kermit gets homicidal

writers should not underestimate children. i think it's an enormous pity when people treat kids as if they were all sweet but just a little mentally handicapped. as if they were puppies rather than reasoning individuals, albeit small and still developing ones. now, i certainly don' t think that a 5-year-old has my sense of mental acuity, because i am really, really smart. hah! but that kid is probably sharper and more inventive and interested than my 40-year-old high school english teacher who had us watch the tv version of gulliver's travels starring ted danson instead of having us actually read swift and then (egads!) discuss the book. because he hated anyone disagreeing with him and discussion tended to lead to disagreements, he generally opted for lectures composed of historical facts gleaned from textbooks, arranged chronologically, and then deployed via bullet point sentences clearly designed to smother your desire to learn. this method largely succeeded, unless you took enormous pleasure in disrupting class and making a general nuisance of yourself. which i did.

perhaps i'm just bitter about never getting to talk about the complete and total awesomeness of jonathan swift in a classroom setting. but my point is that kids are active and engaged learners who respond not to condecension, but to challenges and activity and, quite frankly, anything interesting whatsoever. treating kids nicely reveals more about the adult than the child.

which is why i am such a huge fan of morbid humor for children. for some reason, people tend to interpret this assertion as either cruel or irresponsible (or both). in fact, the frequent antipathy this opinion generates has led me to develop a boring person litmus test. if you think that kids should be exposed to flowers and rainbows and kittens until they are 21, you are boring and i want nothing to do with you. if you think edward gorey's the gashlycrumb tinies is both art book and illustrated children's story, i may deign to speak with you again. poor you.

morbidity is intellectually challenging - that is what makes it so good for developing minds. it forces you to think and interpret images, events, and relationships counterintuitively. death is funny. death is funny.

the thing is, people who find morbidity to be unsuitable for children generally think morbidity is simply in poor taste for everyone. which means they don't get it. they don't think death is funny. in the right circumstances. here lies an atheist. all dressed up and no place to go.

even if they didn't deploy gorey's kind of overtly violent and ennui-ridden imagery, the best children's entertainers created work tinged with the depressed and morbid. did sesame street ever seem a little strange to you - entertaining, but kind of unsettling, as if there was something you weren't quite getting?



henson had a wonderful, quite, deadpan sense of humor that i still find enormously endearing, especially when it tips into the vaguely offensive. one should not be too serious and one's not-seriousness should not be too upbeat. you end up launching yourself into ashton kutcher humor, and i start gleefully contemplating your demise, turned into a homicidal kermit myself. which is why i love the complete lack of emotion in the narration of henson's films on these coffee commercials. and their "documentaries."





the wonderful thing about henson's creations and, indeed, edward gorey (at first, they seem to have little in common) is their attempt to create stories and characters that will appeal to children and adults in equal measure. morbidity seems to be a good way of bridging this gap, largely because it reduces an occurance that is often complex and loaded with meaning to something very simple. because death is very simple. you are alive and then you are dead. almost anything could precipitate death, thus the hilarity of gorey.

you are unlikely to be assaulted by bears anytime soon, but that's the point. basil's fate is the same as ernest:

and choking on a peach is equated with wallowing in self-absorption and self-pity:

ennui - like being mauled by a bear! it's funny and unnervingly true, especially when one considers the fact that in the case of melancholy, you are the bear mauling you. gently and quietly. these morbid, occasionally cringe-inducing equivalencies often remind me of biblical lessons, whacking you so squarely in the face with a lesson that you might not see it, focused as you are on the stars circling about your head. details. in conclusion, the bible is horribly, excitedly morbid - and often feels geared very much towards children.

so i encourage you to expose your child to the ghastly baby as soon as it emerges from the womb.

news that makes you look normal

strange news stories force you to realize that, no matter how strange you think you are, there are much stranger people out there, and their strangeness is impairing their ability to live life on a day-to-day basis. i collect these stories in a little notebook. they are all earnestly written. the misfortune of others shall quiet my own discord.

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"Taste for Gummies Gets Man in Sticky Situation"

ROGERSVILLE, Tenn. -- Police in Rogersville says a man's taste for gummy fruit chews landed him in a sticky situation.

The Kingsport Times-News reports Rogersville police chased 19-year-old Wesley James Hough as he fled on his motor scooter after taking a Life Savers Gummies pack valued at a little more than $1 from a Dollar General store on Monday.

Hawkins County Sheriff Roger Christian said Wednesday police found meth lab ingredients and components stashed in Hough's yellow motor scooter.

Hough was charged with promotion of manufacturing meth and theft under $500.

He remained in the Hawkins County Jail Wednesday evening on $10,000 bond, with an arraignment set for June 8.

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"Authorities Believe Bug Caused Crash"

Plymouth, IN -- A bug that flew into a moving vehicle, frightening the driver's child, is believed to habe caused the driver to strike a utility pole and telephone junction box Sunday morning.

Marshall County Sheriff's Department investigators said teh driver, Jeffery Parenti, 39, of Plainfold, Ill., told them he was driving his 2002 Ford Excursion eastbound in the 8000 block of 3A Road when the bug flew in one of the open windows an 11:20 a.m. Sunday.

Police said Parenti told them his child became frightened and, when Parenti attempted to capture teh bug, his vehicle went off the road, striking the utility pole and telephone junction box. No injuries were reported.

Parenti, police said, told them he stopped and assessed the damage, saying he's glanced the utility pole with his bumper but did not notice the damage to the junction box. He then left the area.

Bremen Police Department officials located and stopped Parenti to make a report. No charges were filed, according to county police.

There also was no word on whether the bug made it out of the vehicle without injury.

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"Notes on the Olympics"

South Bend, IN -- I have been largely bored by the Olympics, but the one sport that has grabbed me is table tennis. Derided by the ignorant as "ping pong," its grace, speed, and athleticism are a revelation.

I was a teenage prodigy at table tennis, but the other kids at school thought I was just a weirdo. It's not cool - but it's a subtle and wonderful game.

