Thursday, October 23, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
Election Debate
Dad-dad: I'm glad that you're voting for McCain now.
K: I never said that.
DD: You're voting for Obama?
K: [cagily] I haven't made up my mind yet.
DD: Well, now Palin's in trouble for firing her brother-in-law
K: Yeah Troopergate. Whatever. She's not the first governor or mayor or president to fire someone for her own self interest. She's just one of the few who got caught.
DD: Did you see her on the debate?
K: Bits and pieces. I try not to watch too many things that will automatically piss me off. I heard she did pretty well, compared with what was expected. But then, those expectations were pretty low.
DD: Yeah, she did OK. Hey, do you watch Saturday Night Live?
K: Yeah.
DD: It's usually on too late for me to watch.
K: Well, yeah, it doesn't start till 11:35.
D: Did you know they did one on Thursday night?
K: Yeah, they're going to be doing them on Thursday nights up till Election Day.
D: Oh yeah? I didn't know that. Have you seen that woman who imitates Palin?
K: Tina Fey, yeah. She's a freaking riot.
DD: She's pretty funny.
K: I think she may do a better version of Palin than Palin does herself.
DD: Oh yeah. Well, I wasn't watching it...
K: [interrupting] Of course not.
DD: ...but Doris who lives downstairs?
K: [cluelessly] Yeah?
DD: Well, she was going to watch it on Thursday and she wondered what time it was on, and I told her 9:30.
K: Yeah, that's when it was scheduled.
DD: Only she went to watch it and turns on her T.V., only it turned out it was on at 10:30.
K: [confused] OK.
DD: How 'bout that. Did you hear that she's now going to be on Saturday Night Live herself?
K: Who? Doris?
DD: [patiently] No. Sarah Palin.
K: I knew they were in negotiations for her to go on and spoof herself a bit. I guess they finally confirmed it.
DD: You knew?
K: Yeah, pretty much.
DD: You really do know everything, huh?
K: Pretty much.
DD: [laughing]
K: [laughing because he's laughing]
DD: [still laughing] Touché
K: I never said that.
DD: You're voting for Obama?
K: [cagily] I haven't made up my mind yet.
DD: Well, now Palin's in trouble for firing her brother-in-law
K: Yeah Troopergate. Whatever. She's not the first governor or mayor or president to fire someone for her own self interest. She's just one of the few who got caught.
DD: Did you see her on the debate?
K: Bits and pieces. I try not to watch too many things that will automatically piss me off. I heard she did pretty well, compared with what was expected. But then, those expectations were pretty low.
DD: Yeah, she did OK. Hey, do you watch Saturday Night Live?
K: Yeah.
DD: It's usually on too late for me to watch.
K: Well, yeah, it doesn't start till 11:35.
D: Did you know they did one on Thursday night?
K: Yeah, they're going to be doing them on Thursday nights up till Election Day.
D: Oh yeah? I didn't know that. Have you seen that woman who imitates Palin?
K: Tina Fey, yeah. She's a freaking riot.
DD: She's pretty funny.
K: I think she may do a better version of Palin than Palin does herself.
DD: Oh yeah. Well, I wasn't watching it...
K: [interrupting] Of course not.
DD: ...but Doris who lives downstairs?
K: [cluelessly] Yeah?
DD: Well, she was going to watch it on Thursday and she wondered what time it was on, and I told her 9:30.
K: Yeah, that's when it was scheduled.
DD: Only she went to watch it and turns on her T.V., only it turned out it was on at 10:30.
K: [confused] OK.
DD: How 'bout that. Did you hear that she's now going to be on Saturday Night Live herself?
K: Who? Doris?
DD: [patiently] No. Sarah Palin.
K: I knew they were in negotiations for her to go on and spoof herself a bit. I guess they finally confirmed it.
DD: You knew?
K: Yeah, pretty much.
DD: You really do know everything, huh?
K: Pretty much.
DD: [laughing]
K: [laughing because he's laughing]
DD: [still laughing] Touché
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Final Diagnosis
circumlocution \sir-kuhm-loh-KYOO-shuhn\, noun:
The use of many words to express an idea that might be expressed by few; indirect or roundabout language.
Finally - a term for my condition!
I knew there had to be a diagnosis for me out there somewhere.
Besides nutter.
And goddess of all I survey.
Because those are just too obvious.
The use of many words to express an idea that might be expressed by few; indirect or roundabout language.
Finally - a term for my condition!
I knew there had to be a diagnosis for me out there somewhere.
Besides nutter.
And goddess of all I survey.
