The Start

I'm in early drafting phases of the bourbon guide I'm making for The Trip. The outline shifts and expands every time I have a new idea. I get a new idea with every paragraph I read online.

I'm in the manic research mode of a project, and it's fun as heck. It is New Year's Eve, and I just gave up going out partying with my awesome friends to stay in and READ about drinking. Mamagaard and Papagaard trained us to be critical thinkers about everything we pupae do, it makes you enjoy them more, is the argument for this. I must enjoy them so much they never actually get experienced.

Or, Kiddo is just a nerd. You be the judge.

So far the guide is like reading this here blog, if ever I could focus this here blog on some subject or other. The loose idea of travel is pretty stretched if you ask me. Life is a journey, surely, and each experience I've had does reflect the culture in which I find it... but... yea, you're all right, it's not necessarily related.

Knowing this, knowing a whole 100 pages really have to tie into the same three things over and over again means the writing actually happens far more fluidly. Thoughts appear, and are shunted into the sections that seem most appropriate. Then comes the justification. Why is this thought relevant? Why should it not be deleted before it is finished?

Mostly everything gets kept, (manic phase is maximalist phase) but I am proud to say that each scrap of paragraph does tie into the thesis: Teach Kiddo Bourbon, with the subtitle: What is Love?

It's a good time. 

Travel vs. Settle

One day maybe I'll get around to attacking the word "Settle" with all the vehemence and understanding my 19 little readers have come to expect from me. Until then, know this: I have settled.

With varying levels of deliberation I have an apartment, steady job, close family, prospects of love, and definite stakes driven into the dull Maryland ground.

Kiddo's new goal is to not go crazy mad with the pressure of staying still. Luckily, that looks no where close since each of the above-mentioned stakes are apparently made of some quantum flux material.

And, my first travel since stepping off the Peace Corps boat is in the planning stages. I have been planning it for 12 hours now, and am stoked. At long last, after a couple brushes with Possibility, Kiddo will tipple the bourbons of Louisville straight from the casks.

Stay tuned for details as my crazy motivation for motion keeps me pounding out some sweet entries.

Downside: I'll have to start logging into facebook again.

Le sigh.

Silly Poet, Drama is for Snooky

The last century and the Romantics of yesteryear have collectively stripped the necessity for plot and narrative in poetry. Poetry becomes “better” when it abstracts a single image or feeling. It is best if the poet discovers something about life  or themselves in this scrutiny, but it’s not necessary. It is enough to point out how swollen with emotion the writer is.

Which is cool, I love poetry like that. I love purely descriptive poetry. It’s like well written guide book tid bits into the human psyche/condition. It’s anthropology, sociology, psychology, and even history rolled into a bite size nugget. If it’s really good, if the poet is to become respectable for her ability to convey all this, the writing must not be simply descriptive and informative. It has to be moving, right? Drama.

Human drama is what keeps us engaged, and away from the edge of boredom that potentially allows us to forget our need to eat and procreate and rear our off spring, right? It's also what pays the network bills. Do you think Jersey Shore could sustain itself without Sweetheart and her thug boyfriend didn't break up once a season?

My own drama is the reason I write poetry in the first place. Break up? Can't go around flinging your weakness and idiocy in the real world! If there’s no rough emotion tangling up my ability to function on the mundane level, I have to express it in some contained way, like planned demolitions. If you put enough individual scraps of emotion together, over a sustained period of time, you cannot help but provide plot-line for whoever is reading it, right?

Yet, so many books of poetry are simply collections of poems that loosely correspond to each other, like the poets just squirt out 400 poems and shunt some about nature into a Nature folder, and some about love into a Love folder, but there is no development of attitude towards these things through the course of the book. The reader is forced to start with fresh slate every page and absorb whole new emotions each time. It's freaking tiring. 

This sort of collection is great for picking and choosing read time. One poem for this 5 minutes, one for a break later in the day.

The next step up of coherence are books like Mary Oliver’s … anything, they’re all beautiful and all the same.  Every single poem has a subsumed drama to the grace and awe Oliver has for members of nature. None of the foxes, herons, ponds, clouds ever interact with each other, but if you read 3 or 4 of her anthologies you will have a new eco-system living in your imagination and its drama will revolve on an almost Stephen Crane sort of careless equilibrium.

The last level, however, is the genuine page turner poetry collection Claudia Emerson’s “Late Wife,” and Edgar Lee Masters’ “Spoon River Anthology” are brilliant. They are a cut above every other book of poetry I’ve encountered. Every poem in each of them is a single scrutiny of humanity. Every poem also builds on the last, mentions characters or instances in the another. They reward the reader for paying attention. They build suspense, and a deeper connection with the characters. At the end of reading one (and you’ll want to read them cover to cover) you are as in touch with the speakers as you are with Katniss Everdeen, or Jay Gatsby.

