Quodlibets

There'd be no distance that could hold us back

So the summer is officially over now, for me.   A new semester has begun at little college where I work, and I've felt it in my bones.  I'm tired, man.  After a whole summer of working hard at nothing, actually doing work poops me out.  Things have been ever-so-tense, here, too, with a bevy of computer and printing problems.  That storm that tore up Chicago tore up this college, too, and it's set us back days, in terms of having everything ready for the first day of classes.  Hence, everything wasn't ready for the first day of classes, and boy, can you tell when you're working the ref. desk.  Anyway, things seem mostly recovered here, though I'm not quite up to standard yet. 

Sam and I have been busy busy busy, and it's not letting up any time soon.  At least, weekend-wise.  The draft for my fantasy football league was Tuesday night (yes, it's a go!  I'm all fired up for football.), and it didn't last that long, but it felt very intense.  I was very sweaty afterward, in a very cool room, which should be a clue.  Then again, I did have my burning-up laptop on my lap, so that might have been it.  Either way, I definitely didn't get exactly the team I wanted, with my quarterback annoying the hell out of me.  All the mock drafts I did didn't prepare me for the fact that in my league, quarterbacks went FAST, and I just wasn't prepared to take a quarterback in the third or fourth round.  Plus, I picked second, which REALLY threw me off.  My best mock draft was at seven, so I wanted fervently to be in the bottom half of drafters.  Oh well, we'll see how this season goes, and if the ladies like this enough to keep doing it.  Fingers crossed.

What else?  Nothing very interesting, except that I'm already writing the first of my banned book book reports, and will post it during banned books week.  I'm enjoying the little oasis of YA books very much, and in fact, the book group I'm in will be reading a banned YA book for our next meeting, which is kind of neat.  I'm hoping to read at least two more for the blog, but we'll see how the reading goes.  I haven't been doing much of it, oddly enough, with the mix of crossword puzzles, cross-stitching and actual work keeping me from books.  It's very strange, and even more oddly, somewhat of a relief.  I'm enjoying having other pursuits. 

That's all for now, I guess.  Back to book report writing.

Musical Dilemmas

Is it okay to download music if you promise to buy the album when it comes out?  I feel very uncomfortable, personally, with downloading music from the internet, unless it's 100% legit.  (I'm thinking of those bands that encourage and help along the download of their live shows.)  However, sometimes I'll bend my very rigid feelings about the matter, and allow Sam to download something for me, but only if I'm absolutely sure that I'm going to purchase it.  (Amy Winehouse, the new Rilo Kiley.)  I can't see why this isn't above-board, as in both instances, the record was purchased. 

Speaking of the new Rilo Kiley, it is fan-fucking-tastic.  Just marvelous.  Sam said there were some bad reactions to the album on some websites, complaining about how different it is from the other albums, and that may be true, but if it's true, it's for the better.  The first song on the album, Silver Lining, is so good that I want to listen to it over and over again on repeat.  And I want to sing along with it at the top of my lungs.   This is an album that feels intimate immediately.  It's one of those that doesn't have to grow on you (or at least, it didn't need to grow on me) because you love it from first listen.  Before I heard the album, I took a chance and bought some Rilo Kiley tickets (at the Riv? on Sept 15), hoping that my sort-of love for them would be enough to enjoy the show.  Will it ever.  This new album has me SO excited to see this band.  Can't wait.

Here's a video for Silver Lining:

Big Love

I'm trying to decide whether to abandon the show "Big Love".  I'll admit that I really enjoyed the first season, even though the topic is creepier than creepy.  But this season has begun to push me over that line of enjoyment vs. discomfort.  There's a big part of me that just finds the whole topic unsavory and unhappy.  I find fictional polygamy to be slightly more than I can handle.  I'm having a hard time voicing why I am having such a problem with it; every week, though, I sit on the couch and exhort Barb to leave Bill, and every week I get angrier and angrier with Margene.  Yes, they're fictional characters, but these are patently my true feelings about the subject.  I personally cannot imagine why any woman would choose to enter into a polygamous marriage, and I have a hard time seeing any benefits to the situation. 

