Opening Day

Today's post is going to be on a topic none of you ever expected to see in this blog: baseball.

I don't know how you could have missed it, but in case you didn't know, I'm not a big sports fan. Once a year, I make a halfhearted effort to learn who won the Super Bowl (I've already forgotten this year's outcome) and that's about it.

However, about a year ago, a New Yorker friend informed me that I am a Yankees fan. Lacking any evidence to the contrary, I agreed with him. Being a Yankees fan seems a fairly simple occupation--I just have to enthusiastically agree with everything he says about the Yankees and badmouth the Red Sox at every opportunity.

This year, my friend raised the stakes and inquired as to the identity of my favorite player. Favorite player? Well, it turns out that selecting a favorite player is not too hard either. Naturally, it had to be a Yankees player, so that narrowed down the field considerably. Normally, when selecting from a pool of options I know nothing about, I choose the one with the most interesting name. But none of the Yankees' names were doing it for me, so I dug a little deeper and started looking for someone with a similar birthday to mine. I came up with Brett Gardner. We were both born in August of 1983. Following this, I discovered he's also left-handed (so am I!) and wears the number 11 (my favorite number!) He's like, a favorite player made in heaven! To seal the deal, by striking (you may interpret this as a baseball pun if that makes you happy) coincidence, he's also under 6 feet tall. As I discovered while perusing the roster, not many baseball players can claim that...but I can. Wow, we have so much in common!

So now, armed with a favorite team, a favorite player, and a rudimentary knowledge of what WHIP means, I am ready to face this baseball season head-on. I am pleased to announce that my favorite player will be the opening batter for his team on this opening day. Whee, this is so exciting! Who knew fandom could be so easy?

The Soundtrack to My Life: The B side

In my previous post, I shared the first 8 songs that I would put on a soundtrack to my life. In this post, I finish what I started.

9. Fool's Garden - Lemon Tree
   When this song came out in the mid-90's, it was nothing but a fun-sounding pop song with lyrics that I ignored. That's what I usually do with lyrics. Little did I know, though, that a dozen years later, it would become the theme song to my existence! Full of loneliness and despair and still having a fun sound, Lemon Tree is a favorite of mine when I want to take an ironic view of my pitiful existence.
   
10. Blu Cantrell - Hit Em Up Style
    Following 1996, there was a gaping void in the music world, where nothing interesting dared tread. These were my high school years, when Britney Spears reigned supreme and all the girls were obsessed with Dave Matthews Band. I did not join in, choosing instead to immerse myself in  music from an era before I was born. Upon graduation, however, all that changed! Hit 'Em Up Style has that old-school jazz style that was just what I needed to wean me gently away from classic Broadway soundtracks and back into the world of pop music. Whenever I hear this song, I will always be brought back to a hot summer day a few days before I would leave home for college, sitting in the Kohl's parking lot in my Neon (just steaming), hearing this song and knowing my life was about to change forever!
    
11. Welle:Erdball - Deine Augen
    And just how did my life change forever when I entered university? Well...I was introduced to file sharing! I had never been big into buying music, but when one of my roommates downloaded some peer-to-peer software and I discovered all the wonderful things you could find - for free! - by the track instead of by the big bloated boring album! - I knew I had discovered something amazing. When I was just getting started (before I became the borderline music junkie I am today), one of the first songs I downloaded was this gem by the German band Welle:Erdball. I was actually looking for another song entirely, but I'm glad I ran across Deine Augen by mistake, because it remains one of my favorites. You can see from the imagery in the video that Welle:Erdball is known for composing their music on a Commodore 64. And thus, though I didn't know it then, they were my first introduction to chiptune music, which has become one of my favorite genres.
    
12. The Doctor Who Theme Song
    Any of them! All of them! Every remix you can imagine! Doctor Who was my favorite television show when I was in second grade and most of the surrounding years (because I couldn't pick something normal like Full House, like all my friends did). Although I forgot about Doctor Who for years following that, when the series was revived (ahem, regenerated) in 2005, I remembered pretty quickly how much I loved it. It is my favorite television show again.
    
13. Himesh Reshammiya - Aashiq Banaya Aapne (Remix)
    Well, if I thought things went downhill once I reached adulthood, it was peanuts compared to what I would experience after graduating from college. This super-fun Hindi dance song was the last thing I downloaded before it all fell apart. It was, in essence, the last relic I had of happy times before I entered the worst and longest period of depression I've ever suffered.
    
