Tarzan!


What movie Do you Belong in?(many different outcomes!)
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It takes longer than fifteen minutes to hang a ceiling fan and other holiday week revelations...

It doesn't seem like it would, especially when the light fixture was already removed for me! Install ceiling mount, connect wires, attach fan, voila. 15 minutes. Or...not. 3 hours into the ceiling fan project, I realise that each discreet step in hanging a fan takes about 10-15 minutes, but I am too lazy to add the steps up and arrive at a reasonable project time estimate. So, don't ever bother to ask me how long it takes to complete a household project. They all take 15 minutes.

Now writing a paper - that takes 2 hours. (I would advise you not to mock me in my present mindframe.)

All week I have been working dilligently to avoid writing a paper for my aggravating class, and look, I still am! Go me!

I have now written 12 pages which i have entitled "drivel," and shamefully sent to Will and Melissa for suggestions because the only revision I am interested in making is to set it on fire and throw myself on top of it.

The next step in paper avoidance is to clean the house, which I bought the supplies for just an hour a go, right after I dashed out to pick up issue 4 of 1602. It is woven into the fabric of human nature that the people you love the most (even pure and chaste from afar) are the ones to hurt you. I'm looking at you Neil Gaiman.

It may also be human nature for some people to seek out pain in various forms, and I have to admit to probably being one of them because I have just this last week discovered a massage therapist who is not afraid to hurt me, and I am delighted. It is very weird to have someone comment on your high tolerance for pain. I'm not sure if it is a compliment or an accusation. I've never had chronic pain of any kind, so I don't know really how anyone could tell what my tolerance was like. It's just a weird thing to say to somebody.

We had an exciting day after Thanksgiving during which Gavin hooked Merlin's ear with a fishing hook while he was trying to cast. Merlin screamed. I ran. Will bounded. I untangled. Will cut. It was all over in less than a minute. Gavin stood cluelessly staring at his fishing rod, wondering where the hell the end of his line went.

Well, it is time to enter the cleaning stage of the procrastination. Should take me...what?15 minutes? an hour?

Then I guess I will finish burning writing my paper for tomorrow.

I had all this typed out much more coherently and in a freakish blogging accident it was all wiped out. I hate blogger, and I don't want to live here anymore.

Go figure...

You Are Sam From "Benny & Joon." You are very talented at physical comedy. People are in awe of your abilities. However, you have many quirks which can either win people over or completely annoy them. But you're a sweetheart through and through, and it's hard not to love you.

Take The Johnny Depp Quiz!


Back to THIS IS YESTERDAY.

Friday Five
This is Thanksgiving week in the US of A, the holiday on which immigrant Americans celebrate the poor foresight of the Native Americans who kept their Puritan forebears from starving to death. Which normally means that I could cop out and ask a question like, "Name five things you're thankful for." However, several people on this list are within driving distance of my home and are rumored to have poor impulse control, not to mention the alleged secret stockpiles of explosives and furry porn, so I'll go for something a little different: five separate questions, loosely related (just how loosely depends on how much scotch I manage to drink before I finish thinking them up).

Aside: It occurs to me that these questions betray a definite Anglo-Saxon Christmas-season bias. Please feel free to recast the questions to suit your own holiday traditions.
1. You've just sat down for you favorite holiday meal and you hear a knock on the door. It's Freddie Mercury in a tight white T-shirt and a gold lame halo—he offers to sing for his supper. What song(s) do you request and why? (Not necessarily Queen songs—since Freddie joined the heavenly choir he's been expanding his repertoire.)

Actually, I didn't know who Freddy Mercury was, but I am presuming he was in Queen? I still can't think of any Queen songs except didn't they sing that one in Wayne's World? I think I would offer to give him the day off and just feed him.

2. A certain relative or in-law so-and-so—the black sheep of the family, the one who drinks all the beer but never bothers to pay for any—shows up later in the evening. You know the one (assuming it isn't you, of course). What is his (or her, let's be fair) special talent that you secretly envy?

My little brother plays the guitar, and he can sing quite well, though he rarely, rarely does.

3. You've been feeding the family dog beneath the table. Fido's digestive tract isn't what it used to be. Which tasty morsel was it that stank up the joint?

I never, ever feed the dog people food on purpose. Based on what my kids dropped during lunch yesterday, he would have eaten: green bean casserole, cornbread dressing, shredded cheese, turkey, ham, and the marshmallows from the fruit salad covered in poppy-seed dressing.

4. Between dinner and desert one needs a pause for digestion and reflection. In what special aid to this process do you like to indulge? Madeira, port, ye olde Sheep Dip, Longbottom Leaf, or something else?

A Nap? Otherwise, I like tawny port or scotch on the rocks with water and a lime wedge - yes a lime wedge. It is my drink, and I will drink it the way I like it.