Because those are just too obvious.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Metaphorically Speaking
Every year, English teachers from across the country compile and submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphor found in high school students essays. Here below for your guffawing pleasure is a list of the top 25.
They better as you go on.
No doubt I came up with equally unintentionally hysterical verbiage in my time. Those poor kids were probably so earnest thinking they were crafting the greatest thing since Hemingway. I can actually feel the intensity behind some of these efforts. That did not stop me from laughing into a wheezing state as I read them. And on some of them, the tongue-in-cheek, smart ass attitude comes through loud and clear. These are crazy awesome funny.
Poor fools. They keep on the windy side of care.
My favorites? Three, six, eight, fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, nineteen is priceless, twenty-two is awesome, twenty-four came straight from the Cohen brothers oeuvre, I'm sure.
1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master®.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free®.
3. He spoke with wisdom that only comes from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of e. coli, and he was room temperature Canadian beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty® bag filled with vegetable soup.
11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and JEOPARDY! comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other
from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.
16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.
18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But, unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
What are your favorites? Any you've heard yourself that you'd like to share?
They better as you go on.
No doubt I came up with equally unintentionally hysterical verbiage in my time. Those poor kids were probably so earnest thinking they were crafting the greatest thing since Hemingway. I can actually feel the intensity behind some of these efforts. That did not stop me from laughing into a wheezing state as I read them. And on some of them, the tongue-in-cheek, smart ass attitude comes through loud and clear. These are crazy awesome funny.
Poor fools. They keep on the windy side of care.
My favorites? Three, six, eight, fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, nineteen is priceless, twenty-two is awesome, twenty-four came straight from the Cohen brothers oeuvre, I'm sure.
1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master®.
2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free®.
3. He spoke with wisdom that only comes from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.
4. She grew on him like she was a colony of e. coli, and he was room temperature Canadian beef.
5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.
6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.
7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.
8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.
9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.
10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty® bag filled with vegetable soup.
11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and JEOPARDY! comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.
12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.
13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.
14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other
from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.
15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.
16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.
17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.
18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.
19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.
20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But, unlike Phil, this plan just might work.
21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.
22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.
23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.
24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.
25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.
What are your favorites? Any you've heard yourself that you'd like to share?
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Oh, ALL RIGHT!
I will always remember 2002 as a Very Bad Year. Not the entire year - January to May rocked the house. I had a great job as promotion manager at Bantam Dell Publishers, a division of Random House in NYC, that I loved. I was enjoying my single late 20s in the city and, most especially fabulous, I took myself to Italy that April.
But then July arrived and I entered an extended period of unemployment, heartache, drama, and woe.
Ever since, I have looked back at that year as a watershed. I have railed against the Lord for those events and many that followed. I have begged to know why my life and plans alone were sacrificed for family needs, why (when I finally got my current job) I had been relegated to an uneventful job where my training and experience had no place to flourish, why I was continually blocked from changing my circumstances professionally, why I wasn't allowed to go back to the publishing industry I loved, why I had a job but no longer a career. Why, why, why.
This morning, as I was again late for work due to - stuff - I was hanging up my cell phone after alerting my boss to my delay and found myself marveling (not for the first time) at my good fortune. Had I managed to shift from the creative side of my agency to the account side (as I had endeavored to due two years ago in an effort to re-enable my career), I'm certain I would have been fired long ago for absenteeism or continued lateness or some other (probably valid) reason caused by the erratic life I've had this year with my mother's long-term illness and hospitalization. But my boss has been unbelievably supportive, allowing me to make up time and working with my erratic schedule whenever possible, and she and my colleagues have repeatedly pitched in to cover my account when I could not.
Then today, I read that Random House has been hemorrhaging big name authors lately. It's been having trouble for some time, evidenced most greatly when parent company Bertelsmann's CEO was ousted last year. Now RH has lost several recognizable names, two of whom (Iris Johansen and Tami Hoag) were directly managed by Bantam Dell. Big time authors. Besides being a longtime reader of these two authors, I had also worked on book campaigns for both of them - both hardcover and mass-market books - while employed at Bantam Dell.
And I thought: Oh. Crap.
After reading that news update this morning, my brain quickly flipped through the last six years. I could see how loosing my job at Bantam Dell in 2002, while devastating, was infinitely better than being there (or somewhere else in publishing) today and facing the current marketplace, especially considering our national economic meltdown. Instead, I have 5 years invested in my current company, the longest I ever been at a job in my whole life. I'm pulling down a higher salary (however limiting) than anything I could have maintained in publishing (finances in the publishing world are typically about 30% below other industries), which is especially helpful now that I'm supporting my mother. And while there will be shocks felt everywhere from these economy issues, here at least, there's less immediate fear of job loss. For now.
