verbatim

Friday iPod Random Ten

1. Wonder (live) - Natalie Merchant   
2. Hold On - Tom Waits
3. How's the World Treating You - James Taylor & Alison Krauss
4. It's a Hard Life (live) - Nanci Griffith
5. Once in a Lifetime (live) - David Byrne
6. You Can Close Your Eyes - James Taylor                   
7. One Too Many Mornings - Peter Keane
8. I Confess - English Beat
9. John Haber - Bill Morrissey
10. False Echoes -  James Taylor & Jimmy Buffett

I don't have to discuss the "random" issue again, do I? You can count the James Taylor songs as easily as I can, right?

Non Sequitur #1485

In the car the other day, apropos of nothing, Steph says, "I bet God still feels bad about that time when the Egyptians were being so mean and he had to do those 10 [plagues]. The last one was about killing and you know how much He hates killing."

Wicked Cool App

With Delicious Library, I can scan the barcodes of all my books, CDs, and DVDs using the little iSight camera that's built right into my MacBook! (You could also use any external Web cam, too, or even your keyboard. Borrring!) Then, from what I can gather, the barcodes fly off into the atmosphere and turn into little tiny particles that snoop around at places like Amazon for info, thus creating a detailed home library of all your media! How cool is that? Way cool, that's how cool.

Five Years Old*

Julie had cupcakes at school:

and cake and ice cream at home:

Daddy helped blow out the candles (particularly that last one, which turned out to be a trick candle—I have no idea how it ended up in the package!):

*Cue Loudon Wainwright

Rain, Shmain

A couple of weeks ago we had a series of magnificent days—bright, mild, and breezy—with one horribly raw, rainy one in the middle. That, of course, was the day that Julie was invited to her friend's birthday party at a farm. The hay ride was cancelled, but we still got to explore the farm:

feed the animals (the feed was in ice cream cones for the kids to hold out to the animals—now that's clever!):

ride real horses (not ponies):

and take home those cute straw hats:

Wiki Wednesday

Time to learn something!

1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. Click on "Random article" in the left-hand sidebar box.
3. Post it!

Here's what I got:

Talas is a town in central Anatolia and a district of Kayseri Province in Turkey.

The history of Talas, which hosted several civilizations, goes back to 1500 BC. The place experienced the invasion of ancient Persians, Macedonians, Greeks and Romans. Talas was under the rule of Byzantines until the battle of Manzikert in 1071, when Seljuk Turks defeated Emperor Romanus IV Diogenes and entered Anatolia. From 1467 on, the city came under the rule of Ottoman Empire.

Following World War I and the Turkish War of Independence in 1922, most of the Christian residents such as those of Greek and Armenian ethnicity left Talas. The population of Talas as of 2000 is 40,122. The district Talas counts 60,925 people in total.

Phooey. I saw the heading "Talas, Turkey" and thought maybe it was a new Thanksgiving recipe to try.

Ten on Tuesday

Status Report on 10 Things I Plan to Do When the Kids Go Back to School

1. Haven't gotten the car detailed yet. You have to make an appointment and then wait there or get a ride. Can't be bothered right now.
2. Got my hair cut and colored.
3. Have not yet been to IKEA.
4. Have not yet been to the Wrentham outlet mall.
5. Went to the gym a few times, then got a lousy cold, then got really busy with freelance work and school volunteer responsibilities, then ...  well, kind of forgot about it. Next week, for sure!
6. Held our book group meeting; we've even chosen our next book! It'll be The Last Days of Dogtown by Anita Diamant.
7. Took on a lot of freelance work, including a delightful Italian project as well as some not-quite-as-delightful math.
8. Haven't yet made it to LuxLash but did get my brows done locally.
9. Haven't gotten a pedicure.
10. Have cooked a little more, but not as much as I hope to/plan to.

1. Haven't gotten the car detailed yet. You have to make an appointment and then wait there or get a ride. Can't be bothered right now.
2. Got my hair cut and colored.
3. Have not yet been to IKEA.
4. Have not yet been to the Wrentham outlet mall.
5. Went to the gym a few times, then got a lousy cold, then got really busy with freelance work and school volunteer responsibilities, then ...  well, kind of forgot about it. Next week, for sure!
6. Held our book group meeting; we've even chosen our next book! It'll be The Last Days of Dogtown by Anita Diamant.
7. Took on a lot of freelance work, including a delightful Italian project as well as some not-quite-as-delightful math.
8. Haven't yet made it to LuxLash but did get my brows done locally.
9. Haven't gotten a pedicure.
10. Have cooked a little more, but not as much as I hope to/plan to.

