Barbie, we hardly knew ye!

A few weeks ago, I started volunteering at a community arts center on Thursday afternoons. I've only been twice so far, but I really REALLY like and respect the program. From 2:30 to about 3:00 is book club. Volunteers read to the younger kids or listen to the older kids read to them. This past Thursday, I read the most bizarre book to a little girl. It was a book about Barbie, set during the American Revolution. Barbie helps an innkeeper while the innkeeper's son is off fighting the Redcoats. Along the way Barbie reveals her patriotism, helps carry out a few missions, and meets Ken, whom she woos with a homemade scarf. If I hadn't sat and read the whole thing out loud, I'd never have believed this book was ever published. When I decided to blog about it, it took nearly half an hour of searching to find a record that the book does, in fact, exist.

Let's take a moment and review the things I found on the way to proving that I didn't have a large pink-hued hallucination...


Bumper Stickers

There is a Barbie-related bumper sticker. Two versions of it, actually:







No Barbie entry is complete without a Dave Barry link!

Especially a link to a column he wrote about using Rollerblade Barbie in an attempt to set his underwear on fire.


Books

There are many, many Barbie books. An Amazon search turned up 19 pages of books. Not 19 books; 19 pages of books. Some were pretty standard licensed-character fare...color words, shopping trip, sticker books. There are subcategories of Barbie books. Especially intriguing: "Barbie Feelings" and "Barbie Mysteries." There are Spanish-language Barbie books, which is cool. None of these had cover photos, so I'm not sure if there is a Latina Barbie in the stories, or at least a Latina friend doll.

The "Barbie Rules" series is also amusing:

Barbie Rules #1: Be Your Own Best Friend
Barbie Rules #2: Be Proud of Yourself!
Barbie Rules #3: No Teasing Allowed

This would probably be useful for those times you need a plastic role-model to quell your daughters' sibling rivalry:



This I found more than a little disturbing:


"From picking the perfect wedding dress, to finding the best present, to throwing a surprise bridal shower, Barbie has tons of fun because Barbie Loves Weddings! This storybook is filled with all-new full-color photos and wonderful wedding stickers. "

It's sort of paradoxical. On the one hand, Barbie is clearly an adult, so it's not abnormal that she would help plan a wedding and throw a bridal shower...but I am not very comfortable with the idea of little girls being obsessed with weddings and getting married. When I meet or hear of women who have been planning their dream wedding since they were little girls, it squicks me out. I'm not sure I can explain it rationally, but it seems like girls would be better off dreaming of being princesses in frilly dresses than brides, and even then I'm not too keen on the whole "prince charming" angle.

No girl should be raised to think she needs a man to rescue her, and that she should sit around patiently in a ball gown waiting for him to arrive. Little girls do not need to rush into marriage, either. No marriage is a perfect fairy tale, and your wedding is not necessarily going to be the "best day" of your life. I had a blast at my wedding, but I didn't build it up to be the Best. Day. Ever. No wedding is perfect. Mine was darn close to perfect for me and MB, but it wasn't magazine-spread-worthy.

Anyway, it seems odd to market a children's book about wedding planning. To add another layer of weird, there is a second version of the book available:



Notice that the African American friend doll has been replaced with a white bride and groom. Is this version for the slightly racist parents out there? I was a little disappointed that version 2 didn't feature an interracial couple.


Plastic and PC?

Apparently the Barbie machine is trying to be more politically astute, so this wedding thing seems like a missed opportunity. Then again, there's this article, which details how, in Barbie's historical "diary" of the 1960s, the author gave Barbie and her black friend Christie a role in supporting the Civil Rights Movement. The author never specified Christie's race in the text, and was counting on the art to show her properly. (Christie is an actual doll, not just a character made up for the story.) When the book's proofs came back, Christie was as white as Barbie, even though there is reportedly a line in the story where Christie remarks that a little black girl "looks like me when I was little."


Barbie likes that old-time religion

There is also a Pagan-Lite Barbie, called "Secret Spells Barbie."



And you thought I was making this up. I am not that good.

I couldn't find any good web posts about it. I had one I was planning to use, but then upon further reading it proved to be a magic-is-evil, anti-Wicca rant, and that ain't cool. I don't link to hate, dogg. So here's a weird and ranty--but occasionally funny--article about it. May not be suitable for sensitive audiences (as if I have one of those).


Another one that I'm NOT MAKING UP:



Forest Princess Barbie. Because everyone wears formal gowns and high heels when they go hiking! Dude...what? I do!


All this, and still no sign of American Revolution Barbie

So I finally tried a search query using "Barbie" and "horse Lizzie," which was the horse Barbie tends to in the book. That led me to a paper written for a women's studies class. Not kidding. Luckily, the paper provided me with a title...Barbie: A Ride for Freedom. The title at long last led me to a link proving it exists somewhere.


With the search over, it's time for some reminiscing...

I think someone could probably write an entire Master's thesis on the cultural implications and impact of Barbie. I'm kind of ambivalent about Barbie in general. I had Barbies when I was a kid, and I turned out okay. No major body-image complexes...no serious fetishes for pink clothing, stiletto heels, or shopping. My mother did, however, wait until I was seven years old before I was allowed to have any Barbies, and when I got my first Barbie dolls, I got the Heart Family:



The Heart Family was made by Mattel, but they were more conservative. They were definitely marketed as a married couple with kids, instead of the non-married but long-committed Barbie and Ken. The mom had a Barbie body, but also dark hair and a hole in her hand so she could wear her plastic diamond ring. The dad was a brown-haired Ken with a gold wedding band painted on his hand. They had twin toddlers--a boy and a girl.

