Road Rules

So, a week later I'm feeling a bit better and am ready to tackle the world again.  Kind of.  Well, the world as seen whizzing past a car window at the very least.  Today my brother and I set off for adventure (i.e. Pittsburgh), on the first leg of our cross-country road trip.  (Background: the bro is moving to Hawaii, with his car, which is shipping out of San Diego - so that's our destination.)  On this leg we gave a friend a lift to the 'burgh, in return for some pretty posh overnight accomodations upon arrival.  Seriously - I'm writing this from one of their two guest rooms, in an antique-y brass bed on the third floor of an undeniably gorgeous house.  A cat is balled up and sleeping on the bench next to me.  AND I have Wifi.  Life could be worse.

Preliminary thoughts on road-tripping:

- So far, popular conversation topics include: things that our parents do that we don't like, sci-fi television shows, what we are listening to (or what we are listening to next)

- The Pennsylvania turnpike is always just as scary as I remember it being.  And I didn't make up that they force trucks to drive in the left lane in certain sections. Because having zero shoulder on dark windy roads the mountains of Pennsylvania wasn't scary enough on its own, apparently.

- The tuna sub at Wawa is superior to the tuna sub at Sheetz.

- Combos has a special limited edition Buffalo wings flavor

- I am just as bad at reading in the car as I ever used to be. 

- Coconut water: available

Daylight Savings Mind

Day three of rain here in DC, and it’s getting darker every morning. Just as it did during the deluge in mid-September, this kind of weather spurs a particularly powerful impulse to contemplate every mistake I’ve ever made and catalog every failure in my life. Sometimes I literally make lists. SUPER healthy, I know.

Things aren’t even that bad. I’m keeping busy, spending time with friends and family, seeing shows, planning a big trip at the end of the month, taking small steps professionally . . . opening my mail, watering the plants, reading the news . . . all sorts of semi-adult and reasonably functional stuff going on around here. But I gotta admit, brain-wise, the ol’ belfry seems to be filling up with bat guano. And while I KNOW that (to torture the metaphor) said guano may be valuable for its properties as a fertilizer, that doesn’t make it superfun to have in my brain where normal, happy thoughts should be. PLUS as it turns out mining bat guano is really bad for bat populations, so there’s that.

In conclusion, shut up brain, shut up your face.

Right now I’m pinning a lot of brain-clearing hopes on the end of daylight savings time. Anything that makes my first hour of consciousness each day a little more sun-filled is a pretty good plan in my book, and who doesn’t like an extra hour of sleep now and then? It’s like a mini-snow day, a reminder of forces beyond my own little life. Natural phenomena really have a pretty profound impact on my mood. I'm pretty sure my brain chemistry changes substantially every time I take a walk at lunchtime or stop to smell a flower on my way home from work.*

Probably this means that I should be outside more or something CRAZY like that. Maybe if the f-ing rain ever stops. Tonight I’m going to see 50/50 because I really enjoy snotting all over myself in public apparently, and if all goes as planned tomorrow will find me gnawing on a turkey leg while watching some jousting in bumfuck Maryland. That’s outdoors, right?

And the sun just came out, for a moment anyway. Schizo weather. I’ll take what I can get.

See you on the other side! Hopefully at a post-5-pm-sundown happy hour, because that extra light in the morning always comes at a price. Weather jerks.



*If you’re in the Dupont area, there’s still one dumbass magnolia flowering over by the Brookings Institute. You have to climb up on a wall in heels and will probably spill pollen all over yourself, but it’s worth it.

*And in other news, I have officially become my grandmother.

Wonderful

Last weekend I travelled to the Twin Cities for a good friend's wedding.  My bridesmaidly duties for the weekend involved being the first person in line at a liquor store at 10 am on a Friday morning for mimosa ingredients, drinking said mimosas in a hot tub at 10:30 am, rocking a fab orange dress with these amazing shoes,

getting a manicure that only resulted in minor toe-thumb, and valiantly not crying through a very exciting, well-planned and love-filled day.  Also dancing to Men Without Hats played by a swing band, eating mashed potatoes out of a martini glass and enjoying a pretty gorgeous sunset over the Mississippi. 

I was also newly acquainted with this touching My Morning Jacket song




and reacquainted with this lovely, lovely Mary Oliver poem.

