Friday, June 30, 2006

might as well jump

In all honesty I don't know how I feel about having children. Ambivalent with a capital A. Recently I was really happy to hear someone (who has two children) tell me in a lovely moment of honesty that having kids is an awesome way to live life, and choosing not to have kids is equally awesome, because you lose things and gain things with either choice. It was so refreshing that he hadn't had his brains eaten by the baby zombies who make parents tell everyone how miraculous and life-changing babies are and blah blah blah. Aw, baby zombies. How cute. I'm not sure if I want a baby, but maybe I want a baby zombie.

Anyway, perhaps my unconscious mind is telling me how I really feel. I was just in a coffee shop eating some granola, and I saw this dad dangling what looked like a piece of meat in his baby's face. And the first thought that went through my head was, Should that guy be giving his baby human food?

Or maybe it's my conscious mind telling me how I feel. When I got to work and went to the restroom to find a mother putting her ~8yo daughter in a full-on headlock to either extract something from or insert something into her nose, the first thought that went through my head was, ew.

Sidebar: I was bopping along to Squeeze in the coffee shop this morning, until the music switched to two amazingly incongruous crooner swing jazz covers of "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden and "Jump" by Van Halen. The voice was Sinatraesque though I could tell it was not in fact the Chairman, so I had to look it up. Turns out Paul Anka has an album of swing rock covers, according to wiki. Best quote from that article:

Reportedly, the Michael Jackson song Billie Jean was slated to be on the album in the recording stages, but Paul Anka could not get through a vocal take without bursting into laughter.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

coupla things

The asshole upstairs just woke me up (again) with his obnoxiously unskilled and repetitive and did I mention obnoxious guitar playing. Figured I'd post.

So after writing my paper about mystery poetry, that little genre I invented, I've been using Poe's "Philosophy of Composition" to compare nearly everything to "The Raven." I think Gnarls Barkley's song "Crazy" is a lot like "The Raven" for reasons I may explain in a more thought out piece of writing. I also think the pulpy noir novel I'm reading now, The Black Dahlia, is a lot like "The Raven," because Edgar Allan Poe thinks the epitome of poeticness is the death of a beautiful woman, and the novel is about LA and some of its denizens being obsessed with just that. I should write a book about how all art just boils down to being "The Raven," so really you should just read that poem and be done with art. It's rhymey.

Other thing: I was standing on the street near a nail salon yesterday, one that had a sandwich board advertising $20 mani-pedis, and this was the conversation I heard from two men passing. I'll call them Old Guy and Really Old Guy.

Old Guy: They'd take one look at your feet and say "No way. $150."
Really Old Guy: Huh?
Old Guy: Your feet. They're disgusting.
Really Old Guy: I don't have black toes anymore. Have you seen my toes lately?

At which point they fell out of ear shot. Praytell, how does one remedy the scourge of black toes?

Thursday, June 15, 2006

put yr weight into it

Much in the same way that I couldn't have foreseen going to Boca Raton, Florida, for the 2004 election, I don't think that I could have foreseen spending yesterday windsurfing. Just wasn't really on my list of things to learn. Moreover, who knew I'd enjoy it so thoroughly, despite my being really bad at it? In retrospect, it makes sense. I love being on/near water regardless of salinity or temperature. I detest things with motors on water (although there is this intense urge I have to take an Alaskan cruise). I like having to work for my motion on water—canoeing, kayaking, swimming. Windsurfing fits in there awesomely. You have to be attuned to what's going on in the air and the water much more than when you're canoeing across a placid lake (or Lake Placid, as it were). Plus I got to wear a wetsuit and look like an X-man.

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

coupla things

Shopping at Walgreens yesterdat for a "goodbye" card for a coworker, I came across some great categories of cards, in among "Graduation," "Father's Day," "Bat Mitzvah," etc. They were "Troubled Relationship" and "When We Said 'I do' We Meant It."

a) Those are hilarious.
b) If you're looking for a greeting card to say what you need to say in either of those situations, alls I gots to say is best of luck to you.

I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark at the Castro last night (the organist played the theme music!). If I were to write a paper about that movie, it'd definitely be about shadows, and I'd probably call on Jung even though I'm so not into him. There's some line by the French guy when he says that Indie is just a shadowy double of him. It got me thinking about where Indie's allegiances are, what his ideology is. There's totally a paper in there.

I also just finished Beloved. Turtle sex aside, what a book. I love how balanced it is between narrative and something like lyric, or fragment, something characteristically feminine. I'm glad I read it now because I feel like I'm in the right place in my reading tastes/trends to appreciate it. Onto Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping! Soon, Bleak House!

Monday, June 05, 2006

this one's for you, geri

So I wrote recently about how much I like genre fiction for its not taking itself too seriously. Which isn't too say I can't take literature seriously. Case in point, I'm reading Beloved right now, and it's pretty dang serious. But am I to take turtle sex seriously?

"A turtle inched along the edge, turned and climbed to dry ground. Not far behind it was another one, headed in the same direction. Four faced plates under a hovering motionless bowl. Behind her in the grass the other one moving quickly, quickly to mount her. The impregnable strength of him—earthing his feet near her shoulders. The embracing necks—her stretching up toward his bending down, the pat pat pat of their touching heads. No height was beyond her yearning neck, stretched like a finger toward his, risking everything outside the bowl just to touch his face. The gravity of their shields, clashing, countered and mocked the floating heads touching."

This I cannot take seriously. No more than I can imagine Toni Morrison writing this book and thinking, Now would be a good time for some steamy turtle sex. I don't care if it is metaphorical, it's funny.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

could you use that in a sentence?

I was in a spelling bee tonight. I'm in love with the word I lost on: butyraceous. Having the qualities of butter or yielding or containing a substance like butter. That's all I have to say about that.