Saturday, February 27, 2010

Inner-City Camping

At Earl Grey's birthday party I had another conversation with the Patriot, who is really a nice kid. I say this despite the tension I always feel during our verbal sparring.

I asked him why he's learning English.

He said - to be able to do business with the British. Maybe the Americans, too, but primarily he's interested in England. They have football [soccer].

A pause.

There's such a rhetoric of emigration, he said (in paraphrase, so no quotes), but there was and is no desire in his heart to get to America. That seems to be what so many books and movies are about - get out, get to America, get out. But he doesn't want to.

I know what you mean, I told him. I'd like to travel to places around the world, but I don't think I'd like to live there (thank you, Ernie).

I shouldn't have said that (here the paraphrase conversation ends and analysis begins). I shouldn't've. I tell people that I think of Russia as a camping experience; I do my best not to but I feel culture shock at things that are strange, and comfort from those tow hich I'm accustomed; I could visit Russia, and will continue to for research, but I couldn't be an expat living here.

And this is me as the d-bag colonial invader™.

If I'm not in love with the culture as an exotic exhibit of orientalism, it doesn't mean I'm clean in my relation to it. If I don't despise the country as THE ENEMY or think it completely backwards, that also doesn't purge me of my inherent colonialism.

I could only beg objectivism if I could say that I want to live here - not as a romantic escape - in the same way that I could say I'd be fine with living in P'mouth or in Boston or Chambana or any other "comfortable" place in the US - that's when I can argue against the imperialist view that must be inherent to my life.

Friday, February 26, 2010

Am I going to fall into an open grave, next?

So.

My boots did quite an admirable job sticking it to the Man (who, in this case, is Jack Frost) - they kicked off the salt stains, and the discoloring from being wet in the snow faded really quickly.

But apparently my waterproofing treatment isn't as affective as I hoped it'd be. In the past couple of days, where it's been just at freezing or a little above, and where there's been little-to-no coordinated effort to clear the streets of the three-to-five inches of slush (that's unfair. There's a lot of coordinated effort. Just in the Kremlin and along Rublevka [the equivalent of Sunset Boulevard]) - in these conditions they cannot cope. And they are perma-wet.

I walk along and the only thought in my head is:
Oh sweet and sour, what if I have trench foot? I don't want to develop trenchfoot. How can I prevent myself from contracting trenchfoot? Crap crap crap crap crap. Trenchfoot.
Yup.

So.

(PS. The title only makes sense in light of "All Quiet on the Western Front." I'm one of those literary types, after all.)

Thursday, February 25, 2010

I waited for a friend's train to come in.

Two men at Kursky Train Station were drunk, and passed out upon one another. It was 8:30 am. I wondered if they had missed their train, if they were waiting for someone, if they realized where they were (of course they did - they were somewhere warm). Their faces were leathered and pockmarked.

A policeman, handsome to compare, approached. He tapped one on the shoulder, then more vigorously, spoke, still harder shaking, until finally he began to slap the man's face. "Вставайте!" [Get up.]

The man grumbled and shrugged him off. The policeman called for backup and the drunk was suddenly awake. I couldn't hear but there were words exchanged.

I tried not to watch so obviously, even though everyone else was enjoying the spectacle. A woman - pig-faced - laughed in delight at "those horrid Caucasian drunk men" being carted away.

Another call for backup. The policeman pulled on the drunk's sleeve. "Get up. Stand up. Вставайте."

It didn't make the drunkards look any better, but every time he touched the men the police officer looked more and more ugly. Whatever the right way to coerce a drunk to stand up is, it can not consist of so many slaps and taps, so much effort to antagonize him into fighting back.

Another policeman, in a costume of a superior officer, prissy and demure, walked over. At the same time a cleaning lady edged closer, as if she was a collaborator betraying her undercover garb. Likely - just checking for signs of puke, searching for entertainment.

"Why are you touching him?" - the prissy officer.

The other explained. The drunk man made some off-color remark and the officer didn't say anything else when the policeman started to manhandle him again.

The pig lady was still laughing.

Other policemen arrived, and the drunk man allowed himself to be stood. Without hands upon him, he crashed to the asbestos floor tile - skin's sick thud echoing - and rubbed at his mouth to check for broken teeth. So slow, the water of his imagined ocean restricting his motions.

The first policeman got him back on his feet and to the door before he collapsed again. Meantime two of the backup had gotten the second man to stand - he seemed in better control than his friend - but he searched for some excuse to sit back down. "I forgot my hat."

