Movieing Violations

Well, it's over. I managed to see 7 films in 7 days, and used up my entire 10-ticket bundle. What else did I see, you may ask? Sisters in Law, a documentary from Cameroon about female judges and lawyers dealing with family law and rape cases in a misogynistic society. It was funny and fascinating and sad, all at once. I highly recommend it. Iron Island is only the second Iranian film I've ever seen... And it was only slightly less confusing and strange than the first one. One of the reviews on IMDB says that Iron Island "lets you make up your own mind." I'm sorry, but I'd at least like for the director to give the story a clear point or a followable plot--I'm happy then to make up my mind what I thought of it, but give me something to work with, here! Iron Island has one of the coolest setups of any movie I saw this week; a sort of floating city of poor people are living aboard an abandoned oil tanker, run by a big-fish-small-pond kind of guy who's essentially exploiting the people, they work for him in exchange for rent etc. But there's a love plot that ends incomprehensibly, the people are eventually forced off the boat but it's not clear what will happen to them, and a little kid runs off into the ocean and disappears. (I know the last one is symbolic, but I'm not sure of what since the water represents freedom for fish, and his name is Baby Fish--but the water is also what was imprisoning the people on the boat. So I dont' get it. Maybe I'm just not subtle enough to watch Iranian films.) Last but not least was Kinky Boots, which is based on a true story of a shoe manufacturer in Britain who saves his dying business by starting to specialize in womens' style shoes for transvestites and drag queens. It featured The Operative from "Serenity" as the main drag queen, and it was nothing short of hilarious. Two thumbs up, 5 stars, and so on.

Now school's out, grading is done, I've been to Kalamazoo and back, and things are returning to "normal." I have to dismantle my whole fishtank soon, the thought is daunting to say the least. Maybe I can avoid it a bit longer if I keep blogging regularly...

Film Flam

The festival proceeds apace, marred somewhat by the fact that someone kipped the IFS cash box out of the projection booth at the art museum, sometime between Thursday night and Sunday morning. We lost about $150 and three new membership forms. Boo. Other than that, and some minor projection problems, it's all going swimmingly, and we had a number of new people show up at the IFS monthly screening tonight. Though if I see one more Stella Artois commercial before a film I may be forced to boycott their beer for life. (Apparentlly, one can grow tired even of funny European beer commercials.) Got a couple more reviews for you, whether you want them or not.

Lady Vengeance
Have you ever watched a movie, and said to yourself, "Wow, that was a great film, and I don't ever want to see it ever again"? I felt that way about Peter Greenaway's Pillow Book; it was tremendous and beautiful and fascinating, and it also made me want to barf and gave me creepy dreams for days afterwards. Chan-wook Park's Lady Vengeance was a lot like that (though not quite so much so.) It had moments of totally hilarious visual comedy, followed immediately by moments of "Dear god, that's so....wrong." It's not that it's totally gory--though there's a fair amount of blood and ick--but more just that the plot is plain disturbing. Much more so than the capsule on the link page would indicate. I don't think I want to see his other films, and while I really did like Lady Vengeance, I wouldn't recommend it if you're not in the mood for a bit of a mind fuck.

District 13
Brought to us by Luc Besson of La Femme Nikita fame, this is an action movie set in grimy future Paris, 2010. Upyernoz recommended this one to me as it got good reviews at the Philly Film Fest last month. While I'd not call it groundbreaking in terms of plot--it's kind of Escape From New York-ish--the martial arts and action sequences were beyond cool. The best I can describe it is sort of Matrix-style, but more beliveable; lots of jumps, kicks, and rolls and running up nearly sheer surfaces, all with no breaks in the movement. Each action flows into the next, it's like dance. And I'm told there was NO wire work in these sequences. If you see it, you'll find that as hard to believe as I do. I loved it.

I'm dividing my time between grading, movies, and yard work right now. Some time I need to work in painting, too, as I'm getting way behind.... Maybe next week.

Free Time? What's That?

I'm back! That is, I left, and then I came back. London was great, of course, after my initial reluctance to leave my comfortable nest (always an effort for me) I had a fantastic trip. Successful on all fronts, business and pleasure both. Our hosts in High Wycombe were kind and generous (especially with the beer,) our trade show was spectacular and went off without a hitch, and my day spent at liberty in London was perfect--got to see friends I've not seen in a decade, as well as the V&A Museum and the natural history museum, both on my list. Moments of excitement on the trip included my brief detention by Homeland Security at the Detroit airport, and a genuine brawl at the ticket barrier at Marlebone rail station. 2 drunk girls jumped the barrier and were first detained, then wrestled to the ground by the station guards when they resisted. Famed British politeness--as these two girls were screaming obscenities and kicking and clawing at the railmen, one of them is pulling out his can of mace and saying quite calmly, "Now, luv, if you don't stop that I'll spray something in your face, OK?"

Now I'm back, and I've got 200 exams to grade, and it's Film Festival Week. I'd promised you a movie review, but I'll have to save "Hot Wax" for later in favor of a few capsule reviews from the last couple days....

U-Carmen eKhayelitsha
The opera Carmen, set in a small South African township and sung in Xhosa click language--how could you go wrong? Well, for me, the basic problem is that it's still opera, which I am genetically predisposed to dislike. I come from a long line of opera haters, and I'd never seen Bizet's Carmen, so I came a little unsure of what to expect. I actually liked it very much--my main problem with opera is A) I want it to have subtitles, which this did, and B) I get impatient when they sing the same thing over and over again--"I loooove you!" "Dooooo you?" "Yessss, I dooooo! I love youuuu!" "Do you truly love meeee?" Yes, damn it, she said so! Let's move on, shall we? But U-Carmen has very little of this, and when it does the music is catchy. The resetting of it in South Africa is excellent, it had a very gritty feel and reminded me of the small town where I stayed in Kenya. The woman who sings the title role, Pauline Malefane, is incredibly talented--seductive, beautiful, expressive and funny. The neat thing about the film is that it was shot entirely in this small township of Khayelitsha, where they've never had a cinema or really any exposure to either movies or opera. The movie was a hit there (they showed it in their sports facility for several weeks, 3 shows a day.) As the director said in the Q/A afterwards, a film like this, starring people from the poorer towns of South Africa, can go a long way to showing the children of these towns what they too can achieve--whether it's singing, or acting, or going to school to be a doctor or lawyer or whatever. Very cool.

Water
Deepa Mehta's latest in her series of "elemental" films, this was the one I most looked forward to before the festival started. I liked Fire very much, not just because of the theme of love between women but also because it was so beautifully filmed--Mehta captures the soul of India (or India as I imagine it) with color, texture, and light in a way I find utterly breathtaking. Water is like that as well; it's so visually rich that the plot, for me, has to work to overcome the impact of the visuals. It's an intense movie, and disturbing and painful in spots. But it also seemed to me upon reflection that Water wasn't as well put-together as Fire--the plot wasn't as tightly woven, and the characters aren't as deeply developed. It sprawls a bit. But it was still very, very good, a 2 hankie film, and utterly beautiful. The "water" theme is worked in well, a bit more subtly than the fire in Fire. Perhaps because water is more subtle and less dramatic by nature--though the drenching thunderstorms and the monumentality of the river make water a more constant presence throughout this one. More films later, I'm off to volunteer at the festival this afternoon!

You Know You're in Trouble When....

...2 minutes into a phone conversation with your closest friend, they say, "Are you drunk?"

No! It was 10 am on a Monday! Of course I'm not drunk. Apparently, though, the combination of a tax-related crisis, upcoming travel stress, and general malaise/apathy that I'm experiencing right now comes across as drunken rambling to those who know me best. Ah well--this too shall pass.

I've got a few movie reviews for you, but no time to write them at the moment. Just bask in the knowledge that my next post will expose you to the horror that is "Hot Wax: Zombies on Wheels." And with that thought, I bid you good day.

The Horror! The HORROR!!!

I've officially changed my position on gay marriage. This Gibletsian vision of the apocalypse has convinced me that when gay marriage happens, the robot appliance hordes cannot be far behind! Speak out now, America! And in the meantime, be careful; I caught my blender reading a skin magazine this week.

Mr. Noz's endless movie review postings have contributed to my enthusiasm for the upcoming Film Festival here in town. Noz and I used to go to independant and foreign films together all the time; we each went through several frequent buyer cards at the Music Box while we both lived in Chicago. We saw some great stuff there, and also the occasional dog. The worst thing we ever saw, actually, was the animated short session at the Gay & Lesbian film fest in 1998--one short was so horrible I can't even bring it up without wincing. It's like the opposite of gay pride... that movie was serious gay shame. Getting a free pair of saltshakers shaped like Absolut bottles from the sponsor didn't make up for the sheer tastelessness of the film. (though it WAS a nice perk! I used those things for years.) Anyway, there are several things I feel a strong urge to see, so I'm trying to decide if it's worth it to get a 10-ticket bundle and then try to pawn off some tickets on friends, or if I can manage to do enough volunteering to get 2-3 passes free and then buy a single ticket or two if I need it. It's taking up a lot of the brain space I should be using to grade the Art 102 exams that are hulking in a pile on top of my steamer trunk... Hmm....Caravaggio, or Carmen? Tough call.

Could Life Be More Exciting?

