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Meanwhile, the U.S. has one of the highest premature birth rates. Higher than Cuba.
I've been listening to people on Minnesota Public Radio yak about this and, frankly, most of them aren't very smart. I didn't support MPR financially this year, and a big part of why is because I feel like the quality of programming has dropped big-time. Their "experts" go on and on and yet say very little. The unemployment "experts" didn't really see why unemployed teenagers are a big deal. Hello? How are they supposed to save for college? How could any reasonably intelligent human being just assume that kids with jobs just work to buy music off itunes or something? And the guy talking about premature births? He did finally get around to talking about maternity leave in more civilized countries, but come on, you don't think STRESS in the U.S. has anything to do with premature births?
Right now MPR is talking about unemployed construction workers. Why is it that nobody says that we can't keep building new houses forever? Sigh.
Handerpants: Tighty whities for your hands
Captain Corndog vs. Baron Von Broccoli bendable action figures
Crazy Cat Lady Board Game
God I love this catalog. And it is so appropriate that this store is in Seattle because, really, the Pacific Northwest should be home to inflatable fruitcakes.
For a couple years now I have been indifferent to most TV shows. I'm not fond of sitcoms and many of the popular shows like "Lost" and "CSI" and "NCIS" don't do it for me at all. Other than catching some "Law and Order SUV" episodes now and then, mostly to look at Olivia, I've been uninterested in network TV shows.
However, this year there are several fun shows to watch. It started with our getting addicted to HBO's "True Blood" over the summer. Then came AMC's "Mad Men," which is also quite wonderful. Those are both cable channel shows and I was happy just to find those fun to watch, but I decided to give some network shows a try as well. I sampled several, and most were dumb but two of them really are darn good. "The Good Wife" is a well-written show that finds a lovely mix between following the main character's personal life AND watching her put together clues to winning a legal case each week. The dialogue is smart, the mystery element works, and the cast is top-notch. Good stuff.
Then there is "Flashforward." This is another well-written show with a great cast. It has a bit of a sci-fi premise: What would happen if the whole world population blacked out for two minutes and every person had a vision of their lives in the near future? This is a terrific premise because it allows the writers to explore a mystery (what caused this strange event) and the personal travails of several characters (what do you do if you see yourself with someone other than your current partner in the near future, or you are an alcoholic and see yourself drinking, or you see yourself as not existing?). Also it allows the writers to take on some big questions about human nature. As one character puts it: How do you live in the now when you know what will happen in the future? How can people function when they feel their lives are predestined somehow? Or if you prefer to take the question out a bit further . . .What happens to beings who have always lived on a continuum of time that goes only one direction when that continuum skips forward and then back . . .how much of each person's life is absolutely predicated on not knowing what comes next?
If you haven't watched "Flashforward" you have a day or two to catch that first episode on HULU.com. After that you will just have to wait to see it on DVD. It is a heckuva first episode, too. "The Good WIfe" is a show you can jump into now and catch the gist of without viewing back episodes, but "Flashforward" is one you ought to watch in sequence. Mmmm good TV. I missed you.
Take The Pop Culture Archetype Personality Test at HelloQuizzy
</div>Druids are filled with a dramatic sense of wonder, viewing the world through rose-colored glasses as they watch everything come to life, from flora and fauna to mundane objects. They see the good in almost everyone and everything, yet struggle with the idea of ethical perfection (or lack thereof). They tend to turn away from the world and toward essence and ideal, and while they are concerned with all people and creatures, those things are valued only in that they are part of a greater whole; in this, they often struggle to find their place in things, and need to feel a part of whatever they are involved with. Fluent with language, they are keen to pick out patterns in people and things, although their somewhat otherworldly focus on the larger picture can lead them to seem somewhat absentminded. Nevertheless, they have a knack for explaining complex things quite simply.
Druids are often beset by Histrionic behavior, craving attention, reassurance and praise in everything they do. Emotionally exaggerated and often sexually charged, they become concerned with physical appearance, and grow uncomfortable when they are not the center of attention. Their emotions are subject to rapid shifts, and their actions are entirely self-centered, with no tolerance for delay in getting what they want. Their speech often lacks detail as their shallow emotions carry across into their dealings with others.
Famous druid types include Homer, Shakespeare, Dick Clark, Jackie Onasis and Julia Roberts.
