Archive for December, 2006
33 items.
This flu has some kind of mind of its own–or maybe the multi-symptom daytime cold medication that I took does. Which I took several hours before I went to bed last night so probably isn’t responsible for what went through my mind as I lay waiting for sleep that didn’t show up.
Won’t say how I got there but when I became a spider flipping upside down and around in the winds over a tunnel prairie broadly enveloped by great grey thunderclouds pushing me along in the distance, that was one point when I decided to get up as it was a bit overwhelming listening to the Whom-whom-whom bellows of the wind beating the grass. Took me several freaky hours to get there so it was nice that stream of consciousness ended with at least a pretty prairie.
I got up and immediately went back to lie down as it was no use my being up. Well, after I realized the world looked so freaky because I’d accidentally popped on co-adult’s glasses, that’s when I went back to bed. Maybe 30 seconds had transpired, me standing there staring at the room thinking, “Man, this cold is weird…” Oh. Wrong glasses. No wonder.
Didn’t sleep again, but after two hours of the radiator pipes above my head being for too long the spitting, snarling intestines of the world, two hours of my telling the radiator pipes this was too cliché as they drug me through all manner of underwordly muck and mire, and they retaliated finally by coughing up a glowing paper puppet of Alistair Cooke lecturing me on things I already know about Being and Not Being, then I decided–a few minutes after the initial shock–that again this was enough and it was time to get up and shake Alistair Cooke loose from his dark podium.
It was already 7 AM.
Yuck.
Yeah, doesn’t sound so interesting but that’s because I’ve clipped 6 hours of the really freaky parts out.
I went back to bed and this time things were at least not so muddy and wormy and dark. Instead, I watched Gerald Ford beaning people with golf balls for the next couple of hours. He did it in la-z-boy leisure slacks in brilliant hues the color of sunset. Even when they were green they were the color of sunset. Gerald Ford in pink slacks beaning people with golf balls. In yellow and twilight orange slacks. I had no idea he’d clobbered so many people in the head with golfballs. And every time he beaned a person, which is every time he hit the ball, wham, the scene exploded in candy sunburst plastic sparks.
Then I asked my brain what would it now do with Richard Nixon if he happened onto all this. How would it portray him?
Nixon appeared with no problem at all. Except it wasn’t Nixon. It was a man in a Nixon mask charging onto the golf course. A gargantuan Nixon mask. No matter how many times I rerolled I couldn’t get Nixon to appear, only the guy in the Nixon mask, who kept stumbling and falling to his feet because the mask was so heavy.
And that is finally what sent me off to sleep land. Visions of Gerald Ford beaning people with golfballs and a man in a giant Nixon mask running full tilt toward me but always falling to his feet and never reaching me.
P.S. I forget to mention that right before I dropped off, Nixon was finally pulling Chinese people into the scene with desperate determination and ducking behind them.
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Of course I spent yesterday in bed, unable to move. But who didn’t know that would likely happen? Even I knew that would likely happen, I’m not a complete idiot. Though I must say I was hoping that I would be spared, mainly because I was the one doing all the cooking and I didn’t want to next get sick and be known as Typhoid Mary for years to come.
H.o.p. had thrown up off and on all Monday night but was feeling excellent enough by the afternoon to crow, “I’m well! I’m well! I feel good! I’m not sick!” Co-adult was feeling well enough to keep him company, H.o.p. on one living room futon and he on the other much of the day.
H.o.p. didn’t want to be anywhere around me. Whenever I stumbled into the kitchen for something to drink, and co-adult asked, “Are you sick?” I’d say, “No, don’t think so,” because I was only coughing a little and didn’t have much congestion and I wasn’t throwing up, I just wasn’t hungry and nothing sounded good. My only real complaint was I hurt so much I couldn’t move and I couldn’t stay awake and my eyes were so glazed over that I could barely see and I felt really really cold.
I didn’t pull out the sick card until it was time for H.o.p. to go to bed. He didn’t want to. He ignored me. I croaked (by now I was croaking), “H.o.p., look at me. No, H.o.p., look at me.” Reluctant, he turned from his computer game to look. I must have made an impression. He said he did love me, that I mattered to him more than the computer game he was playing, and yes he would go ahead and go to bed like mom was insisting, mom saying he needed his rest and she didn’t want him to get sick again.