Coming Home

When we're driving, in the dark,
on the long road
to Provincetown, which lies empty
for miles, when we're weary,
when the buildings
and the scrub pines lose
their familiar look,
I imagine us rising
from the speeding car,
I imagine us seeing
everything from another place — the top
of one of the pale dunes
or the deep and nameless
fields of the sea —
and what we see is the world
that cannot cherish us
but which we cherish,
and what we see is our life
moving like that,
along the dark edges
of everything — the headlights
like lanterns
sweeping the blackness —
believing in a thousand
fragile and unprovable things,
looking out for sorrow,
slowing down for happiness,
making all the right turns
right down to the thumping
barriers to the sea,
the swirling waves,
the narrow streets, the houses,
the past, the future,
the doorway that belongs
to you and me.


Happy marriage, C&J. Couldn't be happier for you two.

Favorite Things Tuesday?

Go listen to Oh Sister, a new/previously unreleased song from Neutral Milk Hotel. Perfect counterpoint to Two Headed Boy, my #1 favorite NMH song. Box set coming soon.

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Picture via webecoist

Tiny Houses!  Field Papers has been dreaming about them and Prince of Petworth found them.  So clean, bright, beautiful and efficient!  Too bad I would cover them with clothes and empanada wrappers immediately.

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Gorgeous and bizarre nudes/landscapes by Spencer Tunick

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Have I mentioned that I'm excited about the new muppet movie yet?  I'm kinda excited.  See you on opening night.  With my muppet shirt on.

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Love this idea for a new punctuation mark indicating friendliness without exclamation points.  Genius!  (Thanks to Helena)

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Sandwich Mondays on the Wait Wait Don't Tell Me blog

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Happy internet trails to you!

Use More Words Part Deux

If you already knew these words: congratulations! You're better than I am.* 

perfidy (n): treachery, though it should mean the opposite - from the phrase per fidem decipere, "to deceive through trust" (the deceive/decipere part was left out of the final word, evidently)
Usage: "She is a woman - much woman. Should her perfidy be less than that of other women?"
found in The Conqueror

jerkwater (adj): contemptibly trivial. Originally described stops on a rural train line, where a train's small boiler had to be refilled often, requiring the crew to "jerk" or draw water from streams.  Also an indie band.
Usage: This jerkwater town doesn't even have an Olive Garden!
found in my new Penguin Classics Crossword Puzzles book**

imprecation (n): curse, malediction
Usage: "There came a whispered imprecation from above Paul and a low voice: 'Call me spawn of a lizard!'"
from Dune by Frank Herbert

garble (v): Okay I knew this one already, but doesn't this word sound like it should be onamatopoetic?  Apparently it originated in nautical trade, referring to the sifting of spices and then the mixing up of spices and then the mixing up of language.  

soupçon (n): small amount, hint, trace. From the French word for suspicion (Isn't that elegant?)
Usage: "Think of it as a real-life King Ralph mixed with a Shakespearean tragedy and a soupçon of Being There."
from Nathan Rabin's review of W. in My Year of Flops

epos (n): alternative word for the noun epic. It's still tied to the specific idea of a body of literature but I think it could have legs if it were tweaked to cover the general concept of "epic-ness" in that word's current usage.
Usage: "Theresa's passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. She found her epos in the reform of a religious order."
from Middlemarch by George Eliot

jape (v): to joke, jest. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, jape "took on a slang sense mid-15c. of 'have sex with,' and disappeared from polite usage" prior to being revived with the new innocent usage. 
from my Penguin Classics Crossword Puzzles book again

mondegreen (n): Okay this one's really interesting.  I only looked it up incidentally to find out the lyrics to the Yeasayer song, and found the term mondegreen was coined in 1954 by author Sylvia Wright in Harper's Magazine.  From the Wikipedia article (I can't access the original at Harpers): "When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy's Reliques, and one of my favorite poems began, as I remember:

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,

Oh, where hae ye been?

They hae slain the Earl O' Moray,

And Lady Mondegreen.

The actual fourth line is 'And laid him on the green.'"  Hence, Wright defined a mondegreen as a word or phrase misheard or misinterpreted due to "near homophony." I could probably venn diagram this concept with malaproprism, but I won't.

