a bold statement considering the strength of the Canadian dollar...
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
"It's worth five dollars to me that you came back alive"
a bold statement considering the strength of the Canadian dollar...
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Around Town
Lately I have taken to walking around town at night. Kind of like Dickens used to walk through seedy parts of London at three in the morning. Only I do not have floofy hair, am not a man, and have not exhibited much literary genius since that mystery story with the oven cleaner, and this town isn’t big enough to have any habitually seedy parts, so it wasn’t actually like that at all.
On Monday the weather was cool and the air smelled like woodsmoke and flowers, and the pretty Victorian houses on Church Street shone yellow light from their windows onto their front gardens. Even the newer, boxier, uglier houses looked romantic, which is a sign I have been reading too much L. M. Montgomery.
True to my foolish human nature I thought it would be nice to keep it all, so on Tuesday I went out around 8:30 and tried to take pictures of it. Oh, what an awful idea.
First of all, I should no longer attempt to take pictures after dark without a tripod. It is not possible to stand still enough. Why I never think this will be a problem, I do not know.
Secondly, while this town may not have seedy parts, every picture I took has a distinctly creepy feel – the whole place is more or less empty at night and looks like a ghost town. An EVIL ghost town.
They suspected there was something living at the bottom of the falls, but it never came up to breathe.
Finally the townfolk passed a resolution to keep the road clear at night so they could carry their pitchforks to any house on Main Street unimpeded.
A portal to the underworld had opened somewhere in the girls’ A-wing locker room, but it went undiscovered because Kimmy always skipped gym.
Number 16 was the last thing he saw before the blow knocked him unconscious.
By the time the zombies reached West Main, they had learned how to climb over fences.
After two hours had passed and he hadn’t witnessed any crimes, he decided to commit one.
As a neighbor said recently, after hearing several unsavory stories about his other neighbors, "It ain't Mayberry anymore."
On Monday the weather was cool and the air smelled like woodsmoke and flowers, and the pretty Victorian houses on Church Street shone yellow light from their windows onto their front gardens. Even the newer, boxier, uglier houses looked romantic, which is a sign I have been reading too much L. M. Montgomery.
True to my foolish human nature I thought it would be nice to keep it all, so on Tuesday I went out around 8:30 and tried to take pictures of it. Oh, what an awful idea.
First of all, I should no longer attempt to take pictures after dark without a tripod. It is not possible to stand still enough. Why I never think this will be a problem, I do not know.
Secondly, while this town may not have seedy parts, every picture I took has a distinctly creepy feel – the whole place is more or less empty at night and looks like a ghost town. An EVIL ghost town.
They suspected there was something living at the bottom of the falls, but it never came up to breathe.
Finally the townfolk passed a resolution to keep the road clear at night so they could carry their pitchforks to any house on Main Street unimpeded.
A portal to the underworld had opened somewhere in the girls’ A-wing locker room, but it went undiscovered because Kimmy always skipped gym.
Number 16 was the last thing he saw before the blow knocked him unconscious.
By the time the zombies reached West Main, they had learned how to climb over fences.
After two hours had passed and he hadn’t witnessed any crimes, he decided to commit one.
As a neighbor said recently, after hearing several unsavory stories about his other neighbors, "It ain't Mayberry anymore."
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Around the House
My apartment has a bit of a slopey floor in some places. Namely, all of them. It’s a charming and characterful feature unless you have a chair with wheels. When I first arranged my apartment, I managed to do it in such a way that my desk chair ended up repeatedly rolling me into the bathroom when I was innocently sitting at my desk trying to write. I do not manufacture all of my distractions myself. That one came out of nowhere.
Since I have rearranged everything more wisely, hung some pictures, and acquired some chairs, including The Chair, I thought it might be time for updated pictures since some of you are too distant to be lured into visiting.
The Living Room
In the living room please note the following.
The Chair, featured in a photo I call The Effects of Illness.
This was taken soon after The Chair arrived, before I rearranged the living room. I was extremely happy to see it because, as the picture shows, I was miserably sick at the time, and had spent several days making do with a camping chair. Even a perfectly healthy person wouldn’t like to sit in one of those things for more than an hour, and I’m convinced that the arrival of The Chair saved my life, even if I did have to call later and ask if they could please also send the legs thank you very much.
Literary Action Figures: “Comes With Pen and Writing Desk!”
Jane Austen, a gift from my mother, and Charles Dickens, a gift from Megan, adorn the Victorian Literature shelf. Yes, I organized my fiction by time period. Shut up. Jane, interestingly, has a double-jointed elbow and can’t quite stand up straight. (She drinks.) Charles is very dapper and bends at the knee. They are fantastic and they can dance, although Charles, being sturdier, has to hold up tottering Jane.
The Kitchen
It has not really changed except that I hung up some pictures. Almost all of the pictures in my apartment are of England or France, and of those 100% were taken by Christine who has a very wistful eye and is a evidently a whiz with Hue and Saturation. That horse that is lying down is sleeping, not dead. If it were dead I wouldn’t have framed it.
Of note in the kitchen:
One Reason I Always Wanted to Have My Own Refrigerator
And the Other Reason
That is my father’s handiwork. It was in my stocking last Christmas. Before I decapitated it, it looked like this:
Next to it is my mother’s equally anthropomorphized oven mitt. I kept the reindeer around for months, but the day finally came when I really needed the spoon. Now its antlers are my trophy. I think they lend the place an aristocratic air, à la Glenbogle House. Of course I tell people I shot it myself.
I have no other rooms, so I will leave you with the answer to the burning question you’ve all been asking yourselves: Has the Change of Environment Affected Cordelia’s Delicate Complexion?
No. Cordelia had to have a new mug as a result of the move, because I wanted to use the other one, but she is taking to it nicely. However, I must remember to dust her head more often.
Since I have rearranged everything more wisely, hung some pictures, and acquired some chairs, including The Chair, I thought it might be time for updated pictures since some of you are too distant to be lured into visiting.
The Living Room
In the living room please note the following.
The Chair, featured in a photo I call The Effects of Illness.
This was taken soon after The Chair arrived, before I rearranged the living room. I was extremely happy to see it because, as the picture shows, I was miserably sick at the time, and had spent several days making do with a camping chair. Even a perfectly healthy person wouldn’t like to sit in one of those things for more than an hour, and I’m convinced that the arrival of The Chair saved my life, even if I did have to call later and ask if they could please also send the legs thank you very much.
Literary Action Figures: “Comes With Pen and Writing Desk!”
Jane Austen, a gift from my mother, and Charles Dickens, a gift from Megan, adorn the Victorian Literature shelf. Yes, I organized my fiction by time period. Shut up. Jane, interestingly, has a double-jointed elbow and can’t quite stand up straight. (She drinks.) Charles is very dapper and bends at the knee. They are fantastic and they can dance, although Charles, being sturdier, has to hold up tottering Jane.
The Kitchen
It has not really changed except that I hung up some pictures. Almost all of the pictures in my apartment are of England or France, and of those 100% were taken by Christine who has a very wistful eye and is a evidently a whiz with Hue and Saturation. That horse that is lying down is sleeping, not dead. If it were dead I wouldn’t have framed it.
Of note in the kitchen:
One Reason I Always Wanted to Have My Own Refrigerator
And the Other Reason
That is my father’s handiwork. It was in my stocking last Christmas. Before I decapitated it, it looked like this:
Next to it is my mother’s equally anthropomorphized oven mitt. I kept the reindeer around for months, but the day finally came when I really needed the spoon. Now its antlers are my trophy. I think they lend the place an aristocratic air, à la Glenbogle House. Of course I tell people I shot it myself.
I have no other rooms, so I will leave you with the answer to the burning question you’ve all been asking yourselves: Has the Change of Environment Affected Cordelia’s Delicate Complexion?
No. Cordelia had to have a new mug as a result of the move, because I wanted to use the other one, but she is taking to it nicely. However, I must remember to dust her head more often.
Memorial Day in a Small Town
My apartment overlooks Main Street, so I am witness to every foul-mouthed skateboarder, bad muffler, and thudding stereo that passes by. Having an excellent view of parades does not make up for this, but it does help.
Since my prime piece of real estate is so perfectly situated for parades, I was disappointed to discover that we don’t get them all; we are so far out in the sticks that all the nearby towns have to pool their fire trucks to get enough to make a parade, so they rotate. We get Memorial Day and Fall Weekend, and those other people get the Fourth of July and Labor Day. This is unfair because our town is very clearly the most aesthetically pleasing of all the choices, but I shall generously set that grievance aside, especially since the siren in the town hall went off two minutes before the parade, and half the trucks rushed off to save people anyway. This greatly disturbed the horses, and consequently me, as I waited for one of them to buck his policeman right off onto the pavement.
But nothing so interesting happened.
Some people went by in old, well-polished cars, the mayor walked by waving, Scouts of various persuasions wandered by with their lines badly out of form, and some volunteer firefighters and nine or ten veterans marched past. The remaining emergency vehicles followed, and then the crowd wandered up to the cemetery to hear a speech and some blanks fired.