5. It's time for dessert. You've pudding and hard sauce but no brandy to set the former on fire. But there must be fire. You search the house for a substitute: what will you find and use?
I actually have apricot brandy, but, failing that, would have to experiment with dry sherry or tequila.

Friday Five

From Nanette

This Weeks Friday 5 Topic

I work in the music business. Glamorous as this may sound, we are actually just two women in a home office in South Austin. Hipness, youth and cool factor are a common topic of conversation between me and my boss, i'm 35 and she's 39. We often remenisce about our cool groovy old days when we actually went out to see the kind of bands we work with and go to the clubs we talk to everyday and it dawns on us that we are sooo way out of the cool scenes we envision ourselves part of still.
soooo, the topic is - what 5 ages would you like to be and why., either to re-live or that you imgine would be ideal in the future. Hey, if you are so inclined and have a moment to spare, what about throwing in 5 ages you would NEVER want to be again, and why

1) 30 - this is kind of fun. I would like to have more time now.
2) 45 - children will have grown to a point that first general assessments can be made. Was it a mistake to let them run amok all those years? Probably I'll go get my PhD in English, too.
3) 55 - maybe I'll be lucky and have grandkids to ruin as well.
4) 65 - William and I will do something ridiculous like move to another country or buy a downtown condo, or build a hobbit-house in the hill country. You can fairly well count on it.
5) 70 - if I make it this far, what will have changed? Will I be wishing I was 30? I suspect no. Right now is fun, but it is also hard, which is how I tend to think of most of my life experiences that I bother to remember. It seems that my survival with my good nature intact has depended largely on not knowing things at the time. I would not choose to relive any of my past with my current knowledge.

Terry Gross snorts when she laughs...

I know this because Triumph the Insult Comic Dog was on yesterday (Nov 20th show), and the interview was freakin' hysterical. At one point he began mimicing Bill O'Reilly's petulant complaining (Oct 8th show) about her interviewing skill. Go and listen, seriously. I was in tears, I was laughing so hard. If you don't want to listen to the entire interview, forward O'Reilly's to about minute 35 - listen to the last five minutes. Forward Triumph's interview to minute 12 and listen to the next five minutes or so.

Only if Oscar writes my dialogue...


In my not so humble opinion, you, of course, belong
in the Picture of Dorian Gray, and do not try
to deny it. You belong in the fashionable
circles of Victorian London where exotic
tastes, a double life, decadence, wit and a
hypocritical belief in moral betterment make
you a home. You belong where the witty
apothegms of Lords, the silly moralities of
matrons, the blinding high of opium, and the
beauty of visual arts mingle to form one
convoluted world.


Which Classic Novel do You Belong In?
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Also...

Melissa's new column is up at austinmama.com, and it is fabulous.

Ha!


You are John Constantine.
John has a strong knowledge of the occult and at
times he appears to wield strong magical powers
but he has also become known as something of a
con-man, more likely to talk himself out of
trouble than pull a rabbit out of a hat.


What Gritty No Nonsense Comic Book Character are You?
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Friday 5

from Adrienne:

Lately, I've been thinking about food. It's something I think about a lot, granted, but this is more about food and place. For me, these connections are intense and evocative. The question: if you could travel back to any place you've lived (or, in a pinch, visited) and have just one meal in each location that reminded you of the time you spent there, what would your top five stops and dishes be?

1) Versailles - the bread. reference William's blog for details
2) Indian train stations - a spicy potato dish served on a leaf and the strange milky-sweet tea served by people bustling through the trains during stops. I was warned often not to eat food in the train stations (by natives, mostly), but it was some of the best I had while there, excluding only:
3) Benares (Varanasi) - mangoes. I have never eaten a mango here or anywhere in Europe that even began to compare.
4) Prague - gulash and radegast ale - never knew what either of these were before eating there.
5) Oxford - St George's (or was it St Michael's?) cafe. For some reason, I was just the other day longing for an oatcake from there along with a cup of chamomile tea - and some quiet in the fuzzy afternoon light filtering in through the windows of this second floor cafe overlooking a quiet Oxford lane.

I grew up on Hamburger Helper and canned veggies, so I don't have many foods that I associate with places that I lived.

Other F5 participants are: Melissa, Adam, Merideth, Will, Chris, Gina, Dave, Craig, Gord, Adrienne, Nanette, Marvin, Rob, Laura, Jon, Ritu and Julie.

Ctrl-Alt-Dlt

I had a strange experience today. Last night I posted a long ramble about my weird fangirl transformation, but didn't publish it. When i went back and entered the much abbreviated version (seen below) and hit post+publish, it of course published the previously posted (but unpublished) ramble as well. I deleted the ramble post after copying and pasting it into notepad for further consideration.

