Poppycock Jabberwocky

The phrase "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" was coined by Noam Chomsky as an example of nonsense. The individual words make sense, and are arranged according to proper grammar, yet the result is still nonsense. The inspiration for this attempt at creating verbal nonsense came from the idea of contradiction and irrelevant or immaterial characteristics (an idea cannot have a dimension of color, green or otherwise), both of which would be sure to make a phrase meaningless.

Still, the human will to find meaning is strong; green ideas might be ideas associated with a Green party in politics, and colorless green ideas criticises some of them as uninspiring. For some, the human impulse to find meaning in what is actually random or nonsensical is what makes people find luck in coincidence, believe in omens and divination, or engage in conversation with a computer (see ELIZA effect).

The dreamlike language of James Joyce's "novel" Finnegans Wake sheds light on nonsense in a similar way; full of portmanteau words, it appears to be pregnant with multiple layers of meaning, but in many passages it is difficult to say whether any one person's interpretation of a text is the "intended" or "correct" one. There may in fact be no such interpretation.

"Jabberwocky" is a poem (of nonsense verse) found in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) by Lewis Carroll. It is generally considered to be one of the greatest nonsense poems written in the English language. The word jabberwocky is also occasionally used as a synonym of nonsense.

Jabberwocky

Lewis Carroll

1871

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!'

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought--

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

'And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'

He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Jabberwocky" is a poem (of nonsense verse) found in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) by Lewis Carroll. It is generally considered to be one of the greatest nonsense poems written in the English language.

Glossary

Bandersnatch – A swift moving creature with snapping jaws. Capable of extending its neck. (From The Hunting of the Snark.)

Borogove – A thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round, something like a live mop. Carroll emphasized in the introduction to The Hunting of the Snark that the initial syllable of borogove is pronounced as in borrow, rather than as in boring.

Brillig – Four o'clock in the afternoon: the time when you begin broiling things for dinner. (According to Mischmasch, it is derived from the verb to bryl or broil.)

Burbled – Possibly a mixture of "bleat", "murmur", and "warble". (according to Carroll in a letter [1]). (Burble is an actual word, circa 1303, meaning to form bubbles as in boiling water.)

Chortled - Laugh in a breathy, gleeful way; cuckle (Definition from Oxford American Dictionary) A combination of "chuckle" and "snort."

Frabjous - Delightful; joyous (Definition from Oxford American Dictionary, credited to Lewis Carroll)

Frumious – Combination of "fuming" and "furious." (From the Preface to The Hunting of the Snark.)

Galumphing - Moving in a clumsy, ponderous, or noisy manner. Perhaps a blend of "gallop" and "triumph." (Definition from Oxford American Dictionary)

Gimble – To make holes like a gimlet.

Gyre – To go round and round like a gyroscope, according to Humpty Dumpty. However, Carroll wrote in a letter that it meant to scratch like a dog. (Gyre is an actual word, circa 1566, meaning a circular or spiral motion or form; especially a giant circular oceanic surface current.)

Jubjub – A desperate bird that lives in perpetual passion. (From The Hunting of the Snark.)

Manxome – Combination of "monstrous" and "fearsome"; possibly related to the Manx cat. ^{[citation needed]}

Mimsy – Combination of "flimsy" and "miserable."

Mome – Possibly short for "from home," meaning that the raths had lost their way.

Outgrabe – Something between bellowing and whistling, with a kind of sneeze in the middle. Since the verse is in past tense, this is probably a preterite form derived from a strong verb such as "outgribe".

Rath – A sort of green pig. (See Origin and Structure for further details.)

Slithy – Combination of "lithe" and "slimy."

Toves – A combination of a badger, a lizard, and a corkscrew. They are very curious looking creatures which make their nests under sundials. They live on cheese.

Uffish – A state of mind when the voice is gruffish, the manner roughish, and the temper huffish. (according to Carroll in a letter).

Wabe – The grass plot around a sundial. It is called a "wabe" because it goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it, and a long way beyond it on each side.

