yummy.

so everyone gets one guess as to what piece inga wants! it's like a big ol' chocolate easter bunny!

cubicles aren't so square!

so it turns out that working in a cubicle is kinda fun. sure, it's only been just shy of three weeks, but really, it is kind of fun! as a short girl, i can't really ever see over the cube when i'm sitting, but boy oh boy, can i hear a lot. for instnace ~

the courtin' boys. okay, so they aren't courting to date, but they are courting to be friends. it's so sweet! glasses-boy, who sits in my row, is young and married. good hair, who works across the hall, comes by on occasion and they chat. sometimes about biking (they're both bikers - on bikes, not motorcycles), about their wives, about investments (okay, that last part's kind of lame. sure, we're totally at the age where we should be investing, but it never sounds very cool, you know?). this small-talk banter has been going on since like the third day i started. well, today they graduated into full-on mutual admiration/can't we be friends talk! yea! today the talk turned to good hair's baby and where glasses-boy lives and the type of lawnmowers they use. yea! i think they've hit the going steady level of guys-making-friends. very cute. i can't wait til they actually make, you know, plans out of the office so their wives can meet!

so those two i can actually see. all i have to do is swivel around in my chair.

but the woman on the other side of my cube wall? she i cannot see and i kinda of don't want to. she's hilarious. she's from the islands, so she's got this nice little lilting accent. i imagine she's round and wears flower-print blouses. she talks lovingly of her husband. i can usually tell if i should go to the cafeteria downstairs for a salad or out ~ when the salads are bad, she goes on and on in great detail to her coworkers about why it was so bad; sometimes the lettuce is all wilty, at times the vegetables are kind of soggy, once in a great while there's not enough lettuce leafs. The best, though, is when she is either (a) talking to her deadbeat son or (b) about her deadbeat son.

when it's (a), the conversations go like this "well, you need to remember this: when you write a check, the money doesn't automatically leave your account right then. it takes awhile sometimes. you gotta remember to write it down" or "well, are you waking up in time or do i got to call that roomie of yours? why? well, to get him to poke you in the morning, poke you, you know, to wake you up so you aren't late" or "what do you mean you no got to go to work? it's a monday/wednesday/friday - everyone has got to work - do i need to call that roomie to poke you?"

when it's (b), it usually goes like this "hi, i'm calling to find out if xxx is at work today. no? oh. well is he scheduled? oh, he is? oh, my my my" (hangs up) "oh my god! girls, listen to this!"

in the meantime, i need a house. i am so still pretending i'm still visiting. i eat out at lunch. i eat out at dinner. all i want is a kitchen of my own so i can, you know, cook. i heart cooking! it's just weird, the idea of cooking in this kitchen that's only my temporary kitchen, not my real kitchen (plus my temporary housemate doesn't seem to eat. ever. all he seems to do is run. a lot. granted, he looks good. but he looks vaguely hungry, too). what's a girl to do? buy a house!

yo, which i totally did yesterday. yea!

housekeeping part two.

yeah. so last night i totally had some major snark going on and then? voila. moments before i was going to post, we lost power. not once, twice. yeah.

so let's try this again. in no particular order ~

poor liv d.h.! she's convinced i don't snark much anymore because she's my boss and i know she reads snarkygirls and wouldn't want to snark about her! she's wrong! i'd totally snark about her...if only there was anything to snark about, but there's not! liv d.h. is lovely! i haven't snarked because, well, we just figured out how to steal the neighbor's internet. okay, steal isn't the right word. borrow. but that's been taken care of.

i put an offer on a cute new orleans-style townhouse last week. townhouse? yeah. super cute. but my bid was rejected. rejected! rejected even though there's no yard. and it's been empty for months. and on the market for 6 months. AND the owners took the washer, dryer, and fridge!

but i put another bid on anothe rhouse today. so fingers crossed, y'all.

