Good morning fruitcake

And I'm not talking the variety with nuts and candied fruits.

I probably shouldn't have answered my phone at 7 a.m. during my Christmas break, but what the hell. I did.

And now I have officially undergone a rite of passage for every woman in our society: the pervert prank caller.

I suppose some people might have been outraged or highly flustered to have someone they don't know whisper, "What kind of panties are you wearing?" at 7 a.m. over the phone. I was more having to hold back all sorts of colorful comments, things like, "It's flippin' 7 a.m., what the hell do you think I am wearing?" or "No man, what are YOU wearing?"

And to make matters worse, I was immediatly transported to that scene in Mel Brooks' "High Anxiety," when Madeline Kahn thinks someone has made a similar call to her. "I know a lot of the other girls are turned on by these sort of kinky phone calls, but I really couldn't care less ... what are you wearing? Jeans? I bet they're tight."

Of course, good judgement prevailed and I said nothing and hung up. I eventually had to unplug the phone because he kept calling. The dude must have been really desperate for some phone sex or something. Like, has he never heard of the Internet?

I now feel I am finally part of the common experience. Wow. Thanks pervert dude.

;-)

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Holiday midway

Past Christmas and not quite New Year's. Sounds like the perfect time for a greeting.

Happy holidays, all!

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Wisdom of a Whitney mix

I always find something that fits.

"This is hell, this is hell
I am sorry to tell you
It never gets better or worse
But you get used to it after a spell
For heaven is hell in reverse."
-Elvis Costello, "This is hell"

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Monday

Alarm buzzing.
Eyeballs open.
Shower too short.
Kids fighting.
Cold car.
Late for school.
Windy walk to the office.
Irritating e-mails.

It's not even noon and already my jaw hurts from clenching. This could be a loooong week.

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Happy llama-days!

Sing along! You know you want to.
Llama Song

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Sucks having a Satan mother

I've finally reached the end of my proverbial rope with my middle child, who has had a week to clean her room. Today, after six hours of time to clean her room and do what amounted to one sink full of dishes, I was dismayed to find that she had accomplished almost nothing. So I made good on my promise and now every one of her toys and other belongings is in plastic garbage bags. No crap. No crap to pick up, right? Alas, instead of being thrilled with this wonderful reprieve from cleaning she has received, her only response was two words (punctuated with lots of screaming and crying):

"You suck."

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Chocolate casualty

I am perhaps the only person I know who can injure themselves while making candy. Note to self: Using your full body weight to bust a bar of dipping chocolate in half is extraordinarly painful when said bar breaks and said full body weight is brought down on the tip of your thumbnail.

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Some people watch football

Not my family. Our holiday traditions involve lower temperatures and more clothing. Lots more clothing. Add this to the file that proves my rugged Alaska womanhood. Or something like that.

No, we aren’t dead. No, we haven’t fallen and can’t get up.

No, I am not an extreme example of that kid in elementary school that licked the monkey bars. Mmmm. Lake ice. You see, underneath our faces is a hole in the ice. We are simply paying very close attention to our baited hooks, waiting for the big strike ...

Aha! Victory at last.
The boy fared a little better, though I still say that in fishing, the gross weight of the fish isn’t the true measure of success. Nope. The fun’s in the catching, right? So every fish counts, right? Right? So, according to my calculations, I caught exactly 50 percent of the fish that day.

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I'm good enough, I'm smart enough and doggone it, people like me!

My 12-year-old son pointed out my pinochle shortcomings this weekend with the following phrase, uttered at the beginning of what would go on to be the sixth or seventh game in a row that my sister creamed my dad and me:

"Failure to succeed will commence."

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I can’t take the suspense

The above appears on the roof of a local coffee stand.

How can they do such a thing to all of us. Bagel sandwich’s what? How can we go on not knowing the rest of the sentence? It could be something scandalous like, “Now serving bagel sandwich’s secret desires.” It could be valuable information that could change my life, a la “Now serving bagel sandwich’s easy ways to get rich quick. No punctuation required.” The words “bagel sandwich’s” could be more than just the simple personification of baked goods. What if “bagel sandwich” is really a code word for some super -secret important person?

How can I go on not knowing? I curse you, damned bagel sandwich. Your secrets shall remain forever unknown.

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The Big (virtual) I

Cocktails

Looking for results? Visit the Division of Elections online. Not quite as fun as multicolored copies in a wire basket, but pretty darn close.

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Is it just me, or is everything buzzing?

The recipe
One triple-shot vanilla latte
One grande chai latte
One 16-ounce caramel latte
One Diet Pepsi

The result
Blogging at warp speed. Like, akin to Beavis. Heh hehehehe. Fire! Fire! Fire!

And you thought it was impossible to mix Star Trek and that infamous MTV animated classic.

“Hey Beavis ... Engage.”

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What’s a voter to do?

I’m just a mess about Election Day. It’s a nearly impossible scenario:

We have one D, one R and one I (for independent).

So, say your worst fear is that Candidate D wins. You would ordinarily lean toward the Candidate R, but you also really like many of the things Candidate I has to say. Still, you know Candidate I, being outside our lovely two-party system, will not likely win and will instead serve as a spoiler either for Candidate R or Candidate D. But the problem is, Candidate I used to be part of the R party, but in some ways speaks like a D.

