Sydney's Blog

New blog!

2011-12-23T20:10:00.000-08:00

I had a baby so I started a new blog about the experience. You can get to it through my profile, if you're interested. I'll try to post here if I have non-baby related things to offer. Like observations about how weird it is that insurance company mascots all eventually develop a rich and complex back story. Or plot outlines for a sketch comedy show based loosely on Gray's Anatomy. You know, the stuff I used to post when I used my spare time for dicking around on the internet instead of knitting or childcare.

Where did these things come from?

2010-07-31T10:21:00.000-07:00

This morning I find myself in some kind of bizarre, parallel universe where services that help you date a cougar or commit infidelity are no longer hidden in the depths of the internet, but are advertised openly on TV. The following isn't the same ad for CougarLife.com that I saw during the Daily Show, but it exists (and apparently isn't allowed to run during that show "Cougar Town") and that is disturbing enough.

I mean, I'm all about being true to who you are, but can you imagine an ad for a service where the genders were reversed? (I assume it would be called "golddigger.com.")

At the next commercial break, I saw this gem:

It has a song. It has a cartoon. It has me completely confused. Why does one need this service? People have been unfaithful since the dawn of time; this seems like offering a food mastication service. Evidently there have been previous, live action, "racy" ads for this service that make a better case for it: you see, Ashley Madison will help you keep it on the DL, so you aren't caught with your sexy secretary in your own bed. Instead, if the above version is to be believed, you'll go to a hotel with the creepiest lounge lizard they can find, and your slug of a husband will be none the wiser. I actually think their depiction of the husband works against them: the cartoon wife could clearly have had sex with her lounge lizard on his lap and he wouldn't have noticed.

What has our society come to? Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Is there even a case to be made for it being a good thing? I can't believe these services are advertised during the Daily Show. They think that is there demographic. I think that means that they think I'm their demographic. Uhg. It's all so depressing.

Even more depressing chocolate

2010-07-03T17:01:00.000-07:00

You may recall my prior ranting about Dove Promises being super depressing and strange. In fact, I didn't think they could be much worse and we had a little contest to create new wrapper-quotes. (Highlights include "That wasn't chocolate," "What the fuck, this isn't Chinook Winds?", "Try not to kill anyone today" and "If you're looking for wisdom here, God only knows where you're looking for love.") In the intervening year and a half, Dove seems to have had its own contest, the results of which are attributed to their submitters below the quote on the wrapper. The chocoholic-penned missives aren't any better than the ones Dove was coming up with in their Marketing Lab, but they somehow feel sadder, more depressing. It was Pete who realized that the attribution - the connection to an actual living person - makes what are basically the same sayings significantly more soul crushing. Seriously, guys: I wish we had thought of this back in 2008. It's a brilliant plan on Dove's part. Here is what I assume to have been their logic:

Who eats a lot of chocolate? Depressives.
What does chocolate do for them? Makes them feel a little better.
What happens then? They eat less chocolate.
How can we make them want more chocolate/be more depressed upon opening each candy? Positive-sounding messages that are subconsciously destructive.

But perhaps you don't believe me. Okay, sure. Here are some messages from the chocolates a year ago:

Love is always the perfect gift.
Joy is contagious.
Your presence is often the best present.
Friendship is a gift in itself.
A smile is the perfect gift, personal and encouraging.

And here are some from the current candies:

Say "I love you" every day to your loved ones. --Donna, Grand Junction, CO
Love yourself. Dare to dream. Live on purpose! --Dana, Highland, IN
Live every day up to your expectations, not others. --Reena, Brentwood, TN
Indulge in the moments that matter most. --Nicole, Williston, FL

These are the most depressing mantras I've ever seen. "Live on purpose?" I think I know what she means, but as far as an inspiring, organizing principle, it assumes that you're stumbling around, purposelessly "living on accident" or something. This lady believes that the most inspiring thing a chocolate can tell you is to actively make choices. And I think, by definition, "the moments that matter most" cannot be an indulgence. Every time I read that, I imagine some sad single mom working three jobs, unable to attend her child's birthday party or graduation because her unfeeling manager is making her work swing shift even though she requested the time off weeks ago, so she shares a celebratory pancake with her off-spring before work, feeling like a queen sitting at the syrup-sticky kitchen table directing her own fate, and arriving ten minutes late to the 76 station with made-up excuses about a late bus. I mean, that's story telling. Dove's really weaving a whole narrative with those ten words.

Ugh. I'm so depressed. I think I need some chocolate.

A recipe what I made up

2010-05-04T21:22:00.000-07:00

Pete fixed the flickery, poltergeist light in the dining room, which for some reason has made me want to cook again. So for the first time in three years, I found myself just mixing this together in the kitchen, and damned if it wasn't tasty! So here is my awesome recipe that I made up. Feel free to name it whatever you please.

1 family pack tortellini
Olive oil
1/3 c finely chopped shallot
1/2 c finely chopped onion
Salt
Ground white pepper
1 clove minced garlic
1/4 c dry white wine
1 tsp-1tbsp lemon juice
1 lb bulk pork Italian sausage
1/4 c shredded parmesan
1/4 c chicken broth (or other liquid)
1 bunch spinach
1/3 c heavy cream
Shredded parmesan
Crumbled feta
Cherry tomatoes

1. Set water to boil for tortellini in large pot. In a different large pan, heat olive oil over medium.
2. Sauté shallots and onions until translucent. Salt and pepper lightly. Add tortellini to boiling water.
3. Add garlic and sauté until fragrant. Deglaze pan with wine and lemon juice. Cook until liquid is reduced a reasonable amount. (If this direction is unclear, keep in mind, I made it up as I went along.)
4. Add sausage to pan and cook until, um, cooked.
5. Drain pasta and add to pan with parmesan. Stir until parmesan is wilted and all sausage and tortellini are well mixed.
6. Add chicken broth. Add spinach in layer over top and cover. Cook until spinach is wilted.
7. Add cream, stir to incorporate, and move into serving dish.
8. Serve with parmesan, feta and halved or crushed tomatoes to garnish.
9. YUM!

Serves 4 or 5, depending on portions and hungriness.

I was super pleased with how this worked. It would have been nice to maybe have some toasted pine nuts in there too, but we didn't miss them. The cream might not seem important - it's so little for so much food - but it really pulls the whole thing together and makes it a cohesive dish.

The Strange Behavior of Neighbors

2010-04-19T23:00:00.000-07:00

When we lived over on Hawthorne, our neighbors were a bunch of potheads and a loud nightclub/theater. The theater was a bad neighbor, no question. The potheads, aside from filling all common space in the building with the noxious smell of wasted potential, kept themselves to themselves, and that was fine with me. Our new neighborhood is, well, a neighborhood. People know each other by sight and name, they give each other flowers from their own gardens in mason jars, their kids play together. It's all very sweet and wonderful. But even good neighbors have their quirks, and with those directly next door to us, it's parking. We kind of share a driveway - our rental seems to "own" 2/3 of it (by the fence-line). It's not really paved and rather too muddy for parking when it rains, so we usually park in front of our house, which has led the neighbor to park their car in front of their house and over their third of the driveway. This is kind of frustrating because it makes it hard to pull in front of our house (there's usually someone parked in front of the house to the other side of us too), very difficult to pull into the driveway, and just generally seems rather rude. But today took the cake for crazy weirdness.

There should be two spots in front of our house, and when we got home from the grocery store this evening, there was a car parked in the middle of both of them. Pete thought there might be enough room behind it, but there wasn't, and he began to execute a very awkward three-point turn (as the street is rather narrow) so that we could attempt the driveway. The neighbors were in their front yard, and the owner of the car waited until we had almost completed the turn to run over and offer to move her car so that we could park in front of our own house. Pete tried to wave her off and explain that we'd just park in the driveway, but no no, she was in our way and going to leave soon anyway. She got into her car and instead of backing up or moving forward into one spot or the other... are you ready for this? ...she drove forward so she was completely blocking our driveway. That's right: after taking up two spaces in front of a house she was not visiting, and after being signaled and told that we were planning to park in the driveway, she parked in front of the driveway. And the neighbors just stood there staring at us as we very awkwardly parked in front of the house. When the visitor was done obstructing our off-street parking, she got out of her car and kind of waved, and went right back to chatting with the neighbors, who still said nothing.

Maybe I'm crazy, but if that were our visitor, I would have said something, like, "Dude, don't park in front of their driveway." (Of course, none of our friends or relations would have been so nutty, but I suppose that's neither here nor there.) The question of the day is whether or not they are all members of some kind of glue sniffing club. There's really no other good explanation (not to imply that "glue sniffing club" is a good explanation) of why such otherwise nice and personable people would have such a blind spot to one of the classic Good Neighbor issues. (Parking, fences and dog poops, if you're interested.)

The Return

2010-03-04T10:03:00.000-08:00

Since we moved last month, the cat has been desperate to be an indoor/outdoor cat rather than just an indoor cat. We thought this was a great idea as well: no more catbox, a wider world to explore, maybe less cat hair inside and on us... there were myriad benefits. And, as it turns out, one major drawback we completely overlooked. She went out via her cat door sometime on March 1st to prowl around the neighborhood, and never came back. We didn't really notice on the 2nd until after dinner out, when Pete happened to mention that he hadn't seen her all day, and I realized I hadn't seen her that morning.

We poked around the house - no kitty. We called out the back door - no kitty. We started to get worried and did a more exhaustive search of the house, including the basement, the attic, all the nooks and crannies - no kitty. We walked around the block calling for her as loudly as we dared at 9:30 at night - someone else's kitty, but not ours. We went to bed, despondent, at 10:30, only to both wake up hearing an imaginary cat door around 2 am. I didn't get back to sleep until almost 4 when my brain convinced me that I'd heard her come in and I slept like a baby.

All day on the third I was beside myself with worry and sadness. (You wouldn't believe all the Law & Order, "that's how we knew he was a sociopath" scenarios stored in my brain for just such an occasion.) I had no idea how much I loved that little cat and how important she was to my sense of well-being until she disappeared. All day I was saturated with that low dread in the pit of your stomach that accompanies all terrible inevitabilities that leave you powerless: losing a pet; taking home a letter from your elementary school teacher addressed to your parents in very stern-looking penmanship; accidentally breaking someone else's favorite toy; accidentally deleting a video game save when you're over half way through the game; realizing your computer has melted down and your hard drive is toast, and you never actually got around to backing up your thesis. No amount of crying will help, and worse, it won't even make you feel any better.

We filed lost pet forms with the county and Dove Lewis, Pete went out to Troutdale to look through their books of "pets in our custody" pictures, and I posted an add on Craig's List. When we got home we called and called - no kitty. We made a Lost flier to hang around the neighborhood in the morning, and went to bed. Our depression was rather intense given that cats do this all the time, we had no evidence that she was hurt or killed, she has all her tags and is registered with the county and the Humane Society, and has a microchip. Laundry lay fallow in the washer; dishes sat unrinsed on the countertops... The only things missing from a non-cat-related depression were empty boxes of girl scout cookies surrounded by crumbs and two shlubs in pajamas watching Maury on the couch.

Last night I again didn't get any sleep. Around 3:30 something was drawing me up out of sleep. I thought, "Goddamnit, kitty, shut up!" and then immediately, "Omigod, kitty!" I was up and fully awake like you wouldn't believe. There she was, getting muddy footprints on our comforter and meowing to beat the band. Never were two people so happy to see a cat before. We immediately took out the cat door, which was good, as after eating three bites of food she immediately made for it again. She's about three pounds lighter (which is also probably good) and not as soft and glossy as before, but it's out talkative little kitty home again at last.

We have to figure out how to negotiate this indoor/outdoor thing. I don't know how to communicate to the cat that whether she needs to or not, we need her to come home every night. (It's because she's a cat: not great communicators.) But we'll figure it out. Right now I'm just glad that she made it home safe and sound and there are no little budding sociopaths in the neighborhood (that we know of).

A Gross Thing My Cat Does

2010-02-07T22:54:00.000-08:00

Yeah, that's right. It's gross, my cat does it, and I'm telling THE WHOLE DAMN WORLD about it.

She eats her own earwax. She loves it. When her hind nails are long, she likes to dig around in her ears and then lick them. She's not licking them clean, she's actively enjoying the flavor of earwax.

Pete says, "Hey, you don't know. Maybe it tastes like strawberries and champagne." I say, "It's SO gross!"

Sydney Makes Things Up About Rebecca Haarlow (10)

2010-02-07T10:49:00.000-08:00

Rebecca Haarlow once endorsed an edible lipstick made of ham, flavored with rose water.

In which I, surprisingly, didn't freak the hell out

2010-02-06T23:34:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted in a long time because I started a brand new job on January 4th and it is awesome. So awesome that I've been happily working longer hours and have generally completely forgotten about everything else that I used to do before January 4th. But I have things to say, to send out into the ether! Things that are not important or necessarily even interesting but that I will nonetheless spew into an ambivalent void like a blind man's primal scream in a deserted parking lot.

So in week two of my new job, on a Monday I believe, I had an experience so terrifying while getting ready to leave in the morning that I had trouble getting dressed or sleeping for the rest of the week. First, it is important to understand that I am a huge arachnophobe. I don't like things that buzz and dive bomb my head either, stinging or otherwise, but I have full on anxiety dreams about having to walk past spiders in their webs when I'm stressed. In fact, this whole post is making me kind of twitchy and itchy as I type it, so I will try to keep it brief.

Like any normal person, when I get dressed, I put my sweater on last (pro tip: it goes on over your other clothes). I was planning to wear a cardigan. As I swung it around behind me to pull it on, out of the corner of my eye I saw a large, black thing fly towards the wall, and at the same time heard a "thunk", like a wad of duct tape hitting the wall. I knew what it was. It was too large to be a shield beetle (one of two insects that don't nauseate me on sight), too heavy to be... never mind. I knew it was a spider, a really big (for Portland) spider. I immediately dropped the sweater and looked to see where it had landed. Any arachnophobe will tell you that as horrified as you might be, you have to know where it went. It's a million times worse to have it just out there, somewhere.

It had fallen straight down and seemed to be disinclined to move too much. I grabbed a plastic pint glass from the bathroom counter and went to trap it. (Since almost our first date lo these many years ago, Pete's policy has always been to kill spiders for me, usually without telling me what he's doing. And since that time, my policy has been to leave anything that might make a noise when squished under a glass or bowl for him if he's not home. I know, it's terrible and I should be a stronger and more empowered woman, but I am a coward and squishing bugs is super gross. I own it and I've made peace with it.) The thing is, the damned spider was keeping to the moulding, so when I tapped the wall above it to get it to flee so I could trap it, it just kept to the wall. What I needed was a partner. Someone who would make the spider run away from the wall so that I could imprison it. I would also accept someone who would just kill the damn thing, but I knew that was unlikely, as my only option was The Cat.

Domino is good for several things. Sitting on your lap, accepting head scratches and belly rubs, eating cat food, making cat poops, batting cat toys into the nests of cables found at the back of electronic equipment, and whining. Domino is not a hunter. Oh, she thinks she is, but she would be wrong. But this one time, the stars were aligned for her, and what I needed was someone to gently bat at the spider without trying to carry it off somewhere and pretend to eat it: Domino's forte. I spotted her in her little cat bed by the window, picked her up and set her next to the bureau (which is where the spider was then taking cover). I tried to indicate the spider, but she thought I just wanted her to follow my finger because she is a cat and her brain is the size of the interior of a cat skull. But tapping on the bureau made the spider move, and that got her attention. Like she actually understood what I wanted from her, she tapped her little paw behind that spider, driving it out into the open. Where I accidentally killed it, crushing it under the edge of the glass while trapping it.

I left it under the cup because I wasn't sure if it was dead. And then I had to build a fort around it out of books because the drawback to my brilliant "involve the cat" plan was that the cat did not want to become uninvolved. And you know what they say: curiosity freed the maybe not totally dead spider.

It took me a full five minutes to verify that a different sweater was indeed Stuff of Nightmares free and then another five to check every nook and cranny of my winter coat. I called Pete immediately to tell him we had to move and I couldn't sleep another night in this House of Horrors. He was very sympathetic and didn't point out the inherent flaws in that plan, which is part of why he is a great husband. (Spouses, take note: "Well, that's not going to happen" is never the right answer in these situations. Neither is, "I don't understand why you're so upset.")

I couldn't help wondering where it had come from - was it in the closet the whole time? Did it recently invade the house? Did it crawl up and across other clothes? The sweater was new, so the I had to wonder, Has it been living on the sweater since the warehouse? Was it there when I tried it on? Did I bring it home? Is it an invasive species? Right about the time the tiny, detached, wannabe biological scientist part of brain started pondering what kind of spider it was, if it was poisonous, if so, just how poisonous, I physically stopped in my tracks and said, "Oh my God stop it!" I had to will myself not to think about it or my skin would have never stopped crawling. Pete disposed of it when he got home and I think he looked up what it might have been. I don't know if he fond the answer because I asked him not to tell me. It never even touched me, so it doesn't matter. If I asked him to tell me only if it was non-poisonous (which, frankly, in Oregon, is quite likely), and he never said anything, I'd know the thing I didn't want to know, the thing that could only make me dwell on the terrible "what if I'd put my sweater on more slowly, what if I hadn't noticed" questions, the thing that would only deepen my phobia and make me unhappy. So please please please, keep speculation about type and danger (if you are so inclined) to a forum inaccessible to myself.

And that is my thrilling tale of horror.

Studies I would like done: Athelete Attractiveness over Time

2009-12-25T11:40:00.001-08:00

Hypothesis: Basketball stars have gotten more attractive, as a group, each decade since the inception of the NBA.

Required Definitions:

Is there an objective definition of attractiveness? I doubt it. Probably you're looking at so many dozens or hundreds of responses using a Likert scale to reach an adequately powered sample for analysis. Actually, you might need more than one - do people need to differentiate "cute" from "handsome" or "sexy"?
Who are you asking: fans or the general public? I wonder if there's a difference. Would fans find a player more attractive because he played for their team, was a great player or won championships? I think that would have to be evaluated before embarking on the main body of research. And then you'd have to evaluate whether or not that held true for fans from all teams or just fans from the player's home city. If you went with fans, you'd likely need a cross-section of fans from all over the country. If you went with the general public, you'd probably need a set of questions aimed at determining if they are or are not fans, and if so, how much of their lives are dedicated to watching basketball.
In the context of the time in which they played or the modern era? One could try to evaluate how attractive the long-ago peoples of the 1950s found their sports heroes, but that seems likely to turn into some kind of tedious historical sports writing exegesis. I think you have to go with live people you can survey today, but maybe it would be interesting to see if you have to adjust for age. Probably you'd need a question about how long each respondent has been paying attention to basketball, and what kind of time they've put into it over time. That would be a hard question to ask, I think!
What is a "basketball star"? You'd either need a list determined by a trustworthy third party (like the NBA itself, or maybe something like Sports Illustrated) or you'd have to craft a definition of "star" from scratch. You could go with a Lexis-Nexis search and pick the players who appear the most frequently, but you'd also get players who had a lot of scandals but weren't necessarily stars. You could go by pay scale, but you'd have to determine whether or not well-paid players are always stars and if they're considered as good at the beginning and end of their careers. You could go by stats, but you'd have to determine which stats, at what tolerances, and if your chosen tolerances are appropriate in every decade. I mean, maybe rebounds and assists are important now and there are star players who only score 4 points a night but kick ass at getting the ball into the hands of their teammates, but was that true in the 60s? in the 70s? And did the ABA and NBA have different methods of tracking stats? There are a lot of questions here that I'm sure a sports statistician would be happy to suss out with you.

Methodology: It seems like you could use a paper survey or even a telephone survey for something like this, but I think there's a lot of potential for using the internet.

Do a pre-survey to get basic demographic information (age, gender, self-identified race and ethnicity, level of education, city/state where they spent the most years between the ages of 1 and 18, current city/state, how long they've lived there, socioeconomic status, marital status).

Then show a slide show and ask them to rate the attractiveness of the picture they're seeing. I'd use two or three pictures for each player in random order. You could use two pictures in uniform - one home, one on the road- and one not in uniform. (But which uniform? Maybe wherever they played longest?) It would also be interesting to try putting names on the photos for some people but not for others. How many respondents would recognize all of them by sight alone?

Do a post-survey with your fandom questions and maybe thoughts on attractiveness in general. I'd be sure to ask which team, if any, they rooted for as a kid, and let them pick as many as they like. I'd also ask if they thought someone had been left out of the line up of stars.

You'd have to account for people who don't use the internet. Maybe you could have a study center and advertise publically for people to come in and take the survey in person. That might hurt your national sample, though - too much input from one region.

Analysis: Aside from proving or disproving the hypothesis, there's a lot of potential for exploring some interesting questions about how fandom influences perception. Do the people who self-identify as rooting for Atlanta differ in their perceptions from people who self-identify as rooting for the Hawks? (Yes, I know that's the same team. That's the point: is one person rooting for the city while the other is rooting for the actual team and the players who comprise it?) Also, does it matter if you know who the pictures are of? How many people recognize the names of sports heros without having any idea what they look like? How many people recongnize pictures of sports heros without having any idea who they are? What is the influence of age on ideas of what makes an attractive basketball player? Is there a different standard of attractiveness for basketball players and non-basketball players? What kind of comments do people make as they're making their evaluations?

Okay, sports social science: get to it!

Mike Rice: unintentional dirty old man

2009-12-19T20:08:00.000-08:00

Mike Rice cracks me up; his commentary is peppered with unintentionally dirty comments. Tonight I will do my best to catalog some of the inappropriateness.

Of Jeff Pendergraph:

He'll bang ya. And there's a guy named Dwight Howard on the other team who maybe needs some bangin tonight.

About a foul:

Andre Miller really nailed Howard and he thought it was the big guy, Joel Przybilla, and they're goin' at it.

Just calling the game:

Miller really gets it from behind.

On Joel Przybilla:

Boy I'll tell you, Joel is huffin' cause he is just bangin'. Every time down, him and Dwight Howard bang each other.

You've gotta meet Dwight Howard early so he doesn't get low-post position, so you bang him there. You bang him everywhere.

Joel going out of the game made the Orlando Magic spurt.

Even Mike Barrett got in on it tonight:

It was all set up on the penetration of Bayless.

Execution and intent: "In Bruges" and "Revolver"

2009-11-27T14:17:00.001-08:00

I have a terrible head cold, and as a consequence, I seem to be spending the long weekend watching movies. Last night we watched In Bruges, with Colin Farrell, and this afternoon we watched Revolver, with Jason Statham. I knew that Revolver had gotten rather bad reviews and that In Bruges had gotten good reviews. (I even remembered reading that it had been almost criminally misrepresented in its ad campaign.) But, you know, I liked The Transporter and it's not like I'm doing anything with this time other than keeping Kleenex stock on the up-tick. Interestingly, these movies work as a kind of gangster-genre Goofus and Gallant. Although Revolver was released in 2005 in Europe, it didn't make it to the US until March 2008, a month after In Bruges, almost as if the distributors wanted viewers to make that connection.

While there are some overt similarities - both are gangster movies that take place in somewhat imaginary locations, both have accented (to my American ears) leads from the British Isles, neither movie begins at its story's beginning, both have a mysterious and powerful gangster king pulling the strings in the background - the most striking similarity is one of intent. Both movies would like to be a deeply affecting, multifaceted meditation on what it is to be a certain kind of person. In Bruges succeeds at delving into what it is to be a good person, while also being clever, funny, touching, tense, thoughtful, well-crafted and well-acted. Revolver, on the other hand, is like one of those stories you write at summer camp, where each person adds a line and then folds the paper so that the next person can only read the most recent addition before adding their own line. It's confusing, noisy, directionless, and -worst of all- pretentious beyond all reason. It seems to think it's a meditation on ego and personal strength, full of mantras plundered from someone's freshman social studies notes they found on a bus. I've seen Triscuit boxes with more philosophical value.

I have so much I want to say about this, but I'm having trouble constructing coherent sentences due to my head cold/medication situation. I hope Pete will write about this himself. When we finished In Bruges last night, neither of us could really talk about it. It was so dense and funny and sad and strange and wonderful. About a quarter of the way into Revolver, I said to Pete, "This doesn't make any sense." And then one of the characters said, "This doesn't make any sense." I thought, "Oh, okay, this is how it's supposed to be." But it never made any sense. It just kept pushing on and on forever, like a sheep with its head stuck between two slats in a fence.

And another ad I don't get

2009-10-26T18:57:00.000-07:00

I can't find the video for this one, and I'm not really all that inclined to look too hard, so I'm just going to put this out there for you to ponder:

There is an ad where a dude high-fives his own reflection in a window after talking to his doctor about Viagra.

I have tried, and failed, to come up with a way in which this is not the least cool thing ever broadcast.

I don't get this either

2009-10-25T23:12:00.000-07:00

Here is another entry in the Annals of Marketing That Can't Possibly Be Effective.

I assume that the idea is that you'll see this ad and think, "Wow, that girl is cute and hip and singing right to me. And this song isn't at all an irritating earworm!" What I find surprising is that she says, in the song, that internet college is not real college. Well, she says they're not all the same and you have to find "the right one." But University of Phoenix and ITT Tech commercials spend hours every day telling you how real they are and how much the people who "attended" them love them. It seems like admitting that internet colleges might be less than legitimate undermines that whole idea.

I also find it curious how much this ad diverges from the University of Phoenix/ITT Tech model. Where are the successful professionals, the single moms, the guys who no longer live in their mother's basements? No one in this ad is wearing khakis or a sports jacket; no one is giving a testimonial about how much they love working at an IT help desk in some nameless corporate dungeon. A friend of mine tells a story about how someone she works with has paid upwards of $20,000 for a University of Phoenix MBA and couldn't understand why they never got past the interview stage for any new job. Finally, they asked one of the interviewers, "What could I do to make my interview stronger?" and was told that the problem wasn't with their interview skills, it was with their degree. The interviewer said that while s/he was sure one learned something in online college, it just wasn't the same as a real degree. My friend's coworker was completely blindsided by this information. It is my experience that most people who decide to get an online degree really believe in the process - I mean, you'd have to with the price you pay. I am surprised that someone out there believes internet college has great untapped market in wannabe hipsters watching The Mighty Boosh on Adult Swim late on a Sunday night.

There's another one with a girl in her pajamas saying something about "I'm not going to bed; I'm going to college. No, really!" Like no 19-year old girl has ever gone to college in her pajamas. Really - have the people who make these ads never been to an actual college campus? Going to class in your nightwear is not an experience exclusive to classroomless courses. Also: why is that a selling point? Shouldn't the selling point be "you don't have to find parking" or "you can do this late at night, between your two full time jobs, after you put the kids to bed but before you have to drive them to school"? Anyway, these commercials bug me and I don't know why I care. Maybe because the song in the first is such an earworm. Or maybe I wish that I had gone to internet college. It wouldn't have saved me any money and I wouldn't feel comfortable telling anyone where I went, but it would have been a shorter walk.

I don't get it

2009-10-16T17:16:00.000-07:00

Please tell me how this makes sense:

Seriously: how is this selling diapers? What does Woodstock or The Young Bloods have to do with Ultra Leak Protection? Are those babies stoned? Where are their parents? What kind of message is this promoting? I'm so confused!

Response to Joe, re: women and sport

2009-09-29T17:49:00.000-07:00

This post is a response to my friend Joe’s post about roller derby. I suggest you start there.

The whole "sports but also sexy" aspect of women's athletics has always bothered me. It's like women have to be objectified to participate in organized sports or it's simply too boring for anyone to bother watching (men and women alike). Look at the WNBA- they aren't trying to be sexy or cute, just really awesome at basketball, but there's no dunking and I guess it's not as exciting or something, so no one watches.

Aside: I maintain that all sports are boring because every game is essentially the same: they run up the field/court, they run down the field/court, sometimes they defend, sometimes they try to score, sometimes they win, sometimes they lose, but really, blocking is blocking and scoring is scoring and how many times can I be expected to watch blocking and scoring before I want to die?

