grumble.

so, yeah, i think the kids over at salon have summed it up best, don't you think? visit salon.com to read the article.

grammar is kool even out of skool.

thanks, grace, for sending this link. look, kids, grammar is a hit! of course, those of us who grew up in the hip 70s & 80s have always known grammar rocks, but it's nice to see others know it now, too. my personal favorite? lolly and the adverbs.

uh...

so just now, on the news, david gregory said (and i'm paraphrasing here), "with hillary clinton joining in on the presidential race, campaign 2008 is off to its earliest start ever." well, yeah. i mean, we've not had another campaign 2008 already, have we? this is the first gathering of potential presidential candidates for 2008, right? so didn't david gregory mean that, with hillary clinton joining in on the 2008 presidential race, the presidential campaign season is off to its earliest start ever? sure, they're only words. but still.

hey, maybe stella's stellar new student (see below) wrote david gregory's copy this morning.

if only i could make this up

alright, so i was all tea and roses at the end of last week because i'm teaching again. yes, you read that right -- i'm happy to be back in front of a classroom. i'm even happy to get back to work on developing a solid hunch-back from dragging home eighty tons of 10% post-consumer-waste paper every weekend. thanks gods nobody ever remembers to stape their papers together, or else we might be talking an extra pound or two for me to drag home. but that's not the point of the story.

i assigned the kiddies an initial writing sample, a diagnostic if you're hep to the lingo, and set to responding to them this afternoon. of my 32 students spread over two classes (one's an off-campus night class with enrollment of 8. call me lucky.), at least 25 of them are actually really impressive. they've got better organization, voice, prewriting, and proofreading skills, even on a handwritten, timed fluff piece than most of my students at XXX ever dreamed of thinking of aspiring to consider trying to get to. apparently, the 70% placement into developmental writing classes here is a good thing -- they learn enough before college-level writing to ::gasp!:: actually write at or near college-level! what a crazy thought.

but, again, that's not the point of the story. the point of the story is those 7 kids who aren't at college level and their obvious leader. i have a student who, no kidding, asked me after class on wednesday, when i assigned the writing sample, what i meant by "essay." and then what i meant by "writing." she is neither special needs nor a non-native speaker. she's a regular girl who apparently didn't learn or wasn't taught squat in high school. when i asked about the essay she wrote for the ACT to get into college, she didn't remember doing that part. when i looked up her ACT score in private, she scored higher than average in english, which (i think) includes the little essay thing, right? how was this possible, i thought. maybe her writing sample would prove that this whole thing was just a misunderstanding of incongruous semantics.

nope.

actual lines from the writing sample: "I make lists of things, like what movies I want to see and the bands I like or that I have heard of. [insert a bunch more types of lists] I have a list of my favorite flowers, and all the countries I want to go to. And of course, I have a list to tell me what coins I have, how old they are, and how many of them I have. The last time I wrote a paper, it was more like a report I guess. It was about horses, and all I did was copy stuff down off the internet. The one I did before that was on Merlin. That one all I did was type in Merlin and printed stuff." and then there's a list of the papers she wrote before the one she printed about merlin. oh, and the of course emphasis is mine. of course.

no wonder the girl doesn't know what an essay is. or even what writing is. if she got credit for printing a website about merlin as a "paper," no wonder she's confused that i'm asking her to put to paper her own thoughts.

how does this happen? how does this happen in the same place where i have 25 rocking students? crap.

cost analyses

according the the nytimes yesterday, the war in iraq is costing about $200 billion each year. that's $1.2 trillion so far.

to put that number into perspective, the paper asked what could that money pay for if it weren't going to the war, considering the fact that our perspective of "fiscally irresponsible" and "impossible to fund" have changed dramatically since the advent of the tr- prefix to our -illions. here's a short list:

• treating both heart disease and diabetes - $50 billion/year
• universal preschool - $35 billion/year
• budget of the national cancer institute - $6 billion/year

other little old things that might need our attention?

