Wednesday, November 30, 2005
parental notification.....
ok, so i have mixed feelibgs about this subject.....both personally and professionally.......should the parents of a minor female (under 18 years of age) be notified 48 hours prior to the cessation of a pregnancy.......hmmmm.....were they required to be notified 48 hours prior to the conception?.....nope.......and shoud the under18 female carry the pregnancy to term, would her parents be notified that she delivered......nope.......not if she didn;'t live with them.......and so the answer.....according to the mm....is nope to parental notification.....it is up to the pregnant female to tell whomever she pleases./.....everybody or nobody.......and consider this sidebar...the law in question doesn't require paternal notification..............shouldn't the father have a bigger stake than the girl's parents.....if we are being picky..............because i believe in notification of nobody.......a woman's body is her own.....period...........when i returned from the 1st inservice, the nurse in the next office was in the process of telling a young firl that she is pregnant.....and there were loud wailings and moanings.....and i was close to tears...............this was not someone who needed the added pressure of parental notification.......
retirement.....
ok, so yesterday the squirrel-like state inspector told us that she would be retiring before the ned of next year.....'i'll be 50 and my husband wants me home'.......i could have dropped my jaw 5 foot to the ground......to think that this woman is my age..........does state work age a person thusly?...........and though my blog emotes a certain level of meannness.......y'all don't know mean till you have seen state inspector mean.........i suppose that i lost sleep last night fretting over the inspection as much as i worried over the inservices today.......and for what....?......it is not like they can take my first born as payment for my failures.......can they?.......though with the danville advocate headline stories this evening about a dentist with medicare fraud and a pediatrician under arrest for misdeanor sexual assault......one does worry about what one says and does.......and so i now take a bit longer to record in the chart everything that was said/taught/alluded to.......just to be sure...so that eventually i can retire.......
over-prepared
ok, so.......i spent way too much time and effort preparing for the 2 inservices i gave at the local hospital today.....on diabetes ketoacidosis......or rather.....i lost too much sleep over the questions that might be asked.......like how much regular insulin per kg of body weight in the iv based on fingerstick blood glucose......oy.....i could have slept an extra hour and done just fine......maybe it was the nurse thing.....dietitians tend to feel less than nurses......despite the fact that most nurses have only 2 year degrees and most dietitians are masters prepared......and so i travel to lexington for the next two days to study chronic kidney disease.......for the record, dietary management of kidney disease is the single most complicated juggling act there is.....protein, sodium, potassium,......the only good news about the training is that i will have 2 days to do shopping in lexington with mileage paid.......and so....what shopping do i do..... i will be downtown...near cdcentral.......with no clue as to what to buy........and near major bookstores.....such decisions.....but i digress from the professional rant......it is good that i am in a position to offer knowledge and experience........so close to home............
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
writer in residence?
ok, so this is an open question to my centre friends.....who is the writer in residence that is scheduled to do a convo in january?.....her book is out book club book, and i cannot remember it name or her name......other than the word muse may be part of it......and i need to buy ti soon to get it read ....thanks a million.......
movies, movies and more movies.....
ok, so there are all the sudden a plethora of films that i want to experience on the big screen.......p&p, now that critics have acknowledged that no film could surpass the book........and memoirs of a geisha......which was a fascinating read, but i am confident that the elegance of japanese culture will be breathtaking to behold on screen......and brokeback mountain.......which i find intriguing because of the storyline....and the adaptation of a short story......for the record.....i find the crafting of the short story to be a separate art form.....to pull off a plot in as few pages as possible......more pleasurable to read and savor in one sitting.......and then there is the chronicles of narnia......childhood favorites to many......a series that i have yet to embrace.......must be an aquired taste.....the reviewers seemed to favor the book over the movie despite a valient effort.......and will i make it to any or all of these films.....?that is the essential question here......for i might just prefer to see hp again locally before i drive out of town to see any of the above films........reflecting, i contend that this film was better than the book.........fewer subplots and head-on thrills.......
devil's music
ok, so this piece is from salon.com........i find the topic so fascinating, because had the tables been turned....had the shooter been a vehement fan of indie rock or hiphop.....the christian right would have gone ballistic.......as it is...they are curiously silent...or scared to death........
The devil's music
Does it matter that David Ludwig -- the 18-year-old alleged killer of his 14-year-old girlfriend's parents -- was a huge fan of hardcore Christian rock?
By Daniel Radosh
Nov. 24, 2005 | On the night of Oct. 6, David Ludwig, 18, and his 14-year-old girlfriend, Kara Beth Borden, went to church. There was no sermon, though -- at least not a traditional one. David and Kara were at the Lancaster Bible Church in Manheim, Penn., for a Christian rock concert. As the punishingly loud guitars of Audio Adrenaline and Pillar strained the limits of the church sound system, the kids screamed and pumped their fists and banged their heads. "Pillar and Audio A rock my face off!" David wrote on his blog the next day. Kara spent almost all the money in her pocket on a Pillar sweatshirt. She was wearing it the morning of Nov. 13 when, police say, David shot and killed her parents and fled with her at his side.
If your only association with contemporary Christian music (CCM) is Amy Grant or Stryper, you might be surprised at how popular, varied and artistically mature the genre has become in the last 15 years. By some estimates, Christian music sales topped $720 million last year, making it a bigger niche than jazz and classical combined. For every genre of mainstream music there is a Christian parallel: rock, punk, reggae, folk, dance pop, gangsta rap. Pillar, named for the biblical description of God's household as "the pillar and foundation of truth," plays rap-core, a furiously propulsive mash-up of hard rock and rap. Musically, they are as creditable as many of their top-40 counterparts. Their lyrics testify to their faith in Jesus, a faith that David and Kara publicly share.
It should go without saying that Pillar isn't even remotely responsible for David Ludwig's actions, any more than Marilyn Manson was responsible for Columbine. As CCM reaches an ever larger audience, the likelihood that some people in that audience will be deeply troubled increases proportionally. The CCM industry is already painfully aware that its fans are often no more virtuous than any other teenagers. A 2004 survey by the Barna Group found that "teen buyers of Christian music were just as likely as other teens to engage in music piracy." Nearly 80 percent of young people who purchase Christian music also download it illegally. Christian music is not just for goody-goodies anymore.
But Christian rock doesn't just happen to find troubled kids in its audience, it reaches out to them. At a Christian music festival in Neodesha, Kan., two months ago, I watched as the singer of Seventh Day Slumber called on the people there to look into the darkest depths of their souls, that they may seek forgiveness. "If you've ever thought about suicide, put your hand in the air," he said, and they did, tears streaming down their faces. "If you've gone so far as to write a suicide note, put your hand in the air. If you've thought about killing yourself just this week, put your hand in the air." The dark undercurrents of secular thrash and emo music are not absent from the Christian versions, just channeled differently.
Pillar ended its Oct. 6 set with a song called "Fireproof." It must have struck a chord in David. He posted the lyrics on his blog:
I know where I stand and what'll happen if you try it
I am FIREPROOF
I know my heart and I just can't deny it
I am FIREPROOF
I tried to tell you but you wouldn't be quiet
I am FIREPROOF
I'll never bow down and you won't buy it
I am FIREPROOF
Like many edgier evangelical bands, Pillar specializes in battle anthems, composed on the premise that Christians are under constant spiritual attack. The emotional effects are remarkably similar to those of any secular odes to alienation and rebellion, and the vast majority of Christian teens who are drawn to such music, like the vast majority of their non-Christian peers, find comfort in the roiling cacophony that mirrors their inner lives; it helps them get through some difficult years in one piece. Any Christian artist can share legitimate and profound stories of young people who found genuine grace through their music. But there will always be a small fringe of disturbed people who are looking for an excuse to go over the edge, and who will find it in angry and tormented lyrics -- even if those lyrics are supposed to be about eternal salvation.
It is still possible to find fundamentalist Christians who hold that all rock 'n' roll is the devil's music, and that CCM is only a more deceptive variety. The mainstream Christian culture industry, however, is too sophisticated and too profitable to turn its back on any form of musical expression. But with the proliferation of Christian music -- and books, movies, stand-up comedy, and pro wrestling -- the line between faith and sin has become blurred, and pop proselytizers will have to ask themselves if they are really changing hearts or just winning fans. Evangelicals justify their embrace of 21st century pop culture forms by saying that the Bible calls them to be "in the world, but not of it." This week, sadly, they are both.
The devil's music
Does it matter that David Ludwig -- the 18-year-old alleged killer of his 14-year-old girlfriend's parents -- was a huge fan of hardcore Christian rock?
By Daniel Radosh
Nov. 24, 2005 | On the night of Oct. 6, David Ludwig, 18, and his 14-year-old girlfriend, Kara Beth Borden, went to church. There was no sermon, though -- at least not a traditional one. David and Kara were at the Lancaster Bible Church in Manheim, Penn., for a Christian rock concert. As the punishingly loud guitars of Audio Adrenaline and Pillar strained the limits of the church sound system, the kids screamed and pumped their fists and banged their heads. "Pillar and Audio A rock my face off!" David wrote on his blog the next day. Kara spent almost all the money in her pocket on a Pillar sweatshirt. She was wearing it the morning of Nov. 13 when, police say, David shot and killed her parents and fled with her at his side.
If your only association with contemporary Christian music (CCM) is Amy Grant or Stryper, you might be surprised at how popular, varied and artistically mature the genre has become in the last 15 years. By some estimates, Christian music sales topped $720 million last year, making it a bigger niche than jazz and classical combined. For every genre of mainstream music there is a Christian parallel: rock, punk, reggae, folk, dance pop, gangsta rap. Pillar, named for the biblical description of God's household as "the pillar and foundation of truth," plays rap-core, a furiously propulsive mash-up of hard rock and rap. Musically, they are as creditable as many of their top-40 counterparts. Their lyrics testify to their faith in Jesus, a faith that David and Kara publicly share.
It should go without saying that Pillar isn't even remotely responsible for David Ludwig's actions, any more than Marilyn Manson was responsible for Columbine. As CCM reaches an ever larger audience, the likelihood that some people in that audience will be deeply troubled increases proportionally. The CCM industry is already painfully aware that its fans are often no more virtuous than any other teenagers. A 2004 survey by the Barna Group found that "teen buyers of Christian music were just as likely as other teens to engage in music piracy." Nearly 80 percent of young people who purchase Christian music also download it illegally. Christian music is not just for goody-goodies anymore.
But Christian rock doesn't just happen to find troubled kids in its audience, it reaches out to them. At a Christian music festival in Neodesha, Kan., two months ago, I watched as the singer of Seventh Day Slumber called on the people there to look into the darkest depths of their souls, that they may seek forgiveness. "If you've ever thought about suicide, put your hand in the air," he said, and they did, tears streaming down their faces. "If you've gone so far as to write a suicide note, put your hand in the air. If you've thought about killing yourself just this week, put your hand in the air." The dark undercurrents of secular thrash and emo music are not absent from the Christian versions, just channeled differently.
Pillar ended its Oct. 6 set with a song called "Fireproof." It must have struck a chord in David. He posted the lyrics on his blog:
I know where I stand and what'll happen if you try it
I am FIREPROOF
I know my heart and I just can't deny it
I am FIREPROOF
I tried to tell you but you wouldn't be quiet
I am FIREPROOF
I'll never bow down and you won't buy it
I am FIREPROOF
Like many edgier evangelical bands, Pillar specializes in battle anthems, composed on the premise that Christians are under constant spiritual attack. The emotional effects are remarkably similar to those of any secular odes to alienation and rebellion, and the vast majority of Christian teens who are drawn to such music, like the vast majority of their non-Christian peers, find comfort in the roiling cacophony that mirrors their inner lives; it helps them get through some difficult years in one piece. Any Christian artist can share legitimate and profound stories of young people who found genuine grace through their music. But there will always be a small fringe of disturbed people who are looking for an excuse to go over the edge, and who will find it in angry and tormented lyrics -- even if those lyrics are supposed to be about eternal salvation.
It is still possible to find fundamentalist Christians who hold that all rock 'n' roll is the devil's music, and that CCM is only a more deceptive variety. The mainstream Christian culture industry, however, is too sophisticated and too profitable to turn its back on any form of musical expression. But with the proliferation of Christian music -- and books, movies, stand-up comedy, and pro wrestling -- the line between faith and sin has become blurred, and pop proselytizers will have to ask themselves if they are really changing hearts or just winning fans. Evangelicals justify their embrace of 21st century pop culture forms by saying that the Bible calls them to be "in the world, but not of it." This week, sadly, they are both.
