Zen Cat

It's time to go over one of my huge pet peeves. I mean, this is huge. Mostly because I cannot think of any possible circumstance under which I, as a diner, would ask this question, because it is so phenomenally stupid. This is one of those things that makes me instantly want to kill you, and any future niceness to me during the meal will not make up for it. Oh, I will be nice to you because I work for tips, but I might speak to you as if you are slow. You will have been branded as an idiot within the first 90 seconds.

Tip #6: Do not point at a menu and ask your server any variation of the question, "Is this the menu?"
(Common variations include: "Is this all y'all have?" "Is this the only menu there is?" "Do you have another menu?")

Perhaps you can imagine how much sheer willpower it takes for a sarcastic person such as myself to hold in the snarky comments that spring to my lips when someone asks me if the menu is the only menu. Since this is my blog, I will indulge myself in a bit of stress relief and just let loose now, K? "No, we have a whole other menu in the back waiting JUST FOR YOU, MA'AM. I'm sorry, the greeters weren't aware that you would be requiring the SPECIAL PEOPLE MENU. No, it's a piece of laminated fancy paper with words on it that we distribute for our own entertainment. No, but the other one is only for people who are going to tip better than you... sorry. No, actually, that's not the only menu there is. As you can see, we have at least 30 other menus scattered about the dining room currently. No, the kitchen makes several more dishes, but you'll just have to guess what they are-- it's a secret. What, that thing that says MENU? Why would that lead you to believe it is the one and only menu? SHUSH! The first rule of the double secret menu club is you can't talk about the double secret menu club!!!!! Has no one told you the rules?!! No, it's a fucking armadillo! OF COURSE IT IS THE MENU!"

Wow. I feel better.

I am a bit overwhelmed by my day at work, in case you couldn't tell. My last table was illiterate, for one thing. As in, they could not read the menu. At all. And they didn't want to tell me they were illiterate, so they kept repeatedly ordering things we don't have, and I only figured it out when I asked them if they needed more time and the man said, "Let me just think," and then stared at the WINE MENU for five minutes before ordering pasta, which we also don't have.

I know I should not be mad at those people. And I wasn't, after I figured out what was going on. But man, when they were just sitting there ordering random shit, I was this far away from snapping. The woman did the smart thing, really. She asked for the specials and then ordered one of them. The man was floundering. He asked for sirloin, then ribeye, then something else, I forget what, then pasta. I almost wish they had said something. Tell me you have bad eyesight, I'll read the menu to you. But he just kept guessing, until finally I started listing dishes off the top of my head out of pity and because I didn't want to stand there all day.

This is why we need a better system of education. I cannot believe we make America out to be this wonderful country, when in this day and age, people are walking around functionally illiterate. I was struck on the drive home by how difficult it must be for that couple to function. They were forty-ish. How did they get to the restaurant? Surely you need to read to pass the driver's test. Or to read street signs. And do they just use the same bus route their mother taught them to use when they were kids, and hope the city doesn't make any changes? Do they mostly shop and live in their own neighborhood? Unfathomable to me. And frightening. What if that woman was meant to write the great book of the 21st century? What do we lose as a society by not educating our people?

Tags: what not to do in a restaurant, waitressing, literacy

This Weekend's Mission, If I Choose To Accept It

Learn CSS.

I should mention that Mike is done taking the Louisiana bar. I'm sure he passed, so congratulations to him! We celebrated last night by getting Thai food at Basil Leaf, and then passing leisurely humid hours on the patio at St. Joe's. This morning I made cinnamon buns, which we have just finished eating after a nice long sleep-in (strangely uninterrupted by Jolee-- thanks, Jolee, for being quiet and not flopping on my head as per usual! My kitty's so sweet).

I have my laptop back now, and it's time to pick up the task I was dabbling with earlier in the week. I am designing a new web site. I hope to do this all by myself, without a template and without a program. Well, I use Ace HTML, which is freeware. But I generally just write the code myself as you would in a text editor, and use the software to preview what I've done. I am not the most advanced web designer, but I do enjoy creating graphics (I use Gimp, also freeware, but it can pretty much do the stuff that PSP can do-- man, I am just cheap, cheap, cheap) and learning new things. My relationship with computers... how would I describe it? I don't have an engineer's or programmer's gift for seeing how things work. What I do have is incredible internet savvy, an ability to pick things up quickly and re-adapt them, and a huge bag of tricks. Really, if you know a lot of tricks, most people will think you know a lot, because let's face it, the number of people who do have that sort of in-depth knowledge is small.

Working off a tutorial, here is what I've come up with so far. Please note that it doesn't do anything yet, nor are the colors in place, because I need to make a header banner before I pick the color scheme, so what I've got there is pure randomness. This is me playing. I'm probably not even going to keep the bg image. But I learned to make boxes, which was exciting. And I like that things stay where you put them, without having to mess around with tables. My first site had frames. Then my ex-boyfriend told me I should use tables, and reworked my site for me. And I learned tables. Now, from the reading I've been doing, it appears that the use of tables for layout is going to become obsolete.

Anyway, off I go to play freely in the internet universe...

Thirteen Things I Hate About the Star Wars Prequels

(Boba Fett says: I pity da fool who likes the Prequel Trilogy!)
People who were around for the thirteen reasons I hate the Star Wars Special Editions probably know what they are in for. It is SO MUCH FUN to rant on topics about which one is knowledgeable. And, well. I know Star Wars. Oh, I know Star Wars. I know it to a degree that induces strangers to suggest that I need to go out of doors more often. So believe me when I say that all the hate I am about to dispense, I dispense out of love. Pardon me if I begin to foam at the mouth in a geekly frenzy. And when you are finished, go down to the post below and tell Jolee Bindo he is pretty. Thank you. With that said, here goes:

1. Jar Jar Binks. You knew it was coming, so let's just get that one over with and move on to the real meat of the hate.

2. How Padme died of a broken heart and lost the will to live. Oh come on. Seriously? Seriously? The woman was married to Darth Vader. One would think Lucas could come up with something more interesting and less... Victorian... than dying in childbirth of a broken heart.

