I'm Not Dead Yet

I think I'd like to go for a walk.

Greetings from Beyond the Veil

From this Sunday's paper...
(names changed to protect the... well, you'll see)

Mr. Hurlbut Bottomsniffer and the late Mrs. Eugenia Bottomsniffer proudly announce the engagement of their daughter, Prunella, to Mr. Hendryk Djakstrapp.

I wonder if Eugenia sent out notes thanking people for coming to her funeral.

News from (Under) the Rock

"Must-see TV" that I, well, haven't seen:

• The OC
• Survivor
• Dancing with the Stars
• The "L" Word
• The Sopranos
• Queer as Folk
• Curb Your Enthusiasm
• Queer Eye for the Straight Guy
• Desperate Housewives
• Dark Shadows (shout out to cult TV)

"Must-see TV" that I saw, but I just don't get it:

• American Idol
• Fear Factor
• Wife Swap
• Trading Spouses
• America's Biggest Loser
• The Surreal Life

Perhaps I'm just too much of a geek. The last programs I watched were History's Mysteries on the History channel and A Haunting on Discovery. The only programs I actually try to take time to watch are Ghost Whisperer and House (but I still like Hugh Laurie better as Bertie Wooster, or in Blackadder). I can't watch Bones any more because I don't return from school in time. Alas.

Too clever? Too dumb?

I know, Shri, before you say it: too weird.

QOTD

"Here's a good rule of thumb

Too clever is dumb."

--Ogden Nash

Fun for Obsessive Compulsive Paranoid Schizophrenics

Like me.
Why do I have a phone with caller ID? I never use my landline. I actually seem to keep it as some sort of $35 a month joke. When my home phone rings (which is rarely), I tend to look at the ID and see if I want to answer it. Usually the ID comes up as some type of "888-WANTMNY" variant; a charity (like People for the Ethical Treatment of Sock Puppets) who wants my financial support. Granted, I care about sock puppets as much as the next person, and while I am moved by their plight (especially having to overcome such horrific beginnings as someone's foot covering) and impressed with their dedication to enlighten and entertain, I simply don't have the resources to donate to the 2006 Darning Pledge Drive (ohh the holes! those poor poking-through digits!).
(In all honesty, it could also be India calling and offering to get me into debt at a wonderfully low percentage rate, but that's another discussion...)

If I can't tell who it is, though, I start to get, well, anal retentive and all Google-y.
At this point, I can't tell who the caller from Toronto, ON is. A reverse phone lookup gives me bupkiss. Come on now, don't be shy. I would answer if you wouldn't hang up after the fourth ring. Who are you?

Caller ID is dangerous.

Reverse Phone Number Lookup is obsessive.

I need better hobbies.

Oooh. Photoshop.

*~*/\^/\*~*

"oh yeah

life goes on

long after the thrill

of living is gone."

John Cougar Mellencamp

California, Here I Come.

At 11 a.m., 21" of snow (before plowing). After plowing, we got a mere, oh, 6" more.

Though the exercise of shoveling must do wonders for my cardiovascular system, I think I'd prefer biking and hiking for working out.

Have I told anyone lately that I'm a summer person?

Am I The Only One Who Sees This?

Jamie Kennedy is Nanny McPhee.

Incipient Literacy (Isn't that a Boring Sounding Title?)

I think it dawned on me when I was a senior in college, sitting in a Spanish literature class. La profesora asked us what we knew of the Spanish Inquisition. No one raised a hand, until I, timidly, started talking about Tourquemada and the Auto de Fe. I quickly ran out of information. She asked me where I had learned about it, and I confessed, History of the World Part I.
All of my recollections of literacy center around popular culture. Big Bird made the cover of Time magazine the day that I was born. One of my earliest memories is of television: soldiers, in black and white. I think it's Vietnam. For some reason I associate it with Easter and marshmallow peeps wrapped in "tin" foil with a note. The bunny's handwriting is so like my mother's. Even though text, word, and memory are intertwined, it begins with television and popular culture. Written literacy first came to me via the Children's Television Workshop; I was invited to engage in cultural literacy by humming along to "The Shot Heard 'Round the World" on Schoolhouse Rock.
Television wasn't my only teacher; the records, stacked neatly by the turntable, brought me the world. Fiddler on the Roof, West Side Story, Auntie Mame-- I learned of lives and loves, the Russian pogroms and discrimination, Shakespeare and gang violence, the stockmarket crash and the (then) stigma of the unwed mother while singing along with the chorus. (And by the way, as a seven-year old, I think I made one heckuva Tevye.) I acted and sang all of the parts and transformed my living room into Anatevka, New York, Beekman Place. I unearthed the Bill Cosby albums and quite possibly did the worst white-girl mimicry in creation. But, as I was raised as an only child, Cos probably was the first to teach me a family literacy-- what's it like to have brothers and sisters?
It was, I think, in 1980 that my literacy changed. My father brought home a state of the art IBM PC. This baby had two 5" floppy disks, ran on BASIC, and a luscious green text on black screen. Later, my father would install a radically fast 1200 baud modem, but at first I was entranced with the world of GAMES. I played Grey Flannel Fun, Cat & Mouse (on the "compact" Compaq-- about the size and weight of a sewing machine), and the ultimate, Cave Adventure ("you are in a maze of twisty turny passages..."). Imagine going from typing on a typewriter, physically pounding keys that make inked indentations on a piece of paper, to typing on a keyboard, creating images, moving "icons" and things that aren't really there and opening windows that only exist in bits and bytes.
Literacy evolves...
(this post isn't done yet, but it's class time!)