Of Backs and Baths

I think it's official: I inherited my dad's predisposition for back injuries.

I've noticed that, a lot of the time when I eat too much, my lower back gets stiff. I don't know if this is from holding myself in an odd posture to alleviate stomach discomfort, or if the excess food does something weird to my bones, but it happens. On Friday, I consumed an entire bag of Doritos in a day, and Sunday I noticed the familiar faint ache in my back. I thought little of it, and went about my day as usual, working and stopping for a gulp of water when I felt thirsty. Well, one of my gulps was poorly timed, and part of it ended up in my lungs. I coughed to clear it out, bent down to grab a box, coughed again, and suddenly there was searing pain in my lumbar region.

Fortunately, it subsided, but not completely. I toughed it out through work, which was probably a bad idea. By the time I left (after 6 more hours of standing at a food prep counter and carrying crates of snacks out to the shopping floor), I was in so much pain I kept getting dizzy, and could only hobble home (unfortunately carrying a rather heavy bag with me) like an old woman, stopping periodically to bend over and stretch my overloaded spinal column.

I pretty much spent today in bed. They say lying around is the worst thing you can do when you have a back injury, but obviously they have no idea what sitting or standing feels like. I figure as long as I change positions frequently and stretch whenever I think about it, I'm doing the best I can do.

And because I felt like a deserved a treat after all that suffering, I topped off the afternoon with a nice hot shower. They say (probably the same "they" that give such terrible back injury advice) that taking a shower uses more water than taking a bath, thus making eco-conscious folks like me feel guilty every single time we shower. Today, I tested the claim, plugging the tub while taking my shower. I took an extra long one, thoroughly washing my face with special exfoliating soap, conditioning my hair, and stopping periodically to enjoy the hot water. When I was done, the water in the tub barely covered my ankles. I don't know about you, but when I take a bath, I definitely fill the tub higher than ankle deep.

So, while my comfort meter is dragging in the dirt, I'm still happy to know that even my most self-indulgent showers are more eco-friendly than I was led to believe. I think the score is even.

Here comes the bitter old maid!

I survived another wedding last weekend. I put on a brave face for my friend on her big day, but the truth will out. And guess where it will out....

Hello, ever-listening Internet!

All these weddings are taking a toll on my sanity. I really do want my friends to be happy—it's just that watching them be so happy together while I'm so miserably alone is kind of like taking shrapnel in the vital organs. Every couple of months. All while never dropping the cheerful smile.

I think instead of getting little vials of bubbles and and a bag of snacks as a wedding favor, I should get a purple heart.

And with that said, I would like to lighten the mood with a little joke.

Have you ever noticed how single guys love to get all indignant about how other guys treat women? They "like" Facebook pages such as: "Real men don't hit their girlfriends," and go on and on about how they know how to treat a lady and what a shame it is that not everyone does. OK, maybe not all single guys do this, but one in particular got me thinking about it.

Not that I'm just here to disparage the single guys who think this way--I frequently find myself doing the female version of the same thing. For example, upon hearing about the ridiculous things some guys are forced to do to stay on their girls' good sides, I think, with a self-righteous sniff, "I would never act all jealous and controlling like that. I wouldn't get all huffy if my man forgot our anniversary. I wouldn't need some ostentatious and expensive diamond ring to show off my relationship status." Etc. Etc.

Yes, we low-maintenance ladies and self-anointed super-gentlemen are very confident in our relationship superiority. But ha ha, the joke's on us—we're the ones who are still single, while the wife-beaters and drama queens are happily taken. Maybe we should learn to be a little bit less considerate, and we'd find ourselves swarmed by potential mates!

do u write like this plz tell me ok?

It's that time again, when I dredge up another blog entry of days gone by, edit it slightly (or heavily) and present it for your uninterested perusal. Today's haul is particularly uninteresting, being a pedantic diatribe about how the world is figuratively going all to hell, in the literal sense. But it is a logical precursor to a topic I want to discuss later.

September 27, 2007

I've been seeing it everywhere: the claim that our society is abandoning written communication in favor of pretty pictures and slick electronic interfaces. The introduction to chapter 7 of Seeing & Writing states, "Already book sales are decreasing, and students are demonstrating only marginal progress in reading and writing proficiency. Meanwhile we channel surf, rapidly scanning dozens of images in seconds, or we click from icon to icon."

Maybe this is just progress (as Scott McCloud implies in "Chapter 6," which is excerpted in Appendix A), our communication system coming full circle and dropping us off at a time "when to tell was to show--and to show was to tell", but still, it scares me.

I like words. I like communicating in complete sentences and spelling things correctly. I am one of that special breed of people who make a point of using our language in the way it was intended. My text messages could just as well be text books (albeit short ones), the syntax and spelling is so precise (although I have abandoned capitalization when texting). It disturbs me to think that we are approaching an age when we (meaning everyone except the die-hard dinosaurs like me) will all communicate like this:

i was at l.a (language arts) and i saw a peice of paper with this on it. well it also had a heart. "having a broken heart is nothing....compared to a cold heart." what do u think of it? is it good? what do u think its about? plz answer. i think its kinda about: if u broke an animals heart, because he believes in u, and u just let him down, at least u havnt abused him.: thats what i think. pllllllllllllllzzzzzzzzzzzz tell me what u think. if enough ppl answer, i may leak u a secret only on this post.

I picked this out of a blog on Quizilla, a site that's rampant with Internet grammar. Is our language going to be reduced to this? Not that the ideas expressed are particularly coherent to begin with, but in that terribly misspelled form, they lose any semblance of credibility. When your boss sends you an email asking "u" to do something, how seriously can you take it? Isn't presentation just as important as content? Don't we trivialize our thoughts when we present them in a form that trivializes our language?

It makes me wonder what the Olde English writers would have to say about the ways we speak and write now (even the grammatically correct ways). It makes me wonder what we can expect of English in the centuries to come.

Moving

I moved to a new house last week. And the week before that. And the week before that, and this week. It took a long time. In fact, as you can see in the photo of my living room, it is still going on.

Every day, I discover new and interesting things about this house. Such as, water pools on the front steps when it rains. (Had to buy a squeegee and beg the landlord to do something about it. He says he will, but it hasn't been done yet.) Such as, the bathroom is the only room in the house without blinds on the window! (Had to buy a curtain rod and jury-rig a curtain out of some fabric I had lying around.) Such as, there are no electrical outlets on the outside of the house! (Had to pop out a screen and run my cord through the window in the laundry room.) Such as, none of the inside doors actually shuts all the way. (Can't buy anything to fix that...Will just have to keep yanking on them until the doorknobs fall off).

Despite all its obnoxious little quirks, I am quite fond of this house. See my public album on Facebook to learn just how cute it is. Despite my enthusiasm, however, renting an entire house has been a rather trying experience for me. Unlike when you rent a room in a shared residence, nothing comes ready to use (except the major appliances, thank goodness!). I had to call all the utility companies myself and get the service set up. Fortunately, I have amassed a decent collection of furniture (from being unable to resist discarded items found on the side of the road or abandoned by former housemates) and cookware (from being the only baker in my previous household and from being unable to resist discarded items donated by a moving-away neighbor), but every time I turn around, I realize there is something that I don't have but I need--a toilet plunger (haven't needed it yet, but it's a good thing to not wait around for), towels for the bathroom and kitchen, a towel rack for the kitchen, a broom, dishwasher soap (yes, for the first time in my independent life, I'm going to use a dishwasher instead of doing it by hand), a microwave, and on and on it goes.

This, while causing me to shell out money on an entirely too-regular basis, has also enabled me to exercise my bargain-shopping expertise. From Craigslist, I got a great deal on 2 sets of steel utility shelves for 10 dollars (OK, they're a little rusty), and from Freecycle, I got 2 kitchen chairs for 0 dollars (OK, the back is falling off one of them).

However, just as the merchants love their customers to do, I end up spending more money on things I don't need, simply because I'm out spending money on things I need. While I was at Target buying my first load of household necessities, I purchased a cute T-shirt that says, "I love my [Picture of bicycle]," and while I was at Target buying my third load of household necessities, I purchased an adorable red dress. To my credit, both of the apparel items were marked down (in the case of the dress, 50%) and I had been eying them patiently all summer, hoping the price would drop. While I was at Ikea buying my second load of household necessities, I also splurged on a mini ironing board, because after years of ironing my clothes on a bit of cardboard, I thought 6 dollars was a cheap step up.

Today, since I needed to go to the mega-thrift store anyway, I decided to take my sewing machine in to the sew-vac shop that's in the same complex. At the thrift store, I bought a knife block, a pot lid, towels and wash cloths, and (impulse buy alert!) a super-awesome like-new pair of high-heeled mid-calf brown boots, for a grand total of less than 10 dollars (there was a half-off Columbus day sale going on, and boy, did that make the parking lot crowded!), and then I spent 160 dollars to fix the sewing machine. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a microwave, which was the main reason I went there in the first place.