Thank you, Sugar and Wikipedia for these treasures. They are the only two I’ve found. I’m eager to learn, so if you know of more, I will give you a dollar per anthology.

Good Writing Vs. Good Grammar

If you write clearly, readers will scan right over grammatical faux pas like a possesive its or your instead of the contraction it's or you're. When writing becomes cloudy, thoughts on the page come out confused, it may become necessary to clarify by scrutinizing the placement of an apostrophe.

My favorite recent example was simple. It's a tin tub that some baba may use for clothes washing. It's sold in Walmarts here, in the recreation section. Yep, one woman's daily grunt work is another man's tail gating -- we have here a grammatically incorrect ice + beer repository. On its side, embossed and unpainted, is the phrase:

Drink's

No prep-phrase, no further punctuation, no other thing on the other tin side.

I can only assume two situations leading up to this fantastic proclamation.

Drink is...
Drink owns...

Drink is actually an entity, person even, and he/she/it owns the contents of this bin. The fact that this implication is stamped there, far more permanent than flimsy, weather-susceptible paint, is quite the statement. Someone really wants you to know that the contents of this bin is DRINKS, except that they look dumb. The extra emphasis of physical form, and its being all in CAPS, makes this drink toter look particularly headlong crazy stupid. Not to mention that you need a specific bin for such a purpose, not just any bin, and this bin is not insulated like a cooler. The entire existence makes me a little giddy.

Another example, not from Walmart, not for plebs, is the acronym MOBIS. Mission Oriented Buisness Integrated Services. It sounds so good and encompassing and solidly important that it cannot help being a stand-out, motivational, desirable thing for you and your employees, or you and your degree, or you and your future. It should be on a poster with a dolphin.

However, if you are a noob to the business-sphere (as most professional volunteers are) you may look up this stand-out acronym. It may confuse you with its lead-fisted mission to inform you in as few words as possible.

Here is what I would do:

Mission-Oriented, Business-Integrated Services

Because it is four adjectives and a noun. The human eye can recognize three things in a clump together immediately, but four starts confusing it. Either your brain can clump it into two groups of two and do intuitive multiplication, or it can count one through four, or it can recognize three and add one. If your brain is like mine, it tries to run all three of these algorithms at once. If not, well done to your brains.

Grammar exists to asuage and expedite these sorts of things. By clumping the four adjectives into two groups of two adjectives it takes some of the pressure off uninformed brains. The hyphens clump, and the comma separates. The hyphens also show that the two noun/adjectives are describing the plain adjectives (I'm not so good I know the real terms for those, I'm pretty primitive myself).

Alternatively it could be:

Mission-Oriented, Business, Integrated Services

Not as physically pretty on the page, but still effective, takes down the adjectives to three (still intuitively recognizable). It does, however, change the meaning. This is where people who pay grammar, and in particular punctuation, lose their readers.

Are the services integrated? Is the business these services serve integrated? Are they business services that are integrated?

Without punctuation, you'd never know. They're just words in the ether of interpretation.

At least "Mission-Oriented" seems pretty straight forward. There's little other thing for either of these adjectives to be interpreting.

I know, this may be overkill. It may over analyse the message. You could argue the jumble of adjectives get the message across sufficiently without the grammar, and besides it's an acronym---people don't even pronounce the actual words! They pronounce the word "mobis", like mobil, but through a snake's mouth.

I stand by the idea that if MOBIS is a term to describe bettering your product (services are products) then you are falsely advertising the effectiveness of said product. That's all. It's bad, so the seller is bad, and I wouldn't spend my money there.

Vanity

Are all people as pre-occupied by appearence as I am? I spend very little time actually readying myself for public appearences, but spend gratuitous amounts of time before hand planning my whole wardrobe and minimal makeup repertoires. Scanning through haut couture magazines and analyzing minute blendings of color and placement of metallic shades above and below various layers of eyelash. I translate cartoon characters, and TV actress wardrobes and makeup sets from long shots to closeups, and try to find equivalents in my existent closet, then rake through malls for similar things. I do this in binges every 3 years or so, depending on my life situation.

The current transformation is from Peace Corps Volunteer to Yuppie.

Truth be told, half the Volunteers I met were already on the Yuppie Fast Track. Suits and delusions of power enough to help the world, a handsome bunch of Anakin Skywalkers. I went with a nice pair of linen slacks, Cairo circa 1942 sort of look, and a brace of brightly flowered button down shirts, two darts away from being Aloha wear. I had zero pairs of heels.

