Youngo Gumbo

Its a Check!!

2009-07-29T18:48:00.007-05:00

So, today is the day the yard gets mowed. As is SOP, I leave the check for the yard guy out on the back patio table.

This morning, as the boys and I were getting ready to leave, I looked out the back door and muttered to myself that I'd better put the check in a ziploc bag in case it rained. 3 1/2-year-old G2 heard me and joined me at the back door.

Conversation followed:

"Where's the check?" he said, brows furrowed.

"It's on the table right there," I said, while fetching a ziploc bag and going outside to bag the check.

"Where, mommy? I don't see a check"

"Right here." I held up the check. "See?" I bagged it.

"Mommy, that's not a check! Where's the check?" He was getting mad now.

"This is it, in this bag. It's for the yard guy." I showed it to him.

"No, mommy! That's not a check!" He's agitated.

I'm thoroughly baffled. "G2, what's a check look like?"

"It's yellow and it goes 'peep' 'peep' 'peep'! And the mommy sits on it!"

Pause...

"Oh. " I had to move away so he couldn't see me laugh.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless PKMzeta - D

2008-12-30T17:18:00.002-06:00

. . . researchers at SUNY Downstate Medical Center have found that a molecule known to preserve memories – PKMzeta – specifically stores complex, high-quality memories that provide detailed information about an animal's location, fears, and actions, but does not control the ability to process or express this information. This finding suggests that PKMzeta erasure that is designed to target specific debilitating memories could be effective against the offending memory while sparing the computational function of brain.

Story Here

Offending memory. Painful memory. Sad memory. Embarrassed memory. Environmental memory provoking addiction, irrational action, debilitation.

In Lethem's Gun, With Occasional Music the future State sponsors a variety of drugs to make life tolerable. The hero's own blend was "skewed heavily towards Acceptol, with just a touch of Regrettol to provide that bittersweet edge, and enough addictol to keep me craving it even in my darkest moments." But after a brief stay in suspended animation for doing the right thing he returns to a world hooked on Forgettol. Everyone functions normally, their PDA's keep track of the essential facts of their existence and allow them to process and express information, but they have blanked out the majority of their pasts.

Does earasing memories change who we are? Removing experiences would certainly make traditional therapy more complicated then it already is. Could memory removal be used as a theraputic tool? Who is qualified to determine which memories qualify for removal? This certainly falls under the wing of elective drug therapy so even if others couldn't say for us then each of us could say for ourselves that "I choose to forget."

In Bakker's The Prince of Nothing trilogy, there is a school of thought that every action can be anticipated by recognizing the actions that came before. If we unhook those motives do they change our behavior or just further obfuscate the reasons we act the way we do?

How much of my past do I want to erase? Huh. Well, I can think of a few bits. There are some childhood traumas way at the back that I've mostly forgotten already but are still tender when prodded. There are some parts that were just boring and I could use their absence as a dark spot indicating potentially meaningful experience willfully expunged.

Recently my father slapped me. It was all in good fun - he was telling a story and it called for a demonstration. He held his hand up to show how he disciplined the dog. There was a suspended moment where we both wondered what he would do - he popped me on the cheek and nodded his head. Afterwards, it stung for days. I felt it again whenever I thought of it and it would spring to mind at all hours. Here I am a grown man of nearly 40 and this slap landed with the force of an entire childhood and its failings on both sides, real and imagined. Some parts of my memory were busy assigning way more weight then seemed normal, healthy, or worth my time.

So what do I erase? The slap? The memories that make it painful? My father?

Bohemian Rhapsody - L.

2008-11-15T16:35:00.004-06:00

Last night I lay in bed drowsily channel-surfing and landed on VH1's Top Ten show. The topic of this episode was Top Ten Male Vocalists of blah or blah, I forget exactly what. Having taken some H-bomb allergy medicine, I was only half paying attention.

The number two vocalist on the list turned out to be Freddie Mercury. OK, whatever. To highlight his vocal prowess, VH1 choose to play Bohemian Rhapsody. Even though I knew it was considered a benchmark song of the 70's, I'd managed to make it 38 years without ever having been exposed to its lyrics. So I perked up a bit and squinted at the TV, interested.

White satin skinsuits, shorty vests, pageboy haircuts. All predictably terrible and very 70's. Seems standard so far.

Mama, just killed a maaaaaan..put a gun against his head, pulled the trigger, now he's deaaaaaaad....lots of piano drama work.

Whoopee do. THIS is Bohemian Rhapsody? The big frakkin' deal? Whatever. I gave in to the H-bomb and let myself drift.

Talking heads in black turtlenecks, fuzzy 70's camera effects.

Scaramouch, scaramouch will you do the fandango? Gallileo, Gallileo, Figaro!

I wondered about the allergy medication, shook my head, and refocused on the TV.

Bismallah! We will not let you go! No, no, no, no, no!

What the hell?

Mama mia, mama mia, mama mia, let me go! Beezelbub has a devil put aside for me!

THIS is Bohemian Rhapsody?

**Laughs hysterically**

Books to Make Me Cry - L.

2008-10-25T21:04:00.012-05:00

As a general rule, I stay away from maudlin stories--those books the critics call "tearjerkers."

I don't WANT to cry. Who the hell does? So when reading, I avoid shoegazer fiction, most Russians, various Teutonics, and Oprah's book list.

Occasionally, though, I find myself with a book that makes me bawl.

Not often, but it happens.

Over the past 15 years, here are seven books that sent me into the bathroom weeping:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
The grand conclusion to seven amazing books....how could I not cry? It's by far the darkest of the series, and the saddest.

The Reincarnationist
I didn't KNOW this was going to bring on the tears. I thought it was just another pitter-patter archaeology chase thriller. It is, but it's got a twist....one that makes you weep.

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
Aslan going to his death willingly on Stone Table...shaved, humiliated, and killed.... **reaches for kleenex.**

White Gold Wielder
The conclusion to the chronicles of Thomas Covenant left a strong impression on me when I was a teenager, one I still think about to this day.

Tailchaser's Song
What a goofy concept, I thought. A The Hobbit-style story, told from the point of view of cats **rolls eyes.** Little did I know--this one would send me to bed hiccuping.

The Mists of Avalon
Not for the faint of heart. Arthur's story has a tragic ending, one we all know. But the majesty in which Excalibur returns to the lake, the loneliness of Arthur's death, and the exile Morgaine faces...**tears up.**

MycroBlog

2008-09-09T21:20:00.002-05:00

I have been watching twitter from a distance and thinking about it. Microblogging seems to fit into the next stage of how we communicate and express ourselves to people that mean something to us. My hang up is that I tend to over think my typed text and so it has to come out in longer bursts with caveats and qualifiers.

But over the weekend I found a site that seems to be a good fit for me: mycrocosm
Here is my page: http://mycro.media.mit.edu/user/show/500

We will see if I keep it up. One of the first things we learn in Industrial Psychology 101 is about this study in the '50' s where a scientist guy was trying to measure worker productivity and satisfaction through observation. The big lesson learned was that observing a worker changes the way that they work and how they feel about it. After assembling a few days of statistics I have a strong urge to eat better, be nicer, and focus on talking with people. I do not, however, have an urge to listen to less ambient music. I don't know what that means.

Suburban Conflict - D.

2008-08-22T22:44:00.002-05:00

Uh, what can you buy at Costco that you can take home in a SmartCar?

Notes From Vancouver Island, British Columbia - D & L

2008-08-14T20:53:00.004-05:00

Changing Planes in Seattle -
Electronic signs and pre-recorded voice messages say everything once in English and again in Japanese

Cold -
Even though you are from Dallas, it is possible to worry about dying of hypothermia at the end of July. If you are told you have to wear a full-body survival suit to go out on the water, don't complain. You'll be glad you have it on.

Dave the Lab -
The Sidney Pier Hotel (not our hotel) has a black lab on staff. His name is Dave and the hotel guests can sign him out to take him on walks.

Driving from the Airport on Vancouver Island -
At first you think that gas is really cheap . . . until you realize that is the price per liter. Then you wonder exactly how big a liter is and start trying to convert amounts in your head. You glance down at the spedometer and freak out when you see that you are going 120 miles per hour . . . until you realize that is kilometers. Then you start trying to do the whole conversion thing again only this time with distance.

Inflatables -
Zodiacs are very zippy and lots of fun.

Books -
Sidney, BC is informally known as Booktown, due to all the bookstores.

Cod Snobbery -
Halibut, not cod, makes the best fish and chips.

Island Life -
Island life, or seaside resort town life, is the same all over the world. There are locals and then there is everybody else. All the idle talk is about how The Season is going and how to get through the Off Season. The local girls are way too pretty for the local boys but they are stuck with limited options and nowhere else to go. The summer jobs for kids always have something to do with helping helpless tourists navigate, park, shop, eat, or in some other way generally forget their normal lives. Lives that these kids would love to live for them . . .

Orcas -
The orcas are a force of nature for the residents and tourists. 3 pods (matrilineal families) of about 35 orcas each live year round in the waters off BC. Their daily movements are posted on blogs every day. Reports of sightings fill marine radio chatter. Each pod member has a letter-number designation and a name - "J-48 just popped up on me, and Ripples is right behind him. I don't see Grandma yet, though." The oldest pod member, J-1 (Grandma), was born in 1911. They can communicate with each other over miles. An official orca census has been kept since 1975. And we STILL don't know why they do the things they do.

Unequal Economics -
Poverty's rampant on Indian reservations, even in Canada.

Reading signs -
You are startled at the proper English spellings; words like organise and behaviour.

Disappearing Birds -
The cormorant population around the Haro Strait is declining rapidly, thanks to the rise in the bald eagle population. This is a good thing.

Happiness Is A... -
Whoever invented heated bathroom floor tiles (with digital controls!) deserves sainthood nomination.

It's Time to Pay for Something -
Okay, don't even think about trying to use an American Express card. And if you are looking for an ATM the banks all have unfamiliar names so you have to peer at the small print to see if you will even get your card back. And instead of the instructions being in English or Spanish they are in English or French. When your money finally does come out there is a brief moment of panic because it's all too colorful and glittery to be real money. You've selected the Monopoly ATM, or something.

No Lennox -
Air conditioner repairmen do not make a very good living in BC.