My shopping adventures will doubtlessly continue, as I still seek a microwave, furniture for the living room, and, well, who knows what I'll think of next? If I have learned anything from this venture, it's that (1) living all alone because your housemates haven't moved in yet starts off terrifying and ends up pretty fun, and (2) moving is synonymous with spending. In vast quantities. I hope I don't have to do this again for a good long time.

Rules of a different sort

Whoa, I actually have some time to myself today -- that means, while I'm eating my breakfast, I'm going to blog instead of work, before getting back to the packing (for my move to a new house, which I'll tell you all about later). For now, since we're on the subject of rules, I thought I'd share with you my thoughts on the rules of grammar.

They are rather elusive little buggers, the guidelines that define the structure of an English sentence. They constantly change with time. While some grammarians cling to time-honored rules with rigid desperation, others happily toss away traditions with alacrity.

And the poor pitiful students of English are caught in the middle, commanded by one style guide to do one thing, and by another to do another. A language expert may advise them to follow this rule and this rule and this rule, but ignore that rule as complete bunk. This is confusing and annoying, and, to illustrate my distaste for the whole unsystematic system, I present to you a (slightly edited) blog from way back, when I was reading a book on prose styling for a class.

October 14, 2007
Beware the Grammar Guru: or, Rules are Made to be Broken

I've been reading through Sin and Syntax with a lurking sense of indignation. I'm not complaining...exactly...I have learned things. But the message of this book seems to be, "Follow the rules of the English language...except when I tell you you don't have to."
The author (Constance Hale) gives us leave to commit syntactical crimes that are probably punishable by death in some circles of zealots:

To proudly split infinitives is the prerogative of any writer, she claims. Even though pedagogues trying to apply Latin grammar to our Anglo-Saxon tongue insist the split infinitive is a no-no, they're dead wrong.

Later, she explains, Some traditionalists disparage the vogue for hopefully as a sentence adverb, calling it 'one of the ugliest changes in grammar in the twentieth century.'...Grammarians, get a grip. Hopefully as a sentence adverb is here to stay.

Valerie's note: If you do not follow the exciting world of language hockey, the use of "hopefully" to modify a whole sentence is a topic of intense debate. Technically, if you say, "Hopefully the grammar gods won't strike me down," you are actually saying, "The grammar gods won't strike me down (and they'll be full of hope while they're not doing it)," which is awkward for one thing and completely different from the typical intended meaning of "I hope the grammar gods won't strike me down." See this recent post from a language blog I read on occasion.

In a later chapter, she asserts: Make my day. Start a sentence with a conjunction.

Still later, she pleads, Can we bury the schoolmarm's rule, 'Never end a sentence with a preposition,' once and for all?

Speaking of schoolmarms, my sixth grade teacher told our class that one should never begin a story by introducing oneself; Hale buries that rule by describing Moby-Dick's introductory sentence, "Call me Ishmael," as one of the strongest opening lines in American literature.

With all these so-called "rules" that are now okay to break, what rules can we really trust? Who made Constance Hale the Queen of Communication? Why should you believe her more than any other grammarian, writing teacher, or poet on the street? Why should you believe her more than, say, me?

I've run across a lot of advice in Sin and Syntax. Some of it I like. Some of it I don't. The next time I feel like blogging, I intend to question some of this advice. There are at least two sides to every story, and I don't think we as writers should confine ourselves just to Constance Hale's point of view. As long as we're breaking rules, we might as well break them our way.

But that's for later.

Rules of Attraction

Recently, I told a friend that I have given up on dating entirely. While this is not a new development, our conversation did remind me about why I've made this rather self-defeating decision.

After a couple years of Internet dating, and even meeting up with some of the guys who have flagged me down on the street, I have had next to no success. This has mostly been because I just wasn't interested—also pretty self-defeating on my part, but it's not something I can help! I've rejected guys for a number of reasons, but probably the most common one and the one that's most deadly to a future relationship is a lack of physical attraction. Though this is somewhat superficial, let's face it: If the thought of kissing someone makes you cringe, dating them will never work.

Sometimes, an unattractive face grows on you over time, but time is one thing that blind dating does not afford. Generally, you are expected to make a decision about the other person after a single meeting that may be as short as one hour!

So! I'm still single because all men are ugly. But what makes them ugly? Well, that's (after a rambling 3 paragraph intro as always) the topic of this post. [Edit, October 25: No, all men aren't really ugly! That was hyperbole for comedic effect. I don't want to be responsible for causing anyone to get an inferiority complex.]

I read recently that generally people are attracted to people who look different from them (an adaptive trait to avoid inbreeding). This seems to be confirmed in my tastes. In terms of coloration, I'm pretty much a genetically watered-down Heidi. So it's not surprising that I go for men who are dark haired, dark eyed, and dark skinned.

Ooh la la!

I have pretty close-set, deep-set eyes, and my tastes run to guys with big, widely spaced girly eyes (but is this a reflection of evolutionary tendencies, or just a reflection of how much I hate my kind of eyes?). Although as soon as I bring this up, someone will say, "You're not fat!" I do, undeniably, have chubbier than average cheeks, and I am attracted to faces that have the exact opposite. All in all, it seems my genetic makeup dictates that I go for a distinctly alien mien.

Except when it comes to mouths. Along with my chubby cheeks, I was graced with tiny rosebud lips (a terrible combination), meaning that I prefer people with a wide mouth and a forest of teeth. Aliens do not have mouths at all.

While all these first-glance preferences can be superseded by a general rapport brought about by someone who charms me by following all the rules to dating Valerie, there is one physical preference that I just can't seem to shake: I only like skinny men. It doesn't seem to matter how long I've known someone or how much fun we can have together. It doesn't matter if he's the world's greatest conversationalist and we have every common interest two humans can have—if he's not at least as thin as me (on a fat-to-height ratio), I just can't seem to get interested romantically. This makes me feel like a superficial jerk, but all the guilt in the world can't persuade me to change my tastes.

This poses two problems. Firstly, it contradicts the genetic theory of attraction. While I imagine myself to be a blubbery elephant of a person, I have it on good authority (namely, everyone who talks to me) that "You're not fat!" And while one can question the veracity of that statement (it seems to explode reflexively out of anyone's mouth as soon as I mention being chubby, which makes me think they might still be saying it if I weighed 300 pounds), I also have it on statistical authority that I'm not fat. So if I were supposed to be attracted to my opposite, I should be ga-ga about heavier men. Secondly, since I'm statistically not fat and the majority of the American population is, this severely limits the pool of dudes who meet my exacting specifications. Especially when you factor in all the hard-to-find personality traits (which could be the topic of several additional posts, so I'm not even going to start) that I also prefer.

So what's an extremely selective girl to do? The answer is, stop going on blind dates. No point in spending your entire income meeting strangers for dinner, only to tell them, "Sorry, you're just too human for me." Therefore I will wait, averting my eyes from happy couples, glaring disdainfully at engagement ring advertisements, and choking back the tears at weddings, until that happy day when I can again fall in love with the wrong guy.

Can't think... Wait! I can always think about chocolate!

My life is so stressful right now, I'm always worrying about something. My heart is always racing. The idea of sleeping is totally incomprehensible. Every time I eat, I wish I hadn't. I cry over everything. I feel like I'm watching The Blair Witch Project 24/7. Yes, I actually found that movie terrifying.

I keep looking at my blog and my List of Things to Blog About, but I can't seem to concentrate enough to make an interesting entry. And so, a few minutes ago, while bouncing in my chair and aimlessly opening and closing documents and websites, it occurred to me: Chocolate is always interesting!

Even if the chocolate writer is out of her head on adrenaline, and additionally hyped up with caffeine from the object of her writings, she will still be bound to write something good!

Chocolate!
Chocolate!

I'm thinking about writing reviews of chocolate bars. No, I'm not going to be one of those chocolate connoisseurs who looks down their nose and mutters things like, "a heady aroma, but a little timid on the finish." That would never work, considering my crippled sense of smell. But I can write about who has the prettiest chocolate bars!

Have you ever opened a chocolate bar and - before your raging appetite did its damage - been struck by the design on the bar? If you have expanded your horizons beyond Hershey's familiar artistry, you doubtlessly have. If you have not, never fear! I am going to bring the art of chocolate to the olfactory-deprived but aesthetically appreciative masses!

Perhaps, should I perform my work with appropriate sophistication, chocolate bar companies shall even begin beating down my door for the privilege of having me rhapsodize about their product!

Today, however, in the absence of doting candy companies lining up on my porch, I shall do a great favor to the brand of chocolate that is conveniently on sale at my store: Dagoba.

I shall explore every contour of its Beaucoup Berries bar and determine if it meets the exacting set of standards known as "my fickle approval."

