I Had to Share

Via Slog, what else?

More New Favorite Things

These are the side benefits of spending long hours staring at my own writing while outside the sun is shining, birds chirping, and so forth. I assuage my desire to tear my hair out in bloody handfuls by surfing the internet. It's a measured reward. Whenever I get past five pages, I get to spend a few minutes clicking and browsing. Finding new and interesting webpages is like heaven after staring for ten minutes at a paragraph that simply isn't doing what it needs to do. Or agonizing over whether or not an additional source, which one of my committee members tells me I need to deal with, has to be integrated *somehow* into the body of the text or whether I can tuck it away into a tidy footnote. God, I love footnotes. Never thought I'd say that.

No other news, really. As per usual, just my whineyness, checking in now and again. I am mildly excited about making cupcakes for a co-workers upcoming birthday. I'm mulling it over a bit, since this is finally an opportunity to make something other than the Mexican Hot Chocolate. I'm thinking seriously about Bittersweet's Root Beer Float cupcakes. I considered the chocolate stout cupcakes, but I must own up to a slight prejudice against the whole crumb topping thing. I really feel, in some control freaky place in my head, that cupcakes should be covered in mounds of creamy lusciousness. I can't help it. I feel that way. If I can't find any of this ridiculous substance called root beer extract, though, I'm shit out of luck. I'll have to regroup.

Before I get too out of control, I give you the following awesomenesses.

The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotations.

Just what it sounds like. "Quotations": They're not for "emphasis."

Contrariwise: A blog devoted to literary tattoos!






Lovely and, oddly, inspiring. I've been thinking about something like this for myself. Not the same poem, of course. And not on my back. I am surprised, though, at how many of these tattoos are the same. Lots of Plath (I am I am I am), Vonnegut (everything was beautiful and nothing hurt), and Cummings. Who knew?

I have to fess, though, I found this via Slog, like everything else. The slogger, I don't remember who it was, was particularly fond of this one:

Now, if you need me, I'll be over here feeling sorry for myself.

Oh My Gawd

Rock of Love 3. Yes, they did.

How will Bret find a woman to ‘rock his world’ when his world is always moving? VH1 is loading up a tour bus filled with beautiful babes and taking them on tour across the country. Rock of Love Bus with Bret Michaels takes contestants out of the mansion and on the road in true rock star style. This season will feature all-new ladies vying for Bret’s affection while traveling across America following Bret on a month-long tour. The contestants will face new challenges to see if they can handle the rock star life on the road.

This time as the bus pulls into each new city, the girls will engage in challenges specifically revolving around Bret’s life on the road. Whether it’s greeting aggressive groupies with a smile, enduring grueling schedules, dodging the advances of the warm-up band or even stepping in last-minute to fill in for delinquent roadies – these girls will be put to the test. This season, as the Rock of Love Bus heads into America’s heartland, the show will be taking the viewer to a whole new level with crazy, fun, over-the-top challenges- imagine Truck Stop Olympics or a dance contest on top of the St. Louis Arch or even a BBQ cook-off beneath the World’s Largest Thermometer. And also, back by popular demand…Mud Bowl 3. Americana at it’s finest!

So things didn't work out with Ambre. Nobody's really surprised. I think I even heard that New York and Tailor Made broke up, of all the absurdities. But seriously, season 3 promises all the glorious, trashy insanity of the first two seasons plus that key ingredient that will make it all fresh and new and so so much worse: claustrophobia! I can't wait. When the hell is Tila's third season going to be announced?

Three seasons has to be the death knell. Flavor Flav has pioneered all this nonsense, and I doubt anyone will be giving that poor bastard a fourth season. Right? I'm not sure what logic this is, but there does seem to be one.

In other news, I'm currently immersed in different levels of revisions on my third, fourth, and fifth chapters. I haven't yet summoned the nerve to look at my conclusion. It's amazing to be at this stage, though, and I'm even feeling waves of something I can only describe as elation. Even if I don't get a job this year, at least I'll be done. With this project. (Cue the hysterical laughter.)

New Favorite Thing

Deliciously wicked photos by Joshua Hoffine. Check out his website for many many more. Click the first image to enter, obviously. Via Michael Strangeways.

Birthing Pains

Ugh. I've had the worst writing week trying to crank out my conclusion. Who knew this bloody thing would be so fucking difficult to write? I spent two or three days hammering away at it very slowly (and between shifts), and I only managed to produce about eleven pages that I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to use. I went to work very much on edge yesterday, and vented (with much restraint) my frustrations to one of my co-workers. Poor guy. He responded initially by saying, "Oh, yeah, that's like, the most important part of your dissertation, right?" When I was like "Ahhhhhhh!" he changed tactics and said, "Oh, yeah, nobody will read it anyway." "Ahhhhhhh!" Like I said, poor guy. Seriously, though, I hope neither of those things is true. At least I need to believe that right now.

