Love bits

Valentine's Day might be over, but I still have a few cynical thoughts about love up my sleeve, and I'm sure as shootin' (that was a Cupid joke, get it!?) not waiting a full year to air them.

Deep thoughts first

This work of art appeared on the board
where my housemates and I
leave each other messages of great import.

I once read in a teen magazine (I was a teen at the time, really!) an Interview With a Cute Guy. One of the questions was, "How do you know when it's really love?" I've been thinking about it ever since.

The Cute Guy's answer was, "When I stop eating." Which is a valid answer, I suppose, except that it sounds more like an indication of infatuation than love. I daresay even Cute Guys of the hopeless romantic variety start eating again once the initial thrill wears off. How can you grow old together if one of you dies of starvation three weeks after meeting? Cute Guy is excused for calling infatuation love—sometimes I use the terms interchangeably. But he has done nothing to help us answer the eternal question: What really is love?

A significant other once told me it was love if he would "take a bullet" for the lovee. Well, he never took a bullet for me, so I dumped him.

In all seriousness, though, there must be some real-life test that's a little less suicidal to determine whether you love someone. Sometimes I think, if I loved someone enough, I might be persuaded to move to a colder climate to be with them. For me, that would be a big deal, a torturous decision that would definitely require a huge incentive. But even if I were really enamored, I think I might elect to have a long-distance relationship part of the year, rather than join my sweetie in the frozen tundra. Or even New England.

I think the truest definition of love for me is one that gets to the heart of my phenomenally reclusive personality. Social interaction is always a huge drain on my emotional energy. Even when I have a great time with someone, and even when I've been starved for companionship and really need some company, I am always happy when I get to be alone again. Love is the one thing that can break through that introversion. Love is the one thing that can make me not want to say good bye, and the one and only reason that leaving someone could ever cause me pain rather than relief. Aww, how romantic.

And Now for Some Decidedly Unromantic One-Liners

• Some people chase after Sasquatch. I chase after love. I don't know which chase is more futile.
• Being in love is eerily like being high on decongestants.
• If all the guys who joked about marrying me actually did marry me, I'd be a polygamist.
• If I had a dollar for every time I saw someone else having a better love life than mine, I'd still be lonely, but at least I'd be rich.

Bad Romance

Since last year's Valentine's Day post on broken hearts went over so well, I have also decided to start an annual tradition: The Bitter Valentine Blog.

Today, I'm slightly less grief-stricken and pitiful than I was this time last year, but I'm still just as single as ever. My solution? I'm going to purge my music collection of all sappy love songs. Eat that, romance!

Fortunately, sappy love songs have never figured very strongly in my music library, but to the few I have, I say "Yer outta there!...But I'll keep you on my backup drive just in case I ever change my mind."

The following songs will no longer get any playtime in Valerie-land, but will be relegated to a deep dark corner of my hard drive along with crappy live recordings, songs that sounded a lot cooler in their 30-second sample, and other unliked music that I'm afraid to delete.

• Gym Class Heroes - "Cupid's Chokehold" Oh, so you've got a girlfriend, do you? Well, you won't be rubbing it in my face any more! Yer outta there! (The dance version, "Girlfriend," by Darren Styles and Whizkid, may stay, because it's catchy and doesn't say anything about "the one.")
• Cutting Crew - "Died in Your Arms" I don't even know what you're singing about, but obviously it involves hugging and even a kiss. Unacceptable.
• Tim McGraw - "I Like It, I Love It" I got this song when I was making a conscious effort to like country music. Obviously I was trying too hard. It's outta there!
• Brooks & Dunn - "My Heart is Lost to You" If there is one sappy country song worse than "I Like It, I Love It," it must be this one, which isn't even upbeat! Maybe I thought it was cool because it had some Spanish lyrics. How's this for Spanish: ¡Tú eres perdido de mí!
• Natasha Bedingfield - "These Words" How many times can you say "I love you" in one song? Ms. Bedingfield seems determined to find out. But no, that's not OK. She's outta there!
• Lange - "Sincere for You" One of those dance songs that sounded a lot cooler in the 30-second sample, but ended up being vocal-heavy sentimental slop. I'm surprised I kept it as long as I did.

I strongly encourage all readers of this blog to do as I have done, and free your lives of romantic music. But if thumbing your nose at the love song industry isn't enough for you, I have some suggestions for songs that will vindicate you and/or assist in the process of wallowing in bitterness. The following selected songs are all about love gone wrong. I have no shortage of those!

• Sinead O'Connor - "Nothing Compares 2 U" Somebody broke up with you? Why don't you cry about it?
• Fool's Garden - "Lemon Tree" Somebody broke up with you? Obsess about your loneliness!
  
• Lerner & Loewe - "Without You" (From My Fair Lady) Somebody broke up with you? You don't need em!
• The Airborne Toxic Event - "Sometime Around Midnight" Somebody broke up with you years ago, and you're still thinking about them? This is the song for you!
  