I love this place. I love the solidness of it. I love that it has an upstairs and a basement (I grew up in Washington State in a house that had neither). I love that it is old and that many families have lived here. I wonder about them all the time. Who left the Disney stickers on the mirror? Who painted so much of the wood in the house flat, light green (it has almost all been painted over numerous times but I see that color everywhere when we renovate). I wish I could sit down in my living room and shut my eyes and be transported back to 1933. What kind of pictures hung from that picture rail? What did the furniture look like? Who might walk into the room?
The Minnesota History Museum did a wonderful exhibit a few years back in which they built part of a fake house inside the museum that was an exact replica of an old house in the Twin Cities. Then they filled it with the actually history of who had lived in the house over the years. They also detailed the history of the neighborhood and how it had changed. It was a very interactive. You walked through this house and you saw photos, you could pick up objects from various time periods, you could listen to audio accounts of what people remembered. I could have stayed in that exhibit all day.
We have redone much of our house, and while I love how it all looks and know it needed to be done, there is a small part of me that was sad to see the pink plastic fifties tiles in the bathroom go into the construction dumpster. Somebody loved that pink bathroom once, when those fancy modern tiles were brand new. And while the kitchen cupboards were hideous and we really needed new ones, there was something fascinating about the layers and layers of paint on them and the seventies bright orange contact paper we could not get off some of the shelves.
Someday someone I do not know likely is going to stand in our bathroom and look at the faun and nymph and mermaid art tiles amongst the white subway tile in our bathroom and say "Those have got to go". Then they will redo the room in some style I can't imagine. But maybe not. Maybe they will sit in the bathtub and gaze at those tiles and wonder who put them there. And maybe they will say "Those have to stay" just like we did with the picture rails and old doorknobs. I'm okay with it either way. I do hope that they wonder about the people who lived here before they did, though. I think it is good to wonder about the stories that were in a space before you showed up on the scene.
(Oh stop it with your thoughts of this being too personal...armpit hair is not TMI. Get over yourself.)
Anyway so I check and recheck. Yup. One pit has hair and the other does not. So did I just miss one armpit last time or do I have one bald armpit? Gosh I don't know! You know, stuff happens as you age and you don't notice it and then suddenly, ta-da, you find a wrinkle here or a spot there or a sag over there. But a bald armpit? Really?
I'm sure I just forgot to shave the one armpit. I'm not exactly a driven, organized bath taker. I'm usually reading and looking at whatever pet has managed to get into the bathroom to keep me company. And I don't really look at my own armpits that much. I mean it isn't swimming weather or anything so why would I be checking my armpits to see if they are shaved? I'm not a religious armpit shaver anyhow. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. It isn't like I have a tribble under each arm if I don't do a daily mowing or something. I'm sure I just neglected a pit.
Still maybe I should Google "bald armpit" to see if it is a symptom of something awful. You never know.
Also CSN Stores' phone system has better quality muzak. It was a sort of rockin' folk guitar instrumental thing. If you have to wait a bit to talk to someone you could do a lot worse. And once you do talk to someone, they are nice and they know how to transfer you without hanging up on you!
So thanks for doing the right thing, CSN Stores.
Voles, you know, breed in odd population waves -- sometimes you gots just a few voles and sometimes you gots lots of voles. This year we gotta LOT of voles. You can see their funny trails through the grass in our side yard and, every once in awhile,, one falls into our egress window well and gets stuck. Therefore, every day I do vole patrol. I check the egress window to see if any voles have fallen in and, if they have, I hop down into the window well and get the vole out.
Having grown up in the country I have lots of experience with little critters. Mice, shrews, rats, moles and so on. Voles are the damned nicest little critters I have ever met. They are just benevolent little dudes. They are really easy to get out of the window well because you just hold still and tell them you aren';t going to hurt them and then put an old serving spoon on the ground in front of them and they look at you and climb into the spoon. Then you lift them out and they walk off the spoon and tunnel off into the grass. Mice jump. Shrews bite. Rats . . .well I have never tried to rescue a live wild rat but I have had one growl at me. Moles panic (they don't like the light). Voles cooperate.
Yes, I know they eat azaleas and hostas and such. I don't care. I think they are adorable.