If you're still not quite interested enough to pick up a bat, then read Howard Jacobson's wonderful book, The Mighty Walzer - undoubtedly the only great Jewish table tennis novel ever written. It's almost as much fun as playing.

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note: the initial picture is of an austrian art installation by dutch artist joep van lieshout. it is an oversized skull containing a sauna, with bathtubs and showers located on each side of the neck. the sauna fits 8 people and, when in use, emits steam through the skull's eyesockets.

irony and self-abjurement

the oxford english dictionary defines irony as "a figure of speech in which the intended meaning is the opposite of that expressed by the words used." irony's more specific dramatic meaning includes the "ill-timed or perverse arrival of an event that is in itself desirable . . . a [l]iterary technique in which the audience perceives meanings unknown to the characters."

yet the greek etymological roots of irony point to a worse kind of disingenuity. εἰρωνεία eirōneía which, when translated, roughly equates irony with hypocrisy and pretended ignorance while hinting at an underlying meanspiritedness.

now, i am ironic. not my existence (though that's debatable, i suppose), but irony makes a regular appearance in my general conversation. this often leads to problems. one time, i accidentally convinced a friend of mine that i did, in fact, believe everything pat robertson says. but i never thought about the fact that i simply lived with and among a very irony-receptive audience until i met a girl who did not understand what irony was because she had grown up in spain, where irony apparently does not exist.

as far as i was concerned, this was a vast oversight on the part of the spanish. how could i possibly flee to spain after defaulting on all my college loans now? it's one thing to learn a language and another to learn how to be honest and straightforward all the time and i was, quite frankly, ill-equipped to deal with consistent honesty. fearful, i proceeded to teach quenna how to speak and respond to irony - at her request.

the process began with baby steps - my first directive was to pause whenever anyone said something that sounded . . . untruthful. ridiculous. potentially insulting. if a qualification or a half-hearted, self-satisfied comment did not emerge within 30 seconds or so, the person was either being truthful and was simply weird or they were, in fact, being an unmitigated jerk. potentially, both.

quenna then moved to practicing saying untruths with a straight face. she would wander into my room to tell me that pants were originally meant to be worn on the head as a kind of wrap but migrated south to fend off frostbite. or that the christian right was beginning to make sense to her.

eventually, she graduated to saying the opposite of what she meant, completely deadpan, straight-faced, serious. and then she moved back to spain, where no one would understand this kind of behavior.

so if not the spaniards, who uses irony? i think upper and upper middle-class, college-educated, liberal people are ironic. in that they are ironic and they employ irony to make points, mostly to themselves. fundamentally, i think irony might be a form of verbal and emotional bullying. you're an idiot if you don't get it.

am i a bully? i don't think i come across that way. but i might think you're an idiot if you don't get it.

the brits argue that americans don't understand irony. in that we are far less likely to think that deadpan humor and uncomfortable situations are less funny and more . . . straight-up uncomfortable. this is a fair assessment, i think, if properly qualified. british advertisements employ irony, after all. we've only just begun to steal that particular approach, and our versions of funny-by-not-being-funny ads tend towards existential ennui.

i find that intended american irony falls flat:


whereas unintended irony is mindblowingly hilarious:


though the producers clearly understood the ironic facets of this commercial, the lack of understanding prompted an equally hilarious response:


are americans just naturally funny, in an ironic way? is it because a large number of americans don't really understand what in the world irony is? is laughing at this kind of behavior a way of taking ourselves less seriously, or a method of differentiating ourselves from those who are acting in ways that we perceive as uneducated or heavy-handed or . . . wrong?

the discrepancies between intended and unintended irony would indicate that taking academic courses on irony as a literary device might not be the best way to develop the ironic sensibilities of americans. but just in case, you can now buy papers on irony online:

As the world is becoming more specific, the writing techniques are also becoming more specific. The writers have more variety of literary tools such as allusion, metaphor, symbolism, and irony. Irony is the most common and most efficient technique of the satirist. Since this technique is so popular and being used in many different ways, people do not really understand the true meaning of the word. A clear understanding of the word irony as it applies to literature can be attained by an analysis of its formal, historical, and informal definitions.

alanis morrisette should have read this before asking the world whether rain on your wedding day was ironic.

setting aside the god-awful nature of the language here (this is an a+?), there is a sentence arguing for irony as a "tool," a method of making one's point. and certainly, irony is a literary tool - thus the number of writers who defend it as a necessary and oftentimes immensely illuminating method of conveying information and meaning. david foster wallace is (was) a proponent of irony as a method of stripping away sentimentalism and, in a lot of ways, deconstructing complexity. as he writes, "the great thing about irony is that it splits things apart, gets up above them so we can see the flaws and hypocrisies and duplicates."

this is an interesting observation, although i do not necessarily agree with his interpretation. after all, is irony not also a method of obscuring one's meaning? is it not a veil used to deflect criticism and interrogation, a method of self-abjurement? a way of not taking responsibility for one's opinions and conclusions? and can we trust a man who proclaimed irony to be king and then proceeded to kill himself?

apparently, there are then two versions of irony - using irony and viewing or interpreting events through the lens of irony. i suspect that i tend towards the latter, which is why i find most everything to be at least a little humorous. irony is my way of not taking myself or the world too seriously. as jessamyn west asserts, "a taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself." though her differentiation between humor and irony seems a bit like pedantic hair-splitting to me.

instead, perhaps jean stafford is correct in correct in noting that "irony is, i feel, a very high form of morality." although maybe she was being ironic.

the lord knows

i wonder if the old person who wrote this note apologizes for the sins of others when he or she goes to confession.

in love with elvis perkins

if you ever get a chance to go see elvis perkins in dearland live, you must do it. it will be an unadulteratedly joyful experience. he writes songs that make your heart feel like it's going to explode.

from ash wednesday:


from elvis perkins in dearland:


part of me didn't want to post this, wanted to keep the music a secret somehow, something that was mine in my pocket. oh, well. silly, since he's been on letterman.

