| Do It Yourself |
[Jun. 26th, 2009|12:19 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  productive | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Grafton-Tom Brosseau-What I Mean To Say Is Goodbye | ] |
And when the work is done,
your hands calloused,
the finishing at last released
from a verb on the tip of your fingers
to an immaculate noun
the object of all your intentions
of a thousand thousand
identical, tiny gestures,
will not raise its voice to sing your efforts,
singing, as it must, its own form, utility, beauty
Only another rough hand
could know the work |
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| Hockey Night in Boston |
[Apr. 18th, 2009|11:57 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  bitchy | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | For Boston-Dropkick Murphys-Sing Loud, Sing Proud! | ] |
"Au Revoir, Quebecois" was quite jaunty, and rhymed nicely. "Who's your goalie?" had a certain wit after Carey Price was replaced by the harder-to-pronounce Halak. But you know you're in Boston when you're at a Bruins game and you hear the crowd roar, "Yankees SUCK!" |
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| Damn... |
[Jan. 20th, 2009|06:44 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  amused | ] |
I may be the only person who liked the Inaugural Poem more or less unreservedly*. Oh well. Wouldn't be the first time I was out on a limb!
*I could critique it extensively, but on the whole I thought it was the right poem for the time, and I found it moving. |
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| This is so totally polemic... |
[Dec. 23rd, 2008|04:27 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | /hippy | ] |
That by tomorrow I'll be hotly embarrassed to be seen anywhere near it... but today I am crampy and pissy, so there you are.
Appropriate ecology of me
I am shallow-rooted
but I will not take in just any soil
I need a fertile loam
so full of ideas and sounds
the babble of all tongues
many lives lived bringing us here
to bed down in this place
I am wide branched
and so are those I love
stretching out to encompass
all the sky
we are a grove
a resting place for each other
we have come here and
we will be together
and we will not be uprooted
easily
I am oddly pinnate
two legs
two arms
and a head
I am not what I was born to be
But also
I am what I was born to be
I was born with a strong sense of
who I am
what I need to do
How I can stand on these two feet
and make beauty
I was not born with a body-shaped destiny
I was born into a world of curiosity
encouraged to grow
encouraged to question
And nurtured with one great certainty
One law bigger than entropy
that no matter
my body
my intellectual striving
my questions
my circumstances
my perception of the cosmos
my state of sobriety
my state of dress
the number of times I fail
I strive to keep
This is my ecology and my ecosystem
and yes it is as lovely
as any many-hued deep-leaf-littered forest
and yes it deserves protecting
And because it is the truth
it can protect itself |
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| Srsly. |
[Dec. 4th, 2008|01:18 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  predatory | ] |
On edge of seat until Michaëlle Jean either says yes to suspending Canada's parliament or lets Harper face a confidence vote.
Constitutional crises make me wibble. Harper playing FUD about the Quebecois separatists taking over the world just makes me cross. |
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| Fashion branding: You're doing it wrong |
[Dec. 3rd, 2008|10:41 pm] |
I was looking at the Lane Bryant website tonight when I found the pant with the worst description/name ever:
Secret Slimmer porkchop pocket pant
OK, I totally get the part where that's a standard industry term for that cut of pocket, and the Secret Slimmer line has some kind of built in girdle, but the combination suggests more of a Secret Binge-Purger to me than anything else.
Also, the mental image of dieters with porkchops stuffed in their pockets for later is going to haunt me. |
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| Unnatural Causes |
[Nov. 30th, 2008|04:47 pm] |
I made vegan jelled cranberry orange relish... out of my HEAD for thanksgiving. J took the picture.
Turning it out of the teeny bundt pan sheet was an exercise in terror, but it was delicious. So it ought to be with fresh cranberries, liquor, and orange juice and zest. Oh, and tonnes of sugar and a touch of agar just to be sure. |
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| Nanonononono! |
[Nov. 8th, 2008|06:58 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | busy | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Pancake-Tori Amos-Scarlet's Walk | ] |
Oof. NaNoWriMo was easier when I was less busy. Between one thing and another (did I REALLY commit to make beaded necklaces for a craft fair? Yes, I did!) I'm behind by a couple of thousand words. It's not really a whole lot to catch up, but I'm about to move from one structured part of the novel to a looser part (so far we've had some pretty similar days and nights.) And more characters are about to introduce themselves.
I'm afraid!
It's all good fun. |
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| Aww, yeah |
[Nov. 4th, 2008|07:17 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | inconsequential | ] |
Man, I just love Burn Notice. Michael Westen is like the MacGyver of killing people in creative ways. (For just causes, of course.) I'm trying to stretch Season 1 out on DVD before I get to Season 2 online... make the explosive fun times last. |
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| Crushworthy |
[Oct. 28th, 2008|04:09 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  giggly | ] |
I'm going to have to transfer my completely age-inappropriate* lifelong crush from William F. Buckley Jr. to his slightly less age-inappropriate (and at least still alive) son, because he's such a lamb!