CSN stores standard return policy is that they do not take back items that arrive in non-working condition without charging you what it cost them to ship the item and you also have to pay to ship the item back to them. In other words, if they sell you something that doesn't work it is going to cost YOU a lot of money, not them.
Never heard of CSN Stores, you say. Must be a little fly-by-night outfit. NOT. If you go shop at Walmart.com you will find that many of the items listed on their website are actually sold by CSN. And Walmart does not take their returns or anything . . .read the fine print. So you could very well think you were buying from Walmart, a company that has normal return policies, and end up getting stiffed by CSN and their idiotic return policies.
You know, the only power we have as consumers is to thoughtfully choose where we buy things. We all do that by different criteria. I know that some people abuse return policies. My ex was a retail manager at a somewhat seedy Target store, lol, and I have hair-raising stories to tell about what Target customers try to get away with. But good customers who end up with non-working products right off the bat should not have to pay extra just to get something that works. That is just basic.
I do not shop at stores that have a restocking fee.
I do not shop at stores that do not take responsibility for the initial working order of their products.
I demand reasonable customer service. If I get exceptional service I will be an exceptional customer, but at least give me reasonable service.
So folks, listen: Don't shop at CSN Stores. Every retail outfit can have some unhappy customers but this joint has policies designed to create unhappy customers. There are many places to buy the things CSN sells. Buy from someone who takes a little responsibility rather than someone who does not. You'll be happier in both the short run and the long run.
"As women, we need to look like women, how we carry ourselves, how we dress on and off the court, a lot of those things have to be addressed and continue to be addressed because we are the product, and it's important and people want to see a good product. They do. That's just the bottom line. And you need to be marketable. And I think that more women need to understand that here in our league."
The above quotation is what Lisa Leslie said at her retirement press conference. Here is my reply, via video clip:
On Tuesdays Blizzard does maintenance and patching to their hugely popular game, World of Warcraft. And almost every Tuesday the maintenance takes longer than they said it would. This results in hundreds of angsty adolescent nerds posting on forums about how lousy and rotten Blizzard is and how the company owes them money for their wasted time. You see, young, male nerds don't have any real understanding of how the world actually works. Well, older male nerds sometimes don't understand the real world either, lol, but the young ones are the loudest about their belief that when things go wrong with software/online content it is because Blizzard doesn't CARE about them.
Well of course Blizzard cares. It's just that BLizzard is made up of many, many individual human beings and they have their OWN problems. Here is my take on a typical Tuesday problem at Blizzard:
Eric the code monkey, who was distracted because someone took his egg salad out of the break room fridge, forgot to upload that one little change to the WoW maintenance patch. When things went wrong, he blamed Jim, the guy who made the tool that uploads the code. Jim said he never got the memo and, besides, his new project manager, Rudy, pulled him off maintaining that tool in order to do a special project for Ann, the assistant supervisor in charge of Secret Project WoW-for Wii (Rudy has the hots for Ann and will do anything for her). Much sulking and firing off of sarcastic e-mails to pals has ensued from this blame-game and work has slowed to a halt at Blizzard.
Meanwhile, Art, the guy whose entire job consists of flipping the large red switch that controls the servers on and off every Tuesday and giggling at the adolescents who complain about it, dropped his massive three-in-one fantasy trilogy hardcover book that ways five pounds on the Apple II he uses to spam random blue responses on the WoW forums that say "Try cycling your modem." Now the Apple II is on the fritz and Art isn't going to turn the servers back on until he gets it fixed. Art is just like that.
He just needs one more bent staple and some crazy glue and all will be well.
For weeks now I have had a terrible earworm. We go to WNBA games and it is a piece of music they play there . . .I don't know the name of it. At one point I lost it, and then it bothered me that I couldn't remember it so I asked Tambyrd about it and, of course, once she sang it I had it again.
But NOW I have a new one. When I went to Bible school (yes I went to a Bible College for a year. A charismatic Bible college, to boot) we had a class that studied the Jewish tabernacle of the Old Testament and the symbolism of it. The teacher was a Jewish Christian. A Christian Jew? I'm not sure of the correct term but you get the drift. She taught us a Jewish song. And now that song is stuck in my head. As earworms go it is a rather pleasant one that makes you want to dance a little. I thought I would share . . . .
