they say "fuck" a lot more, too

I got a local phone number for my cell phone. I was surprised to find that the change in area code came with a change in the automated voice on the phone - the soothing voice now speaks faster. Dick thinks it's an all new, northeastern accent; I hypothesize that there's one automated voice the speed of which the cell phone company adjusts depending on your geographic location.

the first beantown post

In the interest of reporting the many things happening over the last two weeks, I should have been posting more. What spare time I have had, though, has not found me in front of a computer long enough to type sentences. Thus, a brief review:

-The car is sold. I am car-less.

-The driveway here was not big enough for the PODS container. Five days and a trip to city hall for permits later, the POD made it to the street and was unloaded by people we paid to carry our things up the stairs to our third floor apartment. This felt extravagant, but worthwhile.

-School has started.

-Tanqueray gin is much cheaper in MA than my former state of residence. Much rejoicing.

things of a tuesday

-Tomorrow is my last day at work. This is scary. Also, I have way too much crap in my office. Some of it doesn't even belong to me, like Dick's Charlambides and Bardo Pond cds. But there are some things that must be preserved, like the coffee grinder and llama finger puppet.

-I bought this external hard drive (specifically, the red one, at 250GB). It really looks like a giant Lego. It worked well and fast, but the user documentation is crap. Seriously, tech companies of the world, hire a technical writer.

-The HR people at work recently created a group called "The Fun Club." Their mission is to plan fun things for us to do. So far that has consisted of "TV show lunchtime," when they show an episode of an old TV show in a conference room. Their selections so far: Bewitched and Charlie's Angels (episode: "Angels in Chains"). Maybe this series has secretly been curated by raynorgrace.

-I'm really glad that giant country in the north of Asia is called "Russia" again. When I was in grade school "Soviet Union" seemed so dull, like the name of a bank or a chemical company. "Russia," on the other hand, kindled ideas of a cold, hard country, furry hats and men doing that squatting kick dance and borscht. And what was with "USSR"? How does "Soviet Union" abbreviate to "USSR"? Ok, "USSR" is most of the letters in "Russia"...maybe they were into some avant garde word jumbling. Anyway, I'm glad its back to Russia.

who sells handmade cards in our fair city?

I need to send out some very tardy thank you cards to the kind people who wrote letters of recommendation for me for my MFA apps. They are brilliant and creative people, so I want to send them something handmade and out of the ordinary. In Boston I saw a few amazing letterpress cards in local gift shops, but for some reason neglected to buy them (probably I was distracted by a shiny object).

I haven't been able to find anything like that in our fair city. At least not the point of the geometric shape that is Ex-industrial Town. Does anyone know where I can get some?

i used to think his avatar was a picture of him in a college play

omg, dickumbrage is back! why am i always the last to know?

i cower before your blogging might, dickumbrage.

complaining about the complainers

In case you didn't know, last week we had several days in a row where the heat index got up to around 110 degrees. That is really fucking hot. Even at night, when it cooled down to 80 or so, the humidity rose to 85%. It was so hot during the day I felt dazed walking to my car from my office. I got mild heat exhaustion after running errands for an hour at lunchtime. It made me cranky (er, crankier), and when I experienced or was recovering from recently experiencing the heat, pretty much the only conversation my melted brain could put together was "mmmrrrmm fucking hot mrrrmm."

Yet every time it gets really hot, some jackhole writes a column in the paper complaining about how people keep talking about how hot it is. Like, "Oooh, look at all those idiots stating the obvious because their wee brains are so wee and feeble!" But I think it is YOU who are the idiot, Mr. or Ms. Columnist! We keep talking about how hot it is because it is the only thing we are thinking about. It's probably the only thing we are thinking about because most humans don't do very well running around in 110 degree heat, and our bodies are suffering and trying to tell us to find a cave or something and lie around until it cools off. Perhaps you lack this evolutionary instinct, and thus will die the next time you wander into the overheated world completely oblivious to the physical danger you face while you gab about Kierkegaard or hedge funds or whatever it is you deem suitable for conversation.

If you're going to complain about something, complain about the red teams.

suburb adventures

This is what a turn on my planned bike route in Sprawling Suburb - where I'm holed up with the 'rents until I leave for Boston in a couple weeks - looks like from a satellite. I did a modified version of this ride with my dad last night, and it took us through some lovely rural area with farm houses and small fields of some sort of late-summer crop (I'm thinking potatoes). That, and a new public library stuck in the middle of a field, cookie-cutter McMansion developments, and a lots of upturned dirt being prepared for building yet another housing development.

The combination (or, I guess, transition of) rural and suburban is fascinating, and it's warmed me a bit to Sprawling Suburb. I really want to start taking photos of it, and now I just have to get my ass outside with a camera in hand. The satellite photo of it is even great. I love the way those suburban neighborhoods look from the sky: like teeth? or a microscopic organism? or a deformed sprocket?

if you want to buy my car, you should not call my cell phone 18 times

because then I won't let you anywhere near my person or property.

not thinking about moving things

As of last Tuesday we are out of our house, having survived the moving out process. All of our stuff is in one of these guys in some warehouse, happily sitting around in a climate that is no higher than 75 degrees. It was all incredibly tiring and stressful, and if you want me to relate the trials and tribulations you'll have to provide me with at least one hearty serving of a delicious and refreshing alcoholic beverage. Barring that, let's talk about something else. Like commuting!

I've already discovered the (not surprising) suckitude of our region's public transportation. I thought I'd worked out a nice plan though: my dad works near the main bus transfer station in the big technology park, so he could drop me off there on his way to work. The bus I'd take goes straight from the main station to the station near where I work, taking only 15 minutes. Then I found out my dad is going to out of town for nearly the entire time I'd be making this commute.

I could use the park 'n' ride at the bus transfer station, but that might end up being more expensive than driving (15 mile trip driving vs. 6 miles driving and $3.20 for the round trip on the bus). But is it worth a little extra to do something good for the environment? And maybe save me the mind-numbing highway driving?

selling and buying

The yard sale Saturday went well, netting us a modest bit of cash in small bills to spend on burritos and/or strippers. No one bought my computer desk, even when marked down to $8, so I posted it for sale on Craigslist for $20 this morning. Within half an hour I got six responses, and they keep rolling in. Responding to the various queries is a bit more of a pain than a yard sale, but it's definitely more profitable. I'm thinking maybe we should have done this with a few other pieces of furniture, and then we'd have money for even more burritos and strippers.

Now that I've sold some possessions, it's time to think about buying some new ones, natch! Specifically for me, a bed. I'm working on painting a headboard I got cheap at a thrift store last year, so I need a mattress. Sears.com has some nicely priced sets: a full mattress and box spring for ~$300. I ran to the local Sears at lunch today to try some out for comfort, but their selection sucked. The only had a couple of mattresses on display, and most of them were $500-900. "WTF? " I thought. A little Google searching and the always enlightening Seth Stevenson gave me the straight dope: all mattresses are basically the same, and it doesn't really matter what kind of mattress you sleep on anyway, so buy the cheapest one available. And so I happily shall.

makin' like the computer peoples

One of the things I'm selling at the yard sale tomorrow is my old Compaq PC that my parents bought for me in 1999 for college. It was never a great computer, but it's held up surprisingly well over the years. I hope someone will want to pay $5 for the component parts (monitor, box, accessories) or $15 for the whole package. I like to think it would be a good old computer for someone who just needs to do word processing and access the Interwebs, but I'd be just as happy to hand it over to someone who wants to make art out of it or take out their work-related frustrations on it with a baseball bat a la Office Space.

I had a notion I'd want to wipe all my data off the hard drive, and the ever-knowledgeable and patient Jason! pointed me to Darik's Boot and Nuke. It all seemed very esoteric, but after a couple of tries DBAN started up and wiped everything from my hard drive. This morning I reinstalled Windows 2000 Pro so someone can use the PC for general PC things if they wish. I backed up the drivers for my sound card and ethernet card before wiping the hard drive, but I'm not sure if I need to reinstall them, or if I do, where to put them.

Overall, I'm rather proud of myself, though I imagine this sort of thing is laughably simple to the initiated.

yard sale

We're having a yard sale this Saturday, July 21. Starts at 8:00 a.m and should go till noon or so. Come buy our stuff. There will even be a pile of free stuff that will not require buying.