3. Padme. A feminist deconstruction of Padme follows: She sucks. She is a decorative yawn of a useless female character who doesn't do anything. Really, you have to wonder where her daughter got her spunk from, 'cause damn.

4. The dialogue was lame. Especially the cringe-inducing "romance" dialogue in Attack of the Clones.

5. Continuity errors. "Do you remember your mother? Your real mother?" Luke asks Leia in Return of the Jedi. And then you have her die in childbirth. Oh sure, people try to hedge around it and come up with wacky theories (she remembers because they spoke in the womb using the Force, Leia thought Luke meant her mother on Alderaan, blah blah), but let's just admit what it really is: it's a huge glaring hole in the story that didn't have to happen.

6. One of my favorite aspects of settings like the original Star Wars and the Firefly 'verse is the lived-in rusted-out look. Lucas wanted it that way originally, because it made space different and fresh and real. Why he gave it up I do not know. The problem with CGI is if you use the right amount, impossible things come to life before the viewers' eyes. Use too much of it, everything looks fake. The prequels look fake to me.

7. There is a poop joke in The Phantom Menace. I think this is one of those things I'll never get over.

8. That creature with the lips in Jabba's Palace! I hate that thing!... Oh, fine, you got me, that was in the Special Edition. I am raving. I admit it. But I hate that thing with the diamond shaped head in the pod race. I hate that thing too, and it also lives on Tattooine, so #8 on my 13 has not been completely wasted.

9. Why did we even need to have Anakin as a little kid? Lord, that was annoying. Can we say marketing gimmick? Can we say merchandising? ("Moychandising! Moychandising! They put the picture's name on everything! Spaceballs the Lunch Box! Spaceballs the Breakfast Cereal!") But here's the little secret Lucas and his crew must have missed. News flash: I was five when I saw Star Wars for the first time. I still remember it. I loved it at first sight. Were there any kids in the original Star Wars? No, there were not. But ask my generation and the Gen Xers whether it mattered to them.

10. Pandering to the fans. They liked Boba Fett? Put him in! They liked C3PO and R2? Put them in! They liked Chewbacca? Put him in! Never mind that this is all highly, highly implausible in terms of plot.

11. Oh! Speaking of which (geez, get me going and off I go! I'm on a roll!), if Anakin Skywalker built 3PO and he and Artoo tagged around with the main characters for the ENTIRETY OF THE PREQUELS, why would Ben Kenobi not recognize them in Star Wars?

12. It didn't feel like Star Wars to me. To borrow a term from writers' workshops, it didn't "work." Nobody's motivations "worked" for me because we never got more than a superficial feel for the characters. Especially Anakin. He came across as more of a whiny teenager than a real villain. It was disappointing. It could have been so much more. This really came home to me in November, when I started playing Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. How come a video game felt more like classic Star Wars to me than the prequel trilogy? It seems like sacrilege. But they just got the atmosphere spot-on. The prequel trilogies, and the Clone Wars plot in general, felt like the sort of plot I would come up with when I was tired and out of ideas, patched together from a bunch of crap in my head, that I would edit the hell out of later, when I felt more inspired, because the story was lame and lacked spice.

13. Crap. No more space in the 13 and so much hate left to dispense! Yet, I feel benevolent tonight, so I will now dispense some love. I love Aayla Secura. Love. Her. And she was in the prequels. So there. If only we'd had more hot blue Twi'lek Jedi and less Jar Jar, it would all have been shiny.


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Tags: thursday thirteen, star wars

A Docile, Dignified Cat to Decorate Your Hearth

... or this one?

We hadn't had a Gratuitous Jolee Photo in a while.

A Man Walks Into a Bar...

Since my friends and family tend to think I'm dead when I'm not on IM or my blog, I am posting to let you know that the bar exam is this week and Mike is taking it on my laptop. To complicate matters further, the fan on my laptop is dying (yes! one month left on the extended warranty! which means the IBM guy will be coming to my house as soon as the bar is over) and I've been keeping the computer off in the evenings to preserve it so it doesn't die on my sweetie during his test.

And that's the story. Wish him luck!

Tags: bar exam

A New & Hilarious Breed of Spam

Has anyone else started getting these in the last couple of months? I've gotten the ones about penis enlargement. I've gotten the ones that say "RE:hey" to someone I would never click on because a) I don't know them, and b) I did not say hey to them in the first place. I've gotten the ones purporting to be from my webmaster, saying they need my account information (totally laughable because I own the domain and therefore am the webmaster). I get ones from a guy named Rogert, and I wish someone had the heart to email back and tell him that there is Robert and there is Roger, but Rogert is not actually a real name.

But these... these are my new favorite spam. They have a particular format that cracks me up. They are from some random name, doesn't matter. It usually sounds like a real name. The subject of the one I got today is "Your money, oak fungus." I have also gotten "Your future, Navaho blanket." How about "Your cash, pagoda tree"? I hate spam, but these are kind of awesome. They're so cryptic and bizarre. I wish I remembered more, but unfortunately I delete them after my first morning laugh. If you click to see what's inside, it's some drivel about Cialis-- and I really mean drivel, it's not even in complete sentences, it seems more like someone puked out a pile of words-- and then a short excerpt from what looks like a piece of fiction-- probably someone's work that's been stolen by the spammer. Here is the one that came with "Your money, oak fungus":

==========
he moved.
"Yeah. Your hydromagnetic trap, whatchamacallit . . . Object 77b. It's
"Me? Jon, I'm just a plain seagull and you're... "
"No way. Tender is surrounded by reporters. You should see him. He's
think upside down, reversing the curve of his wing, and reversing it
shut, unable to feel my arms or my legs, when Kirill spoke.

"Couldn't I? Don't you think that there might be other flocks, other
"That's all I wanted cleared up. You're Free to go.

On second thought, the excerpt also resembles words puked out onto the page. I wonder if they somehow caught on that I write science fiction, though that would be utterly creepy. The last one was vaguely SF-ish as well. But it didn't have seagulls.

