Alewife Bayou: January 1999
disneyfication
three january
Here's an email I wrote to the woman who reviewed the Disney release of Kiki's Delivery Service over on Otaku World. This won't make a lot of sense until you read the previous postcard.
- - -
Read your review of Kiki's Delivery Service with some interest. I'm planning on writing an entry in my web journal about my interesting experiences with this film over the last two days or so. Since I am by no means an anime fan, you might be interested in some comments from an "outsider," as it were.
I expected you folks to be fairly cynical about the Disney treatment of the film -- after all, you're the hard-core -- but I thought your review was very even-handed. Two days ago I might have disagreed.
Here's what happened. First, you should know that the audience for this film is about to increase dramatically, because Entertainment Weekly video critic Ty Burr -- a gent whose opinions I pay close heed to -- named it his number-one video of the year last week. So we read that, rented the film (in the dubbed version) and loved it! Absolutely loved it. Especially Jiji. We thought Phil Hartman's voice work was perfect.
Yesterday I went to the video store to actually buy the film -- yup, I was that impressed. I noted that there was a "widescreen" version (i.e. letterboxed -- I hate the term "widescreen" for that; to me widescreen means Cinemascope. Why don't they say "non-butchered version" instead?) But the widescreen version had subtitles, not dubbing (since it was for the "videophiles," natch) and for once -- possibly the only time ever -- I wanted the dubbing. What was I to do?
I bought both. The dubbed, scan-n-pan version, and the subtitled, letterboxed version. And that night (at a friend's house) I watched the dubbed version again. This time I noticed some slight dubbing and translation flaws (even though I know about ten words of Japanese), but on the whole, it was better done than your average dubbing job. Disney is always competent if nothing else.
Then, just for kicks, my friend wanted to see a little of the subtitled version. Just to see what it looked like. And was I stunned! Even though we only watched about ten minutes of the subtitled version:
- Kiki talks much faster in the original, and the voice sounds like a little girl instead of a teenager.
- There are plenty of times when the original has no dialogue at all, where the Disney folks have adlibbed. (For example, her careening off the trees after taking off, and Phil Hartman shouting "left, left! Now right!" etc.)
- Jiji's voice is completely, shockingly different.
- The music under the titles has been completely replaced. The Disney version has some sappy Disney song and the Japanese version has this nice bouncy rock-n-roll stuff.
You know all this already, I realize. The point is ... as good as I thought the English voicecasting was, I think I still prefer the subtitled version. And since you probably agree, you may want to tell your readers it's available. I found it at my local Suncoast.
- - -
The reviewer I was writing to made two important points which, more than anything else, show that Disney Just Doesn't Understand. Y'know, Disney used to be saints to me. But they've fallen way, way off their pedestal, even if I still love most of their films.
The first was that in the Disneyfied version of this movie, there are no silent moments. I mentioned the extra new dialogue inserted all over the place; the music is the same way. The film is never allowed to be quiet, even when noise would be wildly inappropriate. [Dec 2004: I may be a little unfair here, though. I later did a similar comparison between versions of two other Miyazaki films, neither of which was dubbed by Buena Vista, and they had the same extra-dialogue-in-the-dub issue. So it's not just a Disney problem.]
(In The Prince of Egypt, on the other hand, which I'll talk about tomorrow, silence is used very effectively at several points.)
The other point is that at the film festival she attended, where the Disneyized version was first shown, the Disney PR person was clearly expecting an audience full of kids, and was startled to see how many adults had come to see this film. The prepared speech (it began, "Hello, Children") was something of an embarrassment.
Disney Just Doesn't Get It.
[Dec 2004: Disney STILL Just Doesn't Get It.]
After god knows how many years, and despite any amount of evidence to the contrary, Disney still thinks that only kids watch cartoons, and that they have to gear their cartoons to a six-year-old mind in order to sell them. And it just ain't right. Antz is not a child's film; there are sequences in there which'd have a kid screaming. Even A Bug's Life, while it works as a child film, is full of humor intended for the grownups. Is Disney blind to even their own subsidiaries?
I'd like to see some animation intended for grownups, something that isn't Ralph Bakshi's messes -- he can't even do smut right -- and that's not hentai. Ideally I'd like an animated film with an adult plot. (Sex is optional.) TV is aware of the market, what with "The Simpsons" hurtling toward the ten-year mark. Entertainment Weekly just did a report on the number of animated series that the networks are experimenting with. When are the movies going to catch on?
holy moses
four january
Hmph. A new year and all that. I hope that now that everyone's back to work and getting their heads settled, I'll start getting some email again. This has been an unusually dry spell.
Yesterday I said I'd speak a little about The Prince of Egypt, which we saw on Friday. Just to show you I don't trust everything Entertainment Weekly says, I should point out that they were indifferent to the movie, whereas I liked it. In fact, I liked it a lot more than I expected to. I was expecting something tolerably pleasant. To my surprise it was actually good. Of course, it is a Bible story, and you have to expect a certain amount of maudlin when Bible stories are involved -- I think that's the fundamental problem the EW reviewer had, they weren't prepared to deal with a certain amount of stickiness.
One of the most interesting things to me about the movie is that the Hebrew characters have the classical Jewish nose, olive-dark complexions, et cetera -- in other words, the Hebrews are actually allowed to be Hebrews! They even speak Hebrew every now and then (notably in the middle of one song, to good effect). Look! Jews in a picture about Jews! Someone tell Cecil B. DeMille!
Actually, although it's obvious that the animators had seen Cecil's film a few times (notably evident in the parting of the Red Sea and the Angel of Death sequence), this film actually does those scenes and nearly everything else better. There's a sense of pacing here; the film is more tightly "cut" than Cecil's, and of course much shorter. (The Red Sea is the obvious boffo finish for a film about Moses -- everything after that is an anticlimax. The Dreamworks folks realized that. Cecil might have too, but given the title of his film, he could hardly leave the commandments out of it.) Historical details are heeded -- the funny shape of Egyptian oars, the style of Egyptian upper-class dresses with their semitransparent outer sheath, et cetera. The Midianites (the tribe Moses finds in the desert) are properly darker-skinned than the Levites, Moses' people. In fact, there is not a Caucasian skin in the film.
There's been noise about the voice casting oddities, but frankly I don't think casting Brit Patrick Stewart as the Egyptian patriarch Seti is any less probable than casting Brit Cecil Hardwicke in the same role -- and Stewart does it better, the part needs the dignity of his voice. Accent schmaccent.
By the by, I was looking up the historical facts, and I found out that calling the father-son pharaohs in the movie Seti and Rameses is a Cecil-derived thing. Historians do not think it plausible that Seti (Sethos I) could have been the father, i.e. The Great Oppressor, which means that Rameses II could not have been Moses' adopted brother. However, Rameses II is one of the two plausible historical candidates for the father, i.e. Cecil might have been a generation or two off. I don't know what scholars were believing back then -- it may have been that Cecil's film was as correct as the information available could make it. I have a lot more here on pharaonic dynasties and the difficult task of dating Bible episodes, but let's not digress.
It's fun to try to figure out which of Prince of Egypt's tics are stolen from Cecil and which aren't. Both movies have a moment in the Burning Bush sequence where the God-manifestation raises his/its voice and flares up at Moses (I call this the "Because I'm God, that's why" moment), but there is actual Bible evidence for this -- or as Stan Mack puts it, Moses said "Why me?" and God said "Why not you?"
But why do both movies portray Aaron as tall and skinny with an extremely long face? Is there Scriptural precedent for this? Doubtful. Probably Dreamworks was stealing from Cecil again.
Anyway, I liked the film. Can you tell? Oh, and I forgot to mention what struck us both the most. Moses is allowed to be human. After telling Rameses that he has brought on the worst (Rameses has just, unknowing, condemned all Egypt's firstborn, including his son), Moses is shown leaning against a wall in the low town, slumped, crying. Don't forget, from Moses' point of view, he was destroying his own life and family. It had to have been rough. But Charlton Heston would never have been willing to cry on camera.
the email dance
four january (later)
Well, goodness. A new year and all the journallers are tinkering with their sites. Well, Kymm is still away, but goodness, isn't Al's site orange! And Beth has redesigned. And Gypsy is presumably redesigning ... all her links, including the December ones, are newly broken.
I feel like I should change something here, but I'm rather happy with this design at present. So instead I've added a notify list. It was about time, I guess. I got tired of people missing postcards, since Heliotrope only shows you the latest one. I'll probably use it for gossip a little too, but I don't expect it to be spammy by any means (unlike my postcards).
I thought about adding a notify list some time back, actually, but having maintained mailing list software before, I know how painful it is. Fortunately Gypsy clued me in to OneList. They do all the work and the only penalty is that they drop a little ad onto the end of list messages. Seems fair.
Oh, yes, the address. I haven't added it to the main page yet. Go to
http://www.onelist.com/subscribe.cgi/alewife
and they'll ask you to create a password and reply to an email to prove you exist. They don't insist on collecting any vital data though. You can also try sending a blank message to the special address alewife-subscribe@onelist.com, but the confirmation part may not work right, and they'll pick a password for you anyway.
http://www.onelist.com/subscribe.cgi/alewife
and they'll ask you to create a password and reply to an email to prove you exist. They don't insist on collecting any vital data though. You can also try sending a blank message to the special address alewife-subscribe@onelist.com, but the confirmation part may not work right, and they'll pick a password for you anyway.
[Dec 2004: Clever eyes will notice that the listed text and the URLs they actually point to are different in the two links above. OneList became eGroups became Yahoo Groups. The list itself, though, is still going strong, except for the days when the Yahoo servers are cranky.]
[Oct 2005: The list is still there but it is no longer used and that URL is not guaranteed to exist in the future. Subscribe if you like, but you'll never get an iota of mail from it. Actually, that may be the best kind of mailing list.]
[June 2026: And eventually Yahoo killed Groups entirely, so now the URL actually does not work, but I've left it in because it helps make sense of all these emendations.]
I notice that Anita thinks that when she meets someone online whom she might want further RL entanglements with, she generally tries to meet them face-to-face as soon as possible. She doesn't say it, but I get the impression that she finds the long, long email dance in You've Got Mail a trifle unrealistic. I disagree. I generally correspond with someone for ages before I will even consider meeting them in the flesh, and that's not even for someone I'm thinking of in dating terms! (The latter has never happened, so I don't know what I'd do.) Look how nervous I got when I was going to have lunch with TBTF god Keith Dawson, It's obvious even from his website that he's a thoroughly nice guy and not likely to be a threatening presence, yet I nearly panicked.
[Dec 2004: Anita's link has been adjusted. She had some later thoughts on my comments as well. I have no idea what will respond when you go to the late lamented TBTF site; I leave the link as a historical document. Oh, yeah, and all the journal links at the top were deleted: Kymm and Beth (Melissa) have moved their journals; Al's is basically gone; and Gypsy (Elizabeth) ... well, see the next entry.]
I used to be able to blame this on the gender problems. Before I revealed my genitalia, so to speak, I couldn't very well meet anyone, because they only knew me as a female. But everyone who bothers to read semi-regularly knows the truth now, and meeting email folk still makes me nervous. The problem is that I believe my presentation here is a lot better than I come off in person. And, given how nasty, pigheaded and rambly these postcards are, that should give you all real pause.
the gypsy, waning
four january (even later)
Well, I found out why Gypsy's links were all broken this morning (as noted in the previous postcard).
Quick, read it while it's still there.
In a dark day filled with other people's stupidity and politics I didn't want to get involved in, a day when I nearly lost my temper and let my boy-brain win, this was not the way I needed to polish off my afternoon.
Oh, I understand, really I do. I'd try to fix my marriage first too. On the other hand, I wouldn't have done ... oh, never mind. It's none of my business.
I'm sad for her. And I'm resentful of her leaving. Both. At the same time.
Damn it, Elizabeth, you'd better write me once in a while. I had only just managed to get an idea of what you were. You wear too much armor.
I'd go have a drink but -- oddity of oddities -- I usually only drink when I'm in a good mood. I'm going to go get a cup of coffee and button my coat and walk around in the wind.
[Dec 2004: Elizabeth is still keeping the site running, but the URL above is a 404, as you were warned, and has been removed. She also has a livejournal page. In re the events which were happening when this entry was posted, I note that her bio page now says: "I was married before. It ended badly. No, I don't want to talk about it. One shouldn't speak poorly of the dead." Good advice that.]
it doesn't take much
five january (one)
I was only able to be depressed for about fifteen minutes last night. As soon as I got outdoors, and the cold weather found me, and I walked with my coffee and steaming breath rising from my face, watching the people in their greatcoats scurrying around ...
I am easily entertained. Just being outdoors entertains me. Being in bed, letting my mind drift, entertains me. The flip side of being easily entertained is being easily bored. I hate being bored. If I am bored, I will invent something to do, even if that involves making someone else's life difficult for a while.
I like emotions. I even like the bad emotions, if they're strong ones. I like joy and crying jags alike. I like anger and envy and all the other addictive ones, but try not to indulge very often. I like being in a snit. I like being a clown to try to get someone out of a snit.
But I don't like depression, because depression isn't an active emotion; it's a passive do-nothing kind of emotion. I cannot mope for more than five minutes. It's too boring.
I don't take depression (in other people) as seriously as I should. The Economist did an article on depression recently, and they say a lot of other people do this too -- that depression has a long way to go before it is taken as seriously as it deserves to be.
However, they also point out that modern culture seems to treat any low moods as unacceptable, that even such normal emotions as pain and grief are given short shrift. People aren't allowed mourning anymore, for instance. They have to be happy happy happy all the time. It's a Prozac world. I don't mourn, as a rule (grief is boring too) but I certainly can understand having nasty unsocial periods where people stop to work out emotional problems inside their heads. I do that all the time.
Maybe if other people were given the liberty to do the same, there'd be less depression.
Meanwhile I realized yesterday that, as a whole, I enjoy just being alive -- a philosophy I am reluctant to state, since it sounds unbearably treacly. You know, a little too Lucinda Matlock.
(That is your Official Obscure Reference for this week. First person to identify it correctly gets my best awed reaction.)
In fact, I think I've stumbled upon a really good system. The only thing that worries me is that, if I enjoy life this much, I'm going to have some real problems dealing with mortality later ...
i met a man who wasn't there
five january (two)
I was waiting for the subway this morning, with my coffee. A man approached me. He had a simple face, that Mojo Nixon face that screams "hick" (but it ain't necessarily so). He'd gone hippie with it, though, long hair under a watch cap, full beard. Dirty hands. Several layers of thin coats, most of them fairly battered. Okay shoes.
He said he wanted to ask me a question. He was trying to accumulate some change for coffee. I fished out some coins, handed them to him. He closed his hand over them without looking.
"I bet I can tell you when you were born," he said. He named a date in the early seventies. I told him I had been born in 1968. He couldn't believe it. He said he had been born in 1959.
He pulled out a crumpled cigarette. Smoking in the subway is illegal. I wasn't going to say anything. It took him several tries to light it.
"I want you to think about the seventies," he said. "Remember the Seventies? Remember McGovern? Remember George Wallace?" I told him that those were history to me -- that I certainly knew who they were, but everything I knew about them, I knew from books.
