badgerbag: messy, surly, full of books

best book review in the whole world

This is the best book review in the whole world:

This is the best book that I have ever read. It involves a cat ghost who helps children in all of the different ages up until modern times. If I were you, I would read this book. People might think this is a chilling tale about a ghost, but it is a very funny tale about friendship. My mom read it when she was little and she read it to me. Someone stole it from our library, so now we can't read it anymore. There are no other books like it. This is the best book in the whole world.from Camille

Ideal... but there are only a few copies and they are over 200 bucks. Clearly that's why people steal it from the library. Profit, or fit of nostalgia. I bet I can find it around here somewhere.

More for Blogday 2006!

I listed some bolivian and peruvian blogs over here on Blogher. And Cooking diva said hi from Panama...

I just couldn't stop reading, so here's some more:

African Women Reblog - group blog, quite fabulous - a huge blogroll of African women

Rocko Weblog - Words, comics, photos

Mama JunkYard's blog

Black Looks

Ladytron - group music blog! They have a post (with music) on one of my favorite grrl punk bands, Cansei de Ser Sexy!

suvs vs. boobs: the difference

In which I confess to Liz D. and Squid that I don't know what's an SUV and what's a minivan so I never know who to hate. Heated explanation with pointing at the street ...

Squid used to band spotted owls from an SUV.. a land rover... for the b. of land management. she demos a spotted owl call.

Liz says her first suburban was a beater and was perfect and you could take the seats out... not fancy... a thing of beauty... And now they have leather seats and are all fancy. "It was so upsetting. It's like seeing someone you love very much get a boob job."

I am blogging from the restaurant, a bit tipsy... we are outside the RWC library.

morning, bricks, blog party

I spent this morning at the cafe surrounded by friends in a very low-key way, which was helpful. Went to Mary T.'s to get some of her paving bricks since I thought hard physical labor would also be a good idea. I don't really want to be alone right now. I am having trouble eating and drinking as well as not having any sleep.

People are coming over soon for Blogday. I thought I would look at Latin American countries I haven't found blogs for, and then maybe do a little extra looking outside of Spanish for Latin American blogs in indigenous languages.

an annoying mixed message

wow... you know, I like a. hufff1ngton but this book is going on about the damage of the beauty myth .. on and on... and her bad skin and her unruly curly hair and how evil things like the fear of wrinkles are, combatting the urge to have plastic surgery, etc. while the book cover has her with straightened hair and skin so airbrushed it looks like paint-smeared porcelain glaze. mixed message anyone?

i'm really curious to read her book on picasso, though. it sounds like she totally reamed him for being an jerk to women in his life.

I like where she quotes Montaigne, "There have been many terrible misfortunes in my life, but most of them never happened." Then a neat transition to talking about online dating. ha...

also it's kind of funny how much there is about not giving a fuck about what men think of you and of leaving your relationships and marriages etc. and how freeing menopause and age are from that endless wheel of men's regard, but the L word never mentioned.

we'll see if there is any political stretch... it is an attempt to write a palatable self-help book for 50 year old women that doesn't suck and doesn't pander and that actually leads this hypothetical audience somewhere non-destructive.

the biggest potential destructiveness is the personal trap where you are personally responsible for everything... and your own yoga-doing personal courage can smash the patriarchy. in other words not talking about things as politics.

up late

I fell asleep but now... up at 3:30am.

dozing off a little and then up again...

this is hell.

cold comfort...

It's funny to have my ex, Mishia, call me up and be so amazing and wise and supportive. She said a lot of good things. she is an especialy good person for talking about things like respect, and anger, and dealing with bad feelings, b/c she had a lot of them and had a gajillion years of therapy to learn to deal with it, so she's super smart about all that. And on a meta level it was good to be called up by her because our own breakup (long ago) was so bad and painful and to feel that we really are friends for life and I said some sappy things (both of us did) about how much that meant to me. that i could see that 15 years ago it seemed impossible for us to be friends but now it is true and will become even more so over time.

your old friends... they know you ... and you have shared stuff... how much I loved her! and also still love her!

my god how intense we were!

more intense that i ever could be again

and appreciate her good qualities and love to see them now years later developed in directions one could not really predict but that all follow with complete sense from who she was... that is beautiful to see & appreciate.

also I never stop loving people really. I don't know, it seems like a problem to me.

