but what does it have to do with Syria?

Saw Syriana tonight. It was okay. About 80% seemed on target based on my limited knowledge of the topics & regions covered. However, in order to underline the point about how "America is always on the wrong side," there was a "right side" (in the person of an idealistic would-be crown prince) that was a little too shiny for my taste.

Sure, idealists of this particular liberal-nationalist stripe exist—this one was none-too-covertly modeled on Mossadeq (even compared to him by one of the characters in case you didn't get the references). They genuinely believe in their causes, because their Oxford (or wherever) education has taught them well—but their causes have a down side too. The neoliberal model doesn't save them or their people.

The other thing I didn't like about it was how it failed to really explore why America is on the wrong side... it took the "bad people in powerful positions" route, which suggests that if only we had good people in power, then all would be well. A good socialist movie on the same themes would show how ordinary Americans are woven into this and become complicit because of the economic structure of the country...

Well anyway, I do recommend the movie if you're in the mood for that sort of thing. It's a refreshing change of pace, which keeps you pondering the plot for a while after leaving the theater—although it's not, as Loopy noted, what you want to go see if you're looking for some mindless entertainment.

But my question is, why is it called "Syriana"? None of it took place in Syria—I believe Damascus was mentioned once. The unidentified emirate couldn't have been Syria as Syria doesn't have a royal family anymore. Most of it that took place in an identifiable "Middle Eastern" location took place in Beirut.

Maybe they thought calling it "Lebanesana" would bring in too many young studs looking for HLA.*

Syria	Anna

---

*HLA = "hot lesbian action" - I heard that on the radio - apparently big with the youth (the acronym, that is—HLA itself is, as far as I know, big across all age demographics).

really, really covered with snow

None of the photos came out well but maybe you can see how Gracie is completely covered with snow & ice. There are even little icicles coming down from her little chin.

Loopy commented that Gracie never seems to notice that she's covered with snow. Indeed, here she just wants to know if she can have her dinner now, if I'm quite finished taking silly pictures.






Monday we're going to Chicago to furnish the apartment. Mostly it'll be cast-offs from our house & E's—tho apparently he did some shopping, and I plan to hit Anthropologie and buy a ridiculously expensive and just generally ridiculous curtain, as the one extravagance to liven up the small room allotted to Loopy (& me too periodically). I hate packing and moving so I have been a huge pain all day.


Now we're nestled all snug in our bed watching TV. We were watching Jane Eyre ("last night, I had half a mind to demand whether you had bewitched my horse: I am not sure yet...." "Are you fond of presents, Miss Eyre?" "I hardly know, sir...they are generally thought pleasant things.") but we switched to Batman Forever ("Bats aren't rodents, Dr. Meridian," "The bat signal is not a beeper, Dr. Meridian." "It's the car, isn't it. Chicks dig the car.")

This is too much for my poor brain to keep up with, and so I must bid you adieu.

"the first of december was covered with snow..."

"...and so was the nose of a collie named Gracie,
and it looked kinda silly all over her her facie,
after hours of playtime
and so many hours more to go, oh-woh-woh..."

That song (well, not that song, the actual song) used to really make me miss college days, in my cozy LoHo room, drinking tea and not working.

College memories come welling up unbidden in two flavors: incredibly beautiful sunny May days, sprawled in soft grass amid fragrant breezes, feeling just so happy and carefree; or, warm cozy winter afternoons, watching smoke drift up from the chimney at the masters' residence, listening to Amy's mellow music and feeling all cozy and content.

I have a strong suspicion that college consisted of other "flavors" besides these, and that I probably spent about ten minutes total in those blissful states, but don't disillusion me. I'm happy this way.

In other news, the lovely Loopy has been sick this past week, poor baby. Some kind of tummy bug thingy... we called it "the flulet" for a while, cuz it had flu-like symptoms but wasn't as awful as the flu.

It was plenty awful enough though. A couple days ago when she was sickest, I went shopping and brough back all the essential sick room supplies: Gatorade, apple juice, ginger tea, ginger beer, rice cakes, arrowroot cookies, white bread...



...and of course, scandalous celebrity gossip! :) So now we're all caught up on Brangelina, and Clinton's drug habit. If you want to know more about Lindsay Lohan's dating shocker, just ask.

silencio!

"No puedo creer que ya sea diciembre!"
"I can't believe it's already December!"

Shut up, Spanish-phrase-a-day Calendar.

How do you say "shut up" in Spanish?

in which I begin to personify my blog and thereby confirm suspicions of insanity

So, like, last week I supposedly had this big breakthrough, see, and I was all dedicated and doing all this work with no problem.

I finished a big piece of my unfinished work—a lesson plan on the Palestine/Israel conflict—and thought to myself, "I'll just get started on the next thing and then I'll blog about how I'm doing so great and everything!"

I was really looking forward to that post. I even had the illustrations picked out & everything.

But, somehow then things sorta slowed down...I finished that thing, oh, Saturday I guess...and somehow not much has happened since...

...and today it was back to the old pattern, where everything seemed optimistic in the morning but now it's 6:08 pm and I haven't accomplished anything, besides eating the last piece of pecan pie from Thanksgiving, and doing some impressive tricks with my magic wand. Not at the same time.

