yet another(!) quick post ...

really, this is the last one. it's 5:45 a.m., and the car is all packed minus dogs and two or three smallish bags. couldn't sleep at all last night -- such is the way before a long trip, of course. and naturally, it's pouring rain here; according to the radar, it will be raining for the first, oh ... six hours of the drive. then it looks like a short respite from this massive weather "system" before we'll plunge into some sort of sleet-storm in michigan. yay. it will be fun to take dogs for walks at interstate rest stops in the rain and sleet. it's times like these that i curse myself for never investing in one of those ridiculous umbrella hats.

but i ran across my old friend edward gorey the other day, and thought i'd put up this link to his most well-known, and certainly one of his most macabre works. it's delightfully sinister and the pictures are fantastic. the work i'm talking about (click name to read and see it in its entirety) is the gashlycrumb tinies:
















i love it:
"G is for George smothered under a rug.
H is for Hector done in by a thug."

one more quick post

this is a golden retriever NURSING a kitten. and for whatever reason, i find it both totally hilarious/ridiculous and absolutely adorable. the look on the dog's face is such a golden retriever look: "[sigh] is this what it's come to? OK, sure. take the picture then. and, yes, i'll donate blood for your nephew."

happy holidays (again)!

it's about flipping time, etc.

well, i called to double-check, and it's official: i am officially graduating with my MA today. (although i'm not walking in today's [now over] ceremony ... i didn't do this for my undergrad, either. i don't really see the point, because it doesn't seem like such a big deal to me. maybe if i get a PhD i'll finally "walk").

my MAPC degree is so difficult to explain, i won't try too much here. it was basically an English program, but called "professional communication," having grown out of rhetoric, technical and business writing, and visual design theory. each student in the program is supposed to pick an "emphasis" area, which somehow i managed to ... avoid. or something. i think i'm the only person to graduate from this program without an emphasis.

on a completely unrelated note, tomorrow i'm leaving for two weeks in the tundra of minnesota, with a quick trip to see other family in michigan first. so chances are good this is my last blog post in a good while ... considering all of, i don't know ... my FIVE readers, i'm sure you five won't miss my venting and whining for two weeks+. maybe i will have some spectacular new, refreshing, happier (less bitter?) thoughts to post in the new year.

happy christmas and hanukkah (yes, i know it's over, sorry) and new year to everyone i love.

there are a lot of you. you make my life brighter.
carpe lucis, all of you.

as if i couldn't have told you:

everyone else in the world (other than me) is pregnant. yes, you heard me. everyone. even men.

the teenage (girls 15-19 -- yes, GIRLS) birthrate in the U.S. has risen for the first time since 1991. [see NYT article here. love the way it says this is fueling "the debate about whether the Bush administration’s abstinence-only sexual education efforts are working," LOL.]

yet another good friend of mine (whom i won't name here) is pregnant. this is in addition to my cousin alison (#1 in may), my friend jennifer (#3 in feb), my friend suzy (#2 in july, exactly one year since her #1 was born), and then all the rest of the teenage girls in the U.S., (and not counting all my other friends/relatives who have already been pregnant and given birth and now have children). christina aguilera is pregnant. nicole ritchie is pregnant. j. lo was denying it, but she's also pregnant. jessica alba is pregnant. and now britney "trainwreck-beyond-all-
comprehension-worse-than-a-trainwreck-actually" spears' sister, jamie lynn spears is pregnant.

she's 16. no doubt she'll be part of the 2008 report that teenage pregnancies are STILL UP for a second year in a row. [well, what can you expect from someone named "jamie lynn" from louisiana? that she would get a PhD in astrophysics (or even finish an associates degree at the local vo-tech)? it's come to this: if you want your daughter to be pregnant before she finishes high school, first: be from the deep south, and second: give her two names, one of which is "jamie." nevermind that you live in L.A. now and she's a character on a nickelodeon TV show.]

sigh. SIGH.

[how many of these young women have wanted to have a baby and a family since they were 20?? do they LOVE pregnancy and babies the way i always have? and what single (handsome, successful, not crazy-religious) 30-something man wants to get involved with a woman like me, who is clearly driven crazy by hormones and aspires to be a full-time mom?]

yep. i thought so.

mrah! i love it already.

eagle vs. shark, a new zealand movie featuring none other than jemaine clement, my favorite half (sorry bret!) of the indie-smash-hit duo flight of the conchords. (check out FOC's two most popular/hilarious "music" videos: "most beautiful girl in the room" and "business time" if you haven't heard of FOC and need to be convinced).

anyhoo, eagle vs. shark promises to be equally as hilarious any FOC skit, sort of like napolean dynamite 15 years later and in new zealand (where they say "party" like "pahtee" and "girlfriend" like "gaelfrind"). two of the film's taglines are "falling in love was never so ... awkward," and "there's someone for everyone ... apparently." :)

here's the trailer, which is wonderful in itself. keep your eyes out for the little girl dancing toward the end, and the very last lines, which jemaine says in a phone booth (the best):

dear family and friends,

first: happy holidays to everyone!!!

wow! it seems like only a few years ago i was stuck in a dead-end relationship with a self-confessed asshole (one in a series!), trudging aimlessly through a totally stupid, pointless (neverending) MA program, and now i'm a stay-at-home mom married to a gorgeous, patient, adoring billionaire with YET ANOTHER baby on the way! this year we taught the twins french during the two months we spent in monaco on the yacht, and those "lean" times when i racked up credit card debt and chain-smoked my evenings away reading escapist fiction while contemplating the least-painful-to-my-family way to commit suicide seem like such a distant memory!

i know, a lot of you thought: sylvia will never get her life together and be an adult, doing grown-up things like paying a mortgage, having a savings account with money IN IT, and taking vacations that don't involve driving 12+ hours and a tent. but boy how time can change things, huh? i know some of you specifically asked my parents and close friends in hushed whispers, "is sylvia emotionally/psychologically retarded? you can tell us. nevermind that our adult children/friends are married with kids and have professional jobs that give bonuses! we just want to help. does sylvia hate men, is that it? does she WANT to be single and childless forever?? does she know SHE'S 30-YEARS-OLD?"

hahaha! i can laugh at all of that now! because i'm pregnant again and life is so perfect! a man i truly loved and adored felt THE SAME WAY BACK and went so far as to propose marriage -- something i used to think only happened TO EVERY SINGLE OTHER GIRLFRIEND OF MINE and not me. of course, because we were so in love and wanted kids so much, it was only a few months before the twins arrived and so for a whole year i was too busy to even send a nice christmas letter -- my apologies! (kids ARE a handful, huh parents??) so i'm making up for it now; better late than never!

it's crazy to think that only a few years ago i was living on less than $30,000 a year with ridiculous debt and two dogs and two cats, in a backwoods-redneck town (in an illiterate, bible-thumping southern state), eating cashews for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and spending every single friday night going to the movies with an ex-boyfriend who i was still in love with, but LOL, right?? it's so funny to think i used to rent a run-down A-frame duplex without a single piece of "new" furniture and a rotting wooden bathroom floor, just a half-mile away from a sewage-treatment facility that made my whole street smell like human feces three nights a week, haha!