What can you buy from us? Furniture of various sorts, lamps, housewares, a light fixture, one of those push lawnmower things, suitcases, exciting crafty things, etc.

Tell your friends.

we have an apartment

Apartment hunting in Boston was harrowing. Its real estate market gets second place for insanity, falling behind only NYC. We tried for about a week to find a place without an agent, then finally gave up and latched on to the very friendly people at this place. Yes, those ladies are the owners, and they are as crazy as they look.

When I walked into the office, the woman on the left who looks kind of like Lily Tomlin walked up to me and said, "Allison! How are you?! You don't look 5 months pregnant!" In case you are not aware, my name is not Allison, and I am not pregnant.

The woman on the right is married to the bassist from the J. Giles band. As crazy as it is to have to pay an agent simply to show you an apartment to rent, I was pretty happy to give these people my money.

The place is quite nice, too: 3rd floor of the classic Boston triple-decker, hardwoods, 2 bedrooms, and nearly as spacious as the place we're in now. As you can perhaps imagine, the rent is about equal to a mortgage payment on a pretty nice little house in Ex-industrial City.

The least starts September 1. Our lease here ends July 31. For intervening month, we shall be living in cardboard boxes, or perhaps a van by the river.

transit woes

Being in Boston for a week and a half (more on that later) has already spoiled me: I am completely put out by the lameness of Geometrically-shaped Region's public transportation. I haven't had much need to take it, and the only time I have - the special express from Ex-industrial City to the State Fair - was very satisfying. However, circumstances are such that I will be living with my parents in Sprawling Suburban Helltown for about a month while I wait I'm working in Ex-Industrial City. I really want to sell my car to get some cash, and I really don't want to have to make a 25-minute (one-way) commute twice a day.

I checked out the website of the local transit authority, which is only buses. First of all, the so-called trip planner they link to is pretty crappy as well as totally depressing: according to their calculations, it will take me 1 hour and 18 minutes to travel from my parents house to the main transit terminal, which is only about 7 miles from their house. Mind you, this is not 1 hour and 18 minutes to work, which is semi-reasonable: I'd have another 30 minutes on the bus before reaching my final destination. Plus, I'd have to walk 2.4 miles to the nearest bus stop, which doesn't have so much as a bench to sit on.

I could ride my bike to the main terminal and then take the bus, which would give me that double whammy of exercise and getting to work accomplished in one fell swoop. 7 miles of bike riding in the southern summer heat and humidity would definitely necessitate showering, though, and I don't have access to any shower facilities at work.

Transit system, you are lame.

what is and is not on the innernets

Every time I go to the New York Times website to read an article, I'm presented with a flash ad by the Parents, The Anti-Drug people beseeching mommies and daddies to be aware of what their kids are looking at/doing online. The ad shows a kid wandering through a cartoon mall with stores labelled "XXX," "Candy," "Sports," and "Marijuana."

The ad is a total ripoff of a great sketch fromChapelle's Show, except that the people who made the anti-drug spot seem to have never used the internet before. First of all, if the internet is a mall, then there needs to be like 987263743 more stores that say "XXX." Then there's the marijuana store. Sorry to burst your bubble, but the innernets do not have marijuana. If there were a "cannibis" section of Amazon, god knows, they'd be doing a pretty good business, but it isn't there. I'VE LOOKED. Ebay also has a distinct lack of marijuana for sale or auction. Maybe if you live in Amsterdam you can place your order on the web, but I kind of doubt it.

Let's review what we've learned:

The innernet has: porn
The innernet does not have: marijuana

This WILL be on your final exam.

paula vs. winston

From Bravotv.com, an entertaining game wherein one tries to determine if a comment was made by Paula Abdul or Winston Churchill. Not as easy as you'd think.

Lifted from Defamer.

computer geek advice needed

I might as well rename my blog "So I'm moving...", since that seems to be the impetus for 3 out of every 4 blogs these days (the impetus for the other 1 seems to be "hilarious videos from 15 years ago").

So I'm moving, and one of the special challenges is figuring out what to do with my computer files. Dick and I recently bought a shiny new Mac, which will be our computer for home and mine for school. I've still got my 1999 Compaq desktop, and there are many files I wish to keep on my Dell laptop from work, including all of the digital photos related to my future grad school work. The Compaq and all the trimmings is going to the highest bidder ($15? Anyone? Anyone?) once I've cleaned off the hard drive, and the Dell, natch, will reclaimed by Southern Private University when I cease to be their employee.

Thus, I need to transfer all the files I want to keep from the computers I will no longer have to the computer I do have. I have a thumb drive, which could do the trick, but I'm also starting to think I may want to take this opportunity to create a more permanent backup/storage solution for the stuff that, if lost, would cause a great wailing and gnashing of teeth. It's likely that in school I'll be doing digital photo and video stuff, meaning I'll need a pretty hefty storage limit. I'm also kind of poor.

I was thinking online backup/storage, but that shit is too expensive (unless you know of something cheaper, dear reader). Now I'm leaning toward the external hard drive solution, but I haven't a clue what to get. I want something for around $50 that is smallish but not so small I'll lose it, durable, 80ish gigs or so, and cheap. Did I mention cheap?

the beantown mixtape

The move to beantown necessitates a mix of songs about/from Boston, and the playlist has just gotten a "New Editon" (ahhh, I crack myself up). But there are so many hits to choose from:

"If It Isn't Love"


"Candy Girl"


"Popcorn Love"


"Cool it now"

arcade fire: it's not just the music that's whiny

Arcade Fire will steal your basketball. Another reason to hate them. Like you needed another one.

Shamelessly lifted from Can't Stop The Bleeding.

more Cleveland Indians goodness

I watched the Indians defeat Dice-K and the Red Sox yesterday, and enjoyed it quite a bit. I also found a couple more Indians blogs. There's the exhaustively informative one, and then there's the one written by (gasp) a woman. The latter is not the best blog ever, but I do like that she a) talks about feminist things, b) is anti-Chief Wahoo, and c) has fake boyfriends, just like me (see list to your right [for the record, none of these fake boyfriends could/would ever replace or be half as awesome as my real boyfriend]).

Speaking of being a fan of one of the few remaining pro sports teams with a racist mascot, I was pleased to discover one can purchase Indians gear that sports the non-racist alternative logo, a cursive "I." My head prefers a fitted hat, but I'll take the adjustable if that's what it takes.

i muse. oh, how i muse.

Random musings, to make sure something shows up on this here blog now and then:

-I'm selling my car, sometimes known as Little Blue Wonder. 2002 Echo. Whatever money I have left after paying off the loan will be used to pay for cost of renting an apartment, which is steep relative to Ex-industrial City. I'm trying to determine a good, anonymous place I don't actually have to pay for to host one web page worth of information and a couple small jpegs. Blogger? Too easily tracked to my other blog activites, unless I created a new account. Southern Private Univesity-provided web space? Possible, but identified with my last name, and will likely disappear as soon as I cease to work here. Web space I pay for now? Domains all have my name in them. I wouldn't be so squeamish about the whole name business if my last name weren't so uncommon and google-able, and I weren't so afraid of random stalkers following my car around and sending me creepy letters.

-I tried to make Memorial Day weekend DIY Project Weekend. Started building some much-needed CD shelves, and probably would have gotten closer to finished if I hadn't drained the power out of the drill kindly lended to me by The Friends Who's Names Begin With J. I also started sewing a Built By Wendy short-sleeved blouse in lime sherbet-green checked cotton. No actual sewing action has taken place, but I did get all of the pieces cut. Some day, perhaps, I'll submit photographic evidence of all this DIYness.

-Dick is a Mets fan, and as his enthusiasm for the Baseball-headed One grows, I feel the need to be like him and start enjoying my own team. Historically, when people ask me who my team is, Cleveland has been the easy answer, because I was born there, my family is from there, and I've never lived anywhere else with a major league ball team. Anywho, Dick and I watched the Indians play the other day, and I felt a distinct lack of sports fan idiocy. Thus, I am in search of a few good Indians blog that can bring the snark, the dorkiness, and the gossip.

All I've found so far is Mistake by the Lake Sporting Times, which, in spite of its catchy title and handy parking tips, is a little low on posting and also covers the lesser sports of basketball and football.