• Cake - "Never There" Ah, love unrequited. My favorite topic for a song!
• Nine Inch Nails - "Only" Featuring the mantra of every spurned lover: "I just made you up to hurt myself."
• OAR - "Love and Memories" Should be self-explanatory.
• The Raconteurs - "Steady, As She Goes" Finally, a critical portrait of the married life, just to remind you it's not so bad to be single.

How 'bout the power of flight!

Air travel always gives me good fodder for blogging, but I never want to do it again!

Every airplane trip requires so much preparation! Searching every travel website you know to find the best deal takes up hours of your time, and you haven't even gotten to the actual flying part! Then there's that panic-filled period about 4 hours before your flight when you are absolutely convinced you have appendicitis and will have to cancel all your travel plans. Wait, that doesn't happen to everyone?

Although I'm a seasoned flier from a lifetime of vacations, every time I fly, I get a little more nervous when the plane takes off. I feel like I've used up all my luck, and surely this will be the time that I die. Yeah, you can say I'm more likely to die in a car crash, but try telling that to me when I'm looking straight out my window at a spinning propeller and thinking about what will happen when it dislodges itself, smashes into my window, and then tumbles a mile to the ground below! I just don't know if air travel is worth the cardiac stress.

And, though I mentioned this in my last flying post, once again I issue the plea for more sensible refund policies! Why are tickets nonrefundable and non-transferrable, other than to ensure the airlines make tons of money off their passengers' misfortunes? It's not like we're security-screened before buying our tickets--it shouldn't matter who actually flies using them! If you run an airline and a person can't make a flight, and if you do refuse to issue a refund because you're greedy, you should at least let them sell their ticket to someone else. You still get your money and you haven't lost anything.

I just don't know if I can continue flying on airlines that want to exploit their customers in such a way. Nor would it really be practical for me, anyway. My recent trip to Toledo by air took me 8 hours, and in that amount of time, I could have driven almost all the way here, saved hundreds of dollars, brought more stuff, emitted less carbon, and probably cried a lot less. Next time, despite the temptation to fly, I think I'll just harness the power of ground transportation.

Snow Day

The good thing about waking up at 2:30 a.m. and being unable to fall asleep is that when you finally decide to go in to work (2 hours early) at 4:00, you're not at all too sleepy to get out of bed like you usually are. This is how I spent my morning. In spite of the 6+ inches of snow blocking my exit, I trudged to work in the wee hours because I figured getting paid would be better than rolling around in bed failing to get comfortable.

If it hadn't been for the snow, I wouldn't have woken up so ungodly early in the first place. You see, I have this wonderful alarm which wakes me up gently every morning by slowly brightening a lamp over a half-hour period. I find this an infinite improvement over the near heart attacks that used to ensue every time my auditory alarm went off in the middle of my deep sleep. They sell these special clocks for anything from 40 to 200 dollars, but I am a cheapskate, and I didn't want all the fancy features that come with a typical alarm clock, including an LED display (lately I shun these because they shine in my face and make me constantly aware of how late/early it is when I am unable to sleep). Fortunately I was able to find a device for just 20$ that simulates this sunrise using the power of my own bedside lamp. Unfortunately, you can only set it by plugging it in at bedtime and letting it run on its internal 24-hour timer. It works fine after the first use, but if there is a power failure because of a snow storm, and you forget to reset it, it does crazy things like wake you up at 2:30 in the morning.

Following my unwelcome (though gentle) wakeup, and my trek to work, I didn't have much to do. The delivery truck was late to the store, so after packing all the backstock I had available, organizing the cheese case because the cheese packer had called out, and cleaning my area, I was quite ready to leave after 4 hours. I usually only work 4 hours on Thursday, anyway, but usually those 4 hours are over at 10, not 8:30. Just as I was rolling out the door, the truck rolled into the parking lot. I pretended I didn't see.

I got home from a complete day's work before my housemates had even gotten out of bed for theirs! That's always a pretty gratifying feeling. Following this, I had a 1.5-hour nap, and now, at 1:30, I am ready to begin my day!

Flying biscuits

It's time, yet again, for Valerie's Adventures in Cooking!

Today's recipe is for a thing I like to call "Flying biscuits." That is, biscuits made on the fly. Here's how you do it.

Ingredients

You don't actually need to read this, since the required quantities are in the recipe, but go ahead if you're so inclined.

• 1/2 stick butter
• 1/2 stick shortening
• a good bit more flour than butter and shortening combined
• a smallish palmful of salt
• another smallish palmful of baking soda
• no egg
• water
• water
• more flour

Get home from work and decide you'd really like to eat some biscuits with cheese for dinner. Search through all your recipes, but fail to find one for biscuits. Spend a moment thinking how odd this is, since biscuits are one of your favorite things to eat that can be easily made at home, but then remember that you used to make biscuits so often that you could do it without a recipe. Decide, instead of wasting time searching the Internet for a recipe, to channel your past self and do without one.