No one liked the LPGA until there were cute women to watch. My impression of women's tennis is that it wasn't an en vogue spectator sport until people were interested in catching a glimpse of whatever was under those short skirts. Also the grunting.

Aside: I also hate the L in LPGA. I get that WPGA would take too long to say as an acronym, but the seniors tour gets to be the PGA Seniors Tour, so why not have the PGA Women's Tour?

It all bothers me. It's shameful that for women, sport and sex are so intrinsically linked. I agree with you that Roller Derby is preferable to the utterly disgusting spectacle that is lingerie football, but that’s because lingerie football isn’t a sport at all; I would argue that it’s not even a pretense of a sport. It’s an outdoor strip club minus the nudity. And it’s a distillation of everything that’s wrong with the presentation of women’s athletics. The majority of sports consumers are men, and ultimately, they would rather watch a football-themed floorshow than female athletes really playing football. In my head, I can actually hear the Western Male Psyche saying to me, “Women’s football league? Why do we need that? We’ve already got a football league.” (The more cynical part of me can also hear an ass being slapped and a demand to “get me some more beer, Sweet Cheeks.”)

My point is that I wish we were more careful, as a culture, about confounding sex and sport when it comes to women. I would agree with you that you’re a better man for being attracted to archetypes of strong, independent women, and for being generally uninterested in the assault on the women’s movement that is lingerie football. (Now, if you’re a dude who’s into it in the same way he’d be into a strip club floorshow, I think that’s an appropriate and understandable reaction.) But let’s be clear (and I think this is the point Beau was making before): you’re attracted to strong women, and roller derby is, in your experience, full of demonstrably strong women. That does not mean roller derby is an inherently sexier event. You’re also attracted to authenticity of experience. Lingerie football is a very poor football simulacrum. It’s not even a good stripper simulacrum because no one actually gets naked (I assume). And you saw real women doing real sport at the derby, so it wins on authenticity. But everytime we make a value judgement about which sport is better and include "which does a better job of turning me on" in the calculation, we're no longer talking about sports.

I don’t know if it’s possible for men to separate their enjoyment of athletic excellence from their sexual desire when it comes to women’s sports. But I do know that I don’t ever find myself thinking, “I prefer being forced to watch the Blazers over the Seahawks because they’re a better looking team and you can actually see their sexy, um… selves? …” even though that’s technically true, now that I think about it. But I do find myself thinking, every basketball season, “It could be worse. Pete could be a huge fan of the NFL, or baseball. ::shudder::” That is about sport: game length, game pace, frequency of scoring, and ability to see the action without six hundred replays. It does not occur to me that you could objectify male athletes while they’re playing because they’re too busy being, well, athletes. But it seems to occur to everyone that you not only can, but should, objectify female athletes. I assume, because they’re women. It would be dishonest of you to claim that you aren’t turned on by roller derby girls, and I applaud your honesty. But it would be nice if women's sports were as interesting to the general public on their athletic merits as men's.

Thesis: MTV should make music videos freely available

2009-09-26T10:46:00.000-07:00

Does anyone watch MTV for music videos anymore? Can you even see them on MTV? They can't sell you albums if you never see them. And shows like TRL (which I don't think is even on the air anymore) relied on people knowing what videos they wanted to see before they called in. MTV ought to just make it all available online, like a Hulu for music videos. It can't possibly hurt viewership and it would sell more albums (if videos have ever had that effect). I'm sure the music industry would hate it and want royalties, but the networks have their own man-eating lawyers. Plus, you know they'd have ads and banners like everyone else, so they'd make more ad revenue that way. It would also give new bands a chance at a larger audience, the way MTV used to at its inception. When it played music.

The Next Facebook

2009-07-31T00:17:00.000-07:00

Pete has asked a very valid question via stupidTwittergoddamnit: what is the next facebook that everyone's parents aren't on? Although neither of us would ever post anything to facebook that wasn't for general consumption, and both of us keep our pages private anyway, it's still mildly troubling that when a friend posts something profoundly stupid or grotesque, the older adults in my life can just bop on over to my page and check it out. Perhaps I shouldn't have friended them, but how cruel would it be to say to your mother, the woman who gave you life, "No, I'm worried you'll find my friends' fart jokes offensive. Or asinine. And then you won't want me to be friends with them." Okay, so this is not a literal issue for me. My friends don't tell fart jokes (at least not on facebook) and my mom wouldn't care (or notice) if they did. She has better things to do with her time and is a fully licensed and bonded member of the On-Line Community. But I think about other people's moms. If I comment on someone's picture that looks like they're getting a bj from a pirate statue, will their mom read it and think, "Oh my lands! mah baaaaby!" (All other people's moms sound like southern ladies from old Bugs Bunny cartoons in my head.)

Pete thinks they should just be generationally separated somehow. Maybe by reunion decade. All the people between grad and 10 years can see each other, but not those between 10 and 20. Or if you have kids who are old enough to understand what facebook is. My 15-year old cousin friended everyone in the family and we're all weirded out by it. Not because he isn't great (he is!), but because we lead completely different, non-intersecting-except-that-we're-related-and-see-each-other-at-holidays lives. I'm not in high school. He's not pondering how to advance his career, buy a house and start a family. It doesn't mean I don't love him or that I'm not interested in what he's up to; it just means I don't want to see his quiz results in my news feed (but which muppet is he?? and how does he even know what a muppet is! Jim Henson had been dead for almost four years by the time he was born!) and I don't want him to see my comments on people's crap on his (I guess I'm a balloon full of mayonnaise? whatever that means; I wanted to be a chair).

The thing is, facebook is the It thing right now, but remember when MySpace was all the rage? I kept hearing about it, but looking at one of those things feels like being hit in the face with epilepsy, so I was never personally interested. And now all the parents are getting into stupidTwittergoddamnit, so that we can all know when they've eaten a sandwich or if it's hot today or whatever it is that people tweet about. (When I investigated stupidTwittergoddamnit in grad school, lo these many (3) years ago, it seemed like all the posts were "I'm eating a ham sandwich" or "Home from work. TGIF, lol!" I have not seen any convincing evidence that things have changed much since then. And yes, I've seen Shaq's feed.) But that too shall pass. The truth of the matter is, in my opinion, our parents are always going to join new social networking stuff online because we'll always talk about it. Or people they work with will.

Ultimately, the best policy is the one drilled into you in kindergarten: If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. The internet is not the free-for-all, anything-goes, anonymity that many would like to believe it is. Everything can be traced back to its progenitor (or 4-Chan, but those are often one and the same) and eventually that fat guy at work is going to find out you refer to him as Muffin Stuffer "in your facebook"; your dad's brother-in-law is going to stumble upon that picture of him tripping over his own ridiculous lawn ornament on Fail Blog; and your grandmother is going to be horrified to discover that you're an atheist. Typing without thinking, editing, carefully weighing each potential misunderstanding, profits no one, and yet everyone does it everyday. Me, I'm trying to keep putting my foot in my mouth the old-fashioned way, by not thinking before I speak. (Yes, a superior at work actually said to me yesterday, "That's Dr. Dude to you," and for that, I thank her. It's good to be reminded that being friendly, that liking someone professionally, does not mean you're friends. Not in the fullest sense of the word, anyway.)

Cultral Tropes: Riding in Vehicles

2009-07-19T20:46:00.000-07:00

On our way home from dinner tonight, Pete and I saw this great little MG convertible containing a guy and (probably) his son. It occurred to me that I don't think I've ever actually ridden in a convertible. I feel like I have. I've certainly seen enough of them and experienced it vicariously through TV and movies that this personal oversight has gone unmarked. That got me started on thinking about how many other vehicle-related cultural tropes there are that you might not actually ever experience without feeling any personal lack for not having done so. I'm going to start a list here of the ones I can think of. Maybe you have additions? How many of these things have you done? Have you ever thought, "Man, I'd really like to do that someday!" about any of them, or are these the kinds of things that no one ever really feels like they're missing out on? Here is my list. I've put an asterisk before the one's I've done.

*Drive in general
*Ride as a passenger in general
Ride in a convertible
*Ride in the back of a pick-up truck (in the bed)
*Ride in a limo
*Ride in a taxi in general
*Ride in a yellow cab in New York
*Ride in an old black taxi in London
*Be driven in a town car
Ride in an ATV
Ride a motorcycle
Ride a scooter/moped
*Ride a bicycle
Ride a tandem bicycle
Ride in a car with your feet out the window (My mom has a terrible story about someone doing this that results in a broken leg, so I could never bring myself to do it.)
*Ride a city bus
*Ride the subway in any city
Ride the subway in New York
*Take a San Francisco trolley
Ride in the Portland tram (gondola? what is that thing called again?)
*Ride in a funicular
Ride a Swiss gondola (the mountain kind)
*Take a train in the US
*Take a train in Europe
Ride a train from one state to another
*Ride a train from one country to another
*Sleep in the sleeping car of a train
Take the Trans-Siberian railroad
Take the Orient Express (Can you even do this anymore?)
*Drive from one state to another (Oregon to Washington doesn't count, Oregonians. And Virginia/Maryland/DC doesn't count, DC-area people.)
*Drive across the US
*Drive across a country other than the US
*Drive between countries
Drive between countries other than the US and Canada
*Ride a ferry
*Drive your car onto/off of a ferry
Take a cruise
*Canoe
Kayak
Whitewater raft
Ride in a speedboat (Maybe? I don't think so, but I'm not sure)
*Ride in a rowboat
Ride in a Dragonboat
Ride in a sailboat
Ride in a Venetian gondola (Had the opportunity; couldn't bring ourselves to do it)
*Take the Sternwheeler
Ride in a Mississippi riverboat

Well, that's probably good enough. I probably shouldn't have bothered with the boats. In any case, I hope it's at least food for thought.

An Open Letter to the Loud Engine Dickwads Who Drive Past My House

2009-07-06T00:09:00.000-07:00

Dear Dickwads,

Okay, I get it, you have small penes. But there are many quieter alternatives to an unmuffled exhaust system for letting everyone know that. For instance, you could just walk around pantsless wearing a t-shirt that reads, "Hey everyone, I've got a small penis!" Or, if that's too direct for you, what about silk shirts open to the navel so that everyone can see your copious chest hair and gold medallions? Gold medallions + chest hair + unbuttoned silk shirt = small penis. That is math anyone can do. Another idea is to join a glamrock Toby Keith cover band. See? I'm full of ideas here and all of them are quieter than your goddamned engines!

The thing is, when you drive by I can't hear my husband speak, I can't hear the TV or the radio, I can't hear myself think. Sure, I know you have a small penis (your obvious goal in all of this), but I can't, in point of fact, see you because - and this is crucial - I'm inside my house. So you have not actually achieved your goal at all! I know someone has a small penis, but it could be your neighbor, Silk Shirt Steve. Or any of your biker buddies, or the guys in your Assholes of America Car Club. See? The pantsless thing would work way better! I mean, I can’t see you when I’m in my living room trying to watch Miss Marple on OPB anyway. So there’s no need to alert me to the passing-by of a truly tiny John Thomas. But if you did the pantsless thing, or the cover band thing (I do live next to a live music venue!), the laughter of the people who could see you would alert me and make me come to the window. Then, voilá! You would achieve your goal of me knowing about your less than mighty member!

In conclusion: GET A GODDAMNED MUFFLER, ASSHOLES!

With ire and lip-curling, homicidal frustration,

Sydney

PS Maybe check the comments section for other ideas as to how you could more quietly share your little longfellow with the world. I have found the people who read my blog to be most helpful in all respects.

Blogging from my new phone!

2009-06-28T02:00:00.000-07:00

Really I just want to see if this works. I have to say though, typing on the qwerty keyboard with my two thumbs makes me feel like one of the cool kids! Seriously, I'm pretty sure I am now both smarter and more attractive for using the internets with my thumbs. And I'm sure I look younger, and not that I wanted to look any younger, mind you. But I've just been notified that it's two on the morning, so I'm going to bed. TAH DAH!!

How did this ever sell beer?

2009-06-17T19:15:00.000-07:00

Spuds McKenzie.

Evidence:

This one in particular:

And this exists. Seriously. I cannot believe my eyes, but this exists:

Alright, discuss.

"It's your f-ing duty, so just buy a GM already. Jesus!"

2009-06-17T16:30:00.000-07:00

I know I'm a little behind on the times with this, and I've been meaning to write about it for a while, but I've been busy and haven't found the time. Until today! Because I'm home sick, and I'm bored and can't watch the TV because it is babysitting our niece!

Have you seen the GM rally cap ad? If not, here you go:

So. Right. I think it's just awful. Insulting, really.

"You know what America needs right now?"

Yes, in fact, yes I do. America needs equal pay for equal work. America needs health care coverage for all Americans. America needs her troops back home and getting the benefits they were promised and deserve. American needs her people to stop buying on credit and to learn to economize. America needs to educate all... What now? I'm sorry, what was that?

"America needs a come back."

Um, okay. I guess that's kind of the same thing, I mean, assuming we had all those things before the most recent economic crisis.

Nope, sorry: upon a quick check of any reference anywhere, we have never had those things, so a "come back" is setting the bar kind of low.

"Because we can do this, if we all start thinking differently."

Yeah, that's true! We can get this country all the things her citizens need and it will need to start with thinking differently!

Huh? Oh, you meant that whole "come back" thing. Right. So, um, how will thinking differently get us to this to the low bar you've set? It seems like "thinking samely" would be a better way to get back to where you were a decade ago.

"At GM, we're reinventing the entire company, starting with the ownership experience."

That is a great idea! Yes, make owning a GM like owning a better, more reliable car. Wait, can you just make a better, more reliable car instead?

"Introducing the Total Confidence Plan. It starts with up to nine months of payment protection. Lose your job? We'll make your payments, up to five hundred a month."

Okay, this seems like a nice thing to do, but is based on anything? What is the average length of time someone is out of a job these days? Will 9 months cover you? And what's the catch: do you have to make payments for 9 additional months once you get a new job? Also: why are you encouraging people to buy a new car with $500/month payments in this economy?? That just seems irresponsible.

"Then something you've never seen before: vehicle value protection. When you buy a new car, we'll help protect it's retail value at trade in time."

Again, unless you can make it be Not A GM, I don't see how this is possible. I assume it's because you'd be buying another GM. But doesn't that seem like blackmail? Or at least coercion?

"It also comes with our fully-backed, five-year/100,000 mile powertrain warranty, and the safety and security of On-Star, standard."

I'm just gonna go ahead and assume everyone hears "And believe us, you're gonna need it" after "warranty". On-Star just seems like bells and whistles to distract from the major faults inherent in any recent GM. And just as an aside: I have always wondered about the phrase, "fully-backed powertrain warranty." 1) Are you ever offered a "partially-backed" warranty? 2) Is it just on your powertrain? I assume that's something to do with the transmission. Or is it a PowerTrain warranty, like, it's as powerful as a train?

"It's time to reinvent, it's time to rally. It's time to come back with the total confidence plan."

Okay, where is the reinvention? You're still selling GMs. You have not once said that they will be of better quality, more reliable, better looking. Will they get better mileage? Will they have lower emissions? Will they buy you a puppy? You can't just point at a thing and say, "Ah, haha, I hereby reinvent this! See, it's reinvented!" It's not a performative, like pronouncing two people man and wife.

I'm going to skip over the next phrase for a moment to comment on the final sentence of the commercial (before they tell you to visit their website), but don't worry, I'll come back to it. (Ha! See what I did there?) Telling people "it's time to come back" implies that they were GM customers and left for whatever reason, but that those reasons are moot because they evidently signed some kind of agreement that after a certain amount of time, they would return to GMs cold, steel bosom. It's got this whole paternalistic vibe to it that, while appropriate for calling your kids in at night ("Kids! It's time for dinner! You have to come in, now!"), is not really appropriate for appealing to potential customers.

And now back to the phrase, "It's time to rally."

I guess the paternalism is really the core of what bothers me here. GM seems to believe that it has the right to tell you when to buy its vehicles and that it has simply held back in exercising that right because up until now, the economy was strong. They aren't saying, "These new models are totally awesome and address any, let alone all, of your concerns." They're saying, "Okay kids, it's time to suck it up! You have to buy a GM now!" And they're telling you that somehow this is going to fix America. That buying a GM is going to... what? Make us what we were? No, just make GM what it was. Kind of.

Finally, the whole rally cap thing strikes me as a misjudgement. If I understand the concept of the rally cap correctly, it's when fans turn their ball caps inside out if their team is losing near the end of the game. It's a show of support where there's nothing else you can do. (It's also another example of Magical Thinking in baseball, like the curse on the Cubs, but that is neither here nor there. I just think it's funny that baseball has more superstitions than a 17th century Welsh farmer.) So here is GM's basic thesis, in SAT syllogism format, as far as I can understand it.

Rally cap : Baseball game outcome :: Buying a GM : Fixing the economy

It implies that the only Americans who are cheering for the home team are those who are buying a GM. It implies that the average American cannot effect change in their country so they might as well give up on anything more significant than a symbolic gesture. It implies that GM has the right to make demands of you, that GM is the sole arbitrator of what is or is not American, and that like growing a Victory Garden in WWII, buying a GM in 2009 is a patriotic duty. And they're not going to offer you a goddamn thing to make it worth your while. 5 year/100,000 mile warranties and On Star are old hat; GM's been slapping those on their cars for years now.

The only things that are new are the "payment protection" plan (which also implies that you're likely to lose your job, making it unclear why you should be encouraging people to add another payment to their monthly bills) and the mythical "value protection" plan. I mean, whose to say in five years that they didn't do their damnedest to protect the retail value of your car, and they did, they really did, but gosh, how could they have known car values would drop by half, but they saved you some of that, so you're really only losing 40%, aren't they great?

What are your thoughts? Did this strike you as ridiculous as well? Were you insulted? Do you think anyone heard this message and went out and bought a GM?

Sydney Makes Things Up About Rebecca Haarlow (9)

2009-05-23T22:58:00.000-07:00

Rebecca Haarlow is spending the off-season working on her soon-to-be-published, sure-to-be-a-best-seller academic tome, "1,001 Mopboy Nicknames and Their Origins."

Computer Nerds: Help My RSS Feed

2009-05-21T08:09:00.001-07:00

Or the Portland Tribune. Whichever. Here is my brilliant idea that is possibly impossible and probably tedious. I subscribe to the Trib's RSS feed through NetNewsWire (it's a reader!). Every time they update a story (like change a misspelled word, add missing punctuation, add "alleged" between phrases like "a Tigard Man wanted for the" and "a Gresham Man wanted for the" and words like "murder" and "assault", etc.), I get a new item in my feed. I would like, when I read the most recent version of the story, for my reader to mark all prior versions as read. Either that or could someone send a tutorial to the Trib's web guy on how to edit stories before posting them. Or how to update an old post without creating a new one.

THAT IS ALL.

Thank you for your time.

Haha- did this edit just come up as a new item in a news feed? If so, sorry!

On Science and TV

2009-04-29T23:02:00.000-07:00

TV and science have a rocky relationship. They love each other, but they don't really understand each other. Or rather, TV loves science with zero understanding of how it functions, much like the unworldly spinster and one Mr. Liberace. Oh sure, he's sparkly and glamorous, talented and good to his mother, but ladies: he's gay and he's passed on; he can never love you back and you are never going to have a little cottage together on the beach in Malibu. TV sits up at night drawing hearts around pictures of beakers and diagrams of atoms. It writes Mrs. T. V. Science on all its peechees in elaborate cursive.

But I digress... TV shows seem invariably drawn towards the scientific, and to my way of thinking, they are better when they recognize and accept that their love can never be and just shrug it off with a "yeah, but what if..." and a wistful smile. For example:

Star Trek.
How does warp speed work?
Crystals. It's science!

The X-Files.
How come things are unexplained in the world and mysterious?
Aliens. It's science!
(What's with the weird guy who ate you and then barfed you into an underground man-mould?
Uh, Indian folk magic? Look, we're just enjoying ourselves here.)

Heroes. (Okay- I only saw season 1. Maybe they have fucked it up. I don't know.)
What's with the super powers?
What do you want from us- they're super powers.

Star Wars & Firefly.
So, spaceships, eh? Laser guns? Chinese and English in the same sentence?
Time out of mind! The distant past, the distant future and far far away.

Law & Order.
Forensics, that's got beakers and stuff, right?
We're only civil servants! It takes weeks, nay, months!, to get results on this stuff. We don't need to understand it, we just need to do our due diligence. Hey- look at that shouty guy over there!

These programs accept that they are entertainment. People don't watch Firefly to learn how spaceships fly; they watch because it's awesome. They don't watch Law & Order because they want a lesson on Watson and Crick; they want a police procedural. (Don't worry, I'm getting to CSI: Branson.)

What was great about the X-Files, I have come to realize, was that half the time Mulder just shrugged and grinned his goofy half-grin at whomever he was with, as if to say, "I know, right? Crazy times!" The other half of the time Mulder burst into a room, shouting, "Scully! I have an insane conspiracy theory about alien technologies or something!" And Scully would do an awesome Leela impression ("Oh lord, he's made of wood"), her hand on her brow as she looked at the floor, gathering strength to soldier on.

One of my favorite scenes in Star Trek was in one of the movies, the one where they travel back in time, and the doctor is in a hospital. He passes a guy on a stretcher, checks his chart while he surreptitiously scans him. When he looks at the chart and his tricorder or whathaveyou, you exclaims, "My god, the barbarians!" because they're going to remove the patient's kidney or something. I think he says, "I can cure him!" and zaps him with his Future Technology and like magic, er, I mean, science, the man is cured! Yay! No one pauses to explain how it theoretically works. It's a grey box. It has a red light and a touch screen. It makes noises. You point it at a guy and push the screen to make the noises and it fixes the guy. SCIENCE!

But not everyone is the cool girl at the party who just kind of hangs by the tin tub full of melting ice and light beer looking awesome in her skinny jeans and old concert t-shirt saying, "What's up" to everyone who passes by, laughing at jokes, just, like, being cool. Someone has to be the over-eager girl at the front door putting everyone's jacket on the bed in the guest room, laughing too loudly so everyone knows she's having a good time, doing one shot after much preamble and immediately vomiting into the kitchen garbage can. That girl is the show whose entire season I recently watched on Hulu. That girl is Fringe. Fringe has carefully coordinated her headband, belt and socks without noticing that she is a bald double-amputee in sansabelt pants. Fringe practices opening conversational salvos in the mirror before going out only to overwhelm strangers with stories about her dead cat ("ohmygodMittensItwassosad") told in a rushed, overloud voice. You can't dislike her because she's trying so hard. But the closest you can get to liking her is pity, and that makes you feel kind of icky.

Fringe spends about a quarter of each episode providing "plausible" explanations for how its "science" works. This is a terrible mistake because it's all so easy to understand and therefore feels, well, unscientific. (On a related note: part of how ER sounds authentic to the layman is the amount of jargon they use in the "medical" parts of the show. You're not meant to understand it. You're supposed to just let it wash over you, a wave of medicalese to set the mood.) Fringe insists on explaining things in words I know, which really takes away from the authenticity (for lack of a better word) because I'm pretty sure I don't understand advanced genetics, biochemistry and physics.

In a recent episode, one of the characters asks, "Tell me: did the creature have the arms of a tiger, the body of a scorpion and the tail of a rattlesnake?" He later exclaims, "Bat DNA! Of course! That was the missing ingredient." Um, right. I know they're going to glibness-in-the-face-of-incredible-weirdness as their attempt at The Cool Girl, but it just comes off like a poor imitation. (Oh Lord, she's put on her Osmunds t-shirt.) Fringe would be so much better if it took a page from the X-Files and used that time for character development and to generate an atmosphere. J J Abrams: more shrugging, less fakey science.

The sad thing is, like CSI: Frankfort, Explaining The Science is part of the salespitch. The difference is that CSI: knows what its audience wants, namely ballistic gel and mood lighting. I don't get the impression that it thinks its a great police procedural ("Yes, let the CSIs make the arrest! They're all armed and go in for busts all the time!") or even much of a mystery show ("Huh, you say he was holding the gun and confessed to firing it? I dunno guys, sounds like a real poser!"). It is a showcase for Future Technology and lighting design and it seems happy with that. (CSI: Miami, of course, is a showcase for David Caruso's mad standing-at-an-angle skills and Khandi Alexander's awesome cleavage, if little else. Personally, I can't watch either show and I refuse to acknowledge the existence of NCIS and CIS: Big Apple. But that is neither here nor there.)

Fringe doesn't seem to know what its audience wants. Sometimes it thinks the viewer wants to know how the actual molecular reactions work. But then it gets bored (and also, it doesn't know what it's talking about anyway) and so then it thinks the viewer wants Action. There is a flurry of activity where people can travel across the country in a single hour, where there is always interagency cooperation and no one ever asks the protagonist about her crazy diction (what is up with Anna Torv's accent?). No, no, the people want to see monsters! Enter the bad CGI... Now maybe a love interest? No, no they're just friends. (Another digression: there was one moment between Anna Torv and Joshua Jackson, of Dawson's Creek fame, where, to comfort her -as a friend, mind you- he reaches out cups her face in hand, running his fingers into her hair and then drawing her to him to hold her while she weeps (? I don't know-maybe she was just sleepy). I tried to imagine one of my friends doing this and all I could see was a Craft Night gone horribly, hilariously wrong. I tried to imagine two friends of the same gender touching each other like that. Nope: that move is for lovers only, guys.

But back to the science thing. I'm really kind of disappointed. How is it possible that writers and TV producers don't get that you don't have to explain every goddamn thing?

Star Trek, how do your transporters work?
They break you down into your constituent parts and then reassemble you somewhere else.
No, really: how do they work?
It's future science! Just climb right in- it's awesome and it works every time, except for that time we beamed Spock half way into a rock and Bones had to build him a bionic ass. But that at least was funny!

Fringe, how does teleportation work?
Well, you see, you break the object or person down into is constituent parts and then reassemble it somewhere else. There is this ring-thingy that you have to build on the receiving end of the process, but not on the starting end. Did we mention this is advanced Quantum Physics? Yeah, it totally is. Real bleeding edge. But the object being teleported gets a large dose of radiation, so if it's a person, they better wear gloves and sunscreen!
No, really: how... wait, what? Sunscreen protects you from radiation when you're broken down into a bunch of molecules? That doesn't make sense!
Uh oh... Cheese it!

Is it to make up for not having enough plot? For having wooden actors? (Or in Joshua Jackson's case, actors who somehow manage to make bedroom eyes in every scene regardless of what's going on.) Does Fringe think its "science" gives it a veneer of legitimacy? Because it's like calling a ratty old Osmunds t-shirt "My Rock'n'Roll Shirt." I don't think Fringe could be saved from being so-so at best even with a She's All That nerd-to-hot-chick makeover. (And not just because the "nerd" in that scenario was acutally a hot chick with glasses and a pony tail.) I keep watching it because I don't really have to pay attention, so I can knit at the same time, and I can watch it on my computer when Pete is watching endless basketball. And I don't find it unbearable. I mean, it's not Two and a Half Men or anything. But good lord it makes the tiny, atrophied fraction of my brain that was been devoted to studies loosely labeled "science" cringe.

Sydney* Makes Things Up About Rebecca Haarlow (8)

2009-04-24T23:08:00.000-07:00

Rebecca Haarlow totally cares what Pete thinks.

*And by "Sydney", tonight we mean "Joe."

Pete's favorite video game

2009-04-24T19:37:00.000-07:00

Mermortal Kombat: Undersea Alliance. His favorite character was Merscorpion. He knew all the fatalities ("Out of Water," "Shark Bite") and all the rad moves. I mean, merfatalities.

Auld Lang Syne

2009-03-29T11:09:00.000-07:00

This weekend we had dinner with a group of people assembled to see a friend as he blew through town on his way from Seattle back down to LA. As usual, we were happy to meet the friends of our friends and had a great time. Which, of course, we knew we would because of the email exchange that occurred in setting up the date, in which everyone was quite amiable. When we arrived at the appointed meeting place and were parking, Pete says (mid-parallel park, because he's so cool he can parallel and make observations at the same time), "Hey, that guy looks like B." And indeed he did.