Anyway, so today I screwed myself up to try again. I sat down and started writing the thing from the beginning. Between 9 and 3 (with a break in there to take C to the mechanics and eat lunch with her) I wrote sixteen pages. Now I'm as done as I can be for the time and very much desirous of a reward of some sort. So far, I've decided to skip pilates, since I'm not feeling it today and ran eight miles yesterday. (On a side note, I didn't really intend to. It just so happened that the jerks at vh1 decided to get the maximum mileage out of the first episode of the new reality tv show, "I Love Money" and stretch the bloody thing out to 1 1/2 hours with loads upon loads of commercial breaks. So, of course, I ran the whole time. And, yeah, today, I'm not feeling it. If it doesn't make me too sweaty, I might flounder around on the living room floor for a while doing some of the moves that like best/find the most difficult. C is suffering through sad tv movies, so whatever I do, I can't be very disruptive.

Other things I'm considering: 1) Driving to Weggies for some more of the Purely Decadent Coconut Ice Cream. This time I'd get the cookie dough flavor, because I'm fat like that. Last time I got the Mint Chocolate Chip, because C's fat like that. 2) Hunting for a pastry blender. I dearly want one and have vowed not to make any more recipes which involve cutting fat into flour until I have an adequate one in my possession. So far, I've only really looked at Target, and the ones there looked very chintzy indeed. I want one that can really cut the cold cold vegan margarine (not room temperature, because, as we all know, pastry is all about coldness. We do all know that, right?) into flour. I feel like getting a substandard one would be like buying it just to throw it away. In the interest of full disclosure, I should add that I have some serious cherry pie on the brain. I made a pie a week or so ago that was quite good, but not perfect. And now I have the need to try again using the sour cherries that are newly in season. Farmer's Market. Saturday. Here I come. The pie crust, incidentally, and not that anyone cares, is the kind made with vodka and ice water. The idea here, which I would have appreciated more fully if I hadn't kind of fucked it up by preparing the fruit too early, is that the vodka evaporates during cooking eliminating forever the problem of the gummy pie crust. Exciting right? 3) Cleaning the fridge. The only good thing about this is that I don't have to drive to do it, and it fills up some of the time between now and when I can have a glass of tequila without feeling...strange. 4) Calling my mom. I'm going to do this for sure, and it has the advantage of fulfilling part of the requirements of number 3. While I decide, check out this pie via www.thenibble.com.

My First Survey

Whatever, don't say you weren't warned. Plus, there's something about these things that tweaks my voyeuristic ocd. Via the ever lovely Lindy Loo at Yeah That Vegan Shit. If you haven't checked it out yet, what the hell is wrong with you? Get thee to Lindy's blog! Or to a nunnery! Or ...something.


What are five things on your to-do list for today?
I'm cheating. This is my to-do list for Monday. Tomorrow is simply a wash. Already.

1) Finish revising my fourth chapter.
2) Email my fifth chapter to my director.
3) Prepare to write my conclusion (which means, in part, finishing Serenity).
4) Run seven to ten miles.
5) Eat leftover Strawberry-Rhubarb-Peach pie with almond, whole wheat crust.

What are five snacks you enjoy?

1) Salt and pepper pretzels with nut butter
2) Multi-grain toast with earth balance, salt, and LOTS of tomato
3) Bananas with salt and nut butter
4) Tortilla chips with garlic hummus
5) Popcorn with Red Hot and Nootch

What are five things you would do if you were a billionaire?

1) Help my loved ones with their debt
2) Move to Bellingham, WA and buy a comfortable, smallish home with a view of the San Juan Islands and never leave. Ever.
3) Become a pilates instructor. Just for fun.
4) Begin my world travels by visiting the following places: the Caribbean (I write enough about it. I oughta go there.), Eastern Europe, and Russia. I hear the Trans-Siberian Railroad is lovely this time of year. Also, I'd love to drive to Alaska from Maine.
5) Make certain my mom could travel anywhere she wants, as long as she wants, as long as she lives, and go with her.

What are five of your bad habits?

1) Fixating on food.
2) Fixating on exercise.
3) Fixating on reality tv.
4) Are you seeing a pattern?
5) Being inappropriate.

What are five places where you have lived?

1) Billings, MT
2) Seattle, WA
3) Athens, OH
4) Woodstock, VA
5) Buffalo, NY

What are five jobs you’ve had?

1) Alfalfa sprout engineer
2) Barista
3) Ass. Accountant (yes, it should be "Asst.", but so what? I like ass.)
4) Coop cashy
5) English T.A./Adjunct Instructor

Tag! You're it if you ...

1) Have a right boob that's bigger than your left.
2) Like to dance the robot.
3) Find a good shit more satisfying than sex.
4) Are vegan.
5) Your mom.

I Hated It

Rambo 4, that is. Just, ugh. The reviews I've read since seeing it--I never read reviews in advance, for other reasons--fault its absence of plot, and its...shall we say...over reliance on gore to carry scene after scene. One reviewer said there weren't enough shots of John Rambo running through the woods and engaging in cleverer-than-thou guerrilla-style war tactics. In other words, not enough straight up bad-ass Rambo action. Being the Mudgeon I so avowedly am, I couldn't disagree more. Well, that might be somewhat of an overstatement. The plot was definitely weakish and it was extremely gory. The latter is really all I had heard about the film before seeing it. As a fan of the earlier three films, though, and a sort of connoisseur of gore, I didn't let these warnings bother me. What nobody told me was how deeply regressive the film was.