Start with shortening and butter, one half-stick each. For the purposes of this recipe, they shall henceforth be known collectively as "shortening." My apologies to the butter, which may feel slighted by this. Most biscuit recipes recommend that you slice these ingredients into the flour, but since you are so excited about finally being able to use them after they've been sitting around since Thanksgiving, you may forget this and dump them, intact, into the bowl. Follow this with flour, in a significantly larger volume than the shortening. Add salt--a teaspoon, measured in the palm of your hand. Begin to cut the flour into the shortening when you remember that biscuits need baking soda to rise. While you are getting the baking soda, wonder whether you are supposed to add an egg, but decide you are not. Toss in some baking soda in about the same amount as the salt and mix thoroughly.

Add water. Mix. Add a little more water. Mix. Add too much water, which you only realize when your biscuit dough becomes a gloopy mass. A good rule of thumb when deciding how much water to add to a recipe is to draw on your extensive vocabulary and recall whether the pre-cooked version of your product is called "batter" or "dough." Gloopy masses are good for "batters," but a little more viscosity is required for "dough." Dump in the rest of the flour and mix with your hands until the dough clumps together in a soggy ball.

At this point, remember to preheat the oven. Almost everything bakes at 350 degrees, so you can be reasonably certain that that will be an acceptable temperature for your biscuits.

Most of the time, biscuits are supposed to be rolled out and cut into circles. Your time is more precious than that, so feel free to grab slightly-less-than-biscuit-sized chunks from the dough ball and splat them onto the baking sheet. Pat them down into shapes that somewhat resemble biscuits.

Because you began the preheating process approximately 40 seconds before being ready to bake your biscuits, the oven is only going to be at 110 degrees. While you're waiting for it to pass through the next 240 degrees, you may clean up your mess! At 285 degrees, decide the oven is hot enough, and slide that pan into it! Whoops! First, I guess you should remove the two partially eaten pizzas that your housemate apparently decided to store in the oven.

How long do biscuits bake, anyway? Well, surely long enough for you to take a quick shower while you're waiting for them to finish. Shower away, and get out just in time to hear the oven beep to let you know it has reached temp. Clearly your biscuits are not finished yet.

Because you are starving to death, take your biscuits out of the oven every 5 minutes to see if they are done and eat pieces out of them. After 20 minutes of this, declare them officially done and eat them. Next time, use more salt.

Silence

I caught a cold a few days ago.

This is not big news, since I catch approximately four colds a year (one for every season). However, this cold topped the charts in terms of vocal destruction.

Monday, my throat felt a little wheezy. Tuesday, my voice got a little raspy. Wednesday, I suffered through a day of work in intense pain, unable even to complain because my voice had been depleted to a whisper, and every whisper hurt like a scream. Let me tell you, as someone who talks to herself pretty much continuously, I found it nearly as painful mentally to endure a full day of silence. My internal monologue was obliged to stay internal--and that hurt! People would come past my work station and make little comments--comments to which I usually make other little comments in reply. But this time I could only smile, or nod, or wheeze out a little laugh. I felt so isolated!

The worst part was about midway through the day, when one of my coworkers came by and decided to have a conversation with me. The conversation mostly consisted of me trying to explain what was wrong with me, without seriously injuring myself in the process. I failed miserably. When I turned to put away a bag of sesame sticks, I whacked my hand hard into the shelf--in the exact spot where I'd cut myself and gotten stitches the previous Sunday. When I took out the stitches yesterday, I was surprised by how much my finger still hurt, until I remembered this occurrence. I had hit it so badly, I bruised the entire knuckle.

Maybe it was a good thing I had no voice right then, because I would have screamed bloody murder if I could have. As it was, I had to choke it back and stomp on the floor instead. As one of my friends commented later, "Not a satisfying way to express pain." And of course I wept bitter tears in front of my coworker. But that happens so often that I'm sure he wasn't surprised.

By the time I left work that evening, my throat hurt so badly that my entire body hurt. Or maybe I had a fever, since I also felt chilled to the bone. My walk home in the cold was torture, but a few minutes of inhaling steam from a teapot followed by a good long huddle in bed set me to rights.

Yesterday, my throat felt much better (although all the congestion had moved up into my nose), and today, the average listener probably can't even detect anything wrong with my voice. But I have learned a valuable lesson. I should never take a vow of silence.

VMA's are early this year!

