Voodoo Bungalow

Voodoo Igloo

2009-12-09T17:26:00.004-07:00

Some families have winter homes in Mexico. We have this:

I pity the poor families huddled together in airports waiting for international flights, dealing with pasport control, getting hepatitis medications, studying their well-worn copies of "Spanish for Dummies," dragging wailing children through one crappy gift shop after another. We're at our destination in 7 seconds!

Honesty in Advertising

2009-07-27T17:16:00.002-06:00

As it happens, I love generic promos. They matter to me.

Plot point for Alpha Monkey

2009-07-08T09:38:00.002-06:00

Dear Blonde Alpha:

Los Angeles Public Television offers discerning viewers a panoramic view of weirdness. Body drummers, bug-eyed old dudes obsessed with alien abduction next to mysteriously rustling potted plants, sweet old ladies who can show you in three easy steps how to teach your dog to crochet.

But my favorite was always Francine Dancer, who used her fame to promote Metropolitan Transportation:

Has any woman ever so loved a public transit authority? I think not.

But the plot point, you ask. Imagine Francine Dancer as a levitating lifestyle guru.

Peace and love and MTA!

Lorraine

Thanks, HuffPost

2009-04-07T22:39:00.002-06:00

. . . . but no thanks. . . .

Birds of a Feather?

2009-04-03T12:24:00.001-06:00

Wouldn't it be nice?

Jane, even you have to admit this isn't cool

2009-03-28T18:01:00.002-06:00

WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY?
Even the Laplanders can see light at the end of their winter tunnel.

The Cold Hard Facts

2009-03-10T17:32:00.003-06:00

Winter Can Just F*** Off

2009-02-25T18:07:00.002-07:00

I cannot remember a winter as long, as remorseless, as pitiless, as full of huge piles of brown poo in the backyard, as this one. I woke up today and felt the way that medieval people under seige must have felt on Day 6690--what is within reach that I can use to kill myself???

So off I went to the Co-op. And home I came with this:
A potato for baking
A potted Gerbera daisy
Salt and Vinegar potato chips
Edemamae
Rootbeer
Vanity Fair
Vogue
Metropolitan Home
Dwell
Elle Decor
Kahlua
Jellybeans
Chocolate eggs
Chocolate milk
Watermelon
Coffee

If that's not enough to get me through the next 24 hours, I don't know what will.

Holy Moly

2009-02-15T15:36:00.004-07:00

I have three major projects due in the next 24 hours. Three of them. So what am I doing today?

Well, I'm cooking chicken mole for my inlaws, of course. They will hate it. They will hate the delicate warmth of the anchos, they will hate the bitter chocolate, they will hate the toasted pepitas ground into a fine powder. They will be filled with warm toasty chocolate and hate.

I knew this from the moment I decided to embark upon the long, complex task of recreating Mayan delicacies in my voodoo bungalow up here on the tundra.

I cannot explain my behavior any longer.

It's time to seek professional help.

In the Yucatan, if possible. Anyone got a villa? And if the Mayas didn't come from the Yucatan, please don't write to tell me about it.

Thank you. In the immortal words of Hodgman, That is all.

Does this come in 2-gallon cans?

2009-02-03T21:45:00.003-07:00

Favorite review of this product (or perhaps any product): "I’m guessing that if I were to use Poop Freeze, it would be by far be the best Poop Freezer I’ve ever used and would thus recommend it."--Jason

Stupid Zone 3a

2009-01-29T11:22:00.002-07:00

Sometimes I think that you might as well NOT have a garden in Zone 3a.Flipping through the Vesey's catalogue is a kind of hell for a girl who does enjoy her ranunculussesses.

Does this Burka make me look fat?

2009-01-21T10:10:00.001-07:00

Farewell, Turkmenian markhor. We hardly knew you.

2009-01-20T22:14:00.003-07:00

"OTTAWA (Reuters) - An exotic goat in Canada's Calgary Zoo accidentally hanged itself after it became entangled in a rope and then fell off a log, CTV television reported on Sunday."

Perfectly understandable. Even goats from Turmenia would rather be dead than live through one more day of winter in Canada.

One small tragedy for goatdom, one big boom for tourism in Alberta:

Overheard conversation

2009-01-04T12:20:00.001-07:00

Basement, Voodoo Bungalow:

Lief: I don't ever want to be a father.
Jasper: Me neither.
Lief: Yeah, cause then Santa only brings you underpants for Christmas.
Jasper: "Dad" rhymes with "Bad."

There is no excuse for this kind of behavior

2009-01-03T23:23:00.002-07:00

Mollusk eyes

2008-12-31T10:18:00.004-07:00

Being someone who generally can't see the forest for the trees, can't see what's right in front of her, can't see her way clear, can't really see at night (rods and cones! they're bastards), I'm trying to find out what I'm missing by reading many books about seeing, including "How to Use Your Eyes," by James Elkins. At the very end of the book, plastered upon a discussion of the "true eyes" of mollusks, I found this:

Maybe I cannot see much but I can use Google, which led me to Professor Karlin of Bowling Green--he of the 1958 field study in Colorado that concludes that there is a "food chain relationship between land snails and aspens." I've lived among academicians (they're devils) and can bring you this insider information: that means snails eat aspens.

I'm trying really hard to turn this small coincidence into a finely-wrought observation about year-end, resolutions, saying what you mean lest you appear retarded, and the pleasures of serendipity. It's not working, but I thought I'd state for the record that that's what I'm up to if you're trying to reach me by phone, or email, smoke-signal, semaphore or telepathy. Sorry, I'm busy with mollusk eyes and stomachs.

Seriously hoping that 2009 can offer WAY more than this. . . for everyone.

Inventing Elvis

2008-12-29T23:29:00.003-07:00

So, because I am myself, superbly and completely myself, I now own a coonhound from New Orleans by the name of Elvis. Actually, the yellow piece of paper from the St. Bernard Parish animal rescue society says his name is "Elvis/Buddy" but clearly that's not workable. So Elvis it is.

So what would YOU do with a coonhound from New Orleans called Elvis?

Right. You buy him red winter boots. Just til you can find blue suede shoes in his size.

You download all songs containing the words "levee" or "bayou" from iTunes and play the CD for him when you have to leave him alone in the house.

Every time you see him you assure him that he's never caught a rabbit and he ain't no friend of yours.

And you purchase him a pet tag just like this one:

Thank you, Wicked Minky. You seem to rock and I like your jewelry, doggy or otherwise.

Art criticism 1

2008-12-14T12:10:00.003-07:00

This superhero is catching a falling star.
This superhero is riding a comet.
This superhero is stopping a meteor.

This superhero is riding a forklift.

I Love Canada

2008-12-09T09:49:00.003-07:00

We had a huge dump of snow here yesterday--a foot or so of the soft white stuff. Snow, as you know, hushes everything. You can't hear a car, a bus, the train, people's voices, the kid next door working out his acoustic rendition of "Walk This Way."

It also seems to have settled some people's notion of what's important. The federal Liberals are having a leadership knife fight. The dollar continues to plummet. Three more dead Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.

And, of course, a major wipeout on a sledding hill:

I love this country.

Hunka Hunka Woo Woo Woo

2008-12-04T23:38:00.003-07:00

Dear Elvis the coon hound:

It's a long way from New Orleans to Calgary, a long way from the broken levee to the cedar-scented dog bed (King-sized, naturally) in the voodoo bungalow. You have a few things to learn.