This morning I woke up and turned on the television to see what Network World is serving up as News and Entertainment. This is unheard of around here, turning on the Network World television, but I was wanting a distraction from the pain and couldn’t concentrate to read. I had done the same Tuesday, watching the selection of shows on TBS with increasing dismay and sense of nausea, and finally ended up pulling out “All Quiet on the Western Front”, courtesy Netflix, and felt relatively sane for the period of time I watched it (twice). Which says something about Network television, when you watch an anti-war film that was considered, in its time, to have some pretty graphic violence, and your response is, “Ah, that’s more like it. Putting the humane back in humanity.”
As long as there are wars, people will produce anti-war art and attempt to show what it’s really like, how it’s not Paths of Glory, how fighting for the fatherland or motherland is bullshit, and there will always follow more war and more art attempting to show what it’s really like and questioning what war serves if certainly not the people dying in the thick of it. In “All Quiet on the Western Front” it is framed as fighting for the fatherland, but when the bombs start dropping then the talk is of Mother Earth and diving into her and trying to cover yourself as best as possible.
I like a lot of Bill Murray’s comedy but the boot camp training with the sadistic Sgt. in “All Quiet on the Western Front” brought to mind a wretched excuse for a film, “Stripes”, which I only saw recently. Bill Murray and Harold Ramis join the army. Murray is supposed to somehow be the rebel, even though he has joined the army, and there’s conflict with his Sgt. What happens but it all turns out to be great fun when the Sgt. is incapacitated and Bill Murray whips the troops into dress show song-and-dance shape. Because of course the anti-authoritarian rebel is actually much like the Sgt. but can do it one plus better, with good fun appetizers. Then follows some bizarre bit of plot where Bill and friend steal the test urban assault vehicle for some R&R with the female MPs (now girlfriends), the rest of the company goes looking for it behind the Iron Curtain for some reason, they get trapped, and Bill and friend and girlfriends use the urban assault vehicle to rescue all from behind the Iron Curtain. The New 1981 Military! Crazy, man, crazy!
“Stripes” was released in an era when Hollywood seemed to be churning out a lot of post draft, it’s-really-rebellious-to-be-military movies. See how much fun the guns are! And the speed! Whoo-whoo! Have you got what it takes? Partly evolved into today’s blood and guts military computer games.
The “All Quiet on the Western Front” equivalent would be the scenes of the German troops attempting to defend their trenches as they were stormed by the French, the camera taking the eye of the kid behind the machine gun, attempting to keep up with all the human asteroids coming at you but they’re real and if you don’t make it you’re really dead.
The men are all exhausted, sleepless, sick, and no one’s looking out for their best interests, they’re lucky to even get a meal.
One notable scene follows another, such as the one with actor Raymond Griffith, who had lost his voice as a child, playing the part of the French soldier mortally wouded by Paul Baumer (Lew Ayres) who is forced by circumstance to spend a night with him in a shell hole. The enemy is offered more compassion (however erratic) by Paul, than dying German soldiers are given by their own, in the trenches or in the hospital where they are thrust out of sight, out of mind, making room for the next round of invalids. Paul listens to the nameless Frenchman wheezing, dying, and must deal with him as an individual. But then Paul is a man able to empathize.
Raymond does an amazing bit bit of acting. He’s finally dead, and what’s communicated in his death mask is remarkable. A lost world. One expression. Raymond had to settle upon one expression that would in death speak to everyone’s sense of loss. One expression was the only opportunity he’d have; an expression that would work from any angle. His tragic mask. How he managed it, I don’t know.
This morning the only thing I could get on the television was “Live with Regis and Kelly!” with Raven-Symore boosting “Cheetah Girls II”. What can I say but it was very pink and giggly. Gobble, gobble corporate candied entertainment bites. Even subjects which should have had substance were instead like lint taken from a dryer, sprayed with a blow dryer for volume and given a hefty passing of sparkle.