It is the beginning of a brand new year, and in the grand tradition of my fellow blogger Geoff, I am going to start it off right by sharing some of the best songs of the prior year! That's 2010, folks. Your time is valuable, and I'm not exactly on top of the music scene, so I'll limit my selections to the top three. That's about as many new songs as I take notice of in a given year anyway. Welcome to the VMA's (Valerie Music Awards)

Third place: "We No Speak Americano," by Yolanda Be Cool and DCUP

Halloween this year kinda sucked. I had a not-too-fun choir concert at which the zipper on my skirt broke, and I only made it to the Halloween party after all my friends had left. Its one high point was when, on my way to the party, I heard this song playing on the radio for the first time. As soon as I got home, I feverishly searched the Internet for the only lyric I remembered: "Americano." Obviously, the song was more popular than I imagined, as, even with that meager input, it was one of the first results on Google. Sifting through several YouTube versions and finally posting one on Facebook kept me up til almost 2a.m.—and it's not for just any old song that I'll stay awake that far past my bedtime! My taste for dance tracks and music that sounds like it's being played backward made "Americano" a shoo-in for one of my favorite songs of the year. Unfortunately, it only made third place due to the fact that it's not really my style. Not quite enough beats per minute to keep my attention very long once the novelty wears off.

Second Place: The TRON: Legacy soundrack, by Daft Punk

Is it cheating to pick a whole album as one of your favorite songs of the year? Because almost every song on this soundtrack is digital awesome! Dramatic classical music of the sort you hear on every fantasy soundtrack, combined with synthy melodic basslines and blips and bleeps galore! Yum! But if I had to choose just a few must-downloads, I'd tell you to definitely not miss "The Grid," "The Son of Flynn" and "Derezzed," which is the song that you'll hear if you click the link.

First Place: "Break Your Heart," by Taio Cruz featuring Ludacris

Considering all the breaking of hearts that goes on in Valerie-Land, it's no surprise that the Grand Prize Winner of this year's VMA's goes to a song about that very subject. It's also no surprise that the chosen song happens to be extraordinarily danceable. Without the beat and the super-fabulous synthesized background music, this song would be totally unremarkable. But add those things plus the delightful interjections by Ludacris and you've got a real winner! Normally rap goes in one of my ears and out the other, but the priceless gem, "I may break your heart, but I don't really think there's anybody as bomb as me" has introduced me to my new favorite adjective! And then there's the part about how he's gonna "shatter and splatter it all into little bitty pieces!" Took me weeks to learn to say that line, but learn it I did, and now I can sing along while I dance to the song. And I do. At work. My coworkers watch me and laugh.

Nonqualifiers

Since I'm always a little bit behind the times on most things, it's often years after its release that I learn about a song I absolutely fall in love with. Two of these shall be presented today.

One, I only missed by a year. It's Andy Moore and Ashley Wallbridge's "Faces."
The other is an older remix of a video game song called "Dreaming on Distant Shores" by the artist known as Rellik. Both of these are archetypal trance pieces that you'll love if you love trance.

Until next year...
Or until the next time I get the urge to gush about some disco-fabulous song I found...
Valerie signing out.

What happened to my finger and my upper arm

I am typing this with a sore finger and a sore upper arm because... well...in order that some sense of mystery should still be preserved, no revelation will yet be made concerning how my upper arm was injured.

But I will immediately tell you how it all began.

It all began yesterday night, when my family members began checking today's weather forecasts in preparation for my incipient trip back to Maryland. There was much anxiety about the 100% chance of snow that was predicted for College Park. Although I played the stalwart traveler, I was a bit concerned myself, fearing burial under drifts of snow, or an accidental departure from the road, or - even worse - having to drive all the way to Maryland with a film of salt on my windshield!

Well, only the latter actually happened (What's with all the gas stations at the so-called "service" plazas not having any window cleaner fluid?) and I actually made it to College Park completely unscathed. The snowfall wasn't even close to significant until I hit the Beltway, and there was, miraculously, not a traffic jam the whole way down.

It was only once I got home that I became scathed. After unpacking all the stuff I'd brought back from Ohio and pleased that I'd made the entire trip in just 7.5 hours, I was in a productive mood. So I decided to clean up some of the stuff that had been sitting around since long before I went to Ohio. Among that collection of stuff was a jar candle with a label that had been half-ripped off. I set out to remove the label completely.

I should know by now that plying any kind of blade on a cylindrical object is not my strong point. I have a scar at the base of my thumb to prove it, and now I'll probably have a scar at the base of my pointer finger to bolster the argument. I don't think I will shoot for scars on all five fingers. And now, gore alert! If you are as squeamish as I apparently am, you may not want to continue reading. There will be blood.

As I diligently scraped away at the tenacious sticker, I slipped and sent my paint scraper (with a fortunately pretty dull blade) digging into the flesh of my finger. "Oh my God," I said, and promptly began bleeding all over the place.

The fortuitous part of this story is that I was wearing my favorite pair of pants--pink jeans that I got at a thrift store almost 6 years ago. I loved them because they were the perfect fit and super soft, which most jeans never become. However, they had gotten so soft that I'd already worn a hole in one knee and the second one was soon to follow. As I was driving home, I noticed that they looked a little dingy even though they had recently been washed, and I vowed that this would be the last time I wore them--even though I love them so much. Well. Now that they are blood-spattered, I don't think I'll be able to cheat and try to wear them ever again. That was good timing.

Anyway, after cutting the dickens out of my finger, I did the responsible thing and washed it with soap and water. Fortunately, I was so shocked that I didn't feel any pain. But I did get really dizzy and have to lie down for a minute.

