More meme-y goodness
What is this blog about, anyway? Right now, it's "randomness."

LAST MOVIE YOU SAW IN A THEATER:	Deepa Mehta's WATER
WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW:	Little Women, for the n-zillionth time
FAVORITE BOARD GAME:	Depends. If I'm alert, I like Scrabble; otherwise I like easy things such as Snakes & Ladders.
FAVORITE MAGAZINE:	I buy here and there as they catch my interest. Lately I've been reading The Walrus.
FAVORITE SMELLS:	Things baking. Sandalwood. Crushed green things, as I tear through the clutching foliage of deep summer.
COMFORT FOOD:	Cake, chocolate, something fast-food that someone brings home for me because I look tired.
FAVORITE SOUNDS:	Cats chirping. My dog grunting like a pig. A. singing the I'm So Wonewy song from Team America, or laughing wildly as he only occasionally does.
WORST FEELING IN THE WORLD:	Being the odd one out, and knowing you've been shunned.
WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU WAKE UP IN THE MORNING:	"Oh, argh. I am so tired, and today's workout SUCKS."
FAVORITE FAST FOOD PLACE:	I like the fish'n'chips place about fifteen minutes drive from my house.
FUTURE CHILD'S NAME:	"Published by ___ Books."
FINISH THIS STATEMENT: "IF I HAD A LOT OF MONEY, I WOULD":	Pay my debts and fix the f$@%ing roof.
DO YOU DRIVE FAST:	Yes, but Volvos look slower than they are.
DO YOU SLEEP WITH A STUFFED ANIMAL:	With two to four cats and a dog, there's barely room for me and the pillows, let alone a teddybear.
STORMS -- COOL OR SCARY:	I go out and DANCE in 'em!
WHAT WAS YOUR FIRST CAR:	The first car that's really mine is the one I have now, Grishilde the Mighty Battle Maiden Volvo.
FAVORITE ALCOHOLIC DRINK:	Strongbow, certain single malts, a sweet sparkling Italian muscat wine called Amore, and Bailey's.
FINISH THIS STATEMENT,'IF I HAD THE TIME, I WOULD LOVE TO':	Do it all. Everything.
DO YOU EAT THE STEMS OF BROCCOLI:	Yes. If you peel them before steaming, they're actually the best part. Only sometimes, they're all hollow and weird inside. That's when I don't eat them.
IF YOU COULD DYE YOUR HAIR ANY COLOR, WHAT WOULD YOU CHOOSE:	It's already been lots of colours. But I saw that L'Oreal, I think, has a new line of lurid purples out.
GLASS HALF-EMPTY OR FULL:	Depends what's in it. Do I like it?
HOW MANY CITIES/TOWNS HAVE YOU LIVED IN:	Heh. Technically, "one." I think where I am now counts -- everywhere else has either been a village, or unabashedly rural.
FAVORITE PLACE TO RELAX:	Surfing mindlessly right here.
FAVORITE SPORT TO WATCH:	Can I read instead?
WHAT IS UNDER YOUR BED:	Dust rhinos, and, for some reason, a large collection of random shims.
TOILET PAPER/ PAPER TOWEL--OVER OR UNDER:	I truly do not care, nor do I see why some people consider this such an issue. As long as there's some within reach when I need it, I'm happy.
CREATE YOUR OWN! - or - GET PAID TO TAKE SURVEYS!

splogged by compass-rose at 8:28 PM EST

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Tis the season
We were always sort of secular about Christmas, but some things made it through. Cultural assumptions.

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate?
Egg nog. No booze. I love egg nog flavoured anything, really, including ice cream and various baked goods.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?
He wraps them. And fills an old sock tied to the foot of each of our beds.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?
Aesthetically, I prefer white. If they're coloured, there have to be LOTS of them.

I hate those blue LED lights that are all over the place now. The Gloom of the Season, cold and cheerless.

4. Do you hang mistletoe?
No. One year, when I decorated my house as part of a decorating tour for a work fundraiser, I did make a Kissing Ball and hang it in the front hall. I had to look everywhere for mistletoe, and when I found it, the berries had been replaced by plastic balls and the whole thing preserved in glycerine, so that it felt strange, limp and leathery.

5. When do you put your decorations up?
When I do, around the solstice. I hate having them hang about for weeks, and if there's a tree, it must be real. I haven't decorated anything for about three or four years, since my home became and remained a construction zone.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)?
Stuffing. I like my mother's, which has raisins in it.