"You're kidding!" He really didn't believe me. "You don't remember McGovern running for President? Wallace getting shot in the stomach?" Nope. "I'm only a little older than you are, and I remember them like they were yesterday!"
My train arrived and I never did try to tell him that he was nearly a decade older than me, that he was existing in the sort of personal time warp that we all have a tendency to create.
And all the way to work, I couldn't stop thinking: Why those particular questions? Why those two people?
lucinda and other fragments
five january (late-breaking)
I am stunningly impressed! Not twelve hours after I wrote it, three people have told me who Lucinda Matlock is (although one of them admits to cheating). My awe goes out to Mary Anne, Jette, and Wyyrd.
"Lucinda Matlock" is one of the poems in Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology -- one of the good ones. I resented having to read this book in high school; we read Our Town at the same time and I feel like if you're going to be maudlin about the progression of life and death, Thornton Wilder's approach is the way to go. (OK, ok, I admit it -- the end of the play, with the dead, really creeps me out and I love it.)
Anyway, most of Spoon River does nothing for me. Lucinda -- she's the one who says "Oh my children/Life is too strong for you/It takes life to love life" -- is all right, as is Cassius Hueffer:
While I lived I could not cope with slanderous tongues,
Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph
Graven by a fool!
Now that I am dead I must submit to an epitaph
Graven by a fool!
I may be a cheerful soul, but I like my poems good and cynical.
Since I've got my book of poetry quotes open, let me see what else is in the box. It's that kind of night. I never quote entire poems here -- that's a copyright violation -- but I'm not above a fragment every now and then. Fortunately, I've got plenty of examples here where I only wrote down a fragment, because that was the only part of the poem I liked. I have a particular page in my book which consists of nothing but two-line fragments. I use them as email signatures sometimes.
It's usually no good to read several of them together in one place, though; it diminishes their effect. Oh, well ... what's life without a little wretched excess every now and then?
But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement.
[W B Yeats]
The place of excrement.
[W B Yeats]
Possessing what we were still unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
[Robert Frost]
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
[Robert Frost]
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
[Wallace Stevens]
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.
[Wallace Stevens]
It is needless to state that a trout on the plate
Beats several in the aquarium.
[Guy Wetmore Carryl]
Beats several in the aquarium.
[Guy Wetmore Carryl]
Strange blessings never in Paradise
Fall from these beclouded skies.
[Edwin Muir]
Fall from these beclouded skies.
[Edwin Muir]
For what one is, one sees not; 'tis the lot
Of him at peace to contemplate it not.
[Yvor Winters]
Of him at peace to contemplate it not.
[Yvor Winters]
Approval of what is approved of
Is as false as a well-kept vow.
[John Betjeman]
Is as false as a well-kept vow.
[John Betjeman]
Oh, come forth in the storm and rout
And be my love in the rain.
[Frost]
And be my love in the rain.
[Frost]
consolation
six january
I just discarded an old paper journal, the closest I ever came to keeping an actual diary. I kept it for some years, but never made more than one or two entries a year in it. (It took the web to make the process interesting and spontaneous enough.)
The diary is a fascinating mess, since it only has the day and month in the corner of each page -- no year. And I didn't put years on the entries. So if there's something written on the 16 January page, I know what day of the year I wrote it, but may not know when.
The book is mostly empty and very few of the entries are worth keeping. I copied a couple of road trip entries, during the crucial period in my life when I was leaving Louisiana and seeing New England for the first time. I want to remember those. You can read them if you like, but they're really only of interest to me and maybe a few people very close to me. Caveat emptor.
There's only one other entry in the entire book I'm attached to, and I'm appending it here, exactly as I wrote it (save the omitted names), roughly ten years ago.
22 November.
It is just barely the 22nd. It's 3 am and I'm cold and I can't sleep. I spent the evening with [ ] -- she asked me the 2nd time, a little more strongly, if I wanted to go to bed with her. "It would be good for you" is the way she put it more or less. Well, certainly I can think of worse people than [ ] for the first, but even so -- I've been lying awake, trying to imagine myself kissing her. You know, kissing is the hardest part for me to picture? I can't imagine having sex with someone without kissing them -- and I can't imagine kissing someone (in a non-platonic fashion) that I'm not in love with. Can it be that simple? Is that one source of the problems?
As usual, being paranoid, I feel like I made a fool of myself tonight, in the usual and accepted manner, by turns being a) pedantic b) whiny c) stupid. "Naive" equates to "stupid" here. Why, why, why do I alternate between rigid silence and spilling my guts on the floor every time I open my mouth? I know [ ] is sick of it all by now.
I'm probably going to do it. Every time I come up with another good reason not to, it turns out to be another defense mechanism designed to keep me from being vulnerable. I've stopped telling myself "you can't hide for the rest of your life." I've learned that I can. The fact that I am occasionally in a state of mind to consider just retreating inside this "I fear and hate the world" shell should be scary enough to jolt me into a less sociopathic mode of thought all by itself. I can hide from everything, but I shouldn't want to.
It all comes down to that morbid fear of looking foolish, of being the nerd, the geek. I try so hard to avoid being the geek that I end up being -- more of a geek. I have to break out of the loop somehow.
CONSOLATION
When I kissed you on the ear last night
You were definitely confused
But I can't read you nearly as well as you read me
So this morning
I woke up next to your warmth
And confused you again
Now, later, I am quite cold
But the cup of coffee I am supposed to have given up
Is also warm on my lips
And the back of my neck tingles a little
In almost exactly the same way as before
Which is some small consolation
For having to force myself not to be in love
So easily
You were definitely confused
But I can't read you nearly as well as you read me
So this morning
I woke up next to your warmth
And confused you again
Now, later, I am quite cold
But the cup of coffee I am supposed to have given up
Is also warm on my lips
And the back of my neck tingles a little
In almost exactly the same way as before
Which is some small consolation
For having to force myself not to be in love
So easily
apathy and interest
eight january
I've been so feeble the last two days. I'm not cranky or sick or anything like that, just unmotivated. I want to lie in bed until all hours of the morning -- well, I always want to do that, but I actually allowed myself to today, which is always a bad sign. I shall have to be industrious this weekend. About something.
Anyway, nothing at all has happened except work, sleep, and a few stabs at a railroad game I bought with a gift certificate. On Wednesday I went out into the world to give away money, but that was a fluke and I made a bad job of it anyway.
Speaking of money, Kymm bought a computer from Gateway and forgot to check the interest rate -- tsk, Kymm. I can do you one better, although I did it from expedience, not ignorance: MicroCenter's house credit card, on which I purchased two computers, has a whopping twenty-three percent rate. That's usury in my book. I closed that balance out as quickly as possible.
I've stopped using my general-purpose credit card, too. Rate's too high. When people are giving teaser rates down in the single digits, there is no point in my stoking up the balance on an 18% card. (It wasn't 18% when I got it.) Since it's one of my beliefs that we should all stop purchasing on credit as much as possible, I haven't applied for a new card with lower rates, and probably won't for some time in the future. At least not until this one's paid off.
Of course, one of the complications of life in this decade is that paper money is vanishing. I have a debit card, which is ostensibly a MasterCard but which draws money without penalty from my bank account. I think I've noted before that I can go an entire day -- shopping, dining, heaven knows what else - around Boston and Cambridge and Somerville, and the only cash money I'll need (since I have a subway pass) is the $1.20 for my morning coffee.
oh, look - snow
eight january (later)
It's snowing. I just had a long walk in it. I refuse to wear a hat because there is no hat which does not look ridiculous on me, so when I came in I looked like someone had been trying to make a Sno-Cone on top of my head. Which looks even more ridiculous. It's rough being vain in Massachusetts in winter. I usually stop trying to do anything constructive with my hair (which is disobedient at best) because as soon as I step out of my house, the gale-force winds will destroy it anyway.
Actually, although Boston can get plenty cold (mostly because of those constant winds, which verily threaten to rend the flesh from thy bones), we don't get much snow. Too coastal. This is the first real snowfall we've had this winter.
I saw a commercial for Campbell's soup the other day. A little boy loved soup, and he loved playing in the snow, but the problem was, whenever he went out to try to build a snowman after eating, he was so warm inside that the snow would melt as he handled it. This made the little boy very sad. One day he heard a mysterious voice whispering to him from the trees. The very next day, he built the best snowman he had ever made, and all thanks to the voice, which had told him:
Make the snowman before you eat the soup.
Well, I thought it was cute. Never mind, then.
I like snow. I even like driving in snow, as long as there's no one else on the road. I don't think I'd like it if I were getting the kind of snow Rob's seeing. [Dec 2004: Obviously, this was when he was in Kalamazoo, not Texas.] Boston's snow level is just about right.
plumbing and schizophrenia
eight january (even later)
I hate talking about the plumbing. Especially mine.
I bet you thought I was talking about genitalia, and I suppose the statement would have been apropos there too, but I meant Alewife Bayou.
This is supposed to be a stream of words for people to read. You shouldn't need to hear about behind-the-scenes. That's my concern.
Nonetheless, I get email about these things, and sometimes it's easier just to put it in a postcard rather than write the same answer ten times.
So here we go:
1. Sam (Bowing Down To My Addiction) isn't in the webring anymore because she had to password-protect her pages, which isn't fair to the ring readers.
2. Since Scr@wls is shut down, I will probably be shopping for other ring sites. Send them if you like, but be aware that it takes me a long time to reply to requests of that sort; it doesn't mean I haven't read them.
3. Heliotrope only gives you the latest postcard when you ask her. Since of late I have been writing two or three a day, then skipping days, that system means missed postcards for some of you. So I've got a notify list. If you don't already know it exists, then you missed a postcard. See? (The top page has details too.)
4. Yes, I changed the logo. (Some of you never see the top page at all; I see it every day; ergo, I get sick of it faster than you do.) Yes, I am aware that it's a rather creepy logo. (One person said it looked like I'd drowned.) I like it that way.
In case you don't realize: Alewife Bayou is supposed to have a murky design. Grim, swampy, decaying, neglected. The fact that you don't realize this is because I'm an inadequate artist, and I won't put up any trimmings that might make it "swampier" because I can't do them well enough to suit my exacting standards. It already bothers me enough that I can't get the little portraits right.
This has nothing to do with inner despair or Gothness (perish forbid) -- I just like dark vistas. I love overcast days. To heck with the sun; the sky is most beautiful in the false darkness just before the record-breaking thunderstorm. The rusted-out barn is prettier than the new one.
As for my face: You have no idea how much of a change in personality I've had to undergo just to put my image on this site at all. Newish readers may not recall that for the longest time no one knew Columbine's appearance; she was an enigma. I dislike my face. That image on the top page is as beautiful as I can make it, and it's still not good enough.
Nobody understands this. I sometimes think it was a mistake to come out of the closet about Columbine; it means that my conscience doesn't hurt from the deceit, true, but the whole idea was for Columbine's personality to displace mine when I dealt with my online friends. I wanted them to meet and know Columbine, not me. Instead, it's happened the other way 'round. Mary Anne, who's met me in person, no longer sees Columbine as an entity at all. She and my friend Eric both refer to me by my right name (you know, the one which appears nowhere on this site?) in front of strangers while displaying Columbine's email address, and I'm too tired to keep protesting. [Dec 2004: And I got tireder and tireder, and basically the real-name protection is gone for good at this point, although you still have to sort of hunt for it.]
Your loss. Columbine was a better person to know. I cultivated this schizophrenia deliberately and for a good reason.
Oh, heck, I'm getting depressed just writing this. See why I don't bring up the plumbing?
I've thought about asking for volunteers for the portraits. If you know anyone who's crazy enough to draw ten to twenty little bitty pictures of Columbine, each showing a different facial expression, then refer them to me. Having some pretty pictures of Columbine to look at would make me feel better. It gets harder and harder to feel pretty, and I suppose my damned face at the top of my web site doesn't help much, but I have nothing to replace it with.
who's who in my universe
ten january
On Saturday it was over fifty degrees. The snow was melting so fast on Saturday morning that it was making clouds of mist. I am not making this up. I bought a 1000-piece jigsaw and a tray for catproofing, and worked the whole thing in a single evening, without once turning on the computer.
When I came back to my mail, several people had written about my angsty comments re the schism between Columbine and her puppeteer. Some felt the "voice" in these postcards was consistent. Others expressed confusion. SR will speak for the latter:
Both of you are interesting people, with well-reasoned opinions, and thought processes I like listening in on. And I'd be happy to read thoughts by some combination of the two, but I have to admit that the current combination thereof leaves me a bit confused. So ... let me ask you: Do you see Columbine as a distinct persona? Or do you really see yourself as an amalgam of the two?
Oh, god, I wish I knew.
Due to dysphoria and my upbringing (and I apologize to all males in advance) I tend to associate some of the more flagrant emotional reactions -- anger and stubbornness, in particular -- with "maleness," and avoid them. (Jealousy is the only dark emotion I find especially female, but it's impolite.) If I am to be "ladylike" -- and my idea of "ladylike" is a rather Victorian one; Miss Manners would probably deem it over-conservative -- then I must suppress many aspects of my male personality from appearing. As a male, I leap to judgement rather too quickly and have a venomous tongue.
On the other hand, it is often more entertaining to read venom than sweetness and light, so if we are considering the journal as public entertainment, it's probably desirable to let those aspects out once in a while.
If we're considering the journal as a personal record for me, frankly, I have as much of a need to know what upset or hurt me as what pleased and thrilled me.
The thing is, my ideals of femininity are moderately repressed ones. In my upbringing, a woman never admits it when something ticks her off; she smiles pleasantly and then arranges a solution to the problem quietly -- either fixes it herself, or puts her foot down with a smile still on her face, or shoots someone in the dark and dumps their body in the river and is never caught. The women in my family are capable of anything.
My male side sometimes (not always) thinks that's a really silly way of doing business. And sometimes he agrees that the female way is better, but can't hold his temper enough to implement it. Ironically, the better I am at being my ideal female in public, the worse I look here -- since these postcards are often the outlet for things I cannot permit myself to say aloud to other people.
Finally, Columbine may own these postcards, but my male aspect is the one which has experiences in the real world -- and I can't write about Columbine's purely virtual existence for very long; it wouldn't be much of a journal.
What I am shooting here is for my female personality interpreting my male experiences. Call it Columbine's take on someone else's daily events. But, yes, it will always be an amalgam, and if you can sort out who's who, you're doing better than I.
[sic]
eleven january
You want to talk about portents of the downfall of civilization?
Not the Year 2000 bug (as the Annals of Improbable Research point out, "things don't work that well now.") Not the increase in personal rudeness, as Heinlein suggested; we've been rude since the nation was founded and we're remarkably consistent that way.
No. It's that no one bothers to spell correctly anymore.
Bad grammar I can understand; grammar is often stupid, tricky, and completely arbitrary. I make all sorts of grammatical errors myself, and I have had training in how to write; I'm not willing to cast stones. But spelling?
When I went to get my coffee this morning, there were little signs all over the Pain stating that because of the California freeze, they were temporarily unable to carry "naval" oranges. The word appeared on each sign several times.