• new orleans
  
• darfur
• our own deficit
• aids research
• education - primary, secondary, and higher
• afghanistan
• universal health care

nothing like spending $300 million/day on a break-it-bought-it policy gone nuts.

the dog thief.

so an interesting thing happened on my walk with the dog today. vivian, bless her little puppy heart, is immune to the cold. she's oblivious to below freezing temps, piles of snow, howling wind. the girl loves her outside time. not going on our morning walks because it's (gasp) cold out is not an option. so there we were this morning, vivian in all her black lab glory, her plaid collar in place, her leash snapped to it. lizzie the yellow lab, her pink collar and leash in place, too. and there was i, dressed oh so warmly in my smart cord skirt (newly purchased in spain, thank you very much), my woolen tights, my duck boots. and, yes, my ultra-warm winter coat (as opposed to the mid-warm winter coat or the fall jacket), my scarf, my stupid-silly-hat, my extra thick mittens. dude, seriously, you could see my eyes. that was it.

off we go. vivian and lizzie trot along happily, black and yellow dogs acting happily like dogs. i try hard not to breath in. we pass by grumpy students, a little old lady out sweeping her porch. seeing vivian trot along happily, they smile. i smile back. we greet each other with much more enthusiasm than the morning warrants. super cute dogs in the snow will do that to even the crankiest of us. we get to a corner and turn. i notice a mini van pull up to the stop sign. out of the corner of my eye i see the driver's window go down. the dogs and i take a few more steps. vivian stops to smell something. lizzie, not to be left out, stops to smell something, too. the mini van creeps toward us, so i turn toward it.

"do you need directions?" i call through my scarf.
"no," the woman says. "my husband it out looking for our dog because he got out. i thought i'd drive through the neighborhood."
"oh," i say.
"he's a black lab," she continues. "he looks just like him." she motions to vivian.
"oh," i say. there's an awkward pause. "well, she's my black lab."
"well, he looks just like ours."
"well, she's mine."
there's another pause.
i say, "uhm, i haven't seen any other black labs out this morning. if i do, where should i bring it?"
she squints. "over on __________. the corner by the __________."
"okay. will do." i start to walk, pulling vivian and lizzie closer to me. i glance back at the van. the woman is rolling up her window, but she doesn't look convinced.

so, friendly tip of the day? when going out dog-stealing, be sure to wear a cute skirt and tights. make sure to steal said dogs on the coldest morning of the year. make sure to wear a stupid-silly winter hat that's easily describable and identifiable. offer help to the dog owners when they come by. trust me, this set up? it fools the dog owners every single time.

holy wow.

being in the south for martin luther king's birthday was an interesting experience. in my yankee circle of friends and colleagues, it's a day that passes without much fanfare: we don't recite his speeches or reflect on life before civil rights all that much. it's sort of like any other "X's day" holiday -- the post office isn't open, and my garbage gets picked up a day late.

apparently, fucknut michael savage (he's not warranting a link) is one of those folks who do consider the impact of the civil rights movement on their lives. according to mediamatters.org:

"From the January 15 edition of Talk Radio Network's The Savage Nation:

SAVAGE: But basically, if you're talking about a day like today, Martin Luther King Junior Day, and you're gonna understand what civil rights has become, the con it's become in this country. It's a whole industry; it's a racket. It's a racket that is used to exploit primarily heterosexual, Christian, white males' birthright and steal from them what is their birthright and give it to people who didn't qualify for it.

Take a guess out of whose hide all of these rights are coming. They're not coming out of women's hides. Are they? No, there's only one group that's targeted, and that group are white, heterosexual males. They are the new witches being hunted by the illiberal left using the guise of civil rights and fairness to women and whatnot."

w.o.w.

barack es mi corozon. word.

so thanks to the pleasant reading over at cK's dramamater, look what i found!

Madrid es mi corazón.

sadly, a fair amount of photographs from madrid have agatha, oonagh, or oonagh's wee babe in them, so for the sake of, you know, not showing agatha, oonagh, or oonagh's wee babe, some generic photos from madrid taken by inga, thus no inga in any of these photograph either. above please see a typical building in madrid perched along the side of typical little plaze one comes across while out walking the city.
and here please note the beautiful and dazzling stairwell of the hotel petit palace posada del peine, located near the plaza de(l?) sol. according cid and his sister, this was a very famous place back in their grandfather's time. he stayed there, apparently, but there was some question on the part of the proprietors about the kind of people they let to - everything was chained down. the combs in the baths. the plates. the silverware. the cups. hmm. we're skeptical, but with cid, you never know. perhaps his grandfather was a thief.
here please note the tiny senorita, perched where she can see all in the bar. this is a typical spanish cafe where we stopped for lunch one afternoon. lunch consisted of a bottle of vino tinto (of course), a tiny plate of olives and assorted meats, a salad with tuna, and a tortilla de patatas.
ah, yes, and here we have a typical street in madrid. hello lovely buidlings, hello lots of people out walking, hello non-generic architecture!
admittedly, this photo is not very good, but i was trying to be all sneaky, and those of you who know inga know how effective that can be. but this man was the tops. we especially love his fellini-like fedora and dark glasses. and his dogs, who we later found out were chica (the mom dog) and chico (her puppy). the man wandered in, dogs trailing behind him, and found a table. he pulled out two chairs and motioned. the dogs happily jumped up and sat down. then he sat. he ordered a coffee. he pulled out his newspaper and started a game of suduko.