Assuming nobody was going to deliver the Gettysburg Address of our time, I did not bother to go, so I was still around to notice that fifteen minutes later the main intersection was still blocked off, so I kept an eye on it, and pretty soon the veterans came marching back through and lined up across Main Street. I had no idea why they were doing that until the firemen reappeared, still in formation, and turned the corner saluting. Then the policeman who had been holding up traffic got on his motorcycle and drove off, a couple of passersby continued on their way, the firemen went inside the firehouse, and the veterans dispersed.
So much for the speech at the other end of the street. This was a moment of perfect eloquence.
Since my prime piece of real estate is so perfectly situated for parades, I was disappointed to discover that we don’t get them all; we are so far out in the sticks that all the nearby towns have to pool their fire trucks to get enough to make a parade, so they rotate. We get Memorial Day and Fall Weekend, and those other people get the Fourth of July and Labor Day. This is unfair because our town is very clearly the most aesthetically pleasing of all the choices, but I shall generously set that grievance aside, especially since the siren in the town hall went off two minutes before the parade, and half the trucks rushed off to save people anyway. This greatly disturbed the horses, and consequently me, as I waited for one of them to buck his policeman right off onto the pavement.
But nothing so interesting happened.
Some people went by in old, well-polished cars, the mayor walked by waving, Scouts of various persuasions wandered by with their lines badly out of form, and some volunteer firefighters and nine or ten veterans marched past. The remaining emergency vehicles followed, and then the crowd wandered up to the cemetery to hear a speech and some blanks fired.
Assuming nobody was going to deliver the Gettysburg Address of our time, I did not bother to go, so I was still around to notice that fifteen minutes later the main intersection was still blocked off, so I kept an eye on it, and pretty soon the veterans came marching back through and lined up across Main Street. I had no idea why they were doing that until the firemen reappeared, still in formation, and turned the corner saluting. Then the policeman who had been holding up traffic got on his motorcycle and drove off, a couple of passersby continued on their way, the firemen went inside the firehouse, and the veterans dispersed.
So much for the speech at the other end of the street. This was a moment of perfect eloquence.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
The Sins of Kalamazoo
Some of you have commented on a lack of posts in the past couple of months. My excuse is that I’ve been writing. Ivan’s excuse is that she lives in California, which always explains everything. (Actually she beat me to it, so I have to take that back.) Anyway, here is one of the things I meant to post about...
Way back in May I went to Kalamazoo. My first encounter with Kalamazoo-as-a-concept was several years ago in Washington, D.C., where I met a girl named Emily. Emily told me this joke.
Emily: Why did the monkey fall out of the tree?
Me: I don’t know, why?
Emily: It was dead.
Emily was from Kalamazoo and had clearly developed her sense of humor as a survival instinct. I have been to Kalamazoo twice now. It looks like Western New York, but scrubbier. As far as I could tell, it has only one thing to recommend it, and that is a sub shop on, I think, Old Michigan Ave. Last year I walked two miles in heels for that sub, and it was absolutely worth it even considering that that particular adventure resulted in my supergluing myself to a desk eighteen months later – but that’s another story. If you are thinking of visiting Kalamazoo, I recommend that you sit down with Carl Sandburg’s poem on the subject (see the title of this post), consider yourself to have been there, and go to Paris instead. Or even Cleveland.
Fearing that the city would have the same effect on me as it did on the macabre little Emily, I would not have gone there voluntarily. When I found myself there eight years after hearing that joke, it was as an exhibitor at the Medieval Institute’s annual medieval conference. Exhibiting at the conference is exhausting and it doesn’t help that getting there is exhausting, too. Kalamazoo is one of those places you can never get to from wherever you currently are. Nobody wanted to drive twelve hours this year, so we flew into Chicago, stayed overnight, and drove a couple of hours around the bottom of Lake Michigan to Kalamazoo the next morning.
Taking off.
I had never been to Chicago before. I have still hardly been there, since I only stayed about twelve hours. However, in those twelve hours I formed the opinion that Chicago is clean and shiny, and the people there seem very friendly. For example, there was a positively effusive fellow on the train who was “the nicest guy you could meet” in spite of the fact that he worked for a loan shark and was at that moment on his way into the city to break some knuckles. I was comforted to know that “if anything happened” he would protect me. Since he was probably the most dangerous person on the train, and he was reading a Dean Koontz novel, I figured my chances of making it out alive were fair to middling. Fortunately by the time he got off I had put him “in such a good mood” that maybe he’d break fewer knuckles. I guess my silence and sullen expression really cheered him up. Thank goodness I was there to serve that cosmically vital purpose.
We arrived at Kalamazoo on Wednesday morning. Any academic bloggers who have been there will back up all the seemingly ludicrous claims I make about this conference. The first year I went, I wasn’t there two hours before I was drinking beer out of the back of a station wagon with a crowd of hairy medievalists. It’s the same sort of thing as when when all the moths converge in, you know, that place, in South America or the Mediterranean or wherever, to mate or something else to do with survival (you can tell I'm really informed on the subject of moths, or was it butterflies), except in this case it’s medievalists, and they go to Michigan, and they seem to be there mainly to drink. It certainly isn’t the luxury that draws them: Sir John Mandeville compares the dormatory accomodations to a Turkish prison, and although I’ve never been to a Turkish prison, I did put in nine months at Goodricke A Block and I can tell you anything that can’t meet to those low standards really isn’t fit for human habitation. Putting a door on the toilet stalls would just be a start.
Even the conference hall is hideous.
I’ve been told it’s supposed to resemble a forest, with the pillars disguised as trees, rivers running through the carpet, and grates representing sunshine hanging from the ceiling. I have never been able to see it, myself.
The conference goes for three and a half days, and they are long, long days. Between sessions we were mobbed by eager book-buyers, but during sessions, it was so boring I started reading our books. Fortunately we just published one on leprosy, which I sincerely and enthusiastically recommended to everyone who came by, and even talked a couple of skeptics into buying it. They won’t be sorry.
The leprosy book opens with magnificently grisly descriptions which, as my longstanding fondness for the plague and more recently schistosomiasis would rightly suggest, were simply delightful to me, and not only that, but useful. There were two of us manning the booth, and the other one, when she was not singing “K-A-L-A-M-A-Z-O-O what a gal! in Kalamazoo-zoo-zoo-zoo-zoo . . .” was singing the lyrics to a song she learned when she was little:
There goes my eyeball
Into your highball
Oh my god I’ve got leprosy
I had never had the pleasure of hearing this song before, and I suspect she received a much higher-class education than I did, because I didn’t know what a highball was until I read The Great Gatsby in high school. The truth is I think the song is genius artistically-speaking, but I was forced to inform my colleague that according to the leprosy book, the disease may cause you to go blind, but it will never make your eyes fall out. And later, when her foot was giving her great pain, I was able to assure her that whatever else it might be, the diagnosis could not possibly be leprosy, unless she had been born under the wrong star or was egregiously promiscuous. She was very grateful for my medical advice. I’m not sure why that pony she promised me hasn’t shown up yet.
At the end of the conference we drove back to Chicago and spent several hours at the airport wishing we were dead because we were so tired we might as well have been. I took my mind off my suffering by reading one of the books I picked up, J. J. Saunders’s The History of the Mongol Conquests, from which I learned that horses had to be specially bred to have a spine strong enough to hold a rider. I always thought they’d evolved that way. Amazing.
Ever since reading that sentence about horses in a random lounge in Chicago O’Hare, my brain has forged a connection between Kalamazoo, airports, and medieval Mongolia. While airports and Mongolia are almost universally agreed upon to be two very unpleasant places, maybe just below Limbo and Siberia, the association has actually improved my opinion of Kalamazoo. Really, don’t ever go there. Unless you go for the conference. They serve the wine at five.
Way back in May I went to Kalamazoo. My first encounter with Kalamazoo-as-a-concept was several years ago in Washington, D.C., where I met a girl named Emily. Emily told me this joke.
Emily: Why did the monkey fall out of the tree?
Me: I don’t know, why?
Emily: It was dead.
Emily was from Kalamazoo and had clearly developed her sense of humor as a survival instinct. I have been to Kalamazoo twice now. It looks like Western New York, but scrubbier. As far as I could tell, it has only one thing to recommend it, and that is a sub shop on, I think, Old Michigan Ave. Last year I walked two miles in heels for that sub, and it was absolutely worth it even considering that that particular adventure resulted in my supergluing myself to a desk eighteen months later – but that’s another story. If you are thinking of visiting Kalamazoo, I recommend that you sit down with Carl Sandburg’s poem on the subject (see the title of this post), consider yourself to have been there, and go to Paris instead. Or even Cleveland.
Fearing that the city would have the same effect on me as it did on the macabre little Emily, I would not have gone there voluntarily. When I found myself there eight years after hearing that joke, it was as an exhibitor at the Medieval Institute’s annual medieval conference. Exhibiting at the conference is exhausting and it doesn’t help that getting there is exhausting, too. Kalamazoo is one of those places you can never get to from wherever you currently are. Nobody wanted to drive twelve hours this year, so we flew into Chicago, stayed overnight, and drove a couple of hours around the bottom of Lake Michigan to Kalamazoo the next morning.