Monday, November 28, 2005
christmas shopping.....
ok, so aside from the few items i bought back in october when my office had its annual outing...at maker's mark.....i have purchased no christmas gifts......and i anticipate difficulty in buying said gifts......mostly because neither my mother nor my children nor my spouse need anything....i have no needs, either......my 12-year old hasn't a clue that she already has more than 2 children could want.....as she thumbed through catalogs circling what she hopes that santa will bring.......she spent sunday morning circling desirables in the glossy ad flyers......including items that she already owns......which really worries me...that the consumerism we so value in this country has become so powerful that we can own so much as to forget just what we already have.......those who know me well are aware that i have purchased duplicates of at least 2 books........the book of ruth by jane hamilton....and a booker prize winner whose name escapes me other than it has the word lac in it......so embarrassing to have bought the same thing twice.......because it means that i undervalued the first purchase......as if it was just something to buy rather than a book to treasure......and therefore......i may go with gift cards for services and consumables rather than things....maybe donate a beehive to some faraway farmer in my mother's honor rather than burden her with more stuff that she can't keep up with.......and so on thanksgiving friday i refrained from shopping....and on thanksgiving monday i ordered nothing online........and maybe i can manage to make this holiday more about being with my beloveds than about presenting them with things they neither want nor need......
efficiency.......
ok, so recently a blogger that i hold in high esteem noted a concern that she took far less time to do task than was alloted....and there was some degree of guilt in charging up the time alotted versus the time taken....and i say........there should be no penalty for efficient use of time/motion/previousknowledge......i had an extremely productive day in terms of output....and this product production took up so little actual time it is laughable...........even with the 45 minutes of computer-generated madness.......i am sorry to say that what i did in 2 hours would have taken my co-workers all day..........if they had attempted it at all.......and therefore i feel no guilt whatsoever for spending the remainder of my alloted hours sending emails and looking at on-line gift possibilities.....
computer-generated madness.....
ok, so i have been working on a presentation that i will give twice on wednesday to a local hospital on diabetic ketoacidosis.....in powerpoint.....so far so good......but when i tried to download it to a cd.....i discovered that the laptop i use is too aged to do cd-rw......and so i tried to email the file to myself...to be opened on a newer pc.....only to discover that the file was much too big.........and then it occured to me to use winzip to shrink the file and email it......so far so good......and i was able to retrieve and unzip said file on the lab pc.......but when i tried to save as: to the cd drive.....a pop-up message told me that i had no access to that drive....and that i should inquire of my adminstrator.....who eventually made it down my way to tell me that he had no idea why i had no access to the d: drive......and he tried to use a program that i am certain was intended for mp3 files for the purposes of saving my powerpoint program to disk....which did not work......and after he finally made of copy of my file on his little thumb-drive....and sauntered upstairs to try to make a copy on his own (new)laptop.....i retried the save as thing again.......and after 45 minutes of frustration i finally suceeded......before my administrator, i must add......but that was 45 minutes out of my life that i really want back.......computer madness really sucks the life-forth out of my momentum.....and takes years off of my life......i am certain that those who read this blog regularly could have performed the task in moments....and been on to something else useful and enriching........i am in awe of your computer competence.....
Sunday, November 27, 2005
the 3rd wife.....
ok, so i was sadddened today to learn that a local metrosexual attorney was divorcing his 3rd wife....to take back up with his 1st wife, who is kin to the dows of dow chemical........and it wasn't as if i was especially enamored of wife #3...i liked wife #2 best......only because she gave a rousing eulogy to my friend anne when she died unexpectedly of an insulin reaction several years back.......but i digress.......from the fact that even in small towns there are those who play the marriage odds for all that they are worth.......literally...............
birthmothers.....
ok, so friends of ours, who adopted a child just after birth when they thought they couldn't have one of their own.......havejust discovered that their 21+ aged child has been in contact with her birthmother and wants her (adoptive) mother to drive her south to meet with her birth mother.......and she is conflicted....having not foreseen this reality...those of us who live day-to-day with the spector of the birth mother may have it easier than the adoptive parents who find out about birthparent contact on the sly.......and what could i say to her....that she has no option but to drive her south and accept that this child will want to live with the birth mother for the foreseeable future.......just because that is the fantasy....that somehow the (evil) adoptive parents have kept the (wholesome) birthmother from her child all of these years........and until the child finds out the truth on her own...the birth parents have to wait it out.......omg....i had to fight back tears as she told me of this upcoming event.......adoption is not for the faint of heart...............
catching up on housekeeping....
ok, so i have done more housework in the past 48 hours than i usually do in a week...or two.....and it wasn't even in my own home......i took advantage of my mother's trip to cleveland to get her caught up....on laundry, dishes, vacumning.....and sorting through the reams of junkmail she gets......every cause and organization except maybe the nigerian spammers have her name on their solicitation roles......and then there is the recycling......oy!.......once the cans and bottles and boxes and empty pill bottles are out of the way...what a difference....we took the time to organize her videos and cd's.......and root out all but the most recent catalogs........it all adds up.....it all makes me fearful......that she has such little interest in picking up after herself....is it alzheimer's...or depression.....or adult adhd....can pills help someone to deal with clutter...how will i know for certain that she can no longer live alone........i must admit that some of the mayhem is charitable...she makes receiving blankets and hats for newborns who have nothing to wear home from the hospital, and cloth covers for catheter bags for the v.a.......and she makes bandages for haiti...though i content that even the haitians would rather have whole cloth remnants than strips rolled up and fastened........when my eldest left for his own place yesterday he asked what my current worry was.....'i know you always have something you are worrying about, mom...what is it this time?.....'i had no pat answer at the time, but i do now.....i worry that my mom is already incapable of living well alone, and that i am in denial of this reality......maybe when my brother comes home for christmas he can look at the situation with fresh eyes.......and so it is 3:45 on the sunday afternoon of a 4 day weekend....and i am going upstairs to read...not my bookclub books, nope.....i have picked up hp book 5 order of the phoenix...to remind myself just what happened after goblet of fire ended......and i find it just as compelling a read this time around as it was the first time i read it......one could call it escapist reading........
Saturday, November 26, 2005
alias to end......
ok, so......the mm's favorite television show will end it's five year run in may......that is usually how the story goes.....i get attached to a program.....and it gets cancelled.......let's see....there was ally mcbeal, and well.....alias.....yeah,yeah,yeah......2 shows getting cancelled is hardly a streak.......but i watch very little television and when i do make an effort to see every episode(read this as plan my life around) of a show that means something.....at least the show will continue til may, to give the script writers time to wrap up the story lines.......maybe we will get to see rimbaldi at the end of it all......and maybe sydney's family can get reunited, especially now that there will be a grandbaby to be their center of affection.......and maybe vaughn isn't really dead after all.......well, i don't see that happening......but one never knows.....i cannot imagine the show ending with sydney alone......
me and my shadow(s)
ok, so i have previously blogged about my aging dog, oscar.....not my dog but rather my spouse's dog.....i should say our dog, i suppose...in that all of us have our own special relationship with this pet......but i digress.......i have previously noted that the dog likes to be where ever people are....and so when i blog at the computer in it's hallway niche.....the dog is often underfoot....literally.....and the cat is often behind me in the highbacked office chair.....and now that we have my mother's dog staying with us for the holiday weekend.....she is jockeying for position as well........one would think i had treats in my pockets to account for the proximity of three animals to one human blogger...........and when i get up to replenish the coffee mug......they tend to move along with me....like a parade.....this scenario is not an every-time affair.......but it has happened enough to warrant a permanent record of the occassions.......this will be my last blog about the cute antics of one's pets...at least for a respectable period of time.....as it sounds so grannyish to have nothing better to talk about.........
Friday, November 25, 2005
character in a novel?......
ok, so the mm has taken the bait......just which/what//character in a novel is the mm of the l.o.?....elizabeth bennett/......juliet?. scarlett?........katherine?..blanche?..surely not a red role in a red state? ..nothing short of a major role for the mm of the l.o.
Thursday, November 24, 2005
hp
ok, so our company came, we had a great time......and then they drove off toward tennessee....and after we cleaned up....it occurred to us all that we had just enough to time to make it to.....the 7:50 pm showing of harry potter and the goblet of fire.......wow.....words are not enough.....the film was that good.....when compared to the first three films, when compared to the book.....of course..much more humor than in previous offerings.....and some overthetop touches....like snapes potions storage room.....the conversation between snapes and harry could have simply taken place in any-old hallway...but the filmmaker went to great lengths to flesh-out the polyjuice potion angle with an inside view of apothocary-like vials and containers stacked to the ceiling.....and then there was the scene in the library stacks that gave new meaning to the term stacks..........we dissected it a bit on the way home......the way that the polyjuice potion angle was not developed enough for folks that didn't read the book..granted, how many people would go to see movie 4 without having seen films 1-3, or read books 1-6?.......and then there was the failure to finish off the rita skeeter story line.....the closure in that regard in print was marvelous and i am saddened that it didn't make the cut in the film......but aside from those taudry comments...the film was richer and fuller in the particulars....of private school life, of friendship, of factions, of young love......and the business of it being dark and deemed too intense for young viewers......hmmm.....i am not sure where that comes into play.....i believe that in the day i was more affected by the death of bambi's mother.......yep, somebody dies in this film......and we knew he was going to die because we read the book...several times..... and he always dies at the end of each reading.....so the death was upsetting in the way that all deaths should be..... horrific.....but not unexpected......and the film set the stage well for movie #5......i was impressed with that forethought.....the earlier films never looked ahead despite the reality of the subsequent installments already in print.....and so.....now that i am home and warmed up.....the temperature has dropped considerably.......all i can think about is how quickly the dvd can be released ......next summer?....we may have to see it again...maybe when child #2 returns home.......an aside......we had the pleasure of a david sighting...he and his family showed up for the same showing.......i trust that he enjoyed the film....and i am eager to read his thoughts on the subject.............he will probably remember the name of the group that performed at the yule ball.....i couldn't recall to save my soul.....despite having read the press.......
sitting pretty.....
ok, so all that needs done for a 1:00 pm feast is to peel the potatoes....everything else just came together pretty quickly last night, with enough energy left over to tidy up......and exercycle 10 miles.....in fact, i have already walked 2 on the treadmill, and will likely do a few more after my omelet......there is a bit of havarti dill left over.....and some ham....uhmmmmmmmmsounds like a really tasty reward for exercise....in case i don't get back to this console before y'all sit down for feasts of your own...have a pleasant and thankful holiday......and remember to say all of those things to family and friends that you need to say.......the things you will wish you had said if you never got to see them again......just a thought........
Wednesday, November 23, 2005
crunch time.....
ok, so i have procrastinated long enough over this holiday feast....and as soon as i can get myself up out of this chair i am going to make the stuffing, the sweet potatoes, the cranberry relish and the spinach artichoke casserole.....i swear i will......so that i do not have to make these things tomorrow morning, when i will be picking up a bit before company comes.....and setting the table....you know the drill.....i had planned on doing these pre-prep tasks monday...then tuesday......and now i am quickly running out of pre-prep options......i couldn't possibly be doing any meaningful food prep when my sisterinlaw drives up....i have a reputation to uphold.....such as it is.....as i stillsit here i have no clue how i managed to cook for so many people for so many years.....when cooking for 10 seems to be a......burden is not the correct word....challenge?....that isn't quite what i am looking for, either.....and i would just as soon read rather than cook at this very moment....i have picked up a bookclub book that i put down a while back......wallace stegner's crossing to safety.......i think i like it better this go-around.....but it is not the next selection......there is a book for january that coincides with centre's writer in residence....whose name escapes me and whose book i cannot look up without author's name.....something about muses.......hmmm......as i was leaving the bike shop with cayle, a person who thinks my middle child hung the moon came in with her eldest who is at centre....and julie assured me that stephan probably wants to chill....and not to worry about him this weekend........she commented that she would prefer a weekend to herself now and again.....wise words......now.....if i could just get up out of this chair.....
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
digital catharsis
ok, so i have emailed numerous digital photos stored on my hard drive to everyone/anyone that could possibly want copies...just to be on the safe side......there is a measure of doubt in my mind about precious memories stored on something so corruptable as a hard drive...and so i have sent them out into cyberspace unbidden.......risky business.....when the recipients ask themselves why......no reason at all....just because............
milestone
ok, so i was about to disclose about how i have moped around today...feeling sorry for myself at the prospect of having a partially empty thanksgiving table for the 1st time......but how can i be glum when this, gentle readers, is blog entry number 3000......therefore, i will make myself view the remaining hours of this day as a glass as half-full rather than half-empty....i do have so much to be thankful for......and having a son away at college who cannot come home for a long weekend is not going to get me any sympathy around my workplace....not when coworkers have children who won't be coming home because they are divorcing/injail/incommunicado/ondrugs/justplainmean.......kinda puts it all in perspective........
Monday, November 21, 2005
Sunday, November 20, 2005
seen on a shirt.....
ok, so i rarely remember things i mean to look up...but the obscurity of this passage invited just that.......hab3:19.......just the thing for a sunday school teacher.....must be habakkuk.....and it reads......the sovereign lord is my strength, he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights......nice sentiment for a 50 mile race over field and fountain, moor and mountain.....
a weekend away.....
ok, so the mm has learned many things during this 3 day weekend away.....some profound and some random....lets start with the profound......i have absolutely no need to run/walk/crawl 50 miles......no intrinsic reason/nothing to prove to anybody else......i haven't ruled out another marathon.....after witnessing the 50 in progress i could see myself doing a more doable distance...maybe in a better time next goaround.......while there is still daylight......understand that these events start in the neardarkness and end for most in complete blackness...except for the halogen lights at the finish line...thankfully all participants are issued a reflective vest at a certain hour.....my spouse finished in slightly over 11 hours.....he swears he will never do it again...but then i said that after my marathon, now didn't i?.......the temperature was cold but thankfully not raining nor windy.....and so many others jockeying to be supportive of their runners.....i walked at least 6 miles by the days end by the time i parked my car in the next available portion of a cow pasture and walked back to the course...at 5 separate spots along the course...that included the appalachian trail and the towpath on the c&o canal.......and then back to the car.......the scenery was special......historically so....antidium battlefield, harper's ferry, numerous stone houses and barns in the western maryland style......pastures with stone fences.....or split rail fences.......lots of topsy-turvy backroads....it was a lovely day for a driving adventure.....finding these course support spots using the downloaded directions......a bit problematic once the darkness fell...part of the day was spent with my brother-in-law.....who brought along many of the same items that i had brought.....a thermos of hot water, a packets of powdered cider, hot chocolate, soup.....oatmeal....as well as gels, potions, bars, etc......and yet another digital camera to record the moment(s)......he is most pleasant company.......i also had pleasing moments with strangers in the same boat as i......i want it noted on my permanent record that i didn't approach any of these people to chat......kathy from new jersey spoke to me first as we walked back to our cars after the mass start on the main street of boonsboro, md...a charming a little town........her spouse was doing this for the first time, also.......i had minor interactions with a gaggle of folks who walked off and left all of their leavings.....empty water bottles, pop cans, etc....i offered to pick up their stuff as they walked away from it.....well, that maybe doesn't count as an interaction.....but telling them loudly that i would be happy to pick up their trash made me feel holierthanthou.......and then there was the crowd of supporters who had the complete hp commercial-thing going...they had obviously photographed and downloaded a picture of their runner......and made full-size facial-fascimile/masks....mounted on large tongue depressors....and held up as he approached....it was very sweet.........and then there was the fellow who, when asked if he was supported his runner....said.....'if he gets here and looks for something to eat or drink then he will be f..cked, now won't he?.......'.....omg......2 compelling books on cd on the way up and way back....robert parker's widow's walk on the way up.....and inspector morse on the way back......that book was too long to completely finish on the way home....and i am listening to the end as we....type.........still not sure who done-it.......still a few chapters to go......the routes we traveled were littered with dead deer.....must rutting season for so many carcasses to be on so many lengths of roadway.....and speaking of roadways....so many tributes to the dead at the sides of roads.....crosses, wreathes, and the like....from tragic wrecks over the years......or more recently...who can tell......as for me....i am so very very happy to be home...at my own little terminal.....recapping the events so as not to be forgotten........
