Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Rode bike in the city tonight for the first time
in years, come to think of it. I've missed it. Damned good time.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
I'm here.
In DC. Few hours on the road yesterday, Monday, and several more today. Spent the night in Richmond, Indiana. Add Indiana to the list of states that plagiarize their town names. Ohio remains the worst, by far. Take a look at a map. Their only originals are Akron and Cleveland. And maybe Sandusky, but I'm pretty sure they stole that one, too.
There is a lot of Christian radio between here and Minnesota. Really a lot. And like four headlines on public radio, over and over again.
Ran four miles on a treadmill at a Holiday Inn this morning, the one I stayed at last night. Lord. How can you people do more than a half hour on those things? I'd had enough of CNN Headline News in five minutes. Marginally interesting story about a CSI highschool class in Bumblefuck, Fl., that found the body of a dead guy while doing their homework or something. The news people were all "Isn't this just the craziest thing?" and the teacher was trying her best to counter with sentiments of Hey, this is a dead human, a homeless dead human whom we stumbled upon while looking for clues to whatever little exercise I wrote up for the kids and they were supposed to run around the high school grounds chasing these clues to find the stuffed animal or whatever, and this poor guy died and now he's on national TV. The news wasn't having any of it. "Great! Up next: Cat has kittens! And do donuts make you fat? Correspondent Prettyboy McHaircut has the story!"
I arrived in town about nine or ten, I guess, and if God is on my side, the cops won't think I've parked too close to the fire hydrant. If not, well, it is the will of Allah, I guess. I spent today and yesterday listening to a book on tape about the Balkans. Lord. What a clusterfuck. I knew it was bad, but criminy. Montenegro sounds interesting. Very interesting. They're the only people in that area never to have been taken over by the Turks. And boy, do the Turks have a bad rap down there. According to the author, anyway, and he's a moron. I've read another of his books, The Professor and the Madman, which was a good story about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary, but this dude, Simon Winchester, what a damned Narcissistic pompous punk. He took it upon himself in the dictionary book to spend the better part of a chapter yammering about how maybe it was genius that made this one contributor mad, or maybe madness made him a genius. Criminy. Blow it out your ass, Winchester. Look that one up in your pissing OED. I wanted to know the story, not how this Winchester guy had a deep look into the soul of a man so screwed up that he sliced off his own most valuable appendage and threw it into the fire in the hopes that he wouldn't continue to have dreams in which he was transported to faraway lands with horrendous underage concubines, etc.
Anyway, so now I'm here and I'm very very glad I wasn't a non-Serb in Kosovo when the Serbs decided to clean house. And I'm also glad I'm not sharing a car with that dude who wrote the book. Apparently he once thought it would be a great idea to drive from Oxford to Mumbai in an old car containing him, his twelve year old son, his soon-to-be ex-wife, and some guy he'd known in college. I'd divorce the fucker, too, and long before India.
DC feels like a temporary stay. Can't say why. The drive didn't feel long, I didn't get super lost when I came into town (not nearly as lost as I got in Indianapolis, a city Kurt Vonnegut had led me to believe was tremendously regular and dull. Dull, yes; regular, not in the least; there were streets that bent back upon themselves like black holes. And me traveling them with my beloved bike hanging off my bumper, just above the "I'm from Minnesota!" license plate). Now I'm here, I have shit to do in the next couple of days, like get a parking permit so I don't get towed, buy groceries, sleep, get something resembling a closet or wardrobe so I can hang up my fancy expensive clothes, find a place to launder the shirts so they don't look like they've spent the past few days in my trunk. Small things like that. Things that ensure breakfast in the morning and the avoidance of a panic attack come day 1 of work, this coming Monday.
But I hardly feel transplated. May have something to do with having left Mpls so suddenly, and having steeled myself for leaving several months ago, but not really knowing where I'd end up. Passivity. Not unlike what the Christian radio people talked about. Except here I'm not submitting to my husband. I'm submitting to the fickle will of the librarian job market, particularly that end of the market reserved for young men without loads of experience whom the more established old guard of librarians--public librarians, anyway--have a significant tendency to dislike. This whole business librarian thing is working remarkably well. I had to move to DC, sure, but these last three hours I've spent in the city are any indication, it'll be fine.
Oh, and I got to stop at the Motorcycle Hall of Fame today, which is somewhere in Ohio, in some town that probably shares its name with a more significant town elsewhere (see Dublin, Cairo, Berlin, London, Versailles, etc.). Damn. Motorcycles rock. Particularly the engines of Moto-Guzzis that have been cut away to show the transmission, flywheel, connecting rods, camshafts, pistons, tappets, pushrods, ignition, and all that stuff. I don't think there was much else, save the clutch assembly. Simple engine. Sure, I say that now. Wait 'til I buy one from 1977 for $3000 that just needs a little work. I'll be swearing in Italian before I skin my knuckles. And after I skin my knuckles, too.
RC
There is a lot of Christian radio between here and Minnesota. Really a lot. And like four headlines on public radio, over and over again.
