Regular Habits

Can you tell what time I check my email and (perhaps) blog?

Gibbering from the Sheeted Dead

You Are a Question Mark

You seek knowledge and insight in every form possible. You love learning. And while you know a lot, you don't act like a know it all. You're open to learning you're wrong. You ask a lot of questions, collect a lot of data, and always dig deep to find out more. You're naturally curious and inquisitive. You jump to ask a question when the opportunity arises. Your friends see you as interesting, insightful, and thought provoking. (But they're not always up for the intense inquisitions that you love!)

I tried to take this quiz, then found I was too tired to be able to come up with the answers, but had already invested too much emotional energy to be able to let it go, so Mrs. Bear told me the answers. (I was going to say "Let me copy from her sheet," but actually she gave me an entirely new set of answers. [I wrote this before I discovered that I'm the same punctuation mark as she is—will the teacher suspect?])

At least I didn't ask her, "How's my stomach feeling?" I get asked that a lot each day. Usually I answer, "You feel great," which seems to bring comfort. Once I questioned the existential validity of the question, which seemed to bring pain.

Notes from the Underdog

Wow, finally the capitalists have produced something which caters to ALL of my obsessions at once: communist revolutionary dachshunds (with a dash of Johnny Cash.)

Feel free to buy me as many t-shirts as you wish, just be sure to ship with a dachshund inside it.

Adoption Propaganda

Okay, insanely cute. I'll take all five.

Thank you, Guy Crouchback!

Memento Mori II

Our parish priest signed all 1700 copies by hand without complaining or even pointing out to my boss that he was doing it because someone hadn't had him sign the original.

He is totally going straight to heaven, which is something that he did point out so that the 1700 second-class relics he just produced could be cherished properly.

Immunizations and Formula, STAT

I've been reading Twilight over Burma, and keep getting the feeling that this is the straight man (à la Gracie Allen, rather than the brother who was happy in Kansas and didn't need to move to San Francisco) with George Burns's part played by Evelyn Waugh's Black Mischief. In the first, an idealistic, western-educated Shan prince tries to modernize his country in a decade, before disappearing into the jungle in the custody of the army. In the second, the place is Africa and the time span a few months.

Apart from that and the author's regrettable decision to forgo a ghost-writer, the book is a very enjoyable real-life Cinderella tale ended by a military coup.

J.G. Ballard

This article has made me wonder if I want to risk the modern sensibilities (i.e. lots of sex) in the search of possibly enjoyable literature. I'm also wishing that some sociopath hadn't run up a big library fine so that this quandary inevitably involves money. I will probably start with this one, which has the plus of involving my favorite topic (concentration camps) and, unlike the sequel, is not rumored to have my least favorite topic (clinically reported mortal sin scenes).

Memento Mori

I am dying. Actually, that would be a relief. I am conspicuously not dying but if there were any justice in this world anyone who felt this way would be halfway between the mortician's and the cemetery. In fact, I bet you can get some quality rest on that cold marble slab. (A friend tried to sell me on the idea of a healing Mass involving being slain by the spirit, and I found myself wondering wistfully if you can rest up while lying on the floor. At the moment I am awakened in the middle of the night by an intense feeling of exhaustion.)

I really don't know why I feel this way, which is frustrating. As Viktor Frankl says, for suffering to be bearable it must have meaning, and this has none. The most basic of tasks takes just a wee bit more than would be required to climb the northern face of the Matterhorn, but the result looks like something blown out of one's nose while mostly asleep (possibly not even bothering with a tissue, not that I would do something so foul). For example, my boss sent me to get color photocopies of a mailing we're sending out. It was my day off, but I can't write so what the freakin' hell else should I do but run errands. She and the bookkeeper (incidentally the word in English that has the most double letters in a row) had said something about 15 times 5 making $75, which initially translated in my mind to 75 color copies. I was pleased that the copies had only cost $36, but as I was loading the 2000 envelopes and 75 copies into the van, a feeling of numerical discrepancy came over me. So I called my boss, asked how many copies she wanted, was told 1700, and went back for another 1625 (making me late for an appointment with my boss' daughter, which then made her late for a potential wedding reception site, though she was very sweet about it). The total for the second batch was about $630, but as the clerk cheerfully pointed out, we'd made an easy $60 on our rewards card. My boss halfway coughed up her skull when I told her the total. On the bright side, she doesn't yet know (and I don't have to tell her) that we forgot to get the parish priest to sign the original, so we now have 1700 papers waiting to be signed in colorful blue ink.

