Because Not Sharing Would Be Criminal

I want to let you know about this amazing woman, Rachel McKibbens. She is the 2009 Women of the World poetry slam champion and you may have seen her on Def Jam Poetry.

She can make you laugh and cry in the same damn poem.

And how can you not love a woman who has "Book Worm" tattooed on her knuckles? Seriously, she rocks.

Not only is she insanely skilled as a poet, she is also a mother of five. (And her kids have the coolest names!) She has the best sense of style and her house is decked out in odd but beautiful little trinkets: an apothecary jar full of doll legs, a Kewpie doll spray-painted gold- it all comes together magically.

Her website is really cool, go look at it!

Here are some videos of her performing. I'm sure you'll love them. Her poetry book Pink Elephant just came out last Fall. You can get it on her website, or on Amazon. Her site also has some really cool handmade cards!

Seriously- watch these! She is fabulous. I just discovered her a few months ago. (Thanks to the other awesome Rachel for letting me know about her!)

Audible.com, and Some Other Things

Hello fellow bloggers and anonymous couple of readers! Time to update you all on the adventures of ME. How's that for Freudian Narcissism? But then, that is the heart of blogging is it not? Some would say yes. (I say we gang up on that guy and kick his ass! And then blog about it.)

First I want to say that blogging is so much easier and much more fun now, so I just might do it more often. The reason? Well, I recently got the new laptop . After much comparing and debating (and name-calling), I went with this one:

[Cue angelic choir]

Isn't it beautiful? It is, of course, the MacBook Pro. So easy to use: never gets hot, doesn't make a sound, don't have to bother with anti-spyware and three hour scans. I love it. Plus I got a student discount AND got a free Ipod Touch.

That brings me to the next item for this post. I have been nerding it up listening to all kinds of cool podcasts on history and grammar on the Ipod. (And of course- Hey Brooklyn by Amber!)

Grammar Girl's podcast is where I found out that you can get a free trial and download a free audiobook at www.Audible.com. (That link has the full address and will take you to the correct page for the free trial and download.)

I have never tried an audiobook. I'm old school. I like to have the book in my hands. Sniff it. Use weird scraps of paper for bookmarks. Throw it at someone to get my point across. Spill coffee on it. The normal fun things one does with books.

But, the audiobook is free so it seems like an opportune time to try it, no? If any of you do the free trial let me know what book you choose. I am having trouble deciding. There is a pretty good selection.

Also- two weeks into school already and it is going well so far. I had to do a simple presentation and had a complete spaz attack. I have been exiled in Mommyville for over two years. It may take some time to readjust to things such as: people that aren't Violet or Jeremy, bright lights, having to think.

Wish me luck. (That way I can be insulted at your implication that I need some sort of magical ward to accomplish my goal rather than relying on talent and intellect alone.)

;)

That'll Git Yir Mooth Burst, and Quick!

I am currently reading 'Glue' By Irvine Welsh, though he is probably best known for 'Trainspotting' which was made into a film. This book has most of the same crew, but much less heroin. The guys are all pretty young in this book so it probably takes place before all that.

The setting is the projects in Edinburgh, and he writes in dialect. It took a moment for my brain to acclimate. No, honestly- it took me two chapters just to figure out what the hell "fitba" was, relying only on context. Finally, the little cartoon light bulb above my head illuminated: Fit-ba... Football! That makes sense. Of course, it's really what Americans would call soccer, but still. I'm at least in the ball park, so to speak. (What a cheeky cunt.)

So, through this I have discovered that I sort of like my internal voice as a sleazy Scottish youth that calls everyone (even his mates) 'cunts,' drinks lager, and goes to fitba games to start paggers, and looking fir wee lassies to snog. Just the phrase "I'll burst yir mooth" makes the whole thing worthwhile.

Here is a snippet (don't you just hate that word?) from the book. I want you guys to translate some of it. It will be fun.

