My linguist friend and I had an interesting discussion last night about who was more "from LA," the future Mrs. Linguist Friend (who has lived in South Carolina for two decades but was raised in LA) or my old college roommate Melani (who was raised in Lynchburg, Virginia but has lived in LA for the last five years.)
He said it's where you were raised and that of course your formative years shape who you are the most. I can see some truth to that, but I said where you decide to live, giving as examples of how the future Mrs. Linguist Friend makes her own food, gardens, and has knitted herself a sweater with multicolored state map on it while Melani bitches constantly that she's not as pretty as the other women in LA, complains about the food everyplace but LA and is in general far more given to both trendiness and complaining than she used to be.
CC has always pretty much been a Northern Virginian/Washingtonian. Raised here, chose to live here. The CSO is in no way a guy from Charlotte, North Carolina. But I know people who grew up in, say, Great Britan, who still seem basically British.
Ok, so what cultures do y'all come from? Which influence who you are the most?
S
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Tuesday, August 30, 2005
Dangerous Minds
Imagine the sort of person who spends their vacation figuring out potential crime scenes. Where you could hide someone, how you could dispose of a body.
You're thinking about roughly CC.
Little bit creepy, little bit cynical, fascinated with mysteries and something of a schemer by nature.
The Chaliceboss is opposite of that person, a sweet-natured, socially and religiously conservative, mother of two who wears Christmas sweaters all December and actually saw that "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" movie.
And she just came back from Aruba full of stories about how one could dump a body just anywhere and the sharks would eat all the evidence.
I expect this stuff from ME, but geez...
CC
You're thinking about roughly CC.
Little bit creepy, little bit cynical, fascinated with mysteries and something of a schemer by nature.
The Chaliceboss is opposite of that person, a sweet-natured, socially and religiously conservative, mother of two who wears Christmas sweaters all December and actually saw that "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" movie.
And she just came back from Aruba full of stories about how one could dump a body just anywhere and the sharks would eat all the evidence.
I expect this stuff from ME, but geez...
CC
Does anybody else here dream movies?
Last night I dreamed an action movie, or really half of one. My college has a music festival every year and I dreamed that these punks with AK-47s took over the music festival and were holding my college hostage.
The most logical thing would be to call the cops on my cell phone, but this was clearly an action movie, because instead I escaped into the woods (by diving into the lake and swimming there) and was planning to live there for a few days and sneak back in and save the campus, rescuing TheCSO in the process. The "living in the woods" part is especially ludicrous as CC has all the forest survival skills of Zsa Zsa Gabor.
I'd met a few people in the woods whom I hadn't known well or gotten along with while in school and we'd formed a resistance movement that was equal parts Justice League of American and Breakfast Club. I'd taken out one of the guards and gotten his AK-47 and snuck back into the woods.
I don't even watch action movies, but this is about how they proceed, right?
Anyway, it was about then that I woke up.
One time this spring I dreamed a horror movie where, I swear, zombies rose from their graves at Arlington National Cemetery, were marching through DC disguised as a Veteran's parade and were going to take the White House. I knew about it and was trying to stop it, but nobody believed me. My linguist friend would later point out that the zombies might have done a better job RUNNING the government than some people.
I'm a little confused as to why someone who herself prefers funny movies like "Joe vs. the Volcano" and "Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion" or smartypants movies like "Cold Comfort Farm" and "Tea with Mussolini," would be dreaming this other stuff. And why am I dreaming movies at all? I mean, can I not get away from formulaic plots and Hollywood production values even in my dreams?
CC
The most logical thing would be to call the cops on my cell phone, but this was clearly an action movie, because instead I escaped into the woods (by diving into the lake and swimming there) and was planning to live there for a few days and sneak back in and save the campus, rescuing TheCSO in the process. The "living in the woods" part is especially ludicrous as CC has all the forest survival skills of Zsa Zsa Gabor.
I'd met a few people in the woods whom I hadn't known well or gotten along with while in school and we'd formed a resistance movement that was equal parts Justice League of American and Breakfast Club. I'd taken out one of the guards and gotten his AK-47 and snuck back into the woods.
I don't even watch action movies, but this is about how they proceed, right?
Anyway, it was about then that I woke up.
One time this spring I dreamed a horror movie where, I swear, zombies rose from their graves at Arlington National Cemetery, were marching through DC disguised as a Veteran's parade and were going to take the White House. I knew about it and was trying to stop it, but nobody believed me. My linguist friend would later point out that the zombies might have done a better job RUNNING the government than some people.