Blue Skies

"Blue Skies"
Sung by Bing Crosby

I was blue, just as blue as I could be
Ev'ry day was a cloudy day for me
Then good luck came a-knocking at my door
Skies were gray but they're not gray anymore




Blue skies
Smiling at me
Nothing but blue skies
Do I see

Bluebirds
Singing a song
Nothing but bluebirds
All day long

Never saw the sun shining so bright
Never saw things going so right
Noticing the days hurrying by
When you're in love, my how they fly

Blue days
All of them gone
Nothing but blue skies
From now on

I should care if the wind blows east or west
I should fret if the worst looks like the best
I should mind if they say it can't be true
I should smile, that's exactly what I do

Summer is Coming

Finally it happened, the sun came back to us. After an extended vacation, the sun finally came back to save us from our water-logged, wallowing pits of rainy melancholy. Not to mention, save our basement from the streams of rainwater which have threatened to swallow up the entire house. When I got my first glimpse out of our sunny backyard out of the window this morning, it was like a heavy weight immediately evaporated from my chest.

"Finally," I thought to myself, "Now I can ride my bike to work! Oh boy!"
It was one of those perfect bike rides where I managed to grab a flowering stalk off a tree without having to dismount. The roller coaster ride down Main Street is always a bit frightening and exhilarating at the same time - especially because I only have back pedal breaks, eek. Each time I make it down that hill without smashing my head open like a ripe melon, I feel as though I have accomplished something terrific.
Work whizzed by and Suzanne and I took a coconut popsicle/lake/sun break. We were chatting on the swings when she heard a baby cry that she recognized.

"Is that my niece?...is that Paige?"
Turns out that her sister Jenny and her very new, fresh out of the oven baby, the pink and beautiful Paige had just settled down in the park behind us. Suzanne got lots of Paige cuddle time and I got to meet both the cutest baby in the world and her cool sister who I already feel like I know.

Before we knew it, it was time for mojitos and Abbie called me on her cell to tell me so while watching me work through my office window - too weird talking to someone who is far away yet close enough that you can see them and wave. Oh technology, we love thee. We got to marvel at Tanner's super cute new salon do and then off for burgers and fried items and by 9pm we were pooped. But not too pooped to move some of Abbie's furniture through her maze of an apartment which was actually not that painful but maybe that was the liquor talking. Still can't believe she is leaving?! Crapola.
Beers on the stoop with the girls. Love the girls. The bike ride home was refreshing. The second I hit the hard part of the hill going up College Avenue, my legs kicked into overdrive and I had one of those moments of "Wow, I am so strong, I could carry an ox!" but 2 seconds later my legs were aching and I was huffing and puffing like an old ox. Still I made it up the hill without stopping once, granted, there were some moments when a snail would have been faster, but, my bike does weigh about 20 lbs.
The sky is so clear tonight. All the stars are out in full force and I can't wait to be at the campsite star gazing like it's my job. This is one of those perfect nights that makes me long for fireflies and a mason jar. Then I could run around in bare feet and pajamas, catching all the lightening bugs I could find and bringing them home to watch them pulse the whole night long. They were usually dead by morning, despite the airholes I carefully cut in the top of their jar, but it seemed like a fair enough exchange.
After weeks of repetitive rain, it is finally beginning to feel possible that summer might arrive. And the days on end of rain and more rain have turned the foliage a lush, tropical green. Everything feels so vibrant and alive. The sky today was a pastel perfect blue with puffy white clouds and not one single raincloud in sight. The lake was glistening like plastic as though all the gloom and doom had never even been here. Summer is coming, summer is coming, what will I do with my long summer vacation? Oh, that's right, I am no longer a student which means I get no summer vacation. WELL, CRAP. Oh well, summer is coming, summer is coming...


