Apr 19 2012

anglophile

I’m a big fan of almost anything British.

Boddingtons?
Love it.

Shakespeare?
Love his work.

The Beatles?
Taught me everything I know about rock n’ roll.

Naomi Watts? Rachel Weisz? Kate Winslet?
Heaven will be me, Ashley, and the three of them. With Star Wars playing nearby on a huge tv.

Dr. Who?
Well, okay. There are exceptions.

But what I love the most is simply to listen to Brits speak. I know there are a wide variety of British accents and I wish I could catalog them better.(1) But it’s not the accents that do it for me. Or, not just the accents.

Brits use words like smashing and brilliant. They say things like, “I’ll deal with that straightaway.” I’m not even getting into the slang here – just normal everyday syntax.

“Oh that’s such rubbish.” “It was totally out of sequence.” “Those skills add up to zed.”

I mean, I’m sure not all Brits use these sorts of words. And I’m sure they’re not always used in each of these circumstances.(2) But any time I talk to someone from across the pond, I marvel less at the accent than at the uncommon words they toss into normal conversation.

No American has, for example, ever told me to bugger off. Which I’m sure is what an earthbound Naomi, Rachel and Kate would say, even if Star Wars weren’t involved.

  1. My brain is reading this all to me in a British accent right now.
  2. Though I almost never hear the word rubbish unless it comes from the mouth of a Brit. Or unless I say it. Because sometimes I use British words and syntax with my plain Midwest accent. The juxtaposition is jarring.
Apr 18 2012

tired

Today was a tired day, but I’ve made it through. Barely.

The kittens are doing okay so far. I’ve been asked to post more pictures of them – and I’m given to understand that the internets loves cats – so since I’m too tired to do much else, here are some pictures of three-day-old kittens.

Apr 17 2012

responsible

“You are responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in The Little Prince

Years ago. When things were generally tougher. Confusing. And certainly darker. On a foreign porch we sat, parting.

This was something given to me. A little lesson, like a thought or a light. I turn to it all the time, marvel at how it fits into everything.

I honestly can’t remember if we were still on that porch or if this came later. But the porch matters, so in my memory we’re there.

You don’t ever think about what it means to have tamed something, let alone what to do with it. Perhaps due to Shakespeare, we think of taming as something more like refinement, like grinding a gloss onto a stone. But it’s far more simple than that.

Let someone learn to love you, even in the smallest of ways, and you become responsible for her.

Late at night. When things were generally better. Confusing still. But lighter. And she asked me if she should take a chance on me.

This was also something given to me. It was not something I took lightly. I, in fact, asked for time to consider it, to mull over what it would mean to be responsible, forever, for her. She’s not the kind of person you want to let down anyway. But to let someone down and to forget that you’re responsible for someone are two very different things.

In the end, I asked her to take that chance, because by this point I already knew that what was given to me on that porch so many years ago was maybe the one thing I’ve been here to learn all this time.

Though there is, of course, a corollary lesson. If you are responsible, forever, for what you have tamed, then you should take great care in that which you tame.

Or, to put it differently: love openly, but take care with the love that is returned to you.

If you put food in a bowl and set the bowl outside for a stray cat and the cat eats from your bowl, the cat is returning your love. There are millions of bowls and even less risk in starvation.

There are six newborn kittens behind a dresser in our apartment right now. They are there because I chose to be responsible for their mother, because I gave her a bowl of food and she ate from it. They are there because I am responsible for her. Forever. And as I am for her, I am for them.

And though I can’t abide the idea of have ten cats in our little apartment, I equally cannot abide shirking my responsibility.

I go for walks, some days, with the woman from the porch. I will soon be husband to the woman who took a chance on me. I have let them, and others, love me, and am I responsible for them. Just as I am for the six tiny kittens. Just as I am for their mum. Just as I am for our other cats.

Forever.

