hmmmmmmmmm.......: November 2008

Saturday, November 29, 2008

trying to relax the white-knuckle grip...

"If you're going to make every game a matter of life or death, you're going to have a lot of problems. For one thing, you'll be dead a lot."
---Dean Smith

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

depressed? watch this :)

i've officially lost it

i used to call my students "guys" or "hey!" last year. (as in, "hey! quit shoving! get in line!")

this year i've switched to "ladies and gentlemen," after noticing how much nicer it sounds when other teachers say it. it also makes the rest of the sentence come out nicer, as in, "ladies and gentlemen, please stop shoving each other and stand in line appropriately!"

(the Gary Larsen cartoon of the man talking to the dog, and all the dog hears is "blah blah blah Ginger," pops into my head, which leads me to the memory of the grown-ups on Charlie Brown cartoons and their indecipherable "mwah mwah" speech.... didn't take my ADD pills today, and i kinda forgot how i am without them - it's actually not all bad...)

ANYWAY.

i just accidentally started to address the dogs as "ladies and gentlemen" right before telling them to "get over here."

there went my last marble.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Sunday, November 23, 2008

the new economy, chez nous

During the boom years, the Loopy-Loopy household was "cheating" a little... no, not that kind of cheating. :) Financial cheating.

See, I was always taught that you're not supposed to sell anything that qualifies as capital—you're supposed to hoard capital and use the income that it generates. That's how you become a robber baron like my great-grandfather.

So, our investments were growing so fast that we could cheat... we would gradually sell off a small percentage of capital and use that for our living expenses, without stopping the overall growth of our total assets. Hence the extravagance for which we were known in years past.

Since the crash, our capital has shrunk like a certain feature of a gentleman who has stepped into frigid water. It's scary how small it is. So we suddenly have to live solely on income. We thought we might have to sell our house because we can't make the mortgage, but we made up a budget and we can just squeak by if we stick to the budget.

Suddenly, I'm living like a regular person.

Now, being a pessimistic apocalyptic sort, I had always anticipated this - actually, as friends can attest, I anticipate having to struggle for survival amid the blowing dust and massive ruins of post-civilization. So it's not a shock. But it is an adjustment.

Herewith a brief rundown of some of the adjustments...


Situation

Before

After

change of seasons;
dogs shedding
call groomer; drop of scraggy dogs; pick up gorgeous dogslift dog onto table; hold violently struggling, howling dog while brushing; week of horrendous back pain. repeat.
horrendous back painacupuncturehot baths, tiger balm... and who knew those things could really be used as massagers?
vet calls; dog needs blood test"when can we come in?""Is it really necessary? We can't really afford that right now."
dog needs pills"Ooh, lookit these cute lil pill pockets... eight bucks a bag but let's try 'em.""Honey, don't use a whole slice of [generic pseudo-Velveeta] cheese, that's a waste - you only need a half slice."
Hungry"I can't believe we've lived here over a year and never been to Topolobampo!" "Guess what Lovey! I found a 2-for-1 coupon for Burger King in the Sunday paper! We can go out to eat!"
adorable tschotschke"I don't really need it but it's so perfect I have to have it!""Pfft, that would take 4 weeks of my $10 entertainment budget, no way is that worth it!"
vacations"I miss Japan. Do you want to go to Japan this summer, honey?" "We can't afford to go to my sister's for Thanksgiving." "That's ok, we'll just stay home and have a lot of hot baths. It'll be relaxing."
shoppingWhole FoodsCostco
snackies"Look, I found this new fair trade organic chocolate, flavored with lavender tips and the heart of the seed of the passion flower!"Giant bag of Hershey's minis from Costco.
get your 5 daily servings of fruits and vegetables!Frozen vegetables - steam in the bag, with sauce, and/or organic - 24 to 40 cents an ounceFrozen vegetables - grown in a toxic waste dump by oppressed migrant laborers* - only 9 cents an ounce! ("Do we have a coupon for any of them?")
dry skinNature's Gate organic herbal skin therapy (hey, it was the cheapest of the organic ones!)Vaseline intensive care "moisture locking" lotion. It even smells like motor oil, but it's only 5 cents an ounce when you buy the economy bottle.

*tip of the nib - er, keyboard? - to Alison Bechdel for this phrase

OK, so it's not as funny or dramatic as it was in my head. It's an adjustment, is all.... and for those of you who have always lived this way, please forgive me. I don't mean to rub anyone's face in anything. Just sharing my perspective.

the banality of evil

For my 666th post, I give you Cindy McCain. She deserves it. Read this deeply disturbing profile of her in the September 15th issue of the New Yorker. The most incriminating part, to me?