Wanted: Headband-Wearing Tablemate

Steph's teacher was planning to rearrange the students' tables, so she took advantage of the opportunity to teach the kids some manners. Each kid had to write a recommendation for the kid next to him/her, in the most complimentary manner possible. Here's what Max had to say about Steph:

Dear Steph's New Table,

I do recommend Steph for your new table. Steph is very helpful and kind. She has great handwriting. She is a good reader and is okay at math. She always is wearing headbands. Steph is a good tablemate.

From,
Max

I don't think language gets any flowery than that in fourth grade.

Ask and You Shall (Eventually) Receive

Last August I downloaded a terrific song from Salon.com, called "De Makeba" by the Jazz Dazzlers, a 1950s South African jazz group. I couldn't stop listening to it, so I wanted to find other songs like it. No luck. The song was featured on Salon as part of the "Mandela" soundtrack, but the rest of the soundtrack comes from a variety of musical genres. It seemed that the CD I wanted was called "Township Swing Jazz, Vol. 1." I checked Amazon, half.com, ebay, and about a zillion used CD sources, but no one had a single copy—used or new. I was ready to give up when I checked with the U.K. ebay and—lo and behold!—there it was, for a measly £1! I emailed the seller to ask what the shipping would be; he figured about £10. So I bid on it and won. The seller then felt bad when it took him all of a week to get the thing to the post office, so he included both the CD I wanted and "Township Swing Jazz, Vol. 2" as a bonus! All for £11, which comes to about $20. Gotta love them Internets.

The Most Realistic Fortune Ever

Voting Machine Whistleblower

A long, long time ago (I guess it was, oh, around November 2004), I vowed never to revisit the voting-machine debacle. OK, so I lied. Check out this Boing-Boing piece.

An Apple A Day...

Yesterday my hard-working crew picked 30 lbs. of Macintosh, Macoun, and Cortland apples!

It's All So Random!

Don't you just love when you blog about something on Friday, and then on Saturday someone famous publishes a story in a well-regarded newspaper about that same topic, and it turns out it's an excerpt from a book that's coming out soon? No, me neither. Dang.

Check out this article by Steven Levy about so-called "iPod randomness." I mean, no, I didn't get to speak to Steve Jobs about it, but still. (Thanks, Scott!)

Don't Get Me Started

When Jet Li's "Fearless" came out on September 22, Andy I vowed we would see it as soon as we could get a sitter. That turned out to be last night. We scanned the day's movie listings; unfortunately, it's not playing at any of our local cinemas or at any particularly convenient times anywhere. (Our favorite scenario for a date is a movie at about 6:15 and then dinner afterward.) We finally decided we would trek out to Framingham for the 8:10 showing, catching a small bite beforehand and then something else afterward. Sort of like two servings of appys (It couldn't be appies, could it?) and drinks with a movie and popcorn in between.

So we headed out to the dreaded Route 9, which is lined with strip mall after strip mall containing every chain store and restaurant you've ever heard of. After about an hour of driving around and not being able to get so much as a single bar stool at Legal Sea Foods, Skipjack's, Joe's American Bar & Grille, Chili's, and so on, we finally ended up Bennigan's. We should have suspected the worst when we saw that it was nearly empty, but we knew it was the grand-daddy of all the chains, so we figured it had to be OK. (Wrong again!) The menu should have been another tip-off; it was like a time-warp back to the '80s (NEW! Chips & Salsa!). The bartender should have been the final clue: She didn't know that Tanqueray was gin. The appys were mediocre, and the wine was crap.

So we'd already spent all this money on two hours of babysitting and lousy food and drinks; it was time to head over to the movie. We arrived at the cinema only to learn that there wasn't going to be an 8:10 showing after all. The pimple-faced teenager behind the window gave a Beavis-inspired giggle by way of an apology (and then returned to his algebra homework), and that was it. I was spitting mad. We scurried back to the car to check the movie listings again, but we knew we could neither make it to Dedham by 7:40 nor stay up until the 9:50 showing in Cambridge. And there was nothing else worth seeing ("The Departed" was sold out). So we drove to Aquitaine Bis for dinner and a bottle of Cabernet to drown our sorrows.

Today I saw that the newspaper was still listing an 8:10 showing in Framingham; I called the cinema to have  word with the manager. He was really sorry this happened to me. And I mean really. I could just tell from his voice.

If you are in the business of designing circles of Hell for particular people, make mine just a series of poor customer service experiences. Oh wait, I'm living it now! Who needs Hell? Grumble, grumble.

And Another Thing!

