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sincere thanks for reading, commenting, and being generally rad in 2005. i say: less terrorism and natural disaster, more love and harmony for all in 2006!
please?
have a righteous and SAFE evening, everyone. see you next year...
i was just reading alice's post about her struggle to find time to write amid, well, LIFE, and felt more than a twinge of self-recognition therein. whether you stay at home with your kid(s) or work in an office all day, or don't have any kids and work in an office (or restaurant, or chain store, or sewage plant, or etcetera) all day, its damn difficult to wrangle the time and energy to produce substantive writing. which is, umm, sort of why i have a blog. cough.
but my point and purpose here is: to those of you that do write -- on a blog, in a magazine or newspaper or zine, published or unpublished, public or private, producing poetry or fiction or memoir or anything at all -- how precisely do you find time to do that? do you have any insights or suggestions for those of us who are perhaps a bit more, umm, time-management-challenged? tips? anyone? anything? no, really -- ANYTHING?
see also: part of my uberlist resolutionfest is to write 6 poems i like this year. and though that number may seem small to some, it looms before me like a great big flaming wall of EXPECTED FAILURE.
help.
taking a page from styro, newly absorbed into The BORG (aka The LJ):
Four Jobs You’ve Had in Your Life: DJ; Bookstore Clerk; University Instructor; Writer/Editor.
Four Movies You Could Watch Over and Over: Showgirls; Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle; The Royal Tenenbaums; Manos: The Hands of Fate (MST3K version, natch).
Four Places You’ve Lived: Detroit; Washington DC; Baltimore; East Lansing (MI).
Four TV Shows You Love to Watch: LOST; Buffy; The Amazing Race (until this past “family” season, when they screwed it all up. BASTARDS.); The Wire.
Four Places You’ve Been on Vacation: Cairo, Egypt; Amsterdam; Athens, Greece; Vegas, Baby.
Four Websites You Visit Daily: sweetney; flickr; LJ; del.icio.us.
Four of Your Favorite Foods: mac+cheese; licorice (red); pad thai; vegetable korma.
Four Places You’d Rather Be: anyplace warm and sunny with M_, jamie and friends..
Four Albums You Can’t Live Without: Pavement “Wowee Zowee”; Elliott Smith, “XO”; Neutral Milk Hotel “In An Aeroplane Over The Sea”; The Shins, “Chutes Too Narrow”.
so i got an email this evening from danielle, daring me (though not double dog daring me... pussy) to participate in some sort of new year's resolutionfest called The Uberlist. and though reluctant initially, i've ultimately decided that i feel good enough about me inside me to reach higher, run farther, and publicly post my list of demands of the new year. 2006 better fucking step up, man, or i'm gonna be pissed.
however, i'm not going to be peer pressured into setting up a fixed number of goals to achieve (Ms. Dare Ya is at number 106 on her list... and apparently INSANE); i'll just list as many accomplishments -- both large and small -- as seems appropriate, relevant, and personally useful, adding to the to-do list below over the next couple of days as i think of things.
fyi, danielle's uberlist intro:
The goal isn't to accomplish every single item, or to judge myself by the amount I am able to accomplish (admirably noted by my complete failure to do much of anything last year), rather to remind myself that there are small things I can do on a regular basis nourish my spirit and soul. I hope that posting the list and keeping regular track of my progress incites me to do more this year.
alrighty then. with all that in mind, i say: let's do this thing.
my uberlist, 2006:
#
Wired News: Best (and Worst) Gadgets of 2005
because i'm an enormous flaming GEEK.
#
The Book Of Cool
for you skaters/bikers/etc out there. some very amazing stuff.
#
Top Ten National Geographic News Stories of 2005
includes “ligers”!
#
REUTERS Showcase
pictures of the year from REUTERS.
#
IFILM - Viral Video: Best of 2005
oh webby goodness.
#
Baldo: People, please, no more sleep wars.
a-frickin'-men.
