I don't even know what bandwidth is!

Yo! (I have been saying 'yo' recently.) On cue, my overhead lightbulb burned out, so I bought this!

Which, unfortunately, doesn't fit. It fits in the socket just fine, but the frosted glass thing that goes over it is too small. Never fear, I will use it somewhere.

Also: if you can't get enough of my writey-writey, see my knitblog, where I have actually been posting recently.

we built this city on cheap takeout

Hey, look everyone! Lou held still long enough for me to take a decent picture of him!


Of course, that is the "even though I'm looking at you I'm listening to that interesting noise downstairs, so just prepare for any commands to go unheeded" look.

***

Sweet steamy apple pie, are we back to this again?

***

An exchange:
Him:Yeah, Grease makes me want to kill myself.
Me:Really?
Him:Yeah.
Me:I thought it was just the part where they shuffled across the bleachers.
Him:You do listen to me!

We have conflicting theories about glaciers.

Mimi Smartypants is not the only one who talks for an animal who lives in her house. When we first got the Lou Dog, he automatically talked like Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, because he looks kind of like him and also that might be kind of why we went and checked him out. (Someone in this household is a BIG Triumph fan.) In a cosmos-bending coincidence, Lou shares an abusive and dismissive demeanor, as well as a hearty interest in pooping, with his facesake.

Lou used to get up at 6:45 every morning. It took us a very long time to break that particular habit, so for the first year or so that we had him, we would wake up at 6:45 with Lou planted squarely on one of our chests, staring intently into our eyes. It was then that the Sarge aspects of his personality came out: "Get up, maggots! God damn it I said get those lazy asses outta bed! Hup!" He called us maggots a lot. It helps that he's constantly yelling.

So, when Other slips and falls in the woods - which happens a lot in the winter, as you might imagine, what with the layers of snow and ice over the layers of decomposing leaves - Lou says something like: "God damn it, maggot, get up! If you was on the battlefield right now YOU'D BE DEAD! YOU MAKE ME SICK!" That is, if he's even around to see it. Sometimes he's off pursuing moles and squirrels and anything else he can find and doesn't even notice.

The first time Other fell when Jane had come along to the woods, though, Jane stopped and came running back to him, looking genuinely concerned. She said, "Oh my goodness! [Other], are you okay? Shall I run for help? Would you like to attach an explanatory note to my collar?" And she's done this every time since then, too, waiting for him to get up and start moving again. Meanwhile Lou's threatening to take the keys and drive his damn self home because god damn it you were supposed to feed Lou 20 minutes ago.

oh, that is just the lustrous sheen of my hair.

God damn it, I totally had this idea a couple of years ago. And also god damn it, I don't live in Brooklyn. My idea was more of a studio space/yarn/fabric store/coffee shop/deli kind of thing, but it had the "communal creative space" thing going for it. I guess I can be happy that it's a good enough idea that someone else is doing it. And acknowledge that I, someone who is afraid of the public and who has no interest in business, was probably not the ideal vehicle for it.

*-*Updated to add:*-*
Okay, and now on PBS I just saw a show called "Building Green," where they build eco-friendly houses. And I had an idea about a year ago for an HGTV-like show where they go into a regular house and do a green makeover. I'm going to go to bed before I see a commercial for those pajamas I invented.

Here's a picture of my dog wearing a hat.

GOD I LOVE THE INTERNETS.

say it loud: he's done & i'm proud

We realized tonight that 75% of the people sitting around the dinner table had been hit by cars. And I represent the lone 25% that has never been hit by a car knock on wood. None of us had ever (or would cop to having ever) run anyone over in a car, so these statistics must not be entirely reflective of society, but wow! 75%!

Have you ever been hit by a car?

Other has actually been hit by cars multiple times. He must be some kind of outlier.

drinkin on empty

Per an earlier post about conscious consumption, I would like for you to know that: 1) I'm now setting an alarm for a certain length of time when I get in the shower, and when it goes off I get out, if I haven't already. It's really helping. I don't know how long I would shower for before, but this is definitely less time, and the fact of the timer ticking helps me not let my mind wander.

ALSO: I have purchased a canvas bag the size of a rowboat to use at the grocery store. That, plus the tote bag I got free when I signed up for Hippie Long Distance, plus the half-billion grocery store plastic bags, ought to keep us going for a long time.