However, I am upset that the contents of the email shed no light on how to get my very own Navaho blanket in my future...

Tags: spammers, junk mail, spam

I'm On A Victorian TV Spree

A Masterpiece Theatre rampage, if you will. I have been watching The Forsyte Saga this week on Netflix, which is slightly infuriating because there are only 2 episodes on each DVD. Of course, I watch the whole disc at once and then am forced to wait for the next to arrive. To carry my my obsession further, I have ordered North and South and Wives and Daughters on DVD. These are both adaptations of Elizabeth Gaskell books. I haven't seen North and South but have heard excellent things and am very much looking forward to it.

Still more reason people outside NOLA need to know that things are not back to normal here: Do your orders from Amazon get the following caveat?

"Your order is being sent to an area recently affected by Hurricane Katrina. We estimate that delivery of your shipment may be delayed up to 10 days or more. Click here for more information."

Shame on the government, shame on the U.S. Postal Service, and shame on people who think we're a bunch of whiners down here. And with that thought, I am off to watch some period drama.

Tags: masterpiece theatre, john galsworthy, elizabeth gaskell, forsyte saga, wives and daughters, north and south, new orleans, post-katrina

Dead Dog :-(

Today there was a dead dog at the first feeding station in Plaquemines. Already half-decomposed because of the heat so you could see its rib cage, but I am pretty sure it wasn't there last week. I would have seen it or smelled it, since I parked my car right where it was lying in the grass. The dog food and water was gone. I didn't take pictures, and there are probably people who don't want to see a dead dog anyway. At least now I know there is something out there. All the food stations were empty. The trip was much better this week because a) I had company, b) no ferry, and c) the joys of bug spray.

Poor dead dog. I guess it wasn't enough food, or it was too late.

Tags: new orleans, nola, katrina, post-katrina, plaquemines parish, animal rescue, pets

Thirteen Favorite Canned Soups

For a blog entitled "Still Life With Soup Can," I believe I don't have nearly enough posts about soups... in cans. And I dare say there is no one alive who loves soups in cans more than I do. I'm a canned soup connoisseur. Today I will show my appreciation for 13 top-of-the-line canned soups.

1. Progresso's Chickarina. Chicken! And mystery meatballs! In one soup, together in a marriage of bliss! I love this soup.

2. Campbell's Chunky's Sirloin Burger with Country Vegetables. Potatoes, veggies, and mini burgers, complete with little mini char lines from what I assume are little mini grills somewhere. How. Cute.

3. Campbell's Mushroom Soup. A classic. May it continue to make casseroles for many years to come. This is the one canned soup I will eat straight out of the can. (Little known dirty secret about me. Seriously. You can ask my dad. It's so good.)

4. Campbell's Select's Three Cheese Mushroom Ravioli with Vegetables.

5. Progresso's Chicken and Long Grain Wild Rice.

6. Healthy Choice's Zesty Gumbo. Doesn't taste a thing like real gumbo, but nor does it taste healthy.

7. Campbell's Select's Roasted Chicken With Rotini & Penne Pasta. Notable for a reason similar to #1 Chickarina: two kinds of pasta in one soup!

8. Campbell's Select's Chicken With Egg Noodles. Really no different from Campbell's Chunky's Classic Chicken Noodle, or Progresso's Chicken Noodle, but usually gets the edge because it is 30-50 cents cheaper.

9. Progresso's Turkey Noodle. I always remember that one of the poultry-variety Progressos has mushrooms in it, but can't remember which one. The other day I was pleased to rediscover, totally by accident, the fact that it is Turkey Noodle. That's what the world needs: more soups with mushrooms.

10. Campbell's Chunky's Chicken and Mushroom Chowder. !!!! What! I've never seen it! I must have it! I was just on their site looking up soups, and it is listed there. That's what I'm saying: more soups with mushrooms.

11. Progresso's Roasted Chicken Italiano. This one is rather tasty.

12. Progresso's Chicken and Herb Dumplings. I like these weird little dumplings. Yum.

13. Campbell's Chicken Noodle. I have moved on to the more sophisticated end of the canned soup spectrum these days, but this is where it all began.

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Tags: thursday thirteen, campbell's soup, progresso soup, canned soup, food

Plugging the Fam

Lo and behold, my little bro has jumped on the blogging train with me. Bry hails from St. Paul, Minnesota these days, and spends his time tromping through wetlands with lots of mosquitoes. He is rumored to have recently won a haggis throwing contest at the Scottish games (ew. haggis). I've spent some time today working on my mom's site. If anyone's in the Albany, NY, area and needs a facial, you should check her out! Her skincare and nail spa is called Clinical Dimensions, and it's in Troy.

It is nice that I'm not all alone out here in hyperspace... I mean, hypertext... I mean, on the internet.

Tags: blogging, family, clinical dimensions

Blogger Photo Q&A

Q: What's up with the ambiguously naked blog photos?
A: I'm actually wearing the same bathing suit as in the old picture. It's from J. Crew. It's white and strapless. I like to be ambiguous.

Q: What are you reading?
A: Lasher. Anne Rice.

Q: This looks like your old picture, except by a pool.
A: Lounging in the sun is my natural state of existence.

Q: And yet another photo with huge tortoiseshell sunglasses.
A: I want to maintain my anonymity.

Q: But we know your name.
A: So I have four pairs of large tortoiseshell glasses. Leave me and my preppiness in peace.

Tags: blogging

"There's Nothing Here"

Yesterday I drove down to the East Bank of Plaquemines Parish to fill the feeding stations there. It was the first time I had ever been there, and the first time I had done food/water stations by myself. You go to the West Bank and take a ferry-- if you have not seen a map of New Orleans, this will sound very confusing, because what I just said, if you were following, was I live on the East Bank but I went to the West Bank to get to the East Bank. But what happens is the Mississippi curves around in a circle at this point, so you have to cross it twice. I am kind of dubious of this ferry business now, because both times I was so far back in line that I had to sit and wait for another one (it's not a very big ferry). I think it probably puts more mileage on the car to drive through Chalmette, but it can't possibly take the hour I waited for the ferry, and anyway, there are only 1100 miles on my car.