Taking off.
I had never been to Chicago before. I have still hardly been there, since I only stayed about twelve hours. However, in those twelve hours I formed the opinion that Chicago is clean and shiny, and the people there seem very friendly. For example, there was a positively effusive fellow on the train who was “the nicest guy you could meet” in spite of the fact that he worked for a loan shark and was at that moment on his way into the city to break some knuckles. I was comforted to know that “if anything happened” he would protect me. Since he was probably the most dangerous person on the train, and he was reading a Dean Koontz novel, I figured my chances of making it out alive were fair to middling. Fortunately by the time he got off I had put him “in such a good mood” that maybe he’d break fewer knuckles. I guess my silence and sullen expression really cheered him up. Thank goodness I was there to serve that cosmically vital purpose.
We arrived at Kalamazoo on Wednesday morning. Any academic bloggers who have been there will back up all the seemingly ludicrous claims I make about this conference. The first year I went, I wasn’t there two hours before I was drinking beer out of the back of a station wagon with a crowd of hairy medievalists. It’s the same sort of thing as when when all the moths converge in, you know, that place, in South America or the Mediterranean or wherever, to mate or something else to do with survival (you can tell I'm really informed on the subject of moths, or was it butterflies), except in this case it’s medievalists, and they go to Michigan, and they seem to be there mainly to drink. It certainly isn’t the luxury that draws them: Sir John Mandeville compares the dormatory accomodations to a Turkish prison, and although I’ve never been to a Turkish prison, I did put in nine months at Goodricke A Block and I can tell you anything that can’t meet to those low standards really isn’t fit for human habitation. Putting a door on the toilet stalls would just be a start.
Even the conference hall is hideous.
I’ve been told it’s supposed to resemble a forest, with the pillars disguised as trees, rivers running through the carpet, and grates representing sunshine hanging from the ceiling. I have never been able to see it, myself.
The conference goes for three and a half days, and they are long, long days. Between sessions we were mobbed by eager book-buyers, but during sessions, it was so boring I started reading our books. Fortunately we just published one on leprosy, which I sincerely and enthusiastically recommended to everyone who came by, and even talked a couple of skeptics into buying it. They won’t be sorry.
The leprosy book opens with magnificently grisly descriptions which, as my longstanding fondness for the plague and more recently schistosomiasis would rightly suggest, were simply delightful to me, and not only that, but useful. There were two of us manning the booth, and the other one, when she was not singing “K-A-L-A-M-A-Z-O-O what a gal! in Kalamazoo-zoo-zoo-zoo-zoo . . .” was singing the lyrics to a song she learned when she was little:
There goes my eyeball
Into your highball
Oh my god I’ve got leprosy
I had never had the pleasure of hearing this song before, and I suspect she received a much higher-class education than I did, because I didn’t know what a highball was until I read The Great Gatsby in high school. The truth is I think the song is genius artistically-speaking, but I was forced to inform my colleague that according to the leprosy book, the disease may cause you to go blind, but it will never make your eyes fall out. And later, when her foot was giving her great pain, I was able to assure her that whatever else it might be, the diagnosis could not possibly be leprosy, unless she had been born under the wrong star or was egregiously promiscuous. She was very grateful for my medical advice. I’m not sure why that pony she promised me hasn’t shown up yet.
At the end of the conference we drove back to Chicago and spent several hours at the airport wishing we were dead because we were so tired we might as well have been. I took my mind off my suffering by reading one of the books I picked up, J. J. Saunders’s The History of the Mongol Conquests, from which I learned that horses had to be specially bred to have a spine strong enough to hold a rider. I always thought they’d evolved that way. Amazing.
Ever since reading that sentence about horses in a random lounge in Chicago O’Hare, my brain has forged a connection between Kalamazoo, airports, and medieval Mongolia. While airports and Mongolia are almost universally agreed upon to be two very unpleasant places, maybe just below Limbo and Siberia, the association has actually improved my opinion of Kalamazoo. Really, don’t ever go there. Unless you go for the conference. They serve the wine at five.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Friday, May 25, 2007
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Evidence for why Louis the Whichever Roman Numeral it Was was right to call Western New York "a swamp"
Exhibit A: These conversations occured over the course of a week while house-sitting a year ago
Operator: This is 911.
Me: Hi . . . um . . . I’m not sure whether you’re the right person to call. . . . I’ve got, uh, kind of a raccoon running around my front yard. It looks pretty much rabid to me.
Operator: I’ll send an officer over. Will you be able to meet them at the door?
Me: Well, I’m kind of stuck in the back, locked out of the house, but I’m trying to break in, so hopefully yes.
Operator: Okay. Bye!
Me: Are there any poisonous snakes around here?
My dad: Not really. There are rattlesnakes in the Alleghenies, but not around here. Why?
Me: Well, one of my cats decided to lie down next to one.
My dad: What color is it?
Me: Green and brown.
My dad: Oh, sounds like a . . . Green-and-Brown Snake.
Me: Thank you so much for your help.
Me: Are you sure there are no poisonous snakes around here?
My dad: Pretty sure. Why?
Me: There’s one under the molding in the laundry room.
My dad: Oh?
Me: It’s as long as my arm. It’s looking at the cats.
Exhibit B: A current (and ongoing) series of equally upsetting conversations
Me: I have a problem.
Landlord: Yes?
Me: My walls . . . are squeaking.
Landlord: How are your little critters doing? Did the poison work?
Me: Yes.
Landlord: Are you sure?
Me: Oh, yes. I can smell it.
Landlord: The poison?
Me: No. The dead animal in my wall.
Neighbor: Did you hear that last night?
Me: Hear what?
Neighbor: THE RACCOONS IN THE CEILING OF COURSE WHAT ELSE?
Me: Are you kidding?
Neighbor: NO.
Parents: How are your mice?
Me: Dead. It’s raccoons now. And I could swear I heard meowing over the weekend.
Parents: (speechless)
Landlord: I don’t see how a raccoon could get into the ceiling. It’s got to be a squirrel or chipmunk or something.
Me: A chipmunk is not physically capable of making that much noise. It sounds like a grown man walking on the roof.
Landlord: Hmm, I wonder if someone’s living up there. (laughs)
Boss: Remember when you asked for a pony?
Me: Yes. But I believe I had been drinking when I said that.
Boss: Well, I’m getting you a pink one.
Me: Great. I’ll put it in my ZOO.
Operator: This is 911.
Me: Hi . . . um . . . I’m not sure whether you’re the right person to call. . . . I’ve got, uh, kind of a raccoon running around my front yard. It looks pretty much rabid to me.
Operator: I’ll send an officer over. Will you be able to meet them at the door?
Me: Well, I’m kind of stuck in the back, locked out of the house, but I’m trying to break in, so hopefully yes.
Operator: Okay. Bye!
Me: Are there any poisonous snakes around here?
My dad: Not really. There are rattlesnakes in the Alleghenies, but not around here. Why?
Me: Well, one of my cats decided to lie down next to one.
My dad: What color is it?
Me: Green and brown.
My dad: Oh, sounds like a . . . Green-and-Brown Snake.
Me: Thank you so much for your help.
Me: Are you sure there are no poisonous snakes around here?
My dad: Pretty sure. Why?
Me: There’s one under the molding in the laundry room.
My dad: Oh?
Me: It’s as long as my arm. It’s looking at the cats.
Exhibit B: A current (and ongoing) series of equally upsetting conversations
Me: I have a problem.
Landlord: Yes?
Me: My walls . . . are squeaking.
Landlord: How are your little critters doing? Did the poison work?
Me: Yes.
Landlord: Are you sure?
Me: Oh, yes. I can smell it.
Landlord: The poison?
Me: No. The dead animal in my wall.
Neighbor: Did you hear that last night?
Me: Hear what?
Neighbor: THE RACCOONS IN THE CEILING OF COURSE WHAT ELSE?
Me: Are you kidding?
Neighbor: NO.
Parents: How are your mice?
Me: Dead. It’s raccoons now. And I could swear I heard meowing over the weekend.
Parents: (speechless)
Landlord: I don’t see how a raccoon could get into the ceiling. It’s got to be a squirrel or chipmunk or something.
Me: A chipmunk is not physically capable of making that much noise. It sounds like a grown man walking on the roof.
Landlord: Hmm, I wonder if someone’s living up there. (laughs)
Boss: Remember when you asked for a pony?
Me: Yes. But I believe I had been drinking when I said that.
Boss: Well, I’m getting you a pink one.
Me: Great. I’ll put it in my ZOO.
Monday, April 23, 2007
jogging my memory
Flipping through my notebook, I found the word "Schistosomiasis" scrawled on a blank page. What was this word, so hastily scribbled opposite "The Chastity Belt of Venezia"? Why was it standing there, lonely and afraid, without a definition or context?
And then with one Google search, I remembered.
Thank you, Simon, for ruining my breakfast not once, but twice.
And then with one Google search, I remembered.