All the Barbie-style dolls I acquired after that were assimilated into what became a giant family. The Heart Family mom and dad were the parents, and they had many daughters--a Barbie, a Jazzie (taller, smaller-breasted, and flat-footed...also had crimped hair and some FAB 80s fashion sense), a Skipper, a Stacie, and a random doll of about Stacie's size that a friend gave me. Eventually they also had the dark haired version of the new Quints dolls. (My foster sister had the red-haired ones, and my sister had the blonde ones.)




I had the run of a tiny storage room off of our landing, where I set up the kickass Barbie house my aunt had made from four cardboard boxes. This was the BEST BARBIE HOUSE EVER. She wallpapered it with wrapping paper, added cutouts of paintings from magazines to decorate the walls, and made the most ingenious furniture from cardboard boxes, contact paper, and cloth. She made a bedroom set for the parents and one for the kids and a living room complete with a couch, armchair, television, and coffee table. She included a store-bought kitchen with plastic food.

That house was one of my most treasured things as a kid. I played with my Barbies until the summer before my freshman year in high school, and I turned out all right. I carefully packed away all of my Barbies and clothes and furnishings when I moved out to go to college. Sadly, the Barbie house had to be sent off to the great recycling pile in the sky, after more than 5 years of valiant service.

So, I know that just owning Barbies is not enough to give girls a skewed view of the world and their own girl-ness...but I still feel wary of the ideal that the Barbie machine seems to be pushing, and feel simultaneously impressed and horrified that it is such a juggernaut of both the toy industry and, in a way, of our culture. I'm not sure how I'll approach the Barbie issue if I have daughters someday.


At least I'll always know that the Barbie-as-Revolutionary-War-hero book wasn't a figment of my imagination. I'll always have that.



Reading: bad historical Barbie fiction; The Dogs of Bedlam Farm by Slate contributor Jon Katz

Playing: crazy mind games; Hypnotize, by System of a Down

What happens when broke people watch too much HGTV:

Or at least when this broke person does.



What's that about a road?

I had all kinds of good intentions when I sat down, all kinds of plans for the interesting things I was going to write about...but alas. Now that it's time to actually write something, I'm not coming up with much.


Uh...I got this book for a dollar in the library's used book corner today:



I adore Laurie Notaro.



What happens when I insist on blogging instead of just going to bed:

>>I managed to leave both my purse and lunch bag of gargantuan-ness at work today.

>>When I got home from my once-weekly night shift at the record store, I could see the cat's head and ears silhouetted against the kitchen curtains as he watched me get out of the car. For some reason, it struck me as almost unbearably adorable :)

>>We went to see V for Vendetta on Saturday night with my mom. I rather liked it. In fact, I really liked it, and wouldn't mind seeing it again. It was definitely a movie requiring a bit of forgiveness of the absurd, but then again, it's based on a graphic novel, so it doesn't need to be as firmly rooted in "real life" as most films.

>>My dad and I are going to go see The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada tomorrow night. Dare I hope for two really good movies in the span of a week?



Reading: Abhorsen, the final book following Sabriel and Lirael; The Blue Girl, by Charles de Lint.

Playing: The Greatest, by Cat Power.

quatro times nueve

Four jobs you have had in your life:

1. ice cream scooper

2. instructor in a science program for Girl Scouts

3. clerk in a very eccentric trinket shop

4. seasonal employee for the DNR


Four movies you would watch over and over:

1. The Princess Bride

2. The Usual Suspects

3. Grosse Pointe Blank

4. Empire Records


Four places you have lived:


1. My parents' house

2. My college apartment

3. My very nice current apartment

4. a geologic field station in Cardwell, Montana (if we're counting any place that was occupied for more than a month)


Four TV shows you love to watch:

1. Miami Ink

2. Design on a Dime

3. almost any nature or science program

4. real-life ghost story programs, even though I get creeped out and can't sleep


Places you have been on a TRUE vacation:

1. Yellowstone National Park

2. Great Smoky Mountain National Park

3. South Dakota

4. road-tripping through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi, then across the Gulf to Texas, up through New Mexico and Arizona, into Utah, a bit of a south-to-north jaunt across Colorado, and back across Kansas, Missouri, and Illinois.


Four websites you visit daily:

1. Hotmail

2. Mimi Smartypants

3. Amalah

4. Go Fug Yourself



Four of your favorite foods:

1. vanilla bean ice cream

2. tuna salad

3. pb&j (or h)

4. grilled cheeze-ees at Turoni's


Four places you would rather be right now:

1. outdoors

2. curled up somewhere with a good book and a snack

3. on vacation

4. snuggling with the boys (one human, one feline)



I'm tagging:

these three people plus some others through email.



postcards for the smartass in everyone

(from stellamarrs.com)

Addendum, Caveat, Etc.

First: Also, when your ex-husband/boyfriend/whatever--whom you threw out last summer after a spectacularly entertaining screaming fight--comes around at 9:00 on a Sunday morning and bangs on your door insistently for 20 minutes...it's not your fault, and clearly you have every right to ignore him, but DAMN it sure does rack up points for the Miss Trashtastic Pageant.


Second: Our neighbor is not that bad. I know this. While this stomping/jumping/shrieking was pretty much a daily thing back before Christmas--for two months...almost every day--we recently had weeks and weeks of relative decency. She doesn't threaten us, she doesn't deal drugs (as far as we know), and most of the time her children don't throw trash in our yard. Most of the time. So, while I do occasionally feel the need to vent and complain about her, I fully admit that it could be so much worse.

I am, however, COMPLETELY FUCKING OVER the assholes who sit in the parking lot blasting their car stereo bass. OVER IT.