Perhaps I did not start far enough back. Okay then, background. Pete and I met the first week of college in a freshman seminar on the Spanish Civil War. On the first day of class, there were 10 students. By the third week, I think there were 5, only 4 of whom remained at the end. Those 4 people were me, Pete, B. and a Czech girl, S. Now somewhere, lodged deep in the recesses of my memory, I knew that B. had lived in the same dorm as some of our friends, which struck me as rather small world at the time. But I had pretty much completely forgotten this piece of information and had not thought about it since.

We got out of the car and walked over to the group and sure enough, here is this guy that we haven't seen in 9 years, with whom we spent 1o weeks in a rather intense class (at least the professor was very intense)... and his 1-year old daughter. To date, I had not yet met the offspring of anyone I went to school with. I know people have had kids, but I have been terrible about getting around to meet them. Add to this the surprise that Pete recognized B. at a distance... Pete never recognizes people!

I spent a good portion of the evening chatting with B. and his wife, J., and watching them with their daughter. I feel like I frequently read about people running into old acquaintances and being envious of what they've done with their lives, or saddened, or bored, and that it really makes them reflect on their own lives and goals. But I can't think of many instances where people run into old acquaintances and are just really happy for them and how well things have turned out for them. (Probably because it's not a very dynamic position and doesn't really provide any insight into the characters.) But that is just how I felt chatting with B. after all these years. He and his wife appear to be really happy together, from what we saw he's a great dad, and he just seemed kind of quietly self-confident. And that little girl... oh man was she cute! And happy. She didn't cry, she didn't fuss. She was just happy the whole evening. It is my observation that children with really good parents are often happy with strangers and not fussy. She knew that whatever she needed, she'd get it.

(Minor Digression on Good Parenting from Someone Who Doesn't Have Kids But Does Have a Lot of Opinions: what really impressed me was how J. and B. gave their daughter plenty of freedom to make her own choices without ever taking their eyes off her. For example, whenever she started to toddle off down the street, B. would call, "Where are you going? Bye bye! Bye bye!" and she'd usually turn around with a big grin and toddle on back. When she didn't turn around on her own, he was at her side in about three strides, guiding her back to the group. She got to feel autonomous, pattering about on her own two little legs and he made sure she was never in any danger without being a helicopter parent.)

My point here is not to make anyone's ears burn or anything. More that our culture seems to worry quite a lot about what people will think of us in the future. We stress about reunions and running into old friends with whom we've lost touch. I know people who keep their Facebook page completely hidden to everyone they don't personally friend because they don't want anyone they used to know to find them. At least in one instance because they are certain that those people have not changed at all and they don't want to have to listen to the same old BS they suffered through in high school (over 15 years ago).

In my experience, though, running into people I haven't seem in 10 years is almost always a good thing. There are people at Craft Night where I can't believe we didn't hang out in high school and I totally regret letting 10 years go by without getting together. There are people I've only seen or talked to once in the last decade, but who have made incredible transformations out of bad situations. It is interesting to me that if my experience is unremarkable, those stories may be the most common, are taken for granted and therefore never make it into popular narrative. (Or perhaps I should say "the popular narrative", as in, the narrative constructed by popular culture as a whole.) And because the popular narrative spends so much time stressing over the less common bad reunion where everyone is better than you or no one has changed, that is the popular motif.

Questions: Is it your experience that running into old friends or acquaintances is generally a negative experience? Is it anything you ever give any thought to? Do you look forward to your next reunion? Do you keep your Facebook page hidden because you're pretty sure everyone is still an idiot (okay- that's probably true; I know I still am) or is it more for professional considerations? Does MySpace make you feel epileptic? (Off topic, yes, but still a valid question. My answer is: yes, yes it does.) Have you ever looked at someone's Facebook or MySpace page and been sad for them? (I have only had that happen with MySpace and never with someone I know.)

You thoughts: I want them!

Quick Knits

2009-03-08T11:38:00.000-07:00

I usually don't blog about knitting because I assume most of the ten or fewer people who may or may not read this would not be interested. Also, it is good to not let one part of your life take over all parts of your life. But I have finally found the perfect baby shower gift that is handmade, not too expensive, can be done in five days (if you can knit for 5-7 hours on each of the first three) and is not a hat. Erika Knight's Classic Cashmere Sweater from Simple Knits for Cherished Babies took me literally three days to knit. Today I will block it and tomorrow I will sew it up. If I had been smart and bought the ribbon for the ties in back when I bought the yarn, I would do that tomorrow too, but that will have to wait until I can make it to the fabric store.

It's a neat pattern that has you knit the sweater all as one piece. The only seams will be at the sides.
You start at the bottom front and knit up to where you cast on extra stitches from the sleeves. I used the single loop cast-on from the Knitter's Handbook, at least I think that's what the cast-on is called. It's the loosest or second loosest option, which seemed important. I don't think you want baby knits to be too restrictive, and very firm cast-ons and bind-offs lead to stiff seams.

Once you get to the neck opening, you knit each side individually. But you don't have to dump the stitches for the other side anywhere; they can just hang out on the end of one of the needles until it's their turn. To me, that makes this pattern psychologically easier and faster. You need no special equipment, just yarn and a single set of needles*. When both sides of the neck opening are complete, you knit across all stitches again, binding-off the arms when wide enough, and suddenly you're done. I found the pattern to be well written and easy to use. It has little hints at the beginning and in the text describing the pictures that have to be integrated as you see fit. For example, the hints suggest slipping a stitch at the beginning of each row of the sleeves so that when they're folded back there will be a nice little detail at the cuff, but the the pattern doesn't say, "Sl1, K to end; Sl1 P to end." It just says "continue in straight stitch until x inches long."

I used RYC Cashcotton DK for this, in colorway Fresh. It's a mix of cotton, microfiber, angora and cashmere, so it pretty much feels like the squishiest, nicest thing ever under your fingers. The pattern calls for three skeins and I bought four with the intention of making a little hat to go with it. So far I have used one and a half skeins, so I think I will make little booties too. Conventional wisdom with baby knits is that they should be machine-washable, and I typically agree with this. However, I think there's some wiggle room for newborns, as they won't be able to wear it for very long before it's too small, so a handful of hand-washings is probably not too onerous, if the knit is nice enough to warrant the trouble. And trust me: this yarn warrants any trouble you care to take. It's that amazing.

*Of course, I consider a crochet hook for weaving in ends, an embroidery needle for sewing up and scissors to be the essentially, taken-for-granted tools of every knitted item. That should go without saying.

Unenchanted

2009-03-05T22:36:00.000-08:00

While Pete watched the Blazer game on TNT (with its unlistenable commentators), I subjected myself to a little piece of probable masochism and watched "Enchanted" streaming on Netflix. They couldn't perform enough of those songs at last year's Oscars and I've always kind of wondered what all the fuss was about. My expectations were very, very low. And you know: it wasn't a total and complete waste of my time. It was mostly a waste of my time, but Patrick Dempsey's irritated rejoinders made much of the movie almost bearable. And I liked the little post-feminist twist at the end; very cute.

What surprised me was how empty I felt once it was over. I have ranted in the past, out loud if not in this blog, about how much I hate the unrealistic standard set by romantic comedies for what love and relationships are supposed to be like. There's so much focus on "happily ever after" that girls who grow up watching too much of that dreck are woefully unprepared for the quotidian realities of a real, long-term relationship.

AN ASIDE: I feel I should offer the following disclaimer before going any further: I am one of those irritating people who is happiest doing the most mundane relationship/household things. I love going to the grocery store, I love long days in and out of the car running errands, I love chatting in the kitchen while I make dinner and Pete does the dishes... And I also had the nerve to marry my best friend, so we genuinely get along and enjoy each other's company.

SO... why do people usually watch romantic comedies? Because they like the sensation of vicariously falling in love. Now the whole deal with "Enchanted" is that it's supposed to put the lie to the fairy tale "happily ever after"- that given a dose of reality, even an animated fairy princess would realize you can't base a lifetime of "happily ever after" on a single duet and a mutual attraction. But it's still a romantic comedy, so the princess in question (named Gisele) has to fall in love. And she does. With real world New York divorce lawyer Dempsey. And it's very cute: she forms an attachment with his daughter and we find that she is less worldly than a six year old. Predictable, but not over done. So that's something.

ANOTHER ASIDE: One thing I did like is in the beginning, when Dempsey decides to let this strange woman sleep on his sofa - mostly because she's already asleep - he tells his daughter he wants her to sleep in his room that night. (Oh, keep your gross nonsense to yourselves, you guys!) It's exactly the kind of thing a real parent would do: protect their child. And mostly movies don't bother with stuff like that because they're too worried about how it would look that a grown man is telling a six year old to sleep in his room. And of course they would trust the trustworthy stranger! Why not? Also: the very first scene where we meet Dempsey's daughter, he's picking her up from Karate and gives her a book on great women, like Marie Curie and Rosa Parks. My feminism's all a tingle! Bravo, "Enchanted;" you did two things that were both surprising and charming.

ANYWAY... Because "Enchanted" makes it so abundantly clear that the "ever after" part is a long time and "happily" is going to take some time and consideration even if you do fall in love at first sight, I was surprised that it so closely followed the usual story arc for a romantic comedy. The big climax is that she falls in love with him, and "ever after" is glossed over in a "dancing around the apartment as a family" montage as the credits begin to roll. I wish that it had condensed the current plot down to 30-40 minutes and then spent an hour showing us how that relationship works.

I mean, this woman made me think of the first verse of Ben Fold's Five's "Kate": "She plays wipe out on the drums / The squirrels and the birds come / Gather 'round to sing the guitar." I mean, she called all the rats and pigeons in New York to clean a dirty apartment... with song. (And yes, the singing is very, very annoying. VERY ANNOYING.) How long is her unworldliness appealing? How do they get her a social security number? How did she start her little clothing business? And did she steal it from Dempsey's former girlfriend who accompanies the prince back to fantasy land? There are so many questions! It could have been a kind of brilliant surrealist mystery- the detective or IRS man nosing around the apartment, assuming her dress company is a money laundering front. Her saying, "I bested the evil Queen of Andalusia or wherever I claim to be from: I think I can handle the IRS." Cut to Gisele sitting in a little office in a bland government building, drooling with boredom, muttering "You're the evilest queen!" before passing out. Then the IRS man hates her because he thinks she's anti-gay! Hilarity ensues!

Okay, so that last bit was a terrible idea. I can own that. My point is, I really wanted to see what life was like for a pragmatic, cosmopolitan divorce attorney and single parent who (ostensibly) marries (and certainly at least moves in with) a magical virgin with all the wide-eyed optimism and sophistication of a small child. I wanted to see how she did as a parent; did the little girl ever get to be a little girl, or did she have to keep giving her step-mom advice, like, "don't wear too much make-up or you'll look like a slut." (That is really a piece of advice she gives Gisele in the movie, though not in those exact words.)

Sydney Makes Things Up About Rebecca Haarlow (7)

2009-03-04T22:49:00.001-08:00

Rebecca Haarlow penned a screenplay for "Undercover Blues 2: Son of Muerte" that was never made due to Stanley Tucci's belief that audiences would not buy a complicated backstory involving the characters played by himself, Park Overall and Dave Chappelle.

Sydney Makes Things Up About Rebecca Haarlow (6)

2009-03-01T21:15:00.000-08:00

Rebecca Haarlow owns a variety of wigs and false moustaches for the purpose of starting waves at the various sporting events she covers.

News from early 80s Portland maybe!

2009-02-27T08:27:00.001-08:00

Ken Jennings is trying to start a meme and it's kind of a neat idea. What are the first five news events you remember as a kid and how old were you? I'm trying to figure out how I would even begin to determine this. I vividly remember watching the Challenger shuttle explode (1/28/86, 5 years 2 months). I think I remember Mary Lou Retton in the 1984 Olympics (7-8/84, 3 years 8-9 months), but it's so hard to parse out what's cultural detritus from growing up with a TV and what's an actual memory. I will think about this and see what else I come up with. I kind of think the only way to do it, though, is to look at a list of events from those years and see if anything rings a bell. But is that cheating?

Answer Me This

2009-02-26T23:11:00.000-08:00

How did Steven Seagal become... Who thought that he was a.... What... Wh... ...How do his movies get made?! He's terrible! The "action" is awful! I'm watching this thing Pete has on and I'm asking myself: To whom is he even a hero in this? Rageaholics? Workaholics? Good ol' boys? Wannabe cops? I simply don't understand how this man has a career.

Pete said he's watching it for the moment when the female lead realizes she's going to have to kiss him at some point. I said I'm watching for the moment when she realizes that she's in a Steven Seagal movie. Then we saw... Tom Arnold. I said, "I bet he already knows he's in a Steven Seagal movie." Pete said, "At this point in his career, Steven Seagal may be wondering how he ended up in a Tom Arnold movie."

Sydney Makes Things Up About Rebecca Haarlow (5)

2009-02-24T22:10:00.000-08:00

Every year Rebecca Haarlow officiates the secret ski contest between Matt Zaffino and Channing Frye on January 26, in honor of Australia Day.

Elitist Coffees for Douchebags

2009-02-10T07:55:00.000-08:00

Have you seen the new McDonald's ads for their "gourmet" coffee drinks? I cannot believe that this works for them. On any level. I think what they're going for is "Cappuccino is an elitist, snob drink that we're bringing to the people," but what they're actually saying (in my opinion) is "Cappuccino is an elitist, snob drink and the only people who would ever drink it are elitist douchebags, but once McDonald's serves it, you'll see, the snobbiness is all a put on because secretly everybody wants to drink coffee at McDonalds." I just don't understand how this is an ad campaign. "Hey assholes! Come drink our snooty drinks!" And the implication that a soul patch or enjoying books (and yes, even "films", although I might agree with them about berets on adult men) could only ever be a put on, that's just so degrading. To everyone. It tells the average McDonald's customer that they cannot like these things. Come on, McDonalds! Times have changed; there's a new game in town called optomism, respect and pro-book-learnin'. Get on the Obama Train, guys!

PS: I think there are two of these ads, but I couldn't find the other one quickly. I did learn, however, that Kiwis are idiots. McDonald's: why are you insulting your customers so much?

This is happening.

2009-02-04T21:57:00.000-08:00

This. Near my house. I have got to pay more attention. I wonder if this will change the quality of the weirdos in the alley.

Sydney Makes Things Up About Rebecca Haarlow (4)

2009-01-26T22:00:00.000-08:00

Rebecca Haarlow did not pick out Mike Dunleavy Sr's jacket/tie combination, although she did once best Mike Dunleavy Jr in a battle of wits. And in a pancake eating contest. And at "Bad Dudes."

Bonus: Rebecca Haarlow is a bad enough dude to save the president.

Sydney Makes Things Up About Rebecca Haarlow (3)

2009-01-19T20:53:00.000-08:00

This one time, Rebecca Haarlow caught Sam Adams making out with a dude who had reached the age of consent and said, "That's okay Sam; I'll keep your secret cause that's just how I roll."

Semantics

2009-01-16T20:24:00.000-08:00

Is it just me or has the whole world forgotten the actual meaning of the word "miracle"? I think it's great that all those people survived that plane crash in New York, but it wasn't a miracle. It was good planning, good training, a competent crew and plenty of good samaritans. The news media have to choose: either everything's a miracle and there's no point in training or safety regulations, or some things aren't miracles, they're just really good people doing their jobs really well. A real miracle is when a plane falls out of the air into a marshmallow factory and everyone on board is cushioned in a pillow of pure joy.

I give up

2009-01-13T18:05:00.000-08:00

I give up on making things up about Rebecca Haarlow. It turns out that it's a lot more fun in your living room when you can say negative or slanderous things and not worry about hurting anyone's feelings. But if I were a minor local sorta-celebrity, I would google myself daily and would feel bad reading about how I once got so mad even Allen Iverson told me to calm down. Or how I once had my stomach pumped because I ate an entire bulk bin of whole nutmegs. Or how my affair with Joel Przybilla ended because I wouldn't make him waffles after I beat him at Horse. Well, maybe I wouldn't feel bad. Maybe I'd just feel confused. Anyway, I can't bring myself to publish most of the probably-more-confusing-than-mean things I come up with, not even for laughs on a stupid blog probably only ten people have ever read. (Although the three I came up with just now are pretty good. And not at all mean.)

Nostradamus again

2009-01-12T08:02:00.000-08:00

There are multiple History Channel programs about this guy. Here are two of my favorite Quatrains that HC interviewees say means something bit I think are just hilarious. First the French and then the English. You should look up what the internet has to say about the first one. Apparently it means Iran is going to blow up the Suez Canal, blocking the shipment of Australian biscuits (of the toaster variety?) to Europe. On the HC (in HD) they actually used the word "biscuit" (which means "cookie" in French) and called it the "Biscuit War Quatrain." Seriously: people get paid for this.

Century 2, Quatrain 3

Pour la chaleur solaire sus la mer,
De Negrepont les poissons demy cuits:
Les habitans viendront entamer,
Quand Rhod et Gannes leur faudra le biscuit.

Because of the solar heat on the sea
From Negrepont the fishes half cooked:
The inhabitants will come to cut them,
When food will fail in Rhodes and Genoa.

Century 5, Qutrain 98

A quarante huict degré climaterique,
A fin de Cancer si grande seicheresse:
Poisson en mer, fleuue: lac cuit hectique,
Bearn, Bigorre par feu ciel en detresse.

At the forty-eigth climacteric degree,
At the end of Cancer very great dryness:
Fish in sea, river, lake boiled hectic,
Béarn, Bigorre in distress through fire from the sky.

The second one is supposed to be about an atomic war that blows up SW France. Which is weird, because they also interpret the beginning to be about the 48th parallel, which south of Paris (right around the Freiburg Pete lived in, incedentally). My interpretation? Well, I do a lot of work in women's health topics. To me, "climacteric" means "menopause." Those first two lines, in my interpretation, predict a 48-year old woman in early menopause due to cancer treatment who is suffering vaginal dryness. Nostradamus suggests a folk remedy made by boiling fish from three different environments (probably to make a gelatin-like substance) and I think Béarn and Bigorre are a metaphore for the vagina. In his time, both had recently been independent kingdoms, but now one was part of France as the King's personal lands while the other remained outside the larger royaume. He's saying that just insideas well as just outside the southern "border" could use some fish salve.

I don't know, guys. I think this is an equally valid interpretation. Also, in C2Q24 (or however you're supposed to note these things; I don't really care that much), one that supposedly references Hitler, "Quand rien enfant de Germain observera" is translated as "When the German child will observe nothing," only "German" in French is "Allemand." "Germain" is not a French word; it's a French name.

(Oh my God - the morning news just presented someone's name like this: "Chelsea" and then underneath "Has Cellulite". Hahahaha!)

Sydney Makes Things Up About Rebecca Haarlow (2)

2009-01-11T11:43:00.000-08:00

Rebecca Haarlow enjoys the 2 DVD set "Lots & Lots of Trains."

Mother's Bistro: In bed with the Salt Barons

2009-01-10T23:00:00.000-08:00

We ate at Mother's tonight and I have to say, their food is slipping. The underlying flavors, combinations and presentation were all still great, but what is with all the salt? Roast chicken shouldn't taste alternately salty and bland. If I managed to get two or three "bland" bites in a row, my sense of taste returned and it was really delicious. But then I'd get a salty bite, zotz my tastebuds and taste nothing again. Additionally, their cauliflower cheese was pretty awful. I don't know what cheese they were using... It was white but it wasn't white cheddar, swiss, fontina, provalone, parmesan, gruyere, havarti... at least not that I could discern. It wasn't good, that's what's important. But the underlying ability was there: the califlower was perfectly cooked, tender without being limp, crisp without being raw. The chicken was moist and juicy, the skin just crisp without being fried. But in the end, I just ended up feeling totally bloated, tired and over-full.

Dad didn't like his pot roast. I thought it was okay, but whoever did the sauce had a heavy hand with the wine. If that's not what you're expecting, then it's no good. It was also very salty, although Dad disagreed. We might have a different perspective on salt, though. I believe in lightly seasoning each layer of food as I'm cooking - just enough to bring out the flavor, but not enough to be noticable. Most salted food should have a savory flavor, not a strongly salty flavor. If I roast a chicken, I want you to be able to taste chicken, lemon, thyme, rosemary, onion, garlic... But I don't want you to think, "Is a pint of water really going to be enough? Why doesn't she bring that carafe over here so I can drink straight from it."

The worst part is that I'm a chicken shit. When the chef (or one of the cooks - I didn't notice an appellation on her white jacket) came to the table to ask how everything was, I just smiled and said, "Oh, great!" I really like the ambiance, the introductory rolls and breads are delicious, the staff are great... (In particular, our waiter was super.) I just don't have it in me to be honest and risk making everyone uncomfortable by lodging a complaint when everyone's had such a nice evening.

Sydney Makes Things Up About Rebecca Haarlow (1)

2009-01-10T00:16:00.001-08:00

This one time, Rebecca Haarlow ate an entire cheesecake. Just cause she was hungry.

(Explanation (kind of) here.)

Sydney Makes Things Up About Rebecca Haarlow (0)

2009-01-09T23:57:00.000-08:00

I have this idea for a blog. It would be called Sydney Makes Things Up About Rebecca Haarlow. If you don't know who Rebecca Haarlow is, that is okay. She has a Facebook page. That means she is a celebrity. She is the on-court interviewer for the Blazer's commentary team of Mike Rice and Mike Barrett. I think she's pretty good at her job, but never really thought about her that much. One of my co-workers said she and her husband couldn't stand Rebecca Haarlow and I thought that was weird; I mean, it's a pretty innocuous job. But one evening we noticed a guy in the stands at the Rose Garden with a big sign that said "We Love Rebecca Haarlow!!" (Or something similar.) So we looked her up, wondering if this was going to be a thing. We didn't learn much - just that she went to Princeton, is tall and an athlete - and I did not make any of that up. I think it was that same evening, each time she introduced a pre-taped bit and the camera was about to cut away, her face would fall very suddenly and she would look some combination of annoyed, tired, irritated and/or sad. I, of course, started hypothesizing as to why this might be.

"Oh, maybe it's cause the story's about Joel being hurt. Maybe she's got a thing for Joel. Ooh, Pete! Do you think they were secretly involved and now they've broken up and she's annoyed?"

"No no, I think maybe she's got a cold. Maybe she's really tired. Yeah, she looks tired."

"Ooh, Pete wouldn't it be awful if she and Joel were involved? And she had to report on his injury? [Silence] What? What is that look for?"

I determined that maybe Pete did not think listening to me make things up about Rebecca Haarlow was very interesting. Also, he couldn't hear Mike Rice's palaver over my own.

And then it came to me: this should be a thing on the internet. Only I can't quite bring myself to start a new blog that is definitely totally stupid and that I might only use twice. So I thought I would start here. So look for me making things up about Rebecca Haarlow (for no good reason) in the near future.

Scientific exegesis of Nostradamus is not actually science. Sorry, History Channel.

2009-01-08T22:30:00.000-08:00

I'm watching this show on the History channel right now - mostly because Pete teasingly suggested it and I had to call his bluff - and it is, well, silly. That is really the best word for it. It is chock-a-block with "scholars" talking about scientific interpretations of Nostradamus' quatrains. Seriously. Men who have trained in real sciences (yes - only men) are using their understanding of nuclear and cosmic radiation to explain... Nostradamus. Their justification is that Isaac Newton believed in alchemy and prophesy. Yes - and he also believed that leeches were a valid treatment for disease. Time and place, Scientists! Time and place!

The problem with this kind of "science" is that it's all predicated upon a completely ridiculous supposition: that Nostradamus could predict the future. He predicted Sadaam, you know. Here is their evidence. Quatrain 8:70.

He will enter, wicked, unpleasant, infamous,
tyrannizing over Mesopotamia.
All friends made by the adulterous lady,
the land dreadful and black of aspect.

Okay, that is not even English. That does not make any kind of grammatical sense. Here is the French.

Il entrera vilain, mechant, infame
Tyrannisant la Mesopotamie,
Tous amis fait d'adulterine d'ame,
Terre horrible, noir de phisonomie.

Admittedly, my French is a wee rusty, but I believe that "dame" is "lady" and "d'ame" is "of soul." I read this more as "He/It will enter ugly, mean, infamous / Tyrannizing Mesopotamia / All friends made by the bastard of soul / horrible earth, black physiognomy." It is interesting to note this definition of "physiognomy" from the wiktionary: "The art of telling fortunes by inspection of the features." I this this is really about a soul singer turned fortune teller who is good at neither avocation. But I digress.

Has there ever been a time when human beings didn't think the apocalypse was right around the corner? No. There has never been such a time. This program is looking for concordance between the Mayan End of Days Calendar, Hopi folk tales and a the poetry of a 16th century French pharmacist. Oh, and the Bible Code. The answer is: The world will end in 2012. Well, the Hopi say that the Fifth Age will begin in 2012. I say, "Fair enough, Hopi." To the rest of them, though, I can say only this: you are not doing science! Please stop pretending that's what you're up to!

I know what you are thinking: why keep watching if it is so ridiculous? Well, it's on the HD History Channel and it has all these gorgeous images of space (you know - predictions and cosmic rays all come from constellations). And now that it's muted, it's way less irritating.

Pete's take: "It's a stretch for being history, too." Maybe they should call it "pre-history" or "peri-history." Or, you know, "bull shit."

Okay, it just ended with shots of Portland and a guy saying something about "when new Rome fell." Um, hello? We're Little Beirut? Geez - it's like he's totally out of touch with the world or something.

Happy New Year!

2009-01-05T08:15:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, Everybody! (Happy New Year, Dr. Nick!) I have many updates, but I also have to shower and go to work. Let's see how fast I can run through these (synchronize watches now: it is 7:45 am).

1) Snow snow snow!! I've been putting together a slide show of snow pictures from our 2-week long "Arctic Blast," to use the parlance of our local news stations. I will get it posted soon - maybe tonight? - for those who are interested. Please keep in mind, non-Oregonians and especially people from snowy climes, most years Portland gets a quarter inch of snow in February and everyone gets their single snow day. 2 weeks of snowing is pretty much unheard of, and having more than a foot on the ground at all times in Portland, with temperatures under 30 (under 20 some of the time!)... well, that's just crazy talk. But it happened, for the first time in 50-years.

2) Pete has come up with a new name for the Sylvan overpass on Hwy-26 and I think we should petition the city to adopt Storm Team Memorial Overpass as its official appellation. "This is Mark Glyzewski for Storm Team 8,000 on the Storm Team Memorial Overpass. Back to you, Shauna."

3) I super love KGWs morning crew during a Weather Event. Normally I watch channel 12 (because some how Good Day Oregon has totally grown on me - probably because they're a little punchy every day and the aforementioned Glyzewski sounds like Number 24 from "Venture Brothers") but no matter when you got up between 4 am and 1 pm, KGW was on. That's right: Brenda Braxton and Russ Lewis were on for 9-hours every morning. And by the last hour, they were punchy. Delightfully nutty, having a good if exhausted time, blowing kisses to the viewers.

4) Hm. It's been 10 minutes already. I'm wandering!

5) Christmas: good. Gifts didn't all arrive, but we had at least one thing for everyone. I knit my brother socks, but even with all the days off, only had one finished because I had to rip back so many times. It would be nice if I could count and do basic arithmetic correctly the first three times.

6) New Years: good. Unexpected fun! Mike and Marissa took us out for drinks and we rang in the new year at a very subdued, mostly empty Baghdad Theater. On the way there, we ran into some nutters from Sacramento asking where they could catch a cab. Well, where they could catch a "fuckin' cab," so asks the guy. His female travelling companion says, "And sorry for saying 'fuck,'" and shoots him a look. We all demurred - I think Marissa said, "We're all adults here." Indeed! Pete said, "At a hotel," at the same moment I said, "You can't." I explained that Portland isn't really a cab city, so you have to call for one, unless you're near a hotel. And we couldn't think of a hotel nearby. So we asked where they were headed and told them how to take the bus. The girl became ebullient: "Oh man, Portlanders give the best fucking directions! You guys are so nice here! In [somewhere else - Seattle maybe?] they're all like 'Fuck you' but here, like at the airport even, people were all like, 'No, go this way, take this,' it's awesome man." The guy says, "Yeah, don't even ask for directions in SF. They're like, 'You don't know? Too fuckin' bad.'" They were pretty excited about the bus.