This sets aside the issue of polygamy in the real world, where cult-leader men take 25 wives, some when they're as young as 14.  Though the show very superficially deals with that reality, with the character of Rhonda, I don't feel like the show wants to touch that part of the world.  Because it's not hard to hate and castigate the people who do such things.  Such things that are illegal and absolutely morally reprehensible.  Anything that deals with underage girls being coerced into plural marriage is clearly defined in my head, and probably everyone else's as putrid.  I couldn't watch the show, obviously, if that was all it was about.  Nevertheless, no matter how convinced I am that this sort of polygamy is ugly and needs to be stamped out, there is a little reservoir of doubt in me about this other plural marriage thing that Bill and his ladies seem to be doing.

But.  But.  I obviously have such problems with it that I can't refrain from yelling at the TV, yelling for those women to get smart and leave that craphead.  I can't see it any other way, apparently.  I can't see it as anything else, no matter how open I want to be.  And then again, I'm not sure I want to be open about it.  Either way, the show is royally pissing me off, and I'm not sure it's worth it.  I guess I'll watch the season finale, see what happens, and make a decision.  This is, of course, assuming that the third season of "Big Love" will show up in a timely fashion, which is definitely not a given with HBO.

All We Are Saying

A long time ago, I rented "The US vs. John Lennon" and only sort-of watched it.  I fell asleep about 40 minutes in, and woke up to the gunshots that killed John.  I missed a lot, to say the least.  Tonight, it was on VH1 commercial free, and as luck would have it, I discovered it about 40 minutes in.  I watched the rest tonight, and making it twice today, cried at the end.  (I also cried when Sirius died in the HP V movie.  Too sad, even though I knew it was coming.)  The tragedy of John Lennon's death almost never fails to evoke something in me, even though as I've said before, I can get touchy about the martyrdom of John Lennon vs. the hate of the schlocky Macca cult.  But make no mistake about it, however you feel about the complicated end of the Beatles, John's death left us immeasurably poorer.  It was, perhaps, the most shocking musician death ever, and it's made worse by the life and philosophies of the man who died.

But what mostly struck me about this film, this time, was the sad, sad parallel to now.  Gore Vidal touched on it in the film, saying something to the effect of John standing for life with what he did, and Nixon and George Bush, our current president, being death.  And death being bad.  Gore Vidal said that, if no one else did.  But what other people were saying about Nixon and that immoral Vietnam War are things that can 100% be said about this immoral war we're in now.  The things that these people said about Nixon can be said about Bush.  Nixon's administration was criminal, and their twisting of the Constitution was shameful.  I believe 100%, with no doubt, that the same things can be said about Bush and his administration.

The film was, of course, telling a story, and it was the story of how the US government (Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, the INS) conspired illegally to deport John Lennon, because he was saying things against the war and government.  Tariq Ali, in the film, says it's absolutely laughable that someone like John Lennon could be a threat to the US government.  He's incredulous that Nixon perceived such a threat in Lennon that he illegally tried to remove him from the country.  And it was insane.  It was.  It's a fascinating story, politically and culturally.  It's also very sad to watch, simply because of the parallels.  And because of the ending, which we all know. 

The other thing that I couldn't not think during this viewing was how the world would be different if John Lennon had lived.  I honestly cannot imagine a world in which John Lennon was still alive.  I can't even begin to think of it.  I don't know what he would have done.  It's so heart-breaking to think, I don't think I ever really have.  It's hard, it's very hard to exert your mind that way, because it brings you right back around to the place you are now, a world that he left too soon.  But I think, and I don't think I'm even a little wrong, I think that John would have been doing the Vote for Change tour with other musicians.  I think he would have been a naturalized citizen of this country, and I think he would be doing the same thing now that he was then.  Trying so hard to get us to give peace a chance.

Watch the film.  Just don't be surprised when you end up heartbroken at the end.

Dear Michael Vick,

You should be ashamed.  I've barely been able to read the coverage of this dog-fighting scandal, but I know the basics.  The other people charged in the case were flipped, and were flipped against you.  If they're not lying, the things you've done are despicable.  I can't imagine being a person who didn't know that fighting two dogs to the death of one of them was wrong.  I can't imagine rooting for someone on a football field who didn't know such a thing.  I especially cannot imagine how you could possibly kill an animal for being a sub-par fighter.  Oh, I understand that the dogs you bred were vicious and unfit for any life but the one you bred them for, and that perhaps is the cruelest thing of all.  Those dogs you executed were probably dogs that would have had to been put down (though perhaps with some mercy and sorrow for their loss), because you made them into monsters. 