Somethings Coming
West Side Story

Could be
Who knows?
There's something due any day
I will know right away
Soon as it shows
It may come cannonballin' down through the sky
Gleam in its eye
Bright as a rose!
Who knows?
It's only just out of reach
Down the block, on a beach
Under a tree
I got a feeling there's a miracle due
Gonna come true
Coming to me
Could it be?
Yes it could
Something's coming
Something good
If I can wait
Something's coming I don't know what it is
But it is
Gonna be great!
With a click
With a shock
Phone'll jingle
Door'll knock
Open the latch!
Something's coming, don't know when
But it's soon
Catch the moon
One handed catch
Around the corner
Or whistling down the river
Come on - deliver
To me
Will it be? Yes it will
Maybe just by holding still
It'll be there!
Come on, something, come on in
Don't be shy
Meet a guy
Pull up a chair
The air is hummin'
And something great is coming
Who knows
It's only just
Out of reach
Down the block, on a beach
Maybe tonight
Maybe tonight...

Sex Slaves and Zombies

"They didn't see us as human beings, but just as whores, just as flesh that they could use. That's all." - Tania in Frontline's "Sex Slaves"

My plan was to go to bed early for once but some pre-bed channel flipping changed all that when PBS pulled me in with their presentation of a Frontline program entitled: Sex Slaves. With a title like that, how could I go to bed? Granted, this was a somewhat cheesy, melodramatic piece but you can't help but be riveted by these women's stories and their cold hard stares. And then, even more saddening than their forced prostitution in Turkey, their destitute lives in the Ukraine which drove them far from home and resulted in these risky, abusive situations. All of this was done with the hope of improving their own lot and the lives of those they loved.

Yes, there were some girls who might have been too naive to know what sort of jobs they were signing up for but most probably had a good idea that they were being marketed in Turkey for their flesh. However, only pure hopelessness and desperation could lead these women to take that blind leap of faith and leave their homes for an uncertain future. And to imagine that kind of cold hard desperation makes me all the more appreciative of the easy life I take so breezily for granted: the Offasty I make fun of, the Western culture I parody and the go go go go ethic which I reject. Tania simply wants to support her family, many of them disfigured by their close proximity to Chernobyl. And Tania acts out of desperation and is punished for it in the worst sorts of way.

More than anything, it amazes me that these girls are sold the moment they get off the boat. How do they become pieces of property and where are their "ownership" papers? And how is it that the person who brings them to Turkey receives $ for their sale? How is it possible to be sold repeatedly without ever making any profit off your own flesh? How does one person suddenly own you? It boggles the mind. And how many years ago were we owning and selling people in America? Not so long ago. And the worst part is that this goes on all over the world and it is generally women and children who are getting shafted, beaten, raped and violated.

These sorts of programs always leave me feeling a little dirty afterwards. I know that part of the sensationalistic entertainment value comes from the titillating tid bits the girls relinquish about the horrors they suffered. I am simultaneously nauseated and fascinated. But as others have pointed out, sex slaves are only one of the many ways humans are taken advantage of and oppressed - it just happens to be glitzier and therefore, receives more press. In the article, Oversexed, Debbie Nathan writes:

"On one side were evangelical Christians, with their typical fears of foreigners, leftists and sex--and their morbid fascination with forced prostitution, even though more people may be forced to pick broccoli than to rent out their genitals. Then there were feminists whose concern about the exploitation of women--like the evangelicals'--also fixated on commercial sex. The evangelicals and feminists seized the lobbying reins by making common cause around what both call "sex slavery."" - Debbie Nathan

And on a lighter note, the Zombies won the Eurovision Song contest! Who are the beautiful Zombies who never take their costumes off (are they costumes or are they Zombies for real?)? A fabulous Finnish band of superfreaks called Lordi and since I am officially a Space Creature (someone very important told me this today, two whole times, so it must be true!), I feel an affinity for my dear scary zombies! Only in Europe!