"You don't have a hat."

The pig lady laughing.

"There's nothing over here." - from the cleaning lady-spy.

"Get up, you're blocking the door," said policeman the first.

The prissy officer stood there. The second drunk rubbed at his head, so thoughtfully, as if he needed to articulate an apology. They got his friend up and both of them out, and the pig lady was still laughing.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

And the magic starts...Now.

Owl City’s “Fireflies” is utterly banal. Not a good song.
Cause I get a thousand hugs
From ten thousand lightning bugs
First, I must question – is that a thousand per firefly, as in one million hugs total – or are 9,000 of them holding out? Either way it is creepy. Second, I must question – really? Really?

Anyway. I still get excited when I see it come on MTV UK at the gym and I think I know precisely why – the whole video is the kid playing on the synthesizer in his room while retro ‘80s toys (including the daemonic Speak&Spell of Dane Cook fame) dance around the room. At one point the kid turns on the ‘magic’ synthesizer button.

That’s cool.

Probably one of the reasons I think so is because of the He-Man movie, where the high music salesman thinks that The Key (a device that opens wormholes) is “one of those new Japanese synthesizers.”

But more so – and sorry for playing the theory card, here – it relates to what Yurchak talks about in Everything was Forever… when he describes a “bare” semiotic value in [Imaginary] Western products. What he means is that Soviet youth listened to Western rock&roll, and didn’t know what the Beatles, etc. were saying, and didn’t care to know the translation - the songs’ exotic value was enhanced by their unknowability.

I don’t think the idea of “bareness” has to be limited to that community, to that specific phenomenon. I like the "Fireflies" music video because of where my imaginatino takes the pressing of the "magic" button. The universality of a literary masterpiece is because it is infused with bareness, no matter how rich it is, like the empty space within the electron cloud. Readers hold ambiguities in their minds: even while cognitively recognizing what the author is saying, they add connotations and draw parallels, use allusions - "make it their own." In the process of reading, they transform both themselves and the object. (Thanks, Foucault.)

A riddle - what piece of literature can only ever be read one way?
False answer - An instruction manual.
True answer - None.

Just think about how hard it is to put together a child's toy at 2 am on Christmas morning, swearing at the badly-translated text. Next time, depart from the text (thanks, Goodnight Opus). And make sure you've plenty of extra screws on hand.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Choices!

I had a fantastic birthday. Lots of friends, lots of good times.

But I can't decide between the two coolest moments. Either:
1. Briullov: "When I get back to America I'll make the B.FLOW JACKET for you."

or

2. This email from Galinda: ps: you have some samoas in the freezer at my house. i am scared to try to mail food to you in russia...in soviet russia, food mail YOU
GAH! SO EXCITED!

What about a BFlow jacket...made of Samoas?!

No, that'd be no good. I would want to eat it. And then I couldn't wear it.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Shoot it in the face.


The Hotel Moskva
A.V. Shchusev
First opened 1935-demolished 2004
Zombie due for completion 2010(?)

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

But I won't cry. I don't want to.

It’s my birthday!

Since I’m good at pretending, I’m going to make believe that I actually wrote this post on my birthday, too, and beg off writing one. Instead, if you’d like you can
leave a comment that says what superpower you’d like to have and why.
I had a post vaguely similar to this back in P’mouth, but I want to play again. My superpower would be telepathy, not because I want to make illusions or have mind control or hear other people’s thoughts, but so I could immediately transmit the thing I’m trying to say into someone else’s mind and there’d be nothing lost in translation (from Frozicarese to any other language of the world).

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

It's Pointing at the Bank Sign!


Through the 1920s, 30s, 40s steel-frame construction and its ilk caused the city to rise up around the churches and cathedrals (foreground left). They no longer dominated the skyline, their spires lost in the sea of cement.

The Seven Sisters (background right) were planned to serve as orientation points for Homo Sovieticus - lighthouses of socialism, rather than markers of the Christian god. At some point in the process it was regulated (that passive construction is intentional; there are a couple of different arguments on whether it was a group decision or a Stalin/Beriia decision, etc.) so that every Sister would have a spire on top, piercing the sky, adding to the height, and entering the "Russian tradition" of spire-construction.

Since perestroika, the traditional building method is to get a concrete shell in place and then to stop. The money has fallen to the wayside (pocketside?) somewhere, and the cranes stand unmoving. They complete, at last, the system of vertical dominants in the city skyline.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Your Lord and Master Stands on High, Playing Track Seven

You may have been wondering why I haven’t spoken about the Colonial Invaders™ in a while. They have been away!