I'm a little confused as to why someone who herself prefers funny movies like "Joe vs. the Volcano" and "Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion" or smartypants movies like "Cold Comfort Farm" and "Tea with Mussolini," would be dreaming this other stuff. And why am I dreaming movies at all? I mean, can I not get away from formulaic plots and Hollywood production values even in my dreams?
CC
Small victory
Down 1.1 pounds. At this rate I will look damn good by the time I'm 50.
Yes, getting up at 2:20 a.m. to weigh oneself sounds like something out of a Lifetime movie, but I swear I was awake anyway.
S
Yes, getting up at 2:20 a.m. to weigh oneself sounds like something out of a Lifetime movie, but I swear I was awake anyway.
S
Monday, August 29, 2005
Quote of the Day
That was offensive. And lame. So double offensive."
-The Office
CC
who has noticed that the Boss on The Office is like a parody of Jennifer Beautiful's ex-husband, but has decided not to tell her.
-The Office
CC
who has noticed that the Boss on The Office is like a parody of Jennifer Beautiful's ex-husband, but has decided not to tell her.
CC's church marketing idea
Last night, the Chaliceparents and the CSO and I took the ChaliceRelative out for dinner for her birthday. Conversation, as it often does, turned to my parents' church, a kickass Gothic cathedral right off Dupont Circle in downtown Washington.
The minister is a hippie, and not the cool kind like Edie. He thinks guitar music is just the thing for making a Gothic Cathedral homey.
My mother's big complaint is that the man has little respect for history. (To be fair, this is my mother's complaint about a lot of things.) My mother said that she'd tried to talk to him about doing things in a way in line with the church's history and original mission and he'd blown her off. If the church isn't doing well, then the old methods must not work. So let's rearrange the pews!
CC said "Well, couldn't you try a recruiting campaign more in line with the church's original history?"
The church's origins, which of course can't appear on the website because Pilgrims is too cool for that now, are that there used to be northern Presbyterians and southern Presbyterians, but there was no Southern Presbyterian church in Washington DC. So the Rev. Andrew R. Bird went all over the south, hat in hand, collecting money to build a southern church. (If I sound like I've heard and told this story a million times, it's because I have. I hope they still tell the kids about that.) At Pilgrims, the pews have little plaques saying they were donated by this or that southern presbyterian church. It's way charming, I swear.
When I was a kid, my mother took me around to each stained glass window (they are arranged in classic cathedral style, with the childhood of Jesus on the left up front and going around the church to the crucifixion on the right front. The ascension is at the back of the church, keeping the minister properly inspired) and explained who was in it and what it meant and that Andrew R. Bird's granddaughter died when she was four and the little girl in the blue dress sitting next to Jesus in the children's window is her. I've repeated this tour many times for friends of mine visiting the church.
Anyway, so my suggestion was, we look back to our original mission. We're a church in Washington DC who was put together to minister to pilgrims. My particular hammer when it comes to marketing is direct mail because I write it sometimes for my job.
My idea was to get the presbytery to give us a list of every presbyeterian church in the south. Then, the minister writes a letter to the ministers of those churches, politely saying "If someone from your congregation is moving to DC, tell them about us and give us a call. We'd be happy to help them out in their transition and be a spiritual home for them. Leaving home is scary and ministering to pilgrims is part of our mission" Send said letter out. It will probably cost a few hundred dollars to do and ministers might file such a letter away and keep it for years until little Suzie announced that she'd gotten into Georgetown, at which time the minister might remember it.
The ChaliceMom was THRILLED, saying that was a great idea, it could actually turn up some new members, it was well in line with the church's mission, and was the sort of thing hippie minister should be thinking of.
The ChaliceRelative, who was always one for raining on parades, said she thought it would be awful because to send something like that to the southerners would be reinforcing the denominational divide that the Presbyterians fixed about 1966. ((A fix engineered, by the way, by Dr. Randy Taylor, who might be my mother's hero. A former Pilgrims minister (who married my parents while he was there,) he went on to head the denomination. He came to speak at my college when I was there and I told him about them firing Mary-who-Dances. He didn't intervene, but he did talk to her and talk to some people in the church and try to work things out. Heck of a good guy.)) My impression is that nobody cares about the denominational divide anymore, but the ChaliceRelative clearly does, so I didn't tell her that.
Anyway, the conversation went on with the Chalicerelative arguing that my plan would be in some way racially offensive for a reason I never quite understood. But it was an interesting conversaton.
CC
who was going somewhere with this story, but has now forgotten and has to go to work.
The minister is a hippie, and not the cool kind like Edie. He thinks guitar music is just the thing for making a Gothic Cathedral homey.