Yes, I found my passport. No, I'm not going to tell you where it was. Suffice it to say it's a good thing I'm off work today, as there's a hellish mess to clean up downstairs. (of course, what am I doing? blogging.) Included under the headline "hellish mess" is the horror created by Mean Cat having inflicted a small but potent injury to Big Cat yesterday afternoon. He's fine--but she hit a blood vessel near his eye and he painted the town red, as it were, running around the house and shaking his head violently. I wanted to make him a little pirate eye patch and teach him to say "arrr!" but settled for getting the bleeding stopped and wiping up the splatters he left on me, the floor, the rug, my clothes, etc. and so on. It was a stressful day. Then the storms hit, and while my house and yard are unscathed, my boss' place a half mile north of me got pummelled. Telephone poles snapped like toothpicks, trees uprooted.... And no power at Casa de Croc. So off I go to clean.

canalsnow
Originally uploaded by blackbear88.

Guess When I Took This?

Actually, this is from a snowstorm back in December; the one last week was not nearly so cool-looking, with flotillas of slush moving down the canal in ribbony patterns. I'm hoping by posting it that it will serve as a farewell to winter weather. We're now well into spring weather, which involves lightning and hail and occasional tornado warnings. I met friends for a beer last night, and they drove through hail on the way up from Little Flower; I left my house in a driving sideways rain. By the time we reached the appointed place, the sun was out (though setting) and the only sign of danger was the continual flashing of lightning in the clouds to the east. Which we got to look at for quite a while, as we had to go to three different brew pubs to find one that had table space. Thus the dangers of going out in Broad Ripple during the first warm days of spring, even with the occasional torrential downpour.

This all pales in comparison to my crisis du jour, which is that I can't find my passport. I'm supposed to go to London on business in exactly 3 weeks. I've not needed my passport since October of 2000, before I moved into this house. I have no memory of seeing it between then and now, and it's not where I would ordinarily put such an important document. While I'm the Supreme Overlord of Disorganization and Clutter, I'm finding it hard to believe I'd have just thrown it someplace stupid when I got back from Brazil. So if any of you knows where it is, feel free to email me.

Indiana goes to Daylight Savings for the first time this weekend. DST is stupid and pointless, and our Governor is a dick for pushing it through. I can only hope that when he's out of office, we'll repeal it--as should the rest of the civilized world...

My hero....
Originally uploaded by blackbear88.

Bow Before His Might!

hhw tipped me off last week to a special on the History Channel called "How William Shatner Changed the World." I can't believe I almost missed this; there was a frantic scramble in the living room while I tried to remember how my VCR works (curse you, DVD technology! And curse me, for not being able to afford TiVo. Just wait, TiVo...someday, you will be mine.)

What you have to understand is that, while I have an appreciation for the later incarnations of Star Trek in varying degrees, my childhood was intertwined with the original series in such as way as to be completely symbiotic. That handsome fellow you see on the right was one of my earliest toys; I got him when I was 4, along with the rest of the Mego crew and the boxy vinyl Enterprise with the spinny transporter. I loved Star Trek. I fully expected the future to be like Star Trek. The more I thought about this last week (as I watched ol' Bill cuttin' up on screen--the man's hilarious, no question) the more it came to me that Star Trek shaped not just my love of science fiction, but my ideas on politics, religion, society, and technology. Shocking, really, to realize that it's not just me, or even just me and the even bigger trek-heads I saw when I was into the con scene--Star Trek burned itself into the imagination of the people who masterminded the technology boom and the arrival of the information age. I always just thought it was a nerdy coincidence that flip phones look like communicators... (And yet, as you know, that's why I bought one.) I feel somehow... vindicated, I guess, that the importance of Star Trek TOS in my own early development is mirrored to some extent in the mainstream world. Maybe I'm more mainstream than I thought.

I'm certainly more mainstream than the woman I hired to work at the store a few years back, who wanted to wear her Starfleet uniform to work and whose answering machine message included theme music, and the phrase "This is Captain Smith of the U.S.S. Freedom! Ensign Smith and I are on an away mission right now...." I never asked how her husband had gotten demoted to Ensign. I had visions of him at home swabbing the holodeck while she faced the dangers of the retail galaxy on Planet Mall....

hhw also included a link to Wil Wheaton's blog entry about Grand Slam, which included some kind words regarding fans of the U.S.S. Freedom type; it was really quite nice. I've never read his blog before, though I knew he had one. I wasn't so much a fan of ST:TNG while he was on it. This wasn't really because of the "Wesley saves the universe!" stereotype that fans laugh about--though there was one episode where Wesley created an intelligent life form as part of a science fair project or somethin', and that did make me wince all of its own merit. I think, in retrospect, it was more that there was someone very close to my own age on Star Trek.(He's two years younger than me, almost to the day.) The problem was not that there was a kid on the show, but that that kid wasn't ME. I'm not talking about being an actor--god knows that's never been in the cards (as you'll see when MD Hearts becomes downloadable! very soon!) But the character was a proxy for all us kids who wanted to be part of the Enterprise crew... and he wasn't like me at all. So, perhaps unfairly, my visceral reaction to Wesley was always, "Hmpf. Jerk." And, as an extension, I didn't feel a fannish need to seek out Wil Wheaton's weblog. I doubt I'll read it regularly even now--but knowing that he, too, fantasizes about hearing the words "I love you" from Morena Baccarin makes me think that while Wesley and I were galaxies apart, Mr. Wheaton and I at least have something good in common! :]

Sweet cracker sandwich, it's snowing like friggin Christmas outside. What the hell is going on with March?

rio negro
Originally uploaded by me.

Braaziiiiiillll....

Figured out how to use my slide scanner! however, thanks to the miracle of my slow-ass connection, I don't expect to have the bulk of my photos up until sometime in 2018. I'll keep you all posted on progress so you don't have to keep checking my flickr account. Unless you want to, of course.

I went to Brazil in October of 2000, and spent a week on a sort of houseboat thing on the Rio Negro, which is one of the two main feeder rivers for the Amazon. It and the Solimoes river come together at a city called Manaus; the black water of the Rio Negro meets the more ordinary colored water of the Solimoes in a sort of swirl of black and white (which we were led to believe would be more photogenic than it actually was.) Eventually I'll come across the slide of that and put it up. I'm discovering that my father apparently disassembled my carefully planned slide show, which I gave to much audience acclaim for friends in late 2000, and put in every freakin' slide either of us took, in no particular order on the carousel. So this Rio Negro slide was the first one I pulled. One property of the black tannic water there is that when it's still, it's highly reflective. As you can see, it's rather a stunning effect--much better than the meeting of the waters. I'm taking all the more pleasure in remembering Brazil this evening, as there is a winter storm warning for all of Central Indiana right now.... We're supposed to get 6-10" of snow by tomorrow afternoon. Spring can show up any freakin' time, here....

No Diving....Dumbass.
Originally uploaded by me.

No Diving...Dumbass.

This has been on my Flikr account since the Dells trip; Erin took it. I love it.

So I'm thinking about scanning in all my slides from my trips to Africa and Brazil. I'm a fan of slides over prints, when it comes to real film--the color can't be beat, and something about the formality of sitting down and watching a slide show is very appealing to me, it gives each picture a weight and meaning that flipping through a pile of 4 x 6" prints just doesn't have. Which, of course, is why almost no one has seen my Africa and Brazil photos. So what do you think? If I posted them, would you want to look at them?

I've been kinda ill this week, so no real entertaining post awaits. Possibly related to being ill, I've had a couple of very vivid dreams in the last week. I don't have those often, so it kinda creeps me out a bit when I do. One was a return to high school dream--I have those a lot, but as I said, they're not often so painfully real-seeming. I woke up from that one with a bang, and it was like "Where the HELL am I?" The second involved a person who was at one time a close friend; our friendship died, for a number of reasons, over a decade ago, and I've not seen her since. This bothers me; while I don't imagine we'd ever really be good friends again, I continue to occasionally wonder how her life is and what she's doing. I don't let go well. And about once a year or so I'll have a vivid dream in which we meet and catch up. If I were superstitious I'd wonder if the dreams were presaging something dire about her ("Oh no! Timmy's in the well again?") but I figure it's more just loose wiring in the ol' noggin.

The third dream involved a coffee place that gave away a free turtle with every espresso drink; I got one so I could release the turtle, but when I took him down to the canal on his leash he dove in before I could make sure there were no turtle predators around, and he dragged me into the canal after him and I ended up getting pulled up and down the canal by this turtle because I couldn't get his leash off. I hate when that happens.

***I've added three more friends to the Other Divers Tales list--finally, Carl and Karen K. are on there. And finally, Erin has a blog for me to add! So check 'em out, yo.

Please, God, Don't Let It Be Genetic...

This week I pulled a lynchpin of my life, in the form of my old computer desk. I bought the desk 7 years ago, in a different house, for a computer I haven't used since I bought my laptop in 2003. It's been sitting fallow in my "office" since then, piled with random paper and computer equipment I couldn't use if I wanted to because of all the clutter. When the DAV called last week to ask if I had anything for them, I said "Yes!" and resolved to donate the desk.

