lyrics

Why does only country music get to be so unselfconsciously punny?

I just downloaded some Billy Joe Shaver (the guy who wrote "The devil made me do it the first time/The second time I done it on my own"). The song is "Slim Chance and the Can't Hardly Playboys"
That title on its own is worth a MacArthur genius grant, I think.
Apparently, they're on Polish ("PAW-lish") Records, and are going to have a Polish hit real soon. [zing!]
Another line: "Out where the cars are up on blocks and the houses are on wheels"

Ya gotta love it.

seeing double

When Julie and I were living in our separate places in SF and having our never-ending sleepovers, we both had roommates, of course. One of her roommates had red hair (as does Julie). Her name was Holly.
On April 1, I saw her with a new haircut and some makeup (which she usually didn’t wear). So I said, “Hey, Holly, nice haircut.” And she responded, “I’m not Holly. I’m her twin sister.”
It being April Fool’s, I laughed and said, “Okay, and what’s your name?”
“Julie.”
“Funny,” I said and walked off.
Later I ran into Holly, with more hair and less makeup.
In other words, I’m a little gun shy around twins now.

Yesterday, in one of my classes, I had two kids with the same last name, same projected graduation date, and very similar looks (once you got past the gender difference). I said, “You guys must be twins.”
To which one of them (the older, darn that birth-order thing) said, “No. We’re not. We’re triplets.”
And, indeed, there was a third in a different class.
I just can’t win.

Madge Monday

Yesterday, while I was gone, Madge said to Julie, “I’ve learned all the words to the songs. Can I go see Les Miserables now?”
And so she has. Using the booklet and the CDs from the library, she’s accumulated a working knowledge of all the lyrics – though she complains that she can’t sing both lines of a duet (when the singers have differing words).
I guess we need to start a Madge-Mis fund now.
The problem is, if she does get to go, how do we keep her from singing along?

knowing Auden

I worked again yesterday, which meant a day away from the kiddies, who have been sick and whiny or not sick and whiny, depending on your take.
And, as always happens when I get away from the kids after they've been suffocating, I feel I have a lot to get off my chest.
Also, as often happens when they're home and not doing much more than watching movies and drifting in and out of sleep, I read a bunch.
Here's my friend Wystan Hugh Auden again (I wonder what his friends called him - I'll look it up, maybe):

...[I]n our culture, we have all accepted the notion that the right to know is absolute and unlimited. [...] We are quite prepared to admit that, while food and sex are good in themselves, an uncontrolled pursuit of either is not, but it is difficult for us to believe that intellectual curiosity is a desire like any other, and to realize that correct* knowledge and truth are not identical. To apply a categorical imperative to knowing, so that, instead of asking, "What can I know?" we ask, "What, at this moment, am I meant to know?" -- to entertain the possibility that the only knowledge which can be true for us is the knowledge we can live up to -- that seems to all of us crazy and almost immoral.

*It makes more sense to me if the word were "complete" - editorial error? Or just me? In other words, I have the feeling he originally wrote "complete knowledge and correct knowledge are not identical" and in the rewrites got things jumbled so he ends up contrasting correct knowledge with truth.
Either way. What a thinker (and feeler). Some day I ought to read his poetry.

she exists

Often, because I am of the so-called "day people," people who see me and the kids are surprised when they see Julie.
"Oh, you're the mom," is a comment she frequently gets to hear - and, obviously dislikes.
Today I finally came up with a fairly good response, I think.
"You didn't think, after hearing all I had to say about her, that a woman this perfect could really exist, did you."

trustworthy

There are plenty of stories circulating about the dollar coins that were minted without the catchy "In God We Trust." For example this one http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003605634_webdollar07.html. It appears the one-dollar coins are selling for around $50.