In order to ensure that Candidate D doesn’t win, whom do you vote for? Do you vote for Candidate I, who perhaps would be the best choice of the three? If you do that, and every vote for Candidate I takes a vote away from Candidate R--your second choice--then you are helping to elect Candidate D. But if you vote for Candidate R, are you missing the chance to elect the person you think would really be best for the job?

I predict that many people will be very angst-ridden at the ballot box, myself included, whether they favor Candidate D, R or I. That or I am overanalyzing things again.

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Too much past blast

Be warned that my young adult life had a decidedly daytime-drama air to it, but my visits from the ghosts of upheavals past this evening were a bit more than I can process at once.

First, it’s pick my kids up at the ex’s trailer, where he lives with the woman who worked for me in high school, who he was dating before we met and who was, for a while after we were married, driving by our house at odd hours.

And if that’s not bad enough, I’m happily standing at the UScan checking out my small basket of groceries when a friendly “how are you doing” reaches my ears. I look up and see the friendly, smiling faces of two people, a couple, I knew when we were all teens. Awww. Nice. Sweet. Yeah, except the deal is that I know him because I had a six-month-long torrid relationship with him. I know her because she is the girlfriend he was “in the process of breaking up with” the whole time. (Note that these two are married now.) I know both of them because they are the ones who eventually ended with misdemeanor convictions for beating the crap out of me after school.

Hi, how are you doing? Whoa! Overload. I mumbled something pleasant and laughed nervously and then left. What the heck are you supposed to say? “Hi! How are the kids? You still wearing those strange, shiny underwear?”

Yeah. I always think of the best things to say after the fact.

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Mergers, diversification and other secrets of romance

I have a dear friend who would argue that relationships between two people--marriage, for instance--are more business deals than anything else. And we have delightful verbal tangos on the issue, with him telling me that I’m a sap (I am) and me telling him he often has the romantic inclinations of a fencepost (he does).

Now in many ways, this friend is correct. From a financial standpoint, a married couple will almost always have more potential for income than a single person. They live together in one house, pay one set of the expenses of living, and generally take advantage of that proven truth of business known as economy of scale. Though it isn’t in any written contract, many of the interactions of marriage resemble what one might see in a relationship between two businesses. If you cook dinner, I’ll do the dishes. If you work full time, I’ll work part time and take care of all of the household duties. It even enters into the most intimate parts of a relationship. Almost every couple who has been together for any length of time is familiar with bedroom bargaining.

So you have financial incentives, de facto contracts and heated bargaining. Sounds like business, no?

It does. But there’s one thing you throw into the equation and it taints the brew, so to speak, and calls into question the businesslike appearances of many relationships: love.

Go ahead, get all the eye-rolling and the “yep, she’s a sap,” stuff out of your system. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

OK, here’s my point:

In my opinion, love is solitary in nature and therefore independent of any business deal. You either love someone or you don’t. Love may grow or fade over time, but it either is or it isn’t. And it is not part of any reciprocal arrangement. There is no, “I’ll love you this much if you love me in return to an equal degree.” If you love someone, it really doesn’t matter whether they love you back or not. Their ability to do so has absolutely nothing to do with your own feelings. I think most people would agree that the statement, “I love you because you love me,” is loaded with all sorts of psychological dysfunction and is not something any of us would strive for. No, the best we can do is to say, “I love you regardless” and then hope for the best. That’s why loving relationships--whether they be a marriage or a friendship or a family--can be frightening at times. That’s why they are so rewarding when they work. That’s why their demise is so traumatic.

In the end, despite all of the wheeling and dealing, we are left only with the enormity of our unconditional love for another human being and the realization that we alone must deal with all that follows. You can’t hire out that task.

Bottom line: Business is dependent on reciprocity. The core of human relationships isn't.

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Friday morning poetry

Sometimes, the spam in my inbox is nearly poetic in its oddity:

Everything grows: your body, experience,
sexual desire but not your penis. Advanced Gain Pro
will make the last one grow too.
Advanced Gain Pro can enlarge your dick so
much that you won’t be scared of ruler anymore.
Try Now very cool


Sexual innuendo, random capitalization, badly translated language. What's not to love?

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History in the making?

A while back, I watched an online animation about the future of the press. You can watch it here.

The basic gist is that several mergers of online giants like Google and Amazon, combined with technology that allows people to create their own news portals, basically made the concept of news a self-selecting enterprise. For example, if you wanted to select, say, only information about pro wrestling and the latest on Pamela Anderson, then that is what would show up each day as the top news. Nothing about Korea. Nothing about a national election. Nothing about crime rates in your town skyrocketing. Only pseudo-athletes and big breasts.

In this futuristic world, what we now know as the giants of the fourth estate have become bankrupt and obsolete. Nobody reads the New York Times or listens to APRN. They simply get their “news” spoon-fed to them via the billions of self-proclaimed “journalists” across the Web. There is not even a baseline assurance that the things that you read are true or well-researched or created with any eye toward basic journalistic ethics. Everyone creates the news. The line between the journalist and the wingnut down the street is gone. The concept of balanced reporting is gone. If you want to hear only that all gay people are evil perverts, then you can set your channels to feed you gobs and gobs of diatribes to reinforce your bigotry on a daily basis.

