Funky Friday

Because you can't have too much Etta...



Gotta wonder about her outfit, though.

monday meh

By popular request Because one of the two followers of "the daily meh" thought the series was worth continuing, and because mondays really are "meh," I will adorn my corner of the blogosphere with weekly visual representations of this sentiment.

Today's meh is by French artist Henri Mehtisse.

Life, liberty, guns, and teeths for all!

I've been too busy of late to pay much attention to affairs of state, but here in Tennessee one can't help but take an interest in the upcoming gubernatorial primary. The lone Democratic party candidate, Mike McWherter, is no progressive's prize, having opined against adoption by gay couples and for the teaching of intelligent design in the state's schools. (Why am I living here, again?)

The Republican party's half dozen candidates have unleashed a plague of mailers and canned campaign phone messages to households here in Bubbaville, but it is in their unrehearsed pronouncements where they shine brightest, some promoting secession, while others ponder whether Islam is really a cult and therefore not afforded all the protections of "true" religions.

But the shiniest star in this primary has got to be Basil Marceaux:



Swoon. I could just listen to him say "pwedge of aweegance to da wepubwick" all day.

Funky Friday

This brings back memories of Baltimore summers, hot & muggy and no air conditioning in the apartment I shared with my best friend's finger-pickin-blues guitarist boyfriend. Not that she had other boyfriends, mind you.

up to my ears

Friends and family know that I have no shortage of words when it comes to whining about the less-than-positive aspects of my job. I could write pages and pages about every outdated, poorly designed, mismanaged, ill-conceived aspect of the job, and how even though I am charged with coordinating the program, the things that are in direst need of attention are outside the realm of my influence, etc., etc., yada, yada....

Words failed me last week, however, when I had to write a 360-word promotional piece to accompany an ad for next year's program. I think I managed to eke out 194 words before my mind started to warp...

Come spend a month at our campus. We have cleverly timed the program to coincide with the arrival of several hundred high-schoolers here to attend wrestling, cheerleading, and football camps. If you are lucky, they will not have eaten all the good stuff at the dining hall by the time you shuffle your middle-aged rump across campus.

If you missed the opportunity to experience dormitory living during your undergraduate studies, you will now have the chance to live in a 14' X 20' room, sharing a bath with someone who is the Oscar to your Felix, or vice-versa. We hope that all of the mildewed carpet in the residence hall will be replaced by the time your group arrives, but cannot guarantee same.

Your days in the classroom will be spent among colleagues whose tales of woe will rival your own. Nobody has it worse than they do back at their home campus. Prizes will not be given for the saddest tale of administrative abuses of power, but that doesn't stop the sharing.

You may or may not be assigned to a qualified advisor to guide you through the design of your project, since you failed to return the required paperwork on a timely basis. We are not mind readers and have no preconceived idea of what the hell you want to work on while you're here.

Need more information? Your program director will cheerfully answer any questions you have, at least the first and second times. After that she will become quite testy and refer you to the program Web site or the informative handout you were given 5-minutes prior. She will smile when you ask how she is. And she will weep to see you leave at the end of 4 weeks. Whether this is because she will genuinely miss you, because her veneer of self-control has finally cracked, or because she knows she must immediately begin planning for next year's program, well . . . .

Listening to fireworks

Patriotics
-- by David Baker

Yesterday a little girl got slapped to death by her daddy,
out of work, alcoholic, and estranged two towns down river.
America, it's hard to get your attention politely.
America, the beautiful night is about to blow up

and the cop who brought the man down with a shot to the chops
is shaking hands, dribbling chaw across his sweaty shirt,
and pointing to cars across the courthouse grass to park.
It's the Big One one more time, July the 4th,

our country's perfect holiday, so direct a metaphor for war
we shoot off bombs, launch rockets from Drano cans,
spray the streets and neighbors' yards with the machine-gun crack
of fireworks, with rebel yells and beer. In short, we celebrate.

It's hard to believe. But so help the soul of Thomas Paine,
the entire country must be here-the acned faces of neglect,
the halter-tops and ties, the bellies, badges, beehives,
jacked-up cowboy boots, yes, the back-up singers of democracy

all gathered to brighten in unambiguous delight
when we attack the calm pointless sky. With terrifying vigor
the whistle-stop across the river will lob its smaller arsenal
halfway back again. Some may be moved to tears.

