Red Cross Phone Number

The website is slow, so here's the number: 800 HELP NOW.

Inspired by Musicals and Yoko

Oh could there be a career for me
That doesn’t require another degree
yet and commands a higher fee?
Oh could there be a career for me?

Oh could there be a really cool job
Where I could show up dressed like a slob
And my boss’s butt holds no corn on the cob?
Oh could there be a really cool job?

Oh could I earn serious daily bread
Without doing something I really dread
Or selling stuff that makes people dead?
Oh could I earn some daily bread?

In my dream work
I’d arrive sharply at whenever
To create something I gave a shit about
But that wasn’t too stressful

In my dream world
I’d learn new things all the time
And people would listen to what I said
Then I would be successful

Oh there must be a place for me
To earn a living and not go crazy.
I must look harder until I see
Oh there must be a place for me.

Sahibaan: The Film that Ate Last Saturday

Ah, Sahibaan. "The entire area smells of her presence. "

Beware, aging slacker, or be sucked into the time-bending vortex that is the Bollywood afternoon movie following Namaste America. It is more powerful than an historical costume drama from Korea, more hypnotic than the gyrations of an AVS music video.

sickr

Help! Not even Pirates of the Spanish Main can keep me from looking at flickr.

Murder My Digital Darlings

Dang my boasting about being the only one at my workplace who can throw things away. It's true, I have no love of things, so long as those things are physical. Once they are captured by a CCD chip and translated into ones and zeros, however, they are my precious darlings and it hurts me like a hangnail to erase them.

This weekend, I took over 500 pictures. I've managed to select the best 125 or so (at 125, the term best is a little bit of an exaggeration. 2 of these pictures are of grass--just grass.), but I don't know if I should delete the rest. What if I change my mind?

When I took a traditional photography course and had to make contact sheets, test strips, proofs, prints, then paint out the dust spots and such, I was ruthlessly selective about the photographs I bothered to make and keep. Now that the only thing at stake is gigabytes and the patience of flickr folks, I'm a photo hamster.

Maybe modern art was about conception. Art in this age is about selection. Some smart person probably figured that out in the days of the Commodore 64. I wish that person was around to help me delete some of my photographs.

What Was and Wasn't This Weekend

What was on Friday Evening
Free live entertainment was free live entertainment: When you're a woman in your mid 30's and your aunt treats you and your other single woman cousin to "Menopause: The Musical," resist the temptation to read anything into it.
South Street was not Napa Valley: When buying wine for dining in one of Philadelphia's many BYOBs, avoid the store that only sells wines from Pennsylvania.

What was Saturday's Frisb Championships
Warm-up pants were not Playing Pants: When playing a crucial game, be sure the top layers are fully fastened to avoid wardrobe malfunction.
Thinking was Not Doing. Not Thinking was Doing: When the disc is thrown to you, you can just catch it.
Pizza and Beer are Pizza and Beer: Yeah.

What was on channel 12 Saturday Night
The 60's were not the Aughts: When watching Two For the Road starring Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn, enjoy knowing that this film could have only been made in 1967.

What was for Sunday Brunch with Aunt and Cousin and Shopping with Mrs. Ass
Experienced Service was Good Service: When dining at the Marathon Grill, tell them you're in a hurry and they'll assign you an actual waiter instead of a child.
Sunday was not Saturday: When you go to a Sunday yard sale and all of the merchandize was purchased on Saturday, then you got the dates mixed up.
All Targets were Not the Target: When your car's navigational system tries to lead you to the suburban store, ignore it.

Lyrical Skills

Happy Birthday, Quiconque
You live in the Bronx
If I had more spending money
I might buy you some onyx

Rural Retreat

Dear Shoofly Family,

Thank you for hosting an at-risk urbanite this weekend. She had never been so close to varmints before, only vermin. She took some photos of her visit --some she will share with the world, others are exclusively available At-Risk Urbanites and their patrons. We hope you will enjoy them.

Sincerely Yours,

The At-Risk and Jaded Urbanite Retreat Foundation

Cute on Wheels

When I saw a cluster of young geeks escorting their robot across campus today, I had to go up and talk to them about their little charge. They told me their robot is a LOGR, then they started throwing out all these adorable acronyms at me and we went our separate ways.