Ran four miles on a treadmill at a Holiday Inn this morning, the one I stayed at last night. Lord. How can you people do more than a half hour on those things? I'd had enough of CNN Headline News in five minutes. Marginally interesting story about a CSI highschool class in Bumblefuck, Fl., that found the body of a dead guy while doing their homework or something. The news people were all "Isn't this just the craziest thing?" and the teacher was trying her best to counter with sentiments of Hey, this is a dead human, a homeless dead human whom we stumbled upon while looking for clues to whatever little exercise I wrote up for the kids and they were supposed to run around the high school grounds chasing these clues to find the stuffed animal or whatever, and this poor guy died and now he's on national TV. The news wasn't having any of it. "Great! Up next: Cat has kittens! And do donuts make you fat? Correspondent Prettyboy McHaircut has the story!"
I arrived in town about nine or ten, I guess, and if God is on my side, the cops won't think I've parked too close to the fire hydrant. If not, well, it is the will of Allah, I guess. I spent today and yesterday listening to a book on tape about the Balkans. Lord. What a clusterfuck. I knew it was bad, but criminy. Montenegro sounds interesting. Very interesting. They're the only people in that area never to have been taken over by the Turks. And boy, do the Turks have a bad rap down there. According to the author, anyway, and he's a moron. I've read another of his books, The Professor and the Madman, which was a good story about the making of the Oxford English Dictionary, but this dude, Simon Winchester, what a damned Narcissistic pompous punk. He took it upon himself in the dictionary book to spend the better part of a chapter yammering about how maybe it was genius that made this one contributor mad, or maybe madness made him a genius. Criminy. Blow it out your ass, Winchester. Look that one up in your pissing OED. I wanted to know the story, not how this Winchester guy had a deep look into the soul of a man so screwed up that he sliced off his own most valuable appendage and threw it into the fire in the hopes that he wouldn't continue to have dreams in which he was transported to faraway lands with horrendous underage concubines, etc.
Anyway, so now I'm here and I'm very very glad I wasn't a non-Serb in Kosovo when the Serbs decided to clean house. And I'm also glad I'm not sharing a car with that dude who wrote the book. Apparently he once thought it would be a great idea to drive from Oxford to Mumbai in an old car containing him, his twelve year old son, his soon-to-be ex-wife, and some guy he'd known in college. I'd divorce the fucker, too, and long before India.
DC feels like a temporary stay. Can't say why. The drive didn't feel long, I didn't get super lost when I came into town (not nearly as lost as I got in Indianapolis, a city Kurt Vonnegut had led me to believe was tremendously regular and dull. Dull, yes; regular, not in the least; there were streets that bent back upon themselves like black holes. And me traveling them with my beloved bike hanging off my bumper, just above the "I'm from Minnesota!" license plate). Now I'm here, I have shit to do in the next couple of days, like get a parking permit so I don't get towed, buy groceries, sleep, get something resembling a closet or wardrobe so I can hang up my fancy expensive clothes, find a place to launder the shirts so they don't look like they've spent the past few days in my trunk. Small things like that. Things that ensure breakfast in the morning and the avoidance of a panic attack come day 1 of work, this coming Monday.
But I hardly feel transplated. May have something to do with having left Mpls so suddenly, and having steeled myself for leaving several months ago, but not really knowing where I'd end up. Passivity. Not unlike what the Christian radio people talked about. Except here I'm not submitting to my husband. I'm submitting to the fickle will of the librarian job market, particularly that end of the market reserved for young men without loads of experience whom the more established old guard of librarians--public librarians, anyway--have a significant tendency to dislike. This whole business librarian thing is working remarkably well. I had to move to DC, sure, but these last three hours I've spent in the city are any indication, it'll be fine.
Oh, and I got to stop at the Motorcycle Hall of Fame today, which is somewhere in Ohio, in some town that probably shares its name with a more significant town elsewhere (see Dublin, Cairo, Berlin, London, Versailles, etc.). Damn. Motorcycles rock. Particularly the engines of Moto-Guzzis that have been cut away to show the transmission, flywheel, connecting rods, camshafts, pistons, tappets, pushrods, ignition, and all that stuff. I don't think there was much else, save the clutch assembly. Simple engine. Sure, I say that now. Wait 'til I buy one from 1977 for $3000 that just needs a little work. I'll be swearing in Italian before I skin my knuckles. And after I skin my knuckles, too.
RC
Thursday, June 01, 2006
So this is a blog.
If I ever get around to so doing, this would be a fabulous place to post entries for Funniest Thing of the Week.
As everyone knows, the Funniest Thing of the Week is chosen from a list of contenders, each of which must meet these criteria:
As everyone knows, the Funniest Thing of the Week is chosen from a list of contenders, each of which must meet these criteria:
- Must be something funny
- So funny that the mere recollection of it causes me to laugh out loud
- Just on one occasion is all it takes to qualify
- And it can't come from The Onion or The Simpsons
- Craigslist entries can be fantastic
- As can be other classified ads
- Particularly those where someone's trying to sell something they value very highly
- That is really probably crap
- Or I'd think it to be crap, anyway
- Or weird barters are good, too
- Like I saw an ad one time where someone wanted help installing a sex swing, and offered--I don't know--something like "a nice abstract painting" in return
- Weird reference questions work well, too
- Like the one where the toothless old man asks for help finding information on "Birt' control." "Um," replied the rather reserved librarian, "What kind of information, exactly, were you looking for?" She thought an answer to this question might help her think of the right section of the Dewey Decimal System this dude might consider appropriate, like abortion vs. sheepskin vs. Lord knows what else. He answered, "Damn birts is flappin' they wings an' shittin' all over the yard, I needs somepin' can fix 'em up good!"
Anyway, the big reason I put this thing up is so that I could send a msg to a friend who also has a blog.