#
Ready. Sit. Read! Target Book Club.
target, how can you continue to be so awesome? (also note j. otto seibold illustration (ala mr. lunch!)!)
#
now that's funny.
per usual, patrick's xmas kicked the holy living shit out of mine (and yours, i'd wager).
one of these days i'm totally crashing a hughes family gathering. and i want to wear the OMAR hat.
with a very special holiday piece on zombies vs. ninjas (the pictured zombie was one of my xmas gifts from jamie. and nothing says i love both you and the war on christmas like a handmade zombie, my friends...).
my site was recently accessed by someone performing this google search.
again i am left asking: what the hell is wrong with you people?!?!
i love my city.
slack mofo that i am, a holiday vacation isn't considered merry or complete by yours truly without obsessive television consumption. the present fixation du jour? The [Motherfucking] Dog Whisperer! (okay, so the series title is a little retarded. and yes, i did add the whole 'motherfucking' bit to emphasize the hardcoreness (or dogcoreness, if you will) of the dude in question.... but o ye of little faith, T[M]DW will make you believe.... and then rub your very sensitive nose in it.)
besides his [i was going to say 'animal magnetism' here, but then decided that stooping that low grossed even me out] spicy, south-of-the-border hottness [okay, so that phrasing may be even slightly more repulsive. i'm sorry.], dog whisperer dude Cesar Milan turns evil, snarling, frothing demon dogs into mellow, obedient throw pillows in minutes. i'm serious as a freaking coronary -- literal minutes. in one episode, they show T[M]DW turn a dog almost instantly supplicant simply by setting his steely, canine-bewitching gaze upon the pooch (who, receiving T[M]DW's Evil Eye, then rolled on its back in full-on I Give The Fuck Up BECAUSE YOU SO ROCK submission) -- such is the preternatural puppy-mastery of T[M]DW.
i've been applying T[M]DW's techniques with Cujo Truman the past few days, and the change has been quite seriously astonishing. like, we're able to have him in the same room with us without having to, you know, scream bloodcurdlingly at him every 3.5 seconds because he's trying to inhale one of the cats or something. all of a sudden he's noticeably calmer, he listens to us like the underling he's supposed to be, and he's stopped deploying the chompy pirana-mouth thing he's had going on relative to many of our appendages since we got him over a year ago. friends, its a Festivus miracle!
so if you have one of them dog thingies, i strongly recommend you devote several hours to obsessive Dog Whisperer viewing this week. because if the human race is to remain the ruling species, we must surely continue to assert our dominion over the canines among us and remain forever vigilant, so that they don't turn rogue and start secretly plotting the dog revolution.
though santa supposedly consumes cookies at each and every child's household all around the world, i'd still wager that between the two of us i've eaten more sheer tonage of baked goods in the past 48 hours.
isn't this aroundabout when we're all supposed to retire to the vomitorium?
and i put up those lights just to taunt you.
EDIT: nope, the joke just isn't getting old for me yet, folks.
thought some of you would get a kick out of this...
there are many reasons to love woot... besides the obvious very cool one-day deals on stuff, their truth-in-advertising-type descriptions of products give me the giggle-snorts:
Mediocre Under Cabinet CD Player
$29.99
...Yes, the manufacturer is mediocre. Some people might refer to the GPX/York brandname as “craptacular”, but we prefer the more optimistic “affordabletacular”. Besides, if you're gonna get chili sauce or sawdust or bone fragments* all over the place, you don't want your premium German-made audiophile system getting splattered in the process. From “Under My Thumb” to “Down Under”, “Under the Sea” to “Under Pressure”, the D830 keeps your cheap thrills on the down-low.
“affordabletacular.” heh.