Otters -
It's possible to wake up at 6:30am, look out the window, and see river otters hunting for breakfast.

Vampire Novels -
British Columbia is the perfect place to read Stephenie Meyers's Twilight series.

What A Long Strange Trip It Is - L.

2008-06-27T22:06:00.006-05:00

Every morning and evening, on my way to and from work, I see a lot of odd things. Granted, my commute's only 12 miles, but it's 12 miles through the dense streets of Dallas's satellite cities. I avoid the tollways and highways because they're jammed, opting instead to thread my way through city streets. This zigzag route takes about the same time as if I had taken the highways (50 minutes, minimum, in rush hours), but it's far more interesting.

I've seen a few strange things lately. To wit:

1) Two scrawny, ropy guys decked out head to toe in Serious Cyclist a la Lance bicycling wear--the tight thin brightly colored nylon shirts, padded bike shorts, bike shoes, helmets, bike gloves, streamlined sunglasses, and beef-jerky legs. Nothing unusual about that, you say. Right. But what I didn't say was that these ropy guys were on UNICYCLES. I kid you not. Unicycles that looked like mountain bike type tires--thick, huge, chunky tire with a seat on it. Now when have you seen that? What bugs me about it is, why the bike gloves? They're not exactly holding onto anything....

2) In the warehouse district halfway through my trip while stuck at a stoplight, on a blazing hot day, I look over to one of the anonymous warehouse businesses and see: A large beefy man dressed head to toe in a snow suit--navy blue poofy ski parka, ski bib, and heavy weather boots, coming out of one of the warehouse doors. As if this is freaking Nome, Alaska. He hops down the steps, all bundled up in the 100 degree Dallas heat, unzips his parka, drapes it over the stair railing, and lights up. Stands outside in the blazing sun on the asphalt, in his white T-shirt, poofy ski bib, winter boots, and has a smoke. Eh?? Best as I can figure, there must be some kind of frozen storage business back in that warehouse.

3) While driving down a feeder street, I see a flurry of movement on a residental street I'm passing, and am taken aback by what's unfolding before my eyes: A melee involving half a dozen people taking place in the middle of the street, as two Carrollton police cruisers come to a sliding, screeching (smoking!) halt in the middle of the fray. The police tumble out of their cars, guns drawn, aiming at the people in the street, swiftly advanging on them, their arms braced straight out and their hands wrapped around thick, ugly automatics. That's all I saw before I was around the next corner and out of range.

4) An extremely fit and attractive Asian man in his thirties, shirtless, riding a red Schwinn bicycle with a wire basket on the handlebars. In the basket sat a happy West Highland Terrier. Exactly like Dorothy and Toto, only Asian, washboard abs, and the dog was white. . .

5) In heavy traffic, a man driving his Chevy Tahoe up over the curb and onto the median in the middle of the street, piling out of his car at a dead run, dashing over the median and into opposing traffic. . .to rescue a turtle. Which he did. The turtle was stubbornly trying to walk down the center lane of a thoroughfare in heavy traffic. Our unknown hero snagged the terrapin in a football hold, dashed back through traffic, and got back in his car. Yay for Mr. Tahoe man, whoever you are!

6) I can't stand THIS guy. . .whoever he is. He drives a navy blue jacked-up pickup truck with testicles attached to the back tow bar. Yes, you heard that right. Testicles. Or more specifically, truck nuts. They're proportionally sized for the truck, swing pendulously, flesh colored, and have visible veins in them. They're thoroughly disgusting. I've had this guy in front of me three times thus far, his ass in my face. The fact that his truck's jacked up on big chunky tires means the truck nuts are at my driving eye level, where I can't avoid looking at them. Oh, ugh!!!

7) A mother and a teenager in a Volvo behind me. The mother's obviously very angry about something. She's ranting and raving, her arms waving everywhere rapidly as she screams (and drives at the same time). Her arm waving was what caught my attention in the rearview mirror. Her teenaged passenger sat with shoulders slumped, head down, longish hair hanging down over the face so that all I could see in the mirror was a nose and chin. I couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl. Mom screams and hollers at 45 mph, and then shoots an arm out and whacks the hell out of the teenager's face. Teenager doesn't even flinch. The only sign of impact was his/her head rocking to the side, the hair displaced only for a split second. Mom continues yelling and waving. I stopped watching at that point.

8) And the one that bothers me most of all--a well-dressed blonde businessman in his thirties standing on the side of the road, blood streaming down his face, doubled over, screaming incoherently with rage at an unseen thing to the north. Traffic was heavy and there were a lot of people around. He had on khakis, a starched chambray blue shirt, expensive loafers, and had receding blonde hair. No car, no keys, no briefcase, no nothing. Just him, his face bloodied, raving mad. It didn't occur to me until well after I had passed that he might have been assaulted and carjacked. I did think about stopping to see if he needed help but his rage scared me.

What Goes Down Comes Up* - L.

2008-06-10T20:27:00.006-05:00

One of our dogs has an extraordinarily sensitive stomach. Few foods outside her normal dog food (prescription food, of course) go down and stay down. Stray cheetos, the random pizza crust, a piece of hamburger dropped by a toddler. . .all are automatic barf primers. This also includes all the random things dogs get into while outside--leaves, grass, dead bugs, poop, birdseed. . .you get the picture. She's a Zantac-popping regular regurgitator.

Lately, she's been on a grass-eating kick. Don't know why--she does this sometimes. So does her doofus cousin, but his stomach is a lot more cast-iron than hers. This past week, thanks to the grazing, we have gone into the "Puke Upcoming!" drill no less than 3 times. We missed only once, and only because it was 2:00am and we couldn't find the barf towel fast enough in the dark. We've been yelling "No Grass!!!" at her if we catch her nibbling, sniffing, or even thinking about it while she's outside. She knows this command, believe me. We've had a lot of practice. But still, she waits until we're not looking.

Today continued the "No Grass!!" reminders. I'd had a very full day--very busy at work, plus Excel hell, plus I gave a pint at the bloodmobile after lunch. My long-suffering mate had mercifully put the kids in the tub, so I made myself a Cobb salad for dinner, periodically checking outside and yelling "No Grass!" every time she neared the weeds in the flower bed. Thoroughly frazzled, I finally called her inside and sat down in the study with my food and a glass of wine. Peace at last. I was halfway through my Cobb when I realized she was sitting squarely in front of me, staring unblinkingly. This wasn't the stare of hunger, or of hopefulness at a handout. It was a cold, disapproving stare of reproach. There was no mistaking it. Now, why on earth would this dog be looking at me so severely?

Then it dawned on me. I was eating grass.

*Props to Dave for the posting inspiration.

Fancy Dive - L.

2008-06-08T21:58:00.006-05:00

Lately, I've realized that while my mind may be in its 20's, my body sure ain't.

Friday after dinner, my Long-Suffering Mate and I took our boys to the rec center pool in our neighborhood. It's a great place, with a huge outdoor pool and two indoor pools. We splashed in the outdoor one until it closed and the lifeguards moved everyone inside to the other pools. One of the indoor pools, the competition-sized one with the lap lanes, also has two low diving boards. Our older son, G1, who is six, loves them. He's discovered cannonballs and the freedom of defying gravity. Somehow, Dave and I got roped into the board queue with G1 and a gaggle of other kids his age.

I volunteered to go first while Dave kept an eye on two-year-old G2, who had appointed himself official commentator at his post on the pool deck. At the go-ahead from the teenaged lifeguard, I climbed the three steps up and savored the feel of the no-skid metal under my feet. My hands on the rails, my mind flashed back to countless summers spent at the country club pool, where I enjoyed this same view, a blue-green strip of board extending into the horizon, over shimmering blue water, the smell of chlorine, the chill of the air against my wet skin. Thus invigorated, I took off down the board, heading towards a glorious jacknife. At the edge, I shifted my forward momentum into a downward bounce, jumping up and slamming both feet down. The board twanged and dipped down. . .down. . .down. And then just when I thought there was no recoil, it reversed and went up. .. .up. . .up, flinging me up and out over the pool with the force of a wad of potatoes twanged out of a spoon. I windmilled and twisted madly as I flew, trying to gain control. My eyes saw the ceiling, the far wall, then a rapid mass of blue. My face hit the water the exact same time the rest of me cracked down. The physics of surface tension were never demonstrated so clearly to me as at that moment.

My downward momentum carried me almost to the bottom of the deep end, where I finally came to rest in a suspended haze of tiny bubbles, my torso, arms, thighs, and one foot stinging smartly.

"Damn," I mused. "That board's got a hell of a lot of spring in it."

"Ahem!" spoke up the Bitch in the Back of My Head (you know the one--she looks like Bjork in a pink twinset, with a bow in her hair, and tells you you're really going regret ordering that last martini.)

"Ahem," she cleared her throat,"It's not that the board is springy. It's that you bring a lot more to the board than you used to."

I tacitly ignored her, preferring to sulk near the bottom of the pool, where, for a brief moment, I entertained the idea that no one had seen my ignominious exit, especially since there wasn't anyone else in the depths with me. But then I realized lingering too long risked a 'rescue' by the overzealous, gangly, pimply-faced, metal-mouthed teenager in the lifeguard stand. The thought that things could get worse spurred me back up to the surface, stroking over to the ladder, pretending as if nothing had happened and everything was just FINE, thank you very much.

I hauled my bright-pink, still-smarting body up the ladder and out of the pool.

"That was just terrible," intoned Dave, his words punctuated by giggles from the kids in the board queue, my boys among them. I straightened my back indignantly, a retort forming in my head. But I knew it was futile. I gave up and drooped.

"Yeah. Apparently I have a hell of a lot more inertia than I used to." I looked down at my feet, and noticed the board had had the last word, bloodying 3 of my toes on the way out.

"Oh, hell, no," hissed the pink twinset Bitch in my cranium. "you're 38 years old. You don't quit."

"Damn straight, I don't, " I muttered, and dripped my way over to rejoin the diving board queue.

"Mommy!" My 6-year-old was thrilled. "You're back! Are you going to dive again?" He bounced up and down.

"Nope," I said, "This time I'm doing a cannonball."

On My Bedside Table 6/7/08 - L.