-Who knew? Coal is the next clean energy.

were lost but now are found

This past weekend was a boon in terms of finding things that were lost and that I had more or less given up hope of ever finding again. On Friday afternoon, after several weeks of searching everywhere in our house I could think of, I found a missing savings bond. Yes, dear readers, I advise you all to learn from my mistake and never, ever, misplace something that translates directly into about $900 of cold hard cash. Weirdly, I found it in my office, on the floor, under a stack of miscellaneous papers, in a folder with other savings bond-related items. I must have brought it to work sometime a couple months ago to call the Treasury folks, since as a government organization they are only open during the hours I'm at work.

I suspected that savings bond was lying around somewhere, but what was really shocking was when a dickumbrage and I watched a guy run up to our house sunday morning and leave a package on the front porch. Our first thought was "bomb?" but it turns out to have been a package I mailed my sister for her birthday over two months ago that she never got. It was a particularly frustrating loss, since the item contained within was a hand-knitted scarf I had made for her, and not something I could go pick up another of at a store. And it just so turns out that my sister will be in town next weekend, so I can give the scarf to her in person.

eveel, like the fru-its of the deveel

So, exactly how bad does an artist have to be before one becomes complicit in their badness by liking the art they create?

By "bad" I mean "doing really rather horrible unethical and/or immoral things" that don't necessarily manifest themselves in the art.

Exhibit A: Some folks were talking about buying a Phil Spector box set, which pissed me off in light of what I've learned about him lately. (Granted, it also pissed me off because the music is being marketing as Phil Spector's, when really it was largely the music of girl groups produced by Phil. The paranoid feminist in me assumes the aforementioned folks [male] bought the CD because it's easier to maintain your manly punkrock cred by saying you like Phil Spector than saying you like girl groups. If you are more secure in your manly punkrock cred/like girl groups than I assume the folks in this story to be, you should invest in this absolutely incredible box set.)

Exhibit B: I still listen to Biggie even though I know he beat his wife and other women (discussed in this article).

FUN or DUMB

Oops.

The spokesman added that the company recognised that there were some who viewed Banksy's work as legitimate art but that their graffiti removal teams were "staffed by professional cleaners not professional art critics".

[post title from AV Geeks recent show "Other People's Property"]

i've lost my faith in shipping

I've been burned by the world of shipping.

First, a package containing a lace scarf I knitted for my sister's birthday with my own widdle hands got lost. I shipped it USPS Priority Mail, and didn't get any sort of delivery confirmation, so it's pretty much lost in the great dark chasm of untrackable mail. Perhaps it's on the Island of Misfit Mail, or perhaps it was eaten on her doorstep by a vicious paper-and-wool-eating feral cat. We may never know, and I figured I'd learned my lesson about not paying the extra 50 cents for delivery confirmation.

Yesterday, a package containing a rather expensive coat I purchased on bluefly.com, in preparation for the move to Beantown, disappeared from my front porch. This time the shipper was DHL, and proved that even delivery confirmation doesn't prevent your package from being stolen off your freaking porch. I'm a bit pissed at the DHL delivery person for leaving a big ass package that says "Hello! I' m a big package from an online designer outlet!" on my front porch, as opposed to the much less visible back deck, but whatev. It's gone, and they don't have that coat in my size any more, and I have to wait "up to twelve days" for bluefly to conduct its investigation before I can get my $140 back.

I'm totally switching to Trystero.

dear grandma: you are not being divorced

My grandmother - my dad's mom - has had dementia for several years. I'm not sure of the exact diagnosis (it's not Alzheimer's), but the symptoms are basically a progressive loss of memory. Two years ago, my grandfather died under somewhat mysterious circumstances: he died underneath his own car while my grandmother was still inside. He, of sound body and mind for his 80+ years, had taken care of her. She didn't have any memory at the time of what happened when he died, and she had a hard time remembering that he had died.

Over the next while, my grandmother would sometimes remember that my grandfather was dead, and sometimes wouldn't. She'd tell my dad, for example, she was mad at my grandfather for not being around for a couple of days. My dad gave her a call last night while Dick and I were at my folks house for Easter dinner. My grandmother was very upset, because, she told him, my grandfather had served her with divorce papers. That, she said, was why he hadn't been around lately.

My grandparents were totally devoted to each other, and it's amazing to me that while my grandmother can't remember that my grandfather died, she's constantly aware that he's missing. My poor dad doesn't know what to do - apparently they've stop reminding her that my grandfather is dead, because each time they tell her it's like she's getting the news for the first time (she is, in a way). I told my dad about this book I had heard about on NPR a while back, and he seemed interesting. Which is good, coming from the family that never admits to or seeks help for problems that are more emotional and mental than physical.

beantown, ho!

It's official: dickumbrage and I shall be moving to Boston, Taxachusetts at the end of this summer for me to attend the Master of Fine Arts program at the Massachusetts College of Art. A brief tour of Boston courtesy of Google image search:


See, you move to a big city, and you get shot.


Mr. Baseball Hype 2007, aka "Dice-K"


There are Boston baked beans, and then there are Boston Baked Beans.


Giant Christian Science HQ, including Pool for the Drowning of Nonbelievers, Monolithic Skyscraper of God, and tacky neo-neo-classical cathedral.

It turns out that a couple of folks we know from current or past connections to Southern Private University are also planning on moving to Boston about the same time, which is exciting, because now we can commiserate with someone about cold weather and a lack of collard greens in grocery store produce centers.

won't you be my bikefriend?

It's been nearly a year since ankle met car, and I'm still not back to running. The pain in the little screwed together joint is actually getting worse. The weather is warm, and I need to get out and work off my winter lipid stores. Fortunately, my ankle tolerates biking well, so I'd like to get out for some nice long bike rides. I'm pissed, though, because the one cycling group in the area attempts to serve four counties, and most of the rides start in a county that is not my own. Driving 30 minutes to ride a bike is both absurd and a pain in the ass.

Also, I've been afraid to ride on my own since I was bitten by a dog on the local greenway. It's a little paranoid and silly of me, but I justify myself by reasoning there are many good reasons to have a biking buddy based on rational fears.

So, anyone want to join in on some slowish bike rides with a slightly out of shape lady who only has a mountain bike? Weekends are good, some evenings work too.

what do i do with this crap?

There are many things I like about living in Our Fair City, but the city services often leave something to be desired. For example, yard waste. Dick and I have actually started doing things to our yard - things that encourage growing, rather than, say, trying to kill the grass so we don't have to mow it. We planted a little herb and veg garden that we are very proud of. We check it hourly to see if any of our seeds have sprouted. We pulled weeds and raked up some of the leaves that have been clogging our yard since they fell off the trees several months ago.

So now we have a pile of the dreaded Yard Waste. Dreaded because Our Fair City will only dispose of your yard waste if you pay them to. That's not such a bad deal, I guess, if you have over $100 to spend on a big plastic bin and the fee to have the city come and take it away every now and then. I don't, and, frankly, I suspect there are many other people who don't have 'yard waste bin' at the top of their list of things on which to spend $100. If I pack up all of the crap myself and take it to the nearest recycling center, I still have to pay a fee. The city website suggests I could alternately buy one of their composting bins, sold at cost (a good deal, I admit), for my yard waste. But a big pile of leaves actually makes for pretty shitty compost, and the composting bins are currently sold out. Lovely.

I've considered sneaking my leaves and such into a neighbor's yard waste bin in the middle of the night, or perhaps taking part in the age-old tradition of piling it all in the back yard and setting it on fire.

In other waste news, any one want a couple bottles full of used cooking oil?

mystery fabric

In my pondering of what sort of fabric would behoove a spring/summer dress, I've become obsessed with Westfalenstoffe. Westfalenstoffe (which, I think, roughly translates to "fabric from Westphalia") is a kind of cotton fabric from eastern Germany. The designs combine geomtery and folk motifs in amazing repititions, and remind me of Paul Klee



The mystery is not so much locating the fabric - I discovered it among the many fine offerings at Reprodepot.com, source of the amazing cubicle fabric - but finding out something about its history. The manufacturer of the fabric (I think there is only one..) says this about it:

The workshop for Westfalenstoffe has been successful for more than 75 years.

