badgerbag: messy, surly, full of books

geek dinner

06-30-06_2134.jpg
Originally uploaded by Liz.

We can't figure out where the cartoon character Milo Minderbender appeared. Not Milo Minderbinder from Catch-22, but a cartoon from the early 60s maybe... rocky & bullwinkle? Tom Terrific? Help us!

There's fire dancing in the parking lot, a fire pit, a lot of free wine... Moomin is crashing out in the yoga studio.

I've had some wine!

letter from the vet

letter from vet
Originally uploaded by Liz.

To be sappy for a minute... I miss Henry The Cat. I have to keep reminding myself he's not there. (Well, it's more like suddenly thinking, "Why isn't there more loud meowing at 7am?" or being out in the garden and thinking of how he liked to lurk there.)

The vet sent this letter, which I think is really sweet and well-written. I mean, barfy, and I would have left out the word "special" out of an inabilty not to hear it in irony quotes, but it's a good letter of consolation and sympathy:

I am so very sorry for your loss of Henry. I could see what a precious companion he had been to you and how hard it was to say goodbye. He was lucky to have been your cat and so deeply loved. I hope the special memories you have of him help to bring you comfort now and always.

He was 15 when he died a couple of weeks ago - we hoped he would rally but it didn't happen.

He was a good cat! Grey and white and fat! Meowy, with a rebuking stare. Sometimes he'd spaz out and run away like a chicken. You could pick him up, and he'd sleep on the couch next to you if you stayed still enough. He'd let you pet his belly! He didn't hide under the bed all day! All very fine qualities.

fashion, colors, flags

a post from Riverbend on flags, soccer, fashion, makeup, colorful clothes, and horrible oppression & violence. The guy down the street got threatened and told to take down his world cup flag.

I listened to the fatwa, with him getting emotional about playing football, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Foreign occupation and being a part of a puppet government- those things are ok. Football, however, will be the end of civilization as we know it, according to Muqtada. It’s amusing- they look nothing alike- yet he reminds me so much of Bush. He can barely string two sentences together properly and yet, millions of people consider his word law. So when Bush raves about the new ‘fledgling Iraqi government’ ‘freely elected’ into power, you can take a look at Muqtada and see one of the fledglings. He is currently one of the most powerful men in the country for his followers.

giant post about zorro lost

Well that sucks. Flock ate a super long juicy blog post to Typepad. I reported it on their feedback form, then tried as an experiment to post to my LJ, got a bazillion popup windows confused b/c I have a badgerbag journal there and one here. Then Flock crashed and I lost all the tabs I had open.

Back to Firefox for now... I can play on flock but not work on it yet. Yeah, yeah that's what "beta" means, I know.

Lost: one kind of witty snarky post... please return if found...

someone stop me!

Noooooo! I just bought some ridiculous ruffle-butt undies! And, and and, black tights with hot pink seams.

Black tights with flames for Moomin, as I think that I can make them into a shirt/tunic for a great "flame dragon" superhero outfit to go with his red flame dragon wings.

C. got several cute skirts, and lots of 1.99 fishnets. She looked so cute trying stuff on that I have to change her nickname on here to "Candy".

The cheap whore-store is on haight and cole: New York Apparel. Stripey tights for 5 bucks! Shiny vinyl pants for 15! Really not bad. I nearly bought a ridiculous spandex "tube dress" with flames.

Words that should not have come out of my mouth and that I definitely shouldn't be blogging: "But Blogher is coming up and what if someone upskirts me like Nina did last year? I have to have cute underwear! And not the same cute underwear!"

Sorry, world... But there is a place for frivolity. And it's in my pants.

underwhelmed by Zorro so far

I'm reading Zorro, which Jo Spanglemonkey recommended so highly and which I think I borrowed from Squid. Yes, we all pass around the same books!

So far I'm totally underwhelmed. Exposition exposition exposition! And I kind of see that the narrative attitude towards "indians" is supposed to reflect the times, but it's really uncomfortable and seems unexamined. exoticizing... infantilizing... "unthinking" natural savages and their natural wisdom... it makes me insane. Plus, the vague acknowledgement that the missions were exploiting the indians - the "novitiates" - and that they weren't free, yet with no thought of why the other "free" indians might have been attacking the missions, etc. And of course the one "nice" mission dude, Padre Mendoza, who is properly paternal, and in revolutionary fashioin treats his slaves well (all the while talking about how they are like children). If I felt a clear division between the narrative voice of the whole book and the author... it would be fine to represent the characters thinking that way. But there's no division and seems to be no consciousness that there might be such a division.

You get a more enlightened view of things in California just by reading "Two Years Before the Mast". That's kind of sad!

