kdiddy.org

Oh, dudes. Rough, ROUGH day yesterday. There was the mid-term and that really didn’t go very well, and then some other stuff happened that I don’t want to get into just yet, but suffice it to say that you may find me more morose than usual for awhile. I’m okay, but I really have to hike my big girl pants up and…well, honestly…I know that the strength needed is in me somewhere, but it’s hard to remember where I put it.

Sigh.

For right now, I’m trying to be all serene and accept the things I cannot change and looking forward to spending the weekend at home. I think the husband and the sister-in-law and I are going to a haunted house tonight.

Last night, I was seriously in need of some quality TV and we finally finished catching up on our Sunday night shows, namely True Blood and Mad Men. I am just completely ga-ga over Mad Men, but True Blood has been slow to grow on me. Whenever we watch it, I always enjoy it, but I never really look forward to it and am never DYING to know what’s going to happen. Plus, I honestly find Anna Paquin’s character to be really annoying. I think her dialect coach needs to work with her a bit more. Her vowels are too round or something. And they need to tone down the color of her hair. Poor thing. Her vowels and her hair dye make her the object of my ridicule. Truly, everyone should tremble in the face of my judgment.

ANYWAY, this week’s episode of True Blood really and truly blew me away. It was so great. Lots of really funny moments and just a fantastic rush of development in the story. Also, Lafayette, who up until now has been mostly a side character, got some more screen time and had the honor of delivering one of the best smackdowns I’ve ever seen. Behold:

As I just said when I shared this on Google Reader, “There’s an Ice Cube ‘It Was a Good Day,’ ‘didn’t even have to use my AK’ joke in here somewhere and I just can’t get it out.”

Why, yes, I am avoiding thinking about my Grammar mid-term that starts in an hour and a half. Why do you ask?

One of the best parts of my day is coming home after work and school, kicking my shoes off, combining ingredients to make a nutritious, home-cooked-with-love meal, sitting down with my family, digging in and hearing, “Ehhhh, this has too much garlic! Why is there ricotta in here? I hate ricotta! This is too hot! Waaahhh!” And that’s just from my husband.

To be fair…if I had a cooking advice column and someone asked me, “kdiddy, if I need two cloves of minced garlic for garlic bread and have a jar of minced garlic that I want to use up, can I just use that for the bread even though it equals 6 or 7 cloves of garlic?” my answer would be, “Absolutely. Especially if you want to have the garlickiest garlic bread that ever garlicked.” I honestly didn’t think it was that bad, but I love garlic so whatever. *breathes on you*

I didn’t really watch the debates last night. I was being a good student and studying for my Grammar mid-term that’s on Thursday. I appear to have a serious problem identifying phrasal verbs and some other shit and oh my god, I really can’t wait for this class to be over. It’s fascinating, sure, but I hate hate HATE tests and I seriously will not take another one after this. Except for my driving test. I really need to get on that. But that’s a whole other panic attack.

I did hear about McCain referring to Obama as “that one,” which, you know, smooooth move, Ex-Lax. I also really liked the part where he started talking about speaking softly and carrying a big stick and how Obama speaks loudly…and presumably carries a small stick and, hey, let’s just call this whole election thing off and have a dick-measuring contest!

I also skipped all of the punditry and relied on play-by-plays from Sarah Palin, John McCain, Joe Biden, and, of course, Biggie Smalls.

I am brimming with excitement because after nearly ten years I am finally getting new glasses! I went to the eye doctor on Saturday and ordered new contacts, which I am also in dire need of since I had been in my last pair for way too long and they were all cruddy. I also picked out a cheap-ish pair of frames that will house new lenses that are actually my current prescription. And I promise not to fall asleep in them this time, since that was part of the downfall of my current pair, seen here in a rather bizarre picture of me eating birthday cake with my hands while dressed as Carrie at a Halloween party in an abandoned store in the South Side in 2000:

That’s just how I roll sometimes. Those glasses were something of a trademark of mine and I heard howls of protest from both the husband and our friend Jwan when I announced that they needed to be retired. But, the new glasses are very similar. Fear not.

I’m excited at the prospect of actually being able to wear glasses from time to time since my old ones were only good for seeing me from the bathroom to my bed without walking into walls.