OK, maybe that one's acceptable. After all, the Navy does have a long history with citrus fruit, making it a point to provide plenty of citrus and citrus juices aboard ship ever since the British learned it prevented scurvy, lo those many years ago. (Which is why British sailors were nicknamed "limeys," but you knew that.) So I can see a naval orange, as opposed to one with a bellybutton.
I'm even willing to forgive that this same chain advertised their "Ceasar" salads in very large type all over town last year -- although it's less forgivable that, in a campaign lasting several months, they didn't try to reprint or correct the signs.
The straw that is breaking this camel's back is that I am currently reading some new journals, to try to fill in that gap in the webring ... and I am amazed by the number of journallers who simply do not bother to spell.
Look: The way I was raised, if I see habitual poor spelling on your part (I'm not talking about the occasional error, or the same problematic word over and over -- I have my hobgoblins too -- but consistent, flagrant problems) I am likely to assume you are a moron. Or that, at the very least, you don't care about your presentation or attracting new visitors -- that you are apathetic.
And the sad thing is, reading some of these sites, I realize that the people are not morons and they do want new readers, but they have no idea how big a turn-off it is to be cruising along a stretch of prose at sixty mph and hit all these potholes.
Worst of all, there is no polite way to tell someone, "I adore your thoughts and I would love to link to you and read you every day, but I can't because your spelling puts me right off." It's like trying to tell someone they always have bad breath.
sleeping (not sleeping)
twelve january
When I got home yesterday, in the late afternoon, I was tired, so I lay down for about an hour. Then I went about my evening business. By eleven p.m. I was tired again, so I began making preparations and got into bed around midnight, which is unusually early for me.
I sleep in the altogether by preference, but the last few nights I had gotten cold in the middle of the night, so tonight I wore a nightgown. I had taken a nice hot bath and was all cosy and fell asleep almost immediately -- also unusual.
But the sleep quickly grew restless and fitful, and beyond a certain point that stop-and-start sleeping can't really be said to be sleep at all. At five a.m. my thirst finally penetrated my brain and woke me all the way up. It was sweltering and my mouth was as dry as a bone.
Looking out the windows on my way to the kitchen everything was white. It had snowed heavily. I drank my water and refilled the Brita tank and then went back to bed.
And couldn't sleep.
Eventually I went into the guest room, which sometimes works when I can't get comfortable. No. I lay, sort of half-drifting into quasi-realistic events. (For example, I dreamed that the mirror had been removed from my dresser and was leaning in the hall, where I tripped over it and wondered why someone had taken it apart.)
I lay there listening to the snowy silence become the sound of traffic on snow and my spouse waking up and fumbling around and the policeman driving up and down the street with his megaphone telling people not to park in front of our house (which you can't do when there's above a certain amount of snow).
I finally drifted off again after she left and managed to wake up enough to feel like a functional human around ten-thirty, which was pretty good, all things considered.
The weather was mild and lovely when I stepped out and the snow was melting rapidly, same as last time.
spell that again, please?
thirteen january
I got a fair amount of mail about my spelling rant. Everyone is worried about their own spelling, it seems ... worried they missed something obvious and that I was talking about them, or defiant about their perceived mistakes. I find this amusing. A group of people who are secretly paranoid about their ability to spell!
Not to worry. Let me reiterate: Everyone makes a certain number of spelling errors. People usually have a handful of problematic words which plague them their entire life.
I have trouble with "obssession" (I can never remember whether to double the first S) and "commemorate" (I grew up in the South, so I feel like there should be an N in there, because in the South you hear it said "connemerate") and a few others. When I was in school it took me the longest time to learn to spell "separate" -- I want that first A to be an E.
And sometimes I spell things the wrong way on purpose. I tend to favor the British spellings of some words -- a correspondent pointed out my spelling of "judgment" (in America there's another E in there). I told him to count my blessings. After many years, my various editors have finally thrashed me enough that I don't write "colour" or "neighbour" -- but the temptation is so strong in the latter case that I usually have to go back and correct it.
[Dec 2004: See the next entry for more on this problematic paragraph.]
It's not the occasional problems I worry about. I worry about prose where it's clear the person doesn't even try to spell properly, that the person doesn't have a clue. Maybe those two aren't equivalent, but in my mind they are: If you don't try, I assume you don't care.
What may be confusing you is that I began the original rant by talking about advertising. With advertising, and other public media, the bar is much higher. With your personal writing, I just want to get the impression you're doing your best -- that you're making the effort. With advertising, I have a zero tolerance policy. They've got people who are being paid a lot of money to not misspell words.
I took Marc to a restaurant last night which was considerably more upscale than the Pain, and lo, they had misspelled "caesar" prominently too. Not in a sign hand-written by some hapless employee, but in their printed materials. That's unacceptable. Verily, the next time I see "ceasar" anywhere, I am going to wake Caesar Cardini from the dead and the two of us are going to go throw heads of romaine lettuce at the offending parties.
There are only a few individual spelling errors which, by themselves, can cause me to scream in anguish when I see them in personal writing. One of them is "it's" and "its." My spouse goes into fits about "insure" vs. "ensure" and "infer" vs. "imply." Personally, I could care less about the former. If she were here, she'd correct that to "I couldn't care less." We all have our bugbears and hobgoblins.
rushing to judgment
thirteen january (later)
Let this be a lesson to me.
Mea culpa to dear REM, whom I have maligned unjustly. And thanks to Beth -- no, not Beth (Melissa), but (Xeney) Beth -- who called my attention to my grievous error.
I said that my spelling of "judgment" had been corrected by REM, who wanted me to add an extra E. In fact (I had to go back to the original postcard in question, which is what I should have done to begin with), I spelled it "judgement" and he said it should be "judgment." Which is correct. In fact, it's so strange that I put the E in at all, that I reversed the situation in my head.
I should also point out (before anyone else does) that the phrase "I told him to count my blessings" was obviously written by my subconscious while I wasn't looking.
Shucks. Why don't you go read the latest addition to the Thinking Aloud ring instead? The prose is better over there today. I need more coffee.
[Dec 2004: I still have trouble with "judgement" vs "judgment" because I always want to put the E in, whether I'm aware of it or not. The latter, apparently, looks to my subconscious like it is missing a letter.]
but the rates stay the same
fourteen january
The Postal Service isn't the only place introducing a new series of stamps.
A few days back, when I griped about images for this site, I didn't actually expect anyone to come forward and provide any -- it was mostly rhetoric. But to my surprise, Katharine has done so, providing not only an amazing new splash image, but a set of stamps! These are so wonderful that I can't resist putting them into circulation now, rather than waiting for a new month or a new page to start. That means the green-and-white set of stamps was used for less than two months. Oh, well -- I guess it was obvious that I didn't like them very much.
Over the next few weeks, as the new stamps appear, let me know what you think. If you like them, I will pass the word along to Cat. If you don't like them ... well, I'll take note of the information, and maybe pass it along to her.
Really, I'm astonished. I think she's been studying the portrait gallery or something. The image on the top page has the facial structure common to just about everyone in my mother's family. In fact, it could very well be a drawing of my mother from her mid-twenties ... except for the eyes. My mother's are brown.
[Dec 2004: And now, finally, we are caught up to the set of stamp images and logo that are still in use for the reworked Alewife pages today.]
And now, having attempted to convey some small portion of the glee I am feeling because of these happy pictures, I will change to somewhat more cranky topics. But I'll start a fresh postcard to do it. Wouldn't want the two emotions to slop over onto each other -- the colors go all muddy.
ignoring the record
fourteen january (again)
I've been spewing indiscriminately a fair amount lately, and I suppose I should stop. Right now, I have one acquaintance who's mad at me because of an inflammatory email I sent ... and a sometime-enemy who's pleased with me, because of a column I wrote elsewhere that happened to agree with his point of view.
(The latter is just as unfamiliar and disorienting as the former. If my enemies are pleased with something I said, I can't shake the suspicion that I'm doing something wrong.)
Anyway, given that my mailbox contains plenty of hot water right now already, you'd think I'd show some restraint and not bite the hand that reads me, as it were. But I must vent this -- it's been bothering me for some days. So, once more into the breach, dear friends ...
The other day I was talking to my friend Marc. Now, Marc is an alien, as you'll recall. He fills his head with the oddest assortment of information -- and, like Sherlock Holmes, he chooses to deliberately keep certain pieces of information from taking up room in his attic. Marc is an artist, and devours any artistic information of a how-to nature. He is also a philosopher. He loves science. He reads chemistry and biology textbooks for the joy of it, and so he can have more information to load into his "Why is this so? How do we know this is so? What would happen if it were different?" cannon -- a big gun that he is always firing at anyone who stands still long enough.
But Marc will not store history. Any kind of history. Even art history. And he doesn't understand why history might be useful to him. When you throw Santayana at him ("Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it"), he just gets annoyed.
Cut to Columbine stalking home after having argued this with Marc for several hours. I found out just how little he knows about American history. It depressed and infuriated me by turns. Home to the spouse. Mention the night's conversation. No sympathy. She knows more of the raw facts than Marc does -- leftovers from tenth grade -- but still isn't clear on why she should continue to retain a lot of it.
These two are people who, like me, store information "because it's there." We love data, any data. Yet they have a blind spot I don't, and that I don't understand.
I don't claim to be a history whiz. I resisted all history until college, when I finally had a teacher with enough enthusiasm and style that I discovered it wasn't tedious. I've been trying to catch up ever since.
The point is, I'm not asking that you know about the Smoot-Hawley Tariff or "Bleeding Kansas" or even Grover Cleveland's illegitimate child. I only want you to know the minimum amount necessary to pass a citizenship exam. Pretend you're an immigrant and you'd really like to live in this country. Can you prove you're entitled?
But I'm having a hard time finding someone who agrees with me. When I told Kymm, for example, she was slightly sympathetic, but said she was lousy at American history herself.
Some people would say I'm stressing things backwards -- that if their history teachers had talked about Cleveland's child (he admitted everything and was elected by a large majority anyway -- Clinton take note), it would have been a lot more interesting.
Well, no argument there. But the multiplication tables aren't interesting either, and you need them to do just about any higher math that is interesting. (I realize that's a bad example ... some readers will say that "interesting math" is an oxymoron. But hopefully you get my point anyway.)
Similarly, we can't talk about the ongoing fight over interpretation of the Second Amendment -- a fun subject that leads us to some very strange bedfellows and wacky people -- if you don't know what the Second Amendment says.
And don't tell me you can look it up. Do you look up seven times seven every time you need it?
Furthermore, once you learn some history it allows you to have the most interesting conversations. You can have an astonishingly lively discussion, for example, over who was the most successful president ever -- assuming you know enough to be dangerous. (And that you can agree on what "successful" means.)
There were many more presidents, after all, than the few who have entered popular mythology. Grover Cleveland got a lot more accomplished than George Washington ever did, for example -- Washington just sat and let history happen around him. But Cleveland is not a legend, so no one notices.
And the answer I usually give is even further off the beaten path than lovable furry old Grover. No, I'm not going to tell you who I have in mind. But I'll accept guesses. Prove me wrong.
new faces and wine
fourteen january (what, more?)
I forgot to mention earlier that the other new ring addition has joined us. Well, partially joined us. She's in Australia, and communiques take a while to pass back and forth. You can get to her site, but as I write this, you can't get out again. Bwa-ha-ha. Anyway, please welcome Scoop. Please note that our Oz contingent has now doubled ...
I have added four new images to the ever-so-occasionally-expanding self-portrait gallery. If you've been there and you just want to see the new ones, allow me to assist you. There you go. [Dec 2004: Link deleted. Long gone.]
I added them because I don't want to do actual writing or anything else that's constructive at the moment. It's snowing horribly outside and has been all day, the temperature is ungodly, and my car is a snowdrift. Trapped in the house with no ambition and no chocolate chip cookies, I have instead gradually worked my way through the latter half of the Beaujolais Nouveau we had with dinner -- which doesn't help my productivity a whit, let me tell you.
Actually, since I'd obviously rather type a few thousand words here than in my MS, let me say a little about wine. Which journaller was speculating about wine a bit lately? Was that you, Di? Well, at any rate, I seldom drank wine before entering this torrid relationship. The spouse comes from a family, though, which had wine regularly, drinking it with meals moderately often. She has not quite made me into a wine snob like herself [oh, I'll hear about that tomorrow when she reads this], but I have learned a few things.
I've learned that if I'm just drinking wine "out of hand" and not with food, I like fluffy, sweetish white wines -- Riesling is a particular favorite. (Riesling also goes oddly well with sushi -- I don't know why, but trust me, it does.)
I've learned how to tell a bitter, complex red wine from a fluffy, fruity red wine from the labels and types -- and I've learned that all those terms that wine tasters toss around are not just pretension; sometimes there is no better way to describe certain kinds of tastes. (For example, there is no other word for "tannic." Tannic is that dry, bitterish taste lingering in the roof of your mouth after you drink a lot of tea. Some wine has it too.)
I've learned (from a great book called Fear of Wine) about how American restaurants will usually have a whole bunch of Cabernets and Chardonnays because they're the only kinds scared wine drinkers will order. Personally, since I like Merlots and Pinot Noirs and the whole list of German wines, this is OK with me -- I can sometimes get a good deal on a Riesling that no one else is willing to order -- but it's bad for wine-bibbing as a whole, because it becomes a cycle that limits the availability of the other stuff.
I've learned there is good Zinfandel. Real Zinfandel is a red, spicy wine that can be consumed fairly young and goes with a lot of different foods; white (pink) Zinfandel is a soda-pop abomination which gives the other a bad name.
I've learned that armed with a little knowledge, you can go to a wine store and pick up a lot of very good wine for a reasonable amount of money. It's a little like beating the system, and it has a certain thrill to it.
And that's pretty much what I know about wine. Oh, except that Beaujolais Nouveau is one of the few wines that needs to be drunk almost immediately after bottling -- it doesn't keep. So excuse me while I polish off this glass.
solipsist timelines
fifteen january
Marc responded this morning in email about my history rant (two postcards back). Since his language is such a reflection of his thought process (Marc holds the patent on "thinking aloud"), I'm excerpting his reply here, with his permission, rather than paraphrasing it.
- - -
I'm slowly accumulating insights on the non-history thing, and I can say a few things, now, at least:
Let's look at what I like and see why what I avoid lacks it.
I like science mainly because information we've accumulated about physical structures is very, very internally complex. (The fact that it is complex interests me; if I can follow the subtleties, I'm pleased with my mind.) By "internally" I mean that the body of information as itself is quite complicated and interrelated. I don't immediately connect the texts with reality. History, by itself and on the surface, is no more interesting at looking at a thermometer every few weeks and jotting down the level of mercury. Other than an accounting function with cross-referencing, it holds no interesting information. [History] all boils down to a message: People act on their beliefs to get out of what they see as bad situations and maintain what they see as good situations. Sounds like TV, which I also don't watch.
I accept that there are very skewed versions of history, with some accounts being deliberately inaccurate or misleading. I recognize a certain thrill of finding out "the inside scoop." However, in my mind, even if we had transcripts from every conversation on the planet, and real-time videos of every war and event and relationship, I still doubt I'd wander through the archives. (Though the archives themselves would be fascinating. How might all that information be organized?!) Am I assuming that the study of history is noble voyeurism? Perhaps, which would connect it to other things I already avoid due to much the same apathy.