Then I was well enough to drive myself to the ER, where I received two stitches and a tetanus shot. Watching the former caused me to get dizzy all over again (I always forget how awful it feels to be on the verge of passing out. I think I'll be quite happy if I never feel that way again!) and the latter was why my upper arm now hurts.

Ellipsis

I apologize in advance; I don't think I'll be blogging much for a while. I got depressed again.

This happens fairly often for me, usually when unfortunate life events coincide with the onset of winter, but it's particularly bad this time around. I just wondered today, as I was sitting in my chair staring off into the future, how many of you know what it feels like to be really depressed. Maybe all of you do; an uncorroborated statistic in my head is that 2/3 of adults have experienced depression at some point during their life. But if you haven't, let me try to explain.

Normally, I fix problems. If I have a problem, I 'll keep working at it until it is fixed. If I can't fix it, I get terribly upset. And if the unfixable problem happens to relate to the single most important goal in my life, I get more than upset.

I can't stop thinking about it. I analyze every aspect of it. I consider and reconsider every course of action that I could possibly take and realize none of them are acceptable. Even when I stop thinking about it, it stays in the back of my mind. I'll be going about my daily business when all of a sudden I'll realize I am so sad. This goes on for days. I start to get irritable. The small problems that I used to fix now cause me to burst into tears.

When I am alone, I obsess about it until I cry. Loudly, ceaselessly, in the most horrifying manner I hope you never have to hear. Sometimes, I cry until every sinus in my skull is completely impacted, or I have pulled muscles in my throat and ribs. I rail at the Problem, but finding it undefeatable, I have no choice but to attack myself instead. When I realize that hysteria is getting me nowhere, I swing to the opposite extreme and shut down.

Because quickness turns sadness to anger, I go slow. I walk slow, I move slow, I talk slow. I don't think people notice because my normal speed is ultra-fast, and my super-slow speed is the normal person's normal. But if you're watching me, you'll see me stop periodically and space out. Everything is so hard to do. I draw on all my reserves to muster the willpower to do normal things like open a box or put on my coat. I don't really have the strength to stay awake and do all those normal tasks, so I indulge in extremely early bedtimes. When I'm sleeping is about the only time I'm not utterly miserable. When I wake up, there are a few moments of foggy-feeling normalcy, and then the blanket of sadness descends.

Sooner or later, the physical symptoms begin. I lose my appetite. When it gets to the point that I'm dizzy with hunger, I'll try to eat something, but afterwards, I always wish I hadn't. I feel heavy and nauseated. I would like to think that this would at least help me lose weight, but unfortunately I think my metabolism slows down so much that if anything, I get fatter. In the mornings before breakfast, everything feels unreal. Something indescribable happens to my vision: Everything looks the same, but it feels like it looks different, as though I'm seeing it through a window on another world.

On the days that I don't work, I can spend hours on end staring into space or crying. I never bother to change out of my pajamas. I alternately close off all communication channels and open them all in a flood, hoping someone has missed me. They usually haven't. Although I am desperate to feel some love, being around people induces anxiety. Being alone is the worst thing you can do for yourself when you are depressed, but having to feign happiness – or even a sort of stable melancholy – for others' benefit is so draining. While I am interacting with others, I can laugh at jokes and even enjoy myself for seconds on end, but the terrible thoughts will insert themselves ruthlessly into any situation. I want to take some sort of action on my oppressive emotions, but I have to put on a brave face for these people! The stress of it causes mild panic attacks. And as soon as I leave, I start crying again.

I know that this will end because it has every time since I first got depressed. But the thought of the weeks or months that I will have to endure this is enough to send me into another fit of hysteria (please, no). And when I recover, it will only be to a state of resigned sadness. If you try to console me, it won't help (though the effort will be appreciated), but if you think about it, pray for the solution to the underlying Problem. I'd like to, one day, get back to being the ray of sunshine that everyone thinks I am.

How to kill off your dating prospects: advice from the expert

Ladies and gentlemen, after 2 years going on dating sprees separated by lengthy periods of imagined contentment with quasi-relationships, I consider myself an authority on love. And rejoice—I am now going to share my wisdom with you! Today's topic is: How to kill off your dating prospects (figuratively!). Both men and women can benefit from my sage advice.

Gentlemen: Be That Guy.

As an online dater, you have the advantage of presenting yourself in any way that you wish. Addicted to meth? No one needs to know. Want your face on top of (insert hot celebrity name here)'s body? That's fine. And you get to choose any one of a multitude of plausible personas! My personal favorite for scaring off the chicks faster than a hawk's shadow? The One-Track Mind.