Externally, the Dagoba packaging is pleasing in every way. A nice size, big enough to provide a satisfying sugar rush, but not so big that it inspires visions of yourself as the circus Fat Lady. Dagoba packages come in an appealing rainbow of shades to tempt every appetite. But on the inside...what a disappointment. A chocolate bar like the wall of a log cabin...log on boring log. Although I must give credit to the ease with which you can snap off an appealingly stick-shaped bit, the plain architectural vibe makes the bar as a whole pretty unexciting.

Wow, I can't believe how much time I spent on that futile activity. At least it gives me an excuse to eat lots of chocolate!

Bye Bye Buy Buy

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL! PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA!
This is what my computer likes to tell me these days when it gets blue. It'll be merrily chugging on its way, running the screensaver more often than not, when all of a sudden it will get sad and decide it needs a break. Since my computer's desire for a break rarely coincides with mine, this is a problem. Not a terrible problem, since I have not yet lost any work because of its intransigence, but an annoying problem. Do you know how long it takes to restart my system after an unexpected shutdown!?

So, while I continue to do useless things to the video drivers and the BIOS, and will eventually reinstall Windows, in an attempt to fix this problem, I have little hope of success. I believe that all the problems with my computer stem from the graphics processor, which is unfortunately not a separate card, but a unit that, as far as I can tell, is built into the motherboard, which costs almost 300 dollars to replace. Might as well buy a new computer for that much. And, if perchance, the graphics processor alone is replaceable, the part is impossible to find for sale, and will require removing every other part of the computer to replace it.

So, I believe it is time to shop for a new system. It feels like only yesterday that I purchased this lovely green Dell laptop, but actually, it was 2 and a half years ago, and with planned obsolescence being what it is, that's about as long as anyone can expect a lovely green Dell laptop to work well. My Toshiba was 3 and a half years old and still kicking—minus 2 USB ports and the DVD drive—when I finally let it go. I would try to keep this one around a little longer—after all, the occasional Blue Screen of Death is nothing compared to spending your whole month's income on a computer—except that I'm afraid of the future. I need a backup system, so that I can continue to do my job in the inevitable event of catastrophic failure.

Thus, I shop. And I've discovered some interesting things about my computer-shopping habits. For instance, I've become obsessed with graphics cards. I feel it is absolutely necessary that my next computer should have a replaceable graphics card AND that its graphics card should not be some rinky-dink Intel Mobile Express Chipset, but should instead be a high-powered workhorse that will never fail me. Never.

This is silly because (1) the only reason to have a high-powered workhorse for a graphics card is if you play 3-D video games. Which I don't. Well, I might. But I'm afraid to try because I'm afraid to try. And (2) no matter how high-powered the graphics card is, it will still fail me if it is so inclined. But, if it's one of those big fancy schmancy ones, it is more likely that I'll be able to buy a new one online should it be the uncooperative sort.

My next matter of excessive preference is the hard drive. I don't really care about capacity. My current hard drive holds 140 GB and still has room, and all the new drives out there are significantly bigger. But ever since I was shopping for my last computer and was advised to get a computer with a fast hard drive, I've been unwilling to settle for anything less. 5400 RPM? Pshaw. Not good enough for me! Unfortunately, the computers with 7200 RPM hard disks are few and far between. I'm still not sure if a faster hard drive makes for significantly better performance, but I'm afraid to step down now.

And of course, to top it all off, I want the power without the weight and without the cost. My current system weighs something over 4 pounds. All the ones that I find online that meet my exacting specifications weigh 6 to 8 pounds! Unbelievable! AND, most of them cost over a thousand dollars! I refuse to spend over a thousand dollars for a computer, since I spent that much on this hunk of junk, thinking it would be my Old Faithful, and here I am replacing it before 3 years are up! What's the point of spending for quality if it's all going to fall apart anyway?

I'm making this very hard for myself. Now I'm wondering if I can get a desktop for home use. Desktops don't get battered around as much, so they last longer, and replacement parts are cheaper and easier to install. Then I'd have to keep all my files on an external hard drive, and bring it along with my demoted laptop any time I needed to work away from home. I'd also need to make sure all the software I use is installed on both systems. Naah. Too complicated. And besides, how would I fulfill my frequent need to do my work while lying on the floor? I think that, as a professional who works from home, I should just resign myself to the necessity of periodic replacement of the equipment. I can probably write it off on my taxes.

Lists

There are so many things I just can't work up the energy to do right now, even though it would be a really good idea. Here they are:

1. Designing nametags for Global Deposit Summit attendees
2. Investigating restaurants for Global Deposit Summit dining options
3. Replying to potential client about website SEO
4. Posting content on current client website
5. Listing things on eBay
6. Working on that music video I've been making
7. Playing that computer game I've been playing
8. Decorating that T-shirt that needs resuscitation
9. Submitting that T-shirt design to Threadless.com
10. Paying the bills and organizing the receipts

Here's what I feel like doing:

1. Carrying boxes up to the attic
2. Delivering a letter to the mailbox down the street
3. Reading
4. Crosswords
5. Making lists

My body has not been good to me of late. Here are some things that are wrong with it.

1. Tonsillitis followed by a head cold last week
2. Terrible stuffy nose, likely due to allergies, today
3. Arthritic left hip, especially after a period of inactivity
4. Strained left elbow from ??? finally getting better
5. Dry lips cracking on the left corner
6. Arthritic left wrist that gets contrary whenever I work it too hard
7. Right big toe that erupts into pain if I stand on it wrong
8. Bruised right knee from various encounters with milk crates
9. Sprained back from lifting crate of cheese this morning. Ow, ow, ow.

Numbers 1 and 2 inspire me to create this more in-depth list about my chronic stuffy nose--a source of continual agony to me. I keep resorting to ever more novel remedies that mostly don't work. Here they are:

1. Sudafed PE (ineffectual)
2. Sudafed original (possibly works if I double the dose and don't have too stuffy of a nose to begin with)
3. Claritin, Alavert (ineffectual)
4. Oxymetazoline HCl (works like a charm, but can only be taken for 3 days and cannot be used "frequently")
5. Benzedrex (works pretty well, but also can only be used for 3 days and not "frequently") 
6. Vicks inhaler (ineffectual)
7. NasalCrom (Does it work? Doesn't it? Not very well if it does, but I keep taking it anyway)
8. Benadryl (Doesn't work, but helps me fall asleep when I can't breathe)
9. Aspirin (ineffectual)
10. Ibuprofen (ineffectual)
11. Saline drops (Slightly helpful for 5 minutes)
12. Blowing nose (helps for about 2 seconds)
13. Plastic surgery (works until septum reverts to its pre-surgery crooked state and gets inflamed with ever-increasing frequency)
14. Exercise (I can usually breathe as long as I am upright and moving about. This works until I get tired.)
15. Steamy shower (ineffectual)
16. Turmeric suspension in water (Tried this for the first time today. It might have helped. It might have just been a fluke)

Alternate routes to relief of stuffy nose for consideration

1. Visit allergist and learn if there is an avoidable cause of congestion
2. Visit ENT and learn if my deviated septum is more devious than originally thought and whether it's advisable to try and have it straightened again (not my idea of a fun time)
3. Acquire prescription for decongestant that actually works
4. Drill new hole in nose. At this point, this is sounding pretty appealing.

**Edit September 10: Add my left knee to the list of physical ailments! Must've strained it while walking funny yesterday to avoid hurting my back.**

Short Shorts

Today, I present to you a few random thoughts about various topics that just don't have the stamina for a full-fledged entry on their own.

That's not a chicken, that's a ... chicken.

In the store recently, I was privy to a conversation between a mother and her young son, which ended with the mother telling her little protégé, "That's not a chicken--that's a rooster!" Parents, why must you propagate this kind of misinformation to your offspring? Roosters and chickens are not mutually exclusive. Roosters are, in fact, a subcategory of chickens. The female counterpart of the rooster is known as the "hen." Do I need to draw you a Venn diagram?

While we're talking about chickens

Do you ever have days when one moment, you're in the depths of despair, and the next moment, you're whistling the Chicken Dance? I do. It's disconcerting.

A brief history of technology

In the Stone Age, they invented the wheel. In the Iron Age, they invented the ferrous wheel.
Sorry if that one's already been done.

Rhymes with English

Here's a new word for all you whose love for language overshadows your love life: "singlish." Use it to describe your relationship status when you are in love with someone who doesn't love you back, are in the middle of a breakup, have a long-term friend with benefits, are hopelessly addicted to someone you've only met online, or are otherwise indisposed to starting a new relationship even though you're not technically in one. It turns out I didn't invent this word, but I only found it in use after I'd already thought it up on my own, so I consider it my own ingenious invention. And what a useful invention for me, since I'm about as lucky in love as a soldier ant. Now I'll have a single concise word to describe my numerous failures--much better than my usual "Uuuhhhh..."