Sources:
Online Etymological Dictionary
American Heritage Dictionary
TCM.com
Wikipedia
merriam-webster.com


*For the record, judging me for an imperfect vocabulary when I'm clearly trying to learn more words is like disdaining the fat person sweating it out at the gym.  Which I would be too, if I ever went to the gym.  Anyway, not cool.

**The collection is a neat idea - all the puzzles reference or revolve around Penguin Classic novels.  However, they're generally pretty easy, which is disappointing.

August Mix

 Here's what I was listening to in August.

	Artist	Title	Album	Notes
1	Patrick Wolf	The City	Lupercalia	Song, and album, of the month.
2	Bell	Dialtone	Diamonite	Pump me up / top-side me baby / all around the world.
3	Yeasayer	Madder Red	Odd Blood	Epic passive-aggression.
4	LCD Soundsystem	Losing My Edge	LCD Soundsystem	The kids are coming up from behind.
5	Bell	River	Diamonite	No continent is too grand / that we can't run our fingers over it.
6	Beirut	East Harlem	The Rip Tide	The pleasantly undulating second half of this song makes up for the boring, patronizing first half.
7	Yeasayer	Mondegreen	Odd Blood	Epic coke-fueled paranoia.  How do they make such good songs out of such off-putting ideas?
8	Patrick Wolf	The Future	Lupercalia	You come near / I see my future clear / and a threshhold appears / and I am carrying you over, carrying you over
9	Fleet Foxes	Grown Ocean	Helplessness Blues	Honestly, the video is better.
10	Refreshments	Banditos	Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy	I bet you don't remember that you know this song.
11	Jeff Bridges	Maybe I Missed the Point	Jeff Bridges	Oh Uncle Jeff, stick to letting other people write the songs for you.  Still, the rhythm works.
12	Ella Fitzgerald	Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most	Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie!	Promised my first dance / to winter.
13	Kris Macken	The Cool Kids	Marry Me Soundtrack	From this cutesy short film.
14	Sandie Shaw	(There's) Always Something There to Remind Me	The Very Best of Sandy Shaw	I had no idea how old this song is.  So catchy with horns and maracas.
15	Jeff Bridges	Either Way	Jeff Bridges	Okay, so I bought a second Jeff Bridges song anyway.  So sue me.

New music finds courtesy of . . .
All Songs Considered
Miss Moss
Fresh Air
Feministing
Sociological Images

Spotify link coming soon.

Use Their Words: Breakfast Edition

I like to eat breakfast alone, and almost never before noon; anybody with a terminally jangled lifestyle needs at least one psychic anchor every twenty-four hours, and mine is breakfast. In Hong Kong, Dallas, or at home—and regardless of whether or not I have been to bed—breakfast is a personal ritual that can only be properly observed alone, and in a spirit of genuine excess. The food factor should always be massive: four Bloody Marys, two grapefruits, a pot of coffee, Rangoon crêpes, a half-pound of either sausage, bacon, or corned-beef hash with diced chilies, a Spanish omelette or eggs Benedict, a quart of milk, a chopped lemon for random seasoning, and something like a slice of key lime pie, two margaritas and six lines of the best cocaine for dessert…Right, and there should also be two or three newspapers, all mail and messages, a telephone, a notebook for planning the next twenty-four hours, and at least one source of good music…all of which should be dealt with outside, in the warmth of a hot sun, and preferably stone naked.

- Hunter S. Thompson, c/o Lapham's Quarterly

This is a man who understands breakfast pleasure.

Use Your Eyes: Our 12 Hours of Flops

This Saturday I hunkered down with Senor Dogface and E at the apartment of some friends to watch 12 hours of god-awful movies from Nathan Rabin's My Year of Flops AV Club series/book. Themed food and drinks, as well as incredulous gagging on said food and drinks as the movies progressed, was (were?) had by all.  Thanks to K&A for hosting, accepting the aforementioned dogface, and generally being awesome.