2008-06-08T18:27:00.007-05:00

The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte

This is a book I've read twice before, and one that I enjoy rereading every few years. Hollywood made a really bad movie out of it called The Ninth Gate, which bears little resemblance to the book. The book itself is a good intellectual read--one that makes you feel smart and as if you're spending your time in a worthwhile manner, while simultaneously being entertained.

The Pig Did It by Joseph Caldwell

I'm not liking this book a whole lot. . .but I'm trying. I'm just over halfway through it and it's not a thick novel. So I'll probably plow on through. However, I don't identify with the protagonists at all. The humor's also rather dull.

Ze Ennui. . .

2008-05-27T20:32:00.002-05:00

Found this on cuteoverload.com, and had to steal it. It's just too much.

On My Bedside Table 5/25/08 - L.

2008-05-26T21:39:00.005-05:00

The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million by Daniel Mendelsohn
Chronicles one modern-day man's attempt to investigate the past and discover exactly what happened to his aunt, uncle, and four cousins during the Nazi pogroms. I am approximately 2/3 through this book, and even though it's wonderfully written and fascinating, I don't know if I can finish it. At this intimate level of discovery, the horrors of the Nazis really hit home.

The Nasty Bits by Anthony Bourdain
Bourdain's as brilliant on paper as he is on TV. Each chapter is a little snippet or story. So far, perfect portions for when I need to take my mind off something but don't want to get sucked into reading for hours.

Map of Bon es by James Rollins
Techno-thriller that reads like Dan Brown meets Douglas Preston. Rapid-fire treasure hunt where our protagonists (US intelligence agency and the Vatican) face off against the bad guys (secret society) in a race to find the bones of the Magi, which apparently have psuedo-scientific properties. So far, a fun read, though I'm getting a little tired of the never-ending plot twists.

"The Man" And Me - L.

2008-05-04T15:05:00.005-05:00

When I was eleven, Stan "The Man" Musial took me to my very first Major League Baseball game.

For the uninitiated, Stan Musial is one of the greatest baseball players of all time, up there with Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Hank Aaron, and Lou Gehrig. He played his entire career (1941-1963) with the St. Louis Cardinals, taking them to three World Series during his career. He still ranks 4th in all-time career hits, behind Pete Rose, Ty Cobb, and Hank Aaron. In his retirement, Stan Musial remained active in St. Louis civic events and charities. And somehow--I was never quite clear exactly how--he was a supporter of St. Joseph's Institute, the school I attended. The April I was in the 6th grade, he took a group of us students to the Cardinals home opening game at Busch Stadium.

In 1981, I remember the sheer awe on my father's face when he heard I was going to the game. "You're going to the home opener with Stan "The Man"? By golly," he said slowly as his gaze drifted off to a faraway place. "That's just amazing." My dad was a big baseball fan, and grew up watching "The Man" work his magic on the game. My mother, hardly the sports fan, lit up like a marquee at the news. I may not have known who Stan was at the time, but my parents' reaction made a huge impression on me. For my even-tempered folks to get excited and dreamy on me, this must be big.

The day of the game, Stan met us at the school. I remember us milling around the school's circular drive, waiting until it was time to head down to the stadium. Affable and charming, Mr. Musial made his way around our group, seeking out every child, asking questions and beaming. I watched this charity stroll warily from the curb, trying to get a feel for this strange legend who set the parents exclaiming and the school's nuns chattering. Anonymity was not to be, however. A sharp fingernail poked me in the back and a Kodak Instamatic fell into my hands. "Go on," said my giddy mother, "Get a picture," and gave me a shove off the curb and into The Man's path. Feeling every awkward angle in my gawky 11-year old bones, I reluctantly looked up. "Mr. Musial, will you take a picture with me?" My eyes came to rest on a warm, smiling face and sparkling eyes. "Of course I'll take a picture with you. I'd be delighted," and he handed the camera to my mother.

At that moment, my unease vanished. I knew, somehow, down to my core, that here in front of me was a rare, real person, unblemished by any reserve, ulterior motive, or subterfuge. Charity appearance be damned. Stan was genuinely happy to be taking us to a game, and it showed.

We had a wonderful time at the opener. For me, a small-town girl, the massive ring of Busch Stadium and the spectacle of Major League Baseball left me open-mouthed. Our seats were at first base, the sunshine was warm, the outfield was green, and I had never tasted hot dogs so good. And throughout it all, there was Stan.

I love Major League games. I love the crowd, the lights, the expanse of the outfield, the peanuts, hotdogs, and the hitch in your breath when you realize a foul ball's coming your way. I love to watch the groundspeople groom the infield dirt. I love squeeze plays, pinch hitters, double plays, and yelling at the umpire. I love the 7th-inning stretch, stolen bases, and knuckleballs.

Wherever you are, Stan. . .Thank you for the Game.

Sir Gabriel and the Dragon - L.

2008-04-20T20:20:00.002-05:00

Sir Gabriel bravely dispatched a dragon at Scarborough Faire today.

Pauseworthy Videos - L.

2008-01-12T13:46:00.000-06:00

Like photos, some videos need few words. The one below is of the Kaziranga preserve in India, which has the densest population of tigers in the world. The folks on the elephants were out trying to dart and relocate a tigress who had strayed too close to a village.

To find out more, go here.

Pauseworthy Photos - L

2008-01-04T08:30:00.000-06:00

There are times when an accompanying photo eclipses its article. It doesn't happen often, but this is one of those times:

The photo was part of an article detailing research on great whites in South Africa (link here). But the article itself pales against this picture.

Dave emailed the link to me, and he said his first thought was, "David Foster Wallace is cutting this photo out right now."

Mine was, "No way am I ever, ever scuba diving there."

What thoughts popped into your head? Post a comment and share!

The Pervasiveness of H.R. - L.

2007-10-26T23:16:00.001-05:00

When exactly did H.R. Giger become so comfortably embedded in our culture that his influence extends to childrens' toys? That was the question I found myself asking the other day when my son proudly showed me the new Mission to Mars Lego kits he'd assembled. The kits included black 'Martian' ships that stopped me in my tracks when I saw them. The greenish-black colors, tapering curves, and organic ship hoses screamed "Biomechanoid!"

I quickly checked the Lego boxes for credits to Giger, and found none. I didn't find any connections on the web. The blogosphere was strangely silent on the matter, as well. I've been forced to conclude that Giger, weird as he is, has been around for so long and incorporated so thoroughly into our popular culture that today's toy designers, having grown up with Giger's organic machines, are unconsciously expressing his style in their designs.

I know *I* grew up with Giger present at every turn, from the age of ten and onwards. My big sister and I were huge science fiction fans. In 1980, I was ten and she was nineteen. Somewhere around that time, she signed us up for a subscription to Omni magazine. I rapidly devoured the magazine from cover to cover each month, pausing only at the strange full-page grim, unsettling paintings that invariably appeared at least once, sometimes more, in each issue, paired with the science fiction essays and shorts. Although I could recognize that they were by the same person, I didn't know the artist's name, and didn't care.

A couple of years later, I saw Alien. Somewhere around this time, too, my sister bought Debbie Harry's Koo Koo album, which featured a Giger cover. Without being told, I felt, rather than saw, the connection between the Omni paintings, the alien, and the Debbie Harry cover. It wasn't until high school, while working part time at the bookstore, that I stumbled across Necronomicon I and II and finally put a name to the images that had haunted me for six years through the Omni subscription (which we still had). At last, the twisted mind had an identity.

Giving the artist a name didn't lessen the squirminess of the images, however. Rather, as time went on, I kept running into Giger--Aliens, Species, the video game Dark Seed. His influence can also be seen in just about every horror or science fiction film made from 1985 onward.

At some point, Giger references became so common I stopped paying attention unless they were especially goofy, like this:

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that my son's toys show Giger influences. I don't know what it is that bothers me about it. Perhaps it's because as inured as I've become to Giger's images, I'm still not blase enough about them that I'm comfortable with their appearance in children's playthings. Or maybe it's that children's toys are, by nature, supposed to be harmless and benign. Benign has never once been a word applied to Giger's art. So now perhaps the question should be--have toy manufacturers gone too far by incorporating Giger designs? Or has Giger been dumbed down and defanged?

For me, surprisingly enough, I think the latter's worse.

Comfort, Peas - L.

2007-07-14T21:15:00.000-05:00

A few posts back, I mentioned that sometimes very small things bring joy.

This weekend, I was reminded of another of those tiny, comforting moments of happiness. My older son, now almost 6, asked me if we could find some purple hull peas to shell.

Now, to put this in context, I have to go back to my own childhood. Purple hull peas are a very Southern food, as I found out later in life when I learned the distinction between Southern and Everything Else. But when I was a kid, they were a ubiquitous part of summer. Somebody in our family, immediate or extended, was always buying purple hulls by the bushels in mid-summer, distributing them by the sackful to resigned relatives.

Now that I think about it, some years the peas were grown in family backyards, not bought at the farmer's market, but I digress.

Anyway, whenever the sacks of purple hulls appeared, we'd head out to the back patio in the late afternoon with pitchers of iced tea, sacks of peas, and mixing bowls. And we would each sit around the patio table with bowls in our laps, shelling peas, drinking sweet tea, chatting and gossiping leisurely, as the sun set through the trees and the day cooled. Sometimes it was just me, my sister, and my mom on our patio. Other times we'd go to my aunt's, and sometimes my other aunts would come over, as well as my cousins. Occasionally, my dad or uncle would join in, but it was usually just the women, as ours was a matriarchal family that ran heavy on girls. At the end, our thumbs were purple from shelling and our bowls were full of the sweet-smelling, green-and-purple peas. The peas were either washed, frozen in containers, and stashed in the standalone freezers, or simmered straightaway with bacon and peppers. The creamy, rich taste of the peas perfectly matched up with pan-fried ham or pork chops. But my favorite was always a big bowl of peas and their pot liquor poured over a slab of buttered cornbread, nothing more.

Being the youngest of 8 cousins, by the time I graduated from college, our family had scattered to the wind and put an end to the communal pea-shelling. Marriages, divorces, remarriages, blended families, and a dying small-town economy sent the clan roaming. Upon graduation, I joined the exodus, leaving my hometown behind for life in the big city.