I decided to try getting up, thinking that hey I really don’t feel that bad, maybe. “Ouch,” went my first step. Even the bottoms of my feet hurt, which was a surprise. They didn’t want anything to do with moving. But I stuck with it. Ow. Ow. Ow.
Later, doing something or other, the television still on, I heard giggle voices going on about make-up secrets of the Hollywood stars, grown adult women going on about how great it is the Rockettes use Magic Marker on their lips to boost their red staying appeal. See? Dot on Magic Marker and your lips are ravishing bold. And you too can be all this and more if you buy the little black book of Hollywood Beauty Secrets! Secrets!
There was something about the “Hollywood Beauty Secrets” sparkly lighting over the table holding the treasured Secrets! that reminded me of films and shows from the 60s recalling the 30′s, the Depression years, theaters pulling in the viewers for lint froth and some give-away cereal bowl or chance at getting full dinner set. The great escape from your small nitty-gritty life through the gods and goddesses of Hollywood, who you too can be just like! Only now more like the Rockettes. Anymore, forget being just like the Hollywood gods and goddesses whose realm is so far above and outside yours (though the products you buy put them there) that there’s no scaling that height without the platitude often tossed downwards that money really doesn’t make you happy. No, be like the Rockettes. With Magic Marker.
Magic Marker.
Magic.
Let me put it this way, the holiday pitched a few punches. Mother-in-law in from out of town since last Thursday and co-adult’s two brothers arriving a little after that, co-adult got hit with the flu last Friday and has been in bed since then, completely since then, steeped in misery. I have been gobbling vitamin C.
I tried to make things nice. We’d picked things up for co-adult’s red beans and rice, and I went ahead and made it myself though I’ve never done it before, and it didn’t go toooooooooooo badly (kind of). And I really did endeavor to festive things up with holiday treats and juices from the Farmer’s Market (the boxes are at least nice if what’s inside is lacking) and some decorations and bought some holiday movies I hoped everyone would enjoy. Eventually I managed to find time and space on the second floor landing of the apartment building to wrap H.o.p.’s presents, which was fun. Wrapping presents is such a secret, back room activity…and here I was wrapping presents in public, on the stairs, a couple neighbors passing by from upstairs, climbing past the gold paper and ribbon, and it was still just as secret, H.o.p. a floor below not having a clue.
After opening gifts this morning, H.o.p. complained of feeling tired, I pulled back out his futon in his room and remade it for him and he zonked out. I juggled things around the 16 by 12 inch food preparation center and sink and dish drainer and made a fairly edible Christmas dinner though I’m not much of a cook. Apricot and garlic stuffed rolled pork roast (that I’d marinated all night but wasn’t as flavorful as one would hope), wild rice, buttered yams, squash and onions, green beans. Not great but was OK. Then dinner was done and dessert was done and dishes were done and leftovers were jammed into the smallish refrigerator and I thought now I would sit down but first went in to check on H.o.p. for the umpteenth time. He had been sleeping deep but not fitfully, no fever. This time he woke up and said he needed to go spit. But his grandmother was in the bathroom. So I took him to the kitchen. His feet rooted to the floor and he proceeded to vomit all over his feet and everything else for ten minutes–and in our kitchen that means pretty much everything. I got him clean, settled him down (he’s asleep again), Marty’s family left to go see a movie, I swabbed down the kitchen several times.
Marty’s briefly up and wandering by saying he never wants to experience anything like this again. Now he’s back in bed and sleeping.
I’m still standing. Hopefully I will be tomorrow and no one else will get ill either and hopefully H.o.p. and co-adult will be feeling better.
Am gonna go try and read a book a brother-in-law gave me but I imagine I’ll end up staring at the wall instead.
We hit the Imperial Rome Exhibit at Fernbank a second time. The exhibit is leaving early January so not too long left to see it if you haven’t and are in the area.