The first two things that happened when I got out of my car at the first feeding station: I was swarmed, I mean absolutely swarmed as in they were crawling in my clothes, by mosquitos, and I saw a grasshopper the size of my fist. I thought, shit, it's a good thing they coincidentally found someone who grew up in the country. I think if I hadn't, I would have freaked out right there (as it was, I didn't freak out until later, but I'll get to that).

But as I looked around, I became increasingly confused. All the food and water pans were certainly empty. The volunteers I talked to told me I needed to figure out whether the food was being eaten by raccoons or armadillos. Surely, I thought, it must be wild animals. Why would there be dogs and cats out here? There was nothing here. What was I supposed to be feeding? The few houses I saw were so overgrown, they must have been abandoned for years. I combed my brain, trying to remember what had happened here-- wind or water? I guess what threw me off was that in New Orleans, the areas that got heavy water are quite brown and dead. And there are waterlines on the houses. But there, everything I saw was abundantly green, as far as the eye could see. It seemed odd to imagine that people had ever lived there. The food stations were all inside abandoned houses or sheds. At one station, the landmark was supposed to be the Bethlehem Judea African Baptist Church. But there was no church, just a sign and a concrete lot. And lots of weeds.

Then I looked up into the trees, and saw a mattress and the twisted remains of clothes. No wind had done that. Was it possible that everything was washed away so completely? I parked next to a yellow house that sat about thirty feet from its foundation. I crept through the trees to refill the food and water pans in the basement of a beige house. There were bags of old Mardi Gras beads there, incongrously bright against the rotting browns and grays of the silent house. I felt slightly wrong, being in someone's yard, like someone would pop out and yell at me to get off their property. But all was silence, except for the insect sounds that crowded in from the overgrown brush. (I was glad I didn't read this article, written about the exact town where I was, in which the residents talk about seeing spirits walking until after I'd come home.) There was a sign with weeds growing over it that said "God Bless America." There are no waterlines here, because everything is gone.

But there were signs of people along some stretches. I passed construction being done on a church and a school. I passed a neat grid of FEMA trailers with emergency vehicles parked in the driveways and a large sign labelling it "COP LAND." Mostly, though, it was a desolate strip of land, crowded with encroaching green and not much else. I kept seeing steps going to nowhere. One of the last stations was supposed to be behind a church. I pulled into the dirt road. There were mud-covered chairs and a bouquet of fake flowers lying on the ground in front of the church. Behind the church was a cemetary-- and most of the above-ground tombs were broken, crumbled, some empty because the caskets had floated out.

Childhood fears are strange. You never know when they will come back to bite you. I've been able to walk in graveyards for years, now. Maybe it was because I felt like an intruder; maybe I was feeling some of those spirits. I did feel sorry about it the whole way home, but at that moment I knew I had hit my limit: I could not get out of that car and go into that graveyard. Later, I read in my notes that a resident is feeding the animals there, plus I had left food at a shed nearby, so I felt a little better. But I still feel horrible about it, like I failed somehow. I feel badly because I wish I had talked to people and found out whether they had seen any animals, or whether I was just feeding armadillos and ghosts. I think there weren't people outside because I was there during dinner time. Next week I will do some detective work.

I can't shake the feeling I got when I realized that this place hadn't been deserted for fifty years, that it was Katrina that wiped it out and nature was trying to take it back. In the car, I had been listening to the Bruce Springsteen album "The Rising," which I know he wrote about 9/11, but all the songs seemed to be about what happened here. I just didn't know it would be as haunting as that. At least in New Orleans there is wreckage, debris to show that this wasn't always an open field next to a levee. At least there isn't nothing.

I don't remember how I felt, I never thought I'd live
To read about myself in my hometown paper
How my brave young life was forever changed
In a misty cloud of pink vapor
Around here, everybody acts the same
Around here, we all act like nothing's changed
Friday night, the club meets at Al's Barbecue
The sky is still the same unbelievable blue
Darling, give me your kiss, only understand
I am the nothing man...

Tags: new orleans, nola, katrina, post-katrina, plaquemines parish, animal rescue, volunteer

"I Didn't Know It was a Racial Thing"

I nearly spit out water when I ran across Prince Muddy Paws over on BloggingCat.com in a very familiar pose! HOW FUNNY. He's doing the Pimp Hand! It's particularly funny because they are both Himalayan cats. (Hmmm, I need to get an updated shot of the Pimp Hand. Jolee has no fur in this one.)

(The Pimp Hand) ----->

Tags: jolee, cat, pets

Thirteen Things About My Alleged Novel

Oh, fine, it's not "alleged." It's a novel. I'm just being ornery because rewriting is boring.

1. It is called Dangerous City, Dark Skyway.

2. It is roughly 70-ish,000 words long, and tends to grow or shrink as the second draft takes shape. In regular-people terms, this is, oh, 350 double spaced pages. Hopefully it will stick around 85K, as I expand the bits that don't transition well in the current draft, and put back in the bits I took out and put in this separate file because I wanted to put them somewhere else and couldn't decide where yet (can you see why I am not the most organized of writers?).

3. I had a goal of having it ready to send query letters to agents by the end of August, but I'm not sure it's going to happen. Because I procrastinate.

4. In my favorite scene, a character bombs her boyfriend's apartment.

5. Its genre is science fiction. Its sub-genre is space opera.

6. I have four bad-ass female protagonists.

7. My brother told me I needed to have an alien sitting at the bar sipping his Schlieven, so I put one in. We aren't sure what a Schlieven is, other than something aliens drink at bars that sounds cool.

8. I wrote a short story when I was fourteen that started with the line, "She was alone when she heard the footsteps." The character's name has changed, and the situation has changed, but the city is still called New Lessak City. The line is not the first line of the book, but is the first line of the fifth chapter.