Bye Bye Abbie

The Púca is considered by many to be the most terrifying of all the creatures of faery. Not the slightest reason is its appearance, but it is its powers that are most feared. It is said to waylay travellers and others about at night, and if it is able to toss them onto its back, it will, at very least, provide them with the ride of their lives, from which they will return forever changed.
- Wikipedia

An Offasty without Abbie is a sad Offasty indeed. Friday was Miss Abbie Pooka Pucks last day at ye ol'Offasty and when Monday rolled around, the place felt empty and sad. No Abbie to pop into your office and say, "You know what I did this weekend? I stayed out til 6am and then I..." (censored to protect the involved parties - suffice to say, it is always JUICY!). No Abbie to pull you out the door for a coffee/sweet/creamee break. No Abbie to wrap you up in her stories, dramas, jokes and tall tales. No bright face to light up the drab interior of the fluorescently lit Offasty and bring joy to the hearts of all its inhabitants. These brief Abbie-moments are the stuff that make the day go by less painfully. The absence of Abbie echoes down every corridor, through every cubicle and every copy machine drawer and in each Abbie-less office.

The pagan trickster was reimagined in Old English puca (Christianized as "devil") as a kind of half-tamed woodland sprite, leading folk astray with echoes and lights in nighttime woodlands (like the Celtic/French "White Ladies", the Dames Blanches), or coming into the farmstead and souring milk in the churn.
- Wikipedia

We will sniffle into our coffee cups, wipe our tears with recycled tissues and wish our freebird well. And in the meantime, we will have to visit Miss Abbie on the farm because, as Suzanne said so eloquently, "I like mud." And, of course, "I like hay." So we will fit in just fine.

Here are some videos which celebrate Abbie in all her Offasty/Pookah/Puckish glory:

The Offasty: Burnt Toast
The Offasty: Stolen Yogurt
The Offasty: Losing Aimee (coming soon)
"Where is My Mind", the Pixies

Here's a long quotation from A Midsummer Night's Dream. It's from a meeting between Puck and one of Titania's fairies.

FAIRY
Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Called Robin Goodfellow. Are not you he
That frights the maidens of the villagery,
Skim milk, and sometimes labour in the quern,
And bootless make the breathless housewife churn,
And sometime make the drink to bear no barm,
Mislead night-wanders, laughing at their harm?
Those that Hobgoblin call you, and sweet Puck,
You do their work, and they shall have good luck.
Are you not he?

PUCK
Thou speakest aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night.
I jest to Oberon, and make him smile
When I a fat and bean-fed horse beguile,
Neighing in likeness of a filly foal;
And sometime lurk I in a gossip's bowl
In very likeness of a roasted crab,
And when she drinks, against her lips I bob
And on her withered dewlap pour the ale.
The wisest aunt, telling the saddest tale,
Sometime for three-foot stool mistaketh me;
Then slip I from her bum, down topples she,
And 'tailor' cries, and falls into a cough;
And then the whole quire hold their hips and laugh,
And waxen in their mirth, and neeze, and swear
A merrier hour was never wasted there.

-- A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act II, scene i

Dude, Where's My Car?

Walking to my car this morning, I was surprised to find a puddle of rainwater in the place where my car was supposed to be. It didn’t help matters that I had locked myself out of Tanner's apartment and I was wearing a short nightgown with pink fuzzy boots. That'll teach me to run out of the house late at night wearing only bed clothes. Luckily, I did remember to bring my cell phone, but it would have been even nicer if I had bothered to put pants on.

I asked a neighbor if he had seen my car. Was it stolen or towed?? Or perhaps kidnapped by aliens? At least I hadn’t been drunk when I parked it. That would have been even worse as my memory would have been fuzzy. At least I knew for sure that the car had been there at 2am last night and was gone at 11am the next day. Then I saw the sign, half covered in graffiti was one of those, "No parking from here to the street" signs that I must have missed at 2am in the rain.

Double damn! But at least the car mystery was solved. The cops directed me to Spillane Towing. The woman who answered the phone was charming. "Yeah, we got yer car, come and get it. We're over by the Pizza Put, what do ya mean you don’t know where that is?"