My mother's big complaint is that the man has little respect for history. (To be fair, this is my mother's complaint about a lot of things.) My mother said that she'd tried to talk to him about doing things in a way in line with the church's history and original mission and he'd blown her off. If the church isn't doing well, then the old methods must not work. So let's rearrange the pews!
CC said "Well, couldn't you try a recruiting campaign more in line with the church's original history?"
The church's origins, which of course can't appear on the website because Pilgrims is too cool for that now, are that there used to be northern Presbyterians and southern Presbyterians, but there was no Southern Presbyterian church in Washington DC. So the Rev. Andrew R. Bird went all over the south, hat in hand, collecting money to build a southern church. (If I sound like I've heard and told this story a million times, it's because I have. I hope they still tell the kids about that.) At Pilgrims, the pews have little plaques saying they were donated by this or that southern presbyterian church. It's way charming, I swear.
When I was a kid, my mother took me around to each stained glass window (they are arranged in classic cathedral style, with the childhood of Jesus on the left up front and going around the church to the crucifixion on the right front. The ascension is at the back of the church, keeping the minister properly inspired) and explained who was in it and what it meant and that Andrew R. Bird's granddaughter died when she was four and the little girl in the blue dress sitting next to Jesus in the children's window is her. I've repeated this tour many times for friends of mine visiting the church.
Anyway, so my suggestion was, we look back to our original mission. We're a church in Washington DC who was put together to minister to pilgrims. My particular hammer when it comes to marketing is direct mail because I write it sometimes for my job.
My idea was to get the presbytery to give us a list of every presbyeterian church in the south. Then, the minister writes a letter to the ministers of those churches, politely saying "If someone from your congregation is moving to DC, tell them about us and give us a call. We'd be happy to help them out in their transition and be a spiritual home for them. Leaving home is scary and ministering to pilgrims is part of our mission" Send said letter out. It will probably cost a few hundred dollars to do and ministers might file such a letter away and keep it for years until little Suzie announced that she'd gotten into Georgetown, at which time the minister might remember it.
The ChaliceMom was THRILLED, saying that was a great idea, it could actually turn up some new members, it was well in line with the church's mission, and was the sort of thing hippie minister should be thinking of.
The ChaliceRelative, who was always one for raining on parades, said she thought it would be awful because to send something like that to the southerners would be reinforcing the denominational divide that the Presbyterians fixed about 1966. ((A fix engineered, by the way, by Dr. Randy Taylor, who might be my mother's hero. A former Pilgrims minister (who married my parents while he was there,) he went on to head the denomination. He came to speak at my college when I was there and I told him about them firing Mary-who-Dances. He didn't intervene, but he did talk to her and talk to some people in the church and try to work things out. Heck of a good guy.)) My impression is that nobody cares about the denominational divide anymore, but the ChaliceRelative clearly does, so I didn't tell her that.
Anyway, the conversation went on with the Chalicerelative arguing that my plan would be in some way racially offensive for a reason I never quite understood. But it was an interesting conversaton.
CC
who was going somewhere with this story, but has now forgotten and has to go to work.
Good reading
CC finds herself really enjoying The So-Called Neighbor Saga, in which iBeth recieves a petition that her neighbors have written objecting to the color of her house, and then goes around confronting the ones who signed it (and thanking the ones who didn't.)
Given how quick I am to sign petitions typically, I suspect she will find a few pissed-off nieghbors and a bunch who objected a little bit but wouln't have said anything and mostly just signed impulsively.
CC has never lived with a homeowner's association, but theCSO has. When we pass someone who has, say, a bathtub Virgin Mary in the front yard, theCSO likes to say:
"Gee, nothing says 'I don't have a homeowner's association' like that!"
CC
Given how quick I am to sign petitions typically, I suspect she will find a few pissed-off nieghbors and a bunch who objected a little bit but wouln't have said anything and mostly just signed impulsively.
CC has never lived with a homeowner's association, but theCSO has. When we pass someone who has, say, a bathtub Virgin Mary in the front yard, theCSO likes to say:
"Gee, nothing says 'I don't have a homeowner's association' like that!"
CC
Sunday, August 28, 2005
Oh my goodness
I have discovered that if I balance just right,
I can blog and instant message while on the ski machine AND watch Boston Legal.
This is a good day in the physical fitness history of my life.
CC
Atoning for half of an extradietal peanut butter sandwich. And blogging. And watching William Shatner and Candace Bergen snarking on each other. At the same time. Life is so good.
I can blog and instant message while on the ski machine AND watch Boston Legal.
This is a good day in the physical fitness history of my life.