I also had my massage on Saturday and I told the masseuse about my problems with sleeping weird and waking up immobile. When she initially ran her hand down the left side of my back, she said, “Ew.” She found and worked on nine knots and strongly suggested that I buy a new pillow. I repaid her good advice by drooling on her shoes through the face hole thingy.

The baby spent the night with my mom and the husband and I went to see Choke. It was only alright. Palahniuk’s novels are, I imagine, a tough thing to translate to the screen and Clark Gregg just didn’t…get it. Plus, there’s a lot of stuff going on in that book and he tried to fit all of it in and just present it as it is. It didn’t work.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I hate it and really wish we had just waited until it was on DVD. We should have gone to see Blindness, but that’s another book that I love and if they fuck that up, too, I may go ballistic.

But to remedy that, the husband and I are going to see the premiere of Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Kevin Smith is doing a special screening at The Oaks and I’m really excited about this new movie.

To veer off into another direction in this already scattered post, I am very happy that the Steelers won but these late Sunday night games are totally messing up the one night that I have shows to watch. True Blood, Entourage, Californication, and Mad Men are all on Sundays and I missed all of them to watch the Steelers. I recorded them, of course, but I hate waiting. I need to know the latest on Betty and Don and I want to hear more about Joan and her fiance! God!

“The Husband.”

“Mmph?”

“Turn the light off.”

“What?”

“Turn the light off!”

“What light?”

“The light! Turn it off!”

“What?”

“Your lamp! Turn it off!”

“What lamp? What the hell are you talking about?”

“YOUR BEDSIDE LAMP! THE ONE THAT’S ON EVEN THOUGH IT’S THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT! TURN IT OFF!”

“*snore*”

“DUDE!”

“WHAT?!?!?”

“TURN. YOUR. LAMP. OFF.”

“YOU ARE SUCH A PAIN IN MY ASS!”

Or something along those lines. That was the argument that we had ’round about 3:30 or 4 a.m. The husband fell asleep with the light on and I woke up to help the baby to the bathroom and then had that infuriating exchange. What light? Give me a goddamned break. The light that is replacing the darkness that I should be seeing right now, you ass. God. It’s not like I asked him what newspapers he reads.

Anyway, I used to have this big old Toshiba laptop that I bought with some of my college graduation money. It turned out to be a bit of a lemon and a few years ago I brought it into work so that the computing people here could at least get it to function a little bit and I could get my pictures off of it. I put all of the pictures onto a bunch of zip discs. Yes, zip discs. I intended to take them home and transfer them to a functioning computer, but just never got around to it.

Yesterday, I was poking around in my office and came across both the discs and a zip drive. So I spent a little bit of time transferring them to my computer and uploading the pictures to flickr. They go back to 2003 and it’s really neat to see so many pictures of the baby being all little that I had totally forgotten about.

I have another big post in me about how looking back at these pictures has also been very upsetting, because in a lot of them I’m very thin. It’s been drudging up a lot of stuff that I really want to get off my chest, but I can’t do it right now.

Meh. In the meantime, my kid is cute as HELL.

We are jam PACKED this weekend. Tomorrow at noon, the baby is going to hang out with the husband at the record store while I go to the eye doctor, then after that I’m getting a massage! I’m in dire need, really. My neck and back have been totally messed up. Then we have a kid’s birthday party to go to and the baby is going to some Magic Tree House show with my mom.

30 days until I turn 30.

It really doesn’t occur to me to feel old until I mention that I’m turning 30 and someone suggests that I should feel old. I’m not insulted by it, per se, but isn’t that attitude a little…dated? Like if this were, say, Medieval Britain…sure. I would fully expect the, “Christ, you’re ancient. Watch out for that wave of plague!” treatment.

There’s a great scene from an episode of Roseanne, when Jackie and Roseanne had spent the day looking at a retirement community for their mom and were overwhelmed to say the least. Roseanne asked Jackie how old she felt. Jackie thought for a second before responding.

“Thirty-…Twelve on a good day. Eight most of the time.”

That’s pretty much where I’m at. I can’t possibly feel old because I’m so obviously a pre-teen.

Of course, I do start to feel weary when I think about the fact that, deep down, everyone feels the same and we’re out here just…doing shit and affecting people’s lives and messing everything up.