Thank you, Simon, for ruining my breakfast not once, but twice.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
The Inexplicably Much-Awaited Post on Hot Cross Buns
My mother used to make hot cross buns on Easter. Since I did not spend Easter with my mother this year, I thought I would make them myself. Being an atheist, it seemed like the least hypocritical way to observe the holiday, or whatever it is to me now. Heathen that I am, I always liked Easter. It's a good story, there are nice flowers, it involves a lot of chocolate, and comes at one end or the other of a school vacation, meaning we usually spent it in a more interesting place than home, such as . . . Missouri. Or Connecticut. But whenever we were home, my mother made hot cross buns.
Hot cross buns are not difficult to make unless you are a timid and paranoid baker, which I am. And with good reason. Recipes are full of trickery. They want you to fail. It's like I'm Deborah, and the recipe is Marie Barone. It hates me. The hot cross bun recipe in particular hated me via yeast. "1 package of yeast," it said. My mother does not have packaged yeast. Ever efficient, my mother keeps it in a jar in the fridge. Therefore I find myself wondering:
1) How much yeast is in a package?
2) Is this the same kind of yeast as packaged yeast?
Since I was at my parent's house, i.e. civilization, I was able to look it up on the internet. The internet told me that active yeast does not need to be "activated" before adding it to the dough. You can throw it in all at once.
The internet lied.
The first batch of dough I made did not rise. It sat there. And sat there. And sat there. It lurked. It mocked. It stuck out its tongue. It did not rise.
So I tried again, activating the yeast first, then adding it to the rest of the ingredients. The second batch rose. And rose. And rose. Like Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout's garbage. Perhaps someone misread "tablespoon" for "teaspoon"? I absolve myself of blame because it is totally unfair that the universe should expect me to know what to do with refrigerated yeast, and this is precisely the sort of cruel culinary curveball I am faced with every single time I cook. As a result, the hot cross buns tasted very much like yeast and not very much like hot cross buns. Matt lies when he says they were good. The frosting was good. Because I bought it.
In a related story, I made a cake for my mother's birthday over the weekend. It is The Birthday Cake, the cake we know and love, the cake I have myself successfully made two or three times in the past, and although I followed the recipe exactly and even remembered to whip the egg whites before the butter so the oil from the butter wouldn't make the egg whites fall, it wasn't quite right. It tasted fine, it was actually rather good, but it wasn't the same as usual.
It turned out that I hadn't put in enough chocolate. My recipe from The Joy of Cooking ("unchanged since 1931!" it boasts) called for two ounces of chocolate. My mother's recipe, the same recipe from a different edition of the same cookbook, says two-to-four ounces. My mother puts in three. I didn't know that was an option. Now you are all witnesses to the fact that it is the recipes that are incompetent, not me.
Nevertheless, I think it turned out handsomely . . .
. . . although in the interest of honesty I have to admit that it has numerous structural flaws and is being held together, no kidding, it is actually being held together by copious amounts of frosting. Because, of course, even though I greased and floured the pans, both layers stuck like glue. Why? Why? Why do these things happen?
Please note in the background the mammoth red KitchenAid, which is the most beautiful piece of machinery I have ever seen. It was a hand-me-down from my grandmother. No doubt it will be the scene of many angst-ridden experiments with yeast in the future. I can't wait.
Hot cross buns are not difficult to make unless you are a timid and paranoid baker, which I am. And with good reason. Recipes are full of trickery. They want you to fail. It's like I'm Deborah, and the recipe is Marie Barone. It hates me. The hot cross bun recipe in particular hated me via yeast. "1 package of yeast," it said. My mother does not have packaged yeast. Ever efficient, my mother keeps it in a jar in the fridge. Therefore I find myself wondering:
1) How much yeast is in a package?
2) Is this the same kind of yeast as packaged yeast?
Since I was at my parent's house, i.e. civilization, I was able to look it up on the internet. The internet told me that active yeast does not need to be "activated" before adding it to the dough. You can throw it in all at once.
The internet lied.
The first batch of dough I made did not rise. It sat there. And sat there. And sat there. It lurked. It mocked. It stuck out its tongue. It did not rise.
So I tried again, activating the yeast first, then adding it to the rest of the ingredients. The second batch rose. And rose. And rose. Like Sarah Cynthia Sylvia Stout's garbage. Perhaps someone misread "tablespoon" for "teaspoon"? I absolve myself of blame because it is totally unfair that the universe should expect me to know what to do with refrigerated yeast, and this is precisely the sort of cruel culinary curveball I am faced with every single time I cook. As a result, the hot cross buns tasted very much like yeast and not very much like hot cross buns. Matt lies when he says they were good. The frosting was good. Because I bought it.
In a related story, I made a cake for my mother's birthday over the weekend. It is The Birthday Cake, the cake we know and love, the cake I have myself successfully made two or three times in the past, and although I followed the recipe exactly and even remembered to whip the egg whites before the butter so the oil from the butter wouldn't make the egg whites fall, it wasn't quite right. It tasted fine, it was actually rather good, but it wasn't the same as usual.
It turned out that I hadn't put in enough chocolate. My recipe from The Joy of Cooking ("unchanged since 1931!" it boasts) called for two ounces of chocolate. My mother's recipe, the same recipe from a different edition of the same cookbook, says two-to-four ounces. My mother puts in three. I didn't know that was an option. Now you are all witnesses to the fact that it is the recipes that are incompetent, not me.
Nevertheless, I think it turned out handsomely . . .
. . . although in the interest of honesty I have to admit that it has numerous structural flaws and is being held together, no kidding, it is actually being held together by copious amounts of frosting. Because, of course, even though I greased and floured the pans, both layers stuck like glue. Why? Why? Why do these things happen?
Please note in the background the mammoth red KitchenAid, which is the most beautiful piece of machinery I have ever seen. It was a hand-me-down from my grandmother. No doubt it will be the scene of many angst-ridden experiments with yeast in the future. I can't wait.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Apparently winter and I need to have another chat about what constitutes appropriate seasonal behavior.
April last year:
April this year:
Once, at Vassar, when spring was once again letting winter walk all over it, one of my professors gleefully told my Dickens class how there was one summer in 1872 or something when winter went on and on and summer didn't come until the next year. That brief and harmless anecdote WILL HAUNT ME FOREVER.
April this year:
Once, at Vassar, when spring was once again letting winter walk all over it, one of my professors gleefully told my Dickens class how there was one summer in 1872 or something when winter went on and on and summer didn't come until the next year. That brief and harmless anecdote WILL HAUNT ME FOREVER.
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
My Little Broken Kitten
Gil has always been unusual. Terrified of humans, eats french fries, will play with raw penne pasta for hours... unusual. But nothing is less cat-like than his refusal to jump. Counters, tables, fridge-- all cat free because Gil won't tackle any leap exceeding twelve inches. I haven't pursued this phobia because I don't like cat hair in my food, but with The Window Issue I can no longer ignore it.
Before I moved my bed, there was a big open space under one of my windows, and there Gil would sit with a look of longing in his eyes-- sniffing the fresh air, dreaming of all the humans he could watch from behind protective glass. Life could be so good! And when I moved the bed under the window, I figured his dream would be realized. Barely a foot between the bed and his own portal to the world! Gil would be in the window all the time! And it turns out he is in the window all the time-- but he refuses to jump there. No, he balances his back legs on the bed, front legs on the sill, sinks his claws in to the ledge, lets go with the back legs leaving himself dangling in mid-air and then hoists himself up and over. I have never seen a less graceful cat in my whole entire life.
I think we're related.
Before I moved my bed, there was a big open space under one of my windows, and there Gil would sit with a look of longing in his eyes-- sniffing the fresh air, dreaming of all the humans he could watch from behind protective glass. Life could be so good! And when I moved the bed under the window, I figured his dream would be realized. Barely a foot between the bed and his own portal to the world! Gil would be in the window all the time! And it turns out he is in the window all the time-- but he refuses to jump there. No, he balances his back legs on the bed, front legs on the sill, sinks his claws in to the ledge, lets go with the back legs leaving himself dangling in mid-air and then hoists himself up and over. I have never seen a less graceful cat in my whole entire life.
I think we're related.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
When the Work to Sleep ratio isn't quite right
**apparently the fact that I am wearing two different shoes is not obvious. To be fair, I didn't notice either.
all it took was the proper motivation
A mere two months and twenty-six days after my first "I'm going to finish all my furniture and blog about it" post I can proudly tell you "I finished all my furniture!". I lost a little momentum after I dyed my fingers "hobo brown" and the whole thing didn't seem quite as romantic when the electric sander turned on me and took a chunk out of the table. 
The negative thoughts came pouring in after the second coat of polyurethane got a little tacky. And at my lowest point all I could think was "I will never be a master wood worker, why am I bothering?" I finished the table a week after posting and decided the rest of the furniture would function better as a fire hazard than additional seating. 
And then the call came. THE call. The one from my mother. "I'm coming to LA!" she says. and internally I went "oh shit, she's going to think I'm living in hole and I can't take care of myself and she's not going to love me anymore because mothers only love daughters with quality furniture and a decent sense of decoration!" She tends to bring out my rational side.
