I love The Onion It's a fire truck!.

I need this today, and so do you. Baby hedgehogs! Courtesy of Hazelbroom.



So no Harriet Miers, huh? How about that?

eieio I am on the farm with the 'rents. I should be grading. I am blogging. Fortunately Sheila has baked a pie to ease the transition between blogging and grading. It is an apple pie.

I am in catch-all mode, so watch out for the sharp corners.

Fingers crossed that everything will be okay for my mom next week and forevermore.

I went to Fry's to get her some miscellaneous amusements, such as Mental Floss and the DVD of Spellbound. The computers at Fry's were down. i*ron*y (n) - a state or condition contrary to expectation, as when the network is down in a giant computing superstore. The poor clerk had to write me out a ticket on a carbon-paper pad. The line for the registers went aaaaaaalllll the way back through the Pamplona bull-run of impulse items that leads to the checkouts at Fry's, back into the periodicals. Everybody was super pissed.

The toy store here is better than anything in Austin. It's better than Terra Toys and Over the Rainbow put together. It's also a teacher-supply store, so there's office stuff and ECE curricula and dot art and just goddamn everything. There was a giant hairy German shepherd named Fury in there. This turned out not to be a problem for Baldo. Mikey, the deaf miniature Schnauzer at the Kenney post office, was a problem. Fury the Hun was not a problem. I can't figure this out. I did decide that in some phase of my life I will have a giant hairy dog named Fury. Fury was actually pretty docile and seemed to be dominated by his little friend, a miniature poodle named Snowball. Dogs are fakakta.

At one point in the last week I had an endometrial biopsy. The less said about that the better. Once you've had a kid, however, you kind of don't give a shit anymore, especially if you had a caesarian. You could drop your pants in the waiting room. Oh, you only have the cold metal jumbo speculum? Okay. Residents are observing? Sure, bring them in. The Betadine goes where? All right. The risk of uterine perforation is low? Glad to hear it. Will we know right away if you blast a hole in there? Cool. Hospital's right across the street. You gonna need to pull out my intestines this time? No? Excellent.

overheard "If gay marriage is a threat to your marriage, then your marriage sucked anyway."

yuck I did not pick the right phase of life in which to experiment with a non-aluminum deodorant. My apologies if I encounter you. I can't even really tell if I'm stinky. That's one of the worst things about not being able to smell. You can't ever raise your hand if you're Sure.

When we lived in San Diego, Mojo Nixon used to do these "Minute with Mojo" bits on the radio, and one of his rants was against anti-perspirants. They're clogging up your natural essences, man! Mojo can be very convincing. So when my deodorant exploded in Portland, I replaced it with some herbal thing with chicory in it. Some stuff. I don't think this was a very good idea. I'm really nervous these days.

come on, everybody! we're moving to portland! So I am in the basement of my friends' house in Portland--in a room appropriately named the Dave Cave. It's one of the myriad things blowing my mind. We don't have basements in Texas--at least not in Houston, where they would fill up with water. So I'm all, like, "I'm underground! Cool!"

I did a reading yesterday and a segment at KBOO in the morning. The host, Lisa Loving, is a lot like The World's Nicest Person. She gave me a green fuzzy scarf with eyes and a tail, like a dragon, and she was so on fire with her work. I think I do a lot of wall-eyed staring: at the multiple Ethopian restaurants, at Powell's (which I visited even though there's a history), at the freakishly and in fact disturbingly attractive people who are EVERYWHERE, as if churned out from a factory. I don't know how anyone gets anything done here. There are too many distractions. A guy in an orange Hondamatic was driving down the street outside of KBOO, and I freaked out and asked Cave Dave to take a picture of it with his phone. I love Hondamatics. I can't believe there was one on the road, functioning.

I knew Portland was a radical town, but people keep surprising me anyway. Everyone keeps making reference to "the 9/11 conspiracy," and Dave and I decided after a careful, halting discussion that we don't really know what they mean. We know various conspiracy theories, but we've yet to knit them together into some grand unifying concept that can be referred to as "THE 9/11 conspiracy theory" and bandied about casually with the assumption that everyone knows what we mean.