You have to understand how hard it is for me to get rid of anything. My friends laugh and tease me about it, but it causes me actual physical pain to think of something useful (like, say, a desk, or an old yet functional computer) ending up in a landfill. My stomach gets all twisted, and I start sweating, and my lip trembles, and in the end it's just much easier to keep the damn stuff. Until, of course, the house gets full. So I resolved that the desk would go, hopefully to a good home, and I got Rat Girl to help me move it outside; I still stressed and sweated a bit, but I knew it was the right thing to do. Once the desk was gone, I could get into the room and move around more easily, and before long I'd cleared out bags of trash (which isn't useful, so I have no problem pitching it) and arranged the entire room and its closet to make it attractive and livable. In the process of pulling everything out of the closet, I found a small lockbox I'd rescued from my Great-Aunt's house after she died--one of those small metal boxes with an insurance company logo on it, into which you're supposed to put valuable documents in case the house burns down. Naturally, the key had never surfaced during the post-mortem excavation of her home, and I'd taken the box thinking I'd pick the lock someday and see what was in it. I could hear some paper rattling around; but I'd tossed the box in the closet and forgotten about it for several years. Then, this week, here it was--and this week was not a good one for a number of reasons. So I thought, time to open it. Time to see if the box contained Aunt Aileen's lost shares of AT&T or a secret will or war bonds from 1941. That would have been a fairy tale ending to a crummy week. So I got a couple of small pointy metal objects and proceeded to pry the box open at the edge, far enough so that the paper could slide out..... and THIS is what I found.

Of all the possible things she could put into the lockbox, the one thing that's going to survive the fire is a 1954 letter from the Cincinnnati Gas Company informing my aunt that she will be able to install gas heat in her home. I suppose if the gas had blown the house up, this would have been valuable evidence for the prosecution. It's really kind of hilarious, this is just like my Aunt Aileen to have kept something like that for 50 years. Hilarious, and yet eerily familiar to me.... I have limits to my packrattiness, though. I think. I hope.

Holy #$@%, Octavia Butler Died.

Got several funny posts on the burner, but they'll have to wait, as this news drove all the funny out of my head. Damn. Butler was not my absolute favorite sci-fi author; I'd read 2-3 of her books, and found them beautiful, fascinating, and slightly unsettling enough that I didn't seek and devour everything she ever wrote. (I'm sensitive. Sue me. And anyway, that argument breaks down when I admit that one of my favorite authors is Jonathan Carroll, because he's creepy as all hell.) But I still feel a sense of loss, even not having read each of her books cover to cover. The sci-fi world is smaller, today. So I'm sad.

It's All Aboot the Rocks

I've always said I hated the Olympics. I rage bitterly at the excessive, obsessive coverage of sports that interest me slightly less than extended dental surgery (figure skating and downhill skiing being two of these) at the expense of sports that are genuinely interesting (archery and fencing in the summer, biathalon in the winter,) I recoil from the incessant "medal count" graphics in the paper and on the news--who cares which countries have the most?--and I hardly ever watch them. I'd forgotten this was an Olympic year until I found myself in a BW3's with Ratgirl last week, and she asked them to put the opening ceremonies on one of the giant TV's. "The what? Oh yeah....boooring!" sez I.

While I don't fully recant my opinion of the Olympics as an overrated media phenomenon, and while I still don't give a flying crap who won the snowboard halfpipe, I've found something to love about the 2006 Winter O: Women's Curling. I know curling is kind of oddly fashionable this year, and that makes me a little uneasy. I hate being trendy. But I can't help it, it's awesome. O-some, I say! It's like billiards on ice. It's fascinating. I love it. I just watched the US team trounce Italy; it probably won't be enough to get them to the semi-finals, but it was fun to watch. I have to grade 204 exams this weekend, and having something to watch on TV is making it bearable.

One things I've decided I do like about the winter Olympics is that every sport, and every interview has a sound effect: "Snf." Athletes aren't immune to drippy noses; and it makes me laugh when they turn on the mike on the skier or curler and you hear them going "Yeah *snf* I'm planning to take the *snf* turn real tight *snf* and this should be my best *snf* run yet..." Things to still hate, though, include the figure skating (everything about it. everything) and some of the ad campaigns. What is up with the weird animated thing with the dragon--how does that make me want to fly United? And the random Ronald McDonald sitting on a bench commercials? WTF does that have to do with EITHER their food OR sponsoring the Olympics? Go figure. Just don't go figure skate.

We Interrupt This Broadcast...

OK, before I say anything else, I have to link to this photo. A good reason why I'll never own a Roomba; I can't begin to list all the things he'd try to eat in my cluttered home, but he'd probably just choke and die.

No penguin or cat stories to report, it's been a rather quiet week. I watched a pretty good movie called "Ping Pong," a Japanese film about two friends playing competative table tennis; one's got a burning desire to be the best in the world but not quite enough talent, and the other one has the talent but no competative urge. It's about friendship, and dreams and heroes, and I quite liked it.

Jane's got a meme this week, and while I ordinarily avoid these things (and while she thoughtfully refused to tag anyone else with it) I'm actually tempted to do it just to fill out this otherwise unventful post. Sure, why not!
4 Jobs I've had: zoo gardener. retail manager. exhibit installer. sales director of a small but popular wargame company.
4 movies I can watch over and over: Big Trouble in Little China. Star Wars: A New Hope. Better Off Dead. Antonia and Jane.
4 Places I've lived: Indianapolis. Chicago. Lexington, KY. Poughkeepsie, NY.
4 TV Shows I love: The Muppet Show. Buffy. WKRP in Cincinnati. Forensic Files.
4 Places I've vacationed: Kenya. Brazil. Ireland. The Wisconsin Dells.
4 of my Favorite Dishes: Spaghetti and meatballs. Grilled salmon. Fish n Chips. Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.
4 websites I check daily: Sluggy. Rubber Hose. Big Top. The Croc Forum.
4 Places I'd rather be right now: Er.... Is it really lame that I can't think of any? There's lots of places I'd like to go in the long term--but none of them right now, coz dinner's almost ready....

Interesting how hung up the phrase "right now" got me, I really did sit here for a couple minutes thinking hard about it; I suspect this is a reflection of my general unwillingness to be spontaneous in certain areas of my life. I'd like to think I'm the sort of person who can drop everything when the opportunity to do something new or fun arises--but really, I'm kidding myself there. I like things to be planned out well in advance, and while I can be spontaneous, it almost never comes easily or comfortably. Hmm. Know thyself, I suppose...

Snapping Out of It

I haven't been posting much because I've been a little down lately; I'm working 5 part time jobs, I'm not making much money at any of them, and I'm tired and cranky all the time. Part of it, I think, was that I didn't really have a single day free for the better part of January and haven't had time to unwind at all until this weekend, when my work at the museum was unexpectedly cancelled. While I'm sorry I'm not making $60 this weekend by annoying little kids, it was a huge mental sigh of relief when I realized I didn't have anything to do yesterday. This gave me a little time to reflect upon all the stuff that I'm happy about, which offset the honestly very few things I'm unhappy about right now.
1. I haven't had a cold yet this winter. This is amazing; especially considering how many little germ-factory kids I've had contact with at the museum in the last 2 months.
2. I got to be in a movie last weekend. Yes, my role as "Martinique, the Fencing Assassin" has been recorded on digital video, to debut online in a few months as the second installment of the popular soap opera "MD HEARTS" from ANC Movies. I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille! Seriously, it was a great time. That's the back of my head in the teaser photo.
3. It snowed yesterday. Perfect snow, about an inch, didn't stick to the roads or my car but coated every tree branch and power line, and it's just beautiful.
4. I have a job interview next week. Part time, no benefits, but it IS at a museum. More details if they become relevant.
5. I've cooked some really good food lately. I made a resolution to do more cooking in 2006, and specifically to try a new recipe every week. This week's installment was Chinese dumplings, to celebrate the Year of the Dog (which is my year, in the Chinese Zodiacal sense. Come to think of it, that's another reason to be happy--this is my year! Things have to be better--dogs unite!)
6. My pets are insane. No, wait... this was the happy list. Well, I'll tell this story anyway--see, the Orange Cat has this habit of playing with things that aren't technically cat toys, in the traditional sense. So I'm used to waking up in the night and hearing him assaulting some random thing, and unless it's really annoying I just yell "Shut up, dammit!" and then roll over. This happened the other night, I yelled "shut up dammit" and rolled over, and thought nothing more about it. Then the next morning, I wake up for real to discover that his "prey" was a bag of peat moss that I'd been using to try to lower the Ph in my fish tank (which is another depressing story, somehow my Ph spiked to 8.2. it's amazing my fish haven't just dissolved.) So he's found this bag, stalked it, killed it, and then dragged it around the house like a cheetah carrying a Thomson's Gazelle, leaving a trail of blood (that is, peat moss, which is something akin to potting soil) all around my bedroom and living room. When I found the bag, it had been utterly bled dry. I was stunned. Stunned and amused. That's what he's best at, after all, causing stunned amusement. So I'm happy I can wake up to find something that makes me laugh even as I'm dragging out the vacuum cleaner again.
There's more, I'm sure, but this is a good start. It was good to have a day to stop, take a deep breath, and remind myself that I will not always have 5 part time jobs with crummy pay. Hope springs a turtle!

Yes, Your Wish Came True...