faster, pussycat!

i love kitsch movies - those b horror films that develop cult followings of both the socially withdrawn and the overly intellectualized collectors of arcane trivia. i am firmly in the latter category, while also occasionally allowing my feet to dip into the former group during fits of self-absorbed melancholy.

as moving (to new york, to london, to virginia) is especially likely to trigger acute feelings of ennui or overconfidence, one of the first things i do post-move is find the weirdest film showing in local theaters and straightaway go see it.

in london, the film happened to be faster, pussycat! kill! kill! this was extremely exciting, since i'd been meaning to see russ meyer's 1965 cult classic for the better part of a decade, having spent hour upon hour watching other b-film horror flicks during a couple high school summers. stuff like attack of the 50 foot woman and plan 9 from outer space and (my favorite title) amazon women on the moon at a tiny family-run theater briefly reopened in the hopes of finally attracting an audience in staid northern indiana. valiantly rallying whenever the weather warmed and weird high school kids began milling around, the theater closed about two months after each opening. apparently, the weird kids were going elsewhere. i generally sat alone, near the front, after having chatted with the elderly couple who practically set up camp in the third row from the back.

london had a much larger weird theater and film selection - so faster pussycat! kill! kill! it was. the south end theater was just as small, but it clearly had a devoted following and, with its red couches, cigarette stench, and basement feel, fit the film. mildly louche!

though faster pussycat! kill! kill! revelled in its disreputability. don't race the fastest PUSSYCATS - they'll beat you - to DEATH! what a tag line!

faster pussycat! kill! kill! begins with a voiceover proclaiming:

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to violence. The word and the act. While violence cloaks itself in a plethora of disguises, its favorite mantle still remains... sex. Violence devours all it touches, its voracious appetite rarely fulfilled. Yet violence doesn't only destroy, it creates and molds as well. Let's examine closely then this dangerously evil creation, this new breed encased and contained within the supple skin of woman. The softness is there, the unmistakable smell of female, the surface shiny and silken, the body yielding yet wanton. But a word of caution: handle with care and don't drop your guard. This rapacious new breed prowls both alone and in packs, operating at any level, any time, anywhere, and with anybody. Who are they? One might be your secretary, your doctor's receptionist... or a dancer in a go-go club!

wherein we turn to said go-go bar, where the three anti-heroines pole dance. but this is not thrill enough - looking for greater excitement, they hop into their tiny sports cars and drag race across the desert. embodying a number of fabulous stereotypes, blonde bimbo billie, vaguely ethnic and agressive lesbian rosie, and leather-clad dominatrix varla are also overtly male. they are violent, domineering, sexual, competitive, and congenitally enraged.

the best part of this film is the snarky innuendo that laces every line of dialogue. check it:

Gas Station Attendant: [staring at Varla's chest as he pumps gas] Just passing through, huh? Boy, that motor's sure hot! You gals really must have been moving on these little machines. Yessir, the thrill of the open road. New places, new people, new sights of interest. Now that's what I believe in, seeing America first!
Varla: You won't find it down there, Columbus!

aaah, the ever-present parallel between women and cars! a lot of "body work" talk, a lot of "look under the hood" suggestions, a lot of "great headlights" commentary. cheeky!

yet also more than simply cheeky. this is a film that equates sex and violence. embrace one and you embrace the other. neither proactive sexuality nor violence was associated with women until the late 1960s - women were simply not as sexual as men, and because men tended to employ violence in defense of the sexual sanctity of their women (as well as their own heterosexuality), women eschewed violence as well.

given rape and domestic violence data, the link between sex and violence ought not shock us as much as it does - and though meyers' film is certainly not feminist, it raises a number of questions about the ways in which depictions and constructions of sexuality are intertwined with the right to violence.

not to over-theorize the film or anything. it's a booberific cult classic, after all. these are former playboy bunnies we're talking about.

the trailer ---->



this is a great movie. i'd rather not reveal the murky and completely nonsensical plotline, but my favorite part of faster, pussycat! kill! kill! is possibly the sexualized fried chicken dinner near the end of the film. it is truly masterful.

you must see this film.

The Old Man: Women! They let 'em vote, smoke and drive - even put 'em in pants! And what happens? A Democrat for president!

hobo chic

riddle me this - why do strange "fashion" trends occur in a recession? does the recession simply allow women to get more creative when it comes to making imprudent and unnecessary purchases? is it just more of a challenge to our innate instinct to make ourselves look like someone other than ourselves? or does someone out there look more like themselves with fake eyelashed glued to her lids? is there a male equivalent of this tendency? are they simply buying more cost-effective aftershave? did they restrain themselves from purchasing that chicago bulls logo-emblazoned laz-e-boy with built-in cup holders? oh man - i want that chair. but not with the bulls logo. the bulls suck.

enough questions. to the numbers! you can't argue with numbers (social science!), though they are courtesy of the guardian, so we're really looking at the british version of this bizarre phenomenon.

Fashion products flourishing in the downturn:

Selfridges
Sales of false eyelashes are up 30%. Demand is such that it is setting up a lash bar in the London store this month. Watch sales are also up 30%: Toywatch is one of the highest performers.

John Lewis
Accessories are doing great business - branded handbags are selling extremely well, with Osprey and Lulu Guinness bags up 58% and 42% respectively. Gucci sunglasses sales were up 19% on last year.

ASOS
Top sellers for the first three months of 2009 include bow design (£29.50) and jazz-print dresses (£37.50), with 12,000 sold in all. Shoes are also doing well.

Superdrug
Sales of hair dye are up 17%, as are manicure and pedicure tools. Nail polish remover sales have risen 13% compared with 2008.