Another distraction: People here really like their food. I thought Texans cornered that market; we've invented a meal between breakfast and brunch. You must believe me when I say that I had the greatest pizza ever last night--it was just wonderful, and I was as sober as the Pennsylvania Dutch when I ate it. People here like their local sausage and their regional produce (did you know huckleberries are a real thing?) and while they seem to get into a lot of slapdowns about the politics of their food, they eat the foods of their choice with the same gusto once they stop antagonizing each other. I appreciate that.

two tickets torn in half and a lot of nothing to do It never occurred to me that there would be Elliott Smith polyphonic ringtones. I'm not saying I diapprove of that, exactly. Just that we needed Elliott Smith to save us from the polyphonic ringtones of the world. It's a bizarre conflation.

I was listening to my Lyra on shuffle while I was writing today, and here amidst my Wurlitzer-organ and bhangra and rap en Francais files there was "Miss Misery"--a song we associate with a cringing Elliott Smith in a white tuxedo at the Academy Awards (another bizarre conflation). Once you can get Matt Damon out of your mind when you hear it, it's perfect.

At the risk of showing my age I think sometimes that I would like to close myself up in a very small room with harmonic, wry pop songs and never let any other music in. I like the progressions and turns of phase. We don't have enough harmonic, wry pop songs anymore--though I am delighted to see that someone has located Michael Penn and called the number on his tags so Aimee Mann can go pick him up. I only want to hear pop songs about people drinking too much and destroying their marriages and fighting until they pass out from exhaustion, maybe escaping into their gambling habits or bad affairs; or else the people can get tired and just quietly give up--that's okay too.

Not too long ago I was trying to explain to a friend of mine (who is a very funky Sephardic Jew) that if you are a standard-issue suburban WASP (like I am) you might have some angst about turning 33 because it's your Jesus Year. Yeah, and what have YOU done? I don't know if that's it, exactly, but I am definitely aging exponentially. I don't want to try any new foods; I don't want to go out. I got all my shit finished this afternoon, and bedtime was uneventful, so I sat down on the couch and contemplated watching television. I only get two stations well without cable, so I had a choice between Mystery! on PBS and Desperate Housewives, which people keep telling me I should watch because it's trenchant or whatever, but my god, Marcia Cross has such a giant forehead, and I just couldn't handle its frou-frou putative satire, and though I think I am clearly still too young for Mystery! I didn't want to invest any of my attention in Desperate Housewives, which I obviously wasn't going to like, so I went and washed the dishes. I'm such a cranky old kvetch.

born to love Last night's trashy movie was Basket Case, the story of a boy and his conjoined twin, who was excised in a crude table-top procedure by veterinarians and went on to become a cannibalistic blob. We watched Duane (Kevin Van Hentenryck) schlep his cannibalistic blob in a wicker basket through Times Square.

"He should get a sling for that thing," K. observed. "Free up his hands."

I thought about it. "And a sling might help it feel more attached, maybe less murderous."

"Yeah."

"I think it has separation anxiety."

The whole movie (and its two sequels) might have been different if Duane wore his blob from the beginning, before it started acting out.

the books Giant sloppy love to the staff of BookPeople--particularly Jessica and Kester--for workin' it with me on Wednesday.

There's something bittersweet about being surrounded by thousands of books and knowing you're going home with Franklin. Do not get me wrong: I love Franklin. Franklin is boss. I prefer Franklin to beeping books, to Barney, to anything involving heavy equipment or construction trucks (a person gets burned out). But we have something like 4,307 Franklin books from the library around here. Some of them are probably overdue. Before we read any of them, Baldo asks me to read the "Other Books about Franklin" list in the front matter--"in a really fast voice." This is not easy. Franklin has a book about everything, so the list is long: goes to school, meets the tooth fairy, fibs, plays the game, goes to the hospital, &c.

"Time for the Franklin slashfic!" I told J. Franklin and Bear are awfully close, aren't they?

Other books about Franklin:

• Franklin Goes Downtown
• Franklin and the Speeding Hockey Puck (for Nat)
• Franklin Buys a Hooker
• Franklin and the Puppy Who Wouldn't Wake Up
• Franklin and the Benzodiazepines
• Franklin Lands on His Back
• Franklin and the Effluent Pollution
• Franklin's Compound Fracture
• Franklin and the Canada Revenue Agency

See how desperate I am for new books? Adult books? That's desperation talking.

clogging up teh Internets I am going to engage in pointless activity for the next ten minutes by filling out a meme. If Poppy Z. Brite will do it, then I can do it too.

1. Name someone with the same birthday as you.
   Macaulay Culkin. But he's younger.


2. Where was your first kiss?
   At my friend Erin's house at a New Year's Eve party. I was a late bloomer.


3. Have you ever seriously vandalised someone else's property?
   I don't think so. Define "seriously." I did inadvertently destroy part of a state park once. I'm not proud of that.


