Month: December 2010

Thursday various

  • “What’s a Canooter to Do?” Heather reviews Jenny McCarthy’s latest book, so the rest of us don’t have to:

    Is this what the book is about? No, not really. But even my canooter agreed that there was a glimmer of something just underneath the surface — a subtext of what happens when you turn to a life of reality TV and high profile media. And when you finish reading the book — when you finish with McCarthy’s tale of how she has turned to Buddhism to try to find peace and acceptance in her life — you’re left with a vague, nauseous feeling. A feeling that if you want to be like Jenny McCarthy, you’re buying into a view of the world that is tough, jaded, and incredibly cynical. It’s a fleeting feeling, though. Give a moment, and then you’ll be back to laughing about the silly things you can do with your canooter. Hahahahahah. Seriously. I’m not making this up. Hahahahaha.

  • On why dancing is like being a Time Lord:

    When dancing is going well, time does funny things. Sometimes it feels like the most perfect special effect. The suspended water drops. The muffled pause inside an explosion, with every piece of debris hanging still in midair. The only other time I’ve felt the same endless expansion was one evening when I drove down the freeway and a car in front of me lost control, spectacularly and ridiculously. It spun the way cars do in movies, actual elliptical twirls that carried it across the entire spread of lanes, first one way and then the other. It struck the central divider and pinwheeled off again, and everything looked so gentle and so inevitable that when it swung towards me, it seemed to drift along an obvious curve and I had all the time in the world to twitch my own car the smallest degree to the side and watch it slide past. Time suddenly opened up, every edge of it unfolding, like some sort of weird, reversed version of origami. [via]

  • A short but interesting interview with Chevy Chase:

    Let’s not call physical comedy falling down and pratfalls. All humor is physical, no matter how you dish it out. It’s timing, like a dancer or an athlete would have. The raising of an eyebrow, how you do it; when you look, how you look. All those little things are physical. [via]

  • Genevieve Valentine on bad movies:

    If you are on a desert island and Legion is the only movie available in the island-proof DVD player, use the reflective surface of the DVD to angle sunlight onto some dry grass and start a fire; do not use it for any other purpose. I am serious.

  • And finally, Theodora Goss on why she goes to the museum:

    It’s part of a writer’s training, in a sense, to experience as much as possible and to store what is experienced away, not as though doing research, but storing it in the mind so that what is most important is retained. The sheen on a particular piece of glass, for example. Because we create a sense of reality by describing our fantasies as though they were real, and in order to do that we need to draw from what is real, from our experiences. That’s why monsters are hybrids: we always draw from and recombine reality, and so our fantastical creatures are recombinations.

Is this the face of an asshole?

So today was kind of weird, or at least started off that way.

I stopped off at a place near the office where I often grab breakfast. It looked like they were having some trouble getting the gate fully open in front of one of the doors, so I went out a different exit than I usually do. Walking right in front of me was an older gentleman, and I mumbled my thanks as he held the door open behind him. And after that, what I’m pretty sure I heard him say in reply was, “You’re welcome, asshole.”

I was already walking in the opposite direction, headed around the corner to get to work, and I was really confused by this. Did I mishear him? But I looked back, and he seemed to be staring after me, an angrily satisfied look on his face. I don’t know if I accidentally bumped into him and didn’t notice, if he thought I was being impatient and pushing my way through, or if he was just crazy. I was in a hurry, and he was moving quite slow, but I didn’t cut in front of him, ask him to move, or even knowingly throw him a dirty look. He held the door, I politely (if tersely) said thanks, and he called me an asshole.

So you know what, fella? Fuck you. I’m sorry if I unknowingly offended you, but you certainly offended me.

The rest of the day was largely uneventful by comparison, but maybe that’s only because I didn’t venture outside again until the end of the day. We had one of our semi-regular “brown bag lunches,” where they give us food and invite a guest speaker in to give a talk. Today’s was on “Fear of Feeling: Understanding and Using Emotion Effectively.” Maybe the guy from this morning should have attended. As it is, I’m not entirely convinced the talk was worth it. The gist seemed to be, emotions are good so don’t be afraid to have them. Which, y’know, is good advice as far as that goes, but not exactly profound.

And hopefully your emotions won’t leave you cursing at strangers for no apparent reason.

Wednesday various

Fanciful insects

It was just as cold again today, but luckily I thought ahead and wore a warmer coat. (Or rather, the same coat, but this time with the heavier lining put back into it.) Also luckily, my train was on time today, not at all canceled, and only rather crowded instead of ridiculously so.

And since that lack of excitement was probably the most exciting thing that happened to day, I share with you today’s bit of Forgotten English:

People, after they have been fou, feel as they are returning to their wits again, a buzzing and singin’ in the head, which are called bees o’ the brain. Also, when they are getting intoxicated they feel these fanciful insects.