I hung up, unpackaged the bed and said "you're from IKEA, do you really need TWO coats of stain? Is that really necessary? Think about it." and the bed thought and thought and finally said "no". Then I said "SANDING BETWEEN COATS? Seriously?" And the bed said "You're right, your time is better spent wadding up tinfoil for the cat, or perhaps watching television." So with the bed's permission, I cut some corners and finished in about a day and a half. I was on a roll, time to tackle the chairs. I slapped on the coat of stain and returned fifteen minutes later to find the chair was still its original color.
Same style, color, brand as the table, but it didn't want to turn brown. To this I said "Fuck It" and drove to the hardware store where I purchased the prettiest purple paint I could find. The chairs must have talked it over and decided they liked this color better because it took beautifully.
Then came the assembly. I highly recommend putting together IKEA furniture with TWO people, but if you're a hermit like me you can use a stack of books, four screwdrivers, a butter knife, packaging tape, a dime and a bottle or two of wine to achieve the same result.
So that's the story of my IKEA furniture. My mother arrived and said "Oh, how cute!" promptly followed by "You're going to need a rug..."
I refuse to purchase one at this time, but if I happen to find a "Do It Yourself Rug Kit" I'll be sure to post about it in a timely fashion.
The negative thoughts came pouring in after the second coat of polyurethane got a little tacky. And at my lowest point all I could think was "I will never be a master wood worker, why am I bothering?" I finished the table a week after posting and decided the rest of the furniture would function better as a fire hazard than additional seating. 
And then the call came. THE call. The one from my mother. "I'm coming to LA!" she says. and internally I went "oh shit, she's going to think I'm living in hole and I can't take care of myself and she's not going to love me anymore because mothers only love daughters with quality furniture and a decent sense of decoration!" She tends to bring out my rational side.I hung up, unpackaged the bed and said "you're from IKEA, do you really need TWO coats of stain? Is that really necessary? Think about it." and the bed thought and thought and finally said "no". Then I said "SANDING BETWEEN COATS? Seriously?" And the bed said "You're right, your time is better spent wadding up tinfoil for the cat, or perhaps watching television." So with the bed's permission, I cut some corners and finished in about a day and a half. I was on a roll, time to tackle the chairs. I slapped on the coat of stain and returned fifteen minutes later to find the chair was still its original color.
Same style, color, brand as the table, but it didn't want to turn brown. To this I said "Fuck It" and drove to the hardware store where I purchased the prettiest purple paint I could find. The chairs must have talked it over and decided they liked this color better because it took beautifully.
Then came the assembly. I highly recommend putting together IKEA furniture with TWO people, but if you're a hermit like me you can use a stack of books, four screwdrivers, a butter knife, packaging tape, a dime and a bottle or two of wine to achieve the same result.
So that's the story of my IKEA furniture. My mother arrived and said "Oh, how cute!" promptly followed by "You're going to need a rug..."
I refuse to purchase one at this time, but if I happen to find a "Do It Yourself Rug Kit" I'll be sure to post about it in a timely fashion.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Book Report
When I am not at work, not writing, not cooking or eating, and not watching Horatio Hornblower, I am reading. Here is what I have read lately, in chronological order:
Yes, I majored in English. Yes, this is a book about physics. It may seem that I have no business being interested in special relativity, but I don’t see why that should stop me. There is nothing quite like sitting in your kitchen eating Cheerios and discovering that all the geometry you did in high school, and there was a lot of it, years and years of it, was only ONE OF TWO kinds of geometry that have so far been invented. I remember teachers saying, “This is Euclidean geometry,” but they never said, “And the other kind is Gaussian geometry, which projects lines onto spheres instead of planes.”
Spheres! Not planes! That is amazing. That is really amazing.
Also amazing: apparently, if you made the attempt, every second for 15 billion years, to walk through a wall, you would actually go through it once, because probability says that is how often the atoms that make up you and the wall will align perfectly so as not to interfere with each other. I only make the attempt to do this once every several years, usually when half asleep, usually with doors, and never with any scientific agenda in mind, but it’s good to know these humiliating incidents can now be construed as research.
Also amazing: anti-matter. It’s so amazing I can’t understand it. All I know is that it blows my mind.
Last but not least, this is impressive: so far, no experiment has disproved a theory in quantum physics. And quantum physics involves some crazy stuff. So that’s pretty cool.
The Humbled Blue Orb, in spite of its title, has several very good qualities, the main one being that the author has the rather extraordinary ability to explain very confusing concepts in physics. I knew a physicist once. The only thing he ever explained to me that I understood was how to make orange gumdrop cookies. So I would say David Klein, though an enthusiast and not a Ph.D., has a rather rare talent. Unfortunately, the copyediting was virtually nonexistent and I can’t tell you how tired I got of reading about “the law of conversation of energy.” Nevertheless, for some breakfast-time physics reading, it doesn’t get better than this.
Unless you prefer to read about DISEASE when you eat. This book was lying around at work and I was encouraged to take it home. Whenever there are unwanted books lying around at work, they end up on my desk, because I am like that person who can’t turn away a stray animal, only with books. And when I saw this, I reacted to the creepy bird-faced plague doctor much as a normal person would react to being handed an adorable fuzzy kitten, which unnerved a number of my co-workers. Is the plague not universally fascinating? Am I the only one who thinks a disease that can kill you within hours is totally awesome? I just don’t understand how you can look at this cover and not want to read this book.
Here is something I did not know: 40,000 years ago, when homo sapiens were hunters and gatherers, they were taller than we are now. And because they were more or less nomadic, they did not often stick around long enough to pollute their own water supply, and therefore suffered from much less disease. Thus, the book argues that progress creates perfect conditions for disease. I do not find this to be a helpful statement, since we can hardly go back to hunting and gathering at this point, but the fact that I do not find the argument compelling does not diminish the satisfaction of knowing a whole lot more disgusting things than I did before. As cool as it is, septicemia was getting old, and now I’ve got loads of new material. I won’t go into it here, because it will put Megan off whatever meal she is always eating when I tell her gross things, but I would just like to say that schistosomiasis was almost too much even for me. Almost.
I’ve had kind of an E. M. Forster thing going since randomly picking up A Passage to India last summer. I never know quite what to expect from him. He is a little like Shakespeare in that you’re not sure whether it’s a tragedy or a comedy until the end. The Longest Journey is apparently Forster’s personal favorite of all his novels. It is also apparently his least popular. I think the problem is the title. Compared to A Passage to India and A Room with a View, the title is more appropriate for the content but less evocative in general. Rather like the novel itself. However, at the halfway mark, I am still very much enjoying it. There’s almost nothing I like more than a novel, and Forster writes very novelly novels, complete with the requisite peevish old lady:
“Stephen!”
“Yes.”
“I’m tired of you. Go and bathe in the sea.”
“All right.”
That’s quality.
This is another stray book. I am not reading it and probably won’t, but I am keeping it for its cover, which did not seem unusual to me until a co-worker picked it up and said, “Tolkien’s Tart?” I am still laughing about it.
Yes, I majored in English. Yes, this is a book about physics. It may seem that I have no business being interested in special relativity, but I don’t see why that should stop me. There is nothing quite like sitting in your kitchen eating Cheerios and discovering that all the geometry you did in high school, and there was a lot of it, years and years of it, was only ONE OF TWO kinds of geometry that have so far been invented. I remember teachers saying, “This is Euclidean geometry,” but they never said, “And the other kind is Gaussian geometry, which projects lines onto spheres instead of planes.”
Spheres! Not planes! That is amazing. That is really amazing.
Also amazing: apparently, if you made the attempt, every second for 15 billion years, to walk through a wall, you would actually go through it once, because probability says that is how often the atoms that make up you and the wall will align perfectly so as not to interfere with each other. I only make the attempt to do this once every several years, usually when half asleep, usually with doors, and never with any scientific agenda in mind, but it’s good to know these humiliating incidents can now be construed as research.
Also amazing: anti-matter. It’s so amazing I can’t understand it. All I know is that it blows my mind.
Last but not least, this is impressive: so far, no experiment has disproved a theory in quantum physics. And quantum physics involves some crazy stuff. So that’s pretty cool.
The Humbled Blue Orb, in spite of its title, has several very good qualities, the main one being that the author has the rather extraordinary ability to explain very confusing concepts in physics. I knew a physicist once. The only thing he ever explained to me that I understood was how to make orange gumdrop cookies. So I would say David Klein, though an enthusiast and not a Ph.D., has a rather rare talent. Unfortunately, the copyediting was virtually nonexistent and I can’t tell you how tired I got of reading about “the law of conversation of energy.” Nevertheless, for some breakfast-time physics reading, it doesn’t get better than this.
Unless you prefer to read about DISEASE when you eat. This book was lying around at work and I was encouraged to take it home. Whenever there are unwanted books lying around at work, they end up on my desk, because I am like that person who can’t turn away a stray animal, only with books. And when I saw this, I reacted to the creepy bird-faced plague doctor much as a normal person would react to being handed an adorable fuzzy kitten, which unnerved a number of my co-workers. Is the plague not universally fascinating? Am I the only one who thinks a disease that can kill you within hours is totally awesome? I just don’t understand how you can look at this cover and not want to read this book.