As you probably all know, I have worked at the Indianapolis Zoo for a number of years, both as a paid dirt-monkey and as a volunteer in animal care--specifically, in Fish Care. We had three good-sized aquaria containing (respectively) a nurse shark, a blacktip reef shark, and 5 Yellow jacks; an assortment of Caribbean reef fish and two green moray eels; and an assortment of Indo-Pacific reef fish, a blue-spotted ray, and some carpet sharks. I say "had," because in 2006 we are undergoing a much-needed renovation of the Waters building. Unfortunately, this renovation includes the dismantling of nearly every exhibit I work with; when it comes back up, it'll be species tanks (to which I say, boo) and a touch tank (to which I say yay, but not at the expense of the amazon exhibit which is being removed to make room for it.) I was out of town last week during the move; so this week, I came back, and the several hundred fish I fed and cared for every Thursday for the past year were, with few exceptions, gone. Some went to the Audubon Aquarium in New Orleans, which lost all its fish in Hurricaine Katrina; most went to the Mall of America, which apparently has an aquarium among all its other featured attractions. The puffer we called "Spud" went there. Smooth and Wrinkle, the morays, went to Audubon. The tiny boxfish we'd had in a back hall tank because he was too small to go on exhibit for the last 6 months went to Minnesota. I know it's probably hard to understand how a person can get attached to fish, if you're not an aquarist; they're sure a lot lower on the personality scale than dogs and cats, they're not cuddly or affectionate or, really, all that smart. Fish are subtle, though. They do have personalities, which you learn when you work with them each week, and you miss them when they go. At least, you do if you're me. So I'm sad this week.

But the whole upshot of this is, what does a Fish Care volunteer do when there aren't any actual fish to care for? Wait for it.......

.........

.........

......If you guessed "Penguin Care," then we have a winner! Yes. Now that my beloved sharks are gone, I am available at 10:30 to assist in the penguin feed. Which I did this week, much to my dismay. (And if you're not sure why half the people reading this post are currently laughing til they pee, you'd better go here for a recap.) I'd like to point out that I've done this a few times since 2003 without incident (if you don't count getting bitten as an incident, and believe me penguin keepers don't) so you can just stop waiting for me to give you this week's accident punchline. Nothing happened. Nothing other than my cussing a blue streak as the kings and gentoos waddled away from me like my bucket was radioactive, causing me to beg them, "Come on! Come up out of the water and eat this fish! Please? It's a great fish, look! Please? Pretty please?"

For anyone who has romantic notions about the cuteness of penguins, let me tell you a couple things up front--one, they do bite. Hard. On purpose. Two, they're really really loud. You'll be standing there feeding them and all of a sudden one of them 2 feet away will start going off like an air raid siren for no apparent reason, shattering your eardrums and any sense of control you might have had. Three, they bite. Did I mention that? They know where your rubber boot stops, and they aim for the leg right above the top of the boot. One thing I can say without reserve, though, is that they ARE hilariously funny when they run around on land. We had a few in the holding area during the feed this week, and they run around on the wet concrete and their feet make these little slappy sounds--slip slap slip slap slip slap--as they run back and forth trying to decide if they really want to be back here or out on exhibit. Some of them went down a few stairs in the holding area, and that was hilarious too, watching these little bowling pins hop down the stairs--slip! slap! slip! slap!--and then back up as we herded them back out into the exhibit area. So they're not all bad. But they're sure no sharks, either.

Breaking in 2006

Just a short post to assure the world I still live, post-New Year's. I finished Fool's Errand, but still have 2 puzzles in At the Carnival to go, and we won't even talk about 3 in Three because that's never going to be finished. It's just too damn hard. I did, however, get a nice personal message in response to my pre-order of the new game, with Cliff Johnson's assurance of forgiveness for the aforementioned software piracy.

I'm sorry to report no entertaining injuries so far in 2006, and it's already 10 days old. I did stab myself in the hand with a dart last night at the Brewpub; but that was less innate clumsiness and more that I don't own a case for my darts, so when I take them places its an accident in the making to begin with. The miracle is that no one got hurt while we were actually playing darts; I'm terrible, and rat girl is only slightly better, and darts ended up in floors and walls and the cricket board at various times during the two games we played. I got better as the game went on.... I blame the beer.

Puzzle Pimping

Let me take a break from my regularly scheduled blog to tell you all about the thing that's been sucking my time and life away like water for the last couple weeks.

Back in college, I (and nearly every one of my friends) got totally addicted to a puzzle game for the Mac called "The Fool's Errand." It was back in the days of black and white Macs--we were all sportin' SE's or Classics then, running system 6.5--and the game was a series of over 100 puzzles, connected by a plot based on the traditional Rider-Waite tarot deck. The game was authored by Cliff Johnson, and featured crisp silhouette art and a nice level of challenge. In those days of liberal software piracy, we all had a copy, and all worked feverishly on Fool's Errand when we should have been writing papers and studying. It was glorious. Right before we graduated, he came out with "3 in Three," a similar game but mind-blowingly difficult. I'm not sure any of us solved it before graduation.

Fast forward to a month or so ago, when my friend Alex in Chicago casually mentioned that Cliff Johnson is coming out with another puzzle game! Not only that, but there are freeware versions of the two games I played in college, plus another one I'd never seen called "At the Carnival," downloadable on his website. And they'll work on OS 9! Verily I rushed to download them. Fool is still entertaining, 3 is still painfully hard, and Carnival has kept me up til 1 am on multiple nights this week when I should have been doing other things. It's just like college all over again.

So here's the pimp. If you like puzzles, go to Cliff Johnson's Website, and download any or all of these games. They will play on both Windows and Mac machines, with a little work (the later two require 256 colors rather than our current default setting of "buttloads," so you have to do a little workaround. For Windows you need a special extension installed; both of these are also available on the Fool's site.) If you love them, and want to thank Cliff for all those late nights of time-sucking brain-pounding agony, (and have $50 to spare) you should pre-order his new game, "A Fool and His Money." The game won't be out for months and months... but you did just get three fabulous games and hours of entertainment for free.*

* the hint books are also available on the site for free. Not that you'll need them.

The War on Hanukkah

Let me tell you, I've had about enough of this nation's War on Hanukkah.

It seems like I can't walk down a street this year without seeing evergreens and reindeer, hearing carolers grinding out that damn song about the drummer boy, and being wished a generic Happy Holiday by the clerk at Wal-Mart. What gives? Is it too much to expect the great window displays of Judaica from days gone by? The animatronic children in Marshall Fields' windows playing dreidel on the carpet in front of the fire, surrounded by piles of chocolate gelt and stacks of steaming latkes? What happened to Macy's traditional celebration--where all Jewish kids look forward to wending their way through a mock-up of the hills near Jerusalem before finally crawling into the lap of a costumed Judah Maccabee to whisper him their deepest Hanukkah wishes? What's wrong with America?

The holiday flash is what first attracted me to Judaism--as a convert in the making, I enthusiastically anticipated doing my Hanukkah shopping this year. I looked under "Judaica" in the yellow pages of my large midwestern city, and found.... nothing. Under "Religious Articles" I found 8 Christian bookstores, and one Religious Objects merchant. They do carry menorahs, so I called to ask them what their hours were tomorrow. "Sorry, we're closed on Christmas," they said.

I told a friend I'd buy my wrapping paper from her kid's school this year--but every roll in the huge catalog had holly and/or santas on it. I bought a bag of assorted bows, but it contained 6 red, 6 green, 6 gold...and 2 blue, suitable for the chosen colors of the holiday. I went out to rent a holiday video, to see something affirmative about the Hanukkah message of Jewish strength in adversity. The clerk at Blockbuster seemed a little puzzled by my request. "We've got 'Yentl'," he offered.

This war is insidious. You'd almost think people had forgotten what this season is all about. I wished a stranger a Happy Hanukkah, and he looked at me like he had no idea what I was talking about. Even the president has generified his cards to acknowledge the existence of other faiths this season. Come on, George, stand up for Hanukkah, and give us a big SHALOM for the holidays!

The Voice of the People

OK, so it appears that the function that would let me just link you to my survey results on the Monkey is a "Pro Subscribers Only" feature. That's not gonna happen; so I will publish here the highlights reel for your enjoyment.

First off, the vast majority of you know me. 2 people googled my real name, which reminds me I need to change the name on my Flickr account. 1 found me via snarky comments, and several came via other friends' sites or clues. The vast majority are nerds (15) with blondes a distant second (7.) 10 are from East, 7 from Indiana, and a scattering elsewhere--I've no idea who you southerners are, btw, nor the furriners except Alex.

I am dismayed to find that nearly all of you want more stories of my personal injuries and embarassments. I fell down the stairs the other day--happy now?? Seriously, any time I do something dumb or clumsy, my first thought is not "where is the nearest hospital?" but "will I be able to type?" You guys are my first priority.

