Quodlibets

To go or not to go?

To the doctor, that is.  I'm having ear pain (it started yesterday), and I hate to leave it and hope that it's all right. 

Then again, I've had ear pain before, gone to the doctor, and had the doctor tell me:  "It's probably the pimple in your ear."  That's kinda embarrassing.  So that's why I'm waiting, hoping it abates by tomorrow afternoon.  If not, I'll probably run to the closest urgent care and make sure. 

Damn, I hate the doctor.  And the ear pain make me weary of putting earplugs tonight, which means I might not get too much sleep.  Damn you, universe.  Is this payback for the bird murder that I perpetrated last night?

The Social Contract Between Birds and Humans

I'm pretty sure there was a Seinfeld episode about this once, but that's not the point.

The point is, humans drive cars.  Birds for some reason like to pick at shit in the street.  Car on street coming at bird, bird flies away.  In all my 10 years of driving, it's always worked like that.  Bird moves when you come at it.  In fact, bird moves FAST when you come at it.

Oh ho, my friends, no longer.  The birds must be in rebellion, because I HIT AND KILLED A BIRD tonight on the way to dinner and a movie.  Here's what happened:

Driving along happily, la la la, birds in street, la la la, birds don't move.  S says, "Do you think those birds should be flying away?" BAM.  Feathers fly at windshield. 

Not kidding.  This really happened.  There is a bird sized mark (dirt, perhaps; we didn't really examine it too carefully) on the front of my car, almost on the hood.  Yes, I hit and killed a bird.

I wasn't even squeamish because I killed something.  I killed a bunny once and was horrified, crying, blah blah blah.  People stop for bunnies.  But birds?  Come on, I expected the damn birds to fly away.  No, I was more shocked that the birds expressly violated the social contract we have with them. 

Am I supposed to stop for all birds in the street now?  I'll never get anywhere.  (And these weren't, you know, geese or ducks.  [Fuck, now I have surrey with the fringe on top in my head.]  I accept that you stop for waddling birds.  The bird that I hit was a very non-descript, non-waddling bird, black in color.  I think.  Truth to be told, I didn't pay that much attention, because you know, I thought the goddamn birds would make like birds and fly.)

All I'm saying is that if that bird left a permanent mark on my car, I'm fucking billing the bird community for the work.  That shit's not cheap.

Primal Scream

I saw Dar Williams in concert a couple years ago, and before she played "Yoko Ono" she said something to this effect: "when I was in art school, we were artists, and we thought that John Lennon was the problem.  We didn't understand that in the wider world, Yoko was the bad guy.  We thought that Yoko was a tortured artist, and John Lennon came in and took away her solo art."

Interesting, right?  Actually, I've always agreed more with Dar than the rest of the world.  I felt that maybe Yoko was getting a bad rap.  John loved her, after all, and that was enough for me to think that she was somewhat okay.  Perhaps what I was reading was enforcing that idea; I think my dad also thinks that Yoko was somehow good for John.  (Though I could be mixing him up with the myriad other people in my life that have some sort of Beatles opinion.  Seriously.)

I think my opinion is slowly being revised.  I think I sort of hate Yoko Ono for what she did to John, and to the Beatles.  This definitely comes off of reading "Magical Mystery Tours" by Tony Bramwell, who was clearly a member of the Apple/NEMS crew.  I'm not sure I realized what a friggin' stalker Yoko was, or that John never tried heroin until Yoko.  I've heard about the "Lost Weekend", but only peripherally knew about May Pang; I had no idea that John (according to Bramwell) longed for May Pang long after that time. 

By all accounts, Yoko was controlling and obsessed.  Did she actually love John?  Well, she sure maintains a pose that yes, she did.  Did John love Yoko?  I guess we'll never know.  We do know, of course, that he loved Sean, and that's maybe part of the reason he went back, and stayed. 

I've always been a Macca fan, of course.  I hate(d) the school of thought that posed Paul as the commercial sell-out, and John as the tortured, true genius.  I still don't like the fact that John is seen as some tragic genius victim, but it's hard not to have that opinion.  It's not hard at all, when you consider the fact that most of the people closest to John seems to have it.  Maybe it sucks because it's the truth.  (Though I'll never hop onto the Paul as commerical whore train, regardless of the truth of that.  I'm allowing myself to adore Macca.)