She said she's starring in an eye-safety film.

I heard Hootie & the Blowfish on the bus today! And I kind of lip-synched the words that I knew while making that Jackass Singer Face and while doing that thought about this guy who in high school was known (perhaps only by me) as The Guy Who Likes Hootie & the Blowfish. And called them "Hootie."

Speaking of Hootie & the Blowfish, you may recently have been wondering about my opinions on the Iraq War. And, if not, you can stop reading right here, because I cannot promise there will be more about Hootie.

So, for a very long while there, I found myself disagreeing with the Democrats (well, okay, disagreeing with a significantly higher percentage of Democrats than I disagree with in a baseline kind of way) about what to do. I have as of yet never espoused the position that we should Get Out Right the Fuck Now. Or even Get Out Real Soon, Like, Say Six Months or So. Sure, I was all about not going in in the first place, but now that we're in, I just can't imagine that it would be responsible to get out. That's why we shouldn't have wanted in.

Up to the elections, I was thinking that really what should be done is a massive surge. Reasoning that you can't have political security without literal, physical security, supported by the analysis that the US basically moves a group of soldiers from one place to another like a Whak-a-mole mallet, this seemed like the best option. Like, say, you would get 20 Whak-a-mole mallets, put them side by side, and then sit on them. Subdue all the violence at once, and not just serially.

Unfortunately, this massive surge is not realistic because there are no more Whak-a-mole mallets. We're all out. Reality has never stopped W before, so onward we go with a plan that will remove soldiers from their families and communities even longer in order to put them in harm's way so that he can say he's trying other stuff. From what I've heard, though, nobody to the left of Bill O'Reilly believes that this will actually work.

So, I guess the reason I haven't been writing about all this stuff is that I honestly don't know what should be done. It's an awful situation.

pas de trois

Like y'all didn't see this over at Dooce already, but can I please just say how happy I am that "that's what happens when... worlds collide" is included on the compendium of Caruso one-liners?

punch punch tweak tweak we are in love

Zeit to the geist, man. I've got to start posting before reading other blogs, because they talk about what I'm going to talk about and it can be deflating.

See: Dooce, today. For, as we know, say it with me, LouDog suffers greatly. And so does Lou the fish.

o. Zadie wrote more stuff! (Link courtesy of Windowsill.)

i. I am still waiting for the day on which I stumble upon the blog of someone I know.

ii. You remember that song about when you need love, just hold out your hand and you'll touch love and it's cold out and hold out and do like I do? I really wanted to hear that today, but the radio was not cooperating and so yelling all the words of it that I could remember at the top of my lungs in a sing-y kind of way had to suffice.

iii. WEEKEND!!!

it was the wurst of times

I hereby direct you to The Worsted Witch, a blog about environmental/green living issues and yarn/knitting.

I think that most of the blogs that I read are written by people who share the same kind of greenish outlook that I do - they try to be conscious of how much they're consuming, buying, using, wasting. There's a set of assumptions that leads them to compel their readership to raise money or do good for various causes by setting an example and creating the opportunities that make it easy for people to join them. I guess that's pretty much the definition of leadership, and it's really good to see people leading others towards this type of goal.

The Worsted Witch is a nice combination of resources for those people who want to get involved in movements larger than themselves or their households and a personal story about what it means to actually try to change your behavior for the better (from a green perspective) and generally feeling compelled to be doing stuff (doing stuff!) for the environment anyway.

I must say, though, that feeling obligated to consume differently than the norm and the visible mainstream - to say nothing of actually doing so - is really difficult sometimes.

It's difficult because I forget to bring the tote bag for the grocery store with me when I leave for work in the morning, and because I get lost in my thoughts in the shower, and because I feel that incandescent light is some kind of gift to the earth and its inhabitants and hate fluorescents, compact or no. And in one way it costs a lot to do stuff the better way, and in another way, part of living greenly is about not spending money on stuff you don't really need, and both of those things are hard.
So there are always questions. Is it better to drive home and get the canvas bag (thus using/wasting gasoline and accepting the pollution that comes with that) or to use 2-3 new plastic bags? Is it better to use the gigantic bag of incandescents left behind by your dead relative, or buy and use new compact fluorescents? (I'm resigned to the fact that it's better to take shorter showers.) (Sigh.)

dispatches from under the bus

I tend to knit in my in-between time, and sew/quilt in my big chunks of free time. But then every once in a while, I'll knit in a big chunk of time (say, an hour), and then -yomp- I should've been in the shower 15 minutes ago.