The major trend in the final question was that I should keep the blog funny, with occasional forays into politics and quiz memes. (The president's an idiot, and if I were a lunchmeat I'd be corned beef. That should hold you for a while.) And the dead people question richly rewarded me for any time I've ever made anyone else laugh with this thing; you guys are hilarious. Sick, mind you, but hilarious. Here are everyone's answers to question #5:
1. Dorothy Parker, although I supposed that'd be more drinking than eating. I don't think about this question much, and I suspect I'd want to research eating habits as well as personality, before I made a real choice.
2. Thomas Jefferson, a variety of boring reasons
3. Jimmy Stewart--he's sweet, handsome (well, when he was younger), and entertaining. I bet he would have some amazing stories.
4. Julia Child because she could really cook!
5. Eleanor Roosevelt. We'd bond.
6. I find fictional characters more companionable, so I claim Bertie Wooster, because a) I'd be waited on by Jeeves, and b) Bertie really is quite gallant and charming as long as he stays away from aunts and soppy females.
7. Thomas Jefferson, because I'd ask him to make sure that there were parts of the declaration of independence and constitution that would have prevented G.W. Bush from going to war with Iraq.
8. Albert Einstein, he seems like he would have been both enlightening and entertaining.
9. Lord, I don't know.
10. I would ask Jimmy Hendrix what it was like to asphyxiate on your own vomit?
11. Snide answer: A Mummy. They're unlikely to smell. ... I'm sorry, did you think there was going to be a non-snide answer, too?!
12. I don't want to have dinner with dead famous people. and to comment on #4, I want more stories involving animals as long as they're not animals-in-peril stories. This is why I'm not going to see King Kong.
13. Yuck! What kind of sicko are you? I don't want to eat dinner with some corpse you dug up!
14. Ew... don't they smell kinda bad? :)
15. Marlene Dietrich, because I think she would taste good.
16. Several people to choose from, but because I'm feeling randy just now let's say Marlene Dietrich. I'd want to go to dinner with her in the hopes of a one night stand afterwards. (duh)
17. Warren Zevon, of course. Why? Because I think he'd be a more fun dinner date than H.P. Lovecraft, the only other serious contender.
18. dick cheney, because then he would be dead (does that make me a bad person?)
19. Katherine Hepburn because she's just so cool.
20. Dame Phyllis Frost (google it)
21. You said this would be a quick quiz.
22. Jesus. And I'd totally be buying, to pay him back for all those times I symbolically ate him

Can't Talk. Grading.

Remember when I said I hadn't begged for the sweet release of death yet? Actually I still haven't, but I came close on Monday night when I was up until 2 grading freshman essays so that we could return them and clear the way for freshman exams. Now I'm grading those; easier than the essays, because it's clearer when the student has no fucking clue what they're talking about. The essays can be more obscure in that respect. (I did read the WORST ESSAY EVER around 11:30 pm on Monday; while I would hesitate to make fun of a student on my website, I will say that they tried to draw an artistic connection between the Venus of Willendorf and a Bon Jovi song.)

23 responses on Survey Monkey so far; it's been so entertaining that I think I may have to do a "survey of the month" from here on out! I'll post choice results later; suffice it to say that most of you know me personally, and nearly all of you are nerds. Oddly, no one reports as being "north of Indiana,"--Joe and Steve, are you dissing on my survey here? And for the person who was worried--"accidents involving animals" refers MY tendency to get bitten, stomped on, or otherwise pratfalled by my pets or the animals I care for at the zoo. The animals themselves always survive unscathed, it would seem. So no fear there! Catch you later, I'm back to grading exams.

Survey Says....

Weird though it seems, I want to ask a favor of you, my 3 or 4 loyal readers. I'm trying to get familiar with a web-based statistics program called SurveyMonkey, so I started a free account and made up a survey. To fully explore the capabilities of the program, I need some people to actually go take the survey. It's 6 questions, all of them kind of silly; it won't take you long, and you'll be helpin' me out bigtime. So go, take The Cautionary Survey! You'll earn my undying gratitude. And maybe valuable prizes! Or not.

It's CAULK-TACULAR!

I celebrated the arrival of cold weather by caulking around every window in the upstairs of my house this weekend. I discovered a couple of things while doing this. 1) Caulk isn't idiot-proof, and 2)..... well, 2 was even dumber than #1. Let's just say, if you happen to be moving into a new house with recently installed storm windows, and you suspect that the prior owner might have installed them himself despite a vast incompetance in other areas of home repair and modification, do NOT wait til you've shivered through 4 winters there to realize that he had the top sash on the bottom and vice versa. This results in a gap, invisible to the eye from the interior of the house, through which all the heat in your house will escape every time the temperature drops below 30. I always thought the draft around the windows was because they were badly fitted into the slightly skewed frame of my 80 year old house. They are, but that wasn't the only issue; and it never occurred to me that it mattered which sash was on top as long as they were closed. Yeah, like I said. Dumb.

The caulking wasn't so bad except that I think I cut too much off the end of the tube. I thought I wanted a bead about 3/8", and that resulted in a nice clean line of caulk behind the tip as I went--along with a mountainous glob of goo being propelled along in front of the tip, picking up paint chips and tiny, fleeing spiders as it rolled. I'm pretty sure that 96% of the caulk that was originally in the tube ended up gobbed on damp paper towels in my wastebasket, while 3% is protecting me from frozen doom. (1% ended up on the couch, the window, my clothes, and the cat.)

Semester's drawing to a close. All semesters should be like this--only one internship report to write, and 100+ art history papers and exams to grade. I haven't wished for the sweet release of death even once yet!

haiku in comments/a joy to behold on this/holiday weekend

I'd make a real post, but I'm busy this week reading Harry Potter and the Goblins of Fire in hopes that it will clarify the movie for me somewhat. Up til now, it's been pretty easy to grasp what's going on in the films without having first read the books (I've been playing catch-up since the first film) but this one had me stymied in spots. So while I read this phonebook of a novel, you all can read the best of the haiku left in my last comments field:

From Li, Who Didn't Make Thanksgiving Plans This Year

Thanks so much, Cathy
R O F L M A O
Happy Thanksgiving

From Karen K., Who Plays Cribbage With Me Whenever Possible

Not having turkey--
Pad Thai and eggrolls instead.
Pass me the sake!

From Claire, Who Wrote Many to Choose From

There is snow here too.
I don't expect it to last.
Sunday, it will melt.

From Andy, Whose Poem Made Me Laugh the Hardest

Not eating til three!?
How will I survive til then?
If only I'd known

From M, Who Fought the Good Fight

Ate too much turkey:
Fighting to stay vertical,
Pry eyelids open

From hhw, Who Knows What's Important

Four-day weekend, four-
Day weekend, four-day weekend.
Oh! Four-day weekend.

From Karen A., Who Knows What's Good For Her

The benefits of
vegetarianism:
My dinner is PIE!

Thanksgiving Haiku

First snow of the year
the day before Thanksgiving?
The world is ending.

Frozen potatoes,
already mashed? Why not just
shoot me here and now?

Pumpkin pie, staple
of everyone's Thanksgiving
(I like cherry more)

Best china gleams on
tablecloth—one orange paw tugs
and all is laid waste

Cat took my pencil
Maybe HE should be writing
Thanksgiving haiku.

Things My New Cat Has Eaten in Recent Weeks Without My Permission

Oatmeal. Raisin Bran. Tomato Soup. Spaghetti (raw.) Milk. Lemonade. Apple cider. A rubber band. A potato. Solid beef fat from leftover pot roast. A tiny piece of paper. Brown rice with salmon furikake. Brown rice without salmon furikake. Pulled pork. Celery. Powdered sugar. Cherry preserves. Goat cheese. A crouton.

Things My New Cat Has Not Eaten:

Coffee.

Obviously, the only way to protect my food is to live on coffee. This cat is amazing, he's the most politely aggressive eater I've ever met. The reason I say polite is because he purrs like an 8 cylinder engine while gently pushing my hand out of the way so he can stick his head in my soup bowl. I put him on the floor, he jumps back up. I put him down, he gets back up. I take my bowl in hand to hold it out of his reach and he crawls into my lap, purring, and causes me to spill a half a can of tomato soup onto my jeans and the couch/futon beneath them. (A lesson against couch-dining, I know, but the dining room is untenable at the moment, and I was watching "Animal Cops: Detroit" at the time.) In further unfairness, not a drop of soup landed on him during that debacle. When I got back to the couch, pantless, with a wet towel, there he was happpily licking soup off the rug and purring to beat the band. I know this is because he was a stray for most of his young life and survived by eating anything and everything.... but his eclectic tastes in food are over the top. He went out of his way to drag a small boiled potato out of the trash, eat a few bites of it, and then leave it--not on the kitchen floor! oh no--but on the stairs. For me to step on in the morning. A few weeks ago he was on a cleaning-supplies kick; he found the cupboard in the downstairs bathroom where I keep that stuff, and every morning around 4 he'd bounce into my bed holding some random item, then sit there happily chewing on the package until I took it and put it out of reach. Once it was vacuum cleaner bags. Once it was Scotchbrite sponges. I can't imagine what he was trying to tell me by this--and at 4 in the morning, I'm not so open to criticisms of my housekeeping skills by someone who also happens to be a major supplier of cat hair to the cleanliness equation...

Lavaphobia

The Latin word lavo, lavare means "to wash." So lavaphobia, logically, would be the fear of washing. Washing oneself, washing the dishes, washing the smudges off the woodwork.... all terrifying. I can relate. But that's actually not the type of lavaphobia I'm thinking of today. I'm thinking more, fear of perishing in a wave of molten rock.

When I was about 6 or 7, I saw a PBS special about Pompeii, the Italian city that disappeared in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. It would not be exaggerating to say that I was paralyzed with fear from watching this. The fact that the odds of being destroyed by a volcano in central Indiana are....well, below zero.... had no mollifying effect on my terror. I was particuarly moved to tears by the plaster cast of the dog writhing in agony; the sight of animals in peril upsets me more than just about anything I can think of. So I went to bed that night (and every night for about two months) petrified that some heretofore unknown midwestern volcano would snuff out everything I knew in an instant. Perfectly reasonable, in my mind.

