a manner of speaking
betty on why she couldn't have a job like oprah or dr. phil:
"i would get sued my ass off."
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April 24, 2003
April 22, 2003
melt in your mouth
i told betty this last night, and realized i hadn't posted it here.
paul and i were at the supermarket a few weeks ago, and parked next to a car that had a couple of youtsTM in it -- two pre-teen white kids dressed in high rapper style. they had hip-hop blaring from the radio while mom shopped inside.
"look," i said to paul, "tiny white rappers!"
paul chuckled for a moment, paused, and corrected me: "peanut eminems."
benched.
to my doctor:
dear doctor: my liver would like to know if it's safe to drink alcohol again after my injections of 4/11. please say yes.
from my doctor:
your liver demurs for a week or two. sorry.
guess i needn't have bought that vodka.
April 21, 2003
adventure in moving
last night around 10:30 betty and i watched a house being moved to mississippi. okay, we didn't watch it the whole way; we only saw it being painfully maneuvered out of its corner lot and down the street, the very beginning of its long journey across the delta.
tall on its flatbed host, it hit several phone wires strung high above the street. eventually one of the workers mounted the house (with the aid of a friendly bulldozer that hoisted him aloft) and rode down the street straddling the roof, pushing the wires out of the way with a big stick.
April 20, 2003
loaded for bear
- t-shirts: multiple black, 1 red, 1 pink
- jeans: 2
- smallclothes and hosiery: numerous
- toiletries: sufficient
- nightgown
- bathing suit
- laptop
- a/c adaptor and phone cord for laptop
- digital camera
- charger for camera batteries
- card reader for camera
- mp3 player with headphones
- a/c adaptor for mp3 player
- new carton of imitation coffee-flavored beverage
- quilt blocks: 2
- tylenol with codeine: plenty
i think i'm ready for paducah.
April 19, 2003
gold star
terry gets the coveted gold star. she called me on her cell phone from the mall and said, "i'm outside the jewelry store. want anything?" i think she was joking, but i did in fact want something — a new pair of earrings to replace my lost favorites.
she went in, pointed out the right pair to the salesman (and she deserves an extra star for remembering), and handed him the cell phone. i gave him my credit card number and address. et voila: the earrings should arrive here sometime this week.
all hail terry, personal shopper extraordinaire!
April 18, 2003
please won't you be my neighbor?
more about our former neighbor in today's times:
What brought Mr. Schlosser and Mr. Omansky together on Monday, the authorities said, was real estate. The specific topic was a building that Mr. Omansky co-owned with Mr. Schlosser and other investors.
Mr. Omansky managed the building, and Mr. Schlosser and the others were very unhappy with his performance, the authorities said.
The police said Mr. Schlosser told them that the discussion took a bad turn and the men began arguing. According to the criminal complaint filed against Mr. Omansky, he punched Mr. Schlosser and hurled him on the bed. He put a knife against his neck, Mr. Schlosser told the police, and threatened to kill him.
Using duct tape, he bound Mr. Schlosser's hands and feet, and gagged and blindfolded him, warning him that he had better not try to escape because there was someone else in the apartment who would kill him, the police said.
For two hours, Mr. Omansky held Mr. Schlosser hostage, the complaint said. Then, according to the complaint, he ordered Mr. Schlosser to sign over his real estate holdings to him, and Mr. Schlosser did, in fact, sign various documents.
Next, the authorities said, Mr. Omansky had another idea. Beneath the second story of the duplex lies a crawl space. When Mr. Omansky converted the building, according to real estate people familiar with the project, he created the duplex by adding a story atop the roof. Since the roof was sloped, a level floor had to be built above the roof, which left a crawl space through which piping was run for a bathroom.
The crawl space is reached through a trapdoor in that bathroom. Officials estimated the crawl space at 20 by 20 feet and about 3 feet deep.
Once Mr. Schlosser signed the papers relinquishing his holdings, the authorities said, Mr. Omansky forced him, gagged and bound, into the crawl space and locked the door.