Bust of Minerva, Imperial Rome Exhibit, Fernbank, 2006
Bust of Minerva, View of Helmet, Imperial Rome Exhibit, Fernbank, 2006
Education Alley, Imperial Rome Exhibit, Fernbank, 2006
Going through the Farmer’s Market afterwards I finally mustered up a bit of seasonal spirit. I announced we should buy, after all, a semblance of a tree and after finding the Farmer’s Market was out of the little itty bitty live ones, we hit a couple of places for me to look for a fake tiny tree that would sit on the corner table. An aluminum tree, I decided, would be good. But I came up dry. At Walgreens they had only two trees left but both were in boxes that gave no idea of what they might look like. I asked an employee if that was all there was and she said she thought so and I asked if any of these were on display and she said she didn’t know and then left. So I had no way of reaching the boxes that were on top of the shelves. When a woman passed by with a grocery cart I asked her if I could borrow her cart and stand on it to reach the trees and she at first looked surprised then said yes. I dragged the boxes down but wasn’t going to purchase without seeing one of them as one was shown in a bad xerox-type pic as being pink and the other as purple. I trusted neither picture (which looked like stately, well-formed, aluminum trees) and there was no info on materials. Fortunately one of the boxes was open. The inside 3 foot tree was pink plastic, the “branches” of which you’re supposed to bend into shape, but it looked like a sad mashed toilet scrub brush and gave grand appeal to the idea of finding a stray sawed off branch of evergreen left on a street in front of a Xmas tree vendor’s. Thus we ended up with no tree tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Usually, if we’re going to have a tree, we don’t get something up until Christmas Eve anyway, and it’s always a small small small small tree, but we have always put up the big snowman in the living room and this year he turns out to be broken and won’t light.
The seasonal spirit came and went and came and went. Largely went. We didn’t have Christmas last year. Well, not much. Co-adult’s father died last Christmas Eve and it must be on H.o.p.’s mind. Well, I know it is. He’s only once mentioned the death of his grandfather all year. Then Wednesday night (my mother-in-law was arriving Thursday to stay through Christmas) H.o.p. was lying down to sleep and suddenly started going on about how he didn’t want me to ever die, how he would miss me. This went on for a while and then he burst into tears and asked why Marty’s father had to die.
Thursday night I had the bright idea to put on “Little Miss Sunshine” for us all to watch. I only knew a little bit about the plot, that it was a funny movie about a road trip; I had ordered it from Netflix and I was thinking here’s co-adult’s mother (who is here as she didn’t want to be home this Christmas, for obvious reasons) and here’s H.o.p. who was sobbing his heart out the night before about “Why did Opa have to die?” and this really funny movie (so I’d heard) would provide a nice distraction and give us something to laugh about. Then Alan Arkin, who plays the grandfather, turns out to be quite foul-mouthed, and my mother-in-law was rather shocked by that and mentioned being shocked several times…then what does the granddad up and do in the middle of the movie but die and they are left with the problem of what to do with his body as the family is on the way to California, and (spoiler) they put the body in the van finally and carry it with them as they must get to California that day. So there’s the dead granddad wrapped up in a sheet in back of the van like so much baggage (however beloved) and there I am sitting there thinking man oh man did I do a bad job of choosing a funny movie to make things light and cheery.
I really didn’t do much better with things today. Trust me on that. I’m scoring no points.
Hurricane Katrina Aftermath Photos (One Year Later) of Gulfport/Biloxi
December 20th, 2006 |Posted In: General
I now have about 60 Hurricane Katrina Aftermath photos from Nov 2006 of Gulfport/Biloxi up here.
They are also at Flickr but I give the above address because one views the photos against a dark background and also has the option of choosing to see an image in a resizeable browser window, helpful if it’s a large image and you have a smaller monitor.
Hurricane Katrina Aftermath, Over a Year Later – Gulfport/Biloxi, Mississippi, November 2006. #38
View larger of above against dark background here.
I'm not a good photographer, hardly even passable, so it's a pity I enjoy it as much as I do
December 18th, 2006 |Posted In: General
I’m not a good photographer, hardly even passable, so it’s a pity I enjoy it as much as I do.
More expressive faces of beautiful nieces. Larger views of the below can be had by clicking upon.
The top one would actually make an interesting digital painting.