I haven't had a nightmare about volcanoes in quite some time. But tomorrow, I'm headed up to Chicago for an alumni function at the Art Institute; my goal for the afternoon is to get to the Field Museum's current exhibit: Pompeii: Stories from an Eruption. I'm really looking forward to it; the lavaphobic kid is now a grownup with degrees in history and art history, and Pompeii is a unique snapshot of life at the height of the Roman Empire. And still, somewhere deep down, it's gonna creep me the hell out. I know it.

Three for the Price of One

So the thing about being a bike commuter is, how do you dress for success? It was easy when I was working at the zoo; my fashionable Croc Hunter khakis were going to get dirty and sweaty by the end of the day anyhow. So it didn't matter if I arrived a little breathless and damp--no one noticed anyway, as my first action was to go out and sweep the walkways with a backpack blower, leading to early wrinkling and sweating. (And if it wasn't the blower, it was mowing the wedding garden. Oh, those were the days, cutting the verdant grass in perfectly ordered stripes! Mowing my own lawn is never so satisfying.) But now I'm interning at an art museum, and it's a whole different ball of wax. Thankfully I don't have to wear panty hose; but I do have to wear grown-up clothing, which for me is usually a collared shirt, nice pants, shoes that require occasional polishing, and sometimes a sweater. When it was still warm, I'd wear a t-shirt and carry my "good" shirt in in my backpack, and change clothes on arrival; kind of icky, having a soggy shirt sitting in my backpack during the rest of the day, but it's not like I have a locker in my cubicle. And as the weather gets colder and more clothes are required, the good clothes get all crunched up in the backpack, and I end up looking even doofier than usual even after I change. So how do hard core bike commuters do it? Seriously, do they take a suit to work in their gym bag? Do they have a whole wardrobe of clean business clothes in their cubicles? And what do they do with the sweaty stinky stuff? I had this quandary at school, too, because I was biking down to my TA gig every week before it got rainy, and I'd worry that I was grossing out the impressionable undergrads by either a) continuing to wear the soaked shirt, or b) changing in the bathroom, then having a stinky soaked shirt in my bag with my notebooks and junk. It's a puzzlement.

The trip to the Adirondacks was great! I was going to put my pics on Flickr, but then realized that since most of them contain people who might not necessarily want their pictures up on the internet, and decided against it. I suppose I could ask everyone if they care. At any rate, it was splendiferous, though cold and raining 80% of the time. Leaves were beautiful, house was cozy, and we spent our time (gasp!) playing games. Oh, and eating cheese. Everyone brought some food to share, and everyone's food included cheese--so we had about 10 different kinds of exotic cheeses, and they formed a major part of our diets for all three days. It took some time to recover.

Movie Prom was an event sponsored by a local film company called ANC, as a venue for showing 6 of their short films from the last year or two. They held it in the church where Rev. Jim Jones used to officiate, before he embarked on his one-way trip to nutsville, so it was hard to pass up the event! (It's not a church any more, of course. We weren't milling around the pews and picking up cyannide-laced hymnals or anything.) So we all got dressed up in formalwear, went out to dinner, and headed to prom! And let me tell you it was a vast improvement on my own prom. (This was a general sentiment, actually--does anyone have a good time at prom? No one I've ever talked to about it did. All five people in our gang who went to this had "my prom sucked" stories, if I recall correctly.) Of the 6 shorts, 3 were really good and funny, 2 were kind of dull, and 1 was incomprehensible. Not a bad record, really! We got our pictures taken under a balloon arch--very prommy!--and ate rice crispy treats in prom colors, and then..... A raffle for a part in their next film, won by ****drum roll**** YERS VERY TRULY! Yep, I get to be in a movie! Sometime. In the next year. Maybe. I hope. I'm genuinely excited, I never win stuff like that. So it was a great event, thumbs up to ANC!

Ok, so this wasn't the most insightful or witty post I've written, but it did take care of all my neglected topics from the previous post. My finger's healing fine, so all's right with the world.

Oops I Did It Again....

I'd actually had 3 posts on the burner for the last week or so; I had one about being a bike commuter, one about my trip to the Adirondacks, and one about Movie Prom. I think all three of them will come to light before too long; but in the meantime, they've all been pre-empted by the latest in a long line of personal injuries. This one involved carrots, a very nice chopping knife, and an unfortunate error of judgement. One moment I'm trying to cut a gi-normous carrot in half, the next I'm yelping for help from my dinner companions, who had been busy watching "Desperate Housewives" on DVD. (There are different kinds of desperation; for a brief moment, mine trumped the housewives'.) The good news is, I missed the tendon that runs along the side of my left index finger, and I didn't hit any nerves. The bad news is, the cut goes right down to the bone, and looks kind of horrible. It didn't hurt all that much last night after we got it bandaged up, but this evening I bumped it--gently--against the doorknob.... and you know the noise a dog makes when you step on its tail? I'm not sure I've ever heard a noise like that come out of my mouth before now, but it did then. Damn, it hurt! Hopefully this doesn't mean it's infected; I changed the bandage again after that and applied a lot of antibacterial ointment. I'll live; in the grand scheme of things, this is pretty minor compared to the Blender Incident. Come to think of it, that also involved my left hand being injured in a misjudgement by my right. I wonder if this is all some kind of plot on the part of my right hand.... A sinister plot! Well, an anti-sinister plot. A dextrous plot? Anyway, I'm going to keep a closer eye on my right hand from now on--never know when it might try to strangle me in my sleep. I saw a movie like that once, so it must happen. Right?

This Post Is Not About Serenity.

Yes, this post is not about the Firefly movie, despite it being much on my mind this weekend. I realize that not everyone is a total dork-faced geek like myself. So if you want to read my spoiler-filled comments on Serenity, you'll have to check my Nerd Blog instead. If you haven't seen it, and you're going to, you might want to hold off reading it.

Instead, I will tell you about something that happened on the way to see Serenity, which is not quite the same thing as writing a post about Serenity. Thanks to a miscommunication, after dinner at the always aptly named Cracker Barrel restaurant our gang found themselves with over an hour to kill before movie time. What do you do in a happenin' town like this when you have an hour to kill? You go to Meijer, apparently. So we wandered around Meijer, and naturally came to rest in the toy section fairly quickly. As you may know, I have an obsession with action figures. I also have an affinity for particular comic book heroes, to the point that I'll buy any action figure of them that I don't already have. (Green Arrow, and Nightcrawler, since you asked.) There was a new Nightcrawler figure in the Marvel Legends Series from Toy Biz in the action figure aisle: $6, and it was mine. As an added bonus feature, all the figures in this series come with a single piece of GALACTUS: DEVOURER OF WORLDS! Yes, if you buy all 7 figures in the Marvel Legends series, you can build your own GALACTUS: DEVOURER OF WORLDS! at no extra cost to you. However, since the other figures in the series are Dr. Strange, Bulleye, Grey Hulk, and a few other totally uncompelling characters, I had no impulse to buy them, and thus have only one seventh of GALACTUS in my posession. Guess which seventh? That's right, kids--I have here, in my home, GALACTUS' butt. No foolin'--it's basically his abs, hips, and skirt. And, to add further value, I would like to point out that it is made of some kind of horrific vinyl-like substance rather than hard plastic, and it smells awful. It hit me in the face as soon as I opened the package to release Nightcrawler. GALACTUS: REEKER OF WORLDS! HIS ASS SMELLS LIKE....ASS! Joy.

Homecoming is Where You Hang Your Hat.

So a week ago Friday, I went to my high school's Homecoming Carnival. I managed to convince Francie to meet me there; she was the class after mine, and doesn't have a horror of the place as so many grads do. I parked in the lot up by the gymnasium (being a rich kid school, we have a gymnasium building all to itself--and it's bigger now than it was when I was there. 3 gyms and what we used to call the Wrestling Room, because the wrestling mats were always down even in the off-season.) The carnival started at 4, and school gets out at 3, so there were plenty of kids milling around of all shapes and sizes. Hanging out under a tree in front of the upper gym doors, I had the odd sensation of having just walked onto the shooting set of an early season "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" episode. The faces, the dialogue.... Except that I didn't have the vague suspicion that most of these high schoolers were being played by actors nearly my own age. (Did anyone else have this problem with early Buffy? Not so much a problem, just an occasional "whoa!" moment when they'd zoom in on Willow's face and you'd see tiny little lines around her eyes and go "hey! she is SO not 15 years old!" It's the miracle of television. Alyson Hannigan's only 4 years younger than me. I'm not sure why I find this comforting, but I do. How did I live before the IMDB?)

Anyway, so it was a rush of high school endorphins all of a sudden, all these swirls of passing conversations about boys and driver's ed and whose house are we going to and where's your mom's car she's late omigod, and gangly guys shoving each other around, and girls commenting on each other's hair/makeup, and I was really happy when Francie showed up and I had someone to talk to. The Homecoming Carnival, formerly known as the Fall Carnival, formerly formerly known as the Halloween Carnival back in the day, is basically a series of booths set up by each class (it's a K-12 school, so 13 classes) and various clubs; all dumb carnival games, like fish pond and beanbag toss. The 5th Graders always used to run away with the most $$ for the Cake Walk, and in the Upper School it was the juniors with the big bounce room--though the cost of renting that thing offsets the eventual loot take. For some reason, they stopped having the carnival when I was in high school for a few years, and I really missed it even though it's mostly meant for the little kids.... So somehow, this year, when I got a card in the mail about homecoming I had a sudden and powerful urge to go and see if it was what I remembered from 1979. Sure enough, though I'm old enough now to perceive the cheesyness of the games, and the cheapitude of the little plastic prizes and candy, it was exactly what I expected. How many returns to high school can you say that about? We walked around for about 20 minutes, looked at the new gym, said hello to some faculty who remembered us, and then headed for Lilly Orchard to buy some carmel apples and cider. We didn't stay for the football game, despite the urgings of the lady behind the Orchard counter; we'd gotten what we came for, or at least I had.