In other words, my avoidance of history may be an extension of my antisocial tendencies. If we construe a pact of non-voyeurism as a form of selfishness, I'd plead guity.
Referring back to "science," I would not mind if we were entirely wrong about everything in chemistry, biology, and physics: the picture we've created is still beautiful. Now, since I'm content to assume the information we have is largely consistent (if incomplete) with the physical universe, it carries a doubly rewarding weight in being both pretty and pretty accurate.
I'm interested in intense personal growth and mental development. This implies that my internal environment is more important than any external one. I could be living in any country, in any time, any station in life (indeed, I could be any species on any planet), I'd still be tinkering with my mind and trying to stretch it. Why bother to look up at (history) external road signs? (If I'm not next to any cliffs or maelstroms, I'm fine.)
The sciences present me with very complicated information [that steps] over the boundaries history incessantly draws and erases. If my mind can follow it all, I'm pleased. It's not so much about the content of the information as such, but its underlying structure.
- - -
Me again.
Now, I suppose you're wondering what I think of all this? Well ... I can appreciate Marc's reasons for liking science, and I think I understand his focus ... but I don't see what any of that has to do with not learning history.
However, Marc has inadvertently given me the key -- the main gripe that I have with people who won't store any history. I see it as a fundamentally selfish, egocentric act. I see it as saying:
"My universe begins and ends with me. I have no need to learn about what came before me; to me that is unimportant; in fact, it may not even be real. I have no proof that anything existed before I was there to perceive it, and I have no need to care if it did."
Mary Anne and others comment on how self-denigrating I am; that is because to me, there is no sin greater than the sin of hubris -- excessive pride of place. To me, the block above is purest hubris.
Send flames and comments. Tell me where I've derailed.
survey says
fifteen january (later)
It is wet and slushy.
It snowed all last night; this morning, for the third time following a snowfall, the rain began. It is still raining. The rain is melting the snow into slush, but packed drifts of snow are blocking all the drains, so all the low places -- i.e. anything shoveled out -- are filling with icy water.
A funny thing about icy slushy water -- it appears to have a top surface sometimes that you can step on, due to the floating slush. I stepped in several places that I thought were solid and ended up in water up to my ankles. Could have been worse. Last winter I stepped in one such trap up to my calves.
When I talk about weather, it may sound like I'm complaining, but actually I'm not. It's more in the tone of field observations. Bad weather is interesting, and I'm usually okay with it, as long as I'm not driving in it. Then it becomes dangerous.
So, despite my coat and hair being soaked, I was having an easygoing walk home -- until I slipped and fell on my derriere into freezing water. Now if I want to go out of the house again tonight I will have to find some other clothes.
Anyway, I'm certainly not going to talk about history again yet, even though I've gotten all sorts of interesting mail today, because I need something light and fluffy to take my mind off what's transpiring outside my window.
So I'm going to steal from Rob. Today he put up his and Julie's answers to a little survey that's apparently been going around. I have been spared the pain of finding the original in my mailbox, and would normally scorn such frippery, but for some reason it seems exactly the kind of Wonder-Bread thing to do today. Maybe my brain is melting.
More on history tomorrow, plus why I don't Hunt, and something about humans not having enough fun.
- - -
Nicknames?
I get called "that plant-lady" a lot on MUCKs. Oh, did you mean that other person who shares my head? His name is short enough that no one really can do much to it. Expletives don't count, right?
I get called "that plant-lady" a lot on MUCKs. Oh, did you mean that other person who shares my head? His name is short enough that no one really can do much to it. Expletives don't count, right?
Hometown?
Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Croutons or bacon bits?
Um, depends on the quality. I'll eat bad croutons (i.e. from a box) sometimes, but I will never eat those artificial pink bacon bits, never. If they're both real, I'll have both, thanks.
Um, depends on the quality. I'll eat bad croutons (i.e. from a box) sometimes, but I will never eat those artificial pink bacon bits, never. If they're both real, I'll have both, thanks.
Favorite salad dressing?
Hidden Valley Ranch, and no substitutes, please. The only thing better is the pungent dressing Piccadilly Cafeterias put on their Italian salads, but you can't get those here.
Hidden Valley Ranch, and no substitutes, please. The only thing better is the pungent dressing Piccadilly Cafeterias put on their Italian salads, but you can't get those here.
Do you drink?
Me? Drink? Um ... yes.
Me? Drink? Um ... yes.
Shampoo or conditioner?
Conditioner's a rip-off. The secret ingredient in conditioner is grease -- fats and oils. Why would I use shampoo to take grease out of my hair, then add more right back in?
Conditioner's a rip-off. The secret ingredient in conditioner is grease -- fats and oils. Why would I use shampoo to take grease out of my hair, then add more right back in?
Have you ever gone skinny dipping?
Every chance I get. I prefer swimming in the dark too; fortunately these two activities go hand-in-hand.
Every chance I get. I prefer swimming in the dark too; fortunately these two activities go hand-in-hand.
Do you make fun of people?
Way too much; it's very bad manners.
Way too much; it's very bad manners.
Favorite color?
Cobalt blue.
Cobalt blue.
Have you ever been convicted of a crime?
Not unless you count running a few stop signs.
Not unless you count running a few stop signs.
One pillow or two?
Two, but I generally contrive to shove one off the bed while I'm asleep.
Two, but I generally contrive to shove one off the bed while I'm asleep.
Pets?
None of my own, but I've officially been given joint ownership of my spouse's two cats.
None of my own, but I've officially been given joint ownership of my spouse's two cats.
Favorite type of music?
Anything that's not Bela Bartok, Philip Glass, Brian Eno, or Garth Brooks.
Anything that's not Bela Bartok, Philip Glass, Brian Eno, or Garth Brooks.
Hobbies?
I write. A lot. A whole lot. You decide which parts are hobbies and which are my life's work. Careful. Don't guess wrong or you may offend me.
Oh, yes, I also play too many computer games.
I write. A lot. A whole lot. You decide which parts are hobbies and which are my life's work. Careful. Don't guess wrong or you may offend me.
Oh, yes, I also play too many computer games.
Dream car?
Eh. I guess I'd like one of those Toyota Prius hybrids that they're not selling in the US yet. Anything that runs well for ten years with minimal maintenance and never falls below 30 mpg in its lifetime. I don't buy cars for looks or speed. My current car comes pretty close. [Dec 2004: We got a Subaru Forester and I believe it's really a winner. I never have craved slick sports cars and such.]
Eh. I guess I'd like one of those Toyota Prius hybrids that they're not selling in the US yet. Anything that runs well for ten years with minimal maintenance and never falls below 30 mpg in its lifetime. I don't buy cars for looks or speed. My current car comes pretty close. [Dec 2004: We got a Subaru Forester and I believe it's really a winner. I never have craved slick sports cars and such.]
Type of car you drive now?
A Toyota Tercel. One of the last of its kind.
A Toyota Tercel. One of the last of its kind.
Words or phrases you overuse?
I start written sentences with "And" or "So" too much, as if I'm picking up a left-off conversation. My spouse removes about a zillion of these whenever she has occasion to edit my writing.
I start written sentences with "And" or "So" too much, as if I'm picking up a left-off conversation. My spouse removes about a zillion of these whenever she has occasion to edit my writing.
Toothpaste?
Tom's of Maine, cinnamon or peppermint, preferably with baking soda.
Tom's of Maine, cinnamon or peppermint, preferably with baking soda.
Piercing or tattoos?
Heh. Not yet. The piercing is more likely; I keep toying with getting my ears pierced. Once I actually made it all the way into the store before getting cold feet. [Dec 2004: I did eventually get them pierced. That's my piercing quota.]
Heh. Not yet. The piercing is more likely; I keep toying with getting my ears pierced. Once I actually made it all the way into the store before getting cold feet. [Dec 2004: I did eventually get them pierced. That's my piercing quota.]
On-line crush?
Dozens. Male or female? Hmm. On second thought I'll keep mum; several of them read this regularly.
Dozens. Male or female? Hmm. On second thought I'll keep mum; several of them read this regularly.
Current boyfriend/girlfriend?
I am affianced, thankyouverymuch ... which in no way affects the answer to the previous question.
I am affianced, thankyouverymuch ... which in no way affects the answer to the previous question.
Most romantic thing that ever happened to you?
Um, I tend to think even the smallest things are romantic, so it's really hard for me to pick one out.
Um, I tend to think even the smallest things are romantic, so it's really hard for me to pick one out.
How do you characterize yourself (a hopeless romantic or non-romantic)?
A romantic who covers it with a nasty bulletproof exterior finish.
A romantic who covers it with a nasty bulletproof exterior finish.
Do you get along with your parents?
I get along beautifully with my mother and haven't spoken to my father in nearly five years. You may detect a slight imbalance there.
I get along beautifully with my mother and haven't spoken to my father in nearly five years. You may detect a slight imbalance there.
Favorite town to chill in?
I'm with Rob on this one -- ha, ha, very funny. Actually, I absolutely adore Boston, even if "chill" is rather too literal at the moment.
I'm with Rob on this one -- ha, ha, very funny. Actually, I absolutely adore Boston, even if "chill" is rather too literal at the moment.
Favorite ice cream?
Aside from the occasional chocolate malt, I don't eat much ice cream. I have allegiance to a place, not a flavor: Toscanini's, a local joint. I'll gladly eat any flavor they've got.
Aside from the occasional chocolate malt, I don't eat much ice cream. I have allegiance to a place, not a flavor: Toscanini's, a local joint. I'll gladly eat any flavor they've got.
Favorite drink?
Coffee.
Coffee.
Adidas, Nike or Reebok?
None of the above if I could possibly help it. Unfortunately, I have to answer Nike -- they're the only people that made non-hideous walking shoes in my size I could afford.
None of the above if I could possibly help it. Unfortunately, I have to answer Nike -- they're the only people that made non-hideous walking shoes in my size I could afford.
Favorite perfume/cologne?
On me or on other people? I like patchouli on everyone else, and I occasionally wear something called Earl Grey Tea, which mostly smells like bergamot (orange). But in general I like people, including myself, better without extra odors.
On me or on other people? I like patchouli on everyone else, and I occasionally wear something called Earl Grey Tea, which mostly smells like bergamot (orange). But in general I like people, including myself, better without extra odors.
Favorite song at the moment?
At the moment ... "Circles" by Soul Coughing. That will change in the next ten minutes.
At the moment ... "Circles" by Soul Coughing. That will change in the next ten minutes.
Favorite movie?
Probably Matilda. That changes fairly often, too.
Probably Matilda. That changes fairly often, too.
Favorite TV show?
None that's currently on the air. [Dec 2004: The correct answer is probably "The Avengers."]
None that's currently on the air. [Dec 2004: The correct answer is probably "The Avengers."]
Favorite novel?
Oh, good lord. I have a roomful of bookcases and you want me to pick a favorite?
Um ... I read Dorothy Sayers and Robin McKinley and Dana Stabenow and Tom Robbins over and over and over; when I come to the end of the books, I start again. Connie Willis and Pat Murphy can do little wrong. The Princess Bride is a wonderful book that became a wonderful movie -- very rare! -- and Neal Stephenson wrote three perfect novels in a row, dense provocative beasts all, which is exceedingly hard to do. There. That should hold you.
Oh, good lord. I have a roomful of bookcases and you want me to pick a favorite?
Um ... I read Dorothy Sayers and Robin McKinley and Dana Stabenow and Tom Robbins over and over and over; when I come to the end of the books, I start again. Connie Willis and Pat Murphy can do little wrong. The Princess Bride is a wonderful book that became a wonderful movie -- very rare! -- and Neal Stephenson wrote three perfect novels in a row, dense provocative beasts all, which is exceedingly hard to do. There. That should hold you.
Favorite website?
I bet you thought I'd say this one, but actually, Tasty Bits From the Technology Front [Dec 2004: RIP] is my all-time favorite.
I bet you thought I'd say this one, but actually, Tasty Bits From the Technology Front [Dec 2004: RIP] is my all-time favorite.
Favorite subject in school?
Literature, although it didn't seem like it at the time. I resisted the canon, you might say. I used to turn in papers with one sentence: "This was written as entertainment, and it would be pointless to analyze it." My teacher, bless her soul, would then hand it back to me ungraded and I'd write the real paper and generally turn in an A or B essay.
Literature, although it didn't seem like it at the time. I resisted the canon, you might say. I used to turn in papers with one sentence: "This was written as entertainment, and it would be pointless to analyze it." My teacher, bless her soul, would then hand it back to me ungraded and I'd write the real paper and generally turn in an A or B essay.
Least favorite subject?
Any mathematics higher than geometry. No, wait -- there was a Civics class they made you take a semester of. I almost became a student protester in high school because of that class. It wasn't history or citizenship, it was whitewash and how to kiss corporate-industrial butt.
Any mathematics higher than geometry. No, wait -- there was a Civics class they made you take a semester of. I almost became a student protester in high school because of that class. It wasn't history or citizenship, it was whitewash and how to kiss corporate-industrial butt.
Favorite alcoholic drink?
Hard cider. Irish coffee is a close second. [Dec 2004: This was before I learned to love Martinis.]
Hard cider. Irish coffee is a close second. [Dec 2004: This was before I learned to love Martinis.]
Favorite chick drink?
I fancy an occasional margarita on the rocks. Lots of salt, please. Is that a chick drink?
I fancy an occasional margarita on the rocks. Lots of salt, please. Is that a chick drink?
Favorite Sport to watch?
Lumberjack sports on ESPN2. Nothing like watching a man slice inch wide disks of log in about a second per disk with absolute grace and a turbocharged, oversized chain saw. Gets me hot.
Lumberjack sports on ESPN2. Nothing like watching a man slice inch wide disks of log in about a second per disk with absolute grace and a turbocharged, oversized chain saw. Gets me hot.
Most recent humiliating moment?
Making a glaring logical error in front of several thousand readers over at mouth organ.
Making a glaring logical error in front of several thousand readers over at mouth organ.
Loudest person you know?
My mother, these days. I dunno what's gotten into her.
My mother, these days. I dunno what's gotten into her.
Craziest person or silliest you know?
Everyone I know is crazy. I'm probably the silliest person I know. Except maybe Kymm.
Everyone I know is crazy. I'm probably the silliest person I know. Except maybe Kymm.
Favorite holiday?
Hallowe'en.
Hallowe'en.
What do you look for in a mate/lover?
Someone who can stand the way I shift between physically lascivious and absolutely solitary without warning.
Someone who can stand the way I shift between physically lascivious and absolutely solitary without warning.
The worst thing that has happened to you in the past couple months?
No major disasters in a while, thank heavens.
No major disasters in a while, thank heavens.
Say one nice thing about the person who sent this to you and be sure to send it back to them.
He's a lot of fun to read. He can come read this himself, though.
He's a lot of fun to read. He can come read this himself, though.
this dog won't hunt
sixteen january
This postcard, although about real events, is written in the style of my little protagonist friend A.D. Roehm. I will be working more on the Exchange Student novella this weekend, and I need a warmup exercise. So here's A.D.:
I should probably explain now about the Hunt. I mentioned it already, but I didn't explain. Did you ever notice that people usually won't ask you to explain? If you drop in some word they don't know, they'll just nod and pretend they know what you're talking about. I wish they'd ask. It'd save a lot of trouble later.