7) Edlund Family Christmas: held on 1/3 this year because of the snow. Good times, although we did miss Uncle Mike. We played Codeword or Password or something - I forget the name - and somehow made it work with a group of 16 people. Good times! Keaton and Mom share the same evil gift for passing the thing right before it buzzes, thereby scoring a point for their team.

8) A Very Martin Christmas: held yesterday, 1/4, because of snow. Also good times! We got our 8-year old niece Dance Dance Revolution because it seemed like her kind of game. And man was that a success! At one point she, her mom and an auntie all worked together to try "U Can't Touch This" on Expert, or so they thought. Mom took up and down, auntie took right, niece took left. They did not pass the first time, but repeated to finally score a C. And then realized it was on Basic, not Expert. You would not believe the peals of laughter generated by that game.

9) Oh noes! 8:05!

10) House update: It's cold. Really really cold. The hot water heater is not functioning very well and the fridge is making weird noises. And we've now found two "adult" items in our alley. The first was a porn DVD, about a month ago. The second was a "toy" - so very very gross. It was out there all day on Saturday, but after midnight some yahoos from the club next door noticed and came through the fence to examine it. Pete could hear their cries of, "ew! gross!" and then one of them said, "Oh gross, it's all covered in Vaseline but I don't even care I'm gonna pick it up and touch you with it." You should have seen him trying not to laugh to loudly where they'd hear him. It was dropped outside our fence when their ride arrived. I have pictures, but I'm not posting them for the same reason I wanted it gone from the front of the house: I don't want this to become known as the Vibrator Blog just like I don't want this house to become known as the Vibrator House. It was gone by Sunday evening - I have no idea what happened to it. I choose to believe it belonged to a club patron who tried to throw it away in our garbage cans, failed completely, and then noticed it on his/her way to church on Sunday and removed it for us. More likely, though, a less squeamish neighbor threw it out. Either way: hooray!

11) Okay, for those of you playing along at home, it's 8:15. That means it took me... ::sigh:: 30 minutes to do a "quick" update. You know, it's a good thing I don't make new year's resolutions, because I would break them all the time.

Craft Night!

2008-12-05T08:11:00.000-08:00

I had a delightful evening yesterday with some old friends and some new at a newly formed (at least as far as I know) weekly Craft Night. I had a hole in a sock I'd knit and a new friend helped me fix it. I made good headway on the socks I have on the needles and just had an amazing time.

Growing up, I always had small groups of friends with very intense friendships. But in college, I didn't really meet a lot of new people because so many high school classmates continued on to U of O. Admittedly, I became friends with a different group of people, but we many of us knew each other before college. And since college, most of my friends have moved away, so I haven't really hung out with people on a regular basis in a few years. To be honest, I didn't really notice. Probably because it wasn't like everyone was getting together and I felt excluded; it's hard to have a dinner party with invitees from Astoria, Eugene, Portland, Boston, DC, Baltimore, LA and Japan. But hanging out with this group of women last night made me realize how much I miss the friends that have moved away and how nice it is to, well, meet new people and socially interact.

This week was hosted by a friend from high school (A.) who I hadn't seen in years and years before a birthday party a couple weeks ago. She hosted at her parents' house in SE and man, it felt like going home. Anyone who grew up in SE or NE Portland* (at least around the time that I did) knows what I mean: the house that feels familiar and welcoming from the first moment you cross the threshold because it's truly a home. That lived-in feeling, tons of family photos and artwork, warm light, the smell of delicious cooking... It's the kind of house I grew up in. A's parents were sooo nice! It was weird to feel like a kid again but entirely internally. And to evaluate an initial experience as though I were 16. All I can do is hope that when Pete and I are ready to have kids, we can create that kind of environment for them.

*I'm sure this happens everywhere, but the old Portland homes in inner SE and NE have a particular feel. I couldn't explain it if I tried - some mix of architecture, age and people.

Recipe

2008-11-29T12:48:00.000-08:00

This morning I made Pete a crepe filling out of his favorite potassium-rich fruits: bananas and dates. I thought I'd post it here because it was really simple and he seemed to enjoy it. Please note: the dates need to be high quality. We used so-so dates and they were not so great. But Pete said that he things with better dates it would work. I think you'd need to go with really moist and juice unpitted dates. Pitted dates seem to be all dried out in the middle.

Bananas Foster (Kind Of)
This recipe makes enough filling for two 10" crepes.

2 tbsp salted butter
2 bananas, sliced into coins
4 average sized dates or 3 large dates, diced
1/4 c. brown sugar (we used dark brown, but I bet light brown works just as well)
1 tsp cinnamon

1. Heat a medium-sized pan over medium until well and truly hot.
2. Add the butter to the center of the pan and melt.
3. Add the bananas and dates. Toss gently to coat.
4. Add the brown sugar and cinnamon.
5. Toss gently to coat. (You can use a spoon to stir/flip, but the bananas need a gentle touch.)
6. Cook 2-3 minutes, until bananas are cooked through and brown sugar has melted into a gorgeous, sticky brown sauce.
7. Serve as crepe filling or over vanilla ice cream with candied walnuts.

Other ideas:

To make it more summery, add shredded coconut or another tropical fruit.
OR serve with coconut ice cream
To make it more autumnal, add a pinch of cloves and a pinch of nutmeg for that pumpkin pie flavor
OR make a pumpkin-flavored custard to accompany this sorta-bananas-foster in the crepe

Please to enjoy!

A Contest!

2008-11-24T21:46:00.000-08:00

Have you ever had Dove Promises, the chocolate squares whose foil wrapper has an important message about the future, your love life, chocolate or some weird mash-up of all three? If you haven't, go buy some: they're hilarious and delicious! If you have, then I'll assume you'll agree with me that the messages are pretty stupid. I misread one today as "A simile is the perfect gift, personal and encouraging."

So here is the contest: Suggestions For Future Dove Promise Wrappers.

How does it work? You suggest new slogans/promises/whimsical messages for these candy wrappers. If they're funny, praise will be heaped upon you! If they're not, ridicule is yours to endure!

What do you win? Nothing. This is a blog, guys, not Chinook Winds.

Here are some examples from actual candy foils:

Love is always the perfect gift.
Joy is contagious.
Your presence is often the best present.
Friendship is a gift in itself.
A smile is the perfect gift, personal and encouraging.

Here is an example entry from Pete:

Here's a promise: these will make you fat.

So, you know, Have At It!

Goddamnit, Apple

2008-11-24T00:10:00.000-08:00

Why is it so hard to crop photos in iPhoto? It is the only software on my Mac that I truly and deeply hate. Although iTunes is working very hard at pissing me off.

iPhoto: get it together. It's easier to crop and resize pictures using the software that came with my camera. You have to work at being that crappy, so please stop trying so hard. Maybe be just a little annoying, like how the photos I've uploaded into my Pictures file aren't automatically added to my iPhoto library. You can keep that "feature." Just let me crop and edit without trauma. And maybe remind me that when I hit "save" to keep the cropping I finally got to work (with no small amount of swearing and threatening my MacBook with bodily harm, I might add) that you're replacing the copy of the photo in my library and maybe ask me if I'd like to save the cropped version as a copy rather than replacing the original.

I swear, if I didn't have to pay to upload more than 100mb of picture a month with Flickr, I would stop using iPhoto all together. As it is, I think I'm going to need a Valium before any future use.

(Also: why is it that when I add a picture on my goddamn blog it always inserts it at the beginning of the post? I'm so fawking sorry I'm not a goddamned expert at HTML, Blog Interface! Arrrgh!

Erm... I'm going to go have a little lie down now and try to calm my burgeoning inner technophobe.)

Srsly-

2008-11-21T22:04:00.000-08:00

the country version of the Blazer's song sucks.

So very, very much.

Omigod: please play something else. This weak sauce is making me regret the invention of music.

Knittin'

2008-11-21T08:10:00.000-08:00

I have recently given up on computer games in favor of knitting. This is partly because it's finally cold enough that I want to sit around with a pile of wool on my lap. But it's also because the OCD piece of my personality is cyclical in nature and obsesses in waves.

Mostly I've been knitting socks.

Socks for me.

Socks for Pete.

Socks for no one because I'm not sure I can stand the yarn/pattern combination enough to knit the second sock. (I like the way they look, but the yarn is too slippery and the pattern made a very poochy heel. Also, you may note a hole that was created by not-my-favorite-heel-instructions-ever.)

I may write another post or two about knitting, but just in case anyone was curious as to what happened to me post-election, the answer is: Socks.

Things I didn't know we'd lost

2008-11-05T23:53:00.000-08:00

Obama has given us our patriotism back. I just... I mean... Just watch this video. It's incredible. Portland, so-called "Beirut West," is so proud, so happy to be an American city. It always has been, but suddenly that has a whole new meaning and its people are taking back some of the symbols of the "real America/fake America" rhetoric that's become so popular over the last eight years. Perhaps most amazing? They're doing so without irony, without kitsch; they're just genuinely, authentically overjoyed. And you're welcome to join them.

Some observations on our more perfect union

2008-11-05T10:18:00.000-08:00

Listening to Obama speak last night, I was very impressed by how inclusive he remained. "How can anyone not like this man?" I thought. Really: how can anyone not love him? He's a thoughtful, measured leader with a wide smile who didn't once choose valedictory giddiness over calm reassurance that he has a plan and it includes everyone.

Then I checked into Facebook and saw that a friend's status was "I'm so proud of my country right now." And I thought, "Oh my God: Obama is going to make it okay to be patriotic again." In recent history, it seems like Americans either Love America Without Question or hate America. This is, of course, artificial. But I think there are a lot of people who felt like any criticism of the US by its citizens amounted to treason. And a lot of people who felt like any vocalization of love for such a flawed country amounted to idiocy. I know: that's an over simplification. But my point is this: I think Obama has the potential to make critical patriotism okay, to unite the divide the Republican party has worked so long and hard to cultivate.

And now some observations that I don't really have time to weave into a narrative here, with like, transitions and linking sentences and stuff.

Observation 1) This year many GOP candidates (most notably, Sarah Palin) have been talking about a "Real America" and, well, they never really gave the other America a name. In the past, they've used the phrase "the blame America first crowd." In any case, the GOP has promoted the idea of two Americas who are diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive.

Observation 2) For the past decade (at the very least), the Republican party has actively worked to suppress the vote. They do not believe everyone is equally qualified to vote and would prefer two classes of citizens. While those two classes really amount to Those That Agree With Us (qualified) and Those That Don't (unqualified), they are also about class (upper class/middle- and lower class), race (white/non-white), age (older/younger) and location (central/coastal). It is another way of dividing American in two.

Observation 3) The Republican party was born out of a need for two diametrically opposed parties. Americans watched as the Whigs and the Know Nothings tore themselves apart from the inside over the issue of slavery while the democrats remained relatively intact. (At least this is my understanding of things.) The Republican party was anti-slavery. It drew a line in the sand and said, "There are two Americas." We interpret this now as an obvious moral distinction, "One is right and one is wrong," but it was an economic distinction as well. It was about the place of industrialization, modernization, states' rights, federal jurisdiction... The country was clearly heading for a rift and any party with a cohesive internal belief system was going to end up on one side or the other. The Republican party has been about choosing sides since its beginnings.

Mixed Messages (Sorry this is crazy long - I suck at the whole brevity thing)

2008-11-03T23:08:00.000-08:00

Last night I watched a couple hours of TLC: first, a show on what happened to two girls who were once in child pageants called "Painted Babies at 17;" and second, "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant."

I meant to mention the first one only in passing - child pageants are creepy - but there's actually a little more to it than that. One of the girls has continuously competed in pageants since age 5 and has won tens of thousand of dollars will no discernible skills other than keeping a plastic smile pasted on her face while being serenaded by a very weird pageant MC. The other quit pageants at 7, goes to an expensive boarding school and works for minimum wage at a local buffet diner in Appalachia. At first I thought the point was going to be that the girl who quit is better adjusted and is focusing on a real future (career as a tv news anchor), while the other wants to get married and have a big family. (She also had some career aspiration, but I forget what. I remember thinking it was something like Medical Assistant, which I think of as a career you have to make money on your way to something else, not something you dream of being at 17.)

As the program progressed, they began to reveal more about the circumstances in which the two girls find themselves. The one who quit didn't just up and quit out of the blue at 7 after winning thousands of dollars and a car with more than 20 titles: her little brother was born with disabilities and her mom didn't have time to devote to pageanting any more. Although they never say it (BBC4 is too subtle for that), the clear message is: "Baby pageants are driven by the mothers and that's all there is to it. Little girls would never choose to do this on their own." The girl who continued in pageants, meanwhile, did so with the support and participation of both parents until she was 15, when her parents divorced. At least that's how they described it in the beginning. Later they gave more detail. Her father, Boo (no - I'm not making that up), just walked out on his wife and seven children one day and 10 months later married some other woman. They ask her if she misses him, if she ever sees him, if it's hard. It's all very tasteful and non-exploitative. And then explaining why she doesn't see her dad, she says, "Well, the state took out a restraining order on him, so..." The interviewer asks something and she says, "Oh, it was real bad, he was real abusive mentally... emotionally... physically..." She kind of swallows the last adverb and her grandmother swoops in with, "He was a real bad sort." Or something along those lines.

I think this is interesting because there didn't seem to be a clear message any more by the end of the program. At the beginning, I would have said that the theme was "pageants are bad for little girls, they're creepy, and they turn Moms into raving lunatics." By the middle, it seemed to have moved to "Pageants may be creepy, but they make bank, and if you're a poor family with seven kids, having one or two little beauty queens might be your best bet for a new car." It was sympathetic. By the end, though, it painted both girls as victims of circumstance. Certainly one has a brighter future, with real world goals. One could argue that she was either saved or robbed by her brother's disabilities. The other girl, though... It seemed to conclude that she was a survivor and this was what she knew how to do. She's burdened by family obligations, she had an abusive dad who ran off and this is how she's dealing with her emotional scars. So, are pageants creepy? Yes. But maybe that's not the worst thing you have to deal with?

The other program, "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant," is about women who didn't know they were pregnant until they went into labor. It had some serious message problems. They make a big deal over the fact that none of these women had any prenatal care. "And without prenatal care, she may have endangered her baby's life without even realizing it." Well, duh. She didn't know there was a baby, guys. And I think this is an important message. (Prenatal care: it's good for fetuses.)

But they also make a big deal about the fact that all of these women went into labor at home (again: duh, they didn't know they were pregnant). The message is, "Babies will die if they are not born in a hospital. With an OB. With a mother lying supine, in a hospital gown. Seriously, without these things babies cannot be born and survive." I think this point of view is totally misleading. The risk in these pregnancies was not because they didn't arrive at the hospital until late in their trial of labor; the risk is that they didn't know they were pregnant and thought they were dying of tumors or organ rupture or something. Additionally, no mention is made of the fact that all five women profiled were overweight. Well, one of them has "obesity" described as a risk factor for her pregnancy. But it seemed like maybe it was worth mentioning for all of them. Perhaps I'm just judgemental, but if we're going to talk about risks and pregnancy, I think obesity (and it's BFFs "hypertension" and "gestational diabetes") would figure high on the list.

Where does the message get mixed?, you may be wondering. Okay, all this talk about risk risk risk. But for each woman, they say, "Luckily, she quit taking birth control and never drank or smoked throughout her pregnancy." Only one woman delivers prematurely; she has twins at 30 weeks. That's very early (by about 10 weeks), but after lung development. And twins are often born prematurely (although not necessarily that prematurely). So over the course of the show they build a profile of a risky pregnancy for you: no prenatal care, labor outside a hospital. And then they totally undermine it by only showing healthy, happy resulting families.

What really got me was that at the end of the show. There's a title card that says "In loving memory of..." someone, but went by too quickly for me to read. So I rewound and paused. It was in loving memory of one of the premature twins. !! So one of these pregnancies did not have a happy outcome; one of those poor twins died less that three months after her traumatic birth. Here is your message about the importance of prenatal care, TLC! Here is your example of why you should take care of yourself, keep your weight and blood pressure under control! And all that poor baby gets is passing mention because, well, it's a downer.

Anyway, while I thought both programs were interesting, I think maybe not for the reasons intended. Both shows were produced ostensibly to be both educational and a little sensational. Fine - prenatal care good; baby pageants bad. But it was like they lost their nerve about 2/3 of the way through. Uh, prenatal care good, but, um, nothing bad ever happens to babies. Baby pageants bad, but, erm, we guess they're better than developmental disabilities and child abuse. Unless they are a form of child abuse. LALAlalalalala - I can't hear you!

Is this a symptom of something larger growing in our culture? News outlets seem to have a hard time with issues that really only have one perspective. "Human trafficking: we know the sex slaves hate it, but how do the pimps and coyotes feel?" No! There is only one perspective on this. Human trafficking: it's really bad. And also illegal. And immoral. That is the perspective. Are we now pulling punches on educational programming as well? Where does this take us? Today we have High Risk Pregnancies With Zero Risk Outcomes - Don't Worry, Careless Ladies: Evidently You Have Nothing To Fear. And tomorrow? STDs: Maybe They Suck, or Maybe You Love Having Sores On Your Genitals, We Really Couldn't Say. Sometimes things have unhappy endings. Sometimes things are bad and they make you feel sad. But that's part of life. Maybe we should bring back all the old fairy tales where children are lured into the woods and eaten because they ignored their parents, but update them for the issues we face now. I will leave you with my attempt. Keep in mind, I'm going for pastiche here. Terms like "fetal alcohol syndrome" and "hip dysplasia" don't really fit the rhythm.

Blue Belle and The Unrecognized Pregnancy

There once was a girl named Blue Belle, for her eyes were the loveliest shade of sky blue. She was well loved and indulged in her every desire by everyone throughout her young life. But as she blossomed into the flower of womanhood, she found her desires had grown beyond the healthful norm and she suffered for it.

First, she grew overlarge as she indulged in great quantities of food and drink. "More wine!" she called. "More mutton! More pies!" But never more vegetables; never more fruit. The old village wise woman clucked her tongue and said, "You should eat rich treats in moderation, my girl! They'll poison you from the inside if you don't!" But Belle just laughed her tinkling laugh and shouted for more beer.

When food and drink began to bore her, she began to crave entertainment. "More shows! More performers!" she cried from her couch. And no one could deny those sparkling blue eyes, that gay and ringing voice, those perfect smiling lips. Except the old wise woman, who again admonished: "You should get up and see the world for yourself. Go out into it - explore, meet new people, make your own entertainment. If you don't, your world will be very small indeed and you'll never quite fit in it." But Blue Belle just shushed her as the next performance began.

And when she had seen every show, witnessed every performance, she found that she was filled with lust, especially for one man against whom she had been warned by every other woman in the village. She took up with this young man, covered in tattoos, coarse of language, boorish and uneducated, and for a time they were very happy. They drank and ate and smoked and made love together day in, day out. The old wise woman shouted up to her window, "He's made you no promises, nor you him! Without commitment there can be no real trust - only foolish blindness!" Blue Belle simply shut the windows and drew the curtains.

Eventually Blue Belle began to notice that she was missing her womanly cycles. "No matter," said she. "I am very anxious about life. Where will I find more entertainment? Who will bring me a delicious pie? Where is my beer? Why does everyone whisper about me behind my back?"

For the better part of a year Blue Belle lived this way, until one day her anxiety seemed to take root in her back and belly and began to rip through her in waves of nauseous pain. "Oh, oh! I am rent in twain!" she cried. Her tattooed beau ran for the doctor who attended her posthaste. After seeing the condition Blue Belle was in, and knowing of her habits and her past, he sent for the village midwife.

Upon her arrival, the midwife smiled down at the pained and crumpled Blue Belle and told her the happy news. "You are not being rent in twain! You're having a baby!" Blue Belle's eyes sparkled with momentary relief, and then grew dull with renewed anxiety. "But I'm not ready for a child! Where will it live? How shall I feed it?" The midwife smiled kindly. "Don't you worry. I'm sure your young man will help you provide for your child and you'll make room. You'll make due. These things always work out."

But things were not going well for Blue Belle. Her eating and drinking with abandon had made her fat and unhealthy. Her heart raced, her blood pumped through her veins with ferocity, and she felt weak. Her obsession with entertainers and performers had kept her housebound for some many months, and her joints were not used to a wide range of motion. As the baby pushed and shoved its way into the world, she felt her body tearing, her hips popping, her life draining.

As the midwife caught the baby, the smile faded from her face. The baby made no sound and the woman turned away from Blue Belle and conferred with the doctor. The doctor sent for the wise woman. Upon her arrival, she took the baby from the midwife and clucked her tongue at the sickly new mother. "It's as I said it would be. Your insides are poisoned - look at you! And your baby is poisoned as well." Still the baby made no sound. "What's wrong with it?" cried Blue Belle. "It's a syphilitic, like it's mother. Without commitment, there is only foolish blindness! You blinded yourself to that man's failings, and where is he now?" Blue Belle looked around but he was gone. Her azure eyes filled with tears. The wise woman did not relent. "It's also very small and clearly suffers from your alcoholism. It may well be brain damaged, but we shall never know because it has expired its last breath before even taking it's first." Blue Belle cried and cried, suddenly alone in her very tiny world.

The wise woman sat on the bed and took Blue Belle's head in her lap. "If only I had listened," Blue Belle wept. "If only I had taken my pleasures in moderation and sought to better myself. If only I had been the least bit..." but she could say no more, for she too had expired.

From her burial mound in the local graveyard, a rose bush grew and bloomed with the loveliest pale blue roses, but only for a season, and then they too were gone.

Sarah Palin's Gender Roles

2008-10-22T20:14:00.000-07:00

Rachel Maddow showed a clip from a Sarah Palin speech given yesterday in a location that isn't New Mexico where Palin takes "Joe the Plumber" to the next level. Now everyone, according to Maddow, is [Name] The [Occupation]. Palin gives two lists: people she's met on the campaign trail and signs being waved in the hall where she's speaking. Her list of people she's supposedly met tells me a lot about her concept of gender roles. She's chosen occupations that are architypical and sometimes old timey.

Ed the Dairyman
Tito the Builder
Phil the Bricklayer
Rose the Teacher
Corinna the Nurse

Now contrast that with the people who are at her rally or speech or whatever (as read from the signs they're waving.

Anne the Engineer
Dave the Cop
Jeffery the Hockey Player
Jon the Only Republican in My High School

It's interesting to me that she chose architypal occupations, confirming that the whole "Joe the Plumber" thing is, for them, about wooing people whose primary concerns are those of business. And men are builders and bricklayers and dairymen. Women are teachers and nurses. The people at her rally (or whatever), however, did not choose architypal occupations because they chose either their actual occupation or something else that they think defines them. And the first one (at least in Maddow's clip) indicates that Palin's "women are teachers and nurses" view is not our reality any longer. Anne the Engineer. I like it.

If it were anyone else, I would admit that it is patently unfair to judge someone on the content of one excerpted speech. But Palin has stuck me as a kind of unintentional truth-teller. Her pagent-style of question answering (just keep talking! fluently! about anything, it doesn't matter!) lets things slip all the time. And, frankly, I just don't think she's all that bright. I mean, telling everyone that the campaign moved out of Michigan without consulting it's VP pick who had to email her runningmate, "Oh c'mon, do we have to?" is just so obviously a terrible idea. But it let us know exactly where she stands with the campaign behind closed doors. And I think this is the same kind of thing. When she's most comfortable, she's most revealing. She's working with some very old material, like 1960s style. Yes, women work, but primarily at one of two jobs.

Campaign lit

2008-10-22T19:13:00.000-07:00

I'm trying a new thing: short posts. It's very hard for me, as a natural-born bloviator. Normally I would wax philosophical (read: gripe) about all the campaign lit making it our way, what it means, why it's nutty, how badly they've missed their target audience... But instead I'm just going to mention the one thing that actually caught my eye from a Yes on 57 ad.

Measure 61 is a failed, one-size-fits-all approach to crime.
...
Measure 57 has some things we really need. It targets repeat offenders of crimes like identity theft and requires drug treatment.

I read that and laughed to myself. "Oh, who put this together? 'One-size-fits-all is bad! Make all identity thieves get drug treatment!' A+, guys! Like drug treatment is really going to cure repeat identity thieves." Then I read the next sentence.

About 85% of offenders in jail for property crime have drug and alcohol addictions.

You know, that really took the wind out of my imaginings about the one identity thief who isn't a drug addict being required by law to attend NA meetings. Sails. (Sorry - broken metaphor, broken sentence.) He's all, "No, really guys. I do not do drugs." And they're all, "Sure you don't, buddy. Look: you flunked the 'I don't do drugs' test. You stole credit card numbers." And he's like, "But I wanted them to feed my internet porn addiction!" And at about that time my brain registered, "wow, 85%? really?" That's a pretty good idea, drug treatment, if that stat is true.

THE END

Doucheyest commercials ever

2008-10-21T20:43:00.001-07:00

Have you seen those "rotoscoped" Charles Schwab Commercials? They are the douchiest commercials in the history of douchbaggery. I thought the one good thing the on-coming depression (oh, sorry - Depression) would do is end that insufferable "I'm rich, whiny and a cartoon all for no good reason" ad campaign. Alas, that is not the case. I saw a new one last night, which I don't see on YouTube yet. It's a guy opening a bottle of wine (zing!) and smugly talking about how he's so not worried about his investments. Seriously: if I had any money, those ads alone would have me looking everywhere else before Schwab for my investment needs.

CNN has slow readers

2008-10-20T18:26:00.001-07:00

It seems like every day CNN has a new headline related to "Marcia Brady." I think that someone there is reading Maureen McCormick's memoir very slowly and everyday is posting some new tidbit from whatever chapter they've managed to complete. Here is today's: "Marcia Brady says set was 'hormone city'." I did a search to see what the previous ones were, but CNN has the worst search engine ever. And I'm lazy. So you'll just have to take my word for it: someone at CNN is reading a memoir full of rather obvious revelations very, very slowly and they'd like you to know about it.

Your full emotional spectrum in one drive

2008-10-19T18:39:00.001-07:00

I know - two posts in one day. But the other post was so very very crappy, we'll just pretend it doesn't exist. Have you driven up Powell blvd recently? (No need to answer, People Who Don't Live In Portland. This is a rhetorical question for you.) We had not in quite some time, but today took it from 39th to the I-205 entrance at 82nd. Anything you have ever felt - happiness, appreciation for beauty, sadness, depression, befuddlement, total confusion, ire, rage, amusement - you will feel again in those 43 blocks. I am not kidding - it's a roller coaster for the brain.

Happiness
Okay, you pretty much have to start out happy. I may have lied about the full spectrum being on Powell itself. Unless you super love Safeway or restaurants with weird names (see befuddlement below). And for most people, they get happiness once they hit amusement. But let's assume you start out happy because you're going somewhere you want to be going (like to REI to get a cycling-specific balaclava).

Depression
What is with those weird parking areas on the south side of the street? What is up with that? They're so completely awful! In fact, they're so awful that you almost don't notice you're on a tree-lined boulevard complete with planted medians.

Someone told me once that those odd parking islands were created to encourage shoppers and build Powell up as a shopping district. The idea was that you'd increase commerce if people had a place to park and it would be better for the neighborhood if shoppers weren't parked in front of houses just off Powell. Here are the problems with this set up, if that is indeed true: 1) all the "shopping" is on the other side of the street. And from the large cement retaining walls behind the little parking areas, I think that's how it was intended. 2) Powell is a four lane highway with few protected cross-walks. 3) Most of the commercial buildings on the north side of the street have their own little parking lots.

Appreciation for Beauty
You almost don't notice the trees on Powell, but at a certain point (maybe around 70th?) the blue sky is filled with riotous yellow leaves. So long as you look up, your heart swells.