Third: I've been browsing local real estate websites lately, ogling houses for sale in the city and outlying counties. A good friend of mine appropriately calls this "the grownup version of playing dress-up." I have a general guess of what we'll be able to afford when we finally are ready to really start shopping, and I've been snooping around to see what's available in our price range. Right now, it looks like it's:

        >>small, soul-less, 80s-built, one-levels in niceish neighborhoods
        >>larger--but still smaller than we want--slightly bland houses in those questionable transitional neighborhoods that can swing either cute and young-family or shady and lock-your-doors-24-hours-a-day in a few years' time
        >>huge, roomy, beautiful historic houses in scary-ass neighborhoods where people get shot or engage in standoffs with the police. (I am not making this up. The neighborhood where one of my best friends grew up had this happen just a few weeks ago. Luckily, her parents moved to an area of town that's pretty much at the top of the dreamy list when we were in college.)

There's also the mystery houses, the ones that are too good to be true. I drive by one of them every day on my way home from work. It's this big old place on a corner lot. It has 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, a fireplace, built-in bookcases on one wall of the living room, wood floors, high ceilings, and a big bay window off the front room. It's a block away from a library, and faces a huge park that is ringed on all sides by big, nice-looking houses. The yards look neat, the houses look pretty well-maintained, the cars parked out front aren't total clunkers, and the park seems well-tended. It looks every bit like an area on its way to being gentrified. But no matter how nice the weather has been--even on days when the riverfront near work is packed with people--from January until now, I have never once seen children playing at the park. Never once, even though there is a nice playground in the middle. No kids playing, no dog walkers, nothing. Ever. So there's more to it than the fact that the house is listed at $65K and has been sitting on the market since about Christmas.

But then...oh, then...there are the dream houses. Like the one I found last night. The huge 3 bedroom, 1 full/2 half bath, 1899 farmhouse with a huge wraparound porch and a full basement for $99,900. The commute would suck, and the utilities run about $250 a month. But oh...that house. That house...how I covet it.



One more thing, and then it's time to watch Lost on DVD

Is this not the most glorious piece of carrot cake you've ever seen?



And because I'm a nerd, I measured it:


Since carrots are vegetables, I'm not going to feel bad for eating this while I watch TV.



Reading: Lirael, sequel to Sabriel.

Just Finished: Wee Free Men, by Terry Pratchett

Playing: a new mellow mix CD

Dear Upstairs Neighbors

If you want to let your horrid, brattish, one-diapered one-in-elementary-school children stay up past 11 PM, that is entirely your own business. However, when you let them jump up and down repeatedly, run around in circles while stomping as loud as they can, and shriek at the top of their lungs, it becomes our business.

Fuck you, and good night.

PS Your music is great. Know what would make it better? If you'd KEEP IT TO YOUR GODDAMN SELF.

A post worth 10,000 words, or so they'd have you believe.

It's possible that I may have been conned, that this really is just a cheap ass garden glove repackaged as a "cat grooming glove" and sold to suckers like me for $4.00 a pair. But you know what? The cat likes them, and he's a lean (sort of), mean shedding machine, so I'm not sure I care. The cat who can stand about three passes with a brush before he goes berserk and starts gnawing on the handle actually digs these bad boys:




I rocked the thrift store circuit this past Thursday with my mom and sister. They are the best thrift store shoppers ever, and apparently I share some of their talents. I scored these sweet Keds for only a dollar!




This very cool book about coelacanths was also a dollar, in the used book corner of the public library:




I spent a large portion of the evening cleaning out our closet. See? See how nice it looks?

We've only lived here for a year and a half. Seriously, though, this is pretty good for me. I'm a horrible packrat, and cling to the (probably delusional) notion that all I need to solve my clutter problem is as many shelf systems and Sterilite bins as I can get my hands on without going broke. I'm having trouble convincing my more practical husband of this argument. I feel like I did a pretty decent job with the closet. Just look at this pile o' crap I pulled out to get rid of:



Jeans, anyone?



Speaking of el gato...

I was looking at this picture of him the other day, and realized he must have been smaller when we first adopted him.



Still quite large, but not as large as he is currently. He was 18 months old when he came to live with us, and I'd assumed full-grown, but he just looks so much younger compared to now:



There are no pictures of a younger me to share, but here's a photo of my bear, who I've had since I was about four years old:



My mom made him for me, because she's just that cool. My sister has one that is a mirror image of mine...light where he's dark and dark where he's light. Also, this is the turtle that MB gave me when we'd been going out for four months.


Two living fossils in one entry...cool, huh?



squirrel-like rodent found


One more link...

Ancient Cypriots used biofuel.



Reading: The Gallery of Regrettable Food by James Lileks.

Playing: August and Everything After by Counting Crows

In dog years, I'm 175. Almost.

Dude. Put like that, it doesn't seem so bad. Could be worse; I could be a dog. Then I'd be REALLY out of shape and crotchety. All in all, I'm not so worked up over turning 25, which will happen a week from today. I don't feel too much different than I did at 18. Granted, the pants I wore back then have long since ceased to fit and the shirts are largely mourned as well, but I can still technically fit into the bottom half of the boy-shorts and halter-top swimsuit I got in 10th grade. Let's not discuss the halter...please, let's not. So. Being able to wear half of a swimsuit I bought almost 10 years ago (GOOD GOD.) has to count for something.

I feel like I've been able to outgrow some of the less-desirable attributes of adolescence (huge imaginary audience complex, largely self-centered worldview, embarrassing amounts of righteous indignation, some measure of naivete) without becoming too jaded or boring. While I don't really have a swinging nightlife these days, I really never did have much of one to start with. I still see my closest friends from high school on a regular basis. I still have the same best friend I've had since kindergarten, and that rocks.

