Doin’ It Bloggy Style

Friday, January 12, 2007

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

things I want

If you like Amazon.com wishlists (and I most certainly do), you will love TheThingsIWant.com. It brings out my materialistic side and serves as a dumping ground for all the things I’d love to splurge on when I buy my house.

Meanwhile, this is genius, and I must partake! If there’s one thing I understand, it’s overwrought, cringe-inducing adolescent journal entries. My journaling career began on January 1, 1983, when I was eight and a half years old. I’d received a Pac Man Book of Secrets for Christmas 1982 from my grandparents, and I took to journal-writing like the proverbial fish to water. I followed Anne Frank’s lead and christened my diary with a name about halfway through the year. I named it after...wait for it! wait for it!...KITT the car on Knight Rider. Yes, that’s right, I named my Pac Man diary after Knight Rider. You just try to get more ’80s than that. Go on, I dare you.

I think the best part of that diary is the fact that I was usually too lazy to write on weekends, so on the weekend pages I’d write something like, “I didn’t have time to write in you today,” and then I’d draw pictures of all the things I was supposedly doing which kept me from writing. Like riding a horse. Dude, I don’t think I ever rode a horse in my life. No, wait, strike that—my family once took me to Gettysburg’s Land of Little Horses, and my tube-socked self plodded around in dusty circles on a beleagured pony. That was the extent of my horseback riding experiences, although KITT, the Pac Man Book of Secrets, would beg to differ. I love that I had enough time to draw pictures and write “I didn’t have time to write in you today,” yet I didn’t have enough time to actually, you know, write.

So I’ve been keeping a journal for 24 years, and that includes several angst-ridden, maudlin volumes from my teen years. Picking just one entry for the Cringe Book is going to be so incredibly difficult.

Even though I don’t write as often as I should, and I abandoned hand-writing my entries in favor of typing and printing them out around 10 years ago, my fundamental motives for writing remain the same: it keeps me sane, it gives me clarity, and it preserves memories. As simple as that. My journals contain the meat of my life; this blog contains the broth.

Don’t you just love when you get completely obsessed with an album or a song and you can’t stop playing it? And you feel like maybe you’ll get the shakes if you don’t start listening to it RIGHT NOW?

It’s not uncommon for me to get ridiculously hooked on a particular song or a string of songs, but the album thing hasn’t been as quite an overwhelmingly consistent experience. In 10th grade I went through an obsessive period when all I wanted to listen to The Cure’s Disintegration and Sinead O’Connor’s I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got over and over again. I barely touched any of the other tapes in my collection. In 11th grade it was REM’s Out of Time and Morrissey’s Viva Hate. In 12th grade it was U2’s Achtung Baby. The summer after 12th grade it was Don McLean’s American Pie and Simon and Garfunkel’s Greatest Hits. Freshman year it was Tori Amos’s Little Earthquakes and Pink Floyd’s The Final Cut. The summer after freshman year it was 10,000 Maniacs’s Our Time in Eden and Peter Gabriel’s Shaking the Tree. During the first part of sophomore year it was Cat Stevens’s Tea for the Tillerman and the Indigo Girls’s Rites of Passage. The second half of the year was consumed by Tori Amos’s Under the Pink. I’m sure I drove my dorm neighbor utterly batty that semester, but she was always listening to—and bellowing along with—Meatloaf and Celine Dion songs, so she deserved whatever punishment she got from me blasting Under the Pink and weeping. And maybe doing some other things I shouldn’t have been doing. That summer I obsessively listened to Counting Crows’s August and Everything After. I’d sit in my room listening to it on a continuous loop, undoubtedly trying the patience of my mom and sister. There were no album fixations my junior year, mostly because I was studying abroad and didn’t have access to my CD player. My portable disc player broke like three seconds after I arrived in England, so I was left with a tinny little Walkman that kind of killed my desire to sit and listen to CDs over and over for hours at a stretch. My senior year was dominated by Tori’s Boys for Pele.

After college the music fixation dropped off substantially. I obsessively listened to Tori’s From the Choirgirl Hotel in 1998 (so I always associate it with a shitty former job of mine!) and 2003 was all about Tori’s Scarlet’s Walk and Peter Gabriel’s Up. Over and over I listened to them, day in and day out. In 2004 I became completely obsessed with Damien Rice’s O, and here’s where we’ve come full circle, because right now I’m obsessed with his new album 9. My iPod is still in the shop, so I’ve been listening to CDs instead of MP3s during my daily commute, and this album has rarely left the player. It’s not quite as sumptuous as O, but gorgeously morose all the same. It’s just what I need right now. It’s giving me terrible earworms, though, which—because I’m not overly prone to earworms—makes me paranoid that I’ve got a tumor growing in the part of my brain where earworms are generated. Or maybe I’m just developing a raging case of OCD?

song heard most recently before posting:
Me, My Yoke and I—Damien Rice

Monday, January 08, 2007

rainy days and Mondays always get me down

Early January. Snow boots. A shovel. Non-clumping kitty litter for traction. One would think this meant that I got stuck in the snow this morning, right? Well, one would be wrong. This freakishly warm winter continues, and it was actually mud in which I got stuck, because I have to park on my lawn (long story; I know, it makes me look like white trash), and the rain has turned it into a mud pit of Woodstock proportions. I couldn’t back up onto the driveway, due to the mud, so I tried to drive forward across the lawn. It was was muddier than it looked, though, so after I got my car halfway across the lawn it ground to a halt. My spinning wheels sprayed mud everywhere. Kitty litter and a shovel didn’t work, and I figured I’d have to take a vacation day and spend it trying to dig my way out of the goddamn mud. But thankfully my next door neighbor spotted me when he was leaving to take his kids to school, and after a few failed attempts to get me out of the mud, he ended up lashing my car to the rear bumper of his SUV and pulling me out.

Not the greatest way to start a rainy winter Monday morning (which capped off a kind of crappy weekend), but at least I was only 15 minutes late to work, and hey, the whole thing could’ve been worse.

song heard most recently before posting:
The Drop—Peter Gabriel

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

life is a careless—sometimes exquisite—smear on the window

Happy Birthday, Annida Christofi Clark!!!

In DC Land, we’ve had an unnaturally warm winter thus far (nary a snowflake to be seen), but this morning was quite crisp. I went outside in my winter coat and scarf to fill the bird feeder and found…little pink flowers blooming below the feeder, tricked into thinking spring has arrived. It damn near broke my heart.

I’ve learned that my uncle/godfather’s brain cancer has taken an unexpected turn for the worse. A misdiagnosis had him thinking that the cancer was holding steady and he was doing just fine. Not long afterwards, another specialist realized, duh, there’s a thumbprint-sized shadow on his scan, indicating that the cancer has grown and spread to the opposite side of his brain. In the course of a few short weeks he went from “You’re doing great—see you in a year!” to “You’ve only got four months to live.” Chemo won’t do anything. They can’t operate because the tumor is too entrenched in his brain. Radiation will extend his life by 1-2 months, so he’s going to undergo radiation five days a week for the next five weeks. He got this news before Christmas, but waited until yesterday to tell my dad, so he wouldn’t spoil his holiday.