Sadness
This really goes with the depression. It just makes you sad to know that once upon a time someone had great hopes for Powell. They planted trees, they zoned light commercial, they probably even encouraged the development of local neighborhood and business associations. And for what? It's dirty and dingy. Everyone seems resigned to life behind a cement retaining wall, the neighborhood hiding from the expected noise the busy little shopping district was meant to generate.

Rage
There are always some kind of traffic shenanigans going on along Powell. Pedestrians run out into traffic like common squirrels; drivers make sudden, violent and thoroughly unheralded left turns; cars with no functioning brake lights cause others to stop short; the list goes on. We did not actually suffer rage ourselves; but some of the drivers stuck behind the two cars waiting for the police to come after their rear-ender in the center lane seemed to be pretty full of rage. Although we didn't feel it, we did at least see it, and that's something, right?

Ire
We did feel ire, though. After we made it past the minor accident slowdown, the woman ahead of us decided to stop a full car-length back from the line. While that didn't make a difference to us, it did effect someone behind us because they couldn't quite get passed the accident detritus until the light changed, which slowed things down further. That's so irritating - just rude.

Befuddlement
I love this restaurant name: Dream Cafe & More. I tried to accurately represent the relative sizes of the fonts, like the "& More" is being whispered. There was a pumpkin patch with lots of hay bales and some bouncy castles to draw in kids. There was a sign that read:

Corn Stock
Straw
For Sale

Pete asks, "Do you think they mean 'corn stalks'?" I like the possibility that spelling was not the author's problem. S/he wanted people to invest in his/her corn. S/he had a supply of corn s/he wanted to sell. S/he did not have any suped up models of corn on hand.

Depression, Again
Pete pointed out a girl walking along with two nasty, dirty, swarthy looking men. She was several inches taller, very slender and pretty, wearing a tight pink hoodie, a short very cream-colored skirt and shimmery tights. It was the skirt Pete pointed out. "Do you think that's an ice-skater's skirt?" That is exactly what it looked like. It fell to just below her butt (or where a butt would be if she had one), was kind of pleated/ruffle-y full, and had some kind of gold trim along the bottom. Pete says, "Prostitute, do you think?" I said, "I dunno. I mean, she looked pretty healthy." (Most of the hookers we see around 82nd look like they're hooking to feed a pretty nasty drug habit - all pock-marked and lurching.) "And," I continued, "she wasn't, like, trying to be sexy at all. She wasn't wearing a ton of visible make-up. Her hair was pretty boring. It looked like she was just walking along with two dudes. My guess? Russian. Tall, slender, elegant, mixing sportswear with what could be nightclub-wear but is really more misappropriated sportswear. I bet those guys were relatives." But it's pretty depressing to see a pretty girl walking along the street and because she's with two kind of gnarly guys, assume she's a hooker.

Total Confusion
And then we crossed 90th. And we saw this. Guess what it is? It's just sitting there on the north side on Powell, at 92nd. Next to the I-205 on-ramp, almost under an overpass. Go on: guess!

The Columbia School of English. Yeah, I have no idea why. Do you think they built that building for themselves? It reminds me of that episode of South Park where the Persians want to take over the local lesbian bar and Mrs. Garrison freaks out because they'll do up the whole place in columns and gold curtain rods.

Amusement
See above

Heirloom Tomatoes Have Funny Names

2008-10-19T11:26:00.000-07:00

A certain friend in medical school had a quote involving (but not really about) heirloom tomatoes as his facebook status and that reminded me that cooking light had a great guide to heirloom tomatoes last month. I didn't realize that they all had different names, which just goes to show I really need to use my brain in a wider variety of circumstances. (There are like a billion varieties of apple, potato, tulip and rose, and each has a different name, but tomatoes? Nah. They're all either "the red kind," "the green kind," "the yellow kind" or grape, cherry, pear or plum shaped.) Not only do they all have different names (duh), but they have crazy hilarious names! Examples? Mr. Stripey! Abraham Lincoln! Morgage Lifter! Yes, these are actual tomato names. Seriously: go check out that guide.

On a related (and probably equally uninteresting) note... Last summer, in line at Fred Meyer, there were two women behind us, one of whom had five or six green zebra tomatoes. The woman behind her comment on how nice they looked and wasn't it nice how you could get so many tomato varieties, even at Fred Meyer these days. The woman with the green tomatoes said, "Oh, it's wonderful. I've wanted to make fried green tomatoes for years, but they never sold green tomatoes before." Here is my understanding: friend green tomatoes are made with the end-of-the-season green tomatoes that won't ripen before the first frost. They're kind of hard and sour, so they're sliced horizontally in rounds, breaded and fried for a late summer treat. I assume it's the hardness that makes it work: can you imagine trying to bread horizonal rounds of a ripe tomato? It seems like all the seeds would fall out and make a mess, and you'd just end up with fried tomato rings. But you know, I've been wrong before.

So I turned around and said, "I'm sorry to butt in, but it was my understanding that fried green tomatoes were made with unripe tomatoes."

The woman replied, "Oh no - my receipe says green tomatoes. Like heirloom."

The woman behind her said, "I always heard unripe too. That's why they're green."

"Well," said the woman with the green tomatoes, "you can do it with either. That's what my recipe says."

And we all left it at that.

Regional cuisine is always tricky when it's not your region. I'm sure that if you're southern, you just know that fried green tomatoes are either heirloom or unripe like northwesterners just know that... um... philberts and hazelnuts are the same thing? ...that hefeweizen is made of wheat? Okay, those are suck comparisons. (Our regional cuisine - which I would sum up as salmon served with spinach ravioli in a hazelnut beurre blanc and a salad of mixed bitter greens, toasted hazelnuts and apple slices dressed in a balsamic vinegrette - is pretty descriptive and relatively straight-forward; we like to tell you in the name of the dish which exact ingredients you will be eating.) But if you look at fried green tomato recipes, they simply don't say "these tomatoes are unripe." And maybe they aren't; maybe I've made the mistake of assuming "green" means "unripe" because I have the horticultural skills of a swarm of locusts.

Okay, now I've wandered far afield of my original point (such as it was) and I don't know how to wrap this up. Pete is watching Telemundo and it is showing commercials for super-sexy telenovelas and "oropordinero.com." This seems like a good way to lose either a lot of money or a lot of gold. It has a little BBB Better Business Bureau logo in the bottom left corner at the end. Or what could be a BBB logo - it's hard to tell because it's so small. I have to say that would just confirm my belief that a BBB designation means nothing. (The movers that shanghai'd our stuff to northern Maryland and stole our vacuum - of all things - were BBB members.)

Sorry this is so rambling. I will leave you with a link to a joke that is terrible on every level. It's not funny, it's badly punctuated and contains a rather obvious factual error that is extremely annoying. Enjoy!

Just for Joe

2008-10-17T19:34:00.000-07:00

Local Commercials: What are you guys thinking?

2008-10-16T14:48:00.000-07:00

So is there a law that local, amateur commercials have to be terrible? (I know there's a law that Lifetime movies have to be terrible. I'm pretty sure it's in the Constitution.) It would have never occurred to me that local commercials could be better than terrible before living in Maryland. And then we were exposed to the wonderfully bizarre Senate Insurance ads. (I think there was one with heads in a bag like bowling balls, but maybe I'm thinking of something else because I couldn't find a link.)

Local carpet ads seem to be the worst. I mean, "Carpet Carl"? What is he thinking? That's so gross. And then there's one for like, The Rug Store, or something. With a guy in a wagon, talking to a taxidermied bull about getting the carpets to the store. And the bull's eyes bulge and he pulls the carpet salesman out of the wagon and drags a very obviously stuffed shirt and pants to the carpet store. Um, what? And that isn't the only local ad starring a bull either. There's the car dealership (Wilsonville Toyota?) that goes a very long way for a very dumb joke: there's no bull at that dealership. My question is: why use the bull contrivance in the first place? If it's so hard to come up with a reasonable scenario in which someone might utter the phrase, "There's no bull at Wilsonville Toyota," why not try something else?

That's what makes Senate's line ("You can tell those other insurance companies to kiss my bumper - just kiss it!") so brilliant: when would you not say "kiss my bumper?" A friend of my mom's said that they enter the New Yorker cartoon caption contest every week with the same line: "Fuck off." And holy crap if it doesn't always work and if it isn't always funny. "Kiss my bumper" works the same way.

And then there are the ads that are unintentionally funny. In this one, I think maybe they meant to be a little funny, but maybe also a little cool. And the cool part definitely did not work. But they're having fun, so it's fun to watch, even if it is a little cringe worthy. There's another local commercial for a furniture store that I can't find on-line that makes no sense at all. And they think they're being funny - they're aren't - and it is just painful to watch. Well, at least as baffling as it is painful. There's a woman and she says, "Normally I like to dress up for ads this time of year, but my husband said he wanted to do something more serious. Let's go see what he came up with." [cut to woman opening door to office. Inside office is man on phone in a very very bad banana suit. Man shrugs and looks, um, sheepish? Is that what he was going for?] "Well, I guess he changed his mind!" The woman says shrugging the most exaggerated shrug ever. How is that selling furniture?? How?

The Portland "Local Ads Must Be Awful" Ordinance seems to extend to local politics as well. While Earl Blumenhaur, Gordon Smith and Jeff Merkeley (to name a few) have all managed to put together ads that do not look like they were shot on a ten-year old camcorder with a budget of pocket change, some duct tape and a handful of Brach's neopolitains, the same can not be said of Diane McKeel (for county commissioner). Check out the second video in her embedded feed. (I couldn't find a YouTube of this specific ad.) What do you think: does she know it looks terrible and she just wants everyone to know how good she is at following city statutes? Or does she think it's looking pretty awesome? Pete loves how half the 'S' in 'JOBS' is cut off. It's kind of like an SNL bit, but without Scarlett Johansson in a Curly Sue wig (more's the pity).

[Momentary digression: actually, there is an anti-Gordon Smith ad that is incredibly effective on mute. Seriously: hit mute now and then watch this ad. I think the photographs are beautiful - masculine, intense, emotional, even a little gritty - and the words really cut to the heart of the issue. Okay, now watch it with the sound. I think the sound totally kills the impact. The music is maudlin and the voice-over is just a little bitter, a little snide. The first few times I saw it, I saw it on mute, and I thought it was so powerful. "Yes," I thought, "This is how political ads should be. Artful, thoughtful, understated." We watch TV with the commercials on mute so often I don't really notice anymore, unless they don't make any sense without sound. I was so disappointed when I heard it for the first time. If I were the DCC (I think that's who did this), I would have just read the words on the screen so that the illiterate can understand as well and I would have had them read by veterans who feel that Gordon Smith should not keep his seat in the Senate.
--Digression digression: I can't bring myself to hate Gordon Smith. Have I said this before? Maybe so - but it's true. I just don't feel any vitriol. Merkeley seems just as bad, he just happens to share one or two more of my views than Smith does. But Pete put it this way: "No, we need Gordon Smith out so that I can see revenge enacted upon Lieberman." Fair enough.--]

I probably should have embedded some of those videos. ::sigh:: But I'm soooo lazy.... Here, I'll embed the singing furniture ad for you as a parting gift.

Oregon Coast

2008-10-12T00:02:00.001-07:00

Pete and I were at the coast today and oh my god it was so beautiful there are no words to describe it so here are some pictures. [Error 503: Pithy phraseology about weeping, jealousy and not living in the pacific northwest not found. Please substitute actual conversational content or accept fail.] ::Fail accepted::

Birthdays!

2008-09-07T11:23:00.000-07:00

Today is my little brother's 25th birthday. Hip hip, hooray! Post a birthday wish here (if you have one) or leave him a note on Facebook. Happy Birthday, Buddy!

Did I miss something?

2008-09-03T18:41:00.000-07:00

Here are my questions/comments from the Republican convention speeches I've watched so far:

When did Washington, D.C. become Liberal?
When did "War Hero" become synonymous with "Ready to be the Most Powerful Person on Earth"? (As Pete says, "Therefore, all POWs should be President!")
How can you have the slogan "Country First" when you have an "Alaska First" VP?
Mitt Romney actually used giving Guantanamo detainees basic rights as an example of how awful the Democrats are. For serial!
And he also railed against the elite East Coast Washington Insiders that run government. Does he know of which state he was governor?
Huckabee said two things that he thinks are related but are clearly not even a little related. First, that he's so sick of hearing about how unqualified Palin is. (Incidentally, me too! She should step down and save us all the headache.) Secondly - and this is not an exact quote (I'm not a stenographer) but it's close - "Sarah Palin got more votes for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden did for President!" Pete's reaction was, "No she didn't! That's an outright lie!" I think Huckabee was probably being facetious, but I could be wrong.
I mean, he does believe Lincoln founded the Republican Party.
Evidently you don't need to explain how someone is qualified for the job, you just have to tell a super maudlin story about veterans and school children that has nothing to do with anything and that's good enough.
But at least Huckabee's likable. At least it's clear that he really believes in all the crazy crap he says, like earnestly.
And at least they keep to cutting Palin's kids. They're cute and photogenic and well-behaved. They may be the only well-behaved people there.
Guiliani wants approbation for keeping simple, unimportant promises.
As creepy as McCain's smile is, Guiliani's is equally douchebaggy. And yes, that is my personal opinion. I hope no one holds that against me. I'm very ired by this viewing experience.
Guiliani seems to think that the part of this ticket we find hard to believe is that McCain is a patriot who loves his country. He's working very hard to convince us that this is true. At least he's picking an easily attained goal.
When did it become okay to be pro-Reagan again?
They're still arguing experience? THEY'RE STILL ARGUING EXPERIENCE!
Guiliani is seriously a douche. Pete just asked, "How can anyone not hate these people?" Dude, I'm turning it off. Fuck this guy. These aren't arguments, this is just dicking around and pretending like the failing economy, the war in Iraq and everything else that's wrong with the country right now aren't serious problems that deserve serious consideration from qualified professionals.

Hopefully a final Palin Post

2008-09-02T23:31:00.000-07:00

There is buzz out there in the electronic world that Palin may step down. McCain's people are trying to rally, but it doesn't really give one much hope for her as a candidate. For the sake of her future political career, she really ought to. Really, though: she ought never to have accepted in the first place. She knows how unqualified she is.

But there are some weird things about her that I haven't mentioned. I would link to them, but it's late and everyone has the Googles, so I'll leave it for now. (If I remember, I'll come do it later, but no one hold their breath.) Okay, time for another bulleted List of Laziness. Weee!

She was a member of an Alaskan secessionist group. Or she spoke at their convention and said, "I totally agree with all your views." (I know - I should be providing links because without direct reference I suck at facts.)
Her husband works for an oil company (although this is from an Alaskan friend who has never heard of her).
That same Alaskan friend made me laugh out loud today, writing that if she's governor of Alaska and has an 80% approval rating, she must 1) be in bed with big oil; and 2) be a republican "i.e. she doesn't believe in evolution, photosynthesis, or gravity."
There were shenanigans when she got into the mayor's office in Wasilla - a town of dirt roads without sewers, it appears (hey, a link! I know, it's amazing). I don't have a link for this right now (Pete read it to me yesterday), but it seems that she fired everyone, eliminated the office of Town Historian (or similar) and was implementing loyalty tests... in a tiny town without paved roads. Wow. Just, wow. Can you say "power mad"? I can. Power mad. What would she be like as Vice President? I imagine the Bush-Justice Department scandal is probably a pretty good template.
This is just an observation: she had a crazy accent and now she doesn't. If you watch videos of her from her sports casting days on YouTube, she has this crazy almost-Canadian accent. It's really charming. It's gone now - I wonder how much work that took - but I wonder if you could give your campaign the same kind of folksy feel with that accent as with a Southern accent.
She isn't all bad: she enacted a big tax on oil companies, including on windfall profits. That's pretty impressive. Pete says, "What I like about Kevin Drum is he will give credit where credit is due without reservation." And of course, I want to be just like Kevin Drum so that Pete will still like me too. Plus, it leads me to believe that you will find this gem at Mother Jones.
Maybe she was only vetted via Google. (Okay, I'll link to things I've read in the last six hours.) Now if I were only vetted via Google, I would come out looking pretty good. I went to U of O recently, I'm middle aged and living in Cedar Rapids where I donate a lot to various charities, I worked on something related to stroke... Yes, truly, I am a woman of the world.
Oh yeah, and she's under investigation and has hired a private lawyer for her alleged misdeeds in the firings of the safety commissioner and her ex -brother-in-law.
Anything else I forgot is probably here.

I just think this is the craziest thing. I don't understand how they could be so careless. I know: McCain wants to court the far right. But there are plenty more appropriate people to put on a ticket who could accomplish just that, I'm sure of it. All I can do is hope that this is the last I'll feel compelled to write about this woman. Unless I try to think of some other LOLVPs. What scares me is that she won't step down or be taken off the ticket and people will still vote for McCain knowing that if/when he dies, she'll take over.

So here is what I tell myself to feel better. Chester A. Arthur was a purely political pick for VP on Garfield's part. He was not considered desirable or necessarily qualified and I don't think he and Garfield even really got along. He wasn't supposed to take the job, either. When offered, though, he said, "This is a higher honor than I have ever dreamt of attaining. I shall accept!" This is one of my favorite quotes ever because it's exactly what you should say in that situation. When Garfield was assassinated, Arthur became president. Wikipedia says:

Publisher Alexander K. McClure wrote, "No man ever entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted, and no one ever retired… more generally respected." Author Mark Twain, deeply cynical about politicians, conceded, "It would be hard indeed to better President Arthur's administration."

Although they represented completely different views on the subject of civil service reform (I think), Arthur felt it was his duty to respect the late President's wishes and turned his back on his people, the Stalwarts. I'm sure I'm the only person to ever say this, but I hope there's a little Chester A. Arthur in all of us. And I hope that there's a big Chester A. Arthur in Palin and that she'd do the right thing if the opportunity presented itself. (Also, everyone should read Sarah Vowel's Assassination Vacation, which is where I first learned about all this. That book is so good - I have to find it and read it again.)

Palin's Daughter

2008-09-01T11:02:00.000-07:00

Caveat Lector: Pete points out that this is in questionable taste because it's rumor mongering and about a candidate's child, etc. So read no further if you agree that rumors should not be discussed without ample evidence or that candidate's children are always off limits no matter what.

One of the rumors that's been flying about is that Palin's fifth child (Trig) is not actually her son, but her grandson. She didn't announce she was pregnant until she was seven months and did not look demonstrably pregnant. Her 16-year old daughter was suddenly out of school with mono (for five months) so there are not a ton of pictures of her from that time. Then, when she supposedly went into labor a month early, after her water broke she flew 4,000 miles and skipped the hospital in Anchorage to return to her home town to give birth. Aside from the fact of such a choice being just plain dangerous (in fact, in the past, OBs were known to suggest an overdue woman take a short flight as the pressure change could induce labor), everyone knows that the more times you give birth, the quicker it's likely to happen. Anyway, the whole story, including pictures of the daughter from earlier in the year where she does look demonstrably pregnant, is here. I highly recommend reading it as it is just flabbergasting how totally improbable this story is.

Most liars would agree that the most convincing lies omit the details and stick to the truth as much as possible. (In fact, the best way to get caught lying is to look down as you speak or make too much eye contact and to offer too many details.) The Karl Rove school seems to believe that you can say any damn thing you want, no matter how crazy or impossible, and so long as you gnash your teeth and growl while saying it, people will buy it. And if they don't, never try to explain how your crazy story is possible, just accuse them of something, anything, and never ever back down. This story Palin has told is such a weird mix of too much detail AND too many crazy, impossible things that it shouldn't work on any level. Every time she offers a new detail, it fails to jibe with the rest. And she just brazens it out.

Now she's saying that her daughter is currently five months pregnant and therefore couldn't be Trig's mother. Um, what? My guess is that baby will be born two months "premature."

I don't think a candidate can be measured by the choices their children make. They can, however, be measured by the way they handle the fall-out of those choices. We've (my family and I) been talking about this story a lot for several days now and I wasn't going to write anything about it because I agree that candidates' children should not be brought into the process, scrutinized, etc. But in this case Palin has brought her daughter into it herself in exposing her current pregnancy in response to rumors. If she did pretend to be pregnant to cover up what she considers to be a shameful act on the part of her daughter, she made a lot of bad choices in bringing her pretend baby into the world, and that should matter to voters because it speaks to her decision-making skills. If she really was improbably pregnant, it should speak to them even more strongly. If these rumors are untrue, I apologize for having speculated. But the rumor seems more plausible than the purported truth and that is impossible to ignore.

Sarah Palin and why you sometimes see me, fingers in ears, eyes shut tight, shouting, "Nah nah nah, I can't hear you!!"

2008-08-30T10:40:00.000-07:00

Who is this Sarah Palin? And why do I keep wanting to call her Nancy or Cathy? Yeah, she totally looks like a Cathy to me. But that is neither here nor there. My plan today is to round up some information on this person of whom I've never before this week heard even the slightest mention. And to explain to those who know me why sometimes I'm like, "Let's learn everything about this issue; come on, it'll be fun," and others I'm like, "Lalalalala! I don't wanna know! Shut up shut up shut up! Lalalalala!". Please add links to other interesting information about Palin and why she was chosen in the comments, if you find it!

Where to start? I have quite a few go-to sites (as it turns out). If I want the liberal, not-on-tv view, I go to Washington Monthly or Kevin Drum (now on Mother Jones). If I want the "we're so in the middle, we make up opposing viewpoints to stories that don't really have them" view, I go to CNN. For someone shouting an echo of how I feel about something at an unreasonable volume, Countdown with Keith Olbermann. (I'm really looking forward to Rachel Maddow's new show - I think it might be "someone echoing how I feel about something at a reasonable volume".) For the Oregon connection, The Oregonian. For the full backstory that will make me feel like it's impossible to hate anyone and to totally understand who they are as a person, the New Yorker. Usually I would consider The New York Times and Washington Post good sources of factual information. And of course, for the Crazy, I have to turn to Fox News. Oh, or a Bill Kristol op-ed in The New York Times.

But what that leaves out is a real sense of what's going on in a real conservative's head. Generally speaking, I avoid trying to do that anyway. I hate to admit it, but I'm only a sort of political person. In the same way that I overempathize with characters on tv, how George's antics on Seinfeld make me feel personally ashamed and nauseated, reading someone's passionate opinions that are in direct contradiction with my own and knowing that I can do nothing to convince them they're wrong also makes me feel sick. I feel depressed, despondent, angry and yes, a little nauseated. We are each largely powerless to enact real change in the world on our own. It's why we form communities of like-minded people. Barack Obama isn't where he is today because he, as one man, had some great ideas. He's there because he had some great ideas that appealed to communities of people who acted cooperatively and collectively to push him to the forefront as the spokesman for their beliefs. I know this, but I get bogged down in the details, the individuals. I know I can't persuade an anti-abortionist that their point of view doesn't make for good policy and is, in fact, in contradiction with both science and the ethical standards of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart that good people who only want a better world can be so closed-minded and, well, so wrong. And then I realize that if one person is making that point of view known on a national level, they represent a community and then I feel totally, completely powerless. And I can't sleep at night. So a lot of the time, I tune out politics entirely, because it's just too draining to pay attention.

That said, I will try to keep my head out of the sand through this, even though the stuff Pete was reading aloud last night was already turning my stomach.

I think I'll start with CNN. They've been driving me nuts lately with their "it's not real journalism if you don't provide two opposing viewpoints, so make something up!" style of reporting. As predicted, they offer two opposing commentaries. Although as Pete pointed out, the craziest right wing thing they could find (apparently) was "She's okay, guys," while the left wing piece is literally titled, "Is McCain out of his mind?" Their article on her biography begins with what I think is a perfect summary of the differences between the McCain and Obama campaigns thus far. McCain's people say what they would like to be true and Obama's people state the facts in simple sentences.

The McCain campaign calls her a "tough executive who has demonstrated" readiness to be president. The Republican National Committee calls her a "conservative star with the talent, energy and family support necessary to carry out common sense policies."

But the Obama campaign calls her a candidate with "the thinnest foreign policy experience in history" who is "currently under investigation in her own state." And one of the Senate's top Democrats, Charles Schumer, said that although she is "a fine person, her lack of experience makes the thought of her assuming the presidency troubling."

So here are facts I have gleaned from CNN. She's...

44
not just the governor of Alaska, she's the first female governor of Alaska
the mother of 5 children, including one heading to Iraq
been "a beauty queen, high school basketball star and TV sportscaster."
the ex-mayor of Wasilla, AK
been involved in the politics of oil
under investigation for having the safety commissioner fired because he wouldn't fire her ex-brother-in-law
anti-abortion
pro-gun, a hunter and a lifetime member of the NRA
nicknamed "Barracuda" from her basketball days (not because she's a huge Heart fan, sadly)
"outside the beltway"

Here are the buzzwords I've gleaned from CNN

Game-changer
Maverick
Hail-Mary pass

I like this Rollins quote, too. It's like the second sentence and the last two are completely unrelated. Actually, the last two sentences are themselves completely unrelated, except in Rollins head. Pete liked that his ace in the hole is, "she plays the flute." Well, touche!

She is blunt, outspoken and charming. And don't assume she can't stand toe-to-toe with Joe Biden. She is a great debater. And she was runner-up for the Miss Alaska title, won Miss Congeniality in that contest and plays the flute.

Rollins believes she'll appeal to women because, you know, she's got ovaries or something. I agree with Tina and Dale's comments to my post yesterday: the idea that she'll draw away Hillary supporters from the Democratic fold is laughable. And it shows how intensely sexist we still are as a culture. But I think Sam Bee summed it up best on the Daily Show last night.

Okay, I'm not even going to look at the iReports because they'll just make me angry. Where to next? Let's go to the Washington Monthly. At least there someone will be willing to say what we're all thinking: This is a totally irresponsible choice. Holy cats, there's a lot of it. Maybe a summary would be better.

Here is what the Right is thinking. They're, um, not impressed. She's unqualified, she's not ready to lead anyone should McCain die and they don't want to vote for her.
And here are what Alaskans think. They think she's unqualified, she's not even a good governor of Alaska, she doesn't really understand the job and she oversimplifies complex issues.
And here is a summary of how totally nuts this choice is.
Not only did she very likely fire someone for not firing her ex-brother-in-law, she appears to be caught on tape lying about it. She also "then replaced him with a guy facing a credible sexual harassment accusation, and who was out of the job two weeks later." There's also a link to a WaPo story about "just how embarrassing this scandal is for" her. I can't decide what my favorite part is, though. The part where we're informed that the word "impeach" has been thrown around up north or the part where the author (Steve Benen) suggests that she might not be on the ticket come November. I agree with Pete, though, on that count: it would be just as big a train wreck.
Washington Monthly also agrees with Tina and Dale: women just aren't this shallow/stupid. WM keeps talking about how cynical a choice this is, and the more I read, the more I agree with that assessment. It's not just cynical about how women choose a leader, it's cynical about Americans in general. McCain might as well start handing out buttons that say, "Fuck you, Morons. McCain '08."
A classic quote from McCain's people. "Hey guys, don't worry: doctors assure us McCain's got at least four more years in him." Also, they admit that she isn't ready to lead.
This choice may be explained by the fact that McCain had only ever spoken to her twice before offering her the VP spot.
Clearly, Karl Rove was not consulted about the VP pick. This is a great quote from earlier this month where he basically describes all the reasons Palin is a poor choice in talking about why Tim Kaine, governor of Virginia, would be a bad choice for Obama. Hilarious!
If you only read one of these, read this one. It's a short, amusing list of items pertaining to Palin and McCain. McCain fun fact: he's 23 years older than Alaska.
Evidently, living in a state that borders another country is the same as foreign policy experience. Oh Fox News, it wouldn't be as funny if you weren't so damn proud of yourself.
She claims she was against the Bridge to Nowhere, but that might not be the whole story. In fact, she supported the project and kept the money.

Okay, maybe let's move on. Actually, this has gotten crazy long already, so I'm going to post it and then start a new entry with further links as I find them. So far the evidence leads me to believe that my assessment from yesterday remains the only plausible explanation.