Here is something I did not know: 40,000 years ago, when homo sapiens were hunters and gatherers, they were taller than we are now. And because they were more or less nomadic, they did not often stick around long enough to pollute their own water supply, and therefore suffered from much less disease. Thus, the book argues that progress creates perfect conditions for disease. I do not find this to be a helpful statement, since we can hardly go back to hunting and gathering at this point, but the fact that I do not find the argument compelling does not diminish the satisfaction of knowing a whole lot more disgusting things than I did before. As cool as it is, septicemia was getting old, and now I’ve got loads of new material. I won’t go into it here, because it will put Megan off whatever meal she is always eating when I tell her gross things, but I would just like to say that schistosomiasis was almost too much even for me. Almost.
I’ve had kind of an E. M. Forster thing going since randomly picking up A Passage to India last summer. I never know quite what to expect from him. He is a little like Shakespeare in that you’re not sure whether it’s a tragedy or a comedy until the end. The Longest Journey is apparently Forster’s personal favorite of all his novels. It is also apparently his least popular. I think the problem is the title. Compared to A Passage to India and A Room with a View, the title is more appropriate for the content but less evocative in general. Rather like the novel itself. However, at the halfway mark, I am still very much enjoying it. There’s almost nothing I like more than a novel, and Forster writes very novelly novels, complete with the requisite peevish old lady:
“Stephen!”
“Yes.”
“I’m tired of you. Go and bathe in the sea.”
“All right.”
That’s quality.
This is another stray book. I am not reading it and probably won’t, but I am keeping it for its cover, which did not seem unusual to me until a co-worker picked it up and said, “Tolkien’s Tart?” I am still laughing about it.
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Philosophical Experiment for the Deranged: Probably the First of Many
Disclaimer: For years I thought it was cable and the internet that distracted me from writing, but in the absence of those it has become clear to me that in desperation I will turn to anything that seems like it might be easier than sustaining a narrative, and when I say "anything", I mean I really have absolutely no standards.
Over the lifetime of this blog, we have learned a great deal about differences.
We first had occasion to learn the difference between camels and llamas, which is that according to accepted methods of scientific classification, some of them are called camels and some of them are called llamas. As to which is which, you can just flip a coin.
There was then some confusion over Vikings and pirates. To review: neither of them ever wore horned helmets, and in both cases “the” was a popular middle name. You can flip a coin on this one, too, but make sure you keep an eye on it.
Even now, the difference (or lack thereof) between my dog and a Shetland pony remains in dispute, though I have pointed out a number of distinctions could be made. For example, while it is common knowledge that you can ride a Shetland pony, if you try to sit on my dog, she’ll sit down, too, and when you’ve fallen on the ground, she’ll get up, turn around, and sit on you. Nobody has ever heard of a Shetland pony doing that. No coin-flipping. My dog is not a Shetland pony.
Today, we are going to learn the difference between the examples above and the one I am about to mention, and the difference is that there is some basis for confusing llamas and camels and Vikings and pirates. And I SUPPOSE I can see how a parallel, THOUGH CLEARLY FACTUALLY INCORRECT, might be drawn between a golden retriever and a horse ONLY for purposes to do with EFFECTIVE RHETORIC as well as the VEXING of FRIENDS, which is an equally noble cause.
However.
Crickets and yams? What does Ivan mean to imply when she suggests that I am confusing yams with crickets?
Crickets are shiny; yams are dull. Crickets are loud; yams are quiet and unobtrusive. Crickets are annoying when they get in the house; if having yams in the house annoys you, that would appear to be a separate issue, don’t you think? Crickets are crunchy although you should never try to verify this; if your yam is crunchy, you cooked it wrong. Crickets are easily startled; yams are stoic. Crickets wear top hats and have been to Times Square; yams are down-to-earth. Crickets have brains; yams are, erm, vegetables.
A cricket could never be mistaken for a yam.
OR COULD IT?
I once read an article in Philosophy Now (this will eventually turn out to be pertinent) in which a philosopher proved that werewolves could exist by making a list of extenuating circumstances that, if they all occurred at once, against all odds, would make it possible to make a logical argument that a very particular sort of human (who has suffered much more than his or her fair share of personal misfortune) is in fact a werewolf.
I’m sorry to say the article struck me as a rawther deplorable misuse of the laws of logic, not to mention time and effort. And quite aside from it being a silly undertaking, where’s the challenge? You find a very hairy man suffering from various combinations of mental illnesses and suddenly BAM! he’s a proven werewolf. We probably share three quarters of our DNA with turnips; of course it isn’t hard to make the short jump from man to man-wolf. If you’re going to engage in this ridiculous brand of alchemy, why not give it a more difficult test? Why not try it out on the really tough questions? Why not ask yourself: can you prove a cricket is a yam?
Of course you can! And, for your convenience, I have already worked it all out in three easy steps. (Please stop here and re-read disclaimer.)
According to the standards established by our friend the (surely unemployed) philosopher, if Item A looks, acts, and thinks as Item B, then Item A is Item B. So all we must do is fulfill these requirements.
Step One: How to Dress a Yam
One’s first consideration when turning a cricket into a yam must be appearances. Richard Taylor could do it better, but you will greatly improve your chances of creating a convincing yam if you start with a rotund cricket. If you can possibly find one who is also sensitive and suggestible, those qualities will come in handy later.
Once you have chosen your cricket, apologize to him and tell him how the werewolf had it worse. Then dunk him in water and roll him in dirt and grit. This will create a yam-like flavor. I mean texture. Don’t worry about the legs; you can pass them off as sprouts. As a final touch, place the fat, dusty cricket on top of a bowl of actual yams, creating a sort of yam tableau. This will put viewers in a yam frame of mind, making them far less likely to suspect that one of the yams is a cricket. If for some reason the cricket doesn’t blend in, roll him in dirt again. Do not under any circumstances allow anyone to scrub him.
Step Two: Playing the Yam
Unfortunately, as the old saying goes, having hypertrichosis does not mean you’re a werewolf and a cricket dressed up as a yam does not a true yam make. As previously shown by our philosopher, in order to be a werewolf, one must not only look like a werewolf, but one must also behave as a werewolf. One can only assume the same goes for yams.
If this sounds intimidating, take a moment ask yourself: what do yams really do? That’s right. Nothing! Therefore it will not be difficult for the cricket to conduct himself as a yam. Simply tell him to sit and stay. If you have chosen a properly rotund cricket, he will be way ahead of you here. If you have chosen an emotionally receptive cricket, he will be better prepared to give a subtle and moving performance, but frankly, it will be hard to tell the difference.
Step Three: Inside the Mind of a Yam, Such As It Is
Again, step back and contemplate the yam in relation to the rest of the dynamic cosmos: it has got to be one of the most inert masses in the universe. Yams don’t even know they’re yams. And on account of them being not even stupid, this step is even easier than the last one. Rather than going through all the ridiculous effort of raising the cricket as a yam from birth, or hypnotizing it so that it thinks it’s a yam even though it does not understand what it truly means to be a yam and says irritatingly unyamlike things such as, “Hello, I am a yam,” you must merely sing the cricket a nice lullaby and put it to sleep.
Et voilà: you have a corpulent, dirty, immobile, catatonic cricket which you might be able to fool a couple of philosophers into thinking is a yam. In retrospect, it would have been more lucrative to prove that the cricket is gold so that you could sell it to the philosophers and use the money to pay for an internet connection so that you don’t have to perform strange experiments on innocent insects in order to procrastinate and can just check your e-mail like everyone else, but I suppose we all have a different idea of fun.
Over the lifetime of this blog, we have learned a great deal about differences.
We first had occasion to learn the difference between camels and llamas, which is that according to accepted methods of scientific classification, some of them are called camels and some of them are called llamas. As to which is which, you can just flip a coin.
There was then some confusion over Vikings and pirates. To review: neither of them ever wore horned helmets, and in both cases “the” was a popular middle name. You can flip a coin on this one, too, but make sure you keep an eye on it.
Even now, the difference (or lack thereof) between my dog and a Shetland pony remains in dispute, though I have pointed out a number of distinctions could be made. For example, while it is common knowledge that you can ride a Shetland pony, if you try to sit on my dog, she’ll sit down, too, and when you’ve fallen on the ground, she’ll get up, turn around, and sit on you. Nobody has ever heard of a Shetland pony doing that. No coin-flipping. My dog is not a Shetland pony.
Today, we are going to learn the difference between the examples above and the one I am about to mention, and the difference is that there is some basis for confusing llamas and camels and Vikings and pirates. And I SUPPOSE I can see how a parallel, THOUGH CLEARLY FACTUALLY INCORRECT, might be drawn between a golden retriever and a horse ONLY for purposes to do with EFFECTIVE RHETORIC as well as the VEXING of FRIENDS, which is an equally noble cause.
However.
Crickets and yams? What does Ivan mean to imply when she suggests that I am confusing yams with crickets?