He’s a very good man, a very respected man; he deserves better than this. He’s a widower (cancer claimed my aunt/godmother in 1995), a father of two, a grandfather of three. He’s only 70—still so young. Less than six months ago he helped to nurse his aunt through losing battle with cancer, and now he’s in her shoes.

This is a tragedy on many levels, but what astounds me, aside from the gross negligence of his misdiagnosis, is the fact that, in this day and age, we still don’t have a cure for cancer. I’m not claiming I could do a more efficient job of finding a cure (science is not my strong suit)—I just have to wonder where this research is leading. I mean, yes, strides are clearly being made. For example, there is now an HPV vaccine, which, in a sense, doubles as a cervical cancer vaccine. And people are leading longer, better lives with HIV and cancer, both of which used to be automatic death sentences. But we still don’t have a cure. Every year brings about smaller and more powerful technology, both for good (medicine) and for evil (warfare, terrorism). Okay, great, you can now watch videos on your iPod, surf YouTube and look at Google Earth satellite shots of your neighborhood on your Razr/Blackberry/Treo/whatever, use your 10.5 megapixel camera to take startling crisp photos, and study every pore on every face on your big-screen HDTV-equipped plasma television. Cool, neat, but here’s the thing: although there’s medicine for male impotence, there’s no medicine to eradicate ALS, MS, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, cancer, AIDS. Where’s the fucking sense in that? Where are our priorities? Do we really need smarter bombs? Smaller cell phones? Cloned animals?

I guess I’m just shocked that we are capable of traveling in space but not capable of curing a disease that has been around forever. That we can map the humane genome and pull DNA from a flake of skin and create artificial intelligence but can’t figure out how to stop our cells from betraying us.

Anyway, this whole situation with my uncle is reminding me about how abrupt life can be. I want to beg my parents and grandfather to fill out one of those All About Me autobiography books. It’s just sad to think that loved ones could die and leave behind so many mysteries. I know all the big events of their lives—Papa’s war stories, for example—but I don’t know the little things. What were the names of their prom dates? What were their favorite subjects in high school? What’s the most rebellious thing they did? I just think it would be a shame for them to leave without me knowing them through and through.

song heard most recently before posting:
Dogs—Damien Rice

Sunday, December 31, 2006

giving 2006 da boot

[nerdy editor]Actually, that should be “May I take a nap now?”[/nerdy editor]

Growing up, New Year’s Eve was always a family thing—a kind of small postscript to Christmas. My parents never went out and relegated my sister and me to a hapless babysitter. Instead, my maternal grandparents would come over and the six of us would hang out, enjoying the last waning hours of our Christmas decorations and candles, eating hors d’oeuvres, playing board games, watching movies (after we bought our first VCR in 1986, that is), and watching Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. It was clean, innocuous fun, and even after I entered those years o’ torment and horror (the early years of adolescence), spending New Year’s Eve with my family was something I enjoyed doing.

Starting in 11th grade, I think, I began spending New Year’s Eve with friends. I always resisted ringing in the new year alone, even if it meant frittering away the last hours of the year in a snooze fest with one friend, doing and going nowhere in particular. When the inevitable finally occurred two or three years ago (I did have plans, but they fell apart at the last minute), I discovered: Hey, this isn’t so bad!

And really, it’s not. Given the choice, yeah, I’d rather spend the evening having fun with good friends, but if that option isn’t available, and neither is doing something huge and memorable—like ringing in the new year in Times Square (I’ve always wanted to do that), or in London (I’ve done it twice; I’d love to do it again), or in a mass celebration in downtown DC (that’s how I celebrated the millennium)—then I’d rather be alone. Going to a crowded nightclub or an elaborate party where I barely know anybody doesn’t interest me. Going to a party just because it’s expected of me, because it’s New Year’s Eve and that’s what people do on New Year’s Eve, doesn’t appeal to me at all. And given how much I’m now working, due to my heavy freelancing schedule, spending a holiday at home without any obligations or traveling or socializing sounds like the best possible scenario for me.

This weekend I mostly cast my work aside in honor of the holiday (I worked for a bit on Friday night and for a few hours on Saturday, but barely made a dent in the freelancing stack before I tossed it aside). I never got out of my pajamas. I never bathed (ah, the joy of slothdom!). I didn’t go anywhere. I watched DVDs and read. This evening I began a hotly-anticipated art project. The weekend felt gorgeous. Tonight I’ll curl up on the sofa with a warm, furry blanket (faux, of course); some Estonian liqueur; and my cats. At midnight we’ll watch the ball drop in New York City.

As for New Year’s Day—that, too, was always a family affair when I was young. It was tradition for us to go to my aunt and uncle’s house and spend the day relaxing and fressin’ with my dad’s side of the family. Where I’m from, people are supposed to eat pork and sauerkraut on New Year’s Day to ensure good luck in the year ahead, so our day was always filled with steaming, sagging plates of pork and ’kraut (unfortunately for me, I didn’t like pork and I was sickened by the sight of sauerkraut; so, no good luck for me). It was also tradition—during the years when New Year’s Day wasn’t on a Friday or Saturday—for Kristen, our cousin Becky, and me to spend a good portion of the day gnashing our teeth and moaning about having to return to school the next day after having a week off school. Much dramatic flopping on furniture and pointed sighs accompanied our day. Also, one year we listened to Prince’s new single 1999 on a continuous loop for hours, imagining where we’d be and what the world would be like on that distant day when 1999 danced over to 2000.

This year on New Year’s Day, there won’t be much need to moan and sigh about having to return to work, because it’s not like I’m returning from a week’s holiday vacation; after all, I worked three days last week. I’ll probably just feast on Christmas leftovers (my grandfather’s divine PA Dutch potato filling), complete my aforementioned art project, watch some DVDs, read, and indulge in some sweet, sweet vegging.

2006 was a decent year; may 2007 be even better! Here’s one last questionnaire for the year:

2006 Year in Review

1. What did you do in 2006 that you'd never done before?
I auditioned for a game show and went to Georgia for the first time.

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I stopped making resolutions a few years ago. I never kept them! But I’ve been resolving for months to buy a house in 2007, no matter what it takes.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Antoinette had her first baby, Luca, in July.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
My great-aunt Mag died, but we haven’t been close in years.

5. What countries did you visit?
England

6. What would you like to have in 2007 that you lacked in 2006?
A HOUSE!!! And maybe a bit of free time.

7. What date from 2006 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
29 September, because on that day I returned to London for the first time in over seven years and it felt so goddamn good!