9. My four female characters' professions, before they got involved in the Rebellion against the Galactic Empire (oh, sorry, wrong scifi, move along, nothing to see here): a computer programmer, a personal assistant, a pilot, and a waitress.

10. A short story made up of a few early scenes is currently under consideration... somewhere, where it has made it past a couple rounds of editors. But I can't say anything about it, because I don't know if they will end up buying it. And now that I've mentioned it out loud, I've jinxed it and they probably won't. Thanks a lot, blog.

11. It is my first novel.

12. Sometimes I worry that it completely sucks and I will never be published.

13. But not enough to ever stop writing.

Tags: thursday thirteen, DCDS, writing

Those Animal Rescue People Don't Mess Around

I have 100 lbs of cat food in the trunk of my car, and am going tomorrow morning to learn about feeding stations. Then Friday I am going feeding in Plaquemines Parish (which I have been informed is not as far of a drive as my city-dwelling self thinks it is). This is still needed because there are a lot of animals on the streets, though by now they are hiding and can't be caught.

Jolee Bindo promises not to be jealous of the homeless cats. Actually, I lied. He promises no such thing. Jolee Bindo is a possessive creature.

Tags: katrina, pets, animal rescue, volunteering

Political Compass

The Political Compass measures where you stand politically on both a left-right and libertarian-authoritarian axis. I remember doing this before, but I was ranting about something or other (housing projects), and yesterday I was ranting about something else (marriage amendments, abortion), and I thought I should go take the quiz again.

Here's where I land. Mmmm yeah. If there was such a thing as gasping in not-surprise, I would be doing it.

See, I try to have these coherent thoughts on politics, but my mind leaps ahead of itself, and I think I've said something profoundly meaningful, except I can't remember how I got there, and the usefulness of the thought is lost. Oh, I remember how the religious right came up, though. On Sunday some Baptists left me a card in the tip tray about how I'm a sinner who has committed adultery and murder in my heart, and I should accept Jesus into my heart.

What it comes down to is whether you believe that it is possible to have morality without religion. I know it is. Ask the ancient Greeks. I majored in philosophy, so you could say I have my moral construct pretty well laid out in my head. Furthermore, one of my favorite arguments is that atheism can give a person an even firmer moral basis than religion. The argument goes thus: Atheists do not believe in God. Therefore they do not believe in an afterlife. Therefore they have a more profound appreciation for life on earth. Therefore they respect other people's rights to lead their lives. Therefore they're not going to kill anyone or interfere with their ability to lead a full and complete life, because they appreciate the heightened meaning of that life (hey, it's all the life you get) and wouldn't want their life screwed with. The religious right can slink back to the rock from under which they came. Q.E.D.

This may be a proof that works only for me, but it's my moral basis, it took me a nice while and a lot of study to come up with it, and I'm sticking to it. Therefore I am grievously offended when people want to foist their so-called moral issues onto my life. In my morality, your rights end where someone else's begin. Think of it as a bubble of personal space around each person. Like these absurd "marriage amendments." (I am putting that in quotes because it disgusts me, and this is the literary equivalent of me picking it up between the tips of my fingers and holding it far, far away from me because it is slimy and smells bad.) This was my exact quote when Mike and I were talking about the "marriage amendment": Murder is bad. People can see that, because it could potentially affect their lives, and they empathize. Someone might murder you, encroaching on your personal bubble of rights, therefore you want to deter people from murdering. But no one is going to marry you gayly against your will. Sure, this is self-based morality. But what is more important and fundamental than the self and one's personal liberty?

Sigh. Oh, right. God. I'm such a sinner. Well, I for one am not going to gestate fetuses for the patriarchy. The religious right can do whatever they want, as long as they stay out of my bubble. Because it's my bubble.

Tags: poltical compass, politics, atheism, morality, philosophy, gay marriage, abortion

Happy Belated Birthday, Blog!

'Cause we know I'm not the most timely person. This blog has been in operation for one year as of July 5, 2006. Its first post was during Tropical Storm Cindy.

Not to be deterred by the minor inconvenience of the wind blowing the house to pieces around me (but soon to be deterred by the power going out an hour later) I started a blog. Tropical Storm Cindy was, I believe, later recategorized as a Category 1 Hurricane. It is destined to be The One No One Remembers, because Katrina came along less than two months later and decimated the city. It is worth noting that the ceiling in my room collapsed during Cindy, which led to the hugely exhausting experience of me staying up all night to move my belongings from under the buckling ceiling before it finally fell on top of the bed where I should have been sleeping at 7 AM. Also worth noting is the fact that the upstairs of the house was totally redone by the landlord, and I had just moved back in and was gloating over my gorgeous new room (hardwood floors! alas!) when Katrina came along and destroyed the rest of the house (by a strange act of karma, Katrina destroyed every room except my room, which didn't end up mattering much because my clothes were kept in the collapsed walk-in closet and half my stuff wasn't back in my room yet from Cindy). I never lived there again.

But happy birthday to Still Life With Soup Can! May you weather many more storms. (Or wait, that sounds too ominous. Scratch that from the record.) May you wax sarcastic about many more near-traffic-accidents, and continue to be a cat-lover.

Tags: blogging, tropical storm, hurricane, katrina

Tip #5: Order a Bud Light and then get offended when the restaurant doesn't have it.
Tip #5(a): Say, "I'll have a Bud Light."
When the waitress says, "We actually don't have Bud Light, we have--", cut her off and say, "Then I'll have a Coors Light."
"We don't have Coors Light either. We have--"
"I'll have a Miller Light."
"#@$*&#)!@*$#!!" (I don't really say this, but at this point I do get quite snippy.)

