My neighbor is an ignoranus
Subject: New Words
The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.
This year's winners:
1. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
2. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
3. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stop bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
4. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.
5. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
6. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
7. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
8. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.
9. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
10. Karmageddon: It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.
11. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
12. Glibido: All talk and no action.
13. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
14. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.
15. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
16. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you're eating.
And the pick of the literature:
17. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.
Black Lace and Bruises
I came home after two hours of Krav Maga last night and watched another episode of Lost: "In Translation." In this episode, a man is building a raft to get off the island, but his son burns it because he likes living on the island. Only one other character knows the boy set the fire, so everyone else blames the Korean man who's gotten into fights with the man building the raft.
Really the episode was a love story told in flashbacks, showing how the Korean couple are driven apart by the man's decision to work for the woman's father, who is a thug. The marriage really failed the night the man came home from beating up a government minister, but the couple didn't admit it until they have been on the island for some time.
There was a lovely flashback between the man and his father, whom he was ashamed of. He told his wife that his father was dead. His father asked him how anything could be more important than his wife and advised him to run away to America and save his marriage there, but apparently it was too late.
The Korean woman finally admitted that she speaks English. That didn't endear her to anyone, but now that her husband has left her, she can at least wear a bathing suit without him hassling her about showing some skin. I wonder if the show will try to redeem him at one point. When we first met him, when he was courting his wife, he was an innocent. In an attempt to provide for her, he became corrupted by her father.
Redeeming characters is one thing that Six Feet Under does really well. That show would take every character to the point of hatefulness and bring them back. I think they went too far over the edge with Brenda's sex obsession and with Nate's screwing everything in sight when his wife was missing, but they did a great job with the mother (my favorite character) when she was in this new age therapy group. She got up in the group and did an AA-style admission featuring the line, "Fuck my legless grandmother!"
To get back to Lost, I guess the show's writers have decided it's time to pair people off. Kate is still caught between Jack and Sawyer (I guess every show these days has to have a truly annoying but really hot character), Shannon is hooking up with Sayid, and Charlie (Dominic Monaghan) is mothering the pregnant woman who's been really really pregnant for months now. I think she's going for a Guinness record.
At least there haven't been any attempted rapes of female cast members. I hope they just don't go there.
***
OK, those of you who read this because of the title--it was mostly false advertising. I got up this morning and put on black lace underwear, and Todd said, "That goes really well with the bruises on your chest."
Greater Iran
Check out this post from Baghdad Burning:
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/A prediction of things to come?
What Todd Wants Most
My husband once told me that he wants a standing ovation.
Ever since then I've wondered what I could possibly do to bring this about. Blogging wasn't an obvious idea, but I thought I'd mention it here anyway.
We went to a dinner held by Wildlands Restoration Volunteers, and one of the volunteers, a man named Ted, did indeed get a standing ovation for having done 50 eco-restoration projects over the last few years. Ted is a great guy--he's always the crew leader for the rock work sections of the projects, the part in which you improve a trail by putting rocks as stepping stones in the uneven parts. His manner is a little crusty, but he's actually a very funny guy.
So after Ted got a standing ovation, Todd was feeling a little misty-eyed, I could tell.
I do my best to support my husband and praise him when he deserves it, but I'm not quite sure how to motivate someone to deserve a standing ovation. I suppose it's one of those things that has to come to you when you least expect it.
Summing up the weekend
I had to get my birding fix today, at Stearns Lake. It's beautiful around there, with the fields stretching out to the mountains. The clouds were spectacular after our unseasonal February rain. I saw some mergansers, goldeneyes, shovelers, and mallards. A hawk perched on an electrical pole as I drove in to the lake, but it was gone when I drove back. Afterward, I stopped at the top of Lac Amora open space, which looks down Rock Creek Farm into Stearns Lake, and savored the sense of space that view gives. There were lots of native grasses growing up there; maybe last year's wet summer helped the top of the trail look less like a dust bowl.
I'm not quite sure why I'm obsessed with birding. Todd calls it "pattern matching," but that's not quite right. Of course, birders look at patterns (field marks) to identify birds, but they don't do it because they like to put puzzles together.
For me, it's because birds are creatures I can't influence. They're untameable (though of course people hunt with hawks, but still, they're mostly free). I like the idea that I can't really reach them. And sometimes they do the strangest things, like the goldeneyes I was watching the other week. The males were doing their displays for females, which involve reclining their heads so far that they touch the crown of their heads to their backs--only they did it really fast. It's like an up-and-down Exorcist move.