"Ah cannae stoap takin the blade oot tae look at it. That Friday ah wis tempted tae take it to school, but ah didnae want any mair bother. Ah stick it in the drawer. Ma shouted ays again. Running doon the stairs n ah nearly tripped ower the dug, eh wis jist lyin thaire in ma wey, no movin."

I have two other books by Welsh to read next: 'Filth' and 'Ecstasy.' If you can get through the Scoatish and the 'cunt' this and that, the stories are pretty good. Downright sleazy, but good.

Appa-latch-a vs. Appa-lay-chia

I'm reading a book called Listen Here, Women Writing in Appalachia. A few of the stories included are excerpts from books I've read previously, but I am enjoying all of the writing so far. Below is a piece from The Songcatcher by Sharyn McCrumb that I particularly enjoyed. [Yes, I copied from the book without permission, so hopefully the book police won't get me! I am doing it because I enjoy the work and hope some of you will, too, and maybe read the book some time. Plus, I'm a rebel.]

This is part of a conversation between Stan, a New England mechanical engineer who has decided to hike the Appalachian Trail, and Baird Christopher, the owner of the Cosmic Possum Hikers Hostel- a Victorian mansion along the Appalachian Trail that he has made into temporary lodging for transient hikers.

Stan: "Interesting part of the country. Lots of stories."

Christopher: "Lots of Celtic bloodlines in the people here. Stories is what we do."

Well, I'll be interested to hear some stories. This is my first visit to Appa-lay-chia.

Baird had this conversation rather often, too, and in this round he was less inclined to be charitable. The statement We say it that way back home sounded like a reasonable argument unless you realized that it was not a privilege Easterners granted to anyone other than themselves. If a Texan visiting New York pronounced "Houston Street" the same way that Texans pronounce the name of their city back home, he would instantly be corrected by a New Yorker, and probably derided for his provincial ignorance. But here in rural America, the privilege of local pronunciation was revoked. Here, if there was any difference of opinion about a pronunciation, Eastern urbanites felt that their way was the correct one, or at least an equally acceptable option. One of Baird Christopher's missions in life was to set arrogant tourists straight about matters like this.

"You know," he said to Stan, gearing up to lecture in genial tones. "Over in Northern Ireland once I visited I visited a beautiful walled city that lies east of Donegal and west of Belfast. Now, for the last thousand years or so the Irish people who built that city have called it Derry, a name from darach, which is the Gaelic word for 'oak tree.' But the British, who conquered Ireland a few thousand years back, they refer to it as Londonderry. One place: two names.

If you go to Ireland, and ask for directions to that city, you can call it by either name you choose. Whichever name you say, folks will know where it is you're headed and most likely they'll help you get there. But you need to understand this: When you choose what name you'll call that city- Derry or Londonderry- you are making a political decision. You are telling the people you are talking to which side you're on, what cultural values you hold, and maybe even your religious preference. You are telling some people that they can trust you and other people that they can't. All in one word. One word with a load of signifiers built right in.

Now, I reckon Appalachia is a word like that.The way people say it tells us a lot about how they think about us. When we hear somebody say Appa-lay-chia, we know right away that the person we're listening to is not on our side, and we hear a whole lot of cultural nuances about stereotyping and condescension and ethnic bigotry, just built right in. So you go on and call this place Appa-lay-chia if you want to. But you need to know that by doing that you have made a po-li-ti-cal decision, and you'd better be prepared to live with the consequences. Friend."

So, I'll let you guess whether the distinguished traveller decides to pronounce Appalachia the way the residents do, or the way the rest of the country does. I really liked this author's style and hope to look up more of her work.

What good books are you bloggers reading out there in Bloggyland?

It's April, Fools!

So, instead of blogging I have been doing all sorts of fun things:

• Nursing a lovely case of group A streptococcus that I somehow caught despite my hermit-like existence.