Yep, it's pretty much always this cold.
Nope, you can't pee on the rug.
Yep, that stuffed goose is a squeaky TOY and
Nope, it won't hurt you.
Yep, you really do have to be spritzed with eucalyptus deodorant every day, because, Elvis, you're a smelly old hound dog.
Nope, you don't ever have to go back to living under a truck.
Yep, your eyebrows are really cute.

(PS: "Hoser" is just what we all call each other, no offense.)

Miracle

2008-11-25T08:22:00.000-07:00

Go here:

My Hero

2008-11-07T14:44:00.002-07:00

Finally

2008-11-04T20:15:00.001-07:00

Some days are just better than others.

The Vapors

2008-10-29T13:34:00.004-06:00

Where have the days gone when ladies of good breeding could simply swoon a little on the settee and someone would bring in a tonic in a cut-glass bottle, after which the lady would sleep soundly for several hours or days? Now we have nervous breakdowns, go ape-shit, go insane, etc. Not exactly ladylike.

No modern home containing one gently imprisoned wife and mother should be without this:

If my husband said "Easy Now," I'd hurl a potato at him, but somehow having a cardboard box of tea express its empathy is very reassuring. There's a dissertation in here somewhere.

Survived Thanksgiving

2008-10-13T21:53:00.002-06:00

Survived three bottles of bubbly.
Survived the mashed potatoes with goat cheese.
Survived pumpkin pie.
Survived the missing allspice berry in the cranberry sauce.
Survived the political discussion.
Survived the turkey turkey turkey and more turkey.
Survived (narrowly) the whole "I don't believe in Christ" conversation.

Take THAT, Thanksgiving. You're going to have to do better than that next year. And Christmas: your name is on my list. You are going DOWN!

Well, at least SOMEONE's having fun

2008-10-07T12:14:00.001-06:00

hiding from the library

2008-09-30T10:58:00.002-06:00

The Calgary Public Library is a fabulous place. They bring me books about Khazakstan and Superman, recordings by Amy Mann, cartoons about ducks. I am tearfully grateful to them for offering me the world even though I am a couch potato in a voodoo bungalow. If I could only remember to return books on time, it would all be perfect. But I cannot remember. And what's worse, I cannot remember where Scooby-Doo and the Caveman Caper has gotten to. The Library wants it back. They keep leaving polite recordings about how other children want to read this book that I've selfishly kept off the shelves for more than two months, and about how my fines are piling up. And now they're taking hostages. I cannot drop by and pick up my reserved copy of "A Journey Round My Brain" unless I am waving a small lime-green paperback in front of me.

Bright side: I understand many things now. The Cold War, the Wall Street Bailout, the relative cultural values of Kasey Kasem avatars vs Hungarian psychologist memoirs.

Goodnight and Good Luck

2008-09-14T19:54:00.000-06:00

"David Foster Wallace's particular vocation was to allow us to see just how fraught and complicated, how difficult yet how necessary, that telling had become -- not just for him, but for all of us. What will we do without him?"--Laura Miller, Sslon.com

Swaziland is happening

2008-09-09T09:33:00.004-06:00

Turning resolutely away from all things Palin, I am riveted by this headline:

"Bare-breasted virgins compete for Swaziland king."

Well, he IS Sub-Saharan Africa's last absolute monarch. What's a girl to do?

Suddenly, I see what the RNC could be in 2012.

I for one am about to shut up about Sarah Palin. Thank you, Arianna Huffington.

2008-09-08T14:13:00.001-06:00

"Her critics like to say that Palin hasn't accomplished anything. I disagree: in the space of ten days she's succeeded in distracting the entire country from the horrific Bush record -- and McCain's complicity in it. My friends, that's accomplishment we can believe in."--Arianna Huffington, Sarah Palin: A Trojan Moose Concealing Four More Years of George Bush

Read the whole thing here.

Oh, dear God

2008-09-08T12:30:00.002-06:00

A USA Today/Gallup poll released Monday suggests that John McCain won the battle of the convention boosts over Barack Obama. The survey showed likely voters supporting McCain over Obama 54-44. McCain holds a slightly smaller lead among registered voters; among that group, he's ahead 50-46.

Ad the weeping continues here in the voodoo bungalow.

Someone email me something funny--and quick.

Something has happened

2008-09-07T22:48:00.003-06:00

For the last week, I've been gleeful about Sarah Palin. The jokes, the crazy doctored photos, the dead bloody elk carcass as a backdrop for warm and fuzzy family photographs, her banning of library books and vendettas against minor civil servants. I was in stitches. I laffed, I cried.

But now I'm just depressed.

When they said that anybody could grow up to be president, they surely didn't mean, you know, ANYBODY.

John McCain deserves a spanking.

Save that image for a later nightmare. . . .

Sarah Palin rap

2008-09-05T12:08:00.000-06:00

Normally, I don't go for stuff like this. No really.

But this is too good to pass up.

Small Comedies Everywhere

2008-09-04T21:01:00.004-06:00

Sometimes little things make the day worth the living. Like this LinkedIn button:

The whole thing of course depends on whether you think "Tickle Me Guglielmo" is as funny as I think it is.

Jerry

2008-09-02T14:04:00.002-06:00

Flashback to August 1974. Buick Electra. Saskatchewan highway. Chain-smoking parents. Flatulent poodle. 98 degrees outside and inside. Grasshoppers bluff charging even at 80mph. And on the eight-track, just after "I Got Me Some Kind of a Woman" (WHAT KIND? we all wanted to know)--Jerry Reed singing "Lord Mister Ford." From the album "Jerry Reed: Live, Still."

Yeah, not so much as of today.

Well if the Lord that made the moon and stars
Would have meant for me and you to have cars
He'd have seen that we was all born
With a parking space.

Palin in comparison

2008-09-02T01:58:00.004-06:00

So here I am sitting up at 2 in the morning on a holiday Monday/Tuesday, writing about things that don't exactly capture the imagination -- although I am trying to rearrange bullets so that the first words make a haiku about shoes -- hard to work the word "corns" into a proposal about the future of retail interactivity. . . . but at least I am not Sarah Palin.

Beauty queen, sportscaster, moosebane. Bedecked in her brave beehive, she is the object of my pity this chilly evening. And I do believe that she is lying awake right this minute, staring at the moon and wondering why on earth she uttered that fateful "yes."

Sarah: I'm up if you just want to talk, you know, about anything, really. I have this great buttermilk biscuit recipe that you might like--if you put enough jam and butter on them, you might recapture a little happiness. At any rate, try to get a little sleep: Joe Biden can be a real handful and you'll need to roll all your courage into a ball to get up on that stage in your little red Republican lady-outfit.

PS: Do try to think a little about Iraq, there's a dear.

And here's a moose:

Slow day in the USA

2008-08-22T11:35:00.002-06:00

Quiet Night in Calgary

2008-08-09T01:34:00.001-06:00

"Dog dies in garage fire." That's the headline on the cfcn news site tonight.

Abomination cake

2008-08-05T21:53:00.005-06:00

Luke and I sat up until 2 in the morning, bonding over the hand-made creation of our son's birthday confections. Bonding, as you know, is shorthand for "bunchy bickering about frosting." We downloaded a Batman logo from the web, printed it, cut it out, traced it on the cake in transparent goo material, then filled it in painstakingly with homemade butter cream icing that had been dyed JUST the right shade of bat-blue:

Perfect!