I still feel about 19-ish years old. It boggles a bit to realize that my baby sister is now 19. I mean, that's hard enough to believe without doing the math to place myself at the appropriate relative age.

Some days I feel like my life is moving along very well, according to some plan which I might not fully understand yet, but nonetheless seems to be leading me somewhere very good. Other days I feel like we'll never achieve "real" adulthood, with its steady finances and home ownership and such. Other days I suspect that perhaps the steadiness of adulthood is just a carefully crafted illusion, woven by caring parents around the world who want their kids to be able to experience the joy of youthful obliviousness. Maybe grownups always secretly worry if the jobs will hold out, if the money will stay steady, if the goals will be met. If so...oh, well. As long as I can still fit into those swimsuit bottoms, it's all good.



But it's special to me.

Tonight I had a waffle doused in maple syrup that I had a hand in making. I wasn't going to say anything, because big whoop, maple syrup. But then I started thinking...and I'll bet there aren't all that many people who can say they helped make the maple syrup they're pouring onto their waffles.

Here's how it came to pass. I did a year of AmeriCorps service last year, and my host site was a local nature preserve. This nature preserve is seriously cool, and includes some of the last stands of virgin forest in the state. Every year, they have a pancake breakfast and make some of the syrup for it with sap from maple trees found on the preserve. One day last January or February, one of the volunteers showed me how to tap maple trees, and I actually tapped one of them by myself. Somewhere in all the syrup they made last year (some of which was bottled and sold), there was sap from the tree that I tapped, and that's pretty cool.



Witness giant sin-crushing loaves of bread!

I only wish I was clever enough to have made this up.



Stay tuned for your regularly-scheduled freakout

I signed up to take a whitewater kayaking class in April. I developed an irrational fear of kayaking around the age of 12 or so, when I read an article about the sport. Apparently the article implied that the kayaker is completely unable to escape from the kayak once the dry skirt is in place. My overactive imagination immediately went into hyperdrive, and I became very, very afraid of the idea of being in a boat that 1. is likely to roll over and 2. from which I would be unable to escape.

Once someone helpfully pointed out that at least the search teams would know where to look for your body if you drowned in your kayak, I was pretty much never going to go near the damn things. But then, years later, I found that I really love to canoe. Hanging out with canoeing people generally leads to hanging out with some kayaking people, too, and they tend to look like they're having a lot of fun. I'm sure there would be a scandal if they took my parents' $100 (They paid for the class for me as a birthday gift, because they rock that hard) and let me get flipped upside-down in an inescapable boat. Right? ...right? I expect I'll be excited until the moment they put me in the actual kayak, on the actual river. Then things may get interesting.



Reading: Marley & Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog by John Grogan. This book is SO good. It's wonderful because of the dog in question, and because of the way it's written. I love the way good journalists are sometimes able to write excellent and entertaining nonfiction. (Other examples: Tim Cahill, who once referred to me, to my face, as "the girl with the funny jokes." DUDE. DUDE!, and Steve Fiffer, author of Tyrannosaurus Sue). I have absolutely loved this book. It has hilarious moments, serious moments, heartwrenching moments, heartwarming moments, more hilarious moments. I have to confess that I haven't actually finished the book yet. I got to the part last night where it is clear that the inevitable is going to come to pass, and I knew that if I kept reading, I'd bawl all night. But don't let that dissuade you! Read Marley & Me. You'll be glad you did.


Also reading: Sabriel, by Garth Nix. I'd never heard of this author until a friend of mine sent me two of his paperbacks from England. I'm four chapters into Sabriel, and it's totally engrossing. It was a struggle to put it down and return to work today once my lunch break was over.



Playing: The Legend of Johnny Cash (yes, again) and this CD, even though the company that made it is teasing me cruelly with this...the best lotion I've ever, ever found, and it's out of stock and unavailable to order. I may weep.

My name is Sue! How do you do?! Now you gonna die!

I heart Mr. Johnny Cash. I heart him mucho lots.

With that, let's move on to:



Mostly worthless musings on the Winter Olympics

In general, I just don't get as excited about the Winter Olympics as I do their Summer counterpart. Cross-country events don't thrill me that much. Downhill is okay, though I haven't watched it much this year. Mostly because I think Bode Miller is a colossal ass, and I'm not really interested in watching him slum around and then act like he's above it all and that he doesn't really care about winning medals. Fine, dude...but why are you even at the Olympics? His whole "Olympic spirit" thing just sounds like a cop-out to explain why he's sucking big time on the slopes this time around. Halfpipe is fabulous fun, and Sean White looks like a Weasley brother. "Sno-bo-cross" is sort of cool, but sort of weird. Speed skating can be entertaining, but watching Shani Davis and Chad Hedrick act like snarky bitches after tonight's 1500 kind of soured me on the whole event. They made me extra glad that the Italian kid won.

All that said, I do love me some women's figure skating. I'm sort of 'meh' on men's and pairs. Not sure why. The throws in pairs are cool, and I like the powerhouse jumpers like Yevgeny Plushenko, even though almost all of the photos in his NBC Olympic bio are SCARY. SCARY, ya'll. I don't dig the fluffy artistry that much in the men, and I don't know why, because I tend to be pretty equal-opportunity when it comes to fluff. As for ice dancing...well...it's really the winter equivalent of rhythm gymnastics. Both are pretty, both are dull, both have goofy ass elements (giant balls vs. "twizzles"), and both seem kind of silly compared to other events.