to think i once spent a friday afternoon browsing through various sperm banks online, then crying for six hours straight before i begged an ex-BF to try again with me! :) oh, those were the times, weren't they, lol??

ok, well, i better get going now, the cook's not going to supervise herself making a five-course meal in the kitchen, and i think the maid is vacuuming a little too loudly in the east wing! we'll see some of you over the holidays, but i wish to extend an invitation to everyone to come visit us at any of our houses next year! the hamptons are prettiest in the summer, but lately they're so crowded we're pretty much living in the mediterranean on the boat -- winters we hop around a bit (we do love snow in moderation!), but are mostly at our south african vineyard. (i know, who would think i have time between all the kids and the husband to teach english classes and hold HIV+ babies in developing nations?? but somehow i MAKE the time.)

yours with absolute success and happiness dripping from every pore in my body,
:) sylvia
xoxoxoxoxoxxoxoxoxoxoxo!

one more reason women are cool

as if you didn't know women were fantastically cooler, more evolved, and more wonderful overall than (most) men. [yep, i'm in kind of an anti-man mood ... i could go on and on in this vein ... but won't. for now.]

check out this CNN article, "Evolution keeps pregnant women upright." i guess it never occurred to me that balancing all that extra weight in front had to be nothing short of miraculous, but it's not a miracle: it's evolution.

sweet lulu!

ahhhhck. woke up this morning at 5:30 a.m. to overwhelming odor of EXTREMELY PUNGENT dog urine. as it turns out, it was not a fresh nightmare involving me trapped in vat of dog urine, but was instead the reality of a giant puddle of it soaking into ... yes, the pillow and bedclothes just inches from my face. "oh, lulu," i thought of my beagle [still ON THE BED], "you little shit. just when you've been doing so well making it all night without emptying your bladder ..." [although in the past she has generally done this in a far corner of the upstairs, never ON BED, much less the pillow.]

just when i was getting ready to drag her roughly downstairs and outside, i noticed she was heaving. like she was going to puke. on the bed. usually when a dog starts doing the puke motions, i grab said dog and we rush (likewise) outside, but my first thought was, "well, the bed's already covered in pee, why freak her out?"

ah, good instinct there. my poor baby's "puking" was actually mass volumes of clear saliva, and i realized that she was suddenly in the middle of a scary dog seizure, right there on the bed.

beagles, i learned earlier this fall when she had her first big seizure [where we rushed to the vet and i was sobbing and holding her while driving because i thought she was DYING], are very prone to epilepsy. it usually sets in between 1-3 years of age. lulu is 2.

dogs usually lose bladder/bowel (i guess i got lucky with the latter there this morning) control as the seizure starts, and the giant flood of saliva comes before and during the seizure itself. often dogs are blind during seizures and this can last for awhile afterwards (although this doesn't seem to be the case with my lulu).

so, this morning at 5:30 on the foot of the bed, i just petted her and loved her and kissed her warm head and told her over and over she was a "good girl" while she convulsed, her limbs frighteningly rigid, her eyes bugged out, and with the saliva continuing to pour out from her mouth. she slowly stopped shaking, and finally her little body started relaxing. my poor girl.

i took both dogs outside and gave them a biscuit, then gave lulu one of the doggie valium the vet gave me after her previous seizure. when they came inside, both dogs dozed in the crate, and now they're on the sofa [yes, that's the kind of pet owner i am] compulsively licking themselves, one of their favorite activities. [i'm wondering if she didn't spit out the valium or something; shouldn't she be SOUND ASLEEP instead of chewing her own butt?]

[big sigh.] lulu's back to normal and will cuddle up with booker here soon. the bedclothes have finished their wash cycle. i have grading. and then traffic court later this afternoon [ahem.] just another day in the life ...

p.s. incidentally, the beagle in the pic is not lulu, but looks STARTLINGLY similar. i need to get my own photos on the computer, i know ... and aside from the seizures, the slow potty training, her skittishness around strangers, etc., she is such a snuggly, wonderful dog -- sweet as a dog can be. she snores like an old man. she actually hugs me back.

damn them all

that's my attitude this morning toward the fraternities and sororities of the universe.

a freshman (not one of mine, holyshitthankgod, not one of mine) here died this weekend of alcohol poisoning at his off-campus frat house. his name was ben sprague. (click here for the story).

his blood alcohol level was .379, apparently well over the .35-coma level. his "friends" found him on a futon in the frat's living room sunday morning. fucking stupid kids.

i listened to two separate persuasive speeches in the last few weeks from young sorority girls on the dangers of alcohol in college, and now this senseless death. maybe my southern good-ol-boy school will finally wise up about politely looking the other way as the student body carouses drunkenly through tailgating and football games, "rush" week, and spring break booze cruises. perhaps parents who silently condone binge drinking as a part of the college tradition will snap out of it.

drinking at obscene levels aside, ben was the seventh student to die this fall. yes, the SEVENTH. it has been a bad year all around. it's like someone put some "Use Poor Judgment" elixir in the town's water supply or something. god knows i've made some bad decisions this fall, too.

but at least my family isn't going to have the worst christmas of their lives in a few weeks. and at least all of my students will make it home safely for the holidays. where they will be held by their parents fiercely and with a wild kind of love to (hopefully) sustain them through a brighter spring term, where we all make better decisions.

ahhhhhhh ....

done. done. and done.

i just taught my last class of the semester, hallelujah.

as for the grading of the zillions of items just completed or re-written within the last week:
not done. not close. and jesus i just want to sleep.

poor students, they still have finals for a week. my class itself doesn't have a final, so i get to have a whole week of grading and doing final grades, and also grading, and emails (damn the emails!), and then some more grading. but at least no classes to teach, thank christ.

i'd like to say something beautiful and moving here about how teaching this semester has been ... but i'm too tired right now. maybe another day. i will say how lucky i am to have the best job in the world ... i love it, and i love my students so much. how many people feel that way about their jobs? not many, i know. i didn't love my last job in marketing by any stretch of the imagination.

anyhoo, i'm going to celebrate now by enjoying a (hopefully) peaceful nap with the dogs upstairs in bed. maybe just a couple sudoku ...

questions i have no answers to

a colleague of mine is trying to put together a book of "women's journeys," and has asked if i'd be willing to answer some questions for her. she added that when it's published and she's on ellen or oprah, she'll give me credit. i suspect her book might be light years away from both publication and a subsequent press tour, but i agreed to answer her questions.

so, here they are, staring at me (for over a week now), and what can i say? everything i think of sounds so goddamn trite, i can't stand it. why aren't there some easy ones, like "what are your dogs doing RIGHT NOW?" (playing tug of war with a dirty towel in the yard). or: "why did you and your last boyfriend break-up?" (nevermind).

anyway, here they are. someone please tell me what to say.