14. Murray Gold - Madame de Pompadour
    A coworker once heard me playing this song and commented, "That's the saddest song I've ever heard." And so it is. I like songs that can manipulate my emotions and reflect them when they're too deep for words, and this one does it better than any other. It also just happens to be from an episode of Doctor Who.
    
15. Pain - Eleanor Rigby
    The Beatles wrote this song about "all the lonely people," but Pain turned it into an agonized industrial/goth/metal anthem. I love them for it. This song gave me an outlet for all the horrible feelings I felt during a horrible time. I'm sure it will have the opportunity to thus serve me again.
    
16. Taio Cruz feat. Ludacris - Break Your Heart
    Now you might be thinking I just added this song because I don't really think there's any song as bomb as it, and this album needed more upbeat dance music, but in all honesty, I think I can say it pretty much sums up my life at present. I seem to be consumed with this quest to find love. And every chapter ends with someone's heart getting broken. Sometimes it's mine. I seem to have an extraordinary talent for falling in love with unavailable men (emotionally and otherwise), and men seem to have an extraordinary penchant for falling in love with me. Even though, as Taio says, I'm not easy to please. So whether I put myself in the place of the singer or the girl he's singing to, I always fit there!
    
17. BONUS TRACK! Muse - Take a Bow
    No, this song has no relevance to my life. But I cannot believe I've never mentioned it in my blog! It needs to be here simply because of its unparalleled wonderfulness! (Maybe I'm just a little expansive because I just got finished listening to the best dance song of 2010, but still!) Listen to the synthy arpeggios! It's like The Neverending Story and the entire Tron Legacy soundtrack all packed into one rock song!
    

The Soundtrack to My Life

My ingenious fellow blogger, Geoffrey, recently posted a soundtrack to his life. Unfortunately, you can't read it, because his blog is protected, but it was still a good idea that I would like to emulate.

I often tell people I come with my own personal soundtrack, because I can't stop whistling, humming, and singing (that's when I'm not narrating to myself). These songs mostly consist of the Chicken Dance, the Sailor's Hornpipe, Für Elise, Frère Jacques, and Hungarian Dance #5, sometimes all in one amazing extended mix that would make any DJ proud. But if you wanted to go a little deeper and come up with a soundtrack that was somehow meaningful to my life, rather than just a collection of tunes that happen to be rolling through my head most of the time, you could do that too. It would look something like this.

1. Steve Winwood - Valerie
   There's no better way to begin a soundtrack to your life than with a hearty helping of narcissism. While this song isn't much to get excited over, it does have my name in it! It was also released just a year before my birth, as if to say, "Get ready, world...here she comes!" In a good way.
   
2. The Grass Roots - Temptation Eyes
   While I spent my formative years in the 80's and early 90's, when I reminisce about the music of my childhood, I mostly think of stuff from the 60's and 70's. We did a lot of listening to the oldies in my household, and I do believe that "Temptation Eyes" was my brother's favorite song for a while. I even have this recollection of the entire family sitting around the fireplace listening to the Oldies station while he successfully requested this song. Of course, I might be making this all up.
   
3. The Hollies - Bus Stop
   Part of the reason I have so many golden oldies in my repertoire is my dad's band, the Harmony Hogs, who specialized in covers of songs from their own good old days. Daddy spent many an evening rehearsing these songs in my presence. While I'd like to say that one song holds more significance for me than any other, this is really just an arbitrary selection. In fact, it's a particularly inapt one, since it's a completely implausible love song that holds no bearing on any aspect of my real life. Except that sometimes it rains.
   
4. George Harrison - Dream Away
   As I was a weird child, it is only natural that my favorite movie was a weird movie—Time Bandits. And this song is its theme song. Although the cool instrumental introduction is part of the thrill, if you find it too boring, skip to the middle where the pace picks up and there's singing!
   
5. The End Credits to Super Mario World
   In recent years, I've developed a love for video game music. Especially games that figured strongly in my childhood—like Super Mario World! The best thing about this video is, if you skip to 1:40, you can watch all the Yoshis hatch! I think nothing will ever make me quite as happy as Yoshi.
   
6. The Real McCoy - Another Night Another Dream
   When I wasn't jamming to the oldies, I was usually listening to whatever happened to be playing on the radio. I wasn't very interested in popular music back then, but when I slowly began paying attention to it 5 years later or so, it all came back in a flood of memories. For me, The Real McCoy (with that ridiculous bass voice interjecting raps in the middle of the song) will always epitomize the 90's. And trips to the mall in Bowling Green for haircuts and fun with the Girl Scouts.
   