Then, later in the week, I heard Bowling for Soup's "1985" on the radio for the first time, and it totally made me laugh. For those who haven't heard it, I quote here the chorus:
Bruce Springsteen, Madonna
Way before Nirvana there was
U2, and Blondie
And music still on MTV
Her two kids, in high school
They tell her that she's uncool
Cause she's still preoccupied
With 19....19....1985.

At least I'm not that bad yet. :]

But Of Course!

I have slightly mixed feelings here--while I always knew I was the D'Artagnan type, I'm a little disturbed at how high I scored on Richelieu... I better watch the movie again.

You scored as D'Artagnan. You are D'Artagnan, the brash Gascon who embodies the high ideals of the Musketeer. You are sometime your own worst enemy, but your motives are pure and your character is unimpeachable. You are destined for great things and passionate (though often ill-fated) love. D'Artagnan 90% Mercedes 60% Richelieu 55% Porthos 40% Aramis 30% Athos 30% Rochefort 10% Edmund Dantes 10% Which Dumas character are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Why I Love Karen

Karen is awesome. Last night, she and RatGirl and I went out for food; as she'd already had dinner, she waited til we were done and then ordered carrot cake with caramel sauce for dessert. She ended up with a leftover piece, about twice as high as it was wide, and requested a takeout box for it. She put the remaining cake on its side in the box, then scooped a big glob of the caramel sauce in next to it, in a sort of sticky puddle. Before closing the box, she said delightedly, "Look! It's like my cake fell over and threw up!" And it did, in fact, look just like that.

Karen is also the one who has made a small change purse out of an octopus beanie baby, and wore it on her belt at Gencon; when her husband asked her if she had her housekey with her, she took obvious pleasure in uttering the phrase, "Yes! It's in my squid!"

And to top off yesterday's lovely evening, on the walk back to the car we passed a cardboard sign, left by a homeless fellow who'd been sitting in that spot an hour before, which read "Why Lie? It's For Beer." If he'd still been there, we'd have so given him change.

Ray of Sunshine

Unprecedented for me to post twice in 24 hours, I know. But, depressed though I am, I had a few rays of sunshine in my backlog of email this week! So for anyone who was wondering....

The ASPCA has been doing animal rescues in and around flooded areas all this week. Here's a quote from their Sept. 7 daily report:
Working on a grid system, the five teams of three rescuers each waded through waist-high, fetid water, pulling boats loaded with equipment and supplies, successfully avoiding injury on fallen tree limbs and downed power lines. This hot, sticky, frustrating day netted 25 cats, 14 dogs, one pet snake and a gentleman who been overlooked by earlier rescuers. (Land and water rescues totaled 140 animals on Tuesday, and they expect to retrieve 200 on Wednesday as more of the water recedes.) Rescue crews were pleasantly surprised to find the animals in relatively good condition, having been left adequate supplies by their fleeing owners.....The famous carriage mules of the French Quarter, along with 65 other horses, have been removed to safety. And the New Orleans mounted police unit safely got out all their equine partners. They are currently stabled at the Franklinton, LA, fairgrounds.
They've also established a massive online database where people displaced by the hurricaine can enter information about missing pets; there are then volunteers who go through the database comparing those reports with photos and descriptions put in by the receiving animal shelters in Texas and Alabama. It's incredible. I can't even imagine what it would be like to be evacuated and told I had to leave my pets behind. I'd go nuts. I'd even worry about the fish... So the fact that thousands of people--some of them refugees themselves--are giving their time to reunite people and pets moves me to tears. Happy tears, that is.

That's Absolutely Fucktastic.

So it wasn't enough that the head of FEMA wasn't fully qualified for this job, it turns out that he didn't even tell the truth on his published resume; he's got NO experience in crisis management whatsoever. I can't even grasp the implications of this--could one man's incompetance have brought us to thousands of deaths rather than hundreds? I think this was a group effort, mind you, and many many mistakes were made.... but if Brown can be prosecuted for lying on his resume--is that perjury?--then he sure as hell should be. My god.

Hmm, well, a few more interesting links on this topic, and we'll move on. Charles has a head-turner from none other than Barbara Bush, everyone's favorite cookie baker--what was she thinking? Via Upyernoz via Atrios, a timeline which makes painfully clear where the priorities were in our government last week. And Giblets declares a Global War on Weather!

Meanwhile, back at the batcave... I'm recovering from the annual Greek Festival at Holy Trinity Orthodox Church. I go every year, and stuff my face with as many greek delicacies as I can hold. As a result of the fresh feta, the lamb, the tsatziki sauce, and the souvlaki, I am nearing a state of sodium-induced coma. I drank a ton of water (for me--I don't hydrate as well as I should) and still I'm thirsty, I'm sweaty, and the veins on the backs of my hands are standing out in prominent relief form.... Ah well. I brought this doom upon myself. And I'm going again tomorrow! Beware of Greeks, bearing stiffs.

It Liiiiives......

Comments return, at least for the moment. I posted two that saved successfully a little bit ago. Charles, I've posted your Katrina comment.

I haven't been watching the news, or listening to NPR for the last few days. Knowing what's going on in the gulf coast states, and knowing there's not a bit of anything I can do, just makes the whole thing too painful. I read the paper and look at the still photos, then close my eyes and bite my lip and try to breathe deeply. That's about the sum of my parts here. I donated all the extra food in my pantry to a local food drive yesterday. (An airline donated a plane and a pilot to take food from here to a distribution center down south.) One of the items I keep as emergency backup food is a pre-seasoned rice and beans mix from Vigo; it's called "Red Beans and Rice, New Orleans Style." I had to think twice about putting that in--it was just odd, to think of someone whose New Orleans home had been wiped out picking up a package of food and seeing this little jazz guy logo and instructions for making the "Big Easy Special" on the back. Then one of my friends pointed out that this food might end up in Biloxi instead, and that made me feel better so I put the package in the box anyway.

Being who I am, my thoughts on the hurricaine turned almost immediately to animals and the environment, in addition to the devastating toll on people and things. The Audubon Zoo and Aquarium of the Americas survived the levee break with few casualties; but of course many pets and wild animals were affected by this disaster as well, and they're not exactly a number one priority for FEMA. That's as it should be, of course--but the effect on the non-human residents of the gulf isn't inconsiderable. My dad was doing some work with refugees from NO who've ended up at the Salvation Army and Red Cross stations here, and heard a firsthand story from a guy who saw his friend wading through waist high water in his neighborhood in New Orleans get attacked by a shark. A shark. There are sharks, fish, snakes, alligators--not to mention non-aquatic animals--all swimming around in, essentially, sewage, trying to stay alive long enough to get out of this mess. So if you're like me, and this thought upsets you nearly as much as all the other horrible things we've seen this week, you should be aware that there are places taking donations to assist in animal rescue and environmental cleanup. I donated to the ASPCA earlier this week; organizations like the World Wildlife Fund will be instrumental in restoring the native wetlands and marshes along the gulf coast when the emergency is over and the rebuilding begins. Just one more way to give a little of what you've got to help those who have nothing.

Comments Down, We Have Comments Down!

Yep, I know comments aren't working. Sorry. I'm waiting a little to see if it self-corrects, then I'll email enetation and see what's going on. Charles had a nice post about Katrina which he emailed me instead, so you can all look forward to reading it when the comments return!

Well This is an Interesting Development...

A conservative commentator on my friend's political blog seems to have followed me home from the comments fields; he's spent about 45 minutes reading my weblog today. So hi dave! Welcome! I hear you're from this neck of the woods, too--Drinking Liberally's on Thursdays at Union Jack's, if you'd like to come. :]

It's been interesting to me to watch Rubber Hose develop, actually; I was his second reader, I think, and since I lived with "Noz" in college I've engaged in lively debates with him on everything from capital punishment to religion to what we should make for dinner and whether we can watch "Hey Dude" and make tacos at the same time without a decline in quality of either activity. (actually, I don't think we debate that, we just did it. Watching "Hey Dude" with Noz was one of the peaks of hilarity my senior year--that show was just so totally awful it defied description. so of course we watched it every week.) So now I get to see people from all walks of life debating my former housemate, who's now a lawyer and even better at arguing than he was in college--and you really have to have known him to appreciate how good he was at it even then. His blog is always an interesting read, and he's attracted not only a number of regular readers who agree with him, but his own small cadre of people who don't! Right now a raging debate has emerged on the topics of "was it dumb for President Bush to say publically that no one had anticipated the levees at New Orleans might break, even though hurricaine experts have been saying it for years and the entire national media had been saying it since Friday afternoon last week?" and "what has the department of homeland security been doing all this time if not preparing for devastating metropolitan disasters like this one?" Horrifyingly enough, an article in today's paper makes it fairly clear that recent restrucuring at FEMA had a substantial impact on what's now being called a "not acceptable" response plan in New Orleans. They ran a seamless hurricaine simulation drill over a year ago that worked perfectly; now they couldn't even get the National Guard into the city in an efficient manner. This all seems pretty undeniable, whether you blame the Bush administration from the top down, or just the guys at the DHS, things could have been handled better, and people are dying because they weren't.