1. Please describe one of the most important choices that you have made in your life.

2. What tools do you use to guide you in your decision-making process?

3. If a young woman came to you and asked advice for her future, what would you tell her?

4. What person has made a significant difference in your life and why?

5. In what ways would you like to influence others?

homesick ...

i'm super excited about the movie juno. it looks like this year's little miss sunshine, but with a glorious, snowy, minnesota twist (and michael cera. i am in love with him). already this film is getting stellar reviews, and hopefully will actually come to theaters in my backwoods vicinity.

and, on top of what appears to be a charming movie, there's the juno soundtrack, which, if the trailer is anything to go off of, features lots of charming acoustic-indie guitar songs, as well as some retro favorites (see the link for a complete list).

last weekend minnesota had a little blizzard. my folks there, and many others, hunkered down with a fire in the fireplace, and later powered up the snowblowers for the first time this season. i just stared out my south carolina patio doors at the dead trees and dead grass and became profoundly nostalgic for snow. and home.

then this morning i found this at youtube. a semi-famous moldy peaches song (many of juno's songs are originals by kimya dawson, from MP). it's someone's "home video," but it's beautiful and hit me in all the right places today:

"anyone else but you"

meet sharon

my new roommate. sharon lives in the bathroom. she has been living there for awhile now, sometimes in the tub, sometimes on the floor around the toilet. sometime a little too close to my hairdryer for comfort (down sharon! your hair looks fab! get away from my damn hairdryer, please. i mean it. please.).

this was one of THOSE mornings, where hormones must be up to no good (this rachael yamagata song at youtube, replete with bizarre/stupid video montage, made me cry and cry), and coupled with general fatigue i was very tempted by to do the whole fetal ball thing in the shower. usually this shower position is accompanied by a raging alcohol-induced headache, but since i haven't been (praise jesus. i am too old) hungover in forever, the sitting-down-in-the-shower generally means i REALLY do not want to face the day, the masses, the email reply to yet another girlfriend who's having baby number 2 next summer, the whole living-life-normally-deal.

but then sharon was there! creeping away from me (sharon, i swear, i'm not washing you down the drain, why are you running from the shampoo? don't be like that, please.) and reminding me: "hey, don't start your day sitting in your bathtub with the shower water getting cold! be a trooper! i might bite your goddamn face [sharon's kind of vulgar] if you curl up down here!" and then, "see, look, i'm heading over to the hairdryer ... don't sit down or you're going to have to fight me for it when you get out."

thanks, shar. i made it. another day dawns.

a banana republic manager in an alternate universe

[four new men have recently come forward to admit sexual "encounters" with senator larry craig (R-ID).]

dear senator larry craig,

oh, larry. i really do feel for you. and your wife. (because she has totally known "all along," even if you do manage to [somehow] have sex from time to time).

if you hadn't been raised somehow to equate homosexuality with evil, and if you hadn't been too ashamed of your feelings for men, and if you hadn't hidden those "shameful" urges from everyone and then went on to become active in a political party that talks about everything in absolutes (heaven and hell, right and wrong, you're with us or against us) ... you might've really had an interesting, fun, relaxed, entertaining life just being a gay man.

think of how liberating, larry! you could have sex with men ALL the time and the only people who would give a shit would be closed-minded assholes that you don't care about anyway! you could own DVDs of every musical ever made and not care what anyone thinks. you could spend a whole weekend in europe, just shoe shopping, damn them all. you could've been an awesome gay senator! you could enjoy wearing scarves and throwing fabulous parties with tasteful wine and desserts. you could belt out britney and cristina at karaoke bars and LOVE IT.

or you could've done anything else, all stereotypes aside. (yes, you could still be in the NRA, seriously).

but instead, you chose your path as republican senator, as a straight man. and because you can only run so hard for so long from who you really are in your heart, you have had lapses. and now everyone knows about them, not just the minneapolis airport one.

but larry, there's still hope! that's right! it's never too late to admit the truth. and it's not like you've committed a crime (men's room incident aside) by being gay for christ's sake. think of the new life you could enjoy when you're free to be who you are! there's so much living left to do. to quote one of my favorite starbucks "the way i see it" cups (#43), by writer armistead maupin:

My only regret about being gay is that I repressed it for so long. I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make that mistake yourself. Life's too damn short.

yours sincerely,
:) sylvia

speaking of horses ... water-horses, i mean

this is too darling not to share. thanks to bridget for the link. :)

previously, i always wanted my own panda family, but now i think i might have to include a hippo to my future menagerie. i think if my hippo was anything like jessica, she would get along splendidly with the two cats, two dogs, the small polar bear (i want one of these, too), and the panda family.

you can lead a horse to water ...

... but you can't make him get blood transfusions if he's really against it.

bad, bad, awful analogy. i know. what to say when confronted with the absurd?

according to this CNN story, a 14-year-old jehovah's witness boy in seattle with leukemia refused to get the blood transfusions necessary to save his life, and passed away last night. his doctors said if he had gotten the transfusions he would have had a 70% likelihood of survival.

i will rant another day. i will yell and go off on tangents and be angry at religion and make more insipid analogies. i will.

but today i'll just be sad.

so it goes.

oh DEAR.

when i asked my second class today if they had any good thanksgiving stories, one of my favorite students announced she got engaged. she had a gorgeous ring and was BEAMING. at first i thought, "holy christ, a freshman, ENGAGED? what has the world come to??" but of course i didn't say this and actually got a little misty -- turns out she's a senior and her fiancé is a med student at MUSC. and she said she'll be getting a job when she graduates in may to support them while he's in school. and OH YEAH: under "religious views" at her facebook page she wrote "I love jesus!!" (this was serious devotion, not sarcasm, btw).

maybe if i loved jesus more i would be married with a few kids by now. ah, hindsight ...

instead, it's 3:45 p.m. on a wednesday and i came home from teaching and replaced ill-fitting jeans with comfortable yoga pants (not unlike pajamas ...). i'm smoking, and contemplating drinking the gross lime gin in the freezer straight from the bottle. i've never done this, mind you, just considered it in moments such as these. [well, i just took a big swig. it's still as repulsive as it was with tonic two years ago when it went in the freezer. i don't really feel any better, just more like a cliché.]

on the upside, i got this today from a student:

I would just like to thank you for all the encouraging e-mails you
have sent us through out the semester. You have really made this
semester (which is my first at clemson) very insightful learning
experience. You are an awesome instructor and very caring for your
students. I don't think I would of gotten through my public speaking
class if I had another instructor. You words of encouragement helped
me get through my nervous habits and fearful "public speaking" Thanks
again so much!

oh well, i suppose i should be happy i've finally settled on a rewarding career, even if i am a clichéd, single old woman now who puts "loungewear" on in the afternoon, shows people pictures of her pets (rarely -- seriously, this is VERY rare), smokes, has completely stopped exercising, and now DRINKS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY.

[but did i mention i'm going to vacuum today? i'm not ALL nightmare and slovenly misery, see!]