I can’t help but wonder how close we are getting to this place. And I should state up front that I am a journalist by training and may be a bit snobbish about the journalist’s role in society. Still, the bottom line to this scenario, and to a certain degree this holds true even today, is that people seem to be growing less and less informed. And the scary thing is that they seem to be choosing to become that way. It’s ironic that in this age of so much information, people seem to have less information about things that are important. Perhaps it’s a consequence of information overload.

At any rate, I wonder if this scenario has ever played out in modern human history. What happens to a society that chooses to be ignorant of the things that allow it to govern itself wisely? Certainly we have plenty of examples of authoritarian regimes that block out their citizens’ access to information, but has there ever been a country where the people actually chose to simply look away, where people, even though they could learn about the important things in their society, simply say, “You know, I don’t really feel like it.”

Are we choosing the path to our own destruction?

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Innocence slipping

My 12-year-old son has always been a lot more insightful about human behavior than he ought to be at his age, so I guess our conversation tonight shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to me. Still, it says a lot about all of us when a seventh-grader picks up on the hypocrisy around him.

Our conversation began with him bemoaning the fact that some of the kids on his basketball team were giving him a hard time, telling him he is no good, etc. That was hard enough to hear, since I remember how damn hard middle school was. The worst thing was hearing him say, “The thing is Mom, is if you tell on them or they get caught, it really doesn’t do any good, because they don’t care about the consequences. They probably do get in-school suspension, but they don’t care. Their parents all just come in and say, ‘it was some other kid’s fault’ and the principal maybe believes them. And even if the principal doesn’t believe them, the kids don’t get into any trouble from their parents because their parents believe that their kid didn’t do it.”

What the heck do you say to that last statement? I make it a practice not to lie to my kids about the way the world works and I have to say that, in a lot of cases, he is spot on. I did mention the whole, “You have to live with yourself and your behavior at the end of the day” thing, which I believe strongly in, being a great avoider of guilt. Still, pretty sad that a 12-year-old observes this phenomenon that so many adults are blind to.

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'Its' just hilarious

What do you think it says about someone that said person thinks it's amusing to stand in front of a fridge rearranging the magnetic words and inserting apostrophes where they don't belong a la "It's hinges are so rusted its difficult to open."

Hee hee hee. I mean, that person is just sick. Sick, I tell you. And so is my--I mean that person's--copy editor friend. Freaks.

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No undergrad left behind

I have this uneasy feeling that higher education is about to go the way of K-12.

By that I mean, “Hello, I’m from the federal Department of Education and I’m here to make sure that YOU are accountable.”

And when I say “accountable,” I mean, “Let’s see how much money we can suck away from the classroom to create a huge bureaucracy to administer tests that we have engineered to tell us absolutely nothing.”

Hmm, not sure where that vitriolic rant came from. Years of repressing my true feelings in print, I suspect.

Anyway. “All Things Considered” had an interesting interview with Education Secretary Margaret Spellings this evening. In it, she spoke about a recently released report from the Commission on the Future of Higher Education. You can hear the full interview here but the message I got out of it was that higher education needed a few things, among them more money for scholarships, more information for parents and students about the education they are purchasing and more accountability for the money the federal government puts into higher education.

All of these things sound fine on their face, just as they did when officials said similar things during the genesis of NCLB. I mean, really, who can oppose things like students learning and public entities spending our money wisely?

But, a couple of things she said made me shudder. First, Michele Norris asked her whether she was advocating testing in higher education. Her answer was to say that she wouldn’t advocate a one-size-fits-all test. The inference here was that the universities or states should decide what type of evaluation system works best for them.

Then later in the interview she said that the federal government needed to offer higher education “incentives and assistance” to meet the challenges detailed in the report.

I’ll go out on a limb here and translate. Keep in mind this is my opinion and is filtered through my more-cynical-than-is-healthy brain, but try this one on for size:

Dear Higher Education (I capitalized that because people in higher ed REALLY like to capitalize things);

Since our recent report found that you are lacking in several areas, we are here to offer you some incentives and assistance to move to a new and exciting age in education.

First, we want you to develop a set of assessments. We’ll tell you what to include in them, what it takes to pass them and how often you have to give them, but we DO NOT want a one-size-fits-all test.

Please develop a large and expensive bureaucracy to administer this new testing system. We can’t afford to give you all the money to pay for this new department, but I’m sure you can find some money in your budget somewhere. Just so you won’t feel alone, we’ll do the same.

Once the testing system is in place, we’ll move on to how to bring every student up to 100 percent proficiency, but that’s a memo for another day.

Oh yes, I did mention incentives, didn’t I? Of course, we wouldn’t expect you to do this without some incentive. How’s this: Do it or we‘ll jerk your funding.

Love and kisses,
U.S. Department of Education

Whack me upside the head with a piece of celery if I’m wrong. I even have one you can borrow. I smell a changing tide in higher education, and if it’s anything like what NCLB is doing to K-12, it’s low tide in Ketchikan when the humpies are running. (Just ask someone who has lived there.)

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Attack of the killer ...