No matter how far one goes, though, what comforts as a child still brings joy as an adult. And for me, the peas rule. Every summer, I seek them out at the farmer's market downtown, looking for a vendor who has them still in the shell. I get many questions, and many more quizzical looks:

Ma'am, why bother with the hulls? I have them already cleaned right here.
But I want them in the shell. Do you have any in the back?
No, but I can have them for you tomorrow.
No, that's OK. I want them today.

And so it goes, until I find the one perplexed vendor who does, indeed, have unshelled purple hulls in the truck. The oddity of the request always costs me, though, as the farmer's market vendor figures, if ma'am is nuts enough to want to shell them herself, she's probably nuts enough to pay $30 for a bushel. Which I am, because by the time I find them in the shell, I'm hot, tired, and ready to take my peas and go home.

But once I get the purple hulls home, though, I'm happy. I take them out on the patio in the evenings, and let my mind wander contentedly while my hands busily strip peas from their jackets, staining my fingers purple, and filling my mixing bowl.

When my oldest son was four and summer rolled around, I found myself grieving the loss of my family's odd pea-shelling non-tradition, the one we simply fell into by default when I was a child. But as I looked at my son, I slowly realized, it isn't dead. It's just dormant, waiting for the cycle of generations to begin again. So that summer, after I brought the purple hulls home from the market, I took two bowls out onto the patio--a big one for me, and a small one for him--and showed him what to do. He took to it easily, settling contentedly into the rhythm of shelling peas, and gradually, his thumbs turned purple. We shelled peas for the better part of a week, enjoyed some of the fruits of our labor over ham and cornbread, and froze the rest.

Fast forward to this summer. This past week when we visited a roadside farmer's market in search of corn and watermelon, my oldest turned to me and asked, Mama, can we look for purple hull peas to shell? It was then that I saw the seed I'd planted the summer before had taken root and was growing, making me quietly hopeful for the future. The fates smiled on us that day, allowing us to procure a sackful of peas for only $5.00. We spent a placid Thursday afternoon purpling our thumbs, and ate them for dinner.

They were delicious, and I was happy.

Nonfiction, Recommended – L.

2007-07-09T22:53:00.000-05:00

Two weeks ago, I posted a list of thirteen recommended novels, based on what books I felt delivered thought provoking, interesting reads. I pulled those 13 novels from a long list I have in my head, and tonight I’m doing the same for nonfiction books. Granted, my nonfiction mental list is nowhere near as long as my fiction one. I’m not exactly sure why this is, but I suspect it has to do with two things: 1) nonfiction is based on actual events. No matter what real life brings, the human mind can create stories far more interesting and enthralling; and 2) my reading preferences may simply be more comfortable with ‘manufactured’ plots—after all, I can always reassure myself at the end, “it’s just a story.”

Regardless, there’s one type of nonfiction that will probably never make it to my nonfiction list—biographies*. I don’t enjoy them at all. They’re boring, overlong, inflated works that seldom serve any purpose. It’s brief events in the lives of notable people that make them interesting—not the picayune details such as where they went to school, how affluent their parents were, and how bullied they were as children. I don’t want to know those things, even about JFK or Abraham Lincoln. What I do want to know, however, is exactly what happened during the Bay of Pigs, or that night at the Ford Theater. Just give me the relevant parts, and leave out the chaff.

The only biography I’ve considered reading (but haven’t) in recent years is American Terrorist, which chronicles the life and unraveling of Timothy McVeigh. As the mother of two small boys, I look at them and wonder, where did McVeigh’s parents go wrong? What turned a gentle, well-liked young man into someone capable of murdering so many? How do I avoid the same mistakes? I may never know, and I feel confident in guessing that McVeigh’s biography is not going to be the magic 8 ball of answers for fretful parents, however much I would like it to be.

And before you ask, yes, Random House did indeed publish a list of Top 100 Nonfiction books. Again, I’d never heard of a good chunk of the texts on the list, but I’m not worrying overmuch about it because RH missed the mark so widely with the fiction list that it was a foregone conclusion their stab at nonfiction would produce a universal “meh” of indifference. Actually, I didn’t even know there was a nonfiction list until I went looking online for the fiction one, and found a link to the nonfiction version.

I’m trying madly, however, not to bore my readers, so here are nine nonfiction works that are anything but “meh:”

And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts: Chronicles the first ten years of the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. Shilts was a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle and also a member of SF’s gay community. During the course of writing this book, he had an HIV test performed, but asked his doctor to withhold the results from him until after the book’s completion, fearing that knowledge of his HIV status would impeach his journalistic integrity. I admire ATBPO for the way it upholds the strictest standards of journalism while also acknowledging the heartbreaking cost HIV has forced us all to pay.

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer: Recounts the fateful ascent of Everest on May 10, 1996, in which 14 climbers lost their lives due to a complex mess of bad decisions, awful luck, huge egos, and hubris. Krakauer was a member of one of the summit teams that day, and barely escaped with his life. It’s a classic, yet modern, story of man vs. man, man vs. nature, and man vs. himself, all at once.

Salt by Mark Kurlansky: A book people ask you why you’re reading. “You’re reading a history of salt? Why?” Because you can, and because it’s fascinating—what we pour on our roads by the ton in winter used to be worth more than gold.

Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima by Stephen Walker: Engrossing account of the atomic bomb, from the day of the Trinity test to the dropping of Little Boy one month later. If you ever wondered why and how Truman made the decision he did, how the flight crews were trained on Tinian, and how the targets were chosen, this is the book to get.

The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes: A history of Australia’s settlement by white men. Or, should I say, white convicts. Fascinating telling of Australia’s early years as a penal colony and its eventual development into a civilized nation.

Ablaze by Piers Paul Read: A hard look at the events at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in April 1986, when its Number Four reactor exploded. At times, this narrative drones on, but I make allowances for it because it also provides readers with a window on Soviet Russia’s bureaucracy and censorship, and shows how the disaster at Chernobyl helped accelerate the collapse of the Iron Curtain. Given that our distrust of the “Evil Empire” was such a central part of our childhood, I find myself wondering how we can explain to our kids the kind of fear we grew up with during the Cold War. Books like Ablaze do a good job of conveying the centralized monstrosity and terror the CCCP produced.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach: Be warned—this is not a book for the squeamish. Having said that, it’s also hysterically funny. Which, I guess, is probably the only way one can approach a subject so weird and profound at the same time.

Diamond: The History of a Cold-Blooded Love Affair by Matthew Hart: Well-written, condensed history of our obsession with diamonds. Of particular interest are the sections that deal with the discovery of diamonds in the Canadian arctic and DeBeers’s waning influence.

The Hungry Ocean: A Swordboat Captain's Journey by Linda Greenlaw: If you’ve read The Perfect Storm or seen its movie adaptation, this name might sound familiar. Greenlaw was the captain of the Hannah Boden, the sister ship to the ill-fated Andrea Gail. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio played Greenlaw in Wolfgang Petersen’s so-so movie. Greenlaw was the top swordfish boat captain on the east coast in the ‘90s, and the Hungry Ocean is an absorbing narrative of one of her 30-day swordfish runs. What strikes me personally about this book is that Greenlaw was an English major in college, and “Swordfish boat captain” certainly never occurred to me as a possible vocation when I was wondering what I could do with my own English degree.

*Notice I’m not even mentioning self-help books here. They constitute a completely different category—one far more suited to the seventh level of Hell.

Tokyo/Asakasa sushi bar: about midnight -D

2007-07-04T22:38:00.000-05:00

A couple put a camera on a conveyor belt at a Tokyo sushi bar.

The original version can be found here:

http://www.milkandcookies.com/link/62924/detail/

I saw this one first with just the bustling sounds you would never hear at that hour in Plano, Texas. I especially liked the prep crew members calling to each other through the kitchen. The soundtracked version gives it a little 'Lost in Translation' feel but lets you focus more on each interesting face as it passes by and the gestures which are common and alien at the same time.

I wonder who the woman at the start is waving to?

Rain, Rain, Don't Go Away -L

2007-06-26T19:39:00.000-05:00

Check this out, people. Boys can't resist puddles, especially these boys. And in video #2, the damp bouvie on the porch is all, "Baroo? Mah peeps are tewtelly redonk!" Also note in vid #2 when Dad throws his arms up to say 'finished!,' how Baby makes a break for it, "no! no! no! puh-dle! no! no!"

Fiction, Recommended - L.

2007-06-24T22:20:00.000-05:00

In 1998, Random House’s Modern Library division released what it billed as the authoritative list of top 100 Novels. Given our society’s fondness for top XX or XXX lists of any kind, its appearance wasn’t surprising. But what was remarkable about the Random House list was the fierce debate it provoked, over what constitutes canonical literature. Spectacular verbal and electronic fights flared up over it, online, in the press, on the news, among my friends, and on email distributions. The list itself was, to me, an egregious assortment of random (pun intended) titles, many of which I’d never heard of. Now, I admit I haven’t read everything published in English and have certainly missed hundreds of worthy books, but the Random House list was singular not only for its no-name titles, but also for its omissions. For example, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird was glaringly absent. So was Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. None of Ayn Rand’s books were represented. And so forth.

Since I’m a liberal reader with a profound distaste for the literary snobbery of “canonical” academics (see my previous post from 2006 on this subject), I mostly rolled my eyes at RH’s Top 100 Novels. I was, however, fascinated by the firestorm of arguments among my friends, most of whom are avid readers, and many of whom are also English majors. Everyone had definite opinions over what should have been on the list/what should have been ranked where. Overnight, everyone began compiling their own top 100 lists. None were in agreement, of course, and attempts to reconcile them into one unified list quickly petered out when it became clear that feelings ran deep and finding common ground was more work than anyone was ready to expend.

I made a half-hearted attempt at establishing my own list, of course, and quickly gave up when I also realized the sheer effort of elevating one book above another caused too much mental stress. So, rather than trying to rank books and weigh critical worth, I began mentally listing books I would recommend to readers. I had no solid criteria, other than that I thought the book merited serious thought, for whatever reason, and had staying power. Over time, I’ve revised and added novels, and have carried everything around in my head for almost ten years. It’s time for me to take part of my list of beloved novels out of my brainpan and commit it to the blogosphere, for better or for worse.

Without boring anyone with more discussion, here are thirteen novels* (or series) I recommend to anyone looking for something thought-provoking, well-written, and entertaining to read, in no particular order:

Dune, by Frank Herbert: Literally a book of galactic, profound proportions. I re-read it every year or so, and each time I find something new in it.