It was found by german state-prize winner Professor Hanne Nuete Kaemmerer and other notable designer.

The designs are influenced by the typical art and traditional way of living found in the westphalian area of Germany.

Some patterns designed in the 1930´s are still part of the current collection and remain just as popular as when they were first designed.

But I can't find any other information on the innernets about Westfalenstoffe or Prof. Kaemmerer there (also, apparently, spelled Hanne-Nute Kammerer). My curiosity is piqued.

My dad travels to Germany regularly on business, and he'll be heading there in April. I think I'm going to send him on a mission to get me a few yards (meters?) of Westfalenstoffe, based on my guess that it's relatively common there and would be cheaper than buying it from a U.S. website and paying for shipping. Plus, it's fun to send people on international shopping errands for you.

day-after women's day post

The author of the wonderful Dress A Day blog has a post about the subtle sexism of men imparting their opinions on traditional aesthetics of femininity to women they hardly know. In her case, its "I really like it when women wear dresses."

I was asked once by a male colleague, in the midst of one-on-one meeting in which I was interviewing him about project for an article I was writing, if I ever considered growing my hair long. My response at the time was "No." In retrospect I wish I had said, "What I do with my hair is none of your fucking business, buddy." Because it's not, and what kind of asshole brings up the hair style of a woman in a professional setting?.

Oh. And there's that, too.

meltdown, or, just melty

Even after becoming an atheist, living in sin, and not attending mass except for when your parents make you go on Christmas, sometimes that Catholic upbringing comes back to haunt you. Sometimes it makes you buy Virgen de Gaudalupe air fresheners for your car. Sometimes it makes you unbearibly neurotic with the anger/guilt combo induced by your mother nearly weeping when you tell her you've chosen the Dark Path of Art School and she responds, "You're leaving me just like I left [my mother]," and "My stomach really hurts now." And then you want to drink a lot and also get a tatoo that says "I BROKE MY DEAR OLD MOTHER'S HEART" on your forearm, which, come to think of it, puts you in kind of the same league as Britney Spears, except that she's probably Methodist or whatever and did it out of spite/insanity and not as a penance for being the worst daughter ever and breaking your mother's heart with your selfish, selfish educational pursuits.

And sometimes it just makes you see the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese.

Mmmmmmm, grilled cheese.

ghost in the machine

My car radio seems to have been inhabited by a ghost: I'm driving along, listening to the slow jams on Foxy 107 FM, and suddenly the frequency hops down. It's been happening with greater frequency over the past week to the point that this morning Owen Bennet Jones was interrupted every 3 minutes with a trip 0.2 down the dial. Local College Station keeps skipping up to Local Moderately Sucky Jazz Station.

A little innernet searching hasn't yielded any newsgroup discussions of problems like this. That's a little disconcerting, because that means it's not a common problem. My limited knowledge of audio electronics has led me to hypothesize that the problem is with whatever mechanism scans the radio frequencies. I further hypothesize that whatever in this mechanism makes it cease scanning frequencies has gotten "loose" or "wiggy" and thus jumps around unexpectedly.

I'm afraid I may have to call (gasp) the dealer, but I suspect they won't offer any help until I haul the car into their shop and have them charge me $80 for zip ties like they did last time. Maybe I should call the Car Talk guys. Or maybe I should get in touch with Tangina Barrons.

shameful shoe shopping post (which is also the 'shamefully alliterative title' post)

I blame the upper-60-degree weather last week for causing some rather premature spring fever, but I've been wasting lots of time lately thinking about summer shoes.

My philosophy on shoe buying has changed slightly recently, from "buy whatever is cute, cheap, and reasonably comfortable" to "I need something I can walk 2.3 miles in and wear to work." To new philosophy is due to the fact that I've been walking to work 3-4 times a week lately. The bike has a flat, and I determined that walking was a better option in the chilly winter anyway. Once the summer humidity sets in, my natural ability to sweat more than most burly men will likely make walking to work undesirable, but until then, I am loving it. Plus, I don't have to wear a helmet.

So I need shoes that appease both my vanity and my feet. Many women I know swear by Dansko shoes, though I've avoided them in the past because a) it's hard to find a pair for under $100 and b) they've looked a little too much like their wooden inspiration:


Yeah.

Apparently, though, they are practically sinfully comfortable, and the better styles are more John Fluevog than Dutch Boy.

These three are all on ebay for exceedingly cheap prices, around $35 including the shipping.
Basic, versatile, but not thrilling.
I really really like these.
These are red and therefore good.
These are from Zappos, and are not cheap. But they are Mary Janes, which I love, and I kind of like that they are more shoe than sandal.

So much to ponder.

one meeellion dollars

i'm not a reject!

Tuesday I got some good news: I am not a grad school reject! I'm not accepted, either, but I'm on the waiting list for the MFA program at Big Public University of Another State. I've taken this to mean I don't come across as a big fucking idiot to at least one admissions committee, which is actually kind of a shocking thing to realize.

Perhaps I shouldn't be gloating about these things semi-publicly yet, but fuck it. I found out I'm not a total reject. And that is exciting.

more fake social experience brought to you by expensive innernet thingies

If you were outraged/driven to drink even more by Second Life's virtual march on Washington, you'll be pleased to hear that your tax dollars (well, for some of you) are being spent to give rich, white college students the opportunity to experience white privilege - virtually. It's called Game2Know, and it's coming to a Southern Private University near you.

The game is intended to enable users to experience the effects of institutionalized privilege (on the one hand) and disenfranchisement (on the other) by having to adopt a persona of a different race, gender, ethnicity, ability set, etc. By loading the virtual world with real-world statistics about disparities in access to housing, education, health services and the formal and informal institutions that connect people to capital, users will experience how being a member of a particular demographic group has a direct effect on their ability or inability to accrue wealth and “succeed” by the norms of the “American Dream.” As they play the game, participants will learn how factors other than individual ability affects material success, including access to privileges that often seem invisible to those who benefit from them.

It's a good thing they're not making those poor kids actually leave their sheltered campus to experience the majority non-white city in which they live: it's dangerous!

Plus, now you can be white and have a black avatar without having to justify yourself!

cubicle skirt

I finished the skirt out of the cubicle fabric last night, and wore it to work today. This was the first time I made a skirt from this pattern on my own (my mom helped with pinky skirt), and I endeavored to follow all the instructions and do everything all good 'n' proper. I also wanted to add a lining to make the skirt warmer and less translucent. I found some instructions and managed to figure it out, so now it's business on the outside, white cotton with light pink polka dots on the inside.

It seemed to take forever to put it together, and having to hem two skirt bottoms (once for the skirt, once for the lining) was a drag. But it was a good learning experience. It still has many imperfections, but I love wearing this skirt. It's flouncy and a little poufy and in general fun to wear.

On:


Off, with glimpse of the lining, and cat:

garbanzo goodness

Yesterday I was searching the internets for a recipe for lemon scones, as we had some lemons in the house and I needed to make something quick for the weekly knitting get-together. In the process I discovered Orangette, a food/foodie blog run by a woman in Seattle. She posts recipes (and excellent pictures of the result), I found inspiration in her most recent post about a chick pea salad.

I've actually been making a heated version of this recipe for about a year or so, and it's one of my favorites: heat up olive oil and garlic in a pan, add chickpeas, heat; add salt, pepper, and parmesan. This recipe came from some fellow* on NPR talking about the fact that Americans don't know how to create meals that are tasty or healthy. He provided this as a typical Italaian lunch, which, when served with good bread and a salad, is nutrilicious, easy, and elegant.

So when I saw the Orangette post of essentially the same recipe, except cold, and with a little fresh lemon juice, I couldn't believe I'd never thought to make it that way for lunch. This morning I did, and there was much rejoicing.

*This may have been the same guy who famously carted an entire pig carcass on his Vespa and butchered it in his NYC apartment. I can't remember his name, and one look at the results of a Google search for "butcher pig" had me wishing I had not tried to discover it that way.

vagina friday!

Really, I don't look for the vagina-related news; it finds me.