Well, celery, actually. I am now the proud possessor of an absurd amount of celery. As the mercury drops here in Fairbanks, those of us with gardens kick into holy-crap-I-had-better-pick-everything-before-I have-the-low-budget-version-of-flash-frozen-vegetables mode. (Most gardeners, however, probably don’t hyphenate quite as much as I do, though I believe that at least AP style would say that’s correct, no matter how over-the-top.)

But I digress. About these wily, green stalks. Apparently celery thrives on neglect and abuse--great, I have masochistic veggies--because I ignored it for most of the summer and didn’t really even bother to remove the chickweed from around it. The result of my black thumb was an armload of the stuff.

Now I’m soaked from washing all of it and about had to use my feet to stuff it into the bottom shelf of the fridge. What the heck am I going to do with a 10-pound, white-garbage-bag-encased brick of celery?

Perhaps I should fill every stalk with delicately seasoned cream cheese and head out on the town in search of a fancy soiree to crash. Of course I’d need a forklift to carry the trays.

OOO! OOO! I know. I’ll make 20 gallons of cream of celery soup. Yeah, and we can have it for dinner every night. I can freeze it and ... Oh wait. If I do that, a certain 6-year-old in my family will cry because she has to eat green soup and every night the strains of “Mommy, you make yucky food,” will haunt my dreams. Hmm. Scratch that idea. Better just do what I do with everything else I can’t find a use for right away.

Chop it up and throw it in the freezer.

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Shaggy mania

Mushroom saga, part deux: I went just a tad crazy last weekend. I found a field of shaggy mane mushrooms and the owners kindly allowed me to go pick them. I left with two brown shopping bags full and could have filled a couple more. This grassy lawn was just littered with the things. It was amazing. ‘Course, when I got home, I had to clean and process all of them, right away. See, there’s a bit of fine print with these mushrooms. They look all pretty and white in the field, but if you leave them uncooked overnight you will have a stinky black mess. (Shaggy manes belong to a group of mushrooms known as “inky caps.”)

So, the result was four hours of washing, chopping, cooking and freezing. It was, I must say, exhausting work. Still, I’ll have enough for soups and sauces for the winter, which is a good thing. Now if I can only get some ducks to go with it. Mmmm. Duck.

Anyway, as a bonus to this little excursion to someone else’s lawn, I ran across huge bunches of what I believe to be fried chicken mushrooms, shown below, which are also supposed to be a good edible.


The deal with these is you have to be careful because they supposedly resemble some other poisonous varieties. One test, which goes along with a few other things, is to take a spore print. Pink spores=bad. White spores=good. My mother also notes that she has never heard of a poisonous mushroom that actually tastes good. Of course, that’s a little bit more risky.

At any rate, I was elated to find a white spore print and so now will try a tiny bit and see whether I keel over or not. *grin* So if I’m not back within a couple of weeks, I probably offed myself with a mushroom. Kidding. Kidding.

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Equal opportunity elite

For those of us who are feeling left out of the inner circle of power in Alaska politics, Cafe Press now offers a lovely assortment of items for purchase that allow wearers to proudly proclaim that they too are among the esteemed leaders of our great state who, for the past year (at least), have been guiding our government with morality and strength of character.

Er. Yeah.

Check it out here.

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I'll sleep better

This from the "about us" section of the English online version of "People's Daily" in Beijing:

"People's Daily brings you the latest news dispatches of policy
information and resolutions of the Chinese Government and major
domestic news and international news releases from China. It reflects
the views of the Chinese people, expounds on justice and lambasts
various forms of malpractice."

You know, I feel better knowing that someone out there is expounding on justice, because in my opinion, there is just too much silence out there on the topic of justice. And good for them for lambasting malpractice. It's even better that they make sure to practice equal-opportunity lambasting of various forms of malpractice. It would be a shame to focus one's lambasting on just a single sort of malpractice. I mean, really, what good is it to only lambaste, say, the dairy farmer who sells you sour milk when there are lawyers and mechanics and shopkeepers and doctors that are all equally deserving of lambasting? Where's the justice there, I ask you. Where indeed?

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In search of the king

I spent half a day on Sunday wandering in the woods picking mushrooms and now am feeling just a bit obsessed. The sun was shining in my office window this afternoon and what was I thinking? It would be cool to be lounging in the yard? I wish I could go for a long drive with the top down? Nope. I was thinking, "I bet if I could just spend a little time back in the trails I could find some more tasty mushrooms."

I found a small number of regular boletus on Sunday, enough for one meal with steak, along with a few other things that, after looking at the spore prints and the book, to be either poisonous or inedible. Alas, my most prized quarry, the king bolete, has thus far eluded me. These large 'shrooms resemble their cousins, with a reddish/tan cap and spongy-looking gills. But they are much larger and--here's the best part--don't bruise dark when you cut them. They are oh so tasty.

Now if I can just find a place where the dang things are growing, it would simply make my fall, especially since I've been out of the state for most of berry season.

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Hellfire and dumbnation

Here's an amusing exercise:

Let's see who can come up with the best euphamism, expression, metaphor or simile to describe utter stupidity. Hell, I'll even take plain old synonyms, made up or not. A colleague and I had great fun in just five minutes of brainstorming, so I'm sure that, with the eternity that the blogosphere offers, we can come up with some great ones. Now let's see, what did we come up with today...