Except that the little round-headed kid had no idea what it was. The Abomination? The Devil? Um. . . Thor? Thor?!?!?!

He had no trouble with Cake #2, which got right to the point:

However, he was somewhat confused about the mint green icing and what on earth that might have to do with Catwoman. Does she have green blood, he asked, hopefully?

Don't look back

2008-07-28T21:54:00.005-06:00

This is what I see everytime I play Scrabulous with one of the many people who beat me badly at Scrabulous. If I understand correctly, someone has figured out that I'm a middle aged woman who plays Scrabble late at night and wants me to buy some worm powder.

I'm a little touched that there's someone out there who is selling fat ladies magical potions that will kill the badness inside that keeps them from realizing their true potential. When I returned from the Soviet Union in 1980 with a little tummy trouble, my doctor gave me something to drink and then said "When you go to the bathroom, whatever you do, DO NOT LOOK BACK."

A good thought for today, or any day.

Screw art; let's eat pork

2008-07-23T15:05:00.003-06:00

Yesterday was one of those days that life throws out every once in a while, just to remind us to stop freaking and have a good time because everything's all retarded anyhow.

It began as I fretted around the bungalow, waiting for husband to return from delivering small son to camp at the Jewish Centre. Last time son was there for camp, last year, he left shrieking "I HATE THE JEWISH CENTRE!" The fact that we're not Jewish just increased the shame.

And so I wait and wait. And wait a little more. I have 1.5 hours in which to get to the hospital in Banff for my latest descent into knee hell. I had visions of a small blonde idiot child knocking over menorahs and shrieking through tabernacles.

He was fine, as it turns out. Luke had just stopped off to buy a pork roast (as one does, directly after leaving the Jewish Center). His lawn bowling team is BBQing on Wednesday for 60 people and he had to procure as much pig as possible.

We make it to the hospital only 15 minutes late. I lie in bed there for four hours before having the operation. While I am otherwise occupied, Luke has lunch, wanders by the river, reads his book. The surgeon, vastly pregnant with twins, and wearing black rubber galoshes, uses a Mikita drill to draw three long screws from my knee. In a freak of nerve science, the general anaesthesia freezes half of my tongue--and it's still frozen, 24 hours later. I sound drunk all the time, which is as good a cover as I can think of for actually being drunk all the time.

On the way home, Luke picks up my prescription, two more pork roasts, onions, roasting pans, lemon and brining bags.

Home through a driving rainstorm, I fall into bed while Luke goes out to buy a FOURTH pork roast.

That's right: four roasts, three stores, two cities.

And one incorrect date.

Anyone wanting two or three pork roasts, come on over.

The world can rest peacefully tonight

2008-07-08T23:12:00.003-06:00

Hey, everybody: Have a good sleep this evening. These guys are taking care of us:

And they're not afraid to get tough if they need to.

Sweet dreams.

Well, hello there

2008-07-02T21:11:00.006-06:00

"We are here on the planet only once, and might as well get a feel for the place. We might as well get a feel for the fringes and hollows in which life
is lived . . . "
-Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk
(click the image to see who's living in the fringes and hollows)

Not the Only One

2008-06-25T12:42:00.004-06:00

Over at Salon, Sarah Bird writes of her disappointment that her son is not gay. Best line: "God never closes a door that he doesn't open a lilac satin-lined Louis Vuitton makeup case."

Yesterday, when we went to pick up the little round-headed kid at Diana's, we learned that he had spent the better part of the afternoon under a blanket kissing a girl. They're 4. The husband immediately goes into that boy routine with the fist pumping and the lip biting, whilst I sank onto the porch swing and tried not to cry.

I will always shoe shop alone.

Speaking of, aren't these cute:

The remind me of the Bugs Bunny cartoon with the bull who swallows a gun and shoots bullets from his horns. If ladies wearing these Lagerfelds stamp their heels, will their bullet bras have deadly aim?

Hoochie Pucci

2008-06-17T13:12:00.006-06:00

How I love Emilio Pucci. No one has done as much for a girl's sense of fun or for the Big Sunglasses industry. But doesn't it look like there's at least one small bush here about to have more fun than it ought?

When I close my eyes, this is how I see myself:

Needless to say, opening my eyes reveals slightly shorter legs.

See you at emiliopucci.com. The music is pretty groovy as well.

She Throws Herself at Men

2008-05-30T13:47:00.002-06:00

I cannot quite tell you the joy this photo series gives me (lillymcelroy.com).

Rain Warrior

2008-05-25T22:23:00.004-06:00

I think I could deal successfully with the deluge here if I could wear this fabulous Burberry get-up. (I wouldn't have such a mean look on my face, as that might frighten the duck that has started living on our front lawn.) Tonight it will snow, apparently, but I feel like the weather wouldn't have the nerve to do that if it could just get a load of me in my aggressive all-weather duds. Perhaps that's the answer to global warming: scary outerwear. Worth a try.

Want this

2008-05-22T11:18:00.003-06:00

Ever have one of those days when you wish you could launch your bungalow up into a groovy 1960s outerspace eco-fantasy? Sort of like a treehouse in space, except you'd be wearing truly fabulous knee-high boots and a Pucci minidress and your hair would be long and would have no grey, just bouncy curls and lots of them? And you'd serve the aliens smart blue cocktails and clever amuse bouches on your space-age polymer tablewear?

Yeah, I know. I've been there, space sister.

Well, this is the lamp you'd want on your coffee table.

www.kozaidesigns.com can help you out with all that. You're welcome.

Regalia

2008-05-21T23:23:00.005-06:00

This costs $650:

Well, of course it does! It's "regalia." Serious, rich, cushy-- with little hat tassles that make a person look just a bit like a pool table. Making things look like other things can be costly, as any girl who has tried to look five years younger will tell you, pots of cream on every surface. . . .

But for just a little bit more, you could have this beautiful Roberto Cavalli on eBay:

At $650, that's a savings of $1500 or so. You could buy a pool table for that.

Another reason to love the English

2008-05-13T23:45:00.002-06:00

Haven't been here for a while

2008-04-24T10:43:00.001-06:00

And I can't think of anything to say, so I'll just say that, the spell will be broken, and I can get on with it later. Never do now what you can put off for later.

Haaaaard

2008-03-14T13:20:00.002-06:00

It's Friday afternoon at about 1.30. I'm watching curling on TV--Ontario versus British Columbia. Apparently, Bob from BC just made a perfect call as the skip, getting a carry on the yellow rock.

I've never curled, except once in grade 7, about two hours after I'd had one of those eye exams where they put the drops in your eyes. It was winter, which meant that I had snow blindness on top of googly vision. As a result, curling has always been associated with feeling kind of stoned and vulnerable. Oh, and, gawky, out of place, weird and poorly dressed. I think that about covers it.

And this afternoon some 30 years later, I have to say "Thank God for curling" because, once again gawky (a broken knee will do that for a girl), weird and poorly dressed (although these jammies are quite nice, if I do say so), it's either curling or the third episode of last season's Canada's Next Top Model.

Beware the Leprechauns

2008-03-10T10:41:00.002-06:00

The little round-headed kid and I are home alone today, me on the big purple couch with my shattered knee, him on his wee Spiderman couch. He's watching one of the scariest Looney Tunes ever--the one where Porky Pig, who doesn't wear pants, ever, which is completely revolting, but anyhow, where Porky Pig wanders into the castle of the leprechauns and winds up in cursed green shoes that force him to do a frantic jig. When I first saw this as a child, it gave me the shakes for about three weeks. I'm watching the round-headed kid for signs of fright, but so far he's pretty much obsessed only with Porky's bare bottom and the potential for toilet-related hijinx that this might make possible. And, weirdly, this small horror was released on the very same day (July 28, 1951) as Disney's "Alice in Wonderland," also the stuff of kiddy horror.