uh? what else? oh, so a boy in ___________ loves him some stella! stella came to visit over the weekend. yea! we heart stella! stella was excited because it got her out of hicksville. we went to the local roller derby (more on that later) and then to a party with lovely liv d.h. some guy whose apparently very nice, but, uh, well, a bit portly, took a shine on stella. so days later, when liv receives a request for stella's email because this boy likes her...i call and let stella know and she says "oh. he wasn't gay?"

roller derbies rock. a good, good, good place to people watch. there was a fabulous mix of nascar fans, punk rockers, grandpas wearing button up shirts, lots of babies, lots of mean looking girls on roller skates. during the derby lots of good ol' hard core american rock played. a friend's band played during breaks. beer was $5 a cup. the nachos came in pieces - cheese in a plastic thingy. peppers in a cup. chips in a cellophane bag. you had to assemble them yourself. there was one broken finger. by the time we left, during the last play, it was getting kind of rough. final verdict? totally going back. hells yeah.

sanjaya? really baby? bathwater? my money's still on beat box boy, lakisha, or miss melinda (?) doolittle.

my new home here in the south has rocking good vietnamese food.

my new home here in the south is warm. i say to folks from here "oh my god, i love this weather! it's so nice and warm and sunny!" and they say, straight-faced, "oh yeah? give it a few weeks. it will be brutal. dangerous. horrible." a side note to these people who are from here ~ when you meet the cute girl who has just moved her, don't shake your head sadly and say "oh, i'm so sorry." i am from the tundra! i heart it!

my new home here in the south has some good art going on.

it also has a high rate of poverty and crime.

a few weeks ago i went to a little film fest thingy in an old powerhouse. it was fun. we saw lots of short animation films from the world over. the best? the one, from england i think, starring dick and jane and the idol. you have got to find this. i wish i could remember the name of it! it rocks. everything you really thought dick and jane were like and more.

will her next step be

proving that her last name fits?



This has been all over the place, but in case you haven't seen it, enjoy.

making the email rounds

returning from the email rounds, answers we all wish we could have gotten credit for in college:


math can make me feel the same way, pal.


how'd he get NO credit?? he drew an elephant! wtf?


how proud was this kid? at least this is one right.


my favorite. because that's what calculus sounded like to me too.

fuck calc.

have you stopped beating your wife?

Olbermann's compilation of Colbert's "Better Know a District" highlights, in light of Rom Emmanuel's recommendation to Democrats to avoid the Report.

Seriously, what a dope. I'd be so much more likely to vote for a guy with a sense of humor than somebody who's afraid of Stephen Colfuckingbert. (That's an infix, in case you're into that sort of thing.) I love the kittens-in-the-woodchipper guy, methinks.

doesn't so much fit into my "things i have to do" book

Last week, the NY Times presented a Must-Do list to the administration.

Highlights include

• Restore Habeas Corpus

  "One of the new act’s most indecent provisions denies anyone Mr. Bush labels an 'illegal enemy combatant' the ancient right to challenge his imprisonment in court." That's you and me.

• Stop Illegal Spying

• Ban Torture, Really

  "It is still largely up to the president to decide what constitutes torture and abuse for the purpose of prosecuting anyone who breaks the rules. This amounts to rewriting the Geneva Conventions and puts every American soldier at far greater risk if captured."

• Close the C.I.A. Prisons

  "When the Military Commissions Act passed, Mr. Bush triumphantly announced that he now had the power to keep the secret prisons open. It was a defeat for America’s image around the world."

• Account for ‘Ghost Prisoners’
  
  "Human Rights Watch says it has identified nearly 40 men and women who have disappeared into secret American-run prisons."
  

• Ban Extraordinary Rendition

  You remember extraordinary rendition -- it's that special practice of kidnapping foreign citizens and shipping them off to countries that haven't banned torture. The key? Pretending that they told us they wouldn't torture our prisoners, just because we asked nicely (for a discount on torture specials number 1, 4, and 8).
  