CC
Atoning for half of an extradietal peanut butter sandwich. And blogging. And watching William Shatner and Candace Bergen snarking on each other. At the same time. Life is so good.
You kids did NOT tell me...
Apparently, Seminarians are a wild bunch. The always amusing Society of Mutual Autopsy has a lighthearted essay on the subject.
I have to admit, ministers must walk a weird line. Circa 1966, my high school best friend's mother went to the doctor on an army base. She married the doctor a year later. I know that doctors and ministers could use their positions of power in an abusive way, and I guess the possibility that they could means they shouldn't ever.
Of course, I've gone to the church of a minister who regularly used his congregation for a dating pool, dating three different women. He made a tacky joke from the pulpit about one of them (though he didn't give her name.) I thought that was awful. But joke aside, I didn't necessarily have a problem with his behavior. I thought he was major icky and wouldn't have dated him myself, but hey, whatever.
I guess the joke is the problem, though, and how things like that tend to happen because we're all human and human beings sometimes behave badly when their relationships go south.
CC
Ps. I cannot WAIT to see The Corpse Bride. I heart Tim Burton.
I have to admit, ministers must walk a weird line. Circa 1966, my high school best friend's mother went to the doctor on an army base. She married the doctor a year later. I know that doctors and ministers could use their positions of power in an abusive way, and I guess the possibility that they could means they shouldn't ever.
Of course, I've gone to the church of a minister who regularly used his congregation for a dating pool, dating three different women. He made a tacky joke from the pulpit about one of them (though he didn't give her name.) I thought that was awful. But joke aside, I didn't necessarily have a problem with his behavior. I thought he was major icky and wouldn't have dated him myself, but hey, whatever.
I guess the joke is the problem, though, and how things like that tend to happen because we're all human and human beings sometimes behave badly when their relationships go south.
CC
Ps. I cannot WAIT to see The Corpse Bride. I heart Tim Burton.
Run that by me again?
Said about Fred Phelps:
I wouldn't normally give this crap any kind of attention, but it really gets to me that there are actually people out there who think God capable of hatred. No matter what one's image of God/Goddess/Spirit may be, it seems to be inherently cognitively dissonant to claim that God hates anyone. How arrogant, to claim to know the mind of God.
I don't like him either, but I see a logical disconnect here.
CC
I wouldn't normally give this crap any kind of attention, but it really gets to me that there are actually people out there who think God capable of hatred. No matter what one's image of God/Goddess/Spirit may be, it seems to be inherently cognitively dissonant to claim that God hates anyone. How arrogant, to claim to know the mind of God.
I don't like him either, but I see a logical disconnect here.
CC
Bell curve debate
Andrew Sullivan has started it again. If you need to be able to argue that the Bell Curve is bogus, here you go.
CC
CC
Saturday, August 27, 2005
CC's favorite hippie.
Hung out today with Edie-who-sells-books. She keeps a list of my interests and favorite authors and has a cubby for me where she stashes things she thinks I would like. My erotica collection, which I kind of started by accident but which has continued to grow, got two additions including a book of short stories about passion among married people. (And her not having to put erotica on the shelves is probably good.)
Her used bookstore actually has a sign on the wall that says "Hey y'all, got any erotica or trout fishing books?" And credits me with the quote because I called that out one day several years ago as I walked in and Edie thought it was cool, so she put it on a sign on the wall.
It's just that sort of place.
Today she asked if I were interested in 300 playboy magazines from the 1970's on for a buck apiece. Umm... No. Books of dirty short stories are a collection. Old magazines are just junk. (Yes, someone with lots of money could probably make a profit on Ebay with those. If you'd like to take them off Edie's hands and do so, shoot me an email on my chalicechick at gmail account and I'll give you her number.)
Edie is an affable hippie whose political views decorate her store in the form of bumperstickers on the bookcases. Old guy conservatives come in to by civil war histories and comic books and end up hitting on her anyway though because she's really quite lovely. She has a voice very much like Madeline Kahn and in a casual conversation once mentioned that she sleeps naked, a fact I relayed to the CSO the next time he was having a bad day.
"If all hippies were like Edie," the CSO just said "I'd be OK with hippies."
I am Edie's favorite stringer and she will buy books from me on my reccomendation. I will sometimes go to sales and buy books for her and I have a running list of authors she's looking for on my blackberry at all times. I fight dirty at booksales. I wear a tanktop and a pushup bra because one time distracting the guy across the box of books from me for one second was all it took for me to score a particularly nice copy of The Anatomy of Melancholy.
Recently, I've decided I need a complete set of first editions of the Horatio Hornblower novels for life to be complete.