Felicitations

2008-03-09T22:08:00.003-06:00

Happy 49th Birthday, Barbie!

After a certain point, mom stopped buying us Barbies. I think the smell of burning plastic was too much to bear.

Confirmed

2008-03-06T13:05:00.003-07:00

I only thought that I liked World Music.

busted

2008-02-25T17:12:00.005-07:00

Before: dreamsicle daredevil

After: titanium-enriched layabout

8 weeks isn't SUCH a long time. . . .

These are a few of my favorite things

2008-02-12T21:19:00.002-07:00

My closet is filled to bursting with lovely things. Among them:

--A blue silky shift of robin's egg blue resplendent with little pink and yellow butterflies. Perfect for me! When I was 7.

--A pair of buttery-soft hunter green mid-calf lace up boots with a lovely stacked heel, Italian, with very pointy toes. Perfect for me! Before my feet grew toes.

--A Pucci-like wraparound dress in chocolate with a lovely cinched in waist. Perfect for me! When I had a waist.

--A deep v-neck sweater in the most gorgeous shade of coral. Perfect for me! Before I developed breasts.

--A chocolate brown suede piratey miniskirt with a great big wide brass-buckled belt. Perfect for me! Before I developed knee fat.

--Three pairs of French fishnet silk stockings. Perfect for me! Except that I'm not currently a middle-aged hooker.

I am now looking for a clincher that will somehow wrap this all up ina neat little package, but I think the gist of the thing is that my closet requires some kind of multiple-personality medication and a smart cocktail to wash it down with.

Taking things seriously

2008-02-06T19:15:00.000-07:00

I'm reading Joshua Glenn and Carol Hayes' book "Taking Things Seriously: 75 Objects with Unexpected Significance." It's of course led me to look around the voodoo bungalow for things that might have significance not easily assessed from just looking at them. Here are three on my desk:

1. A twisted pair of gold-wire spectacle frames that Luke left in my apartment the night he left to break up with his long-time girlfriend.

2. A fist-sized, smooth round rock painted like a lady bug with a small signature "You're nice." It was made by the mom of a friend when I was just a kid. She was an artist, a mother of 8, and she made some pocket change doing these bugaboos, as she called them. I think of her now and realize that this rock is a small cry for help.

3. A blue glass globe, referred to sharply as a "cabbage" by the darling friend who gave it to me for Christmas one year. We both know that we are made of glass, are blue, and despite all odds (and being perched precariously on a cluttered desk) we remain unshattered.

The bag of whole wheat alphabet pretzels speaks for itself. Kind of literally.

Too much TV?

2008-02-01T11:26:00.000-07:00

Little tussle in the voodoo bungalow last night, one that necessitated a gentle introduction to the premise of "the golden rule." Which, apparently, my four-year-old already knew all about.

"If our meat's not good enough to serve your family, it doesn't leave our plant."

My Scooby Snacks is Froze

2008-01-27T22:34:00.000-07:00

Here inside the voodoo bungalow it's a little chilly, not just because of my natural frosty disposition but because it's something like minus 44 out there tonight and no caulking in the world is going to keep that from getting in a girl's duvet. And if you don't know what a duvet is, you're a lucky person and should just keep your good luck in a small golden box and look at it fondly, perhaps stroke it gentle-like, every once in a while.

Entering Day 8 of the "all about me and the kid home locked up at home alone" show. Hanna Barbera did not make enough Scooby Doo episodes to get me through this one. Ruh-roh, as they say.

Oh, Janey, dear: shuttit about how I shoulda known better.

Whiskey River

2008-01-21T23:04:00.000-07:00

Listening to "Whiskey River" by Johnny Bush (from the all-time great compilation album "Country Drinking Songs") tonight, contemplating the recession and how little stars seem to have noticed that there's anything wrong. They're up there doing that twinkling thing that they do. Just saying.

The last time I listened to Whiskey River would have been something like 1973, likely on a trip to Broadview Saskatchewan to visit a grandmother who kept chickens and a couple of bitchy geese. Buick Electra, no seatbelts, flatulent poodle, two chainsmoking parents, and non-stop country music on the 8-track. At ten years of age I knew the following songs off by heart:

The Happpiest Girl in the Whole USA
I Got Me Some Kind of a Woman
Behind Closed Doors
Satin Sheets
One's on the Way
It's Not Love (But It's Not Bad)

Essentially, at 10 I shared a material culture with hard-drinkin', loose-livin', boot-stompin'no-good womanizing scoundrels and knew a fair bit about things I really had no business knowing about. I did think that "Behind Closed Doors" was called "Behind Old Stones," but I still knew it was dirty, somehow.

Tsk tsk I say to myself, what were my parents thinking? Just for a moment, I say that to myself, before recalling that my four year old's favorite song is "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy."

Kreplach $1000

2008-01-20T17:17:00.000-07:00

That's one of my favorite bits from Daffy Duck's "The Scarlet Pumpernickel." And a nice lead-in to an odd suburban evening with the moms of Lief's friends. Topics of conversation included:

--Sudden, permanent, yoga-induced hair loss
--Sweat lodges and smudging
--Is it worse to have pink hair or to dress like a slut--when you're 14?
--Premonitions of violent death expressed in inexplicable fainting in a mall near Great Slave Lake
--Hula hoop workouts vs. Pilates
--Best way to purge the body of red dye 14
--What happens to tummy tattoos after baby #3 (hint: ewwww)
--Desirability of French immersion kindergarten versus undesirability of driving kid every morning instead of watching them cross the park, meaning you don't have to get out of your pyjamas
--Probable ratio of teachers who will understand when a mom picks up her child from school at 3 still wearing pyjamas to those who will not; likelihood that the latter will be teaching at a French immersion school
--Is gin the new cranberry and soda?

RIP, Suzanne Pleshette, you cello-voiced beauty, you.

The Big Wham-O

2008-01-17T22:41:00.000-07:00

Richard Knerr, 82 forever, died today, having left the world such gifts as the Hula Hoop, the Frisbee--and Silly String. I thought I'd head out and buy a can of the stuff and write "Bye, Mr. Knerr" on the snow in the back yard, but much to my surprise, Silly String is now banned in Canada. Some nonsense about the ozone. Not banned in Iraq, though; the US army uses it to detect booby traps and trip wires. I both love and hate the idea of scared boys from Iowa sneaking through dangerous Babylon armed with Silly String, just as we were when stalking vampires through Glendale Meadows schoolyard in the 70s. Mostly though I wish the scared boys from Iowa could leave the stuff there for the Iraqi kids to play with and just come on back home and play with their own kids. Back in 1925, when Mister Richard Knerr was born, the Kingdom of Iraq was also a newborn. Who could have predicted, looking into those milky and disbelieving baby eyes, how it would all end--with the one responsible for covering the other with fluorescent plastic string?

99

2008-01-16T13:24:00.000-07:00

Happy 99th birthday, Ethel Merman!