EDIT: i just noticed this: *bone fragments?!?!
here's the deal: i'm going to be profiled on mommybloggers.com beginning the week of january 9th, and the Gorgeous Ladies Of Mommybloggers (or, heh, GLOM) are soliciting reader comments about lil' ol' moi for some sort of lovefest they're devising. i say all of this only as set-up for the following email thread sent to me by the irrepressible styro (this is all going somewhere, don't worry):
okay folks, now hear this:
if you ever, ever listen to me about ONE THING, let it be the following: IMMEDIATELY RENT THE FILM “RIZE.”
The film features an abundance of dance footage, which in a fictional context or without benefit of cultural background would feel excessive. But LaChappelle's celebratory approach to the material, which follows several groups of dancers as they reveal their philosophical manifestos, relishes the social and political underpinnings that make their movements not mere choreographic wonders, but almost unwitting expressions of rage, frustration and liberation. The dancing adopts proportions larger than the set of circumstances from which it came – and which will no doubt be shared by many of the film's most dedicated audiences – and achieves a certain, human poetry; viewers will find themselves not just bouncing to the beats of the music, but vibrating with excitement at the prospect that these people endured some of the worst conditions available in America and triumphed, resoundingly, to great personal and professional success.
There have been other films about dancing, about competitions and about achieving victory over insurmountable odds. But the key difference between that film and Rize is that there are no tangible victories for LaChappelle's subjects. The film doesn't culM_te in a cathartic victory that validates their efforts, but witnesses the transcendence of these individuals over the adversity of their upbringing and a much more ambiguous “win” over the destructive pressures of their environment.*
[-Todd Gilchrist]
by far the best film i've seen in... forever. unbelievably moving and multi-layered. imagine if Do The Right Thing were a film about a modern dance movement (it'll make sense when you see it). were i still back teaching at Michigan State, i'd be using this as part of a discussion of race in present-day america.
run. go. now.
though nothing can match the pure, distilled xmasyness of johnny mathis's album of 1958, here's a couple tunes to get by on:
el vez - feliz navidad
james brown - go power at christmas time
because i love.
couldn't wait for my daily links to post this.
it would appear that SNL is, indeed, funny again.
i was somehow behind this, too.
includes a dispatch from one of my favoritest peoples on this planet earth, mr. bob massey, formerly of DC, now of LA, eternally of RAD.
the best of the blogs are accepting noM_tions.... and so i threw a vote in for the most deserving alice in the mommy blogs category.
because, guys, WE ALL LOVE DOOCE, but c'mon! give some other lady a fighting chance, why doncha?
[thanks, paige.]
1776 -- by David McCullough: Contrary to popular belief (and high school textbooks), the American Revolution was quite interesting.
and how you and/or those you love may have, too.
discuss.
*or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Patriarchy**.
**i'm sorry. i couldn't help myself.
file under: time-wasting avoidance word-to-the-wise: stay the hell away from ask metafilter.
so we watched mr. and mrs. smith last night, and enjoyed it far more than expected. twas unexpectedly funny, and some of the action/fight scenes were simultaneously hilarious and spellbinding (the culM_ting shoot-out is so john wootastic, it bordered on explicit homage). two thumbs up! two thumbs up! oh yeah, and it certainly doesn't hurt that two of the most freakishly beautiful human specimens on planet earth are on screen together during 90% of the film. say what you like, but i'm anxiously awaiting the spawn of that union. jolie needs to stop adopting other people's babies and get on producing the pitt-jolie SuperBaby, which will doubtless have crystalline blue eyes, flowing golden tresses, flawless skin, and gorgeously pouty lips. they'll have him/her under contract to a major studio while still in-utero, such will be the promise of the SuperBaby.
additional catty aside: what THE HELL was aniston thinking in letting him make that movie (i assume she saw the script and knew who was cast as the mrs. beforehand, but perhaps not...)? the mind boggleth.
this would constitute part III of my personal war on christmas.
santarchy. heh.