• Thinking about the fact that my baby's second birthday will happen in sixteen days, and despite months of saying, "I'm not going to wait 'til the last minute like last time," I have essentially waited until the last minute to plan things.

• Being riddled with insomnia when sleep is what I need most right now. Some nights I find the dawn's early light creeping in the windows and realize I am still wide awake and that in just a couple of hours I'm going to have to get up anyway, whether I've slept or not.

• Watching The Mighty Boosh Seasons 1-3 instead of cleaning or anything else productive.

The excitement is palpable, I know. I did finish the books I mentioned a few posts back. The Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger was surprisingly good. Surprising to me anyway since I usually hate most "best-seller" books.

The other was Darkness Visible by William Golding. I liked it, too. Now I am working on Willa Cather's The Troll Garden, and Other Selected Stories.

Well, that is all for now. Barely worth the trouble of clicking over here, I know. Sorry. I'm sick and not up to snuff, which is really sad since I've sort of set the bar pretty low!

What I'm Reading

First, I wanted to let you know that one of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman (author of the Sandman graphic novels, Neverwhere, American Gods, Coraline- which was just made into a motion picture, and many other great stories), will be interviewed on The Colbert Report tonight. That should be entertaining.

Here's my latest list of books:

Breakfast at Tiffany's (which includes the three short stories House of Flowers, Diamond Guitar and A Christmas Memory) by Truman Capote. Okay, I've never watched the film, perhaps due to some misguided preconceived notions on what it was about. I still have no desire to watch the film (I am just not a big movie person), but I did love the book. The three short stories were also great. The only Capote book I'd read until now was In Cold Blood which was very well-written, but gruesome.

Pink by Gus Van Sant. Yes, the film director (Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho) Gus Van Sant. I saw this book on PaperBackSwap and ordered it out of curiousity. It is strange to say the least, and maybe not for the reasons some may think after simply reading the synopsis. It involves dimensional/ time travel, but the weird part- to me- is that some of the characters seem very familiar.

For example, there is a rock star named Blake that commits suicide and the public blames his wife Blackie, likening her to Yoko Ono for breaking up the great band of the '90s. Blake had a horrible addiction to... buying large farm machinery. Okay, so it seemed a little like Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love if you just change the names and swap "farm machinery" for heroin. Bizarre. The suicide note that the character Blake leaves is practically verbatim to the one Kurt Cobain actually left. Blake suicides by gun, also.

Another familiar character is Felix Arroyo, who is a sensitive, teen "informercial" sensation who dies from an overdose outside a popular gambling club owned by another young star. Sound familiar? Maybe because River Phoenix died outside The Viper Room, which was owned (at least partly) by Johnny Depp if I recall correctly.

While I normally LOVE strange books (I've read nearly all of Kathy Acker's novels) this one seems a little contrived. It doesn't really read like a novel but more like a rough draft for a second-rate screenaply. By the time I was 30 pages in I swear I had alreay had to stop and refer to at least 12 footnotes that Van Sant added to explain who a character was, after making allusions to them out of nowhere. It was very distracting and more than a little annoying.

Also, the story is full of hokey names, such as the narrator Spunky. There is lots of boring information about the making of informercials which is Spunky's line of work. It just seems that Mr. Van Sant, who worked with River Phoenix and later made a film about Kurt Cobain's last days, would have found a more artistic and interesting way to pay homage to these persons he found so captivating. When reading it I felt as though there were lots of cryptic references, "inside jokes," that are put there solely for people he actually knows to "get."

On the back of the book the price was $21.95! (Mine was from PaperBackSwap, so I didn't pay that). My overall sense was that Van Sant had the money and connections to get his book published, so he did. It was almost like a weird posthumous Valentine to River Phoenix. I don't regret reading it, but I do not recommend.

The book I hope to begin today is Darkness Visible by William Golding, also author of Lord of the Flies, which was great.

After that I have The Time Traveller's Wife lined up.

