rites of storage

"I used to think that it was buying a house, or having a baby, that would make me feel like an adult", my friend Janice said to me today, "but now I've decided that it's when you realize you need an extra freezer."

my congratulations to Mr. Bush

I generally cannot find anything good to say about our country's current leader. And, as I am a person who enjoys saying good things about people, this fact pains me. It creates a feeling of Lack, of Discontentment, of Perpetual Disappointment, in my daily life.

Therefore, imagine my Bliss and Utter Joy when I opened my datebook earlier this week, and discovered that Our President has finally done something Clever! He created the chance for a Moment of Miraculous Revelation, of Comic Conjunction, in all of our lives!

Which is, of course, that in the little square in my datebook labeled April 1st, I found two smaller entries in green type:

Daylight Savings Time Begins
April Fool's Day

rainy day revelation

I have yet to own a car with a properly-tensioned alternator belt.

musi(c)ngs

I have music playing in my head all the time. Non-stop. Like, almost 24/7, for my whole life. Oftentimes, I sing or hum along to it; whatever happens to be playing at the time. Unfortunately, I've found that this generally annoys people. Especially if I do it while they're trying to tell me all the details about the amazing thing that happened to them yesterday.

It sometimes annoys me too, if I get stuck on a particular song. And even more so if I don't know the whole song, so that just a piece of it loops, over and over, like a record with a skip.

But most of the time, I'm glad for the music. And quite often, it's a source of inspiration and an aid to introspection. I can usually tell that I'm supposed to pay special attention if the song in my head isn't one that I'm really familiar with, isn't one that I have in the living room on a CD, isn't one that was on the radio in the store yesterday afternoon when I was buying yogurt. When I get a song like that, randomly selected by my subconscious, I generally try to stop and listen to the lyrics. They're usually telling me something important.

This morning, and yesterday morning, my mind has been playing a B-52's song that I've only heard a couple of times. It’s repeating like a mantra:
Roam if you want to, roam around the world
Roam if you want to, without wings without wheels
Roam if you want to, roam around the world
Roam if you want to, without anything but the love we feel

on prayers and deadlines

Dear Life,

I have been a member of your organization for 35 years and 10 months. I have attended every meeting, and have always taken diligent notes. I have tried to vote positively on almost every issue, and have encouraged others to do the same.

My concern, however, is that in spite of all my efforts to be an upstanding member and representative of your organization, I still feel largely in-the-dark about the purpose of this group. I don't quite understand its goals, or my role, as a member, in ensuring the achievement of these goals. I would also like some information about my responsibilities, and the level of my own importance, as a member, and some direction on how to get the most out of my membership. Also, please tell me whether my dues are likely to increase if I become more involved in your organization, and if I allow myself to make more regular use of the Member Benefits.

I would be grateful for any assistance you can give me in these matters, and would appreciate a prompt response, as time is short. I have enclosed a self-addressed, stamped envelope for your convenience.

Sincerely,
Kate

the fourth dimension

I was just trying to upload a photo to the internet, and got a warning notice, "Uploading photos that are more than 1,000 KB may take several moments."

And I'm now wondering (while still waiting, 5 minutes later) of what use is their notice, really? Let's think about this... what exactly are they telling me? -That uploading my photo could possibly, but not certainly, take more than two, but less than eight, unspecified amounts of time. ...And what I'd really like to know is, how does one determine that one has finished with the first unspecified period of time, and is on to the next?

They might better have said, "Uploading photos of more than 1,000 KB will take so frickin' long that your mind will begin to contort; you will look up word definitions, and end up writing a blog entry. Afterwards, you will check back on the uploading process, see that nothing has changed, give up, and vow never to use our services again."

new englanders- a brilliant summation! :-)

From Jane Langton's Murder at the Gardner.

"...the rest were Anglo-Saxon Yankees with narrow faces that betrayed their inner convictions. Recognizing the tragic nature of earthly existence, they worked hard against the night that was coming, smiled with all their might, and saved leftover pieces of string."

manufacturing mystery

The question that has not let my mind rest this afternoon: Why, oh why, are there eight Sixlets to a pack?