To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee: Self-explanatory. If you haven't already read this, your teachers have done you a disservice.

The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco: Fascinating whodunit set in a fourteenth-century monastery. Encompasses not only mystery, but also the philosophy, politics, and history of the time.

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen: Only in the last twenty years or so have academics begun to recognize Austen's sheer narrative skill. She is one of the few (and first) authors to use free indirect speech skillfully, and her characters are smart, witty, and believable.

The Butcher’s Boy, by Thomas Perry: A murder mystery told from the point of view of a professional hitman, who also happens to be our hero.

Moby Dick, by Herman Melville: I know some readers consider Melville torture, but I suspect it was because they were forced to read him in school. I came to MD voluntarily in my twenties, and find it lyrical, fascinating, and peopled with unique characters.

The Harry Potter novels, by J.K. Rowling: The novels I wish I'd written (along with everyone else). I find strength in HP in times of stress.

The Mists of Avalon, by Marion Zimmer Bradley: The legend of King Arthur, told from the point of view of the women around him. Beautifully written, and the last chapter, which details the return of Excalibur to the lake at Avalon, takes my breath away.

Interview with the Vampire, by Anne Rice: One of the best opening lines of any novel, and contains some of the most eloquent discussions on existentialism since Camus.

The Alienist, by Caleb Carr: Turn-of-the-century serial killer mystery in New York City. Rich in historical detail and a complete page-turner.

Gorky Park, by Martin Cruz Smith: Soviet Police Investigator Arkady Renko's debut novel. Takes place in Soviet Russia and is even more relevant today for the snapshot it provides of life behind the Red Curtain.

The Thursday Next novels, by Jasper Fforde: An English major's dream series. Wacky romp through a universe parallel to ours, where all culture revolves around literature, and books are dimensions that can be visited literally. I can't explain it--just go read them.

The Gabriel Allon novels, by Daniel Silva: Follows the adventures of an Israeli Mossad assassin with a conscience.

Now, to explain the dingbat above--*this is only part of the list I have in my head—this is a blog, on the internet, where multitasking mavens bounce from site to site (myself included), and I have no intention of making folks pass out on their keyboards from boredom. At least, not on purpose, anyway.

Enjoy!

What did I miss? (or, how come my jobs were never this much fun?) -D

2007-06-03T12:05:00.000-05:00

I've been working from home for the past year. It took a little getting used to but I was suited to it. Now I am looking for work and after being in different jobs for 15 years I find that my priorities have shifted in unexpected ways. These days it's not so much about how it will further my career or what's the most money I can make. I think that those impulses are holdovers from Reaganomics and that movie Wall Street. Well, that and being poor for awhile which I didn't care for.

Now the criteria for My Next Job are centered around stuff like; will I be able to duck out at 2 on a Thursday for the Fathers Day Ice Cream Social at daycare?, can I wear those comfy khakis with the built-in sansa belt that nobody can see?, and of new importannce - what are the people I will be working with like?

In another job I travelled around and worked at projects for just a few months at a time. I enjoyed meeting and working with lots of different people but I did it with the knowledge that the job would be over soon as I probably wouldn't see most of these folks again. It's easy to be nice if you know you are not going to have to maintain a facade for 10 years. Projects and short stints fit my personality which was formed by moving around a bunch growing up. I could reinvent myself a little differently wherever we went and if it didn't work out, well, we would be moving on soon enough.

It took concentration and effort to be an honest friend, and then a boyfriend, and then a husband to L. Once I got that down the rest came pretty easily. But I've never really applied the Good Friend principles to work because . . . well, those people are not my friends. They are co-workers. Now I would like to find a place to work that is reasonably pleasant, fun, and friendly, dammit.

I want to go work with these guys:

The Subversiveness of Emoticons :) -L

2007-04-20T20:28:00.000-05:00

Emoticons first appeared about twenty years ago with the advent of BBSs and teletype phones as a way to convey emotion and facial expressions that were naturally absent from text. Adding in an emotional indicator after typing enabled the reader to get a clearer idea of the sender’s feelings. As technology evolved and we migrated from dial-ups and WAIS to high-speed internet and multi-capable mobile devices, emoticons and text shorthand became accepted procedure.

We are both confident in our decision to stay here. :(

However, somewhere in the last few years, the usage of emoticons transcended basic expression and reached a new level of complexity. Emoticons became tools of subversion, little Morse code curveballs that send sentences veering away sharply from their original meanings. Short messages, boiled down to simplicity, suddenly become tiny landmines of ambiguity.

You know I have the highest respect for your opinion. 8-)

Years ago, I spent a good chunk of my time writing a master’s thesis on the use of free indirect speech and subversive language in Jane Austen’s Emma. On first read, Austen’s novels seem pleasant, well-constructed pieces of genteel fiction. But on closer study, one realizes that almost every other sentence she writes reeks of irony and double meaning. Characters think and say one thing while meaning another, imply criticism where none is immediately apparent, and vice versa. It’s quite akin to skating out onto what you think is a nice, solidly-frozen pond, only to realize when you reach the middle that it’s only half an inch thick and you’re in Panic City. In Austen, nothing is quite what it seems, and the paradigm shift leaves you flailing uselessly. And this style of writing appears throughout literature, in Flaubert, Dickens, Woolf, and Hemingway, for example.

They were very happy about the pregnancy. =0

Apparently, we humans are complex communicators, afraid to say what we mean, or mean what we say. Austen’s novels were written 200 years ago, so it follows that our propensity for double meaning and cloaked intentions would naturally carry into digital-age communications. No matter how condensed we get textually by chipmunking on mobile devices or firing off emails, we still find ways to subvert our own words, to add multiple levels of meaning to what would otherwise be relatively straightforward communication.

I love the fact that I only had to wait 20 minutes to use the ladies' room. >:-O

Whether that’s a positive or negative thing, I certainly don’t know. We probably couldn't stop ourselves from doing it even if we tried. But I do know that my own use of condensed text and emoticons has caused me to run afoul of people before, as no one reads sentences exactly the same way, especially when they have a content modifier tacked onto the end. And I know I've certainly read the wrong thing into emails and messages people have sent me, taking offense when I shouldn't have.

She cracks me up. :-|

What a muddled world we live in, a society of billions, misunderstanding each other at every turn, regardless of the year, medium, or language. It's a miracle we've come this far, cloaked as we are in conflicting meanings. But then, maybe that's exactly what has kept us thriving and interacting with each other for so long. ;)

Chick Flicks, Redux - L

2007-04-01T00:36:00.000-05:00

The other day at work, a friend and I were gleefully discussing Quentin Tarantino movies. In passing, I happened to call the Kill Bill movies "chick flicks." No sooner had I uttered those words than my friend's eyebrows went up, his mouth opened in an O, and he said rather gently and disapprovingly, but firmly all the same, "uh, Kill Bill is not a chick flick at all."

I'll spare you the spirited argument that followed, but the very fact that it happened left me stewing. Kill Bill not a chick flick? My ass. It's as chick flick as they come--pregnant woman leaves domineering boyfriend, boyfriend beats up and shoots pregnant woman, pregnant woman "loses" baby and 5 years, now-pissed-but-not-pregnant woman exacts revenge, rediscovers and reclaims baby (now child), and rides off into sunset with daughter. It is SO a chick flick.

It got me to thinking. What other unacknowledged chick flicks are out there? More than you'd expect. I'm not an avid moviegoer, so my accounting is probably conservative. Here is my list of action movies/movies targeted at the 17-34 male demographic that are actually chick flicks :

Chick Flicks:
Kill Bill, Vol. 1 and 2
Alien, Aliens
The Terminator
King Kong (Peter Jackson)
The 5th Element
G.I. Jane
Silence of the Lambs
The Hunger
La Femme Nikita (with Anne Parillaud)
Mimic
Ultraviolet

Just Shy of Chick Flicks:
The Replacement Killers
The Lord of the Rings (all 3)
The Professional
Hero
X-Men (all 3)

Have Not Yet Seen, but Pretty Sure they are CF:
The Descent
Run Lola Run

Not Out Yet, but Betting Money On It:
Grindhouse (at least the Planet Terror half)

The above films are ones I thought of in the space of a 10-minute period. I'm sure a cinema fan could come up with more. But seriously, folks-- maybe it's time to rethink the implications of the "chick flick" label. Or we could at least update the marketing demographics to reflect the changing nature of the moviegoing population and the evolution of film plots.

Either way, it's time for a change.

Body Worlds - L

2007-03-25T22:06:00.000-05:00

People are funny when it comes to the dead. And the older we are, the more hang-ups we have.

This morning, I took our five-and-a-half year old son to see the Body Worlds exhibit, where real, "plastinated" (preserved) corpses are displayed in a range of artistic poses. I also ought to mention they're also displayed in a variety of, er, disassemblage. Whether this exhibit was appropriate for a 5-year-old was something I gave a lot of careful thought. For the past month, he and I had been reading and talking about how bodies work. It was when he asked me what color our intestines were that I realized we needed better visuals.

For weeks, I researched the exhibit, read articles about it, and googled the images. I thought about it some more, talked to family and friends, and finally, talked to G1 about it. I showed him the pictures online and explained what the exhibit was. He was fascinated, asked questions, and expressed excitement about going to see it. The more we talked about it, the more I realized I was the one bringing my emotional baggage and hang-ups to the equation, not him. To him, they were just "bodies." How they got there and the fact that they used to be breathing beings weren't things he had a clear concept of, didn't ask, and I didn't try to clarify. I knew he wasn't ready for me to add a complicated emotional component to it, and besides, the point of the visit was to nurture his curious nature and feed his mind, as well as be a mother/son "date."

But it made me think. At what point and how, I wondered, do we become so emotionally uncomfortable and squeamish about the dead? Obviously, we aren't born with it, so it must be learned. But how? Is it religion? Is it the influence of culture and/or TV? Do we pass our own baggage on unwittingly to children? The latter is something I expressly want to avoid, and I am now working on defusing my own hang-ups. But will that be enough? How do you baggage-proof a kid?