MB is not all that into the Olympics. I think he might still be a little bitter about the fact that I made him watch quite a few of the 2004 Summer Games events from hotel rooms while we were on our honeymoon. Gah...I am a horrid wife. And he is saintly for actually still liking me after it was all over. Not wanting to watch tonight's skating program alone, I recruited the cat as my viewing buddy and fellow judge. Since neither of us really understand the new figure skating scoring system, Mr. Kitters and I decided to rate the skaters on their costumes and musical choices instead. Besides, what do we know about technical elements?


Best costume

ME: The gold goes to Sarah Meier of Switzerland, who wore the prettiest and most normal-looking dress. Make it black instead of canary yellow, give it 6-12 more inches of skirt, and you've got a hot, classy evening dress. It had glittery straps and none of that uber-scary semi-flesh-toned pantyhose-like mesh stuff. Also, I wish my back was half as sexy as hers.

MR. KITTERS: The gold definitely belongs to Elene Gedevanishvili from Georgia. Her costume had fringe. Fringe is fun to bat.




ME: The silver goes to Irina Slutskaya of Russia. She'd win it even without extra points for being an absolute powerhouse. She was the only featured skater to wear pants, and even though I wasn't crazy about the sparkle patterns, the cut of her outfit was flattering and made her look both sexy and totally badass.



MR. KITTERS: I'll give the silver to that girl who wore that half hot-pink, half very scary-flesh-meshy thing. It looked sort of like a flamingo, which is a bird, and birds are fun to stare at menacingly from my window.


ME: The bronze is going to Fumie Suguri of Japan. Gorgeous dress, absolutely stunning girl. Loses points for scary flesh-toned skates, cancelled out by her rockin' "sneaky-high" jumps.

MR. KITTERS: I'm giving bronze to Sasha Cohen. Her outfit had flowers, which I like to eat.




Runners-up: Yelena Liashenko, who rocked the best dress back, despite it being the color of a road cone. Anyone who wore skates with those funky gold-toned blades.



While we're talking Olympic outfits, there has to be a shout-out to those godawful jerseys the Russian speedskaters are sporting:



ME: I can see why the guys who were paired up with the skaters wearing these showed up on the track wearing dark goggles. Otherwise, they'd risk having this heinous pattern seared into their retinae.

MR. KITTERS: Damn. Just, damn. I'm colorblind and that's still painful. And what's with that freaky mouse-human-hybrid thing she's carrying?



Best Music

Gold: Sasha Cohen, skating to the lovely Russian folk song "Dark Eyes." I have a music box that used to be my mom's that plays "Dark Eyes," and I have always loved it.

Silver: Irina Slutskaya, whose music matched her kickassery.

Bronze: The girl (Canadian, maybe?) who skated to an instrumental rendition of Madonna's "Like a Prayer." She medals on sheer hilarity alone.



"Nice try, sparky, but I totally saw you two-foot that landing."



This entry is horribly long already, but one more thing

One of my close friends got married this past Saturday, and it seems that while I was off co-shouldering the terrifying responsibility of cutting and serving this gorgeous cake...



...MB and my cousin were making potpourri art:





A great column...
...on the continuing doubts and hopes of a woman who decided to choose children over her career.



Curse you, Blogger

For making me reconstruct this whole goddamn entry just to change the date. You SUCK. Thank God for cutting and pasting out of Word, because the original took me an hour to assemble, and otherwise, there would've definitely been vengeful thoughts going on over here.



Reading: Medicine Road by Charles de Lint

Playing: Within a Mile of Home by Flogging Molly and The Legend of Johnny Cash

Happy Poo-lentine's Day to you, too

My husband (I think I shall call him MB from now on, just for simplicity...because "husband" sounds too formal and anything related to "hubby" is kind of gross) and I had planned a pretty low-key Valentine's Day. I wasn't feeling too excited about waiting around forever to get a table at a packed restaurant, and he wasn't arguing with my logic. We were going to take a walk along the riverfront (because it was 63 degrees outside. Swear.), get groceries, cook, and probably watch a DVD. Notice I said we were going to do these things. Want to know what we did instead? Of course you do...

We shampooed our cat. And not for kicks...no, sir.

I was gathering my things to head home and change, collect MB and drive over to the levee for our romantic stroll. My phone rang.

Me: Hello?

MB: The kitty's ass exploded.

Me: Excuse me?

MB: The kitty's ass. It exploded. It's everywhere.

Me: *dread looming* In the litterbox?

MB: And on him. And a little bit on the carpet. We have to do something. He's in the bathroom right now. He's not happy.

Our cat is immensely fluffy, with these poofy fur britches (my mom calls them fancy-pants) on his hind legs. I feared the worst. When I got home, I was relieved to find that the cat, while suffering an embarrassing hygiene problem, was not as disgusting as I'd expected. I was not permitted to take photographs. While he was still poo-i-fied, he was just too pissed off and MB was too stressed out. Once he was (finally) clean and sitting around looking pathetic and bedraggled, MB put his arm around me and said, in all seriousness, "No pictures. I think Kitty deserves this moment of privacy." It was so hilarious that I couldn't argue.

MB had already run a few inches of lukewarm water into the tub, so I put on old jeans and a longsleeved shirt and volunteered to sit in the tub and be the cat holder. My mom laughed when I told her about this part. She seemed to have forgotten which feline we are talking about. This is no docile, harmless ball of fluff. This is a 15-pound, mostly-muscle, temperamental linebacker of a cat. He's strong, he's willful, and when he gets pissed, he bites people. He's opened a 24-ounce can of whoopass on me once before, and even though that was my fault, I was not eager to repeat the experience (nor the subsequent visit to the urgent care clinic for a tetanus booster and antibiotics when my arm turned red and swelled up. Gross.)