Anyway, the university has this thing called the Mystery Hunt. It happens every year in January, when there are no classes and a lot of little "activities" happen, like classes but short -- two or three days each -- and not very serious. Like the Charm School for geeks. I wouldn't go to that. Maybe I need charm school but I don't think I'd want to be in a room with some of these other kids. They scare me.
The Mystery Hunt works like this: The team that's running the hunt hides a little doodad, usually a coin, somewhere on campus. Then they make a series of clues that tell you where to find the coin. Then they do something to conceal these clues -- usually they hide them in a big bunch of puzzles -- I mean puzzles on paper -- that you have to solve to find the coin.
The solvers are also in teams -- each team gets the package of puzzles and anything else the huntmaster wants to give them (sometimes there are props, some item you have to figure out what to do with) and they go off and don't sleep for two or three days, working at it, until one team finds the coin.
The puzzles are way too hard for one person to finish in time. Really hard. The kids at this school are kinda smug about how they know so much more than everybody else in the world, and they like to try to figure out nasty problems. Even if the problems are useless to figure out, even if there's no point to solving them. They like being able to say they could do it.
I guess I'm giving away what I think of the Hunt. Well, I wasn't going to try to hide it. I did it for a while. I was on a solving team twice, and was on a puzzle-making team once.
Being on the team that's running the Hunt is really rough. Everyone's got other things to do, you know -- classes and work and stuff -- so you have to write all these puzzles and get them all together so they work right and duplicate them. It's a big job. When I was a solver, I wondered why there were always at least one or two mistakes in the puzzle set. Gee, I thought, can't they get it absolutely right just once? But it's harder than it looks.
Being a solver is kinda fun, but how many puzzles can you work before your brain melts? After the first twelve hours I don't want to even look at the puzzles again. Plus there's always fighting. People fussing about each others' answers, people playing "I know more than you do," people claiming puzzles and not wanting any help from other people. Well, actually, I do that part too. How many people does it take to do a cryptogram, anyhow?
And the group of people I was always on a team with is a close bunch -- everybody knows everybody else, sometimes people are living together, there's always some politics or something going on. I hate politics.
I don't know if I got tired of the people first -- I like them all okay as long as they're not at the Hunt -- or the puzzles. Maybe I'm just over my lifetime amount of puzzles.
Anyway, that's what the Hunt is about, and that's why I'm not there this year, for the second year in a row. I guess maybe I should have just not bothered to explain, and you could have nodded your head and pretended you knew.
curried pecan rice
sixteen january (later)
Well, I suppose that if I'm going to spend time Not Writing, it's better to have spent it in the kitchen, actually cooking myself Real Food, than to be, say, playing computer games.
It's Mary Anne's fault. When she answered the survey (the one I answered two entries back), she was so enthused about her beloved curries that I got this curry craving and just couldn't face a pot of canned soup, no matter how much I doctored it up by adding vegetables and other things (as is my habit).
I dug through the kitchen. Fresh vegetables consisted of limp celery, one bell pepper, and about five mushrooms. Two lemons, a bag of small yellow onions, a head of garlic, and two red potatoes which had begun to sprout.
Well, I thought, I could make a roux, add the Holy Trinity (bellpepper, celery, onion, all chopped together) and rice and tomatoes (we always have tons of canned tomato products) and get a nice, if meatless, jambalaya ... but somehow that didn't seem like the way to go. I could taste curry in the back of my mouth. And rice. Rice seemed to be on the right track. I hadn't eaten anything all day but a banana; I needed something starchy and substantial and fairly hot (it's still cold and rotten out).
So -- time to bluff.
This dish tastes like rice more than anything else. Oh, yes, you taste dates and pecans and the curry heat, but it tastes unabashedly of rice, and some people will find it mild and too starchy. If you don't love rice, don't make this.
Since this is so, choose a nice aromatic rice. "Wild rice" (which isn't actually rice) won't do, though; I recommend a good basmati. I used Konriko Wild Pecan Rice, which is neither wild rice nor does it contain pecans. It is a long-grained aromatic rice which smells and tastes nutty, and it is only grown in Louisiana. If you can find it, use it.
You'll need three cups of rice after you cook it. Boil it however you usually make rice. If you're me, and you can make complex things but can't cook rice worth a darn, follow the package directions closely.
(Actually, I have my doubts that the Konriko box made three cups. It looked like a mighty scant three cups to me. The label hedges and says it makes "about" three cups. Bah.)
Cook the rice first; it should be done, and sitting to one side ready to toss into the mix, before you ever start the rest of the recipe. The rest will happen pretty fast.
Peel two cloves of garlic. I squash them in my hand on the cutting board until the peel just comes right off, but you have to have strong hands for that. If you have a garlic press, you'll be using that later; if not, you'll need to chop the garlic as finely as you can right now.
In a deep skillet (deep enough that you can stir all that rice and other stuff around), put two tablespoons of peanut or vegetable oil and a half teaspoon of (whole) mustard seeds. I used a quarter teaspoon of yellow seeds and a quarter teaspoon of black, but it shouldn't make too much of a difference.
Heat the oil over high heat, maybe swishing it around a little, until the mustard seeds start to pop. This won't take long and you'll know when it happens; they make a popcorn noise. When they start popping, take the pan off the heat! Squeeze in (or drop in, if you chopped them) the two cloves of garlic. Add a quarter teaspoon of turmeric, a teaspoon of cumin, and a generous sprinkling of cayenne (red) pepper. (I didn't measure, but it'd be less than a quarter teaspoon.) Stir all this together, and put it back on the heat, turning the heat down to medium, until it starts to sizzle again.
Crush in approximately one cup of pecans. Now, when I say "crush in" ... you're trying to break up the pecans over the skillet, so the nut oils and nut crumbs get in there. Unfortunately you probably can't use my method, which is to fill my hand (I have large hands) with as many pecan halves as it can hold, and then, using both hands, press and crumble them into the pan. If you need to chop them instead, you'll need to do that before heating the oil, just like with the garlic.
Stir the pecans around for a minute or two so they can heat up a bit. The kitchen should smell really good at this point. Add one cup of coconut milk. It will bubble and foam dangerously. Immediately stir in the rice.
Add approximately a half cup of chopped dates -- I used the kind you buy already chopped, which are sugared, but if you have whole dates and want to chop them, that'll work too.
Stir the whole thing up and cook until the rice is thoroughly reheated or until you run out of patience. Warning: the dish is molten at this point; don't burn your mouth like I did tasting it.
If you think it needs something, tell me what, because I'm trying to improve it. I know it would have been richer with real coconut milk; I had to reconstitute some from coconut powder.
This'll serve two hungry people as a main dish, three not-so-hungry people as a main dish, or four as a side dish with something else (which might be the best way to serve it, maybe with a salty meat entree). I had two bowls of it and I had eaten a little more than half when I was done.
It beats canned soup.
low truths from hightower
seventeen january
I spent the morning reading back entries of If You See Her, Say Hello [Dec 2004: link deleted 'cause it's gone now] and laughing my head off.
That was the high point of my day.
Got bad news from Gypsy in email, didn't want to leave the house to get food, didn't want to eat anything in the house, didn't want to cook again (although I had the rest of the curried rice last night, and now consider it an Unqualified Success), didn't want to go back and tear out the last four paragraphs of the A.D. material I wrote last night even though I know it's wonky and I have to start that section over ... oh, and I told myself I was going to write this postcard about four times, and didn't.
And, while I was waiting for my desktop to be repaired and rebuilt after a series of icky crashes, I read some more of this Jim Hightower book and that just about scared me right out of my pinafore.
It's called There's Nothing In the Middle of the Road Except Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos, and despite the Lewis Grizzard title, this is actually a savvy, funny book of "political subversion" -- as he puts it.
And no, I'm not going to link to Amazon. Go to an actual bookstore and buy it. Quick, before they all disappear. But not Barnes and Noble. They're just as bad. And Borders isn't much better.
That's the way this book has me thinking. If you hated corporations before, you'll really hate them after you read this.
OK, I'm making the book sound so scary you'll never read it, and that'd be a pity. It's fun and it's funny and it does deliver the good news on occasion. Hightower is a folksy Texan; he talks good. He held a number of elected offices in Texas, was mighty popular with the voters, and during his time in office he had a fair degree of success at throwing da bums out. Unfortunately, there was only one of him, and a lot of bums. He now has an unabashedly populist radio talk show, where -- ironically -- he's probably helping more people than he did in office.
Don't let his ten-gallon hat fool you, smug Northerners; Hightower's got a brain, and underneath the wit is a lot of wisdom and, yes, downright subversive theory -- pitched so that even Bubba can understand it. Actually, Hightower believes Bubba understood it all along, it's just that no one higher up would believe it.
The main premise in the book is that "left" and "right" political divisions in this country are a bad joke, a red herring. The real division is top-to-bottom. There is nothing less than a full-blown class war going on in this country, a very effective one which is systematically marginalizing most of the citizens. It's being waged by the corporations and the people they make rich. And if you don't believe it, Hightower's got the stats.
Did you know that corporations are willing to pay those CEOs those ridiculous salaries because they just deduct the whole thing, so that the taxpayers eventually end up subsidizing overpaid bosses? Did you know the US government pays the costs of some companies' overseas advertising campaigns?
OK. How about this one? This is the one I was reading tonight. National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Big to-do, right? Gotta fight breast cancer. Get your mammograms, learn self-exams, eat right ...
The number-one environmental factor responsible for increase in breast cancer -- a near-direct correlation -- is organochlorines. They're used in bleaching paper, in making plastics, a lot of other things. Dioxins -- ever heard of those? CFCs? PCBs? They're all organochlorines. They accumulate in your body. They never go away. And certain reproductive failures and cancers -- breast and testicular cancer in particular -- go up as their levels increase.
No, wait. It gets worse. The sole corporate sponsor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, a company that has made this their personal fiefdom and in fact has the power to approve all BCAM printed materials, is ICI. ICI is a British chemical giant. You know what they generate a lot of? Organochlorines.
But wait, you say, I don't remember seeing the ICI logo on any BCAM materials lately. Well, in '93 ICI spun off its pharmaceuticals and agricultural chemicals arm, called Zeneca. Zeneca is the part that sponsors BCAM. Zeneca contains some of the nastier bits of ICI -- in 1990, Hightower points out, they were sued for dumping DDT and PCBs into the Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors.
One of Zeneca's more profitable drugs is Nolvadex, which makes them about a half a billion a year. Nolvadex is currently the number-one drug used in breast cancer treatment. It has a lot of nasty side effects, like liver and uterine cancer, but what the hell.
Are you getting the full irony of this yet? Good. I won't draw you a picture then.
Read this book. I don't care if it terrifies you. It's very important.
splinter of the mind's attic
eighteen january
Random bits and leftovers today, I'm afraid.
- - -
Jette mentioned Moon Pies this morning.
We made sure to bring back two dozen Moon Pies with us from Chattanooga. Two boxes. They sell them in the supermarket there. But they're single-decker. I never had the single-decker ones before this. I like the double-decker ones much better. It's a little bit of a letdown.
The spouse has discovered that you can heat them and eat them with a knife and fork. I'd always been told this, but she discovered it on her own. I think she read the wrapper. I seem to recall the wrapper says something about it.
Maybe I should try that and see. Maybe it will renew my interest. I'd hate to think I'd lost my faith in Moon Pies.
- - -
A quote from Xeney:
"Poor Jeremy. You can't envy his options: either he gets a hyperactive girlfriend who can't focus on one thing long enough to finish a conversation, or he gets an obsessive bitch who doesn't want anyone to talk to her."
This is me. This is exactly me. This is why I'm hard to live with.
- - -
In the Herald the other day, I saw two separate cartoons that overlapped painfully with something I'd been reading (in the Hightower book, but don't worry, I'm not going to throw heavy politics at you again).
"Sally Forth":
Greg: "Hey, Sal, here's an exercise regimen for people planning a vacation ski trip."
[pause, as they look at it]
Greg: "Remind me. A vacation is one of those things you take to relax, right?"
Sally: "I think our society has redefined the concept of 'relax.'"
[pause, as they look at it]
Greg: "Remind me. A vacation is one of those things you take to relax, right?"
Sally: "I think our society has redefined the concept of 'relax.'"
"Baby Blues":
Dad: "What was your favorite part of the day today, Zoe?"
[Little Zoe considers this for a while]
Zoe: "All of it."
Dad: [Shouts to Mom, off-panel] "That does it! I'm quitting my job and becoming a preschooler!"
[Little Zoe considers this for a while]
Zoe: "All of it."
Dad: [Shouts to Mom, off-panel] "That does it! I'm quitting my job and becoming a preschooler!"
Hightower, in a book full of politics, pollution, and polemic, devotes a whole section to fun. How we don't have enough of it. How we are underpaid and exploited, and if that's so, why the heck are we so cooperative about it? Why aren't we goofing off every chance we get?
The underlying theme of the "fun" section is: They're not paying you enough to make yourself miserable for them. Which is something I tell my spouse just about every day. I will have to be a long way up the scale before I am paid enough to work a twelve-hour day. Oh, I do sometimes, but that's usually because I have goofed off so regularly in the course of the project that now I have to do two weeks' worth of work in one go -- which is, come to think of it, exactly the way I worked all through school.
Anyway: You're not having enough fun. Today is a holiday for me; it might not be for you. If you're at work, do me a favor and do a little goofing off on my behalf.
- - -
It occurred to me suddenly last night that stirring some of those chopped dates into a bowl of fresh oatmeal would be really good. The problem is that I only eat non-instant oatmeal, the kind you have to cook and cook and cook -- I don't like the other kinds -- and I don't make it very often because of that. Mayhap I shall have to overcome my inertia. Either that or make date bread.
- - -
The spouse told me a story Eric told her yesterday. Since this is third-hand, I may get the fine points wrong, but the punch line is intact.
Eric was at the National Puzzler's League convention, which he goes to every year. Now, the NPL members are diehard puzzle geeks. Not only are they excellent solvers, but they also include many of the people who create the puzzles you see in magazines like Games. This is the real, triple-distilled stuff.
So they were on a bus which had been chartered, I dunno, to take them from one convention event to another -- a bus full of NPL'ers. Even though it apparently wasn't a tour, the bus driver seemed to be harboring a secret desire to be a tour guide, and kept up a running stream of patter.
Eventually they approached San Diego. The driver said, "Now, I don't know what you think of when you think of San Diego --"
"Diagnose!" said the entire bus, in unison.
If you understand the joke, you work too many puzzles. Stop now while there is still time to save yourself.
I'm glad I wasn't there. I'd have had to jump out a bus window.
- - -
A quote from SR:
"I like cats in the abstract."
What does that mean, exactly, SR?
- - -
In Joliet, Illinois (says the Globe), the city fathers are about to enact an "antimonotony ordnance" which will require subdivision builders to vary the looks of houses built near one another by alternating colors, roof heights, window styles, or other cosmetic features. The idea is to prevent a Levittown of identical houses.