What, did you think America was smart? This is a country where people think they can drive on the freeway while smoking, texting, and eating a fast-food burger all at the same time. This is a country that has never quite figured out that Wall Street and corporations are not going to watch out for your nest egg and take care of your retirement fund. This is America, where most "Christians" have never actually studied the Bible or the history of the Christian church and where we spend billions to wage war on drugs and never wage war on why people want to TAKE drugs.
The vast majority of human beings, American and otherwise, are pretty damn stupid. Face it. They don't understand things and don't want to understand things because asking questions and listening to answers is hard work.
A lot of people muddle through their lives in a state of barely supressed, dull, throbbing rage and welcome any opportunity to express that rage . . .just give them a target. The guy who accidently cut them off in traffic? Fine. The political party their radio guy says is the enemy? Cool. The tribe next door who has slightly less arid land? Rock on. Many people are primed and ready to froth at the mouth and scream and make rude gestures and, yes, hit and kick and even kill. They are that mad. All the time.
And why are they mad? Well that's a good question. I don't know. Maybe because they thought life was going to be more fun than it is? More fair? Because they thought life would have a great overarching, easily understandable reason to it? And instead, no matter where you live, no matter who you are, life is messy and unpredictable, full of drudgery and repetition, and you can't always get what you want.
"And I went down to the demonstration
To get my fair share of abuse
Singing, "We're gonna vent our frustration
If we don't we're gonna blow a 50-amp fuse"
Sing it to me now...
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometimes well you just might find
You get what you need
Oh baby, yeah, yeah!"
You know, once you realize that life is not always fun, or fair, and that you are going to have to get through it never knowing for certain what the point is, you can either live with your teeth clenched over rage at the utter awfullness of it all, which is the immediate reaction most people never get past, or you can step back and look at the whole, big picture. And once you step back and look at the whole big picture I really think you get on a bumpy path to either becoming a joker or a saint.
Maybe both.
In any case those people screaming at town hall meetings? I guarantee you they are neither able to laugh at themselves and at the world nor are they spending a lot of time thinking about the needs and feelings of other people. They aren't on any sort of path like that. They are just not that smart. They are stuck in dull rage mode for whatever reason. And that is most of humanity. So there is no reason to act all shocked at such rude behavior. This is very ordinary stuff. The only thing extraordinary about such yahoos is that they are getting so much attention in the news. Once a celebrity dies or someone has ten babies, or better yet a celebrity has ten babies, the screamers' moment in the sun will be over. And back they will go to Dull Rageland.
It isn't a nice place, Dull Rageland. It makes me hope for reincarnation. Nobody should have to waste their one and only life on Earth feeling like that.
(Lyrics are from the Rolling Stones' "You Can't Always Get What You Want." Great song. Go buy it.)
From Wikipedia: "A Boyfriend pillow (also known as the husband pillow) is a large, high-backed pillow with two "arms". It is used to prop the user upright while in bed or on the floor, as for reading or watching television."
The Conversation:
Me: Honey are you going to work upstairs or downstairs?
Tambyrd: Downstairs I think. It's more comfortable.
Me: Okay.
Tambyrd: I got rid of my husband, you know, so now there's nothing to prop myself up on.
Me: You got rid of that thing?
Tam: He was just gathering dust and I hardly ever used him so I threw him out.
Me: Good for you!
1. I like Madonna's new song "Celebration"
2. Do you know what happens when you give dork boy engineers too much time and money? They build the Tomahawk, a "motorcycle" around a Dodge Viper engine. It is a motorcycle in name only as it has four wheels, albeit in a configeration that puts two wheels so close together fore and aft that it looks like one wheel. Basically it is a giant engine with wheels and a seat on it. They said it could possibly go 400 MPH. Of course they don't KNOW for sure because, well, at around 150 MPH it gets hard to stay on the thing from the wind. LOL. I think it looks ludicrous. It isn't street legal. Chrysler never could sell it. And we wonder why the U.S. car makers went broke . . .
3. You know what I hate? I hate it when you have worked very hard to be hopeful and upbeat about someone who has often been an asshole and then they prove to you that they really ARE an asshole. To the utter core. I'm talking step-daughter here, so it is particularly hard because I have years invested in making the best of her bad behavior and making excuses for her to myself. But the Hell with it. It takes too much damn energy to keep telling myself she will grow up and be less selfish and thoughtless. If she does someday, kudos to her. For now, though, she is just what she looks like: An asshole. My hopes and expectations, they be gone. Crushed under the wheels of the Tomahawk of reality (see above picture).