So for the bath, we swaddled his front half in a towel, but his back legs had to stick out. That was the main problem, because it left his strongest kicking legs and his claws free. He nailed me good right down my left wrist at the very beginning of the bath. I thought it was going to be pretty terrible, but it's not so bad. It looks kind of suspicious because of the location, but it doesn't hurt too much. (Although it's achieved that point in the healing process where it just itches all the damn time and tempts me to scratch it, even though it's not time for the scab to come off just yet.)

We would get the cat swaddled, I'd hang on to him, and MB would do his best to clean him up with a washcloth. Eventually, he'd get mostly free of the towel, and we'd dump him on the floor for a few minutes so everyone could regroup. We finally abandoned that plan when it became clear it wasn't working. MB swaddled him, held him securely with his booty hanging over the edge of the tub, and I used Dial soap to shampoo his tail and britches. I did have to cut out two really gross patches of fur, but at that point I don't think the cat even noticed. He was too busy freaking out over us pouring water on his ass with a pitcher.

We FINALLY got him cleaned up, and then he walked around the rest of the evening looking like a pitiful drowned rat from the hips down. Every time he got up to go somewhere, he'd kick-shake his back feet like, "Blecccchh!!!!" After a few hours, he'd groomed all of his tail except a few inches at the base, so he looked quite silly with his fluffy body, scrawny soaked back legs, scrawny skinny tail base, and fluffy, plumey tail top.

After that, we were too tired to do anything romantic or culinary. We ordered pizza (which was really late. And cold. Snarl.) and watched Ghostbusters. Good times, good times.



Reading: Jack of Kinrowan by Charles de Lint

Playing: one of my favorite playlists on the computer, Plans by Death Cab for Cutie, and the soundtrack to The Fifth Element because MB keeps putting it in the bedroom stereo (and the car stereo and the computer).

Scientists have discovered more than 20 new species in Indonesia

This rocks pretty darn hard, especially when they found cool stuff like tree kangaroos and frogs and neato birds and this adorable echidna fellow:





My Skepticism Surprises Me

I'm reading a book called The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler. Here is a summary that was published in Rolling Stone last year. I'm pretty tree-huggery by nature, and so it surprised me how often I find that I disagree with the author's bolder doom-and-gloom pronouncements. I can believe that the supply of fossil fuels (and especially oil) could run out a lot sooner than the public expects. I have a hard time believing that the U.S. will break up into smaller factions and revert to a nearly-pre-Industrial way of life, after much of the world's human population is decimated by K-T style die-offs. I'm not very far into it, but so far it gives me the same half-interested half-embarrassed feeling that I get from Michael Moore films.

In a coincidence that's freaking me out a little (but maybe only because it's 1:00 in the morning), there is a Long Emergency blog that uses an identical template to the one I use: www.longemergency.blogspot.com.



Even as a Child, I Was Such a Geek

When I was little, I loved to look through my parents' rag-tag collection of non-sequential National Geographic magazines. One of my very favorites was an issue that had a feature on a shipwreck. A moment ago, I would've said it was about the Titanic, but now I suddenly suspect it was about a ship that sank in one of the Great Lakes during the War of 1812. I watched the documentary Ghosts of the Abyss the other day, and I really liked it. It was enjoyable for science/history geek reasons, but also because it reminded me of going through that old magazine, over and over.

I'm going to try to snag one of the public library's copies of Aliens of the Deep sometime this week, because the only thing better than geekiness is geekiness with a side of nerd.



Reading: Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman. I really, really loved American Gods, to the point where I'll probably buy a copy and it ranks somewhere in my top ten favorite books of the genre. Anansi Boys is not quite a sequel, but it's related enough that I think it'll be fantastic, too.

In other Neil Gaiman-related news, Mirrormask comes out on DVD next Tuesday. I was lucky enough to see it in Chicago at the one theater that was showing it the weekend I visited, and I liked it enough that I plunked down $20 at my part-time job to reserve a copy. If you dig Gaiman's stuff or dark-ish Henson movies like The Dark Crystal, I'd recommend renting or Netflix-ing Mirrormask.


Playing: You Are Free, by Cat Power

To celebrate the fact that we are lame enough to have 1.77 GIGABYTES worth of pictures of our cat, here are a few favorites:

A Festival of Random

This week has been an experience in the random side of life. Randomosity.

Random Thievery, Part One:

My mother-in-law bought me two plastic frog garden statues for my birthday last year. They, in themselves, were random. But cute. I put them out on our front porch around Memorial Day when we finally put out some flowers in pots. At first, I sort of worried that someone would steal them, but month after month, nothing happened. The flowers all died and then we brought in all the green plants for the winter, but the frogs and the flower stand stayed out. The frogs started to be my landmark to find our porch when I was pulling into our parking lot, not that it's that hard. Then, this past Thursday, I glanced out the window to tell a friend that she could find our apartment by looking for the frogs on the porch...and they were gone.

It's not that I'm heartbroken, though I am a little sad. It's mostly that it's annoying. I'd actually be happy about it if the person who did it would take the garden frogs on a trip somewhere and send postcards back to me, signed by the frogs, or take pictures of the frogs on vacation, like these guys did with a garden gnome. I really don't think anyone in our building is that creative. I doubt they were taken by someone who absolutely had to have them for their own garden. I have a feeling they'll end up in the garbage somewhere. That pisses me off.


Random Thievery, Part Two

On Friday, I brought a banana to work with me for a late breakfast. Usually I bring my lunch in a somewhat sarcastically overlarge insulated cooler thing, but on Friday my department director was taking me and our intern out to lunch, so I didn't need the giant lunchbox. I brought a plastic cup, a yogurt, a spoon, and a banana. I put the yogurt in the fridge, obviously, and put the spoon and banana in the cup, which I put on the shelf under the counter, in the same place I usually put my lunchbox. I went back to the breakroom about an hour later, and the spoon and cup were sitting on the countertop, no banana in sight. Now, maybe it's just the way that I was raised, but I don't understand how an adult can think it's okay to take someone else's food. Even if you don't know whose food it is, surely you know that it's NOT YOURS. No one's short term memory is so bad that they can forget whether or not they brought an item to work that day.