***
We went to a conviviality party Saturday night and heard all about the naked party from Susan. She said it was the most relaxing weekend she's had in ages--people just hung out and did what they wanted all day. They had a gourmet cook to feed them too.
After the weekend she went out and bought 3 sarongs; said they were a must-have for this kind of affair. Apparently she had to keep reminding people (i.e., guys) to put a towel down on chairs and couches so they wouldn't ruin the furniture (using towels solves the wet spot problem I was wondering about).
The party was officially for Frank, Grady's brother (Grady's in the Conviviality Society). So they made everything Frank liked: little White Castle-style hamburgers, cake, pina coladas, shrimp cocktail... I met Frank, who told me he liked my red velvet shirt. I assured him I would give it to him when I was done with it. Then he asked me whether someone had given it to me or I had bought it myself. When I told him I had bought it myself, he slapped me on the arm. I asked Grady about that later, and he looked a little worried that I might be offended. He said Frank was either slapping me because I was so good to myself or because my husband hadn't bought it for me and I ought to stop putting up with that neglectful shit.
Can you tell from this post that Frank's developmentally disabled? Or should I say retarded? That's the word I grew up with: people were always calling my brother retarded or making fun of me because I had a retarded brother. But I feel guilty when I use it anymore, as if it's a dirty word. All it means is "slow": what's wrong with that? Anyway, I guess I feel about DD people the way
Sex feels about people in wheelchairs. I don't get all weirded out about them; I'm used to them.
Solo outings
Tonight was the last rehearsal for Orpheus Descending, so to amuse myself while Todd was doing that, I went to see Acoustic Eidolon perform at the Broomfield Audi. They're a husband-wife team: she plays the cello and he plays guitars with one or two necks. He went into the long explanation of why the two-neck guitar has 14 strings; all I know is, it sounded beautiful when he was picking both sets of strings.
I could go to concerts every night. Though I don't actually think of concerts as a social event because I don't go to concerts to talk, and when people around me are talking enough to drown out bits of the music, I want to duct-tape their mouths shut. Todd and I went to a Springsteen concert a few years back, and the people behind us were actually audible, which should not happen at a rock concert. But I was younger and more patient then. Now I'd just turn around and punch 'em, Krav Maga style. What's a rock concert without a brawl, anyway?
Concerts should be a religious communion with the music, or a dancing experience, and that's ALL. Now I'm not talking about gigs at bars, where most of the reason you go is to drink with friends. (Not that I can hear anyone talk at a bar, but that's another story.) But when you're paying through the nose to actually hear music, then I say, listen to it. Don't sit there and bore me with how your day was.
And I'm really not a music snob. Unlike my husband, who is a musician, I can't pick out all the separate parts or tell what the time signature is. I'm not into art rock, though I like just about anything else, including a little country like Melanie Hersch and Lucinda Williams. But mostly, as I told him once, the best music is a voice and a line. That's really all I need--to hear that, and to be held in someone's arms while the voice is singing.
Dusty brown!
Pedro and Mario installed our countertops today. I will love them forever.
I spent a lot of time this afternoon (when I should have been earning money to pay off the rest of said kitchen) gazing at the countertops and the floor and congratulating myself on what a great job I did matching them. "Cool, black in the floor and black streaks in the countertop, but not too much; it matches the cabinet too."
Good job, girl.
And then my hubby comes home--you know, the one who has a little list on his computer that has me at the top--and looks at it, and feels it, and smiles a little, and then ... yada yada yada ... says he'll like it better when everything in the kitchen isn't such a dusty brown.
Count to ten.
OK, there is no brown in the kitchen. There's beige, rust, black, blue, pinkish-something or other, a streak of green or two, but NO BROWN!
I said, "Is that all you have to say after all the work I've done?"
He tries to get out of it by spitting on the slate floor and showing me how much better it will look when it's sealed. Yeah? So what?
I think my husband really wants a disco kitchen. I should have bought the shiny red cabinets from Kitchen Planners.
All kinds of love
The Mormon neighbors' Siamese cat was flirting with Rufus yesterday. Rufus used to be a boy until he got snipped, and I think she's a girl.
She is totally cross-eyed. Which is probably why he hisses at her when she bounds up and bats him with her paw. He's probably saying, "I can't mate with you anyway, and if I could, I'd find a pussy who could look straight ahead!"
I'll have to warn the neighbors that he has a reputation for biting other cats on the butt.
***
Here's a little love music from Shakespeare in honor of the Hallmark holiday (oooh, so much alliteration).
When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutored youth,
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed:
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O! love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love, loves not to have years told:
Therefore I lie with her, and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flattered be.