Jane decided yesterday, after barely even noticing the bandage on her foot for three days, that it was time for the bandage to go. And the sock that we put on. And the other sock that we taped on. So we dropped by the vet and have a plan, and it appears to be working, although she has proven herself to have the capacity to ignore something, tra la la, and then in the ten seconds that your back is turned, completely dismantle it. We'll see.

Get out the saran wrap, it's time to take them outside.

Don't you mean the transformational powers of liberty?

JaneDog continues to heal, and Other's writing for his PhD exams this week. Last night, he had a dream that W was on his committee, and during the oral part said that he thought the essay was "pretty good, but didn't say enough about freedom."

Team Pam

Ummm, yeah, I'm about to devote a post to a debate on what should happen on a TV show. So.

Oh! And apparently I'm going to include spoilers for the British Office, so beware!

I'm on Team Pam. While I bear no malice toward Karen or those on her team, she's an interloper. She is a nice woman who wandered unwittingly into a situation that unfortunately requires she get hurt.

Other completely disagrees with me. He thinks that Pam blew it. He actually yells at Pam sometimes. While I'm sympathetic to this, at the same time it makes sense to me that when you're engaged to someone, you don't just drop them for someone else. That's not cool! As someone pointed out in the comments of the original salvos, the fact that Pam didn't just drop Roy actually works in her favor. She's loyal.

To take a step out of the boundaries of the show for a second, I do think that Pam needs a little bit more or better motivation for turning Jim down. In the British version, Dawn seemed to have more motivation for staying with Lee - there was more of a class thing happening there, which might be a British thing or it might just be a Pam/Dawn thing. It's frustrating because it seems like Pam's resisting doing what she actually wants to do for the sake of moving the plot along and keeping the suspense. I can buy the initially turning him down and then calling off the wedding at the last second, but why doesn't she phone up Jim a week later and be like, yo, Jim, I dig you too? If it's because she's pretty sure he'd tell her to go to hell for turning him down before, that's fine, but tell us that. If it's because she needs time to be single but would like him to be around whenever she's done doing that, tell us that. This whole shrugging-and-looking-glum act is not really doing it for me.

It's very hard to pull off the couple finally getting together. That's why romantic comedies end where they do. It's why the British Office ended where it did. It could be interesting seeing how they would negotiate a relationship inside the office, especially given that almost all of the action takes place in the office setting, and if not, is some sort of office function. Could be interesting.

So. Pam. Yay.

tender is the jane

When LouDog is in pain, we know about it. LouDog keeps us apprised of his ever-shifting mental and physical states, regardless of whether or not we express interest in them. Jane, on the other hand, needs to limp, swell up, or, as was the case yesterday evening, bleed all over the damn kitchen to let us know when there's a problem. She's a very tough dog.

Jane bled all over the damn kitchen yesterday to let us know that there was a horrible cut in her foot. At the park yesterday she somehow lacerated (doctor word!) the webbing of one of her front feet, requiring a trip to the hour-away emergency vet, anesthesia, five sutures, antibiotics, and painkillers.



While I can't be accused of freaking out, I took it all harder than I would have expected. When the vet said that she expected everything to go fine, although there is always risk involved with anesthesia, it took a lot to nod instead of launching into an explanation that, risk, yes, haha, you see that is the thing, perhaps you had better take a step back and devise a plan to make my dog better without any risk whatsoever, how does that sound?


Here Jane, upon returning home all loopy and full of sutures, gobbles down some rawhide

Jane is fine, as expected, and it cost waaay more than we needed it to cost, and as I was paying, it occurred to me that I would happily hand over my wallet, several pints of blood, and my pants if that's what it took to get her better.

So at this point I'm hoping that all you people who say that you can love a dog but have no idea what parental love is until you have children are just lying lying lying. Please be lying. Because if you're not, I'm going to be incredibly easy to take advantage of in the event that I obtain offspring.

At least humans I'm responsible for will be covered on our health insurance.