The exhibit itself goes a long way towards overcoming fear and turning it into fascination. For me, anyway. For G1, it was fearless and fascinating from the get-go. Our favorites were the same. We both were amazed at the circulatory system displays. Somehow, the Germans had managed to remove everything from bodies and leave behind a three-dimensional latticework of red blood vessels, so densely packed together the effect is quite like a pixelated holographic rendering of a person (or animal--they did it to a duck and a chicken as well). The first thing that crossed my mind the first time I saw it was that it explained why those damn paper cuts bleed like the devil. While I was mulling that over, G1 remarked that everything was red, and they'd forgotten the blue veins. I was forced to agree with his logic, that yes, they didn't show the veins taking the blue blood back to the lungs. He then raised both hands in a shrug and said exasperatedly as he turned away, "They must not be very smart about bodies." I stifled my giggle and followed him to the next display. The other thing we both liked was a man astride a rearing horse. I don't know why, but horses are beautiful no matter how you look at them (or, since I can't resist, no matter how you slice or dice them). The rider holds his brain in one hand, the horse's in the other. And they're the same size, which I find fascinating.

We left the exhibit with our minds full and went to the gift shop, where we picked out a DK Multimedia book on anatomy and a bag of stretchy snakes and lizards before heading home. As soon as we were there, G1 took two minutes to tell Dave about what he'd seen and then went off to look at his new book. Me, being the one with hang-ups, needed considerably more than two minutes to download the visit to my patient and long-suffering mate.

In all, it was a worthwhile experience. I'm glad we did it. G1 enjoyed his morning out with Mom and the things he saw at the exhibit. I had fun on our date and am appreciative of the new perspective I have on the dead. I still don't know exactly how to baggage-proof a kid. However, at least I now have an idea of where to start--with his mother.

I'm in ur fridge. . -L

2007-03-22T20:57:00.000-05:00

A Quelque Mystery - L

2007-02-23T20:51:00.000-06:00

It's interesting how, in the worst of the winter doldrums and in the midst of some extreme stress, the tiniest things can bring joy.

This month, joy came in the form of beer. Not just any brew--a very special one. I am not a beer drinker by any shade, which makes this all the more remarkable.

Years ago, in 2002, after a Whole Foods shopping trip, Dave brought home a specialty beer from Unibroue, a Quebecois brewery. It was called Quelque Chose. The beer was really for him, but after I tried it, it was mine.

Quelque Chose is a cherry beer--a lush, warm red ale brewed with cherries that smells and tastes of cherries, cinnamon, and honey. It touches something primal, whispering of druids, ceremonies, and fire.

That first winter, we found Quelque Chose at Whole Foods and Central Market. The supply seemed assured, until it mysteriously ran out in late spring. We asked about it and discovered to our chagrin that Unibroue made Quelque Chose only infrequently and it had now all been consumed. At that time, I had a single bottle left, which I gently put in our refrigerator and refused to touch. Occasionally, I would sift the Web, searching for it and coming up empty-handed. And our single bottle remained in the refrigerator, cold and lonely.

But then last fall, during a random search, I found a liquor store in Lincoln Park, NJ that seemed to have it in stock. Excited, I emailed the store, only to find that the website was out of date. Alas! No Quelque! The owner apologized and offered to email me if he received a new shipment, whenever that might be. I thanked him and then forced myself to forget it, as it had now been 5 years with no new vintages.

But the week of Valentine's Day this year, an email from the Lincoln Park store owner appeared in my inbox.
Quelque Chose has been re-released, he wrote. I have two cases! Would you like some?

Oh, my.

You're lucky it's Valentine's Day and your birthday all at once, Dave said. Order as many as you need.

The day before my birthday, FedEx delivered a 46-pound package containing twelve bottles of Quelque Chose. I waited until my birthday to open one. It was as mysterious and exotic as I remembered.

I was delighted to have it after waiting so long. Would it appear again in the stores here, I wondered? So on my next Central Market trip, I asked the wine/beer associate if they would be getting any. He didn't know, and wasn't familiar with Quelque Chose, but promised to find out.

That was a week ago. This afternoon, Central Market called. It's on our shelves now, he said. Thought you would like to know. We went tonight to see for ourselves, and sure enough, there it was, back on the shelf again after five years. We bought two bottles. We will slowly build our stock up so that when it disappears again, we won't be stuck with one lone bottle to last us until the next vintage, half a decade later.

All this fuss over a fruit beer, you might be thinking. Someone needs to get a life.

But that's just my point--in everyone's lives, there are rare, random tiny things that bring joy and are understood by few others. One of mine happens to be a wonderful, mysterious cherry beer that appears rarely, and only for the briefest of times. It feeds some part of my soul, and its appearance during a hard time brings me hope.

Oh, and that last bottle from 2002? It's still in the refrigerator, but it's no longer lonely. Maybe we'll drink it in 2012. Who knows?

10 Things I Totally Get--L

2007-01-20T18:54:00.000-06:00

In no particular order:

1) The bottomless escape of a book. Until someone perfects it, it's the closest thing we have to the Holodeck.

2) Coca-Cola Cake. If you've had this at my house, you know what I'm talking about.

3) Bath bombs from Lush. OMG. And by corollary, hot baths where the hot water supply lasts longer than you do.

4) Heavy cream in black tea. Closely followed by hand-brewed chai (not the poor substitute crap you get at 'Bucks.)

5) Spring thunderstorms in Tornado Alley. So comforting. . .there's just something reassuring about the promise of rain, new growth, and the reminder that no matter how high we are on the food chain, Mother Nature can still whoop our asses.

6) The beatific presence of a large dog .

7) Sunlight refracting through water.

8) The warm, heavy weight of a child asleep in your arms.

9) Faded blue jeans. The oft-washed, worn pair that time molds to fit your figure, and yours alone. Few things are as personal and unique as perfectly-broken in jeans.

10) 84 degrees. Eighty-four on the mercury is the ultimate ambient air temperature, when you can wear shorts, a t-shirt, no shoes and lay in the hammock in the sunshine, suspended a zen-like dimension between too-chilly and just-starting-to-sweat.

Traditions--L

2006-12-09T22:48:00.000-06:00

If you've ever been to our house during the holiday season, you've met Ishmael.

Traditions are funny things. I suspect most people starting traditions don't realize that's what they're doing. It just kind of happens after the fact.

Not four months into our marriage, we had our first Youngs Christmas Tree. Not Dave's tree, or Lee's tree, but Our tree. So some compromising was in order. What kind of tree (he likes Scotch pines, I like Fraser firs), skinny or fat, how tall, where to put it. . .you get the idea. We managed to work through everything fairly well, until Dave found the treetop angel in one of my Christmas ornament boxes.

"What the hell is this?", he said, holding it at arms length, aghast.
"Uh, that's the angel that goes on top of the tree," I said, my newlywed radar sensing trouble brewing.
"Not on this tree," he replied flatly.
I started to get testy. "Why not? She's been part of my Christmas since I was little."
"For starters, she's PINK. Secondly, she's hideous. I love you, but it's just way too frou-frou. She goes."
"Fine," I hissed. "But then what goes up there? It's not a Christmas tree unless there's something on top."
"Not a problem. We'll find something," he said, tossing Tree Angel aside, and rummaging through my Christmas decoration boxes.
After five minutes of rooting, Dave came back up with a brown teddy bear with a Santa hat and a red scarf. Where I got it, I can't recall. It had been in the boxes for a while.
"Let's use this bear," he said, holding it aloft, "It's not pink. I can live with this."
I sighed. "OK, fine and dandy. Let's stick him up there."

And so, balanced precariously on dining room chairs, we proceeded to try to secure the bear with pipe cleaners to the spire sticking up from the top of the tree. But no matter how we positioned him, Bear looked very uncomfortable in his treetop perch. The more we tweaked, the more awkward Bear was.
I muttered, "He looks like he's waiting to be shot."
Dave paused and looked at me. "That's it. Let's play to his strengths."
The next thing I know, Bear's trussed up, arms behind his back, blindfolded with his red scarf, lashed to the mast of our Christmas tree.
And so, we called him Ishmael.

Ishmael has now been on top of ten Christmas trees. One year, we couldn't find him, and discussed getting another bear to tie up. Fortunately, he turned up in a missed box, and all was well. Sure, our friends and family probably think we're a little off in the marbles department, but Ishmael's tradition, and what's Christmas without traditions? So leave us our bear, lashed to his mast. And if you're in the market for a pink light-up treetop angel, give me a call.

Garbage In, Garbage Out--L

2006-11-30T20:03:00.000-06:00

Well, at least they are clean garbage bags, and he's already got tidy habits at this young age :)

Play of Thought-D

2006-10-05T03:41:00.000-05:00

The greatest wisdom is to make enjoyment of the present the supreme object of life because that is the only reality, all else being play of thought. But we could just as well call it our greatest folly because that which exists only a moment and vanishes as a dream can never be worth a serious effort.
~ Arthur Schopenhauer

It's too early in the morning to be wide awake with my mind racing. The dog needed out, and that woke the baby, and by the time they were all settled back down I was pop-eyed. Being up and thinking at a time that is not common for me makes my thoughts range far and away from now. Worries about the future, fretting about actions in the past, fleeting fantasies of how everything could be 'just right' for a pretended extended period of time.

Of course, each of those moments are just that, 'moments'. And most of them are imaginary. I suppose one could argue that they are all imaginary now since my memories of things are probably all different from those of any one else who may have been around at the time.

So how should I still all of this pointless imagining (besides blogging about it to the world which is a way of taking your mind off of things by showing them to everybody else)?

Well, I go back to the moment. That is, the moment I missed when I let the dog out. I was so busy being crabby at goofy dog and then tolerant of a disturbed baby that I completely missed a great moment. Being outside in the night air at 2:30 in the morning. The grass feels like the grass of sneaking out on summer nights to meet friends and get into mischief. The air is loaded with night smells (which seem more interesting to this goofy dog, what has been wandering though our yard?). The busy road isn't busy! The sound of a busy road being quiet is very special. What a gift of a moment.

And I just got to cradle a little, tiny person. What a great moment that is every time it happens. You are the one thing they need to feel at peace (well, sometimes they need a bottle as well). But then the dog settles and the baby is ready to coo himself to sleep. Moment over.

And before you know it all of these pretend/imagined/remembered moments take over.