• Tighten the Definition of Combatant

  The term “'Illegal enemy combatant' ... allows Mr. Bush — or for that matter anyone he chooses to designate to do the job — to apply this label to virtually any foreigner anywhere, including those living legally in the United States." You mean like Stella?

• Screen Prisoners Fairly and Effectively

  "When the administration began taking prisoners in Afghanistan, it did not much bother to screen them. Hundreds of innocent men were sent to Gitmo, where far too many remain to this day. The vast majority will never even be brought before tribunals and still face indefinite detention without charges."

• Ban Tainted Evidence and Secret Evidence

  You know, evidence obtained through torture or coercion that the defendants and their lawyers aren't allowed to see. A.K.A., the cornerstone of the sixth amendment.

• Respect the Right to Counsel

  "Soon after 9/11, the Bush administration allowed the government to listen to conversations and intercept mail between some prisoners and their lawyers. This had the effect of suspending their right to effective legal representation."

• Halt the federal government’s race to classify documents to avoid public scrutiny — 15.6 million in 2005, nearly double the 2001 number.
  

Sounds good. Anybody got a big felt-tip marker to start checking list items off as they're completed?

. . . Sorry, I just busted my gut laughing at the idea that the administration might actually complete any of these "recommendations." Sorry.

really?

this video by a prof at KU is engaging, to say the least. i am, however, always skeptical of claims that the web is changing everything. ::cue spooky, wavy music:: i wonder whether a change of medium really changes people or we get a skewed sense of reality every time something new comes up. dev and i were just talking about what my students have reported as a meth craze taking over the area's youth; dev reminded me that, when i was a youngster, the deadly drug was pot (the gateway, dontcha know, in an era that at the start of the "retro" craze, even in its propaganda), and for him, it was PCP. oh, and satanists. playing dungeons and dragons. skinning black pets during halloween/friday-the-thirteenth ceremonies. and giving virgins stds. nevermind that none of us really ever saw a spaced out junkie in a fit of reefer madness.... we've always got to have a drug-scare-du-jour, right?

i also wonder how the have/have -not divide will be impacted by the growth of digital technologies. i have students who don't know what an ipod is -- not just haven't seen one or used one -- don't know what i mean when i say "ipod." kids who don't know not only something relatively complex like DRM, but who don't know what it means to download a song. 20-year-old kids, not the geriatric librarian. on one hand, i'm of the mind that to prepare these kids for an educated future, it's our place to bring these technologies to them. on the other hand, ... . i don't think i have another hand.

point of the story? how much have things really changed since the advent of the web? how much will all this social networking change things further? i think i'm honestly asking: i'm young enough not to remember adult life without the web, especially coming from a tech-forward high school that helped us sign up for email accounts (mine was an excite account at the turn of 1996) and required sources accessed on what we'd come to know as the web on term papers in 1993 or 1994. we had computers in grade school, for chrissake, and i remember kids just a couple years older than me being confused at the fact that 10-year-olds had to show them how to load where in the world is carmen sandiego?

typing that, i just realized i missed my 10-year high school reunion last year. huh.

appropriate rambling end to a typical, rambling post.

there's hope out there for us winos afterall and it's called the south.

someday soon i promise to actually post a real honest to goodness snark. but you've got to take it when you can and since i'm still acclimating to my life here in the non-frozen tundra, including trying to get internet access, figure out cross streets, and, oh, yes, find a house to buy, it's a bit hit and miss.

but.

some mini snark for now:

1. yesterday, driving to liv d.e.'s house to pick her up for an afternoon of open house crashing, i tuned into npr and prairie home companion. garrison referred to his home as the frozen tundra, meaning, of course, minnesota. my frozen tundra is not his frozen tunda. but of course, my frozen tundra isn't mine anymore, either. yea!

2. where i live now has some mighty wicked rules on the buying of alcohol. first, if any liquid has higher than a 6% alcohol level, you can't buy it at the neighborhood schnucks. second, if you want to pick up some banned item unavailable at the grocery, you have to go to a wine and liquor store. third, you can only buy said items after 11 am, unless, of course, it's sunday, in which case you're banned from buying said items at all. yes, that's right. it's now stock-up saturday as opposed to stock-up sunday.