4. Have you ever hit someone of the opposite sex?
   Oh, sure.


5. Have you ever sung in front of a large number of people?
   Yes, I have. Not planning to do that again.


6. What's the first thing you notice about the preferred sex?
   I don't notice much anymore.


7. What really turns you on?
   When someone else is washing dishes. I can't go into restaurants anymore because the thought of all that dishwashing undoes me.


8. What do you order at Starbucks?
   I order myself to go someplace else.


9. What is your biggest mistake?
   I can think of a few. But really I'm okay with how everything turned out.


10. Have you ever hurt yourself on purpose?
    Yes. I was crazy.


11. Say something totally random about yourself.
    God, I love CCH Pounder. What's her show now?


12. Has anyone ever said you looked like a celebrity?
    "That chick from MythBusters." I don't see it.


13. Do you still watch kiddy movies or tv shows?
    Does a bear shit in the woods? I really like this one thing called Dig Hole, Build House. I like the part where the builders hang the sheetrock and fill in the cracks with joint compound.


14. Did you have braces?
    Yep. And headgear. Those were sad times.


15. Are you comfortable with your height?
    I don't wake up screaming about it anymore. I'm the same height as Prince! He's a sexy M.F.!


16. What is the most romantic thing someone of the opposite sex has done for you?
    Stay married to me.


17. When do you know it's love?
    Is that a Van Hagar song?


18. Do you speak any other languages?
    I took Latin. I'm really thankful for that because I use it all the time now, reading state mottoes. I can do a little bit of ASL, enough to tell someone about monkeys and elephants and a helicopter crash.


19. Have you ever been to a tanning salon?
    It's been suggested to me, but no. There's one by our house, and our realtor said, "Hey, Marrit, you could go there!" People, what can I say? I just don't have that much pigment. I used to spend a lot of time in a UV room with Baldo, but that was different, not cosmetic. That was to burn all the eczema off his epidermis.


20. What magazines do you read?
    Highlights. It's fun with a purpose! I love "Hidden Pictures."


21. Has anyone you were really close to passed away?
    Yes.


22. Do you watch MTV?
    Is that still on? We don't have cable.


23. What's something that really annoys you?
    Chafing. Man oh man, I hate chafing.


24. What's something you really like?
    Pie.


25. Do you like Michael Jackson?
    Not really.


26. Can you dance?
    Technically, yes. I'm still ambulatory.


27. What's the latest you have ever stayed up?
    Fifteen months.


28. Have you ever been rushed by an ambulance into the emergency room?
    Nor anywhere else.


29. Do you actually read these when other people fill them out?
    I do.
Posted by Marrit at 09:34 AM

Kid Rock, part quatre With a heavy heart I tell you that a certain Rock for Kids band (which will remain nameless) has supplanted my beloved Old 97's as Baldo's music of choice. Last night after cleaning up the living room, Baldo wanted to dance to a song about snack time instead of a cheatin' song with a trucker's gearshift in the last verse. We continued to sing this snack-time song all during the bath. It's like something between us has died. Let the dance of separation begin.

I am determined to honor his choices to the extent that I can bear it. I too have inexplicable musical phases, and my family indulges me patiently. My Wurlitzer-organ phase. My bhangra phase. I nearly lost J. during my rap en Francais phase, but we all pressed on. Now Baldo has come to realize that peppy people make music about things particular to his world: carrot sticks, the first day of school, friendly dinosaurs from the imagination. As he grows, he'll return to "Guns of Brixton." I believe it. I have faith.

Baldo requested the Rock for Kids band during our Sunday Morning Family Jamboree. So I took Ted Leo out of the player, sighing heavily.

"Oh, this is rich," J said. "It sounds like Color Me Badd had children."

"That's a money quote," I told him. "I'm so blogging that." Reviewers of the arts sometimes lie awake at night searching for a quote like that until the Xanax kicks in.

"I love this song!" Baldo cried. "Now we will all dance! I am the line leader!"

"Can we call it 'Color Me Dadd'?" I asked.

"Of course!"

"I think David Silver produced this album."

"That's good. Be sure you say that too."

"Marrit, you dance now!" Baldo barked. He must have been a dance commander.

The obligatory disclaimer: If you have brought joy to my child with your music, of course I am grateful to you. I feel really torn about snarking you up in my blog--not enough to stop me, though. You are also parents, and I am sure you understand that feeling of Well, I don't know, honey. We all have it. It's probably our predominant emotion as our children age.