Anyhow, I now dislike Yoko.  The Beatles probably would have broken up without the destructive influence of Yoko, but Yoko sure didn't help matters.  No, Yoko sucks.  And her wailing?  What's fucking arty about yelling?

Am Tired.

And will have to delay the post in my head to tomorrow.  I'm planning on posting about *ahem* Yoko Ono.

That's right, I'm tackling Yoko in the next post.  It might be boring, but I'm doing it anyway.  So there.

Friday Random Ten

I'm jumping on the bandwagon, hoping that other family members and/or friends will join.  So for those who don't know how this works, fire up your Mp3 player and press play.  Record the results; annotate if you wish (I don't know what I'd say if I were to annotate, but Lauren at Feministe often does.).

1. Une Annee Sans Lumiere -- The Arcade Fire
2. Things We Said Today -- The Beatles
3. It Just Is -- Rilo Kiley
4. Lizzy -- Ben Kweller
5. Woodstock -- Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
6. I Will Remember You (Live) -- Sarah McLachlan
7. Spiral Staircase -- Kings of Leon
8. Old Man -- Neil Young
9. Lie in Our Grave (Live at Red Rocks) -- Dave Matthews Band
10. Rain King -- Counting Crows

That's pretty representative of past and present musical tastes colliding.  I'd say five of these songs are newer favored bands, and five are older favorites, though the Neil Young and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young are older bands, but the songs are newer acquisitions.

Of course, I remember listening to CSNY a lot when I was a kid, just because it was on around the house.  I'm pretty sure both of my parents are big CSNY fans, and then when I started working at the bookstore, one of the people I worked with introduced me to "So Far" which is a fantastic compendium of their earlier songs.  I'd have to admit, however, to liking the original recording of "Woodstock", the Joni Mitchell classic.  So good.  (Joni Mitchell is another recent acquisition of mine, through the same person who gave me "So Far".)

Anh, well, at least none of my embarrassing workout music showed up.

Thanks, but no thanks

On the recommendation of Books Are Pretty, I purchased Kiss My Tiara.  And read it.  And sort of finished it.  I didn't dislike it, but I didn't like it, either.  I suppose that for lack of a better way to put it, it just wasn't my kind of book. 

I do consider myself a modern feminist, tending towards the radical.  And I would say that this book is certainly a feminist book.  But I think that it tends towards the common sense stuff--you know, love your body, learn to tune out your family if they say harmful things, being single is okay, treat dating as a constant disappointment, etc.  And that stuff is really important, in some ways. 

Just, well, I sorta thought it was boring.  I don't want to say that it didn't contain useful snippets (for instance, I really enjoyed what Gilman had to say about gay marriage), but mostly, it was a rehash of stuff that I've read other places, or that I see happening all around me.  My sis, for instance, lives a really kick-ass single life.  I know that being single is okay, and that she doesn't need a man (even though sometimes like the proverbial fish, she wants a bike).  She's a damn cool girl, and well, she's living it.  I don't need Gilman to tell me that Kate's okay.  I know Kate's okay.

Also, Gilman's job advice made me want to scream.  I'm really sensitive to it, I guess, but I was more offended that she told women to take out piercings, pass on dyed hair, not wear blue nail polish etc. for serious job things.  Perhaps I'm unrealistic, but I don't know that I agree with that advice.  Or maybe I think that if you're into that stuff, you should stay true to yourself and find a job that won't make you toady up to some old guy that can't handle a piercing.  I admit that I could never take a job that would force me to cover or remove my nose piercing.  Honestly.

I mean, really, if we're talking about loving our bodies, and not judging by appearances (which seems to me what we're talking about in this book) then we have to accept that someone with a nose piercing might just be serious enough to be, you know, doing serious job things. 

In fact, Gilman's attitude towards women in their twenties (at least in reference to the job thing) is very condescending.  Kind of a "I know more than you, and I'm better at this than you" attitude.  It drives me CRAZY.  Actually....