We'll clean up fast, drive home slow, and tomorrow
get back to work, those of us with jobs, convicting the others
in the back rooms of our courts and malls--yet what
will be left of that one poor child, veteran of no war

but her family's own? The comfort of a welfare plot,
a stalk of wilting prayers? Our fathers' dreams come true as nightmare.
So the first bomb blasts and echoes through the streets and shrubs:
red, white, and blue sparks shower down, a plague

of patriotic bugs. Our thousand eyeballs burn aglow like punks.
America, I'd swear I don't believe in you, but here I am,
and here you are, and here we stand again, agape.

Read this poem and others at Poets Against War

a month of "meh"

It's come to this folks: I'm reduced to an inarticulate shell of a wench. Stressed-out and sleepless, I now resort to posting kitteh pictures from that cheezburger site in a lame attempt to maintain some sort of presence in the blogosphere.

Alas, this state of ennui is all too familiar to me once the end of June rolls around. Long-time readers may recall the despairing post I wrote last summer when I struggled to maintain my sanity in the face of the demands of my job. Enthusiasm eludes me. I'm gearing up for an entire month -- 5 weeks, actually -- of "meh."

Since I will be working for the next 13 days straight (at least), I don't forsee having much time or energy available to wring any witty verbiage from my poor, overtaxed grey matter. But I do expect to find a few moments to take refuge in the words and images that others cast to the interwebs. To that end, I am launching a new project, "the daily meh," where I hope you will come visit & commiserate with me.

It'll be kind of like a party, except not.

1000 words + 1

Meh.

Painting by Joseph Lorusso, found here.

Full Frontal Reminiscence

Summertime inevitably brings back memories of youth, of the long carefree season where the usual rules didn't apply: no waking up to the clang of an alarm clock, no evenings spent toiling over homework, no … clothes. Back when air conditioning was something we enjoyed only on rare shopping trips, and our family's nearest neighbors were half a mile away, summer was a clothing-optional kind of time at our house. Accordingly, my younger sister, cousin and I switched our TV-inspired role-playing games from "Star Trek" to "Tarzan" in honor of the season's less-restrictive costume requirements.

That all changed the summer of my tenth year, however. Precocious in all things, I got a jump-start on puberty as well, and during one afternoon of topless tree-climbing I came to the poignant realization that I really couldn't play Tarzan with these new bubbies that had inconveniently attached themselves to my upper torso. I left the game, went in the house to find something to cover up with, and spent the hours until suppertime sitting on the kitchen stoop reading a Bobbsey Twins book.

It wasn't parental pressure or any sort of moral brainwashing that made me suddenly modest. I guess I just felt uncomfortable in my new body, and was reluctantly aware that other things would change, too. While garments may not have been compulsory, growing up was. Or at least I believed so then.

Nowadays I indulge in the occasional sauna, hanging out, so to speak, with my friends, in the pretext that I'm doing something for my health. In reality though, I'm just being a naked kid again.

(Edited & Reposted from JS 7/29/05)

Meat the Author

I hope they don't make a movie out of Julie Powell's second book, Cleaving. I've just finished reading this latest memoir-ish offering from the author of Julie and Julia, upon recommendation from my sister. I haven't seen the Julie and Julia movie (nor actually read the book - yet) but I'm sure it's innocuous enough. I have read excerpts of Powell's Julie/Julia Project blog, which is comically entertaining while providing ample evidence of Powell's questionable sanity. And Powell's success at turning a passion for cooking into a way out of a shitty job is pretty enviable to those of us stuck in shitty jobs ourselves.

However...

Cleaving would be an okay book if its author was content to merely chronicle her obsession with learning the butchering trade. I didn't grow squeamish at Powell's descriptions of turning animals into entrees; after all, I grew up in a family of fisherpeople, so I know that flounder don't come from the ocean ready for the pan in uniform rectangular blocks. Heck, I've even eaten meat that had a name, courtesy of my sister & brother-in-law's sheep herd. But when Powell's tale turns to the way she rips her husband's heart apart, even if figuratively, via an affair that fulfills some masochistic need she didn't realize she had, I found myself not wanting to read the gory details. Oh, sure, Powell suffers because she sees how she makes her husband suffer. As a reader, though, I didn't want to suffer along.

I acknowledge that many writers use their craft as a form of therapy. Powell surely earned enough from the success of Julie and Julia, though, to afford a real therapist to work out her problems with. Maybe I just don't read enough (any) mainstream writing to appreciate the appeal and marketability of the sort of writing Powell is paid to indulge in.

And maybe, if Powell is the masochist she claims to be, she'd be interested in trying my job for her next book.