[sigh.] i. can't. stop. myself. ...

this latest mcsweeney's, "SO, YOU'VE JUST FOUND DADDY'S METH LAB" is too good to not share. i laughed out loud. alone. (my gauge for how funny something is. since i never laugh "out loud alone" at my own blog, i take full responsibility for the fact it's not very funny).

in the meantime ...

i'm still waiting on a CD of pics from my completely phenomenal birthday weekend to do a hearty post about that, AND i'm hoping to also do something reflective and overly sentimental about my thanksgiving visit to florida (when i get pictures done, hopefully before the second coming of christ).

so in the meantime, i'm just randomly posting whatever i can to procrastinate grading papers. i don't even teach english anymore, and yet OMG the papers ... and the speeches ... and more papers ... sigh.

while taking a totally undeserved cigarette/web surfing break from grading "team process papers" ["I don't want to name names, but there was one member of our team who only came to one meeting and seemed to really not care about getting an A ..."], i came across this intriguing article by "polemicist" writer christopher hitchens on mitt romney's faith, and why it should be fair game to discuss as part of his campaign.

i've always been eerily fascinated by mormons, scientologists, and other "crazy" religions or groups, and i couldn't agree more with hitchens that romney's claim that it's "un-american" to bring up his faith is patently absurd. the whole concept of "faith" to me, is that it's a catch-all term to justify the belief in something that seems completely illogical and ... quite often, UNbelievable. and it's also a very convenient way to duck out of rational discussions. to say "my faith is a private matter," to me signals that you cannot explain it well. and if you can't explain your belief system [that has an undoubtedly strong influence on your political, social, psychological, (economic?), and personal attitudes/positions], then you either haven't thought everything through very well or have your own doubts about your "argument."

i don't mean to imply that everyone needs to justify (to me, to the rest of us) their personal religious views ... this would be excruciating, to have to listen to EVERYONE'S belief system spelled out in detail by those who can and are willing ... but i think it's not too much to ask a presidential candidate.

here's a quick excerpt from the article i'm referring to:

Most journalists have tacitly agreed that it's off-limits to ask the former governor about the tenets of the Mormon cult. Nor do they get much luck if they do ask: When Bob Schieffer of Face the Nation inquired whether Mormons believe that the Garden of Eden is or was or will be in the great state of Missouri, he was told by Romney to go ask the Mormons! However, we do have the governor in an off-guard moment in Iowa, saying that "The [Mormon] Church says that Christ appears and splits the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. … And then, over a thousand years of the millennium, that the world is reigned in two places, Jerusalem and Missouri. … The law will come from Missouri, and the other will be from Jerusalem."

danny's song

for whatever ungodly reason, for like a week i've had danny's song in my head (the loggins & messina version, not anne murray's). it's a great song, definitely, but i'm at that crazy point now where i can't stop singing it and it also is making me teary. [for christ's sake, what is wrong with me??]

anyhoo, i tried to find a nice version at youtube, and to my dismay there are NO nice versions, but certainly some hysterical ones.

there are the concert versions, which i don't really like because the audience singing annoys me.

then there are the crazy versions, where as-of-yet-only-discovered-at-youtube musicians play their own rendition. my favorite here is this asian dude in sunglasses and headphones (because he's a PROFESSIONAL MUSICIAN, duh. they all wear headphones when they sing, everyone knows that) who plays it in front of a black screen/anne murray/kenny loggins photo montage. [this home-video version isn't too bad despite the recording echo and the arm hair that probably frightens children.]

and there's a wacky early cher version that is an excellent example of why '70s fashion (and aesthetics in general) is best left underneath the rock it was dragged out from under (what was with the neck ruffles??). something about cher's voice exacerbates my desire to put my head in a vice, i can't really explain.

however, the best youtube version, hands down (both in quality AND hilariousness) is this version, recorded in a kitchen by a group of four filipino guys. they have very pretty voices! (one or two do, anyway). you get to watch one swallow pills with a sip of water at the beginning! they slur through the english at points where they don't know the words! some random little kid runs in the background and then puts his face in the camera! the tall one (i think) has this super high michael-jackson-esque voice that giggles in self-consciousness when he messes up!

someone needs to sign those guys to a record label, asap. (it's telling that their homemade quartet is prettier than cher's and much, much better than this lame/weird harvard choir version.)

just another one of those "underground world" dreams ...

this is the second of these dreams i've had in a few days. it's me and the dogs running away from someone and ending up taking some harry-potter-esque portal to an underground world, one where the "ceiling" isn't sky, but earth (and very, very high), and there's no sun but there are muted trees and plants everywhere, abandoned houses and cars, paths, streams ... classrooms? yes, i had to teach a class in a scary building that resembled a burnt-out shell of a building. having the dogs with me helped, and the students loved them (although they kept running away).

i met a woman teacher whose husband moved around this world in a viking ship on land there. i don't know how it sailed ... but since i saw beowolf a week ago, this might be where this is coming from. (i'm like that, it's lame: i see a movie or read a book, then [surprise!] i dream something similar. i think my subconscious must not be very creative). anyhoo, the woman lived there permanently and was very friendly, but what very few other people lived in this world came and went. i guess i was moving there soon?

[ahem.] also, people and things had magic powers. there was a chase scene involving uh, magic stuff ... and i ... fought off the bad magic [cough], and then the lady took me to a nuclear stream (don't ask) that was very blue and couldn't take me any further because i was crossing back into our normal world over a wooden bridge. colors were very bright again on this new path and the dogs were bounding around everywhere, never minding anything ... but i knew i would go back to weird-underground-world again soon, and that was OK. strange as it seems, i found the strange new world oddly comforting despite it being very gray and a little scary.

ok, dream interpreters, what is this suddenly (recurring?) dream all about? my subconscious apparently revels in science fiction much more than i do ...

lock yourself indoors, buy duct tape and bottled water

unfortunately, this is serious business on my campus:

ALERT: Unusual animal sightings reported to police

University police are asking students, faculty and staff to avoid contact with wild animals that may have wandered onto campus.

Police Chief Johnson Link said a contract security officer spotted
what he thought looked like a panther Thursday near the Calhoun
Mansion. Police officers later spotted the animal near Earle and
Fluor Daniel halls.

Link said the department contacted a wildlife expert who said it's
unlikely the animal is a panther, but that it could be a cougar, a
dog or some other animal.

Link said people on campus should avoid the animal in case it has
rabies or some other disease.

"For your own safety it's best to stay away from any wild animal,"
Link said. "Call police at 555-2222 if you spot an unusual animal on
campus or one that's not acting normally."

mcsweeney's + blog = procrastination

i love these (scroll down).
[click on title links below for full text of exchanges. (from mcsweeney's). grandma thinks i'm grading papers here on my laptop, and instead i'm blogging. i will grade two speeches, then shower. see, the shower is a reward for grading a little. just as parents aren't supposed to "reward with food," likewise i know shouldn't reward myself with food, cigarettes (another favorite of mine), and hygiene. i can already see how this reward-punishment cycle sets me up for future OCD-ish cleanliness: i'll accomplish something spectacular then spend a day scrubbing in the shower? or worse, i'll procrastinate for days (weeks?) and accumulate so much funk i'll lose friends and the dogs will run away from me when i go to pet them? sigh. i'm also hungry.]

new one: HOW SOMEONE WITH AN AMERICAN PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION WHO DIDN'T REALLY PAY MUCH ATTENTION IN CLASS BUT LEARNED JUST ENOUGH TO PASS EXAMS IMAGINES THE FIRST THANKSGIVING.