4. As someone with an MFA degree in Creative Writing I find it quite wonderful that the woman who is attempting to be a pimp for a nice guy with a big dick in HBO's "Hung" is a poet. I'm telling you, there is something of the pimp in every poet. And that is a good thing.
5. Latest gripe about vampires stories: I don't think vampires should be able to make other vampires out of human beings. I mean come on, there would be so MANY vampires if that were possible! UNless becoming a vampire completely alters the humanity of a person, vampires would be making more vampires left and right. It is human nature to try to make a tribe. And then an existing tribe splits and there are two new tribes. Read Doris Lessings' "Prisons We Choose to Live Inside." If vampires could just make new vampires willy nilly the planet would be crawling with bloodsuckers. Naw. Vampires should be rare.
6. Texting while driving. WHY?
7. I like Facebook and Twitter because it reminds me that nobody is really that interesting on a daily basis unless you love them dearly. However many, many people THINK they are interesting on a daily,, nay, HOURLY basis. LOL.
8. Beer and wine at Starbucks . . .a good thing? I can't decide.
9. Isn't it almost time for a really good band to just pop up out of no where and set popular music on its head again?
10. If I drink a beer while mowing the lawn, and I crash the riding lawn mower, do I get cited for drunk driving?
I will get a brief reprieve when Minneapolis has its Powderhorn Park Art Festival. And HBO's "True Blood" is swell TV and well-suited to watching in the summer. And Taylor has a birthday coming up. But other than that? Meh.
I'm sure it is different for folks who have the dough to go on vacation, but I don't. A lot of us don't. So as the fruits and grains slowly ripens in the summer heat (something we are profoundly disconnected from) we sit in our air conditioned spaces and wait. We wait for the next transition: School starting, football preseason, leaves falling, or something.
Me, I love autumn. Fire, leaves falling, earlier darkness, harvest, death . . .THAT is the season for me. I just have to endure August, that's all.
I am finishing up a big fat book by an author I shall not name. It has been a bit of a slog, and I thought this was because I don't like the characters. On the surface that is the obvious problem. I find the narrator whiny and lacking in self insight. I find his wife selfish, mean-spirited, and weak.
However, it HAS to be more complicated than just not liking things about these people. After all, one of my favorite books of all time is "Madame Bovary" and there aren't really likable characters in THAT book. I also really like "McTeague" which is essentially a book about a rather stupid dentist. So then I thought maybe the issue was a first-person narrator I didn't like . . .except I love "Frankenstein" and yet find the narrator, Frankenstein himself (except when the creature tells his story), to be an utter creep. So it isn't simply that I don't like the narrator, either.
I am baffled by the motivation of the characters in this book, especially the narrator. You see, I could understand Madame Bovary's reasons for doing what she did. I could understand McTeague. One of the joys of "Frankenstein" is actually unraveling the motivations of Frankenstein himself, which are complex and mostly hidden from himself. But the narrator in this book? I just don't understand his motivations and therefore I have trouble getting into the plot. Perhaps, rather than saying I don't understand the narrator's motivations I should instead say that I think I see what the writer is saying motivates this guy but I don't buy it.
In any case, this book has me thinking about what I really mean when I think of a character as "not likable." I find that I do not mean at all the same things I mean when I find a real person not particularly likable. I can enjoy fictional people who are not bright, who are selfish, who are self deluded and who are dishonest. I can hang out with characters who are psychotic, alcoholic, and downright nasty. However, I cannot abide fictional characters who are insipid.
Madame Bovary may be a self deluded romantic but she GOES for what she thinks she wants. McTeague is kind of a wimp for a long while but at least he eventually takes action. And Frankenstein takes action right off and then spends much of the book trying to avoid the consequences of what he has wrought. But I can't stand a character who doesn't do anything and just passively endures his misery. Or rather, I can only endure that for awhile and then the character better step up and do something or I just lose interest.
I have a few pages to go. Maybe these fictional folk will DO something before the end. But I have to say, it has been a long, insipid ride. However, I appreciate the reminder of how important it is not to have a passive character.
