more on mice, mamas

From an email my mother sent a month-ish ago:

I don't think of myself in general as a courageous person, but this trip has forced me to deal with a few phobia issues:

1. I can get on escalators almost casually most of the time.

2. I am fairly nonchalant about using the public facilities

3. Last night was a special dinner for the president of the University where the training is taking place- in a posh hotel, big round table with a lazy susan of thirty or forty dishes in the middle. Jim was sitting between me and the president, and a new dish came around. The president leaned over and said to us,

"You must try this special Xian dish. We call it mouse legs."

Split second decision against the allergy excuse ("Oh I'm very allergic to mice?") It might work but I had already used it on things I am actually allergic to, and it sounds thin. Plus Cecily would never let me live it down.) So, I dished some up and ate it. It was delicious. Also it was just mushrooms, so maybe it doesn't count, but I feel very macho about it.

Jim wasn't paying too much attention because he had been chosen by the chief professor to play the "Gambei!" game on behalf of all the Americans. So he had to stand up and match this guy drink for drink, and down three beers in quick sucession. This is the genteel academic version, limited to three and using beer instead of the usual grain alcolhol.

So it seems like they are having fun.

(Anticlimactically and disappointingly for us all, in case you missed it, there were no mice. There were only mushrooms.)

Confidential to my family: I think I succeeded in guilt-tripping Jocelyn and Michael into coming to Christmas! Congratulate me at will.

my homework is not finished

so here's another movie for you, dears.



I will think about a transcript/description later. Sorry to those of you who are excluded in the meantime.

if you tell me a saying about idle hands, I will SCREAM

Are you bored? Do you need something to look at on the internet? Well I am here to help, as always. Look at this crazy video! It's some Australian musician simcomming in English and ASL for most of the song. So there's probably something to say about that, you know, politically and linguistically and whatnot. You guys all feel free to do so.

I, however, mainly care about watching 1:15 - 2:25 over and over and over. This is where the best thing ever to happen, happens. I won't spoil the surprise except to say that my favorite is the squirrel. And the snakes. And the trees and the dog and everything else about this section who wants to make a movie with me!?!?



Sia | Soon We'll Be Found from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

via The Gimp Parade where there is also smart political discussion and a full description and the lyrics


(if it seems like I never do anything but put links to other people's entertaining videos on here these days, well, you are very perceptive and smart, aren't you? The secret is that my advisor reads this blog and I owe her 5,000 pages of writing and I don't want it to look like I am fooling around too much. HI KRISTIN!)

Everyone loves crocodiles and hippos

even French babies


Once upon a time... from Capucha on Vimeo.

via Feministing

All Hallow's Eve

was fun. First I made some outfits





and then I dressed people up in them.



while Alyssa pumpkin-carved



And everyone drank drinks



and looked pretty





Pictures stolen from various sources; I was too gluey to use a camera ever. Also more at flickr.

DC turned into a block party last night

d
@ the White House, November 4th 2008 from greggish on Vimeo.


this is a pretty fun time to be living in this town.

happy dancing skeleton day

d

via the inestimable Katie Beaton

Verbing AWESOMEs language

d

I just read something where "photoshop" was used as a verb meaning "clean up with a hint of falsification and intent to mislead" but not related to pictures. I practically clapped my hands with glee on the spot.

(By "practically", I mean, whether or not I will admit having done this depends on my mood and how much whiskey and ice cream you brought me.)

It was in this post, which is discussing Sarah Palin's speechifications and their subsequent renderings into print. Prompting Mr. Nunberg to note that "you wouldn't expect the transcribers to photoshop Palin's anacolutha and false starts".

Indeed. I certainly did not expect transcribers to photoshop anybody's anacolutha and/or false starts. Although personally I would prefer transcribers to use the IPA whenever they can, maybe illustrated with some gestural scores of tongue position and printouts of waveforms, so it's possible I am not really anyone's target audience.

This is tangentially related and also awesome.