Dumb as a box of rocks
Not the brightest bulb
Not the sharpest tool
Dipstick
Shallow pool
Sheeple

And, in honor of my love for mixing metaphors:
Can't see the forest for the fog of stupidity
or its variation
Can't see the forest for the tree that fell on his head

I'll add more as I think of them. Now come on people. Let's work together in the name of the dumb.

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It never goes away

It's election night. It's quarter to midnight. I actually know what percentage of precincts have reported results: 66.97 percent. I have the division of elections Web site in the background and have been refreshing it way more than is useful. I know exactly how I would be rewriting my lead to make deadline, because it doesn't look like results will be in on time. Phrases like, "as of midnight" and "was the apparent victor" come to mind. I'm reluctant to go to bed, because I really want to know now.

This is the second election since I left the paper, the first major one. And I do miss the excitement of election night, that and the fun at the Big I afterward. Don't think that will ever go away.

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Belated patriotic mourning

My 6-year-old daughter was questioning me this morning about my recent trip to D.C.

She asked me, "Did you see Washington?"

I said, "Yes, I went to Washington and saw some of the city."

"No," she said. "Did you see that guy. Washington."

I smiled, "You mean the monument?"

"No," she said, a bit frustrated. "Did you see him?"

"You mean the first president?" I asked. "He's dead, sweetie."

"WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?" she exclaimed. "He's dead?"

"Yeah," I said. "He's been dead for more than 100 years."

Her response?

"Oh man."

Just goes to show the context of a 6-year-old's life. ;)

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But ... I was there.

Here's a really strange sensation:

I'm standing talking to my former spouse this evening and mention some not-so-lovely things that happened while we were married. He replies that they never happened. Now, I was there. He was there. We both know the stuff happened. Then how does someone look another person in the eye, knowing they know the truth, and say something like this? And better yet, what the heck is the appropriate response to such a thing? Probably leaving, I guess. Some folks just aren't in touch with reality.

And no, this isn't related to my former post.

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Ethically challenged or just astute

What do you all think? Is it wrong to intentionally create scenarios that will test whether or not someone will lie to you? Is it dishonest to ask someone a question to which you already know the answer, in an effort to test their truthfulness?

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Vote Frank

OK, before you all go and faint, let me explain

I think I may just have to do more than my civic duty at the ballot box in our state’s upcoming primary. I think I’ll take that extra step and do my part to make the general election as entertaining as possible.

We have quasi-closed primaries, which basically means that everyone but the Republicans go on one ballot and all the Rs go on another. As a registered nonpartisan, I can choose either ballot. Ordinarily, I would go with the everything but Republicans ballot--more to choose from--but this year that just seems like no fun. I don’t think anyone in the state has to strain their brains too hard to figure out who will be winning the Democratic nomination. So with Tony Knowles a shoo-in, a vote on that side of the aisle seems a little wasted and certainly not conducive to fun and excitement.

Nope, I think that I may just have to ask for the R ballot. But oh, who to choose?

Incumbent Frank Murkowski, the man who appointed his daughter to the U.S. Senate and who has managed to alienate almost everyone in the state of Alaska?

Sarah Palin, moderate with backbone, which she proved when she stood up to her party’s bigwigs, but perhaps not as known statewide?

Or perhaps John (used to be Johne) Binkley, Fairbanks riverboat captain who is sailing on a sea of cash?

I don’t know a whole lot about Palin, though the things I have read indicate that she has some positive qualities. And Binkley is widely well-liked in the Fairbanks community and seems a nice enough guy. But I fear neither of them will make for big fun in November, so it doesn’t seem right to cast my ballot for them.

But folks, picture this: If Frank wins, the die-hard Rs in the state will have to make an unenviable decision: Stick with the party and vote for someone they dislike or turn to the dark side and vote for Tony. And that doesn’t even count how absolutely amusing it will be to watch Tony and Frank duke it out, with Tony pointing out all of Frank’s failings and Frank trying to talk his way out of them, and vice versa. I can think of no combination in recent memory that stands to generate so much of what makes election season such a joy.

Yep, as much as it may pain me, I may just have to vote for Frank.

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I lost my rose-colored glasses in our nation‘s capital

Now, dear readers, I should clarify, lest you go off thinking that I was some sort of Pollyanna type prior to arriving in that hotbed of politicking known as Washington D.C. Rest assured, I have no illusions about our government. If my temperament were setting the color of my sunglasses, I’m afraid they would be black.

Nope, in this case, I truly am speaking of my pink-hued sunglasses, which not only served their utilitarian purpose, but also were ironic enough, given my aforementioned cynical bent, to give me a periodic chuckle.

Alas, I was a fool. My brain had been well-lubricated with too many shots and I left them on the table in a bar in Dupont Circle to go watch the parade of puffy-lipped drag queens strut their stuff during the evening show.

Like I said, foolish. If there is one place one should not leave a pair of pink sunglasses laying unguarded on a table, it is a gay bar, or at least that’s what stereotypes would tell you. At any rate, some sticky-fingered someone lifted my sunglasses of irony and now I’m back to plain old brown.

Bad queen! Bad, bad queen!

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Avoid the Homer effect

Doh! Doh! Doh!

Sage words from someone at a workshop today:

"The last thing you want to do is reinvent the square wheel."