PILGRIM: We came here on the Mayflower. It is that big ship over there. It has nothing to do with the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. That is something else completely.

INDIAN: We are having a powwow; it is like a meeting.

(PILGRIM takes a bite of food.)

PILGRIM: This is good. What is it?

INDIAN: That is corn. It is also called maize.

PILGRIM: Yes, like a labyrinth.

INDIAN: (Mumbles something inaudible about David Bowie.)

old one: CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN FAMOUS PEOPLE AS IMAGINED BY SOMEONE WITH AN AMERICAN PUBLIC-SCHOOL EDUCATION WHO DIDN'T PAY TOO MUCH ATTENTION IN SCHOOL BUT WHO DID JUST ENOUGH TO PASS THE EXAMS.

Richard Nixon and Winston Churchill

NIXON: Hello, I see you're smoking a cigar and wearing a large hat.

CHURCHILL: So I am, young chap. Could I interest you in a cigar?

NIXON: Sure, I think I smoke cigars ... maybe ... I don't know.

(CHURCHILL hands a cigar to NIXON, who bites off the tip and lights it.)

NIXON: We were probably alive at the same time.

CHURCHILL: Indeed, my boy, indeed. I had something to do with World War II and I think maybe you fought in it.

NIXON: I'm not sure if I did.

CHURCHILL: There's not that much more about me that everyone knows.

NIXON: I once held up my hands and formed two peace signs. I was either about to get onto a plane or get off of one.

CHURCHILL: I have seen the photo, because I think there were cameras when I was alive.

though young, i'm weary

Rooms

Though I love this traveling life and yearn
like ships docked, I long
for rooms to open with my bare hands,
and there discover the wonderful, say
a ship's prow rearing, and a ladder
of rope thrown down.
Though young, I'm weary;
I'm all rooms at present, all doors
fastened against me;
but once admitted start craving
and swell for a fine, listing ocean-going prow
no man in creation can build me.

- Kathleen Jamie

thanksgiving!

i have much to be thankful for this year, i know. i did a little post about this awhile back, and will probably write something more along those lines when i get back from visiting my wonderful grandmother and relatives in florida.

mostly this fall, this fall of relationship disasters and life-changing decisions, i'm just so grateful for my wonderful friends and family, who nurture me through every train-wreck and poor judgment call like i'm a normal, sane person. i'm grateful for those people. everything else is secondary.

"How easily we can forget how precious life is! So long as we can remember, we've just been here, being alive. Unlike other things for which we have a good comparison—black to white, day to night, good to bad—we are so immersed in life that we can see it only in the context of itself. We don't see life as compared to anything, to not-being, for example, to never having been born. Life just is.

But life itself is a gift. It's a compliment just being born: to feel, breathe, think, play, dance, sing, work, make love, for this particular lifetime.

Today, let's give thanks for life. For life itself. For simply being born!"

- Daphne Rose Kingma

awesome student email exchange:

from a potential student:

"My name is John Smith and I have currently requested to be in one of your Labs for COMM 150 next semester. It was closed and I need this class to move on so is there any way you can like make sure that i get in?? Any help is much appreciated."

my reply:

Hi John,

A) I teach six COMM 150 labs, so I don't know which one you're talking about. Three of these are already over the capacity and so I won't be adding any more students to those.

B) "So is there any way you can like, ask nicely?"

:) Sylvia Carlson

from john:

"I'm really bad at formalities, i know that, so i'm sorry about the niceness. I'm working on it though and i'm gettin better. The lab is section 2, 4:40 to 6:20 on Mondays, but i'm not picky about time and day. So let me try this again.... I would very much greatly appreciate being added to any lab. I can cut grass quite well, i'm somewhat of a handyman so i can fix anything you need fixed, i have a garden at my house which is only 15 minutes away and we grow very nice tomatoes and would be happy to bring you some. Basicly i'll do anything to get into one. So please, is there anything that you can do? Thank you kindly."

so:

how cool is that?? i've never had a student attempt to bribe me with tomatoes or handy-work before. i do love tomatoes, christ i love them. and there are certainly always things that need to be fixed in this crazy house. anyway, i wrote him back and said he was sweet and wonderful and of course i'm happy to add him, etc., but it would probably be unethical for me to take his tomatoes ...

update -- i just got this email back from john:

I thank thee very kindly. and if you took the tomatoes it would be our little secret.

another explanation for weight loss?

i mean, besides the fact that i'm smoking more than a year ago since i'm not trapped on the third floor of an office building, i'm eating better, and i hike all over campus (usually lugging a heavy bag crammed with a laptop, student papers, flavored water ... then because i'm too lazy to wait for THE SLOWEST ELEVATOR IN THE UNIVERSE IN STRODE TOWER [seconded by the next-slowest-elevator-in-existence in daniel hall], i climb many stairs):

i'm getting much more sleep? (now i'm averaging somewhere between 7-8 hours a night i bet. when i got up at 5-5:30 a.m. each day for stupid marketing job with long commute, it was more like 5-7 hrs.)

yep. according to an slate's "your health this week," adults who get less sleep are more likely to be overweight, and a recent study of children aged 9-12 (see here for real study abstract) confirmed that the same holds true even for kids: they're more likely to be overweight the less sleep they get.

first: i think every adult would like to sleep eight hours a night, it just becomes next-to-impossible for many working adults, especially those with kids.

second: what kind of kooky neglectful parents don't mandate their kids GET 9-10 hours of sleep a night? maybe this was why i was such a freakishly underweight child?? because i had a strict bedtime until [cough, ahem] the middle of junior high? i mean, kids have to get up early for school, so parents therefore have to MAKE THEM get in bed early. don't parents WANT to have some peace and quiet to themselves each night, anyway? huh.

well, as usual i'm full of helpful parenting advice though have NO children of my own, i know. and you know, maybe some parents WANT obese children. maybe overweight parents with skinny kids wish their kids looked more like them and shared their distaste for exercise, healthy food, going to bed early?









[chip off of the old ... you know. put that kid to bed, lady. stop hugging him, do something about your eyebrows and two chins, and get some sleep! (might help those eye bags, too, over time).]

best song of [my] year

i've sent the link to this bright eyes song and video to some of you already ... i've been in love with it for months and months. and every now and then i listen to it and it's like the first time i heard it: i get all teary-eyed and choked up. bright eyes isn't my favorite band, but maybe this is my favorite song (and video). ever.

because in spite of everything, i'm still a sucker for love.

bright eyes - "first day of my life"

smoke-free college campuses?

argh. i'm wrestling with this one. according to this CNN article, more and more college campuses are going smoke-free. from the end of the article:

That's welcome news for some of his nonsmoking classmates. "I'm not forced to be around all of the smokers," says freshman Matthew Bradford, 19. "I'm not breathing it in all of the time, and it's nice to get some fresh air when you get out of class."

on the one hand, yes, no one likes walking through a cloud of smoke. and cigarette butts all over the ground ARE ugly, to be sure. and it's nice of the college to tell people how to live their lives by making it harder for them to smoke (thereby increasing the likelihood they'll quit? or just be super pissy all the time??) on campus, in general.