Being too nice to leave a nasty voicemail for the entire staff but being too stubborn to just let it go, I taped a note to the fridge--written in Sharpie on a full sheet of paper--that said: "Missing: one banana for breakfast. If found, please return to velocibadgergirl." Yesterday, the sweet and adorable cleaning lady came into the office and said she was sorry, that she thought she'd probably thrown my banana away. She found a banana on top of the snack machine, and figured someone had left it there and forgotten about it. I assured her that it wasn't my banana, unless of course someone had stashed it there...in which case it was their fault I lost the banana, not hers. This leads me to two conclusions, both amusing.

A. Someone else at work is thinking, "Dammit! Someone stole my banana! How random!" If we both begin talking about our missing bananas, it'll seem like a veritable crime wave.

B. The person who took my banana stashed it there, figuring they could eat it later. Only they were foiled when the banana was thrown away, and thus were not able to enjoy the spoils of their sneaky-snake behavior. I think I like this conclusion better, just because it has a certain element of poetic justice to it.

All in all, it doesn't really matter. It's not like I was starving to death and needed that banana. It's not like I have blood sugar issues and got sick for lack of food. It's the principle of the thing.


Random Useless Fact

I was born on the 200th anniversary of the discovery of the planet Uranus. Embarrassing name, quirky planet. It sort of evens out.



Random Biology Lesson

Where I work, there is a display window/alcove thing with a pond inside. The pond is nicely landscaped, with rocks and vegetation and such. Inside the alcove live two white and green birds in a cage (cockatiels, maybe?) and some turtles. I thought there was only one turtle, but last night there was an event, and I ran into one of my coworkers in front of the pond. He informed me that there are five turtles living in the alcove, and that sometimes the box turtles come up to the very front, right by the glass, and make sweet turtle love. I figured this was a once-in-awhile thing. However, it seems that the turtles are quite amorous. Today I walked by the alcove and the new security guard was peering in. He asked me if the lizard on the rock was real or a toy. I located it and said that I thought it looked pretty fake. Then I mentioned how supposedly there are five turtles, but I usually can only find one. I saw one sitting on a log, and then my eyes wandered to the front corner and lo and behold...turtle nookie. Two of the box turtles were in the midst of a romantic turtle moment. I just sort of trailed off and hoped the guard didn't notice the turtle tryst. Ah, nature. So beautiful and yet so ripe for somewhat embarrassing moments.



Random Overheard Conversation

Yesterday night, the husband and I went out for a late dinner. There was a pretty long wait at the restaurant, so we were sitting on the benches at the front, waiting for our buzzer thing to light up. At some point, this somewhat whiskey tango chick and her friends came in and sat down next to us. Well, actually, the subject of this random item sat ON me. On my coat, to be truthful. So when I tried to scoot over, I had to pull my coat out from under her. Nice. Anyhow, she and her friends were jabbering on about something, and one of them asked her if she "got it." I didn't catch all the words, but here's the gist. She had just gotten a tattoo. On the back of her neck. And the guy SPELLED IT WRONG. Yeah.

She lifted up her hair and her friend said, "Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, no...just keep your hair down. Just keep it down. Oh, God. Couldn't you see it?"

Tattooed Girl: "No, you can't see it while they're doing it. He can add an A to it."

Tattooed Girl's Friend:"Just keep your hair down."

Unfortunately, our buzzer went off and we went to our table before I could ascertain what the lacking-an-A tattoo said.


Reading: American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. Love it. LOVE IT. Engrossing, engaging, mysterious, just enough action, really good characters, and a good amount of humor. Love. It.

Playing: Speak for Yourself, by Imogen Heap; Happy Songs for Happy People, by Mogwai; One Way Ticket to Hell...and Back, by The Darkness.

"We're living Planes, Trains & Automobiles!"

So says my husband, in the midst of his very first business trip, which seems to be going slightly awry. They drove from here to South Carolina on Tuesday, which is somewhere in the neighborhood of an 8-hour trip as far as I know. The "we've checked into our hotel" call just didn't happen and didn't happen, so I finally called to see how things were going, only to find out that they were sitting in a repair shop. The truck apparently lost the use of its fuel pump. They ended up getting a rental car and proceeding to their hotel, and everything seemed to be going somewhat according to plan. Then today, they found out that the truck won't be fixed before Friday, so of course they attempted to extend their reservations for an extra night...and that's when they learned that the hotel was all full for the weekend. He seemed in pretty good spirits when I talked to him, but that may have something to do with the fact that his boss treated him and their other traveling companion to margaritas and Longhorn steak for dinner. Stinker.

This means that my official longest stay at home alone since we moved in together will be extended even further. I suppose it's really quite fitting, seeing how many times I've skipped happily off into the sunset tra-la, tra-lee and left my hapless spouse alone for days at a time. Not that I don't miss him when I'm the one who's away. I do...I just don't usually get lonely while I'm away. These past couple of days, it's just been me and the feline...and he's not exactly a party animal this week, being flea bitten (but recently flea-treated, so fear not) and possibly afflicted with a mild infection that makes one eye sort of watery and boogery. Poor thing. He's going to the vet Friday if he doesn't look more respectable.