Not much doing today in the voodoo bungalow. Thinking about some of the worst songs of my teenage years, which were unrecognized as such until much later, like maybe not even until today. On Songfacts.com, there's a fervent discussion about whether Toto's song "99" is about Agent 99 from "Get Smart," or some kind of reference to George Lucas's THX1138. Just in case you really and truly have nothing else that you should be doing. Like, looking into the stomach contents of dead songbirds? No? Yeah, bit messy, that. Ralph Dexter, indeed. (And thus a new euphemism for "barf" was born.)

Messier object M99, by the way, is a magnitude 10.5 spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices, which means "Bernice's Hair."

Oooh: I love Google. At 99 Bernice Street in North Attleboro, MA, you'll find the All Pro Chimney Sweeps, although as this house is being listed on MLS I worry that you'll perhaps have to look somewhere else for your soot solution.

If you're having trouble with that, I guess you could call your senator, Ted Kennedy, whose brother, JFK, enjoyed a marvelous inauguration, one that featured "Everything's Coming Up Roses" as sung by Miss Ethel Merman.

Whose birthday we shall now remark by sacrificing this here fruity cocktail to the angry tiki gods.

Today in a compressed universe

2008-01-15T23:35:00.000-07:00

A dull day here in the suburbs, but it wasn't always so. Oh, no no no no:

Feast day of Macarius the Great. A hyena once brought him her cub, which was blind—he spat on it and the creature regained its sight. The mom returned shortly thereafter with a bloody sheepskin; after a severe tongue-lashing, Macarius accepted the gift, on the condition that the grateful hyena not do anything mean ever again, and slept on the skin until the very day he died. I feel that this story is sending us all mixed messages.

Speaking of which:

1977: Today the song "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" by Leo Sayer topped the charts and stayed there for a week.

Actually, that's not a mixed message, that's one of the four or five top signs of the apocalypse.

1951: Charo is apparently born. Her real name is "María del Rosario Pilar Martínez Molina Baeza Rasten," and sister, if she was born in 1951, I'll eat a dead bird.

Speaking of which:

Also on January 15, 1951, a dead cedar waxwing was found at Massillon by Ralph Dexter of Kent State. Contents of its stomach: fruit of rose bush, and 1 fruit pit.

2003: In Albuquerque, New Mexico, Lou Rawls is arrested on one count of battery against his girlfriend. She’ll never find, as long as she lives, some one who cares for her, tender like he does.

Today in the Voodoo Bungalow: The round-headed kid tells me “Bat guano was once used as an ingredient in cosmetics.”

Ten Good Reasons on My Desk

2008-01-15T09:46:00.000-07:00

Why I'm finding it hard to get anything done today:

1. Bag of plastic pirates (three; isn't that a number more or less guaranteed to come to blows?)
2. Sheaf of Lightning McQueen coloring pages
3. Box of Revillon chocolate/raspberry chocolate twigs
4. Small plastic cannon and cannon ball (record: out the door, down the hall, past the bathroom)
5. CD: "Guided Relaxation"
6. Completely empty tube of toothpaste
7. Entertainment '08 coupon book ("Quickly pays for itself") (if you like hotdogs)
8. Joke Box (contents: fake vomit, fake poo, fake teeth, fart whistle, severed finger, fake blood)
9. Two telephones
10. Neon X-Treme Play-Doh (two containers)

Livin' Large

2007-12-17T10:53:00.000-07:00

This year, I have one party to go to for the holiday season. It happened on Friday, in an unheated dairy barn at a historical village. The evening ended with a rousing game of musical chairs played to the halting tune of "Bohemian Like You," which is either scary prescient or scary ironic.

But scary, which ever way you look at it.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

2007-12-04T17:31:00.000-07:00

Here at the voodoo bungalow, the signs are everywhere: it's the holiday season. It's not the snow. Not the Christmas iTunes mix. Not the odd booze (vanilla WHAT?). Not the twinkly lights, even.

It's that I just licked chocolate peppermint frosting off the light switch in the kitchen.

The tiki gods aren't the only ones who are angry

2007-11-22T09:52:00.000-07:00

In case you failed to visit, the Sodom and Gomorrah of the fish world once existed, as lately ago as last week, off Northern Ireland. And then, out of nowhere, a flotilla of "mauve stinger" jellyfish 10 square miles by 33 feet deep killed all 100,000 farm salmon who lived there in, apparently, a deep condition of sin.

And I'll know that I've reached a particularly low point in my creative life if I find myself thinking about fish sins for any longer than, say, 5 minutes at a time.

Montreal: hoo boy, zut alors

2007-11-13T12:52:00.000-07:00

In no particular order:

1. Watched the preparation (long, drawn out) of a pig's foot being stuffed with foie gras and actually given to someone for dinner. For dinner and not for free dinner, either. Nope, that pied de cochon was farci'd au foie gras to the tune of $45. CANADIAN. (Still can't get my head around our exchange rate.) Bored? Go to http://www.restaurantaupieddecochon.ca and see if you can figure out what this vegetarian had for dinner. Hint: they were out of fish.

2. Studiously did not watch whilst husband chowed down on veal kidneys. Apparently, even people who eat veal kidneys won't eat pig kidneys. I think that's like the whole honour amongst thieves routine.

3. Was asked to dance for three disgusting old men in front of a Sexi-tique Erotique Fantastique Strip club. Three BILINGUAL disgusting old men.

4. Lebanon has no more French-speaking Christian dentists because they are all driving cabs in Montreal.

5. If you make a mistake while saying "Lac Castor" and say, for example, "Lac aux castors," then it's like asking for a lake with some beavers on top. This makes French-speaking husbands roar with laughter until they are pelted with dirt clods. Someone has captured the raw glamor of this lake on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XWmcAAITwg. And yes I do know how to do that so that you can just click and go without cutting and pasting but I'm still a little peevish about the whole ragging I took for not being very great at French and I don't frankly care if you go take a look at the lake with some beavers on top or not. And it was cold, too, for the record.

6. It's difficult to find a public bathroom in Montreal, apart from inside the many thousand miles of underground shopping malls, but this does not appear to bother that many people.

7. They have never heard of Lunar Jim in Montreal children's stores. This is one of many things that recommends the city to some of us.

8. Met a prominent rock and roll photographer and her huggy entourage in a hotel bar. She did buy us beer, so thanks, and I hope her husband doesn't find out about the portly companion who announced loudly that he wanted to suck on her finger. From the hungry glint in his eye I would judge he was more than likely to chaw down on that finger and not just, you know, suck on it. He was fondling a plastic shaker of steak salt with his free hand.

9. French women are French women, whether they happen to actually live in France or not. How is it possible for them to wear felt plaid newsboy caps and golden boots and not look like ridiculous hookers but like glamorous French women? I practiced my French walking but looked like a Westerner whose girdle had slipped and not like a glamorous French woman in "casual separates."

Dead Sea Lemonade: An Exercise in Improbability for Wendy

2007-11-06T00:43:00.001-07:00

Miss M is on a lemonade diet.

I can't stop laffing. A LEMONADE DIET. Hee, that's a good one. Unless of course there is a serious medical condition behind this, in which case, oh no.

Obsessed with the Dead Sea Scrolls these days. Why? Perhaps the toxic effect of Twizzlers. The kick to the head delivered by a four-year-old made giddy by a warm bath. The recurring emotional damage of being called a "no-good farty old mule" by a husband who shall remain nameless.

Now, how to connect the Dead Sea Scrolls with a punitive lemonade diet. . .