Thursday, November 17, 2005
michigan
ok, so i will miss the televised coverage of osu-v-michigan while we are gone......omg.....on the other hand...osu tends to win when i do not watch.........
and speaking of pop culture....
ok, so today was my othercountyday.....and there were folks in the front office disputing the meaning of the tv show o.c.......one person thought it meant overthecounter....but without the t.....and the environmentalist disagreed......and i had to chime in...i could not help myself....that o.c. meant orange county...........and they looked at me like i had 2 heads............
harry potter.....
ok, so....the newest harry potter film...goblet of fire opens on many screens tonight at midnight.......and at that hour i will be asleep and not thinking about hp.......not that i don't care.......not at all...i care deeply....to watch the film during my usual wakeful hours.....after 6:30 am and before 10:00 pm......i honestly cannot wait to see how this new director treats the dragons and the mermaids and the serpent/voldemort.....and cho chang......and rita s. the reporter who.....well....musn't tell plot secrets......i do spend a few moments a day breathing slowly as a way to get through another day without volume 7 of this series.......i silently will j.k.rowling to get out of her multi-count cotton-sheeted bed and write just a few more lines of dialogue....so that i can put this angst behind me......must know what happens to dumbledore/harry/hermione/ron/voldemort....et al.......as i drove to work this morning npr ran an excerpt of a pre-national book award function that honored norman mailor.....and in his speech he basically trounced popular fiction as tripe.....that will not stand the test of time.......codswollop...i say......hp may be pop culture.....but when a grown woman looks forward to the next installment of a children's book.....from a series that averages 800+ pages per book.....that is no longer in the range of pop fiction....sorry, norman...........you may have a point about serious fiction....but hp is serious fiction....and i feel sorry for you if you have felt above it to this point..........go ahead....start in with book 1........
this weekend.....
ok, so this weekend is finally upon us.....the jkf 50 miler out of hagerstown, md that my spouse will complete on saturday....i am his roadcrew......which mostly means that i collect any clothing he discards along the course, provide him with sustenance beyond that which the race folks provide.....and i help him to the car when it is over and i drive us both back home.....he has trained mighty hard for this 50th birthday quest......and i trust that he will come in under his personal goal of 10 hours.......his oldest brother is driving in from the d.c. area to help as well.....i am looking forward to his company as well.....we always have lots to talk about...nick has many interests....roses. haiku, fishing, science.......to date he is the only sibling to have a ph.d......but i digress...keep my spouse in your positive thoughts this saturday..........
speaking of allergies.....
ok, so speaking of allergies.....i have no idea just what makes my histimines react so vehemently these days.....and on general principle i will not find out......it has become tradition that i take my mother shopping on veteran's day.....and she tells me that i need to get allergy testing and then shots....and i tell her that i have no intention of doing so......stability/consistency in relationships is healthy, no?
good drugs
ok, so the mm has found the best overthecounter allergy medicine....alavert-d......omg....i cough so little now and feel like a million bucks.....just thought you'd like to know......speaking of secretiveness.......
quizzes
ok, so the mm likes to(secretly) do on-line quizzes....and secretive was the descriptive used to categorize my latest result........secretive may not seem to fit a frequent blogger, but there are many things i choose to exclude from any blogs and most conversations with my few and highly select group of friends.......and obscure does fit when it comes to those things that i find highly entertaining and engrossing........
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
mcsweeney's
ok, so on wednesdays i have a few hours to myself after work......and today i indulged in mcsweeneys.net..........this piece was marvelously witty...
HIDING THE BALL
IN PRESIDENTIAL INTERVIEWS:
HOW THE LIBERAL MEDIA
CAN FINALLY ASK
THE QUESTIONS
THEY'RE DYING
TO ASK.
BY JASON KELLETT
- - - -
Mr. President, we have all heard the reports that you are extremely health-conscious—exercising daily, eating right, and making sure you get to bed at a decent hour. But with all the stress that comes along with being the leader of the free world, I imagine there must be days when you find yourself hard-pressed to find time to run. And as for healthy sleep patterns, I know when I'm under a great deal of stress I sometimes lie in bed tossing and turning until the wee hours of the morning. I've tried Ambien, warm milk, sheep-counting. Nothing seems to help. So tell me, Mr. President, how do you sleep at night?
- - - -
On my tour of the White House, I noticed that the hall leading from the Oval Office to the press room is devoid of mirrors or reflective surfaces of any kind. Now, surely you sometimes want to make sure your tie is straight or your hair is fixed before a press conference. How do you even look at yourself in the mirror?
- - - -
In my journalistic pursuits, I have traveled the nation, interviewing Americans in small towns to try to get a feel for the attitudes of the masses toward their elected officials. As you have undoubtedly heard, Mr. President, support for the war in Iraq is waning, not only in big cities but in the heartland as well. I'm reminded of an older gentleman I encountered in the tiny hamlet of Hale, Missouri—fairly solid Bush country in both 2000 and 2004. He tells me that many of his doubts and fears about the war could be assuaged if you would accept the Hale Town Council's standing invitation for you to come speak at the local high school, laying out the successes in Iraq not reported by the liberal media. So I ask you, President Bush, why don't you just go to Hale?
- - - -
A while back, a wire story on the contents of your personal iPod reported that you were listening to the Knack, Credence Clearwater Revival, and Van Morrison. Noticeably absent from the reported playlist at that time were any classic '70s soul-music artists such as Al Green or James Brown. Perhaps you have added some Marvin Gaye to the rotation since that story. I wonder if you'd like to update us on your current iPod selections. Have you no soul, Mr. President?
HIDING THE BALL
IN PRESIDENTIAL INTERVIEWS:
HOW THE LIBERAL MEDIA
CAN FINALLY ASK
THE QUESTIONS
THEY'RE DYING
TO ASK.
BY JASON KELLETT
- - - -
Mr. President, we have all heard the reports that you are extremely health-conscious—exercising daily, eating right, and making sure you get to bed at a decent hour. But with all the stress that comes along with being the leader of the free world, I imagine there must be days when you find yourself hard-pressed to find time to run. And as for healthy sleep patterns, I know when I'm under a great deal of stress I sometimes lie in bed tossing and turning until the wee hours of the morning. I've tried Ambien, warm milk, sheep-counting. Nothing seems to help. So tell me, Mr. President, how do you sleep at night?
- - - -
On my tour of the White House, I noticed that the hall leading from the Oval Office to the press room is devoid of mirrors or reflective surfaces of any kind. Now, surely you sometimes want to make sure your tie is straight or your hair is fixed before a press conference. How do you even look at yourself in the mirror?
- - - -
In my journalistic pursuits, I have traveled the nation, interviewing Americans in small towns to try to get a feel for the attitudes of the masses toward their elected officials. As you have undoubtedly heard, Mr. President, support for the war in Iraq is waning, not only in big cities but in the heartland as well. I'm reminded of an older gentleman I encountered in the tiny hamlet of Hale, Missouri—fairly solid Bush country in both 2000 and 2004. He tells me that many of his doubts and fears about the war could be assuaged if you would accept the Hale Town Council's standing invitation for you to come speak at the local high school, laying out the successes in Iraq not reported by the liberal media. So I ask you, President Bush, why don't you just go to Hale?
- - - -
A while back, a wire story on the contents of your personal iPod reported that you were listening to the Knack, Credence Clearwater Revival, and Van Morrison. Noticeably absent from the reported playlist at that time were any classic '70s soul-music artists such as Al Green or James Brown. Perhaps you have added some Marvin Gaye to the rotation since that story. I wonder if you'd like to update us on your current iPod selections. Have you no soul, Mr. President?
southpark
ok, so this gem about the next southpark episode was on defamer.com.......
Tonight’s South Park, a Tom Cruise-Scientology ridiculing episode called “Trapped in the Closet,” is proving itself to be somewhat of a PR logistics problem for Viacom:
According to a source who has read a draft of the script, it begins with Stan leaving a psychiatrist’s office only to be hailed as a savior by the leaders of a strange, Scientology-esque cult because of his off-the-chart results on an E-meter-like “personality test.” A group of Hollywood A-listers quickly gather outside Stan’s house, we’re told, with Tom Cruise somehow ending up stuck in a closet—leading a news crew stationed at the scene to report that Cruise’s fans fervently want the actor to “just come out.”
Comedy Central’s parent company, Viacom—which also owns Paramount—might not be too keen either about seeing its studio’s big-money Mission Impossible 3 star ridiculed yet again just when America had seemingly moved on from its obsession with his sexuality and Scientology ties.
Tonight’s South Park, a Tom Cruise-Scientology ridiculing episode called “Trapped in the Closet,” is proving itself to be somewhat of a PR logistics problem for Viacom:
According to a source who has read a draft of the script, it begins with Stan leaving a psychiatrist’s office only to be hailed as a savior by the leaders of a strange, Scientology-esque cult because of his off-the-chart results on an E-meter-like “personality test.” A group of Hollywood A-listers quickly gather outside Stan’s house, we’re told, with Tom Cruise somehow ending up stuck in a closet—leading a news crew stationed at the scene to report that Cruise’s fans fervently want the actor to “just come out.”
Comedy Central’s parent company, Viacom—which also owns Paramount—might not be too keen either about seeing its studio’s big-money Mission Impossible 3 star ridiculed yet again just when America had seemingly moved on from its obsession with his sexuality and Scientology ties.
lame....
ok, so we spent the evening watching the cma awards......as a diversion to watching the stormtracker map of ky and the scrolling counties with tornado watches........and while i am grateful that we dodged any damage in these parts......i consider the endeavor a waste of time when music is factored in.....most of the country acts sang lackluster songs in torn jeans or poorly designed outfits........i was most unimpressed.....granted...allyson krauss sang like an angel, but won nothing...while the hot acts won for no apparent reason.....lee ann womack's songs were catchy, and i really liked her green dress.....dolly parton sang with elton john just before the event was over......and both her number and her getup showed a disgraceful lack of judgement.....she no longer has the voice for songs that allow her to sing without backup.....she sounded tinny and flat.....elton wasn't in particularly good form, either......there were several such pairings....of rock/pop folks singing with country types...given the nyc locale......i did enjoy willie nelson singing paul simon's still crazy after all these years....mostly because the sentiment is so true.....and willie has made a name for himself with his distinctively offkey voice.......ah well.....my daughter is so disappointed that she has school today.....somehow she got it in her head that it would snow today.....tornado on tuesday and snow on wednesday........who knew?
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
home-schooling......
ok, so as my child is on the phone with courtney, all the while watching the stormtracker map.......they both seem so expecting of a tornado that i fear utter disappointment if none whips up soon........as for me i have spent numerous moments during my day pondering the tragic death in penn. of the parents of the 14-year-old girl whose boyfriend shot them both and then took off with the daughter...only to crash into a tree in indiana......and the part of the saga that has captured my attention is the detail about homeschooling....both are from devout families who opted for homeschooling.........omg....literally.......the gist of online articles that quote their blogs lead one to think that the term biblical relations had come into play.....and that the girl was upset that the boy might be arrested.....and so it goes.......2 dead parents....and 2 additional wrecked lives......and the notion that homeschooling one's children could keep them safe from the world?........certainly not from hormones.......or from firearms.......or a car and a cashcard to buy gas.......and was the boyfriend crazed, or the girlfriend in on it?.....or does it matter?.......it is only illusion that parents can shield their children.......even when parents have the best intentions or the holiest of friends/neighbors.......as the teacher said in ecclesiastes.....there is nothing new under the sun..........all we can do is our best as parents given our circumstances.......but after the cord is cut it appears that our level of control is cursory at best............
the end is near?
ok, so today there are afternoon storm warnings, complete with an announced chance of tornados.......and my workmates have spent the morning obsessing on exactly where we are to meet in case the siren goes off: we have a weather radio in the front office that goes off when a weather alert is directed toward this zip code.....and everyone with a tornado-while-at-work story to tell has shared it.....and so i figured i best go ahead and blog over lunch to catch up with all of the blogthoughts that have gone unblogged.....got it?.....last night i finished the book map of the world by jane hamilton...when i get over the plot line i may reread the work..just to be sure exactly what the title means......the reference came up early on, before everything in the main character's life goes to hell in a handbasket.....and it meant nothing definitive in that moment.....and still doesn't after i reached the marginally uplifting end....like so many books i have read of late.....i am more enamored of the prose than the plot line......the circumstances relevant to the plot could happen to any of us at any time.....and the scenario in this case.....a beleagured working mother with a distracted spouse......rang too true for my comfort level......in fact when alice...the mm in question, screamed at her kids that it was time to go to the (goddamned) store or slapped the client or laid herself down in the yard to cry or brushed by the overly inquisitive gawkers at the funeral.....i could see myself saying/doing the same thing if pushed in the way she was pushed by those around her.....who inevitably saw her as mean rather than complex and uncertain and anxious and more than a little depressed.......and so the question is.....is it possible (for me) to read a book without internalizing every detail.......or is that the point to a good book....and therefore books that make no connection aren't worth finishing?......that would explain my growing pile of unfinished books......and what about books that i reread.....numerous times.......am i looking for prose that has proven to raise my spirits, make the connection, revitalize that which i have already internalized.......like austen's novels...clearly books that i find pleasure and a little something new in each reread......i don't think that i particularly see myself as any one character in any of her novels, but it is so comforting to come back to these strong women when the latest modern novel has messed with my head......ah well.....i shall ponder these points, especially if i spend part of my work day crouched in the lab waiting for the storm to pass......