Robert McCloskey predicted this ages ago. In his children's book Homer Price (c'mon, you remember Homer Price -- the doughnut machine? Aroma the pet skunk?) he tells about the creation of Enders Heights -- how a new set of prefab, all-modern, all-identical houses is erected on the property surrounding the old, Gothic Enders Homestead. Well, people move in, and Enders Heights is a success, but due to union disputes (Dulcey Dooner, the town drunk and sole member of the Street Sign Putter Uppers Union, wants more money than the Mayor will pay), the street signs aren't up yet. No real problem ... until the Enders Homestead gets moved to its new location and a final house, just like all the rest, is erected overnight in its place. Then chaos ensues.
It turns out that the residents had been finding their way to their houses by using the Enders Homestead as their landmark and counting off. Now no one knows how to get home.
Eventually Homer figures out which house is on the Enders Homestead lot and the day is saved, but the citizens insist that the Homestead be moved back to its old location. "You see, the worthy tenants," McCloskey concludes, "though up and coming, aren't taking any chances."
That story was published in 1943.
the tale of one bad cat
nineteen january
I like dogs well enough, and I'd keep one if I had a nice big yard (since I favor the kind of dogs that can knock you over if they jump on you). Dogs do not provoke any strong sentiment in me one way or another; they're nice to have, but not essential.
On the other hand, I have never lived without the presence of cats. All my life, there have been one or two of them around the house -- barring a few unexplained dry spells.
I can't imagine not having a cat. Yet cats are frequently some of the most annoying beasts around. They don't obey, they don't even listen, they want attention when you don't want to give it to them and vice versa. They alternate between an apathy so profound it makes you want to shake them, and running around psychotically shredding the furniture. They rarely get along with other types of pets, each other, humans, plants, or assorted wildlife.
There's something wrong with this picture.
Furthermore, cats cause divisions in humans the way no other pets do. All right, your lover may not like the dog jumping on him, or may hate the way the hamster cage smells, but I know far fewer cases of lifelong emnity over dog-ownership than I do over cat-ownership. You can have a mild, "take it or leave it" attitude about dogs, but with cats, the tangle of emotions is strong and usually strongly biased.
Cat owners: Did you ever look around your house and think, "I am keeping small animals in my house! Whatever has possessed me to keep livestock in my home? What are we humans thinking?" I do it all the time.
Dogs don't inspire that kind of thinking, because properly trained, a dog is a member of the family. A cat is like a permanent houseguest -- one for whom "properly trained" is an oxymoron.
500 channels and nothin' but cats.
- The Simpsons
- The Simpsons
I try not to talk about cats here. I have a lot of cat anecdotes from my years of cat ownership, it's true, and some of them are very entertaining, because many of my cats have been highly eccentric, even by cat standards.
But I've noticed that online journallers, as a whole, tend to be pro-cat ... they own cats, and they love to tell cat stories. Why this should be, I do not know. I merely report my observations from the field.
I don't feel like I should add any of mine, in short; there are enough cat stories online already.
But ... today I am going to bend my rules a little bit and tell you about the Other Cat.
- - -
As you may know, we have two cats. One of them, although she eats like a dog, is catlike in most other respects. Her name is Inu, and not only does she have a whole page to herself, this entire domain is named after her. Spoiled beast. She even has an email address ... but even though I read all her mail to her, she never writes anyone back.
Inu gets all the publicity because, like Zsa Zsa, she knows that fame is her due. The other cat is camera- and publicity-shy. His name is Mr. Peterson. (He is named after a little black cat in a strange cartoon called "Jim's Journal," a sort of existentialist cartoon which, like cats, you either love or you hate. Its author, Scott Dikkers, is also the man in charge of The Onion, which everyone on the web but me seems to read regularly.)
I don't have a photo of Mr. P to show you, but Rob made a little graphic the other day which not only matches the cat's appearance pretty closely, but also his personality. I have reproduced it here with Rob's kind permission:
Mr. P spent a lot of time in the closet -- figuratively and literally -- before I moved into this apartment. (Both cats precede me by some years.) He was classically paranoid and seldom seen by human eyes. But for some reason, he decided that he was completely in love with me, my scent, and anything that spent a lot of time in contact with me, like my clothes and my blanket. Within a year, the cat had become my groupie. And no, I didn't encourage this. In fact, I may have made a mistake in trying to discourage it, because the cat is a born masochist.
If you scold him for something, he very clearly cops an attitude of, "You're right. I've been extremely bad. I think you should punish me some more. Pleeeease?" If you pick him up off whatever surface he's not supposed to be climbing on, and drop him unceremoniously on the ground, he gets back up and begs you to toss him around some more. I'm not saying I abuse this cat, mind you -- I'm saying he'd probably love it if I did.
This behavior is very odd in a cat. Cats are supposed to look at you, sniff haughtily, and ignore you. Right?
So I have one cat that acts like a dog, except he eats like a cat -- and another that is exactly the reverse. Welcome to our house.
He also gets bored easily. He is the shredder, the scratcher, the leaper, the fight-picker, the eater-of-dustballs, the carrier-off of odd junk (which will always be deposited in his favorite, most secure spot -- the center of my side of the bed). All of these things happen when he's bored. And the only time he's not bored is when he's about three inches from me.
If I were going to have a groupie, couldn't it have been some good-looking human?
Anyway, that's the story of the Other Cat. Although I seldom mention him, you can always assume he's around. Usually hollering at me while I type (he's also very verbose). Both cats resent the computer tremendously; it gets more attention than they do.
dirdidrani
nineteen january (later)
I vowed that by the end of the night on Monday I was going to get A.D. Roehm off the planet. But the Sethin had other ideas.
Let the record show that I am not Tolkien, and I never want to be. I am interested in telling stories, not creating universes.
But I also don't like working in other people's universes (which is why I don't write fanfic, and please don't go there, because an series of columns last year on this in mouth organ generated more messages and email than we have ever received before or since. I'm not knocking you if you do; I just don't. Okay?)
So it seems like I have to create a universe or two of my own now and then, or write nothing but stories set in present-day Earth. The thing is, when you make up a new universe, if you're aiming for any sort of quality at all, you have to be internally consistent with your creation. Not plausible -- consistent. And, if it's SF, you have to make it so the fundamental facts check out.
Lord help me.
Never mathematically minded, I have spent a fair amount of time today crunching numbers to answer this question: If I say that the planet Seth is twice the area of Earth, or that Seth is twice the volume of the Earth, which of those two statements makes Seth out to be bigger?
Never mind questions of whether a planet 2x Earth is even probable, whether it could exist -- I don't know, I don't know who to ask, and I can only do so much.
The answer, by the by, is that doubling a planet's volume causes less of an increase in the diameter of the planet than doubling its surface area. All of this so I know which word to use in a single sentence.
Meanwhile, no actual writing gets done.
You might say, "write now, and check the facts later," but that way lies madness. As it is, I have such a loose grip on my own consistency that I have to stop and reread Our Whole Story So Far periodically, start to finish, to make sure my later "facts" don't contradict my earlier ones.
Language. I have tried to think as little about Sethin as possible. Aedie (as the Sethin have christened him by this point) is writing his diary in English, and he only rarely has to cite a Sethin word. Unfortunately some of the Sethin words which are most important to the plot are ones which have no English equivalent; I have to make sure that similar concepts follow logically from similar phonetic roots, that the language looks like it grew naturally, instead of springing fully-formed from my brow.
So, even with maximum avoidance, I now have more than a page's worth of notes about the Sethin language, including a mini-glossary. My notes overall are up to 2200 words. The story itself is only 18,200 words so far! It's ridiculous.
Don't write SF. Don't write something that's even marginally SF, like I'm doing. Take my word for it. Even handwaving requires too much work ... for something which is made-up in the first place. Far better to write like Lewis Carroll and not have to keep your fantasies orderly.
The title of the postcard, by the by, is Sethin for "teaching untruths." Which is what I feel like I'm doing.
satire is dead (long live irony)
twenty january
Kellogg's had an interesting television ad recently. It had a doll, like a Barbie doll, called "Diet Debbie." The doll would say things (in that insipid Barbie voice) like "Time to go on another crash diet!" and "This year I resolve to work out after every meal!" and "Only celery for me, please!" Then the camera cuts to a card which says: "Why do we do this to ourselves every January? Let's just eat sensibly all year."
It's an ad for Special K. I think it's a clever ad, in a clever campaign. (For the record, the spouse likes it too.)
You may recall the first TV ad in the series. It had two men in a bar, with one promising himself to "not freak out if I gain two pounds" and the other checking his own backside and saying "Do these pants make my butt look big?" The caption: "Men don't obsess about these things. Why do we?" That caption's a lie, by the way -- men just don't tell anyone about it. But never mind that.
Unfortunately, the Diet Debbie ad has just been pulled, after only eleven days. Under pressure from Mattel? Nope. Under pressure from the people who treat eating disorders? Nope (although they didn't like it). Kellogg's pulled the ad because people just didn't get the satire. The anorexia groups and a lot of shoppers apparently thought it was promoting an eating-disorder attitude, rather than making fun of one. Some people even thought there was actually a Diet Debbie doll, missing the point entirely (and apparently the last ten seconds of the ad).
Satire is officially a lost art. I suspected this during my brief stint at a college newspaper drawing bad editorial cartoons. I'd draw one that purported to be from the viewpoint of the people I was making fun of -- putting words in your enemy's mouth, y'know, it's an old, old technique -- and people would write letters chastising me because they thought I was actually espousing that point of view!
Meanwhile, in other ad-related news, I keep seeing this ad for precut, pre-seasoned, pre-sauced chicken parts from those Perdue people, with Jim Perdue holding up a package of his chicken parts and saying, "We've just taken all the adventure out of cooking."
As if this was something to be proud of.
Why on earth would it be desirable to take the adventure out of cooking? I can see taking the drudgery out of cooking, I can see taking the dishwashing and the heat and the grease and the sore back out of cooking, but the adventure? The adventure is the only real reason I cook in the first place.
I think he (or his copywriters) probably meant to say "We've just taken the cooking out of cooking," an appropriate tag for a product where all the work except the heating is done for you in advance.
But that would be way too much honesty.
dear dad:
twenty-one january
I'm calling from wherever the hell I am.
- Marc
- Marc
I'm writing this in an "online journal," which in my case is less like a diary and more like me ranting in semi-public about whatever happens to be on my mind at the time. Some people find it provocative enough to read regularly, and I enjoy reading other people's journals, whether it's about politics or the weather or what their day at work was like. It's an odd phenomenon, taken as a whole -- all these people sharing their private lives with the world -- but it's one I've decided I don't have to understand in order to like.
Anyway, Dad, since it's online, you'd never see it, except that after it's posted I'm going to print it out and stick it in an envelope and mail it to you. Why? Well, I'll get to that.
There are many things in this strange online world of internet and web that I'd like to tell you about. I don't know that you'd permit yourself to understand many of them; you're usually dismissive of anything that falls outside your own personal experience. On the other hand, some of the things I do online would tickle you, I think.
I think it would amuse you, and maybe even please you, that [spouse] and I are gradually gaining some small reputation for writing about sex online. We've been printed in the online version of Playboy and we're mentioned in a couple of books and starting to get some press.
I think you'd probably like some of my anecdotes and observations about chat rooms and flirting online, although it would probably convince you that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
I spend about two-thirds of my free time involved in various online activities, Dad. This is a big part of my life. You know nothing about it. Last time you saw me face-to-face, I had never opened a web browser.
You don't know anything about my relationship with [spouse]. You know she exists; you know we're together. You don't know we're engaged, you don't know any of the details about who she is or how I met her or where we plan to be in ten years. I don't know how much of that you care about; I haven't tried to ask you.
You don't know anything about the inside of my head. I am almost a completely different person than I was the last time we had any sort of serious conversation. You're probably wondering why there's a picture of a woman next to this text. That's a long story and one I have never bothered to explain to you.
I don't tell you about any of these things, because to my mind you are no longer in a fit state to understand, appreciate, or respond intelligently to any of them.
Dad, I have an online friend -- well, really he's more like an online sparring partner. I have never met him, and I don't plan to. The only face I have for him is words on a screen. He reminds me of you in so many ways.
He is often rude and verbally abusive in stating his opinions. He feels that he is always right, unless for some reason he decides to admit that he is wrong; no one else's judgment counts. He is ferociously intelligent but, like you, it has denatured into empty contempt for all the people around him -- he feels like he's surrounded by stupid people, and like you he's perfectly willing to be vicious about it.
He, too, had his heart set on certain dreams in academia, and then never quite recovered when he found out his degrees and his ideas were useless in the world outside. He, too, wonders why women won't tolerate his fear and loathing and lecherous objectification for very long, inevitably leaving him.
He, too, turned to alcohol as an escape.
He was working as a waiter until he lost his job recently for sexual harassment. In this case the charges were trumped-up; it was exactly the excuse, I think, that his managers needed to fire someone who couldn't have been especially pleasant to work with. In this case I sympathize with him; but I have also seen enough of his personality to know that the charges could very easily have been real ones.
You know, I never really forgave you for molesting my sister. The idea that you could be sexually attracted to her doesn't horrify me in the least; I've seen much stranger things, and she's a sexy person, after all. It's not a lust issue, it's a consent issue. It's that you continued to flirt and fondle even after she asked you to stop. Several times. Do you have any idea what this must have been like to her psychologically, to have to repel the advances of her own father? I don't worry for her; she can defend herself. But I was, and am, shocked at how much your judgment has corroded.
But maybe I shouldn't be shocked. It's the alcohol again.
When my online friend writes email, I can always tell when he's been drinking. He stops for long periods, but always goes back to it. I don't think he's aware of how much booze changes his tone, the way he thinks and the way he writes. I know you're not aware of how much it changes you.
I drink. I even manage to defeat my trick metabolism and get drunk once in a while. I don't do it often, though, because it dulls my brain, and I don't usually want to turn off my brain. It astonishes me -- it never fails to astonish me -- that you and he do, as often as you do. I can see an occasional escape, but living one's life in a haze holds no fascination for me.
My online friend went on a profound drinking binge after losing his job. At this point things become unclear, since all I have are the email reports. I am not sure he was trying to kill himself. It may have been "accidental" in at least some sense of the word. But he woke up the other morning in the hospital, barely alive.
If he had died that night, who would have known? Who would have cared? Who would have told me? You could be dead right now, Dad. Your parents wouldn't tell me -- they might not even know how to find me -- and very few of your other family members get along with you.
My online friend has upset me badly many times; practically every email he writes contains some phrase designed to irritate me. Sometimes I vow to never write him again. Sooner or later, though, I always do. Whereas -- in the face of similar upsets from you -- I haven't spoken to you in years.
What's the difference between the two of you? About twenty-five years, Dad. I keep holding out hope that he'll figure out his mistakes and work his way out of them. He's still got time. You do not.
I gave up hope, Dad. I hate to admit it, but I did. I stopped hoping you'd ever figure it out. And when I stopped hoping, there just wasn't any point in talking anymore.
And back to the question at the beginning, the question of why I'm bothering to send this to you at all:
You deserve an explanation.
I don't feel a need to keep in touch with you. I don't feel a need to try to help you; I've learned painfully that I can't. I think I learned that the time you stayed with us and we carefully hid all the booze in the top of the closet first. We hid it so well we forgot about it, until one day, weeks later, when we were looking for the vodka and remembered. Climbed up into the top of the closet. And found, instead of the vodka, an empty bottle and an apologetic note from you.