Little did I know what Moldovankas had in store... Two years' inundation of stillettos and sparkles birthed me back into America stylin.

Pair that with the year of Princess enforced one hour daily of fake eyelash application and costume scrutiny, it's amazing I don't preen constantly.

I do notice everything, though. From Hip:Leg ratio, whether you'd look better in profile or straight on, how much hotter you are than me, and me than you, hair maintanence, age of clothes, uneven eyeliner, brand of shoe, and whether all these things work for you or against your personality. How much they reflect your personality. How much of your personality you soak into these damned things. If I compliment your $500 Manolos, and you shrug or light up.

Anyway...I tell myself I only worry about these things when my mind is not otherwise occupied, like with work, or driving.

And since I do these things in binge cycles, I like having help. Since this one in particular is into unknown social territory, help would be nice. My first two forays were completely alone except for my mother's voice: "You know, you are petite."

This turns out to have been gold. I had no clue, but as soon as I walked into the super elite petite sections of Ann Taylor, it's like the clothes were made just for me! Like Guess things are for Key$a or American Apparel for my friend FrannyPants.

It was nice, but nearly as nice as my first shopping experience in Texas. It's Texas, things are bigger and better in Texas, right? Well, they are bitches about parking, but they know how to grease thier commissions. I had just been whinging with a shop girl at DKNY in Maryland about how I have no clue what clothes to buy for my first office job, and needed a personal assistant. She agreed, and folded the skirt and put it away.

These girls, Christine and Francesca, saw me walk in and didn't stop at "Hello, can I help you?" but expanded:

Hi! I'm Christine! What's your name?

Kiddo

So, how are you? What are we looking for today?

Oh, you know, work clothes.

Ok, well, I just helped a young lady in a legal office, do you like any of these (25) things.

They also served me Merlot, and gave me great advice, and I bought things from them without question, hoping they may get a slice. I was even sold a pencil skirt for $1. Their passion and professionalism were fantastic. They allowed me to think really hard for 1 hour, and now, my wardrobe is built to the point where I need not worry again about it.

Thank you.

Now I need my wardrobe to look like this:

And not just be a random bar slung between water works and a wood shelf.

Houston

I'm visiting my friend Houston, in his namesake hometown, for my vacation this year. What do I do, on my annual vacation, you ask? I work 8-10 hour days in a fun little office, and help host fun little networking round tables and presentations about oil wells in Yemen. I wear pantyhose, suits, and three inch heels. I make spreadsheets and battle with Microsoft Word for the privilege of typing upside down to make name-place cards for lunches (Hint: it's not possible. Manipulate the system by flipping the name positions on the page and then flip the direction of the paper as you feed it into the printer one page at a time.). I learned that if you are making an online agenda for a series of activities for a group of people, overkill and simplicity are key.

This is very fun, and useful. I learn all sorts of things, meet all sorts of people, and receive some Yemeni coffee (yum). I also see a whole city from a Not Tourist's perspective. I know most of the highway systems, and where all the HOV lanes are. I know which restaurants have good take out, which suck, which biker bars are particularly unsafe, and which will give you free baklava if you are made to wait too long.

Things I have learned about Texas and Texans:

1. Houstonians are a breed of particularly aware, educated, and clean-accented Texans.

2. "Everything is Bigger in Texas" does not necessarily mean size. It also mean quality. If you are going to open a restaurant, it is not going to be some anonymous building with food and seating inside, it's going to be themed, and decked out, and the staff is going to be competent. I have met no incompetent employees, from security gaurds to waiters to managers of oil corporations. Even people who work slowly, and in circles (I have met only two), finish their jobs to the nth degree.

3. The world runs on the things people do here. We worry about gas prices for a reason. This city is largely where the deals are brokered for those prices. It is the cradle of capitalist life. Such an overarching theme, and motivational core lends the entire city a sense of Can Do not currently felt elsewhere in the world. The roads and streets are ridiculously clean, the street cleaners dress business casual, the shopping strip malls are sequestered in glades seemingly designed by adult graphic design nerds. While there are super-churches dotting the highways, high quality restaurants and shoe boutiques evoke the same God/Jesus awe and devotion.

4. Sheriffs, of course, wear ten gallon hats and ride horses through the streets in packs of 5 or 6 pintos.

5. There are no zoning laws. Want your house to be the next puppy palace? Go for it. Want to build a skyscraper with a 7 level parking garage in this neighborhood? Show me the money. It's crazy. Luckily there is enough money flowing through all these ramshackle entrepreneurs succeed and fallen shacks of yesteryear's failings are few and far between. Either that or some observant person will see that bankrupt China Buffet that looks like Disney financed a mini Beijing, and refit it as a bonsai and other big tree nursery--instant gimmick. Why not?