Apr 14 2012

conundrum

Something funny thing happened yesterday on my way across campus to get coffee. And then another funny thing happened. And then something cool, followed by something hilarious. And I had a quandary:

I wanted to post about it. The story wasn’t long enough for a blog post, though. It was, in fact, the sort of thing I would previously have posted to Facebook. But Facebook and I are no longer friends.

Then I thought back to the day before, when Ashley bought a chocolate bunny at the store and didn’t even wait until we got home to unwrap it and eat it. I took a picture of her behind the wheel at a stoplight nomming the bunny. And I wanted to share it. But…

So I realized that the impulse to share stuff is ingrained in me enough now that I specifically do things just to post them online. We can examine how weird – or even pathological – this might be if you like, but the initial problem is that I have removed my main outlet for online sharing.

I’m not going back to Facebook. Because fuck Facebook.

Enter Tumblr. It’s perfect for this sort of thing. A quick post. A picture. Even a video or audio. There’s an iPhone app so I can do this stuff on the go, just like I’ve been doing for a while now.

So if you’re not totally fed up with me here and want to keep up with other leavings of my hyper-wired brain, you can find now me on Tumblr.

Of course, you’re under no obligation. I wouldn’t want to deal with more of me either.

Apr 13 2012

origin story

Thirteen has been considered unlucky for a really long time. Its origins seem to be in Norse mythology. During a banquet held at Valhalla,(1) twelve guests were invited. But Loki – the god of mischief – gate–crashed the party, making thirteen. A fight ensued to evict him. In the battle, the god Balder was killed, once again making twelve.

This idea moved slowly from the Scandinavian nations south through Europe. As Christianity moved towards dominance, the idea of thirteen was sort-of grafted onto it. There’s a fairly strong parallel between the dinner at Valhalla and The Last Supper, which had thirteen guests,(2) one of whom was dead with 24 hours.(3)

(4)

Now. Onto Friday.

When the Scandinavians named their days of the week, they borrowed the name-scheme from the Romans, who of course borrowed them from the Greeks. The Romans named Friday after Venus,(5) so the Scandinavians found a goddess similar to Venus and named their second-last day after her: Frigga. This is where we get Friday.(6)

Okay, so as the Scandinavians and Germans were converted to Christianity, Frigga was banished to a hill and became a witch.(7) Legend held that every Friday, Frigga would have a gathering of witches and the devil – a gathering of thirteen – to plot revenge for their banishment. All Fridays were, for a while, considered bad. In fact, they called it the “Witch’s Sabbath.”(8) So a bad day(9) with a bad number(10) was extra bad.(11)

Not every culture shares the Friday the 13th thing. In Spain, for example, it’s Tuesday the 13th that’s bad. But many Western cultures consider 13 pretty bad.

So there you go. Courtesy of your friendly neighborhood nerd.(12)

  1. The home of the gods.
  2. Christ and his apostles.
  3. Christ, obviously
  4. Fear of the number thirteen, by the way, is called triskaidekaphobia.
  5. Dies Veneris.
  6. Most of our current day-names come from the Norse gods: Sun’s day, Moon’s day, Twu’s day, Woden’s day, Thor’s day, Frigga’s day, Saturn’s day or Shabbat’s day (Saturday’s the weird one.)
  7. The Christian leaders are now infamous for how the turned old gods into devils.
  8. Great name for metal band.
  9. Friday.
  10. 13.
  11. But not super bad, because it’s a stupid movie.
  12. I had another footnote but felt that leaving it would be courting disaster.
Apr 11 2012

the day after Facebook

Last night I deactivated my Facebook account.

I have many reasons, but they essentially boil down to this one thing: We live in the Information Age, but information isn’t the highest commodity. No, today’s most valuable commodity is the control of information. Since Facebook no longer lets me control the information that comes my way, I made up my mind that it is no longer of significant value to me.

Here are a few things I’ll bet I missed, here on my first day post-Facebook.(1)

The cryptic status

You’ve posted something in a public forum meant for one person and one person only. You’ve used a megaphone to say something you should have whispered. Brilliant strategy. I’m sure the CIA will shortly be emailing you an application, since you so obviously know how to pass information effectively and to precisely the right person.