In my head, I try to imagine what you could have possibly been thinking.  I don't any of the details of your life, so I don't know if you were raised in a place that condoned dog fighting as ethically okay.  I don't know what kind of life you were exposed to after you became a college student and athlete, and then after that, when you became a pro athlete.  I can't believe, though, that anything you experienced after childhood led you to believe that it was okay to mistreat animals. 

You are a failure.  You're a failure because you bred dogs for fighting.  You're a failure because you lied to everyone about doing it.  You're a failure because you took a blessed life and threw it away on the backs of scarred and bloody dogs.  You've failed us, NFL football fans, and your family and friends.  You've failed an organization that believed in you, and as I see it, a league that wanted very much for you to be a success.  And of course, you've failed yourself.  But I suspect (or hope?) that with at least 1 year in prison looming in front of you, you understand that now.

What I don't know, though, is if you understand why dogfighting is wrong.  I don't know, and will never know if you understand how grave this charge is.  You can apologize, you can enter a plea bargain, and you can serve your time.  But I'll never be able to look at you with anything less than disgust.  I hope, for football's sake, it doesn't allow you to ever come back and play another game.  I hope someone makes the decision that some wrongs are too wrong to let go.

With regret, A football fan

Herman's Hermits

By the way, there were no spiders in my pillow.  The mystery of the right arm bug bites stays a mystery.

And I don't know why, but I've got a Herman's Hermits' song in my head.   Not the kind of thing you really relish going around singing all day.

Sam got a new computer, in case you care.  It's a GIANT iMac.  I'm never going to see Sam's face again.  Our relationship will probably begin to deteriorate due to a lack of communication.

The fantasy football league seems to be complete.  I've been mock-drafting my little brain to death at work, because really, what else do I have better to do?  Five hours of crosswords?  The mock drafts are VERY, VERY helpful, so ladies, if you're in the league, take Rocky's advice and do a few.  A few dozen.  Also, and I can't be sure of this, but I'm almost 100% sure that in every mock draft I've been in, I've been the only woman.  I really thought there were other ladies out there doing fantasy football.  Maybe they just don't mock draft?

I've got nothing else.  This'll have to do.

Reading has saved my life

Perhaps I exaggerate. 

My childhood was happy, pretty much exclusively.  I don't remember many bad times, and I don't remember ever feeling like I just needed to escape.  Books weren't that for me as a child.  And though my adolescence was a little rocky, it wasn't rocky in a physically painful way, and it wasn't even that emotionally harmful; I'm fine today and only remember feeling sort of awkward.  And of course, I was made miserable by a family move in 7th grade.  Now, I look back at that move with only gratefulness, because I know my parents did it so that I would go to a better high school.  And it did eventually end up being really good for me.  My point is, I don't think I had much reason for books to save me.  There's not much to save me from, in my life.  Nonetheless, I feel as if reading opened me up to much that I didn't know it was opening me up to.  I think reading has been the greatest gift in my life, and every day I'm grateful for it.  I've always been a big reader; I've always been allowed to read whatever I wanted to.  I like to think that my mom and dad wouldn't have stopped me from reading some of the more controversial stuff that's out now; the books that are frank about transgender (Luna) or homosexuality (Julie Ann Peters books, David Leviathan's books, among many, many, many).  Those books weren't necessarily around when I was reading young adult books (more than 15 years ago; I moved on to adult books pretty fast.), but I think I have good reason to believe that they would have let me read whatever, because no one made a peep when I moved very early on into romance novels.  Regardless, I'm also very lucky in that my parents allowed me to experience a bigger world than I could possibly be in by letting me read whatever.