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Surviving a ridiculously intense workload and a shocking dearth of downtime without having a complete nervous breakdown.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Failing to buy a house. Failing to begin saving for the trip to Eastern Europe I want to take within the next few years.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Just a double bout of pink eye—nothing overly major.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
My favorite thing would be the handmade skulls-and-cherries purse I bought at Smithfield Market in London. Runners up would be the mirrored sunburst candle holder I bought in Athens, GA, and the black satiny trenchcoat dress I bought at Forever 21. And my new flat-screen computer monitor, of course!

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Plath’s, because he hasn’t sprayed the furniture in months. (But secretly I think the Prozac actually deserves the accolades for that!)

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Someone whose name I can’t say!

14. Where did most of your money go?
Into quarterly tax payments (my freelancing is really nailing me to the wall, tax-wise), into my savings account, toward my London trip, toward bills, and toward Christmas presents.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Returning to London after seven years away!

16. What song will always remind you of 2006?
“Your Ex-Lover is Dead,” by Stars, because I listened to it over and over again.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
I’m in the same position, really. Still living in the same shitty apartment, still focused on buying a house, still working nonstop. The only difference is that I now have my tax situation under control (I’m paying quarterly taxes, which I didn’t do in 2005).

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Saving money and vegging.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Working!

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
I spent it with my family at my sister’s house.

21. How will you be spending New Year’s Eve?
I spent it alooooone, just like I spend most New Year’s Eves, but that’s okay with me, because, like I said above, if I can’t spend it hanging out casually with my closest friends or rocking out in Times Square/Trafalgar Square, then I’d rather be alone.

22. Did you fall in love in 2006?
No, although there was an unfortunate crush that didn’t go anywhere. (Shocker.)

23. How many one-night stands?
None.

24. What was your favorite TV program?
A tie between Lost and The Office.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Nope. Well...wait. I now hate my neighbors more than I did at this time last year, because my hatred for them just continues to grow and grow with the passage of time.

26. What was the best book you read?
Mmmm…I guess I’ll say The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, because even though his writing style kind of bugs (he violently swings between being overly flowery and overly sparse; his punctuation is erratic), the book really stands out because it was such a stomach-churningly bleak tale—probably the bleakest book I’ve ever read. It’s one of those books that makes me feel so grateful for what I’ve got in my life. Second runner-up would have to be Graves without Crosses, by Arved Viirlaid.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Joshua Radin

28. What did you want and get?
For Christmas I got pretty much everything I asked for.

29. What did you want and not get?
A house.

30. What was your favorite film of this year?
In terms of what I saw in the cinema (and I barely saw anything): El Método. In terms of what I rented: V for Vendetta, Cube, The Eye.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 32 and spent my birthday in Athens, GA, with Annida and her husband. They got me a fab tombstone cake and took me to dinner at REM’s favorite vegetarian restaurant.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
If I had managed to buy a house, thus releasing me from the hell of my apartment.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2006?
It’s the same as it was the year before. On weekends comfort is key—sometimes I never even get out of my pajamas. The rest of the time I heavily favor vintage dresses, A-line skirts, chunky platform heels, secondhand clothes, flared pants, Aarikka necklaces, and the necklaces I make out of old ’80s earrings.

34. What kept you sane?
Dreaming about my future travels and buying a house. Friends. My cats.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
My #1 TV boyfriend John Krasinski.

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
The disintegration of the wall that is supposed to separate church and state.

37. Who did you miss?
Friends I didn’t get to see.

38. Who was the best new person you met?
I didn’t meet any exciting new people!

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2006:
I’m really, really lucky. (But that’s something I’ve always known on some level.)

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

A song lyric that is actually from 2006:

Leave me out with the waste
This is not what I do
It’s the wrong kind of place
To be thinking of you
It’s the wrong time
For somebody new
It’s a small crime
And I’ve got no excuse

song heard most recently before posting: Eyes Without a Face—Paul Anka

Monday, December 25, 2006

'Appy Crimbo!

Another Christmas bites the dust. I had a great holiday with my family at my sister and her husband’s house in Frederick County. Delicious food, fabulous presents, laughing at old photos, reminiscing, spending a good two hours lolling in a hot tub, mingling with friendly neighbors...what more could I ask for?

The boy who lives next door took my little niece Olivia outside to sprinkle reindeer food on the lawn last night, and it was so adorable because she took it so seriously. (Later we also left cookie crumbs and a glass with milk residue in it on the kitchen table so she’d think Santa stopped for a bite to eat when he delivered her pile of presents.) Honestly, it was just a really wonderful Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and I will sign end this post on that positive note. (Plus I’ll mention that my office is closed tomorrow, so I’ve got another day of relaxation in front of me!!)

song heard most recently before posting: Christmas Time is Here—Ivy

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Christmas 1994

Last night I finally wrapped all my Christmas presents, to the blaring soundtrack of the final disc of Doogie Howser Season 1. I’m so relieved to be done with it all (the wrapping, not my Doogie Howser marathon!)

There has only ever been one Christmas that I didn’t spent with at least part of my family—Christmas 1994, when I was studying abroad. For the holiday I went to Germany, where I spent about 10 days with two friends (Laura, a friend from home, and Dave, a friend from college) who were studying in Marburg for the year. Had this opportunity not arisen, I probably would’ve weaseled my way into spending Christmas with Annida at her parents’ house in Greece. Going home was always an option, I suppose; instead of paying for me to go to Germany, my family could’ve just paid for me to return to the States instead. But, although I missed everyone a lot, I didn’t want to go home until my time at Goldsmiths was finished. I just didn’t think it’d be good for me to interrupt my year abroad with the culture shock of returning home.

For the most part, I enjoyed my time in Germany. Laura, Dave, and I went on a university-organized day trip to the medieval city of Rothenberg, which was really beautiful. Marburg, with its high-on-the-hill fairy tale castle, was beautiful, too. Laura and I went to Gießen for a day as well. I went to Laura’s orchestra practice with her one evening, meeting a Goldsmiths student who was studying in Marburg for the year. I committed fare fraud and got caught (just like I did in London!). I went to school with Laura one evening, and while she attended her Finnish class I made photocopies for her and hung out in the lobby, watching people go by. We hit the email lab so I could worm my way into my Goldsmiths and Scranton email accounts and look for new messages. We went grocery shopping and spent much time hanging out with Laura’s American friends, many of who came from our area of Pennsylvania (since they were studying in Marburg through a Millersville University [in Lancaster County, PA] study-abroad program). It was strange and wonderful to be around so many Americans and native Pennsylvanians again. One of them had a boyfriend visiting from Lancaster, and he brought a stack of celebrity gossip magazines from home, so I was in heaven. Also? I discovered that Cinnamon Toast Crunch, which was at that point my favorite cereal and which wasn’t sold in England, could be bought in Germany, under the name Cini-Minis. Our reunion was utterly glorious.