The passive-aggressive comment

Someone you barely like just posted something. Now’s the chance you’ve been dreaming about…literally. Just last night you dreamt of perfect smack-down comments and awoke in a cold sweat of anticipation. And here it is. You could let it go…but no. You’ll just tone it down a notch. That way no one will know what a douche you are.

Where my friends ate lunch…which was where they ate lunch yesterday

Seriously? I eat at a table in my department at work and experience more prandial variety than you. And I work at a friggin library.

Knowing which words my friends played in Words with Friends

Because I care. Yep. I really, really care to know the moves my friends are making in games I’m not playing. It’s like televising a game of Monopoly, and every damn bit as exciting.

Nerd humor

I really honestly can go a day without a Dr. Who joke. I only ever watched one episode and thought it was stupid.(2) And I only watched it so I could get the jokes my friends expected me to get in the first place. So here’s a big secret of nerdom: like learning a foreign language, once the time has passed to acquire one particular aspect, it’s gone. And getting involved just to get a few stupid memes isn’t the proper motivation anyway.

Memes

I didn’t have to read anything in Ryan Gosling’s voice today. I didn’t see Chandler Bing dancing on something stupid. No one shared a picture I’ve seen a bazillion times anyway. I didn’t have to cry as I thought about the humongous amount of human evolution, knowledge and hard work that went into inventing the internet just so we could laugh at cats with poor grammar.

And, finally, Facebook itself

If I never see that particular shade of blue again, I’ll be okay.

This isn’t the first time I’ve left Facebook. But, lately, when I scrolled back through my timeline and saw the complete lack of anything from about Nov. ’08 through about April ’09, I felt proud that I quit it for so long. I’m betting I can do better.

  1. Well, I wouldn’t say I missed them, Bob.
  2. I apologize to everyone who has even been British.
Apr 10 2012

weird

If you’ve read Macbeth, you know weird things come in threes.(1)(2)

one

For a moment today – just for a moment – I liked Santorum.(3) For one brief shining moment, I smiled approvingly upon something he did when I read – on Facebook, posted by George Takei(4) – that he’s suspended his presidential campaign. But then, of course, because he’s Rick Santorum, he said, “We’re not done fighting.”

Fighting for what, Mr. Santorum? You’ve basically pulled a Lady-Gaga-in-a-meat-dress thing here. The last thing I knew you were fighting for was the Republican nomination…and you’ve quit fighting for that. So what, specifically, are you fighting for? Perhaps you should have an answer to that question before you keep talking.

two

I exercised today. At work. Went for a walk with k. I was expecting a leisurely stroll. Instead, we covered about a quarter of the Appalachian Trail in about fifteen minutes and then ran from New Mexico to the Yukon Territory for the other fifteen minutes.

Well okay actually all we did was walk two miles in about 30 minutes. But it felt like the other one.

three

Someone from work-life admitted to reading my blog. Now, this isn’t someone at my library, and not someone I talk to directly very often at all.(5) But when she sent me an email owning up to her lurker behavior, I was quite shocked.

You see, I’m something of an attention-hungry monster.(6) Anyone with a personal blog by necessity is, especially someone who doesn’t really hide. If you search my name, this blog will be pretty high on the list. I don’t talk about work other than in abstract ways, so it’s not a big deal. What surprised me is why.

Being something of an attention-hungry monster, sometimes at work I send out these wildly ridiculous emails to a state-wide group of library-people. I figure most of them are as wrapped up in the tedium as I am most of the time, so why not liven everyone’s day with a few select pieces of nerd-humor?(7) Plus I’ve found that one of the best ways not to annoy everyone with even more tedious things,(8) is to make them laugh a little bit. I mean sure I’m still asking for the same annoying stuff as everyone else, but I’m being funny about it. It helps. Believe me.

So when she admitted that she likes my emails so much she searched for other places to find my insanity, I was very surprised. Most of the time I figure the five six people who read this blog do so out of pathos. So it was weird that someone sought me out.