I like it.

Nasty

A new and wonderful this has started: When I blow dry my un combed hair, strands clump together, they stay wet longer and blow around like strands of sunny kelp. They fall into configurations around my face that make me look like Key$a. It's off putting. Like wearing a wig for the first time, no way your face can look like that. No way you, your face can transform so much with something so arbitrary. If you've never tried it, it's $10 worth of fun from Party City.

I've worn wigs a good deal before, and never was I perturbed by their outcome. It''s awesome, in fact, to suddenly be a red head. Your own natural hair though,, and realize you suddenly look exemplary of many an abhorrent thing.

I look nasty, in fact. Slutty and mean. Not dirty with mud in my skin, but suggestive of it in a degrading and cheap fashion. I look ready to offend you just to watch you feel bad about yourself, like I might glean some vicious satisfaction from it. I look, suddenly, like I have undergone a serious change of personally and am now hard to dea with and nauseating to your own, higher sensibilities.

Luckily my hair dries, I straighten it and put it in a pony tail and arrive to work fresh and tidy, 10 minutes early. The next several hours are spent with a good deal of attention dealt to consideration of others, making their lieves easier and richer. For guests I am sweet and good humored and obliging. For co-workers I look for things they need help with and then do them.

So leaving tonight it's mentioned in passing that the innocent busboy with his huge liquid eyes, and nervous hand gestures should learn to be more nasty (implication to “stand up for himself”) and he can learn from Her---giant finger gestures at me.

Instantly three other coworkers chime in – Oh yea! She IS nasty!

I am surprised and a little offended. Who are these people, and what have I done to them? When did I cease being a skipping pollyanna and become a whip cracking delilah? If this is true, why has no one else in my life ever noticed it?

RegrEtsy

Zoids and her hubby, uh, Boy Zoids, are having a steampunk party in my sweet basment for Boy Zoids' b-day. I am their Organizer. I imagine myself as a blonde Jennifer Lopez from that one movie. I call and drum up ideas etc.

I have already experimented with some uber british olde recipes. I have rearranged furniture. I have draped everything in pretty cloth. I have started rigging a weird tutu/corset thing made of a wife beater and coat hangers. I have spent too much money on little brass studs to decorate everything.

Then I realized how hard some of these things are to make-- phew! Sewing!

I talk to my little friends on the facebook via some sort of new fangled ICQ and one, Card Shark, sends me a sweet idea for a steampunk bodice:

I take some issue with it, but am amused by the site it comes from "regretsy.com" and it occurs to me that if I can buy something this crazy on etsy, I must be able to find exactly what I want!

Here they are.

The only thing I have to regret is my life wasted as an artist and not an engineer so I cannot afford to buy such beautiful artistic things.

Encouragement

What is the difference between reactions to positive and negative feedback? What is more motivational? No witty story is going to grow here as I contemplate this. It's one of those less than fun situations where my brain focuses too much on the moment. Digestion becomes the thing to do later. I have faith my brain keeps the words and emotions in a bundle and unpacks them on its own time, like in my dreams or whatever, and that the confrontation with criticism will eventually prove to be productive.

If it does, I will consciously never be able to attribute the outcome to that person, that time, those words they used to mould me anew.

My current menial labor is in a restaurant. I started as a busser—that idiot who brings you bread, water and silverware, the unknowledgeable a-hole hovering with a fifty percent chance of screwing something up for you without you knowing it. Yep. That was me. I was taught a thousand tiny details about things you, a guest, are not supposed to notice. The fact that you don't notice them is what means I'm doing my job. So I won't enlighten you on what they are, only how I feel, emphatically, about it.

It is very noble work. Someone must do it so others can enjoy their lives. The sort of training undergone to make guests feel smooth and carefree is ongoing. Even after you are technically proficient other anal retentive people working higher in seniority and merit are going to continuously notice things you didn't do and should have. It is a steady stream. A steady stream of negative feedback.

Most people attempt to put positive spins on this negative feedback, to say it with a smile, or whatever. Most people fail at this.

It tends to come out as a very clever combination of “You're Wrong” and “You're Good.” Win for behavior, fail in execution.

In between these motions are little glimpses of social behind-the-scenes footage between staff members. In these moments you are not being criticized at all, but are on equal footing with everyone around you. It raises you way up. It has a Machiavellian way of eliciting dog-like devotion.

Bussing, in particular, is great for training people like you would train a dog, because of its monotony and eternally changeless repetition of movements. Constancy.

Personally, this is an ideal environment for accepting criticism. The stress of the initial criticism melts into the next and the repetition builds up awareness. Unfortunately, this too has its limits.

