The Next Dark Age
We're in it Now
Joys of the Season
Weekend Assignment #334: What Are You Looking Forward To?
We are about to begin the last quarter of 2010, tell me what you are looking forward to. Will it be the coming holiday season? The cooler days of autumn? The kids going back to school? Family gatherings. Tell us all about it!
Extra Credit: Tell us what you are least looking forward to in the upcoming months.
I am looking forward to lots of things, thank you very much. Let’s see:
1. September Apple picking with Alex. My brother and I have taken the nephew to Oriole Springs Orchard to pick apples every year.
2. The re-opening of the Library. Operations officially shut down last night to begin the big move to the new building. The ribbon-cutting is scheduled for October 9 at 1pm.
3. In November, I will finish paying for the TV we bought for the last holiday season. At which point, I will be free to buy a new laptop.
4. My niece, Ainslie, will be two years old by Christmas. Christmas is way more fun with a two year old than a one year old.
And for my first world complaint about what I look forward to the least:
I work across the street from the biggest shopping mall in Chicagoland. From Thanksgiving through the New Year, the traffic is nerve-wracking when I leave the office. Not looking forward to that.
Being Thankful
This morning, my friend Maile was posting on Facebook about being grateful. Then, the Trib linked to this blog on Chicago Now that has the same daily theme. The author, Jennifer Fernicola Ronay, just wrote about 8 Reasons to Look Forward to Fall.
I agree with every one of them. But just to be participating, I’d better find three reasons to be grateful, too.
I have said before that except for those few horrible weeks in late winter, I don’t actively wish for seasons to change. I generally appreciate them all. I can be grateful for that.
The bright side of the latest library delay is that now, those three weeks that I was going to miss for work-related reasons don’t matter. Grateful.
It is only Sunday and I am not working again until Wednesday.
Mr. Pip, by Lloyd Jones
That article the other day used a term I’d never heard before. “Lit-lit.”
“…lit-lit novels name-drop dead authors obsessively and are built around an epiphany in which one or another character recognizes the transformative power of literature”
Mr. Pip, by Lloyd Jones, is one of those. And I am a sucker for this genre.
Tropical island in the South Pacific, middle of a civil war, point of view of a thirteen year old girl.
All of the teachers left the island before it was blockaded, so school was shut down until Mr. Watts offered to start classes. Mr. Watts was the only white man in the village, and he wasn’t teaching in the traditional sense. He would invite the parents to speak to the children of anything they might know that might be useful. And he read to them from Great Expectations.
There are several themes swirling around here, and they are all really effective. The power of transforming oneself, the power of imagination, the power of faith and the different definitions of faith. Finding solace in a criminally insane world.
If I had thought about it for five minutes, the climax of this book might not have come as such a shock. But I was so engrossed that it snuck up on me. And that is when you know you have a good one.
Lloyd Jones is a novelist from New Zealand and I imagine the only reason this book crossed my path is that it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. But I will be keeping a lookout for his name.
Something about Music
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=leartojugg-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B003BKF696&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifrI noticed something. Back in the day, before Out of Time and definitely before Green, the only radio station in Chicago that played R.E.M. was WXRT – 93.1. It seems that we have come full circle, because it is pretty much the only station that is playing R.E.M. now.
Not that R.E.M. is anything to get excited about these days.
WXRT, however, has introduced me to several bands. Concrete Blonde is a memorable one – that was back in high school. Transiberian Orchestra. And now The National. I heard “Sorrow” on the radio and it reminded me a bit of Leonard Cohen, so I looked it up on iTunes when I got home. I didn’t like it enough to buy a whole album, so I paid my 99 cents for the single and went on with my happy day. A couple of weeks later, I heard “Bloodbuzz Ohio” on WXRT. I didn’t catch the name of the song, but I liked it a lot and was pretty sure it was the same voice so I bought the whole album.
I don’t normally buy entire albums on iTunes. I still like CDs, mainly because I play them in the car. (Yeah, yeah. I should hook up the iPod to the car. I’m having trouble with that. Back off.) You know how you kind of have to let a new album sort of sink in to your head? I do that on my morning commute. But this sucker – High Violet is the title – is sinking into my head just from randomly letting it play sometimes when I am online. They are weird. Lyrics like, “I was afraid I’d eat your brains. ‘Cause I’m evil.” So I decided they required a plug.
And thanks to WXRT.
Good Citizens
Last night while Alex was at football practice, my brother was at the park with his daughters, age 21 months and 4 months. He fell and badly sprained his ankle. So badly that that after hobbling over to sit down on a bench, he passed out. (Hm. That’s probably why he didn’t want me blogging this.) When I called him today to check in, he said the bright side was seeing how the other parents jumped right in and took care of his kids for him until their mom arrived. It rather restored his faith in humanity.
Then this morning, the Chicago Tribune ran an article about a man that had a heart attack in his car at the Park Center. The short story is a man’s life was saved by the retired paramedic that spotted him, pulled him out of his car and performed CPR. While another person walking by called 911. While someone else ran into the Park Center building to find some help. And came back with lifeguards from the pool that had a defibrillator. By the time the paramedics got there, the guy had a sustained heart rhythm.
That happened in Glenview, people. That’s my town. I am at that Park Center all the time. And it does rather restore my faith in humanity.