There were some downsides, unfortunately. Clinical depression doesn’t just evaporate when you cross the border into an exciting new country. It was tough being away from my family on Christmas for the first time, and not having any presents to open on Christmas day. The temperatures in Germany were far colder than they were in England, and since I didn’t pack appropriately, I was always freezing. Marburg was very hilly (whereas London is quite flat), so I felt constantly exhausted and sore. I got sick not long after my arrival, and my full-throttle cold made me feel even chillier and more exhausted than I already was. Plus I’d started the pill in November and it made me periodically hemorrhage; sadly, this excessive, grotesquely messy, and energy-draining bleeding overshadowed part of my time in Germany.

Laura and I celebrated Winter Solstice with a silly ritual we kind of made up as went along. First, she read my medicine cards. It began snowing, which made us deliriously ebullient, and we ran outside into the snow-lit evening, dancing around and catching snowflakes not just on our tongues but also in a shot glass. To fill the glass we also had to scrape some snow off tree branches. Back in Laura’s room, we burned some leaves she had collected over the autumn, chewed on some stems, anointed each other with the burned leaves, melted the shot glass snow with a big purple candle, and drank a mixture of the melted snow and burned leaves. We went out onto her balcony and uttered wintertide blessings we created on the spot as we dropped a burned leaf and watched it twirl downwards.

On Christmas Eve Laura, her friends, and I hung out in their kitchen, cooking, chatting, relaxing. A bunch of her friends were vegetarians and vegans, so I had loads of meat-free food to enjoy. At night, after dinner and after a relaxing day of playing Monopoly and Jenga and reading People magazine, we went to midnight mass at some Catholic church, even though most of us were areligious. Of course I couldn’t understand a word being said (my German language knowledge extended to please, thank you, hello, blood and milk—the latter being ever so helpful), but the service was still magical.

Christmas morning brought vegan pancakes, which were followed by a walk through the forest. Well, it was supposed to be a simple walk, but it really turned into a death march of sorts after a while. Laura, bless her heart, was fit as a fiddle and had no problem bounding around the woods’ steep hills at a steady clip. I, on the other hand, was out of shape, out of breath, shivering, congested, coughing a watery cough, sore, bleeding profusely, inadequately dressed. We got lost, too, which meant our hike went on and on, world without end. I really became concerned after a while, thinking we’d never make it back to her dorm as we threaded our way through the utterly still forest. I even began crying a bit toward the end, so devoid of hope was I that we’d ever find our way home—at least before dark. After roughly eight hours of this, we finally managed to stumble back into her dorm at dusk. I was beyond exhausted and couldn’t feel my feet anymore. But I did warm up and cheer up while eating her friends’ vegetarian Christmas feast. After that I not-so-patiently waited for them to stop using the phone to talk to their families so I could talk to my own family back in States. At night we hung out and watched Father of the Bride, which was of course in German, so none of it made sense to me.

On Boxing Day Laura and I headed to Frankfurt, where we poked around the city for a bit in the snow while waiting for our flight to London (she came back with me for a week or two, and we commenced a reunion with three of our friends from home who were also visiting for a week or two). It was stupid of us to fly into London on Boxing Day, though; public transportation was nearly nonexistent, and the commute from Heathrow to my dorm—which generally only took two hours, at most—took over seven hours and required a complicated tango of maneuvering our way through the warren of the city on bus, tube, feet, and taxi.

That, in a nutshell, was my only non-family Christmas!

song heard most recently before posting: New Year’s Day/On Christmas Night—Bonnie Rideout, Maggie Sansone, Al Petteway, Eric Rigler

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Happy Winter Solstice!

The shortest day of the year has begun. I always found it intriguing how, on the shortest day of the year and the first day of winter, the sun is about to reclaim dominion over the sky (in tiny increments). Likewise, even though Summer Solstice is the longest day of the year and the first day of summer, it also signals the beginning of lengthening nights, the axe swing toward winter. I like the yin and yangness of it all; it really serves as descriptive metaphor for my emotional life.

I have a book, The Winter Solstice: The Sacred Traditions of Christmas, by John and Caitlín Matthews, which delves into the history of Winter Solstice celebrations and the fundamental connection between Solstice and Christmas. It discusses Solstice rituals and traditions from cultures around the world, both current and modern, from the ancient Romans’ Saturnalia celebrations to the sun rites of the Zuñi and Hopi to Solstice in modern Taiwan. It covers the meaning behind each of the 12 days of Christmas, the Mummers, the Kalends of January, Hogmanay, Santa, Shamans, the Nativity, etc. It offers ways to celebrate the Solstice (making a winter shrine and preparing a Yule log, for example). It’s a fascinating book and I recommend perusing it if you get a chance. A nice description of Winter Solstice from the book:

The Solstice is a time of quietude, of firelight and dreaming, when seeds germinate in the cold earth and the cold notes of church bells mingle with the chimes of icicles. Rivers are stilled and the land lies waiting beneath a coverlet of snow. We watch the cold sunlight and the bright stars, maybe go for walks in the quiet land. Sometimes we go carol singing—even those who would normally never think of lifting their voice in song. Attending Midnight Mass, even for those without Christian beliefs, can become a special event. All around us the season seems to reach a standstill—a point of repose. Then, as the Solstice sun moves across the heavens, the new year wakens, the darkness is dispelled, the days grow longer, and we prepare for new beginnings.

song heard most recently before posting: The Sadness of the Autumn is Now O’er—Megha Morganfield

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

books

Happy 1st Birthday, Ethan Hubbard!!!

Yesterday at work we were told that free books were being given away in this little atrium outside one of our lawyers’ offices—I guess they’re downsizing our staff library (or eliminating it altogether) and wanted to get rid of some the books. Well, because the room was so tiny, there was a mad rush of people trying to get books and it was a bit out of control. And some people were walking out with a ton of books, which I thought was unfair. Especially since, by the time I managed to squeeze into the room, a lot of the good stuff was gone. One of the first books I saw was a history on orgies, and I was like, “...the hell? Our staff library has a book about orgies?” Someone said, “Some of these books actually came from the kitchen” (people drop off unwanted books on this one shelf in our staff kitchen, so they can be taken by people who are interested in them—it’s a nice form of recycling). Okay, but...someone thought it was appropriate to leave a book about orgies into the staff kitchen?? Love it. And naturally that was the first book I grabbed.

Last night, when I stopped by an Asian supermarket to buy some bonito fish flakes as part of Freyja’s xmas present, I found myself becoming utterly bedazzled by their Russian/Ukrainian food section. I’ve been to this supermarket who knows how many times and I never saw that Russian/Ukrainian food before. I guess I simply never made it down that particular aisle. I don’t know why, but I just love seeing Russian products! There’s a Russian store near my office and I get a kick out of perusing their shelves. I didn’t buy any of the Russian food I saw last night, but will probably do so in the future. (And yeah, just for the record, I did save food wrappers and whatnot from my time in St. Petersburg; all of it went into my geeky travel scrapbook!)