Yeah, I did have to draw you a Venn diagram.

Hair Today, Hair Tomorrow

I'll have you know that this is my 111th post, which, if anything, is even cooler than my 100th!

Well, my new haircut has met with mixed responses. The majority of them have been favorable (those who didn't approve have mostly either been good liars or had the good sense to keep quiet), but I got a few negative reactions too.
There was my coworker who was so shocked, she just kept walking through the store exclaiming, "You didn't cut your hair! You did not cut your hair! What does your mama think?" to which I responded honestly, "I'm not sure if she knows yet." (Got to call my mother!) But really, don't you think the days when my mother could dictate my appearance are long past? My mom stopped telling me how to dress when I was in kindergarten. Actually, I wish she had encouraged me to dress in a more socially acceptable fashion... I wonder what kind of person I'd be today if I hadn't been so dowdy when I was a kid. But I digress.

There was my Facebook friend who commented, "VALERIE YOU DIDNT!!!!! :(" Hey, now, friend-who-shall-remain-nameless, you weren't the one who had to brush out this overgrown mop every day! You weren't the one who was facing depression due to a lack of new styles to put your hair into (and a dwindling number of tried-and-true styles that were succumbing one by one the gravitational forces continuously growing stronger against your continuously growing mass of hair). Perhaps you appreciated my hair long, but I myself had had more than enough.

Then there was the friend I told over the phone, whose response was an appalled, "Why did you do that?" I answered, "Because I got tired of it. None of the styles looked good any more." And he said, with murder in his voice, "Did someone tell you that?" No, I told him, and I thought to myself vindictively, "This wouldn't be such a shock if you had actually been paying attention when I told you I was planning to do it!"

But regardless of my own personal opinions on these few negative replies in a sea of compliments, one thing remains a fact: It will grow back. And I will grow it back. Because that's what I always do. Just wait a couple years...and in the meantime, relax already! And enjoy all the fun short hair styles that I will discover and wear for your amusement.

Doing the do

Vanity dictates that I share this story with you.

It began in September of 2004, when I cut my hair short for the last time, and ends today in 2010, when I cut my hair short for the new last time. As you know if you read this blog regularly, I was in quite a quandary over whether I should go under the scissors, but by a week later, I was pretty sure I was going to do it, and the only question was when.

After my mid-August trip to Ohio was the answer. That way all my family could see me with my familiar keratinous tentacles, and afterward, I could devote my attention to finding a salon without having vacation packing to distract me.

I really did need to devote my attention to finding a salon, because, after going without a haircut for nearly 6 years, I wanted to make sure that when the big change happened, I would get it done right. Whenever I cruised the streets, I kept my eyes peeled for hair cutting establishments. One day when I was shopping, I stopped into two salons in the neighborhood. At the first, Shear Pleasure, the lady at the front desk was outrageously friendly, answered all my questions, and gave me a brochure. At the second, there was nobody at the front desk, all 5 people in the store looked at me when I walked in the door but no one said anything. I stood there for a few moments, awkwardly waiting for some acknowledgement, then I picked up a brochure and left. Turns out their prices were higher than the prices at the other place. And for what, I ask? Hostility and superior attitudes? The second place, by the way, was Viva Salon, so if you're ever planning to get your hair cut in College Park, I recommend you don't go there.

I set up an appointment at Shear Pleasure a few days later. The night before my appointment, I braided my hair and chopped most of it off, partly to ensure that it was in good condition to donate, partly to save myself the trauma of losing 5 years of work in a public place, and partly to obviate any fees that the salon might charge for cutting longer hair. (I'm still not sure if they charge extra for cutting your hair completely off if it's long, or if they only charge extra if you have long hair and you're getting it trimmed.)

I documented the process on this Facebook video, and I am pleased to say that the results make me happy. SO looking forward to not spending nearly an hour every day brushing out my tangles!

Here's a clip from my video.

Past takes on present in the tensest battle of the century!

While writing my last post, I blundered right into the grammar conundrum to end all grammar conundrums--"can and have."

It's a phraselet (←neologism by Valerie!) tossed around casually by English-speaking communicators everywhere—but when you stop to think about it, it makes no sense!

In Monday's post, I was going to write, "...corporate entities can and have defended the exclusive rights to a color," when I realized that clause would be a grammatical impossibility. If you subject it to the acid test (the same one by which you determine whether you should say "you and I" or "you and me") by removing the "and" and all questionable words following it, you get a mixed-tense mishmash that would make any deceased English teacher turn over in her grave. To whit, "corporate entities can defended the exclusive rights..."

In my search for a grammatically correct alternative, I produced the decidedly ungraceful (and dubiously grammatical) "corporate entities can (and have done so) defend the exclusive rights..." that appears in the published post.

Surprisingly, the grammarians seem to have nothing to say on this subject. In fact, as my Google search for "'can and have' grammar" revealed, the phrase is used in many a grammar guide, but never discussed in one.

My unique puzzlement over this phrase makes me feel as though (that's right, I said "as though" instead of "like" because the grammar guides do have plenty to say on that subject!) I am either:

1. Very clever for noticing something no one else does,
2. Obnoxiously pedantic and should stop obsessing over ungrammatical phrases if they don't obstruct meaning, and probably should stop obsessing over grammar in general, or
3. Very stupid and missing something obvious.

That's my purple! You can't have it!

"The color PINK is a registered trademark of Owens Corning."

When I read this statement at the foot of the Owens Corning homepage, I was taken aback.

What? Pink? How can you trademark a color? Especially something as generic as "pink!" I've heard of some rich people developing their own proprietary Pantone color, but trademarking "pink?" Just plain pink? Breast cancer support groups everywhere would be doomed. Newborn baby girls' wardrobes would be decimated. Maybe they only mean PINK with all capital letters. Trademarking "pink?" Is that even possible?

I was so appalled by this concept, that I had to some research. It turns out that color trademarking is, in fact, an accepted practice, and (as are all legal matters) very complicated and subject to subtle rules and the interpretation of judges. Check out this page on color trademarks to learn just how corporate entities can (and have done so) defend the exclusive rights to a color.

What I take away from my readings is that, if a color is very closely associated with a good or service a company provides, then they can legally prevent competitors from using that color. However, non-competitors—that is, people providing a distinctly different type of good or service—are free to use the color with abandon. So, breast cancer groups are probably safe from the wrath (and legal action) of Owens Corning, unless they decide to go into the insulation business.

To classify the unclassifiable song.... File that under "Musicals," by the way!

Today a coworker said, "outside they're listening to hard rock, and in here it's techno." By techno, he meant the stuff I was listening to. I wanted to tell him: actually, this kind of music is called "Happy Hardcore." But he was already gone. And he probably wouldn't have cared anyway. I think music phylogeny is a topic of obsession only to me (and now, by dint of their role as a captive audience, my readers!). But I'm still just a learner in this vast library of nomenclature. I'm starting to get a handle on identifying the various electronic dance subgenres that I like to listen to, but other styles of music still mystify me.

Like, what makes certain kinds of rock "alternative?" What's really the difference between hip-hop and rap? That stuff I hear on the radio – that I just lump into a big bundle I call "pop" – would some of it be better classified as "R&B?" Is "Indie" really a musical style, or is it more of a lifestyle? If "indie" artists sign on to a big label, then do they still get called "indie?"

Of course, none of this would be a problem except that I'm anal retentive and won't be satisfied until there's a place for everything and everything's in its place. Other people just throw all their digital music in a giant folder and call it a day. I have to rename the file according to artist and song name, and put it in a folder corresponding to genre. Then I have to make sure all the ID3 tags are complete with album name and release year duly noted, any alternate genres listed in the "notes" field, the composer and performer credited separately if they are both well known, and mood and tempo listed if I think about it. (Some day, I hope all these ridiculous practices will help me create auto-playlists that respond to my every whim. But first I have to wait until the auto-playlist-building technology improves to meet my exacting requirements.)

The other source of my taxonomy problem is my pretty darn eclectic tastes. I don't think many people have media libraries filled with equal parts classical, dance, video game soundtrack, oldies, new age, and modern rock (Plus a smattering of country, various forms of electronic, synthpop, show tunes, rap, and—well, you get the picture). Actually, maybe they do, but all I know is, when coworkers wander in to the sound of my beloved recording of The Hampsterdance Song, and then later they pass by while I'm blasting Eminem (quietly—it's work you know!), they act mighty amused. I'm a nice girl by reputation, so no one bats an eye when they learn I listen to Rogers and Hammerstein soundtracks...but they practically fall over in shock when I tell them I have stuff by Marilyn Manson too.