I wish I was old enough to drink.

We took the baby to the Regent Square Theatre last night to see the original 1954, Japanese Gojira, aka Godzilla. The baby loves Godzilla movies because there’s a big monster who smashes stuff, but the screening last night also served as a platform for Remembering Hiroshima.

It seems that many Americans are still surprised to learn that the original Godzilla was actually a very serious film and commentary on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings during World War II, and on the neverending nature of the arms race and destroying The Enemy. In the film, there are two scientists: one who holds the key to destroying Godzilla, even though further H-bomb tests will simply create another monster somewhere else, and another who wants to study the creature and learn from it. Though how one would go about capturing a seemingly indestructible dinosaur and studying it, we don’t know.

Pthpthptthpthpth. I intended to go on here about the empty notion of triumphing over evil and how it’s still VERY relevant today(*cough*everywhere in the Iraq such as therefore *cough*) but frankly, I’m not up for it and I get the impression that the only audience for my philosophical rants are those two or three crickets that happily chirp away and the one or two of you who bother to say, “Nuh uh.”

Anyway, the baby obviously wasn’t that interested in the post-film discussion, but I think it’s good to at least give him the opportunity to hear these things.

If you aren’t already keeping a list of things that I demand that you check out, you should start one and add the following items to it: Bill Burr’s latest stand-up special, Why Do I Do This?, and Chris Rock’s latest special, Kill the Messenger. The husband and I often describe Burr as, “The red-haired, white guy on Chappelle’s Show who was one of the commentators on the Racial Draft.” We’ve actually seen him live a few times through those underselling, free-ticket deals through the Improv, which is cool because I think he might actually blow up a little bit fairly soon. Rock’s special isn’t as good as his earlier ones and seems to slack off into recycled material and generic “Let me tell you about the nature of black and white women,” schtick, seasoned, I would guess, with bitterness over his marital problems, but whatever. Dude is still hilarious.

Rest in peace, Paul Newman. I never really knew much about his acting until fairly recently. I have a hard time getting into movies from before I was alive. No real reason for that, really. I think it’s mostly a mental block, but I also think that the realism in acting had a long evolution, so a lot of earlier movies are too theatrical. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, I’m just not partial to it.

Anyway, the first time I really got Paul Newman was in Road to Perdition, which is an oft overlooked masterpiece. Newman was already pushing 80 by then, so playing the role of a weary mob boss who carries all of the disappointment of life on his shoulders wasn’t a great stretch. But Newman really knocked it out of the park.

In particular, there was this scene. By the way, if you haven’t seen this movie, here be spoilers. Newman’s character’s biological son is a despicable and traitorous human being while Tom Hanks’ character Sullivan, who he raised as his own and who is closer to him than his real son, is on the run from Newman’s minions. The family is slick with betrayal and what they did to Hanks’ character was wrong. Newman’s character, Rooney, knows this and knows that his adopted son must make things right.

On a very dark and rainy night, Sullivan waits in the shadows for Rooney as he departs a restaurant. It takes a few minutes for Rooney and his men to realize that something is wrong, but as soon as the first shots are fired, Rooney knows immediately who it is. Director Sam Mendes beautifully frames Rooney as the men fall around him and the pouring rain drenches him, spilling off of his hat and sloped shoulders. Rooney turns to face Sullivan. He looks at his boy, the one he should have protected, the one who now has to be on the run forever with his own son, and knows that this is right. “I’m glad it’s you,” he says, and Sullivan, fighting back tears, mows him down. When it’s over, he looks up to see illuminated windows and shocked spectators witnessing the act.

In other movie snob matters, the husband’s birthday was on Thursday and it unfortunately was kind of a bust. He had rather un-fun exams on that day and it was otherwise a typically annoying weekday. I couldn’t get it together to do something special for him, but hoped that the gifts that the baby and I gave him at least made up for it. We gave him Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass, Sade – Lovers Live, and the Criterion edition of the original Russian version of Solaris.

Last night, after the debates (ugh) were over and the baby was in bed, we put in Solaris. Now, Criterion is supposed to be on top of things. So why is the aspect ratio set up so that if you want to watch in widescreen and see the subtitles, you have to set it in subtitle zoom, which makes it all stretched out and wonky. There’s no 16:9 setting in which the subtitles are viewable, so we had to watch it in 4:3 with the letterbox. Grrraaarrrgggh! Unacceptable, Criterion.