-A new movie about vagina dentata, (aka "thorny ladyflower" aka "fang tang"). Made by a man, natch!
-Menstruation-related ephemera from the Museum of Menstruation and Women's Health. the museum is in Germany, and run by a man who's sensitive about menstruation (but not Dave Foley). The website is so terrible it makes my head explode and is virtually unnavigable.Old ads for feminine hygiene products, including one that came with 3-D glasses! Pamphlets designed to simultaneously educate pubescent girls about the bodily functions no one wants to talk about and make sure they feel good 'n' ashamed about it! Oh, and naked Danish cartoon teens from the 70's. I don't know what they're saying, but I think it has something to do with feeling 'fresh' for a date with that hot 45-year old dude at the discotheque.

things i learned before 10 am

It snowed here this morning for the first time in two years, but what really amazed me today was the many insane things I learned in this article of the Washington Post.

1. David Lynch and Donovan are travelling around together telling people about the wonders of Transcendental Meditation.


2. And were hosted by the Hungarian ambassador to the U.S. in what was probably the craziest dinner party of the year, or since Salvador Dali died.


3. "...D.C. diplomat band Coalition of the Willing..." Wh-What?! Not, however, the same as Bobby Previte's band Coalition of the Willing. So confusing! But what I would pay to see them both on the same bill...

iRaq

Can two wrongs make a right?

With Photoshop, apparently yes.



(Originally here, via here.)

car falling apart

The other day I was driving on the highway, and a piece of my car fell off. Not all the way, but there's this large plastic piece that hooks under the engine and whatnot on the front that is no longer attached in the way it should be.





If it weren't for the bungee cords, it would be dragging on the ground. It seems fairly non-essential, so my plan is to just remove it entirely for the time. But do I need to replace it? Since it's just plastic held on with hex nuts, I figure I could replace it myself rather than paying whatever absurb cost a repair shop would charge. I've browsed a couple of car parts websites, but I can't figure out what this thing is called.

Give me your ideas, oh wise ones.

i am totally into self-referential clothing

Which is why I just bought two yards of this:



I can't wait to make a skirt out of this and wear it to work, which looks just like the design on the fabric, except that at my office some of the particularly anti-social computer programmers rigged up makeshift cardboard doors on their cubes.

I'm thinking of using the same pattern I used for pinky skirt, which I've been wanting to make again since the pink seersuckerish fabric is a bit out of season at the moment.

But I really need to stop buying fabric until I actually complete some of the projects I dream up and purchase supplies for. I want my weekend project to be cleaning out the 3rd bedroom in our house enough to be able to use the sewing space for sewing, but putting together grad school apps may take precedence.

By the way, I bought it at ReproDepot.com, which is awesome.

return to routine

Pre-vacation December was hell, due to a combination of legal things, massive work bullshit, frenzied grad school application preparation, holiday things, and ongoing inability to have money in my checking account for longer than a week after I get paid. The whole Christmas thing was a much-needed break. I went to my sister's place in [city next to] Norfolk, Virginia, and had a pretty nice time knitting and spending time with the fam and making cocktails out of vodka and whatever else she had in her house.

Dick was in New York for Baby Jesus Day, and I flew up there the day after Xmas. We had a lovely time. Details of our adventures are forthcomning, but for now let me say that the most suprising things about our trip was how sore my feet and leg muscles got after a couple days of walking around and how damn much we missed the kitties. They, apparently, missed us too, and since we got back three days ago it's been a human/kitty love fest. Except for this morning at 4:00 am, when Astro Cat decided it was time to run around the house and Macy Cat decided it was time to eat the Christmas tree.

adulthood sucks

Tom Waits doesn't want to grow up, and neither do I. I mean, driving and being able to eat whatever you want for breakfast is nice, but I have had way too much grown up crap to deal with lately. Today I participated in that age-old maturity ritual, Visiting A Lawyer. So many rules! So many funny names for everything! Plus, I've been mired in the hell that is applying to grad school, complete with financial-anxiety-induced sleep loss and throwing application materials across the room. At least as a child tantrums weren't accompanied by existential* crisis.

Thank god we adults are able to procure copious amounts of alcohol and chocolate.

*Get a job, buddy!

belated thanksgiving recap

A much-belated list of highlights from my favorite non-religious holiday that also kind of commemorates genocide, or racism, or something.

-Homemade salmon pate!
-Dr. Sis says you're not supposed to use hyrogen peroxide on your boo-boos anymore. Mom says: back to the mud-and-leaves method.
-Dad to existentialists: "Get a job, buddy!"
-According to Dick, the Celebration Roast was delish.
-Arsenic and Old Lace

i was told there would be punch and pie

I made two pies for this year's Thanksgiving feast:

pumpkin



and apple.



Perhaps next year I shall also provide the punch.

always

I just can't get enough of this Erasure video.

a vegetarian twist

I picked up this brochure on the way out of a branch of the public library. The illustration raises so many questions. Such as:

-Is that turkey exceptionally large, or is that woman exceptionally small?
-If the former is the case, is it to suggest that the woman is a vegetarian because the turkey is a) her lover or b) really fucking scary?
-Are those marijuana leaves at their feet?

I suspect this brochure dates to c. 1980, not only because of the pastoral-maiden-hippie as vegetarian, but because all of the recipes inside ascribe to the "it's not vegetarian unless it has wheat germ or soy in it" philosophy of vegetarian cooking. The North American Vegetarian Society also suggests that you serve your "Holiday Loaf" with "Mashed Potato Balls." Does making them into balls somehow mean less animals die then when you serve them the regular way?

The more I look at this, the more it creeps me out. Note to single men: if the woman invites you back to her secluded island, DO NOT GO.

CMSuck

Not too long ago, us folks at Southern Private University tech organization got a new CMS. Yesterday I got my first hand at what is now, officially, the CMSuck. I'm not a Web designer or any sort of expert, but my job is to take the mess of verbs, nouns, and punctuation marks that passes for writing in the tech world (sorry tech types, I call 'em how I see 'em) and make it more closely resemble written English and more usable to people who are not tech types. Thus, much of my time at work is spent repairing terrible writing and terrible design.

This year we're scrapping the terrible writig and terrible design and getting a new website, which I'm helping to populate using the CMSuck. And the CMSuck sucks hard. It might be fine in the technical functionality and all that, you know, stuff people who know more about software are concerned about. But frankly, that's not the most important thing about a CMS. People get CMS software so that the average user can change website content without mucking around in design or coding. And the problem with the CMSuck is that it's unintuitive and a pain in the ass for an average user like myself to use. It's more infuriating considering SPU tech organization spent literally two years before they picked out a damn CMS. It probably cost them a pretty penny, too, and I sit and ask myself, can we just get Drupal instead?

bitten

Yesterday morning I was bitten by a dog while riding my bike on a local greenway trail. It was with it's owner, and not on a leash, and I guess it thought that my faster-moving self was prey and took a bit at my left leg (yes, the one that was broken).

I spent most of yesterday at the police station filling out a report and at the Urgent Care getting a tetanus shot and a prescription for antibiotics. I'm still rather cranky about the whole thing and mostly want to sit on the couch all day and eat chocolate.

pink elephant cake

I made a pink elephant cake. Enough sugar to give you the DTs.

website...makes...brain...hurt

So I followed Lisa B.'s advice and got a super-cheap web hosting account at 8-95.com. In spite of the site name, my hosting package was only $3.95/month, and I paid for a few months, which is very nice and fits my budget. I've got the pages for the site almost done, but trying to figure out all this web hosting crap has my brain in knots. Particularly the domain name server crap, which is something I haven't had to deal with in my limited web authoring experience.

I did some reading about web servers and whatnot at howstuffworks.com, and I feel like I have at least a better conceptual grasp of how the innernet works, what with their calming tone and hand-holding. The DNS stuff is still a mystery to me. My main question is: if my domain name (elsasname.com [not actually the domain name]) is registered with one company, and my web hosting is done with another company, do I need to change the DNS settings with one and/or both of those companies? Or is everything ok, and do the web hosting and the domain name just know how to talk to each other automatically?

state fair

Dick and I went to the state fair on Saturday. We experienced the demolition derby, fluffy baby animals, a 664 pound pumpkin, copulating chickens, and a delicious soft shell crab sandwich. We also had the pleasure of getting there via mass transit: Our Fair City's bus line ran shuttles every hour to the fairgrounds. At $4 round trip, it was well worth avoiding the traffic and parking nightmare.