but on the other hand, (MY hand, my SMOKING hand), banning smoking in outdoor areas is a little ridiculous -- refer above to the stupid freshman's quote. YEAH, those two seconds it takes you to walk past a smoker must be SHEER HELL, kiddo. it sucks you can't breathe fresh air outside, because those one or two people smoking in the vicinity of a door are totally blocking your access to fresh air until you walk past them. (don't make eye contact!! they might talk to you and then you'd have to make polite conversation in a giant smoke cloud outside when you really just want to get away and get some healthy FRESH air, maybe have time to pick up a chai latte and PowerBar before your next class).

as i've come to realize over the years, there's no justification for smoking. no excuses. it's just plain bad.

but do i regret smoking?

i wonder.

i always come back to the conversations i've had over cigarettes, both with smokers and with non-smokers alike (those hardy souls who brave taking in a little secondhand smoke). i have very fond memories of smoking in college, huddled together with the other english majors outside before classes, talking about this paper or that prof, or this visiting writer. and late at night in bars after poetry readings or in someone's backyard after a few drinks. i have even more fond memories of traveling alone in foreign countries and new cities, meeting people outside or in and talking for a bit (making friends, in some instances), all because of a shared addiction to nicotine. even in the last few years as smokers are increasingly forced outside (OK by me, smoke inside is a whole different thing from smoke outside), i've bonded with strangers at airports, cafes, parties. with the busboys and other servers when the restaurant where i was waitressing slowed down. with my parents, [gulp!] it's true.

smoking is a slow, stupid way to kill yourself. there's no denying that.

but it's quiet outside at night, you know. and smokers, one or two, possibly three, would be the ones looking up at the stars and making some small connection in this lonely world, separate from everyone else who's just dying in a different way.

Volleyball is an awesome sport and your mother and I are getting a divorce

Sorry, I see you've spilled your chocolate milk. I got a little overexcited. It's just that you think you've told your teenage son everything and then something like volleyball slips through the cracks and it ...

Your mother is a sex addict.

I'll just say it. I'm not trying to vilify her. I'm just being truthful. It would take at least an entire ... I don't know ... a whole sports team of some kind to satisfy the woman. And it seems that the years of therapy have never really clicked. That's the trouble with multiple-personality patients. They can just use one of their personalities to feign progress. It's a real problem in the field, I'm told.

[sigh. i love mcsweeney's. go there to read the whole piece.]

i'm 30 (!)

so far, i've been 30 for a little over 24 hours, and honestly, i think i'm a little more relaxed.

i'll explain better what might have contributed to this strange sense of calm -- peacefulness? -- later with the pictures from this weekend.

but 30 is pretty damn fine for right now.

just fine ...

shocked?

huh. 1 in 4 americans say w. bush is the worst president ever.

really? this genius? this man of the people? the WORST?

check out this lovely clip from will ferrell of bush on global warming if you're not in the 25% of the population that thinks so poorly of bush. (yes, i know an SNL skit isn't the same as bush in reality. it's actually MORE ACCURATE, go figure).

migraine joys!

here are some wonderful things you get to experience waking up with a migraine:

1. nausea, followed by vomiting. the actual puking occurs in about one-third of all lucky migraine sufferers. what's so great about this for me, anyhow, is that i will continue to throw up all day long DESPITE THE FACT THERE'S NOTHING IN MY STOMACH. because any and everything gets vomited, drinking, oh, a sip of water is pointless. an ice chip on the tongue will come back up. and when there's nothing to come up, my stomach invariably finds something. like mucous. and bile. [today, for example, i counted my sessions over the toilet: 10. this includes three trips to the women's restroom nearest to the lecture hall i was teaching in, two of which were DURING CLASS. my students were a little freaked out. i canceled class number two today ...]

2. of course: pounding, relentless headache pain. i once came across a 1-10 pain index in an article written by someone who suffers from chronic pain. "migraine" ranked a 10, higher than having a compound fracture (think bone pushed out through your skin) and even childbirth. i think this might be a tad extreme, honestly. today's migraine was awful, certainly. i have had some that were much worse than the one today. but i think there must be worse things people endure. i hope not. [and for me, even if i had pain medication strong enough to help, it wouldn't stay down for more than two minutes ... maybe i need to look into getting my own injections i can do at home.]

so, uh, i guess that's it. just those two "joys" of having a migraine. naturally there is the crazy sensory overload -- all five senses are on high-alert when you have a migraine, which explains why people are sensitive to light, smell, the way stuff feels on your skin, sound ... taste (but since no one can eat while they have a migraine, i guess this last one gets ignored). all of these are true for me ... smells make me puke, sunlight hurts, and i can only tolerate cotton on my skin (wool sweater i contemplated this morning = too hot and WAY too scratchy). fresh air helps. stale, inside-air is BAD.

some other symptoms that seem to affect me: sweating (it's nice for me to be cold when i have a migraine. i always have a "winter-only" migraine fantasy idea of taking a sleeping bag outside in the cold and recovering that way), blocked sinuses, and occasionally (ahem!) diarrhea. i think the dizziness from the migraine is from not being able to eat or drink anything ON TOP of the nausea and nightmarish pain. today, teaching with the migraine: i tripped over my own feet TWICE. my students probably thought i was hungover, hmm. [sometimes the pain is so bad it makes me actually cry! total-baby admission, i know. it only happens with the really bad ones, and then only makes the pain worse.]

but it's over now. i had the migraine for about 10 hours today, not bad. i'm worn out, but like every other time a migraine fades and then disappears: i'm so happy to be alive! i'm euphoric i don't have a headache anymore. :) my head is actually sore (it will be tomorrow, too) from all the pain, but ibuprofen helps. and finally: I CAN EAT!

[cuteness alert: my dogs were GEMS with me on the couch with the migraine this entire afternoon. no barking, no stepping all over me (ok, there was a little of that at first, until i barked at them in some scratchy-freaky-witch voice that must've really alarmed them), no growling or farting, no humping each other ... they just curled up by my head as they're often wont to do and slept and cuddled like angels. i love them.]

houston!

here we are in bridget's beautiful backyard in houston! it was a wonderful weekend all around, just my kind of time (L-R: bridget, sylvia, alison). UPDATE:

ahh, houston. some refer to it as texas' "armpit," but i think that designation should be reserved for el paso. both because el paso seems to be geographically located more in an armpit (look at a map, it's true!), and because it's much less pretty than houston, which seemed really green and trendy to me when i was there.

my gorgeous, brilliant cousins showed me a lovely weekend in houston: we had good fish tacos the first night i got in, and the next day ali, myself, and their friend, emily, had brunch at a friendly, cool cafe (ali, what was it called?? i can't remember), then enjoyed ourselves poking around in fun shops in houston's cool "heights" neighborhood. we stopped to play with some animals at a big outdoor "adopt-a-pet" thing where i got to hold a kitten. who doesn't love kittens? i think from now on i'm going to try and find a kitten to snuggle with every time i visit a new city. also, we later got to take a nap at bridget's house that afternoon and i LOVE naps.