And that's why, when I read about books being banned from libraries and schools, I get nervous, and scared.  There are a lot of kids out there trapped in houses where things aren't so open.  There are a lot of kids that want nothing more than to escape their reality, and what better way than books?  I'm don't think libraries should be complicit in something that ultimately harms children, regardless of the beliefs of that child's family.  I can understand that there are parents that will censor their children's reading material--except that it's fairly easy to read in school libraries and public libraries when no one is watching.  Which of course is why these books are being challenged, because parents know that when their child is away from them for seven hours a day, they can't control what s/he reads.  But I don't believe that it's a library's responsibility to parent; if a parent doesn't want their child reading something, the radical solution is to lock them in the house and never let them out.  That's called homeschooling.  Libraries have a duty to provide all materials to everyone, regardless of content, age, etc.  I've banged on and on about this before, but with Banned Books Week 2007 coming up, it's important to remember what we're about.  We're about access and information, and banning books doesn't further either of those two goals. 

It's extremely demoralizing to read about libraries and school libraries complying with the control freaks of the world that want us all to be the same, and to think the same, and to bow down before their version of what is right and wrong.  We should all be standing up for and demanding the freedom to read, regardless of our own personal belief systems.  This year, maybe you've got some reading time on your hands.  I encourage you to read at least one of the most banned books from 1990-2000.  I know I've read some of them, and I'm sure some of you have too.  But this year, some time between Sept 29 and Oct 6, I'll be reading one that I haven't read before, and I promise to do an old-school book report on it here.  If you've got a blog, maybe you'd do the same.  Let's take a stand on this.  Banning books is censorship, pure and simple, and there's no place for that in libraries.

Hello! I am sneezing.

My allergies are inexorably headed towards awfulness.  I've been sneezing, quite painfully, all day.  And my eyes are itchy as all get-out.  (Is a dash necessary with that phrase?)  It's only going to get worse.  And I only have 0 allergy pills left from last year, and no refills.  I'm not dealing with the allergist again, because getting referrals sucks too much.  HMOs?  They are not good.  Anyway, should I really have to go see an allergist to get the same pills that I took last year for the exact same thing?  The exact same thing that has been happening to me for the last 10 years in August and September, and that was proved to be quite bad by the allergy test that we did last year.  It's very disgruntling.  I'm very disgruntled about this, heading into what promises to be an utterly miserable allergy season.

What else?  Remember that line of bites down my arm?  Yeah, now there are two more on my shoulder, on the same arm.  I'm totally making Sam check my pillow tonight for a nest of spiders.  Several people at my work, who had seen my line of bites, suggested that maybe the itch mites had gotten me, but one of the prerequisites for that seems to be spending time in forests, and I can't really remember traipsing around any forests in the last few weeks.  I don't think it's the itch mites.  I think it's a family of spiders that live in my pillow and come out at night and bite me when I disturb them.  It may sound implausible, but when we find those spiders, I'm making Sam take a picture of them so I can post it on this blog.  I'm telling you, arm chewing spiders.  In my bed.  Gross.

On the other hand, it could have been a mosquito last night, seeing as there are only two bites, and they are sort of just like mosquito bites.  They're not geometrically placed or anything, and we did have our windows open last night.  I am a mosquito magnet.  No matter what I do, I get bitten.  We are going for a bike ride tonight, and I bet you any money I sustain a bite.  The other thing about this bike ride is that it's going to be miserable on my allergies.  I'm aware.  But it's really not something I can do anything about.  I'm not going to stop bike-riding so soon after starting, and if I wait for the allergies to get better, it'll be the end of September and approaching cold.  It's illogical.  So I'm going to have to live with it.

Hello! I am boring.

There is really nothing happening in my life right now that wouldn't bore you to death.  I can't think of anything else to do but make one big list of things that, like I said, will bore you to death.  I am sorry if I am the cause of your head slumping over and your boss yelling at you.  I am sorry if I break your keyboard because the weight of your head just smashes it.  But I feel I must blog, and there it is.  I am boring, I must blog, hence, I must blog about boring things.