Dead Sea Scrolls written 2300 years ago in middle of Jordanian desert. Lemonade diet transforms girl's soul into desert.

Dead Sea Scrolls make plaintive cry to a God who has abandoned His people. Lemonade diet sends plaintive cry from a girl who has abandoned her mind.

Wouldn't it be refreshing if someone found a 2300-year-old scroll in a Jordanian cave that was all about having waaay too much to drink and falling in with rogues and a Bedouin-y ancient Elton John from the "Bitch is Back" days, with the rat-a-tat-a-tatty keyboard and the crazy glasses and the feather boa? "My soul crieth aloud for Alka Seltzer, my God, and yet the bubbles do not come. What gives already?"

Clearly sleep is needed here.

Night-night Miss M. Hope tomorrow is the last day of your sad citron situation.

Speechless

2007-11-04T21:11:00.001-07:00

http://mustachesofthenineteenthcentury.blogspot.com/2007/11/answers-to-your-questions-additional.html

Affirmation

2007-10-31T18:54:00.000-06:00

This chanting thing can be uplifting at times.

Case in point: I asked a friend to abandon her dogs and come hang around with me this evening: "I'm good company and I don't eat my own vomit."

So I find now that I've been chanting "I don't eat my own vomit" over and over again in the dark, waiting for trick-or-treaters. And it's true, I don't. So there's that on the plus side of the column.

Bring on November.

Irony in Canada

2007-10-30T08:16:00.000-06:00

They say that Canadians are an ironic people. It's not our fault. It's this country.

Case in point: Last night, I fell asleep to the sound of waves in Baja--courtesy a small blue iPod. And so it snowed. 60 degrees yesterday, snow today. Keeps a girl on her toes. . . .

43 Things

2007-10-25T09:51:00.000-06:00

1. Write a novel that makes me laff
2. Grow strawberries
3. Find that black skirt I lost 8 years ago that was the perfect length
4. Get out of debt
5. Be able to identify all constellations of the northern hemisphere
6. See the Southern Cross
7. Live in New Zealand
8. Conquer my fear of heights and go up the Eiffel Tower
9. Go back to Rome for a long long time
10. Make J's problems go away
11. Learn photography
12. Sleep without having to take a pill
13. Lighten up
14. Paint like a French girl
15. Go to Persia
16. Befriend Angelina and Brad
17. Play the drums
18. Tell better knock-knock jokes
19. Run a mile without coughing up blood
20. Be someone's muse
21. Make a truly great strawberry shortcake
22. Have gorgeous champagne flutes
23. Help someone get off the street
24. Watch an elephant band in India
25. Kick the Twizzlers habit
26. Make Smoochy's day
27. Float in a warm lake
28. Find decent Mexican food where I live
29. Learn to make tamales
30. Earn one of those special passports
31. Sleep in the Disneyland castle
32. Perform a flying camel with grace and dignity
33. Be one of the people thanked at the Oscars
34. Wear a floor-length ball gown somewhere where this is done
35. Find the friend I've always wanted
36. Drive super fast on the autobahn in a great car
37. Decide whether there's a god or not and be okay with what I decide
38. Read Greek
39. Sleep outside more
40. Find peace and quiet inside my head
41. Have everyone I love live together and get along in a luxury resort that we somehow all magically have bought together that has really great chefs and massage facilities as well as a variety of swimming pools and naturally a waterfall
42. Score season tickets for the Flames--and not in the cheap seats
43. Be one of the good guys

43 Things

Deep Panuke

2007-10-25T08:12:00.001-06:00

Found the phrase of the day. By day it's an oil reserve off the coast of Nova Scotia, but it's poetry by night.

User Experience

2007-10-24T13:32:00.000-06:00

Lief's first morning of getting his own breakfast.

He heads straight for the pantry, where we've placed the cereal on a shelf that he can reach. He carefully pours a bowlful of milk, then gingerly floats his flakes individually on top. There is no room for the spoon and raisins are out of the question.

It is one of the greatest moments of his life.

Remember this

2007-10-23T13:01:00.000-06:00

It is never--no, not EVER--a good idea to eat an entire package of Strawberry Twizzlers in one sitting, or probably, truth be told, within the span of a single month.

--A message from the Be Kind to Your Colon Council of Canada

Sandman

2007-10-21T22:16:00.000-06:00

I try to tell myself it's 'cause I'm hip, but the truth is that I've started reading graphic novels because they're easy to read in 15 or 20 minutes at a time and they have pretty pictures in them. Some of them. I'm currently reading Neil Gaiman's "Sandman," and can I just say that I CAN'T FIGURE OUT WTH IS GOING ON. Rubies and orbs and bad magic and really cool haircuts--but is the guy supposed to be, you know, cute, or is he supposed to be, like, totally scary??--and why does Lucifer look like David Bowie? And what is that one devil supposed to be? A giant hairy poo? Not the fly, the other one, the one that is also not David Bowie.

I think tomorrow I'll hit the drug store and stock up on Archie comics. Nutty hijinx in Riverdale seems to be about what I can handle these days. Now--wouldn't you like to see a mash up of Archie and Neil Gaiman, in which the Sandman and his demon pals (enemies? don't ask me) make Jughead's eyes pop open so wide that they start to gob all over his cheeseburger? And Betty and Veronica tear each other's hair out from the roots? And Archie gets to be lord of a giant squishy love fest on the football field?

Clearly, the yoga isn't settling my soul any. Crap, another $300 down the spiritual drain. Onward to bellybutton crystals and crazy teas!

Wait! A blog list is born!

2007-10-19T11:06:00.000-06:00

My friends' favorite slurs:

Jane: "asshat"
Kris: "fuckwit"
Robin: "slacksy"
Jen: "slutcracker"
Lief: "dumb old stinky toilet potato"

I guess they don't make zombies like they used to

2007-10-19T10:39:00.000-06:00

The Third Annual Calgary Zombie Walk -- a gathering of hundreds of ghouls who moulder and decay on the streets of downtown Calgary -- has been cancelled this year. Apparently they didn't apply for a parade permit in time.

Blinded by giblets

2007-10-15T15:55:00.000-06:00

Halloween is still a few weeks off, but I have spent the month of October pretty much scared to fucking death. Fall in Alberta can be a bone-chilling affair at the best of times, but this has been a warm and beautiful autumn so far. Not warm, not beautiful, however, are the following:

1. We're getting a dog, a hare-brained Spaniel that eats leaves and barfs (not shoots).

2. Mom in hospital for possible bowel cancer. Or not. Who can say? Certainly not the medical professionals, at least not for the last three days because there are no beds except those in the noisy, smelly and scary emergency ward, and apparently only one colon specialist in the entire province. I saw things on her dinner tray last night that would make your hair curl. . .

SPEAKING OF WHICH . . .

3. The man in Tyler Texas attempting to break the world record for leg-hair length (substantially longer than four inches) has invaded my dreams. IMAGINE.

4. New antibiotics mean, potentially: tremors, diarrhea, nausea, headache, insomnia, tendon weakness, swelling of feet, dimness of vision, thoughts of suicide AND NO ALCOHOL. I would rather smell smoke for the rest of my life, I think.

5. My four-year-old son works diligently at perfecting his Mr. Bean routine. We can no longer walk through the poultry section of our local grocery store, because he wants to put a raw turkey on his head and then stagger around blinded by giblets.