When I posted about some of my favorite word and punctuation usage blogs, I neglected one of my favorite quirky sites (albeit not a blog): The Gallery of "Misused" Quotation Marks. The "name" speaks for "itself."

No Wire for Me

If you ever glance at my "In from Netflix" item in the sidebar and see an installment of "The Wire," you can be sure I'm going out and Andy's staying home. I just didn't end up caring to see any more episodes after watching the first few, so I try to time my Netflix queue so that a disc arrives in time for any evening activities I might have. For instance, a few weeks ago I went out to dinner with Pia, Rebecca, Kathleen, and Vinita; the following week I had book group. And this past Friday night, I went to a terrific party: The publishing company I worked at for 11 years had a reunion!

My work experience is limited to that one company; I went there straight out of college and stayed until they were sold, then became a full-time freelancer and, a year later, a mommy. So all I've ever known is that great working environment, and I know only from speaking to everyone else in the world that that was a rare time and place indeed. Nearly everyone I worked with was bright, warm, conscientious, fun, and interesting. We really enjoyed working with one another; there were minor political ongoings here and there, but for the most part it was just a group of people who cared a lot about producing high-quality educational texts. The fact that this reunion was held shows what a special place it was! So, I've stayed in touch with many of my old friends and colleagues (although, in some cases, it's just holiday cards once a year), but I'd lost touch with many more. I can't describe how genuinely happy I was to be reunited with some of these people—and we intend to stay in touch from now on.

It's All in the Details

Longtime readers of Verbatim know that I have a soft spot for blogs that devote themselves to the kinds of errors that only editors care about. Two of my favorites are Apostrophe Abuse, which presents photos of things like a menu featuring BURRITO'S, and Literally, A Web Log, which—you guessed it—logs abuses of the word literally, as in "My eyes literally popped out of their sockets!" They use clever pictures to illustrate each example.

Well, here's another one to add: Lowercase l, for all those hand-lettered signs that say WElCOME! or SPECIAl!

Keep up the good work, guys.

Friday iPod Random Ten

1. Heaven - Los Lonely Boys
2. Copperhead Road (live) - Steve Earle, Townes Van Zandt, & Guy Clark   
3. House Where Nobody Lives - Tom Waits
4. A Heart Needs a Home - Loudon Wainwright III & Shawn Colvin
5. (Dawning of a) New Era - The Specials   
6. Sandusky - Uncle Tupelo
7. Child of the Wild Blue Yonder  - John Hiatt
8. Independence Day - David Byrne
9. Doesn't Make It Alright - The Specials
10. Hesitating Blues - Louis Armstrong

Not for nothing, but I have more than 3000 songs in my iTunes library. Exactly 18 of them are by the Specials. So when 2 out of 10 songs played at random are by the Specials, that sends up a red flag to me. If you're going to start explaining statistical probabilities to me, you can just hold your breath. It makes much more sense to me to imagine that my Mac heard "New Era" and thought to itself, "Wow, these guys are great! Let's listen to another one. How 'bout 'Doesn't Make It Alright'?" Now that I can wrap my brain around.

Belated Book Group Recap

I've been holding off on reporting on my last book group because I like to close my wrap-up by announcing the next book we'll be doing. Unfortunately, we reached the end of our current list and haven't picked the next batch yet. So you'll have to wait on that, but in the meantime:

Last time we read Teacher Man by Frank McCourt. On the one hand, we (all moms of school-age kids) could all appreciate someone who wants nothing more than to share with kids his enthusiasm for literature—and learning in general. We admired his sometimes unorthodox methods of sparking his students' enthusiasm. All that being said, however, we all grew tired of his "I'm just a stupid mick, what do I know... But get a load of this clever idea I had for my class!" shtick. Not a page went by without McCourt reminding us that he's Irish, that he speaks with a brogue, that he had a miserable childhood, that he didn't have adequate training to educate teenagers, and so on. The tone—at times outright self-congratulatory, otherwise false self-deprecatory—got tiresome real fast.

And When She Was Bad, She Was Horrid

Love Me Some Retro Graphics

I came upon two clever items today:

• I think my favorite page of The Executive Coloring Book is "This is my telephone."
• I don't know how serious The Housewives Tarot is meant to be, but I like it. You must click on Desktop Goodies just for the awesome toaster graphic. And, in case you were wondering, a long-term struggle has tested my strength, a great loss is not spoiling my outlook, and careful preparation is about to serve me very well. So there.

Wiki Wednesday

Time to learn something!