No cloud is so dark but lurks a silver lining.

Pale Fire *Revised*

[Spoiler alert!]

I just finished Pale Fire, and am really enjoying turning it over in my mind. It ends up being about the relationship between a poet and a madman, laying their two creations side by side. The poet was by far the kinder and more human of the two, and in fact his tolerance of the poesis of madness accounts for the remarkable kindness shown to his eccentric neighbor.

It is clear that the author of the second portion is a lunatic, (probably paranoid schizophrenic, as he is overly cautious in unreasonable ways while being reckless in reasonable things, hears voices, and has fits of hysterical grief), but what was not immediately clear was whether he was also royal. I couldn't understand why the killer waited for the poet at the madman's door, but just remembered that it was the madman's rented door, rented from a judge on sabbatical whose appearance at dusk was probably very similar to the poet's.

I just added a new category which lists the books I'm currently reading or have just finished. I'll consider giving a book review if requested. :)

Adulthood

At college a professor told the story of how he knew he was an adult when both he and his wife had a terrible case of the stomach flu, yet someone still had to change his son's poopy diapers.

The story has lingered in my imagination, strongly linked to the response: "YES! Adulthood! I bet it rocks!"

But now this same situation (minor differences, beginning dialogue: "How do you flush the toilet?" "Oh, you know—show me!" "I'm afraid to." [Internal, unprintable response]) has happened for me—because, yes, my fabulous immune system let me in for a worse case than anyone else had and which has just returned after a day's intermission—and somehow the whole thing really doesn't rock as much as I'd expected. I think I was imagining the graduate degree and vocation came part and parcel with the re-exposure to the same thing that made you sick in the first place. Or at least that there would be balloons and dachshunds. Or dachshunds the shape of balloons. Or even salt and pepper shakers.

It's Meme O'Clock

Mrs. Bear tagged me for a book meme.
1) Take the nearest book of more than 123 pages.
2) Find page 123.
3) Find the fifth sentence.
4) Post the next three sentences.
5) Tag some folks.

So the nearest book was The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, and I'm not up to page 123 yet, so I hope this doesn't spoil anything:

'Naturally,' William said, 'all this means nothing. I don't believe anyone entering the choir passed behind the apse, and therefore the corpse could have been here for several hours, at least since the time when everyone had gone to bed.'

'To be sure, the first servants rise at dawn, and that is why they discovered him only now.'

Hmm. Well, there's certainly been enough foreshadowing that the corpses would be flying thick and fast, so I suppose that didn't ruin anything.

Now just imagine how interesting things would have been if this book had been a few inches farther away, since the next closest book was my journal. Yes, I do number my journal pages because I feel like it makes me less likely to be eaten by dragons or smothered by giant toads. The real question is whether that page has actual sentences, since I usually affect more of a James Joyce-y style. And on looking it up, it's all about how I should imitate St. Francis more and with more joy, which probably means that I was anticipating a gatekeeper beating me and throwing me into the dark, and feeling like that would not be the highest happiness.

I tag Anika and Hélène.

A New Milestone

At 2 am this morning I was awoken by a knock and heard, "I need you." One of my charges had the stomach flu, so I got her settled over the toilet for what I imagined were dry heaves. But in fact, while one end tried but produced nothing, the other end quietly filled up all vacancies. Poor little thing. The worst part was that she was scared and didn't understand what was happening. It took an hour or so before I had her and the bathroom and the laundry cleaned up (some I just threw away). I learned how to clean all sorts of stuff out of all sorts of places. All in all it was not that bad, but something that I'm hoping will not be repeated soon. On the bright side, even if the stomach flu rages through the rest of the house, everyone else will be a little more prepared to deal with it on their own.