138th Sonnet
***
So I stayed up late watching another Tom Cruise movie and didn't blog on Valentine's Day again, as I'd planned. Wouldn't you do the same?
Last year I decided to watch all his movies in chronological order, I think after seeing
The Last Samurai. Did you know the first one was
Endless Love? He shows up for about 2 minutes, talks in an incredibly nasal accent, and takes off his shirt. That's about it. I barely recognized him because the tape was so old and dark.
But the energy is there. You can see it full blast in
Taps, which is one of my favorite Cruise movies. It also has Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn. It's a good movie in and of itself, which you can't say about all of Cruise's 1980s movies.
Because Cruise is such an intense actor, I always like him best when he turns that off: when Rebecca de Mornay asks him if he had a "good time last night" in
Risky Business; when he figures out that Raymond (Dustin Hoffman) is the rain man in the eponymous movie; and last night, in
Born on the Fourth of July, when his Dad lifts his paralyzed body into bed and tells him he has to leave. He says, "Who's gonna love me now?" And there's a beautifully composed shot when he comes home from the VA hospital and his Dad hugs him while he's in the wheelchair.
Next up:
Days of Thunder, I think. I know it's one of the movies with Nicole Kidman.
*** OK, I'm not going to do italics on this blog anymore. They look retarded.
I hate fiction
I didn't get any blogging done Sunday--in fact, I didn't get anything else done Sunday--because I was trying to find markets for my stories. I spent most of the day hopping from one literary mag website to another. You know, the kind of place that says, "Our only criterion is excellence. No, we don't take simultaneous submissions but we'll keep your story for 4 months. Please enclose it in a 9 x 12 envelope enclosed in a 12 x 16 envelope, and your SASE [stupid assholes send envelopes] must be as big as the Milky Way."
When are these people going to drag themselves into the Internet age? They want me to buy 3 or 4 issues of their magazine so I'll really understand what they want, but when they take only 1% of submissions, I'm likely to get rejected anyway. So why should I drop $20 per magazine? I need to send my stories to about 80 mags or so to have a decent chance of getting 3 or 4 published, and I don't have the cash or the time to read 3 issues of 80 magazines. The ones that really piss me off are the ones who just list the contents pages on their sites, as if I'm supposed to be so impressed that they published fiction writers I've never heard of.
Most people have email now! So stop making me send that stupid SASE, especially when you're in Canada and I have to get the postal coupons! Just reject me electronically! It's quicker and easier!
Whew.
I feel better now. Reading a lit mag for pleasure is one thing; reading one to see if there's any chance in hell that they'd like your story is another. And after you read stories from 5 or 6 mags, they all begin to blend together anyway.
Urgent messages
So I get home from the movie and discover 5 messages on my answering machine. Since we usually have only 1 or 2 messages, I knew it was a bad sign. First one sister and then another calling to tell me my father had had chest pains in church and then took so much nitroglycerin that his blood pressure plummeted and they took him to the emergency room. He already has 4 stents, so there aren't too many arteries left that can be worked on, but I guess it turned out OK. The last message said that he had been released from the hospital and was going over to Beverly's house to recover. I'll call tomorrow to find out more.
It's weird to be practically the youngest person in my extended family. I'm the youngest child, which makes me almost the youngest cousin--I think my uncle David has 2 or 3 kids who are younger than I am. Two of my father's siblings have died--and both had dementia too, which is not exactly comforting--so time seems to be closing in.
So I don't really have a subject for this post; it's the weekend already!
I've been slacking on blogging. I've got a deadline coming up next week on a freelance job, and I'm trying not to let it slip, as I have so many these last few months.
But I've been wondering: where do the early morning hornies come from? Are people morning persons or night persons for sex, the way they are for sleep and going out?
Or do most people really prefer it in the afternoon?
I watched another episode of Lost last night. I love that show, and since Six Feet Under doesn't have episodes right now, it's about all I've got. It's especially fun to watch Dominic Monaghan (Merry in LOTR) play a drug-addled rock star. He hasn't done much makeup for this character--he looks pretty much the same as he does in photographs, but he is charmingly obsessive.
Early on, though, I missed a few key episodes, and now there are certain things that I don't know. Why was Kate in the custody of a federal marshall? And where did Ethan come from? I missed the episode where Claire disappeared but saw the one when she returned, so that sequence is a bit mystifying to me.
Women in groups
No, this is not a sex post. Too bad.