saturday night we all went to see american gangster at the alamo drafthouse/cinema, which despite being located in kind of a ghetto-y mall, was really fun. i forgot how nice it can be to eat dinner while watching a movie on a big screen (er, not on my laptop with a plate of bagels). you can even order candy off of the menu, and then it's brought to you! i wish i could do this everywhere (my office, my house, the local theater here, my bed ...)

sunday ali, bridget and i headed to the galleria, a fancy houston mall with upscale shops and AN ICE SKATING RINK. i spent too much money at j crew and we didn't ice skate (thank god). after shoe shopping we were worn out and went home to bridget's to watch 30 rock on DVD, which is my new favorite show, seriously. if it wasn't online at nbc, i'd have to consider getting a TV just for that and the office.

later sunday, ali and bird got pedicures while i got a manicure at a nail place by bridget's house. there was this little girl there, linda, an alarmingly overweight 6-year-old daughter of one of the manicurists, who was running around chirping in a blend of english and vietnamese. she had made up a little song about potato chips, her favorite food i guess, which she sang for a bit. then for a long time she just sat nearby and talked to herself, eating dry cereal and potato chips alternately. the lady who did my nails was nice enough to let me sit in a massaging chair by ali and bird (here, smiling because her feet and toenails have just been bathed, massaged, then painted).

all in all it was a fabulous weekend that ended way too quickly. makes me think how important it is to live in the vicinity of people you love. my twin cousins and i grew up together in minneapolis, and lived together on and off, so to me they're a bit like sisters. they seem like they've really got it all together, so i'm proud for them and only wish i lived closer to be there when their kids are born.

[also made me wish i had my own twin sister!]

favorite song(s) of the moment

from josh ritter's album "the historical conquests of josh ritter":

01. "to the dogs or whoever"
03. "right moves"
05. "open doors"

you can listen to numbers 3 + 5 by clicking here. i love these songs, and now by extension, josh ritter.

yesterday i was playing "open doors" kind of loud at the coffee shop drive-through window (not when i ordered! i had it off for that, then turned it on when i pulled up to retrieve coffee at the window, honest) and the guy who gave me my latte leaned way out the window and said, "what's the name of the band you're listening to?" i told him. he liked it. i almost gave him the CD, but i'm not ready to pass it on just yet. (coffee-shop-guy was very nice but had an abe lincoln beard. these are hideous, in case you're wondering. it was an unflattering style on abe, and remains so on everyone else as well. i think they're appropriate for costume balls ... where you go as abraham lincoln ...)

[my thanks again to dave for sharing this awesome music.]

this shouldn't surprise anyone

but apparently, teaching teenagers abstinence-only sex education (a conservative agenda item from the beginning of the bush presidency, and popular in "red" states) does little or nothing to curb teen sex.

wow, really?

huh. who would've predicted that?

[oh, i don't know ... anyone else (besides planned parenthood) that thinks rationally, maybe.]

it's always a little bittersweet when you find out you were right ... and you also find out hundreds of thousands teenage girls and boys were not able to learn about birth control and preventing STDs because bible-thumpers had their way with legislation. so it's a mixed bag.

on a different, but related note, i stumbled across this hilarious site promoting abstinence for boys. (since it comes from whitehouse.ORG, it's not real, people). "sex is for fags" has some lovely testimonials from members on its front page:

Zach P.: "Premarital sex isn't worth it! You can catch AIDS, or cancer, or testicle weevils, or a bad body image or rickets. You know what IS worth it? Making love to Jesus. Because you can't knock Him up and He'll never ask what you're thinking – cuz He already knows!"

Greg B.: "I joined Sex is for Fags after watching girls who put out turn my big brother into a major wuss. By learning to repress my urges, now I can to grow up and be what I always wanted: a prison guard or a priest."

[mrah, "sex is for fags" led me to its abstinence-only sister-site for girls, "iron hymen." go. read. snort.]

baby lust

it's looming.

30.

less than a week away now ... meaning it's pretty unlikely i will give birth to a baby while i'm in my 20s.

i spent the weekend with my twin cousins in houston. one is married and pregnant, and the other is married and soon-to-be pregnant. (more on this trip in a separate post). and in case you're wondering, everyone in the universe is either married with children or married and working on children. or single and not wanting children at the moment. i have one friend in my same boat (happy birthday today, ES!) and the good news for her is that she doesn't want a flock of kids like i've always wanted (4-5-6?).

i recall, in my freshman or sophomore year of college, making a list that detailed what i would've accomplished by age 30 -- it was a timeline of sorts. it got a little fuzzy because i had a lot on the list, but i figured some things would overlap. to the best of my memory, it looked something like this:

- by 23: graduate from college and get cool overseas job
- by 25: be in grad school and be married.
- by 27: finished with grad school and have baby number one.
- by 29: live in foreign country and have baby number two.
- by 30: be happy and have baby number three on the way.

sigh. kids are so idealistic aren't they? [sniff.]

well, i did live overseas a little bit, and i did get to travel some. i did go to grad school.

i just missed the whole part about getting married (not for lack of trying) and having 2-3 kids by now. the point was that since i knew i wanted a whole bunch of children, i knew i needed to start in my mid-late-20s. do women have 5 kids after (let's give me a nice window here) 32?

maybe i should've just married the crazy, older french-canadian guy who proposed to me quite suddenly at the end of my first sophomore semester in college. he said, "marry me and we'll move to france and live on my grandmother's lavender farm and have 10 children." (he was, erhm, leaving the next week. he knew i loved lavender). i actually thought about it for a moment, and then said i couldn't because i had to finish college. (i know. it's so ridiculous. i could've totally gone back to college later).

[i ran into this guy on campus in las cruces a couple years later. apparently when he got to france after a short period on said grandma's farm, he had joined a circus and spent a year traveling around with this circus. i like to imagine this was a wild gypsy circus. think of the stories you'd have for your ten kids if you did THAT.]

why do they always want to blame the spider?

an australian man is blaming a funnel-web spider bite for kidnapping and raping a woman in 1997. i know we hear this excuse A LOT, because it makes such perfect sense, but it never ceases to startle me.

i think of all the poor kidnapper-rapists who have been forced to commit acts of violence due to spider venom, and i get a little choked up. such nice people, you know, and then one-little-spider bite and suddenly against their will they kidnap and rape, sigh.

i think someone should definitely start an international Spider Bite Taskforce to look into this pressing issue, asap. i wonder if anyone even bothered to look into this when ted bundy was finally caught. it might've explained so much.

crabby "lecturer" post

"if you don't mind, please let me know what i missed in class today."

"sorry i missed class today can you tell me what i missed. [sic] thanks."

"i didn't come to class because it was my birthday. i attached the homework. can you tell me what i missed. [sic]"

"i know i missed class last week but i want to go home early to celebrate my birthday so don't think i'll be able to come this week either. can you tell me what i missed. [sic]"

"sorry i couldn't come to class today. your [sic] a great professor. i attached my paper here."