In honor of our trip to the fair, carnival strippers! (warning: some boobies)

wanted: web hosting

In case you haven't picket up on this, I'm applying to grad school in fine arts. For the sake of having a go-to portfolio, I've been working on a website to showcase my art, and now I need a place to host it. Any suggestions? I've been paying this company for email and a to own a domain name for my last name (i.e. elsa'slastname.com), and their cheapest web package, with 5GB disk space and 250GB bandwidth is about $5 a month. I have no idea if that's a good price or not. I'm thinking 5GB should be enough to hold the several dozen image files I'm going to need to store, since web pics are delightfully low res and I'm not making them particularly big. There are also various other perks - free domains, and, I think, email, that would mean I wouldn't have to pay for that other stuff.

in need of $

Man, I am broke. Moving (which I did a couple of months ago) will do it, but mostly my own poor budgeting and profligate spending is to blame. Now I'm feeling the need to get a little side job to help rebuild my savings, especially in light of looming grad school application fees and Christmas gifts.

I'm looking for something that would only be a few hours a week (3-5ish), doesn't require long-term commitment, and isn't in food service or retail. Unless that involves, I dunno, wine or fancy cheese or something. I don't do children, either.

Thus far I've come up with the following:

-prostitute. Nice in theory; licking the asshole of some nasty guy not so nice in practice. Also, STDs. Also, very displeased boyfriend. Also, potential of transvestite/transexual Michael Caine trying to kill you.
-ticket-taker at local arty theater. Very close by, dickumbrage connections, but potentially mind-numbing.
-GRE prep course teacher. Actually, I already have this job, but the only class available to teach right now is at a college almost two hours away. Also, I'm kind of tired of it because it requires a lot of effort to, you know, teach people stuff, and it requires a certain amount of out of classroom time.

Hm, not much a list, is it? Any ideas?

get out of my life, american pornparrel!

Dear American Apparel,

Please stop invading my life with your pseudo/actual pornographic internet ads, especially the one with that 14-year old girl in cotton thing that looks like a bathing suit from a Bo Derek movie except not shiny and not a bathing suit, that is essentially a leotard not made for dancing. What the hell does one do with a leotard not made for dancing, anyway? You sell at least a dozen different ones, including one that is completely mesh. A mesh leotard folks. The only other time I've seen a mesh leotard was at a store that also sold sex toys. And that's fine. I've got nothing against mesh leotards in theory. But this mesh leotard isn't even in your "Intimates" section. Do you mean to suggest that this is somehow clothing? Mr. Charney, I know in your dirty old man fantasy world this is, in fact, what young attractive women walk around in all day. That still doesn't make it clothing.

And while 95% of the ads I can't avoid every time I try to read a freaking blog or about sports in the Village Voice or whatever feature women being scantily clad and harsly lit whilst they do hipstery provocative thing ("Oh, look at the hair fall in my face over my head in a totally unnatural way!"), the one man you put in the ad made me want to vomit. Please do not subject us to the horrid vision of a scruffy unbathed hipster man in tighty whities (all-be-them tighty burgundies). I see that picture, and I can smell the nasty B.O., feel the oil oozing from his clogged pores. There is only one woman attractetd to a man like that, and that is Lindsay Lohan. I, for one, fall on the underpants-wearing side of the spectrum.

mod MF dress

The sewing bug has bitten again, and although the room where the sewing is supposed to take place is still the room where all the crap we don't know what to do with gets stashed, I bought this pattern on ebay. It's mod! It's a-line! It's "E-Z"!

I chose this pattern because it seems like it will be really versatile (and because it claims to be E-Z to make). I could make it out of lightweight gray wool, or hot pink boucle, or iridescent silk, or an elaborate velvet print, and all versions would look great. I love the possibility of the contrast sleeve bands too: I think my first version might be some black and white houndstooth with red sleeve bands. Maybe even something in a contrasting print, to be all crazy like that. Another idea would be to use some sort of trim along the sleeves and/or bottom of the dress. Or put a giant button at the neckline. The possibilities. are. endless.

Because I cannot contain my obsession with a project in the early stages, tonight I am planning on doing some fabric shopping. Even though the patttern hasn't even arrived yet. OBSESSED.

shelter in place, fools

News of last night's explosions and chemical fires that released a cloud of poisonous chlorine gas into the air in Apex, NC (watch the video. it's impressive) reminds me of my childhood. No, really. I grew up in the "chemical valley" of West Virginia, in a town where a slow river cuts through the hills of the western edge of the Appalachians. Chemical plants line the river for several miles, including a town called Nitro, named for the nitroglycerine plant located there during WWII. I don't know how the area became dominated by the chemical industry, though maybe its because there's a lot of space and not a lot of people, and plenty of people who find a chemical plant a more comfortable place to work than a coal mine. Especially when all the coal mines are closing.

Kids in the midwest practice tornado drills at school (get under a desk, crouch into a ball, cover your head with your arms), but kids in the chemical valley practice Shelter-In-Place. Shelter-In-Place involves closing yourself into a room and sealing up windows, doors, etc. with duct tape. Every Friday at noon a test siren would sound throughout the valley. To those of us at school, it meant it was almost time for lunch.

There's even a Shelter-In-Place mascot. Meet Wally Wise:


He's a turtle. They hide in their homes. Get it? He even has a paunch to, um, help those rural Appalachian types identify with him better, I guess.

My dad has worked on the management end of the chemical industry since I was a kid, and I once had a tshirt with Wally Wise on it. I wonder what happened to it...

Oddly, Apex doesn't seem to have had any Shelter-In-Place plans in place (schools, places of work, etc. are required to in places like Chemical Valley, WV). That may be because most of the Research Triangle Park area is, natch, research-oriented rather than production-oriented, and there are few plants to speak of. But dude. A warehouse for hazardous chemicals? Don't you think you might want to warn people about that?

those cancer sticks can DANCE

So, so amazing. Apparently, one of the first TV commercials made.

I wonder what the "M.F.T" in "L.S./M.F.T" stands for...perhaps "Lucky Strike: Mother Fucking TIGHT." Or, to keep with the slogan on the package: "Lucky Strick: Mother Fucking Toasted."

barbie living

When my sister and I were young, we were crazy about Barbie dolls. Actually, not so much the dolls as all the stuff they came with. Some people argue that Barbie reinforces unrealistic feminine body ideals and traditional gender roles. Really, I think most 5 year olds are pretty oblivious to those messages coming from their dolls. Barbie, in my opinion, is about training kids to be consumers.

I think my first major Barbie accessory was a hot pink metallic corvette. Shortly thereafter my sister got a red Barbie Ferrari (more classic, perhaps, but not nearly as hott).

Being the spoiled children we were/are, we both eventually acquired Barbie houses. She had the Barbie Dream House, a three-part, two-story thing that came with balconies and furniture and shutters and fake window box plants. I had the Barbie Townhouse, a smaller, more urban style in three stories with an elevator. This seems weirdly indicative of the different people my sister and I would turn out to be in our 20s. Well, except I'd have had the Barbie Rented Arts and Crafts Bungalow.

To be fair, she doesn't have the Barbie Dream House yet, but she's a doctor, and it's only a matter of time.

the usual suspects

One of these adorable kittens peed on my gym bag this morning. I don't think we'll ever know which one, which is one of the interesting things about having three cats.

Let me tell you, washing urine off your things is not a fun way to begin your day. Especially when it's shortly followed by a message from your wireless phone company reminding you that you haven't paid your bills for two months (oops) and that you need to pay now or else.

Fortunately, in between these happy events, my wonderful man friend bought me a chocolate croissant and orange juice to cheer me up. It's not easy to shake off the crankiness caused by a pool of urine on your stuff, but that's a pretty good start.

project!

In continuing my quest to learn skills that require me to use my hands (insert joke here) and my fantasy to some day have a job that doesn't require me to work in an office all day (insert other joke here, perhaps), I'm taking an upholstery class at Local Technical College.

This chair is my project.

This picture, what with the nice morning light, makes the fabric look snappier than it in fact is. Don't get me wrong, I adore hot pink, and hot pink chenille upholstery fabric is no exception. What you don't see in the picture is that the fabric has a dingy, brownish/grayish hue to it and is incredibly faded (based on the parts of the fabric never exposed to light/people). One side of the seat cushion fell victim to spillage of hot wax, and much of the fabric on the buttons is literally worn to the threads.