Fairly quickly, Mr. Schlosser was able to free himself from the duct tape, he told the police. But he could not get the trapdoor open.
Fumbling around, he located a piece of pipe. He began to tap it against the underside of the floor, hoping that someone would hear him. No one did. There was nothing to eat or drink.
Because of the shallowness of the space, Mr. Schlosser could neither stand nor sit. The police said he spent much of his imprisonment crawling back and forth, listening intently for footsteps that would mean that someone had entered the apartment. Noise might mean a savior. There was no noise.
Hour after hour, he tapped with the pipe. He listened for sound. Nothing.
Finally, he succeeded in prying open the trapdoor with the pipe. He scrambled out.
It was 5 p.m. on Tuesday. He had been beneath the floor since around 1 p.m. Monday. He called the police from the apartment and then met them outside the building. He was unshaven and disheveled. Duct tape still hung from parts of his body, the police said.
The police said they called Mr. Omansky and, accompanied by his lawyer, he turned himself in on Wednesday morning at the First Precinct station house, which serves TriBeCa. He was arraigned yesterday in Criminal Court in Manhattan on kidnapping and coercion charges, and sent to jail. Bail was set at $100,000. Mr. Omansky posted the bail and was expected to be released today.
The authorities said he told them that the whole thing was ridiculous.
Benjamin Brafman, Mr. Omansky's lawyer, issued a short statement saying, "The case will ultimately be viewed as a business dispute that should be resolved in a civil forum as opposed to the criminal court."
April 17, 2003
happy birthday to you!
a shout-out to my homey, my younger (not little) brother tim, who turns 25 today. happy birthday!
howdy, neighbor
our downstairs neighbor from chambers street called us this morning to tell us the latest on the weird guy in the building next door. he has the top floor apartment, so was our immediate next door neighbor, and caused us all sorts of irritation when we lived there. we were pretty well convinced he was a stone-cold freak. we just didn't know how freaky:
Man Is Accused of Kidnapping in TriBeCa
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
A Manhattan man was charged with kidnapping after he pulled a knife on a 63-year-old real estate agent, bound him with duct tape and put him under the floorboards of the suspect's TriBeCa apartment, the police said last night.
The floor of the apartment, which is in a renovated 1862 firehouse at 160 Chambers Street, is equipped with a trap door, Sgt. Dennis Ferber said.
On Monday morning, the victim went to the apartment for a business meeting with the suspect, Lawrence Omansky, 54, the police said.
The victim remained under the floor from 10:30 a.m. on Monday until 5 p.m. on Tuesday, when he managed to escape and call the police, Sergeant Ferber said.
Mr. Omansky later turned himself in at the First Precinct station house on Ericsson Place, the police said.
out, out, damned spot
that tiny patch of snow you see on the webcam is the only snow remaining in the front yard. (there's still a passel in front of paul's workshop.) i think the mound in front is left over from angry mr. plow, who heaps it high at the end of the turnaround.
the picture on the webcam is somewhat obscured by the window screen. the sun shines on the screen and makes a reflection in the picture. i am not complaining. a blurry picture is a small price to pay for plenty of much-needed sunshine.
April 14, 2003
economy size spacker
sometimes when i think i might need tylenol overnight, i take two of them out of the bottle and put them at my bedside with a bottle of water. no fumbling, no confusion -- i don't even have to get out of bed.
for some reason i didn't do that last night. so at 5 am i stumbled into the bathroom for drugs. i didn't turn on the light, because i didn't want to wake up so much i'd have a hard time going back to sleep. that was okay, because i knew exactly where to locate the 1000-count bottle of tylenol (thank you, costco).
what i didn't know is that i'd neglected to screw the lid on correctly last time i used it. i picked the bottle up by its cap, and tylenol cascaded everywhere.
loudly.
in great number.
i spent the next ten minutes on my hands and knees on the bathroom floor, with the light on, picking up caplets, evaluating each one based on where it had landed: was it now too gross to put back in the bottle, or did it seem pristine enough for future consumption?
hell of a way to greet the day.
crocus party usa
April 13, 2003
look, i just can't help it.