I waited on the corner for my mother to come and pick me up. Cars whizzed by and starred at my nightgown attire. The Kountry Cup van driver nearly careened into the church he was so busy gawking. I probably could have made some $ on that street corner to pay off my towing fees.

Spillanes is over in South Burlington and the angry woman at the front desk did her best to ignore me despite my chirpy hello. "Close the door," she growled.

"It is closed," I smiled back.

"Is it closed tight?" she barked.

"YES, give me my car!"

$55 smackers and 15 minutes of humiliation later and I was finally ready to go. I tried to take a picture of this lovely lady as I left, "No pictures in here," she spit.

Once I was sitting in the safety of my poor, abandoned car, examining the $45 police ticket, everything felt much better. All is all, the entire experience cost under $100 bucks and took only 1.5 hrs to fix up. Compared to the time I got towed in Oakland, this was a cakewalk.

Years ago, I drove home slightly tipsy from SF and parked in a neighborhood I had recently moved into near the Oakland Rose Garden. I didn’t notice that I was slightly protruding into a driveway. The next day I went out to my car with my friend Nessa and had no idea where the bloody thing had gone. Even worse, I wasn't sure exactly where I had parked which just made me more confused. Once I called the cops and located my car at a compound lot in the depths of Oakland, the painful journey was underway.

We headed to the police station where I had to pay a fine to release the car. The station was in downtown Oakland and there were cops with machine guns in the marble lobby. They sent us up to an empty office where they made us wait for 1/2 hour as they stamped things and filled out paperwork behind bullet proof glass. The entire day was so "Brazil" - slow, surreal and amazing how many retarded hoops we were made to jump through.

We took the freeway out to the warehouse section of town off the 580 and tried to get into the huge car lot which was encircled in menacing barb wire and seemed deserted. Much yelling brought a grumpy, cigar smoking man and a bevy of dogs. He led us into a dilapidated building where we waited hours upon hours as he stamped paper, made phone calls, talked on a walkie talkie and disdainfully took my $200.

"Cash only sweetheart."

Eventually, he drove me through the enormous warehouses where we passed hundreds of other abandoned cars that he said would be sold off soon. Sadly, many people aren’t able to spring their cars from this Automobile Purgatory. When we finally found my little blue Honda Civic covered in toys, I felt a huge sense of relief.

Here is a side by side comparison of towing and the pain it incurs:

Towing in Oakland, $250, time spent: 1/2 day, annoyance scale: 10
Towing in Burlington, VT: $100, time spent: 1.5 hrs, annoyance scale: 5

On a happier note, check out the cutest kittens the world has ever seen:

Nostalgia will Befall Ya

“Nostalgia is a seductive liar.” – George Wildman Ball

It is one of those perfect rainy mornings and all I wanted to do was stay curled up in Tanner’s bed snug and dry, sleeping in as late as we liked and maybe rolling out of the cover tangle for brunch at Sneakers in the very, very late afternoon. Sadly, there is this thing called “work” which somehow results in a bi-weekly paycheck and this motivated me out of bed and down to the office to do my duty.

Nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days. Doug Larson

Last night was Tanner’s friends’ Seamonster potluck with yummy food, interesting people and a sudden, dramatic rainstorm. Check out Tanner’s blog for a far better description of the evening and pictures too! Anyway, maybe it was the rain or meeting new people or perhaps it was that discussion with the boy from next door about California but I got hit with a massive wave of nostalgia something awful. You know how they say “Paranoia will Destroy Ya?” Well, probably the same thing could be said of nostalgia, but I can’t think of a way to rhyme it.