Monday, November 14, 2005
old bones,old bones....
ok, so i perfectly understand that the above chant....and the dance movements that go along with them has been borrowed without permission from a beloved family member......but they are so descriptive of how i feel at this very moment....i am willing to take that change....for the record....i threw in the hand/arm gestures just because it seemed essential to do so.........
on walking away....
ok, so this morning a co-worker disclosed that her daughter was walking away from a basketball scholarship before the season and would be transferring to uk next semester....not to play ball...but to be closer to home.....and to not be at a school that she ended up not liking as much as she thought she did......and to get away from a roommate that she didn't like....and the list goes on....but this poor mamma blames herself for not making her child stick it out and make good on her commitments.....the daddy may also be blaming the mamma as well.....seems the coach called the daddy to find out what the deal was....and all the daddy could think to say was that the daughter missed her mamma.....and the mamma encouraged it.....omg.....i felt so bad for this woman......but what can one say at this point other than to urge her to support her child in a decision that has already been make.......there is some merit in walking away and cutting one's losses straight away rather than dragging out the inevitable.....another co-worker's youngest child is on the 3rd college and appears to be on track to graduate now that the fit has been found.......
Sunday, November 13, 2005
a weekend almost gone.....
ok, so it is dark:thirty on sunday night....which means it is time for the endoftheweekend lamentations........that begin and end with all that one had hoped to accomplish.....separated in the middle by the short list of what was started/finished......this weekend started on friday......or at least emotionally so...when my mom and i drove off toward lexington with vague plans of finding the new goodwill on new circle road...new is relative....the checkout clerk recalled opening up in june.......for those who live in the greater lex. area.....it is huge and at the intersection of north limestone and new circle.......but mostly we did what we always do when we have a friday to go shopping.....we went to tuesday morning.....whereupon my mother bought us a santa claus the size of a toddler riding a tricycle......it is outrageous and overthetop.....as santa's go......and then we went to red lobster......and then to the camp dick national cemetery to see my dad.......and about the time i was home and putting things away......andrew showed up...to spend the weekend.......a child home for more than a few hours is more precious than gold to a mamma facing an emptying nest.....and though he spent most of his time writing ......just knowing he was home was satisfying....i read the pilot's wife by anita shreve...i liked it better than the last time they met..the plot was more transparent, but the plot was much more believable.....i felt her horror even when i saw the horror coming......if that makes sense........the rain and the wind successfully brought down the remaining leaves......and so after he left the rest of us raked....it ironic that my mother's yard, which has only one large tree.......and the natural depository for leaves from other yards....i suppose one could map wind patterns and the locations of neighborhood trees and explain it all mathematically.....when one rakes one has the time for such thoughts......the leaves were wet.....or we would have used grandma's electric leaf blower......which brings us to sunday evening......i did take a few minutes after lunch to start jane hamilton's the map of the world which has horrors of its own.....i find it a pleasant, earthy read......one can almost smell the cow manure and hear the crickets on the farm in question......and the main character, alice....she and i have much in common...when one gets down to essentials.........and there is an essence to this woman that i have to admire.......maybe i can pick it back up after dinner and cleaning up....though with the yard work i may just fall asleep into my food....i am faceplant tired at this point......
potato pancakes
ok, so andrew is home for the weekend....and thus i got up yesterday and made one of the family favorites as part of his breakfast.....white and sweet potato latkes.......the original rendering of potato pancakes was with the white potato......those who celebrate certain jewish holidays serve latkes as part of the feast......i started making them after offering a kids around-the-world cooking class way back when...sometimes with onion and sometimes without...and so loved the variation from frenchfry crisp that i take the time to make them whenever i have time to indulge myself and certainly when there is an appreciative audience.......the addition of sweet potato and has taken hold in the past year or so.....and far exceeds the original version in flavor and semblance of wholesomeness......with the beta carotene even my spouse feels compelled to eat this fried delectable......add a dollop of sour cream and snipped chives if i am really in a good mood or it is not raining (the chives require a trip across wet grass...)this entire explanation leads up to a product i read about in the nytimes this morning...in a big piece on holiday treats that may bepurchased online.....RUTHIE & GUSSIE'S means no more graters, and thus no more scraped fingers, for those who want traditional batter for potato pancakes (latkes to those who want them for Hanukkah). For thinner pancakes, add water to the batter. They fry up golden brown with just the right amount of onion. A 28-ounce container - a remarkable bargain - is $5.49; ruthieandgussies.com, (877) 452-8537. Dec. 21.......
wow!!!the thumb on my right hand is missing a bit of flesh at ther knuckle as we speak.......latkes are not without the potential for great pain......
wow!!!the thumb on my right hand is missing a bit of flesh at ther knuckle as we speak.......latkes are not without the potential for great pain......
Saturday, November 12, 2005
poetry for the masses
ok, so this piece was from the nytimes...In late 2002, the radio host Garrison Keillor committed an act of inadvertent but undeniable depravity: he published a poetry anthology for average readers that sold pretty well. Anthologies are often troubling for poets (who likes being left out?), and many serious writers are ambivalent about popular success, but the combination of these concerns - a popular anthology - can create a near perfect storm of psychic distress.
In the case of Keillor's collection, modestly titled "Good Poems," the trouble came to a head in a rare double review in the April 2004 issue of Poetry magazine. The first review, by Dana Gioia, the poet who is chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, was a reasonable and amiable appraisal that said, in essence, "This book is surprisingly O.K." The second, by the poet August Kleinzahler, was a different story - or as they might say in Lake Wobegon, a whole 'nother pan of casserole. Kleinzahler began by suggesting Keillor be locked in a Quonset hut and tortured to persuade him never again to stray from "Lutheran bake sales" into the Realm of Art. After that, Kleinzahler got mean. He claimed that Keillor "makes no demands on his audiences, none whatsoever." He accused him of "appalling taste," of hosting an "execrable" show, of compiling a "rotten collection," and of having a weird speaking voice ("that treacly baritone, which occasionally releases into a high-pitched, breathless tremolo"). Not content simply to wallop Keillor, Kleinzahler then turned his megaphone on every target within soapbox range, accusing the M.F.A. system of being filled with "dispirited, compromised" mediocrities and asserting that "American poetry is now an international joke." Finally, he said your mama is fat.
It was a performance to savor. According to Christian Wiman, Poetry's editor, the response to the double review - mostly to Kleinzahler's polemic - was "enormous." The magazine ran over a dozen letters from readers with reactions ranging from amusement ("funny and true") to annoyance ("tired and cliché") to double annoyance ("I need look no farther than Poetry magazine to find a reason for poetry's decline"). The controversy hit the Internet, and later became the focus of David Lehman's introductory comments for "The Best American Poetry 2005." As Lehman wrote, "It was as if one of the two reviews of 'Good Poems' was in favor of civilization and one in favor of its discontents; as if one spoke with the adjudicating voice of the ego, while the other let loose with the rebellious rant of the id."
Whatever Freud might think of that comparison, Keillor doesn't seem to have been too troubled by all the shouting, because "Good Poems" has now been joined by a sibling anthology, "Good Poems for Hard Times." Like its predecessor, "Good Poems for Hard Times" consists of poems previously read on Keillor's public radio show "The Writer's Almanac" and sorted into thematic sections. The poems themselves range from classics of English verse (Marvell's "Thoughts in a Garden") to the best of modern American writing (Elizabeth Bishop's "At the Fishhouses") to a large number of genial and frequently forgettable contemporary efforts. In his unabashedly personal introduction, Keillor recounts his childhood theft of a poetry anthology from a department store, talks about how his dad's work as a carpenter had "the cadence and fervor of poetry," and delivers a Grumpy Old Man rant about the "shallow knowingness" of today's culture, as opposed to the trueheartedness he finds in Poetryland. According to Keillor: "Poetry is the last preserve of honest speech. . . . All that matters about poetry to me now is directness and clarity and truthfulness. All that is twittery and lit'ry: no thanks, pal." Well, fair enough, pal. Of course, in the literary world, directness and clarity and truthfulness are themselves matters of artifice, but a man is entitled to his preferences. There's plenty to admire about this anthology and the spirit in which it was undertaken.
On the other hand, there's also plenty to be annoyed about. The most obvious problem with "Good Poems for Hard Times" is that it proposes that "the meaning of poetry is to give courage." That is not the meaning of poetry; that is the meaning of Scotch. The meaning of poetry is poetry. But a more subtle and intractable difficulty is that Keillor's taste isn't just limited, it's limited within its limitations. He likes plainspoken writing that is long on sentiment, short on surface complication - a defensible aesthetic, if one that occasionally condescends to its subject matter and audience. But rather than emphasizing the strongest writers in this mode (James Wright and Sterling Brown, for instance), Keillor favors soggy tough guys like Raymond Carver and Charles Bukowski, as well as a host of small-scale epiphany manufacturers, almost all of whom appear to be, as they say, white. ("Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average, and all the colored people are in somebody else's anthology.") You could hold nine of Kleinzahler's Lutheran bake sales in the gap between the best and worst poets in these collections, a fact that seems to bother their editor not one bit. Indeed, "the pleasure of making this book," Keillor wrote in "Good Poems," "is the chance to put poets such as Jennifer Michael Hecht and C. G. Hanzlicek and April Lindner and Ginger Andrews and Louis Jenkins into a club with Frost and Dickinson and Burns and Shakespeare." The comparison is as unnecessary as it is stupendously silly. One of the more interesting things about Keillor's project is that it quietly emphasizes poems over poets - a social, craft-centered approach that has fallen by the wayside in the age of Harold Bloom. But when Keillor claims to be putting Ginger Andrews "into a club with Frost" (instead of "a good poem" by Andrews beside "a good poem" by Frost), he not only undermines his credibility as an editor; he sets Andrews up for an annihilating failure.
So which way do we turn? Do we agree with Kleinzahler that art is meant to be an entertainment for the select few by the select few? Or do we sign on with Keillor, and embrace poetry as a means of creating a common life, even if we lose a few highbrow writers along the way? The truth is, it was never a real choice to begin with - a fact neatly demonstrated by the extent to which Keillor's and Kleinzahler's own careers are mixtures of high and low, lone wolf and average bear. After all, Keillor may praise the homely world of Wobegon, but he is a sophisticated writer with New Yorker magazine credentials and possesses an angry wit rarely heard on Main Street. Similarly, Kleinzahler isn't anyone's idea of an avant-garde poet; his work is published by a major house and is easily appreciated by a smart but untrained reader. This isn't real confrontation; it's Narcissus chewing out his own reflection.
Yet even if the arguments are taken at face value, both Keillor (playing populist) and Kleinzahler (playing elitist) are hoping to hold back waters that can't be dammed. When Keillor writes that poetry "is entirely created by peasants" and that "the intensity of poetry . . . is not meant for the triumphant executive, but for people in a jam - you and me," he's assuming that poetry is a tool to be used, rather than a force capable of doing a little using of its own, not all of it wholesome. And he's assuming, along the same lines, that "you and me" are bound to like a certain kind of thing; that "we" won't turn out to be as strange and unknowable as all those "lit'ry" poems out there. Similarly, as a talented poet, Kleinzahler would like to believe that poetry is split between "real originality" and pointless mediocrity; in an art so divided, there's little doubt where a strong writer like Kleinzahler would end up. But great poets often produce mediocre work, bad poets can be surprisingly good, and very good poets are frequently no better than consistently above average - all of which is to say that it's far more difficult to isolate "great poetry" than Kleinzahler (and most critics) might like to believe. We're forced to live with a chaos of styles and a muddle of best guesses. This makes everyone uncomfortable; we're much happier when we can have well-worn arguments about populism and elitism, about Good Poems and High Brows. But what Elizabeth Bishop once said about knowledge may be equally said of poetry itself; that it is "dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free"; not a sure matter of sides, but a fleeting balance of currents. The best we can do - the best we have ever been able to do - when faced with the words "Good Poems" in a book's title, is to turn the page hoping to say yes they are, or yes they were, or yes (believe it or not) they will be.
In the case of Keillor's collection, modestly titled "Good Poems," the trouble came to a head in a rare double review in the April 2004 issue of Poetry magazine. The first review, by Dana Gioia, the poet who is chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, was a reasonable and amiable appraisal that said, in essence, "This book is surprisingly O.K." The second, by the poet August Kleinzahler, was a different story - or as they might say in Lake Wobegon, a whole 'nother pan of casserole. Kleinzahler began by suggesting Keillor be locked in a Quonset hut and tortured to persuade him never again to stray from "Lutheran bake sales" into the Realm of Art. After that, Kleinzahler got mean. He claimed that Keillor "makes no demands on his audiences, none whatsoever." He accused him of "appalling taste," of hosting an "execrable" show, of compiling a "rotten collection," and of having a weird speaking voice ("that treacly baritone, which occasionally releases into a high-pitched, breathless tremolo"). Not content simply to wallop Keillor, Kleinzahler then turned his megaphone on every target within soapbox range, accusing the M.F.A. system of being filled with "dispirited, compromised" mediocrities and asserting that "American poetry is now an international joke." Finally, he said your mama is fat.