7. Favorite Holiday memory as a child?
Going to get a Christmas tree stomping through the woods with my older younger brother and my sister behind my father in his old black coat, with an axe and saw over his shoulder. That was a huge tree.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
I can't remember ever not knowing. That's what comes of being an early and omnivorous reader. It never particularly bothered me.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?
Now, we usually open a gift or two on the Solstice. As a child, no; everything on Christmas Day, after a special brunch that usually included my mother's Holiday Fluffy Buns (a kind of buttery overnight yeast roll).

10. What kind of cookies does Santa get set out for him?
We never did that.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it?
I hate winter and everything about it, but if it has to do something, I'd rather snow than sleet or freezing rain.

12. Can you ice skate?
Not really. I broke my ankle as a child when a friend of mine decided to teach me by pushing me fast and telling me to "keep going" (I did, right into the boards of the arena) and since then, I've been a bit afraid of it. I can keep my feet and stagger along, but I can't really skate.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift?
My ex gave me a food processor. Not only was it a great gift, it was the only thing from him that took my tastes and interests into account at all. I still have it and use it, although I had to replace the blade.

14. What's the most important thing about the Holidays for you?
Happy kids. They're the only ones who wholeheartedly enjoy them.

15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert?
I LIKE those bricklike supermarket fruitcakes with marzipan icing. I mean, really like them. But I love to bake. My favourite dessert is probably "whatever turned out best this year." Oh, and mincemeat. I love me a mincemeat tart.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition?
I used to love those Christmas mornings as a kid. My parents still asleep; us sitting on our beds comparing stocking contents (and stuffing ourselves with stocking chocolate). Wired. When were they going to get up so we could open presents? (This, you must know, was shortly after dawn...) We'd wait and wait and wait -- peeking at the tree, looking at the packages. That big one -- was it for me? Or my brother? How many packages did we each have? We'd count them, without touching them.

Then my parents would get up. So late! (but much earlier than they usually got up; my parents have always believed in the fine tradition of sleeping in on weekends and holidays.) But they'd insist on breakfast before we could open presents. We were already wired on chocolate -- we were READY! NOW! But no, a nutritious breakfast must be consumed.

That was the best. Before the presents got opened, when every package was a box of possibility.

17. What tops your tree?
Different things. A garland of roses, once. A star handmade out of milkweed pods.

18. Which do you prefer -- Giving or Receiving?
Giving, I think, if I have the right gift. I hate buying things just because I HAVE to buy someone something, though.

19. What is your favorite Christmas Carol?
Something I can sing to. I like Good King Wenceslaus, and I like Walking in a Winter Wonderland (but more for the filthy lyrics improvised one year by me and a crew of theatre people I was hanging out with).

My favourite ever holiday song is Kate Bush's December Will Be Magic Again.

20. Candy Canes!
Yuck. I hate hard mint candies, and have a problem with mint in general.

Next year, then
"Initially a poet, Le Guin published her first novel at 37." An interview with her in The Guardian.

I didn't realise that. S'pose that means I'm just about ripe.

Dear coz, thank you for the kick in the ass. (heh.)

Musings in Dvorak
or, This Entry Took A Long Time To Write

So -- yes, I finished a book. I realised day before yesterday that I missed -- I didn't, quite, write the book I meant to write -- I wrote around it a bit. I got bits of it, but there's a lot I left out.

Hello, rewrites.

And after the pain this one junior-size book caused me, I thought it very likely that were I now to go off (as I would like to) and write lots more, my incipient carpal tunnel syndrome would kick in, and cripple me within the year.

Thus, when (in search of Rewrite Hints) I came upon this article about using the Dvorak keyboard, and its benefits, I decided to start, as it were, before I absolutely had to.

Oh! Hate! This is maddening! I'm stumbling along here and this is worse than Hunt and Peck, cos I almost know, but really don't -- halt, stagger, stutter...

I can feel, though, that it does make more sense -- even now, my fingers have less roaming to do, to say the same thing.

How long, though, before I "speak" easily and fluently again?

A. is reading my mess (so far called Name of the Blade, but that title doesn't quite fit). He says he likes it. I hope he's not just blowing smoke up my ass. I guess he can't see all the places where it went HORRIBLY, HORRIBLY WRONG!!! Heh.

I can't feel my hands...

*dies*

Pain! I love pain!
Ooooo-kay! Pass me that big hammer! Oo! Ow! That felt good!

I'm crazy, aren't I? O yes.

Never mind. Blame my cousin.

"Strives to emulate these traits" - wince
I don't know why I trouble to do these things. I always know the answers...

CompassRose took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test! "Needs to feel identified with someone or something..." Click here to read the rest of the results.

Keep on dancing

Let me preface this with a rant. I hate "retro". I don't want to hear the Greatest Hits of my Dubious Youth. I've been there. I've done that. Show me the new stuff. And I mean the really new stuff. Retro. "The eighties" were twenty-five years ago. Minimum, people. They are over. Remember when you were in highschool, and you would eyeroll at some thirtiesh or fortiesh parental person trying to deny their years and groovin' down to the sounds of the seventies? That is you, my friend.

