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Go Gaggers!
Yesterday Q & Co. came over to help decorate the Xmas tree. There was the baking of the ginger snaps, the listening to the Band Aid mp3, and the watching of the Charlie Brown Christmas special. And of course, the practicing of pom pom routines. Q brought a toy that looked like Twister and acted like an ipod. You jumped on a circle and the circle played a song / cheer. “When I say Awe! You say Some!”, etc …
Q thought all the cheers were pretty great, but she seemed confused by the one that began with “Go Tigers!” When I asked her what was wrong with that one, she said she didn’t understand why we were cheering for “gaggers”. “Why are we happy they’re throwing up?”
by the way
convivialities
I’ve been meaning to post this for forever. Here goes.
In October I went to Portland. On the train. It took two days.
I found out that Wisconsin looks just like Ithaca.
And that there’s nothing in Montana but livestock.
These are the other kinds of people that take the train.
This is what they give you for dinner. It was very midwest and buttery.
Hey look – the Rocky Mountains are just like Taughannock, only states and states bigger!
Oh wait, Montana also has dead red bushes.
If you look closely, you can see that the black sign says “Torture Museum”.
I went to the back of the train and looked out the window at night. It was gorgeous and eerie. It reminded me of scenes in Superman II .
On the second morning the train went through the Colombia River Gorge. This was my favorite part of the trip.
Finally we made it to Oregon, which is like an Old West version of Vermont.
I was there mostly to visit Raven, who had to play 2 Halloween shows. Here she is practicing and catching on that she’s being photographed.
The first show was here.
Here she is warming up.
Here she is playing. It’s a Cure cover band, and this night they were recreating Unplugged. Note the toy piano.
The next night was a more rock affair. This is the only moment in the whole show where she wasn’t completely covered with fog from the fog machine. It was at her feet and only affected her.
At some point we thought it would be a good idea to go buy anti-SAD lights and makeup and pose in berets. Raven spent a half hour doing my hair before she took this photo.
And then I had to leave! Really bad planning! Next time I’ll have to stay a year or so to make up for it.
Hey look, the most interesting part of Montana!
Did I mention that there’s nothing in Montana?
This is seriously a Montana train station.
This is seriously a dead horse near it.
Things started to get interesting again as we left Montana.
Ah, Wisconsin, so pretty.
And then I was back home.
That dead animal looking thing on my couch is Emma, who likes to sleep in this position.
Yay! The end.
america: -y52ou45y23pi5, not america: +1
Today I read that if the US had a bullet train, like all the other countries, you could get from New York to Chicago in 4 hours.
!
My entire life would be different.
a and b
Today’s topics are ThinkSecret and Of Montreal.
A) ThinkSecret
Bad Steve Jobs. Yes, the site stole a little bit of your thunder. But it also overall made your thunder a lot more interesting and fun. For shame.
B) Of Montreal
Good, oh so good. (Though I have to rewatch it to see what’s up with the confederate flag – mockery of America I presume.)
Captain Mongoose
I got a wonderful call from a pilot flying just outside Minneapolis last night. This is the message he left:
This is Captain Mongoose calling? We have a sighting of five teddy bears who have been displaying some beautiful, uh, dances? We want to promote them and give them a civic commendation, so I was hoping your office could contact city hall? To prepare the paperwork? A small ceremony involving ribbons, eggnog and pastries (involving caramel) …
In the past I might have ended this post by saying that most of you know who the pilot is, but recently I found out I have 39 subscribers on netvibes. Who are the 39 of you? Cause I swear, I only know like 6 actual people and I’m related to half of them.
financial exigency
For about a dozen people in the world the phrase “financial exigency” still rings a very specific bell. Those people may be interested in the opening 3 paragraphs of a recent AP article:
BENNINGTON — Middlebury College’s president makes more than any other university president in Vermont, according to an annual survey by the Chronicle of Higher Education.
The report, in an issue titled “What Leaders Make,” says Middlebury’s president, Ronald D. Liebowitz, makes $477,764, $425,000 of it in salary.
Bennington College President Elizabeth Coleman, who heads the small private liberal arts school, is second with a salary of $325,824.
the halo disease
A few nights ago I was on a “date” with a nice, good-looking boy who worked in computers. He was 26, which I could *maybe* look past, but he didn’t know that much about music, which I could just barely look past, and he had stopped engaging in hobbies outside of Halo – that was an absolute dealbreaker. It turned out that his questionable shirt (“Yes, I am a gay robot.”) could have clued me in right from the start, but I didn’t know until I got home and looked it up.
Halo is ruining mankind. I came home that night, and as usual, I could see about 9 different simultaneous Halo games going on through the windows of other people’s apartments. When I went to bed I had to knock on the walls to let people in my own apartment know that I was having difficulty sleeping through the noise of incessant Halo gunfire.
I was talking to jdl about it. Like this:
Him: You should have called the cops.
Me: And tell them what? That people are playing video games too loud?
Him: Tell them you hear gunshots.
It was a good conversation. We talked a lot about the disappointment that is other people – i.e., he’s still railing on about the need for “silent packaging” in movie theater candy, I’m still (obviously) ranting against Halo. Eventually he summed it up like this, “Friends are one thing. Finding other people who are annoyed by the same things you are, that’s where it’s at.”