It was a performance to savor. According to Christian Wiman, Poetry's editor, the response to the double review - mostly to Kleinzahler's polemic - was "enormous." The magazine ran over a dozen letters from readers with reactions ranging from amusement ("funny and true") to annoyance ("tired and cliché") to double annoyance ("I need look no farther than Poetry magazine to find a reason for poetry's decline"). The controversy hit the Internet, and later became the focus of David Lehman's introductory comments for "The Best American Poetry 2005." As Lehman wrote, "It was as if one of the two reviews of 'Good Poems' was in favor of civilization and one in favor of its discontents; as if one spoke with the adjudicating voice of the ego, while the other let loose with the rebellious rant of the id."
Whatever Freud might think of that comparison, Keillor doesn't seem to have been too troubled by all the shouting, because "Good Poems" has now been joined by a sibling anthology, "Good Poems for Hard Times." Like its predecessor, "Good Poems for Hard Times" consists of poems previously read on Keillor's public radio show "The Writer's Almanac" and sorted into thematic sections. The poems themselves range from classics of English verse (Marvell's "Thoughts in a Garden") to the best of modern American writing (Elizabeth Bishop's "At the Fishhouses") to a large number of genial and frequently forgettable contemporary efforts. In his unabashedly personal introduction, Keillor recounts his childhood theft of a poetry anthology from a department store, talks about how his dad's work as a carpenter had "the cadence and fervor of poetry," and delivers a Grumpy Old Man rant about the "shallow knowingness" of today's culture, as opposed to the trueheartedness he finds in Poetryland. According to Keillor: "Poetry is the last preserve of honest speech. . . . All that matters about poetry to me now is directness and clarity and truthfulness. All that is twittery and lit'ry: no thanks, pal." Well, fair enough, pal. Of course, in the literary world, directness and clarity and truthfulness are themselves matters of artifice, but a man is entitled to his preferences. There's plenty to admire about this anthology and the spirit in which it was undertaken.
On the other hand, there's also plenty to be annoyed about. The most obvious problem with "Good Poems for Hard Times" is that it proposes that "the meaning of poetry is to give courage." That is not the meaning of poetry; that is the meaning of Scotch. The meaning of poetry is poetry. But a more subtle and intractable difficulty is that Keillor's taste isn't just limited, it's limited within its limitations. He likes plainspoken writing that is long on sentiment, short on surface complication - a defensible aesthetic, if one that occasionally condescends to its subject matter and audience. But rather than emphasizing the strongest writers in this mode (James Wright and Sterling Brown, for instance), Keillor favors soggy tough guys like Raymond Carver and Charles Bukowski, as well as a host of small-scale epiphany manufacturers, almost all of whom appear to be, as they say, white. ("Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average, and all the colored people are in somebody else's anthology.") You could hold nine of Kleinzahler's Lutheran bake sales in the gap between the best and worst poets in these collections, a fact that seems to bother their editor not one bit. Indeed, "the pleasure of making this book," Keillor wrote in "Good Poems," "is the chance to put poets such as Jennifer Michael Hecht and C. G. Hanzlicek and April Lindner and Ginger Andrews and Louis Jenkins into a club with Frost and Dickinson and Burns and Shakespeare." The comparison is as unnecessary as it is stupendously silly. One of the more interesting things about Keillor's project is that it quietly emphasizes poems over poets - a social, craft-centered approach that has fallen by the wayside in the age of Harold Bloom. But when Keillor claims to be putting Ginger Andrews "into a club with Frost" (instead of "a good poem" by Andrews beside "a good poem" by Frost), he not only undermines his credibility as an editor; he sets Andrews up for an annihilating failure.
So which way do we turn? Do we agree with Kleinzahler that art is meant to be an entertainment for the select few by the select few? Or do we sign on with Keillor, and embrace poetry as a means of creating a common life, even if we lose a few highbrow writers along the way? The truth is, it was never a real choice to begin with - a fact neatly demonstrated by the extent to which Keillor's and Kleinzahler's own careers are mixtures of high and low, lone wolf and average bear. After all, Keillor may praise the homely world of Wobegon, but he is a sophisticated writer with New Yorker magazine credentials and possesses an angry wit rarely heard on Main Street. Similarly, Kleinzahler isn't anyone's idea of an avant-garde poet; his work is published by a major house and is easily appreciated by a smart but untrained reader. This isn't real confrontation; it's Narcissus chewing out his own reflection.
Yet even if the arguments are taken at face value, both Keillor (playing populist) and Kleinzahler (playing elitist) are hoping to hold back waters that can't be dammed. When Keillor writes that poetry "is entirely created by peasants" and that "the intensity of poetry . . . is not meant for the triumphant executive, but for people in a jam - you and me," he's assuming that poetry is a tool to be used, rather than a force capable of doing a little using of its own, not all of it wholesome. And he's assuming, along the same lines, that "you and me" are bound to like a certain kind of thing; that "we" won't turn out to be as strange and unknowable as all those "lit'ry" poems out there. Similarly, as a talented poet, Kleinzahler would like to believe that poetry is split between "real originality" and pointless mediocrity; in an art so divided, there's little doubt where a strong writer like Kleinzahler would end up. But great poets often produce mediocre work, bad poets can be surprisingly good, and very good poets are frequently no better than consistently above average - all of which is to say that it's far more difficult to isolate "great poetry" than Kleinzahler (and most critics) might like to believe. We're forced to live with a chaos of styles and a muddle of best guesses. This makes everyone uncomfortable; we're much happier when we can have well-worn arguments about populism and elitism, about Good Poems and High Brows. But what Elizabeth Bishop once said about knowledge may be equally said of poetry itself; that it is "dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free"; not a sure matter of sides, but a fleeting balance of currents. The best we can do - the best we have ever been able to do - when faced with the words "Good Poems" in a book's title, is to turn the page hoping to say yes they are, or yes they were, or yes (believe it or not) they will be.
from an email received from a damn smart woman...
ok, so i received this sentiment in an email .......
Today is International Very Good Looking, Damn Smart Woman's Day, so please send this message to someone you think fits this description. Please do not send it back to me as I have already received it from a Very Good Looking, Damn Smart Woman! And remember
this motto to live by: Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!"
my plan to a tee.......
Today is International Very Good Looking, Damn Smart Woman's Day, so please send this message to someone you think fits this description. Please do not send it back to me as I have already received it from a Very Good Looking, Damn Smart Woman! And remember
this motto to live by: Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, wine in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!"
my plan to a tee.......
avahi cleesei
ok, so this from the web.....That Monty Python snake didn't work out. But thanks to his tongue-in-cheek love for lemurs--and his real-life interest in animal conservation--John Cleese has secured a place in the annals of science.
Cleese, who played a lemur-happy zookeeper in the 1997 film Fierce Creatures and hosted 1998 documentary Born to Be Wild: Operation Lemur with John Cleese, the comic now has a new species of the primate named after him.
Researches at Zurich University have dubbed a tiny, leaf-loving lemur in Madagascar the avahi cleesei. The endangered, two-pound furry creature was discovered in the western region of the country in 1990 by the Zurich team, but wasn't named until now.
Cleese has yet to comment on the distinction, but word is he's pretty pleased.
"John Cleese is a lemur fancier," Urs Thalmann, who discovered the species with colleague Thomas Geissman, told the BBC. "I asked for his permission through his agent, and he was really excited."
Cleese, who played a lemur-happy zookeeper in the 1997 film Fierce Creatures and hosted 1998 documentary Born to Be Wild: Operation Lemur with John Cleese, the comic now has a new species of the primate named after him.
Researches at Zurich University have dubbed a tiny, leaf-loving lemur in Madagascar the avahi cleesei. The endangered, two-pound furry creature was discovered in the western region of the country in 1990 by the Zurich team, but wasn't named until now.
Cleese has yet to comment on the distinction, but word is he's pretty pleased.
"John Cleese is a lemur fancier," Urs Thalmann, who discovered the species with colleague Thomas Geissman, told the BBC. "I asked for his permission through his agent, and he was really excited."
erased history....
ok, so somebody erased the history in both browsers.......not especially problematic....as the sites i frequent are easily relocated and the passwords for log-inable places like washingtonpost or newyorktimes are recreatable......nah...it is the annoyance factor....and then the curiousity of just what tracks have been covered up........hmmm.......
Friday, November 11, 2005
p&p
ok, so this blog has boldy advertised of its adoration of all things austin (enough a's?.....) and so i offer this insightful review of the latest p&p for your perusal.....knowing full well that none of y'all will appreciate the sentiment more than the mm.......
Pardon my prejudice, but for me, only one Pride will do
By Robin Berkowitz
A&E Editor
A decade ago I providentially acquired the five-hour BBC/A&E Pride and Prejudice on tape, and it became a kind of audio-visual security blanket. Whenever the stresses of modern life threatened to overwhelm me, I would retreat into the world of harpsichords and cotillions, Empire-waist gowns and horse-drawn carriages. Finding me ensconced on the couch watching Miss Bennet and Mr. Darcy exchanging barbed witticisms at a ball for the umpteenth time, my spouse perceptively and tolerantly observed, "This is kind of like your very own Prozac prescription, isn't it?"
All this is by way of saying that I feel a certain protectiveness, even a degree of expertise (or at least familiarity) when it comes to P&P.
One literary essayist's oft-quoted characterization of Pride and Prejudice is that not much happens, except that a young man changes his manners and a young lady changes her mind.
So true -- and yet P&P is packed with incident, which is rather the difficulty for filmmakers looking to adapt it. There's a whole checklist of essential milestones that the screenwriter dare not skimp -- dances, dinners, visits, proposals, confrontations -- and a central cast that cannot be dispensed with. Woe betide any scribe who tries to eliminate one of the five Bennet sisters, even though fretful Kitty and sententious Mary do very little to drive the story forward. And let's face it: Mrs. Bennet could be just as worried about marrying off three dowryless daughters as five.
The very latest Pride & Prejudice, with Keira Knightley and Matthew MacFadyen, races through all the narrative high points in an admirably streamlined fashion, which is to its credit, and manages to paint a convincing portrait of early 1800s country life in the bargain. Which makes it all the more remarkable that this version, while correct in all its details, sidelines the real action -- charting those changes the young man and the young lady are undergoing.
Plenty of critics, experts and fans have concurred with Jane Austen's opinion that Elizabeth Bennet is "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print." Considering that she made her debut in 1813, she's still pretty hot stuff in 2005.
Unlike, say, poor doormat Fanny Price in Mansfield Park -- who was given a complete personality transplant in 1999 by filmmaker Patricia Rozema -- the sassy, outspoken and lovable Lizzie can leap straight from the page to the screen. With a few cosmetic tweaks, she can become a modern British singleton (Bridget Jones's Diary), or a dazzling Bollywood beauty queen (Bride & Prejudice). There's even a 2003 Pride and Prejudice update for, uh, Latter-day Saints (which cannot be recommended, not because Elizabeth and her friends go to Mormon church services, but because it's unequivocally silly).
Knightley acquits herself well in company that includes Greer Garson and Renee Zellweger, but the onus of embodying Elizabeth (or Bridget, or Lalita) shouldn't rest on the actress' personal charisma; it should reside in the script. Knightley is charming in the new version from director Joe Wright and screenwriter Deborah Moggach (with a rumored assist from Sense and Sensibility's Emma Thompson), but her appeal is Keira's and not Lizzie's.
And that's why Jennifer Ehle, an unknown when she was cast in the 1995 BBC/A&E miniseries, remains the definitive Elizabeth of our time, and perhaps all time. It's because screenwriter Andrew Davies, working from Austen's incomparable template, wrote her that way, along with a Mr. Darcy whose emotions were manifest throughout instead of remaining a mystery until the final denouement. (And that, I contend, is also why Bridget and her contemporaries, both fictional and real-life, swooned over Colin Firth -- not because he's the hunkiest Brit to ever cast a smoldering gaze, but because this was a script that let us girls really see Mr. Darcy yearn and burn.)
In the new millennium, we've had no fewer than four Prides (counting the contemporary variations), after averaging about one a decade since the late 1930s. But here is a truth that should be universally acknowledged: There's only one that's prescription-strength Austen.
Robin Berkowitz can be reached at rberkowitz@sun-sentinel.com.
i especially like the notion that p&p is akin to prozac.......i couldn't have said that better myself.........
Pardon my prejudice, but for me, only one Pride will do
By Robin Berkowitz
A&E Editor
A decade ago I providentially acquired the five-hour BBC/A&E Pride and Prejudice on tape, and it became a kind of audio-visual security blanket. Whenever the stresses of modern life threatened to overwhelm me, I would retreat into the world of harpsichords and cotillions, Empire-waist gowns and horse-drawn carriages. Finding me ensconced on the couch watching Miss Bennet and Mr. Darcy exchanging barbed witticisms at a ball for the umpteenth time, my spouse perceptively and tolerantly observed, "This is kind of like your very own Prozac prescription, isn't it?"
All this is by way of saying that I feel a certain protectiveness, even a degree of expertise (or at least familiarity) when it comes to P&P.
One literary essayist's oft-quoted characterization of Pride and Prejudice is that not much happens, except that a young man changes his manners and a young lady changes her mind.
So true -- and yet P&P is packed with incident, which is rather the difficulty for filmmakers looking to adapt it. There's a whole checklist of essential milestones that the screenwriter dare not skimp -- dances, dinners, visits, proposals, confrontations -- and a central cast that cannot be dispensed with. Woe betide any scribe who tries to eliminate one of the five Bennet sisters, even though fretful Kitty and sententious Mary do very little to drive the story forward. And let's face it: Mrs. Bennet could be just as worried about marrying off three dowryless daughters as five.