Today when i get home from picking up Merls at school, I find that the ramble post IS STILL ON MY SITE!!! The post is not in my template - I have, of course deleted it from there, and I don't know how to get it off the page. I panic quite loudly until my husband dedicates a few minutes' meddling and asks blogger to republish my entire site. I would not have known to ask it to do this as i have never before written a post that I didn't immediately publish.

So, you might be wondering (or not, as you are free to do) what the heck did i write that was so mortifying that I actually felt my blood pressure shoot up when i discovered that one of the handful of people who read my blog between midnight and 2pm might have read the post.

the disappointing answer is: nothing much, really. I couldn't figure out how to wrap up the post. I wanted to write about the end part of the post, but felt it necessary to provide a showing of my thought process (who knows why?) and by the time I wrote the foundation, I had forgotten some of the things that I had wanted to write about in the first place. Too many ideas jockeying for position. Here is my original:

I am fangirl

At least, it's beginning to feel that way. I believe I reached the tipping point yesterday when I actually bought a copy of GQ because Adrien Brody is on the cover. (Stop laughing Melissa, or you won't get the Johnny Depp photo that's in this issue.) There are a couple of things about this particular action that disturb me.

1. I haven't seen the man in a film (and based on web reviews, probably won't bother)
2. I never did this sort of thing as a teen. It is uncharted territory for me to be interested in the lives, thoughts, pictures, fanfic, slash, or any other items related *however tenuously *to people that I don't even know. As recently as last year, I wasn't interested in attending AggieCon to see Neil Gaiman speak and sign. What on earth would I have to say to the man? and why on earth would I let him run inky lines over MY Sandmans? Though friends offered to take something of mine to be signed, I didn't bother.

I still have no idea what I would say to the man, but I have a markedly increased interest in what he has to say on his blog. A subtle shift that is beginning to feel like a downhill sled ride.

I blame Melissa. Perhaps in conjuction with a midlife crisis. (Based on the ages at death of most of my grandparents, it is about time for me to get this out of the way if I am going to get to participate at all.)

You see, before my dear friend had a blog, I would sit at the computer wondering what to look up on the internet. The internal dialogue went something like this:

Me: hmm, the kids are napping, what could I look up on the internet to avoid cleaning?
still Me: didn't I think of something earlier today that I wanted to find out about?
me again: I already checked the bank balance and my email...
me, undaunted: god, Will spends hours looking up stuff, how does he do that?
me, beginning to waver: maybe I'll think of it after I go load the dishwasher
me, in despair: i don't think they update the bank balance more than twice a day
me, brightening: maybe trading spaces is on!

...leaves the computer, having spent a scant 3 minutes there.

Contrast this with the night before last during which I stayed up until 2am reading Sparrington slash fanfic. I was interrupted twice by sleepwalking children, whom I directed to go on to my bed without me.

So Melissa gets a blog and Lo! I have something to check every day - just in case she didn't tell me about it already on the phone. Funny, intelligent, thought-provoking entries. And links to sites. Which have links to sites. And further links to sites.

Some of the developments to have come from this:

I always have to explain what a blog is to my fellow grad school students. This semester alone, I have also helpfully defined, "gimp," "metrosexual," "slash," "pastiche," and "anime" among others. It reinforces the feeling that I have slipped into a parallel dimension and am somehow interfacing with both that and this.

I am addicted to RightClick!Lick!

I don't know which is more disturbing to me , the fact that both Captain Jack and Commodore Norrington have online journals written in character (mostly) or the fact that I KNOW about them.

...
See what I mean? I think the first ideas i had revolved around, "Why am I so different from my fellow grad school students?" many of whom are my age, some of whom are mothers. I had some examples of instances where I said something in class that only brought on blank stares. By the time I got the the end of writing, I had forgotten most of them! Gaah! This writing is a tricksy and perilous endeavor. And now I don't know how to end this post! I am going to just go ahead and publish it though, becase I think the real panic today was not that I had written something revealing. I am not by nature a mysterious person. The problem was that I mistakenly thought I had control over where my words were when I wasn't looking.

It's 10:28 pm. Do you know where your words are?

I am fangirl

I don't know which is more disturbing to me , the fact that both Captain Jack and Commodore Norrington have online journals written in character (mostly) or the fact that I KNOW about them.

I blame Melissa.

Eye opener

Progressive malcontents read and weep ...and then hope.

Friday 5

Gord wonders:


I've just thought of this question, and perhaps it will be torturously difficult to answer, but... I've been reading Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, a stunning alternate history that raises many questions about history, religion, culture, meaning (and how humans make or find it)... and offers some beautifully thought-out answers or possibilities to these questions. It's a wonderfully crafted novel, and I highly recommend it.