After so long, I get bored with the repetition and stop caring whether or not I'm being criticized at all. Improvement stops. It becomes no better than the all love or all hate environment. Which is only the fault of the task at hand. If it were a task complex as, say, directing films, I would flourish.

Variation with constancy? Is that what we've learned in today's rumination on mundanity? Ironic to anyone else?

Today's Gym Adventure

Middle aged ladies on a walk date. One is late because a kid had a sore throat. One is late because she has a sore throat, and we all know that you're about to come down with typhoid if your throat is parched from mouth breathing all night.

They also called in maintenance to complain about the smell in the gym. Apparently, it was like “vomit,” but I'd be running for 15 minutes at this point after a 10 minute warm up, and well, I guess my nasal passages are just out of touch.

In the past I would have disdained these women. In the past I'd have ignored them, let their story about a puking 9-yr-old and carpooling roll right by me. I'd come up out of the situation like a mermaid surfacing to clear, interesting conversation.

I am trying to be a better person, and see the relevance of their lack of pancakes yesterday morning. I decided good people do that. Give other people chances. Give the benefit of the doubt that perhaps they are an undercover spy and are suffocating. Perhaps I can relieve their bordom with sprightly and inspiring spontaneity. Maybe they really are interested in war, and ancient mosaics, or how magnets work.

It could be worth it to find out, right?

Self Improvement

Everyday is another Pollyanna/Lil Orphan Annie opportunity to become a better person, in some way. Either you help a blind person across a street, listen to someone complain, learn some new vocab, edit a resume, apply to a new job, drill holes somewhere, try hoola hooping for the first time, discipline your dog in a loving, gentle way, experiment with a new recipe, read a book... whatever. Well, I do half a dozen distinct self improvement things everyday, and I don't want to today.

Sitting at my new desk in the new basement looking at a gorgeous piece of Klimt art, and then my sketches for the painting to be replicated on the back of my door, and my guitar, all the collage cards I need to send out, the book I just finished, the millions of Monster.com responses I have two hours to respond to, the power drill on my floor, the endless more books to read, and I come up with three tears and three words like any good three year old might:

I don't wanna.

How much positive movement forward can we force out of ourselves before we need a black out day? It must be one of those things that requires inertia and desire. It probably depends on the person. Scratch that, it definitely depends on the person.

But, what are the reasons for breaking down? Smoothie had a breakdown apparently. Not too big, not that she couldn't easily recover from within an hour or two, but it was unexpected. What are the pressures that go into a person, and what are the devices in them that digest these pressures and relieve them to non-toxic levels?

Like always I am full of questions and short on answers. But, it shows forward movement that I've defined the questions, right? Now I can form a hypothesis and get on with the betterment.

Yes!

Kristen Bell's Sloth Melt Down

Feeling down, therefore Short Round showed me this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5jw3T3Jy70

It is so incredibly worth watching, I cried with joy that there are other freaks in the world, and that some of them look that good.

Especially ones that every man I have ever dated has a mad crush on. This video makes me not only laugh until my eye makeup runs and I literally hug my sides, but gives me hope that I might be somewhere in the ball park of Kristen Bell.

Or at least in the nosebleeds.

(And if anyone wants to tell me how to download videos like this and/or embed them directly, I'm eager to learn.)

Drill Kiddo Drill

Today's Assignment: To hang a closet rack.

Tools: power drill, level, pencil, pre-made (non Ikea) rack/shelf unit.

It should be noted here that Ikea is superior in almost all ways. This instruction manual comes in three languages. Ikea's comes in none. The graphic designers and engineers they

have at Ikea have no need for words---they are THAT good at showing which to tool to use when on which piece of wood or metal or wall or plastic or cloth... They are brilliant. They also design ALL of their pieces of furniture, each shelf, screw, leg, support board, are unique and distinct looking from all others. They are also all precisely measured so no hack sawing is required.

I am circumnavigating the need for a hacksaw today by adapting the design of the non-Ikea shelving unit. That's right, I'm a genius, it's ok to worship.

What is not so precise about this particular, generic, Best Buy of DIY stores, are the numbers of things they include. I have three too many fat screws, two too many thin screws and one too few stud covering plastic cap guy.

Luckily, I am an adult and will refrain from knocking my noggin on the edges of any white metal.

I feel like I'm commiting treason against my holy land, Ikea, land of marzipan and gravy, land of color and delight in efficiency, land of show, land of self explanation, exploration, mix and match heaven. Where a person can easily make a nest worth feathering.

Drunk the koolaid?

Um, that's lingon berry juice--B****.