The very latest Pride & Prejudice, with Keira Knightley and Matthew MacFadyen, races through all the narrative high points in an admirably streamlined fashion, which is to its credit, and manages to paint a convincing portrait of early 1800s country life in the bargain. Which makes it all the more remarkable that this version, while correct in all its details, sidelines the real action -- charting those changes the young man and the young lady are undergoing.
Plenty of critics, experts and fans have concurred with Jane Austen's opinion that Elizabeth Bennet is "as delightful a creature as ever appeared in print." Considering that she made her debut in 1813, she's still pretty hot stuff in 2005.
Unlike, say, poor doormat Fanny Price in Mansfield Park -- who was given a complete personality transplant in 1999 by filmmaker Patricia Rozema -- the sassy, outspoken and lovable Lizzie can leap straight from the page to the screen. With a few cosmetic tweaks, she can become a modern British singleton (Bridget Jones's Diary), or a dazzling Bollywood beauty queen (Bride & Prejudice). There's even a 2003 Pride and Prejudice update for, uh, Latter-day Saints (which cannot be recommended, not because Elizabeth and her friends go to Mormon church services, but because it's unequivocally silly).
Knightley acquits herself well in company that includes Greer Garson and Renee Zellweger, but the onus of embodying Elizabeth (or Bridget, or Lalita) shouldn't rest on the actress' personal charisma; it should reside in the script. Knightley is charming in the new version from director Joe Wright and screenwriter Deborah Moggach (with a rumored assist from Sense and Sensibility's Emma Thompson), but her appeal is Keira's and not Lizzie's.
And that's why Jennifer Ehle, an unknown when she was cast in the 1995 BBC/A&E miniseries, remains the definitive Elizabeth of our time, and perhaps all time. It's because screenwriter Andrew Davies, working from Austen's incomparable template, wrote her that way, along with a Mr. Darcy whose emotions were manifest throughout instead of remaining a mystery until the final denouement. (And that, I contend, is also why Bridget and her contemporaries, both fictional and real-life, swooned over Colin Firth -- not because he's the hunkiest Brit to ever cast a smoldering gaze, but because this was a script that let us girls really see Mr. Darcy yearn and burn.)
In the new millennium, we've had no fewer than four Prides (counting the contemporary variations), after averaging about one a decade since the late 1930s. But here is a truth that should be universally acknowledged: There's only one that's prescription-strength Austen.
Robin Berkowitz can be reached at rberkowitz@sun-sentinel.com.
i especially like the notion that p&p is akin to prozac.......i couldn't have said that better myself.........
adult angst.........
ok, so today is my freebie day-off......one of those little surprises afforded by my newlife in public health......and so i started out with breakfast out with my spouse after we dropped the daughter off at school......the hub was happening this morning....with ken k. reading in the window.....and david's dad interviewing a prospective pol-sci guy....... when introduced i said something lame like...we are big fan's of dan's son david...which is true, but somehow not the thing to say at the time......ah well.....and i took advantage of the free wi-fi to answer the return email about how hard it will be to find a ride home for thanksgiving from up-east.....and i regretted for the umpteenth time that i didn't buy a ticket for the middlechild way back when he got his acceptance letter....when the prices were decent.....but i hesitated...and when i checked back the tickets were outrageous and now there are no tickets to be had ......my spouse recalled using a 'ride' board at wooster to find transportation....he once rode from ohio to l.a. with someone he found on the ride board....sight-unseen for a 24 hour drive........i understand that there is an eerieness about looking for rides with strangers...but not nearly so much as hitching.......one could safely assume that the princeton folks who have rides to offer must have some level of decency.......maybe there is a ride board on campus.............and there is always facebook to ckeck out the options.......
Thursday, November 10, 2005
fatwa
ok, so......this from wonkette.......re: dover, pennsylvania's election that ousted the intelligent design folks from the school board.......Pat Robertson's latest fatwa: Calling down the Almighty exact revenge for the town of Dover, Pa. tossing out the school board who mandated that "intelligent design" (i.e. "magic") be taught in schools. "I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: if there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected Him from your city." Says our reader, "Well, you know, he DOES pray all those hurricanes off course--it only takes a little extra faith to have one level a town full of evolutionists who have the temerity to vote. . .".....what....does pat think himself a great prophet...like job or isaiah........or jeremiah?...............don't know of any prophets named pat...............
ok, so.......
ok, so.......i have tomorrow off......and this is a good thing after the week that was.......three diabetes support groups as well as a state mandated diabetes self-management class whereupon the laptop and/or the projector malfunctioned all the sudden....... and i was forced to ad lib 2.5 hours of diabetes nutrition education without a net......that much was no problem.....it was the annoying lack of the prescribed visuals that got my goat......how do they (those who sit in judgement in frankfort) expect new grads to perform without the powerpoint slides?.......i fell back upon experience.....few others in my new line of work have such luxury.....and the other highlights....hmm.....i spent an hour in the company of a sweet couple who had maybe 10 intact teeth between them.......and another with a client who is taking an on-line purchased herbal enhancement supplement.......omg.....i couldn't even look it up because of state computer filters........it is supposed to help his diabetes, too..........and after several grocery store stops.....and supper.......the thursday raison d'etre.......alias........a new episode...produced by and starring jennifer garner..........heavy with child......in a fast action drama that has taken her pregnancy to heart.........and managed to weave it into the plotline better than i expected.......so far so good......next....jen could/should work breastfeeding motherhood into the mix.....the least she could do to give high-profile cred to an eternal artform.................
the raising of daughters......
ok, so i have raisied my voice more in the past month than i did in the entire raising of both of my sons.......and i am decided.....that raising daughters is an endeavor best approached with fear and trembling.................
more on bras.....
ok, so this from salon.com......Hong Kong's Polytechnic University has a new degree..... in "bra studies." What work awaits China's underwear engineers? According to the AP, Top Form, China's biggest lingerie manufacturer, employs a crack team of bra-smiths who push the cutting edge of tit-padding technology. The Wall Street Journal reports that in their quest to "give busts a boost," Top Form has tried pumping pads with air -- but met disappointment when the bras deflated like old balloons. Then the company's oil-filled pads proved prohibitively expensive and bulky. Now they're betting on fiberfill, a fluffy insulating material usually used in ski clothes -- and not something you'd normally find in Victoria's Secret products.
Back in the U.S., a woman has been accused of using bra padding not to enhance her décolletage, but to commit a crime. The AP reports that Jill Knispel, a 35-year-old from Florida, was arrested after stuffing her bra with a stolen parrot she hoped to trade for a 1964 vintage Volkswagen Karmann Ghia. "The circumstances of [this] case are the most bizarre I've ever encountered," veteran wildlife investigator Lenny Barshinger told reporters. Funny, sounds like a classic case of grand-theft Audubon to us. ......'i have had a long frustrating day......the notion of a woman traveling with a parrot in her bra has raised my spirits......
Back in the U.S., a woman has been accused of using bra padding not to enhance her décolletage, but to commit a crime. The AP reports that Jill Knispel, a 35-year-old from Florida, was arrested after stuffing her bra with a stolen parrot she hoped to trade for a 1964 vintage Volkswagen Karmann Ghia. "The circumstances of [this] case are the most bizarre I've ever encountered," veteran wildlife investigator Lenny Barshinger told reporters. Funny, sounds like a classic case of grand-theft Audubon to us. ......'i have had a long frustrating day......the notion of a woman traveling with a parrot in her bra has raised my spirits......
as if i neede another reason to boycott victoria's secret....
ok, so this from salon.com's broadsheet.....You may remember the fracas this summer when one Lori Rueger asked to breast-feed her 10-week-old daughter in a Victoria's Secret dressing room in a mall in Point Pleasant, S.C. A store clerk told her to take her nasty nursing to a public restroom, a request that Rueger found pretty nasty herself.
"Would you want to eat in the same room where someone was defecating?" Rueger asked a reporter from the Charleston Post and Courier at the time of the incident. The store clerk later alleged that Rueger "became combative" when asked not to nurse in the dressing room. A couple of dozen women later staged a "nurse-in" under a Victoria's Secret awning.
It all went down in June, but has not been forgotten. Tonight, protesters are meeting in Rock Hill, S.C., in support of writing breast-feeding rights legislation into state law. According to the Charlotte Observer, 38 states including North Carolina and Georgia protect a woman's right to breast-feed in public. The proposed South Carolina bill is modeled after Georgia's, and reads in part that "a mother may breast-feed her child in any location where the mother is otherwise authorized to be."
It remains to be seen why, in a nation that prizes the innocence of infancy above almost every other form of human life, anyone objects to the notion of nourishing infants.
and to think that v.s. makes it living off of breasts................
"Would you want to eat in the same room where someone was defecating?" Rueger asked a reporter from the Charleston Post and Courier at the time of the incident. The store clerk later alleged that Rueger "became combative" when asked not to nurse in the dressing room. A couple of dozen women later staged a "nurse-in" under a Victoria's Secret awning.
It all went down in June, but has not been forgotten. Tonight, protesters are meeting in Rock Hill, S.C., in support of writing breast-feeding rights legislation into state law. According to the Charlotte Observer, 38 states including North Carolina and Georgia protect a woman's right to breast-feed in public. The proposed South Carolina bill is modeled after Georgia's, and reads in part that "a mother may breast-feed her child in any location where the mother is otherwise authorized to be."
It remains to be seen why, in a nation that prizes the innocence of infancy above almost every other form of human life, anyone objects to the notion of nourishing infants.
and to think that v.s. makes it living off of breasts................
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
a good day to be blue......
ok, so this from howard dean...... Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean issued the following statement on the resounding Democratic victories in elections in New Jersey, Virginia, and across the country:
"The resounding victories tonight by Jon Corzine and Tim Kaine have sent a powerful message that when Democrats stand up for what we believe in, we win. They showed that the values and priorities of the Democratic Party are the values and priorities of the American people.
"Jon Corzine and Tim Kaine were strong candidates who offered vision and leadership based on the shared values and priorities of the voters of New Jersey and Virginia. They worked hard to earn the trust and the votes of the people in their states by not taking a single vote or voter for granted.
"Also tonight, voters all across the country delivered a resounding message: Americans are tired of the politics of hate and divisiveness, and voted for strong Democratic candidates who offered true leadership for their states and communities. These candidates showed exactly what our party is going to do to stand up and win in 2006."
and when you add in cauli-forn-ya......and awr-nold's 4-part failure with ballot iniatives.......it was a very good day.....
"The resounding victories tonight by Jon Corzine and Tim Kaine have sent a powerful message that when Democrats stand up for what we believe in, we win. They showed that the values and priorities of the Democratic Party are the values and priorities of the American people.
"Jon Corzine and Tim Kaine were strong candidates who offered vision and leadership based on the shared values and priorities of the voters of New Jersey and Virginia. They worked hard to earn the trust and the votes of the people in their states by not taking a single vote or voter for granted.
"Also tonight, voters all across the country delivered a resounding message: Americans are tired of the politics of hate and divisiveness, and voted for strong Democratic candidates who offered true leadership for their states and communities. These candidates showed exactly what our party is going to do to stand up and win in 2006."
and when you add in cauli-forn-ya......and awr-nold's 4-part failure with ballot iniatives.......it was a very good day.....
god isn't a republican....
ok, so i was intrigued byu this richmond, va article about the gub race......
Jerry W. Kilgore got his referendum.
The Republican's crushing defeat by Democrat Timothy M. Kaine in the governor's race signals that, despite the rapid ascendancy of the GOP, Virginia's political orientation is more practical than partisan.
Beyond the state's borders, Kaine's victory will be seen as a setback for an embattled President Bush, who nationalized the hard-fought contest with his last-minute fly-in for Kilgore's anemic candidacy, a centerpiece of which was a promise to let voters decide on tax increases.
The fortunes of two presidential prospects also are affected by the result: Departing Democratic Gov. Mark R. Warner's are up; Republican U.S. Sen. George Allen's are down.
National Democrats, looking for a winning strategy in the 2006 congressional elections and the race for the White House two years later, will note that Kaine not only held the centrist coalition that lifted Warner to office in 2001 but also effectively played the values card that Republi- cans believed was theirs.
"We're trying to show here that God isn't a Republican," said David Eichenbaum, who, with Karl Struble, produced much of Kaine's radio and television advertising, including commercials in which the candidate invoked his Catholic faith. "This may be one of the biggest lessons that Democrats have to take out of this."
As a Catholic, Kaine said he opposes abortion and the death penalty. As a prospective governor, he vowed to uphold the laws allowing both.
Though Kilgore claimed Kaine got religion only because it was an election year, voters -- as public-opinion polls showed -- were comfortable that Kaine would not put church ahead of state.
This allowed Kaine to survive the most hazardous stretch of the eight-month, $40 million campaign: a punishing barrage of Kilgore ads by Scott Howell -- an archrival of Eichenbaum and Struble -- in which relatives of murder victims branded the Democrat unreliable on the death penalty.
One spot suggested that Kaine would not execute even Adolf Hitler.
Republicans, certain that Kaine's stance on capital punishment would prove politically fatal in a state where 75 percent of voters favor it, were instead stunned by a backlash. In one survey, one in four voters said they were more inclined to oppose Kilgore because of the disputed ads.
Jerry W. Kilgore got his referendum.
The Republican's crushing defeat by Democrat Timothy M. Kaine in the governor's race signals that, despite the rapid ascendancy of the GOP, Virginia's political orientation is more practical than partisan.
Beyond the state's borders, Kaine's victory will be seen as a setback for an embattled President Bush, who nationalized the hard-fought contest with his last-minute fly-in for Kilgore's anemic candidacy, a centerpiece of which was a promise to let voters decide on tax increases.