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Fatally killed by repetitive redundancy

I have seen and heard the words "general public" more times than I can count in the last 24 hours. Over and over and over... And sometimes it has been capitalized. Even better, I found a synonym that is equally redundant on--guess where--a PowerPoint slide. Shocking, I know. The trend didn't escape the watchful eye of my colleague, who is a former copy editor. She slipped me a cocktail napkin with the words, "general public," scribbled on it. I added my reply and handed it back:

"=public at large."

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I think I'm a bumpkin...

I'm in Washington D.C. at the moment and it always takes me a couple of hours to acclimate to places like this. It's not the climate, though the 92 degrees and humid feels like a wet wool blanket, but the ... city-ness.

For a girl from Fairbanks, Alaska, any city feels like another planet, but DC is certainly that to the nth degree. The faster pace of things is almost tangible as you step out of the plane, and it's not just the roar of people or the view of cars jammed on a freeway as I flew in. People are just going. And they don't seem very happy about it. 'Course people at airports seldom are. Still, people don't seem to look you in the eye as much in a large city. And if you smile at them, their smiles back look a lot like they might just be doing it because they know you're "special" and deserve their sympathy. ;) It's not that people in cities, as individuals, are any less friendly than they are anywhere else, it's just that, as a whole, humanity feels so much more anonymous.

And then there's my incredible lack of knowledge of things like: Exactly how much am I supposed to tip the guy who refused to let me carry my own bags even though, being a woman who splits her own firewood, I am perfectly capable of carrying a couple of suitcases, thank you very much?

As for my hotel, it's very nice, and I'm afraid to touch anything for fear they will charge me for it. They charge for local calls, for calling-card calls, for Internet access. They offer bottles of water in your room, for $4.95 apiece. If I enjoy the robe and want to take it with me, $90. Believe me, it's not a $90 robe. The front desk asked me if I wanted a key to the "refreshment center." Noooo, I think I'll pass on that. A chocolate attack in the middle of night could run me $8 for a candy bar and soda. If I desperately needed a beer and some peanuts I'd be looking at $13 for a half-cup of honey-roasted peanuts and a Miller Lite.

Guess I'm just not quite ready for the role of rich yuppie business traveler.

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A familiar face

Funny how certain things can trigger memories that bring you to your knees.

When I was in college, I worked at the school newspaper, as most journalism students did. I was managing editor and the editor-in-chief was someone I quickly formed a close connection to and was terribly fond of. I remember sitting in the office that Tuesday in October, the fluorescents off and the sun filtering in through the windows, creating a cool, crisp light. I waited for him to come so we could go deliver all of the papers and wondered where he was. I remember sliding down my kitchen wall when another friend and fellow student called me, “He’s been murdered.”

For a long time I could see his face whenever I closed my eyes, whenever I wanted to be near him. I could see his hands and arms crossing mine on the light table as we pasted up the last blocks of text in the week’s edition. It was all so clear. But that was nearly a dozen years ago, and time, mercifully and cruelly, fades those memories.

I haven’t seen his face for so long. So when a song I used to sing when we were working on deadline came on the radio tonight as I was pulling into the driveway, I simply turned up the volume, closed my eyes and he was there. No time had passed. I could have touched his face. Then the song was over, I opened my eyes and he was gone just as quickly, my tears the only remnants of my memory‘s brief gift.

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Kneading in the wee hours

It's 12:25 a.m. and I'm making bread. There must be something wrong with me.

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Passive bureaucratic pop

All those who roll their eyes at anal word people, read no further.

OK, for those of you who are left, I offer the following snippet from the chorus of a song by an unnamed American Idol winner: "... but there were lessons learned."

My middle daughter, who at 10 is enamored with this bubble-gum stuff, plays this song (and the rest of the CD) over and over again and sings along. And I wince.

Now I know I shouldn't expect too much from this genre of music, but bureaucratic cliches and passive voice in one song?

It’s almost too much to bear.

I know they were trying to rhyme with such inspirational gems as "some pages turned" and "some bridges burned," but someone should have killed this song before it made it past the first edit. And if that wasn't possible, they should have at least given it to Weird Al and added some additional corporate jargon to make it even more absurd.

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Being Ms. Right

What is it about some women that seems to inspire devotion in men? Why is it that others, despite being intelligent, beautiful, talented, caring and successful, find continuously that their partners simply aren't willing to put up the slightest effort.

I have been rolling this one around in my head for a while, prompted by friends' comments over the years. And I suppose it ought to be more like a question than a statement, because this is far from an instruction manual.

I recall a conversation with a woman whose relative told her something to the effect of, "If he loves you, then he'll wait for you." Her response, born of a good number of years' experience: "No, that's just not true. Not for me."

Another woman I know speaks of relationships that have ended as if they are completely her fault. She says that perhaps if she had been a better girlfriend that he would have been willing to give more, that he would have been willing to try harder.

And then I look at my own experiences. Despite being married for eight years, I am under no illusions that my former husband was devoted to me in the slightest. Had I gotten sick or needed some extra effort to get through a rough time, he would have been gone in a flash. And to some degree, that's been the case with every relationship in my life.

Now lest my readers think I'm some sort of man-hating whack job, I can assure you I am not. And the central theme in this rambling stream of consciousness, or perhaps unconciousness, is that it must not be by sheer coincidence that some women seem to be Ms. Right and others are just Ms. Right Now. If the woman in the common denominator, it stands to reason it must be something she is or is not doing.