yesterday jamie and M_ and i drove down to the dreaded burbs of northern virginia (its like a strip mall! but with mcmansions!), to engage in early xmas gift-exchanging festivities with jamie's family, as well as to celebrate jamie's 32nd birthday (he's touting the coming year as his “jesus year” -- the one in which he'll perform all his miracles on this here earth... before the sadly inevitable crucifixion). so, in a flurry of gift-wrap-rending, M_ received the Dora's Talking House (among other things... but of course those other things are rendered trivial and of little consequence in the face of the freaking supercalafragilistic radiant glory of the Talking House), which she immediately deemed the bestest toy ever, and has since been physically attached to, as though its tiny plastic parts were coated in some sort of hypnotic adhesive.
which is all well and good, of course, except that said Talking House comes with about 4 measly pieces of furniture, though clearly displaying on the box it came in (and in the picture linked to above) a bounty of various household items and furnishings. this fact was not lost on M_, who -- after quietly examining the Talking House packaging for a few moments with the intensity of a jeweler scrutinizing the cut, shape and clarity of a gemstone -- pointed to the absent items pictured and asked “where's that, mommy?” as though i just might be hiding a few sticks of plastic furniture in my cheeks for her, like a mama squirrel. then followed an over-elaborate explanation of consumerism, consumption, capitalism, supply-and-demand, and... actually, i just said “we'll get those things for you later.”
which pretty much means that, from this point forward (or until we declare bankruptcy), i am Dora's Talking House's bitch.
stupid Talking House.
just received our utility bill for the past month.
we may soon be wearing mittens, scarves and hats indoors.
i hate everything.
happy monday, everybody!
i just added my desktop to Lifehacker's Desktop Show and Tell Pool on flickr, and i gotta say i'm fascinated to an embarrassing degree by the photos of other people's little windows to the interweb.
its voyeurlicious!
ps: yes, i'm aware that simply having a public blog means i probably qualify as an exhibitionist.
pps: shut up.
i've been haunted by this picture for days. why does everything in it vaguely resemble meat? why do i find it at once compelling and utterly repellent? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME?!?
[from ticky tacky's photostream]
EDIT: better still, view it JUMBOTRON SIZE.
EDIT DEUX: those fried chicken cookies on the plate with the pinecone centerpiece in particular look inviting!
small children confront the terrifying reality that is The Santa Photo-Op.
(in a 100 year old smudgy mirror).
sorry, no time to mirror-flip the image.
like a warm cup of cocoa on this cold winter's day.
includes a fine nugget of poultry from the other sweetney, too.
why does being a part of (and please forgive me for ever, EVER using this term, GAG) the blogosphere so frequently have to dissolve into interactions that make me feel like i'm going back to high school -- with all the horrible, painful, and infuriating associations of my original go round?
for future reference, i decline.
joey from a softer world has a wonderful blog. sometimes, when i read posts like this from him, i find my mouth slowly falling open in gaping awe at his ability to articulate what seems to me inarticulable. because i suck and he rules.
he also has a book. i'm hoping to make him my BFF.
and, to follow-up, just a little clarity regarding what christmas is all about.*
we call it xmas around here, incidentally.
EDIT: d'oh! i posted *this link and then later realized the original source is here: fuckchristmas.org. just, uhh, clarifyin'.
i know its, like, against some unwritten bloggers code to ask for advice through one's blog, but i've reached a heretofore unimagined level of desperation, and so say FUCK THAT SHIT. i obey no code! i am a one woman army! huzzah!
okay, so here's the unwritten-code-breaking part of our program: i am totally and utterly perplexed and filled with panic over this whole potty training thing, and would really appreciate your thoughts/advice/feedback. essentially, we've tried before -- a few times -- to get the whole ball rolling with M_ regarding this subject, with little success. she seems to have ZERO interest in the whole production... perhaps even a mild aversion. yesterday i steeled myself and decided that THIS WAS IT, today we'd put on the undies and throw caution to the wind... until she wet and shat through about 5 pairs of underwear and appeared increasingly upset by her own accidents. discouraged but not yet defeated, this morning i again commenced with the applying of the undies, all the while talking to M_ encouragingly about how when and why to use the potty. then she peed through two pairs of pants before noon and i threw in the towel (or the pull-up, rather). now i say: “do you have to use the potty?” and she screams “NOOOO!!!” -- i fear i may be setting us all up for failure by pressing the issue further right now.