Alright, I have to get moving. I’m in a book club! Look at me, all being sociable! Today we’re talking about The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which I just finished reading last night and LOVED, even though I was initially irritated that it had a quote from Michiko Kakutani right on the front cover, but whatever. I guess when you get such accolades you show them off, right?

Started this post last night:

I’m avoiding doing my homework because, well, it’s homework and I don’t wanna. Also, I made some chili earlier and cut up some kind of hot pepper from our CSA box to put in it. As you’re probably aware, the oils from hot peppers stay on your hands for awhile and I was, uh, digitally adjusting…something in my nostril. Now that delicate membrane is all burny and, according to the internet, vegetable oil will cut that spiciness.

I’m actually being very academic this week. On Friday, I’m going to a lecture with Scot Brown about funk music from Dayton, OH.

Ahem. Where I was going with that is I went to a lecture by Steven Greenhouse yesterday evening. Greenhouse is the labor reporter for the NYT and wrote a book called The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker. It was a very timely lecture, considering all that’s been going on in the past week.

I will state right now that I could probably be accused of a bias. My dad’s been a postal worker for forty years and has always been a union member. Unions are good, not just for blue collar workers but for all workers, and contrary to what I hear most people my age and younger saying, they are definitely still needed nowadays.

While I have gripes with my job, just like anyone, I realize that I am pretty lucky. I have guaranteed paid time off days, good insurance, excellent job security and it’s paying for me to get my master’s. But it’s really mind-boggling to think of myself as lucky. Aside from the possible exception of tuition benefits, time off and insurance should not fall under the category of luxuries. But they do for millions of Americans.

As Greenhouse spoke last night, he would expound on a point and would make projections about what he thought would need to happen in order for American workers, blue and white collar, to have more rights and not get screwed over so much, and then would apologize for moralizing. But it is a moral issue.

I am not an economist. I am fascinated by economics and took a few classes in college whenever I could, but I will be the first to own up to the fact that I will never fully understand how we keep this machine running. But I think on a very basic level we have people who want money and things and power and then there are people who just want to live a decent life and not get stepped on. And, yeah, I think there’s something severely messed up with the moral compasses of people who will stop at nothing to get more.

Greenhouse said that as preposterous as the Wall Street bailout sounds to those of us who will pay for it, he believed that it was necessary in order to avoid a tremendous collapse. I think he’s probably right. So I’ll hand over my share. But, I think we should be honest about what it is. It’s welfare. It’s cash assistance. And you know that I believe in welfare.

So now that the richest among us are receiving it with the full support of the government, I demand that no broke person be given shit for the pittance that they receive. The next time that I pay for groceries with an EBT card, don’t glance at my selections and judge my character. The next time that I go into the hospital and have a baby and use my Medicaid, don’t bitch about “paying for my mistakes.” Don’t get all indignant about your tax dollars and don’t gripe about the irresponsible behavior of “those people.” Because what we’re seeing on Wall Street is the ultimate in irresponsible behavior and it’s not just fucking with the lives of one person or one family, it’s fucking all of us. We’ll pay for it. We’ll fix it because that’s what we need to do. Now hopefully that minuscule percentage of your tax dollar that goes toward social services won’t seem so outrageous. Because it isn’t.

And now back to our regularly scheduled pictures of not-jizz and innuendo-laden homework.

In somewhat stark contrast to the picture below, in which my brand-new son and I clung to each other, skin on skin, I report to you that I spent a good portion of the evening bellowing, “DO. YOUR. HOME. WORK. NOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW.” And throwing in a, “There will be no TV ever again and if you think I’m joking, just TRY IT!” for good measure.

Gah. Today was perfectly fine until we tried to drive home and got stuck in the most horrendous traffic ever. We didn’t actually get home until 7 and I was just going to make us some grilled cheese sammiches, because what’s better after a stressful fall day than grilled cheese? But, lo, there was no cheese.

In the midst of this meal angst, the baby was just being…I don’t know…purposefully and infuriatingly obtuse about his homework. I went to help him and read the directions aloud: “Read the words in the box…Come. Good. On. That….Uh.”