So what is it? How is it that you can take a group of women of various ages, professions, intelligence, physical beauty and personality and some will find that men with love them with passion and devotion. These men are smitten and they truly would do almost anything for these women they love. Others will find only lukewarm, at best, versions of the same qualities.
With no obvious common traits among the men or the women in each group, what is it?

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Summer of wandering men

It's the oddest thing: Every male friend I have is tooling around the lower 48 this summer. One's in his truck. One's on a bike. And one's taking the scenic route to D.C. with his wife and a big dog in an Audi.

Go figure. Must be something in the water.

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Litmus test

A friend's astute observation on the nature of the relationships/friendships between men and women and how to tell the difference:

"If either of you started dating someone, what would happen to the friendship?"

Answer: "It would likely change drastically or cease."

"Then you aren't simply friends."

Give that man a prize. Seems awful simple, no?

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God and basketball

This from an article in a Texas paper about a high school basketball player and said player's reasons for playing for a particular team in college. I'll paraphrase, but the player said that a big plus was that the coaches are members of the same religious denomination she is, Church of Christ.

OK, now, explain to me again why it matters what religion a basketball coach is. Wait, I know, God will be on their side.

These kinds of statements really irk the heck out of me, for a number of reasons.

First, though this player doesn't come out and say it, the inference is that not only are those
who go to the Church of Christ somehow more desireable, but those who do not are somehow just not quite as good. We can't have any Lutheran or Catholic basketball coaches. And Hindu? Oh hell no.

Second, I find it incredibly sad that a young person just venturing out on his or her own would be so closed-minded as to list among the primary appealing traits they find in other people, "They are exactly like me." How about going off to college and experiencing new things, learning new things and, perhaps, broadening your horizons.

And finally, it's pretty telling to me that this young person actually felt comfortable saying this to a reporter for publication. It's a testament to how tolerant our society is of bigotry by Christians in relation to other religions. I wonder, if we changed "Church of Christ" to some other class/characteristic of people, how much such a statement would be tolerated.

How about these:
"It's a big plus that the coaches are white like me."
"A deciding factor was the fact that the coaches were Muslim, as I am."
"I'm heterosexual, and I chose to play for this team because the coaches are heterosexual too."
"Since I am a man, it was really important to me that I have a male coach."

Nope. Can't see anybody without a wish for lots of nasty phone calls saying anything like that publicly. But say, "These guys are best because they're Christians like me," and it's all apple pie and waving flags.

Wonder how long before we end up with a state religion.

Perhaps we're already there.

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Family

My great uncle, whom I had never met prior to last weekend, is up visiting my grandparents and all the relatives throughout the state. His wife of 25 years accompanied him. Both seem very sweet people and I'm glad I got a chance to meet both of them.

I was struck this weekend by the value of what I have in my large extended family. I and the kids spent a couple of days out at my aunt and uncle's farm with my grandparents, cousins, aforementioned great uncle and his wife, cousin's significant others, my uncle's nephew and a large assortment of animals, including a couple of geriatric dogs, a handful of cats, horses, ducks, etc.

If it sounds a bit chaotic, it was. It always is. Still, as the evening wound down and my great uncle got out a guitar and everyone sang old songs around the fire pit, it was easy to feel calm in surroundings that aren't dependent on location, but on the faces and voices that have been the context of my life and my children's lives since we were born.

Likely the greatest gift my parents gave me, and one I hope I am giving my children as well, is the knowledge that no matter the places life takes me, family is the one thing I can always count on. It is not simply where I'm from; it's who I am.

I can think of little else more comforting than knowing that as certainty. And I wonder how some people in this world live without it.

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Summer sucks

There. I said it. It's probably the first and, I hope, the last summer I will ever say that, but there you have it. I'm sad. I want to cry a lot. And the problem won't rectify itself until the fall. So, hence, summer is bad. Fall is good. My intellect has waned. I need to blow my nose.

That's as profound as is gets this evening.

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Powerful smut

Sometimes, when my sister and I get to rambling, you just don't know what we'll come up with. In this case, it's a new word. *drum roll*

Omniporno (n.)- Pornography that, due to supernatural characteristics, is everywhere, always.

Yay! Omniporno! Yay!

I gotta go to bed. Sheesh!

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Damn hearts...

This sad-but-true observation from a friend: "The heart knows little of dead ends."

Wonder if there's a way to teach one's heart to recognize such things. Probably not. Sometime in the last five or 10 years, as I watched the people around me and as I experienced single life again, I realized that we really don't get to choose who we fall in love with. And that, friends, is a very scary prospect.

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Rugged Alaska woman

Yep. That's me. You see, certain people who know me scoff at such assertions, probably because I cry during every sappy movie ever made, but I think my most recent activities make it official. If I had a digital camera I would actually take a picture of said activities, namely the 5-foot-high pile of birch logs in my front yard. I even have my very own bright-yellow splitting maul and neon green chainsaw with a VERY rugged 14-inch bar. I'll probably look like Arnold's twin sister after I split and cut all of it, sans membership in the Republican party. Even several cords of wood can't send me there.

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Resistance is ...