During those six years, I had to believe that the Lord had a plan for it all. How could I be a good Christian if I didn't? There had to be a reason for my suffering and sacrifice, a purpose I simply could not see but that might someday be revealed to me. I knew the lingo. I got the theology. I mouthed the platitudes. I had to be patient. I had to wait.
I really suck at patience and waiting.
It's much harder to believe in the dark emptiness of an aching night filled with pain. I still railed. I still begged. I cultivated festering anger and dissatisfaction. And that 's not all in the past tense. But in that revelatory moment this morning, I could see how the Lord worked through these trials and personal losses to set me up for what's happening now. My heart might still yearn for things lost that I valued so greatly, but I could now see and be grateful for His unfathomable, far-flung vision so massively greater than my own.
Well, maybe not too grateful.
I could feel Him smiling at me this morning, that gentle, knowing look when a recalcitrant child finally gets it. I could hear Him in my head offering a mild rebuke with a slightly taunting "See?" (though I'm betting the taunting aspect came more from my own inner voice than a holy discourse with my creator.) To which I, of course, responded in my normal, humble, repentant (ahem) way -
"Oh, ALL RIGHT!"
But then July arrived and I entered an extended period of unemployment, heartache, drama, and woe.
Ever since, I have looked back at that year as a watershed. I have railed against the Lord for those events and many that followed. I have begged to know why my life and plans alone were sacrificed for family needs, why (when I finally got my current job) I had been relegated to an uneventful job where my training and experience had no place to flourish, why I was continually blocked from changing my circumstances professionally, why I wasn't allowed to go back to the publishing industry I loved, why I had a job but no longer a career. Why, why, why.
This morning, as I was again late for work due to - stuff - I was hanging up my cell phone after alerting my boss to my delay and found myself marveling (not for the first time) at my good fortune. Had I managed to shift from the creative side of my agency to the account side (as I had endeavored to due two years ago in an effort to re-enable my career), I'm certain I would have been fired long ago for absenteeism or continued lateness or some other (probably valid) reason caused by the erratic life I've had this year with my mother's long-term illness and hospitalization. But my boss has been unbelievably supportive, allowing me to make up time and working with my erratic schedule whenever possible, and she and my colleagues have repeatedly pitched in to cover my account when I could not.
Then today, I read that Random House has been hemorrhaging big name authors lately. It's been having trouble for some time, evidenced most greatly when parent company Bertelsmann's CEO was ousted last year. Now RH has lost several recognizable names, two of whom (Iris Johansen and Tami Hoag) were directly managed by Bantam Dell. Big time authors. Besides being a longtime reader of these two authors, I had also worked on book campaigns for both of them - both hardcover and mass-market books - while employed at Bantam Dell.
And I thought: Oh. Crap.
After reading that news update this morning, my brain quickly flipped through the last six years. I could see how loosing my job at Bantam Dell in 2002, while devastating, was infinitely better than being there (or somewhere else in publishing) today and facing the current marketplace, especially considering our national economic meltdown. Instead, I have 5 years invested in my current company, the longest I ever been at a job in my whole life. I'm pulling down a higher salary (however limiting) than anything I could have maintained in publishing (finances in the publishing world are typically about 30% below other industries), which is especially helpful now that I'm supporting my mother. And while there will be shocks felt everywhere from these economy issues, here at least, there's less immediate fear of job loss. For now.
During those six years, I had to believe that the Lord had a plan for it all. How could I be a good Christian if I didn't? There had to be a reason for my suffering and sacrifice, a purpose I simply could not see but that might someday be revealed to me. I knew the lingo. I got the theology. I mouthed the platitudes. I had to be patient. I had to wait.
I really suck at patience and waiting.
It's much harder to believe in the dark emptiness of an aching night filled with pain. I still railed. I still begged. I cultivated festering anger and dissatisfaction. And that 's not all in the past tense. But in that revelatory moment this morning, I could see how the Lord worked through these trials and personal losses to set me up for what's happening now. My heart might still yearn for things lost that I valued so greatly, but I could now see and be grateful for His unfathomable, far-flung vision so massively greater than my own.
Well, maybe not too grateful.
I could feel Him smiling at me this morning, that gentle, knowing look when a recalcitrant child finally gets it. I could hear Him in my head offering a mild rebuke with a slightly taunting "See?" (though I'm betting the taunting aspect came more from my own inner voice than a holy discourse with my creator.) To which I, of course, responded in my normal, humble, repentant (ahem) way -
"Oh, ALL RIGHT!"
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