at one point oonagh's wee babe made, under her breath, a 'come here, dog' noise and lo' and behold, chico jumped down, trotted over, and demanded much petting and cooing. later, when we prepared to leave, our cafe con leches finished, the man came over. we admired his dogs. he thanked us and told us their names. apparently, i could have taken a better photograph.

on a side note: dude in the silver jacket is a Japanese tourist. he ordered coffee and a pizza. the pizza arrived on its own little cutting board, complete with its own tiny machete-like pizza cutter. from our table we reveled in its cuteness. he did, too, taking out both his digital camera and his phone and taking photos.

and, finally, taken in a friend's apartment in madrid, behold the photograph of the cured ham. yep, it's even got its own handy holder! i love the jamon in spain, i really, really, really do. but this did cause me some pause. for a minute. then i totally got over it. the only thing i still haven't accepted? blood sausage. tried it once. that was more than enough.

non-real time reactions to stella and her gg comments.

new drinking games are fun!

love when angelina is all bitchy (see How to Effectively Kill Ryan Seacrest with a Stare). love when we get 'private' moments between angie and brad, though 'private' and 'whoring it up for the cameras' seem strange bedfellows.

i thought tina fey's dress was okay...though it IS weird seeing her (a) in a dress and (b) trying to look girly. i was more upset by her hair.

think prince is going to beat down justin timberlake for his 'see me as tiny prince accepting the award'? or for breaking up with cameron diaz?

love alec. HATE diane keaton and her commercials. ooh, we're supposed to be all impressed b/c she finally shows some skin?

hated america ferrara's dress. frumpmeister, anyone? loved salma hayak's cleavage. and helen mirren's. am slightly distressed i admire an old lady's cleavage.

i personally like hugh grant's hair. more distressed by his (still) slightly awkward, befuddled manner.

jack nicholson's daughter, miss golden globes, is hot. do you think jack caught himself oogling her for a moment, only to realize it's his daughter, and start oogling someone more age-appropriate, like that little girl from little miss sunshine? or the cheerleader from heroes? and by little girl from miss sunshine, i obviously mean toni collette, people! sheesh. stella's drinking game has really gotten to you, non?

best moment ever? tie between forrest whitaker's acceptance speech and my boyfriend joaquin walking on stage.

worst moment ever? tie between geena davis's dress, renee zellweger's frozen face, beyonce's dress/horror at jennifer hudson winning, and david spade's mustache.

real-time golden globe reactions

a) let's start a new drinking game. the rules will be simple: drink every time the cameras stop for a reaction shot on brad and angelina.

b) i'm going to find religion just so i can start praying that my breasts look as good in a dress as helen mirren's do at her age.

c) my fave funny girl, tina fey, needs a good friend to tell her what not to wear before the awards show begins.

d) i'm absolutely in love with alec baldwin.

e) do you think prince was in the boys' room during his award? or busting one off in the elevator? (*update: "stuck in traffic" my left foot.)

f) diane keaton whoring it up for l'oreal skin cream drives me fucking batshit.

g) update: geena davis + cornflower blue dress from her high school prom? heinous.

h) the ugly betty folks obviously didn't expect to win, as they apparently don't understand how "will be accepted by ONE GUY" works.

i) hugh grant needs a new hairstylist. badly.

j) i'm already drunk from my new brangelina drinking game.

resolution for the new year

i don't usually participate in the new year's resolution game. i know myself well enough not to fool myself into believing that on some particular date, i will suddenly find the willpower to do much different(ly) than i have been for the years or months before.

this year, i have one. i'm letting everyone i know off the hook for at least one unfulfilled promise. my expectation, my waiting for the fulfillment of those oft-miniscule promises keeps only me without resolution. even just an earnest "i'll make you a cd of that" stops me from getting that music myself, only to miss it forever waiting for that damned, promised cd.

so, my new year's resolution - to resolve.

and the good news keeps on coming!

oh, goody. on the heels of this good news, we get this! gosh, golly, electing g dub for another term was such a great idea, no?

so let's take a moment, shall we, to remember someone wise and good.

and playing the role of those old boxes...

is the new couch and tables!




the roles of "drapes" and "rug" are yet to be filled. applicants are welcome.

the problem with gourmet groceries.