When chatting with a new woman online, pick a topic and stick to it. Fanatically. Remember, this is the Internet, and normal rules of courtesy need not apply, so you can and should pick every girl's favorite subject to discuss with strange men: sex. If she has a photo posted online, make sure your first words to her are, "u r hottt!" Truncating the "you" and employing multiple T's are crucial. You want her to know early on that your interest in getting her into your bed far exceeds your mastery of English. If you have not seen her picture yet, demand one, because there's no point getting to know a chick if she doesn't look like a supermodel. Once you have received the required photo, proceed to the previous step.

Following this, if you are confident that your attempts at flattery have set the lady's heart aflutter, you may then invite her to see your manhood. However, if you are like most men, you'll want to take things a little slower than that and begin your courtship with some casual conversation. Here are some good questions to use to break the ice:
"What's the wildest thing you've ever done with a guy?"
"What's your favorite place to be kissed?"
"What are you wearing?"
"What are you wearing underneath?"

A chastity belt. Go away.
Ding ding ding! Congratulations! Following these steps, you can be certain that The One Track you're on is the Fast Track to rejection! Never fear, however. Just because you've successfully scared off one female doesn't mean that there aren't many more out there, just waiting to be repulsed! In later posts, I'll be discussing the many more personas you can try on them, including The Speed Dater, The Bore, The Stalker in Training, and The Hopeless Romantic—Really Hopeless. If you get good, you can combine all these into one epochal interaction that will be sure to leave the girl's head spinning.

Ladies: Be That Girl

You know, that girl...the one he talks to all his friends about and shudders. You can do it. Just follow this simple guide.

So, you're not that enthusiastic about meeting him, but he hasn't been deterred by your lukewarm response when he talks to you. You've canceled one date already because you decided to take a spontaneous trip out of town. You've canceled another date, citing a "bad mood." You've expressed your trepidations about getting involved with someone who lives so far away from you. But he's persistent and hasn't broken any of the rules, so, lacking any better options, you allow him to meet you for a first date and then a second.

But on the middle of the second date, you're still dreaming of the love of your life who is someone else and wondering how you will escape this guy's determined grasp. You don't want to be that coldhearted ***** who ignores his phone calls, and you don't know how to express in words that it's not because he's ugly or gross or boring, but you just don't want to date him any more. What do you do? What do you do?

Well, when he tries to kiss you, let him for just a second, then tell him to stop. When he asks you why, start crying. When he tries to comfort you, cry harder. Apologize profusely for putting him in this position and berate yourself with gusto in between sobs. You may cease this behavior after 5-10 minutes. Even if he toughs out the date to the bitter end, you can rest assured that this will be the last. Be proud that you will go down in history as one of his most memorable dates ever.

Branching out in the Blogosphere

Over the years, I have been consumed by passions for various creative activities. As much as one can be "consumed" by one thing while trying to simultaneously engage in three or four other hobbies at the same time. Call me a Jack of all trades. Jacqueline.

During my formative years, I was a prolific writer of stories and poems and drawer of pictures. I dabbled in aromatherapy, cartooning, and crafts of all sorts. In college, I channeled all my creative energy into academic and extracurricular projects. After graduation, I toyed briefly with making a business out of making wreaths, concurrently discovering the joys of glass etching. I became and remain infatuated with blogging. For a while I was so fixated on web design that I made it my career, and once that ceased to be a hobby and became the daily grind instead, I became fascinated with DIY fashion.

Buying clothes at the thrift store and altering them to make them look cute became my new favorite pastime. I discovered the aesthetic potential of knee socks. After a lifetime of either playing the fashion pariah or assiduously blending into the crowd, I discovered I really could have a unique look and not be spurned for it. Some people even tell me I look good once in a while!

This fashion fascination has lasted a year and a half and is still going strong, so I think it's time I make something of it. Rather than let my wardrobe experiments fade into history, I am going to memorialize them with pictures! Best of all, this means a new outlet for my blogging infatuation.

I have started a new blog. Unlike the mixed bag of random thoughts that is Val's Galorious Galaxy, this one will focus exclusively on fashion. Or rather, a deliberate lack thereof. In my new blog, I'll share the numerous ways a cheapskate with a unique sense of style can create a distinctive look.

The Unfashionista

Visit it today! Enjoy, comment, and tell a friend!

Thanksgiving Dinner, Valerie-Style

Thanksgiving is here, and now that I'm Suzie Homemaker herself, it means it's the first Thanksgiving ever that I get to host!

My mom and her boyfriend came bearing furniture this Thanksgiving, and in return, I fixed dinner for them to eat upon their arrival. Since my idea of dinner is usually a few cubes of cheese and a carrot, this means it's time for more of Valerie's Adventures in Cooking!

I acquired almost all the food I needed for free from the rejected produce at the store --mushrooms, green beans, potatoes, green onions, a pie pumpkin, and cornmeal (ground from whole corn by a resourceful coworker) all came my way just in time for Thanksgiving! About the only thing I needed to buy were the dairy items and ingredients for cranberry sauce.