It seems like it's been a while since I blogged, but when I thought about posting, I felt like the blog itself was almost a reminder of my failure, for not being able to post that highly-anticipated "I'm doing so great!" post.

Which is ridiculous, obviously. I did finish a lesson plan, after all—a forty-seven page lesson plan.

Forty-seven pages? Gee, birdfarm, doesn't a lesson plan usually take, oh, eight or ten pages, fifteen at most? Who the hell writes forty-seven-page lesson plans?

Yeah, I know, I know, that's my whole problem, you think I don't know that?

Anyway. So since I don't have that post to post, here is a different post.

Check out the dogs in their Hallowe'en costumes! Whee!

See, Jackie is a spider. Gracie is laughing at her. But just wait... Gracie will have her turn.		Gracie is a pumpkin. She doesn't like it. We took it off after the photo. But she was very cute!

There. Ya got yer post. I hope you're satisfied.

Not you, gentle reader. The damn blog. Hmph.

what is THAT? and can it please, please go away?

One day, in elementary school band class, where I "played" the clarinet, something went seriously wrong with the piece we were mangling.

Who knows how that happens—maybe one person screwed up, maybe the whole trumpet section skipped a page (they seemed to all be boys who just liked loud noises)—but suddenly the whole band descended into total cacophony.

For some reason I felt completely liberated and just started playing notes at random, trying to somehow harmonize with the rest of the din.

"Stop! Stop! Stop!" the band teacher howled, waving his hands furiously. When we had all stopped, more or less, he looked at us all in utter disbelief. "What was THAT?"

A word to the wise—if you ask a roomful of children a question in a certain way, they will all answer at once, and we did. It's a good thing, too, or my classmates might still be mocking me for my answer, which fortunately was lost amid their own responses.

"I was improvising!" I said defensively.

I remember distinctly that I was actually mildly wounded that the teacher hadn't recognized my brilliant prowess in using that moment to liberate myself from mere sheet music and take flight into instinctive virtuosity. God, I hate students like me.

What is the point of this story? The point is that P@ner@ Bre@d has decent coffee, a variety of yummy food, and free parking mere steps from the door, but if they don't stop playing "jazz" that sounds exactly like that moment in band class,* I am going to have to start going elsewhere for my free wi-fi.

---

Yes, I have an iPod. But the offending noises are piped over the speakers loudly enough to mingle irritatingly with the music on my iPod, unless I turn the iPod up so loud that I can't concentrate. It's a no-win situation.

in which Rachmaninoff inspires me, but not in the usual manner

Today I did something that was strenuous, time-consuming, and utterly pointless. It was also fun. This will seem even more completely bizarre to you when I tell you what it was: I wrote an article for Wikipedia on Tibetan funerary practices. Here it is. Warning: it's not for the faint of heart.

The reason this came up was that my mother wrote an email to all her living relatives asking if anyone was paying the annual upkeep fee to take care of the burial plot of all her dead relatives, which is on Long Island. (She mentioned her own first cousin repeatedly and spelled her name wrong every time, but that's beside the point). At the end of this lengthy missive, she concluded with the following exhortation:

Attention to respectful burial is one of the marks of Neanderthals etc
becoming homo sapiens & civilized beings so I hope our family doesn't
abandon this civility.

To which I was forced to respond,

Since I just did a unit on ancient humans last year, I thought you
might be interested to know that this isn't quite true, in three ways.
(1) Neanderthals seem to have buried their dead, more or less—laid
them out in caves in specific positions with specific objects. (2)
Neanderthals died out, they never became homo sapiens. (3) As I'm sure
you know, not all humans bury their dead—some burn them, some grind
them to bits mix with barley and feed to the birds. But maybe you
didn't know that not everyone even does anything with their dead. Some
just leave them by the wayside.

Mom asked about the "feed them to birds" reference (noting that she wouldn't want to be the funeral director there!), so I did some fact-checking and discovered, horror of horrors, that Wikipedia had only two sentences about Tibetan funerary practices, both of which were only partially accurate. (I also discovered that yes, she would definitely not want to be the funeral director there). Five hours later, this sad state of affairs had been remedied, making the world a better place. OK, not really, but humor me. Maybe it will become a decent 3 to 5 page undergraduate paper for some future plagiarizer.

When I asked Loopy, Autumn & Shamus to guess what I had done today, Loopy immediately took all the fun out of it by suggesting that perhaps I had, on a whim, paid my 2004 taxes? Which of course is only the tip of the massive iceberg of things I haven't done.

The other day in a big chain store I picked up a five dollar CD with a Rachmaninoff piano concerto that I used to love (#2). (This may seem like a non sequitur but bear with me for a moment). So tonight in the car on the way home from seeing Harry Pothead (entertaining by the way) I listened to it and remembered why I used to turn up my nose at five dollar CDs. I also read the liner notes (not while driving) and discovered an interesting story.

Apparently Rachmaninoff experienced a horrendous critical failure in 1897 and was paralyzed by despair. He was unable to compose any more music for three years. Finally in desperation he turned to a skilled hypnotherapist who implanted the suggestion that he would soon compose a wonderful piano concerto. Then he did. Not only was it wonderful, it was much more uninhibited and confident than his previous efforts and attained a genuinely personal, unique voice that blossomed throughout his career.

In case it's not blindingly obvious, the point of this story is, maybe there's hope for me yet.