In her new glasses, 2006
Young Actress with a drama angel on her shoulder, 2006
The Book Discussion, 2006
Best viewed large to appreciate at all, if it’s something to appreciate. The Flickr shrinking of it here has particularly distorted the images.
Having some nieces with wonderfully expressive faces, I had fun composing it at least. (I’ve nephews with wonderfully expressive faces as well but they’re not in this pic. H.o.p. is but he’s but a blur in the background in the 5th photo.) Click on the pic and at the Flickr page click “all sizes” to view the larger.
Why do I always think of Young Life when I meditate a moment on "The Blob"?
December 16th, 2006 |Posted In: General
Puppet Maker’s Hand, 2006
H.o.p. trying his hand again at making paper mache puppets the other day, which didn’t turn out so well and he decided it was too much work. But I did get this picture and liked the way there was an ungooped spot on his hand where you could see the flour/salt crystals.
I’m in and out of deep at work on writing which means a lot of staring at the wall. Because I’m writing (staring at the wall) this will mean not much text blogging. Perhaps pic blogging for a while instead and some occasional updates for old wayward picture urls that are out of date will be going through the RSS feed. But nothing too involving, at least no more involving than a movie blog. Though I won’t be doing one of “The Blob” which we watched the other night in Criterion color. However tempting it is to blog “The Blob”, what with a 25-year-old Helen Crump playing the teen heroine and a 28-year-old Steve McQueen as the earnest, kind-of angsty teen hero. They are actually pretty decent (more than decent when you consider with what they’re working) though there’s a definite read off McQueen that he knew he couldn’t be the teen so was playing it straight, which did cause some problems with how the parental figure actors interacted with him. Their lines often enough seemed directed to a cardboard cut-out of the teen they were supposed to be playing against but wasn’t there. Aneta Corsaut (Helen Crump), somehow sidestepped this both with McQueen and the other actors. Not that she has a whole hell of a lot to do other than worry about a little dog being eaten by the blob. And when confronted with monsters, she hasn’t the scripted imagination to do much other than fall down and not be able to get back up.
This reminds me of when I was 15 and off at a Young Life weekend getaway with some friends. Yes, Young Life, which was a Christian thing. A good friend of mine by the name of Martha was attending and I can’t imagine my going to a meeting for any reason other than Martha, who was very much unlike me in that she was gregarious, talked nonestop, seemed to get along with everyone and though she was most every parent’s idea of wholesome she wasn’t so much so that she wasn’t a lot of fun, because she was funny as hell and smart, which is an especially good combination when the person is good natured. Team all that up with really good fitting Levis and there was a kind of trustworthy factor that wouldn’t have happened if she was in ill-fitting Wranglers handing out bible tracts. Which she didn’t do. Martha wasn’t ultra-religious. Martha just wanted to have fun.
Martha fit into Young Life, but Martha fit in just about anywhere as long as that anywhere wasn’t likely to get her into trouble. I was always the outsider and would be the outsider there as well for the brief time I went to meetings, which to the best of my memory was only about two meetings, because they were boring, people sitting around singing John Denver songs, and sometimes people can smile too much, if you know what I mean. Plus I had been promised that boys would be there, and there were only boys at the first meeting I went to (some friends), at least the kind of boys that I thought were interesting. And there was an ex-boyfriend there and that was no good. Especially when a meeting was held at his house. I forget whether it was the first or second.
I’ve blogged a bit about this before. In fact, it was another post on The Blob. I really can’t tell you why when I think of The Blob I’m immediately reminded of Young Life.
Anyway. Young Life held these weekend getaways in the mountains. Martha was a mountain kind of person. She was a member of the kind of family that went skiing on snow in the winter and on water in the summer. I wasn’t a mountain kind of person but a bunch of girls and boys together for a couple of days sounded good to me, especially if I was going with Martha because she wasn’t the kind of friend to hook up with a guy and abandon you.
I recollect so very little about that Young Life weekend in the mountains, I may as well not have been there.