Actually, they’ve been away for quite a long time. It’s funny, because they were here all through last semester’s finals and the first week of the winter break (which is, here, mid-January to early February). Spring semester classes started on the 8th, but neither of the Invaders is back.

Their stuff is still all around: shoe rack in the private corridor, lots of bathroom supplies, three rolls of toilet paper (for some reason they don’t go through one roll and then start on the next. It has creeped me out all these months. For what purpose would one need to start a new roll of toilet paper when the old one hadn’t finished yet?)

Existential crises involving toilet paper aside, that’s why I haven’t been using my private-public forum to complain. I get home, and when I lock the outer door behind me, it’s like I have my own apartment! With a lot of young neighbors. And a fridge that is a stack of food items pressed up against the glass.

Edit: I should have realized the ironic twist the universe seems to be rocking these days. The morning after I wrote this post I woke up at 6:30 to the sound of a key turned in the latch, and showers run, and a toilet flushed. And then a key turned in the latch again.

When I got up for real real at 8 there was no sign that my lords and masters were here (their shoes weren’t in the hallway) except that their bathrobes are gone. Presumably on their bodies. But I haven’t heard any noises from their room. So. I don’t get it.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

My dreams am crazy, yo

While the bosses were all wheeling and dealing, we sat in lawn chairs by the hoods of our cars. Typically, one should sit on the hood of one's car, but when the car is bright pink, waxed, and worth more than the average cost of rearing an American baby, one opts to sit somewhere other than it.

"I'm sick of dodging the fuzz," my fellow driver -- either Briullov or Earl Grey, I'm not sure -- said. Puff on the cigarette. "I just got an interview to join an international corporation. Pay's about the same as here."

"Yeah," I said. "The pay's like the only thing we have going our way, here. Wait. Why'd you choose to apply to an international corporation?"

Earl-Briullov-Grey looked surprised. "I have an M.B.A. I thought you knew that."

"Naw," I flicked the cigarette into the snowdrift. "I'd love to get out. Enough of all this...I could..."

A shot fired. We looked over, but it was an organized thing, everyone was still milling around. Except for the body twitching on the ground. The boss came our way. "Millie's old spot is open. E-B-G, you want it?"

He looked up at the boss and - so calmly - said, "No. I actually got a job offer in the real world. I've gotta give you my two weeks."

Boss didn't miss a beat. "Icarus?"

I looked at E-B-G, who didn't move, but from whom I could hear some emanation of thought à la "get out-you know you want to-get out," then back at the boss. "Yeah, I'll take it."

Gimme a Glass Shoe and I'll Marry It

In honor of Valentine's Day, today's post is tied to beauty.

Architectural criticism seems always to go in favor of the past, never for present building trends. I'm myself sometimes guilty of this. In the critics' and my own defense, some modern architectural is horrible. No good. Very very very bad. Like the new building of the theater "Etc."


Then I tried to think if I saw any modern construction that was pretty. I don't know if this is classically beautiful or truly, aesthetically pleasing - I don't feel like giving it an intellectual parsing - at the very least, I don't think it's quite as crazy as other things. And I will thus indulge my gut inclination to say "pretty."


To be perfectly honest, this is actually a turn of the century (1902-1903) mansion by the extremely famous (which is a relative term, as I'm sure most of my American readers don't know him) architect, Shekhtel'. I consider it a modern building inasmuch as the glass has been replaced, the plaster replaced five thousand times over, the interior redone...if both external and internal form have changed, and function has changed, how can there still be a monument?

Don't worry, I won't try to answer that question here. Yet. :D

Saturday, February 13, 2010

I wonder What Else I Can't Do Without Written Permission

The above actually is the monument over which I got so excited, and about which I later saw an exhibit at the museum. Hurray! Now I can do research on ideological monuments and their meanings! (And given the ideological clout of this statue, and the amount it’s been parodied, you can understand why I’ve been thinking about Schroedinger’s Cat.)

Because the monument actually was restored (something I honestly never expected to happen) and because the sculptor, Vera Ignat’evna Mukhina, was a superstar in a well-known-to-be chauvinist society (there were children’s books about her!) I’ve included her in the Totentanz research even though she’s not really an architect.