Sigmund Update
Sigmund the Foster Bird is looking scraggly, as he picked a bunch of feathers again. But he can share a tree with Kiwi for 15 minutes at a stretch. And, he deigned to walk across the room so I would pick him up and pay attention to him. Also, he is seriously playing with toys now. That’s progress.
Daria, The Complete Series
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=leartojugg-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0019N8P2W&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr
Daria was an MTV cartoon – a spin off of Beavis and Butthead, if you can believe it.
I’ve waited for-about-ever for the series to be released on DVD. The problem was in getting the rights to all of the music on the show. Unlike 90210, however, Daria’s creators were able to pull out all of the problem material without negatively affecting the rest of the content. Seriously, I wouldn’t have noticed if they hadn’t mentioned it. Advantages of being a cartoon, I guess.
I am happy to say that so far, this show has held up. It helps that isn’t particularly old. And to say that I have some things in common with this character is a bit of an understatement. I particularly enjoy watching the evolution of Daria’s crush on Trent Lane. It goes from Can’t Speak in His Presence to Getting the Navel Pierced Because He Thought it Would Be Cool to Oh, That’s Why I Could Never Really Date Him to something resembling friendship.
I was annoyed that the two movies, Is it Fall Yet? and Is it College Yet? are “Extras” and thus pulled out of chronological order. The former was a pretty important bridge between the last two seasons. The latter was really the show’s finale, so it was less of a problem.
And speaking of the Extras, I don’t normally bother with them. Unless it is Star Wars or something. But this had the Freakin’ Friends video, which I always loved. And Daria and Jane hosting MTV’s Top Ten Animated Videos.
So it was worth the wait. Worth the forty bucks or whatever that I paid for it. Worth letting Mad Men sit around gathering dust while I watched every last minute.
Why the Internet Sucks
Because old videos never die. And do you know why Facebook sucks? Because one (or ten) of your friends will always point you to those videos. Someone put a bunch of the stuff produced by my high school TV department on Vimeo. I am glad to say that I am not in any of the clips, so I don’t mind throwing this up here so that my mother can have a chuckle at Godzik, around 2:15. Also, I am pretty sure I saw Eric in the drum line, but I am not going back to verify. And, the part that makes me rather proud – interspersed with the sports clips are clips of our Horticulture Club. No, I wasn’t on it.
Standing on Top of the World (1991) from Glenbrook South Television on Vimeo.
If I Had a Twitter Account
These are the things I would have said this weekend:
- I don’t watch Glee and I didn’t even watch the Emmys, but OMG did Jane Lynch look great.
- I think the Bears are broken.
- Alex is the Olin Kreutz of kiddie flag football. And he can return kicks, too.
- Sonic has a Happy Hour between 2 and 4pm. Drinks and slushies are half price. Cherry limeade, baby!
- Just deleted all my cookies and damn, my computer looks different.
- I forgot to put The Brothers Karamazov in my bag and was forced to buy a new book to read.
- I also have two book club reads to go through and I haven’t even cracked my new school book yet.
- The Farmers Market makes you do crazy things. Like buy eggplant.
- Free word game for the Kindle. Awesome. Except that it doesn’t work on my version. Do they really think I am going to fork over $189 for that? Death first! (And by Death, I mean iPad.)
- How many characters was that?
And this is why I don’t have a Twitter account.
Defining Graffiti. And Art.
Weekend Assignment #333: Writing on the Wall
Have you ever written on a bathroom wall, or left graffiti anywhere at all? Confess! I promise we’ll go easy on you! How do you feel about the ethics of graffiti, and the level of discourse sometimes found in illicit art and messages in public places?
Extra Credit: If you were to leave a message to the world on a public wall, what would it be?
I find it rather difficult to believe that I have never left any graffiti anywhere, but I just can’t think of any. It would be just like me to block out any deliquent behavior, though.
There is a famous pizza place in Chicago called Gino’s, where the graffiti on the walls and tables is legendary – practically encouraged – so I must have written something there, but I can’t come up with it.
In high school, I used to scribble song lyrics all over my notebooks. David Bowie here, Queen there, U2 and whatever else was going through my head when I should have been conjugating verbs in Spanish. But it isn’t graffiti if it is my own notebook, I don’t think. Do you have to deface someone else’s property for it to be considered graffiti?
So I had to look up the exact definition. From dictionary.com:
markings, as initials, slogans, or drawings, written, spray-painted, or sketched on a sidewalk, wall of a building or public restroom, or the like
O.K. by that definition, I have clearly created graffiti in the form of chalk drawings on the sidewalk. Hopscotch boards, mostly. Foursquare boards on my neighbor’s patio. And perhaps, “Anne Rules the Universe”. That was all gone by the next rainstorm.
There is a schoolmarm in my head, that might only be my mother, telling me graffiti is bad because someone is just going to have to clean it up after it is done. I don’t know what the cost/benefit
analysis is for allowing the (temporary) artistic expression of the few and the theoretical enjoyment of some others to create the work of the clean up. Some graffiti artists are really talented. Which leads to a greater argument on what defines art.
In any event, I will be working my last volunteer shift in the old library on Thursday – we are moving to the new building beginning Sunday – so I should really scribble something on the bathroom wall before they tear the place down. Any ideas?
The Next Dark Age 