The fortunes of two presidential prospects also are affected by the result: Departing Democratic Gov. Mark R. Warner's are up; Republican U.S. Sen. George Allen's are down.
National Democrats, looking for a winning strategy in the 2006 congressional elections and the race for the White House two years later, will note that Kaine not only held the centrist coalition that lifted Warner to office in 2001 but also effectively played the values card that Republi- cans believed was theirs.
"We're trying to show here that God isn't a Republican," said David Eichenbaum, who, with Karl Struble, produced much of Kaine's radio and television advertising, including commercials in which the candidate invoked his Catholic faith. "This may be one of the biggest lessons that Democrats have to take out of this."
As a Catholic, Kaine said he opposes abortion and the death penalty. As a prospective governor, he vowed to uphold the laws allowing both.
Though Kilgore claimed Kaine got religion only because it was an election year, voters -- as public-opinion polls showed -- were comfortable that Kaine would not put church ahead of state.
This allowed Kaine to survive the most hazardous stretch of the eight-month, $40 million campaign: a punishing barrage of Kilgore ads by Scott Howell -- an archrival of Eichenbaum and Struble -- in which relatives of murder victims branded the Democrat unreliable on the death penalty.
One spot suggested that Kaine would not execute even Adolf Hitler.
Republicans, certain that Kaine's stance on capital punishment would prove politically fatal in a state where 75 percent of voters favor it, were instead stunned by a backlash. In one survey, one in four voters said they were more inclined to oppose Kilgore because of the disputed ads.
poems for people who have no time for poetry
ok, so i like this poem...
Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry by Stephen Dunn
Relax. This won't last long.
Or if it does, or if the lines
make you sleepy or bored,
give in to sleep, turn on
the T.V., deal the cards.
This poem is built to withstand
such things. Its feelings
cannot be hurt. They exist
somewhere in the poet,
and I am far away.
Pick it up anytime. Start it
in the middle if you wish.
It is as approachable as melodrama,
and can offer you violence
if it is violence you like. Look,
there's a man on a sidewalk;
the way his leg is quivering
he'll never be the same again.
This is your poem
and I know you're busy at the office
or the kids are into your last nerve.
Maybe it's sex you've always wanted.
Well, they lie together
like the party's unbuttoned coats,
slumped on the bed
waiting for drunken arms to move them.
I don't think you want me to go on;
everyone has his expectations, but this
is a poem for the entire family.
Right now, Budweiser
is dripping from a waterfall,
deodorants are hissing into armpits
of people you resemble,
and the two lovers are dressing now,
saying farewell.
I don't know what music this poem
can come up with, but clearly
it's needed. For it's apparent
they will never see each other again
and we need music for this
because there was never music when he or she
left you standing on the corner.
You see, I want this poem to be nicer
than life. I want you to look at it
when anxiety zigzags your stomach
and the last tranquilizer is gone
and you need someone to tell you
I'll be here when you want me
like the sound inside a shell.
The poem is saying that to you now.
But don't give anything for this poem.
It doesn't expect much. It will never say more
than listening can explain.
Just keep it in your attache case
or in your house. And if you're not asleep
by now, or bored beyond sense,
the poem wants you to laugh. Laugh at
yourself, laugh at this poem, at all poetry.
Come on:
Good. Now here's what poetry can do.
Imagine yourself a caterpillar.
There's an awful shrug and, suddenly,
You're beautiful for as long as you live.
Poem For People That Are Understandably Too Busy To Read Poetry by Stephen Dunn
Relax. This won't last long.
Or if it does, or if the lines
make you sleepy or bored,
give in to sleep, turn on
the T.V., deal the cards.
This poem is built to withstand
such things. Its feelings
cannot be hurt. They exist
somewhere in the poet,
and I am far away.
Pick it up anytime. Start it
in the middle if you wish.
It is as approachable as melodrama,
and can offer you violence
if it is violence you like. Look,
there's a man on a sidewalk;
the way his leg is quivering
he'll never be the same again.
This is your poem
and I know you're busy at the office
or the kids are into your last nerve.
Maybe it's sex you've always wanted.
Well, they lie together
like the party's unbuttoned coats,
slumped on the bed
waiting for drunken arms to move them.
I don't think you want me to go on;
everyone has his expectations, but this
is a poem for the entire family.
Right now, Budweiser
is dripping from a waterfall,
deodorants are hissing into armpits
of people you resemble,
and the two lovers are dressing now,
saying farewell.
I don't know what music this poem
can come up with, but clearly
it's needed. For it's apparent
they will never see each other again
and we need music for this
because there was never music when he or she
left you standing on the corner.
You see, I want this poem to be nicer
than life. I want you to look at it
when anxiety zigzags your stomach
and the last tranquilizer is gone
and you need someone to tell you
I'll be here when you want me
like the sound inside a shell.
The poem is saying that to you now.
But don't give anything for this poem.
It doesn't expect much. It will never say more
than listening can explain.
Just keep it in your attache case
or in your house. And if you're not asleep
by now, or bored beyond sense,
the poem wants you to laugh. Laugh at
yourself, laugh at this poem, at all poetry.
Come on:
Good. Now here's what poetry can do.
Imagine yourself a caterpillar.
There's an awful shrug and, suddenly,
You're beautiful for as long as you live.
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
death of a poet...
ok, so this from salon.com's new broadsheet section.....
The New York Times reported yesterday the death of 25-year-old Afghan poet Nadia Anjuman. The 25-year-old rising literary star died this weekend after being knocked unconscious by her husband, Farid Ahmad Majid Mia. Anjuman was an undergraduate student of literature at Herat University, and this year published her first collection of poems, "Gule Dudi." Her husband was an administrator in the literature department of the same university.
Anjuman's death was condemned by the United Nations. A spokesman for the organization told that Times that her passing was a great loss to Afghanistan, and that "anyone found responsible [for her death] needs to be dealt with in proper accordance with law."
The New York Times reported yesterday the death of 25-year-old Afghan poet Nadia Anjuman. The 25-year-old rising literary star died this weekend after being knocked unconscious by her husband, Farid Ahmad Majid Mia. Anjuman was an undergraduate student of literature at Herat University, and this year published her first collection of poems, "Gule Dudi." Her husband was an administrator in the literature department of the same university.
Anjuman's death was condemned by the United Nations. A spokesman for the organization told that Times that her passing was a great loss to Afghanistan, and that "anyone found responsible [for her death] needs to be dealt with in proper accordance with law."
bleeding heart liberals......
ok, so today the bleeding heart part just got to me.....and when a nicely dressed client described her afternoon in the park with her kids......i at once gave kudos for the fresh air and physical activity.........and after her newly laid-off spouse herded the little ones back out to the lobby to play with the toys she disclosed that no.....health and fitness were not the issue.....her electricity had been cut off ...in the middle of a cartoon.....and it seemed better to take the kids out to the park to play than explain why the television no longer worked.......gentle readers.......most of you have no clue how close the rest of america is to such things as powercutoff....or water/phone cutoff........or health insurance cutoff.......in fact...it has only been since we took on the adoption notion years ago that i began to take in the horror that is subsistence poverty.......my youngest child...to this day.....has a fear of being in the dark.....and she can recall clearly memories of the lights being cut off when she lived with her birth mother.....of going to bed early because there was no other option.........and so i reached into my purse and grabbed the bills at hand.......because i did not think that i could live with myself if i didn't........and then the mother started in crying....which made me cry........and so what happens to folks like this....nobody is having fundraiser events for the working poor who get laid off due to a slagging economy....the presidetn doesn't helicopter in for a look-see.......the papa can't apply for unemployment for 2 weeks after he was laid off....or so he was told.....what sense does this make?.........and even with medical cards/food stamps......these are the kind of folks that will probably fall through every crack because they are ashamed to ask for help..or worse, he will feel compelled to volunteer for armed combat to make ends meet.....omg..........these were children who had no public health records....because up until recently they had had no need for any help of any kind.......and it appeared a tremendous burden for them to come for wic vouchers to supplement what foodstamps may provide.....though until the power is restored i advised against actually buying milk, eggs, cheese with the vouchers........ponder the state of america, my friends........i would just stop here.....but i have more catharsis to disclose......why do i not respond in such a way to the other poor and down and out folks who i meet every day......why did it take a well-dressed mamma with visibly precocious children to raise my internal alarms.........i am ashamed that i do not do more to ease the plight of my fellow humans................
Monday, November 07, 2005
ca ira....
ok, so i drove home from my new first monday of the month diabetes support group in lawrenceburg to world cafe....and interviews with cameron crowe...and roger waters.......who has orchestrated a 3-act opera to a libretto written en francais by somebody named ettienne to commerate the bicentenial of the french revolution.......it will be performed live in rome next weekend.....and the cd set is, of course available on on-line...david dye could not help but bring up old pink floyd stuff......as well as chat about liveaid.....which roger waters only became involved with because he felt so politically against those who profess to be christian yet do such unchristian things (he actually did refer to dubya....).....waters had not spoken to david gilmore for over 20 years before liveaid came along.....and it was the good cause not the chance to play together that created the reunion op.......by the way....i have become comfortably numb......and roger has reminded me that this is not a good thing........
jane goodall
ok, so this is epicurious.com
Jane Goodall's Do-Good Message
Dateline: From Africa to Your Table
For more than 40 years, naturalist Jane Goodall has championed the rights of chimpanzees and advocated the protection of the world's endangered habitats. The newest endangered habitat she has trained her binoculars on: the world's farms and supermarkets.
Goodall's newly released book, Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating (Warner Books, $25), is a clarion call, as she terms it, to rouse ourselves from "spineless acceptance of the status quo." What status quo is she speaking of? She charges that we no longer know — or care — where our food comes from. And, she says, as multinational corporations buy up family farms and plant genetically modified crops, as the level of treatment of our livestock continues to plummet, and as we continue to allow that livestock to ingest growth hormones and antibiotics, the world is becoming seriously out of balance.
What Goodall advocates is not earth-shattering but can be hard to do: She says we should support sustainable resources at every opportunity. She spotlights some real heroes who are making a difference and offers simple and, yes, obvious things we can all do to slow down the rampant destruction of our farmland and counteract unhealthy practices.
Chief among her suggestions are shopping in farmers' markets, buying only organic foods, eschewing fast food, using water filters instead of bottled water, and adopting a vegetarian diet. Goodall reminds us that we are the lucky stewards of the earth, and whether it is saving one chimpanzee in the forest or refusing to buy products with genetically modified ingredients, we can all help turn the tide toward a more healthy way of being.
Jane Goodall's Do-Good Message
Dateline: From Africa to Your Table
For more than 40 years, naturalist Jane Goodall has championed the rights of chimpanzees and advocated the protection of the world's endangered habitats. The newest endangered habitat she has trained her binoculars on: the world's farms and supermarkets.
Goodall's newly released book, Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating (Warner Books, $25), is a clarion call, as she terms it, to rouse ourselves from "spineless acceptance of the status quo." What status quo is she speaking of? She charges that we no longer know — or care — where our food comes from. And, she says, as multinational corporations buy up family farms and plant genetically modified crops, as the level of treatment of our livestock continues to plummet, and as we continue to allow that livestock to ingest growth hormones and antibiotics, the world is becoming seriously out of balance.
What Goodall advocates is not earth-shattering but can be hard to do: She says we should support sustainable resources at every opportunity. She spotlights some real heroes who are making a difference and offers simple and, yes, obvious things we can all do to slow down the rampant destruction of our farmland and counteract unhealthy practices.
Chief among her suggestions are shopping in farmers' markets, buying only organic foods, eschewing fast food, using water filters instead of bottled water, and adopting a vegetarian diet. Goodall reminds us that we are the lucky stewards of the earth, and whether it is saving one chimpanzee in the forest or refusing to buy products with genetically modified ingredients, we can all help turn the tide toward a more healthy way of being.
rock snobs.....
ok, so i was quite amused by this piece from slate.com that i read over my lunch of leftovers.....which seemed somewhat fitting.....though i only know of 2 really with-it cool-kids who have enough collected rock knowledge to know about such things as steely dan covers....and i hope that they both enjoy reading this piece as well.....
culturebox
The Rock Snob
An anatomy of a delicate breed.
By Stephen Metcalf
Posted Friday, Nov. 4, 2005, at 12:31 PM ET
Why o why, ye Rock Gods, do I cherish the Minutemen's cover of the old Steely Dan song "Doctor Wu" as much as I do? Let's take this one step at a time. The original "Doctor Wu" is classic middle-period Steely Dan. A snare drum snaps to attention, jazz-inflected chords spill off a piano, and just as the L.A. session men settle into this groovy little midtempo vamp, Donald Fagen's adenoids kick in: Katy tried. I was halfwaaaay crucified. I was on other side of no tommorrr-oooooow-oh. Say what you will about Fagen's singing—I happen to love it—he is really selling this one, and to the far corners of the house. You walked in, and my life beee-gan again, Just when I spent the last piaster I could borrrrrr-ooooow. Fagen has said "Doctor Wu" is "about a love-dope triangle," and the song exudes a strangely bewitching aura of dissipation, with its suggestion of exotic locales and middle-aged drug abuse. Like a lot of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen's music, "Doctor Wu" feels designed for the self-consciously louche palate of a '60s kid with money. It would go well with a prissy stereo and some really expensive pot.