Well. I’ve been trying to include her in the research. I was up at the state arts and literature archives, where I’ve been getting some good work done ever since Phoenix helped me figure it out, and I asked for the catalogue on Mukhina. I skim through it, I choose some entries that look like promising starting points, and bring my order form back to the main desk. The archivist looks at my form and says: “Oh, Mukhina. I’m sorry, I would have told you if I noticed which catalogue you were using – the Mukhina archive is closed without specific written permission from her son.”

He gave me the son’s address and I’ll have…someone…either the Totentanz office, or the architectural institute, write me a letter of introduction and plea (with lots of stamps and seals attached). First I sent an email to Prof F to see if it isn’t unheard of to ask for polnoe razreshenie [complete access] to the archive – otherwise I need to go back and list out every single document I want to look at. Maybe I can do that without going back: I’ll just write, “Document 1, Document 2, Document 3...”

Friday, February 12, 2010

Either pair of pants is WAY too tight.

Consider this groan-worthy performance of Journey's "Midnight Train (Don't Stop Believing)."

Compare it to the heart-pumping (and nausea-inducing) performance of The Killers "All These Things That I've Done."

Now, ignoring the fact that B.Flow is 1) obviously not lip syncing 2) could stand to have an earpiece in place so he could better hear the pitch he's on, The Killers rock! It's fun to watch them in concert. It would be fun to watch it even if they didn't have the nausea-inducing camera work.

Journey, on the other hand, look like they're about to pee their collective and oh-so-'80s-tight jeans.

I feel relatively assured that this comparison is more-or-less "objective," despite my "secret" fanboy feelings towards The Killers. The other night, one of the other Totentanzers said: "I don't think I've ever met someone who likes The Killers as much as you do."

Be that as it may. The difference in crowd energy, and the relationship of energy<-->performance, is palpable. There's only one moment I wish that The Killers concert was more like Journey's, and that's at the end of "A Dustland Fairytale," when B.Flow steps out into the crowd and a group of some seven girls turn into monekys, he into a tropical rainforest. They jump and swing and bite the bananas hanging in clumps from his branches...too graphic?

Well, little girls, SO WAS YOUR DISPLAY TOO GRAPHIC! There comes a point when it's no longer the energy of the crowd, no longer "here's a moment to get a picture with this great entertainer," and it starts to be gross and vulgar voyeurism.

This is still with them relatively restraining themselves. Then, song over, they kiss and hug and pawn at him. I see his lips moving: "Okay, alright, okay," and the awkward "enough, now, ladies" smile on his face...eventually he escapes the zombie hold. There's a difference between showing excitement over a celebrity and making a complete and utter fool of yourself.

(I'm just jealous because I couldn't be one of those girls? I'm racist against the horde of white people in designer polo shirts?)

No. If I remember, I'll edit this to add the Milan Kundera quote about the West's allergy to the vulgar, as opposed to the East's allergy to the kitsch.

ALSO! Wif sent this my way. I am not alone!

It's a mohlett?

I was going to let Wif's comment go the other day but then my own mother sent me an email, asking: "Who's your friend?" (in the picture about the stranger walking in synch with me.) So I must explain: I wasn't in the photo!

That picture's actually me being a creeper last summer - I didn't have a mullet yet, and I knew people who didn't believe me when I said that Russians like the khvost [tail, or, figuratively, mullet]. I also couldn't pass up the opportunity to photograph to guys acting their parts: the white, blond kid dressed all in white; the dark skinned, black haired guy wearing a black suit. Colonialist angels and demons...

Anyway. I hope you haven't forgotten what I look like (or that you'd look to the right if you did), but I decided that since there have been some variations on the theme lately I'd share some emo-kid-self-taken-photographs. (The only redeeming grace, in my mind, is that there is no bathroom mirror in either.)


I had a mustache for the first twenty-five days of the New Year.


I upgraded my mullet for a korotkii, shirokii irokez [a wide, short mohawk.] I think it looks like the fashion mullet I've always wanted.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Maybe this is what R Kelly's Song's About

I consider the number 42.

I’ve been thinking about the post about revolutions I previously posted.

I’ve also been thinking about Schroedinger’s cat, the thought experiment. (Instead of explaining it, I’ll just link wikipedia.) To reduce it: the cat is dead and alive.

Science.

I question, as always, who would even want to do that to the poor cat.