1. Go to Wikipedia.
2. Click on "Random article" in the left-hand sidebar box.
3. Post it!

Here's mine:

This is a list of Croatian Americans:

• Nick Begich - Alaska congressman^[1]
• Bill Belichick - football head coach^[2]
• David Diehl (1980 - ) football player and offensive lineman in the National Football League^[3]
• William Feller - mathematician^[4]
• Mike Grgich - winemaker^[5]
• John Kasich - congressman^[6]
• Dennis Kucinich - former Mayor of Cleveland, US Senator from Ohio, and 2004 Democratic Presidential candidate^[7]
• Curtis Leskanic - baseball player^[8]
• Branko Lustig - movie producer^[6]
• Anthony Maglica - inventor^[9]
• Roger Maris - baseball player^[10]
• Mary Matalin - political commentator^[6]
• Michael Matijevic - musician^[11]
• Pat Miletich - martial artist^[12]
• Josip Novakovich - writer^[13]
• Krist Novoselic - bassisit for Nirvana
• Rudy Perpich, Former Governor of Minnesota [17]
• Dan Plesac- baseball player^[14]
• George Radanovich - congressman^[6]
• Lou Saban - football coach
• Nick Saban - football coach^[15]
• Rudy Tomjanovich - basketball player/coach^[16]
• Vanna White - game show hostess, original last name Rosich
• Fritzie Zivic - "Croat Comet", World boxing champion (welterweight)^[17]

What does one do with such information? Oh, I know: Next time I'm at a Wesleyan alumni function and find myself chatting up Bill Belichick, I can cover up for my lack of knowledge of football by asking him about his Croatian background.

Four Weeks

I so wish I had never seen this. Do I really need a magazine that's in sync with my menstrual cycle? Is that what's wrong with my life, that I don't have magazine articles attuned to my hormonal cycle? Even beyond all of the obvious, laughable reasons why this is so very wrong,* I think I recall hearing about a woman one time whose cycle wasn't—gasp!—exactly 28 days! What is she to do? Read the same articles for 9 days instead of 7? Then take her temperature and see whether it's safe to move on to the next week's worth of articles? Sheesh. And I mean, Sheesh!

*To wit:
Week 1: Fun, Familiar
Week 2: Exciting, Exotic
Week 3: Cautious, Caring
Week 4: Indulgent, Introspective

Lots o' Movies

Once again, a fun, quirky little movie was marred by being too long—where are the editors? "Happy Accidents" stars the adorable Marisa Tomei as a woman who's had way too many bad relationships and is about to give up on men entirely. Then she meets Vincent D'Onofrio, who seems normal and sweet. Oops, except that he believes he's visiting from the future! Very cute, but even 110 minutes was unnecessarily long for what it was.

I wish I didn't feel that National Geographic's "In the Womb" was going to become a tool for the anti-choice nuttos, because it's a very cool documentary. It's a little misleading, because the computer-generated images of the fetus look really real—in fact, they look so much like those old Lennart Nilsson photos from the '70s that I thought they were real. The 3D ultrasounds were very cool, and I did learn quite a bit about life in the womb. Very interesting.

Bad Johnny Depp fan, bad! I seen bits and pieces of "Edward Scissorhands" but never the whole movie. Now I have.  It's exactly what I expected it would be, and everyone else has already seen it, so I'll leave it at that.

I was uninterested* enough in the characters (Isabelle Adjani, Gerard Depardieu, and two more) in "Bon Voyage" that I stopped watching halfway through it. Every now and then Roger Ebert and I part ways; it happens.

I liked "Young Adam," which stars Ewan McGregor as a guy who always gets what he wants—which turns out to be, mostly, sex with every woman he meets. There's quite a bit of sex and nudity in this movie; McGregor is, um, definitely not Jewish, shall we say. Anyhow, sometimes he looked very handsome to me and other times really creepy. So that's good acting, because he's a handsome guy playing a creepy character, right? We know from the start whodunnit, so it's not a mystery, but you have to wait to see how it turns out. Tilda Swinton is outstanding in this. Meanwhile, can anyone shed some light on why this movie is called "Young Adam"? The main character's name is Joe.

"What's Cooking?" is surprisingly entertaining and satisfying despite the fact that the racial/ethnic stuff is so whitewashed (pun intended) and generic. It's about four families in LA—one Vietnamese, one Hispanic (but with mostly Italian names like Gina and Anthony—where are the editors?), one Jewish, and one black—and takes place on Thanksgiving Day. What can I say, it's a nice movie, and one that I enjoyed watching to the end in order to find out how everyone (and their turkeys) turned out.

*not disinterested, which means impartial

It's That Time Again!

It's BAFAB week, so go ahead—there's nothing like giving someone a book for no earthly reason other than that you think they'll like it! And maybe you'll get BAFAB'd back.