Now, I'm not trying to make any kind of agnostic claims about the worth of the slogan, but it appears to me that we might be sitting on a solution to the defecit. All we need is a good eraser.

conundrum: n. see parenting

It's the little things that get to you.
Next week we get so sign up Coco for pre-K. Sounds easy. But of course they want documentation. The first is funny to me, an "unpaid utility bill." All I need now is a note from the school to the electric company as to why I'm delinquent.
The other is an immunization record, which shouldn't be funny but has become ironic (though not funny to me) because Coco is home with a fever, which means I can't go to his doctor as I wanted to pick up his immunization record, because he'd think we're going on his account and, really, he's not that sick (and as we all know, he's tired of doctors).
In short, in case you missed it:

Gotta go to Coco's doctor.
Can't, though, because Coco's sick.

Okay, now I can laugh about it, too.

break-out role

Because of my first name, Horse-lover in Greek, I've always had an odd relationship with Peter Shaffer's (yes, same guy who wrote the entertaining yet historically misleading "Amadeus") play, "Equus."

Now Harry Potter, sorry, Daniel Radcliffe is starring in it and a bunch of teenage girls are encountering some disturbing sights.

Hopefully not all of their inquisitive attention will be directed towards equipment that he did or did not acquire at Ollivander's.

I'm sure the girls in this picture were all desperately thinking, "Accio!"

it's snowing today

Some bitter mom saw me pulling the kids to school on the sled on less than half an inch of snow and said, “Wishful thinking, hunh?”
Thinking she was being funny, of course.
And my first thought was, “Well, duh, otherwise I would never have had kids.”
Meaning, “If I didn’t think things could change for the better, … And why, pray tell, do you even bother sending your children to school?”
But I kept my mouth shut. Experience has taught me that, with people such as her, I usually have to explain my quips, by which time they lose whatever sting they may have had.

headlines

Makers of Sodas Try a New Pitch: They’re Healthy
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/07/business/07soda.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

For Cheney, Political Toll May Follow Libby Verdict
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/07/washington/07cheney.html?hp

Makers of Sodas Try a New Pitch: They’re Healthy
And, at heart, they’re right, if your choice is drinking nothing or drinking soda.
For Cheney, Political Toll May Follow Libby Verdict
Cheney tries a new pitch: We're honest.

Overheard in my head

WindCHILL? Who ever thought of calling it that?
"Chill" doesn't even approach what happens when you face the blast.
Today the wind is downright cryogenic.

Coco Tuesday

We’re still listening to the soundtrack of “Les Miserables” at home. It’s in the CD player fairly permanently now and Madge keeps reaching for the booklet to sing along.
I had an insight which Julie isn’t going to like, but here it is: The musical must have been written with Meat Loaf in mind for the role of Jean Valjean (or Javert). The songs seem tailored to be outtakes of “Bat Out Of Hell.”
But this is Coco Tuesday, so here goes. The other day when Madge was singing along with her favorite number (other than “Castle On a Cloud”), “Who Am I?” She gets to the part where she sings, “I’m Jean Valjean” and Coco bursts in, “No. I’m Sha Fa-Sha.”
And a fight ensued.
Me? I’m Eponine (even though Madge keeps calling me Javert).

headlines

Oil Innovations Pump New Life Into Old Wells
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/business/05oil1.html?hp

A Record of Failure at Center for Sex Offenders
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/us/05civil.html?ref=us

A Record of Failure at Center for Sex Offenders
Corralled together, they merely offend each other, sexually.
Oil Innovations Pump New Life Into Old Wells
No offense, but I think it depends on your point of view.