You'd searched the house for booze while we were out, Dad. That is pathological behavior.
I don't feel guilty about not having anything to do with you. I just feel guilty about not telling you why.
comfort food and childish pleasures
twenty-two january
Hmm. All right, this is as good a place to start as any.
Jette's entry from yesterday is probably a prerequisite too.
[Dec 2004: Since the Anhedonia archives are gone, I've removed that link, but I'll quote the most pertinent bit. Jette won't mind:]
The writers of "Sesame Street" are far cleverer than those of, say, "Friends," so why shouldn't I enjoy that program more? I don't enjoy most children's movies because quite frankly, they suck -- but when they're good they're certainly as good as certain films that are nominated for prestigious awards. I didn't much like Titanic but I was in tears by the end of A Little Princess (the 1995 version), and you know I rarely cry over movies.
I think the problem is simple: We put children's literature, movies, etc. into a lower class because they are for children. We do not give the writers, directors, etc. the credit that we give to those who produce adult-oriented work. "Sesame Street" has been around for 30 years, longer than any sitcom, and nearly as long as "60 Minutes." L. Frank Baum does not appear on lists of great fantasists of the 20th century. I don't recall any children's books in that bogus "Top 100 novels of the twentieth century" list that those idiots came up with. [That would be the Modern Library List. Their readers' poll also included no children's literature. Looking at the Radcliffe response list, however, I notice Charlotte's Web, Winnie The Pooh, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. You go, girls.]
How many children's films did you see on the AFI Top 100 films list? Although any list that leaves Preston Sturges and Ernst Lubitch off is obviously flawed. [I was way off here. The list includes at least three films made with children in mind, and several more that would be acceptable to show to children. I still think the list bites, though.]
It's the same problem the science fiction and fantasy genre has, and probably worse. No one takes it seriously.
- - -
Today Aussie talks about the joys of comfort food -- Jello and egg salad. Gourmet magazine, as I noted to Jette, has devoted their entire issue this month to comfort foods -- although they don't necessarily put it that way; maybe they're scared they'll offend their drizzled-in-balsamic-vinegar readership.
Beth adores kid's films, kid's books, and kidthings. Jette does too. My friend Eric collects children's books and I have been known to purchase one or two myself. At the moment I'm shopping for pieces of the Alfred Hitchcock Three Investigators series -- fortunately they're still in print. I just bought my very own copy of The I Hate Mathematics Book! after recommending it to everyone for years ... and during the same trip I made sure to get the latest book by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith -- a take on Aesop called Squids will be Squids.
Even Kymm, whom I never suspected had any interest in this range at all, admitted to joining the Betsy/Tacy list recently.
(I think I left an E out of that, didn't I? Sorry.)
As Tom Bodett said: "What is the $64 question, and why does it cost so much?"
My $64 question today is: Does all this mean something? Something bigger than all of us? Are we, in short, representative of some sort of (gasp) trend?
Dana's cartoon is wonderful, as they always are (do you mean to tell me you aren't a regular Ozy and Millie reader yet?) I linked to it above because it was about comfort food ... but while I'm thinking about it ... have you noticed that many of the best cartoons around are about being childlike, or wanting to be childlike?
"Calvin and Hobbes" was arguably the cartoon that spoke the most to people in our age group, the people hovering around age thirty (I will not use that odious term). This wasn't just because it was high-quality work; the choice of subject matter was significant.
Most of us in this age group can sing an embarrassing amount of "Schoolhouse Rock" songs from memory. Many of us are the same age as "Sesame Street" and cannot envision a world without it. Memorabilia -- what amounts to fan merchandise -- for both shows are hot sellers. Why, I myself recently bought Jette a copy of Sesame Street Unpaved as a gift. Of course, I read the whole thing before I mailed it to her.
Comfort food. There are many fine restaurants in Newton. Yet the one I need to make regular pilgrimages to, the one I will take half-hour drives or forty-five minute trolley rides to visit, is a humble "luncheonette" (their words) which serves the likes of pancakes and breakfast specials and mashed potatoes and meatloaf. Why is this?
Jette provided some theories. They're good theories, and I agree with everything she said. But I also suspect there may be something more at work here, a layer she didn't mention.
I hate to be cynical about this, but I worry that a lot of this embracing of things childlike is a rejection of the current world. That the world has become so intolerable (or at the very least, so stressful) that we are, en masse, turning our backs on it -- at least in our private time.
This idea bothers me.
I don't have a problem with childlike things. I'm fundamentally childlike; ask my spouse. It's how I stay happy and carefree. But it does concern me that we may all be turning to escapism when we might be doing better to change the things we don't like.
I mean, in some cases children's books and films reflect a world so simple that it can never really exist -- granted -- but there are a lot of changes that we could make, collectively, that would bring this society much closer to the ideals we love to read about. It just takes concerted work.
I worry that by fleeing into the child's universe, we're only making it less likely we'll want to spend any length of time in the real one.
occam's depilatory
twenty-four january
I put my hair up. D'you like it?
No, I don't have something special planned this evening; why do you ask?
I just did it because I knew you liked it.
There have been a number of people coming into the Bayou lately from other, more respectable sites ... directed here by a plethora of recent mentions in other journals (thanks, y'all!) for the likes of such Serious and Worthy Topics as the resurgence of childhood, the class war in America, the importance of learning history, and my alcoholic father. Not to mention feline misbehavior, always a popular subject.
Lest any newcomers think that I'm always on the trail of some Big Idea, though, today I need to delve into the "too much information" section of my life ... which usually involves my gender issues. In this case it involves body hair as well. It's my journal and I'll say what's on my mind, but I feel it's only fair to warn you first.
- - -
I have been reading a lot of transgender fiction lately. I read a fair amount of it anyway, most weeks, but for some reason the last few nights I have been rereading old tales compulsively, twenty or so a night (they're short), which leaves me with a vaguely dissatisfied feeling and very interesting dreams.
One day I'd like to show a mostly heterosexual genetic female around these websites and feed her about five hundred TG stories -- I've probably read about twice that -- and get her honest reaction. Like most fetish fiction, it's nowhere close to reality, it's often trite and sexist, it frequently (and obviously) reflects the sexual agenda of whatever fool wrote it, and it's hardly politically correct. Nonetheless, it's often good. If you like that kind of thing.
With TG stories the basic idea is that a male is made to look female or behave in a female manner -- or actually changed into a female, in whole or in part, surgically or magically. TG stories and "forced feminization" stories are not the same, but they overlap each other about ninety percent. There are very few men in TG stories who become butch women; femme (in fact, outright sissy) is the name of the game.
(If you're wondering where the female-to-male TG stories are ... they reflect the same ratio as in the population, where there are many, many fewer FtMs than MtFs. "Why" is something that could keep a lot of writers occupied for a very long time.)
Anyway, this isn't a mouth organ column. The point is, I've been reading TG stories when I haven't been doing anything else, and it's affected some real aspects of my life lately (as you'll see.) Along the way, I've come to three conclusions. All of them involve hair.
- - -
1. I feel more self-confident when I've shaved my face. I carry myself better in public and I feel attractive. When I haven't shaved, I feel ugly. I suppose I knew this at the back of my head ... but just like with the sunglasses, the extent to which it made a difference came as a shock. Why should a little thing matter so much?
Part of it, obviously, is that I can't be femme with stubble, but honey, my femme portion has always been mostly behavioral anyway. It shouldn't count that much.
2. And even if you can explain that, why should something that no one but me sees make a difference?
Partially as a result of these stories, I have once again embarked on a campaign to remove my body hair. I would give a major organ to wake up one morning and find that the Depilation Fairy had waved her wand and I would no longer grow hair any further down on my body than my eyelashes. If I could be dunked up to the nostrils in Permanent Follicle Stop, I'd take it. But I have been the shaving route and I just have too much real estate. In a fit of desperation, though, I gave Nair another try -- and got it to work.
How? Well, um, you know how it gives you a range of times to apply it, and then says UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES LEAVE ON LONGER THAN 15 MINUTES? I chose to interpret that in the "whatever is not forbidden is permitted" sense and left it on for fifteen minutes. I used a stopwatch. It worked wonderfully.
I just about pranced down the street the next day.
Now, it's cold out, and none of my skin was exposed to the public below the neckline. Furthermore I had one area I shouldn't have put the Nair -- where I forgot my skin was abraded -- and it was behaving like a bad sunburn. Furthermore some of the short broken-off hairs (Nair doesn't remove hair so much as make it extremely brittle and easy to rub off) were already beginning to itch in the places that a shaved body always itches. (If you're male, ask a female what that means.)
In short, this was not the slippery smooth lovefest that your average TG fantasy makes a shaved skin out to be. (In your average TG fantasy, depilatories are also shockingly and instantaneously effective.) Nor did I expect bliss from my denuding -- I've been doing this for years and know what's what.
So why was I still on cloud nine? Why would I even bother to maintain a hairless body, when most of my female readers are probably glad to shave as little of their anatomy as they can possibly get away with?
Don't assume I have answers to those questions.
3. One of the interesting things about TG fetish fiction is that it some of the sexiest scenes don't have sex in them. Many TGs, for example, have a thing about having their hair styled or handled. I do; I admit it. I have a sequence from a story I saved which consists of nothing but a woman brushing an unsuspecting young man's long hair out, lovingly. I am feeling the tingle on the back of my neck just typing these sentences, thinking about it.
Mind you, you don't have to be TG to have a hair fetish. Regular readers of Circlet books (and you know who you are) are invited to peruse the story "Braided Bonds" -- which was written by a woman -- in the book SexMagick. You can find it easily if you're borrowing my copy; the book falls open to it.
Anyway, the personal effect of this is that I have renewed my vow to grow my hair out and then get it cut in a fairly femme fashion. Damn the torpedoes. It's getting to that do-or-die stage where it looks horrid (cut it off, or wait it out?) and I was having a crisis of confidence. Now I am once again resolute.
- - -
I suppose the connection between these three items is that I don't understand my own brain. It is a constant mystery to me that I should want these things in these ways. I decided to go with the flow long ago, figuring it to be basically harmless -- and so far my decision has proved sound. But I'd like to be able to make sense of it, and that hasn't really happened yet, after close to ten years. Maybe it never will?
little words and Ivy
twenty-five january
Today I added a new pixie here to help me sort the sets and backdrops. Her name is Ivy and she finds things. Which is good, because sometimes I forget that I've already ranted about a given subject, and I repeat myself.
[Oct 2005: Ivy's long gone, and so is the search engine that replaced her, so the example link below has been deleted. As of this writing I have not replaced the search engine, though I plan to. So if you're trying to search the site there might be something on the topmost journal page to help you by now. Or there might not.]
And then, there are some subjects I know I've done before, but I can always find something new to say about them. For example, if one were looking for "footnotes" to today's postcard (heaven help you), one could simply ask Ivy for the words "prescriptive dictionary" and then would easily be able to read Our Story So Far.
Now, then.
I have here a book which is a shoe-in for Best Argument-Starter Of The Year. In fact, I haven't seen a likelier candidate in many years. If you fancy a good fight, just get this book and read almost any entry aloud to someone you love.
It's called The Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations by Charles Harrington Elster. I will resist the temptation to draw conclusions about people who insist on using three names in their credit, but I will say without reservation that Elster is a hardheaded, overprescriptive, fuddy-duddy of an orthoepist snot.
Yes, I had to look up "orthoepist" too; Elster uses it constantly to describe himself, which should tell you something. It means someone who is concerned with correct pronunciation. Elster is certainly that. The problem is in his definition of "correct."
If you read the items Ivy hands you, above, you'll see that I've been fretting for a while about which side of the descriptive-prescriptive fence I should stand on. I believe that "proper" pronunciation, in almost all cases, is what the majority uses. If ninety percent of the people start pronouncing a word a particular way, and they keep doing it that way, the correct pronunciation has just changed. Language is what we make it and nothing more. There is no "higher authority."
But on the other hand I freely admit that there are some pronunciations used by a vast number of people which strike me as disgusting, a sign of either laziness or ignorance or both, and I will stitch my lips together before I use any of those. So clearly I have a prescriptive side too.
Elster is flat-out prescriptive. He tells you in several places -- not usually in these words -- "I don't care if everyone else says it that way, that way is wrong. Say it the right way -- you'll get strange looks from everyone, but you'll have the satisfaction of knowing you're right."
I'd tell you what I think of that idea, but such language is unladylike. Suffice to say that I will never pronounce "flaccid" as FLAX-id, even though Elster makes his case magnificently and the dictionaries back him up.
My main dictionary, the Merriam-Webster Tenth Collegiate, (hereafter MW10), which is arguably the most permissive dictionary in print, lists FLAX-id second. But there's a catch! Its first pronunciation, FLASS-id, is marked with the Dreaded Obelus (the little division sign which is the closest MW10 ever comes to saying "we consider this incorrect"). Most people don't even know that's what that symbol means.
Got that? MW10 lists the most common pronunciation first, so this is Secret Code for "Actually, we think most people say this word the wrong way." Shockingly harsh, from the anything-goes MW10. Now, are you going to change the way you say "flaccid"?
Me neither.
Are you going to say "grimace" as gri-MAYS, the way Elster does? Of course not. All right, even he admits he's being a hardnose on that one; I think he likes saying it just so he can argue with people about it.
Elster often makes good points -- and I'm not just talking about the times I happen to agree with him (I've been telling people for years that Andrew Carnegie's surname has the emphasis on the second syllable -- a mistake you do not make twice in Pittsburgh).
He goes off on a two-and-a-half page rant on "bulimia," which he pronounces byoo-LIM-ee-uh. You can say "boo" for the first part if you like; it's the "lee" in the second syllable that frets him. He traces the word all the way back to 1398, where it was "bulimy" and meant "ox hunger." He makes the excellent point that until recently this word was hardly ever spoken, confined to medical journals, that most dictionaries concede that his pronunciation is the correct one, and that the reason it's wrong is because nobody ever bothered to look it up before saying it -- all of which I agree with.
But, confound it, laws to sweep back the tide just don't work. Are you going to start saying byoo-LIM-ee-uh? You are? You're a brave one, then. Some of the worst humiliations of my life, the ones I replay in my head when I can't sleep, are times when I said a word aloud that I'd only ever seen written -- and everyone laughed at the way I said it. My priorities are such that I'd rather risk mispronunciation than humiliation.
In addition to being a diehard squarehead, Elster is often petty, fighting about syllable emphasis on two-syllable words like "chastize," where most of us give the syllables such close-to-equal emphasis that it's hardly worth fussing over, or kvetching about the pronunciation of the final syllable of "ambassador." Who cares? Well, Elster cares. One gets the impression he feels that to neglect even these minor battles will result in the decay of the American language.
The language is incapable of decay. It is, however, capable of evolution.
Elster is also a Yankee. I usually don't have any regional biases, except when someone does something boneheaded ... like insisting that you don't pronounce the "l" in words like "calm" and "palm." Maybe you don't in New York City, sirrah, but in Louisiana we do. Furthermore if I heard someone say "com" for "calm" there, I'd think they were ignorant or from some alien place -- which, come to think of it, describes NYC pretty well.