The class itself is amazing, if it does provide me more exposure to the middle-aged home-schooling christian mom than I usually seek. In an uncharacteristic turn from my usual misanthropy, I've discovered that the DIY streak we have in common actually makes them pretty easy to get along with. Though I do get a bit of joy of mentioning how my project will be used in my Atheist Den of Sin with my Shack-up Boyfriend To Whom I Am Not Married But With Whom I Have Sex NOT EVEN FOR THE PURPOSE OF HAVING CHILDREN.

presidential doodles, other random caffeine-induced thoughts

I really want this book. For some reason I feel like that means I have succumbed to the brainwashing of the Shallow Hipster Elite. But is it so wrong to want to see Lyndon B. Johnson's "slightly nightmarish scribbled man-on-fire aesthetic”?

Apparently, all I blog about these days is recycled info from various Gawker blogs. Eesh. I should try doing some work.

Now, off to a meeting with Insane Egomaniacal Boss's Boss Man. Always a treat.

poor doggie

This seemed like the kind of thing on which Ms. Bunchofpants would report wonderfully, but I figured I could offer up the topic for potential insightful analysis.

In Washington, D.C. yesterday morning a park police officer shot and killed a dog playfully running loose in the park. The dog, a pit bull named Precious, belonged to a resident homeless preacher named Texas Joe.

Via Wonkette, and I'll agree with their interpretation of events:

The real cause of the murder seems to be this: A power-mad federal cop told Texas Joe to put Precious on a leash, and when the harmless homeless man didn’t jump fast enough for the cop, the cop shot Precious dead.

And, it highlights the unwarranted reputation pit bulls have as inherently aggressive, dangerous animals (fyi, they're not).

child of the corn

So I've got this Lion Brand yarn left over from a project, and I don't know what to knit with it. So I go to the Michael's Lion Brand Pattern Finder, search for patterns with this yarn, and lo and behold...





Is it genius? Madness?

I'm just glad I don't have the skill level to create this. Because I know some people soon to have babies, and I'd be tempted.

a place to rest one's ass

So Dick and I moved into a place together a few weeks ago, a charming little Arts & Crafts bungalow. But little it is, any my couch is too big for the living room. Out it goes, we said, and now we've entered the hell that is trying to purchase a sofa. Actually, we're looking for something more loveseat sized (or what trendy stores seem to be calling "Apartment Sofas" these days). My god, how can a mass of foam, fabric, and wood cost so damn much? I mean, even a Todd Oldham loveseat is $979.00 at Target. I don't shop at Target, but I used to, and this whole $1000 loveseat thing is not the Target I once loved.

The used sofa option is on the table, but it turns out that people, at least people around here, have terrible taste, as evidenced by nearly every single post on the local craigslist. I like to imagine shopping for used furniture in Scandinavia is like an orgiastic Adventures in Cheap Modernism, porn for people obsessed with clean lines. But in the middle south, it's more a bring-your-own-vomit-bag affair. Dear people: please do not buy a sofa with a floral pattern unless it was made before 1978. Please. And those expensive leather things that look like a morbidly obese sea lion rubbed with olive oil? Yeah.

the king of creep

American Apparel CEO Dov Charney, who's creepiness was made public in a 2004 Jane Magazine article (alas, hard to find on the innernet these days), has been stripped of the King of Creep title. The new winner: 'Girls Gone Wild' CEO Joe Francis. Based on the experiences of a writer from the L.A. Times, the reality of the new King of Creep makes the "get young women drunk and get them to do dirty things" premise of the videos seem ethical by comparison. Being a violent, emotionally stunted and thoroughly misogynisitic person is much, much worse for the world when you've got a shitload of money.

photoness

Image005
Originally uploaded by elsacapuntas.

I decided today that I want to create a website for my photos (this is the sort of idea I come up with when bored in a meeting), sort of as a start to preparing for applying to MFA programs. Thus, I have uploaded ten black and white photos I did a while back for the world to see. Luckily, it seems that the largest jpeg I really would want to have is a relatively small file, but I"m still thinking about signing up for Flickr Pro account for the hosting. That way I wouldn't have any limits on how many files I could upload and bandwidth and all that crap. Anyone out there have experience using Flickr as a hosting service?

It turns out, though, that when I initially created these files in the high-tech fashion of lying photographs on the ground and making digital "slides" of them with a digital camera, I didn't have the camera set to record at a high enough resolution to makes these things look ok. I can't remember how I resized them, but at full size these they look like ass. Any suggestions out there for how to do this better next time? Getting the color right for black and white photos in a digital version is a pain in the ass, too, because despite what the name suggests, black and white photo papers have different tints to them. This one is "warm," and thus a bit greenish.

it doesn't look quite like this

I made this dress last night. The pattern is from Blueprint, a new Martha Stewart vehicle. It was so damn easy looking, and I have a bunch of fabric a friend gave me for free a few weeks ago, so I ran right home after to work to try it out. I chose a light blue cotton with 1/8" gold wiggly stripes that is basically like a men's shirting fabric.

Making the dress ended up being a bit of a, ahem, learning experience. I made the dress following the instructions, but when I tried it on it was huge. Positively tentlike. I took out one of the side seams, cut away 4 inches of fabric, and it was still too big. Took out the seam again, cut away more fabric, and, lo and behold, it was too small. Since you sew the side seams first, I would have had to take out every single seam I had sewn to make the side seams smaller so the dress would fit. Instead I donated the first dress to my cat for a new thing-on-which-to-lay and used the remaining fabric to start over again.

The dress still ended up a little big, but it's probably an issue inherent to wearing a garment that is essentially a rectangular laundry bag: you're going to end up with some extra billowing in the upper torso area. As the picture indicates, you pretty much need to wear a belt or something with the dress to give it some shape. I'm going to make a wide sash with some extra fabric to make a sort of midriff band, which in trials looked really nice. In the end, it actually turned out quite cute, and perfect for the terribly hot weather that has recent beset the region. Some day I'll get a digital camera so I can share pictures of these things more often than the occasions when I can surreptitiously borrow my camera from work.

fuck you, day!

It's been a demoralizing day, and it's only barely past lunch. Sample:

-Power went out in my apartment while I was getting ready for work, for no apparent reason (it wasn't even raining)
-Forgot my access badge for work
-Got soaked by a sudden rainstorm while waiting to be picked up after lunch
-Thought had resolved issue that caused significant other and I to not sign lease yesterday with new slum landlord, only to discover that slum landlord had a new evil plan in store: to make us go through the rigamarole of lease signing and deposit-paying only to tell us that they, the landlord, would not be signing the lease until they had completed the background check. So now these people have my money, and I don't even have a real lease.
-Have gotten absolutely nothing done at work today

Right now I'm thinking maybe I should avoid turning on the stove and using any power tools until I'm solidly into Wednesday.

dressification

I made my first purchase via an Ebay auction ever. Well, at least kind of - a friend bid on my stereo receiver and speakers for me when I was in college, but I didn't do anything except approve dollar amounts. This time I did it all solo. I was the only bidder, which is a good way to win the thing you bid on at a good price.

My prize:



Including shipping, the grand total is $12.99. I hope it fits.

take that, cast!

I have a nurse to thank for it, but the hot pink cast suffered a swift death at the hands (teeth?) of a mini circular saw. I was a little frightened when the nurse put that thing through the cast, but amazingly it didn't make any large gashes in my skin. I mean, in addition to the still-healing one from the surgery.

So, yep, I'm cast free. In its place I'm now wearing a walking cast "boot" thing that looks like a ski boot, but with less range of motion and without that weird forward-leaning effect. Over the next week I'll be gradually getting used to putting weight on my left (injured) foot until I can walk without crutches. So, no cup-carrying yet, but it is soon to come. The doc also gave me the green light to swim, and thinks I probably won't be needing physical therapy to strengthen my atrophied muscles. Huzzah! It is a good day. A day that behooves drinking.

I made it myself!

pink skirt
Originally uploaded by elsacapuntas.