i know i post too many pictures of our cats. but i simply can't help it. when thermos finds the only patch of sun in the room, and then does this, yawning as he luxuriates, what else am i supposed to do?
behold the mighty hunter
one of lunch's most endearing talents is that he fetches. you throw his stuffed multicolored worm for him and he trots off after it (or gallops, if he's feeling particularly bloodthirsty). he carefully picks it up, clamps his powerful jaws around its lifeless carcass, and brings it back, yowling the whole time with his mouth full to let you know he's on his way. then he drops it, looks up expectantly, and trills proudly.
then i make much of him, and throw it again. this can go on for days.
sometimes i wake up in the morning staring at the worm, which he's thoughtfully left on my pillow. sometimes, just as i'm dropping off to sleep, i hear the telltale jingle of the bell inside it as lunch hurries into the room, baying happily, proud of his kill. and sometimes, exhausted from the hunt, lunch cradles his trophy jealously as he sleeps, guarding it from -- i don't know, jackals? hyenas? vultures?
April 12, 2003
she seemed like such a nice lady
last night i dreamed there were a bunch of kindergarteners in my yard. they were there on a field trip, a science excursion, and they were marveling at the mole burrows.
in my dream, i actually opened the window and bellowed at them, "GET OFF MY LAWN, Y'DAMN KIDS."
April 11, 2003
igor and the boys
paul ford writes in ftrain:
Do Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, and Cheney have coffins in the basement of the White House where they sleep during the day? Is Ari Fleischer secretly their hunchbacked errand boy? How are these people formed? What combination of parenting, and weather, and genetics, and ideology makes them so different from me, gives them the hunger to see their visions turned into action, into dollars and blood?
adrenaline rush
this morning the truck came from agway to top off our heating oil. i practically broke my neck trying to get to the webcam to adjust it so that you could experience the excitement yourselves. (you probably missed it. i pity you poor sad mortals.)
the camera's now pointed to the driveway so that you can enjoy the comings and goings. be sure to let me know if you see any suspicious activity. and tell john ashcroft, too. i'm sure he'll be glad for the help.
banking those karma points
now i am not exactly a champion parker. i don't quite know where the edges of my car are, so i usually end up slightly askew in a space, to one side or the other, sometimes diagonal. yesterday, however, when i parked at the mall, i was dead on, and fairly proud of myself. i traipsed into the mall, committed retail atrocities, and returned to the parking lot about two hours later...
...only to find myself totally hemmed in on the driver's side. not only could i not open my door, i couldn't even get to my door. the person next to me had parked way over the yellow line. there weren't six inches between our cars.
i had to go around to the passenger side and clamber over the gearshift and center console to get into the driver's seat. and i had to fold in my mirror as i backed out, so as not to tear the mirror off the other driver's car.
did i key long, deep gouges into the offending vehicle? no. but that's not why i deserve a prize: i was raised right, after all. i am a nice person because i wrote a snarky note to leave on the windshield...
...and then i crumpled it up.
April 09, 2003
where are my teeth?
last night, among other alarming dreams, i dreamed that my teeth were falling out. actually, they were sort of falling into flakes, which i would then spit out into my hand.
here's part of what the dream explanatorium has to say about teeth dreams:
We also want to stress the relation between teeth, the mouth, and talking. We need our teeth to bite our tongue. And, showing one's teeth can be a form of agression and danger (not so different from laughing, but that is another theory!). In addition, dreaming of losing our teeth may be symbolic for losing our agression, and the powerlessness we experience in our lives.
not surprisingly, freud thinks teeth dreams are about sex:
Freud also connotates the wordplay and the 'Witz' element of teeth. In Austria there is an expression for the act of masturbation, namely: To pull one out, or To pull one off. There are expressions more or less similar in other languages.
...but then freud thought everything was about sex. and i don't even speak austrian.
i think i'm simply terrified of going to the dentist. how's that for deep and probing psychoanalysis?
April 08, 2003
real-life tivo
if i could just hit pause on the snow that's falling i could get a better picture of it for the webcam.
tales from the dentist's chair
introducing paul's blog!