Indeed.
(Remember the term “playstation widows”? The very fact that this term has fallen out of fashion while the problem it refers to has gotten worse says everything we need to know.)
boys and their lipstick
The last 24 hours have somehow revolved around males and quasi-males in degrees of drag.1
First, came across this online (and it just added fuel to the fire of my obsession with him):
This here Eddie Izzard interview.
Second, had this conversation:
Me: I think Robert Smith ruined it for all of us. Cause he set the standard too high and opened up the door to men in lipstick.
Her: What is he? He’s not gay.
Me: Yeah, and he’s not a transvestite.
Her: Wait, what is he?
Me: He’s not anything.
Her: Yeah. He’s just great.
Third, had this one. One of us is bordering on drunk. Guess which one.2
Me: Ok, so what is this thing with Golden Girls and lesbians?
Her: It’s that lady who looked like a man.
Me: Oh. She was a lesbian?
Her: No, no. It’s just that she’s ugly.
Me: Wait, what?
Her (a lesbian): Oh my god. Please don’t tell anyone I said that.
1Quasi? Apparently it’s 1988. (Yay!)
2Yes. 3 sentences in a row using the same word. Today’s excuse is that I’ve only been up for 13 minutes.
merry christmas
Today I was at the river. It looked like this.
When I was done looking at the river I turned around and saw this. In case you can’t tell, it’s an old man pulling a headless mannequin by a rope.
Also yesterday there was this. It’s made out of car parts.
Oh Jermaine
It’s a rainy, apocalyptic day. My favorite kind. Perfect for staying inside and reading, playing piano, and watching things. Like this:
obviously
Yesterday Q went for a tricycle ride all the way around the block. It took about a half hour as there were several stops to be made. Leaves needed to be thrown, sticks needed to be collected, and the health of “boo-boo trees” needed to be ascertained. Returning to her tricycle after administering imaginary ointment to a sycamore, Dr. Q informed me that the tree in question was going to be ok. As she put it, “That tree just needed some cream of momentum.”
animal crackers are for dancing!
i love you, fall
My gorgeous Friday afternoon (above) was heralded by Thursday evening’s rainbow (below).
(Raven, this is what I was talking about when I said the world had the best lighting ever in the past 24 hours.)
have you seen me?
return of *The Bodies*
As some of you know, I have a recurring dream where I’m having a great time hanging out somewhere and then I suddenly remember that I’m a mass murderer. It starts to rain, or I take my keys out, and then I think, “Oh no! The bodies!” As in, “This rain is going to wash up all the corpses that I buried!” or “What am I doing having people over? I forgot to get rid of all the dismembered limbs covering my living room floor!”
It’s been awhile since I had one of these dreams – so long in fact that I believed whatever issues caused them had been resolved. Apparently not.
Last night’s dream had a slight variation on the script in that it did not actually include the phrase, “Oh, no! The bodies!” But the important parts – I kill someone, I forget, I remember and it ruins my day – were all there. Here’s how it went down:
I’m hanging out with everyone after hours at the bar we all work at. We’re lamenting that it’s changing from a goth / skater club to a hip-hop / skater club. Instead of wearing black, the girls are all going to have to start wearing football jerseys. I’m thinking how it’s kind of amazing that I’m looking forward to it. The new bar will be the complete opposite of my aesthetic, but because I’ll still be working with all my best friends, I won’t really mind.
Then I remember. A month ago I went to France for a romantic tryst with some guy. He turned out to be a jerk and I strangled him. Life actually isn’t going to be great at the new bar because I’m wanted in multiple countries, and when they catch me, I’m going to be electrocuted. My friends notice I look dejected and they ask me what’s wrong, but I can’t tell them cause that will probably hasten my execution.
—
As usual, I have nothing meta (that I’m willing) to report about these dreams other than that there is no better feeling than waking up and realizing you are not in fact a killer.
you can take the girl out of the midwest …
Ever since I moved back to Chicago, I’ve been resisting returning to my native habits. Yes, my speech has become more nasal, but no, I don’t pronounce soft o’s as soft a’s. Yes, I now say “Do you wanna go with?” instead of “Do you wanna go with me?”, but no, I don’t say “sangwich” when I mean “sandwich”.
Yesterday, however, as I found myself wandering through a corn maze trimmed in the shape of a bat, I realized it was game over. I was back in Illinois and Illini* as they come, despite my best attempts otherwise.
*Technically the correct term for an Illinois native is “Illinoisian”, but I’d bet you 50%+ of midwesterners don’t know that.1
1 Josh, you’re still wrong. I did NOT steal the footnotes idea from you.
crawl
Me: Be careful driving home.
Beth: Why?
Me: There’s a beer crawl going on down the street.
My niece: Why bears crawling?
i won the lotto
For real. Tonight’s megamillions was $330,000,000. So I asked my sister to buy me a ticket and I told her what numbers to play. I got one white ball right and the all important megaball. I got 33% of the numbers right! Including the megaball! What did I win for this accomplishment? Three dollars. Eh, the ticket only cost one.