I can't help it! I like what I like! If it makes me happy, I like it. If it sounds strange and interesting, I like it. If it mirrors my mood when my mood is grouchy or depressed, I like it. I am not bound by genre. I like my classical music as much as any snob, but I'm not so highfalutin' that I can't appreciate a good rap when I hear it (er, let's rephrase that to "a rap that I think is good" I don't claim to know the first thing about what constitutes quality in rap music). I like dance music because it's fun—but I like lots of dark electro/experimental stuff because it's ominous. Unlike many people I know, I refuse to hate country on the grounds that it's country. I have stuff that's new age. I have stuff that's old as the hills. I have stuff that I only like for the lyrics, and I have other stuff that I completely ignore the lyrics of and focus only on the sound.

I may sound like I'm making myself out to be some kind of benevolent, egalitarian, music-loving angel, but the point I'm trying to make (in the most self-congratulatory way possible, of course!) is that my broad tastes sure make it difficult for me to indulge my obsessive-compulsive side. I imagine, with a certain amount of wistfulness, how easy my life would be if I only listened to, oh, hard rock. Just one genre. No infinite categories to break down and define.

By the way, anyone know what genre to call Fish Heads, by Barnes and Barnes?

Writing on Seeing

Well, it's been a while since I last wrote, and being unmotivated to come up with anything new, I'll just dredge up this old blog entry I wrote for my Words and Images class. Not that I remember what "chapter" I was talking about.

September 19, 2007

I really loved this chapter (1) in Seeing & Writing! It just reminded me - and I love being reminded of this - how everything in the world can be fascinating if you only take the time to pay attention to it. It's so gratifying to find yourself really appreciating such small, commonplace, oft-overlooked things--a band-aid (ahem, adhesive bandage) plastered to the road, blackened in the places where it's been ground into the asphalt by hundreds of passing feet...an oddly shaped droplet of water on your desk...a tube of toothpaste shaped like a whale...

I'm including pictures, but probably they'll mean nothing to anybody but me (by now, they mean much less than they did, even to me. I think a good deal of the magic that comes from observing the ordinary simply exists in the first moment you see it), but here they are--two items that, for a moment at least, sent my mind soaring towards some sort of revelation (it still hasn't gotten all the way there).

I could probably devote a lifetime to exploring the wonders of the commonplace, but I do have two other projects to be working on, so I'll end by sharing just one excerpt from the chapter, which was this quote from the essay, "Seeing": "Thoreau, in an expansive mood, exulted, 'What a rich book might be made about buds, including, perhaps, sprouts!'" I love how he tacks on the part about sprouts, as if it were an afterthought, and then adds an exclamation point, as if it were the most thrilling afterthought that ever occurred to him. Not many people could wax so ecstatic about a vegetable, but the mind attuned to buds and other growing things could no doubt devote a lifetime to exploring the wonders of sprouts!

Of course, maybe I'm just in an expansive mood myself, but I'm pretty thrilled to be living in a world where every little thing can be the cause of endless fascination.

Fun with phrases that employ similar phonemes to humorous effect

It's true that all last post, I glorified Melvil Dewey and his campaign to simplify the English language. But for all that I love order and tidiness and systems that make sense, I'm kind of glad he didn't succeed.

If he had, I never would have had the opportunity to feel like a big shot for getting my photo in the paper prior to my appearance at the Toledo Blade Spelling Bee. Yeah! Spelling bees are fun! And if Melvil had succeeded, I also never would have experienced the crushing defeat that comes after forgetting to put the P in "neuropathy." ... Never mind. Spelling bees aren't that much fun after all.

But if we reformed our language, we'd also lose the opportunity to ponder those funny inconsistencies that are so...ponderable. Like, why is it that a "prisoner" is someone in prison, but a "jailer" is someone who puts people in jail? See? Inconsistencies are fun! Oh—here's another one! Why is the suffix "ee" always used to convert a transitive verb into its object...except in the case of "attendee", in which "ee" is used to convert a transitive verb into its subject? Huh. That was a little complicated. Maybe inconsistencies aren't that much fun after all, either.

But wait! I know one thing about the English language that will always be fun! Puns! If all words that sounded the same were spelled the same, not only would their meanings be pretty confusing, but lots of jokes would lose their effect. In honor of jokes, take a gander at these uproarious buckets of humor! (Yes, I made them up.)

Q:What do you call the person who gives the central speech at a grain farmers' convention?
A: The quinoa-oat speaker!

Did you hear the one about the raisin who decided to write its life story?
Yeah. It's called, "As I Lay Drying."

How about the one about the compulsive crafter?
The title is, "As I Lay DIYing."

Cue the laugh track, and give thanks for English!

Melvil Dewey

If my heroes were a brain, Emily Dickinson would be the artistic right hemisphere. Melvil Dewey would be the logic-loving left.



Melvil Dewey is the inventor of the Dewey Decimal System for classifying books in a library, and anyone who makes classification systems is OK by me. He advocated for the use of the metric system, which is really the only logical way to measure things. But the real reason he ends up in my little collection of heroes is because of his penchant for spelling reform.

Melvil Dewey looked at the ridiculously inconsistent ways in which English words are spelled, and he didn't just grumble about it like some of us. Nor did he take advantage of it and go on to win lots of spelling bees. No, he did something to change it.

Melvil Dewey wrote like this: "Speling Skolars agree that we hav the most unsyentifik, unskolarli, illojikal & wasteful speling ani languaj ever ataind." And he wasn't always known as Melvil. He was originally named Melville, but only attained linguistic fame after he'd dropped all the superfluous L's and E's. He even tried to change his last name to Dui, but had less luck getting it accepted.

Spelling reform! It's Occam's Razor meets the Queen's English! Melvil Dewey! He's the poster child for spelling reform!

While I've heard that Mr. Dewey was kind of overbearing and hard to get along with, I think on the whole, he and his eccentric ways with language make him well worthy of a spot in my hero boat.

An Ode to Emily

The following is a piece I wrote on Emily Dickinson for a prototype magazine for people with depression. Consequently, the article focuses on depression and skims over the other thing about Emily that I love—our shared inability to form healthy relationships in the real world.  Because of this common trait, we'd probably never have been friends if we met, but separated by several hazy decades and united by stirring poetry, I get to feel like we're good friends! And now, on to the article.

In the long history of mood disorder sufferers in the arts, one person in particular stands out to me as the ambassador of the depressed—Emily Dickinson. Reading her poetry might at one moment carry one straight into sadness’ firmest embrace, and at another moment, restore one to hope with the simplest imagery of joy. Though I’ve not made it all the way through her voluminous writings, the ones I have read mirror my heart in such a way that I consider Emily a friend of mine…a long-lost sister. It might be a tad presumptuous to speak so familiarly of this person I’ve never met—but what I do know, and what I’ve read of her work, have convinced me that that she is my literary alter ego. And I’ll warrant that a good many depression sufferers might agree.

In Emily’s time – the mid 1800’s – depression was not a disease that doctors recognized or diagnosed. But Emily’s life certainly shows the signs. After the age of thirty, she hardly left her family’s property—sometimes never even left the house. She led the kind of solitary life that is both born of depression and fuels it.

Her writings speak of a broken heart, of tragic loss, of the truth in agony, of a subtle yearning for death. Her words take all the thoughts in my tortured soul and distill them to perfect clarity—and make them beautiful. In Emily’s poetry, the broken heart is elevated to glory: Proud of my broken heart since thou didst break it / Proud of the pain I did not feel till thee... The tragic loss is an avenue to spirituality: At least to pray is left, is left / O Jesus! in the air… It is a true artist who can reveal the glimmer of loveliness in anguish, without letting the anguish lose its sting. But Emily’s poetry succeeds again and again.

Wherever I look amongst Emily’s poems, I find my timid lost self, speaking in her voice. But the thing that I find most remarkable is, even though Emily is so adept at expressing the pain that lies within every depressed heart, she is equally adept at dispelling it. One of my favorite poems in her repertoire goes thus:

HOPE is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all…

Emily’s hope never stopped singing. It is her hope that reminds me there is a light at the end of every tunnel. Actually, not just a light—a cute fuzzy bird! What more could I hope for? Once in a poem, Emily wished, If I can ease one life the aching…I shall not live in vain. Emily, you have succeeded. Thank you for your wisdom and your hope.

Readers, Emily Dickinson’s poetry is freely available for anyone who needs it. Visit her anthology, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, at http://www.bartleby.com/113/.

My Hero!

Numerous times as a youngster (and a high-school student, and a college applicant, and a job candidate...), I was asked to name "my hero." I always found this task highly distasteful, because I never had a good answer.

In elementary school, my classmates seemed to usually pick their favorite athletes, musicians, or family members. I, too, eventually chose the family member route, not because I strongly idolized my relatives, but because I knew them well enough to give plausible reasons why any of them could be my hero—if I were to have one. I didn't, of course, since, as an extreme introvert from birth, I never spent much time thinking about other people.