“It is one of the paradoxes of American literature that our writers are forever looking back with love and nostalgia at lives they couldn't wait to leave.” – Anatole Broyard

There we were. Having a perfectly fine evening, slightly wet and sauced and I was waxing nostalgic about places I miss in Cali: Bolinas Beach, Chrissy Fields, the back deck of Club Mallard, Cordonices Park, the Berkeley Rose Garden, the Cheeseboard, Mountain View Cemetery, the view at night on the San Rafael bridge, the Mission on a rainy evening, the Kabuki Hot Springs, Market Hall on a busy afternoon. And more than any of the places, it is the people that I miss so much: Nessa in LA, Jeff Gouin in Alameda, Jeff and Charlie in SF, Jen Hing in Richmond, Molly Lynch in LA, Keith and Travis in SF, Sue in Albany, Sarah in SF, Renee in Oakland, and Joanne in LA.

Nostalgia, the vice of the aged. We watch so many old movies our memories come in monochrome. - Angela Carter

It is hard to go through the motions of meeting new people and trying to make new connections when you are missing your old friends. I have made so many friends in my 32 yrs on the planet that it seems almost pointless to make new ones, especially when I am so adept at losing touch with the old ones. Occasional emails and phone calls every three months don’t really do it for me. I want to roll out of bed past noon on a Monday, grab my housemates Jeff, Nessa and Jared and walk down to Saul’s deli for pre-breakfast pickles, lattes in bowls, blintzes and scrapple. Greg brings us our steaming platters of food in record time and drops off his latest CD release, and at the next table are my other housemates and their VA clan slurping down coffee. Then we toodle through Black Oaks Books, grab the East Bay Express and some book from the used section and make a trip to Peet’s for coffee beans and more coffee, say hi to the people who work there and then browse the flip flop selection at Longs on our walk home.

"Imagination equals nostalgia for the past, the absent; it is the liquid solution in which art develops the snapshot of reality” – Cyril Connolly

But it is so silly to stick my head in a past which has been over for many, many years now. Long ago, Nessa moved to LA and had a baby. Jared is in in Iowa and Jeff is in Alameda and I can’t recall the last time I saw them. Sauls, Peets and Longs still remain but our house has new people living in it. How do you clear your head of these cobwebs before they wrap you up and swallow you?

"Nostalgia isn't what it used to be." - Peter de Vries

Tanner listened patiently to all my nostalgic reminiscences and then he said, “10 years from now you are going to remember this night of lying here in the rain cuddling up with a boy and you will be nostalgic about it.”

“I don’t like nostalgia unless it’s mine.” – Lou Reed

But NO! If I am very lucky and play my cards right, in 10 years I hope to have achieved some sort of inner peace and superhuman ability to live in the “now” so that I will be able to enjoy that exact moment that I am living. And perhaps I might look back and remember a rainy evening 10 years ago and smile to myself but then I can continue forward without getting snared in the sticky webs of the past. How I will get to that enlightened, carpe diem sort of place, I have no idea. But perhaps Tanner can give me pointers since he is so darn smart. In the meantime, this rain is nice to watch out the window with a cup of tea and a dash of nostalgia – after all, once the sun returns, my nostalgia is sure to be replaced with an empty brain and sunny dazed thoughts of grilled meat, inner tubes, mystery novels and hammocks…hopefully…

"We seem to be going through a period of nostalgia, and everyone seems to think yesterday was better than today. I don't think it was, and I would advise you not to wait ten years before admitting today was great. If you're hung up on nostalgia, pretend today is yesterday and just go out and have one hell of a time." Art Buchwald

But since it is not summer just yet, I will indulge in some more California nostalgia. Here is a montage all about the Californian places and people that I miss so much it hurts:

And here is another video montage Ode to Cali.

“Fiction is not imagination. It is what anticipates imagination by giving it the form of reality. This is quite opposite to our own natural tendency which is to anticipate reality by imagining it, or to flee from it by idealizing it. That is why we shall never inhabit true fiction; we are condemned to the imaginary and nostalgia for the future.” – Jean Baudrillard

Happy Suzanne Day!