Madge Monday

I love that smart kid of mine. Sometimes I’m not sure if what she says is on purpose or not, but still.
On Friday, her school had “Parents as Learning Partners.” Parents are invited to come and work with their children. We were done with our project and went to the next task, which was to read. The book we picked up was “Leo the Late Bloomer,” in which Leo (oddly enough a tiger, not a lion, poor mixed-up creature) doesn’t speak or read or write or draw or eat neatly at the same level as his friends. His mother isn’t concerned, but his father is. On the front matter of the classroom’s copy are several post-its with a heart penciled on them and various messages. “Everybody blooms.” “We all learn to do things.” (All by boys, incidentally. I wonder if the teacher was purposely assigning the reading on purpose to academically frustrated males.)
I asked Madge what these notes were and she said, “Oh, that’s the heart of the story.”
Cute, hunh?
So I asked Madge her take on the heart of the story, in her words.
She said, “You just need to be patient.”
Without irony. Without a glint in her eye.
I don’t mean to be paranoid, but look back at the father’s role in the story. Then note who she said this to.

headlines

Warm Winters Upset Rhythms of Maple Sugar
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/us/03maple.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
U.S. Predicting Steady Increase for Emissions
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/science/03climate.html?hp

Warm Winters Upset Rhythms of Maple Sugar
How the winters got warmer, nobody knows.
U.S. Predicting Steady Increase for Emissions
Except, of course, maple sugar emissions.

headlines

Greenspan Is Still Able to Move Markets
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/business/02greenspan.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Widespread Storms Cause Deaths in 3 States
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/us/02cnd-tornado.html?hp

Greenspan Is Still Able to Move Markets
If Greenspan can’t come to the markets, the markets must come to Greenspan.*
Widespread Storms Cause Deaths in 3 States
It’s about time Greenspan had a talk with the weather.

*At about $150,000 a pop, it seems.

Subbing

I've noticed a certain lack of levity here lately. (Now you know how much I need Julie around.)
Yesterday I had my first subbing gig in a local high school.
Too many images and thoughts accumulated in this novel situation to properly relate in this short time, but here's something that happened.

Girleequa: How old are you?
Me: Let's just say I'm in my thirties.
G: You look as old as my sister.
M: Okay.
G: My sister's thirty-six.
M: Yeah, that's about your sister's age.
Femaleeshia: Oooh. He's slick. You bein' slick, ain't you? He think he slick.

They're really not dumb. At all. But for some reason the period between the two World Wars isn't what they want to be studying at this hormone-filled stage of their lives.

Auden and "aesthetics"

I just found more on Auden, law, and aestetics.
If you're still interested, read on.
The very next chapter in "The Dyer's Hand" deals with his guilty (pun intended) pleasure of reading murder mysteries.
Of the Human Mileu of these mysteries, he writes (italics are mine, he can't have them),

It must appear to be an innocent society in a state of grace, i.e., a society where there is no need of the law, no contradiction between the aesthetic individual and
the ethical universal, and where muder, therefore, is the unheard-of act which precipitates a crisis (for it reveals that some memeber has fallen and is no longer in a state of grace). The law becomes a reality and for a time all must live in its shadow, till the fallen one is identified. With his arrest, innocence is restored, and the law retires forever.

Make of it what you will. I love this kind of stuff.

Paraph

I subscribe to one of those “A Word a Day” deals that show up in my inbox every day. I know this comes as a surprise to you, but try to contain yourselves (why I presume I have more than one reader, I don’t know).
Today’s word was “paraph.” (Incidentally, I just noticed that it’s a word which MSWord doesn’t recognize. Maybe the folks as MS ought to subscribe to the service as well.)
A paraph is the swirly flourish attached to a signature, intended to foil forgers.
The odd thing, though, is that this superficial flourish is the easiest bit of the signature to imitate. The way the name is shaped, the essence of the signature, however, is more difficult to get right. (I speak from the experience of copying my dad’s signature, which includes a paraph in the initial “G,” after seeing that Alain Delon Movie – the original, pre-Damon, Ripley – in which he uses a projector to magnify the signature in order to get the flow right.)
Anyway.
It’s weird how we think superficial flourishes delineate our inimitability.

Yummers

A not unusual conversation in our house.

Me: Coco, do you want some food?

Coco: No. I want a small hot dog.

See, reading Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" to him in utero paid off.