3. crazy ladies who show houses and chastise pretty young things are not realtors you should buy houses from.

4. wearing no stockings and putting away the wool mid-march? wonderful. freaking wonderful.

tasty goodness

from shakespeare's sister, a news clip for posterity:



note to self: be careful getting graphics from google images.

closeup hint:

I'm on a hating-Ann-Coulter swing this week

BBC's Jeremy Paxman interviewed Ann Coulter in June 2006. It's interesting that, according to the comments with the video, the people who love AC believe this clip shows her "owning" Paxman. To me, with my rational, functioning brain, it seems that she comes off a little less than shiny.



And as with the lovely "Darwinism is an illogical, tautological" blah-di-blah, she shows again that maybe she should have paid a little more attention in her godless public school classes:



And while I'm on a roll:



It's a good thing that Inga got out while she had the chance, since universities are "turning semi-retarded kids into psychopaths."

best slogans ever in the south. thus far.

agatha, proving yet again she really is the best friend a girl could ever have, offered to drive from the tundra down to the south with me for my move. well, drive isn't really the right word to use, since agatha doesn't actually drive, but she makes for some wicked good company and her music selection on her ipod rocks. seriously.

i'm in the south now, getting ready for the new job tomorrow. i'm exhausted, but really, not too exhausted to post the three funniest things that happened during our marathon drive.

1. crazy creepy truck stop in _____________. as we exited from the interstate, no less than four gas stations/truck stops appeared before us. choosing the cleanest, newest looking one, we thought we had it made.

we were wrong. the convenience store section held a freaky assortment of elderly couples, skanky truckers, and hobos. yes, hobos.

2. on the back of an 18 wheeler's cab the slogan: hillbilly eye candy.

3. on the back of some dude's shirt in the pharmacy: the bida-bong kitty's lounge. where the big dogs come to chase tails.

i heart the south.

things i'll miss about the tundra.

CORN. When thawed, the tundra can be a relatively pleasant place, especially in the spring or fall. However, everything is relative, thus the tundra, while sometimes pleasant, isn’t always so. When the tundra is thawed and the summer crops start to come up, folks like to say folksy things such as “knee high by the fourth of July” when speaking of corn.

A fair amount of people I know grew up de-tasseling corn, including stella. Apparently, the removing of tassels from corn is (a) very unpleasant, (b) makes you wet, (c) drains your desire to actually ever eat corn, and (d) makes you rethink the living off the land process. I have family in from a town that specializes in corn. The town has a big corn festival. Many of Inga’s cousins and aunts were corn queens or on the corn court at said festival. There’s always lots of corn – usually grilled, usually slathered in butter. Sometimes it’s free. You can also get things like deep-fried twinkies at this festival. Or your face painted. There’s a certain amount of kitsch to this kind of festival, where way too many people who have eaten way too many deep-friend twinkies come out in way too little clothes, where the carnival rides look so wobbly and the carnies look so ominous it’s a wonder ANYone lets someone they know on one of the rides, and where one time famous bands (ala Journey , Molly Hatchet, or Joan Jett), get their tired, saggy asses up on stage to sing about the glory days. I’ll miss this ode to the corn. Especially since, as some of you know, I once knew a girl who grew up in the town where children of the corn was filmed and her classmates were extras. This girl grew up to get married in a pink dress with princess sleeves and whose ceremony included a bad (but is there ever a good?) rendition of “groovy kind of love.”

Obviously, these things are effects of the corn.

JUMBO MART. Sadly, and some what ashamedly, I’m actually composing this snark at the local jumbo mart. I leave the tundra tomorrow for the south, so an oil change and a quick looks-see at my belts, fluids, and tires is a good idea. Like with everything else this week, I’ve procrastinated getting this done (other things I’ve dropped the ball on until today: finishing calling places to give my new address, turning in my change of address form to the local post office, seriously packing – as opposed to half-assed packing, and the actual attempt at packing everything I think I’ll need into my car, the lil’ bug). Thus, where else does one go without an appointment for a heavy duty oil change? Jumbo mart, of course.