*Neverminding politics and strange bedfellows... |
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| Apropos of nothing |
[Oct. 12th, 2008|12:27 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | amused | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Just Like Betty Page-Jazz Butcher Conspiracy | ] |
I remember going to an exhibition of photography as a teenager and seeing the photography of Dorothea Lange for the first time, and marveling at the brutal honesty and raw poetry in her work, and then seeing the work of Helmut Newton for the first time and not understanding it at all. Just having no context in which to place those stunning black and white images.
It's sort of amazing, the power of art, the power that images seen once and really not at all understood have to dive into one's subconscious and hang out in one's aesthetic. And damn, I wish I could still wear shoes like this! (But the bionic ankle, in spite of limiting my shoe choice, would have looked wicked cool in a photo like this.) |
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| This Sporting Life |
[Oct. 5th, 2008|05:18 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  tired | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Possession-Sarah MacLachlan | ] |
I was lucky enough to score some tickets from a co-worker to the first BU Terriers game of the season, an exhibition game against New Brunswick. I've never been to a hockey game before. Let me be even more general - I've been to a total of one minor league baseball game and three cricket games in my lifetime. I played field hockey in high school, but my family and social circle were not exactly big sports fans when I was growing up.
I've wanted to go to a hockey game for ages, but the cost of Bruins tickets, plus not knowing that much about the sport, has kind of inhibited me from actually getting it organized. So it was really lovely of my co-worker to remember that I wanted to see a game when she couldn't get to the first game she had season tickets for. I think I really will have to get Bruins tickets some time though. Because that was a blast. I loved the game!
BU beat New Brunswick 4-1, which makes it sound like a bit of a rout. Well, it was. The first period BU scored three goals. New Brunswick was playing this gorgeous elegant passing game up and down the ice, and smacking into a brick wall of defense any time they got near BU's goal. And their defense was loose and fluid and completely lacking in keeping BU from shooting on goal. Gah. I mean, of course we were there to support BU but I have a thing for the underdog!
But in the second and third periods New Brunswick really picked their game up and played some awesome, exciting hockey. During the last two minutes, BU was down to four players on the ice because of a penalty, and New Brunswick took their goalie out and played six offensive players. The downside of this was they still didn't managed to score off Boston, and as soon as Boston's fifth player hit the ice again, BU scored. No goalie was a bit of a problem there for New Brunswick. Still, exciting!
And there was no fighting, which was actually nice. It was just a good, clean, game. I definitely want to see more! |
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| Timing |
[Sep. 26th, 2008|06:56 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  sick | ] |
After being off work a third of Tuesday, all of Wednesday, and half of Thursday with vague symptoms of chills and fatigue, I finally bust out in a full-blown array of 'flu symptoms just in time for the weekend. Yay. |
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| New glasses |
[Aug. 17th, 2008|06:52 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | tired | ] |
It was probably past time to get my prescription sorted. They're the photo-reactive sort because I was so tired of juggling every time I needed to put my sunglasses on.
( Fancy! ) |
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| Relax |
[Jul. 13th, 2008|02:23 pm] |
Some kind of respiratory distress (allergies or a cold, I have no idea... I was betting on allergies but I could be wrong) knocked me on my ass at the tail end of this week. As in, I dragged myself to work hardly getting a decent amount of breath in on Friday. I went because stress levels have been nuts and I had a lot that was supposed to be wrapped up by the end of Friday. Also because I don't think too well sans oxygen. Anyway, I powered through and left at 2pm, dozed on the effects of antihistamines on the subway back to Somerville, slept as soon as I got home, breaking only for dinner, slept through most of Saturday with an interlude of going to the movies and sitting in airconditioned comfort, and have spent all of today on the couch. I did get up to tidy for about thirty seconds, after which I had to sit down again to catch my breath.
The net result of all this forced relaxation is that about twenty minutes ago, my brain said, "hmmm, it's a lovely lazy Sunday afternoon. Ooh, Disney's Magical Kingdom will be on soon!"
Yup. Thanks brain. You're a solid two decades late with that information, I don't have a TV, and I don't think Walt is sitting around introducing the latest installment of Herbie the Love Bug, or another one with pets finding their way home or whatever. But ring the bell and I'll drool, and apparently get me relaxed enough on a Sunday and all I want to do is curl up and watch the fireworks over the Disney castle. Now where's my fluffy pink dressing gown with the fairies on it? |
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| Velvety |
[May. 21st, 2008|11:17 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | entertained | ] |
Hilarity ensued today when during our annual three-day departmental meeting thingy, the big boss quoted Carl Sandburg writing about Abraham Lincoln.
“Not often in the story of mankind does a man arrive on earth who is both steel and velvet, who is as hard as rock and soft as drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect.”
The big boss went on to say that she thought some of us needed to be more velvety. I was already supressing hysterics up the back at what sounded like a dime store romance novel description. "Abe was steel and yet also velvet. He was hard as a rock as he pressed his throbbing..." well, you get the idea. Then when she said velvety, all was lost. I can only hope she thought I was burying my head in my hands to conceal my weeping for Lincoln who was cut down in the prime of his steely, velvety life.
Velvety became the watchword of the day (along with moist, just because.) |
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