April 07, 2003
today's brilliant plan
fact is i just don't sleep right. on any given day i am:
- a) ready for bed at 9 o'clock
b) up in the middle of the night
c) wide awake at 5
d) some combination of the above -- the variety-pakTM
this morning it was option c). terrible anxiety, couldn't go back to sleep, so i got up, drank a cup of breakast, screwed around on the internet for about an hour, and finished quilting my current project. i am still anxious, but then i haven't felt otherwise for about, oh, three months now, so it's about as normal as anything at this point.
i think i'm not getting enough vigorous physical activity. i was watching the rodeo last night on tv (fun fact about me: did you know i love rodeo?) and it occurred to me that maybe we should buy a steer for me to wrestle, so i could get good and exhausted. he would fit comfortably in the unused garage bay, and i'm pretty sure i could teach him tricks. i think i shall name him chuck.
and, you know, it occurs to me that rodeo would a pretty good way to earn some extra cash. i could rent out chuck to be wrestled on the professional circuit, and there's money in that. but even better, i was thinking we could develop a sophisticated system of signals. that way, when chuck was getting wrestled at the national finals rodeo in las vegas (hey, an excuse to go to las vegas!) i could lay bets and then signal chuck to behave appropriately. big money there. "$100 says that this cowboy dislocates his shoulder. c'mon, chuck, mama needs a new pair of shoes."
then again, maybe lack of sleep has finally caused me to hallucinate. what do you think?
April 06, 2003
carl hiaasen's basket case
patricia cornwell. robert b. parker. and now carl hiaasen. seems like every prolific author eventually wears me down into disillusionment with his schtick when i read more than, say, three of his books. this time it's carl hiaasen, whom i've always liked. i am sorry he's disappointed me like the others.
i guess basket case's jack tagger is just the washed-up-middle-aged-hero-in-search-of-redemption who broke the camel's back. this book isn't wildly different from any of hiaasen's other books, but it's neither as irreverent nor as bizarre as i'd come to expect. basket case feels tired to me. sorry, carl, i doubt i'll be back.
be impressed. be very impressed.
i am so often a spacker that it's worth noting on the rare occasions that i'm not. this time i actually remembered to mark my quilt top before sandwiching it with the batting and backing.
April 05, 2003
ready for my close-up, mr. demille
the view of the birch tree is, well, sorta boring. i am toying with the idea of different cameras placed around the house. here are some contenders:
sewing room cam. i was thinking i would aim it at my design wall so you could see what i'm working on at any given time.
pro: you could send me messages saying, "i like the other color combination better," or, "wait! you're about to make a mistake! fix that!"
con: you'd see how messy my sewing room is during a project.
cat cam. maybe i could aim the camera at the spot the cats best love: the very center of our bed, on top of the fuzzy white blanket.
pro: it could be very relaxing to watch the cats do what they do best -- sleeping.
con: the other thing they do there is perform personal hygiene. that you probably don't really wanna see.
julie sitting at the computer cam. self-explanatory, really.
pro: i am that fascinating.
con: i don't want to scare anyone who might be surprised by just how stupid my hair looks first thing in the morning.
as the spring progresses i may aim the camera at the front perennial bed so you can let me know when it's time to weed.
weather report
yesterday i went to the doctor. (i think it has become my hobby.) as i lay there on the table, i felt really cold, so i asked for a sheet to cover up with. "wow," said the doctor, "you're cold? it seems kind of warm in here to me." "yeah," the nurse added, "i'm not cold, either."
"well," i said, my irritation evident, "you're wearing pants."
i got the sheet i'd requested.
cakewalk, my ass
finally, a smart article discussing opposition to the war in iraq. it's been hard to find thoughtful commentary that doesn't immediately undermine itself with outrageous sanctimony or ivory tower idealism. joan walsh succeeds in salon: "I hope for a U.S. victory with minimum bloodshed and maximum freedom for the Iraqi people. But I also want the cakewalk conservatives to pay for their hubris politically."