I went to a meeting tonight hosted by NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado. There were only 6 people there, but I had a good time. NARAL wants to rebuild its network of activists in Colorado, so we spent the evening thinking of ways to get more people interested in what we're doing. We're going to do an abortion providers appreciation day on March 10, and then they were trying to get me excited about doing a pub crawl on St. Patty's Day in which we had out green condoms and information about emergency contraception (the morning-after pill). They suggested we wear t-shirts saying "Do you feel lucky?" or "Ask me how you can get lucky" or "Has your luck run out?"
No.
I can take gift baskets to abortion providers to thank them for their bravery in the face of harassment. But I can't walk up to a bunch of teenagers at a bar and hand them a green condom. I just can't. I won't. You can't make me.
That's right. I'm chicken.
We planned our next meeting for March 8. We're going to change the focus of the group a little bit--from just a strategy group to a group in which women can talk about the reproductive choices they've made in their lives. Yes, I know, women do this with their close friends all the time. But I think many of them don't know how many other women have made decisions like theirs. I'm looking forward to it. I think it will be cool to get a group of women together on a regular basis to tell their contraception stories and their pregnancy stories and their abortion stories. All the stuff that a woman's reproductive life is made of.
Starbucks is everywhere
What a weird evening. Todd had rehearsal for
Orpheus Descending, and I had to attend a presentation on the Galapagos Islands to see if it was good enough to amuse the people at the Boulder Bird Club. So he drove me to Changes in Latitude, the travel store in Boulder that was hosting the program, and told me he would pick me up when the play was done. Apparently, everyone in Boulder wanted to see this program. The place was packed! I had to stand for more than an hour, and the first part of the program was nothing but endless pictures of coastal scrub and lava rocks. Just as I was beginning to wonder if there were any birds in the Galapagos, he got to the pictures of blue-footed boobies. Thank god for boobies. I might have fallen over on the people in front of me if they hadn't appeared.
When I talked to Charlie afterward, he said he could shorten the presentation for the BBC and focus more on birds. No, I didn't walk up and say, "Hey, that was so damn boring! Can you shorten it?" I just mentioned that it was a little long for the BBC's spring meeting, which is only 2 hours or so and requires at least some socializing before staring at pictures of birds.
So here I was, all alone in Boulder on a cold night at 8:40. Todd wouldn't be done until 10. I had planned to go to the Boulder Library and work on a poem, but I decided that I'd try the 24-hour Starbucks instead, which was only a few blocks away. Well, who'd have thought that students at CU actually studied? There was not an empty seat in the place. I couldn't very well stand there with a mocha and hover over the college students--that would have been humiliating--so I got a drink and took it down the street with me, mentally mapping Boulder and calculating how far I had to walk to get to a place where I could sit. Finally I went to Safeway and sat at the tables near their in-store Starbucks, which was closed.
I guess I'm condemned to sit at Starbucks, whether it's open or not.
There was a man there, who seemed pretty obviously homeless. He was eating from a carton of ice cream. I sat there with my magazine and my poem and my drink and hoped nobody would ask me for money or run me out of the place. How pathetic. I don't have an obvious place to go for an hour and I get all depressed. I used to walk most places and ride the bus everywhere else--I have definitely gotten soft. I wonder how people who are homeless cope with their disability to go somewhere and sit as if they belong.
Sing-Sing in Boulder
One time I went to a piano bar in Denver called Sing-Sing. It's one of those places with dueling pianos. It was fun, but I drank too much because I was with
Sex Scenes at Starbucks and
Virtigo, and they just kept pouring me drinks. Now there's one of these places in Boulder. It's called The Reef. Todd and I ate there once, and the food was unmemorable. But we had fun Friday night listening to the piano guys. The place was packed with people from college students to older couples to this Asian man sitting at the bar in a suit. He had his back turned to the music, and when I went up to order drinks, he tried to pick me up. I felt sorry for him, but he had one of those craggy gangster faces, so I didn't feel sorry enough to stop and talk.
I was in the mood for vodka, and the bartender recommended Ketel One and Belvedere. Ketel One is definitely better. Todd, meanwhile, was drinking mai tais, so when I got tired of the vodka I'd have a sip of his. Meanwhile the piano guys were switching to drums and synthesizer and trying a few metal songs. They were amazing.
I just wish they'd pick on the guys as much as the girls. I wouldn't care about the bitches and whores stuff if they'd call a few guys a name. But they didn't. So that pissed me off a little bit.
We left when Todd thought he might starve to death and went to Old Chicago's for pizza. It was about the only place that was still serving food.
We actually stayed up past midnight.