Dream a Little Dream

2007-09-09T23:05:00.001-06:00

Got all magical and dewy-eyed about childhood--my child's childhood in particular. And am now in the midst of a dilemma. I was trying to get Himself to go to sleep and told him that if he touched his forehead to mine and fell asleep, we could share a dream. His lamplike blue eyes lit up and he was so excited about this prospect that he couldn't settle down for more than an hour. "Have we shared a dream yet?" "Was that the dream?" (No, daddy flushing.) "What will our dream be? Do we get to decide? Who decides what we dream anyhow? What if I want to share a dream with you but it's not the dream that you want to share with me? If you're wearing just one sock because your other foot was itchy and you kicked off that sock can you still share a dream with someone else? Are you wearing socks? Was THAT the dream? (No, daddy flushing.) I really want to dream about an elephant. Could we make that our dream? Will I feel different in the morning? Can you share dreams when you're just napping? If you dream about an elephant does the elephant know that you have? Would that make an elephant mad? Is it dangerous to dream about motorcycles? If you fall off a motorcycle when you're dreaming of one, do you still hurt yourself?"

He finally drifted off, but how in the world am I going to convince him in the morning that we shared a dream and that there is magic in the world after all? Will this scar him? Will he always suspect that I am A Fraud? Can you be A Fraud if you're wearing just one sock?

24

2007-09-06T08:21:00.000-06:00

A few things have changed since I was 20. I no longer have a green cord bomber jacket, for example, and no bib-front gabardine dresses with school-marm ribbon ties. I no longer have a summer home on a mountain lake. I have chocolate-brown lowlights. I have voted. I have thrown up on Sunset Boulevard. I narrowly missed being bombed in London by the IRA. I have had three other near-death experiences. I lost four teeth. I became ridiculously overeducated. I ate abalone. I broke the speed limit on a lonely California highway in the middle of the night by some 55 mph in an ancient Honda. I watched my infant son nearly drown. I've discovered that I have a gift for lactation.

But I have always loved Neil Finn.

And, as of last night, I realize that this makes me part of the "middle-aged women in boots" demographic.

She Lists

2007-09-05T11:57:00.001-06:00

I would like to do the following today instead of sitting at my desk looking at the neighbor's satellite dish and wishing I were too famous to be waiting inside for the plumber whilst my son watches "Quack Peep and Chirp" in the basement:

--Warming my bottom in a sandy beach hotpool in New Zealand
--Eating mushroom soup with sherry and truffle oil beside a fireplace
--Watching one of those 1960s movies whose soundtrack goes "Ba ba da ba ba doo doo da da" and features mad outbreaks of dancing in daft boots
--Trying on some Robert Cavalli outfits and having them FIT
--Running wayward Maritimes girls (actually, one in particular) through an atom collider deep beneath Geneva to see what would happen upon impact: Many minnows flying in all directions? Bits of seaglass?
--Being brave enough to actually attend the "Chicks with Sticks" martial arts fitness class running RIGHT THIS MINUTE at the JCC
--Responding to fan mail ("She's so genuine!")

Time to go eat cheese. Crowded House tonight!

O Nebo, My Nebo

2007-09-03T19:10:00.000-06:00

In search of a lost marble I fell to my hands and knees before the dishwasher.

Something that looked like the mouldering knee of an ancient Babylonian king was looking back at me from the space between the machine's motor panel and the main compartment. Something that had clearly been undisturbed for millennia. Something. . . . baleful.

What to do, what to do?

I backed off, horrifed, to the other end of the kitchen and, feeling behind me, slowly opened the cleaning cupboard. Armed at last with a slender bottle of organic lavender cleaner (perfectly safe on skin and quite delightfully scented), I considered my options.

The best of which appeared to be retreat. So here I am in the basement with my chocolate cache and my loyal whinging television. Have been watching "Rome" for hours now--let's call it RESEARCH in the destruction of Eastern empires. Updates to follow.

Update: In Akkadian, Nabû-kudurri-uṣur is usually interpreted as "O Nebo, defend my kudurru."

*Blink*

Bathing Beauties

2007-08-15T13:58:00.000-06:00

I bought a bathing suit today-- well, a SWIMMING suit, actually, one designed for movement in water and not a complete lack of movement in the vicinity of water. All attendant horrors nothwithstanding, it was a very strange experience. I saw:

1. A 12- or 13-year-old boy trying on a girl's swimsuit. His mother was very encouraging. Also extremely beautiful and not at all bothered (apparently) by her son's cross-dressing. And she was right: the aqua maillot did make him look a little sallow.

2. A 400-year-old man stalking the change-room area in a speedo and flippers.

3. A woman who tried on something like 50 pairs of swimming goggles. She claimed that they all smelled like chickens. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.

Is it any wonder I required 150 grams of chocolate-covered ginger shortly after making my purchase? A lovely, shirred, black, steel-girdered number that is probably so heavy I'll sink like a rock.

Heroes of Particle Physics

2007-08-14T11:53:00.001-06:00

When I was a kid, I didn't know that it was possible for a person to grow up to be a hero of particle physics. If I had known that there was a career that involved finding dimensions, I would have signed up for it. I blame Mr Lukeman, my junior-high math teacher, who told great tales of opening a boarding school for wayward girls in PEI, but didn't much care whether anyone in his class could count beyond ten.

I wonder what would happen if a person were to race wayward Maritime girls through a vast underground chamber in Switzerland, colliding them into one another deep beneath the streets of Geneva?

The Fish God

2007-08-13T16:49:00.000-06:00

Yesterday we took the small boy to Fish Creek Park to splash in the water, tread softly in silent pine groves and just generally try to elude civilization for a while. We threw rocks into the water, skipped stones, played a variety of one-note wonders on an old recorder, ate chips and danced away from anxious wasps just beginning to sense The End.

At one point we looked up to notice a sturdy blonde child of about 2 wading in the creek alone--her young Russian mother sauntered up eventually, but was very unconcerned that her daughter was stomping around in knee-high water, charging up small waterfalls and clutching at darting minnows who seemed intent on leading her into depths not conducive to toddler life. And I could see why; this girl was clearly mistress of it all, solid, stolid, in charge, and not to be suspected of tipping over and drowning. She wore on her little pink face a scowl worthy of Boris Yeltsin that communicated quite clearly her relationship with the larger world around her.

Suddenly, Luke noticed a large cobalt dragonfly that had swooped too low to the water and was struggling in the current and headed towards tiny rapids that would probably finish it off. So I did what I had to do: shucked the Tevas and waded in. The dragonfly's grip on my finger was quite mighty for something made of nothing, basically; it was so clearly relieved to be finished with the swimming and so intent on clinging to solid me that I had trouble shaking it off on dry land. Then I called to the children to come see where it rested, gleaming in the sun with its strange square black head. One of nature's magic creatures.

The little Russian girl picked up a stone and before I could do anything, squished the dragonfly under it.

I think the Fish God made her do it.

Political for a Moment

2007-07-16T21:23:00.000-06:00

Just read Joan Walsh's interview with Elizabeth Edwards over at Salon.com.

So, hey, God: if you ever drop in on this blog, could you leave a comment about why Ann Coulter gets to have more days on earth than EE? Cause, look, if it's something we said, or you know, if we didn't write a thank you note when we probably should have, I think we could maybe figure out a work-around.

I'm just saying, is all. On the one hand we have bravery, intellect, courage and kindness. On the other, well, we have Ann Coulter.