Harvey Nichols
Fragrance sales are very strong, particularly older heritage brands such as Baghari and Creed, as customers prioritise quality over quantity.

now, there are a few trends that i think i understand. for instance, shoes. everyone needs shoes, excepting members of that crazy cultlike (hippie?) group who refuse to wear shoes - apparently their only protest against modernization and all the accompanying totally awesome stuff you can plug into outlets and play with for hours without speaking to another soul. a woman at grinnell attempted to explain the shoeless rationale to me while i was standing in the dining hall line once, but i stopped listening after about 30 seconds, right around when she was launching into some getting-back-to-nature diatribe. taking off your shoes is hardly getting back to nature. i refuse to take you seriously until you stop annoying people while waiting to get into a cavernous heated dining hall, so you can eat things prepared with electricity-sucking equipment and then stuck under heat lamps. you are not worthy to kiss the feet of the amish. those people are badasses. i once watched them erect a barn the size of new hampshire in three days.

either way, these are not amish consumers. these are regular jills. so what about manicure and pedicure tools? hair dye? sunglasses? are these faceless consumers attempting to disguise themselves in order to escape debt collectors and the irs? are all the new handbags for storing the dozens of passports, driver's i.d.s and social security cards necessary to evade capture by the government? is bernie madoff entirely responsible for the bump in fake lashes sales?


"In the economic downturn, it's important for consumers to look for chic and cheap deals in unusual places. The message to consumers is clear: recession chic is possible. Just take the time to compare prices and make good choices and you can still treat yourself well. . . . The brilliant colours and patterned fabrics in [this] collection will cheer up anyone suffering from the recession's gloom."

sold.

i scream

summers mean ice cream. it's not that ice cream isn't a part of my life on a year-round basis, but summer means self-churned ice cream, made with my own two hands (and an ingenious little machine). this reasoning differs somewhat from most people's experiences - they remember ice cream trucks. but when i was little, the sound of the ice cream man was heard chortling down the street once a summer at most. apparently, a highway on which more livestock than people live did not garner much attention from selfish, profit-seeking ice cream peddlers.

i can't imagine what ice cream production was like before my little motorized box of whirling frigidity. apparently, the first ice cream parlor opened in new york city in 1776, making american colonists the first group to recognize the awesomeness of what was then known as iced cream. this is most assuredly why we proved victorious in our revolution against the wicked british, who lacked the power, strength, and refreshing coolness of haagen dazs.

actually, some american dude named reuben mattus started haagen dazs in 1960, choosing the name because it sounded danish and clearly, the danish are ice cream experts? oh well. though haagen dazs is unconscionably expensive, at least it's not this kind of crazy:

this is kind of awesome in its insanity. what the hell is the point of saving the glacier if you're only going to continue to decimate it by incorporating its ice into outlandishly expensive sundaes for the rich? thank god the t-shirt is organic, or i might worry about this vacation's carbon footprint. actually, i want this vacation. someone get me this vacation.

after the invention of the continuous process freezer was invented in 1926, mass distribution of ice cream to the american public was off to the races. ice cream for the proletariat!

one of the things that fascinates me about ice cream is its adaptability. it can be pretty much any flavor (avocado! basil! mango wine!) and can be sandwiched, frozen onto a stick, or crammed full of creams and baked goods, ready to be distributed by the friendly ice cream man in his carnivalesque van, which evokes a state fair on wheels:

i've now heard too many stories about child molesters driving these things, evil-minded pied pipers of sugar who might shove your child into the back of the van with the frozen treats. child molesters ruin everything.

there are a number of variations on ice cream - sherbets, gelatos, soft serve, frozen yogurt, milk ices. sorbet is an especially ubiquitous example, and one that i've become obsessed with, since i'm comfortable fiddling with recipes as i learn how to use my extremely discounted cuisinart ice cream maker, an item i am inordinately proud of owning.

sorbets are generally not made with cream, which separates them from ice creams and sherbets. my favorite ones are simple and divide into two categories - rich, and crisp. recipes!

i like chocolate. a lot. this is serious, unadulterated, bittersweet chocolate.

chocolate sorbet
2 1/4 cups water
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup cocoa powder
pinch of salt
6 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1/2 tsp. vanilla

in a large saucepan, whisk together 1 1/2 cups of the water with the sugar, cocoa powder, and salt. bring to a boil, whisking frequently. let it boil while whisking for 45 sec. remove from heat and stir in the chocolate. after it has melted, stir in the vanilla and remaining water. when it's cool enough, transfer to a blender and blend for 15 sec. chill thoroughly and throw it in your ice cream maker. sometimes it will not flow after sitting in your fridge. let it thaw a bit and then whisk it if this happens to you.

if i want something really crisp and refreshing, i go with a white wine and fruit sorbet. the alcohol from the wine keeps the sorbet from ever completely freezing, creating a really smooth texture.

raspberry wine sorbet
2 cups white wine
2/3 cup sugar
3 cups raspberries, fresh or frozen

in a medium saucepan, bring the wine and sugar to a boil. remove from the heat, add the raspberries, and let cool to room temp. throw the mixture in the blender and puree, then pass through a fine-mesh sieve. chill thoroughly and then throw it in your magic ice cream machine. this can be made using pretty much any wine and is totes awesome using champagne or sparkling cider. you can also swap out the fruit for something like mango or pineapple or apricot, though if you use a citrus you'll want to up the sugar ante.

it is now summer. in celebration - one of the only songs that both my mother and i actually like.

nils olav

we being well satisfied with loyalty, courage, and good endowment of our trusty and well-beloved nils olav and proposing entire trust and confidence in you, as a penguin, in every way qualified to receive the honor and dignity of knighthood.



the funniest thing about this absurdist scenario is the fact that nils is not really nils - he's the penguin the zoo got to replace the penguin they got to replace nils. in other words, this is nils, take three.

apparently, the original nils was adopted as the norwegian guard's mascot during a trip to the edinburgh zoo, an outing that often punctuates their attendance at an annual music festival. is the norwegian guard really a legitimate branch of the army? do they have real weapons? or are they armed with those little guns with "bang" flags? and do they skip instead of march?

apparently, these guys are the primary defensive line for oslo and are equipped with rifles and totally awesome plumed hats. some woman of royal status decided that the hats on the italian bersaglieri alpine troops were pretty sexy and stole the idea.