yet she's over 3 years old, and it seems she *should* have the control to be trained by now... and i have no clue as to why she would have any negative associations with it, if that's the case. i'm going to speak to our pediatrician today about all this, but i'm wondering what those of you who've been here make of this. tips and suggestions most welcome. oh god, yes.
please help me to not fuck my child up psychologically for life. thanks much, dudes.
EDIT: just typing all this out was enough to induce a mid-level panic attack. sometimes it really sucks being in charge of another human being's development.
i just got through putting together holiday cards for a mass mailing, and my mouth now tastes like i've been sucking on a stale, bitter pine cone for several hours. all that envelope licking... my DNA will now be dispatched to points north, south, east and west, including several fancy international destinations. lucky spit.
i started off in earnest, jotting personal notes on each card to the recipient(s)... but by the 10th card or so my life-energy was waning (along with my now shriveled salivary glands), and personalization devolved to the simple signature: “Love, Tracey, Jamie and M_.” weak, i know. but to those of you out there on the holiday card list i say: that “Love” is a big love, and i mean that shit, AND I'M DOING MY BEST HERE, OKAY?!?
ps: happy holidays! [cough]
by M_ (okay, i helped).
doo doo doo lookin' out my front door.
evidence of jamie having plummeted to his death.
for your downloading and listening pleasure.
(the very funny david rakoff, in an old piece from this american life.)
consider it an early holiday gift from me to you.
i've mentioned my love of the corrections here numerous times. now, from bitterwaitress, i learn the following awesome tidbit:
Location: New York
Celebrity: Jonathan Franzen
I was working at a very upscale place in The Meatpacking District. One
night Jonathan Franzen walked in alone and ordered a whole pie and
requested four plates. I found this a little odd as he was alone but
brought him the pie and the plates. Mr. Franzen then proceeded to cut
four tiny slices of pie and put them on each of the plates. He then said
to me, as he pointed to each of the plates: “This one is for Dave
Eggers, this one is for Michael Chabon, this one is for Rick Moody, and
this one is for David Foster Wallace.” He then pointed to the rest of
the pie, which was most of it, and said:“And this is mine, all mine”.
He tipped really well, about 100% of the bill.
...and now i officially love that dude even more.
aka paige. we're on each other's wayback machines as readers-in-mutual-admiration, and i don't think i've ever even mentioned her here before, which is so so very wrong of me. our politics are, i think its safe to say, vastly different, yet -- and for me this is quite a rare thing -- that fact somehow fails to dampen my enjoyment of her writing. she's just that good. see: today's nugget from her -- “My Mom is the Greatest Internet User of All Time” -- makes me want to hop the next flight over to Germany so that i might kiss her full on the mouth. the lady is gut-bustingly funny, whip smart, snarky, and has excellent taste in music. what more do you people want?!
ps: we are very glad she'll soon be rejoining us stateside.
EDIT: oh yeah, and did i mention she's fucking GORGEOUS? [scowls bitterly]
i started to reply to a comment from kate about where i find all the stuff i post and link to here, but my response grew to dissertation lengths, so i figured this subject deserved an entry unto itself.
the short answer is: everywhere, which is less than helpful. the long answer involves a review of my history on the internet from the early 90s, trolling hither and thither, accumulating sources. but, for the sake of clarity and simplicity, the following might be useful: first, let's say you find a blog or some other sort of source online that consistently posts links and things that you enjoy -- kottke is an obvious choice, so i'll use him to illustrate. over time, note the sources for things he posts that you like, and follow those sources (if provided; otherwise (or additionally) take the time to go through his links list (sites i've enjoyed recently, on the right-hand side of his main page), noting additional sources you like and following their links to their sources, and so forth, ad infinitum). eventually you'll sift your way back to a number of sites that consistently post stuff you find useful. there are also a number of sites/blogs wholly devoted to the task of link aggregation and tracking blog content -- things like blogpulse's top links and del.icio.us are useful in this way. through just rooting around and reading, you'll find a ton of others (and ones that aren't top-tier, obvious sources like boingboing or metafilter... and why anyone would post links to stuff gleened from those is beyond me, since the goal -- at least to my mind -- is to NOT be redundant).