Anyway, since I’ve been reading a book Briullov lent me, Everything was Forever, Until it Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation, I’ve been thinking about both of those strands together. Now, I could get into all sorts of theory on speech acts and performances, or into historic details about post-Soviet era, but that’s boring for the reader construct in my head, first; and in case I develop this idea later on I don’t want someone to be like, “Hey, you stole that from this website, Frozen Icarus!”

Like anyone really reads… Not going there. Besides the point. Let me finally tell you what I’ve been thinking instead of just circling it like one of the Colonial Invaders™’ hairs are perpetually circling the drain in the tub.

To what extent can we extend Schroedinger’s thought experiment to the philosophy of human intent? Let me give you an example from my life. There was a girl at a café the other day who looked just like an old friend of mine, Artemis. I looked over at this girl, and I thought, “Huh. I should write to Artemis and say hi. I wonder how she’s doing with the cowboys in Wyoming.”

Before that thought crossed my mind, the possibility didn’t exist. From that moment on, I was Schroedinger’s cat, both writing the email and not writing it. I created my own little quantum universe to confuse the Sliders – who’ll get trapped in that alternate reality, not realizing that it is the one that shares all the similarities with ours except it has no Icarus-Artemis email connection.

Which direction does this take the question about revolutions, the apocalypse, Things that Go Bump™, and Damien [IT’S ALL FOR YOU!!1!Exclamation point1! --noose snaps neck--]? Much as I hate binaries, I can’t think of a third option.
1. We have dreams of The Resistance because that’s the MK Ultra of our Undisclosed Desires.* That is – my previous post was correct; we dream about revolutions and apocalypse because we WANT them to happen, and the expression of those dreams is us letting off steam.
Future historians can use these cultural artifacts to describe what (certain individuals in the media construct of) our (generalized Americo-Western one of many) society fears.
2. We can only express those things because they’re not real to us. We leave the theater and laugh at ourselves for being scared. There can be no zombies, no demon-orphan-children-of-American-ambassadors, no flash floods that destroy New York in Apocalypse Porn™.
Future historians can theorize about how we use these cultural artifacts as speech acts – because we use them to entertain ourselves, we’ve profaned them, we’ve made them un-scary, we’ve tamed them.

War Games (the Matthew Broderick movie) was a comedy, was it not? Wasn’t Strangelove a satire? Dark satire, to be sure – but would the movie-going public have been able to stomach either movie if they really believed the rhetoric of the Cold War, of Star Wars?

The obverse: I can’t think of any good late-Soviet-era movies that fill the same role as Strangelove or War Games. Does that mean the Cold War rhetoric was embraced as The Professor’s nostalgic commentary (about learning the names of major cruisers in the US Naval Fleet as a kindergartener, etc.) suggests it was?

*All Muse songs.

ROD

Davai-ka sigraem v shakhmaty. - How about a nice game of chess?
Net. Global’naia termoiadernaia voina. - No. Global thermonuclear warfare.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Apparently the Saints went Marching

Continuing that post about losing things...

I have been told I am un-American. This is likely true. The latest round of insults, however, don't relate to any particlar un-patriotic activity (unless you consider skipping out on the Superbowl to be so.)

In my defense, kick off was at 2:30 am. And the reason why I'm writing in my blog right now and not working is because I'm taking a quick break from the rush-rush-rush pretty-making-itude of the papers I'm writing for The Professor, which I used as the excuse for needing something resembling sleep.

Anyway. No Superbowl for Ikar.

The weird bit about this situation is that even though football is nowhere near my favorite sport, I still feel like I missed some huge cultural event. I felt the same thing when I was three months shy of voting in the 2004 presidential elections; when I was in Piter for the 2007 Red Sox World Series victory; etc. etc.

In the purest sense of the word, I suppose it is just nostalgia (a Vulgate Latin from Greek "nostos" (return home) + "algos" (pain, suffering)).

Again, no point to this post. No driving thesis. Just words.

My god, I'm turning into Satan's chatbox.

Monday, February 8, 2010

My hat has no corners. No corners has my hat.


I lost my hat!

This is sad. I liked that hat. I should have known our time together would be short, though; it had fallen out of my pocket before. I had just been lucky enough to notice and pick it back up.

Not this time.

It's quite disconcerting to lose an object. I noticed that I didn't have it when I was leaving the metro, looking for Phoenix with one eye, the scouring for the hat even as the doors closed again, my fingers blindly typing her number on my phone...all of a sudden my world was crazed. I was trapped in the Medusa Cascade, a second out of sync with the rest of the universe...