DAMN THEM ALL.

first: what is wrong with using a question mark? why is this so difficult?

second: unfortunately in Grown-Up World my dear freshmen, birthdays are no longer the holidays they were when you were a child. (maybe this is a shame -- i'm grumpy so don't really care). you have to come to class. you have to do homework. you still have to use question marks.

third: emailing me papers means i have to download them from webmail then print them out myself. this sucks for me for a variety of reasons. mainly because it's a hassle and it was your job to bring your paper to class like (almost) everyone else managed. why aren't more students embarrassed by this? they think it's totally fine.

fourth-and-most-important: whenever you miss class in college, it's up to you to first attempt to find out what you missed from a fellow student. if you've exhausted every single person in class and no one can tell you, then you pay a visit to your prof during their office hours. I DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH ENERGY IN MY SOUL TO EXPLAIN TO YOU (and you, and you, and you, and I HAVE 150 STUDENTS) IN A FUCKING EMAIL WHAT OUR CLASS DID FOR 1.5 HOURS THAT DAY. christ.

whew. i feel better now. i really have explained this (albeit more delicately) in class, but everyone is an exception. i know. i know.

another sad day for the GOP, sigh.

maybe it's time for republicans to re-think their anti-gay policy, no? stop carrying on with the stupid BS that being gay is a choice, and marriage can only be between a man and a woman, and god doesn't support gay-ness. etc. ad nauseum. BECAUSE CLEARLY REPUBLICANS WHO TRY TO PRETEND THEY'RE NOT GAY CAN ONLY LAST FOR SO LONG.

here's the new face of hypocrisy, one of many in a sad, upsetting line:

he's two-term WA-state rep. richard curtis. twice he voted down legislation supporting gay rights.

before him just recently were republicans larry craig (ID) and mark foley (FL). then there was ted haggard last spring (ok, not a politician, but a prominent evangelist minister. worse).

there have been others as well. how many republicans will be forced "out" of their pathetic hypocritical closets before some GOP genius says, "huh. maybe we've got this all wrong about homosexuality"?

just the "scandalousness" of these public outings pisses me off, but any relish for these situations (we dems do love to see them roll in it) is quickly followed by sadness. check this post out at the daily kos. it says better than i can here why all the lying and hypocrisy is nothing more than a great tragedy (here's a sample):

Let's face it: the reason why we, as Democrats and progressives, reap political benefits from the gay Republican tragedy has nothing to do with our own actions.

We're not out there stirring up anti-gay rhetoric. We don't hate gays.

They do.

They think the scandal is that Larry Craig is gay, or bisexual, or whatever he is.

That's bullshit.

The scandal is that they hate gays. The scandal is that not just that they think being gay is an option, but that they think it is a repugnant option. The scandal is that they pretend that homosexuals don't exist, when clearly they do.

good-bye, muffin top. [sniff.]

for those of you who don't know, this is a muffin. a muffin with a nice tasty "top" (see how happily it spills over the muffin-wrapper-thingy):















and this is a "muffin top" (i'll let you make the connection yourself):


















i'm sitting here, comfortably typing at the computer, in some pink pants that for the better part of last year, I COULD NOT EVEN BUTTON. and now, not only do they close (un-painfully no less), there's no muffin top. same goes for two pairs of jeans ... only a few more jeans to go ...

[why is it "pair" of jeans? i realize that jeans have a "pair" of legs, but when i say "i got two pairs of jeans last month" (i did not, in fact, buy this many jeans last month), why doesn't that mean i GOT FOUR jeans??]

institute without boundaries

in an effort to put something meaningful up on the blog, here's a very cool program a friend of mine is working on up north in toronto. it's called the Institute Without Boundaries and is actually doing what my favorite KV quote (up there in the header) talks about: creating stable communities.

i'm not sure if these stable, green communities help alleviate loneliness, but they're a step in the right direction. the concept of creating utopian communities has fascinated me for as long as i can remember, and it's neat a thoughtful program is trying to strike a balance between crazy-utopia (the farm, pennsylvania) and viable-world-changing-utopia (the farm, pennsylvania).

[i wish there was still a quaker utopia ... sort of. i would have to go visit my family there then, and people would silently judge me for eating meat and shopping at wal-mart. or for shopping at all. this is an intelligent post about the dangers of utopias ...]

point taken ...?

"Frankly, I simply don’t get the whole idea of blogs. They strike me as a bit narcissistic and something to do for people who have time on their hands such as the young and the elderly. Sorta’ like playing Solitaire… yes it fills the time, but it’s not particularly meaningful, just a lot of opinions and words. Why not create your own website where you publish your poetry and short story writing? I really enjoyed the website that you and Lauren created – it showed a comedic as well as deep side of who you are.

My real concern, as your ______ who cares about you and your name/reputation, is that a fantastic job prospect will arise in the future and it will be nixed when they Goggle [sic] your name and come up with … what?"

i think this close-relative-of-mine-i'm-not-identifying-here has a point. she/he also sent me a few other emails last night that concerned a) a misspelling on my academic department's faculty page for me, and b) the very real concern that since there are currently two other people with MY EXACT SAME first and last name, i should really start using my middle initial. (so when i'm "googled" people don't confuse me with this woman who writes camera handbooks with her husband, verne).

so. now i'm sitting here, thinking about this. again.

what am i doing with this blog? with my life? [why DON'T I USE MY MIDDLE INITIAL? ]

why don't i do creative writing anymore? (aside from the fact that most of my short stories from my undergraduate workshops dealt with freakish disasters of the mutilating sort ... my favorite of these was a "short-short" of pure dialogue that concerned a chicken processing plant accident where one of the employees had his arms ripped off at the shoulders. another involved an aspiring male model who broke off his two front teeth diving into a nearly-empty swimming pool while drunk. yet another concerned a young woman whose parents BOTH DIED AT THE EXACT SAME MINUTE, albeit across town from each other).

yes, i didn't really "get" irony. i still don't, apparently.

but i'm beginning to suspect it's genetic.

one piece (giant stick not included)

"you're a walking turn-on."

walking ... with your giant walking stick/piece of lumber? is this fun new "Big Zip" for walkers or ... those dudes from the highland games that have to toss a log? (yes, thank you, i "get it" with the stick. i'm trying to ignore "it," ahem).

honestly, why aren't more men wearing these one-pieces today? i recall when a brother of mine went through a phase in high school where he wore blue mechanic coveralls, but why isn't the "Big Zip" making a comeback yet? (click on image to enlarge and read the full description).

it's figure-flattering AND it's a shirt and pants IN ONE. (think of how stress-free getting dressed can be, without having to worry about whether that shirt matches these jeans!) all you have to worry about is whether your chest hair is going to get stuck in the zipper or not. (this outfit screams Chest Hair Fluffy and ON DISPLAY, does it not?)

and because it's 50-50 poly/cotton, i'm sure there's very little ironing. might suck a bit when you have to go to the bathroom. in the winter.

well, i know what i'm getting my the men life for christmas now. that was easy.

(also comes in "rust," and a short-sleeved version in "natural" and "camel" [cough.]).

thanks, again, josh.

favorite song of the moment

(thanks, dave).

the song is "hesitating beauty," and was originally written by woody guthrie. I DELETED THE CODE THAT MADE THE SONG AUTOMATICALLY START PLAYING. that was getting annoying. but it's still a beautiful song, and you can click here to listen to the whole thing, in case you weren't getting sick of it yet. :)