this is what happens when you listen to women who wax poetic about uniform fashionability. the fighting peacocks!

the sea is scary

the ocean is amazing and completely terrifying for someone from . . . indiana. after having spent a number of years in the safety and relative aridity of the midwest, i visited the ocean (pacific) for the first time as part of a two-week california vacation - a college graduation present from my father. i was nearly sucked in. unfortunately, dear old dad didn't recall that a rip tide was something only he naturally adjusted to. look at all of the dangling participles my recalled fear just induced! terror! my not really anywhere near death experience would have traumatized me if i didn't end up thinking that swimming against the rip tide was, possibly, one of the most awesome things ever provided by nature.

i retained a single reservation, however. the ocean contained jellyfish. jellyfish freak the shit out of me. they're spineless, boneless iridescent bubbles with the power to cause intense pain. they travel in packs, gangs, posses. they can temporarily paralyze you. they don't have eyes. their mouthes and anuses are the same hole. possibly . . . maybe . . . they are enemies from outer space. they have lost their space ship, they miss their home country, and they are angry.

look at that. it is motherfucking terrifying. maybe this is one in its natural habitat of space. keep in mind that these things don't have hearts and thus cannot feel guilt over wrapping their slimy glowing tentacles around you in a grip of death.

either way, i spent a statistically significant part of in-ocean time worrying about potential jellyfish attacks, unpersuaded by my father's assurances that his friend was stung once and survived with virtually no emotional or physical scarring. and i began to worry about all the other terrifyingly foreign forms of life creeping, pulsing, and floating through the waters.

this thing, for instance -->

referred to colloquially as a sea squirt, this glowing sucking bubble tube eats its own brain. don't ask me how or why these glowing stems do this. i do not know and do not care to understand.

and this next creature resembles a giant, glowing, see-through sea grasshopper with CLAWS OF DEATH.

will it eat you? this is apparently a strange form of sea insect. insects are fairly innocuous, right? right?

this next one is no insect.

look at that thing. it's so terrifying that it was featured in that pixar nemo movie as the most terrifying moment of the film. craftily duping the ditzy ellen degenres fish with its shiny little nose lamp-lure, the blackdevil anglerfish can extend its body in order to swallow sea creatures (or human appendages, says i) that are twice its body size. there are about 500 species of anglerfish out there in the ocean, wobbling through the water, hungry for your toes.

at least there is some absurdity left in the sea, in order to lighten the mood a bit. i give you the blob fish:

apparently, the blob fish is pretty much a gelatinous mass slightly less viscous than water, allowing it to float around aimlessly off the coasts of australia and tasmania. this is a fish as lazy as it looks - it does not use muscles at all, simply opening its mouth to catch debris and unaware sealife floating by.

this is a fish that might be a lot like your lazy, obese uncle ron, who used to date but gave up on finding a life partner at age 55. he might be a closeted gay. he eats a lot of cheetos and his favorite time of the day is when jeopardy comes on. he went to the star trek movie on opening night, wearing a costume that doesn't quite fit anymore.

the blobfish is hilarious in a depressing way. this little guy is just adorable.

it's like the sea version of a rubber duckie! an oceanic chick! i want one for a pet!

i wish the ocean were full of those little buggers. the ocean would be full of cuteness.

i'll bet the black devil fish of horrific death eats these popcorn balls for lunch, avoiding jellyfish like the plague. next time i'm anywhere near the ocean, i'll have to convince myself that it's worth it to get in all over again.

welcome to our house

snooker, inscrutable sport of champions

though i wanted to go to london for my semester abroad, i worried that this decision was a bit of an evasion of responsibility. after all, i didn't have to deal with a different language or vast cultural differences. friends went to india and russia and korea and zimbabwae. friends had to live with crazy families who didn't understand the concept of personal space and friends were joltingly asked to weigh themselves every morning. trials! travails! cultural immersion!

in contrast, i rented a flat with three grinnellians and worked in parliament, site of my most "foreign" experiences. i interned for a scottish member of parliament who, after a few years of americans filtering through his office, had learned to recognize when facial expressions slid from listening to utter incomprehension in the face of rapid words disintegrating into one long stream of scottish brogue. this certainly did not constitute the full-on disorientation i was supposed to feel amidst my exciting semester abroad, though. no forced, fearful engagement with the unknown for me.

but british culture contained a few unexpected deviations from the things i knew.

to whit - apparently, if you don't have a british accent in england, than you are automatically relegated to the category "australian on her gap year; possibly (probably) slutty." thus, about a dozen often sort of drunk men attempted to pick me up in bars, after informing me that they found an australian accent to be "very sexy." me too, buckoos.

another piece of newness was british television. i love british tv. it doesn't have the same polished feel as american tv, which makes it less uncomfortably shiny and consumption-oriented. even when americans aren't selling you something, they're selling you something.

not so with the british. when coupled with afar laxer approach to sexuality and obscenity, the homemade qualities of british tv produce a hodgepodge of brutally deadpan sitcoms, programs that seemed to be a series of jokes requiring physical humor a la monty python (but not as good), hilariously bad soap operas, the bbc news programs i watched religiously, what to american sensibilities would be very poorly made commercials, and hours upon hours of snooker.

now, almost all of these television offerings made sense to me. at least on some basic level i understood them, assisted as i was by my own horribly deadpan sense of humor, which is certainly not politically correct and can often verge on the offensive.

snooker table

snooker was another issue entirely. to those not acquainted with the game (deprived of even my nominal understanding), snooker looks and feels like pool. it is not pool. it is a game evilly designed to trick you into believing it is pool, before it becomes readily apparent that you have absolutely no idea what is going on. then, after having watched a solid four hours of it in an ill-fated attempt to "teach yourself," you realize that you have wasted the best part of the day sitting on your ass in front of the tv, while roommates bustle around you and people move to and fro in the streets. indeed, you are surrounded by a city with the tate modern and portabello market and the british museum, all stuffed full of people who are smarter than you and know that learning the ins and outs of snooker is not the point of a semester abroad. for most people, anyway. perhaps there is a fulbright in this.