The lineup:

The Conqueror: John Wayne plays Genghis Khan.  THE END.
Pros: The Star Wars-style prologue taught me some new words; awesome acting by animals.
Cons: Massive racial insensitivity; the whole cast got cancer afterwards due to filming near a nuclear test site

Postal: Everyone is awful/a terrorist/both in Uwe Bol's dark-comedy-failure based on his dark-video-game failure. Dave Foley shows his wang.
Pros: Osama Bin Laden is played by the Soup Nazi?  Glad that guy's still getting work.
Cons: Holocaust jokes, 9/11 jokes, children being shot, animal violence, everyone is awful

Shadowboxer: Hired assassins (and incestuous step-relatives) Cuba Gooding Jr. and Helen Mirren find a new lease on life when their newest target turns out to be pregnant.  Joseph Gordon Levitt is a doctor who's in a relationship with his crackhead nurse, played by Moniq.  Macy Grey guest stars as crazy.
Pros: See above.
Cons: See above.

Ishtar: Think Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty in an entertainment-themed Spies Like Us, except way, way more expensive and such a critical and financial embarrassment to the studio that it is now practically impossible to find a legit copy on DVD.
Pros: Hoffman and Beatty are actually pretty good at their roles as totally pathetic and untalented musical comedians.
Cons: I had to walk the dog in the hurricane during this movie.

Zandalee: New Orleans love triangle between Nic Cage, Judge Reinhold and some unfortunate lady.
Pros: LOTS of sex
Cons: Sex mostly involves Nic Cage.


(This clip does not require sound, and is shockingly safe for work.  But let me point out: Cage is the girl.)



Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band: Let's make a Beatles movie, but with the BeeGees and Peter Frampton instead of, you know, talented people!
Pros: I slept through most of this one.
Cons: There is apparently no angle from which one cannot see up Peter Frampton's nose.

Sounds like everyone else survived the storm.  Just in case another one comes along, you now know what not to watch, under any circumstances, ever.  You're welcome.

Use Their Words

Hulk is all about productive discomfort–the notion that growth requires us to step outside of the familiar spaces where we feel safe. My pain during childbirth had less to do with the relative strength of any given contraction but with the attitude I brought to coping with that. When I felt vulnerable or passive, I tried to hide from the contractions, which only made it harder. My midwives and my mom really helped me dig in, get active and aggressively pursue the contractions.  I would dance to bring on contractions, then get in position and say, “Okay, this is gonna fucking suck, and I’m gonna make it suck even more, because then there will be one less contraction between me and my child.” I created new comfort zones.

- Jessica Lawson, aka Feminist Hulk, on the relationship between childbirth and SMASH.  Much more Lawson awesome at the Ms. Magazine Blog.

Rockin' the Suburbs

This week I'm out in the NoVA 'burbs taking care of this 80-pound beast of adorableness, while my parents are in Florida and my brother's in Hawaii.





(I know. My family's got it rough.)

I've decided to treat the week as a mini-vacation, though I'll still be working. I'm taking a break from all TV, except workout videos, and trying to keep other screen-time to a minimum. I haven't opened my laptop since Friday morning. So far it's been pretty nice.

Of course, suburban life has its downsides too. I have a car at my disposal, which is not so much a bonus utility for moving/IKEA trips like in the city as it is a necessity for getting anywhere in under 45 mins (if I'm lucky). Even a fancy "planned community" like my hometown can only do so much with bike trails and carefully placed shopping centers. On the other hand, the places I CAN get to on foot are pretty uniformly gorgeous - quiet creeks and swaying poplars and serene lakes. And thanks to the dogface, I am obliged to frequent these locations, albeit usually with a little plastic-bagged excretory "present" in hand.

The quiet of the empty house has also provided me ample opportunity for contemplation, which is a blessing and a curse. I've used some of my reflection time to go through the detritus left in my old bedroom. Last night, after a rousing internal debate about exactly how many pages of ten-year-old notes about James Baldwin I really need to keep around Just In Case,* I found myself in this remarkably cliched situation: sitting on the floor holding open a sweetly painted white jewelry/music box with my name on it, listening to the tune as a little ballerina spun in the pink sateen interior. So much for tough-minded room cleaning; hello pointless sentimentality. I brought the box to the guest room, where I'm staying this week, and stored my wedding ring inside for overnight safekeeping.

Just so as not to leave this post on such a maudlin note, I'll end with this other intriguing window into my young mind:





Why, yes, that IS 12 naked Barbies, several decapitated or dismembered, and one lucky lady** wearing ALL of their clothes. Why do you ask?



*Two? Let's go with two.
**The lucky lady happens to be my Brooke Shields doll, the only Barbie I owned who mysteriously came with painted-on underwear. She really was clothed thoroughly.