Crickets are shiny; yams are dull. Crickets are loud; yams are quiet and unobtrusive. Crickets are annoying when they get in the house; if having yams in the house annoys you, that would appear to be a separate issue, don’t you think? Crickets are crunchy although you should never try to verify this; if your yam is crunchy, you cooked it wrong. Crickets are easily startled; yams are stoic. Crickets wear top hats and have been to Times Square; yams are down-to-earth. Crickets have brains; yams are, erm, vegetables.
A cricket could never be mistaken for a yam.
OR COULD IT?
I once read an article in Philosophy Now (this will eventually turn out to be pertinent) in which a philosopher proved that werewolves could exist by making a list of extenuating circumstances that, if they all occurred at once, against all odds, would make it possible to make a logical argument that a very particular sort of human (who has suffered much more than his or her fair share of personal misfortune) is in fact a werewolf.
I’m sorry to say the article struck me as a rawther deplorable misuse of the laws of logic, not to mention time and effort. And quite aside from it being a silly undertaking, where’s the challenge? You find a very hairy man suffering from various combinations of mental illnesses and suddenly BAM! he’s a proven werewolf. We probably share three quarters of our DNA with turnips; of course it isn’t hard to make the short jump from man to man-wolf. If you’re going to engage in this ridiculous brand of alchemy, why not give it a more difficult test? Why not try it out on the really tough questions? Why not ask yourself: can you prove a cricket is a yam?
Of course you can! And, for your convenience, I have already worked it all out in three easy steps. (Please stop here and re-read disclaimer.)
According to the standards established by our friend the (surely unemployed) philosopher, if Item A looks, acts, and thinks as Item B, then Item A is Item B. So all we must do is fulfill these requirements.
Step One: How to Dress a Yam
One’s first consideration when turning a cricket into a yam must be appearances. Richard Taylor could do it better, but you will greatly improve your chances of creating a convincing yam if you start with a rotund cricket. If you can possibly find one who is also sensitive and suggestible, those qualities will come in handy later.
Once you have chosen your cricket, apologize to him and tell him how the werewolf had it worse. Then dunk him in water and roll him in dirt and grit. This will create a yam-like flavor. I mean texture. Don’t worry about the legs; you can pass them off as sprouts. As a final touch, place the fat, dusty cricket on top of a bowl of actual yams, creating a sort of yam tableau. This will put viewers in a yam frame of mind, making them far less likely to suspect that one of the yams is a cricket. If for some reason the cricket doesn’t blend in, roll him in dirt again. Do not under any circumstances allow anyone to scrub him.
Step Two: Playing the Yam
Unfortunately, as the old saying goes, having hypertrichosis does not mean you’re a werewolf and a cricket dressed up as a yam does not a true yam make. As previously shown by our philosopher, in order to be a werewolf, one must not only look like a werewolf, but one must also behave as a werewolf. One can only assume the same goes for yams.
If this sounds intimidating, take a moment ask yourself: what do yams really do? That’s right. Nothing! Therefore it will not be difficult for the cricket to conduct himself as a yam. Simply tell him to sit and stay. If you have chosen a properly rotund cricket, he will be way ahead of you here. If you have chosen an emotionally receptive cricket, he will be better prepared to give a subtle and moving performance, but frankly, it will be hard to tell the difference.
Step Three: Inside the Mind of a Yam, Such As It Is
Again, step back and contemplate the yam in relation to the rest of the dynamic cosmos: it has got to be one of the most inert masses in the universe. Yams don’t even know they’re yams. And on account of them being not even stupid, this step is even easier than the last one. Rather than going through all the ridiculous effort of raising the cricket as a yam from birth, or hypnotizing it so that it thinks it’s a yam even though it does not understand what it truly means to be a yam and says irritatingly unyamlike things such as, “Hello, I am a yam,” you must merely sing the cricket a nice lullaby and put it to sleep.
Et voilà: you have a corpulent, dirty, immobile, catatonic cricket which you might be able to fool a couple of philosophers into thinking is a yam. In retrospect, it would have been more lucrative to prove that the cricket is gold so that you could sell it to the philosophers and use the money to pay for an internet connection so that you don’t have to perform strange experiments on innocent insects in order to procrastinate and can just check your e-mail like everyone else, but I suppose we all have a different idea of fun.
Friday, February 16, 2007
This Post Made Possible by Katie P.
Not long before I moved, A Lover of Trotsky and Other Dead Philosophers alerted me to a news story in which a young woman somehow managed to fall behind a bookcase and die and not be found for two solid weeks, even though she lived with her family. At the time I squawked at A Lover of Trotsky and Other Dead Philosophers because that is not a story you want to hear when you’re about to move away from the safety of home. (Not that the safety of home did that unfortunate lady any good, but it could have been worse. If she’d been living alone, she could have been behind that bookcase for years.) A Lover of Trotsky and Other Dead Philosophers insisted that there must have been something strange going on behind the scenes of that story because nobody could possibly be stupid enough to get stuck behind a bookcase and die there, and even if they did, nobody could possibly be stupid enough not to notice that there was, you know, this funny smell in the house.
That may be true. I hope for the sake of the human race that that is true.
Nevertheless, just as I suspected, that story was exactly what I thought of as I undertook to rearrange my living room by myself one evening. I thought, “This is a very bad idea. This bookcase is going to fall on me and even though it is empty it is going to crush me and I am going to die and that message that Harry leaves on Sally’s answering machine is going to take on new meaning for everyone who knows me and I will be responsible for ruining one of the best parts of that movie and therefore I should not be doing this.”
But I did anyway, and look how pretty!
The arrangement may not be in strict accordance with feng shui, but I didn’t die doing it, so I count it as a success. By these standards I have also succeeded in hanging curtain rods and using a gas stove. One of the curtain rods is hanging by half its screws, and I did have a lot of trouble baking that one stubborn yam, but I neither fell out the window nor blew myself up, which means victory is mine. Taking this paradigm of success to its natural end, I must conclude that my life has been one triumph after another since I was born. There is still a possibility that I will die trying to get my armchair up the stairs and through the door, but, happily, that possibility has been forestalled by the fact that the chair probably will never arrive. It is so delayed that it is now practically mythical. I’ve been complaining about this a lot but it might turn out to have been a close call.
Speaking of chairs: Yes, those are camping chairs in my living room. They are not comfortable in the least but the cupholders do double nicely as remote control holders. However, since it appears that Turner Classic Movies is (inexplicably) not considered a major television network, and anyway the rabbit ears get reception about as effectively as the plastic Viking longboat on top of the TV, the chairs and the TV are really just for show. My stereo does not get radio reception terribly well either, and my computer is not hooked up to the Internet yet, so the real center of the technological action in my apartment is . . . my ugly old clock radio, which travels frequently between my bedroom and the kitchen counter, which location it seems to like very much.
The clock radio is about sixteen years old. It gets the best reception of any radio I’ve ever had. It is quickly becoming one of my most prized possessions, partly because of its reliability, and partly because there is very little chance I could get stuck behind it and die. The single drawback is that on account of listening to at least six hours of NPR every day, I am very well-informed in the area of current events, and it is getting harder and harder not to give in to the urge to take refuge under my bed. This will not save me from North Korea’s nuclear weapons, or the results of global warming, or even the early lunacies of the 2008 presidential election, but it will be nice and cosy-warm until one of these three things brings about the end of the world. That, or my bed crushes me and I die.
These cheerful thoughts are brought to you through the kind generosity of Katie P., who has made made the first ever technological donation to the Simon and Ivan blog in the interest of at least one hedgehog posting something between mid-January and the end of the world (which, as we have seen, is coming right up). Katie P., a loyal and appreciative reader, stepped in to save the day with an adorable wee flash drive. Since the Internet will not come to me, I must take my posts to it, and this makes it a lot easier. Thanks, Katie P.! You are a true friend to hedgehogs everywhere, which is why when I get fired for posting at work, it is on your doorstep that I will show up. Don’t worry, though. I will bring my clock radio.
That may be true. I hope for the sake of the human race that that is true.
Nevertheless, just as I suspected, that story was exactly what I thought of as I undertook to rearrange my living room by myself one evening. I thought, “This is a very bad idea. This bookcase is going to fall on me and even though it is empty it is going to crush me and I am going to die and that message that Harry leaves on Sally’s answering machine is going to take on new meaning for everyone who knows me and I will be responsible for ruining one of the best parts of that movie and therefore I should not be doing this.”
But I did anyway, and look how pretty!
The arrangement may not be in strict accordance with feng shui, but I didn’t die doing it, so I count it as a success. By these standards I have also succeeded in hanging curtain rods and using a gas stove. One of the curtain rods is hanging by half its screws, and I did have a lot of trouble baking that one stubborn yam, but I neither fell out the window nor blew myself up, which means victory is mine. Taking this paradigm of success to its natural end, I must conclude that my life has been one triumph after another since I was born. There is still a possibility that I will die trying to get my armchair up the stairs and through the door, but, happily, that possibility has been forestalled by the fact that the chair probably will never arrive. It is so delayed that it is now practically mythical. I’ve been complaining about this a lot but it might turn out to have been a close call.