Ferret Redux

2008-08-29T19:58:00.000-07:00

Someone has posted a comment on my post from last year about the Ferret Fancier program on OPB. I had totally forgotten about that thing. I went to YouTube to relive the glory and remembered why it made me so mean when everyone else thought it was purely hilarious: the dreaded tardwillies. I think you will agree, it's the most tardwilly inducing thing ever. Also, totally hilarious.

Whaaa??

2008-08-29T18:25:00.000-07:00

Okay, so here is my theory about McCain's bizarre choice: when he and Obama were the clear candidates, they sat down in a secret meeting and decided that Obama should clearly be the next president. "I will do everything in my power to make myself completely unpalatable," McCain says, his eyes tearful with pride, protecting his nation once again.
"I wish it didn't have to come to this, Old Friend," Obama says. "I wish this nation wasn't filled with idiots who will vote for any damn thing Fox News tells them to." McCain shakes his head.
"You know, I love this country more than anything. I would - and will - give my soul for it." Obama tries to interject, to console the brave warrior, but McCain raises his hand. "No, it's true. I just don't understand how people vote. I mean, if you truly love this country, wouldn't you want it run by experts?"
Obama smiles wryly. "Damn that Andrew Jackson... You know, it's been all downhill since he won on his "Isn't illiteracy cute? Ha ha!" ticket. Old Hickory indeed. But how will you do it, John? I mean, you've managed to look pretty forgetful and old these last few weeks, but you're no Bush. And even if you were, Americans keep electing that guy!"
"Yeah, what is up with that?" Both McCain and Obama are silent for a moment, scratching their heads in earnest thought. Then McCain continues: "It's quite simple, really. I'll be completely inconsistent in the positions I hold. I'll make bizarre claims and generally act like an old goat. When given a host of viable VP candidates, I'll choose some no-name, right wing wacko out of left field."
"What, like Miss Congeniality, Sarah Palin?" Obama jokes.
"Hey - that's not a bad idea. She's hot - and you know how I like the ladies - she's nuts, and she's totally inexperienced. She'll scare away the moderates, ire the sexists and get everyone else so hot under the collar they can't make it out the door to vote!"
"I don't know, it could be risky."
"But it's worth it, Friend! America is worth it!"
"You're doing a great thing, John. A great thing." They embrace and weep gentle tears of patriotic sacrifice.

Also, everyone should participate in Pete's LOLVP contest. I think it should be either VP, so look for those awesome "Wherz mah bukit??" Joe Biden pictures. Oh Internets, is there anything you can't turn into a meaningless meme?

EDIT: I fixed the spelling and punctuation errors. (Helps to have an editor for a husband!) I don't know why spell check wasn't underlining things before. And now it's underlining "wasn't." Truly, technology is a marvel. (I bet I just misspelled "marvel.")

Turns of phrase that don't mean what they used to

2008-07-29T23:26:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a lot of mysteries lately, mostly Agatha Christie, but I'm moving onto Sherlock Holmes. (Yes, I know he's not an author.) I was semi-ranting at Pete today about mystery novels and he suggested I should blog about them. And he's such a good husband, he even managed to sound like he thought other people would be interested in my thoughts and ideas rather than like he just wanted me to stop shouting about how totally unnecessary Watson is except to let the reader know that actually, Doyle doesn't agree with Holmes' misogyny/misanthropy at all. Sadly (or not), I am too tired to give full breath to my thoughts on the subject, so I thought I would post a short, related note about language in these books. Maybe I did this already? If so, sorry for the repeat. I'm too lazy to go look at my archive.

There are certain phrases that we just don't use any more. Or at least, not in the way they were originally conceived. Some are just strange, things that seem so very particular as to be too useless to remain current. Like, "She had Irish blue eyes put in with the smutty finger." Whaa?? Evidently this means that they had a smokey ring around the iris. If it were "put in with the smutty thumb" it would mean thick, dark eyelashes. Thanks, Agatha, for a phrase I will never have any reason to use because aside from being completely foreign to the modern person, it's just awkward to say. "With the smutty finger"? Why a definite article? Does it imply that God only uses one finger to play with ashes and occasionally also to put in eyeballs? Another favorite is "mare's nest," as in, "Well this is a right old mare's nest you've gotten us into." It means "complex situation," almost "imbroglio," but without the connotation of scandal.

The two phrases/words that have gotten me laughing again and again though are both redefinitions. I will give examples (though not quotes; again: lazy).

Suddenly, the Colonel left the room. Miss Marple ejaculated. "What is it?" cried her friend, startled by the uncharacteristic outburst.

"Watson, I'm sorry to knock you up so early in the morning, but it's really quite urgent."
"What? Sherlock, why are you knocking me up so early?"
"It's not me really, but a lady downstairs. And whenever a young lady knocks you up so early in the morning, you know it must be vitally important and I knew you wouldn't want to miss it."

Yes, that's right: boring old Miss Marple and her knitting are ejaculating all the time. All the time! And so are Holmes and Watson. If things get the least bit tense, Watson can't help himself. And when Holmes ejaculates, well, Watson is always startled, no matter how many times it happens.

The "knocked up" thing was quite unexpected. I mean, I'm familiar with the multiple meanings of "ejaculate," but I'd never seen "knocked up" used to mean "sought out" or "rung up" before. It kind of sheds new light on the provenance of the meaning "to be pregnant," don't you think? I mean, can you imagine fifty years from now if "to ring up" were to mean "to impregnate"? All kinds of British movies will cease to stand the test of time! Everyone will be ringing everyone up all the time and we will seem like the most lascivious of cultures!

Anyway, I thought you'd enjoy those two little artifacts.

My new favorite thing

2008-07-29T07:26:00.000-07:00

Okay, check out this site, it is hilarious: http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com.

I've been reading through the archives and it is just amazing what people will put up with. For big, expensive cakes, you sign a contract and the bakery has to deliver what you requested. It's shocking what people have ended up with. I mean, they should just be ashamed! But the author is wonderful! She's funny, a good writer, has an eye for both style and grammar mistakes and seems to be pretty even handed in doling out the blame. I've found myself laughing out loud more than once, but this entry had me laughing the entire time it took Pete to take out the trash and come back inside.

Also, if you are in Portland and haven't checked out the Portland Tribune's RSS feed, I highly recommend it. It's no more or less overwhelming than something like Political Animal or the Onion AV Club and I think it's the only place covering every single stabbing at the NE 82nd street MAX station and small arguments at local neighborhood meetings as well as more major city news, like arguments over the I-5 bridge and research at OHSU. Of course, I'm more interested in the police blotter-like stories. Portland is basically a lot of villages all mooshed together, sharing a transit system; the Trib's voice is kind of representative of that.

Another Royal Challenge

2008-07-18T09:30:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time a made a mix-CD of break-up songs that followed the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance). But I had no one I could give it to and now I don't know what happened to it. I suspect the play list was either pre-iTunes or on an old machine and didn't transfer for whatever reason. But it was pretty neat and I was super pleased with myself though haven't thought of it in years. But yesterday I was listening to "Breaking Up" off of "Under the Blacklight" (Rilo Kiley) and I thought to myself, "This would be the song to end that playlist. It's not just acceptance, it's excited to be free." Then I started wishing I could remember the rest of what was in the playlist, although I'll never know what the original contained because my music tastes change so much over time it's hard to remember that I used to like x and dislike y. I put it to you, friends and strangers who have stumbled upon this blog googling "Rilo Kiley" or "five stages of grief:" what would you put on a break-up CD so organized? In fact, I'm going to add two more "stage," one for before the standard five and one for after: background story and freedom. Please comment! Put the name of the song, the artist, what stage of grief and why it should go on the playlist there. I'll even start you out with some examples!

Breaking up, Rilo Kiley - Freedom
It's about the end of a relationship, but it's got a kind of pop dance hall beat in the chorus that makes you want to raise your arms over your head and jump around as you croon along with "Ooh! It! Feels GOOD to be free!"

Song for the dumped, Ben Folds Five - Anger
The chorus ("give me my money back, give me my money back you bitch") pretty much says it all.

Breaking up is hard to do, Neil Sedaka - Depression
Dude, I totally thought this song was by a girl. It is the classic breaking up song; it seems like a breaking up playlist would be incomplete without it.

Does he love you?, Rilo Kiley - Background story
A letter from one friend to another, telling a story about a potentially troubled marriage and ending with at least two broken hearts. It kind of sets the tone. If the tone is, "am I really sympathizing with a woman cheating with her best friend's husband?"

EDIT (7/19/08): Okay, now that I have more than a moment to think about this, I will add some more items to the list myself. I am inspired by Joseph and Beau's additions! I would also like to add the category "Categories Are Stupid" for those songs that just don't fit anywhere but should totally be on a break up mix tape. I appreciate transitional songs, too (Beau mentioned a couple, I think) because they would give said CD a smoother feel. Pete thinks I have too many Jenny Lewis songs already. But he he can go shove it up his nose; if he could remember lyrics, his list would be all Smashing Pumpkins and Radiohead.

Runaway, Del Shannon - Denial
It wasn't until Beau suggested Take a Letter Maria that I started to think about all the oldies rattling around in my brain from my middle school years as a KISN addict. Runaway sprang immediately to mind. And actually, as I started to type out the lyrics looking for the phrase that had struck me as "break up song," I was surprised to discover that this is actually kind of a creepy song. I mean, dude's girl fuckin' ran away from him to end the relationship, but he's still hoping to figure out where she's staying and "wondering" what went wrong, like he doesn't know, like maybe they'll get back together. Maybe if you beat her less, Del Shannon, she would have at least left you a note explaining why she left. Here are the lyrics to the first verse and chorus as I remember them from Middle School assemblies.

"As I walk along / I wonder / what went wrong with our love / a love that was so strong. / And as I still walk on / I think of / the things we'd done together / while our hearts were young. / I'm a walking in the rain! / Tears are falling and I feel the pain! / Wishing you were here by me / to end this misery / and I wonder / I wa-wa-wa-wa-wonder / Why / Why why why why why she ran away / and where she will stay-E-A / my little runaway / run run run run runaway."

(Digression: they passed around kazoos in buckets and so about half the 8th graders would end up filling in the weird musical interludes with appropriate buzzing while everyone else went "doo doot doo doo doo" in a high pitched whine. We also sang "Love Potion Number Nine," "You Don't Knock" and "I Know You Rider" in assemblies. It was a weird place, but we didn't mind assemblies as much as we might have.)

I know you rider, various (Joan Baez, Janis Joplin, Grateful Dead) - Background story?
All I remembered of this song was the chorus (which essentially boils down to "I know you rider / gonna miss me when I'm gone / gonna miss your baby / rollin' in your arms"). As I don't remember any of the verses, it's hard to know which version I learned in Middle School. The Grateful Dead version seems familiar and appears to be just about leaving, although evidently the earlier versions had a final verse that implied the singer wasn't coming back.

Superhero, Ani DiFranco - acceptance (with a touch of anger)
This was absolutely my favorite song, maybe senior year in high school/freshman year of college. It's so angry and strong and bitter. I think it's the bitterness that puts it in the acceptance bucket rather than the anger bucket. The beginning lyrics capture perfectly that place where hurt opens you up and exposes you to the cultural cliches to which you'd typically be immune. But by the final verse, she's taking back in control and saving herself.

Don't Pass Me By, The Beatles - bargaining?
Bargaining has got to be the hardest category. I'm guessing that oldies are probably the place to look for this "look, I'm make you a deal if you just don't go" category. This is the best I've come up with. I've never been sure if I understand this song correctly, but my interpretation was always that the singer had been left by his gf, she's lied to him about a car crash as an excuse for being late to meet him, but she's never going to show. And he's left pleading at the end, "You'd never know it hurt me so / I'd hate to see you go / Don't pass me by."

I don't want to spoil the party, The Beatles - hard core denial
If there were a stage of grief called "Wallowing" this would be its anthem. He's drunk, he's sad and he wants everyone to know. Oh, she's left me! Oh, I'm drinking to spite her! Oh... hey, maybe I'll just go see if I can find her...

For no one, The Beatles - depression
Oh my god, I probably listened to this song a thousand times between 8th and 10th grade. It's so deliciously sad, another passive agressively wallower trying to break his ex-lovers cold, cold heart. Joseph, I totally agree about Wilco's "I am trying to break your heart;" I think this song may have been the inspiration because that is so clearly its deal.

You could actually probably do a break up CD just with Beatles songs. I'm a loser, Another Girl, Yesterday, You won't see me... And the scary scary background story of "Run for your life," where John Lennon threatens to 'cap a bitch,' if you will, should she ever cheat on him. I will move on.

Paper Tiger, Beck - depression, acceptance
When I started to play this album to pick a song, Pete said from the other room, "Ohhh. That album wins." Indeed. This is my favorite song on this album of favorite songs and I'm not sure how I ever registered it as a break up song as it's only the last line that let's you know it's about a girl. Guess I'm Doing Fine would be my other solid vote from this album, but Pete's right: you could just give someone this album and say, "For when you're depressed and looking to move on," and it would be just about perfect. Unless they're suicidal. "I just hold on to nothing / see how long nothing lasts" and "it's only lies that I'm living / it's only tears that I'm crying / it's only you that I'm losing / guess I'm doing fine" might not be the best lyrics for the suicidal mind.

Selfless, Cold and Composed, Ben Folds Five - anger
Although ostensibly about accepting a break up, the singer is really this close to trying to bargain his way back in. He's pissed, she's already moved on (maybe) and she's making it really hard for him to try and hurt her the way he wants to.

Train in Vain, The Clash - passive aggression
Okay, that just needs to be a category. This is another song about a guy who was wronged, he wants her back, but he "supposes" there's nothing he can do. It sounds like acceptance, but he's still hanging on. It's not really anger either, in this case though. Not with lyrics like, "without your love, I won't make it through." The real question is: do these songs have a place on a break up album? If the point is to lead someone through the five stages of grief, starting out angry and hurt but leaving the 1-2 hours of music happy and ready to start over, is there a place for Mr. Passive Agressive Woe Is Me?

Little Hands, Duncan Sheik - bargaining
Okay, I know I'm going to get a raft of shit for owning, knowing and (god forbid) liking this album, but there it is. This is a weird song; its protagonist is in love with a woman who's told him there's no relationship there ("I need another lover like a hole in the chest") but keeps stringing him along. In the end, she cuts him loose and attempts to make him feel small, but he's too focused on the fact that he survived and thinks that maybe there's a chance for some future lovin': "I'll let it go but I'll never say never."

Okay, I feel like I'm starting to repeat myself, so I'll leave it here for now. If I add anymore, I'll do it in the comments section. I look forward to seeing more ideas from you all!

CNN: Still Stupid

2008-06-29T16:35:00.001-07:00

Here are the t-shirt options today:

Party begins for Spanish soccer fans
Bison again roam in Minnesota
Pets from floods need homes
Teacher fired for using book

But here is the one that would actually make an okay t-shirt:

Oldest profession feeling fuel-price pinch, too

Not that anyone wants a CNN headline t-shirt. I mean, that's still their greatest barrier. But it would help if the almost funny headlines were the one's making it rather than the definitely not t-shirt worthy ones. I mean, "Pets from floods need homes" is pretty much just an ad for the humane society. Which would be great if proceeds from the sale of those t-shirts went to help said pets find homes. But they don't. So very very lame.

Why is CNN so stupid?

2008-06-28T17:52:00.001-07:00

Have you noticed that CNN has this new thing where they put a t-shirt icon next to some of their headlines? If you click on it, you can order a shirt with the specific headline on it. My question is: why is choosing which headlines should be on t-shirts? They are universally retarded. I get the feeling that some baby boomer/greatest generation producer noticed that all The Young People were wearing t-shirts with nonsensical slogans on them, sometimes about different states being for lovers, sometimes about something called the "Flying Spaghetti Monster." And then s/he learned that some of them - the one's that read "Area Man" or "Area Woman" - were from a humorous fake news publication called the Turnip or the The Scallion or some such. S/he rushed into the marketing department and declared, "The Young People are idiots! They'll buy anything anything! They call it "irony;" I call it "profit." If they like wearing fake headlines on their chests, I'm sure they'll love wearing real headlines!"

I don't know who chooses which headlines could become shirts, but they are universally stupid. Why would you want that on a shirt? The thing with ironic t-shirt slogans is that they are a decontextualization. If you went to Virginia and bought a shirt that said "Virginia is for lovers," and were like, "Look at the awesome shirt I got; Virginia is totally rad," you would be a dork. Or someone's grandmother. But if you buy that shirt at a store, it is not actually an advertisement for Virginia, it's just an intentionally dorky t-shirt. And if you are intentionally dorky, then you must be cool because no one would ever intentionally be a dork. Or it is a shirt that has a non-slogan on it, like "Bowling Sucks" or "I'm A Quitter," something that no one would ever seriously use a t-shirt to advertise. And that juxtaposition is, I believe, funny. I think that's how ironic t-shirt logic works, anyway.

The choices from CNN are just headlines. They're informative. They're not even particularly funny. Here, I will give you the list of headlines with a t-shirt icon available right now:

McCain, Obama in nuclear battle
Motorists push car to get free gas
Lost dolphins feed in New Jersey river
Hawaii reels from high food prices

These are decontextualize; they provide their own context in that they are informational headlines. They aren't a juxtaposition, like something that would never be a headline to begin with (a la the Onion) because they are actual headlines. And they're not even dorky things someone's grandmother would buy. Grandma might think "Virginia is for lovers" is a cute slogan; she probably doesn't think "Motorists push car to get free gas" is all that adorable. It's so stupid! And it doesn't work even a little. I suggest checking these out whenever you use cnn.com; maybe you can explain to me who would buy such a shirt.

Identical Cousins. Wait, what?

2008-06-23T21:32:00.000-07:00

I don't know how it never registered when I was a kid, but what the hell was up with the premise of the Patty Duke Show?

"They're cousins, identical cousins and you'll find... they laugh alike, they walk alike, some times they even talk alike.... you could lose your mind! when cousins! are two of a kind!"

I mean, seriously: how did it never occur to me that there's no such thing as "identical cousins"? Also, why do I still know the theme song to a show that was already in reruns before my mother had even graduated high school? Hrm... I just looked it up on wikipedia and evidently I don't remember all of the theme song. Here are the lyrics in full (just try to wrap your head around all the ways in which none of this makes sense):

Meet Cathy, who's lived most everywhere,
From Zanzibar to Barclay Square.
But Patty's only seen the sights
A girl can see from Brooklyn Heights - what a crazy pair!

But they're cousins,
Identical cousins all the way.
One pair of matching bookends,
Different as night and day.

Where Cathy adores a minuet,
The Ballet Russes, and crepe suzette,
Our Patty loves to rock and roll,
A hot dog makes her lose control - what a wild duet!

Still, they're cousins,
Identical cousins and you'll find,
They laugh alike, they walk alike,
At times they even talk alike -
You can lose your mind,
When cousins are two of a kind!

Okay, I'll admit it, that was mostly filler. I don't really have anything more to say about this other than to invite you to really fully consider the insanity that is the idea of IDENTICAL COUSINS.

Also, is the bit about the hot dog innuendo? If so: gross.

Come Rape The Earth With The History Channel! Weee!

2008-06-08T23:08:00.001-07:00

Pete and I are big fans of the Discovery Channel show, "The Deadliest Catch" (please imagine that said with Mike Rowe's inflection). Crab fishing is a hard hard job and for the most part those guys are incredibly kind and funny, and philosophical about the lives they've chosen. The producers of the show work hard to make it clear that these men are not chumps, that they are tougher than tough and well seasoned, and that not just anyone could do their jobs. You root for the underdogs who are having a bad year, but you also root for the guy in the lead because it all comes down to being in the right place at the right time. The Discovery Channel (in my opinion) works hard to make it clear that these are all professionals. And in the two and a half seasons the show's been on, each crew has had good seasons and bad.

When I saw commercials for the History Channel's shows "Axe Men" and "Ice Road Truckers," I didn't realize they weren't Discovery Channel shows. One follows Oregon loggers and the other Canadian truckers up near the arctic circle. The commercials make it seem like they're also examples of programs that document "crazy dangerous jobs and the men who love them." While flipping channels today, I noticed that "Ice Road Truckers" was on and I thought, "Why not?" The intro said that the truckers were racing ahead of an arctic storm to deliver "much needed supplies." Then it showed what appeared to be a bunch of little houses in a tiny town all buried up to their roofs in wind-harried snow. "Wow," I thought, "Those guys are so brave to take that stuff to those villagers."

I watched the first five minutes or so with no distractions, but then started to knit and kind of tune out, so I was surprised to hear the phrase, "Without these supplies, the diamond mine cannot operate." Whaaaa? That's right - the much needed supplies are going to a Canadian diamond mine. These guys are driving 60,000 tons of truck and oil over less than 4 feet of ice to help DeBeers rape the earth. Way to be, History Channel.

And then Axe Men came on. I thought it would be about how hard it is to be a logger, maybe something about the changing industry. And maybe it generally is, but in the episode I just watched, it seemed to actually be about which crew of foul-mouthed hard asses could rape the earth (specifically the part called "Oregon") more quickly.

The thing that galls me the most is that they have totally stolen (WHOLESALE!) the Discovery Channel's format. They have the same voice over, the same switching from crew to crew with a map and their relative distances, and the same "so far this season" tallies of dollars earned or loads of trees hauled (or pounds of crab). If I were the Discovery Channel, I would be suing their asses hardcore right now. And yes, I think it's totally weird that I'm most bothered by their format theft, but there it is.

The thing about the Discovery Channel is that they show the crabbers being responsible - they measure each crab; they throw back the ones that are too small or female; and they explain their reasons for doing so in almost every episode. They talk about quotas and how the crabbers are fined if they go over their quota. They take the time to make it clear how carefully their crab fishermen are keeping track of the pounds of crab in their hold (who knows how the rest of the fleet behaves). This is an implicit commentary on the impact the crab fishing fleet has on the crab population. The History Channel, on the other hand, provides no commentary whatsoever on the impact driving semi-trucks carrying fuel over ice to diamond mines where it will be mixed with nitrate to blow up the earth (like mountain top coal mining). Seriously! What do the truckers think of that? What is the possible environmental damage? Is De Beers a responsible company? History Channel, you're dropping the ball. Maybe stick to things you know, like Hitler and the DaVinci code, and maybe the seasonal Nostradamus, Dracula and Jack the Ripper.

(Also, Mike Rowe - the voice-over guy for "The Deadliest Catch" and the star of "Dirty Jobs" - is frickin' awesome. I totally love that guy.)

Dirt: The Women's War

2008-06-02T00:15:00.000-07:00

Just quickly, have you noticed how a lot of cleaning commercials - especially for Swiffer and various vacuums - portray cleaning as a military campaign run by women? I've been thinking about this for a while. It's so pejorative it makes me angry every time I see some woman sneaking up on her "worst enemy" (dust!) like it's the only way she can make her shut-in life bearable. And there are the ones with women "dismissing" their mops in favor of their swiffers. In one version it's a female executive who appears to be letting an employee go... but no it's really her feather duster! In another a woman is counseled by her mother that it's time to make a change, "for the children" and then her baby starts to cry when... her dirty old mop falls over! (Yes, in one version it's an old English butler, but that always struck me as an after thought.) Anyway, these commercials super bug me. Feminism is about equality for everyone and even though these commercials seem to want to portray women as "powerful go-getters" who know what they want, they instead trivialize the gains women have actually made in the work force (and the world at large) by implying that those gains are still best applied to hearth and home. Actually, the only vacuum commercials I've seen that I don't find pejorative are the Dyson commercials (even though I do find him a wee irritating) because he speaks to his potential customers like they have some possibility of understanding why his product is better based on its actual features rather than an implication that said customers will be "empowered" by their purchase. I may post more on this later, but keep an eye open for such ads if you haven't noticed them and tell me what you think.

My Most Recent Movie Recommendations

2008-05-29T00:32:00.001-07:00

I must do this quickly before I die of tired.

Movies I have seen recently:

-Eddie Izzard, Unrepeatable.
Not as good as the first one I saw, but I still laughed most of the way through, and look forward to his other performances. Made me think of Joseph, actually. He has a whole thing about why he's a transvestite (or was at the time, I guess). It's very women's lib. Women can wear any article of clothing and men can't; he doesn't think that's quite fair. I thought of 'Seph and his kilt. And the comments/questions he gets. Izzard says it's always groups of men - five, to be exact - saying "Bloke in a dress! bloke in a dress!" to one another. And when he responds, "Yes. I'm a bloke in a dress," they seem at a loss. That seemed like a very Joseph attitude: "Um, duh? Can I help you with anything else, Captain Obvious? Well then, I'm off to be awesome!"

-Iron Man
Oh my god Robert Downey Jr is my new favorite male lead ever and may his franchise live on and become a huger success with each film and may none of them ever suck because seriously dude has seen enough bad shit already and you can see it in his soulful soulful eyes. ::sighhhhh::

-National Treasure II
OH GOD THE PAIN

-The Assassination of Jesse James by that Coward Robert Ford
I may be distantly related to Jesse James (if he was a cousin to the Younger brothers, I was named after their sister, Sydney Anne Younger) so I have naturally always coveted association with his mythology (who doesn't want a famous ancestor, regardless of how they garnered their fame). I wrote a paper on him in the 5th grade that ended with the poem/song of the same name (the source of the movie's title, if you will) so that was pretty neat. That's why I wanted to rent it. Here is what I thought after I saw it:
::buh::
It's so goddamned beautiful that I was rendered speechless. I'm not even sure if it's a good movie - although I think it may be great - because I was so stupefied by how beautifully it was framed and filmed. Also, Brad Pitt is just amazing. He's so tightly wound, so dark and terrible and paranoid, and yet so tragic and sad and wounded. You know what's going to happen - title's kind of a spoiler - and you can see it ramping up, but by the time it does, you still don't know whether to be sad for him or relieved that he's dead.
And yes, that is Zooey Deschanel doing a little burlesque at the end.

-Erm... Oh! Right! Girl Movie afternoon at mom's.

-27 Dresses
Not as bad as I expected. In fact: entirely watchable. The lead female isn't simpering or dumb, the lead male isn't trying to get in her pants (at least for most of the movie) and in the end, once they've finally been honest with each other, they're rewarded for their candor. Yay?

And more than that and I'd have to check my netflix queue. Which I'm not going to because I have to sleep. Dag! The cat just crawled into my lap. Oh god, I'm being pierced with cuteness! Next she'll start purring and doing that thing where she wraps her little paws around my forearm and then flexes them in her sleep like a tiny, adorable, furry arm hug. Or she'll start yowling. I think Mom might be right: she must be part siamese. She's so loud! I mean, She's so vocal! ::good kitty::

Public Service Announcement: Don't Watch National Treasure II

2008-05-26T00:44:00.001-07:00

Unless, of course, you super love ginormous plot holes, contrived beyond suspension of disbelievablility plot points, characters with exactly one dimension and two facial expressions each, and Helen Mirren's awesome boobs. Okay, actually, strike that last one, because everyone loves Helen Mirren (boobs or otherwise), but you should not watch this movie just for Helen Mirren. Although I will give her this: she tones it down to the exact level of the movie, never once looking out of place. Dang. That lady is super. If there hadn't been a HUGE thunder storm to distract us, it may well have been unwatchable. Here is a synopsis:

[[WARNING: This is extrodinarily long. The reason is threefold: 1) I type at about 90 wpm, so I tend to write way more than I intend to without really noticing it. 2) I tend to blog late at night when all sense of time and length has left me. 3) This post has a lot of short lines. But I can't promise they're all worth reading. Or that it's well edited. So, um, sorry about that!]]

Nick Cage: My ancestor saved the Union in the civil war by burning part of John Wilkes Booth's Diary and dying the same night Lincoln was assassinated.
Audience: [clap clap clap]
Bald Guy: Only he was actually a co-conspirator! See how this other page from Wilkes' diary proves that?
Nick Cage: Oh noes! I better steal some priceless artifacts to prove that this guy is a poopy head!