but you do it again the next day, and the next. and then watching snooker becomes a personal quest to divine the rules of the game simply by watching hour after hour of coverage, little colored balls knocking around the table.

eventually, this careful deconstruction of play descends into bewilderment. after a few days, i looked a number of rules charts up on the internet, a project that revealed why the rules i had concocted were almost always disproved within a few cue strokes of their construction. a revealing example:



what?! i don't even completely understand how this causal flow chart works, much less the information it is attempting to convey. i spent the better part of a week figuring out what the difference between a foul and a miss was, leaving the repercussions of this distinction well alone. unfortunately, this was an inherently flawed method of determining rules - i was discovering rules through analysis of repercussions.

this approach might have worked better for me if i had realized that snooker is a game which continually offers your opponent control over the parameters of your actions. for instance, a person who commits a foul must reshoot if his or her opponent requests. additionally, there are levels of fouling. one can commit multiple fouls at once, compounding their penalties and thus increasing their opponent's control over the trajectory of play. when the highest level of foul is reached, maximum penalties are incurred. whatever those maximum penalties are. i didn't ever figure that out.

the ability to compound fouls is important, because the game divides naturally into two phases, one in which there are still red balls on the table and one in which they have all been potted and the other colors remain. this is important because you are required to alternate between potting red balls and colored balls. a foul is incurred if you fail to do this. a foul is also incurred if you hit more than one color on a single turn. i am confusing myself just relating the rules.

in the end, i did what any good (bad?) student does in the face of incomprehension - i narrowed my projected thesis. instead of mapping out a range of snooker rules through observation, i would define what in the hell snookering was. this took me a month of watching intermittent snooker tournament coverage. i wrote my definition down in my tiny red journal, alongside a recipe for cinnamon buns and a set of notes on the series of cy twombly paintings on special exhibit in the tate.

my definition:
you are snookered when you are unable to hit any ball on either side of the table - any ball that is legally in play.

the definition given by billiard world:
"The cue ball is snookered when a direct stroke in a straight line to any part of every ball on is obstructed by a ball or balls not on. If there is any one ball that is not so obstructed, the cue ball is not snookered. If in-hand within the Half Circle, the cue ball is snookered only if obstructed from all positions on or within the Half Circle. If the cue ball is obstructed by more than one ball, the one nearest to the cue ball is the effective snookering ball."


yes. i feel that way as well.

okay. so there is always a part of british culture that will remain incomprehensible to me, utterly inscrutable. so i did go to a foreign country for my semester abroad.

goddamn snooker.

phyllis schlafly, harbinger of doom (?)

phyllis schlafly is getting to me. not in the conversion-to-conservatism way, but in the i'm-beginning-to-understand-you-and-therefore-cannot-hate-you way. if that makes any sense. i mean, who else talks about self-conscious, waifish lauren bacall as an ideal? after all, as schlafly notes, "lauren bacall wasn't lonely. she had humphrey bogart." so it's a good thing that bacall subordinated her career to making sure that bogie had a relaxing island of domestic bliss to return to, if he so desired.

now, i might reply that after bogie died, lauren bacall suffered through relationships with the alcoholic jason robards and the straight-up jerk frank sinatra. meanwhile, her career stalled in a creative cul-de-sac, and bacall was forced to star in a couple broadway musicals, thereby immersing herself in the murky depths of *groan* song-and-dance theater. i don't care if she won a tony. forget waterboarding - forced musicals viewings might be a more fruitful form of torture.

phyllis parries: you foolish little girl. musicals shmoozicals. look at lauren bacall. just look at her.


lauren bacall is a hottie. you know you want to be lauren bacall.

egads, phyllis is right! i do want to be lauren bacall. so okay, phyllis. but if lauren bacall mimicry is not possible (plausible) for me - i mean, let's be realistic here - what are my options?

positive women #2: katherine hepburn.

you're killing me. are you really only going to give me astonishingly attractive actresses (and especially in hepburn's case, astonishingly brilliant ones), phyllis? huh?

oooooh - sciency.

unfortunately, there seems to be a thread running through her positive women greatest hits list - she unerringly chose staunch democrats. and rachel carson was a lesbian on top of her liberality. yet i can't decide whether this is the reason that the power of the positive woman hasn't aged well. after all, none of schlafly's books have aged well; this is the problem with writing for your audience. that audience ages, dies, and is replaced with a new generation that looks at the old generation and mutters "losers" under its breath before skulking off to the mall to hang out in front of the orange julius.

so are phyllis schlafly's details dated, or are her messages dated? is there a difference?

conservative women are extremely concerned with protection from the dangers of men, who will inevitably run off with their secretaries (or sexually loose feminists) if the law allows them to do so. thus, opposition to divorce law liberalization, while liberal women scream "how could you?!" in the background. but can conservative women translate their opposition into direct action? women in politics? elective office?

or was schlafly simply an inaccurate representation of the average conservative women, despite her aptitude for organizing them? are the two functions mutually exclusive? is it impossible to combine political savvy and ambition with a conservative worldview that privileges gender(ed) hierarchy?

i stole these

jeff wall

i adore jeff wall's photographs. they're like a little like film noir; something quivers underneath the surface, but not being able to put your finger on where the unease is coming from is what makes them both beautiful and troubling. wall's subjects are vibrantly pensive. they pose not because they have been asked to pose, but because they live life that way. and the colors are astonishing. wall lights his picture window-sized photos from behind, dimming the lights in the gallery so that the pictures glow, illuminating the faces of gallery visitors like the faces in the photos. he creates photos that subdivide into panels, each panel its own perfect composition of color and light. yet each photograph has one source of movement, one disruption amidst placidness.

gorgeous.

scatter, monkey of love

elvis had a monkey – a chimp – called scatter. scatter was fond of alcohol and looking up women's skirts, and he bit. elvis was wont to refer to him as "you coconut-headed little motherfucker."

apparently, no one foresaw the inevitable trouble that comes with mixing eight guys, 150 girls, and a chimpanzee eager to make his reputation as rock 'n 'roll's ultimate party animal.