There's an "alternative" radio station here to which I sometimes listen. Despite its flaws, it's still better than the other choices, which mostly cover "Classic Easy Listening from the Eighties, Nineties and Today! Music EVERYONE can enjoy!" Except me, of course.

Anyhow, at any rate. Said "alternative" station has a tagline which runs "The Edge. New. Music." It is invariably - invariably - followed by some fine selection off, perhaps, U2's War album, or maybe something from the prime of R.E.M. Over two decades old. It is not, no matter how much you would like it to be, "new" any more. Influential, perhaps. But over. Shed a tear, put the vinyl away, and play the real new stuff. Please.

Let us begin. Go to musicoutfitters.com and plug in the year of your graduation along with the words "Top 100." Eh bien. Then bold the items you like, and strike out the ones you don't. And tint blue the ones you don't remember, and make comments, because you are me.

Top 100, 1987

1. Walk Like An Egyptian, Bangles
This was the best song of 1987? Oh, all right. Catchy. I do still have it on my MP3 player in the "workout" playlist, so all right.
2. Alone, Heart
I do not remember this song. I vaguely remember Heart. I once auditioned for a Heart tribute band. I was not hot enough for them, and my performance was abysmal, too. They probably still laugh about me.
3. Shake You Down, Gregory Abbott
4. I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me), Whitney Houston
Yuk.
5. Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now, Starship
I only vaguely remember this song. But what I remember isn't good.
6. C'est La Vie, Robbie Nevil
This is stupid, but boppable. Not worth a strikethrough, but not greatness, either.
7. Here I Go Again, Whitesnake
Hair metal. Yurgh. One of the worst things about the eighties.
8. The Way It Is, Bruce Hornsby and the Range
Agh! Agh! Agh! Get it out of my head! Blech.
9. Shakedown, Bob Seger
10. Livin' On A Prayer, Bon Jovi
11. La Bamba, Los Lobos
Please. Everyone. Please just forget this song ever happened. Delete it from ALL playlists - particularly those of staff parties and tacky weddings. Why oh why?
12. Everybody Have Fun Tonight, Wang Chung
Beyond stupid, this song was.
13. Don't Dream It's Over, Crowded House
And now this is stuck in my head. Great.
14. Always, Atlantic Starr
15. With Or Without You, U2
It was okay. At the time. I've heard it a couple hundred times too many though. O-Ver. Take your cash and retire, U2. And someone stick a pin in Bono's ego while you're at it.
16. Looking For A New Love, Jody Watley
17. Head To Toe, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam
Probably mercifully. I have the feeling I should remember something about Lisa Lisa et al, probably "puke".
18. I Think We're Alone Now, Tiffany
I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.
19. Mony Mony, Billy Idol
Mr. Idol had a few acceptable items in his musical resume. This is not one of them.
20. At This Moment, Billy Vera and The Beaters
21. Lady In Red, Chris De Burgh
I hate Chris De Burgh. Hate. Everything about him, his smarmy music and his nasty little hairstyle. Everything. 22. Didn't We Almost Have It All, Whitney Houston
On a first run through the list, I thought I had forgotten this one. Then on a second look it played vaguely in my brain. To my intense distress.
23. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, U2
Whatever. See above, re U2, over, ego, go away.
24. I Want Your Sex, George Michael
I never "got" Georgie. But I did recently see a photo of him from this era, pointing out his obvious emulation of Princess Di's fashion sense. Heh.
25. Notorious, Duran Duran
One of the less-than-stellar offerings from a more or less throwaway band.
26. Only In My Dreams, Debbie Gibson
27. (I've Had) The Time Of My Life, Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes
Oh, argh. And yuk. And argh.
28. The Next Time I Fall, Peter Cetera and Amy Grant
29. Lean On Me, Club Nouveau
30. Open Your Heart, Madonna
I liked Madonna for thirty seconds when she was all hot and cute and orphanish, rolling lasciviously about the floor "Like a Virgin". By this point, however?
31. Lost In Emotion, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam
32. (I Just) Died In Your Arms, Cutting Crew
33. Heart And Soul, T'pau
34. You Keep Me Hangin' On, Kim Wilde
35. Keep Your Hands To Yourself, Georgia Satellites