As we got older, my peers grew more high-minded, selecting their heroes from a pool of upstanding charitable, intellectual, and courageous figures from the present and the past. Following their lead, I dabbled a bit in citing Gandhi as my hero. He was supposed to be all about peace, right? I like peace. But really, I didn't know anything about him. I'm not sure if I spelled his name right. I'm not even sure if I'm talking about Mahatma or Mohandas Gandhi. And what he actually did to promote peace? Well, that's a little hazy. All this uncertainty was making me feel like a downright fraud, so I reverted back to familial heroes.

I've realized since then, that while some people seem to easily become infatuated with public figures (Teens with their movie posters, anyone? Adults with their Obama shirts?), I rarely develop even a passing interest in people I haven't met. And thus my hero-deficiency may be neatly explained. However, it was only after I stopped being forced to write essays on this awkward subject that I realize what I would write – with confidence – should the need arise.

My heroes are not the great instigators of social change that I always felt should be my heroes. They're not scientific geniuses or founders of great religions. They're not even my favorite athletes. They are, like me, simple people with a love for words. It seems obvious now, that as a bookworm with limited social graces, I would choose literary figures as my role models. I don't have to relate to the people—I just have to relate to what they do!

Of course, now that I've realized where my true loyalties lie, I can't be content to select just one hero—and surely I'm entitled to a couple, after a lifetime of having none at all! Finally, after years of being obliged to half-heartedly endorse people who never really struck a gong in my heart, I can name my heroes with enthusiasm! So, over the next few days, I'll introduce you to a couple of the people I consider role models and kindred spirits.

An Eye-Opening Experience

Originally, I was planning on writing a post on the way I (and people in general, I think) always find something to be discontent about. Whenever we get what we want, we find something else to want instead. I was going to discuss, as an example, how when I'm feeling fat, all I can think about is how fat I am. But when I get over that, then I find myriad other things to hate about myself—such as the breadth of my shoulders, the narrowness of my mouth, the knobbiness of my knuckles. It's always something. I was going to talk about that, but then I ran across a much more interesting topic.

You see, the object of my self-loathing these days is my eyelids. Yes, my eyelids.  It seems to me that almost everyone else has fairly discreet eyelids. You see maybe a millimeter or two of the upper lids before they disappear under a fold of skin that I'd consider part of the eyebrow. If you happen to be East Asian, you probably don't have any visible eyelid at all!

Eyelids done right

Not so with me. I've got eyelids the size of Delaware. If I look straight at you, you can see the contour of almost my entire eyeball behind the upper lid! This, in my humble opinion, is not an attractive effect. It makes me look perpetually sad and sleepy. Possibly bug-eyed as well.

And so, bemoaning my fate as the ugliest human being ever to walk this earth, I set out to determine why this is so. I considered briefly that my eyes were set too deep into my skull, but rejected that, as it would cause just the opposite of a bug-eyed look. Then I considered that they might be set too far forward in my skull, but experiments with pushing my eyeballs back farther into the sockets (not a behavior that I would recommend, but I did it for science!) just caused my upper lids to look droopy and the "crease" (as it is known to those familiar with makeup tips) separating my eyelid and eyebrow to disappear entirely. So I concluded that my eye sockets are simply too big! There is a space between them and the eyes themselves—creating a hollow into which my flesh sinks, rather than folding neatly on the surface like eyelids are supposed to do! This also provides a tidy explanation for the circles under my eyes that persist no matter how much I sleep.

Following this epiphany, I set out on an image search for "eyes" to see just how uncommon my eyelid configuration is. The fruits of my search yielded the pictures of eyelids done right that you have been admiring above, but no pictures of eyelids that look like mine. They did, however, include a few results that led me to another epiphany. As I usually discover when I become excessively interested in a subject that I think is unclassifiable, there is a WORD for the object of my obsession—and that word is "heavy-lidded."

Funny, I have seen that term in literature numerous times, yet I never gave thought to how it would actually look outside the pages of a novel. But there it is, staring me in my heavy-lidded face!

The next phase in my journey of discovery occurred when I learned that a synonym for heavy-lidded eyes is "bedroom eyes." Now that was a shocker. See, I've always heard "bedroom eyes" used in a complimentary way. And since, in my mind, the defining characteristic of beautiful eyes is size (the bigger, the better—and if you look like an anime character, that's the best), I always assumed "bedroom eyes" meant "eyes the size of an entire bedroom." No, it turns out bedroom eyes are called so because they look sleepy, like the eyes of someone who's about to go to bed. Apparently, bedroom eyes are considered "sultry" and "seductive" because of other things people do in bed when they're not sleeping.

Apparently as well, bedroom eyes are best exemplified by the late film star Bette Davis. Some people think Bette Davis' eyes are just the cat's pajamas. I personally was never impressed when I saw pictures of Bette Davis, but it's comforting to know that my funny-looking eyelids are in such well-respected company.

↑ Bette Davis' Eyes . . . My eyes ↑

That's right, world! I've got Bette Davis eyes! (I even have her asymmetrical eyebrow elevation!) And, while "sultry" and "seductive' are not exactly the look I was aspiring to, I guess I'll take what I can get.

The moral of this story is, (in rhyme, just as in the best Aesop's fables):
Even if there's something about you that you hate,
Someone else probably thinks it's great.

This is my 100th post

I was watching my list of blog posts, so I could make a big fanfare when I hit 100. Then I logged in today, and saw that I already had 100 posts! I was very sad that I had missed my 100th. But then I realized that I'd only reached 100 posts because one of them was a draft of this post. So this really is my 100th post! Isn't that cool?

In honor of that coolness, I want to share with you just one thing that I think is cool. Just one. And, right here in this sentence, I will describe this one cool thing with words like "tight," and "sick," because I have this great love for new slang terms, but I lack the confidence to use them in everyday conversation.

Let me introduce you to the greatest computer game ever invented. Forget about MMORPGs, abandon your first-person shooters and your high-falutin' graphics cards. Instead, play this super 2-D puzzle game that was originally written for DOS. Oilcap. Go on. Just download it. You won't regret it. It is particularly fitting, considering the big BP fiasco of recent months.

Where I'm gonna go when I die

Speaking of things being at the end of their life span...the trusty pocket calculator that I've had since 8th grade (that's 14 years, folks) is starting to randomly display blank diodes. Its time is near...And I'll miss it when it goes!

Last time we talked, I was talking to you about what happens to consumer goods at the end of their life span.

Today, I'd like to talk to you about what happens to consumers at the end of their life span.

In America, a very popular way to dispose of bodies is to dress them up fancy, pump their now-defunct circulatory systems full of chemicals, seal them up in a fancy, expensive box, and then cover them up with a ton of dirt and a fancy, expensive rock. This rather ludicrous practice has its roots in the fear of decomposition (obviously something that we should all be worrying about once we're dead) and has no doubt been encouraged by the funerary industry, which stands to rake in a good bit of profit when corpses are provided with their own cosmeticians.

There are other options. Many people choose cremation, which allows the remains of the dear departed to be scattered romantically across bodies of water or favorite haunts from the time before the dear departed were technically capable of haunting anything. In some cases, cremation also allows the dead body to be stored in a very compact manner so that it can be cherished forever by adoring family members. Cremation is significantly cheaper than its cousin, the extravagant burial, but just think of the carbon dioxide emissions!

Actually, there is no other option that I can think of that's in common use. But obviously neither of those options are satisfactory to a tree-hugging hippie who would rather die than let any of those earth-scarring things be done to her dead body.

Oh.

Well, moving on! There are still other options--even if they're not as popular!

I've heard, if you happen to live in the right third-world countries, you can have your body placed somewhere out in the open so carrion-eaters can have their way with you. Unfortunately, I do not live in one of those countries, and I don't think that practice is ever going to fly in the US.

So, what's a good eco-conscious American citizen to do?

The answer is, find yourself a good green cemetery and do your best to ensure that's where you end up!
They are out there. I don't feel much like writing about it at the moment, because I think I've dripped sarcasm over just about every tradition related to respecting the dead, and if I don't want to join their (highly respectable) ranks, I'd better shut my figurative mouth now.

But here, visit these links:

• http://www.naturalburial.coop/
• http://www.cemeterygroup.org/

The downside to upcycling

Back when my purse collection was in its prime, it filled an entire printer-paper case, with a few extras lying about here and there. This might not seem that huge, but to someone who likes to avoid clutter, it was oppressive. Last summer, I donated a dozen or so purses, and the collection now fits inside a standard milk crate along with some other apparel-related odds and ends. Why am I telling you this?

Well, I'll come back to that.

One of the current trends in the waste-reduction world is to take old stuff that would ordinarily get thrown away and transform it into something new. They call this "upcycling." Something like adding postconsumer plastic to paving materials would be called "downcycling," because once the plastic has hit the road, it's really reached the end of the road. There's not a lot that can be done to further reuse or recycle that plastic, once it's been mixed with gravel and fused to the ground. And being used for driving on is not what every bottle aspires to. Plastic lumber is another example of downcycled material. If you know a tackier building material than plastic lumber, you let me know. Upcycling, on the other hand, is repurposing material into something of a greater value than the original.