Why MamaGaard Rocks 1

My father doesn't like travel or vacations much meaning my mom, Colleen Ostergaard, who adores travel and adventure, sometimes takes vacations solo with excess children. She approaches these vacays with a balanced diet of planning and spontaneity; hotels are usually booked, cities are always met on schedule, days are free to who we meet and what we encounter. Getting lost, missing ferries, meeting pool sharks, she incorporates these things with poise and a competency that enriches every trip without losing all-important safety or plane ticket deadlines.

The greatest example I have of this, is the first time I was aware of it. I was seven and Mom and her friend Kimiko wanted to take me and my best friend Mika to a super sweet, mountain top spa resort thing outside of Taipei. We lived in




Taipei at the time, so this was to be a weekend trip. No worries.



We start. Lovely weather, road trip games, Mika and I have little idea as to where we are going, but don't care, because we're together, and we're seven. The moms do their chat thing in the front, we pay them no mind.



Half up the mountain we get flagged over by some dirty looking chinese people. Thank golly Mom speaks chinese, so she can understand what they're talking about. I don't get a translation, so we must be ok. We go on, there's this amazing cliff to our left, and clouds start filling in the valley so I can't look at the trees and bushes anymore. The same cliff rises to our right and the patterns of the rock blur as we are trucking along at a good 30 miles an hour. There's a tunnel up ahead.


I like tunnels, we hold our breath going under them. A good car game. Instead, though, there are chinese police men in blue uniforms waving their arms and shouting. I can't hear or understand what they say, but Mom gets out to talk to them. She can. She's cool.


She comes back and talks seriously with Kimiko. Mika and I start being quiet, I ask if I can hold my breath through the tunnel. “Of course, honey,” says Mom. Mika and I hold our breath, but because of the serious talking between the moms we don't try to tickle each other while we turn blue. We enter the tunnel. When we come out the other side we pass under a honest-to-goodness waterfall like I have ALWAYS wanted to see. It was awesome. On the other side of the water fall are more peasant looking ladies, they are also waving their hands.

Mom rolls down her window. I see giant, giant rocks in the road before us. Giant. Some of the ladies are trying to push them into the valley, they disappear into the clouds. I want to throw one. Mom rolls up her window and I have no recollection of how the hell we turn around in a one-lane tunnel or one-lane cliff face switchback. The next thing I remember (does stress block memories? Mom tells me I was very quiet for this part) is Mom and Kimiko throwing more boulders into the clouds like the ladies did. We'd returned past the police men and going down hill now. She told me to stay in the car. I wanted to help, I wanted to throw a rock, but I stayed because Mom is always right about what to do and how to do it.

My mother stayed calm and pragmatic. One villager might spread rumors, one police man might exagerrate, but 5 villagers and 3 police man and several hundred big rocks are enough evidence to destroy a good holiday. She weighed options and made life-saving decisions. She used all her mental and physical skills in a synthesis of competency to get Mika, Kimiko and I home safely. This was when she stopped being just my mom, and started being, objectively, a hero.

Buck Versus the Vacuum

Buck is over-motivated in protecting me from live vacuum cleaners. He finds joggers, golfers, and walkers to be threats to his national security also, but they are safely outside his glass portculis, and away over his grassy moats.

They are also pretty silent and have many obvious weak points to scratch and disembowel.

This guy though, is under the sway of a trusted pack mate, loud, completely metal and plastic.

He will, I'm sure this is not unique to this dog, chase it and bark at it from a distance of 4 inches but never get closer. Very barbarian in technique, but without any follow through. Have we, his human pack reined him in?

Whether this intimidation tactic is instinctive or learned, his new behavior is definitely learned. Thanks to 4 months of very consistent contact and lots of discipline sessions, Buck now hears the vacuum and starts to bark, looks over his shoulder at me, growls, and I say No, and he trots over and goes into pre sleep mode on my lap. It's amazing. I'm very proud.

But a little worried. Have I stripped my little warrior buddy---competent slayer of aliens---of his protect-and-scare-off nature?

Tumblr

I have three friends using the blogging competition: Tumblr. It is a little intimidating for me and my pretty little space here. They are both serious and prolific--things I will never be.

Differences: layout. subject. content. commenting. exclusiveness.

I love google. I am a minion and devotee to the gods of free stuff and laid back environments in which to enjoy them. Google offered me this free place to design and yak to my little heart's content, and I took it.

Tumblr has some very cutting edge looking pages with big, black fonts. The users speak in bullet points and just show things they like, and drop grains of thought out after them, or refer to what other people have said about whatever it is. It's very much like a live serial of Vanity Fair or The New Yorker. It, actually, is like a cyber New York. As seen by this suburban hick, anyway.