Speaking of chairs: Yes, those are camping chairs in my living room. They are not comfortable in the least but the cupholders do double nicely as remote control holders. However, since it appears that Turner Classic Movies is (inexplicably) not considered a major television network, and anyway the rabbit ears get reception about as effectively as the plastic Viking longboat on top of the TV, the chairs and the TV are really just for show. My stereo does not get radio reception terribly well either, and my computer is not hooked up to the Internet yet, so the real center of the technological action in my apartment is . . . my ugly old clock radio, which travels frequently between my bedroom and the kitchen counter, which location it seems to like very much.
The clock radio is about sixteen years old. It gets the best reception of any radio I’ve ever had. It is quickly becoming one of my most prized possessions, partly because of its reliability, and partly because there is very little chance I could get stuck behind it and die. The single drawback is that on account of listening to at least six hours of NPR every day, I am very well-informed in the area of current events, and it is getting harder and harder not to give in to the urge to take refuge under my bed. This will not save me from North Korea’s nuclear weapons, or the results of global warming, or even the early lunacies of the 2008 presidential election, but it will be nice and cosy-warm until one of these three things brings about the end of the world. That, or my bed crushes me and I die.
These cheerful thoughts are brought to you through the kind generosity of Katie P., who has made made the first ever technological donation to the Simon and Ivan blog in the interest of at least one hedgehog posting something between mid-January and the end of the world (which, as we have seen, is coming right up). Katie P., a loyal and appreciative reader, stepped in to save the day with an adorable wee flash drive. Since the Internet will not come to me, I must take my posts to it, and this makes it a lot easier. Thanks, Katie P.! You are a true friend to hedgehogs everywhere, which is why when I get fired for posting at work, it is on your doorstep that I will show up. Don’t worry, though. I will bring my clock radio.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
In Which the Vikings Relocate to a Room with a View and are Promptly Seduced to a Life of Crime
Due to overcrowding at home, the Vikings were recently forced to go a-viking and to pillage a new place to live. After spending many Sunday afternoons on the internet, and many Saturday afternoons looking at squalid hovels that by virtue of having brown shag carpeting and a curious odor did not recommend themselves, the Vikings at last came upon clean and humble living quarters that they all agreed were very pillageable, although in the end they did not so much pillage these living quarters as agree to pay rent for them. These days spears, berserkers, and heroic boasts hardly get you a candy bar, much less a homestead, so devalued has Viking currency become since the good times way back in the 830s AD.
The eminently habitable hovel is conveniently located at the four corners of town, allowing the Vikings to keep a finger on the pulsing nightlife of the village that never sleeps. (The laundromat, at least, seems to be open until all the way til nine.) There are so few sets of four corners in this town that when you say “the four corners” everybody knows what you mean. The Four Corners I refer to is lucky enough to be one of only two intersections that merit traffic lights, so you can see the Vikings are very fortunate to be so centrally located, even if this is the next-to-last town before civilization ends and corn starts. The corn does not stop until Pennsylvania. It may not even stop in Pennsylvania, but that is the point at which the Vikings usually fall asleep in the car.
The view out the Vikings’ best window effectively demonstrates to what degree this town truly is full of clamor and commotion. Thank goodness for those traffic lights or this intersection would be a nightmare.
That was a picture of the village on a Sunday at dusk. Here is a picture of the village during a nuclear winter:
In case you were wondering how it would look.
The view from the kitchen is also rather good:
Few things are more cheering than having a bookshop in sight at all times. The yellow sign says OPEN. How comforting.
Incidentally, it has been suggested by several people that the Vikings quit their job and engage in full-time reconnaissance, or, to speak plainly, spying. Although the crimes and injustices in a small town are usually invisible, stupidity is very often public. For example: it doesn’t matter how much snow has fallen recently; if the roads have been plowed, you aren’t going to get far down Main Street on your snowmobile. Or, if you are going to make a scene in a bar, don’t do it in a bar that is visible from the fire station, where the police like to park. Or, if you don’t want to have to drag your child’s exhausted carcass home in a sled, do not make the unfortunate creature walk across town to play in the snow. Or, if you are all going to roam the streets drunkenly singing an eighties ballad at four o’clock in the morning, at least pick one to which you know the lyrics.
There is certainly money to be made, or as some might call it, extorted, from what you might see out the Vikings’ windows, and goodness knows that without cable or the internet, there is not much else to watch, but unfortunately the Vikings are really just not that nosy. They also feel it would be unethical to misuse the advantage one has gained simply by virtue of happening to live in a place from which one can see the entire town. However, if it looked like they could actually make a living from blackmail, they might entertain the idea of negotiations. After all, it’s as easy to see in as out, and if people never look up, who can they blame but themselves for their underdeveloped sense of entrepeneurialism?
Life in the big city can really corrode a Viking’s innocent soul.
The eminently habitable hovel is conveniently located at the four corners of town, allowing the Vikings to keep a finger on the pulsing nightlife of the village that never sleeps. (The laundromat, at least, seems to be open until all the way til nine.) There are so few sets of four corners in this town that when you say “the four corners” everybody knows what you mean. The Four Corners I refer to is lucky enough to be one of only two intersections that merit traffic lights, so you can see the Vikings are very fortunate to be so centrally located, even if this is the next-to-last town before civilization ends and corn starts. The corn does not stop until Pennsylvania. It may not even stop in Pennsylvania, but that is the point at which the Vikings usually fall asleep in the car.
The view out the Vikings’ best window effectively demonstrates to what degree this town truly is full of clamor and commotion. Thank goodness for those traffic lights or this intersection would be a nightmare.
That was a picture of the village on a Sunday at dusk. Here is a picture of the village during a nuclear winter:
In case you were wondering how it would look.
The view from the kitchen is also rather good:
Few things are more cheering than having a bookshop in sight at all times. The yellow sign says OPEN. How comforting.
Incidentally, it has been suggested by several people that the Vikings quit their job and engage in full-time reconnaissance, or, to speak plainly, spying. Although the crimes and injustices in a small town are usually invisible, stupidity is very often public. For example: it doesn’t matter how much snow has fallen recently; if the roads have been plowed, you aren’t going to get far down Main Street on your snowmobile. Or, if you are going to make a scene in a bar, don’t do it in a bar that is visible from the fire station, where the police like to park. Or, if you don’t want to have to drag your child’s exhausted carcass home in a sled, do not make the unfortunate creature walk across town to play in the snow. Or, if you are all going to roam the streets drunkenly singing an eighties ballad at four o’clock in the morning, at least pick one to which you know the lyrics.
There is certainly money to be made, or as some might call it, extorted, from what you might see out the Vikings’ windows, and goodness knows that without cable or the internet, there is not much else to watch, but unfortunately the Vikings are really just not that nosy. They also feel it would be unethical to misuse the advantage one has gained simply by virtue of happening to live in a place from which one can see the entire town. However, if it looked like they could actually make a living from blackmail, they might entertain the idea of negotiations. After all, it’s as easy to see in as out, and if people never look up, who can they blame but themselves for their underdeveloped sense of entrepeneurialism?
Life in the big city can really corrode a Viking’s innocent soul.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Side Effects of Bibliophilia
Acceptable reasons for moving away from home:
1) Extensive shelving no longer accomodates personal library
Otherwise, to move out of a place with fresh carpeting, a newly redone bathroom, heat, cable, internet, excellent catering, and a faithful canine companion would be folly. Jobs, spouses, education, ill health, witness protection – these alone are not good enough reasons to take up the arduous and inconceivably dusty task of packing, loading, transporting, unloading, unpacking, arranging, rearranging, and inevitably re-rearranging all of your earthly possessions.
I was not even halfway through this process when I began to think much better of the dowry chest concept. Then I began to admire Jack’s alter ego for blowing up his apartment. And I began to make mental notes on childrearing: do not under any circumstances encourage your child to frequent flea markets and buy forty-eight million gallons’-worth of pretty glass bottles of CALIFORNIA FIG SYRUP and PARISIAN SAGE HAIR TONIC and KILMER’S SWAMP ROOT KIDNEY LIVER AND BLADDER REMEDY. They look like pretty glass bottles, but here is what they really are: pretty glass shackles. Impossible to part with, but almost prohibitively risky to move. Such fragile objects are the enemy of the nomad, the pilgrim, the wayfarer. So is a personal library, come to that, but it can also be a stimulus to movement if the following conditions occur simultaneously:
1) You are a compulsive patron of the local used book store
2) You work at a publishing company and get damaged books for free
3) You like to own multiple translations in case one is unreliable
4) Your house is full of enablers
5) Your shelves are already full
6) You worked in the campus library for three years and know too much about damage inflicted by improper book storage
7) You are pretentous and refer to your books as your “personal library” and can’t bear to see them crammed into shelves, stifled, unable to “breathe”
So I moved.
But then I couldn’t afford the necessary forty feet of shelving.
Stacking books behind books on the paltry few shelves I could afford, I made a mental note to raise my children not only without bottle collections but also in an impenetrable nest of illiteracy so they would not know this pain.
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