I think I'm having a bit of a "me vs. all the rest of you" kind of week. Doesn't bode well for my attitude or my ability to play well with others, which is kind of unfortunate given that I have at least one board meeting this week.

The thing is, I am just a bit weary of people telling me "no" or arguing with me or pushing or just being generally obstinate. I'm sensitive to the controlling aspects of my personality and try to keep them as toned down as possible. But really, would it kill my kids to just do what I tell them the first time? Hell, I'd even take the second. And is there any reason why it must take an hour for them to get ready for bed and 20 minutes for a certain child to brush her hair in the morning and hence make me very late for work?

Speaking of work, I swear I'm likely to come unglued if one more Ph.D. tries to tell me that it's absolutely essential for all sentences to include no less than 30 seven-syllable words. C'mon people.

And if all of that's not bad enough, one of my few respites from resistance, who happens to be going on a summer-long vacation, actually asks me why it is I want to be sure to see him right before he leaves. How about, "I want to." Is that good enough? Or shall I create a Powerpoint presentation with the complete rationale of how I'll miss seeing him for two flippin' months.

Resistance is everywhere. It's driving me batty. Someone needs to give me an affirmative answer to something, and fast, otherwise my eyebrows may soon knit together in the middle of my forehead. And in the wise words of another dear friend of mine, "That just ain't sexy."

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Poetic crusades

The journalism haiku from SPJ national has inspired me. So, in honor of my favorite crusades:

Random capitals
The bane of my existence
Self-important types

General public
Why, when one word would suffice?
Die redundancies

Passive voice must cease
No cake will be had by all
Subject, verb, object

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Becoming a man

No, no, not me. My son. At 12 he now has his first girlfriend. And it appears that at least a little of my "be nice to girls" dogma has stuck. I mentioned to him that I had gotten a call from a 13-year-old who was interested in babysitting over the summer.

I said, "That seems like a bad idea, the more likely scenario would be that you two would flirt all summer."

"Mom," he replied with some exasperation, "I can't do that. That would be cheating on my girlfriend."

*grin*

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What a girl wants

This from a friend who is beginning a job in government in Alaska. We had been talking about the benefits, primarily retirement and health care benefits. It's great that we can count on such things in our golden years, that is, unless the legislature decides to change that too...

"It's a false sense of security, that's all I really want."

What's even scarier is the people who don't realize that's all it is. And don't even get me started on the people who know what it means and still vote for these yahoos. At some point we'll discuss the biggest myth in Alaska, namely that a 401k-style retirement plan is good for public employees. Not tonight though. Not enough time to rant.

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Seeking serenity

It'll be green tomorrow.

As I glanced at the trees during my evening walk, I could see just a tinge of life peeking from the tips of the buds. My guess is that they'll burst forth once the sun warms things up a bit.

Amidst all of the stressful things this time of year brings, and this year more so than most, the promise of green leaves rustling in a warm wind can't help but offer a little bit of hope and comfort. As I walked this evening, with a nearly full moon at my face and the sun setting at my back, the air just cool enough to feel on the tip of my nose, it was a little easier to shed some of my cares: work, the frantic pace of the end of the school year, the lack of funds in my checking account, the impending departure of a loved one.

Just walk, under the sinking light of Fairbanks' springtime sun. Feel the wind. Hear the robins converse. Breathe.

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Sometimes it ain't what it seems.

I'm out in my yard the other night, whacking away at my wiley wild rose bush and cleaning out my planter boxes, when I overhear a conversation from next door. In order to fully appreciate this conversation, it is, however, helpful to have a bit of context. You see, the conversation was coming from a group of four drunk neighborhood guys standing around a fire burning in a 55-gallon drum outside a trailer.

Aaanyway...

I'm plucking dead plants from the ground and so not minding my own business. I hear things like:

"I don't think Bush was always this way."
"I think Bush used to be a lot weaker."
"How do you think Bush compares to others? Is Bush stronger?"

And I thought, "Wow, maybe all is not lost. Maybe even people whose politics I wouldn't likely agree with are at least paying attention enough to form opinions. I mean, if they are sitting around a burning drum talking national politics, they must be at least noticing a little of what is going on. Maybe there is hope for the sheeple yet."

'Cept about 30 seconds later, I realized the limitations of the spoken word.

I was hearing "Bush."

They were saying "Busch."

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I think I'm obsolete...

OK, maybe I am not exactly obsolete, but my web publishing skills sure are. It'll take me a bit of time with my book and a lot of experimentation to come up with a design I really like. Actually, if I am being truthful, what I really mean is it will likely take me at least three hours of filling in random hex codes in every location in the template before I figure out how to make my links purple. Of course then I will discover that purple looks really crappy and I'll forget which place I changed a D0D0D0 to an 3F45T2. And then I will say "fuck" a lot. And then I will turn off my computer.

The version that passes muster with certain copy editors: I think I'll stick to a prefab template for now.

(HAH, I dare you to make that shorter.)

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'Creative' use of white space

Hmm. The test post, done for the purpose of being able to preview what the heck I have created, has revealed that white space abounds on said creation. The word "sterile" comes to mind. Must remedy that.

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Test post

This is a test. And come to think of it, I wonder how many blogs start out with that exact sentence. Alas, not very hip and edgy. Not at all.

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