So today Soleil and I venture to a more well-developed area, one that is home to a Trader Joe's. It's Saturday afternoon, we thought, of course they won't be so very busy. Ha! We are fools, Soleil and I. But it's that kind of gray, cold, dreary winter day and we needed to do something to perk ourselves up. Besides, we had a totally yum recipe from cooking light to buy for, and some wine, too. Trader Joe's! we cried, and embarked. i mean, who completely shops at trader joe's for everything? isn't it the kind of place you visit only when you need some greek yogurt, tiny frozen cubes of cilantro, soy mayonaise, and wonton chips?

okay, so, sign number 1 this was a bad idea: totally full parking lot.
okay, so sign number 2 this was a bad idea: the store, upon entering, resembled a zoo, a zoo of small suburban children.
okay, so sign number 3 this was a bad idea: no one was apparently minding the zoo-children.

why, why, why do well to do suburbans moms think their children should come above all else? soleil and i were on a quest for shredded part skim mozzarela. a young mom, with her two tow-headed kids in tow, a cart chock full of stuff (whole organic chickens! waffles! trader ming asian tasty delights! buffalo burgers!), a list about a half mile long in her hands. the kids scooted along the side of the cheese case, reaching in and touching the imported cheeses, begging their mother for laughing cow cheese; she ignored them solidly. as a matter of fact, it was pretty impressive how well she ignored them. but in ignoring them, she also, you know, effectively cancelled out any chance anyone else had of getting within twelve feet of the cheese case.

THEN there was the preteen boy browsing through the wine section, pretending he was old enough to actually be perusing the wines. all he really did was cause a cart-pile up in his wake.

THEN there was the pretend-hip couple stocking up on the two buck chuck. here's a newsflash for all y'all sophisticates out there: two buck chuck is not, nor has it ever been, good. you can pretend all you want, but it's no use. the stuff is crap. it tastes like crap, it smells like crap, it is crap. and when you drink it, bad things happen. after all, a two dollar hangover is what roped me Vegan #2.


but i digress. the next warning sign? kids rushing to and fro in the aisles with mini carts, getting in the way of the big carts, ramming shins.

and don't even get me started on the frozen food aisle!

but hands down, soleil and i noticed, is just how rude, rude, rude the suburban moms and their kids were.

don't get me wrong. i heart organic. i heart trader joe's. but, really, the suburban sophisticates? nothing but trouble. and rudeness. and children who resemble those who live in the corn. seriously, i don't think you're embodying the traits ol' joe would like to see in his customers. tsk. tsk.

as soleil pondered on our drive home, if we let a pack of wild dogs loose in the trader joe's, would they eat the crappy people or the food?

if it were free and anarchic, it'd be chindogu

i just saw a hilariously alarmist ad for the new tylenol go tabs, lamenting the millions of headaches that go untreated in america every day. the solution? portable tylenol go tabs! they dissolve in your mouth, and you can take them anywhere!

hold the phones.

you mean those pencil-eraser-sized tablets of normal asprin-or-asprin-alternative i've been carrying around all these years weren't portable? what have i been thinking?

thanks gods for the innovative folks at tylenol.

a war narrative

a photo journal of the first real tussle between my puppy and the cat who came with the house. the cat won.

librarians are handy!

one of the librarians at the school i'm working for showed me this dandy new search engine, exalead! it apparently ranks based on quality, judging from the results of a "snarky girls" search.

it's rocktastic, and i think i love it.

the christians? really?

who knew they had such a sense of humor?! i've been thinking they're only good for jeezus-rap...hmmm.

i wish there was a way to embed this, but this pseudo-psa is totally worth the trip off-site.

hammock! indeed.

screw the links

Alright, so I put this as a link in the last post, but it's so good, it warrants a front-page view:



Seriously, if more of my education had been presented this way, I'd have made it on to Jeopardy rather than only getting that craptastic pen. Right, Khalil?

wrong focus, seriously

at target this weekend, i spent a few minutes in the feminine hygiene aisle, and as the product of the advertising age that i am, i snuck a peek at those "feminine napkins" that come with a moist towlette attached to each individually-wrapped package. you know, to keep your business dazzling.

sidetrack #1: when i saw the first ads years ago for rembrandt's tooth whitening system, i predicted the trend towards advertisers' finding one more natural thing about ourselves to find "ugly" and "treatable." and sure enough, if your teeth are their natural shade, or anything less white than freshly fallen snow, you've got a cosmetic deficiency. i'm thinking of taking up smoking just to yellow my teeth enough to rebel to this -- or would red wine stains be just as good? hmmm . . . enough wine to stain my teeth and keep me fat-mouse healthy?