I, therefore, am fascinated. I want to be more like it. I want to be serious and prolific! I want people to say things to me and to respond to them. I want pretty pictures on my blog.

So, Kiddo will heretofore think less, react more, and find prettier pictures.

For example, when running an image search for "Tumblr" you are as likely to get that logo up there as you are to get this awesomeness for sexy Spanish hipsters:

Naivte and Movies that are Probably Good

The Oscars. The Academy Awards.

I don't know the etymology of "Oscars," I like to think it is the name of the guy who modeled for that statue. I do know where Academy Awards comes from. It's simply descriptive. Literally, The Academy chooses who gets the Award.

Who the s*** is the Academy? Get this propaganda:

They are the more than 6,000 artists and professionals who bring the magic of the movies to life. They are the men and women who transport audiences to galaxies far away and to worlds long ago and who create the previously unimagined for the big screen. They are the entertainment industry's preeminent filmmakers. They are Academy members.

Could you be any more into yourselves? I hate that I admire these people. They are so smarmy that this year Hugo and The Artist, amazing amalgams of Hollywood masturbation, are the big names for the series of awards. 11 for Hugo, Martin Scorcese's attempt to be warm, paternal, and heroic for his educational prowess. 10 for The Artist, a super fun looking silent film revival attempt that no one but over-educated film nerds like me are going to attempt watching or ever possibly enjoy.

It's enough to make me start doubting the objective integrity of the academy.

ha.

Like it possibly existed before.

Kiddo = naive.

Joe

"The only people who should compare themselves to Ronald Reagan are Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II, everyone else should just be quiet."

The first time I have laughed out loud today.

Thank you Joe Scarborough, for giving me a worth while reason to be awake this early.

Target Infatuation

Shopping at Target is different. It's the lighting or the quality of floor, or the cart, everything is a little more plush. The plastic is denser, the linoleum thicker on the concrete, Carpeted sections are more clearly defined. The holiday décor is themed, and consistent—providing a feeling of walking through a story, rather than store.

I was forced, forced I say, to shop at Target. My list was all in-edibles. I had to drop off library books. There were shopping bags to be recycled, and the last time I used my Trader Joes bags at Safeway, the check-out chick gave me more passive aggressive criticism than I had previously thought the breed of people capable of.

With these seemingly unconnected reasons, you, darling reader, can see clearly why I had to experiment with my grocery shopping settings.

And it bloomed with so much contentment. Open, cleverly, with winter clothes on sale. The sale racks organized by size—a whole rack of extra smalls at $4. Yep. One thermal and two tanks in the cart. It's smart on their part and smart on mine. Right?

Duped?

no.

Surely not, the layout of the store did not weasel me into obeying the demands of the economy...

The layout of the food section, once I got there, was incredible. No confusing sections or deviations from logical order of foods, no weird inedible soaps or towels shoved in among tortillas or coffee. It's awesome. All snack food is even right at the back, sequestered safely away from where I needed to go.

People are friendlier at Target. First conversation was around the sale tank tops. Second by greeting cards. Third at check out. All women, all smiling, all dressed well but not flashy—Have I come to the home of tasteful middle class house wives? Why do these ladies value, like me, company brand tissues with pretty patterned boxes? All the colors are subdued, and calm, as though they had been knitted for Etsy. The detergent aisle included three brands of eco-friendly and minimalist designed companies of soap. Soap.

Still duped? No, it's really a wonderland.

The Boredom

Regular life being what it is, and so many of us experiencing it, little can actually be interesting. Expression therefore, becomes the thing that keeps us from inertia.

When I become bored, I become boring to others as well.

But when engaged, the Tree of Life, or football, or sitting very still become fascinating, and descriptions of them flower in entertainment.

But the boredom is so easy. Is it like recharging? Like sleeping? Does coffee cheat us of quality boredom? Do we cheat ourselves of better entertainment by cramming too much of it into our days?

Is my boredom bringing me to similar conclusions usually reserved for stoners, drunks and philosophers?

Jammin' Mon

T-Bone said: Yea, I got that for you because you need to chill out.

He referred to my suite of Bob Marley tab book and cd.

It's a new, weird thing that I don't really think adheres to my personality, because I'm anal retentive about everything. Thus proving T-Bone's the point.

So I find myself, very shortly thereafter, and in a no way related series of events, in the quintessential jam band basement of suburbia.

Everything about the experience screamed a teenage life I ducked out on while rock climbing, watching Audrey Hepburn movies, and making gnocchi.