I have been getting this a lot lately. There are a couple things wrong with this situation. First of all, I am aware my restaurant has kind of a weird beer list (Abita, Heineken, Beck's Light, Stella Artois, Sierra Nevada). HOWEVER. If you are eating in a restaurant that has $25-30 plates, is it really out of the question that they might not have Bud Lite? Second, I swear the conversation I typed above happens on a weekly basis... and unfailingly, the guest gets increasingly offended and makes some snide remark. OK, Mr. Diner (this diner is unfailingly male), at what point do you realize that YOU are, in fact, the one being rude in this situation? Where do you get off ordering things repeatedly that we don't have and getting mad about it, when you haven't waited ten seconds for me to list what we DO have? Third, about 75% of the time, this conversation ends in the guest actually making a face and saying, "I'll have a water." I have two things to point out about this scenario, the first being that if I'm out to eat and I am in the mood for a beer, damned if I'm going to get a water instead. Who does that? The second is, dude, you ordered a Bud Lite. A Bud Lite. This is a crappier beer than ALL THE OTHER BEERS LISTED ABOVE. If you are ordering a water because Bud Lite is the limit of your beer tastes, I have nothing but sniggering contempt for you and your ilk. What kind of a tool gets self righteous over Bud Lite? Over there, behind the service bar, where you can't see? That's me, laughing at you.

Tags: what not to do in a restaurant, waitressing

Gifts in the Mail... And Turtles!

SFBC has bestowed on me a package containing Steven Erikson's Deadhouse Gates, the second book in the Malazan Book of the Fallen series, and Naomi Novik's Temeraire novels in omnibus form. I am starting with Temeraire, partly because I will have to review what happened in Gardens of the Moon before I read Deadhouse Gates (although I believe I remember from a review that this one is about entirely different characters and we don't get to find out what happens to the first bunch yet, and the flip-through I did seems to back this up). But also, I mean come on, an alternate history of the Napoleonic Wars with dragons. That starts on a ship. With dragons. Now why would anyone think I would greatly anticipate such a book? Me, particularly? Perhaps because Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders series is my all-time favorite series? But this won't be as good as Liveships. I hope it will be good, don't get me wrong. Liveships is special to me, though, and as such, occupies the top spot in the ships & dragons genre. And if ships & dragons is not a genre, it ought to be.

Was perusing the Blue Bell half gallons at the store yesterday when I saw it: Caramel Turtle Fudge. I said to myself, "What are these Caramel Turtles of which the box speaks? I must have it." As it turns out, Caramel Turtle Fudge is Caramel Turtle Fudge in the same way that Ben and Jerry's Phish Food is Phish Food. It is vanilla, with nuts and caramel stripes, and LITTLE CHOCOLATE TURTLES FILLED WITH CARAMEL.

Joy! The cute is rendering me speechless. Joy!

My ice cream is so cute. I wonder if it isn't cuter than Jolee. Too bad he's in the other room so I can't compare. [Spontaneously combusts from what doctors will determine to be a combination of sugar overload and cuteness.]

Tags: books, naomi novik, steven erikson, robin hobb, caramel turtle fudge

When the People of Katrina Frustrate You...

Yesterday afternoon and this morning I helped out at Animal Rescue New Orleans. I cleaned out cages, changed food and water dishes, and petted the cats. I may also be learning how to trap cats this week. The people at ARNO are super-nice, and they are doing this for free. I just get fed up sometimes and can't deal with the politics, questions, and red tape of Katrina. I get sick of people in general, and this "gimme" attitude that persists 11 months after the storm. I get angry at myself because my life got derailed too and I should be more understanding. I get angry at the assholes from other cities who come on Craigslist and post about how black people need to die and New Orleans needs to sink into the ocean. I get disgusted at the paper's Corruption-of-the-Day reports. I do not consider myself a helpless person, and I don't want to live in a city that's portrayed that way. In search of a pro-active solution, I wound up at ARNO's warehouse in Jefferson.

These kittens (I found their picture on the internet) are at ARNO. I played with them today, and one of the Siamese-looking ones got away on me. Two of them look like baby Jolees but with light yellow tabby stripes on their faces. They were found in the trash in Lakeview, taped inside a box. Luckily someone found them before they starved to death. They are just about the sweetest kittens ever, and very acrobatic. They can climb all the way up the walls of their cage with their little clinging feet. Which basically means the person who taped them in a box to die is going straight to hell.

I'm going to take a shower now, because I suspect Jolee Bindo can smell cat on me. I don't want him to think I'm cheating on him with other cats.

Tags: new orleans, post-katrina, katrina, pets, animal rescue, ARNO

Thirteen Reasons Why Life Should Be Like Summer Camp

I was a Girl Scout from Brownies up through high school. We spent a lot of time in the Adirondacks, being based in Albany. I went to Camp Little Notch starting in, I think, 1992. I was a CIT in 1997, and was on staff there for two years. In 2001 and 2002 I worked on the sailing staff at Raquette Lake Girls Camp. In 2004 I was Head of the Small Crafts department at Camp Matoaka in Maine. Consequently, this is the longest time I have gone without summer camp since I was roughly... seven. And I miss it. I think a part of me is secretly counting down the months till I get a teaching job and can go back.

1. At CLN, we used to live on Girl Scout cookies because the food left something to be desired. We used to joke that there was a cheese element in every meal. In the walk-in there was, I swear, an entire freight truck's worth of Girl Scout cookies. We weren't allowed to have food in our tents because of raccoons and mice. We were NOT allowed to eat the Girl Scout cookies except when they were served for dessert at every lunch. But some nights we could not take it anymore. We would dash into the kitchen after dark in an oversized sweatshirt, raid the walk-in, shove four boxes of Girl Scout cookies up our shirts, and dash back to the staff tent, where we would share the booty. And hopefully, live on Girl Scout cookies until we were rescued by a passing steamer. Arrrrr...