36. I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me), Aretha Franklin and George Michael
Why not just pour high-fructose cornsyrup right over your turntable and stick the needle in that? Ech.
37. Control, Janet Jackson
38. Somewhere Out There, Linda Ronstadt and James Ingram
39. U Got The Look, Prince
I have never got the love for the artist formerly and once more known as Prince. Musicians seem to like him, and I have no musical talent; perhaps that explains it. Noxious little tweak, I say.
40. Land Of Confusion, Genesis
41. Jacob's Ladder, Huey Lewis and The News
There are a few performers who bring me out in hives of horror at the first twang. Huey is one of them. Blgblgbglbglgblg... Also Elvis Costello, Elton John and Billy Joel. Full-body shudder.
42. Who's That Girl, Madonna
43. You Got It All, Jets
44. Touch Me (I Want Your Body), Samantha Fox
45. I Just Can't Stop Loving You, Michael Jackson and Siedah Garrett
46. Causing A Commotion, Madonna
47. In Too Deep, Genesis
Not that I would like it I expect. Never cared for Genesis, though Phil Collins was worse on his own.
48. Let's Wait Awhile, Janet Jackson
49. Hip To Be Square, Huey Lewis and the News
Blgblgbglbglgblg...
50. Will You Still Love Me?, Chicago
51. Little Lies, Fleetwood Mac
52. Luka, Suzanne Vega
I liked this a lot at the time. I also enjoyed Jane Siberry. Shuddup. I was a black-clad artsy. Shuddup.
53. I Heard A Rumour, Bananarama
54. Don't Mean Nothing, Richard Marx
55. Songbird, Kenny G
56. Carrie, Europe
57. Don't Disturb This Groove, System
I don't remember this, but it sounds bad.
58. La Isla Bonita, Madonna
Horrible, even for mid-period Madonna. Saccharine and uninspired.
59. Bad, Michael Jackson
I adored, however, Weird Al Yankovic's "Fat".
60. Sign 'O' The Times, Prince
61. Change Of Heart, Cyndi Lauper
"She Bop", "Time after Time" and maybe, just for kicks, "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun." All right, Cyndi, your Novelty Moment is done with. You aren't actually a musician or anything, nor can you sing.
62. Come Go With Me, Expose
63. Can't We Try, Dan Hill
64. To Be A Lover, Billy Idol
65. Mandolin Rain, Bruce Hornsby and the Range
66. Breakout, Swing Out Sister
67. Stand By Me, Ben E. King
68. Tonight, Tonight, Tonight, Genesis
69. Someday, Glass Tiger
70. When Smokey Sings, ABC
"Wheeeen Smokey sings - I hear violins! Wheeen Smokey sings - Hoo-Hoot!" Pflarch.
71. Casanova, Levert
72. Rhythm Is Gonna Get You, Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine
Ew! Ew! Ew!
73. Rock Steady, Whispers
74. Wanted Dead Or Alive, Bon Jovi
75. Big Time, Peter Gabriel
It was okay. I guess. Most of this album I still quite like on very occasional occasions. This isn't the best of it though.
76. The Finer Things, Steve Winwood
77. Let Me Be The One, Expose
78. Is This Love, Survivor
79. Diamonds, Herb Alpert
80. Point Of No Return, Expose
81. Big Love, Fleetwood Mac
82. Midnight Blue, Lou Gramm
83. Something So Strong, Crowded House
84. Heat Of The Night, Bryan Adams
85. Nothing's Gonna Change My Love For You, Glenn Medeiros
86. Brilliant Disguise, Bruce Springsteen
I don't remember this particular song, but the ubiquitous "Boss" was a perpetual annoyance to me, him and his frikin working-class jeans.
87. Just To See Her, Smokey Robinson
88. Who Will You Run Too, Heart
89. Respect Yourself, Bruce Willis
90. Cross My Broken Heart, Jets
91. Victory, Kool and The Gang
92. Don't Get Me Wrong, Pretenders
I do not like the Pretenders.
93. Doing It All For My Baby, Huey Lewis and The News
94. Right On Track, Breakfast Club
95. Ballerina Girl, Lionel Richie
96. Meet Me Half Way, Kenny Loggins
97. I've Been In Love Before, Cutting Crew
98. (You Gotta) Fight For Your Right To Party, Beastie Boys
Oh, yeah. Another one that should be long since buried, a throwaway that STILL floats up like a bad turd on radio and dancefloor.
99. Funkytown, Pseudo Echo
There's a rather funny Dykes to Watch Out For cartoon, though, with Lois half-dressed in drag ironing her boy-pants and Sparrow grooving, both singing this, while Ginger, in the throes of her thesis, despairs. "Oh take me dooooown - to Funkytown!"
100. Love You Down, Ready For The World

That's it? Not a very good year, was it? Where's all the good stuff, the dark alternative I jigged to at Club Zinc? Not here, apparently.

splogged by compass-rose at 7:59 AM EDT

Updated: 26 August 2005 10:34 PM EDT

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