Friday Blues
When I was in college, I used to regularly start my weekend evenings at 9 or 10 o'clock. These days, they usually start around 6 when we go out for dinner. Then maybe we'll go to a movie. Our social life is so tame, you'd think we had kids.
But tonight I'm meeting Todd in Boulder after he finishes doing sound for yet another rehearsal of
Orpheus Descending. Maybe we'll go to a bar that has air hockey. Maybe it will also have Ciroc vodka (made from grapes; how is that possible?), which is totally yummy.
Maybe something exciting will happen.
Card me, I want to feel young
What more is there to say? My sister sent me this card years ago.
I love getting and giving cards. I have two big plastic boxes full of cards that people have sent me. I even have letters that I sent my parents that I found in a trunk in my father's house.
One of my favorite cards is one Todd gave me years ago. It features a boy and girl shivering in the surf and says on the inside, "I waded my whole life for you." I liked it so much that the next time I saw it in Target, I bought it and gave it to him.
I still have cards from one of my college boyfriends because he wrote such wonderful stories in them. Here's a sample:
"It's Monday night and I'm sitting in my room all packed and listening to my new Creedence Clearwater Revival tape and missing you more than I thought I would. I guess I didn't have a fixed amount of 'missing you' in mind, but I wish to hell you were with me."
Isn't that just so Beat? I must have broken up with this guy 4 or 5 times before we called it quits. He always seemed to withdraw after we had sex (sorry, I just couldn't think of a better way to word it). I never felt I got enough from him, and he once wrote a song in which he said, "I gave her my heart, but she wanted my soul."
Oh my.
"I'll suck your soul!"
"Suck this, bitch!"
That's from my favorite horror movie. And believe me, there aren't many of them. I tend to believe horror films too much to enjoy watching them. I had a friend in high school who would drag me to them and then laugh at me hiding my face. Yes, she really was my best friend.
Somedays I go through my box of cards and read parts of my past. My favorites are those from my mother, who died in December 1992. I'm looking now at a card with the Country Club Plaza on the front, all done up in snow and Christmas lights. When you're driving down Ward Parkway to the Plaza between Thanksgiving and New Year's, it looks as if the buildings are hanging on air. They used to have KC stores there--Woolf Brothers and Harzfeld's--but Woolf Bros. went out of business and Harzfeld's got bought by a company that got bought. Mergers have so improved our lives, haven't they?
But I digress.
The card's from December 1982, when I was in England for my junior year. My mother wrote: "I love your new hairdo" [it was quite poofy] ... We have to get ready for Patrick and Rosie's arrival--baby bed, put away all dangerous items, etc." [My niece Rosie is married; Patrick's finishing college.]
"The birdfeeding is paying off. When I looked out this morning, there were 8 bluejays, 2 male cardinals, countless sparrows, some juncos, a mourning dove, and 3 squirrels (not birds)."
I knew I got the birdwatching gene from somewhere. Thanks, Mom!
Ugly Bags of Mostly Water
Rufus is on my lap, purring. He seems undisturbed by the smell of small black kitty that I was petting earlier this evening, so I guess he isn't concerned about my cat infidelities.
I just got back from a showing of
Earthlings: Ugly Bags of Mostly Water, a documentary about the Klingon Language Institute. It was frackin hilarious (there you go, Todd!). My screenwriting teacher Alexandre Philippe was the director. He's done two films, this one and Chick Flick, which was about Mike the Headless Chicken, who lived on after being decapitated. It's always been interesting to me that someone like Alexandre, who doesn't seem to appreciate experimental cinema and fiction, makes films that are so out there. They're very funny, but they're definitely on offbeat subjects. "Quirky" doesn't begin to do them justice. This one was shot at a Klingon language conference held in a Comfort Inn in Pennsylvania, so they had pretty limited settings to work with. Much of it was shot in extreme close up, focusing on the mouths of these people talking about their love of speaking Klingon. They also got interviews with the inventor of the Klingon language and with Michael Dorn, who played Warf in Star Trek.
The DVD kept wigging out on us. I felt bad for Alexandre because they had to stop twice and fix the player or switch the CD. After the film, I told him how much I enjoyed it. Joey, one of the producers , invited me to go out with them, but I decided not to. Strange: all day long I'd been feeling lonely, but when I got a chance to socialize, I didn't feel like it. I wanted to come home and blog instead. Maybe it's because I feel so ignorant around that group sometimes. They know so much about film, and I really don't. And also, I'd eaten such a lot of crap today--5 Chips Ahoy, Domino's sausage and pepperoni, and a chocolate brownie--that I couldn't stomach (literally) any more.