Let me clarify. In the first three films, John Rambo is a Vietnam vet struggling to find a place in a world from which he feels radically alienated. The source of this alienation is the violence, betrayal, and treachery that he has personally and vicariously experienced at the hands of the U.S. government. He has seen the horrors of a politically misguided war, and has been transformed by them. He's sort of the Gothic product of an American war machine, the self-stated ethos of which is to make the world a better, safe, and more prosperous place. He creeps out from the shadow of whatever national mission statement and articulates (well, grunt-screams) a very different story. He knows, for example, that violence and war, in some sense, serve only themselves. That father-figures--in the form of commanders, generals, what have you--espouse benevolence and care, but are just as likely to leave you in the very maw of danger and certain death as to kill you themselves. He knows that for all the government praises the importance and honor in service, soldiers are ultimately expendable, but during and after they are "used."

The first film engages the trauma of the Vietnam veteran in a kind of national allegory, perhaps, of a nation very much divided, inwardly torn. The second and third films feature Rambo fighting--extremely reluctantly--once again on the behalf of the U.S. in the service of a third party. In the second film he rescues P.O.W.s left behind in Vietnam, no thanks to the military. In the third, he helps aid Afghan freedom fighters in their struggle with the Soviets. That film is dedicated to the "gallant people of Afghanistan." Trautman, Rambo's primary contact and former commanding officer, explicitly likens the misguided efforts of Russians in Afghanistan to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam Conflict. In both the second and third films, Rambo works as an independent operative, serving a higher calling (truth, freedom, justice) through the expedient means of the U.S. military operations. The sense in both is that he is hugely bigger than the latter and could probably settle things by himself. There is some vestigial soldier logic here, of course. No matter what way you slice it, Rambo is always saving white Americans from Others of various derivations. While he always has these rescue missions as his surface motivation, the deeper logic of the films is much more complicated and gets very much to the core of a problematized humanist military ethics. In other words, while performing fairly cohesive missions, there's always this sense that Rambo is really fighting for the greater good in spite of the nation he ambiguously serves.

If I haven't already bored you, I'll now tell you what is wrong with Rambo 4. He's living in Thailand (where he is at the beginning of both the second and third films, incidentally), doing an excellently surly ex-pat thing when he's sucked into saving some Christian missionaries who are captured bringing aid to the Burmese people. His pessimism is acute, and there's a sense that he wouldn't have bothered with the rescue mission at all if it hadn't been for the naive, pollyanna appeals of an angelically white Julie Benz (watch out, Rambo! she's a vampire!). She actually gives him a small cross--the only payment he'll accept for his services--and he wears it wrapped around his wrist during the remainder of the film. She asks him some apparently soul-searching question about why he never went home. Rambo says his father's alive in Arizona, he thinks, but he doesn't really know. He gives her his typically stoney-faced response and doesn't reply. Clearly, though, we're supposed to know that this has been a life-altering moment. Apparently he doesn't have a good reason for not going home, and this question never occurred to him. Why not just go home? (Forget the first film all together, apparently.) After he discovers they've--or, really, SHE's--been captured, there's a horrible scene with him making a machete (which he never uses, preferring instead the bow and arrow and the gatling gun). Picture a blacksmith forge. Lots of steam and red hot metal. Super sweaty, roid-tastic, Stallone, banging away at said mysterious weapon. Cue the voiceover about how he knows deep down he's built for war. He's good at it. He likes it. Don't fight it.

Then the violence and exploding heads. Throats ripped out. Evisceration. Babies on bayonets. Hey, that has a nice ring to it! Limbs torn off. What have you. The villains (Burmese army) are (almost) completely irredeemable, aside from a bit of information about how they are recruited. The leader is the worst of all of course. A sadist and pedophile who makes games out of killing civilians. They keep people in cages, put heads on stakes, the whole nine. And these soldiers die horrible deaths. About half the missionaries, plus Julie Benz, make it out alive. If Rambo weren't quite so monstrous, it seems, Julie would have been the romantic interest. But as it stands...not so much. In the final scenes, he's walking down a road in a pastoral American setting. Blue jeans, army duffel bag, just like in the opening of the first movie. Except here, instead of picking fights with asshole town sheriffs, he's going home. He turns down a small dirt road leading to a prosperous-looking ranch behind an appropriately dilapidated mailbox labeled "Rambo." The end.

No vision. No politics. No engagement with the other films beyond a nod to Rambo's experience with torture. The U.S. government is conspicuously absent and the sense here is that, unlike these stupid missionaries who are barely able to escape with their lives, daddy (the U.S.) is smart enough to stay away. The world is a very very very dark and scary place. The best thing, by far, for Americans--both those as lily-white and sweet as Julie Benz and those as rugged and laconic as Rambo--is to go home and stay home. Home is safe and good and pure. Finally, Rambo finds peace in the rural hills of Arizona. With his real, not his surrogate, father. Or maybe these are still the same thing. In that case, the bad father from the first three films has become a benevolent, stay-at-home dad.