I arrived in my little car with a tinful of homemade cookies. Puffy coat, fluffy gloves, hair all tangled in a giant scarf-- and not knowing anyone in the house except Pippin who, last night, had gotten a tad defensive of jamming 'cus girls always fuck up the creative flow.

Teen Sister answers the door after Dad yelled stuff. Between two and five dogs bark. I wonder frenetically how I will say things. Hi! I'm here for Pippin, Hi, my name is Kiddo, is your son here? Hi! How are you—point me in the jam band direction? How do you do, I'm here for the band.

The labs jump all over me I'm so thrown off I don't even introduce myself. I'm escorted to the basement door: “Pippin! Your Friend is here!” Teen Sis smiles and walks off. Dogs continue jumping and sniffing my crotch. I side swipe into the cellar and clump down the stairs, trying to pull my scarf off and purse back up my arm and getting over the four dog gang bang I just pulled my girl parts out of.

The basement has a couple plastic christmas trees, country kitchen style wardrobes abandoned in the last century, a semi circle of seven distinct amps, a rack of guitars, a bass, and a drum kit I am stunned is actually on a cheap persian rug—who knew, all stereotypes are genuinely rooted in basement reality.

My adorable friends screw together a genuine steel drum. It's silver and pretty and sways, and makes noises like fairies alighting on stars. They discover problems with two amps, a cord and a bass. One compromises to play the bass like a dulcimer, and the other finds the trippiest sounds a little keytar can spew. We eat my little choc chip cookies and I wish, for the umteenth time I were talented.

It is the afternoon, and no one thinks of drinking alcohol. Pippin asks “I have flavored water, and water flavored water—what do you want?” No one even thinks to smoke things, like I had half expected.

They, and therefore me too, chill out like only 15-year-olds should be able to.

Censorship

Dear Honorable Senator/Representative, and his/her staff,

Please do not support the Protect IP Act / Stop Online Piracy Act. The internet is not an entity that can or should be controlled to that strenuous a degree.

In the way that arming policemen with guns heightens the motivation for criminal firepower, attempts to muzzle online piracy will only inspire such pirates to escalate their methods.

In the mean time, students of all ages, start up businesses, researchers of foreign websites, and even curious searchers of knowledge, will lose out.

Thank you for your time and consideration,

Kiddo

Copy, Paste, Adjust, Send.

Heathers

An epic tale of the changelessness of humanity, no matter the actions taken.

When a couple of cute 17 year olds, Smoothie and AdoptoGaard, wanted to know about fashion in the late 80s and early 90s, I, being the loving elder that I am, first thought Clueless. It wasn't free on Netflix, but the internet seems to know me pretty damn well, and it spaketh: “You Will Like Heathers.”

It's true, I do.

Zap forward an hour and a half---

AdoptoGaard is shouting “I told you! He wasn't dead! Find an adult!” she gets so excited she leaps, double footed off the super plush, super suburban couch and gestures with both hands wildly at slightly worse-for-wear Winona Ryder.

Heathers isn't about achieving happy ends through following society's suggestions, NetFlix aside. It's about forcing society to conform to ideals of the tortured, less popular kids in high school. Or at least it starts as a fantasy for those of us who fit that role. And it is appropriately cartoonish in its portrayal of this fantasy.

In its gore: a blue mouth full of draino, perfectly symmetrical gun shot wounds.

It's colourful in its language: “Very very,” “It's will be so very,” “I love my dead gay son!” And who could forget “F*** me gently with a chainsaw”? The quotes are timelessly naïve in their brutality and dipshittery.

In its wardrobe: Red scrunchiis, and the world's greatest cheerleader outfits (Kurt Cobain clearly jerked off to this film at some point). It's a time capsule of attitude.

It was exactly what Smoothie and AdoptoGaard needed, but not what they expected. No teen/tween movie made in the last 10 years has featured something so edgy as serial killing, suicide as a social problem, or even Christian Slater's lesser work with pirate radio in Pump Up the Volume.

If I'm wrong, I'm willing to watch. Challenges like defusing bombs are deemed too stressful or outlandish for teen/tweens, but if we've learned anything from the course of the nineties and the centurian zeroes, it is that people destroying their classmates is something you may want to prepare yourself for.

Books like How to Survive a Zombie Invasion or How to Survive a Robot Uprising may be amusing in their premise, and their deadly serious tone, but they won't actually help you stop Columbine from happening to your local collection of queen bees, nerds, jocks and outcasts.

Winona Ryder will. How ought one respond to finding out you just inadvertantly killed your greatest frenemy? Fake it to be a suicide. How do you stop your super hot boyfriend from blowing up your school? Shoot off his middle finger and smoke a cig.

AdoptoGaard was floored.

I feel my duty as a Knowledgable Elder has been fulfilled.