The one thing I do remember is the mock attack. It was night and Martha and some other girl and I were walking down a woodsy road. There were no lights and it was quite dark. The next thing I remember there was a split second of commotion, two threatening shadows appearing in front of us suddenly, one large and one smaller, and out the corner of my eye I saw Martha dropping to the ground and the other girl freezing. The adrenaline already kicking in, the one conscious thought I had was, “What in the hell does Martha think she’s doing?” but I didn’t stop to check, none of this grab your friend by the arm chivalrously and help them out of a situation stuff, because adrenaline was doing my thinking for me which meant I was gone, tearing through the woods, no brain leading me, body relying on speed and an ability to dodge branches and trees and ravines in the dark to get me out of harm’s way. The only other vague thought I’d had was that one girl frozen in fear on the road and one girl unreasonably lying on the road meant a possibility that the two shadows might be preoccupied and not so likely to spend energy pursuing a third body into the woods.
What had happened was ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend had decided to stage a mock horror show attack on us on that woodsy road. They were on the road as well, had heard us coming, hidden in the woods, and then jumped upon us. The girl I didn’t know had frozen and was immedately nabbed. Martha? Her adrenaline didn’t blot out her brain which decided that the thing to do was drop to the ground and hope that no one would notice her lying there in the dark. What hadn’t been expected was that I would tear off into the woods, my brain temporarily on hold while fight or flight chemicals did my thinking. For me, it seemed, to scream would mean diverting necessary energy away from running, so I never screamed, I just ran. They ran after me, yelling to me to stop, that it was a joke, but being drenched in adrenaline I didn’t hear them for a long while. Or rather I did but my adrenaline self felt that as long as I could hear voices and footsteps then I wasn’t out of harm’s way, so keep running hard until those voices and footsteps are muffled by distance. I don’t know how I did it but somehow I managed to tear through the trees and branches without falling, and eventually sensing that danger had dropped far behind me, I began to come to and hear that these were familiar voices wailing for me to stop, that things were all right, that it was just a joke. I stopped running and listened to make sure I was hearing correctly. I recollect I was on the other side of a small gulley and a couple of fallen trees; perhaps the adrenaline self had recognized these logs as a decent place to take cover, if necessary. I listened and realized those were familiar voices yelling and that they were yelling my name. I began to backtrack, stepping over logs that I’d nimbly leaped over, quite unconsciously, in the dark. The ex-boyfriend appeared, out of breath, frightened. Everyone was frightened and one of the girls was crying. I’d scared them as they’d been unable to catch up with me and they were afraid of what would happen to me in the woods. Afraid of me getting lost in the woods at night. Afraid of me being eaten by bears. Probably afraid of getting in trouble for a joke going wrong and losing a friend in the woods.
I was rather amazed at the obstacle course I’d navigated without conscious thought.
Afterwards, I thought if the threat had been real I probably had the best chance of surviving. The brain driven on adrenlin didn’t, however, turn me and have me race back up the road to the lodge. I don’t know why. Instead that brain plunged me into the forest. Had we been a horror film then I would have been the girl, I guess, that theater-goers would have been chiding for being so stupid to run into the woods. “Why is she running into the woods? That idiot! Why doesn’t she run back down the road?” Perhaps the adrenalin-driven brain sensed the bigger shadow would have been able to catch up with me on a straight-out road and thought it a better bet for me to dive into the woods.
I felt at least I’d done better than Martha and the other girl. As mentioned, I’d seen there were two shadows and one of the girls freezing and the other dropping to the road, as I took off, I’d figured those two shadows would be preoccupied long enough with what was right in front of them to give me a chance to get away.
Some friend I was, hey?
The Child Experiments with Making Puppets (the Puppet-maker’s Hand), 2006
Blondesense notes that Scientists must now have APPROVAL to release data
You knew it was only a matter of time, right? Apparently the Bush Administration feels they need to keep a closer track on US Geological Survey (you know, those folks who, amongst other things, study global warming).
And I quote:
“New rules require screening of all facts and interpretations by agency scientists who study everything from caribou mating to global warming. The rules apply to all scientific papers and other public documents, even minor reports or prepared talks, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.”
Read more at the above link.
