My Aussie sister-in-law just sent us some of her photos from Christmas. Here’s a picture memorializing the moment when one of the brothers experienced a bitterly cold convergence of art and nature.
It’s my favorite:
banshee beastie
The Banshee, New Year’s Eve. Cute, huh? Sweet, huh? Looks all cuddly, huh?
Well, then there are those moments. Later that evening, my sister-in-law, who was nursing a headache, said to my brother, “Oh, S, will you come over and give my head a good rub for a few minutes?”
He agreed and moments later, from her spot on the floor, The Banshee narrowed her eyes at them and demanded, “No, Daddy. Don’t give mommy a good rub; give her a BAD rub!”
I just stared at her and watched as her head started sloooowly spinning ’round atop her spine.
I love her, but ….. wellll, let’s just say I hope she uses her powers for good someday.
jeez, trace
do not speak to me
about the Chargers. I am dead serious. We are all in mourning. So, shhhhh!
Seriously. Do. Not. Speak. About. The Chargers.
I love paper!
A new site I found, Optical Toys, has a section featuring vintage paper toys. So very cool.
Here are a few of them. (Actually, I don’t seem to be able to link to them individually. You can find them all starting from the link below, though. So click there first, then go to the side bar and click Paper Toys to find the names I’m listing here):
Mov-I-Graf
Coiffures aux Choix — totally weird paper doll, but that’s why I find it so hysterical. Please check out those hairstyles.
Handshadow Cards
Fore’s Moving Panorama — currently out of stock, but take a look at them, amazing-looking little things called phenakistascopes, precursors of sorts to modern-day film animation. I hope they get more, because I think my nephew Joseph would like them.
The site has a flipbook section, too. Go there and click on “Gestation Animation,” if for no other reason than to read the little blurb there. Who IS that guy?
Other flipbooks that look fun, too:
Whirlwind Moviescope — an old ad for the Whirlwind vacuum.
Oooh. Ooooh! I’m literally discovering this stuff as I write and I must get this for MB! (Hm. Our anniversary is coming up — Groundhog Day, you know. Haha.)
So look at this one, too:
Muybridge Series — a series of flipbooks featuring Eadweard Muybridge’s studies in motion. The man was a pioneer in the advancement of the modern motion picture. Legend. Okay. MB’s gotta have these!
Motion Study, “Woman Jumping Off Stairs”
Okay. Gotta stop. Sorry for the disjointedness here, but I was just clicking over there and then writing over here and just getting swept away by all the quirky cool stuff. Oh, and the prices are really reasonable, I think.
Just go check it OUT.
the agency
Today was a day of tromping all over downtown to this government agency and that government agency to do all the paperwork necessary for the coffeehouse. The very very wee coffeehouse.
Agency 1, no problem. Agency 2, piece of cake. And the clerk is a huge Chargers’ fan, so we all blab excitedly — MB, the clerk, and I — about the upcoming game while she types my information into the computer.
Then there was Agency 3, the agency where I need to get my seller’s permit. You know, to sell stuff. I fill out the form and wait for the sad-faced woman in the pink cowl sweater to call my name. Anxiously, I cross and re-cross my legs, wiggle my foot inside my unbusiness-like Converse All-Stars. The pink lady strides by, with her pumps and her papers and her certain gloomy purpose while I huddle with nervous feet in a 1950s overcoat that once belonged to MB’s grandfather. All around us, people fill out paperwork, slouching and sighing irritably in those high school desk-chair combos as if they’re taking some lousy pop quiz. Luckily, we snagged the only real chairs in the room; however bowed and shabby, they’re preferable to the school desks. The whole room glows with that sick, bilious glow of institutional fluorescent lighting, as if the very air were queasy. I sense the Hispanic woman across the room staring at me and sneak a glance her way. She is staring. I look back down and wonder — is it the shoes? the coat? the jaundiced light making my face look jaundiced, too? Thankfully, though, I’m interrupted as the pink lady calls my name and ushers MB and me through the doorway and into the place where things get done, I guess.
We turn a sharp corner into the nearest cubicle.
“Take a seat,” growls a voice from a head that is under a desk. We just stand there, furrow our brows, roll our eyes towards one another. I bite my lip and wonder if we should do something to help the head be where a more business-like head should be. Before I can do anything, though, the head springs back up. It’s a woman with wire glasses and steel-wool hair and a big solid belly. A barrel, really, that bows out past her breasts. As she stands to her full — but short — height, I notice she’s got some kind of cane with pincers on the end. “I can’t get my pen,” she grunts, stabbing the pincers repeatedly at the floor. MB spies a pen on the edge of the desk. “Here’s one,” he offers. She ignores us, grunts and pinces some more, until she finally recovers her wayward pen. It’s the same kind of pen MB had found.
“Sit,” she commands again.
We do. She glares at the paperwork I give her.
“Okay. What kind of business is this? Sole proprietorship, what?”