I desperately needed to know, so I googled it. Only one website addresses this question, and their answer: "...it's rumored that Sixlets are so-named because they used to be sold in packets of 6." (that's a paraphrase, actually, not a quote, but I put it in quotes cause it looks better that way in my sentence.)

So my next question: why the heck would any company completely re-vamp its packaging scheme for a popular, historic candy, so that the name no longer matches the product? Is it some grand Republican conspiracy to finally rid the country of its lower class (those forced by financial restrictions to buy candy labeled "chocolate-flavored") by driving them completely insane? Factory workers, their minds gone wild with the illogic of it all, pulling their hair out in squalid breakrooms, eyes rolling, shouting "SIX? EIGHT? SIX? EIGHT?" in an agony of bewilderment, all their trust in the inherent order of the universe lost forever....

I think next time I'll buy a Snickers.

note to prospective employers:

Interview question that makes me not want to work for you:

"Katherine, can you tell us what is your greatest single accomplishment in life?"

the divinity of auto repair

I was talking with my dad the other night about religion.

I've pretty much decided that the key to the whole thing is in alignment. Being in alignment with the Universe, with God, with your higher self. About approaching everyone and everything with love; not in a mushy, selfish way, but an objective, courageous way. About learning how to read the signs the universe sends you, about living the Truth of each particular moment, about being adaptable and acceptant when that truth changes. About being in tune and in harmony, all the time. Or trying to be, anyway.

Seems like most religions and cultures have the same idea. (Though, in my opinion, many religious groups have largely forgotten these more holistic, spiritual roots and are still getting their feet tangled in humanly-constructed rules and regulations. ...But it’s hard _not_ to screw it up, especially when language is involved. What an inefficient medium for spiritual expression!)

Of course, most days I fail miserably at this ‘alignment’ objective. Seems impossible not to, as a human being, because we’re all insecure and fearful, and often moreso the older we get [and the more we're exposed to Republican-run governments, but that's for another discussion ;-)] It’s hard to be still enough and brave enough, internally, to be able to live in Truth. But it seems to me that one's got to at least strive for it. Don't you think?

and speakinamilk....

Ok, I'm wondering if I'm the only person who's noticed this (can't be).

If you heat milk (or maybe it works cold too; I'll check later) and pour it into a mug, and then stir it, the timbre of the sound that the spoon makes against the side of the mug changes. The more you stir, the deeper it sounds.

This doesn't work with tea, or coffee, or cider, or any other type of beverage one might be tempted to put into a mug.

Whazzup with that?!

will wonders never cease

I found this online this morning:
The Popularity Dialer:
Want to flee that meeting? Get out of lunch after an hour?
Popularity Dialer can place one of five fake calls: the boss call, the cousin-in-need call, the male-friend call, the female-friend call, or the affirmation call (reminding you that you’re wonderful). Each recording includes convenient pauses for your side of the conversation.
http://www.popularitydialer.com/.

My favorite part? The special mention of the convenient pauses. Apparently a big selling point. Puts them a step above the competition!

spamspamsausage&spam

This is both the most absurdly-worded, and the (ouch!) least convincing, sex-enhancement-product email I've gotten yet:

"Penis Patch will not only make your day but also the whole night!"

the reverse-fold path

Trying not to make mistakes is a huge mistake.

fashionable discrimination

bootstraps, coattails, lapels... I have arrived at the conclusion that men have an unfair advantage over women, when it comes to getting their shit together. "She pulled herself up by her lacy padded bra...." just doesn't pack quite the same punch.

quote of the week #3

"I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death."

quote of the week #2

"Pity!" he said, and sighed and paused. "It is always the way of events in this life," he continued presently: "no sooner have you got settled in a pleasant resting-place, than a voice calls out to you to rise and move on, for the hour of repose is expired."

quote of the week #1

"Because," he said, "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you -- especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly."

upstate ny

There are different levels of cold in Oneonta; this is how I think of them:
1) first-period gym wet sneakers frosty grass in the shade melting in the sun (September)
2) wood smoke and dry fallen leaves (October)
3) slate-grey-dead/runny nose (November)
4) fresh wet stone dog kiss snow (December)
5) nose-hair-freezing (January)
6) screechy styrofoam snow eek it makes me grit my teeth (February)
7) put on shorts and go to Wilber Park; sit in the warm sun in the corner of the singles-tennis-wall (even though there's still snow on the ground), and pretend it's summer (March)
8) rainy-sunny you can smell the earth again hint of daffodils; cold fingers that smell salty like an old jacket, when you spend the day outside (April)
9) maple buds-smell in the rain run-around-without-a-sweater cool skin (May)
10) warm pavement windy first barbecue; hamburgers! (June)

society

I just received notice of a mandatory office training meeting.