***

Next: I want to see movie critics start using anacoluthon to describe when it seems like there's gonna be one kind of movie, and then all of a sudden the aliens attack and you are all like "whoa I totally thought this was going to be a romantic comedy based on that opening scene there, boy howdy was I ever taken aback by the swift change in tenor as well as the scary scary aliens."

The banana confuses happily.

More awesome from China: menu items sighted by my mama.

The curry beef/chicken braises the Italian surface

Pushes Pisa newly

Cherishes one's relatives the intestines

West the Buddhist ritual procedures black angel digs up the beefsteak to match orchid shelled fresh shrimp

And for dessert:

The banana confuses happily

family update: Africa/Wild West edition

So before when I told you my dad and stepmom were moving to Bangladesh, I spoke rashly and before all the cards were on the table. Or whatever the saying is. Anyway they didn't go to Bangladesh; instead they went to Mozambique. Where the streets, rather than having no names, have some pretty awesome names. From my dad:

The street is Pereira da Lago (which is probably mispelled), presumably somebody's name. To get downtown, one goes a couple of blocks left, turns right on Kim Il Sung, left on Mao Tse Tung, and then left on Kenneth Kaunda, and finally right on Julius Nyerere, which one follows past Robert Mugabe Place on Avenida 25 September.

In other news, the apocalypse has apparently come to Montana: that place is full of stowstorms



and has somehow magically turned into a swing state. Wacky.

oyster bourbon pony island weekend

was a success.

This is what Saturday was like:



with some of this:



also I made a Walrus Moustache for our dramatic readings of Lewis Carroll poems:



then at nights there was a lot of this:



and bourbon in teacups, and poetry recitals, and ridiculous games.

Verdict: A++++! would attend again.

everybody's got a little devil

mine are in a bucket in my hallway.



"Everybody's Got a Little Devil In Their Soul": Tommie Young

family update: far east edition

Some of my parents (the ones who aren't in Africa) are in China. They report that

we have spent an incredibly TRYING week looking for an apartment. The plan was: wait until Monday because the office manager would help us, but she seems to have very nebulous hours and didn't come on Monday, so Tuesday we went with an agent who could speak English, looked at six apartments that were really more basic living than we could quite stomach at our ages. ( Pipe issues, wildlife under the sink, no water in the toilets,etc. One that was good otherwise had, literally, kitchen counters that hit Jim at the knee).

Yesterday we went with the program manager, a delightful young woman who just moved back here after eight years in New York, and we saw: two amazingly swanky apartments in "hotel style living" places that cost the same or less than the sketchy ones, but one of the most posh ones had the toilet in a glass enclosure in the living room, in full view of everyone!

Then we went to see one that we actually love, and I think will try to bargain on today- highly overpriced (for foreigners) and when we got back to the office, the office manager was very disapproving of that part of town: "Too many Koreans; too many black people." But it's a great part of town, lots of foreign students and interesting cafes, right near the subway, which is very efficient and clean. Today we are going at noon to see three more that are in Jennifer's building complex, and I think they may also work. The office manager (whose name I can't spell) seems to want us to live there, so...

We are SO tired of living in the hotel, although it is beautiful place, it is really existence on a strange tourist level that is pretty artificial. Prices for everything are completely arbitrary- a box of granola bars might cost six dollars, and a meal of four courses with beer ten dollars apiece. Lunch costs less than a package of gum. The food is wonderful, and people are so kind to us about not knowing anything. Our internet access will continue to be limited until we get into an apartment- I am just planning to come here to the office from time to time, because they have wireless here and I can use that until we get settled. Every time before this morning that I have been ready to write this email someone would be ready to go look at places, so it has been slow. Each apartment involves meeting the agent, finding/waiting for the landlord, looking at the place, long incomprehensible discussions about something, not including us, but probably about us, and then transportation back to the hotel or office at rush hour, which is a time consumer in itself.