Guess I'll just have to hang out with Edie even more.
CC
Her used bookstore actually has a sign on the wall that says "Hey y'all, got any erotica or trout fishing books?" And credits me with the quote because I called that out one day several years ago as I walked in and Edie thought it was cool, so she put it on a sign on the wall.
It's just that sort of place.
Today she asked if I were interested in 300 playboy magazines from the 1970's on for a buck apiece. Umm... No. Books of dirty short stories are a collection. Old magazines are just junk. (Yes, someone with lots of money could probably make a profit on Ebay with those. If you'd like to take them off Edie's hands and do so, shoot me an email on my chalicechick at gmail account and I'll give you her number.)
Edie is an affable hippie whose political views decorate her store in the form of bumperstickers on the bookcases. Old guy conservatives come in to by civil war histories and comic books and end up hitting on her anyway though because she's really quite lovely. She has a voice very much like Madeline Kahn and in a casual conversation once mentioned that she sleeps naked, a fact I relayed to the CSO the next time he was having a bad day.
"If all hippies were like Edie," the CSO just said "I'd be OK with hippies."
I am Edie's favorite stringer and she will buy books from me on my reccomendation. I will sometimes go to sales and buy books for her and I have a running list of authors she's looking for on my blackberry at all times. I fight dirty at booksales. I wear a tanktop and a pushup bra because one time distracting the guy across the box of books from me for one second was all it took for me to score a particularly nice copy of The Anatomy of Melancholy.
Recently, I've decided I need a complete set of first editions of the Horatio Hornblower novels for life to be complete.
Guess I'll just have to hang out with Edie even more.
CC
Science snark
Gotta love it.
CC
who was apparently feeling very political today. The fact that most of this morning's posts are pretty liberal may come from the fact that CC wrote some of them in Trader Joes.
Trder Joes doesn't take American Express. Grr. The last place I went that didn't take American Express was in Ohio. Actually, nowhere in Ohio takes American Express. Trying to buy stuff with an AmEx card there is like trying to get your Volvo fixed in New Orleans, which, trust me, sucks.
CC
who was apparently feeling very political today. The fact that most of this morning's posts are pretty liberal may come from the fact that CC wrote some of them in Trader Joes.
Trder Joes doesn't take American Express. Grr. The last place I went that didn't take American Express was in Ohio. Actually, nowhere in Ohio takes American Express. Trying to buy stuff with an AmEx card there is like trying to get your Volvo fixed in New Orleans, which, trust me, sucks.
Greta, Greta, Greta...
No, really, missing white people ARE big news. The biggest!
She says that we have an epidemic of missing people. "Hooge!," as Trump would say.
CC seems to notice an epidemic of DYING people, but that's nut big enough for Fox News.
Have I mentioned how much I heart mobile blogging?
CC
She says that we have an epidemic of missing people. "Hooge!," as Trump would say.
CC seems to notice an epidemic of DYING people, but that's nut big enough for Fox News.
Have I mentioned how much I heart mobile blogging?
CC
Yes, John McCain is a cool guy
But he's really quite conservative.
CC
who has had to make that point several times over the last few years and thought she would strike pre-emptively this time.
CC
who has had to make that point several times over the last few years and thought she would strike pre-emptively this time.
And he likes Philocrites, too!
John Stewart rocks my world.
Wanna see Christopher Hitchens get his ass handed to him on the Daily Show?
Here it is in quicktime.
CC
Wanna see Christopher Hitchens get his ass handed to him on the Daily Show?
Here it is in quicktime.
CC
Questioning the standard liberal view of things, or as we call it here at the Chaliceblog, "Tuesday"
If we're bitching about the fact that poor people can't get fresh vegetables, why do we bitch when Wal-Mart wants to open up a supercenter with a grocery store downtown?
I don't want one in my town, but there aren't a whole lot of poor people in my town.
Thinking back to the Wal-marts I've been to, I know that upper middle class people hate them.
Poor people seem to love them.
CC
Ps. I know it's Saturday. Tuesday's a funnier day.
I don't want one in my town, but there aren't a whole lot of poor people in my town.
Thinking back to the Wal-marts I've been to, I know that upper middle class people hate them.
Poor people seem to love them.
CC
Ps. I know it's Saturday. Tuesday's a funnier day.
Friday, August 26, 2005
Adults rule!
3 of the 5 top-rated movies are rated R. Two of those for sex.
Upshot: It's getting profitable to market to adults again.
Thank goodness.
CC
Upshot: It's getting profitable to market to adults again.
Thank goodness.
CC
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)