These guys seemed slightly stunned by my interest. Hello, you are walking a robot! I'm sure these future engineers had no idea that robots could help them meet women. So what if these women are more than a dozen years older than them and impossible to program? I hope that somewhere future women engineers are out walking robots and meeting men who may prove easier to program.

SADHD: Disorder or Ditz

I'm not in favor of the quick patholigizing of personality or pleading insanity in defense of all assy behavior, but when faced with my own recuring life problems and baffling actions, the alphabet soup of disorders and syndromes starts to look pretty tasty. Answering yes to most of the questions on a couple of ADHD lists doesn't mean I have ADHD. I file my flakiness under SADHD: Situational Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Ditzorder.

Most of the day, I find it difficult to concentrate. I get out of my chair and move around aimlessly. Anything can distract me. Yet on evenings and weekends, I can concentrate for hours on books, writing, and even concepts. When I'm trying to play frisbee, I can think of nothing else but the game. So, my attention deficit problems depend on the situation I'm in. The reason that I am bored at work is because my work is boring. Job disatisfaction, however, doesn't explain my other long standing tendencies.

During my distracted moments, I visit ADHD websites start to recognize stuff: frequently losing things, forgetting details, blurting out answers to questions before people finish them, impatience. This site is called A Day in the Life of an ADDmirable Woman, but it also sounds like an episode of I Love Lucy. Maybe this stay-at-home mom isn't disordered. Maybe she is chaffing in the shackles of patriarchy. Or maybe she's just a ditz. We need to know about her childhood to be sure.

When I was a kid, my knickname was "hyperwoman," even though I wasn't like the official "hyper" kids in elementary school. I stayed in my seat. I got good grades. I wasn't a boy. I was rambunctious and more disruptive than my bookish friends, but my obnoxious outbursts and disgust with long devision didn't count as learning disabilities. I was "hyperwoman" because I could be hypersensitive and I flew into crowd-pleasing rages at least twice a year, often in response to punishments I saw as unfair. (What do you mean we all have to put our heads down because you couldn't see who was talking out of turn? No Justice, No Peace!)

In the end, it doesn't matter if I'm officially "hyper" or not. The important thing is knowing that some of my weirdness might not be as weird as I think it is.

Blaxploitation is Beautiful

Last night I found my feel-good movie of the summer, Hustle & Flow. Some movie movies are made with corn syrup, this one is drizzled with Vermont Grade A medium amber maple.

And that reminds me:
Terrence Dashon Howard! Terrence Dashon Howard! Terrence Dashon Howard!

Little Town Blues are Melting Away

Wouldn't it be nice to see some improv comedy in this town without running into certain people?

I think I've done a pretty good job staying cool and managing the anger. Those of you who know what I'm talking about have only seen the rough surface of the roiling rage I once felt. If it's anything like my other rages, it will take years before it goes away completely. To loose some fateful lightning and let slip a few dogs would be satisfying but pretty pointless, unless I want to confirm that I am, in fact, a true Mean Girl. (If I was, no one would have dared to mess with me in the first place.)

Still, it just crinkles my gut to totally slink away from the scene. I'm going to see some improv in this little city with a Jan Brady complex. And I'll do it my way.

Americans in Bangalore

Check out my friend's blog.

Documentary Style

I finally got my mits on our copy of The Battle of Algiers, the conservatives' favorite documentary style Marxist film of 1966. Had I been around to have seen it in the sixties, I'd say it's as hard hitting today as it ever was.

I joined Melba and Snacks for Murderball on Friday and it was okay. I don't like to call the film a disappointment, but I would have liked some more rugby action. Instead, the film was mostly personal back story. I did appreciate the scenes that dealt with how quadriplegics do it.

On Saturday, I made my Aunt see the penguin movie with me. I enjoyed the simple struggle of March of the Penguins even more than the hypnotic Winged Migration. Yet, aside from the miraculous photography, March of the Penguins is kind of a throwback to those cutesy narrated nature films they used to show me in elementary school. I believe that most sentient creatures have emotions, however I don't believe in sentimental anthropomorphism. I don't need the deep and dulcet voice of Morgan Freeman telling me that penguins are "in love" just before they mate or "devastated" when they lose their offspring. If a left wing anticolonialist can make a fiction film about the liberation of Algeria without demonizing the French, then a bird loving French documentary can show the lives of penguins without depicting a hungry leopard seal as a villain.