I am so very excited. After many years of wanting a sewing machine, I finally inherited a sturdy little machine from a great aunt. And, after many years of wanting to, I'm finally learning to sew clothing. This is my first finished product - a simple slightly pleated skirt made out of a very lightweight cotton. The pattern is very versatile, so I'm thinking I can make many versions out of different kinds of fabrics and patterns. I have a dream to do one in black silk dupioni, but I'll probably pick up something a little cheaper for skirt #2.

Mmmm, satin short-shorts...Slyvester, "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)"

Thanks to dickumbrage for sending this link to me (since, alas, he doesn't post to his blog much these days, I don't feel so much like I'm stealing his thunder).

Dick loves the fact that Sylvester goes through FIVE different outfits in the course of this video. My favorite part is the satin short-shorts-clad dancers and their amazingly gay barefoot dance moves. The girl-on-girl hump dance is so, so, so amazing. I'm not gay, but this video kind of makes me wish I were. At least in the 70's.

final cast countdown, i hope

I'm in the last less than a week until the cast comes off. At least, on Friday I go back to the ortho, and I'm going to demand that he remove the dirty, itching, deteriorating hot pink thing on my leg or else. I haven't decided what "or else" will entail yet, though it's probably more of the copious weeping variety than the go and buy that smart little handgun i saw at the pawn shop variety.

On Friday it will have been almost seven weeks since the injury and six since surgery. If the cast does come off, I will suddenly be able to experience all sorts of wonderful things that have been missing from my life for the last two months. Such as:

-Showering without a plastic bag over my left leg
-Shaving
-Pedicures
-Scratching the maddening itches
-Swimming

While the first four there are sort of like, "oh, look, now I can have normal hygeine again!" the last one is really a treat. Ah, womblike submersion in a lovely indoor pool...I can hardly wait.

mark e. smith on english soccer (er, football)

When I first read this, I had a hard time believing it wasn't just very well-written parody. But with Mark E. Smith, all things are possible. And can I say how much I love The Guardian for printing this sort of thing?

"What Sven could learn from me," by Mark E. Smith

Running the national football team is very much like running my group, the Fall. As a manager, you've got to maintain a certain detachment from your players, and it's the same with my musicians. When we're on tour, I sit at the back of the bus. We're friendly but the secret of it is never get too ally-pally...

pat robertson, weight lifter of god

My favorite pointless news bit of late is Pat Robertson's claim that he can leg-press 2,000 lbs (via Deadspin). But what's even better is that once this rather absurb claim was pointed out, a Robertson spokesman went public to assure that the claim was true. (As the Deadspin folks point out, the Florida state leg press record is 1,335 lbs.)

wrath of the injured

There's nothing like the prospect of having to use crutches for 8 weeks to bring out the rage. If there one could identify a "benefit" from my situation it would be that I was able to get a handicapped parking pass that's good for the next few months. At work I can park reasonably close to the building I work in and only have to cross a small courtyard and climb a couple of half-flights of stairs.

This afternoon parking around work was insane because of a minor league baseball game going on across the street. I got back from lunch and all of the handicapped spaces were taken, as well as any reasonably nearby non-handicapped spots. But one of the cars didn't have a handicapped pass on it (it's always kind of a giveaway when you have a giant SUV that anyone moderately physically challenged would find impossible to climb in and out of). And oh, the parking authorities were notified. I stopped short of staying until the police were called to have the car towed, but I really hope the asshole ends up with the $250 fine.

It's not that having to park farther away once pisses me off. It's that when you have to walk around on crutches every fucking second of a day you won't take any bullshit from the part of the population that doesn't have to use their gimpy fore-appendages to transport their entire body weight.

bring your milkshake to MY yard

I really would like a milkshake right now. Just thought I'd let you all know.

I am a big fan of milkshakes, but I don't even know how to make them. The advertisement at many places claiming their milkshakes are "hand-dipped" suggests to me that hand-dipping is somehow essential, if only because it sounds dirty.

I do know a good milkshake when I see one though - real ice cream of the flavor of the milkshake. If it's strawberry there damn well better be bits of strawberry in it. There's a place around here that makes a chocolate milkshake by adding, I think, chocolate syrup to a vanilla milkshake. This is not a chocolate milkshake. They do, however, make a peppermint milkshake in the winter months with crushed peppermint candies in it that is awesome.

Milkshakes should also be served with just a little whipped cream and a cherry on top. Places that don't do that are just never really gonna cut it for me, however good the main substance of the milkshake.

Once I had a milkshake at a White Castle. Or, rather, "milkshake," as the thing I actually consumed was more semblance of food than actual food, quite like their little sandwich "hamburger" things.

To this day the best milkshakes I've ever had have come from Blossom Deli in downtown Charleston, WV. Those things are the shit.

half-woman, half-machine

Well, the percentages don't quite work out like that, but after getting two stainless steel screws put into my ankle on Thursday, I am at least partially an artificial being. People keep asking if this means I'm going to have super-bionic kickball skills as a result; alas, I kick with my right foot, and the enhancements were on the left.

The surgery went well. The anesthesia involved giving me sedation and then doing a nerve block on my leg, which involves injecting the anesthetic directly into the nerves of your leg. It made all sensation go away in my leg for several hours, which is one of the oddest feelings I have ever experienced. The day after surgery I was whisked away in a van by my family to go to a wedding in Cleveland. The 9-hr car ride was pretty awful, but it was nice to be around a bunch of happy and frequently drunk people who were all willing to wait on me.

I'm finally back at work, and it's nice to feel like a productive member of society again. This broken ankle is decidedly a pain in the ass. I've got to hobble around on crutches for two months. Two months! Since I can't do any sort of physical activity that involves using both feet, I'm going to dedicate myself to creating insane upper-body strength. I will crush all you little men with my bulging arms! Or something.

the opiates are making me all verklemmpt

Zacharias Moussaoui has attempted to rescind his guilty plea in his now post-sentencing trial for involvement in the 9/11 attacks. According to his affidavit (PDF, affidavit starts on p. 4), the fact that the jury didn’t give him the death sentence made him see the American justice system in a new light.

I awoke to this story on my radio alarm clock this morning, and I find it kind of touching. I was excited when I heard that the jury had passed on the death penalty, for a variety of reasons, and to see a person who is impressed by just treatment to the point of rethinking the entire American justice system is kind of inspiring. It’s also yet another example why treating anti-American extremists within a system of justice is a much better idea than subjecting them to extra-legal detention and torture. As if we really needed another example.

Of course, previous evidence that Moussaoui is a paranoid schizophrenic leads me to think maybe he’s finally gotten on the right dose of anti-psychotics and realizes how batshit crazy his position over the last two years has been.

elsa's new nemeses: road and car

So I was crossing a street with a fern yesterday and got hit by a car turning right. Fortunately, only the front right corner of the car and tire hit me, so I landed on my well-padded ass with a broken ankle on my left leg and nothing worse. But still, the broken ankle thing sucks ass. The inside of the bone is broken and a bit displaced, which means I need to have surgery to get a couple screws to hold everything in place. That will happen sometime later this week, and it's out-patient surgery that usually takes 30-40 minutes and is done under sedation, so all in all it's an ordeal about equivalent to having my wisdom teeth taken out, without all of that unpleasant gauze in your mouth.

Now my leg is wrapped up in a splint (a "sugar thong splint" according to my two-weeks-away-from-graduating-med-school sister) that is sort of half cast, half ace-bandage mukluk. It's oddly similar in color to my cat, and she seems to have kind of befriended it. At least, that is, opposed to her reaction to me walking on crutches, which is like, "Bizarre six-limbed bionic creature coming through! Run!"

The fern, by the way, survived without any injuries.

this must be the opposite of hungover

Remember how I couldn't stand listening to disco the other day because I was hungover? Right now "Tangerine" is kicking my ass, in a good way, so maybe I should say that "Tangerine" is spanking my ass. The occassion? COFFEE. I usually drink green tea in the morning, but today I got up early to go the gym before work and I needed a little extra kick to get started at work. Because I don't drink coffee very often, I now feel practically high, and I feel the desire to write an entire blog post extolling the virtues of coffee.

Anyway, if disco makes your head explode when you're hungover, but spanks your ass when you're on a caffeine buzz, then...what was I talking about? Oh, right. COFFEE IS AMAZING.