other things that i've found helpful: 1. (to state the obvious) spending lots of quality time reading stuff on the web. though i doubtless benefit from link aggregators and the like, at least 1/3rd of the stuff i post link-wise are just things i randomly stumbled across through daily trolling; 2. being on a number of listservs whose members are rabid web scavengers. i've recently removed myself from a number of mailing lists because i just don't have the time for them, but there are one or two that i've been on since the 90s that are like goldmines full of webby goodness; 3. have friends and family who work on the web send you stuff -- my husband jamie, who works in web development, sends me web content-laden emails at least once or twice a week with the subject line: “post this to sweetney!”
all of which probably sounds like a lot of work and effort if you really aren't into it, i'd imagine. which is why i exist, living to serve, in all of my obsessive-compulsive glory! whee!
funny thing is, i don't really think of the links and such as an important part of the content of sweetney. they're just, well, there -- an amusing by-product of my weblife. i have no desire to have them doM_te this blog or what i do here, nor do i think i'm particularly cutting edge or pathfinding in terms of locating cool web shizzle -- there are people out there who obsessively devote every nanosecond to doing that, and i'm clearly not one of them. i *do*, however, know where some of those people live on the web, so i benefit from having that knowledge and access. and i pass the savings on to you.
/end long-winded over-explained web blather.
earlier today i had the thought that -- particularly *now* -- dissent IS patriotism.
i was proud of myself for about, oh, 2 milliseconds. then i googled 'dissent is patriotism', and came up with this image of a bumper sticker.
[shakes fist in air] i'll get you, howard zinn!
EDIT: oh my god... i'm becoming one of those t-shirt sloganeering sort of people! noooo!!!
DOUBLE EDIT: that last one i'm buying though.
clicky-click for legible version.
so funny. so apt.
sniff.
on a wholly different matter: M_ is OBSESSED with her computer. this is probably related to two things: 1) her parents are OBSESSED with their computers, and 2) said parents have purchased, like, 20 different edutainmentional software titles for her computer -- jumpstart preschool, two different dora the explorer games, two different blue's clues games, the cat in the hat, and so forth. i'm conflicted about how concerned i should be regarding this fixation. on the one hand, from what i've seen, these “games” are pretty instructional and skill-development-oriented, to one degree or another; on the other hand, her wide-eyed look of transfixion before the computer screen closely resembles the slack-jawed, opiated one she sports when slumped before the tee-vee.
jamie thinks we should institute tv and computer usage restrictions. like we're parents or something.
so what's fair? no more than 8 hours a day in front of the computer, like mom?
my first thoughts upon waking this morning: hey.... who filled my head with crushing pain and sloshing goop? and how long can i lay here before i'm forced to hurl my body toward the bathroom so i can puke? (answer: about 90 seconds.)
today = DOOMED.
going to crawl into the shower momentarily to see if the magical healing properties of hot water may help. send prayers, light a candle for me, etcetera...
in other doom-related news: the film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? don't bother. utter crap.
today I MADE BREAD, people! so okay, it was a mix from a box, but it involved actual measurements and the combination of disparate organic substances (1/4 cup oil, two eggs, etc). i mean, I MIXED SHIT, dude! BY HAND! WITH ONE OF THOSE WISKY THINGS!!!
the downside: i've eaten nearly half of the finished product in less than 7 hours. it would seem other, umm, things are ever-widening as well...
but nobody makes bread like the doughboy, man. NOBODY.