I still can't quite wrap my brain around the total destruction we've witnessed this week. It's like the tsunami--only I hadn't been to any of the places that were devastated then, so it was an abstract kind of horror. It's like 9/11--only so much worse. And unlike 9/11, there's no one to be angry at, nothing to curse, no one to say "we'll show those bastards!" to. Just water and mud, sewage and corpses. It's beyond imagining.

At any rate--it takes all kinds to make the world go round, so please don't come to my house and rip the Republicans for Kerry sticker off my car, dave. I'm treasuring it as a collector's item... And if you haven't already, everybody, please consider going and donating to the Red Cross relief effort online.

What Fresh Hell Is This?!

Sunday, clutch goes out on car. Wednesday, receive another citation from the town marshal regarding the brush along the street. Thursday, in trying to make it to the class I'm TAing for on time, I am forced to climb over a chain link fence that separates me from the new art building, and I rip a sizable hole in my pants, just beneath the right buttcheek. ("Hi, I'm your TA, and I'll be mooning you this afternoon.") Friday, new cat continues to be sick and requires a trip to the vet. Today, enormous branch falls off silver maple at back of lot and comes to rest, very gently, on a power line. Did I piss God off this week? Or what?

And in this same spirit of irritable bitterness, I present to you a meme, courtesy of Jane and Sarah. "Name three social phenomina that bug the hell out of you." Ahem.
1. People who use the word "impact" as a verb. "The Iraq war has really impacted gas prices." No it hasn't, you goons! It's affected gas prices. "Impact" is a noun, unless you're talking about wisdom teeth.
2. People who pull out in front of you, forcing you to slam on your brakes, when there is a mile of clear road right behind you. Jerks.
3. Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. I was going to say, the mis-use of apostrophe s on signs in public places, but I already had one grammar one. And Jane already used Neil Young.

The Week the Earth Stood Still...

So you want to know what Gencon is like for those lucky few of us who work in the professional nerd industry? Here's a handy guide--it's almost like being there.
I. THE SETUP.
Dealer Hall opens for setup on Tuesday, but we're busy doing other things Tuesday. Wednesday, we could go in at 8, but some of us aren't up til 11, by which time Des has made some kind of English breakfast bread studded with about 4000 raisins. We eat a lot of raisins and bread. Then we load the car. Arrive at the convention center around 3. We have to be out by 8. We can't set up until boss arrives with new cushy flooring tiles, which require a trip to the hardware store, so wait while he goes. Wait. Look jealously at everyone else setting up faster and better than you. Gloat at card sellers whose product takes hours to deploy and weighs a ton. When boss arrives, set up entire booth and cushy floor in approximately 3 hours. Then go home and pack pre-release miniatures until after midnight.
II. DAY ONE: THE ONSLAUGHT.
Arrive 2 hours early to finish setting up. Finish just as doors open at 10. Watch as onrush of thousands (no, really--thousands) of gamers flows into the dealer hall and up the aisles like a demonstration on the capillary system at the science museum. Talk, and stand, constantly from 10 am to 6 pm when hall closes. Answer the same questions hundreds of times. Meet lots of nice people. Marvel at the weirdos. Have dinner with your friend from out of town who you almost never see; get home around midnight.
III. DAYS TWO-FOUR.
Much of the same, only less money changes hands and the weirdos get weirder. Manage to leave booth for over an hour on Saturday afternoon. Get called back by boss. Rush to office supply store en route to con center on two different mornings. Never get up after 7 am. Never go to bed before midnight or one. Never sit down for more than 5 minutes at a clip. Participate in one--and only one!--Gencon event for fun, at 1 in the morning when you're rapidly losing coherance. Wake in the morning with vague memories of having had a good time.
IV. THE TAKEDOWN.
Dismantle entire booth, in a relatively organized fashion, in 1.5 hours. Discover that 400 booths trying to break down between 4 and 8 pm means that the line to get into the loading area is 3 blocks long. Go out for dinner. Come back and find that the line is now 5 blocks long. Park illegally, and carry all booth items out the front doors of the convention center, in 85 degree heat. Unload contents of truck and cars at boss' house. Try to go home, and find that transmission has gone out on my 10 year old Saturn. Contemplate suicide. Enlist help of coworker to push car out of driveway, and drive home using a limited number of gears. Go home...and thank god it's over.

Bruce Teaches Logical Positivism, and is Also in Charge of the Sheep Dip.

First, let me say that I am a fan of Bruce Campbell. I own the special director's cut of Army of Darkness, I loved him on Xena and Hercules, and I got a lot of pleasure out of Bubba Ho-tep. But this week Bruce tried my loyalty severely, as I paid $8 to see his newest cheesy flick, "Man with the Screaming Brain."

I expected a screwball parody of 1950's horror/monster genre. I expected it to be at least as good as Steve Martin's kind-of-funny, kind-of-terrible "Man with Two Brains." Instead I got the lamest, most awful waste of 90 minutes I've ever experienced in a theatre. I've walked out of bad movies before (most notably "Office Killer," which was so bad I almost threw up right there in the theatre) but I felt a certain duty to stay at "Screaming Brain"--mainly because I'd dragged two friends to see it, and because I wanted to see if Bruce saved it at the end. I'll save the rest of you the trouble of wondering: he didn't.

For anyone who might be considering seeing this movie, let me sum up the plot for you. A gypsy woman who runs a bridal shop keeps getting ditched by men, so she kills 'em. Completely unconnectedly, a mad scientist (Stacy Keach, for god's sake where did they find HIM?) and his assistant (Ted Raimi) are working on brain transplant technology in the same Bulgarian town. And a drug company exec (Campbell) and his wife (some Australian chick trying to sound American) are having marital problems and riding around in a taxi cab driven by an admittedly entertaining Russian guy (some Bulgarian guy.) This is the entire first half of the movie. Then, in rapid succession, the gypsy kills Campbell, his wife, and the taxi driver. Ted Raimi somehow gets their bodies for his boss, and they put half the taxi guy's brain into Bruce Campbell's body, and the wife's brain into a robot with a blonde wig. TaxiBruce then engages in some typically Campbell style physical comedy, which could have been funny if they'd planned it better but instead consists of him slapping himself around at a salad bar and falling down a lot. Robotwife goes on a rampage looking for Gypsy; TaxiBruce realizes that he needs to kill the gypsy also, and then interminable chase scenes followed by poorly choreographed combat ensue. Rinse. Repeat. Repeat. Finally, mercifully, everyone dies except Ted and Stacy.... only because the mad scientist has figured out how to perfect the surgery (apparently being dead doesn't damage brains at all, at least not these idiots' brains) we have a happy ending moment where we see that TaxiBruce and the newly constructed GypsyWife live happily ever after, donating their millions to brain research charities.

This review, right now, is officially funnier than the movie, and it's not that funny. I expected better from Bruce's directorial debut.... Oh well. At least i didn't pay $10 at the sneak preview last week....

Look Back In Anger...

Note to self: next time you let the Japanese honeysuckle along the canal road get a little out of control, and you find an ordinance citation in your mailbox from the Town Marshal telling you to cut it back, do NOT go out in a fit of irritation (both at yourself and at the marshal for citing you without trying a phone call first, which would have been nicer) and hack at the honeysuckle with your tree loppers at 8pm when it's starting to get dark. First off, you'll do a crummy job of it; second, you won't be able to see the poison ivy mixed in with the honeysuckle until it's too late; and third, when it's 80% humidity and 85° out after sunset, and then you come back in the house dripping with sweat and try to cook dinner over the stove, you're going to be courting death by heat exhaustion. All I'm sayin' is, next time, THINK, stupid.

Living in a wooded idyll as I do, putting up with invasives like Japanese honeysuckle all over my freakin' yard is par for the course. The poison ivy is even par for the course. So are the mosquitos.... and the massive ant colonies... and the mice... The upside, of course, is the canal and its denizens. I regularly see three or four different kinds of turtles in the canal; on my birthday I saw 35 of them (an omen?) between here and the grocery store. A few weeks ago the pumpkinseed sunfish were nesting along the bank; the males collect stones and shells and decorate an area about 8-12" across, and then hang out there, undulating against the current in a "hey baby" sort of way in hopes that a female sunfish will deem their nest worthy of some egg deposition. They guard their own little nests, but they'll put them right next door to each other so three or four males might all be hanging out within a foot or two of each other. "Seen any babes?" "Nope. You?" "Nope." Right after we got the leftovers of Hurricaine Dennis, the canal was clear of all wildlife, except the nesting sunfish who seemed totally unperturbed by our 7" of rain. People eat them, but I don't know why--they're pretty damn small. I also see wood ducks, and great blue herons, and muskrats. I heard a wood thrush the other night, and I sometimes hear owls. A weasel ran in front of my car a few weeks ago; it was dark, but I can't imagine what else it could have been but a weasel. And biking home from the river the other evening, I came face to face with a deer who seemed not at all alarmed by my presence. What I mean is, citations and poison ivy aside, I'm really glad I live where I do. Now I just need to remember where I put the bottle of calamine.