Today Suzanne turned 28 years old and we went out to Mirabelles to celebrate with warm goat cheese salad - yummy. Oh, who are we kidding, we eat there all the darn time?! But today we got three sugary goodies in honor of Suzanne's birthday. Again, who am I kidding, we get treats there all the damn time! Ah well, today they were special mini-birthday sweets: one key lime pie, a whoopie (chocolate cake filled with whipped cream) and some white chocolate cake thing that did not have a name. We were all a little sick after scarfing them down but it was worth it.


Happy birthday Suzanne Monroe! The Offasty just would not be the same without you - you bring the giggles and the naughtiness and the evil "hee hee hee" to our little section of cubicles. To celebrate, check out these episodes of The Offasty which star the fabulous Suzanne Monroe and Abbie Hepburn - The Offasty: Burnt Toast and The Offasty: Stolen Yogurt. Or try this Pixies music video to "Where is My Mind?" which is pretty much how we were feeling alllllll day as we tried to do work through the sugary, birthday haze:



Oh, and check out this funny article this guy I met on YouTube (we share an affinity for Britney Spears) wrote about his experiences being an extra at All My Children. My favorite bit had to be:

Now, everyone knows soap opera actresses are skinny. But let me be clear, they are not skinny — they're inhuman. The two young women in our scene were about four feet tall, and weighed no more than 70 pounds. Ok, I'm exaggerating. Maybe 75. These women are just ridiculously thin. Fifty years ago, they would have joined the freak show at the circus. Today, they're TV stars. Who knew? - Scott Harris

Speaking of skinny, I have been getting some flack on my YouTube videos of the Skel-fab Club girls (Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie are the clubs founding members). Lots of people have been protesting that anorexia is NOT a joke. I agree that it is not a joke but PLEASE, if you can't poke fun at a pervasive social issue which is getting more and more out of control EVERY SINGLE DAY, then what can you do? I suppose do some silly skits with paperdolls, thus, the Skel-fab Club was born. You can watch some of their episodes here: The Skel-fab Club,
Skel Fab and Jared Leto, Skel-fab Oscar Highlights, Skel-fabbers Get Gorey, Skel-fabbers and Oprah, Skel-fab's New Convert, Skel-fab's Skinny Babble

Super Good Boyfriends

SGBs make you steak for dinner when you have been drinking Bloody Mary's all day and you need some protein in your belly. They brush your hair while you are watching a cheesy action movie and they send you sweet emails when you are freaking out about your computer. They drive you home when you have had too much to drink and they IM you to ask how your day is faring. Super good boyfriends are hard to come by so if you find one, take him on many walks round the block and count your lucky stars. Now if only my G5 was being a SGC instead of spitting my DVDs out defective and only partially burnt. Double damn it, I hate computer problems at 5am when there is no one at Apple to answer the phone. A SGB and a SGC, now that would be a perfect world.


Speaking of some super good boys, here are some 60s (Once Were) Babes of the Month from an old Deadbeat Club. Featured babes are Michael Caine, Terance Stamp, Malcolm McDowell, Paul Newman (the one American) and Michael York.

April 2005, 60s (once were) Babes of the Month, part 1, part 2, part 3 (below, includes a Serge Gainsbourg monage, oooh la la - let's time travel baby!)

A little hair of the dog

Have a happy mom's day everyone.

Happy Mommy Bloggy Day

For Mother's Day, I gave my mom a haircut. I know this sounds cheap but this is ALL she wanted, I swear (although I am also cheap!). That and I will trim the shrubbery tomorrow as well as saw down a fat ol'tree that is crowding the house. I know, I know, sounds awful, right?! Nothing says happy mother's day like activities with scissors, am I right here?! But again, this is what she wanted for mother's day! Our mom is one of those oddball beatniks who does not like flowers (she grows her own), chocolates (she does not eat sugar) or a Hallmark card (homemade is ok). This makes it tough because we want to celebrate her and show her how much we care but...how to do this? Every year it is a stretch and this year, haircuts and shrub trimming seemed the best solution. Oh, and berry pancakes never hurt...