Meanwhile, I have pretty big news of my own (as if anyone reads this. Ha!): After all my whining and pity-party-throwing, I managed to score a ticket on that bus after all. I won't say where I work now, because that's just irresponsible...but I can say that it doesn't involve retail, it does involve a pretty respectable salary, and it will allow me to indulge in two of my favorite things--being a science geek and teaching kids in a not-a-traditional-classroom type of setting. It's especially sweet because I've been teaching workshops on an extraordinarily part-time basis at this unnamed place for going on 6 years now, and I truly love the program and the work I've been able to do there.

I started my new job yesterday, and I can say that my brain is very, very full. I know that it won't be perfect, and I'm sure there will be days when I'm frustrated or tired of it, but I think it has the potential to kick ass in a pretty serious way. So, to life...cheers. I will try to make the most of this one.


One of my favorite Christmas scenes EVER:
(which I actually photographed in my own town)




Farking adorable!

Hippo and tortoise, one year later




Reading: Life, the Universe, and Everything, Douglas Adams
              The Art of Discworld, Terry Pratchett & Paul Kidby
              Tree: A New Vision of the American Forest, James Balog

Playing: The Legend of Johnny Cash.

You ain't got no alibi...2005.10.01

This is part two of my ugly car blogging fascination.

The 2005 Mustang



Let's start with a car that's not really that ugly, just to prove I'm not totally mean. The first few times I saw the 2005 Mustangs, I was appalled. I just could not see the appeal of melding new-Mustang-style curvy fenders with old-Mustang-style front and back ends. But the more I saw them, the more I liked them.

Now I can appreciate that they are pretty attractive--though nowhere near as sexy as the old school Mustangs...that kind of goes without saying. Still, for some reason when I look at one face-on, it makes me think of a puppy dog. Go figure.


The Dodge Magnum



This is the car that inspired my fascination with writing some blog entries about ugly cars. K.W. rented one for a trip, and the car ended up being dubbed "The Big American Penis." Previously, I had argued that only James Bond could pull off driving this car. Anyone else would just look ridiculous. This is a truly hideous car. It's so bulbous...like a station wagon without the quirky charm...like a sedan in need of rhinoplasty...like a...well, like a Big American Penis. There's really no other way to describe it.

Postscript: Laura Danger says, "The Dodge Magnum...giving soccer dads their balls back."


The Scion xB





This is the only vehicle on the planet that makes the Honda Element look a little less heinous. I appreciate the ecological significance of the Scion. I dream of one day owning a hybrid, but in my dreams hybrid cars look more like normal cars. They certainly don't look like the Element's homelier sister. There are 3 models of Scion, and I'll admit I chose the ugliest one to poke fun at, but then again, that's kind of the point.


Here's the Toyota Prius:



This is not an overly attractive car, either, but it's a lot better than the previous example. If you squint a little, you can almost imagine that the Prius is a space-age Volkswagen Beetle. Almost.

You so ugly...

A while back, I was inspired by a conversation with my friend K.W. to write a blog entry about ugly cars. I posted it on my first blog, which was set up on the webspace my husband and I have through our internet provider. In an attempt to go worldwide (because I lie to myself and say that someone other than three of my friends will read this), I switched to this blog. Alas, I never bothered to repost the old content. I think, however, that I finally have the patience to attempt it. Here goes:

The H2

The original civilian Hummer was not that bad. Sure, it was a road-hogging, gas-guzzling, small-penis-indicating monster of an SUV, but it had a special something. It was road-hogging and gas-guzzling and over-compensating in a way that reminded one of M*A*S*H and muscular action hero types. It had a certain virility to it, if you will. The Hummer was a bit ugly, but it was also a bit (a tiny bit) sexy:



Now let's consider the H2:



Same wide wheelbase. Similar body style from the dashboard back. The front? Oh, dear. The nose and grille look way too small. It reminds me of something you might see in a bad 80s sci-fi flick, where they were trying to make something look high-tech and futuristic, but instead made it embarrassingly bad. This homely face might be forgivable in a less gas-guzzling, less-over-compensating vehicle, but in an "I Am Manly" vehicle, it's just sad.

The Dodge Durango

How did something so wonderfully hot, the Dodge Ram, the epitome of sexy fullsized pickups...



...spawn something as ungainly-looking as the Dodge Durango? How does that wonderful silver grille look so out of place on such a similar body?



Alas, I think this will always be one of life's great mysteries.

Postscript: My friend Laura Danger says, "The only way the Dodge Durango could ever redeem itself would be if one ran over Paris Hilton, repeatedly."

The Honda Element



Criminy, what an ugly vehicle. The photos really don't do it justice. I've seen a few of them around town, and trust me...they're much less attractive in person. I find this picture especially amusing, because it's clear they want you to think this vehicle can go off-road. Have you seen the clearance on one of these bastards? Look at this!



It would get stuck trying to drive over a speedbump, let alone any kind of respectable obstacle. My mom's minivan had more clearance than this! You'd get about 50 feet into the forest, get hung up on an acorn, and have to call AAA to come tow you back to the highway.

You're not paranoid if they really are out to get you

Or, I might've been right about that whole American dream thing:

College debts and broken dreams

Sometimes, I'd rather be wrong...

Reading: Killing Bono, by Neil McCormick

Playing: Plans--Death Cab for Cutie, All That You Can't Leave Behind, U2

I love this article:

The Straight Dude's Guide to 'Brokeback'

'Brokeback,' of course, being Brokeback Mountain, the upcoming movie in which Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal fall in love with each other. I'm definitely going to see this one, even if I can't find anyone to be my date. It's supposed to be a fantastic film (review here). My only concern is making sure my dad does not see it. He will be quite traumatized if he goes merrily into the theater expecting horses and lovely mountain vistas and then experiences an altogether different kind of scenery.