Young guy: I'm sellin' a book. Dag. No ladies like me. They wish I was Nick Cage. Double Dag! My car is being repoed by the IRS!
Nick Cage: Where's your car, YG?
Young guy: Where's your house, Nick Cage?
Nick Cage: I'm breaking up with my girlfriend, but she gets the house. That is mine. Because I bought it. With my adventuring money from the first movie. Say, you wouldn't be interested in clearing my ancestor's name from a clearly specious accusation, would you?
YG: Yea! My life has meaning again!
Nick Cage: Yea! You can help me break into my house (that my girlfriend gets in the breakup for some reason even though I'm making it super clear we're not married) and steal my girlfriend's ID badge.

YG: B&E is super easy for me and my bag of tech gagets.
NC: Oh no, she's home! With a date!
Girlfriend: What are you doing here? Gimme that. I'm coming too! Adventure! [grumble]

GF: I'm spectro-intrared-cg-analyzing your diary page with my museum curator machines. Which I wasn't going to do even though it's my job until you made me.
NC: A cypher! Let's solve it!
YG: Okay, I'll manually enter every 5-letter word in the English language in this computer program.
NC: Dad, can you remember any more details from a story your grandfather told you as a boy that might tell us the secret cypher key word?
Nick Cage's Dad: Gosh son, I don't know. He said, "Oh, it was scary. And the cypher keyword is "Implausible."
NC: That's not five letters, but good enough!
YG: Yea! I'm being useful!
NC: This means we have to go to Paris.

Baddies: [breaking into NCD's house]
NCD: Humdidum, bringing in the groceries. Oh noes!
Baddies: [knock out NCD] Get his phone. Now we have a copy! This whole process was so profoundly stupid and ridiculous it can only serve as a warning to others that working on films of this nature robs everyone of their most basic sense of verisimilitude.

NCD: Nick Cage, I was totally knocked unconscious! By goons!
NC: [shouting, leaping from chair] I. Am. In. Paris. I. Am. Coming. Home. Right. Now. [This was the most crazily stilted piece of dialog in the whole movie.]
NCD: Nah.
NC: [sitting] O. K. I. Will. Stay. Here. In. Paris.

BG: Now I have a copy of NCD's phone. I am a super genius and also clearly a super bad guy! Bwah ha ha!

NC: Let's use a camera to look at Paris' statue of liberty real close for a secret message.
YG: Okay.
French Policeman: Hey, cut it out!
NC: Let me recite all kinds of obscure historical "facts" that we probably made up on the spot! It makes me look super smart and almost convincing as a scholar. Lucky for me, I'm supposed to be a scholar of the "DaVinci Code" variety. You know: Suckmaster Scholar. FPM, can you tell me which way to Buckinham Palace? I have to break into the Queen's desk!
FPM: I'll call you a cab, Nick Cage! Nothing about that statement seems at all fishy! YG, I'm writing you a ticket! [Wah wah!]

NC: Dad, we're going to England.
NCD: OK.
BG: (I totally heard that.)

NC: Lalala, breaking into Buckingham Palace is so easy!
GF: I came to help you.
NC: What are you doing here? I'm making a scene!
GF: Oh, yeah, well I guess I'll help!
NC: Now that we're locked up, you should go home while I climb into the service elevator with a large floral display.
GF: No, I'm coming too.
NC: Good thing there are no guards anywhere in Buckinham Palace except for the foyer.
GF: Super good. Let's rifle through the queen's drawers!
NC: Rad. That's why I like you.
GF: Ooh, neat hidey-hole. But what's with the old piece of wood?

NC: Oh noes! Bald Guy! Quick, a car chase!
YG: You drive real crazy!
NC: I'm running a red light for the picture. Tee hee! I just through this SIGNIFICANT HISTORICAL ARTIFACT into the Thames! Good this red light cameras have such high resolution cameras!

NC: Dad, translate this grainy picture of an old plank. It's in Ancient Native American!
NCD: I think it says, "Yes, there was only one language in Ancient Native America."
NC: Hrm. Let's ask mom just to be sure.
NCD: But she hates me! [pouts]

NC: Mom, translate this!
The Always Delightful Helen Mirren: I'm the best part of this movie and I'm not even trying!
NC: Yeah, that's true.
TADHM: Oh, right, your grainy picture of an old plank. Um, it says, "I am a treasure map to a fabled city of gold." You are a silly adventurer, Nick Cage. NCD? I totally still hate you for reasons that make no sense but allow me to holler a lot. Also, I am wearing a necklace with big, oddly shaped beads and all black because I am An Anthropologist!
NC: Helen Mirren, you are always a delight.
TADHM: Aw, that's sweet.

NC: Let's break into the white house!
GF: ME TOO, dangit!
NC: Okay - this time.

NC: Hey guy who wants to date my girlfriend. I'm going to vaguely insult your masculinity and you'll totally let me into the oval office.
GWWTDNCGF: Yes.
NC: Distract him while I poke the president's desk.
GF: Hey, GWWTDNCGF, you wanna have sloppy makeouts while Nick Cage looks for my lost earring in a part of the oval office I never walked through?
GWWTDNCGF: Yes.
NC: Oh noes! The old plank is missing!

YG: The old plank is in the President's Book. It's a thing I made up. It talks about Area 51, because that's the only thing Conspiracy Theorists like me care about ever.
NC: Huh. I'm going to need that.

NC: FBI Guy I know somehow, who is maybe tracking me maybe not, what about this President's Book thing?
FBI Guy: Let's go outside so I can divulge state secrets because I am only an FBI Guy in my office. Outside I am your friend and the rules don't apply. Um, there is a book. But only the President knows where it is. Because it's his. It's the President's Book.

NC: I'm going to kidnap the president.
Everyone else: No! That's a terrible idea.
NC: Two words: Mount Vernon.
YG, NCD, GF: I'm in.

NC: I'm totally breaking into the President's birthday party at Mount Vernon. Good thing the secret service is crap at their jobs. Hey, Mr. President! I brought you a musty old map!
President: I saw in the news your family was discredited. That's too bad. Ooh! I love maps!
NC: Really? Total surprise to me. You wanna shake off these secret service a-holes and explore an old tunnel?
President: You know it!
NC: Now that I've got you in a totally old room, I need to see your book.
President: You're so going to jail.
NC: Maybe. But I'm not really kidnapping you. So, um, can I see your book? Please?
President: Well, you did say please.

NC: We're breaking into the Library of Congress which is apparently both open and full of patrons at midnight.
GF: I'm here because I have a pass!
YG: I'm here because I'm your side kick!
NC: The book! Hooray! It has a photo of the other plank which was burned a billionty-half years ago by some a-hole called Coolridge. Also, Queen Victoria supported the confederacy. I'm totally glad I stole her old plank and threw it in the river!
GF: Oh noes! The FBI!
YG: Time for a daring escape.
NC: If you drive fast enough, your Mercedes SUV can overcome the world's slowest rising barriers.
GF: Weeeeeeeeee!

NC: Dad, I need to translate another plank.
NCD: Yes, let's go see your mother.
NC: No, you need to do it. For some reason. Maybe because I'm being chased by the FBI?
[Um, sorry folks, I seriously tuned out at this point.]

BG: TADHM is a speaker of Ancient Native American!

BG: TADHM, can you look at a thing I have?
TADHM: Um, no. Cause it's bad?
BG: NCD is on his way in here. Don't give him the right translation.
NCD: TADHM, can you save yet another scene with your ability to turn the stupidest writing ever into some semblance of a scene?
TADHM: Without question.
BG: TADHM, get your coat, I'm taking you with me for a reason I won't explain.

BG: We're on Mount Rushmore. I'm going to find a fabled city of gold because I think the civil war is still being fought! Or something like that.
TADHM: This movie is dumb. [Okay, she didn't say that, but she should have. Because it's true.]
NC: Haha! I've totally beaten you here! TADHM sent us a code message!
BG: Fine, we'll all go together.
NC: Pour water on this rock to find the secret passage.
GF: I found it!
NC: Look, a door!
YG: Wee! I just love ruining national monuments!
NC: Oh no, we're falling down a pit!

TADHM: NCD, we're stuck on the other side of some random door thing. Let's dig our way out.
NCD: Okay.

NC: BG, we have to work as a team.
BG: No, me first.
NC: Okay. Let's get out of this totally contrived booby trap.

NC: Good thing we made it through. Wow, this room is full of water.
GF: Oh noes! We're trapped!
NC: Nuh uh. We'll just turn this really obvious lever here.
GF: You're so smart!

NC: A fabled city of gold! Let's no one mention how ridiculous it is for an AZTEC city to be in SOUTH DAKOTA.
Everyone: O K.
TADHM & NCD: You hoo!
NC: Hooray! Helen Mirren is still in this movie! Helen Mirren, your boobs look awesome!
TADHM: Thank you!

GF: Oh noes! It's filling with water!
NC: Let's go through this trapped door thing where one of us has to stay behind.
BG: Haha, it will be you!
NC: Oh noes, the current is so strong! It will be you!
BG: I've been your adversary for no particular reason this whole movie, but now my life is forfeit so I will confess that actually your ancestor wasn't a bad dude after all. I just wanted to make a name for my family! Remember me fondly....
NC: O K! I will! Even though no one will ever explain what my ancestor's name on that list really means! [Here is a thing he should have said: "Also, this room is not filling that fast. If you go out into the larger chamber, we can probably get help down to you before you drown." But he didn't. And BG drowned in the most incredible sudden-filling of a chamber with water ever.]

NC: Look, a light! We're saved!
Everyone: Hooray!
NC: Wow, there's a lot of FBI agents here.
FBI Guy: You're under arrest for kidnapping the President. For 22 minutes.
NC: That's cool.

The President: You are a rad dude. FBI Guys, he did not kidnap me. We were explorin' at Mount Vernon.
FBI Guy: Oh, well then. That's a totally different kind of a thing!
NC: Let us all remember BG.
President: O K. Also, look at tomorrow's paper, which I happen to have here.
NC: Yea! My ancestor's name has been cleared! On the front page of the Post! Because everyone cared about this! And when I blew a hole in the side of Mount Rushmore, someone informed the press that I was discovering a lost city of gold and that somehow meant that my ancestor was a cool dude AND I finally won us the Civil War! Hooray! I'm awesome!
GF: That's true. Also, you should move back in. To your house. That you own. Even though I live there and you don't.

YG: My car is back! Hooray! I will now back it into something! [wah wahhhh!]

~~FIN~~

So there you have it. I don't feel like I need to say anything else about this AWFUL movie. And now you don't have to sit through it! Unless you're on a plane. Although if that is the case, I suggest you do what Pete and I did with "Dare Devil": Take off your headset, put on an eye mask, and hope to god you fall asleep quickly.

God I hate Reedies (sorry M!)

2008-05-21T00:59:00.001-07:00

This fact was confirmed for me today when I sat in my car listening to NPR for two hours in the parking lot at work because I had left my keys inside the night before. (Or so I thought. Turned out they were at home in my pocket. And a co-worker had snuck inside through the front so I could have only waited an hour if I'd chosen to wait where I could see both entrances. But that is neither here nor there.) I really like Think Out Loud, except that it's too short and on at an inconvenient time for me to catch it very often. Today their topic was WW's story on Reed (related to a recent student death via heroin overdose): are their drug policies too permissive? I really liked both Reed's Dean of Students and the WW writer right off the bat. But the longer they talked (and then argued, however civilly) the more irritating they became. And then a recent Reed grad, the 2005 student body president in fact, joined the conversation and he irritated me from the get-go. Ultimately this was about my feelings regarding Reed, but there were some unrelated things that ired me too. I will list them later so I can get to Why I Hate Reedies Oh My God So Very Very Much Seriously Guys Get Over Yourselves. (Don't worry - it's a short list. But poignant. Very poignant.)

Okay, so when I finally got into my office I was going to post on their blog about this. But for reasons that are not worth going into, I was thwarted by their login system. And this is probably for the best. I will copy for you here the text that I wrote in anticipation of a future post and you will see that this is most likely not the kind of thing I want to post on OBP. I'd like to look like, you know, not a huge asshole. (I know, it's a small goal. Baby steps!) Also, when I'm angry and trying not to swear, I come off sounding like a hugely pretentious prick. Keep in mind, I had like half an hour to stew before getting a chance to put fingers to keyboard. You can imagine how pretentious and douchey an earlier draft would have sounded. Also, I've added anything in [brackets] because the tone was kind of uneven and I would have cleaned that up before posting it anyway.

"As I listened to this program, I found myself more and more irritated. Reed students and faculty talk about the school in a very insular way: it's always us versus them. "We" this and "our" that, in a way that is completely different from any other University with which I am familiar. In some languages it is possible to distinguish between "we" inclusive (you and us) and "we" exclusive (just us, not you). English is not syntactically or morphologically one of them, but pragmatically Reedies have found a way to exclude everyone with their We. Somehow when I hear administrators or students from either of my alma maters (U of O and Georgetown) talk about their community, about their "we," it always feels more inclusive, like "we at the U of O" could be extended to "and state schools in general" or "and Oregon Universities in general." As a sociolinguist, I'm almost tempted to study this phenomenon. But as a listener, I'm too irritated to really consider it.

Did you notice how both the Dean of Students and the ex-Student Body President both talked about Reed like it's the only college to ever have intellectual students bent on serious academic pursuits? [sarcastically] Yes, we at the University of Oregon were only interested in cavorting and picking our noses. And at Georgetown… well, don't get me started on how unserious the students were at that place!

Reedies work very hard to set themselves apart, but not in the quiet way of people focused on action and effect; rather in the noisy way of people desperate for attention and approbation from the very people from whom they claim to be so far apart. Harvard alums may mention their alma mater in the first five minutes of any conversation, but that word stands alone as a symbol of intelligence and academic excellence (even when the act of mentioning it without context is irritating and belittling). What does it say about Reedies that it isn't enough to simply mention Reed, but requires a minor soapbox about how intellectual and above everyone they are. Insecure much?"

Yes, I am a mature adult. And everyone cares about my opinion. I MUST SHARE IT WITH YOU NOW!

::ahem::

Sorry. Moment of introspection. ::cough:: I think it's passed now.

I will now summarize the experience of listening to the reporter and the dean argue with this brief one act play.

Reporter: I was working on a different story when this kid died. I interviewed a BUNCH of people. Plus, I live in Portland, so I've heard all about Reed.

Dean: Yes, Reed has a drug problem, but so do all universities. I was a little sad that you chose not to talk about that.

Reporter: Sure, they all have drug problems, but Reed is perceived as particularly permissive and I wanted to investigate that.

NPR Lady: Dean, what would you change about the story if you could?

Dean: I was very very disappointed at the characterization of Reed as untouched by the student's death. We were all very upset! VERY UPSET!

Reporter: Yeah, I know. I talked to the kid's friends and family. What I was commenting on in my article was the fact that no policy changes have been made. The administration has seemed virtually unmoved from a policy standpoint.

Dean: WE WERE ALL VERY UPSET! VERY UPSET!!
Reporter: But you're not making policy changes.

Dean: Yeah huh. But we were reviewing that policy before anyway. It's very complex. Reed has a very complex view of the world and its students. But Reed is very open too. We welcome everyone. Our students are intellectuals.

Reporter: I was physically escorted off campus four times.

Dean: Well, we're open all but three days of the year. Our Ren Fair is only open to Reedies. Who are intellectuals.

NPR Lady: Why is that?

Dean: Because, we want to keep out undersirables. But Reed is very open. And intellectual. And complex.

NPR Lady: Undesirables? Did you seriously just say that?

Dean: You know - high school students - it wouldn't be appropriate - and people selling... things... that would be... bad. But Reed is very open. Except during Ren Fair.

Reporter: If it's so open, why was I asked to leave four times?

Dean: You shouldn't have come at Ren Fair.

Reporter: I had a pass! I went through all the official channels - I was the invited guest of an alum! I didn't interview anyone, I didn't ask any questions. But within five minutes of being on campus I heard some kid screaming like an animal on a bad psychotropic trip.

Dean: We have a tent set up for that. Reed is very open. Reed is very complex. VERY COMPLEX! Our community is very complex. We're intellectuals. SO SMART!

Fin

So there you have it. The implication throughout was that Reedies are too smart for anyone else to get them. My favorite part was probably when the reporter asked the dean why it is that Reed only graduates 72% of its students whereas comparable "elite" colleges graduate 95%. Could it maybe be the drug problem? I will give the dean this: he started out by saying "It could be, I don't know! I've never seen a study looking at that, so it's possible. We can't know that." And then he went on to say that basically a lot of students come to Reed and don't get how Intellectual and Complex it is; they can't hack it and they leave. Please note: I've only known two Reedies (that I'm aware of). One is brilliant and flourished, graduated and went on to bigger and better things. The other was a HUGE pothead, became a bigger pothead, was suspended (or something), given second chances to clean up his/her act, and then dropped out to go to a school where people just cavort and pick their noses all day. (Potheads are known cavorters.) I don't think that says anything about Reed, necessarily. I think the us/them thing says everything, though. (Please to note: my successful Reedie friend never talks about Reed in those terms. Ever. It's like it's just another school and we all went to school.)

Here is my list of things that bugged me in general. It's only two things; does that even qualify as a list?

1. Both the Reed Alumn and the Dean of Students misunderstood about 40% of the questions they were asked. It wasn't that they missed the point. It was like they only heard 2 words out of each sentence and were guessing at what the question was like some kind of horrible Jeopardy-Scattegories hybrid. The irony of this was intensified by the fact that they both kept harping on how brilliant everyone at Reed is. So brilliant they can't listen to full sentences OR so proud they can't ask for clarification. But mostly the former.

2. There just wasn't enough time. The NPR moderator kept asking for people to call in and they only had time for two, maybe three calls. "Have you ever been addicted to drugs? Have you ever known someone who has? Call in and tell us about it!" Then ten minutes later - no calls answered, by the by - "Are you a college student? What is your schools drug policy like? What do you think of Reed's" and of course none of those calls, assuming there were any, were answered. I would have called in, except I kept expecting my boss to show up and let me in the building and that would have been embarrassing. Also, I probably would have just shouted into the phone "glarbedyglarbdityaaahglefrazzlebagglebaggledybuh!" I was so annoyed by the end. (And the two Reed guys would have been like, "Ah, you must have attended a state school!")

So there you have it. That is my Reed Rant.

Reed: if Georgetown and Harvard can manage to talk about their student body inclusively, so can you. Please get over yourselves, your holistic evaluations, your organic vegetables and your COMPLEXITY and INTELLECT.

Also, is "snuck" not a work? Doesn't that sound right? If it is, what's wrong with my dictionary? If it isn't, what's wrong with English?

Masculinity Personified

2008-05-16T22:11:00.001-07:00

Clint Eastwood.

I've been watching Westerns on ACM lately - Silverado, Hang 'Em High - and there is no one else who can do all of his character development in the first ten seconds of a movie. I know, Clint isn't in Silverado, but it's Silverado as compared to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly or A Fistful of Dollars. Silverado was just a mess of a movie. I mean, just a mess. It has about 70 plot points, but no actual plot to string them together. It has too many characters with no chance for character development. And it was pre-Dances with Wolves (which turned the Western motif on its ear, being about society as the insurgents rather than society plagued by insurgents, if I remember my Pop Culture and Anthropology class correctly), so it had a lot of standardized tropes with which to work. Silverado was not trying to turn anything on its ear. Which is why it is so shocking that such a predictable movie could waste so much time on an overly complicated plot and visual exposition cum character development. I mean, it has a petty criminal/gambler turned barman, a kingpin turned sheriff and mayor, a slick gambler called Slick, a petty criminal/prettyboy, the brother of the prettyboy, the free blackman/sharpshooter, the midget lady saloon owner... and their families, and their friends. Kevin Klein (yes, Kevin Klein in a western!) is the most convincing. He delivers his lines quietly, a man made of sheer confidence. And they're all lines like, "That's my hat," and (about his horse), "Can't you see she loves me?" Kevin Costner is (of course) the pretty boy, and he's (of course) very good at that. But that's all the more we get to know about his character because he's not capable of or allowed to use more than the broadest of strokes. Don't ask me why Klein gets to use subtlety and Costner is asked to ham around and look like he was told nothing about his character or the plot beyond "you're a sexy cowboy with ADHD that none of the ladies can resist." Only there aren't really any ladies, so a lot of the time he looks lost and confused.

Silverado has an all-star cast. Besides the Kevins there's Danny Glover, John Cleese (plays an Englishman in America), Jeff Goldblum (Slick), Rosanna Arquette (okay, so there are a couple ladies), Brian Dennehy (playing a very convincing low-talking kingpin turned sheriff) and some guy called Scott Glenn, who movie nerds probably recognize. You would think that each of them would be able to embody and demonstrate their respective cliche in less than a minute, but the movie works tirelessly to reinforce the stereotypes with scene after pointless scene of each character reaffirming who he is. And the plot. Oh the convoluted and yet entirely too simple plot.

Here is the plot, in a nutshell: Two guys who meet by happenstance. One wants to be a bartender. One wants to move to California with his brother. And they do.

Everything else that happens is impossible to follow. But I have an analogy. A piano can only play 88 specific notes. Your brain fills in the midtones to make scales sound smooth. A guitar has infinitely more variation possible - you can actually make the midtones on the instrument. (And if "midtone" isn't a real word, too damn bad, it's the one I'm using.) Silverado is like a piano: it has lots of set plot points, but nothing in between. Your brain is supposed to fill in the plot between Kevin Klein in the desert, left for dead and Kevin Klein discovered by Scott Glenn. Then they are in town. Then Kevin Klein shoots a guy to get his horse back. Then he makes out with the horse. Then he sees Dennehy, an old friend. Then he has new clothes. Then he turns down a job with Dennehy. Then he misses his hat. Then he goes with Scott Glenn to some other tiny town. Then they have dinner. Then the hotel discriminates against Danny Glover. Then... You see, it's all discrete events, but there's no real connection between them because they have to rush on to the next plot point at breakneck speed to make it through the ridiculously complex story.

But what has this to do with Clint? Clint Eastwood knew (and probably still knows, but is no longer making westerns, mores the pity) that the point of cliches was to cut to the chase. You don't have a crusty loner with no past because you want to delve into the depth of his past. You have a crusty loner because you want the viewer see everything he cares about for themselves. A crusty loner is a kind of tabula rasa. The thing is, everyone knows you don't just wake up one day crusty and alone. A past is inherent. But it's going to be a bad past, a sad past, of trespassing or being trespassed against. It is mostly irrelevant. Clint knew that and he worked it. In the first minute he's on-screen in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, you know exactly who he is. With one look he banishes the need for a past. With a flick of his wrist and a light to his cigarette he banishes the need even for a name. He wears the cliche like a suit and it looks good.

There's a moment in Hang 'Em High (he's in the brothel having fallen from his horse after a grueling three day round up of some cattle rustlers and a guy who tried to hang him at the beginning of the movie - see, lots of plot, none of it in isolation!) when the prostitute who is bringing him breakfast coyly asks if there's anything else she can do for him... he's staring at her hard and angry, like he stares at everything throughout most of any movie, and then she asks in this little knowing voice, and his face kind of lightens, and then he smiles so sweetly, with something like genuine pleasure. Character development! Now we know he's not dead inside! And it took no exposition, no unlikely conversation, and it didn't waste valuable plot development time.

Now: is Hang 'Em High a good movie? Well, that's a fair question. It's very predictable. It's about lawlessness and what happens when the rule of law is as unconcerned with justice as the brigands. And two lonely people who were violated by lawlessness find love, some amount of healing and bring true justice to the west. Or so I assume. I'm only about 3/4 the way through it. But they let Clint smile at the Broken Girl, so I'm guessing they totally do it by the end. But Hang 'Em High does it's job, mostly because Clint is so awesome. It lacks the artistry of Sergio Leone. (But what doesn't, am I right?) But I will tell you this: Hang 'Em High is a better classic western than Silverado by a long shot.

None of this really makes a case for Clint being the very soul of masculinity in our times, but it does make a good case for him being an awesome badass, so that's something.

My conclusion: Clint Eastwood is so manly I think I may be pregnant.

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OhmigodI'malreadytoohot

2008-05-16T00:28:00.001-07:00

It was only like 80 today and I'm already too hot. (It may have something to do with hot ridiculously hot my computer gets too.) It's supposed to be 95 tomorrow. 95! but back down to 68 by Monday. Ah Portland... I had actually forgotten what naturally hot air felt like. I'm not kidding. I went on a little walk to mail a letter today and I was just giddy. I skipped through a sprinkler. Well, around it really. But it is too hot. I hate shorts and I think I may be low on work-appropriate skirts. Seriously: this is the thing I have most to worry about right now. Life is pretty good. (Yes, the sunshine has activated ALL of my serotonin and I'm freakin' high as a kite on Love For Everything In The World Oh My God It Was So Beautiful Today. Aren't you glad I'm not an actual drug addict? Can you even imagine what I'd be like on meth or heroin?)

Also, "For your blue" is a really sweet song. If Pete were ever to write a song about me, that's the kind of song I'd want written about me. It's just nice and fun and sounds like someone who both loves his wife and enjoys spending time with her. Fancy that!

Oh, double also: Pete wins. All other husbands can just quit; it's over. He is, hands down, the best ever. This week when I casually asked if he had any ideas for dinner, he volunteered to run to the store and get the stuff for galettes and berries for dessert. So we had buckwheat crepes stuffed with ham and gruyere and topped with an egg for dinner and raspberries over vanilla ice cream for dessert. He also vacuumed, took out the trash and even though he was dead tired, made extra crepes before he went to bed so we would have some for lunch the next day (crepes reheat very well, by the by). So yeah, Pete wins. Also, he smells good.

It's late. I'm rambling. Did you know kids get high off Axe body spray? What is wrong with them! This is quite possibly the funniest thread ever. Old ladies are adorable!

Edit: the last paragraph and the last statement in the penultimate paragraph are not related. Pete just naturally smells good. And he's not huffing. I don't secretly fear for him or anything. Although given his reaction to when we've idly smelled Axe body spray at the supermarket, imagining him trying to huff the stuff is pretty funny. It would be all grimaces and sneezing.

Neighbors

2008-05-15T00:23:00.001-07:00

There are good neighbors and there are bad. Pete and I have had both. The worst were probably in Eugene our senior year. The guys upstairs left their empties in the hall and fell asleep in the laundry room; the people next door were drug dealers who partied late into the night on weeknights. (I called the police non-emergency line on them multiple times when they were non-responsive to polite requests for quiet so that those of us with morning classes could get some sleep.) Mostly I think of good neighbors as ones you either know well, like those I grew up with, or ones you never know at all. Right now, I consider our across-the-hall neighbor pretty good (I can't remember her name, so I will call her The Pretty One because she's pretty, if very skinny). She's quiet, she keeps to herself, when she has people over it's never very many and then the only sounds that carry into the hall are of laughter and talking. I'm not sure about our upstairs neighbor right now (I will call them Other Lady and Guy). They seem pretty good, except for one or two loud domestic disputes that went something like this:

Other Lady: [loud indistinct shouting and maybe crying]
Guy: [Angry responses]
Other Lady: [Punctuated retorts] Now! [Indistinct shouting and definitely crying, but of the angry variety]
Guy: I don't even know what you're so mad about!
Other Lady: [Screaming crying stomping door slams]
Guy: Fine! [front door slams, runs down stairs, down hall, out front door]

We don't know what they fight about, but I'm guessing they don't know how loud they are. The Pretty One is single and so if she has a boyfriend and fights with him, it's at his place of residence. Pete and I are very quiet. We don't really fight, and when we do it's more of a silent resentment kind of fighting punctuated by long discussions in which I explain how even though I know he didn't mean to hurt my feelings he still did and that is a valid emotional response to the situation, and he tries to explain that it's past midnight and he's pretty much already asleep and definitely not able to follow what's going on, and then he falls asleep for real and I stare at him resentfully until I fall asleep. (And in the morning we either very quickly agree on a solution to the problem (real or imagined) or can't remember what we were fighting about and decide that that's as good as a solution.) So I'm sure they have no idea how well voices carry around here, unless they've heard my incredibly loud sneezes or inappropriately loud laughter at things on TV. (Seriously: there is something wrong with me. I cannot control the volume of my laughter while watching sitcoms. Pete can attest to this.)