This is neither funny nor revelatory. The replacement hat doesn't have the same magic as its predecessor. Yet.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

I have a good ten years of this ahead of me

I need to think faster on my feet.

Yesterday I was confronted by an unpleasant situation that I couldn't negotiate because I - naively - expect humans to be polite individuals.

The situation reminded me of one I got myself into last year, at a banquet. A dissertation candidate was speaking about her research into European sailors in the Caribbean. I tried to establish myself as an intelligent person, and asked: "Have you been able to find more materials from ships logs, or captains' diaries,products lists? What sources have you been using?"

The girl gave me a withering look, and said, "I'm using primary sources. You see, there are two kinds of sources: primary, which are materials from the time period; and secondary, which are from previous researchers."

Step One: Peel Frozen Icarus' body away from the eighteen-wheeler that just blind-sided him.

Step Two: Reject all of the snotty comments that immediately come to mind, like: "Actually that's a reductive account of sources that doesn't call into account traces versus sources and historical errors from memory and the like," or something more blunt, like: "That wasn't my question, you [insert-derogatory-term-here]."

Step Three: Find a new conversation before facial muscles fail and the sneer developing reaches the surface.

Yesterday, I was introduced to a couple at a meet and greet, and explained my subject of investigation in some two or three sentences. The pair immediately launched into an attack of my methods, assuming that I am manipulating my sources and trying to prove "That Soviet architects think exactly like us."

The look of shock was apparently evident on my face (Step One). They "reassured" me: "Oh, we always talk about methodological questions like this, we weren't trying to piss all over your project."

Step Two: Faced with so many rejected possibilities, all I could say was, "No, they were legitimate concerns. I'll keep them in mind as I continue my research."

Step Three: Briullov arrived. Hurray!

I wish I had been quick-witted enough to say something veiled but still political, à la: "Please let me know if you still have those concerns after you've actually read my work!"

Friday, February 5, 2010

Walk walk fashion baby push it...


Talking about "rules of the road" - in Russia, from a foreigner's point of view - quickly devolves into - frankly - racist comments about how "Russians never smile," or "Russians always shove me out of the way," and the ilk.

I'm not sure how to answer the first claim. I don't think that people in other major metropolitan areas are going to smile at me, either, though. As for the second - I definitely know that if a person is walking too slowly down a crowded New York or even Boston sidewalk, they're going to get pushed out of the way.

But for all of those "rules" over which we can ruminate when we're not being back-seat walkers to ourselves, there are laws that act on an intrinsic level. Laws the likes of which we'd never consider if we didn't come upon a violation of one. For example
Do not walk at the same pace as the stranger next to you.
I think it was equally awkward for both of us this morning, Mr. Walking-Away-From-Tverskaya-Guy.

Somehow it's even creepier than thinking someone walking behind you is following you.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

I don't care how many Art Ross Trophies You Have

Bobby Orr, who apparently is now a Yoda-like, senile old man who lives in my parents' neighborhood (in my subconscious), drove a golf cart around the front yard.

I called him over and convinced him to stop. Mr. Orr was very cranky at needing to pause. He refused to listen. He wanted to keep DRIVING! Feel the road (or snow drift, or grass). Feel the wind, the plastic of the golf cart's gas pedal.

"Wouldn't it be fun to drive along the street until you get back to your house, and go inside, and take a nap, Mr. Orr?"

"No." [I needed to learn how to refrain from forming yes-no questions.] A wide smile upon his face - "The Frosts have a huge lawn. I'm going to go ride on that!"

"Go home, Mr. Orr!" This, watching him putter back into the woods, wishing there were such things as people-leashes.

Wait a second. There are! Oh, sneaky subconscious.

I've long bemoaned the fact that I was handcuffed (velcro, Mickey Mouse pattern) to my father when we went around in Montreal. I think that event has single-handedly caused any neurosis you might identify in my fractured pscyhe.

Well, Mr. Subconscious, you're not taking me without a fight!

Monday, February 1, 2010

Houston, the red button's flashing again...

Wer of Wer&Wif fame just clued me in to a major problem.

I have no opportunity to get my grubby paws on Girl Scout cookies this year!

How will I survive with Thin Mints!? Tagalongs!? SAMOAS!! Oh, Samoas, we had it good, we had a nice long run, but every good thing must come to an end...

I wasn't planning on going this weekend, but now I must go get some kartoshki from Cookie Monster. Om nom nom nom.

(PS - I had sushi with Briullov last night. Can you guess what song I was singing before, during, and after? OH YES!)