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MARTY LACKER: Scatter was with us on my first trip cross-country. We had him in a cage in the back of the Chrysler station wagon. One night, we checked into a motel in Flagstaff, Arizona. The chimp stayed in Alan and Lamar's room. All night long we heard Scatter going "Ba-dum, Ba-dum!" just running back and forth in the room. The next morning, Lamar said, in this real quiet voice, "You need to come in here and see this." Scatter had gotten up on the drapes and started swinging on them, and they were partially pulled down. And he'd shit all over them. Oh, God, it was a mess. Lamar said Scatter was just throwing everything he could find. He'd even shit in his hands and thrown it on the walls. I said, "How do you think we're going to get out of here without paying for this?" Lamar said, "Don't worry about it." So we closed the door and went and had breakfast at the restaurant across the way.

LAMAR FIKE: Just about the time our food came, I looked out the window, and I said, "Oh, my God!" The Mexican maid was knocking on the door. We all jumped at the same time and tried to yell at her, but it was too late. Before we could even gt out of our chairs, she'd walked in and closed the door to start making up the room. It was early in the morning, and the room was dark.

Well, you can picture what it was like for a Mexican maid to open a motel room door in Flagstaf, Arizona, and find a chimp inside. Scatter ran across the room and latched onto her, and she went bananas. She started screaming the most blood curdling yell, I've ever heard. We ran over there, and God, That was the funniest sight. That maid came flying out of that room with Scatter wrapped around her like a damn boa constrictor. He'd jumped on her back, and fastened his legs around her waist, and put his hands over her eyes so she couldn't see.

We peeled Scatter off of her, but then he bolted out the door and went tearing out across the porte cochere which ran over the shed in front of the hotel. He went right up the drain-pipe and over the top. The maid was still screeching. And Scatter was on the damn roof, just dancing up a storm--laughing at us.

Alan said, "What are we going to do?" I said, "Go get in your car, and I'll go get the station wagon. I'll leave the back door open and the window down, and the door to the cage ajar. Just slowly drive off."

Well, that car hadn't rolled ten feet when Scatter was on that sucker. He thought we were going to leave him. He stuck so tight he looked like adhesive tape.

MARTY LACKER: We'd paid when we checked in, so we took the keys and threw them on the front desk, and just took off before anybody discovered how bad it was.

LAMAR FIKE: As much of a terror as he was, Scatter was also capable of behaving like a gentleman. Alan used to love to take him for a drive in the Rolls Royce. He'd buy little suits for him, and sometimes he'd stick a chauffeur's cap on him and balance him on his lap. When they'd meet a car, Alan would duck down to make it look like Scatter was driving. One guy drove right off the road.

MARTY LACKER: We came home one night on Bellagio Road and found that Scatter had bitten Jimmy, the butler, real bad. Elvis was furious. Jimmy and Lillian were all upset and yelling and threatening to quit if Elvis didn't get rid of him. Scatter was upset too. We kept him in the basement, underneath the steps, and Alan tried to get him to go downstairs to his cage, and he wouldn't. Elvis finally calmed down, and he walked up to Scatter and he stood over him. Scatter was on top of his cabinet, and he looked up at Elvis with those innocent eyes, and all Elvis did was stare at him, trying to keep a straight face. Finally, Elvis said, "You coconut-headed little mother fucker, you'd better get downstairs in your cage. And you'd better not bite anyone anymore, either."

Scatter hopped off the cabinet, and he slowly walked downstairs like a man going to the electric chair, with his hands folded in front of him. We all followed him. Alan put his hand out for Scatter to hold it, but he wouldn't do it. He had too much pride. He just marched down to the basement and right into the cage. We came upstairs, and Elvis fell on the floor laughing.

LAMAR FIKE: Elvis hit him with a cue stick one night. He hit him so damn hard that chimp just saw stars. And then he ran up the curtain. I said, "God Almighty!" I came downstairs with a gun. I said, "Elvis, if you'll lead him about two yards, I'll shoot him."

LAMAR FIKE: Another time, the damn monkey had bitten me, and caused me a lot of problems, and tried my patience every which way but loose. So I went out and got a Hot Shot, a kind of cattle prod. I knew chimps hate water, so I ran a tub full and forced him into it. And he landed in that water, and he started going, "RUUUUUH!" I said, "Okay, you little bastard," and I jammed that cattle prod into him, and I promise you, every hair on his body stood straight up.

Everybody came in, and Elvis said "You're trying to hill him!" And I said, "Yes, I'm going to kill the son of a bitch right here!" I hated that damn chimp.

MARTY LACKER: Elvis used to wait until the den was filled with girls, and everybody was real comfortable and having a nice time. Then he'd whisper, "Okay, boys, let him out!" We'd open the door from under the steps, and Scatter would come out whooping like crazy and scaring a couple of people so bad they almost had a heart attack. Because he could make some noise. He was about three and a half or four feet tall, and he made an impression. And he would just naturally gravitate towards the girls.

BILLY SMITH: Alan taught him a lot of things, but he learned some on his own. When a woman got up to go to the bathroom, for example, he'd run and hide behind the bathroom door. And in a minute, we'd hear this godawful scream and this frantic grabbing of the doorknob. It was like jerking the door off the hinges. The girl would bolt out of there screaming her head off, and Scatter would come waddling after her.

One time, this big, tall girl named Pat Parry was over at the house. Well, she didn't know about Scatter, and this sucker made his entrance. He come in with that screeching and with his hands up, and she thought he was going to attack her. He didn't, but then he kept trying to look up her skirt. She told him to stop, and then when he wouldn't, she said, "You do that one more time, and I'm going to knock the hell out of you." They were both in front of a couch by the bar. Well, naturally, Scatter did it again. And Pat came off the floor and hit that monkey under the chin, and he did a back flip and landed on the couch, dazed. He looked at her like he couldn't believe it. He had a head like a bowling ball, and she put a dent in it.