Cindy McCain regularly calls herself an only child. In fact, she has two half sisters: Kathleen Portalski and Dixie Burd...

"I feel bad about having a father that wasn’t there, and then having my face rubbed in this—having her stand up and say she’s an only child—makes it even worse," Kathleen Portalski told me.

The video played before Cindy’s speech at the Republican Convention declared that Cindy Lou Hensley "got all the attention of her father. . . . They were truly best friends."

[Meanwhile Cindy and Kathleen's father] Jim Hensley visited Kathleen on her birthday and on Christmas throughout her childhood, and took her shopping for school clothes....

Kathleen Portalski visited her father almost every day in the months before his death. When he died, Cindy McCain inherited the Hensley empire; Kathleen Portalski and her family received ten thousand dollars.....

When I asked Portalski if she had ever contacted her half sister, to discuss the situation, she began to cry and spoke angrily: "You think she’d give a flying fuck?"

Portalski said that she has not spoken to Cindy McCain since their father’s funeral [when] Portalski sat in the front row as McCain gave a eulogy from the lectern, where she spoke of her father’s generosity and kindness and referred to herself as his only child. (emphasis added)


The whole article makes her sound soulless to the point of psychopathy, but this bit was really the cherry on the sundae.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

favorite words

some because i like the sound. some because i like the meaning. some because i just think it's cool that there's a word for that. i could sort them but why? instead... no particular order:




lithe
firelight
azure
rhumba
jasmine
passion
lingerie
kiss
silk
pleasure
pamplemousse
decolletage
plush
luminous
cinnamon
sapphire
marigold
bluebell
terrace
rove
peruse
stroll
reverie
luscious
lascivious
caress
filch
saffron
plum
willowy
seduce
Lenten rose
moon
cornflower
celdadon
pristine
celestial
precious
treasure
sweet pea
wisteria
waves
rivulet
serenade
wistful
autumn
amble
allure
droplet
lily
mahogany
periwinkle
fleur-de-lys
tranquility
moon


the world is so full of richness and beauty...

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

omg... omg.... omg!


Students at Spelman College celebrate moments after Obama's victory is declared.

everything's different.

we knew it would be, but. it really is. everything. everything! goosebumps.... head exploding...

I'm going down to the teacher store tomorrow and buy that set of portraits of the last 43 presidents. I never put them up in my classroom because it always irritated me to see so graphically portrayed the nature of power of this country. But tomorrow I'm gonna get them, just so I can put Obama's portrait at the end. Even if it all goes wrong and he's a terrible president... the world is a different place for my students now, a bigger place...

Congressman John Lewis, who was born to sharecroppers and led the way across that bridge in Selma on "Bloody Sunday" (read his full bio here -- he is on the right in the light-colored trench coat), said this on CNN:
It's unbelievable that we have come such a distance in such a short time... America is a different nation, a better nation. We're different people. We are a better people. We are prepared to lay down our dark past and look to a bright future. In spite of all our problems, we are prepared to come together and follow a man of hope, a man of vision, who can take us to a place where we recognize and respect the dignity and the worth of all our fellow citizens.


He also said,

"During the height of the Civil Rights Movement I never thought, I never dreamed, that I would live to see that an African-American would be president of the United States...We were just trying to bring down those signs that said 'white men,' 'colored men,' 'white women,' 'colored women'...."

"We have witnessed a transformation of American politics and it will have unbelievable influence on the politics of the world..."


We are all in shock... everyone I know seems to be texting and IMing each other "omg... omg... omg!" We all hoped and prayed... but we couldn't believe that it could really happen... We all expected disappointment.

But for once... we didn't get what we expected... we got more than we could dare to hope for. I have no doubt that there were all kinds of efforts to rig and fix this election, to suppress voter turnout and intimidate people away from the polls. Last week I made fun of Joel for praying about this election, since I know he's about as religious as I am. But this morning, thinking of all the nastiness that must be going on out there, all that they must be doing to try to steal this thing, my own prayers slipped out... "for once, for once, for once, let light be stronger than darkness."

And for once, they didn't succeed.

Somehow, we were bigger and better than that. For once! For once, we were bigger and better than all the fears and nastiness and suspicion and pettiness. For once we lived up to what we learned about in school... all those nice ideals that we learned to sneer at and secretly mourn.

There will be plenty of time for disillusionment and disappointment when we see what limitations there may be to what can be achieved in the real world. But still, everything, everything, everything is different. Everything!