I started my preparations early, since, with my predilection for dawdling, I knew I'd be rushing around trying to do too much at the last minute. So on Monday night, I cooked my pumpkin. The instructions I found online said I should cook it in a steamer basket. I don't have a steamer basket, so I just put it in the bottom of the pot and hoped for the best. Which probably was for the best, since our 2-quart saucepan (the biggest one we have) was just barely big enough to fit the pumpkin by itself. It turned out fine. I roasted the seeds and, because they seemed a little underdone, left them in the oven while it cooled down. I also left them in the oven overnight. And most of the next day. Oops.

Next on my agenda was pumpkin pie. I don't really like pumpkin pie, but since divine providence had dumped a pumpkin into my lap, I figured I should make good use of it. Since I was only planning to make a small pie, I had some leftover pumpkin which I used for pumpkin cookies. I made the dough on Tuesday night, and baked the pumpkin pie and the pumpkin cookies on Wednesday. Both seemed to come out splendidly, though I had to stab the pie a few times to make sure it was done. Smoothing the surface over again with a knife did not work as I had hoped.

Thursday - that's Thanksgiving, folks - was crunch day. Bright and early at 8:00, I powered into action, checking my Facebook, getting distracted by the attic that I can't get into, and shopping for ladders on Craigslist. A few hours later, I made the cranberry sauce. 2 cups of cranberries, 1 apple, most of one orange, and chop in the blender. A few bits of spoon for texture. Oops.

Following the cranberry sauce, I took a break, but soon was ready for the meal's crowning glory—cream of mushroom soup. Lacking light cream, however, I was obliged to make half & half of mushroom soup instead. It should taste the same, right? The recipe only said the mushrooms should be "thinly sliced." It didn't say "diced," but while they were cooking, it became obvious that the pieces were much too big to fit onto a spoon. At that point, I learned the fine art of cutting your mushrooms into smaller pieces with scissors while they're cooking!

Since my recipes are from a website, and I hadn't printed them, I had to bring my computer out into the food prep area, which meant I had the perfect opportunity to listen to Internet radio. I turned the dial to a dance station and had a grand old time spinning around in circles on the delightfully slippery living room floor and attempting to learn how to moonwalk. Oh, yeah, I also eventually got back to the cooking and had an equally grand time snapping green beans to a techno beat. This was after I extricated the beans from the cheesecloth I had washed them in. Well, most of them. Some were entangled beyond the point of rescue. Important Lesson: Using cheesecloth as a substitute for a colander isn't as brilliant an idea as you might imagine.

When Mom called saying she had arrived at her hotel, I went into overdrive, trying, as expected, to do too much at the last minute. I nixed my plans for oven-roasted potatoes, seeing as I don't like them, and Mom had been snacking in the car all day and wasn't very hungry. Anyone want 6 potatoes? In record time, I whipped up some cornbread batter. I rushed around the house, frantically clearing things off the dining room table. I changed into my cute autumn-themed skirt just in time to let my guests in the door. (The skirt stayed on for all of 5 minutes, since I put on jeans to lug the furniture into the house and didn't change out of them again afterward. But at least I made a good first impression.)

And, after a rousing game of Yahtzee, dinner was served. In spite of the lack of prep space and the minimal presence of suitably sized cookware, dinner went off without a hitch. Everyone loved everything! Seconds were had. Pie was consumed. Plates were cleared and the guests were shooed, and Thanksgiving came to its end. I feel almost let down that this was less a cooking "adventure" than a cooking success.

---

In case you are new to this blog and wondering why the big deal about Adventures in Cooking, complete with the wacky font...it's a sort of theme I started and abandoned back in 2007. Here are links to a few more Adventures in Cooking posts:

Italian Mushrooms
Spinach Cheese Squares
Pasta Primavera

On Case

Everyone knows how to capitalize a sentence. You put the upper-case letters at the beginning of the sentence, and the lower-case letters after that. You capitalize first letters in proper nouns and acronyms, and if you're writing in a text-based conversation, you capitalize when you want to yell! Simple. (But should you really capitalize a sentence fragment? Hmmm....) However, the rules for capitalizing proper nouns are no longer as hard and fast as (I imagine, since I haven't done any research on this) they once were.
In recent years, I've noticed some unique capitalization schemes for company names. In terms of corporate identity, the way a business' name is capitalized says something about its values and intended image. While this is great for setting businesses apart and giving them that unique touch, it makes uptight rule-followers such as me a little uncomfortable.

So bear with me while I drag you into my internal debate about the rules of capitalization. After all, when I'm lying awake at night thinking about this matter, I want to make sure that I'm not alone.