(Not even heavy drawlers would say "com." In a thick Southern drawl, it comes out "cawm.")
In the entry for "almond," Elster admits that he has received numerous flaming missives about the "lm" words. He basically throws up his hands and says "Say the darned 'l' if you want; I don't care." And that's Elster's saving grace. He admits that he's pigheaded. He admits he likes a good fight. He admits it when the weight of popular usage is against him.
If one could only get him to admit that the whole mess is Not Especially Important on the grand scale of things, that his book is a good read and a great argument-starter but little else, he'd be just about perfect.
gossip and metagossip
twenty-six january
Had to get a new monitor tonight -- that flickering back and forth from yellow to white (I described it a while back) was finally getting to me, and it made it impossible to edit graphics. Problem was, when I got back with the monitor, I was too tired to edit graphics. I started, then said "bah" and now I'll probably just go surf websites until bedtime. Aedie is back on hold; he got 6000 words on Sunday, which is a lot in one sitting, and that melted my brain.
- - -
It's a pity when you want the gossip on someone because you always liked that person, and you have only just now gotten the implication that other people do not like that person as much as you do, and you're wondering what you missed.
Urgh -- I apologize for that sentence.
Even if you're not going to spread the gossip, not going to tell anyone, including the person in question ... even if it's only to satisfy your own curiosity ... there is no graceful way to ask. And I hate not knowing. More so, I hate the idea that there is some time bomb waiting to strike me that I don't know about -- is this person secretly psychotic and I'm just blissfully unaware?
(Actually, I already know that the person I have in mind isn't the most stable individual on the planet, but I hardly consider her a threat to my well-being, or anyone else's for that matter.)
I'll just put it out of my head now. And no, it's none of you. Nor would I tell you if it were.
- - -
Got a comment about how nasty Nair is from Xeney, which I knew -- its active ingredient is a caustic alkaline, what did you expect? But I did a patch test and proceeded with considerable caution, in slow stages. No skin has fallen off yet. The question is: What will happen after I use it a few times?
Jette thinks I should get my legs waxed -- did I mention that already? She keeps insisting it doesn't hurt nearly as badly as everyone always says it does. Certainly there are plenty of places in Boston that'll do it for me; I know, I saved an article on hair removal methods that appeared in the local gay newspaper last year.
All in all, I'm surprised at the number of comments I received about my body hair. I never know what will put mail in my mailbox, but I'm always delighted to get it.
- - -
More randomness in the morning, I should think. I need to turn my brain off now.
reading rereading
twenty-eight january (late)
A weird day where I travelled to and from the office one or two more times than I expected. But a productive one. Aside from mouth organ, I wrote a story today called "Rereading." In one big gulp, so it probably needs some editing, but the postcoital glow is still on and I can't look at it coldly until tomorrow.
You can, however. Be ruthless if you like.
You might as well read it, because this is all the postcard you get tonight! See you tomorrow.
a sleepless night in the closed loop
twenty-eight january (daytime)
The previous postcard said "twenty-eight january (late)" and what it really should have said was "(early)" -- it was written shortly after midnight this morning. I stopped recording time of day on these because it didn't seem crucial.
If I'd written in the middle of the night last night, as I thought about doing, I don't know what I'd have labelled it. Is it "late" or "early" at four o'clock in the morning? I guess it depends on whether you're just getting up or haven't gone to bed yet, but what is it when you've been to bed but can't sleep well?
Yes, I've been having a fresh bout with my lifelong Nemesis, insomnia. The new wrinkle is that I sleep well for about three hours when I go to bed. Then I wake up, somewhere between three and five a.m, and can't sleep again for a while. Usually a short change of pace is enough -- go to the computer and send email, which is what I did last night, or read, or have a snack, or, um, perform a certain activity with myself which I have no tactful way to describe but is the best cure for insomnia I know.
[Oh, boy, am I blushing. I'm sorry. But I'd have been leaving out an important part of the story if I hadn't said it.]
The problem is that this hiatus interrupts my sleep cycle enough to leave me cranky and barely focused the next morning. But I can't just stay up once I'm awake -- it's worse. I thought about that last night, but my eyes hurt so badly just sending a few emails that any thought of serious work was quickly discarded.
(I've mentioned before that having burning eyes is my number-one "I need sleep" cue, so much so that when my eyes are burning for other, unrelated reasons, my brain assumes I'm tired. Unfortunately the computer also gives me red-eye, so it's kind of a losing proposition. And right now my eyes are burning from last night, but if I went home and tried to sleep, I wouldn't be able to.)
Last night was very, very bad. I got up and had some water and sent email and went into the spare room and tried my Favorite Insomnia Cure and that didn't even work. The big cause was "Rereading." I had gone straight from postcoital bliss to postpartum depression.
I got an annoying and anonymous email last year from someone who instructed me to "stop worrying about my f**king talent" (their words) and just write. Well, I don't worry about my talent, oddly enough. I know I have talent. I write things people want to read. But I don't write things I can sell, and I have utterly no idea why.
Every time I've tried to write something commercial, it's either been utterly lousy (you don't get to see those) or has mutated into something non-commercial while I was writing it (you can see a few of those on the story page). I don't have any control over the process.
Manuscript buyers (aka submissions editors) are some of the most conservative people on the planet. (Next to movie producers.) They like stuff that's an easy sell and is easily pigeonholed. They like things that go where others have gone before -- if it's the same formula as something that's already succeeded, then it's a shoe-in, right?
Now -- before you berate me -- F/SF editors are different. They are generally willing to scale their slushpiles in search of the new and unsaid. Their readers demand more intelligence and complexity from their stories -- usually -- and get bored with the same plots rather quickly -- again usually -- unless the variation is clever.
But there are maybe three paying F/SF markets in this country, and they are so glutted that even the pros have a hard time getting in the door. I explain this all on the story page. Mary Anne mentioned Asimov's to me last night. I didn't even know whether Asimov's was still running. You know the last time I saw an SF magazine at a newstand? And "Rereading" wouldn't sell to Asimov's -- there's barely even an element of the fantastic in it, let alone SF.
I am not saying all this to get sympathy.
I am not wallowing in self-pity.
I am not looking for an excuse to avoid shopping my work.
I am not looking for martyrdom.
I am merely calling things as I see them.
I will never stop writing. I can't. I'm just not sure I will ever be able to sell any of it.
1. I write stories where the plot is the thinnest excuse for the character development. I write, at the core, stories about what happens when people get caught in weird situations, and since I'm mostly concerned about the people, I don't bother to explain or talk about the situations much. That annoys the SF types.
2. I am partial to characters who are emotionally closed to the world, because I like to see what happens when I either coerce or force them partially out of their shell. I like embittered characters. These characters are not popular -- I got a lot of negative feedback about them the last time I was on a crit list.
3. The only time I have ever varied from this, the stories have been autobiographical. The main character in The Novel, who is lively and who does have emotions, is a thinly disguised version of me from the Rocky Horror, hand-to-mouth days. Aedie is me as a fifteen-year-old, way too smart and a little too cynical and completely naive about many things. These are good characters. But I can't write autobiography forever.
All right, all right, end of rant. I have to go pretend to do work now. You can flame back, as ever. Think my facts are warped? Think I'm dead wrong?
Mary Anne is absolved from comment. She's already made it clear she thinks I'm wrong, and I think I've annoyed her -- no point in more friction over fiction.
Xeney noted the other day that she kept thinking to herself But I was supposed to have had so much potential! I know I have potential. I just don't have a market.
I didn't get to sleep until seven this morning.
adventures in cooking
twenty-eight january (again)
So, cast off the shackles of yesterday!
Shoulder to shoulder into the fray!
Our daughters' daughters will adore us,
And they'll sing in grateful chorus,
"Well done, Sister Suffragettes!"
Shoulder to shoulder into the fray!
Our daughters' daughters will adore us,
And they'll sing in grateful chorus,
"Well done, Sister Suffragettes!"
It's been in the back of my head looping over and over. All afternoon. My Glynis Johns personality was the only thing that saved me from a crying jag. I don't know where these defense mechanisms originate, but I'll take them where I find them.
I tried to cook for therapy, but today everything went a little off-kilter. No disasters -- my rule is, if it's edible, it's not a disaster -- but not what I hoped for.
The garlic soup recipe was flawed to begin with, I think. I'd have used Julia's but it makes two quarts of soup and was not easily halved. Not enough taste to the Gourmet recipe I used -- when I sampled the broth it fit the recipe's Italian name, aqua cotta. Cooked water.
Then I had to take the egg yolk-and-Parmesan mixture, which I had in a little glass bowl, and keep whisking it while I dripped in a little hot garlic broth, so that the eggs wouldn't cook instantaneously and form little ugly egg droppings. The egg-and-cheese mixture was so thick that the whisk jammed dead in it, like a saw binding in sap. To whisk it I needed one hand to hold the bowl, another to hold the whisk, and a third to pour in a stream of liquid. The results weren't pretty.
The soup was tasty enough, especially with a nice round of peasant bread from my favorite bakery and some vinho verde. But it didn't taste half as good as it smelled.
Then I tried to make a classic spongecake. This is a recipe that calls for beating the yolks, then the whites, then folding the two together with cake flour without deflating the eggs. I am a lousy folder. Plus I didn't have an eight-inch pan, only a nine-inch. I hardly ever make anything calling for an eight-inch pan. What with the deflation and the too-large pan, the cake was approximately half an inch high when it was done.
But -- the happy ending is that we tried to make boiled icing (hot sugar syrup whipped into beaten egg whites) for the first time. By then there were two of us to provide the three hands needed, and we mixed a little orange extract into the syrup, and the icing was absolutely dreamy. Of course, we had about three times as much of it as we had had cake batter -- a huge bowl of this fluffy icing stuff.
We toyed with rubbing it all over each other's bodies, but I decided a big bowl of egg whites and sugar was not a good dietary supplement, and I washed the rest down the sink.
The cake is really good, just dense and flat. Actually I liked the cake better than the icing. (My spouse thinks I'm crazy.) I don't like sugary things that don't taste enough of something other than sugar. I'm like the person in the anecdote in one of my cookbooks who liked divinity but always thought there was too much sugar in it.
And that's what I did tonight.
Oh, and I watched ten minutes of Mary Poppins. No points for guessing which ten.
white rabbits, tuesday coats, and too much data
twenty-nine january
Today is payday. I never did get a check from Playboy for the article and I wonder what the polite way is to say "she got hers and the Postal Trolls ate mine, may I please have another?" I don't know that there is a polite way. Speaking of the Post Office, now that there's money I really should go down and rent a box. mouth organ mail is getting to be a regular occurrence and we'd rather not give some of those deviates our house address.
A brilliant day today. Blinding, in fact. I was halfway to work and wished I'd gotten my dark glasses from the glove compartment of the car. We have so few days where it's both snowy and sunny that we tend to forget how bright the snow can be. A nice powder, no wetness or icing yet, dry, clear, crisp, and cold. There are many devout skiers taking sick days today, I imagine.
- - -
I have a bad habit, one I suspect you may share: I buy clothes sometimes with the full knowledge that I will never have a place to wear them.
I was thinking a little last night about the Tuesday Weld coat. This is a huge, extravagant, jet-black fake fur coat which is a problem not so much because of its femininity (although it is) but its dressiness -- it's for a fancy party or the opera or some such. I have worn it once, over a very elaborate ensemble built around a full-length vinyl dress -- fetish clothing has as many weird and arbitrary rules as evening wear does, you know.
But my opportunities for wearing vinyl dresses are even fewer than for the coat, so that's not likely to happen again soon. I have vowed to wear this coat outdoors in public at some point this winter -- I'm just waiting for the opportunity to arise.
We call it the Tuesday Weld coat because it looks like the one in the picture of Tuesday Weld that's on the cover of the Matthew Sweet album Girlfriend. Just so you'll have a visual reference point. I look a little intimidating in it, I'm sure, but then, I look intimidating in a vinyl dress, too.
- - -
My links page needs updating. I have so many great new sites to read that I'm having to stagger them. "Today I'll read X, Y, and Z. Tomorrow I'll read A, B, and C and catch up." The problem with that plan, of course, is that delayed gratification is not a strength of mine.
Random thoughts from today's crop of journals:
Aussie talks about Sixties music. I have an odd, after-the-fact perspective there, Aus -- and I have to disagree with you on the Jefferson Airplane album; I like "White Rabbit" a lot more than "Somebody to Love." Not because of the drug references, which were trite even then, but because of the way the song starts out deathly quiet and builds up to the point where Grace Slick is almost screaming. Her voice has always been the only thing that interested me about that band.
As for Hair, I have mixed emotions. Hair brings out my mean side: I listen to it and find myself thinking "Were they really that idealistic and spacey?" On the other hand, Hair is nastily subversive when it's not being touchy-feely. It may be idealistic, but it's not naive. It should come as no surprise that the evil songs in Hair are the ones I like best; "Air," which is about pollution, is my favorite. It pops into my head at the oddest times.
Anita talks about wearable computing a little, linking to this character. Anita, I hate to say it, but I hope wearables don't catch on.
I see this guy walking around all the time -- he's a well-known and obvious figure here. (I recall the display in his glasses as much more obvious than in that photo -- big ol' clumsy gizmo on the side of his face -- the photo may have been done with a normal pair of glasses for effect.) Every time I see him I think -- okay, well, first I think, "Goodness, what an übergeek!" but then I get over that, and I think, "Now, why would someone consider that desirable?"
Put aside questions of geekiness -- after all, the technology will get steadily more invisible and socially acceptable, so don't mind my crankiness. Think of this as a larger-scale objection instead. Why would you need information that constantly?
We have too much connectivity as it is now. It is now possible for us to wander the entire country, on foot, in a car, on horseback, whatever, and never be out of telephone contact. When I see people who carry their cellular phone everywhere, I think, "There are very few people who are as important as these people think they are." We have a cell phone. We use it for car trips and when I'm tying up the main line on the computer.
The financial and technical bar to the internet gets lower and lower; people are getting email whom I would have bet never would. I consider that a good thing -- internet for everybody! But there's a top bar as well, or should be. Why do you need to check your email from anywhere? OK, on a long trip you want to make alternate arrangements, I buy that. But this is different.
What sort of facts do you need, what sort of information do you need, that you must have it instantly on-demand? The only people I can think of who might benefit from a pair of these glasses are people who must make rapid-fire decisions based on an ever-changing flow of information. Brokers. Dispatchers. Ticket agents. That doesn't include most of us.
Ultimately, it comes down to religion. I see too many people in this town already who think that getting from point A to point B is a waste of time; they want to read or do something "constructive" while they're in the process of Getting There. I am occasionally guilty -- I read on the subway a lot. But the times when I don't read, just watch the faces and the bodies, are as entertaining as when I'm in a book somewhere. I have seen this gent, walking around with his computer in his glasses, and he's in a daze. The computer has his attention, not the world. I could strip in front of him and he wouldn't notice -- and the sight of me stripping should be enough to make most humans run in terror.
I think when you're walking, you should notice the world around you. I keep thinking back to the story of the invisible city in The Phantom Tollbooth. When I'm queen of the universe, that book will be required reading. And cell phones will be illegal in public.
25 June 2026