The media is just all aglow with stories of great stuff being made out of not-so-great stuff. People are making jewelry from just about every reclaimed object under the sun. Terracycle fashions cute tote bags from old food wrappers—among many other clever products. And clothes made with cigarette butts? Yes, we've got those too.

But let's not get too excited about it, now. The point I was trying to make with my purse story was that we just don't need that many purses. Or light switch covers, or sandals, or trivets. There's only a finite number of things we can make with would-be junk, and our consumption of the disposable items is pretty much guaranteed to exceed that number.

In some ways, I would go so far as to say that upcycling is a euphemism for downcycling. Higher-quality does not necessarily mean more environmentally friendly, and while upcycled products might look a lot prettier than they did in their original form, they aren't any more recyclable than they were. At the end of the day, your wallet made from tires is still going to end up in a landfill.

I'm not saying that upcycling is bad. But the existence of a use (even if it's a one-time use) for old packaging materials gives manufacturers an incentive to not find greener packaging material in the first place. Wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have to invent creative things to do with our single-use products after we'd used them—because we didn't have single-use products to start with?

Well, we do have single-use products. But as consumers, we have the power to change that. The next time you're shopping, consider the full life cycle of whatever it is you're buying. If you're buying snack chips, you can buy the ones in petroleum based plastic, or you can buy the ones in the compostable bag (way to go, Sunchips!). While a purse made from potato chip bags is greener than a similar purse made from virgin PVC, the earth would be better off if you chose a purse made from cotton canvas—which, at the end of its life, will degrade neatly back into the dust from whence it came. That's closing the loop.

While upcycled goods are a nifty way to make use of the oft-wasted material cluttering our world, ultimately, I hope we learn to focus on eliminating the oft-wasted material at the source, making upcycling obsolete.

Grumble, Grumble

It's that time again—when I fill my blog with gripes about things that annoy me. (Let's face it, gripes about things that don't annoy me wouldn't make any sense at all!) Today's first topic:

Paginating online news articles

I'm told that people on the Internet have a short attention span. I'm told that they don't read; they skim. And I'm told that if you don't give your e-audience their information in little bits and pieces, they won't read it at all.

The online news media seems to have taken this advice to mean that they cannot post an article on their website in its entirety, but rather have to divide it into 2–4 pages. Mind you, these pages are not meaningfully divided, such as by topic wherein you can skip topic 2 if it doesn't interest you and go right on to 3. No, they're just divided to make the page look shorter.

Does this really result in any kind of benefit for anyone? If I were to break this blog entry right here, and make you click a link to see the rest of it, would you? Or would you decide you'd had enough, and it wasn't worth the wait to load an entirely new page just to continue reading?

If I've already committed to reading an article, making me click through several pages of it is only an annoyance. In my opinion, dividing content on the Internet should only be done if it assists in navigation—not if it slows the reader down.

On second thought, this unnecessary pagination may be a ploy to ensure the reader sees more ads. In which case, I complain even more adamantly than ever before!

Speaking of complaining...

There are some people on my Facebook who keep a running commentary via their status updates of all the things that have gone wrong in their life since their last status update. I hardly hear anything from them but some complaint. There are also some people in my immediate vicinity who have a cynical comment to make every time they open their mouth. Jeez! Grumbling every once in a while is all right (it'd have to be, or it would be very hypocritical of me to be writing this post), but try to maintain a balance!

And speaking of balance...

Yoga

I'm aware yoga has been in existence for millennia. Apparently it has some practical benefit, or people would have given up after the first thousand years. But ever since yoga splattered all over my radar screen about a decade ago, I have been struggling with my skepticism. I can't help but think that a good portion of yoga practitioners merely do it because it's trendy. And another good portion of them only do it because they like to show off all the strange ways they can contort their limbs. Maybe I'm just jealous because I'm about as flexible as a Lego person, but frankly, I just can't work up any respect for an activity that inspires captions such as the one below.

If we relax our minds and concentrate,
perhaps we can rip our own heads off!

Life After Graduation, Part 2

It occurred to me today that as a postgraduate graduate, I will probably never again have cause to create masterpieces like the above bit of nonsensical ingenuity that I doodled on the bottom border of a page of lecture notes during my last semester at UB.

I bought a window air conditioner today. This may seem apropos of nothing, but it set off the chain of events that caused me to become all nostalgic over my classroom artistry. You see, whenever I acquire something new, I have this overwhelming compulsion to purge my life of something old. It's 'cause I hate clutter. So today, while patently ignoring the existence of my new air conditioner and sweating under the breeze of two ineffectual fans (because I still feel guilty about using an air conditioner at all), I decided it was time to clean my bookshelf (again) of all the things related to my completed degree.

I ruthlessly recycled pages upon pages of photocopied articles that I'd kept, thinking I might use them as reference material someday. I culled two books that I'd been holding onto just in case I needed them as source material for a paper. I got rid of an entire notebook of typeface samples. I tossed away my student handbook and course catalog. I Freecycled two 3-ring binders and a folder, and I kept...one page of notes.

I'll miss taking notes like these--notes in which the terse and cursory comments on the lecture (half of which are upside-down) are overrun by a swarm of random phrases and pictures of owls. Don't get me wrong--I won't in the slightest way miss being bored during a lecture, but I will miss rifling through my notes and puzzling over the outrageously digressive works of art that adorn the borders of the pages. Some of my most creative designs came from not paying much attention in design class!

You know what else I'll miss? Writing papers. Yes, it's nerdy of me, but I find something immensely satisfying about pulling together a bunch of scraps of quotes from a pile of books and websites, and turning them into something that makes sense. A few days ago, a friend who is still in school was griping about how her school was forcing her to limit her 11-pages of writing to five pages, and I was jealous! If I found it immensely satisfying to put a paper together, I found it absolutely glorious to tear one apart, remove page after page, change a few words, and find that its meaning was still not lost. Yes, I do like to be long-winded when I write, but as I said, I also hate clutter.

Without term papers to write, dissect, and rewrite, I guess the only way for me to get my tidiness fix is for me to organize my bookshelf. Again.

Consider the Environment

You probably know me as your friendly tree-hugging hippie who just can't shut up about reducing, reusing, recycling, cutting emissions, and conserving energy. And for good reason—I am more than happy to talk about the ridiculous lengths to which we can go to save the earth.

For example, take a look at my headphones. They're not the only ones I've got, but I keep using them because I just can't stop!

These headphones are a chintzy piece of junk that I think I got free when I bought a tape recorder—if that tells you anything about how old they are. When the foam pads wore out and fell off, I glued on replacement bits of foam that I repurposed from some cell phone packaging.

Whenever someone visits and looks at my headphones, they immediately tell me I need a new pair. They even offer to give me a new pair! But I tell them, no, these ones are still working and it would be wasteful to throw them away!

But I didn't come here today to talk about my headphones. (Even though I do want to remind you that when your headphones wear out to the point where they can't be saved even with new foam padding, you should not throw them out, but take them to an electronics recycling dropoff, such as at Best Buy.)

No, today I came here to talk about an environmental trend that I think is stupid!

Have you ever gotten an email, and down at the bottom, it had this slogan, "Consider the environment before printing this email?" It probably even had a cute webdings picture of a stream meandering through some trees!

That's stupid! Email works like this: You read it, you delete it. How many people in this world actually print their emails? Do you? Do you keep a paper file of every message you ever got? Perhaps even keep a duplicate file, organized by sender address, for cross-reference purposes? No one does that! Sane people will only print an email if it's absolutely necessary—like, because it has driving directions on it or something. And sane people do not like to have their intelligence insulted by insipid reminders to consider the environment before doing something that's absolutely necessary.

So, if you ever receive an email that tells you to consider the environment before printing it, go ahead and laugh! I, the tree-huggingest hippie around, give you leave to do so. And if, perchance, you are one of those people who has that slogan in your signature, consider your audience instead. Don't you think the people you email have enough sense to decide for themselves when to hit print? And if you were possibly planning on printing an email...well...consider the environment, and print on the backside of another sheet.

Hair

As I mentioned in my last post, when I'm feeling ennuious (no, that's not a word, but it should be!), I develop 3 cravings: to eat junk food, to move away, and to wear makeup. There is, however, in recent months, another option. Lately, my general malaise has also been manifesting itself in a desire to cut my hair.

My ponytail measures 27 inches these days. It has already reached the point where people are awed by it, and there's really no incentive for me to keep growing it "until it starts to look ratty," as was my original plan. I'm growing weary of its demanding maintenance schedule (which requires a good half-hour of detangling every day, plus nightly braiding), and I've seen ladies with braids that extend past their butts, and I don't think they look all that good.