Closing thoughts:

song heard most recently before posting: Light is Returning—MotherTongue

Monday, December 18, 2006

the week before xmess

The baaaaaaad news: my iPod, which is only a year and a half old, went belly-up on Friday, and I had to send it to iPodMods.com for repairs. It was working fine on Thursday evening when I listened to it on my way home from work, but when I tried to listen to it on Friday morning, it went berserkers. I treat this iPod like royalty—I’m always very careful with it, thank you very much. And in return, it never gave me any grief—not even when I schlepped it through five European countries and a handful of US states. But now, suddenly, poof. Let’s hope it’s just a minor problem (a dying battery, say), and things don’t get overly screwed up when I try to reimport my iTunes library into the iPod after I get it back.

The good news: Uhhhh…lessee…is there any? Well, I’m nearly done with my Christmas shopping, so that’s good, but it’s not exactly a badge of honor, since Christmas is only a friggin’ week away. It’s not like I finished my shopping in November. And I still haven’t wrapped a damn thing! I’m going to kick aside any freelancing I’ve got next Saturday and instead spend the day wrapping presents.

I got a jump start on Saturday night, actually, after I finally heaved aside my day’s worth of freelancing. I decided to start painting the wooden letters I bought as gift identification tags, as well as supergluing wire onto the letters’ backs so the letters can serve as Christmas ornaments in the future. Pretty straightforward, right? Yeah, except I managed to get superglue all over my fingers. And my lips. Thus began my sizzling Saturday night of sitting home alone in my pajamas, watching Netflixed Doogie Howser DVDs (because I loved that show in high school, and I loved Neil Patrick Harris’s cute gay ass with the fire of a hundred suns, and if I could’ve had his babies I would’ve done so in a heartbeat), and frantically trying to remove superglue from my lips and my paint-spattered fingers. I’m exactly what the Beastie Boys had in mind when they sang for their right to party.

I’ve gotten back into reading McSweeney’s lately; here are some of my faves:

AN OVERHEARD CONVERSATION AT THE SUBURBAN NEIGHBORHOOD POOL, IF THE SUBURBAN NEIGHBORHOOD POOL WERE IN DEADWOOD.

JOHN MOE’S POP-SONG CORRESPONDENCES, VOLUME V: A LETTER BETWEEN SIBLINGS WHO LIVED IN THE HOUSE DESCRIBED IN “OUR HOUSE” BY MADNESS.

THE GAY AGENDA.

CORMAC MCCARTHY WRITES TO THE EDITOR OF THE SANTA FE NEW MEXICAN.
(this one made me laugh because I read his book The Road a few months ago, and this mimics his writing style perfectly)

OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE VALENTINES.

POEMS THAT WERE CONSIDERED AND REJECTED BEFORE ’TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS WAS ESTABLISHED AS “THE OFFICIAL AMERICAN CHRISTMAS POEM.”

FROM THE GRAD SCHOOLYARD: THE DIARRHEA SONG.

STORIES THAT WOULD HAVE TURNED OUT DIFFERENTLY IF THE PROTAGONISTS HAD HAD CELL PHONES.

THREE NEW MAC AD IDEAS.

song heard most recently before posting: Winter Solstice—R. Carlos Nakai

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

quotes

Lately I’ve been trying, piecemeal, to overhaul my quotes collection. Since time immemorial I’ve worked to provide a full citation for each quote; ie, not just say that Nietzsche wrote something, but specify that he wrote it in The Antichrist. And since many of my quotes were directly encountered by me through various means (books that I read, songs that I heard, words spoken and written to me, etc), this has not been a problem.

However, I also found many quotes through secondhand sources (online collections, published quotation anthologies, article and book mentions, etc), and if the quotes were cited incorrectly and/or incompletely in those sources, then they are also cited incorrectly and/or completely in my collection. This is what I’m trying to fix. But it’s not easy! So many quotes collections—especially the collections found online, but sometimes even in print editions—only provide a name and no further information. This annoys the crap out of me; I really want to break away from doing the same thing in my own collection. Why is this such a popular way to provide quotes to the masses? It’s lazy and sloppy and looks bad. And why do so many collections provide no information at all? I’ve seen quite a few that just list quotes with no additional information whatsoever—not even the quote utterer’s name. Gack!

Anyway, so I’ve been taking a break from my ever-hearty freelancing schedule to research quotes at my local public library. I’m astounded at how much noise is contained therein! Sure, they’ve banned cell phones (thank god!), but they really don’t do much to curb chatting people and screaming kids. I felt like a miserable old crone when I was glaring at all the gabbing teens and shrieking toddlers. If I weren’t so lazy I’d maybe try to infiltrate the University of Maryland’s main library for my research, because I’m sure it’s much quieter there—not to mention the fact that my research pickings would be much juicier. But, like I said, I’m too lazy. And, who knows, maybe you even need a student ID to access the library. (Yeah, I’m too lazy to even phone the library to find out.)

In a completely different vein, I took an online personality disorder quiz a while back, and here are my results:

Paranoid - 54% (average: 49%)
Schizoid - 86% (average: 53%) (Heh; appropriately enough, I went through a period in college when I was convinced I had Schizoid Personality Disorder.)
Schizotypal - 66% (average: 53%)
Antisocial - 26% (average: 47%)
Borderline - 50% (average: 47%)
Histrionic - 14% (average: 43%)
Narcissistic - 22% (average: 41%)
Avoidant - 74% (average: 39%)
Dependent - 22% (average: 37%)
Obsessive-Compulsive - 42% (average 40%)

I also took a career quiz which ties in with Myers-Briggs. My results:

Your type is INFP [Withdrawn (I) 83.87%, Imaginative (N) 69.44%, Emotional (F) 69.44%, Improvised (P) 54.55%]

You are an Idealist. Possible professions include: graphics designer, college professor, researcher, legal mediator, social worker, holistic health practitioner, occupational therapist, diversity manager, human resource development specialist, employment development specialist, minister/priest/rabbi, missionary, psychologist, writer.

Hot! I should be a priest!

song heard most recently before posting: Yellin’ at the Christmas Tree—Billy Idol

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

decorating

Happy Birthday, Richard Hughes!!!

I won’t be decorating my apartment for Christmas this year, and I didn’t decorate last year, either. The reason why is complicated—it stems from the fact that my apartment is in a state of disarray and flux (again: complicated). Once I finally buy a house, I will resume decorating for Christmas.