MARTY LACKER: One of Scatter's favorite pranks was to line on his back on the edge of the couch, so he was be half on the couch, and half of. And when a girl walked by, he'd crook his finger under the hem of her skirt and stick his head up there. He really had a thing about that. You can imagine how it went over. And sometimes he'd masturbate in front of everybody. Believe it or not, we did not teach him to do that. But Sonny and Alan would put him in a bedroom with a couple who was making love, and he'd get excited and jump on the guy's back. Scatter was the real life of the party.

BILLY SMITH: We knew a woman named Brandy Marlow who'd come to the parties. She made her living as a stripper, but she didn't come to the party as one. She was just a guest. But she liked to play around with the chimp. She thought he was fascinating.

One night, the monkey got in her lap, and she had on a low cut blouse. And Scatter kept running his finger down her cleavage. Elvis said, "Is he bothering you?" She said no. So Elvis said, "Well, if you don't mind, see how far he'll go." And the monkey went to unbuttoning with both hands.

Scatter started off with somebody's drink one night. Turned out, he was a damned suds-head. He liked beer, but he could down a fifth of liquor before you knew it. He'd get so damn drunk that he would fall off the couch onto the floor and just slide.

He got loose in Bel Air once, and the next-door neighbors were real upset. The final straw came when he went over there again. They were having a fancy cocktail party, and Scatter went roaring through their house with his hands up and all the hair standing up on his back. He went, "Whoo-whoo-whoo!" Loud as a freight train, you know.

When he screamed, God, it would just send chills down your spine. And it scared the hell out of the party guests, especially when he ran towards 'em. He just wanted attention, really. They didn't know that once you saw him, he'd let down and go on about his business. But, man, they went nuts! They said people went up on the back of couches and on the tables. He cleared the house. So that did it. Scatter was banned from Bel Air. We had to take him back to Memphis.

LAMAR FIKE: Scatter met a sad end. We put him outside behind Graceland. He couldn't stand being left alone after all the attention he'd gotten. He died out there by himself hanging on to the side of the cage.

BILLY SMITH: When we took Scatter back to Graceland, the maids had to feed him because we were gone so much. One day, a maid named Daisy went out there, and she had her wig on, and that damn chimp grabbed that wig right off her head. It scared a couple of years off her life. We always thought she poisoned him. And it wouldn't surprise me. Because not long after that the monkey come up dead.

MARTY LACKER: It happened to be out in the backyard when they took him off. He was hard as a brickbat, just frozen dead. Two guys came from the animal shelter and each guy had one arm, supporting him, because he was upright, with his long arms out and his legs bowed. It was eerie. It kind of shocked me. They just carried him out to their truck and hauled him off. Poor old Scatter. Alan cried and cried.

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oh cruel world. will michael jackson's monkey bubbles meet the same fate?

not the barbie of your youth

i've gone through exactly two barbie fazes. the first faze lasted until i was around seven and involved much brushing of crimped barbie hair and arranging of tiny barbie furniture. i have to admit, i always liked barbie accoutrement, primarily because miniaturized things are so eternally fascinating.

fascination is not always so peaceable, however. barbie faze #2 was war. i spent a large part of my childhood strongly disliking anything that could be categorized as conventional, and barbie fell solidly into the category of "conventional."

retaliation against such unabashed normalcy was unrestrained. and given my penchant for pyromania, barbies fell by the wayside in a variety of ways, most involving melting various barbie parts in my driveway. my sister helpfully assisted by disassembling barbies, but the she-devil dolls proved surprisingly fire-resistant, requiring lengthy exposure to intense heat before succumbing to her wicked witch of the west fate. some barbies endured immersion in kool-aid beforehand, meeting the fire with blueberry or raspberry-colored and flavored hair.

thereafter, the only interaction i had with barbie-related materials was loading my totally awesome (and fast!) barbie jeep with small toys before launching it across the playroom, gleefully watching the little vehicle smack into the opposing wall and violently discharge its contents in an explosion of tiny plastic playthings. i always liked the thump-crack-bop-bop-bop sounds this set of collisions created - and the intentional disarray that resulted. intentionality was key for a kid who carefully vacuumed her bedroom in straight lines, working backwards so that no visible footprints marred uniformly and linearly arranged carpet strands.

after most of the barbies were abused beyond all recognition, i committed myself wholeheartedly to various forms of construction - buildings and spaceships out of legos and tables and chairs out of 2x4s hammered together with my little person hammer and nails nicked from my father's basement store of home improvement materials. i even built my own version of a tree house, composed primarily of perches nailed into branch cruxes and connected by an intricate rope pulley system of buckets, which i used to ferry equipment, books, and tootsie pops from perch to perch. i am more proud of that makeshift treehouse than most other things i've done.

from there on out, i adamantly refused to consider involving myself with anything that could be construed as "girly." i hated dresses and skirts and abhorred pink anything, frilly anything, sparkly anything. i didn't start voluntarily wearing dresses until the end of college. girl stuff was out!

but i might have made an exception for hooker barbie.

racy! indeed, in my flash search through google images for any barbies i might have actually liked in my post-girly, pro-fire and destruction faze, i found a strangely logical snapshot progression for the barbie who lived life on the edge. so onwards in badass barbie's life! obviously, std barbie wouldn't look much different from hooker barbie, though she might have a facial expression that more clearly reflected her fall from grace. but pregnant barbie - two toys for the price of one! look see!

it's like a barbie matryoshka! it's like a barbie transformer!

i appreciate that manufacturers have conformed to proper anatomical baby posture, head aimed towards mummy's feet. kudos for realism, mattel.

but barbie is too young. how will she be able to finish high school and go to college? what will her peers think of her, after this obvious indiscretion? will she still be able to fit into her prom dress? what to do?

solution:

the coat hanger is a nice touch, no?