• Sam and I bought and made a new dresser on Saturday.  Like all our other furniture that isn't handed down from people with more money, it's an IKEA creation, and we actually quite like it for what it's meant to do, which is hold our unmentionables and hold up the TV in our bedroom.  It's not a very complicated job, and when we have guests over, we close the bedroom door, so it's not even that attractive.  But who cares?  It's doing a fine job on the underwear.
• Last night, my sister and I made fried zucchini, which is my mom's favorite way to eat it.  Given my earlier tussles with squash--Remember the baked acorn squash debacle?  I do.--I wasn't very optimistic, except that what other way could this be edible except to bread it and saute it in a nice bed of olive.  But yeah, it wasn't that good.  I think I might be giving up on squash for once and for all.  I'll never buy a squash again.
• We also drove to DQ last night, which will hopefully be the last time I ever have to drive to DQ.  The one down the street is supposedly opening on Weds.  The rest of this summer will play out like this:  bike riding v. copious amounts of soft serve.  The battle will be centered around my stomach, literally and figuratively.
• It looks like this fantasy football thing is actually happening.  (Every time I type fantasy, I type a t before the y.  F-a-n-t-a-s-t-y.  I'm always thinking with my stomach, apparently.)  I'm very excited, but I do really still need two girls.  Anyone?  Anyone?  (C'mon, Kate, you know you wanna be the fluke winner girl.)
• Sam and I made a deal on Saturday, and it goes like this:
  • Him:  Ew Cats.  We're never getting a cat.
  • Me:  Fine, we're never getting a dog then.
  • Him:  Fine, if that's what it takes to avoid a cat.
  • Me:  Looks like we're going to be lonely pet-less losers in our dotage.
• So how about those Cubs?
• So how about those Bears?
• Can I be done now?  I'm lamely out of even boring things to say.  It must be the combined effect of football studying (yes, I'm poring over the literature, figuring out my draft) and crosswords (I've graduated to the NYT Sundays, and they're kicking my ass all over the place--mostly to the back of the book, to look at the answers) that's melting my brain and making me exceedingly uninteresting.  It'll never happen again, I promise.  Until tomorrow, when I have blog again.

Catastrophe! I wake up crying.

I don't actually know if I was crying when I woke up.  I was scared and sad, though, and here's why:  the airplane crashed.  I have crashy airplane dreams more often than I probably should, although it bears mentioning that none of these dreams really occur around travel, and I'd say that over half are dreams with planes crashing while I'm not on them.  In general, in those dreams, the plane is crashing into the ground near me, or into something that I care about (ie my sister's apartment or my dad's office building).  In last night's dream, I was on this plane that suddenly had to turn around and make a crash landing because, and I quote the flight attendant: the light in one of the engines wasn't working.  It wasn't a serious issue--I knew the plane wouldn't burst into flame and become a rolling fireball upon landing, but still, a crash landing isn't every good.  When the plane hit the ground, I ended up rolling out of the plane onto the runway.  And at the same time we were crashing/landing on this runway, another HUGE plane was taking off.  Suddenly, my dad was there and telling us all to duck, and that feeling of the other plane taking off over our heads was so intense, I can almost feel it now.  My brother lifted his head up, and the plane clipped him, and my dad started yelling at him, and then I realized I had lost my purse.  Apparently, this was the most distressing part of the dream, because that's when I started crying in the dream, hysterically.  And that's when I woke up.  Very distressing, I tell you.  I went to the bathroom after the dream, and sort of lingered there, because I was so distraught.

I have distressing dreams fairly often, though they're not always based on something as trivial as a purse.  Probably my number one distressing dream is based around nuclear weapons.  I dream about a-bombs all the time.  I witness, in the dreams, the mushroom cloud.  Once, I was trying to save my sister from the bomb, and she wouldn't leave her apartment without the cats.  Naturally, we couldn't find the cats, and I was trying to convince her to get to the shelter and I can't tell you HOW bad this dream was.  Other times, I'm in the shelter, but trying to get to the best part of it.  Or I'm on the way to the shelter, and I can never seem to reach it.  All these dreams have the one thing in common:  the mushroom cloud.  It's the kind of moment you've seen in movies.  Everything goes quiet and the world lights up and we all watch the cloud.  And then I freak out.  On the whole, these tend to be the most generally traumatic dreams I have.  I wake up very uneasy, but I almost never cry, and I almost always go right back to sleep.  Sometimes I've checked the sky to make sure it isn't Armageddon, and it never is.  That's the nicest moment after those dreams.

I'll tell you, though--I'd rather wake up laughing any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.