It saddens me, because I was raised in a home that was always decorated for Christmas, and it’s a tradition I really appreciate. Plus I have several boxes of truly kick-ass Christmas decorations. My tree ornaments alone fill me with delight. In 1999 I began following my mom’s lead, picking up an ornament whenever I traveled anywhere. If only I had thought to do that earlier! I also buy ornaments that reflect my personality in some way. I’ve always loved pandas, so I have a cute panda ornament, and I’ve always loved Rowlf the Muppet, so I have an ornament showing Rowlf wearing a crown of holly and berries. I have a University of Scranton ornament to reflect my alma mater and Amish ornaments to reflect the area of Pennsylvania in which I grew up. Plath, Freyja, and Shoah all have their own ornaments, and I also have a few ornaments from my childhood (the rest still get hung on my mom’s tree every year). My goal is to someday replace all the generic filler ornaments on my tree with meaningful ornaments. My goal is also to buy a pre-lit tree, because I am a lazy bastard.

In terms of Christmas decorations, my taste veers more toward emulating nature. (I know—how very pagany of me!) Evergreen boughs, berry clusters, lotsa candles, etc. I have one star made out of berries and another star made out of berries, bay leaves, pinecones, and grass (all faux, of course, but surprisingly realistic). One year I made a big candle holder out of twigs, and while it sounds like a summer camp arts n’ crafts nightmare, it’s actually pretty cool.

This has nothing to do with nature, but I also have a purple velvet stocking for myself and personalized stockings for Plath and Freyja. Plath’s is shaped like a fish and Freyja’s is shaped like a mouse. Maybe I’ll at least hang those up this year...

song heard most recently before posting: Vogliatemi bene—Giacomo Puccini

Thursday, November 23, 2006

giving thanks

Happy Thanksgiving!

and

Happy (one day early) Birthday, Jorge Rosas!

Believe it or not, in my 32 years on this earth, I only ever spent one Thanksgiving away from my family, and that was when I was studying abroad. Initially I was bummed about missing Thanksgiving 1994 with them—especially since I was in a place where Thanksgiving didn’t exist—but it turned out to be a great holiday.

There was a guy in my newswriting class, Steven (I had a bit of a crush on him, I admit), who asked me if I had any Thanksgiving plans. It was so thoughtful of him to ask, especially since this wasn’t even a holiday he celebrated. I had no plans, so he invited me to a dinner being held by an American student he knew. It was a nice mix of Americans and curious Brits. The hostess served a traditional Thanksgiving dinner, including apple pies with an outline of the Statue of Liberty baked into the top! I really had an awesome time.

Today’s Thanksgiving is taking place at my mom’s house in PA. Dinner attendees included Mom, my grandfather, Mom’s boyfriend Bill, Bill’s son Brian, and Brian’s girlfriend Jamie. While everybody fressed on turkey, I ate the most wonderful vegetarian ham in the world, along with many scrumptious sides.

Things for which I am thankful: My awesome family, friends, and pets. My very cool coworkers. Sleep. My camera. A job I love. The fact that I’ve avoided major catastrophe and trauma thus far. Breakfast cereal. The internet. TV. Antidepressants. Having a freelance job that brings in extra money and allows me to work from home. Andes mints. Peanut butter Hershey’s Kisses. My knee-high black platform boots. Music. Art. Books. Poetry. Chocolate milkshakes. Bodies of water. Wildflowers. Flickr. Nature. Cool eyeglasses. The fact that the Earth hasn’t been completely destroyed (yet). Unexpected snowstorms. Hot chocolate. Silence. My mom’s whoopie pies. My grandfather’s PA Dutch potato filling. A healthy body. Grilled cheese with tomatoes. Ice cream. Opera fudge. Great strides in the vegetarian meat industry. Tagless shirts. Wrinkle release spray. Online banking. Icicles. Television without Pity. My journals. Unexpected sculptures. My quotations collection. Netflix. Being able (thanks to the meds!) to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

song heard most recently before posting: Thunder Road—Tori Amos

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

the mold paranoia continues

My landlord never showed up on Friday. Shocker! (Yes, I am rolling my eyes as I say that.) This isn’t the first time he said he would do something and then never did it. So all weekend long I ran my two fans constantly and my dehumidifier whenever I was home. It sucked a lot of moisture out of my apartment and the carpet now feels dry, but I’m still super-paranoid there is moisture in the walls that is going to turn to toxic mold. This was heightened by the conversation I had with my sister yesterday afternoon. She said that when her basement flooded a few years ago, moisture got into the walls and mold began growing, and specialists had to pull down drywall and everything. So I called my landlord yesterday and told him that I was concerned about the walls and he was like, “So you want me to come over and rip out part of the wall to look for mold?” and I said, “Well, no, when my sister had this problem, the guys who came over to handle the situation had a special device that detected where there was moisture and mold, so the walls didn’t have to be randomly ripped apart.” He said, “Okay, I’ll see what I can do.” Which, in his parlance, means that I won’t hear back from him.

On my way to Mom’s house on Thursday I’m going to stop at Kristen’s house with boxes full of my most important stuff (journals, boxes of photos, travel scrapbooks, framed photos, travel souvenirs, etc.) and store everything in her basement or garage. That way, if a toxic mold infestation strikes before I can get the hell out of that apartment, my irreplaceable items will be safe. Because, you know, with toxic mold, the health authority insists on burning everything in the household—even things that have no mold on them. I would lose everything. I’ve got renters insurance and could use that to replace furniture and clothing and whatnot, but it sure wouldn’t replace the zillions of photos I’ve taken over the years, the journals I’ve kept for nearly 24 years, and things like the matryoshka dolls I bought in Russia.

On top of the flooding mess, I’ve got car repair woes. But I really don’t even want to get into that right now.

When I was packing up my journals for their journey to Kristen’s house, I casually flipped through them and found an entry from my freshman year of college that made me laugh. Coincidentally, it was written 14 years ago tomorrow:

22 November 1992

I spent the night (until 1am) in Kris and Emily’s room, watching TV, eating Zorba’s fries, and talking-talking-talking. I was woken up at 2am (actually, I wasn’t; MBS had already woken us up with another crisis of hers) when Missy and Suki called me from the callbox downstairs. They wanted me to go to a party with them. I resisted, then finally relented. The Late Night we were aiming for was cancelled, so I ended up walking around Scranton with them at 2:30 in the morning, wearing my pajamas and my retainer, with brown Clearasil streaks on my face and my hair sticking out everywhere. I got in at 3am.

Aw, god/dess bless 18-year-old me for thinking it was socially appropriate to go to a college party in my pajamas and retainer, with Clearasil all over my face. No wonder college hunks never beat down my door!

song heard most recently before posting: Open—The Cure

Friday, November 17, 2006

why you should always listen to your gut

I have a penchant for being freakishly intuitive. Over the years I’ve learned to listen to my gut, because most of the time, it knows what it’s talking about. Sometimes, though, I pooh-pooh it and refuse to listen to it. And usually I end up regretting this decision. The gut knows best, people!