Here is a video of Mom giving a tour of her gardens. In the span of two weeks everything grew and transformed entirely. It grows too fast to keep up with, gotta love this rain!


Speaking of cabaret's, check out this cool cabaret, The Yard Dogs, which took place in Santa Cruise, for extra fun, have a look at this fabulous karaoke Celine Dion song as interpreted by an Arnold impersonator/cable access tv show host. Again, these are a coupla reasons why I still love YouTube. Oh, and I posted a bunch of bits from the current episode of DBC25 here on YouTube. Highlights include Tanner's Gorey Tattoo and the Skel-fab Club, Aniston Chases Oscar, Eva and YouTube and Brangelina's Political Tiffs - bring on the nasty comments, yeehaw! No wait, I changed my mind, no more comments that make me want to cry if you please!

Oh and BIG NEWS, Britney Spears has finally admiteed to being preggers. I am glad I am not the only one to make fun of this little lovely. As I mentioned, the current May 15th New Yorker has an interesting article by John Cassidy entitled "Me Media." It is a good read predominently about Facebook with brief mentions of My Space, Friendster and YouTube. Oddly enough, right after I read this article, we flipped on the new SNL and the skit was ALL about My Space. It was a pretty funny skit implying that most of the people on My Space are old pedos pretending to be younger to get laid - hey, if you want to watch it, I am sure it will end up on YouTube in 10 minutes.

Here are some quotes from the New Yorker article:

"The eagerness to parade in public on the Internet still surprises many people...[Says Duncan Watts, a sociologist prof at Columbia] 'If I had to guess why sites like facebook are so poular, I would say it doesn't have anything to do with networking at all. It's voyeurism and exhibitionism. People like to express themselves, and they are curious about other people.'"

Hmm, I buy that. Here is an interesting article about the Blog World Hierarchy - something I know next to nothing about but find fascinating. Who knew that the Blogosphere is yet another popularity contest/beauty pagent complete with cliques and "In Crowds" as can be found in high schools, Hollywood and every other small pond with a limited amount of pie? But even if the game is "rigged" as some bloggers claim in this article, the Blogosphere, like the internet, seems too large and irrational to control completely. So as much as advertisers and big cheeses try to track the Blogosphere and manipulate it, it will slip through their fingers along with Princess Leia and the rest of the revolutionaries:

"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers. ... Star Wars: Episode V—The Empire Strikes Back (1980) ...

Here are some good quotes from the article and hey, the original Gawker Girl got serious hate mail too so I guess it is really quite cool to be despised!?:

When Shirky compiled his analysis of links, he saw that the smaller bloggers’ fears were perfectly correct: There is enormous inequity in the system. A very small number of blogs enjoy hundreds and hundreds of inbound links—the A-list, as it were. But almost all others have very few sites pointing to them...The A-list is teensy, the B-list is bigger, and the C-list is simply massive. In the blogosphere, the biggest audiences—and the advertising revenue they bring—go to a small, elite few. Most bloggers toil in total obscurity.


The power law is dominant because of a quirk of human behavior: When we are asked to decide among a dizzying array of options, we do not act like dispassionate decision-makers, weighing each option on its own merits. Movie producers pick stars who have already been employed by other producers. Investors give money to entrepreneurs who are already loaded with cash. Popularity breeds popularity.


“It’s not about moral failings or any sort of psychological thing. People aren’t lazy—they just base their decisions on what other people are doing,” Shirky says. “It’s just social physics. It’s like gravity, one of those forces.”


No one knows this better than Elizabeth Spiers, the original Gawker girl. She is arguably the most famous professional blogger, since she invented its dominant mode: a titillating post delivered with a snarky kicker, casual profanity, and genuine fan-girl enthusiasm—sonnets made of dirt. Yet no good deed goes unpunished; the player-hater e-mail she received during her tenure at the gossip site was astonishing. “I’d get these e-mails saying, ‘You’re a dirty slut who can’t get laid,’ ” she recalls. “How can I be dirty slut and not get laid?”