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.

Not Available in Stores

There is a foolproof sign of when exhaustion has become equivalent to intoxication. It happens to me while watching the commercials on HGTV. Although the images and text of the commercials cover different subject matter, they all break down to the same basic three stages, and almost certainly employ the following quotes subliminally. Why else would anyone hire a tubby, bearded fellow who shouts and has no credentials other than that he is the perfect cover for the whispered insinuations?

Stage 1: Uncertain cynicism:
"Oh that's just ridiculous."
"But they wouldn't sell it if it weren't worthwhile."
"Well, I suppose it does have real-life applicability and it's not TOO expensive."

Stage 2: Cautious enthusiasm
"They just doubled the offer!"
"How can they afford to do that?"
"Can I afford not to buy?"

Stage 3: Let me at the phone
"They just added a free gift/tripled the offer!!!"
"Act now, think another time!"

I knew someone who shopped non-stop on QVC. She really believed that QVC offered the highest value and quality, and she appreciated the "easy-pay" system which just took a small amount of money out of her bank account each month for three months without bothering her at all. In general, her possessions did have a very uniform and marked theme: gimmicks. Each item justified its existence with one small, well-defined, and generally spurious reason. One shirt could be balled up in a pocket, then worn without being any less attractive than if it had been ironed. One kitchen utensil used a complicated process to turn out perfect little cubes of garlic—and nothing else (of course, they're not crushed, so the resulting dish is not as flavorful).

Now, Charles de Konick says that living things are organic, meaning "having tools." He delights in how a tool provided by nature, such as a hand, was perfectly adapted to innumerable tasks, while a supposedly multi-function man-made tool, such as a Leatherman, did anything poorly. I think of this with perverse pleasure when buying things (especially kitchen utensils) that can be used for as many different tasks as possible.* This combines with love for Lady Poverty to make a wooden spoon (3 for a dollar at Target) a thing a beauty and a joy forever.

QVC is clearly a fan of de Konick but not of Lady Poverty.

*Major exception to the rule: coffee makers.

From Helénè

You Scored an A

You got 10/10 questions correct. It's pretty obvious that you don't make basic grammatical errors. If anything, you're annoyed when people make simple mistakes on their blogs. As far as people with bad grammar go, you know they're only human. And it's humanity and its current condition that truly disturb you sometimes.

The It's Its There Their They're Quiz

Over the Top

Anika not-so-recently posted about the thrills of being single (as opposed to being matched to the available options). It's hard to keep from being struck by the paucity of what society dishes up for the single girl. A recent City Journal article touches on the same topic. It seems like the choice is between a man who has cultivated success in the world to the extreme detriment of his character and a man who has not gotten into drinking, being mean, looking at porn, etc., but has also not done anything other than keep his couch from floating off. And somehow it's not surprising that the girls don't find themselves panting after either option.

Or, said another way, it's like being of the educated class and living after World War I with a dash of a zombie movie. Everyone's fiancés, brothers, etc., are dead—but in this case they're still walking around.

March for Life

The March for Life in Washington DC.
Lord, have mercy on us.
A good day to be Catholic.
A not so good day to be crazy Latin-Masser.
Also a good day to be Orthodox.
From the top of Capitol Hill (the Washington Monument is in the distance).

Amazing Grace

I just saw a movie that makes me feel like both politics and movies are not necessarily garbage-ridden gutters breeding moral filth. I'm not sure I like feeling this way, primarily because I doubt it corresponds to reality (though I wish it did). I suppose this would be cynical idealism. But the movie, Amazing Grace, is worth seeing anyhow.

Advice?

My erstwhile laptop (a Dell Inspiron 600m) may be dying. I have thought this before, and it has risen from the ashes, but it is nearly four years old, which is getting near the honorable age for retirement. It has been everything that one hopes for from a computer and more. In fact, it is more like typing on my best friend. I looked to eHarmony to find another perfect match, but apparently they really just have boys on the brain.

My reservations about this computer is that it is susceptible to viruses and the Microsoft programs wage war on other, often better, programs (here I am thinking of Firefox). In fact, iTunes runs into a startup conflict that I haven't been able to pinpoint, but which has made me shelve my iPod for the nonce. Would it be a good idea to move to an Apple laptop? The cheapest is $1099, whereas a decent Dell runs about $699 (the cheapest is $499—is the extra $200 necessary?).

Here are my criteria:

• Long-lived. I would like it to last at least four years, and to be reasonably compatible with new accessories (like iPods) at the end of those four years.
  
• Durable. I've dropped this laptop more times than I can say.
  
• Portable. I've taken this laptop everywhere and therefore used it more than any other computer I've had. I prefer a smaller, lighter computer to one with a high-quality but heavy wide-screen.
  
• What I actually use a computer for is the following:
  
  
  
  • Word processing and spreadsheets
    
  • E-mail and blogging
    
  • Music, videos and pictures (but I'm really not discerning about sound and video quality, and I like it that way because I can be happier spending less.)
    
  • I do like to be able to run a lot of programs at once.

As you can see, I clearly do not need something state-of-the-art. However, I do use it a lot, so probably don't want to go completely bare bones.

Boys on the Brain

I got a CD in the mail Saturday and asked J if she'd like to open it for me. She did, and when she pulled the CD out and saw the picture of the band on the front (four guys looking intentionally geeky—I'd given in to temptation to revisit the early 90s) she said, "Boys, huh? You've got boys on the brain!"

That night we went to Catholic Underground New Jersey. One of the singers during the coffee hour was a handsome young man, and he dedicated a song to M. When we were leaving, M (an always bubbly 40 something resident) gushed goodbyes to him and finally made two big kissy noises to him. He looked shocked and then turned bright red, while she continued to overflow with her natural ebullience.

I guess I'm not the only one with boys on the brain.