7. Weezer - Buddy Holly
   If The Real McCoy are my poster children for 90's dance music, Weezer play the same role for rock. Buddy Holly and The Sweater Song instantly evoke memories of riding around in a minivan, a vacation to Florida, and...candy corn? Those were my golden years. It was all downhill from there.
   
8. Kitaro - Sacred Journey II
   As an introduction to the end of youthful happiness and the beginning of my painful first encounters with the Real World, I'd like to share a song that can both signify limitless bliss and bottomless sadness. Songs that can do that are truly powerful, and my favorite kind of music. This is one of those songs.

Although this is only half of a good album, I'm going to stop here because 16+ songs are a lot to listen to at one time, and a whole lot to write about! Stay tuned for the other side (if this album were vinyl instead of YouTube).

Better get this historical journey over with

I have only a few remaining entries salvaged from my old Words and Images blog, on topics of grammar, design, and the art of communication. Today I'll share with you one more. Soon my topics will be fresh and not dredged out of some old grad-school files.

December 16, 2007

Don't let the grammar gurus grind you down

or, sometimes bad words work

Last time we spoke, I was questioning Constance Hale's status as linguistic royalty. Now, I have nothing against Ms. Hale. She has taught me many valuable things about language and called my attention to a number of entertaining grammatical gaffes and several pulchritudinous passages that will surely go into the book of "things I like." However, while I'm no princess of prose myself, I think I know enough about English to know (when I've overdone the alliteration and) when it's time to think twice about swallowing advice. (I may be about to overdo the rhyming, too, so let's get right to the examples.)

House, Hale says, is a word that has many alternatives. Still, she commands, "Don't even think about colorless words like abode, dwelling, domicile, or residence." But why not? The house in which I live is your average two-story mix of brick and white vinyl siding. It's shaped like a box; its roof is grey sediment-on-tar-paper shingle; and it sits in the middle of a street of houses that could be its clones. There's nothing distinctive about my house. It certainly does not qualify as a cottage, duplex, dacha, shack, bungalow, A-frame, Tudor, or any of the other options that Hale cites. It's a house, pure and simple. Yet if I were to write a passage much longer than this one about my house, my readers would likely die of boredom if I didn't spice up the description with some other term than "house." I could use "home" once or twice, but after that, I'm going to resort to "dwelling." I'm possibly going to call it a "residence." And I don't think I'm going to end up in grammar hell. Even prosaic synonyms are better than no synonym at all.

Beware of back-formations, says Hale (she's talking about verbs that have arisen from nouns). Some of them meet with her approval - rob from robber, beg from beggar, diagnose from diagnosis - but others do not--enthuse, burgle, and televise. There's no established rule about which verbs to reject and which ones to embrace; you simply have to read Hale's mind. Or else make up your own rules. I, for one, am quite fond of the verb televise. I think it's the perfect word to succinctly convey the concept of sending a television broadcast. I think the "ise" ending lends it an electronic feel, and I think it is just different enough from television to have an identity of its own, yet similar enough that its meaning is immediately obvious. I don't think it's awkward, as Hale does; I think I will use it with abandon.

Access as a verb? wonders Hale with disgust, somewhere in Chapter 9. For whatever reason, our author is extremely averse to this back-formation. Earlier in the book, she suggests that instead of using to access, you try to view. Can you imagine using that substitution in the sentence that she's deriding? "It's the line of credit you _______ simply by writing a check." No, that will never work. The writers are definitely not saying you can view a line of credit - which would make no sense - they are saying you can gain access to it. But if you substitute gain access to in the sentence, then you not only accumulate several unwieldy words, but you also separate verb from its indirect object, in an awkward manner that even Hale, with her opposition to schoolmarms' rules, would not condone. Here (and most places) access is not a bad verb. It is not vague. It gets to the point.

Many words that Hale has shunned are words that I find perfectly acceptable. Context matters, and in the right light, even the dullest word shines. Often, the same thing is true of groups of words—phrases that Hale disfavors have their time and place too. You can bet I'll be sharing my humble opinion on those parts of speech, too, but for now I'm tired of writing and I bit you adieu. (Sorry, I couldn't resist one last rhyme.)

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.