I Wanna Get Next To You

2007-07-15T13:49:00.000-06:00

My son's favorite music is a 1970s soul compilation that features Marvin Gaye, Rose Royce, Bill Withers and Aretha Franklin, among others. It's strange to hear your four-year-old crooning "Let's Get it On," is all I have to say.

Bells and Whistles

2007-07-12T12:21:00.001-06:00

I hate my phones. They all have the most horrible ways of communicating with me. Why can our machines not, for example, cough discreetly or whisper our names like a lover, or bang a gong so we can get it on and all that. My DVD welcomes me to DVD World and wishes me Bye! My microwave tells me to Enjoy My Meal. This is akin to that Microsoft Office paperclip, to which I would also like to take an enthusiastic hammer. I like my machines to be the strong silent type.

Or, alternatively, to make the following sounds:

Tra-la-la! (a la Captain Underpants)
Meadowlark trills
Steve Martin on banjo
Wind in a pine forest
Sneakers scaping in the gravel underneath a swing
Opening riff of "Need You Tonight"
Toast popping up
Icecubes cracking under cold gin
Lief yawning

Just for the record, I would also like for my next-door neighbor's stupid fracking motorcycle to be the strong silent AND LONG GONE type. Who tunes a motorcycle at 6.30 in the morning???

Gin

2007-07-10T14:50:00.000-06:00

I talk a lot about gin, way more than I drink it, and way more than I know about it. Until just now.

And now that I know, thanks to Wikipedia (and it must be true if I read it on Wikipedia), that gin and tonic was originally devised as a preventative against malaria, I think I might just drink a little more of it. The mosquitos are bad this year, bad I tell you, and there's something desperate and brave about drinking gin so as to avoid a sweaty death.

But oh my, what have we here? 67 litres a day, wot?

And here it is, already 3 in the afternoon. I had better get a move on if I'm to remain alive.

Toodles.

Thinking about John the Baptist again

2007-07-09T16:48:00.000-06:00

I wonder what kind of list you get on if you Google things like "dried human tongue nailed to Bible", "skull Damascus", "skull Yorkshire", "severed right arm Egypt" and "Montenegro"?

Cause I'm on that list.

I'm reading a book called "What Happy People Know" mostly because I like to make fun of happy people, and knowing what they know might make my taunting more targeted. The author claims that you should be able to summarize yourself in 25 words or less and that this summary should be something memorable and positive that you can use as an elevator pitch to yourself when times get tough.

"I'm a middle-European baroness in disguise as a suburban mother; my fabulousness twinkles in the gin, the candlelight gleaming on my tiara, and the azure directness of my blue blue eyes."

31 words -- I think (that would be the gin there). Maybe happy people would be even happier if they had more than 25 words to work with.

Thinking about John the Baptist

2007-07-08T22:15:00.000-06:00

I once saw a Bible on which was nailed the leathery tongue of John the Baptist. Or at least that was the story (remember that if all the little pieces of Christ's foreskin claimed by Cristendom were stitched together, JC would very clearly indeed be seen as the Son of God). The tongue looked like beef jerky, dried and curled at the edges as though at its last living moment it were licking cream from J the B's upper lip.

I just saw a photo of a piece of skull as well as the right arm of John the Baptist. They're in Constantinople.

I have just seen the right hand of John the Baptist. It's in Montenegro. In the summer of 2006 it took a little tour of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine before returning in July to Montenegro. Nice! Everyone needs a vacation.

Hands up if you're confused: If you're ever in Scetes, Egypt, head out to the Coptic Orthodox Monastery of Saint Macarius the Great and take a yoohoo at the right hand of John the Baptist.

The severed head of John the Baptist is in San Silvestre de Capite in Rome and, confusingly, in Amiens Cathedral.

Severed head update:It's also buried in Halifax, West Yorkshire, England, Antioch, Ummayad Mosque in Damascus, and somewhere in southern France.

But no mention of a tongue.

My heart aches for the owner of the mystery tongue nailed to that medieval Bible I once saw. (That's got to be one of those sentences never before written.) If richard Brautigan were alive, he'd know what to say about this.

Saturday Musings

2007-06-30T22:46:00.000-06:00

Summer isn't what it used to be, that's for sure. I used to spend entire days in the lake, or crashing through pine woods, or lying on clover reading Agatha Christie whilst frying my pale white tummy in the hopes of tanning like my sisters.

Today I went to the wave pool with the kid, splashed around in saline pee solution (I knew it was a saline pee solution because Smoochie peed in it), and ate a handful of jelly beans from a really unsanitary candy dispenser in the main lobby. I knew it was unsanitary because of the snot. There wasn't a single opportunity to water ski, steal a kiss from a Baptist minister's son who thought he could contract VD if so much as touched by a Catholic, or spit watermelon seeds over the retaining wall. On the other hand, no bottom-feeder fish tried to suck on my little toe as it dangled from the raft, either, so I suppose the day wasn't a dead loss.

I wonder if that minister's kid ever got over me. I expect I spoiled him for all other women. I would kiss me, you know, right now, if I was standing in front of twelve-year-old me, covered in Coppertone, chewing pink Bubbalicious, spackled in lip gloss and sass. A quick look to the right, into my grandmother's walnut vanity mirror, reveals 44-year-old me, covered in sad fat, spackled in Oil of Olay, and I have to say that I am not moved in the slightest to throw my arms around me, except maybe with compassion.

Moving right along.

Favorite song bit ever:

"It's got the wang bar from the crypt, Fender Fender Fender." -- Jonathan Richman, "Fender Stratocaster"

I just googled 'how to end a play.'

Painted the bathroom a hideous periwinkle and cannot bear to go on. Who knows how long the masking tape will cover the electrical outlets?

If having the largest collection of copper-hued nail polish bottles in the history of the world were a guarantor, as hoped, of real happiness, I would be really fucking happy right now.

Brain Tumor Update 2

2007-06-05T09:56:00.000-06:00

Guess this means I have to take care of those dandelions after all.

Brain Tumor Update

2007-06-04T21:15:00.000-06:00

Brain tumor?

Don't have one.

Chronic sinusitis?

Yep, got me some of that.

Deep breath.

Still smell smoke, but apparently a month of antibiotics will take care of it.

WHEW.

Europe is Weird

2007-06-04T16:34:00.000-06:00

Things I saw:

1. Catherine of Siena's index finger (brown, wrinkly)
2. Eleanor of Toledo's undergarments (larger than you might have imagined)
3. Cosimo de Medici's codpiece (see above)

Neck Roll Philiac

2007-05-02T22:50:00.000-06:00

Today I followed a man around Safeway for 15 minutes because from the back of his neck I felt that I knew him and wanted to figure out who he was before looking at his face. Bit of a slow day up here. Skin: red, slight shaving rash, pudgy around the collar. Hair: brown, cut straight but a little shaggy. Dark lowlights. Ears: pierced, both of them. Hat: sort of a mod bowler. I stalked him past the frozen perogies, whilst he fondled avocados, as he considered some sale books. There was just something about him (well, his neck) that I had seen before. Under stage lights? Why was I thinking of David Geffen?

Ah, got it. It was Elton John.

In 1988 I raced up the I-80 north of San Francisco, certain that I had seen Stevie Wonder drive by in a black BMW. Drive by. Took about 10 minutes for me to figure out the central miscalculation there.

Tomorrow? Probably Christina Aguilera will come collecting for the Cancer Society. I'd better go clean up the foyer right now so as not to be found ill-prepared.