Yesterday was one such instance of this. There was a destructive storm barreling up the East coast, after causing substantial damage in the South. Lightning, large hail, tornadoes, flooding rains, and strong winds were all distinct possibilities in this area. As the storm raged outside my office, my gut was telling me that my apartment would flood again, even though I’d been careful to clear all leaves away from the drain outside my back door (this is the same drain that caused my apartment to flood a few years ago). I kept thinking that I should leave work early and go home and check on it, but then I accused myself of being paranoid and told myself everything would be fine. Except it wasn’t. I got home and was halfway across my bedroom when I started hearing the squishing noises. The flooding affected the bulk of my living room, all of my bathroom, and half of my bedroom. There wasn’t standing water, but there was enough where, when I stepped on the carpet, water pooled up around my feet. Much cursing ensued.

I called my landlord and he came over with a wet vac. He vacuumed the bulk of the water, but the carpet is still damp. So, like, if I kneel down, the knee of my pants will be wet when I get back up, and I have to wear slippers to keep my feet dry. Today he is coming over with an industrial drying fan which will hopefully work. I’ve got the raging toxic mold paranoia, yo! I ran my two fans all night long and I also ran my dehumidifier this morning. I left the fans running when I went to work, but wouldn’t leave the dehumidifier running. I’ll run it again when I get home from work. My landlord is also going to work on the gutters and fix the drain to make sure this (hopefully) doesn’t happen again.

I’m beleaguered by this whole thing (especially since I already have my plate full with a heavy freelancing load and imminent car repairs), yet I’m also grateful, because it could’ve been so much worse. This same storm killed 12 people, injured others, and destroyed who knows how many homes. My only problem was flooding, and it was far from Katrina proportions. I got off lucky. There are water marks on some of my furniture and some of my possessions was ruined, but thankfully they were all very minor items (like one of my freelancing style manuals and one of the framed postcards I’ve had since high school).

Now, if only I could turn off my fears about toxic mold!!!

song heard most recently before posting: There is a Light That Never Goes Out—The Smiths

Thursday, November 16, 2006

the best thing in the history of the world

I did an online facial recognition thingy which listed the celebrities I supposedly most resemble. I didn’t use a great picture (it’s my passport picture), but it was the only one I had handy that showed me smiling and looking straight ahead. The results are hot hot HOT! The software says I look like Jensen “Eric Brady” Ackles!! And I look like rotund middle-aged comic Wayne Knight, aka Newman on Seinfeld!! SUCH HOTNESS!!!

Here we go:

Okay, actually, I just dug up another photo of myself (more recent) and snagged this:

Awesome! Now I look like Michael Keaton!!! Isn’t he, like, 60 years old?

Meanwhile, here’s something very cool. I learned about it on the Today Show this morning. Apparently researchers can turn a person’s brain waves into music, using a computerized mathematical algorithm. Brain waves are translated into digital music and placed on a CD with a relaxing file (music made from your slower, more relaxed brain waves) and activating file (music made from your faster, more alert brain waves).

Brain music therapy has been used by thousands of patients worldwide to treat anxiety, insomnia, and depression. It alleviates migraine and tension headaches and drug withdrawal symptoms. It increases attention span and improves concentration and productivity in people with ADD. It also helps people with social and performance anxieties. It is believed that it could help pilots who suffer from pilot fatigue syndrome, military personnel who have to function at the optimum level in tense situations, and others who have to overcome the disruption of their sleep-awake cycle (like shift workers). It could enhance athletic performance, too.

And no, it doesn’t sound weird, discordant, or space age-y; rather, it sounds like classical piano music. Matt Lauer’s brain music was played on the air and it was quite lovely!

Each person’s brain wave pattern is unique and therefore each person’s brain music is highly individualized. In double-blinded studies there were two groups: One group listened to their own brain music therapy CD, while the second group listened to a brain music therapy CD of another person. The results showed that individuals in the group listening to their own CDs significantly exceeded the effectiveness of those who listened to other CDs.

How cool is this! More information is here. It reminds me of DNA Artistry, a company which turns your DNA into modern art. Science and art tango so beautifully together!

song heard most recently before posting: Hand in Glove—The Smiths

Monday, November 13, 2006

dispatch from the shallow end

Well, fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck. I went to the Silver Theatre on Friday night to catch a Czech film (Lunacy, which was deliciously bizarre) running as part of AFI’s European Union Film Showcase. While there, I picked up the latest issue of Washington City Paper. In it I saw an ad for Damien Rice’s mid-December concert at the Lincoln Theatre in DC, which had only just been announced, and I was like, “Great! I’ve gotta go!” Stupidly, though, I waited until today to buy my ticket, which was too late—the show is sold out.

I’ve been missing things right and left lately. This weekend I learned that I just missed two cool-looking things:

1) an art exhibit in Arlington that dealt with death, and
2) a stage production of 1984—one of my all-time favorite books.

However, lest you think I’m too out of the loop, I’ll mention that I did manage to find out about two local events in the nick of time: a Scandinavian Christmas bazaar and St. Lucia festival in McLean on December 2nd and a Finnish Christmas bazaar in Bethesda next Saturday. I attended the Finnish bazaar last year and loved it (even though I didn’t win the raffle, which would’ve sent me back to Finland for free), so I will definitely go back again this year.

A while back, Washington City Paper started a new feature called Crafty Bastards, which spotlights the talents of local artists. They produce everything from purses made out of old books to dolls made out of tampons. Check it out!

song heard most recently before posting: All Blues—Miles Davis

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

happy days are here again

At Antoinette’s parents’ house the other day, her father grabbed my left hand and pointed to my empty ring finger. “No, I’m not married,” I sighed. This happens nearly every time I see him. Aw, bless, after 20 years of knowing me, the poor guy is really eager to see me get hitched. He said to me, in his delightfully thick Italian accent, “You tall, you beautiful—why you not married?!” Ummm…maybe because I repel every man who isn’t an itinerant street lunatic? Just a thought.

Meanwhile, there is a lot to celebrate today, regarding last night’s poll returns! Here are a few of the reasons why I’m celebrating:

Democrats have seized the House and are poised to take over the Senate as well.

My state, Maryland, now has a Democratic governor, Martin O’Malley. This is especially good news to me because during his tenure, our current Republican governor, Robert Ehrlich, repealed Maryland’s 51-year ban on trophy hunting of black bears, the 280-year ban on Sunday hunting, and the centuries-long ban on crossbow hunting. Before he was governor, he voted in Congress to subsidize the trophy hunting of African elephants and give millions of dollars to the luxury coat industry, and he opposed legislation to protect dolphins from drowning in tuna fishing nets.

Michigan voters squashed Proposal 3, a measure that would have allowed mourning dove hunting.

Arizona voters overwhelmingly passed a historic initiative to improve the lives of farm animals—the Humane Treatment for Farm Animals Act.