As a result, my Outlook calendar now shows that I have scheduled a session of Sexual Harassment for March 29th at 2pm.

today

this post
clear as toast

as calm and clear as graham crackers in the moonlight

racy-red as a green grape dipped in chocolate

in-out put about

let
me
go!

truth and alliteration

King Cake is better cold.

nature

There should be a word (and perhaps there is) which would convey the idea of two things being simultaneously identical, and completely dichotomous. Wholly connected, and at the same time absolutely discrete. It seems to me that this paradoxical state is the constant for everything (and everyone) in the universe; the basis of all life and human experience. Pretty cool.

The Work/Study filing song:

(to the tune of Rawhide)
(written by me!)
(and inspired by true events!)
(which occurred at Hartwick College)

Filing, filing, filing,
Gotta keep on filing.
Get those students filing,
Archives!
O! Alfred, Lynn and Heather,
Doomchin and Vetter,
Watch out for floods and keep ‘em dry!
All those yellow statements
That we keep in the basement
Of Arnold Hall, in draw-ers so high.

Chorus:
Put ‘em in, take ‘em out,
Take ‘em out, put ‘em in,
Shred ‘em up, tear ‘em up!
Archives!
Stuff ‘em in, mash ‘em down,
Push ‘em in, stuff ‘em in
Pile ‘em up, throw ‘em out!
Archives!

Keep on al-pha-be-tizin’,
Although the stacks are risin’
With paper cuts a’bleedin’
Archives!
You can’t find the right file?
It's prob’ly somewhere in that pile.
Tell your friends you’ll be awhile-
Archives!

reality

When the UPS guy brings his cart down the stairs to the mailroom next door, it makes a hollow BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! , which resounds loudly through the office.

I like to imagine that it's the Mummy of Arnold Hall on his way to visit our basement office, with arms outstretched, feet pounding, trailing dirt and tattered wrappings.... I would hide behind the copier, and pelt him with day-old donut holes. People would scream and run around. It would be lots of fun!

dire

When you find yourself fantasizing about food instead of sex, it's a bad sign.

Chocolate milk chocolate milk chocolate milk

f/m-ood (status: shitty)

So, I’m trying out this 'detox' diet where you eat various stuff on various days to ‘purify’ your system. It lasts 7 days; not long enough to do any harm, right? I thought it would be fun to try, having just gotten back from eating way too much on vacation. Everyone always eats way too much on vacation, and I'm no exception. So, trying out this diet seemed like a good idea at the time. 'The time' being yesterday evening. Not that long ago, really. Fascinating how one's view of things can change so radically overnight.

They tell you you can eat as much as you want of the stuff, but only that stuff on that day. Today is vegetable soup and fruit. I’m hungry, and I want bread and chocolate and bananas, but I can't have bananas. Not today. Today is vegetable soup, and any fruit _but_ bananas. [It really says that! "...and any fruit (except bananas)."] I had vegetable soup for dinner last night, and vegetable soup for lunch today, and goddamnit, the last thing I want for dinner is the fucking vegetable soup. Tomorrow is vegetable soup and vegetables. Thrilling. Then there’s a beef and skim milk day, and a bananas and something day... THEN they let you eat the bananas. Of course, by that day I'll be craving the vegetable soup.

This is day one. We’ll see how far I get.

inevitable

when you own a cat, be prepared to eat fur.

commonplace

I am a really good photographer.

There are lots of really good photographers in the world.

I suppose that with Art, as with humanitarian efforts, one should be able to think globally, and yet still have the determination to act (as it were) locally.

"How many cans must I stack up / to wash you out of my mind, / Out of my consciousness?"