So far the loudest establishment voices criticizing the Bush administration's war plan belong to retired generals, unnamed active military leaders and former Republican officials, while most prominent Democrats either proclaim their support, or remain silent.
the full article is here.
[...]
Why are so many war critics flummoxed by talking about the war? Isn't it possible to critique the president without giving aid and comfort to the enemy? And is pointing out the effort's shortcomings the same as glorying in them? I've been struggling with these questions since the war began. I'm not an antiwar Democrat; I'm just anti-this war, at this time. I think Saddam is a bigger menace than most of the left seems to; I think his flouting U.N. resolutions merited a tough international response; I thought the world was on its way to crafting one when the Bush administration pulled the plug on diplomacy.
[...]
Retired generals have blasted Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for an unrealistic war plan that emphasized technology and air superiority and minimized the role of ground troops backed by heavy artillery. [...] Yet I won't be able to enjoy the spectacle of Rumsfeld being proven wrong, if the battle for Baghdad is bloodier than expected, and the war drags on -- though the news Thursday made victory seem closer than it did earlier in the week. After all, such miscalculations aren't just a political blunder; they may cost American and Iraqi lives.
[...]
Those of us who argued for more time, to bring more of our allies onboard, if not the U.N., did so not because we're Saddam lovers or Bush haters or we're secretly French; it was because the difficulty of winning the war, securing the peace and rebuilding Iraq required an international coalition. As one moderate Egyptian told the Times' Thomas Friedman (who was himself a little too sanguine about the incredible gamble with human life that this invasion represented): "Maybe the Iraqis will eventually stop resisting you. But that will not make this war legitimate. What the U.S. needs to do is make the Iraqis smile. If you do that, people will consider this a success."
It's not too late to make the Iraqis smile, of course. But it is too late to take back the pictures, broadcast around an already hostile world, of dead Iraqi children, grieving parents, wounded civilians and the comparatively lucky Iraqis who are merely having to drink sewage-tainted water and scavenge for food, due to delays in humanitarian relief. And let's be honest: Making Iraqis smile, even belatedly, is a much tougher job than it would have been had this invasion been backed by the U.N., or at least by a more genuine "coalition of the willing," in which more partners were doing the tough work of bringing humanitarian aid to Iraq even as American forces did the lion's share of the fighting.
The anti-Saddam alliance built by the White House -- which militarily consists almost entirely of the U.S. and Britain, with a small number of Australians and a handful of Poles -- would be comical if its impact weren't so tragic. In 1991, for the first Gulf War, Bush's father amassed a coalition of 32 nations that sent thousands of troops and committed $70 billion in aid; this time around most leaders of the 40-something countries supposedly backing Bush did little more than affix their names to a "Best of luck with the war!" greeting card. [...] Bush and Rumsfeld are dissembling when they say this coalition is larger than the one assembled in '91, and they deserve to be called on it every time they say it.
A poll last week found that a majority of Americans think Bush didn't tell the truth about the cost of the war, either in fiscal terms or in terms of the loss of human life, and I thought once again how silly polling is: The fact that Bush didn't tell the truth about this war and its costs is not a matter of opinion, it's fact, and he should pay for it.
[...]
So what do opponents of the war, and the president's policy in prosecuting it, do now? I can't support Kucinich's call to stop the fighting immediately; it would only let Saddam's regime come in and crush those who've risen up against him, and submit the country to further terror and chaos. On the other hand, I think Rumsfeld's sneering insistence that a cease-fire is completely off the table is frightening: Should the battle of Baghdad bog down, should there be a reasonable chance to resume diplomatic efforts to remove Saddam Hussein, why wouldn't we stop the killing and talk about it? Democrats should be ready to call for that if there's evidence there's still a diplomatic solution to this tragedy.
April 04, 2003
"casey at the bat" it ain't
once in a generation, a public figure unleashes a bolt of creative brilliance that leaves a nation staggered.
okay, twice, if we're counting john ashcroft's stirring anthem, "let the eagle soar" (and we are).
ladies and gentlemen, i give you the poetry of donald rumsfeld.