“Well, sole proprietorship,” MB answers.
She glances down at the papers, up at MB, and barks, “If you are not a signatory, then you DO not answer. If you think you want to talk, go out in the hall.”
Her head is down again. We turn to each other and stare, open-mouthed and silent. She is everyone’s worst grade school teacher.
Ignoring us, she continues to peruse my information. Then, because I answered incompletely on the form regarding what, exactly, I’m going to sell, we suddenly have … a problem.
“So you’re not going to sell pastries, baked goods?”
Oops.
“Uhm, well, I most likely will.”
“Well, it just says ‘espresso, coffee, tea’ here. In that case, you don’t need a seller’s permit. You only need a seller’s permit on taxable items. These are not taxable.”
“Oh, well, what if I end up doing that?”
The bark again. “You’re not listening to me! You don’t need this permit.”
MB is sitting silently. I’m trying to read his mind, ask what he’d want me to ask, but I can’t think straight. She’s old and has pincers and I’m nervous.
“Okaay. What if I just add ‘pastries’ to that information that I put on there?”
“You can’t do that. I have to report what you first put down here.”
“How will anyone know what I first put down there?”
“I’ll know. I can’t do that.”
“Okay. Well, the wholesale coffee bean contract I’m getting requires that I have this permit.”
“No, it doesn’t. You don’t need this. If you’re selling hot pastries, you’d need this.”
“Okay. Define ‘hot pastries.'”
We are now glaring at each other. She openly sighs in my stupid stupid face.
“Okay. If you heat a bagel in a toaster, that’s taxable.”
“And if I don’t, it’s not?”
“That’s right.”
“Isn’t this just a little bit confusing?”
Silence.
“So I can’t just add to my information right now?”
“No.”
“So you won’t give me a permit today?”
“Nope. I can’t. Why are you making your life more difficult?”
Silence.
“So … if I want to serve pastries, I have to change my information, come back another day, and then I can get this permit?”
“That’s right.” She just plays with her rescued pen and stares at me.
MB stands quickly. I jump up. “Fine,” I bark at her, stomping my Converse as I go.
So, I’m wondering, do I need a permit for pincers?
said
The human comedy doesn’t attract me enough. I am not entirely of this world …. I am from elsewhere. And it is worth finding this elsewhere beyond the walls.
— Eugene Ionesco
chicken
At my sister’s on Sunday, we were all sitting around the table, seeing who could do what facial “tricks” — you know, who could make their tongue a hot dog, roll their tongue over, wink both eyes individually, etc. This all started because I had a vague recollection of learning in high school biology that these thing were all genetic, that if you could wiggle your ears, for instance, at least one of your parents must be able to do it as well. So the nephews and niece and their parents immediately began seeing who could do what. It was hilarious, really. You know, grown adults, children, everyone, just sitting around a table on a Sunday afternoon, making hot dog tongues.
In the middle of all of this goofiness, Piper suddenly blurted, “There’s a boy in my kinnergarden class who can put his tongue in his nose! I saw him do it and he said it tastes like chicken!”
She said it with dead-on timing. Perfect delivery. Didn’t start giggling or laughing because she didn’t think she was saying anything funny; she was simply sharing this deeply astounding news. But the rest of us — died. We were gone. Her look of epiphany, of “wow, snot tastes like chicken!?” was just too much to bear.
For the next five minutes, falling over, gone.
our christmas tree is still up
Since the branches drag so low, it can’t be watered.
Since it can’t be watered, the branches drag low.
Since most the ornaments are paper, I’m really just hoping that they will all to slide off to the floor. Then I will pick them up someday.
pet peevish
I’ve decided that if I get one more political email from certain relatives who live in this country — legally — but who are NOT citizens and DON’T vote, I am definitely going on a statewide killing spree.
You know ….. this is just a huge HUGE pet peeve of mine.
So to all legal non-citizen residents of this country, especially if you’re related to me, which means you don’t even know about this blog and won’t ever read this, unless you run into one of those lurkers from my church — oh, hello! — I’m gonna say this: Please, please make haste to shut the hell UP about US politics. You’ve lived here forever and you’ve never taken the step to become citizens or exercised your right to vote? Then there is nothing else you should even be allowed to do but shut the hell up. That is the only thing I can abide from you on any topic of this nature at any time. I love you and all, but you have absolutely no right to complaaaaain or mmmmoan or really even SPEAK of a process you wilfully choose not to participate in.
I think, too, that whenever I see you from now on and you start raging about politics in your current non-citizen, non-voting state, getting all red-faced and breathless, you must deposit one dollar for every minute you speak into my huge hungry “Citizen or SHUT UP” Jar. Every unwanted political email that provokes a sigh and the enervating finger movement of deletion will cost you five dollars into the jar.
OR you could save up the money yourselves and finally become citizens, uhm, 35 YEARS LATER.
Bleah.