South Dakotans rejected a law that would have banned virtually all abortions, and at least two state Senators who supported the ban (both men, go figure) were voted out of office.

Arizona became the first state to defeat an amendment to ban gay marriage.

Missouri voters approved a measure backing stem cell research and voted Sen. Jim Talent, who has consistently done poorly on animal welfare issues, out of office. He was replaced by Democrat Claire McCaskill, who supports stem cell research and is a strong animal welfare advocate.

Kansas voters rejected extremist attorney general Phill Kline, who attempted to seize women’s confidential medical records.

In pro-choice news, dangerous abortion restrictions for teens were rejected in Oregon; in Ohio, pro-choice, pro-family planning Governor Ted Strickland defeated Ken Blackwell, who supported legislation even more extreme than South Dakota’s abortion ban; in Wisconsin, women’s health champion Jim Doyle defeated Mark Green, who co-authored legislation allowing health care providers to deny women access to birth control.

We now have our first female speaker in the House of Representatives (Democrat Nancy Pelosi), our first Muslim congressman (Keith Ellison, D-Minnesota), our first socialist senator (Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont), and our first black northern governor (Deval Patrick, D-Massachusetts).

In California, Rep. Richard Pombo, once deemed the “leading opponent of animal welfare in Congress,” and Sen. Conrad Burns, another foe to animal welfare, were defeated.

In North Carolina, Rep. Charles Taylor (R), who had voted against nearly every animal welfare bill, including one to ban pornographic “crush” videos, was defeated. In Pennsylvania, Rep. Don Sherwood (R), another opponent of animal welfare issues, was also defeated.

Senator Rick Santorum was defeated in my home state of Pennsylvania. To his credit, Santorum was the lead author of legislation to crack down on puppy mills and he was a strong supporter of animal welfare issues. However, there are still lots of reasons why I was glad to see him go:

He once tried (unsuccessfully) to insert language into the No Child Left Behind bill that sought to promote the teaching of intelligent design while questioning the academic standing of evolution in public schools. He described intelligent design as “a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in science classes.”
In 2003 he said, “Whether it’s polygamy, whether it’s adultery, whether it’s sodomy, all of those things are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family” and “Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that’s what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. … when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality.” He also said that sodomy laws exist to prevent acts that “undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family.”
Regarding the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, Santorum said the priests were engaged in “a basic homosexual relationship” with “post-pubescent men,” and added that he had “a problem with homosexual acts.” He added, “Priests, like all of us, are affected by culture. When the culture is sick, every element in it becomes infected. While it is no excuse for this scandal, it is no surprise that Boston, a seat of academic, political and cultural liberalism in America, lies at the center of the storm.”
He believes that the right to privacy “doesn’t exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution.”

So now a staunchly Republican president will being going head-to-head with a Democratic Congress. Will this create a big, stagnant deadlock? Maybe so, but a deadlock is better than allowing Bush to continue his disastrous, rampant reign unimpeded!

There is some bad news, however. In Colorado the Domestic Partnership Initiative failed. Gay marriage bans passed in Idaho, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R) of Rhode Island, co-author of legislation to stop the commerce in primates for the exotic pet trade, lost his reelection bid. Rep. John Sweeney (R), the lead author of legislation to ban horse slaughter, lost his bid for reelection in New York. And Rep. Charles Bass (R), a supporter of Sweeney’s horse slaughter bill and the lead author of legislation to protect Yellowstone bison, lost in New Hampshire.

Sigh.

But hey, at least Rumsfeld resigned! When that was announced, there were whoops and cheers heard throughout my office!

song heard most recently before posting: Longer Boats—Cat Stevens

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

poll-dancing

Today is Election Day, which means two things:

1) Democrats will hopefully seize power in Congress, and

2) The mudslinging ads on TV will finally stop! Yay!!!

I kick-started today by voting. And although the line at the polls was rather long, it did move at a fast clip—especially since I read one of my trashy British magazines while waiting in line.

Yesterday I took off work and went to Berryville, VA, for Antoinette’s baby’s christening. Afterwards there was some time-killing at her parents’ house, followed by a big, gorgeous after-party (theme: A Star is Born) at the Shenandoah Golf Club in Front Royal. Fittingly, this is where Antoinette and her husband had their wedding reception three years ago. Oh, it was so lovely, and I confess to getting teary-eyed when Antoinette and baby Luca had a mother-son dance to the song “I Hope You Dance”!

song heard most recently before posting: Big Day—XTC

Sunday, November 05, 2006

stoooopid

Not that there were any doubts about this, but I am officially the stooooopidest person alive. The American Film Institute’s annual European Union Showcase has begun, and I headed to the Silver Theater this afternoon to catch two of the films—one from Finland (Mother of Mine) and one from Germany (Requiem). The former was excellent and made me cry. Bonus? The director was there!! Nobody expected it, so it was a great treat. He gave a small talk before the film and after it started, he cut out so he could catch his flight back to Finland. Another bonus is the fact that a trio of Estonians was sitting behind me, happily chatting away in Estonian. I resisted the urge to say to them the only Estonian phrases I know: thank you, please, and I don’t eat meat.

After the film ended, I browsed through DSW and Borders and then returned to the cinema to wait for the second film to begin. I thought (thought being the operative word) there were only two theaters, and I wasn’t sure in which one Requiem would be playing, so I sat at a table between the two theaters, where I could keep an eye on both of them and wait for one of them to empty out, thus indicating where my film would be screening. I finished the book I’ve been reading, then started reading the latest issue of the Washington City Paper. I didn’t have a watch and there were no clocks around, but it seemed to be taking an awfully long time for one of the theaters to empty out and Requiem to begin. I should’ve only had to wait for an hour, tops, and it seemed like more than an hour passed. I don’t know why I didn’t ask an employee what was going on. Because I’m stupid, I guess.

Well, eventually one of the theaters emptied out and the screen outside the door continued to say Little Miss Sunshine, instead of changing over to Requiem, so I finally asked an employee what was going on. Turns out there was a third theater I didn’t know about, and that’s where my movie was showing. Also? It had begun an hour and a half ago. D’oh!!! God, was I kicking myself!

The good news is that the woman thoughtfully gave me a readmission pass, which means the $9.50 I spent on my ticket wasn’t spent in vain—I can go back to the Silver Theater and see another film without having to pay for it. There is a Czech film playing on Friday night that I want to see, so I’ll probably use the pass for that.

The bad news is that I lost my chance to see Requiem, since today’s showing was its final showing. Also, this weekend is one of the very, very few weekends when I didn’t have to work, and I’m pissed that I squandered my preciously rare free time by sitting in a dim cinema lobby when I could’ve been outside, enjoying the beautiful day, or lounging on my couch, savoring the pile of trashy magazines I brought back from London last month.

I think I need three kicks to the head right now, thank you very much.

song heard most recently before posting: Intergalactic—Beastie Boys