2. Taking boats everywhere. This may not be everybody's cup of tea, but a place where one must take a boat EVERYWHERE is kind of my dream that I drool over at night. At CLN we didn't have anything with a motor on the lake, so maybe not so much there... except the way Tall Timbers, the camp unit where we ran the sailing program, which had its own dock, felt like an island cut off from the rest of the camp by a mile (OK, it was more like 1/2 a mile, but let me tell you, it was fun trying to get to meals on time). Raquette was way cooler, though, because there was a "boys side" across the lake. Boats were always zooming back and forth from boys camp to girls camp. You couldn't get to boys camp by road. We had a giant pontoon boat called Raquette One that used to cart our kids across the lake for socials (and carted the male staff to our side, where their cars were parked, for nights off). You could also take Raquette One to the bar at South Bay every night, but if you missed the boat back at 12:30 you were S.O.L. There was also a trash barge-- a real barge! On the 4th of July, they took the whole girls camp across for fireworks, and every boat was put into use. My girls and I got to ride on the barge a couple times... which I would like to say was as cool as everyone wished it was, but man, that barge was slow.

3. Real life doesn't have any wacky traditions. Ones that outsiders are slightly frightened by. A birthday song, for instance, that is screamed so quickly and with so much foot thumping that it takes years to learn the words.

4. Three words: Water. Ski. Boys.

When I was at Raquette, strictly the staff who worked at Sail were at war with the staff who worked at Ski. They were always pissing around in our moorings, upsetting our Sunfish with their sleek Mastercrafts... and we only had a Whaler. I think we may have been resentful because all we got was that crappy Whaler. And it was the crappiest Whaler on girls OR boys side. Even Canoe had a bigger Whaler, and what the hell did they need a bigger Whaler for? But the water ski boys were hot. Oh, they were hot. (At Raquette, I only dated Ski boys.)

5. I think I slept better on a crispy Adirondack night on my creaky metal cot with sagging springs and extra blankets over my sleeping bag than I do in my actual bed.

6. Canoe trips. So during my CIT summer we went on a canoe trip from Blue Mountain Lake to Raquette Lake. We spent the night at the lean-to on Utowana Lake, which is a sort of widening of the river about 2/3 of the way to Raquette. This particular lean-to had three priceless pieces of graffiti I will never, ever forget:
Cryptically, "Jake the Nightcrawler... Jake the Snake."
Hilariously, "The Shitter is Full-- Call 911!"
And, scrawled on the rafter, "THE BULLFROGS DROVE ME MAD."

I wonder what it says these days. And whether they took care of that shitter.

7. Covert Ops. At CLN when we didn't like the furniture that came in our tent, we used to try to surreptitiously exchange it for the furniture in other people's tents without them noticing. My CIT summer we got caught carrying a shelf across camp. Once in a while, as a prank, someone would get drunk and pass out, and they would wake up in their bed... except that bed, staff member, and belongings would be sitting, intact, on the floating dock. I think at Raquette, boys side stole all our canoes overnight once. The best thing we ever pulled at CLN was my last summer, when we made contact with the Boy Scouts. We had this horrible director, and she was so paranoid and mean that a third of the staff quit. This British girl and I had the sailing program out at Tall Timbers. Bordering our property was Camp Wakpominee, but we never had anything to do with the Boy Scouts. At night we used to have to check in with these stupid walkie talkies. We hated doing it, because the procedure was lame and the words we had to say were lame too. One night, we hear this male voice pop out of the walkie: "Get the chocolate sauce. That seemed to go over well last time." It occurs to us that the Boy Scouts can hear us on their walkies at Tall Timbers because we're so far out! So we started to communicate with them. It turned out their code words were lame and cryptic too, and we had great laughs over them. Then we started sending letters back and forth, and they called our staff house. They sent me this ridiculous package, and that was when the director caught on and gave us a lecture on "the frivolous use of emergency communications devices."

7.(a) Thrilling Near-Death Experiences. Twice at Raquette I was within ten feet of a bear. And I mean a really large bear. You would be surprised at the little thrill you get at being alive once you've looked a bear in the eye. Once at CLN we dark walked (you know, it is shocking how many of these stories involve being in the woods with no flashlight) from one overnight campsite to another... only to wake up and realize the next morning we'd been walking along the edge of a huge cliff we never saw!

8. Really, really great rolling-on-the-floor jokes. Once we wore T.P. to dinner at Little Notch.

9. Intrigue. Life is SO MUCH MORE FUN when you have 60 people stranded in the woods all dating everyone at once! It's like a microcosm. You can date for 10 years, have a harrowing breakup, and betray your ex with his or her best friend and shock the world, only this all happens in eight weeks and thus is fraught with immediacy and tragedy! So juicy.

10. I am so tan at camp. At Raquette I vividly remember that every day at shower hour I would take off my life jacket and my uniform T-shirt and lie out in my bikini on the bow of the O'Day. And the ski boats would go back and forth from the office to boys side. And the O'Day would rock in the wake. And the Adirondack air smelled of pine trees.

11. I have all these crazy skills that I desparately want to brag about but that have no place in the real world. Like once at CLN we lined up in order of who had gone the longest without a shower (I held my own). Like I can swim over a mile. Like I have a wicked sense of balance in boats. Like I build a very technically proficient one-match fire. Like I can beat you in eating a bowl of Jello with my face. I surprise people by my ability to right a turtled Sunfish in 5 minutes even though I weigh 110 pounds (it's physics, bless me, what do they teach them at these schools?). I can tie a bowline around myself with one hand in under 6 seconds. Also, I know a song called The Aardvark Song. Which goes to the tune of the Danube Waltz as follows:

"It starts with an A, aardvark, aardvark
And ends with a K, aardvark, aardvark
Not easy to say, aardvark, aardvark
But try anyway, aardvark, aardvark
It starts with an A! A-R-D-V-A-R-K, aardvark!"

It is very popular at parties... with people age 13.

12. I am, seriously, an amazing cook on the open fire. I have the well-honed ability to make anything out of ground beef, cheese, and a roll of foil. Unfortunately, these formidable skills are not matched in the real kitchen.

