Friday Five:
5 things I never pass up.

1. A cup of coffee - seriously, even if I have a cup in my hand already.
2. A glass of wine ( or other proferred alcohol) - an international gesture of friendship.
3. A massage - not that I've had many spontaneous offers since high school.
4. The favorable attention of a cat - I don't see how you really have a choice here, but some people manage to try to refuse.
5. The chance to help someone who asks me - if it is within my means, it will be done.

Runners up include (These don't quite make the list b/c I have been known to be tired enough to give them a miss. The spirit is willing...)
the perceived opportunity for uninterrupted marital sex (ha!)
the chance to stay up all night and read a good book
the favorable attention of a child

5 things that make me wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.
topic ourtesy of Adam

1. A breaking fever.
2. Remembering an appointment/birthday/phone call that was supposed to take place the day before.
3. Thinking I have remembered a missed appointment/birthday/phone call that was supposed to take place the day before, but really isn't supposed to happen until tomorrow.
4. Wishing I had said something nasty to someone whose stupidity surprised me so much I was struck dumb at the time - not a cold sweat thing so much as a tossing and turning thing.
5. In one of the few dreams that I remembered and that I was in - I woke up late in my pregnancy with Gavin (about where Melissa is, actually) from a dream in which I had come home with my new baby (Gavin) only to discover that I was still pregnant and expecting a new new baby any day.

Before I had children, I traditionally slept the sleep of the dead. I almost never remember my dreams, and when I do, they most often do not include myself or anyone I know. Now that I have children, I sleep the sleep of the dying - light, raspy, fitful, one eye open for the recognizable face or sound of a loved one. Before kids I imagined my death so often (from childhood on up) that it became a rather matter-of-fact part of crossing a street or going down stairs to imagine myself dead before the task was completed. Now I imagine my children's at every ordinary, risky thing we do (think driving to the grocery store), so it doesn't ever bother me in the middle of the night, and while distressing, it is hardly shocking (to me) as it is a long-time habit of mine.

Well, I can't say I'm surprised.


Threat rating: extremely low. You may think you can
subvert the government, but if you should try
you will be smited mightily because God likes
us best.


What threat to the Bush administration are you?
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Friday 5

Five people (historical or fictional) that you would like to have dinner with.

1. King Arthur - the 6thC celtic warlord, not Malory's romantic (which you will remember I know all about)
2. Jesus - but I don't want to speak to him, I just want to watch among the crowd and see if I am convinced.
3. A student at Hogwarts - again, I don't want to meet Harry particularly, just sit at the Ravenclaw table and watch.
4. The Inklings - I'd love to hang at the Eagle and Child and listen in on Tolkein and Lewis
5. Eleanor Roosevelt- I'd be willing to be part of a ladies brunch or some such.

Honorable mentions stolen from my friends:
Lazarus Long - I would join his line marriage in a heartbeat.
Oscar Wilde - I don't know, he's just funny and briliant.
Granny Weatherwax - this is one person I would actually speak to after she sized me up.
and a runner up...
Mark Twain or Samuel Clemens, either one - I would at least buy him a Jameson.

Out of Pocket

I'm going out of town for most of the next two weeks, so will not be able to post much, if at all. I'm looking forward to a week at Disney, but I'm currently in the unenviable position of waiting for money. I know money is coming from various quarters over the next month (or at least I have enough reason to suspect that it is to remain hopeful), but the money isn't actually here yet and my general mood is bleak. Every day that the mail brings no good news just adds to the mounting tension and exasperation that I cannot pay people as quickly as they want me to. Ah well.

I'd like to recommend two sites to visit to amuse and enlighten you in my absence. It's not homework, really...I haven't been a teacher for years now. First, Fr. Hoster has a thoughtful, theological essay up about Warrior Jesus and the political schoolyard fight over who Jesus loves best and agrees with more. Second, the Morning Improv is starting back up at Scott McCloud's website, and while the new one is moving along slowly, what I really want to direct you to is the archived improvs, particularly Meadow of the Damned. Be sure to read parts 1, 2 and conclusion.

Cheers

I, Voyager

Today I have discovered the internet. You might have thought in years of having an email account and weeks of having a blog that I might have noticed it before today, but somehow it completely escaped my attention. In my beeline, blinders on, steal 20 seconds at-a-time-while-the-kids-are-distracted method of using my computer to check my email and bank account, I just never allowed myself to look around. What a beautiful place this is.

Case-in-point: Ideas about ideas from Neil Gaiman

Aye, aye, Captain

OK, so on further reflection, I have seen a little more pirate-inspired fare than I at first realized, but I'm not sure that my other experiences build up into anything more substantial than The Pirate Movie. Read on:

Terry Gilliam's short "The Crimson Permanent Assurance" - the man is a genius
Goonies - and people were worried about Chris Columbus and Harry Potter (actually Young Sherlock Holmes was my reassurance.)
Zoro, the Gay Blade - "Green like an avocado?" George Hamilton permanently associated with the masked avenger in my mind.

Actually, my spiffy attempt at a title made me wonder if I should include SpongeBob Squarepants. Hmm... it might fit with my pirate-experience theme.

Terrifying Friday 5

Five ways I am turning into my mother/father:

1. Every day a powerful impulse to sit down and get drunk comes over me. I'm not particularly sad or depressed, it just seems like a good idea. - Dad's daily existence from age 17 to present
2. The big eye.- Mom's favorite scare tactic. Works pretty well with babies, hopefully I can replace it with something more effective when they start to snicker at me.
3. Paying for a vacation instead of paying the utility bill.-This only happened once because we only had one family vacation, but it made an impression on me. We had a blast in San Antonio and didn't have a phone for a month. Disney may do us the same.
4. Continually rearranging, painting, redecorating. -There was not a house we moved into that we didn't tear down a wall.
5. Passive-Agressive tendencies masked as patience. - Thanks Mom!