On a more literal level, the novel asks the question: What would have happened if the Black Death had been so virulent, and so alien to Westerners, that it had wiped out 99% of humans in Europe instead of only the mere third of Europe it killed off? The result is a stunning weaving of speculation, understanding of human nature (for European colonialism could possibly have been carried out, differently, by other empires, and surely something comparable would have been if the West had been thus destroyed). I think it's a powerful way of looking at our myths about the goods and bads of Westerners, by examining a human history absent of Westerners.

In any case, I want to save that for my review of the novel. But I will say that it has gotten me thinking about questions of historical inevitability. Consider the printing press: while movable type was a stunning idea and the key to the success of the Gutenberg printing press, the Chinese had already invented a kind of print press with movable print blocks. It's even sometimes suggested that the Western printing press traces back to the Chinese, in the genealogy of technologies. I think it's reasonable to say that, given paper and alphabetical language, someone would have figured out this movable-type print concept eventually. Maybe not for a long time (though we have no reason to think so), but eventually.

To your mind, which five other innovations in history are those which were basically inevitable? Which events do you think were simply bound to happen, and if they'd not happened as they did in our history, would eventually have happened elsewhere or elsewhen, even in the face of something like one of the major world civilizations (along with its technical contributions to the long and intercultural ferment of the development of technologies) having been completely wiped out?

(Please note that these could be technical, philosophical, religious, social, or other innovations. I don't only mean technologies.)
1. creation narrative - you can even count the theory of evolution as one - we just have to wonder where the hell we came from
2. the wheel
3. written representation of language - civilizations without it were almost entirely lost when disasters or colonialism came along
4. colonialism - perhaps the flip side of "why can't we all just get along?" is "why can't we all just be alike?" it seems insidious and pervasive throughout world cultures that the folks with power have little tolerance for significant differences and they pass along that feeling to people without power and without resources by encouraging them to believe that different people are threatening and that they are the ones who need to leave or change, not the powerful or the system that maintains the inequitable distribution of said power
5. money - somebody would have come up with it sooner or later, only in Ayn Rand's universe of seven people could you barter for eternity

runner up: the friday 5

Other F5 participants are: Melissa, Adam, Merideth, Will, Chris, Gina, Dave, Craig, Gord, Adrienne, Nanette, Marvin, Rob, Laura and Jon

And another

Knew I was a hobbit.

Precious time wasted on frivolity





what decade does your personality live in?


quiz brought to you by lady interference, ltd


Congratulations!! You are M.C. ESCHER.
Your drawings often depict images, which seem to be
feasible, but logically cannot exist.
You are happiest when you are exercising your mind.
You live your life very sensibly. Your friends
turn to you when they need advice from someone
who knows how to remove emotional prejudice
from a situation.


Which famous artist most reflects your personality?
brought to you by Quizilla

Green , like an avocado...

Last night, instead of putting the children to bed at a decent hour, I gave up and planted myself on the couch to watch Zorro, the Gay Blade which my husband thoughtfully DVR'd for me. That movie is freakin' genius. Is it wrong that in my mind George Hamilton is the definitive Zorro? (that's rhetorical, Adam) I heard Antonio Banderas has signed on for another Zorro movie, but I have to say that though I like Banderas, I'm just not that interested, no matter how naked he gets. And how is it possible that Mel Brooks didn't write this? I need to look these people up.

Unrelatedly, I am participating in NaNoWriMo, but because of grad school writing pressures, I have decided not to begin my novel until Thanksgiving (Nov 27) and then write 20,000 words a day for three days and be done. It is the perfect plan.

Friday Five

Craig's topic:

"The biggest advantage to being a teacher is the time off in the summer. Yeah, the annual salary isn’t the best, but I get two friggin’ months off a year! Not to mention two weeks for Christmas, a week for Thanksgiving, Spring Break, and other assorted days off.

If you were paid for two months of not going to work, what are five things you would do with your time off?"

Actually, I was a teacher for two years and a student who took the summers off for many, many more, and I found that most of my two months filled up with visiting family (who knew I had the time off, after all), a required summer teacher training thing, a pregnancy, moving across the state while seven months pregnant (twice), job hunting, planning for the next school year, and all sorts of other mundane things that render the two months off not-so-great-as-one-might-think. Not that I'm knocking it as a concept. I also managed to do the following, which at the drop of a hat, I would do again:

1. spend the whole time in another country (1993, 1994-split with greyhound trip)
2. spend the 8-10 weeks country-hopping in Europe (1997)
(both of the above were possible because I gave up my apt and had no mortgage)
3. ride a greyhound bus (or maybe I'd try amtrack this time) across country - you meet the most interesting people this way (1994 - split with Oxford)
4. kick around Austin and sleep (1996)
5. initiate a big house project (1998, 2000, 2003)

Of course all the time off in the world will not change the fact that I have two small children, from whom I have almost no time off. I'm working on squeezing them into the bohemian lifestyle, but they are surprisingly stubborn and constantly demand things like electricity and regular meals.