Even with Mishia I can say that there are moments when I consider her and have the most terrible regrets and pain and complexities.

i have problems holding anger, grief, betrayal, all the terrible feelings in my head while also feeling such strong love.

i admire other people's (and my own) ability to make everything okay again and all for the best, but it can come off as callousness ... revisionism and pretending-everything-is-okay is the dark ugly side of a talent for fiction and persuasion. I am good at that, and so glib that people admire it as being wise or really good at change and processing, but partly it's huge lies. do you people hear me? I am full of huge lies.

my sister had some good awesome wise things to say as well, about relationships, expectations, compromises, the ways that they make you die a little inside but you also build something new with a person with those resources. Also, she offered me some cute fluffy bunnies, robot bunnies because I am allergic to real ones. And said she didn't understand things at first but then eventually did. that helped a lot just to know i dont have to pretend everything is okay to everyone. i whined to her my biggest most pathetic whines and she understood completely.

so I believe the long view of life and perspective and ... all that.... and yet...

it sucks

even more free work, wooo!

Some people who wrote me a year ago about a web page I made in like 1998... about its subject I mean... about an interesting diarist... just wrote me back to say that they did indeed make real plans to publish it all and would I write them a quick 500-word introduction to the book?

Mixed feelings... on the one hand it would be fine with me and I shoudl be able to spend an afternoon digging into that book and writing something. On the other hand I have not thought about it, gave the book to my dad, and would want to go find it in the library and read it all over again and think about it and read MORE about it before posing as any kind of expert introduction writer. On the other other hand, such a last minutey project that doesn't even find a real expert on the subject but asks a random person with no credentials off the internet who never even finished the original project.... well...

But no matter how half assed anyone else is or I was in the past on the project I am in a mode now where I want to produce as good of a "thing" as I possibly can and so the temptation to overdo it is high.

For right now I already have 2 deadlines - the translations & the article with Q.

So i should probably say no... or just make up my mind to grit my teeth and toss off something very quick for that introduction.

miserable moment

END 999

....

yah, okay, not an end, a beginning...

Wrapping my head around that.

seemingly innocuous questions

When I asked Nukie next door if his new kindergarten teacher was nice, he thought a second and then said rather hopefully, "I think she is nice, she doesn't hit me!"

OMG!

Which made it doubly awful that Moomin picked a couple of hours later to threaten him with a shoe and yell that he was going to hit him for laughing. Nukie (a huge robust child especially next to Moomin) was actually cowering.

Made Moomin copy out lines about not being a mean person who hits people. (Later... after defusing the incident and then declaring it was time to come in.)

Horribly like an arrogant little prince... I can't explain to him that N. gets locked out of his house until his mom gets home and that he sleeps in the utility shed... He is a good kid, very cheerful, kind to babies, bright, playful, smart, etc.... I always feed him if he's here... I don't feel like explaining this to Moomin would be productive at all. So, from Moomin's point of view the dumb kid next door who can't play chess or read shows up and he is forced to share his legos and they have tense conversations where they boast about knowing about some TV cartoon hero. And from my point of view I'm like, Dude, you are lucky to have a kid-next-door to play with at all.

T.'s mom talked a bit about her prospects post-divorce . I had assumed she was either rich or was an ex-marketing or high powered executivey person confident of getting a good job. But no - actually not and though she administrated language programs in various other countries, etc, Daly City U. would not accept her BA even though they let her in 1 semester of grad school and she made all As. Her 4-year degree from England does not count - It was 20 years ago and the school's name has changed and her old profs are all gone and nothing can be properly certified. How... how could her husband leave, especially 1 year after adopting a baby (from Ch1na... what a huge effort... and then to leave apparently with no warning!) She seems amazingly calm , a bit bitter and despairing in a quiet way but determined to move on and seems to have faith she'll figure something out.

Still it is sobering... we talked about not ever thinking it would happen to you but then it does - the way that it is near impossible to get back in, and everyone in acts sanctimonious about it while not themselves wanting to hire anyone who has managed small children for the last 6-7 years.

I remember my mom listing her momness as managerial experience on her first resume and it made perfect sense to me at the time.

Meanwhile I am very excited on this new poet. I spent much of today grappling with "Mala P1el" which is a mind breaker of a poem and extremely p3rlongher-like. I had a sighing moment where I imagined her translating my M. F. poem or several others that would be really hard in just the same way, to Spanish. she would be the perfect person to do it. And F. wrote back to my burbled madness speaking as if it were just a matter of my carelessly mentioning to X.Y. at Very Cool Small Press that I was thinking of doing it, and they would go for it. When... actually they do not even have any contact info on their web site and they are snootypants to the max. I would have NO idea how to contact them. And she tossed it out ther that of course C.L was not very hip to REAL radical revolutionary poems were they now... as I should know... so why bother. This made me laugh as it's so true... they wet their pants only for already completely establishment-ized people - but i have hope anyway. One could be a token. It would be one thing if F. mentioned it casually to X at Very Cool Small Press. And ANOTHER if I do it... who they don't know. I am very lucky to have any mentoring at all but always end up with the mentors who drop your hand about 1/4 of the way through the tunnel and prance off expecting you, too, to be able to see in the dark... they don't know what dark IS... oh their casual careless exercise of power.... their crumbs!!!!!