First off, there's the issue of all-lower-case typesetting. You see this in electronic messages a lot, because, frankly, when typing fast, and especially when typing on a phone, making capital letters is a big hassle. I've seen it in poetry, because poetry is art, and in art, anything goes! I've seen it in graphic design, and I like it, because I think it helps balance out text which, when capitalized, would look a little heavy on the left. But is it really all right in a business name? Let's take a specific corporation as a case study (get it!?).

innocent drinks, a natural beverage company in the UK, has taken the lower case to a whole new level (get it!?). Not only is their name uncapitalized, but so is every heading on their website! Using all lower case makes them seem super cute and...well, innocent. I daresay that's the exact kind of image they were going for. But it also makes communicating about them quite difficult. For example, when I write, "innocent drinks," am I referring to innocent drinks, the company, or am I referring to guileless beverages in general? Oh, the confusion! And just look at the beginning of this paragraph! In order to conform to their strange capitalization preferences, I had to start a sentence without a capital letter! Horrors! Before I have a nervous breakdown, I'd better move on to another topic.

Such as the good old ISP, America Online. Oh, wait. They're not an ISP any more. In fact, they're not even America Online any more. In 2006, America Online officially changed its name to AOL—which is in itself a bold move that states, "We're so awesome, we don't even need words to support our acronym. Our acronym is big enough to stand on its own." A few years later (perhaps even this year?) they changed their logo in the craziest way, uncapitalizing the O and L and adding a period at the end. In my book, that means their name should now be pronounced "owl," but they still refer to themselves in text as AOL. So what are they? Owl(period) or AOL? Does capitalization affect meaning, or am I just trying too hard to create order out of chaos?

A journey of scientific and etymological discovery (with cookies!)

In my hometown of The Midwest, everyone refers to carbonated beverages as "pop." In my current town, The East Coast - and apparently most everywhere else in the country - they call them "soda." When I first came here and found my colloquial vocabulary such a source of endless amusement to the residents of my new home, I adapted to the common usage and never gave the issue much thought—except to occasionally revert to using the word "pop" during socially awkward moments in order to get a laugh and a conversation going.

But today, my curiosity came out of the woodwork while I was making peanut butter cookie dough—of course an activity having nothing to do with carbonated beverages. However, the connection was made because of a fortuitous cooking disaster. Ever since my cornbread failed to rise a few days ago because of being made with 6-years-expired baking powder, my mind has been attuned to leavening agents. So, naturally, I was prepared to pay a little more attention to my baking soda than usual. Baking soda. Sodium bicarbonate. Carbonate(d) soda?

Because I love to be distracted and work on anything but my actual work, I decided now was the time when I absolutely must learn how beverages actually become carbonated, and whether that has anything to do with why they are called "soda." I'd always kind of imagined the carbonation process was similar to how vegetable oils become hydrogenated—which, now that I think about it, is also a bit hazy to me! The Internet was not particularly helpful to me in my search—I know now that carbon is added to liquids under pressure, which enables it to dissolve. But I do not know how that feat is accomplished, nor do I have any idea what it has to do with soda.

Feeling unsatisfied, I have jumped to my own conclusion. Several histories of the soft drink industry indicated that the first carbonated beverage was "soda water," so I assume (without any factual data to back me up) that other carbonated beverages which came after were logically referred to as flavored soda water, or soda for short. But the question still remains: why is soda water called soda water? According to Wikipedia, soda water is thus named because sodium salts are added to it to make it taste more like naturally occurring mineral water. Webtender even goes so far as to say that the specific sodium salts added are sodium bicarbonate.

Ah, baking soda.

And I have come full circle, to peanut butter cookie dough. Which I totally deserve to eat after conducting all that grueling research.

Making my voice heard--by griping in an obscure blog in a shadowy corner of the internet.

I yielded to the pressure and did vote this election, but I'm not proud of myself for performing my civic duty. I don't feel like I've protected my rights by exercising them. In fact, I feel rather dirty about the whole matter.

I didn't have a good solid reason for voting as I did--I made sure I had a fundamental grasp of the issues on the ballot, but as for choosing between candidates...well, I basically did what the Washington Post and one school board advocate outside the polling place told me to do. I am ashamed that my mostly uninformed decision could have an impact on the way my country is run.

I've never been enthusiastic about voting. Politicians are nothing to get excited over when every elected official is basically just a middleman standing between me and the issues I really care about.

Sometimes I wonder what our founding fathers were smoking when they decided a representative democracy was the way to go. Maybe relying on politicians to make decisions for us was a sensible option when half the population hadn't gone to school and news took months to travel the country, but in an era when information is everywhere and communication is no object, why are we still letting an elite handful run the show? Why is the popular vote still looked on with such suspicion? Why, when we want anything accomplished governmentally, must we have to jostle for the attention of an overworked legislator--when his decisions are influenced less by our heartfelt pleas than by which corporation financed his campaign? Why are we still allowing progress to be stopped cold by something as silly as filibusters? And whose idea was this ridiculous 2-party system, where every few years, the newly arisen majority party makes it its mission to undo everything the former majority party did for the last few years?

I would ask another rhetorical question, but I think that tactic is growing old. Instead, let me resort to exclamation: Let's come to our senses and learn to embrace initiative and referendum! It's time to dispense with the red tape and start making things happen!

Or am I oversimplifying things? Undoubtedly.

But still, there must be a better way. I'd propose one, but it would never make it through Senate.

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.