Jo has promised me, however, that the story heats up and then is all about relentless, cheesy, melodramatic action. So far that is not true and it's boring and predictable! Yes, you can have a character who was a baby girl raised by wolves and who dresses as a man and leads a battle charge, and still be annoying!

Aaaa, I'm such a bitch, how can I diss on Allende?

technorati tags:books, zorro, isabel allende, history, racism

how to be professional

Rook's making me watch a super silly western movie with melodramatic macho moments... here's Lee Marvin being incredibly butch and studly in "The Professionals":

Rich gringo: "Your hair was darker then."
Lee Marvin: "My heart was lighter then."


Minion: Broiling by day, freezing at night, alkali dust choking you.. In the name of god, who could live in a desert like this?

Lee Marvin's dude: Men... tempered like steel.... a tough breed. Men who learn how to endure.

Yowza!

& then a great conversation about dynamite, love, creation, and the big bang. Oh! even better.

"What are Americans doing, anyway, in a Mexican revolution?" "Maybe... maybe there's only one revolution."

"If it keeps the Revolution alive for even one! more! day! then I will lie, and cheat, and steal... and whore!" *toss of the head*

I love a movie that lays it on thick.

technorati tags:movies, macho, westerns, dramatic, men

clothes and weight

Once again... I find I don't own a respectable pair of jeans without holes. How is it possible, didn't I just buy some last year? Where did they go? It's time to buy some new black jeans for my formalwear and possible job interviews.

Also, I'm back up to my normal weight after the prolonged illness of fall & spring. That's a relief. But none of the newer clothes I have fit anymore - they don't fasten around my waist.

I did notice that being 115 pounds and 5 foot 3 made me visible to a lot of people who would not otherwise be looking. Men of all ages talked to me more; I registered on their radar; especially younger men. Strangers were nicer to me. I felt delicate, gamine, fairylike, boyish, less like a stumpy troll or sturdy pony, my default self-image. My thighs never chafed. Clothes all fit me without thought as to style or size. Women deferred to me or made direct remarks about my body, my luck, my probable self-discipline, my clothing, my eating habits, how they wished they were me or were like me. Bitter envy, queries for advice on eating habits and diets - I'm talking about this coming from relative strangers. When I'd say I was sick, I'm not kidding, but people would say at least it had a positive outcome, and would often tell a story of a relative with cancer... at least she got to die thin. Yo. That's fucked up. Do you hear me people? That's FUCKED UP.

That has now mostly stopped, with my exit from starving waif/teenage boyhood and return to normal-landia of 125-ish-ness and a stomach that bulges out comfortably, like a perfectly normal middle aged woman's usually does.

While it was nice to have all clothing automatically look fantastic on me, I am not sorry and in fact I happily say fuck off and goodbye to the fawning, sleazing, objectification, envy, and extra attention.

Thankfully the people around me congratulate me on looking like a human being again and on not being sick and miserable and unable to eat anything, even saltines, without excruciating pain.

Let's not go into what my mom will say. She was so happy. For her, being 5 foot and 115 is insanely fat. She said recently to me that it was only hard for her to consider because her "normal weight" was 100 for most of her life. Actually, I know this is completely untrue ... and I know this because for years she has reported her exact weight to me.

Am happy to be back on the job as a sturdy troll. My lap is comfortable again to children!

on fire

If there was a contest for catching one's toaster oven on fire... I would totally win.

That thing is tough! It's still going strong!

an ordinary morning

Most days everything looks beautiful to me no matter what. Moomin and I saw a California Towhee gathering bits of straw for a nest... the Acrobat and Peanut were out in the yard too... Moomin entertained me in the truck with X-men trivia. Regular people l said "hi" to this morning swirled around me. They're all protagonists in their own story. That blows me away.

As I drove back home I came across two women dealing with a stalled car. The older one, a 50-ish blond suburbanite, was pushing the little honda out of the intersection, while the young woman steered and two kids looked wide-eyed from the back seat. They didn't need help. It was beautiful and sad. Their annoyance steamed off them through the veneer of cheerful competence, and I could see the young woman reassessing her day, tight-lipped, going over her options... what do do with the children... a controlled panic as she steered the car backwards to the curb... So that for a minute they glowed for me like heroes.

It's a morning where all of that seemed extraordinary, like I was seeing it from a distant planet through a telescope, or as if I were an alien posing as a human to experience this strange thing called Earth, so that it was all fresh, new, and interesting!

I'm usually like that, so perhaps it's just that it's returned to me after my interlude of recovering from surgery. Or it could be reading all these Doris Lessing short stories.