Escape--L

2006-10-02T21:45:00.000-05:00

This is where I go in my memory banks when I've had a bad day, like today.

To Be A Kid Again. . .--L

2006-10-01T21:24:00.000-05:00

Kids' birthday parties can be pretty boring, especially when they're held in a place where parents and friends can do nothing but hang out and watch. JumpTown, at least, lets the big people play on the equipment, too. Which leads to this. . .

10 Things I Just Don't Get-L

2006-09-17T02:17:00.000-05:00

In no particular order:

Angostura Bitters: Who really believes this improves the taste of drinks?

Thong Underwear: On either sex.

Hunting for Fun: Why do so many people think it's a smart thing to get drunk folks together in a remote location and give them guns?

K-Fed: Self-explanatory.

The Today Sponge: If you don't understand my confusion, go to the FAQs and look under 'removal problems.'

Fried Liver: Besides its taste, why is it a good idea to eat a body's pool filter?

Bidets: What's wrong with the shower?

Golf: Why is this considered a sport?

VH1's The Flavor of Love: You couldn't pay me to go out with Flavor Flav. Why are they even having a season two?

Toeless Pantyhose: What's the point?

Perfect or Prolific?--L

2006-09-03T22:11:00.000-05:00

Who would you rather be—Harper Lee or Stephen King? Or, let me put it this way—would you rather write one absolutely perfect iconic novel, or be a prolific, albeit inconsistent, best-selling writer?

My friend Meghan and I were discussing this one day during a post-sushi stroll through Barnes and Noble. I admitted I would rather be a best-selling, popular writer of a series of bodice-rippers than the highly regarded author of the one Great American Novel. In other words, I’d rather feed the public the equivalent of literary methamphetamine than turn out a masterpiece.

For me, it’s not really about Harper Lee so much as it is about wanting to be the kind of literary talent who can generate books that a) people enjoy reading; b) people will spend money on freely; and c) enable one to quit one’s day job. I love Harper Lee. To Kill a Mockingbird is in my all-time top 5 best novels. But I suppose writing a novel of that caliber creates expectations, scrutiny, and pressure on anything else you dare publish. Which may be why we never hear from Ms. Lee, who lives quietly in Monroeville, Alabama, and makes hardly a ripple.

But Stephen King, on the other hand, can write whatever he pleases, and people buy it anyway. Sure, sometimes one of his books is a dud, but as soon as you put it down and turn around, there’s a new one out, with a shiny dust jacket and a crackly, squeaky spine. Plus, you get to live in an eccentric house and say things like, “People want to know why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy--and I keep it in a jar on my desk.”

To me, that's appealing. I want to live in a weird house, write what I want, be prolific, and make people happy with what I write.

What about you, Gentle Reader? Who would you rather be?

False Positive -D

2006-08-10T21:14:00.000-05:00

There is that parable about the monk who spends all of his time alone on a mountain meditating to achieve enlightenment. One day he reaches a sense of absolute peace and understanding. It makes him very happy. He decides that he must share this feeling with the world so he leaves his mountaintop and goes down to the village. On his way through town a farmer accidentally runs over his toe with cart. The monk curses and shakes his fist. It’s easy to find peace on a mountaintop, but it’s hard to be at one with the world when it’s running over your toe.

I was complaining the other day to some friends that I had duped myself out of happiness. At some point in my life, the happiness and peace that I felt day in and day out was insidiously replaced with a sense of self-righteous smugness. When I first realized it my thought was that my bliss had been switched somehow, like a changeling in the night. But now I’m starting to wonder if I didn’t force-feed a staggeringly bad diet of materialism to my happiness until it turned itself into this smugness that demands attention and ever-increasing materialism to sate it. And of course, it’s never sated for long.

My happiness didn’t need much at all. It was fed on a very simple diet of experiences and quiet reflection. And it was it’s own reward. This smugness is always demanding approval from others. What good does that do? The really irritating part is that I really thought I was happy.

So do I give up the material stuff to get back the simple things? I often hum this little lyric from Laurie Anderson:

I know a man he lost his head
He said: The way I feel I'd be better off dead.
He said: I got everything I ever wanted
Now I can't give it up
It's a trap, just my luck!

Or do I just diet and exercise this nasty smugness off and see if there is any happiness left underneath? And will I be at peace in the middle of the village with my toes constantly under threat?

And, as one of the friends I was complaining to asked, why do I want to be happy that much anyway? What’s the big deal about happiness?

Litterae Interruptus-L

2006-07-30T15:15:00.000-05:00

Even though I take great pleasure from reading, occasionally I come across a book I refuse to finish. Now, before you think to yourselves, “who hasn’t?” and assume I didn’t finish because the book was tedious, hold on a second. I have come across a lot of books I just can’t get into because they’re boring as hell. This blog isn’t about those types of books. I’m referring to books that have bothered me, pissed me off, infuriated me, or befuddled me to the point that I’ve slammed them shut and refused to open them again, ever.

Before anyone brings up Moby Dick. . .let me head that off at the pass and clarify still further. By books I’ve refused to finish, I mean books I have voluntarily decided to read, not because a course mandated it or someone told me I ‘had’ to read it. I’ve forced myself to finish quite a lot of books I didn’t want to read or hated reading, because it was a required part of the syllabus and I really liked getting good grades (though I’ve taken the Cliffs Notes route a few times, re. Ulysses, etc.). Plus, Moby Dick is one of my favorite books. No, really. I somehow managed to avoid reading it through H.S., college, and graduate school, before deciding to give it a shot at the ripe old age of 25. To my surprise, I really enjoyed it, and re-read it every so often. But I digress.

Anyway, here is a list of five books that fit not my “tried and failed” category, but the more final “tried and died.” *

In no particular order:

The Nanny Dairies
This based-on-real-life book both pissed me off and saddened me. I know it’s supposed to be funny as hell, hip, and quite the New York wit, but I got none of those things out of it. I just felt so badly for the little kid at the center, whose socialite mother held him in the same regard (and gave him about the same attention) as a pair of out-of-season Prada shoes. Humor at the neglect of a four-year-old? Sorry, but no. When I got to the part where NY Mom refused to let her son put his handmade paper ornament on her designer showpiece Xmas tree, I quit. I think we gave the book to Meghan. MH—we don’t need this one back :)

American Psycho
Words fail me here. I got halfway through, and felt so physically ill I gave the book away at work. It wasn’t enough to just put the book down—I didn’t want it IN MY HOUSE. And no, I’m not a weenie. I’ve read the Marquis de Sade, and actually find him humorous (esp. 120 Days of Sodom). The brain feast/eloping with Lecter ending of Hannibal is so over the top. But the sheer cruelty in AP, regardless of whether or not it actually happened or was just a figment of the main character’s imagination, is more than I can stand. The ironic thing about this is that I got the book from my sister, and SHE didn’t want it in her house. Her literary stomach is stronger than mine (her tastes run towards King and Koontz, and she loves the Excorcist), but even she couldn’t tolerate AP.

Mommie Dearest
I enjoy Hollywood gossip to some degree (see my link to Go Fug Yourself), but this one took me farther into La-La land than I was prepared to go. I discovered through this book that my Hollywood gossip curiosity is actually fairly superficial. The deeper details I can do without. Call me chicken, but there are some things I don’t want to know. I have no idea where this book is now, and don’t care.

7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Ugh. Double Ugh. Shudder. The fact that so many people hold this book in such high regard scares me. Am I the only one who sees the cult factors here? It’s just common sense wrapped up in doublespeak. There is nothing original about it, but it’s spawned an entire industry of corporate idolatry and “professional aids”. The only glimmer of hope on the horizon is the fact that there are so many parodies of the Successories posters out there.

The Island of the Day Before
I tried, I really did. But this one falls into the category of sheer befuddlement. It’s not boring. I just can’t figure out WHAT this book is about or where it’s going, which makes me feel stupid. I love Eco’s previous two books—The Name of the Rose and Focault’s Pendulum, but TIOTDB is too muddy for me. Of the 5 books listed in this blog, TIOTDB is the only one that’s still on the shelf. I’m hoping that when I’m 80, maybe I’ll finally get it.

So that's five of the books I refused to finish. I'm interested in hearing from ya'll if you've had any similar experiences with books--which ones, and why. It may be that the list above tells you more about me than about the books, and that's OK :)

*Dune, see the conversation between Paul and Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam re: the Kwistaz Haderach at the beginning of the book. Yeah, I know my Nerd card is showing :)

A Book of Memories-D

2006-07-13T22:31:00.000-05:00

Dr. Pawel Lewicki has kept a daily journal for his entire adult life. That was the first thing I heard about him. A few of us new arrivals were buying beers for some departing graduates. All of us either had taken or would be taking his class on non-conscious perception. It was a big deal for a small department. I only ever saw him consult this journal on one occasion. It was a year later and we had a question about something trivial. We may even have made it up in hopes of seeing him pull this thing out. It was winter, late, and dark outside. I don’t know why we all worked so late in that program. Probably because we had day jobs to pay the bills.

Pawels office was the nicest one I had ever been in. He had only a little green glass library desk lamp turned on which I thought was classy. He scooted his chair back to the shelves and pulled out The Biggest Book I Have Ever Seen. And his writing was miniscule. Pages and pages – it was a book straight out of The Name of The Rose. It may even have been in his native Polish. Dr. Lewicki kept a daily journal of his inner life. He wrote to capture his perceptions, preconceptions, judgments, emotions, reactions, and motivations for actions for each moment of his entire adult life.

And he has decided that very little of who we are is something we actually decided to be.

And I’ll say that whatever you are changes almost minute to minute. When you read stuff from High School it’s difficult to imagine being the same person. And really, you’re not. We’re like those little streams of water where you put your hand in at the same place twice and you are holding two different things. The idea is as old as Plato but we are so busy ‘being’ from moment to moment it’s really hard to hold the idea in your head.

But the longer you are on the planet, the easier it is for your processor to get into the swing of things. You acquire mechanisms for learning, coping, interacting, and just getting on with life. Of course, these can be really bad behaviors like drinking to be social or ‘pretending’ to learn in order to get by with the look of someone with knowledge. But once these behaviors have settled in and worked a few times in practice, it’s hard to unwire the pattern even if a bunch of people tell you that you need to stop behaving that way. You could join a cult but that’s pretty much just exchanging one set of socially unacceptable behaviors for another.