Happenings
You're going to be told lots of things.
You get told things every day that don't happen.
It doesn't seem to bother people, they don't—
It's printed in the press.
The world thinks all these things happen.
They never happened.
Everyone's so eager to get the story
Before in fact the story's there
That the world is constantly being fed
Things that haven't happened.
All I can tell you is,
It hasn't happened.
It's going to happen.
—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing
April 03, 2003
i can see my tree from here
i've set up a web cam so you can see what i'm seeing as i sit at my computer. look on the right-hand side of the page, just below the calendar. you're really going to enjoy it when it's lawn-mowing season.
i wouldn't be surprised if in about five minutes you see my neighbor come out and start shoveling his driveway. you, uh, probably won't see me doing the same.
i put this together so that betty could enjoy the snow vicariously, but, darn it, you can't really tell from the picture that the flakes are flying fast.
how about a suet tree?
if i can't have a pancake maple, maybe i could make do with a suet tree. beef: it's what's for dinner.
this squirrel is hanging four feet off the ground, and he had to shinny up a frosty iron pole to do it.
paging omar sharif
so what do you do when you have 20 points, a balanced hand, and no five-card major? well, i personally open with my four-card minor and hope we get around to finding a fit somewhere. but last night we sure didn't. first paul had that hand and ended up playing in 2d, woefully underbid. then i had it and actually ended up playing in 1c -- my partner had no points in her hand.
there's gotta be a better way. but what is it?
April 02, 2003
the american south: do we really need it anymore?
i hardly know what to say.
On his 14th birthday, boy weds 42-year-old
PRAIRIEVILLE, La. -- Lauren Roberts was riding in a car with her aunt, Daina Sancho, to Blockbuster one day last summer when Sancho said, "Lauren, I have something to tell you. I'm in love with I.V."
Daina was a 41-year-old mother of two. I.V., the nickname for Irwin Vincent O'Rourke III, was only 13 years old. It was a good thing, Roberts said, that she wasn't driving, because the news came as a shock. [...]
Just a few months later -- court officials said it was October or November -- Daina, I.V. and I.V.'s parents showed up at the Ascension Parish Courthouse in Gonzales, seeking a marriage license.
"I said, 'No, I'm not signing that,'" recalled Judge Ralph Tureau. "Not without knowing more about it."
The couple left. On Jan. 10, I.V.'s 14th birthday, they showed up at Mobile County Probate Court. By this time, Daina was 42. Unlike Louisiana, Alabama does not require a judge to approve marriages in which the bride or groom is under age 16. Alabama merely requires that the minor be at least 14 years old, and that both parents sign.
I.V.'s parents, Irwin Vincent O'Rourke Jr. and Mary Alice Bordelon O'Rourke, were willing to sign.
"If you've met the man of your dreams, why wait?" his father told the Mobile Register.
the full story is here, but do you really think you can stomach it?
not to be outdone
headache-b-gone
i'm posting this for an online friend who wondered about drug-free headache relief. it's an acupressure technique that always helps me.
you spread your thumb out from the rest of your hand so that the web is stretched out. then you find the magic spot and press hard. i usually bend my thumb so i can use my knuckle, squeezing with my index finger from the other side.
you have to do it hard. it will likely hurt. hold on to it as long as you can bear the discomfort from the squeezing. if you've found the right spot, the pain from your headache should recede almost instantly.
i swear it works.
best dream ever
this morning i had a great dream. i woke up laughing, which is rare these days.
you know how there are japanese maples, silver maples, and sugar maples? all different kinds of maple tree. well, i dreamed that in our yard we had a pancake maple.
it bore thousands of dainty pancakes. if you picked them in the spring when the sap was running, each pancake was saturated within with maple syrup. like they were filled with tiny syrup capillaries.
you'd pick a handful in the morning, throw 'em on the griddle to crisp them up, and then you'd enjoy breakfast, fresh from the tree.
April 01, 2003
arrangement in gray and black
if there's a patch of sun to be found in the entire state, thermos will seek it out and arrange himself sexily in it.