Our downstairs neighbor is what I would consider not an ideal neighbor. She's not a bad neighbor: no loud parties, no empties at our doorstep, no selling of drugs. But she is a stoner of the highest degree and has this awful hacking cough that sounds like someone vomiting that can be clearly heard from anywhere in the apartment. After Eugene, I knew I wasn't crazy about the smell of pot. Now I know: I hate the smell of marijuana. It is sickening. I don't have anything against people doing it - victimless crime and all that - but please please please, not in shared spaces. What ever happened to the days of trying to cover up the smell of your three-times a day habit? I think I might actually prefer pachoulli or nag champa to the reek that is our shared hallway. (Ask anyone who's visited us: if you're looking for a contact high, bring a lawn chair and breathe deep.)

But as gross as the vomitoughing is and as much as I hate the disgusting smell wafting under the door, she is an ideal neighbor compared to those next door. Yes, the worst neighbor is the Club/Theater. The music routinely continues past 10 (which, as I was informed by the neighborhood watch, is the legal noise ordinance time for weeknights), their patrons vomit in our alley, they leave empties and garbage out front, and garbage from their dumpsters overflows into our little parking lot. Mostly the patrons are disaffected goth or emo kids who roll their eyes as you pass and try to kill you with the sheer force of their nihilism and angst. I kind of like those kids. They want to hear some loud music with a boring bass line (that's really all we can hear - we've only lived here in cold months, so the doors are closed; I bet we hear a lot more as it heats up) and feel like they belong to something. Go ahead: aim your laser beam angst-vision at the squares entering the house next door. But not for too long or people will know you care and your cover will be blown. The patrons who pushed me over the limit were the Insane Clown Posse family-member band (whose name escapes me; I doubt it matters). If you are not familiar with ICP, then lucky you.

These face-paint wearing, generally fat, 30-somethings started showing up at 5 on a saturday to shout obscenities at traffic and chant "FAM-I-LY! FAM-I-LY!" at each other. They dropped empties, they harassed passers-by, they were drunk and idiotic. One of them - in full green and black clown make-up, mind you - shouted, "What're you lookin' at?!" at a car waiting to turn left. Pete was like, "Um, you and your desperate bid for attention, you painted douche?" Yeah, that's probably it. They were just so so so depressing, on top of being scary (they kept threatening to get fucked up and fuck shit up, etc.) because the scariness wasn't from their ICP look, or whatever: it was from the fact that a bunch of adult males, presumably with jobs and desires for their futures, put on clown paint to come stand in front of a very small venue and chant "Family!" with a bunch of other lonely losers for four hours just to see a band that is vaguely related to the group that actually represents their purported ethos. Plus there were the white supremacist overtones inherent in any costumed, aggressive gathering of young-ish white men. (Note to comic nerds: comicons don't count because they're not aggressive. Yes yes, I know, you're very aggressive when dressed as Wolverine because you're "in character," but seriously. Comics. Not scary. Now put down your Japanese purple-heart oak bo and calm down. Here's you're inhaler. Yes, that's a good nerd: deep breaths! It's okay. You don't have to be scary and aggressive to be masculine. We all like you just the way you are. Now run along before your "adamantium" blades wilt any more.)

Anyway, I'm thinking about this tonight because the club is actually quiet for once (and has been since 10!) and when I started writing this half an hour ago my downstairs neighbor was hacking up a lung (it's so so disgusting sounding. I cannot impress upon you enough how nasty her coughing is) and the hall is, shall we say, "fragrant," and it got me thinking. I like this apartment, I don't mind my neighbors most of the time, but I'm beginning to think my standards might be rather too low. Perhaps I should think back to the days of my youth and the neighbors I had then and that is what I should shoot for. But I don't think we'll achieve that kind of situation until we can afford more in rent each month. Until then, try not to smoke yourself too stupid, Stoner Lady! Hey, we can hear you fight, Loud Couple! Um, you're doin' just fine, The Pretty One! Stay Classy, San Diego? (Damnit! I've spent too much time with my brother recently and now I'm broken.)

Local Politics III: Profiles in Audacity

2008-05-13T07:41:00.001-07:00

Okay, so did all the republicans in this state get together and say, "Let's just say whatever we want in our ads and see if anyone notices"? Mike Erickson is running adds accusing Kevin Mannix of being pro-tax. I mean, I actually agree with Mannix for once: Erickson doesn't understand what is and what is not a tax. In the immortal words words of War, "This really blew my mind."

Erickson's campaign thus far has been kind of interesting in that he focuses on one issue at a time (ONLY ONE ISSUE!) whether it is relevant or not. First it was illegal immigration.

Mom thinks he had these in the can months ago, trying to predict what the top issues would be. You can see the logic: economy getting worse -> job loss -> fear of job loss/job stealing -> anti-immigrant pandering. Now he's on to taxes.

I will try to find the Mannix one when I get home from work. It's just craziness. I mean, I know why he's using these ads: it cost something to make them, so he can't waste them. But seriously: this is not a strategy. I can't believe that his constituency is like, "Yes, Mike, tell us what to care about. We have no important questions of our own that define, for us, the current political climate."

Best... Craft... Ever...

2008-05-09T00:43:00.001-07:00

I'm on a crafting kick. Because I am a huge nerd. And I love to have unfinished projects haunt me for all of my days. Anyway, I recently needlepointed a boat (with the poorest of poor techniques) and have developed the beginnings of calluses on my right forefinger and thumb. This is very exciting for me. It's like crafting-cred. I don't want to lose it, but I have completely forgotten about how to needlepoint, so before I go back to a project I care about, I wanted to get a small one I didn't care about to fuck up and get it out of my system.

The problem with this plan is that small + cheap = Michael's + dolphins/horses/kitties/trite maxims. Things I will needlepoint in a pinch to warm up: flowers, various natural scenes... um, did I mention flowers? They're kind of the safe bet. The problem is that I don't want to be stuck with whatever it is I make because, as something cheap, it will be some kind of wall hanging or display. I was once very lucky and found a spray of roses that covered the whole square canvas that I thought I could turn into a small pillow. (Hm, I wonder what I did with that?) But today... today was just epically bad. I did find something, but I'll wait until I'm done and if I like it okay, I'll post a picture. Otherwise I will deny this conversation ever happened. Such as it is. My second choice was a kitty picture - it was actually a kitten hanging miserably over a rope and seriously said "hang in there" at the bottom. I considered purchasing this awful thing and sewing it up, only with the text "I hate you guys" at the bottom. I mean, who put that cat there in the first place? But then I realized I would actually be creating a "hang in there" poster and withdrew my hand from the rack.

The two things I saw that I wanted - oh did I want them - were both cross-stitch, which is not adequate practice for needlepoint. Now first here is something to understand about cross-stitch: there are two kinds, stamped and counted. In my opinion (and that of little old ladies the world over, I'm sure) the only real cross-stitch is counted, where you fold your aida cloth into quarters and mark the center with string and then count where your stitches should go based on a printed pattern. Stamped cross-stitch, on the other hand, has the pattern printed right on the aida cloth so you don't have to count anything. I assume this is for beginners, lazy people and people who are planning to craft as they fly somewhere (it sucks trying to count stitches and the little tiny squares between then on a turbulent flight). I think some of the printed pattern always shows through the stitches (which are not as tight as in needlepoint) and it looks even chintzier than regular cross-stitch. (I love it as a craft, but man, there is nothing more useless.)

Okay, so now you understand what it means when I say that I very very badly wanted to purchase and take home with me the Stamped Cross-Stitch Last Supper. Oh my God (no pun intended), it was so wonderfully awful. The most horrible part of me wanted to just take it home and set it on a shelf. Just to have it there. This kind of surreal artifact from another world. But I know there are little old ladies across the country who think this is just precious. Their eyes are failing them, they want to honor their Lord and Savior in the best and least useful way possible, and then God just sets down this $23 Honor Buffet right in front of them. But seriously. It's just terrible. Pete pointed out that if I had gotten it, we would have just come to find that Katie already had it attached to the flap of her satchel or something because she's just that cool. And then I then I would have had to hide my objet d'art so that no one would know my secret secondsies shame.

The other thing I wanted so very very badly was this Magnificent Wizard. By Merlin's beard, I feel his glorious wizardry just looking at him defeat that dragon! Or maybe the dragon is just waiting for the batteries to run out on his nerd-stick so he can eat him. Either way, how could you not want to make this and send it to your favorite Dungeon Master? ::ahJOEem:: Alas, at $40 and god only knows how many hours of work, I just couldn't justify the cost for the joke. I mean, irony is all very fine, but one has one's limits. (Mine are apparently $22 and the vague risk of offending some old ladies who will never know or $40. Who knew that vague old lady offense risk was worth $18?)

So there you have it: those are the best crafts ever. I may have to go back for the last supper one. Or order it on eBay. And I may have to find that matching satchel. Katie is probably the only person I know cool enough to pull it off, but it would likely horrify her parents. Or give them false hope. Ooh, I smell a social experiment!

Local Politics, Part II

2008-05-08T07:44:00.000-07:00

This morning - not five minutes ago! - I saw a Gordon Smith ad against Merkley and Novick. I commented to Pete that the worst thing Smith had on Novick was "he thinks taxes are good." (Not that what he says about Merkley is so bad; just another example of low-level hypocrisy I think is inherent in living a public life. Lord knows I wouldn't stand up to that kind of scrutiny. Not that I'm an apologist for hypocrisy - but if my choice is "universal health care and some publicly acknowledged, legal campaign finance shenanigans" or "the current system," I'll probably go with the former. But I digress...) Pete said, "Oh man, have you seen this?" and ran it back (woot, TiVo!).

"Did you see that?" he said at the end. "Huh? Oh, no," I said, not really paying attention. He played the end again. "There," he said. I had no idea what he was getting at. "Okay..." I said. He quoted the end of the ad: "More of the same, it's time for a change." I still did not follow. I mean, that's what every political ad sounds like these days. "He's the incumbent." And then it all clicked and I was left with a feeling of pure strange.

Yes, Gordon Smith. It is time for a change. Let's not have business as usual with those tax-loving politicians who enact campaign finance reform. That's exactly what the last eight years have been like.

Also, here is another Novick ad. This is the first one, from January 2008.

FYI

2008-05-04T00:28:00.001-07:00

Just to let everyone know, we did not win the lottery this evening. But we DID donate $2 to the Oregon schools.

Oregon Primary Voter's Pamphlet: Comedy Gold

2008-04-26T11:31:00.000-07:00

Every election the voter's pamphlet is my favorite part. It's just full of crazy. Here is my question: if you are going to run for office and you are totally, completely unqualified, why wouldn't you at least glance over your candidate statement before submitting it? Maybe run a search for double periods and read it out loud once to see if the sentences make sense. I mean, you're already totally unqualified; you don't want people to think you're lazy too. Apparently this is not a concern for some of the nut jobbers who run for office. I'll post my favorite examples here, but if you want to see the whole thing, you'll have to download the pdf for yourself.
Hm, these might be too small. But maybe you can enlarge them. I hope you can read this first one, because it's easily the best.

It looks like Goberman ran for State Senate as a Libertarian in 2000. Surprisingly, he was not elected. I think his greatest qualification is "beekeeper" and my favorite line is "Smith has no faith/integrity, ignores, violates, doesn't support and criminal contempts the Constitution and Code of Ethics for Government Employees." His policy statement about crime is pretty good too. "Crimes: Harder punishment." And who doesn't like a democrat who is also a supporter of the NRA?

It also seems like this year there is an increase in the number of people who have included their grade school as a part of their educational background; who "attended" college, but did not graduate; or who took classes at several colleges over a period of many years. I think we're supposed to be impressed by this. But it just makes it more obvious that they are totally unqualified; no one cares that between 1968 and 1985 you took "night class at 8 or 9 collages [sic]," Richard Nathe, democrat running for Representative in Congress from the 5th District.

The best picture is probably Joseph Walsh (Lone Vet) who is running against Earl Blumenauer in the primary. Check this guy out: I may not want him to take Earl's place, but I think I might want to hang out with him. He's just so happy! Also, he has this line in his candidate statement: "Justice for the farmers who cry out to stop the very Peru trade deal that Representative Blumenauer is always bragging about." Hilarious! It makes it sound like he and Earl are neighbors or relatives and every time they run into each other Earl finds some way to bring up his "Peru trade deal" and Joe is just sick of it. Okay, Earl, he gets it: you're real proud. So just shut up about it, okay? Also, did he have to change his name to "Joseph Walsh (Lone Vet)" to get that in the pamphlet? I know that in some states you can only put your name and some guy in like Utah changed his name to "Only Prolife Candidate" and there was a big hullabaloo about whether or not he would actually be allowed to post his statement.
The most insane candidate statement, by far, is Gordon Leitch who is running against Gordon Smith in the Republican Primary. And by insane I mean "completely unrelated to anything that is happening anywhere in anyway." Sure, his picture says "I'm a sweet old man," but the text says, "Who doesn't know what year it is. Where's my pudding? Who opened that window? Where am I?" Oh man, I hope you can read this. It's all about the value of old eagles in 1834. Seriously. If you can't, go look at the pdf. It's page 51 of the Multnomah County pamphlet.

For the people who are qualified, a surprising number went to Harvard. It's like everyone from this state who goes to Harvard does so with the express intent of someday running for office. Actually, that might be true. This is not a big state; we can't possibly have that many Harvardites, right? (I don't know what Harvard students are called and the Internet is not yielding useful results. Come on, Harvard; Yale students are Elis - get it together!)

So yes, I hope you have enjoyed this tour of Primary Election Crazy from the state of Oregon. There is nothing I don't like about the democratic process, except the Electoral College, but that's not really very democratic, is it?

File under: Ideas that would totally work if Inspector Gadget were still on TV

2008-04-17T19:06:00.001-07:00

A laptop for little girls that looks like Penny's book. Yes, that idea is awesome. And I totally would have begged for such a thing 20 years ago. Before laptops existed. And little girls would totally beg for it today if only Inspector Gadget were still on TV. ::sigh::

xkcd fruit chart: not accurate enough

2008-02-24T23:26:00.000-08:00

Pete pointed it out to me: the "Fuck Grapefruit" chart on xkcd is not especially accurate. So I made my own much-more accurate chart. And then Pete accused me of being inaccurate! Well, I can't wait to see his chart... ::scoff:: Please to note, in a bid for sympathy, I have colored the names of the delicious fruits to which I am allergic red.

Thank you, Jeph Jacques, for character development!

2008-02-21T23:56:00.000-08:00

First, a note: that title is not meant to be read sarcastically. I am totally sincere and it should be read cheerfully. Also, I'm not meaning to imply that there has never been character development in QC before. But the new stuff that's going on is all exciting and that's what I'm psyched about so that's the title.

So one of my complaints about comics (web or otherwise) is that the more people care about the characters, the harder it is for the author to have any character development. Or at least I assume it's due to reader complaint, that no author would want wooden, static characters. But I digress... One thing I love about Questionable Content is that the characters have changed and developed over time. I have enjoyed the story arcs as much as the one-offs and that is not usually the case. (Normally I get irritated when there's a non-story comic because I'm into the story, or when non-sequitur comics go all story on me because I'm like, "Why are we dwelling?") Recently I have been worried that the main female protagonist on QC was becoming a one note character, whose purpose was to act as the sadly-cynical counterpoint to an otherwise happily-cynical cast. I am really happy to see Jeph take her in a kind of new direction. (It's not totally new because he's been foreshadowing the improvements in her mental health for weeks; but he could have decided to go for drama and had her toe the same old "I'm too emotionally scarred to be anything by afraid" line.)

I think I've ranted about the relative merits of mono- and polyvocality before (probably many times, and no doubt to everyone's general chagrin), but comics offer a different set of challenges when it comes to authorial voice. Because the graphic style is (usually) consistent throughout, there's an inherent monovocality to any comic strip or graphic novel. All polyvocality must be character and dialog driven. In a book, an author might show each character's individual voice in first person or third person-limited descriptions of environment and events that evokes the character's independent perspective, as compared to third person-omniscient descriptions from the author's perspective. Sometimes the author's perspective is very subtle - it's in the way s/he gives you access to the characters thoughts and motivations, almost pleading with the reader to understand, to think: "Her reasoning is so flawed!" or "But he had such good intentions! Why can't he see how wrong he is?" But in a comic, options for separating out individual character voices are limited. (I actually think this is why so many web-comics are semi-autobiographical. But that's another post for another day.) In the beginning, as new characters were added to the QC cast, it seemed to me that they were really a parsing out of different characteristics of a particular lifestyle. Archetypes almost. And that was fine with me because it's funny and well-drawn and interesting stuff happens. But as the cast reached a stable level and Jacques started to flesh out their backstories, they really began to develop individual voices. Actually, I sometimes find it hard to distinguish Dora and Martin, or Dora and Faye, depending on who is in a scene. (Not visually, obviously; but those pairs are equally likely to make an obscure indie music reference, or threaten to pummel someone.) But most of the time I feel like I could tell you who was speaking without seeing the drawings. And that's without crazy accents!

Anyway, I've been so excited about this new story arc that I've been refreshing my QC tab every five minutes once the clock strikes 10. If Jeph posted a new comic three times a day, I would still be like, "Why do I have to wait??" So this is just to say, Thank you!, to Jeph Jacques and to prattle on about narrative voice for a bit, as I like to do. If you've read this far and are ready to kill me for being so damn boring (and such a disgusting fangirl), (and totally pretentious, all talking about literary criticism ideas she learned in a linguistics class like she knows anything), well, all I can say is: Dude. (I can't actually think of a better response that doesn't come off as trying-too-hard-to-be-clever or adversarial, so I stick with what I know.)

Sam Harris: You are a boob - Part 1?

2008-02-17T16:45:00.000-08:00

Okay, as promised in the comments to my February 13 post, here are my ~~complaints~~ responses to the first 14-pages of Sam Harris' ~~stupid~~ thought-provoking book, The End of Faith. I've only been able to read one or two pages at a time because I've been filling the margins with notes and then getting too irritated to go on. I'll put my comments in order, with his section titles and page numbers. I have the 2004 Norton & Co. paperback version, which starts on page 11. Is there a foreword or an epigram? No. But the publisher is counting the title pages, table of contents, copyright page and the page of review pull-quotes in the page count. Maybe they always do this and I've just never noticed. But I thought those pages were supposed to be on some sort of other numbering system, using lowercase roman numerals.

"Reason in Exile" pgs 11-
11-12: I hate this first vignette. It provides this picture of a suicide bomber that is both callous and facile. Harris implies that the specifics are irrelevant because ultimately all suicide bombers are the same: they have no regard for life, no second thoughts, they're totally calm and devoid of personality. Oh, and they're Muslim. Through his generalized vignette, he intimates that the parents of suicide bombers are all proud of their children's actions and find them not just laudable, but cause for a neighborhood-wide celebration. While this may be true some of the time, it's certainly not true all of the time. The only reason to make such an intimation is to manipulate and inflame anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment.

12: He equates "belief" in science with belief in religion, aliens and politics. So let's see here: that's science=culture, science=crazy, and science=personal preferences for cultural products.

13: Here is a fun syllogism. Most people in the world believe that the creator of the universe has written a book of some kind. Each such book claims to be infallible. THEREFORE all people who believe in sacred texts believe that those texts are infallible.

13: All of these texts agree on one point: God does not endorse respect for other religions, their values, their believers or the views of those believers. "Intolerance is thus intrinsic to every creed." Next to this I wrote, "You are a boob." The implication is, of course, that if you believe in a religion, you must also be intolerant. He follows up the previous quote with "Once a person believes - really believes - that certain ideas can lead to eternal happiness, or to its antithesis, he cannot tolerate the possibility that the people he loves might be led astray by the blandishments of unbelievers. Certainty about the next life is simply incompatible with tolerance in this one." Why is this an absolute statement? By stating this as an absolute, I am forced to think, "Not all the time." And then I thought, "Wait, so you're telling me that adherents who don't try to convert everyone they know don't really believe?" I mean, it's just disrespectful to everyone.

13: He actually says, "...criticizing a person's faith is currently taboo in every corner of our culture." Yes, because Mormonism and Scientology aren't real faiths. And depending on what part of the country you're in, neither is Catholicism.

13: "...religious beliefs are simply beyond the scope of rational discourse." My note reads, "That's because they're not rational! What are you? A Vulcan?" Seriously: anyone who has ever gone through an uebermensch phase in high school knows how irrational emotions are and how difficult they are to ignore. This was the first clue that Sam Harris has not matured past the 10th grade.

13: Okay, here is a link between my problem from page 12 and the above problem also from page 13: "Criticizing a person's ideas about God and the afterlife is thought to be impolitic in a way that criticizing his ideas about physics or history is not." That's because someone who believes gravity is one of the unappreciated "sticky" forces is a buffoon. Physics is objective. And history is really meant to be an interpretation of objective data. You can ask someone to explain their interpretation, to back it up with evidence. You can't do that with religion because it's a different kind of thing. It's silly to compare them. You might as well say, "Criticizing a person's personal taste in clothing and food is thought to be impolitic in a way that criticizing his ideas about addition or what his name is are not."

13: "And so it is that when a Muslim suicide bomber obliterates himself along with a score of innocents on a Jerusalem street, the role that faith played in his actions is invariably discounted." Whaaa? Are we reading different newspapers? Are we watching different tv stations? Because from where I sit it's far from discounted: it's so obvious, it's taken for granted. There is the second sign that Sam Harris has a 10th grade perspective on the world: he can't tell the difference between taking something for granted and discounting it. He follows this up with, "Faith itself is always, and everywhere, exonerated." That is just not true. What he sees as exoneration is, in my opinion, respect for complexity. If every suicide bomber were touted as Muslim Faithful Kills Dozens, it would leave no room in the discourse for the millions of Muslims who have not and would not blow themselves up. We talk about political alliance and economic state not because we're saying, "Faith is never dangerous," but because we want to say that faith isn't always dangerous, isn't usually dangerous.

Okay, that is just three pages and this is already really long. I'll post more later. There's fun stuff to respond to: Harris believes beauty is objective! He uses bad examples! He assumes a null hypothesis of "God doesn't exist" instead of "God does exist"! It's fun fun fun!

My Royal Challenge

2008-02-13T23:59:00.000-08:00

Have you read "The End of Faith" by Sam Harris? If you have, post your OUTRAGE here! I've only read the first five pages but I am so filled with ire at his absolutist hypocrisy I'm not sure I can go on.

And so I issue this, My Royal Challenge: I dare you to go into any bookstore and read more than the first five pages without feeling disgust, anxiety, sadness or just pure, unadulterated homicidal rage. If you can do this, than you are a better dude than I.

Notice my links!

2008-02-05T23:06:00.000-08:00

I've recently added two new webcomic links to that bar thing on the side. With the links. You know: it's over there ----->
Anyway, you should check them out; they are awesome! Kate Beaton is Canadian and does historical comics as well as comics about her life. She is from Cape Breton and claims to have a crazy accent; I would enjoy to hear it because I love a good accent. (Why is it so much fun to hear one's own language spoken in a way that makes it almost unintelligible? I don't know!)
Anders ::hearts:: Maria is drawn by a Swedish lady, and now I know that "puss" is Swedish for "kiss." My whole Swedish vocabulary now consists of "Swedish," "girl" and "kiss." Oh, and "pant," as in the "I ran so fast I was panting," but I learned that from Anders ::symbol:: Maria as well. I recommend starting this one from the beginning otherwise it is confusing as it is in a flashback right now.
If you are not already reading Achewood, I swear to God.... Do not make me stab you with a fork. Also, Overcompensating has had some really hilarious political comics lately. They're so funny, I almost used "really" twice! And I love Scary Go Round, but Pete's hatred for it grows and grows. I would be interested to know: do any dudes like Scary Go Round or is it just the ladies? If so, kudos to John Allison (the artist) for coming up with the ultimate strategy for gettin' the ladies and gettin' rid of the dudes! (Now I am imagining the Emcee in "Cabaret" inviting people in, saying, "Meinen Damen und Herren, Madames et Monsieurs, Ladies and Dudes...") Or maybe he is gay. I used to totally love the band Moxy Fruvous (which Pete tried very desperately to ruin for me, because he hates all male, Canadian a cappella groups more than Dick Cheney eating the piece of the world's chocolate, thereby ruining sweets for him forever) and I said something about there being "the gay one." Pete said, "Dude - they're all gay." I said, "No they're not. Or at least, only one of them is obviously gay." Pete knitted his eyebrows together the way he does when he believes you are speaking what is fundamentally nonsense. "No, that's the decoy gay, to get you to say, 'Oh, that's the gay one,' and to distract you from the rest of them. They're all gay." Ask him about his theory. He was forced into a field study of this phenomenon while working at Hollywood Video, where he had to watch Tap Dogs again and again. (Also, he hates tap dancing. And musical theater. Although I'm not sure that last one is related. I think he just doesn't find their breaking out into song all the time believable. Too much Python as a lad, perhaps.)

THOSE ARE MY THOUGHTS.

ALSO, I MADE THIS AWESOME ASCII DOG (or whatever it's called with the pictures of dots and slashes) BUT THE THING MESSED IT UP. ::sad:: This is another try. With periods.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^_
/.\_/.\''''''''''''''''''''''''''''\\
|o....o..|________//
|_*__.........................|
.|.......\......_____\...|
.|_/....|_|..............|_/

Man, that is scary as fuck. It's like that dog is being shot with some kind of crazy particle ray.

Narrative In The Modern World

2008-02-03T02:16:00.000-08:00

I have frequently thought about what the purpose of blogging is. For me, anyway. I mean, I'm not famous; I'm not doing anything earth shattering (or even interesting, for that matter); I'm not living abroad; I don't have kids; I'm not an artist; my opinions are often prosaic; and I've been told no one wants to hear about my dreams. (I blog about them anyway. Ha! Take that, People Who Aren't Interested In My Dreams!) I kind of think blogging is great. I love getting to hear what my friends are thinking about, where they're going, what they're cooking, what their kids are up to... It's like being plugged in without having to spend hours on the phone. All the stories, none of the greetings or awkward transitions. Actually, I used to love the phone. Until everyone had a cell. Now with delays, echos and quiet zones (where you can't hear someone, for no known reason), I dread the phone.

I have asked myself the same questions about journaling. What is the point? Who am I doing it for? Does anyone really care about my thoughts on politics or media or whether or not it's weird for Julian Lennon to hear Hey Jude as muzak in an elevator? More importantly: does it matter? Maybe it's worth it just to put something out there. Therapy for therapy's sake. Experiential recording for posterity's sake. I don't know. My journals are weird, weird books. Usually only the first quarter ever gets filled, and yet that can represent three or four years of entries. And there's lots of (probably) unnecessary exposition. One even has a family tree. You know - just in case. Just in case what?? What could I possibly be anticipating?

I've noticed a lot of commercials are appealing to the modern American's desire to leave a narrative mark. "It's your story. Citi Bank helps you write it." That's the one I saw most recently. But this idea that everyone has something to say... No, scratch that. That everyone has something interesting to say. Or worth saying. "Log on now and chat with your favorite characters!" I mean, does that make any sense? They're not real! It's a writer, or an intern, who drew the short straw and has to answer your retarded questions. "What's your favorite color?" "What inspired you to become a detective?" "Are your parents proud of you?" Some of it is cool, like the CNN iReporters. Every time there's a flood or an ice storm, you get awesome pictures of the bizarre shit that happens in Ruralville, Kansabraska. But even then... I have learned to never read the comments posted on CNN. They're all like, "I will pray for him. That man needs all our prayers!" And that is for everyone, from the President, to Obama, to the father of a dead child, to a serial killer. It doesn't matter; all CNN commenters ever do is pray and exhort others to pray.

Anyway. These are my thoughts. Read them. Also, I have been hittin' the lolcats again. Sry. But it's Ben's fault. He IMed me this link.