Two more things I find irritating:

-People who don't take things seriously.
-People who take things too seriously. (a sin I often commit)

But in fact, there often isn't much difference between the two. It seems that life needs to be lived in the balance; if you live as though everything were serious, you're not being serious enough about living.

This reminds me of the lyrics in that Soul Coughing song; I'm always amazed by how many people can't tell that the words are switching:

"You know but that you go on...
You know that but you go on...."

the airspeed velocity of a frozen blueberry

CHISAKI WATANABE
Associated Press
TOKYO - A Japanese food company recalled nearly 5 million cans of tuna Friday after a customer found part of a box cutter blade in a can, a company official said. There were no injuries from the blade, company official Kunimitsu Asakura said. The recall followed the disclosure earlier this week that a shotgun pellet had been found in December in a pack of frozen blueberries from Canada sold by Nichiro. Nichiro said on Wednesday that Purewal Blueberry Farm, the Canadian producer of blueberries for Nichiro, prohibits the use of shotguns at its farms to chase away birds, and the pellet may have been a stray shot from a nearby farm. Nichiro said it has no plans to recall its blueberries because there were no other complaints and it was unlikely that the problem would recur.

-Yes, I imagine it _would_ be rather difficult to complain about anything while choking on a shotgun pellet.

humility

Being (for whatever reason) a rather self-effacing sort of person, I've been trying to become better at showing off, but it's hard. Despite my best attempts, life still conspires to keep me humble.

An example:
Last week (in Ecuador) I was faced, unexpectedly, with a stuffed toilet (not of my own stuffing, I might add.) (and so I did) (add it, I mean.)

I was in a rented apartment, and, with one eye on the rising water in the bowl, I looked around wildly for a plunger. Not finding one, I thought to myself, "what is there on hand that's about the right size, and could serve to get some vacuum pressure going in there?" And my brain immediately answered: "a 2-liter soda bottle!"

I ran to the kitchen, grabbed a knife and an empty Dasani bottle, chopped the top off it, and was back to the bathroom within seconds. I squeezed away at the bottle and was amazed to find that my plan worked perfectly! Almost better than a real plunger!

The excitement over, I went back to the couch to read. When Erin and Victoria walked in a few minutes later, I told them about my inspired emergency action; my amazing 2-liter hack!

They looked bored, and Victoria said "oh yeah, I read about someone doing that in some magazine a couple of months ago."

Oh well. I was disappointed, but soon consoled myself with the thought that at least I wasn't wasting my allotted 15-minutes of fame on a toilet....

about anger

People who know me [especially Joel] often accuse me of being too forgiving, too tolerant, with a disconcerting lack of anger and irritability. Therefore, I am going to make a list [albeit an incomplete list] of things that royally piss me off, just for the record:

-Carelessness
-Apathy
-Ridicule
-Littering (that should go under 'Apathy')(and probably under 'Self-Importance' too)
-Self-Importance = this includes:
-people who interrupt others in conversation
-people who drive dangerously. Especially those assholes who come up behind you and flash their high beams to tell you to speed the hell up and let them through. Especially when you're already going the speed limit and there's plenty of room for them to go around you in another lane.
-drunken college students who have loud parties and keep the whole neighborhood awake all night.
-people who allow themselves to be rude to strangers just because they don't ever have to see them again.
-people who are dismissive and/or curt towards waiters/waitresses or other customer service reps.
-people who act without first thinking how their actions will affect others
-drunk college students
-people who do any kind of in-person business transaction while simultaneously having a personal conversation on a cell phone.
-did I mention: drunk college students
-loud campers
-Americans who act like 'Americans' while they're abroad
-a friend who puts you on hold for more than one minute to answer the other line...
-...in fact, anyone whose actions consistently indicate that their time is more important than yours.

firstpost (lastpre?)

Having just gotten back from 10 days in ecuador, I'm not in the mood to work. At all. So, it seemed like a good plan to copy my cousin Jamie and start a blog for this [still] new year. It seems like a good plan, both because it involves imitation of someone I highly admire [ie: Jamie], and because I often have a lot of things to say, and not much opportunity for saying them. This lack of opportunity is due both to the fact that most other people like to talk (so I often find myself in the role of listener), and to my own fault of being too sensitive to other people's interest level in what I have to say; if I sense that their attention is wandering, I prefer to be silent.