Matt asked yesterday if the traffic was really all that it is cracked up to be, and it is. The rules are followed vaguely when followed and crossing streets is an adventure every time. The program manager said they will again be limiting traffic starting Monday as thay did during the Olympics - people will have one day a week that they can bring a car into the city, except for cabs. I will try to take some pictures before that. I think that the first week was artificially low in traffic because of the national holiday. As soon as we figure out the apartment I will send photos of that and the neighborhood.

Hope everyone is well and happy and I miss everyone an enormous bunch!

So that's what they're doing. I will mention here for the purposes of Very Fond Mockery that the last email I had from my mama before they left Montana had no subject line and just said "I'm having trouble dragging things (like to the trash). What am I doing/not doing?" and then a few hours later she followed up with a text message complaining that she just couldn't drag things "like you would with a mouse." People who are familiar with my mother's highly variable attitude towards rodents will understand that it took me a moment to decipher these messages.

Hey Mom! Did you get your computer fixed ever? I love you!

I'm not doing much, or at least not much that's worthy of your time and attention. However, starting tomorrow I will be, because tomorrow I am going camping for the weekend on an island with ponies and an Oyster Fest. There will be costumes and bourbon and smores (in addition to the oysters) and hijinks. I'll tell you all about it as soon as I recover; see you next week.

material possessions*

Missoula has a lot of fabric stores for a small town in Montana, and a lot of them are pretty good. One in particular, Selvedge Studio, is better than pretty good: it is REALLY GREAT. Dangerously great. Every time I walk in there I want to spend the next five hours touching stuff and if I had a million dollars I would buy two yards of everything and three yards of some things. Here is some of what I acquired in August:



There's only one fabric store in DC** and I don't love it. It's okay I guess. They have lots of beautiful expensive imported things for fancy people to make suits and dresses out of. And they have some other stuff too, and sometimes things are on sale. I usually can find something I want.

But it is too hard to navigate, in there. The fabric is mostly on skinny rolls, instead of bolts, and only half of them have any fiber content information. A lot of them also don't have any pricing information. And they are all mixed together, sort of vaguely categorized by price? or fiber? except not really, really there are all kinds of everything stacked together in heaps, all the colors mixed in there too, and since the rolls are stacked on top of each other you can't really even see most of the fabrics. Like so:



So my main feeling after being in there for five minutes is usually annoyed frustration***, especially if I was looking for something specific. And there have been a number of times when I was looking for something specific and relatively basic, like solid cotton quilt fabric or batting, and they didn't have it. And it's downtown! And it's crowded! And my life is very hard!

Anyway, they're moving into a different location (in Georgetown, which doesn't bode well for the convenience/crowdedness issue) and having a big crazy sale. So I bought some fancy new scissors and a bunch of ridiculous silk taffeta, with which who knows WHAT I will do. It's all shiny and double-woven so it's hard to take a picture of: either I got blurriness or inaccurate color.



Whatever, take my word for it, it is beeeyoutiful.


Okay, the moral of the story is, if you want me to make you something out of fabric, you should go buy some fabric soon while this big 50-percent-off-or-more sale holds out.



* HA HA HA ha ha ha ha ha.

**to my knowledge. There may be another one somewhere but their attempts to remain hidden have so far been successful.

***I know, crazy, right? The last combination of emotions you'd ever expect from me!

I heart technology

All my classes are independent studies this semester so I mainly do my work at home*. But every once in a while I go to school and today was one of those days. I had a meeting and then found things at the library.

I am so spoiled. And so are you, probably. Did you know people used to have to look things up in books if they wanted to learn about something? I get very annoyed if I have to actually physically move myself or any objects other than a keyboard in the pursuit of knowledge. What! It's not available online! That is the worst thing I have ever heard!

Anyway today I had to have a new kind of library researching adventure: MICROFILM. I hadn't used one of those crazy magnifier reader machines since third grade. I walked up to the desk with my little box of film and a nervous expression and before I even said anything the librarian rushed around to show me how to use all the old school technology.

It was pretty fun. Now I have a lot of things to read. Hasta.

*by which I of course mean Big Bear.