13. The songs are better at summer camp. I still know all the words to all the verses. Sigh.

"I'll return to the woodlands, I'll return to the snow
I'll return to the hillsides, and the valley below
I'll return as a poor man or a king if god wills
But I'm on my way home to my piney wood hills"

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Tags: thursday thirteen, camp little notch, raquette lake, camp matoaka

Wallowing in Uselessness

I had a supremely useless holiday weekend, if one can call it that when one's days off from work are Monday and Friday (observe that these days do not fall consecutively; therefore, I could not be said to have a "weekend"). I didn't work on my book like I wanted to, I felt sick yesterday and Mike felt sick Monday, it rained, we didn't go to fireworks, and I had to work. I watched TV, which I never do, then felt all bloated and brain dead because I watched TV. At work we didn't get a single party for the first hour and a half, and spent this time sitting at a table in the window having coffee so people would know we were open. It must have worked, because then people came, just when I was on the verge of being cut because NO people were coming. But I made $60. And I was expecting to make $5 or less. So that's something.

I really need a hobby that does not involve being in my house, and am going to start volunteering in an attempt to kick the uselessness. I hate feeling so blah. Then I woke up this morning and realized, like seeing a light in the clouds with angels going, "Ahhhhh!," that it was the time of the month when women feel blah. Or, it was about to be. While that explains the blah, it just means it is likely the blah will continue for the remainder of this week.

Tags: holiday, 4th of july, useless

More Nonsensical FEMA News

According to today's paper, New Orleans residents are in a poor state of mental health. Well, no wonder, when we have to see stuff like this: FEMA wants NOFD to pay, or else they'll take away their helicopters. Pardon me for a second. Didn't we just get that article about the BILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF WASTE FEMA IS COMMITTING AS WE SPEAK? In the midst of those billions of dollars, they want to withdraw their two measly helicopters-- which are desparately needed because of the fires. Every time I drive somewhere I see another building that's burned down. And I mostly just drive through Uptown and Central City. Imagine what the really destroyed areas look like. The other day the water pressure was... let's just say my shower was almost refreshingly rain-like.

It is raining now. Depressingly, since it is the holiday weekend and idiots will be lighting off fireworks, I can only see that as a good thing right now.

Tags: new orleans, nola, post-katrina, hurricane katrina, FEMA, NOFD, news

Yet Another Graphics Change

I like to tinker with stuff, in case you haven't figured this out. This month I have been tinkering in particular with The Gimp, which is comparable to Paintshop Pro but free. Therefore we have a more personalized header at the top of my blog tonight. The old one was a modified version of the image that came with the template... which I liked. But I felt that it was a picture that was close to what I'd ideally want. This one nailed it.

I am bad with templates. Or am I good with templates? I peruse them because I have a lot of vague ideas in my head of things I might like, but then when I implement them I end up making so many changes that when I'm finished, it doesn't look much like the original. I still credit those who created the templates, of course, because they have done the important things like the sizing and the layout... in other words stuff that would take me a long time of tinkering to do myself. I should mention I am perfectly capable of writing my own HTML. I am kind of lazy in that respect, being more interested in the aesthetic than in how many pixels across things should be. I am in the middle of redesigning my site, which has looked the same since I got it two years ago. This time I am doing it all myself... the only problem is I'm such a Gemini I've made two templates already and will probably make a couple more before I decide. There is also the guilt because I'm supposed to be editing my novel, but let's skip that for the moment.

Anyway. I think the image is perfect. Then I let it sit for two or three days while I lamented that my old quote didn't fit in the space I wanted it to. I listened to about 30 songs and read some poetry (Masefield, Tennyson), trying to find an appropriate new quote. Then tonight I thought, "Space be damned, I want that one. I picked it and I want it." It's from a song called "Northwest Passage" by Canadian folk singer Stan Rogers. This is a song I heard all the time as a child, on the folk show on public radio (I had a public radio childhood-- to this day I wake up on Sundays and feel weird if there is no classical music on). My musical taste is still quite folky. I have always loved reading about explorers, and the idea of going somewhere new. It's hard today, of course, to be an explorer, since people have tracked all over the earth by now. I think that's what he was getting at in this song: the idea that the only quests we have left now are figurative or personal ones. The great irony is that the search for the Northwest Passage was, when you get down to it, a search for a shortcut back to where you came from.

I've experienced a similar circular route in the past couple of years. Therefore, this is my quote and I'm sticking with it. Explore away, my hearties!

Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea;
Tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea.

Westward from the Davis Strait 'tis there 'twas said to lie
The sea route to the Orient for which so many died;
Seeking gold and glory, leaving weathered, broken bones
And a long-forgotten lonely cairn of stones.

Three centuries thereafter, I take passage overland
In the footsteps of brave Kelso, where his "sea of flowers" began
Watching cities rise before me, then behind me sink again
This tardiest explorer, driving hard across the plain.

And through the night, behind the wheel, the mileage clicking west
I think upon Mackenzie, David Thompson and the rest
Who cracked the mountain ramparts and did show a path for me
To race the roaring Fraser to the sea.

How then am I so different from the first men through this way?
Like them, I left a settled life, I threw it all away.
To seek a Northwest Passage at the call of many men
To find there but the road back home again.

Tags: graphics, blogging

Cat of Chaos

Jolee loves to destroy this rug while he tears around the house, especially while we sleep. Sometimes we'll get up and it will be on the other side of the kitchen. At least he owns his destruction. He seems quite proud of it in fact.

Tags: cat, jolee

Awesome Sports Moments

We were just watching England lose to Portugal on penalty kicks in the World Cup. They had a camera in a British pub showing the fans' reactions, but with no sound, and this reminded me that... gasp!... I forgot to blog the awesomest sports moment of the year.

Which was this: the Carolina Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup in 7 games over the Edmonton Oilers. While we were cheering for the Oilers (following the defeat of the Sabres), our sorrow over the defeat was mollified by the following: They had Bret Hedican miked, and they cut to his reaction at the moment one of his teammates handed him the Cup. I don't know what the hell NBC was thinking doing that on a live broadcast. What did they expect would happen? He takes the Cup and yells "FUCKIN YEAH!!!" right into the mike and the camera.

I said it was almost worth Canada losing the Cup again just to see that on network TV.

Tags: world cup, hockey, NHL, stanley cup