And then so also of course there’s a ridiculous amount of pressure now. Now that I know other people may actually be trying to find me here, instead of stumbling across this blog while looking for the Snuggie Sutra,(9) there’s a push to write better. Be funnier. Include more footnotes.(10) Do something other than what I normally do here.

That sounds like a lot of effort. I think I’ll just go on being ridiculous.

  1. If you haven’t read Macbeth, stop reading this doggerel and go read it. You can find it free on the intertubes and free for any e-reader out there. Or, you know, you could go to the library.
  2. Apologies to those of you who might be theatre folk and believe that uttering the name of the Scottish play to be bad luck, a curse, bad mojo, voodoo, ill omen and/or harbinger of doom.
  3. The dude. Not the substance. I really have no opinion on the substance, though I think it’s pretty awesome Dan Savage created this little gadfly.
  4. I’m not proud of this. The getting-my-news-from-Facebook thing. I’m totally proud to be a fan of George Takei.
  5. In fact, today may have been the first time.
  6. Not my words, but not entirely inappropriate.
  7. And/or footnotes.
  8. Viz, supply requests.
  9. Happens all the time. Seriously.
  10. Just kidding. Sort of.
Apr 9 2012

both

To this point, I’ve only being paying attention to how fibromyalgia and Cymbalta affect me. On a day-to-day basis, I assess and react. I’ve only been playing behind the puck, if you’ll allow me an incredibly rare hockey metaphor.

Yesterday I was totally wiped out. All day. I had things to do, what with it being Easter and all. I’d promised Ashley an angel food cake, and, I don’t know if you’ve ever made one from scratch, but it takes a while. Especially if you don’t have one of those nice mixers and you have to stand there whipping eggs with your sad little hand-mixer for almost an hour. I learned that there is literally nothing you can go while whipping eggs. You can’t even sit down, and you certainly can’t nap.

It also fell to me make the Easter ham because at Christmas I made a ham for the first time ever – along with a glaze I invented on the spot and thankfully entered the recipe into my iPhone – and by all accounts pretty much knocked it out of the park, if you’ll allow a more common baseball metaphor after I’ve already gone for a hockey metaphor and have yet another hockey metaphor lined up.(1)

But so anyway. Despite feeling just wiped, I couldn’t simply lie down. Chill out. Take it easy. I couldn’t react to how the f/C combo was making me feel. I had to carry on with life, including going to Ashley’s family’s Easter dinner – the reason for the ham – in which three boys under the age of five were in attendance. It’d be easier to nap whilst whipping eggs than with three monkey-boys on a sugar high running around.

Today I feel even worse. I’m still tired. I’m in a fair amount of pain. I’ve been better than religious about taking my pills. Once I’m gone, they’ll start the canonization process for me because I’ve been that good about taking my pills. Nevertheless, this. Today.

So it’s time to understand. It’s time – and here come that final hockey metaphor I was telling you about – it’s time to play ahead of the puck. It’s time for research, about fibromyalgia and Cymbalta. I need to know what is known and what isn’t known about the disease. I need to know what else I can do. I need to know other ways to reduce the pain and to deal with somnolence, because while I wouldn’t say I’m missing it, Bob, I’ve been absent from work too much.(2) Too much for my own work ethic.

I need to suck it up. I need to grin and bear it. Actually, forget the grinning. I just need to bear it better. So I’ll start how I always start: knowledge and its power. This approach worked with understanding Ashley’s cystic fibrosis and post-transplant issues and how her meds work and interact. It seems silly that I haven’t taken the same approach with myself. Though of course there’s a wide chasm between living with a disease and understanding it.

It’s time I do both.

  1. And I don’t know enough about hockey to work this baseball metaphor into a more consistent hockey metaphor, is the reason for the baseball metaphor. Also, if you’re reading this, how tired are you of the word metaphor right now?
  2. Not a metaphor but a pop culture reference, a phenomenon I’m generally suspicious of but I went for this one because I know two of my five readers will laugh at it.