And that’s where the medication comes in. Behavioral modifiers unhook (suppress previously reinforced) connections. But that only leads to stopping socially unacceptable behaviors.

So where does the Happiness come from?

The Magic of Pyrex-L

2006-07-13T21:12:00.000-05:00

Pyrex is da bomb. Literally. Like most folks, I have several glassware dishes in the kitchen, from measuring cups to serving bowls. I’ve always been impressed with the indestructibility of this stuff—it never chips, puts up with a lot, can go from freezer to 500-degree oven without breaking, and actually survives short drops. Long drops, however, were untested in my kitchen.

That is, until Monday night. In transit from one counter to the other, I managed to two-handedly fumble a large Pyrex bowl. Four feet straight down, directly onto ceramic tile. Boom! The bowl disappeared in a spectacular detonation. One millisecond it was there, and the next I was standing on a carpet of thousands of shards. Oh, and I was barefoot, to boot (pun intended). Two things flashed through my mind. 1) John McLane picking glass out of his feet in the bathroom in Die Hard; 2) how this mostly harmless thing suddenly turned lethal, as if it were magic. And the weird thing about it was that these mean little pieces of glass flung far and wide were matte, not glossy, meaning they didn’t glitter, and you therefore couldn’t see them very well.

Which brings me to my nerd moment. If I can be brought to a complete halt instantly and put in a position where it takes me a good five minutes to figure out how to extricate myself from it, then just think what it would do to a barefoot Ogre. Ladies and Gentlemen, we now have a brand new D&D spell, brought to you by the magic of Pyrex:

Morgan’s Shards

Conjuration
Level: Sor/Wiz 3
Components: V, S, M
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Medium (100 ft + 10 ft./level)
Effect: Non-reflective glass shards in a 30-ft. radius spread
Duration: 10 min/level
Saving Throw: Reflex –see text
Spell Resistance: No

Morgan’s Shards creates a thick carpet of razor-sharp glass shards. These shards will injure living creatures without protective footwear. Any unprotected creature in the effect’s area when the spell is cast takes 1d4 points of damage for each step it takes until it is clear of the area. Creatures also have their movement impaired. If Reflex save fails, the creature can’t move from its space, but can regain movement by spending 1 round and making a DC 20 Dexterity check or a DC 25 Escape Artist check. Once moving (either by making the initial Reflex save or a later Strength check or Escape Artist check), the creature may move through the glass very slowly. Each round devoted to moving allows the creature to make a new Strength check or Escape Artist check. The creature moves 5 feet for each full 5 points by which the check result exceeds 10. The glass is non-reflective, so creatures rounding a corner or coming upon a shard trap must make a spot check or stumble into the glass.

Material component: a bit of glass

And if you were wondering, I only had to pick a few small shards out of my feet after I’d navigated the glass field. But it took me a good few minutes to figure out how, and it took Dave a good half hour to clean it up. And one positive thing came out of it—I have me a new spell (DM permitting, of course)!

Ah, How We Love Bad Writing-L

2006-07-12T19:56:00.000-05:00

July is one of my favorite times of the year, because it’s when the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest winners are announced. For those of you who have never heard of it, the BLFC is that little fetid gem known informally as the Bad Writing contest. Started in 1982 by the English Department at San Jose State University, the competition asks writers to compose the opening sentence to the worst novel in the world.

Writing badly is harder than it looks. The result is often just mediocre. I’ve tried it, and nothing I’ve come up with has quite the panache (or should I say stink?) of the entries composed by the contest winners.

My all-time favorite dates back to 1999, when it won the Science Fiction category:

The remaining astronauts strung out on the long tether could only wonder at a universe full of eerie contrasts - brilliant stars against the velvety blackness of space, the hot flare of their comrade's meteoric plunge into the atmosphere against the cool-blue ocean below, the man's frenzied screams on the radio as he was roasted by the heat of re-entry against the icy calm voice of mission control as they grilled the astronaut on the far end of the tether, and how hilarious it had all seemed when he first yelled "Crack the whip!"

Two other favorites include:

Like an over-ripe beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage cheese, the corpulent remains of Santa Claus lay dead on the hotel floor.

The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the greensward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window, revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her, disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception, screaming madly, “You lied!”

There are quite a few doozies in this year’s winners, so when you are settled in your comfy swivel chair and have a drink in hand, check them out here.

Enjoy!

Io Perry -D

2006-07-11T09:02:00.000-05:00

Io Perry is the name you get if your parents are Hippies from Canada. I guess you also get encourged to follow your dreams of being a musician because here she is now:

Io Perry - I'll Pick You Up

You have to juxtapose this song with the fact that she used to be the bassist for Tito and Tarantula. They are probably best known as the vampire band in From Dusk 'til Dawn. I remember first seeing them in David Byrne's True Stories. Gosh, there were a lot of interesting people in that movie.

But this is a music post, not a movie trivia post. So here is my first Song of the Week. Let me know if you like it and I'll post more (thank you, Tim). I have no idea if there will actually be a song a week or just a bunch over the next couple of weeks and then nothing for six months. But if you leave encouraging comments I will continue to pluck gems from my hoard.

Learn more about Io, hear more samples, and pick up her new CD, Greybay, from CD Baby. Because CD Baby loves you.

Or go to Io Perry to download a couple more nice songs. Try 'Saturday'.

Get Happy -D

2006-07-09T16:05:00.000-05:00

I shall preface this entry by saying that, like a good gumbo, you are going to get something a little different in every bite of this blog. Sometimes you may get a tasty shrimp, or maybe a solid chunk of Andouille. Other bites may be something you can’t quite identify and cause you to remember scenes from Angel Heart.

If a blog entry has a ‘-L’ at the end then Lee wrote it. This one has a ‘-D’ which means it is being written by Davo. That’s right, a schizophrenic blog. And as other distinct voices emerge in our family psyche they will be given space on this page as well. No, I don’t know how this is going to work or even if it will work but we are going to give it a try. If you have a comment about the whole thing then you can post it. I am going to blog now . . .

Last night on CSPAN-2 I watched Ronald W. Dworkin speak about his new book, Artificial Happiness: The Dark Side of the New Happy Class. He was a nervous speaker and that always makes me sympathetically nervous for the person speaking. But I watched anyway (squinting between a crack in my fingers) because of what he was saying. His first assertion was that both secular humanists, who put the happiness of the individual first, and organized religions, who put the happiness of the group first, were letting their Primary Care Physicians prescribe all manner of MAO inhibitors to anyone who said that they were not happy. And that this state of artificially induced happiness is suspending people from making important decisions in their lives that could lead to a state of genuine happiness.

Now, I believe that some of these people suffer from neurochemical imbalances that are the root of clinical depression. And in reading more about Mr. Dworkin’s position I am pleased to see him state that antidepressants are an important part of treating professionally diagnosed clinical depression. It’s the spot diagnoses of PCPs and self-described cases of “mild” depression receiving these levelers that are the concern.

Before watching this, I had been quietly counting the number of people I knew well enough for them to tell me that they were on some sort of prescription medication whose primary function was to change the way that they think and feel. There are quite a few. What about the people we all know just well enough to be surprised when we find out that they are also on some sort of modifier? Are there really that many clinically depressed folks out there? Am I somehow identifying with, and then wanting to associate with, clinically depressed people so that there are more of them in my circle of friends? Do I (uh oh) attract depressed people to me like some sort of bug zapping light? (Come to think of it, that would explain several ex-girlfriends)

This led me to (of course) thinking about myself and the source of my happiness. It also led me to consider my own methods of behavior modification and decision-making. These are topics I am going to blog about for awhile.

I have this image of our friends saying to each other “Did you read the latest post on YoungoGumbo?” “No, I only read the –L’s not the –D’s.” So I will try to balance my posts with musically themed ones. Once I figure out how to link .mp3’s I will try to do a ‘Song of the Week’ or something like that.

The Liberal Reader--L

2006-07-09T10:37:00.001-05:00

I figure, having a blog, a fair amount of my posts will mention books, words, articles, and things of a textual nature. Reading gives me great comfort and fuels my brain, so naturally some of it’s going to dribble out and show up in my posts. I enjoy all types of writing—literature, romance, mystery, thriller, nonfiction (with the exception of biographies, which is a future post), cookbooks, newspapers, magazines and e-zines, blogs, and so forth. I’m a democratic reader, a biblio-whore, an inhaler of books.

Before you, Gentle Reader, take issue with my literary promiscuity and chuck virtual tomatoes and real aspersions at me (or worse, ignore me), you should know that I have two fancy-schmancy degrees in literature. I specialized more or less in eighteenth-century English lit, with offshoots into textual integrity, literary theory, and free indirect speech. Over my lifetime, the more I read and deconstructed what I was reading, the more I realized how much of literary criticism is subjective and semantic. What we take for granted today as canonical literature is so simply because 50 years ago well-known academics (who happened to be white and overwhelmingly male) decided which texts would be taught, and which would be designated trash. The result is an unconscious, ingrained snobbery in the minds of readers and non-readers everywhere that if something is popular and sells well, it can’t be literature, but if it’s hard to read/pedantic/obscure/translated from russian/german/written by someone with three names/depressing, it must be literature. Come on, people! You don’t need some mothballed English professor, the New Yorker, or Oprah telling you what to read. If something you read makes you happy, teaches you something, or makes you think in a way you haven’t before, then it’s good text. That’s all.

Now, in a different vein, I am not Conan the Grammarian—depending on my mood, I alternate between writing flawlessly with exact punctuation to grammar defenestration. So to those of you who sigh inwardly at misplaced commas, two-sentence paragraphs, excessive compounding, passive voice, or overzealous modifiers, I apologize in advance.

Now that we’ve constructed our nice, democratic, marble-lined swimming pool of words, complete with a warm concrete apron for sitting and musing, a shallow end for ankle-wading, and a deep end for profound immersion, let’s change into our literary swimsuits and take the plunge. Come on in—the water’s fine! And I promise there are no sharks.

Gone and Done It -L

2006-07-08T21:01:00.000-05:00

Well, I've gone and done it.

I guess it's time for a blog. Whether there's anything worthwhile to say, however, remains to be seen. It's going to take a little while to get the hang of site operation, so please be patient. Baby steps! :)