Actually, in retrospect, the whole book drives me crazy.  It seems all-around condescending.  I'm done with it.

(And I think I just broke my toe.  I suck at walking.)

S had a hair crisis this morning

Let's just say, for all of you who know what recently happened with S's hair, that he mixed up gel and shampoo.  Not pretty, and resulting in an enraged, hurried S.  Very unpleasant. 

He's new to the gel thing, too, and this doesn't make him very happy.  Theoretically, it's my fault, since I left the shampoo and gel (and conditioner, I might add) on the counter, all in the same spot.  Technically, I think that if he can't tell the difference between gel and shampoo, we're in for a long, horrible winter.

Oh well.  S is uber-clean now, due to his having to rinse for 10 minutes.  Apparently, the boy now uses a LOT of gel.

TV We Love in the Manogirl household

HBO shows are the greatest.  Okay, so maybe The Comeback sucks A LOT.  Isn't it sad to see such a talented actress like Lisa Kudrow toiling away in what is maybe the WORST TV show ever?

Regardless, we are watchers of Sex and the City, Six Feet Under, and now Entourage.  S brought home the first season, and it's excellent television.  I think I'm a fan now. 

And of course, S will be parked in front of the TV when the new Rome series starts.  Yes, HBO is quality shit, and you should try it.  (Although, I confess we regret our lack of Showtime right now, what with that new good-looking series, Weeds.)

On Santorum

Rick Santorum was on The Daily Show a couple of days ago.  His exchange with Jon Stewart was very polite, though I got the feeling that Stewart knew he was beating his head against a brick wall from the very beginning of the interview.  (How funny was the ice cream bit?)  I myself wanted to smack Santorum, only because he apparently bases his entire philosophy about gay marriage on facts that, you know, aren't facts.

Santorum argues that gay marriage should effectively be banned because the family is the essential building block of society.  And we know this because for thousands of years, societies have elevated marriage because that society understands that marriage is what's best for kids.

Uh, no offense, Mr. Santorum, but that's bullshit.  Societies never elevated marriage for children.  Some societies could give two shits about children, which is why they strapped them to boards and hung them on walls.  Marriage has been a part of society for thousands of years, it's true, but for many different reasons; men wanted to pass their land to their children, not bastards; men wanted to own what women owned; men wanted a control over women.  It was rarely romantic, and it doesn't seem that it was about children very much. 

Frankly, I think that Rick Santorum is an idiot.

Confession Time

I don't own all the Beatles albums.  Not even close, considering how destroyed my copies of Sgt. Pepper's, Rubber Soul and Revolver are. 

And for someone who has aggressively pursued every single book about the Beatles (but not about the individual Beatles) and have read more about the Beatles than you can possibly imagine, that's pretty bad.  I went through a period where I was obsessively listening to the Beatles, but I lived at home at the time, and it was so long ago that I had a tape player and copied my dad's CDs onto tapes and lived happily like that.  When I went to college I made an effort to get all of the albums, but it didn't happen. 

Besides Beatles "1", I haven't bought a Beatles album in years.  I'm thinking it might be time.  I'm reading a Beatles book right now, one of the more comprehensive ones (unlike the last one, which only dealt with the few US tours the Beatles embarked on), written by a fellow who seems to have worked for Brian Epstein.  Anyway, this book is making me want to listen to the Beatles again (as I am doing right at this very mo), and I'm realizing how corrupted some of my Beatles CDs are.  It makes me unhappy.

So I'm going to have to take steps to rectify the situation.  Unfortunately, I may have to wait until I get a job to spend oodles of money on Beatles CDs.  (Do you know how many there are?  And then there are all those "bootlegs."  I've never owned any of those.  How worth it do you think those are?)  So yeah, I've decided that 2005 will be "Complete the Beatles Collection" year.  I have five months.  (I guess there is the question of what the complete Beatles collection is, but I'm going with the definition that it's just the studio albums.  Besides, I know I have all the anthology CDs, which makes the collection even more complete.)