Here it should be said that my mother was an excellent parent of small children while my father was no parent at all. I love them, but a lot of my energy is spent trying to battle impulses that pull me toward insane behavior that must be genetically derived.

Decompressing

I have accomplished much this week. I finished Harry Potter, and I loved it. I will say no more in the interest of preserving people's rights to discover for themselves what a wonderfully written, superb portrayal of adolescence and the struggle to understand Rowling has created. I turned in my drafts for grad school - at the point of abandonment rather than perfection, but you know how it is. I went to see Pirates of the Carribean last night and totally fell for Johnny Depp again. Will was less enthusiastic about the movie, but then he has conceptions of what a swashbucckler should be, while my only pirate frame of reference is The Pirate Movie. If you haven't seen it, you should just to see where I am coming from. As for Carribean, it was a fun little movie, and Depp stole the show. He is perhaps at his most endearing since Edward Scissorhands. Just beautiful. I kept looking for him even when it wasn't his scene.


Unrelatedly, I'm having a bit of a literary dilemma. More of a strange emotional, moral, ethical connundrum.

Lady Chatterley's Rapist?

In junior high I was introduced to D.H. Lawrence through one of his short stories in Junior Great Books: "The Rocking Horse Winner." I loved that story (still do) and decided I really liked Lawrence, but didn't seek out anything else of his to read. Then in high school, my American Lit teacher used to have us read his criticism (silently, of course) of American lit stories and novels that we had read. I well remember her sitting at the front of class after 20 minutes of silent reading (We were all quite terrified of her, though she was my favorite teacher.) demanding, "Don't any of you people have a sense of humor?" Lawrence actually was quite funny in that charming, British, condescending, Monty Python sort of way, we were all just too afraid to make any noise. So, I liked Lawrence more definitely. I go to find out what he has written. Being a teenager, I self-select Lady Chatterly's Lover from the public library. And here I find something in Lawrence I can't quite like.

Decades-old SPOILER. The climax of the book (in more ways than one) is a scene between the aforementioned Lady and her lover, the groundskeeper. Though her physical and mental health have improved markedly by having sex with him (her husband is paralyzed and unable to satisfy that need for her), she decides she cannot live as a social outcast without any money, and she dumps him. So, he accosts her on her walk home through the woods after visiting an inane society neighbor, rapes her, during which they both acheive orgasm and thus changes her mind. At sixteen, I am a little weirded out by this. Not the rape itself so much, but the implication that "no" might not always mean "NO." The complexity of the situation is not lost on me, even at sixteen, but I am so uncomfortable with the ambiguity represented here that I decide that it is better, perhaps, for me to stick to Lawrence's nonfiction. Novel written off as mysoginist, product-of-its-time, blah,blah, blah...

Enter the connundrum. In a BBC tv/film adaptation of the novel Sean Bean plays the groundskeeper. Do I need to say more? I haven't even seen the production, but the reel of that troublesome scene in my mind has changed oh-so-subtly. I am unable to call up the righteous indignation I felt for that part of the book. I have become a victim of my preferences, my mind held hostage by something more forceful, more primal. Damn. I'd like to think that this is really only possible because Lawrence has woven the story in such a way that people are constantly wavering between the sensible and the passionate - they never coincide in his work - one minute they are determined to do the "right" thing, which the reader can see is patently wrong, and the next minute they do the "desired" thing, which the characters wrongheadedly think society has the right to forbid them. I hope that this is so because if it isn't, a careful casting of Atlas Shrugged could potentially cause my whole worldview to tremble at its foundation. (There aren't any republicans reading this, are there? I'd hate to be planting ideas.)

Anyway, it has brought to my notice the disturbing way in which troublesome (at best) or repulsive actions can be made palatable by having the "right person" at the helm. Not that I didn't know this already (don't we always want the bank robbers to get away?), but it seems to be more subtle, possibly more dangerous here. Or maybe, at sixteen, I didn't read the subtext well and this is all just a product of youthful misinterpretation.

One can hope.

My Friday 5 - things that identify you as part of your demographic:

1. My minivan is full of food crumbs and hidden candy that has melted. (mother)
2. All my clothes are from Old Navy. (short, female, median income)
3. My accent after 3 beers. (small-town, north central Texas)
4. My inclination to spend money on books before food. (educated)
5. Hmm...my indecision? (Is your birth sign part of your demographic. I suppose it could be...but on the other hand...)


Topic courtesy of Chris, who has convinced me that it is too risky to surf the internet for the next couple of days because people post things about phony information about Harry Potter. I read the first line of his entry about the article in The Onion and experienced what can only be described as a psychic scream in stereo. Both my brain and my body let out an exclamation of horror so fierce, I could not back up out of his blog fast enough to avoid having a headache for the next hour while I pondered how to handle the situation. I'll be signing off the internet now until I have read the book. I'm finally out of class for the summer!

I stayed up until 6 am this morning attempting to pull some sense from my brain and get it down on paper. In the cold light of day, it doesn't look so good. I have one day of class left, and I am determined to be done with this piece by tomorrow so I can just cruise through the rest of the summer.

I wrote my paper on integrating comics into the curriculum, and I felt a little under fire today in class, so I really appreciated Melissa's link to Sequential Tart.

I've been canvassing a bit on behalf of the scifi canon and may have a few to add to Adam's list soon.

In my fit of hysteria last night, I went and looked up Neil Gaiman's 24 hour comic on Scott McCloud's sight. I laughed and laughed, though that may not have been, strictly speaking, an appropriate sane person's response.

Which Founding Father Are You?