And given that it’s a Thursday and well before noon as I compose this, I figured there’d be little to no wait. No such luck. An hour and a half - maybe. Hopefully. So I’m in the dingy little sitting room. It was rather dark and dreary, until I realized, just now, the light was off – now it’s fluorescent bulb dreary. And even worse than the cracked pleather chairs, crappy flooring, and “magazines” such as FLW Outdoor (featuring the article “2007’s Best Bass Fishing Spots!”) and Guideposts (60 years of inspired living!), my ibook’s battery is running low. Alas, what will I do when I lose power? I guess I could walk the aisles of Jumbo Mart, looking at bulk food items, polyester house jackets, and generic vs. brand name cleaning item displays. The good news? I’m fairly certain my destination in the south has its own brand of Jumbo Mart. Yea!

CRAPPY PSEDUO-IRISH PUB in the Tundra. Yes, it’s true. O’Crappy’s, the place where Stella and I used to go for a good ol’ martini or four. When this place first opened, it sucked and it was hard to pinpoint what sucked the most: the awful food, the cheesy piped in musak mixes, or the fact that, on opening night, a few hours or so into opening, this “Irish” pub ran out of Guinness, and despite being in close proximity to 23 liquor stores (the tundra is, after all, a college town), didn’t go to get any more. This wouldn’t have been so bad if Yadho and I, after ordering a couple of pints of Guinness, hadn’t sat around for 35 min. before someone told us the Guinness had run out hours ago.

But lately, the pub’s gotten better. The bartenders are appropriately chatty. The Guinness is usually poured right. The martinis are more often good than bed. And the food is good, too. Plus, it’s a smoke-free bar. Even the music has gotten less cheesy. But it’s still pretty crappy. Why?

This past Monday Ena, who has been in town to help me pack, and I decided enough was enough – we were tired of looking at boxes, tired of packing, tired of each other. Let’s go out to eat, we decided. So we go to O’Crappy’s. We order cocktails, we order food. Inga’s starting to de-stress a bit. Ena orders a special treat – onion rings! I reach for one, see a glint of light catch it. Odd, I think. I look closer. There’s a staple in the onion ring, an honest to goodness staple. I show Ena. She looks confused. We decide to not eat any more onion rings. The manager happens by. Look, we say. Staple. He furrows his brow, shakes his head, takes the offending ring to the back. Our waitress comes up moments later, apologizing. She offers us either free desserts or another rounds of drinks. Ena and I decline. Now we’ve lost our appetites. We ask for the bill. When it comes, the manager, rather than comping round of drinks we did order or, oh, I don’t know, the food, takes a few bucks off our bill.

Want proof of how tired and stressed I was? Inga no snark. The perfect opportunity to snark up one side and down the other of this “manager” but instead? I let it go. Goodness.

This move needs to be over and done with so I can get back to what I do best!

Maybe I can get the new resident to see...

The Host with me!!

It looks ridiculous, and AWESOME!!!

Here's the trailer.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?

According to Reuters,

"Four priests of the ancient Mayan religion held a purification ceremony to rid Bush of 'demons and evil' in a square in downtown Cancun, some 10 miles (16 km) from the plush hotel strip where the leaders met."


I'd heard that they cleansed the archeological site Bush had visited rather than the man himself, but what are details?

Do you suppose if the we all organized the folks we know across the globe to burn some sage at the same time one day, we could get even close to the cleansing we need? I've got a few spots in Europe and Asia covered. Who's teaming up to get Africa? Maybe we can count on those priests for their part of S. America....

Alright, y'all. Get wrangling.

what's more disturbing?

ann coulter's "speech" or the fact that she got applause for it?



this is the definition of a bad person.