sidetrack #2/overshare #1: i was similarly disturbed by the ads last year or the year before in which some plain-jane woman accosted nice ladies in the femhyg aisle asking about ::shhh:: "embarrassing odor." what the fuck?!? first of all, if your business has enough "embarrassing odor" to need worry about using a scented maxipad, you've got bigger problems than some baby powder scent will help with. and if they're selling this shit to regular, healthy women, we're now (or again) supposed to be embarrassed about (and ready to "treat") the totally not embarrassing smells of our own bodies? i mean, didn't we all get over smells(-and-tastes) issues once we got our first non-high-school boyfriends (or while we had good high-school boyfriends)? i wondered during that whole ad campaign whether we'd soon be seeing some jockish dude coming up to regular joes in the shower-gel aisle, gesturing subtley "down there," hinting about embarrassing odors. seriously, we all know that boys don't always smell the greatest, but somehow society doesn't have any "fishy" equivalents for teenage girls to toss back at their asshole counterparts. why is that?

anyhow, back to the always clean things
. a note on the back touts that the wipes are "dermatologist tested and approved." is it just me, or is it not a dermatologist's seal of approval i need here. not so much the silky softness of my skin i'm worried about. how about y'all get yourselves a gynecologist to do some testing, always?

talk about a grudge

in the spirit of my very real love for wikipedia (who doesn't love the "random page?"), i have started a love affair with a new wiki: wikimapia. the folks at wikimapia are enlisting us all to "describe the whole world" by providing descriptions of real places that we're familiar with and linking those descriptions to a satellite map that's zoomable to street level (a la google maps). it's an interesting endeavor, with people describing particular buildings and what's in them, area landmarks, cities in general, and on up/down the zoom-ometer.

besides it real (potential) value for giving us the chance to read local, lay identifications of previously unmapped and unimportant locales, there's this (click the map to see it bigger):

false advertising 101

so you know that new movie, primeval? the one that's about world's deadliest serial killer, with victims numbering over 300, who's still at large? well, here's the trailer:



this "serial killer?" he's a fucking crocodile. no shit.

if i'd have wanted to see a serial killer flick and gone to this to find a damned reptile as my antagonist, i'd be pissed. if i were totally into giant crocodile movies and missed this one thinking it was about a human being, i'd be pissed. either way, the folks over at primeval headquarters fucked up, methinks.

apples & oranges. and kumquats.

On one hand we have Dita. She's got her own business, is very successful, looks fit and healthy. She's three years younger than Marilyn.


And on the other hand, we have Evan Rachel. She starred in Thirteen. She's got a nice little film career going. She's nineteen years younger than Marilyn.

And then, of course, you have Marilyn himself.And while he's obviously made interesting lifestyle choices in the past, dumping Dita for Evan Rachel? Uh. Yeah, most interesting of all.

uh...

okay, just for fun, let's examine this one a little more closely, shall we?

things i (re)learned in spain.

1. everyone should adopt spanish time ~ what, rush? por favor. we will take our time, no matter. another cafe con leche? cigarette?
2. the germans rock. new year's eve, on the most crowded metro train ever, as the crowd rushed, i began to fall, destined, no doubt to be crushed by the crowd, until a really big, red-haired german who'd done nothing but laugh since getting on the over crowded train, grabbed me and pulled me up.
3. vino tinto. yum.
4. spanish boys are still the most handsome.
5. spain is still not good for the vegs, not to mention the vegans!
6. we need to adopt a new coffee culture. i heart cafe con leche. starbucks who?
7. every american restaurant should offer agua con gas or agua sin gas. i heart bubbles.
8. like every other outlet store in the world, the camper outlet was a bit disappointing. last year's models, anyone?
9. javier bardem has a bar in madrid and we went there! sadly, he wasn't in.

10. walking the streets of madrid rocks.
11. the transvestites walking the streets of madrid rock, too, but in an entirely different way.
12. zara and zara home!
13. madrid's architecture is loverly.
14. barajas airport's new international terminal is a disaster. agatha and i barely made our flight back to the states (really, though, would that have been so bad?). we literally sprinted from the desk, where we were the last two allowed to check in, to our terminal - a 25 min. walk - in about 11 min. in order to actually get on the plane. my plan to buy wine in duty free (as opposed to the grocery store as in olden days, when liquids were safe to bring on a plane) were washed away.
15. seeing the destroyed parking garage at terminal four at barajas, where the airport bus you catch in the center of madrid drops you off, is sobering.
16. madrid's metro is awesome & oh so easy to use!