day-amn

Before:
sneakers
battered glasses that sit kinda askew
hair up in a clip because I was too lazy to dry it at the gym
makeup? ha!
jeans that have faded funny
shapeless sweater that smells like a sweaty sheep has been living in my basement.

After:
shoes that make walking like sex, in that it's all about the hip motion and it's painful if you do it for too long
black velvet pants that scream "Booty!"
black satin halter top
black feather boa
hair down and curled
deep red lipstick and glittery eyeshadow

Conclusion: I may be frumpilicous day to day, but damn do I clean up good.

The occasion was T-Regina's batchelorette party. It was a good time. Everyone thought so at the time, and the next morning I still think so, although T probably disagrees. She had such touching faith in a hangover-preventing pill she'd just bought that she had two large margaritas with dinner and who knows what all afterwards. One of those margaritas is enough to make me feel ill, and she's smaller than I am....I'd never actually held anyone's hair for them before. T is as sensible drunk as she is sober, and she insisted that we get her into the bathtub so that she could retch in comfort. I slept with her, to make sure she didn't come to grief in the night. (Nothing casts a pall over a wedding like the bride choking on her own vomit the weekend before.)

In the morning I walked from the hotel to the church, still in my going-out-on-the-town getup. I thought for a millisecond about putting my feather boa in my purse, but realized that it'd stick out and make me look like I was shoplifting a crow--and besides, I've wanted a feather boa my whole life; now that I have one I'm going to wear that motherfucker. As I was walking down the street, a homeless guy biked up to me and said to me, "Damn you got it goin' on." I couldn't stop grinning the rest of the way to church. What a great way to start the day.

Times like these, though, do make me start thinking into the future. Given that there's a strong probability that I'll live into my nineties, and given that few people are likely to tell me I've got it goin' on when I'm in the nursing home,...what will that be like? Will I be able to keep a sense of myself as fundamentally attractive and worthwhile when there's no external validation coming in?

inventory control

So recently there's been a lot of construction in my lab. Some equipment has been being moved around, and I thought you might be interested in the sophisticated inventory control mechanism that's in place at a top scientific research institute.


full view


zoom on label 


handling instructions

Sang at a funeral today, with the choir. I didn't know the person we were singing for (even though he's apparently the one who's been paying me and most of the choir for the past two years--yeah. This parish does have some wealthy members), but even without any emotional context for the service it's impossible to make it through the committal prayer without weeping:

Give rest, O Christ, to thy servant with thy saints, where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting.

Thou only art immortal, the creator and maker of mankind;
and we are mortal, formed of the earth, and unto earth shall we return.
For so thou didst ordain when thou createdst me, saying,
"Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."
All we go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song:
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Give rest, O Christ, to thy servant with thy saints, where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting.

...fortunately we'd done all our singing by then, except for the closing hymn.
Oh, and the sermon was inaudible from where we were sitting, so I amused myself by picking out the hymns for my own funeral: Slane, Lasst uns Erfreuen, Hyfrodol, Land of Rest...I think that's it. (and yes, those names won't mean anything to you if you haven't spent a while singing in Anglican churches. Sorry. But trust me, they're rockin' tunes.)

out-Niles-ing Niles

Scene: a friend's living room
Friend and I are watching Frazier.
Niles enters, in a swish of trench coat and long scarf.
Frazier greets him. "Ah, Niles, how was La Traviata?"
"Terrible," replies Niles. "The soprano couldn't hit the E-flat to save her life."
I sit bolt-upright and exclaim, outraged, "That E-flat is completely optional."

When my friend stopped laughing and picked himself up off the floor, he explained that the point of the character of Niles was to be geekier and more particular than any human being could possibly be, and that I had just out-Nilesed him.

*sigh*

funny how defining moments sneak up on you like that.

if I, if I've been unkind
I hope you can just let it go by
if I, if I've been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you

I've been listening compulsively to k.d. lang's new CD since the day I bought it, back in August. This bit of Leonard Cohen's "Bird on a wire" particularly grabbed me. And yet, when you reduce the lyrics to their essentials, they end up sounding like

Roses are red
violets are blue
if I've been untrue
it was never to you

In his lyrics in general there's this wild combination of images that stop you in your tracks like a punch to the gut and other images that seem like he came up with them (a) out of nowhere or (b) to fit with the rhyme scheme he'd established.

--but then, I'm probably a generation late for the "is L.C. a genius or a hack?" debate.

(edit: a bunch of people seem to be finding this blog by searching for "Leonard Cohen Hallelujah" (or "alleluia" as the case may be). As a public service, here is a webpage that has words and guitar chords. Some of the words on that page are different from the versions that I have, but they make a good start anyway. Besides LC's own recording, and k.d. lang's on the CD above, there's lovely versions by Jeff Buckley and Rufus Wainwright, and also the version that was used in the movie "Shrek" (apparently not RW although his version is on the CD soundtrack)--and I'm sure there are others that I don't know about.
There. enjoy.)

an explanation

"It makes perfect sense," says Karl. "You're a filthy pig, just like me."

That clears it right up.

Susan's trip to South Africa with Earthwatch

Pictures from my grade-school friend Susan's recent trip to Cape Town with Earthwatch, banding penguins and cleaning up beaches for "work" and whalewatching for fun. The whalewatching was land-based: Hermanus advertises itself as the best land-based whalewatching in the world.

saved by grace

Amazing. Among the phone calls I didn't expect to get today, this one was near the top of the list.

A few months ago I hurt a friend of mine pretty badly, and he in turn said some pretty hurtful things to and about me. (How hurtful? Well, a month later the nightmares had pretty much stopped.) Once he'd gotten all the bile out of his system I thought I was never going to hear from him again (except for the little part of me that kept tensing up in expectation of finding him on my doorstep with a chainsaw). So today he called me up, seemingly at random, to apologize for what he said. We actually ended up having a civilized chat. It remains to be seen whether we'll get to be friends again, but to know that he's moved on is a huge relief to me.

After I got off the phone with him, I went to do errands for an hour or so, to enjoy the sunshine and to stop shaking.

And this morning (...was it really only this morning? it seems like about ten thousand years ago) I finally showed my supervisor the stuff that I've been slaving over recently, in spite of the fact that it still seems to me to be a steaming pile of dog poo. He didn't laugh at me; in fact, he seemed to be impressed by what I've gotten out of the data so far. Huh.

The rest of the week is going to be grey and rainy and miserable, but today the sun is shining and the trees are gaudy. And I have parties and recitals to plan, and fewer people who hate me than I believed, and it's even possible that I may actually finish this disertation someday.

"My" cats have very distinct tastes and preferences. Here's some typical dialogue:

me: Who's your favourite world leader?
Ying (or Yang: they both seem to feel the same): Mao!
me: Who's your favourite composer?
Y: Milhaud!
me: Who's your favourite surrealist artist?
Y: Miro!
me: what would you chant at an anti-capitalist rally?
Y: Mao! Mao! Mao!

I tell them to mix it up a bit, maybe listen to some Debussy or check out some Dali, but they just give me big-eyed looks of reproach.


(I'm sorry. this is truly terrible. I'll get back to work now.)

Veni, Creator Spiritus,
mentes tuorum visita,
imple superna gratiaquae
tu creasti pectora.

Qui diceris Paraclitus,
altissimi donum Dei,
fons vivus, ignis, caritas,
et spiritalis unctio.

Accende lumen sensibus:
infunde amorem cordibus:
infirma nostri corporis
virtute firmans perpeti.


it can't come too soon, that's all I can say.