But still, I hesitate to sever all ties with my old friend (get it!?) just yet. I've begun to feel that my hair is my not-so-secret weapon. It's dramatic. It's a talking point. It gives people reason to notice me.

Without this 2-foot clump of keratin trailing behind me, I fear I would recede into invisibility. Without "Wow, your hair is getting really long!" as an opening line, my reunions with long-unvisited friends and family members might never progress past the awkward-grinning phase. I have long suspected that one of my chief social failings is that people forget me as soon as I'm out of sight. Yet, I've come to believe that my hair is the only thing that might mitigate my forgettability (no, that's not a word, either. Get used to it). Without my ridiculously long mop, I worry there would be nothing distinctive about me.

Before I commit to such a drastic move, I need to find another gimmick—something that makes me more than just another face in the crowd. There is that penchant that I have for one-of-a-kind thrift store getups... And last winter's experiment with knee socks as a wardrobe staple went off pretty well. Maybe I should learn to harness the power of accessorizing—without big tumors of hair sticking out of my head, I'd be free to wear things like hats! Or maybe I should just stop being so vain.

Anyway, while I'm pondering how to cut my hair without going through separation anxiety, I'll leave you to ponder this abbreviated top-ten list:

You know it's time to cut your hair...

• When you can hit your funny bone with the end of your braid.
• When you can use your hair in place of a scarf.
• When you see your hairstyle reflected in a window, and you remind yourself of an alien in a Star Wars movie.
• When a loose hair can work its way down your collar and become an instrument of itchy torture somewhere in the vicinity of your belly button!
• When you start accidentally sitting on it.

Makeup

When ever I become unhappy with my life, I start doing three things: I lose my desire to eat anything but junk food, I get this sudden urge to move somewhere else, and I start wanting to wear makeup. The appetite thing is easily explained by the food-serotonin link; the moving thing has to do with a desire to run away from my problems; and the makeup thing is just bizarre. Sometimes I think it's my subconscious saying, "I'm pissed off—here's the war paint to prove it!" Or maybe it's just another desperate bid for change.

In any case, I never actually do it--but since I'm constantly arguing with myself about whether it's time to give in and purchase a tube of mascara, I think it's a good time to make my stance on makeup perfectly clear.

I don't object to makeup. In fact, for most of my adult life, I had a reasonably respectable collection of it. However, I threw it all out a couple of years ago, when someone I was in love with told me I didn't need it. I wish I could say I've never looked back, but I do. Frequently. Especially during those times when I want to start wearing black and run away to New Mexico to eat cheesecake all day. It's just that, all things considered, I think makeup is something better left unworn.

Like so many of the other things I shy away from, I believe makeup breeds dependence. According to my book, makeup is something you should wear for decoration. That's why my collection of old had nothing practical in it such as foundation, but mostly consisted of an assortment of colorful eyeshadows. However, for the average female who has graduated from 7th grade, makeup is something you put on to make you look beautiful.

You understand the distinction, right? According to me, makeup is something beautiful you wear. According to convention, it's something that alters the perception of what you are. For those of us who are naturally beautiful (*bats long, luscious, unpainted eyelashes*), such artifice is completely unnecessary. But those who buy into the belief that makeup can make you beautiful soon find that they only feel beautiful when they're wearing it. And when they're not, they feel ugly. Thus they are forced to wear it all the time to keep up the image they've established for themselves. I choose to keep my face looking plain, because if people get used to seeing me with my natural look, they won't think I look like a corpse when they see me with my natural look!

Of course, there are other reasons (mostly having to do with laziness) that I choose not to paint my face. I'm pretty happy with my ability to get ready for work in 15 minutes every morning (and that includes styling my unmanageable mane, which will be  a topic of later discussion), and I don't see why I should slow myself down with unnecessary preening. Nor do I see why I should have to go through the hassle of washing it all off every night. I don't put soap on my face, period, and I see no reason to change that.

And then, of course, there's the simple argument that wearing makeup is actually counteractive to most of my goals. I maintain that makeup makes you look more gorgeous—only if you're already gorgeous to begin with! For my part, makeup is not going to hide my chubby cheeks, nor is it going to bring my eyes out of those hollows they're sunk into, nor is it going to straighten my deviant nose. Honestly, wearing makeup only makes me look old and mean, which doesn't seem the best strategy to combat a discontent brought on chiefly by loneliness.

So, while sometimes I have the urge to splash some color onto this waxen face of mine, I think for now I'll just refrain. But you ladies out there who disagree with me, go ahead and keep doing that thing you do! That way, I can compare myself to you and feel liberated, and the cosmetics industry will stay in business should I ever change my mind!

That old-time music

I never had a first-generation gaming system, but apparently I'm nostalgic about them. In fact, I seem to be on a retro tech kick. I don't know the reason, but I do know that's the reason I was compelled to create the "1980's Nintendo-Style Tree" (credit for the name goes to Geoff) of two posts ago.

It also explains my latest musical obsession. Remember when I waxed ecstatic about how Welle:Erdball composes some of their music on a Commodore 64? Well, it turns out that that delightful 8-bit music has a genre all of its own!

I discovered this quite accidentally while exploring a new website, radiotuna.com. They feature some strangely categorized genres (like, who knew rock and roll was a subcategory of rock?) and some genres I've never heard of (viking metal? screw? gabber?), one of which was "chiptune."

I decided to try it out, and instantly fell in love! Bleeps and bloops and scratchy bass galore! Wikipedia told me a lot more about the genre, most importantly the technological basis for that peculiarly fun, jittery sound that's in so much old-school video game music--it's their attempt at simulating chords. I quote, "In early video game music, arpeggios were often the only way to play a chord since sound hardware usually had a very limited number of oscillators, or voices. Instead of tying them all up to play one chord, one channel could be used to play an arpeggio, leaving the rest for drums, bass, or sound effects."

I find this inordinately exciting. If you are even half as thrilled as I am about micromusic (another name for the genre I just learned today), I encourage you to download a few of these thrilling bits of pseudo-history. How about some chiptune remixes of popular songs! Want to resurrect the 90's trance scene with some Nintendo power? Try Yerzmyey's remix of Robert Miles's "Children"! Or mix up the decades a little more, and bring some 80's into Madonna's 2005 hit that samples an old disco track: TDM and Factor 6 reproduce "Hung Up" on the ZX Spectrum (no, I don't know what one of those is, either). Or feeling a little more adventurous and want to try something totally new? Try "I Want More Diamonds!" by The Galactic Stranger. I don't remember anything about it, but I made a note to myself that I should add it to my collection.

And, if you're really motivated, you should run, don't walk, to www.cvgm.net and do some exploring of your own. Download some tracks, or listen to their audio stream! Learn about the dudes who make the songs and their spiffy equipment! And, as an added bonus, watch Super Mario spinning out in your address bar!

After you're done, be sure to tell me what you found. I just spent the last week organizing my music collection, and now that that's done, I need to mess it up a little with more new stuff!

Boos and Woohoos: Or, a Set of Reviews

I get really excited about some things, and I want to share them with the world. And some things make me really grumpy, and I want to gripe about them. But I never seem quite sure how to address them in my blog--not enough to talk about, too much of a downer...there's always something holding me back.

But not any more! I am going to write about them in the contrasting viewpoints format that is so popular among publications. You know, like thumbs-up/thumbs-down? Or like rants/raves? Except that, if you somehow managed not to read the title of this post, these are called "Boos and Woohoos!" Today's reviews are on a few topics related to environmental friendliness.

Boo

You know those yellowish envelopes you send interoffice memos in? Oh, you don't send interoffice memos any more? Well, you know those yellowish envelopes that you can buy to send your mail in? The ones that usually have a metal brad or a little doohicky with a string that you use to help hold them shut?

I always thought those envelopes were pretty cool, because thanks to the attached doohickies, you could use them multiple times. What's not cool about them is they are apparently unrecyclable! Yes, according to at least a few sources, this "goldenrod" paper is saturated with dyes that can't be removed--meaning the paper can't be recycled. Apparently this is true of any dark-colored paper. Well, I checked on my city's recycling website, and it did not prohibit goldenrod envelopes--but (and here's a point you should remember) just because the city accepts something for recycling, that doesn't mean it actually gets recycled!

So, just to be on the safe side... Next time you buy envelopes, don't choose any that are mustard or dark in color!

Woohoo

On a different recycling-related note, the last time I was at Payless Shoes, the cashier asked me if I wanted to keep the boxes. I said no, and asked her if they recycle them. It turns out they actually do one better: they return the boxes to the manufacturer for reuse! Way to go, Payless! Not only did you hook me up with an awesome, comfy pair of shoes that everyone compliments me on for just 10 dollars, but you also have shown a commitment to packaging reduction! If I didn't love you before for your great prices and irresistible BOGO sales (which I did), I definitely do now for your sustainable ways! Keep it up!