Where the Steely Dan original was the product of two Bard-educated sophisticates striving to sound worldly, the Minutemen cover is a half-assed throwaway by three guys who couldn't be bothered to look up "piaster" in the dictionary. One voice speak-sings the lyrics laconically; another, buried deeper in the mix, bray-sings out the words slightly but consistently off-key, and the band wraps the whole thing up in a tidy 1 minute 45 seconds. In addition to absolutely rocking, the Minutemen rendition is a confession: Look, we're troglodytes compared with those guys, what with their Steinways and their buttery sax solos and their 50,000 hours of studio time. But such is the shit storm known as the 1980s, and we're going to make of it what we can. A vulgar snob—someone wearing Sergio Tachini and flashing his million-gig iPod—would prefer the Steely Dan version. A faux Rock Snob—someone ready in the instant to introduce you to what you don't know—would reflexively prefer the Minutemen; but a true representative of the type Rock Snob would throw both versions on a mixed tape, along with Grenadine's "Steely Daniel" and a boot of the Mountain Goats performing "Doctor Wu" live. Now, that, my friends, is a Rock Snob.
Snobbery is as woven into the human fabric as the sexual and aggressive impulses it seeks to refine. It's no accident, then, that Rock Snobbery emerged just as young people started dressing in blue jeans and pretending that social class didn't matter. Adolescents simply found novel ways—ways more acceptable to their newly egalitarian pretenses—to marginally differentiate themselves from one another. Musical taste was one such method, and for a small but increasingly demented subset of the population (interestingly, almost exclusively boys), having good taste in, and encyclopedic knowledge about, rock music became an almost Ahab-like obsession. During the heyday of rock and roll, when everyone was aspiring to be at least a little rock snobby, this irritating geek-pedant wasn't so easily dismissed. But the times they have a-changed. Young people (or the lucky among them) are learning to flaunt the blandishments of their elevated social class without embarrassment; rock music as a going concern is next to dead; the Rock Snob has ossified into a vaguely pitiful cultural type. He now stands, that Einstürzende Neubauten rerelease tucked under his arm, awaiting your abuse.
May it always take as genial a form as the new Rock Snob*s Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Rockological Knowledge by David Kamp and Steven Daly, a couple of writers at Vanity Fair. Like the Minutemen's cover of "Doctor Wu," their book is viciously funny without being entirely unloving. Kamp's bio identifies him as a "lifelong music snob," and though Daly's doesn't cop to it, only someone who had himself geeked out pretty good over the years could help compile this much left-of-your-dial arcana. The authors gather almost every conceivable rock-era name-drop—Countrypolitan, No Wave, Jobriath (Jobriath?)—but the prime targets for satire here are rock critics, and the maddeningly pretentious word pool from which they all apparently feel obliged to draw:
Jangle. Critic-beloved noun-adjective used to evoke sunny guitar pop. …[as in] Nick Heyward's first solo record after leaving Haircut 100 is a masterpiece of jangle pop.
Side. Grating term for a single, usually used in a tone of contemptible knowingness. Though ignored at the time of its release, "The Porpoise Song" was one of the Monkees greatest sides.
Seminal. Catchall adjective employed by rock writers to describe any group or artist in on a trend too early to sell any records. The Germs were a seminal L.A. punk band, but guitarist Pat Smear didn't realize any riches until he joined Nirvana.
In a (very funny) introduction, Daly and Kamp trace the history of the Rock Snob. He started out in the '50s, finically archiving his old 45s; in the '70s, he devoured the newly emergent rock press, with stacks of Creem, Melody Maker, and New Musical Express piling up under his unmade bed. "But it wasn't until the eighties," the authors write, "that Rock Snobbery truly gained traction as a phenomenon and a pathology. This was attributable to two developments: the advent of the 'classic rock' radio format, which saw rock aficionados retreat from their monomaniacal obsession with the new, and the rise of the CD format, which A) compelled fans to repurchase their entire music collections, and B) compelled the record labels to reissue their back catalogues with 'bonus tracks' and booklets and never-before-seen photographs and exhaustive liner notes." Rock Snobbery, they argue, has now found a comfortable niche as a mini-mass phenomenon, what with Rhino reissues, the twee soundtracks of Wes Anderson films, and the likes of Jack White collaborating with the likes of Loretta Lynn.
The essence of Rock Snobbery is hoarding and lording, and once the word gets out, via a tastefully catered Starbucks compilation, say, the Snob is at a total loss. It's even been argued recently that the advent of the iPod spells the death of the Rock Snob. True enough, thanks to the digital revolution, nonsnobs can now filch 20 years of compulsive squirreling with a single drag-and-drop. "Soon our collections," Michael Crowley wrote in the New Republic, "will all be ones and zeroes stored deep in hard drives, instantly transferable and completely unsatisfying as possessions. And we Rock Snobs will have become as obsolete as CDs themselves." An absence and a presence! A plenitude and an emptiness! As delightful as The Rock Snob*s Dictionary and Crowley's essay are, I think such fears are overblown, myself. I'd love to say it's because genuine pleasure—that enemy of both snobs and satire alike—will always take precedence over the need to condescend. But the reality, alas, is otherwise. At some point, drag-and-drop deposits will overwhelm even the most cavernous hard drive; a person will have to choose, and then their true colors will out: The Killers? Lenny Kravitz? Dave Matthews??? Because let's face it, only one thing is more incorrigible than my snobbery, people, and that's your indefensibly crappy taste in music.
Stephen Metcalf is a Slate critic and lives in Brooklyn.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2129511/
culturebox
The Rock Snob
An anatomy of a delicate breed.
By Stephen Metcalf
Posted Friday, Nov. 4, 2005, at 12:31 PM ET
Why o why, ye Rock Gods, do I cherish the Minutemen's cover of the old Steely Dan song "Doctor Wu" as much as I do? Let's take this one step at a time. The original "Doctor Wu" is classic middle-period Steely Dan. A snare drum snaps to attention, jazz-inflected chords spill off a piano, and just as the L.A. session men settle into this groovy little midtempo vamp, Donald Fagen's adenoids kick in: Katy tried. I was halfwaaaay crucified. I was on other side of no tommorrr-oooooow-oh. Say what you will about Fagen's singing—I happen to love it—he is really selling this one, and to the far corners of the house. You walked in, and my life beee-gan again, Just when I spent the last piaster I could borrrrrr-ooooow. Fagen has said "Doctor Wu" is "about a love-dope triangle," and the song exudes a strangely bewitching aura of dissipation, with its suggestion of exotic locales and middle-aged drug abuse. Like a lot of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen's music, "Doctor Wu" feels designed for the self-consciously louche palate of a '60s kid with money. It would go well with a prissy stereo and some really expensive pot.
Where the Steely Dan original was the product of two Bard-educated sophisticates striving to sound worldly, the Minutemen cover is a half-assed throwaway by three guys who couldn't be bothered to look up "piaster" in the dictionary. One voice speak-sings the lyrics laconically; another, buried deeper in the mix, bray-sings out the words slightly but consistently off-key, and the band wraps the whole thing up in a tidy 1 minute 45 seconds. In addition to absolutely rocking, the Minutemen rendition is a confession: Look, we're troglodytes compared with those guys, what with their Steinways and their buttery sax solos and their 50,000 hours of studio time. But such is the shit storm known as the 1980s, and we're going to make of it what we can. A vulgar snob—someone wearing Sergio Tachini and flashing his million-gig iPod—would prefer the Steely Dan version. A faux Rock Snob—someone ready in the instant to introduce you to what you don't know—would reflexively prefer the Minutemen; but a true representative of the type Rock Snob would throw both versions on a mixed tape, along with Grenadine's "Steely Daniel" and a boot of the Mountain Goats performing "Doctor Wu" live. Now, that, my friends, is a Rock Snob.
Snobbery is as woven into the human fabric as the sexual and aggressive impulses it seeks to refine. It's no accident, then, that Rock Snobbery emerged just as young people started dressing in blue jeans and pretending that social class didn't matter. Adolescents simply found novel ways—ways more acceptable to their newly egalitarian pretenses—to marginally differentiate themselves from one another. Musical taste was one such method, and for a small but increasingly demented subset of the population (interestingly, almost exclusively boys), having good taste in, and encyclopedic knowledge about, rock music became an almost Ahab-like obsession. During the heyday of rock and roll, when everyone was aspiring to be at least a little rock snobby, this irritating geek-pedant wasn't so easily dismissed. But the times they have a-changed. Young people (or the lucky among them) are learning to flaunt the blandishments of their elevated social class without embarrassment; rock music as a going concern is next to dead; the Rock Snob has ossified into a vaguely pitiful cultural type. He now stands, that Einstürzende Neubauten rerelease tucked under his arm, awaiting your abuse.
May it always take as genial a form as the new Rock Snob*s Dictionary: An Essential Lexicon of Rockological Knowledge by David Kamp and Steven Daly, a couple of writers at Vanity Fair. Like the Minutemen's cover of "Doctor Wu," their book is viciously funny without being entirely unloving. Kamp's bio identifies him as a "lifelong music snob," and though Daly's doesn't cop to it, only someone who had himself geeked out pretty good over the years could help compile this much left-of-your-dial arcana. The authors gather almost every conceivable rock-era name-drop—Countrypolitan, No Wave, Jobriath (Jobriath?)—but the prime targets for satire here are rock critics, and the maddeningly pretentious word pool from which they all apparently feel obliged to draw:
Jangle. Critic-beloved noun-adjective used to evoke sunny guitar pop. …[as in] Nick Heyward's first solo record after leaving Haircut 100 is a masterpiece of jangle pop.
Side. Grating term for a single, usually used in a tone of contemptible knowingness. Though ignored at the time of its release, "The Porpoise Song" was one of the Monkees greatest sides.
Seminal. Catchall adjective employed by rock writers to describe any group or artist in on a trend too early to sell any records. The Germs were a seminal L.A. punk band, but guitarist Pat Smear didn't realize any riches until he joined Nirvana.
In a (very funny) introduction, Daly and Kamp trace the history of the Rock Snob. He started out in the '50s, finically archiving his old 45s; in the '70s, he devoured the newly emergent rock press, with stacks of Creem, Melody Maker, and New Musical Express piling up under his unmade bed. "But it wasn't until the eighties," the authors write, "that Rock Snobbery truly gained traction as a phenomenon and a pathology. This was attributable to two developments: the advent of the 'classic rock' radio format, which saw rock aficionados retreat from their monomaniacal obsession with the new, and the rise of the CD format, which A) compelled fans to repurchase their entire music collections, and B) compelled the record labels to reissue their back catalogues with 'bonus tracks' and booklets and never-before-seen photographs and exhaustive liner notes." Rock Snobbery, they argue, has now found a comfortable niche as a mini-mass phenomenon, what with Rhino reissues, the twee soundtracks of Wes Anderson films, and the likes of Jack White collaborating with the likes of Loretta Lynn.
The essence of Rock Snobbery is hoarding and lording, and once the word gets out, via a tastefully catered Starbucks compilation, say, the Snob is at a total loss. It's even been argued recently that the advent of the iPod spells the death of the Rock Snob. True enough, thanks to the digital revolution, nonsnobs can now filch 20 years of compulsive squirreling with a single drag-and-drop. "Soon our collections," Michael Crowley wrote in the New Republic, "will all be ones and zeroes stored deep in hard drives, instantly transferable and completely unsatisfying as possessions. And we Rock Snobs will have become as obsolete as CDs themselves." An absence and a presence! A plenitude and an emptiness! As delightful as The Rock Snob*s Dictionary and Crowley's essay are, I think such fears are overblown, myself. I'd love to say it's because genuine pleasure—that enemy of both snobs and satire alike—will always take precedence over the need to condescend. But the reality, alas, is otherwise. At some point, drag-and-drop deposits will overwhelm even the most cavernous hard drive; a person will have to choose, and then their true colors will out: The Killers? Lenny Kravitz? Dave Matthews??? Because let's face it, only one thing is more incorrigible than my snobbery, people, and that's your indefensibly crappy taste in music.
Stephen Metcalf is a Slate critic and lives in Brooklyn.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2129511/
Sunday, November 06, 2005
She's a geography hero
ok, so this is from salon.com.......
Are you a sucker for a brainiac girl-hero story? Well, this one is truly epic: Ten-year-old Tilly Smith's knowledge of geography saved 100 lives, including her parents', her sister's and her own, at a Thai resort last December.
Two weeks before the Dec. 26th tsunami, Smith studied the monster waves in geography class back in Oxshott, England. Walking on the beach that morning with her family on the island of Phuket, Tilly recognized the telltale signs of the coming deluge.
When the girl told her mother, mom tried to quell her fears, and "Tilly grew hysterical," her dad remembers, according to the Associated Press. But not so hysterical that she didn't have the presence of mind to run back to the crowded beach in front of the hotel, and warn a hotel chef, while her dad notified other hotel staff. The beach was evacuated minutes before the gigantic wave struck. It was one of the few beaches in Phuket where no one was killed or seriously injured.
The now 11-year-old Tilly was in New York this week to visit the United Nations and to meet former President Clinton, the U.S. tsunami recovery envoy. Catch the whole story of her heroics here. It is really worth it, especially this money quote from the hero herself: "I like geography."
Are you a sucker for a brainiac girl-hero story? Well, this one is truly epic: Ten-year-old Tilly Smith's knowledge of geography saved 100 lives, including her parents', her sister's and her own, at a Thai resort last December.
Two weeks before the Dec. 26th tsunami, Smith studied the monster waves in geography class back in Oxshott, England. Walking on the beach that morning with her family on the island of Phuket, Tilly recognized the telltale signs of the coming deluge.
When the girl told her mother, mom tried to quell her fears, and "Tilly grew hysterical," her dad remembers, according to the Associated Press. But not so hysterical that she didn't have the presence of mind to run back to the crowded beach in front of the hotel, and warn a hotel chef, while her dad notified other hotel staff. The beach was evacuated minutes before the gigantic wave struck. It was one of the few beaches in Phuket where no one was killed or seriously injured.
The now 11-year-old Tilly was in New York this week to visit the United Nations and to meet former President Clinton, the U.S. tsunami recovery envoy. Catch the whole story of her heroics here. It is really worth it, especially this money quote from the hero herself: "I like geography."
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