Books, Dumb Celebrity Kid Names and Whatnot

I haven't been able to get as much reading done lately as I would like, but I did start a new book last night. It's called Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China. It's the nonfiction story of three generations of women in China during tumultuous times.

It begins with the story of the author's grandmother, who was given as a concubine to a powerful warlord general. That happened when she was fourteen years old. Her father did it to ingratiate himself to the general in order to further himself politically and financially. It also details the horrible and painful "beauty" ritual of foot-binding she had to endure since she was a small child. This was the feminine ideal trait of the time and the resulting tiny (mutilated) feet were described as "three-inch gilded lilies." I'll stick to my Clementine number nines, baby! (Size 8, actually. Quit looking at me like that. I'm not bandaging my feet for your approval, folks.)

I am not even one hundred pages in yet but I already love this book. I picked it up at my local Goodwill on a whim. Some of my favorite books have been discovered that way.

Okay. I was going to talk about some other books but honestly by the time I actually got to sit down and type this I have forgotten what they were. Oops...

I sort of lied a minute ago. I DO get to read more often than I insinuated. It's just that the books I read (over and over) are: Good Night, Baby; The Cat in the Hat; Tom and Annie Go Shopping; and A House for a Hermit Crab.

I may run out of breath by the tenth reading but I am pleased that Violet enjoys books. Oh yeah! Warning- Mommy bragging moment: she has recently learned the alphabet and she recognizes and says all the letters! (Twenty-two months old? Whoa. I didn't learn them until I was like six I think.)

Now to the other topic. Dumb Celebrity Baby Names.

This isn't a new thing by any means. Celebrities have a long history of showing their "creativity" through offbeat names for their (spoiled) offspring. Bob Geldof and Paula Yates may have helped inspire the recent boom in silly names when they began having children almost twenty years ago: Peaches Honeyblossom, Fifi Trixibelle and Little Pixie Geldof. What's in a name. Well, the only news I ever hear of the Geldof girls involves drinking, snogging and snarking. Go figure.

Honestly, I don't care what anyone names their child, as long as they consider that the child will have to live with the name (and possibly shame.) What do you, Reader, think of this bizarre trend?

To me it's like every other lame status thing in Hollyweird. "Yeah well, my baby's name is totally weirder than yours." (Please, Paris, do not breed!) Who can have the tiniest dog, biggest sunglasses, most stints in rehab, and most unusual baby name. Snorrre.

When I started this blog, pre-Violet, I wrote about the name debate Jeremy and I were having. I've always loved the name Violet. a.) I love the color. b.) It sounds cool to me. c.) I knew a little old lady named Violet Canary and just thought she was the bee's knees. d.) It's the name of a song I like. Jeremy, however, wanted to go all Norse mythology on me (which we both love, but...) and name her-

are you ready?

Valkyrie.

Seriously. This was before the Tom Cruise movie came out, but it was being filmed. I told him that besides everything else, people will think we named our baby after a Tom Cruise movie. Why not tattoo Pepsi ads on her while we're at it? Yuck. His reasoning was "No one else will have the same name." Yeah, nor would she run into a classmate named Dogfeathers. Or Arnie Palmer Lite. Or Sassula Spaghetta. Doesn't make any of those a good name for a little girl either!

I suppose that's the price one pays for breeding with a known Dungeons and Dragon player. Well, I think you know who won that one. However he does stand by the idea that he gets to name a boy child, if we were to have one. His pick? Thor. (One good reason Violet is going to stay a single child.)

While we're on the subject: Yes, Violet. No, not "like Ben and Jen." Sorry. That makes me insane when people say that. I feel better now.

Mother Goose: Book of Crimes

Well, the actual name is "Book of Rhymes," but once you take a good look at what is really going on in this cute little book of lullabies you'll see why I changed it. I bought this thin volume of traditional rhymes years ago, and now Violet has been carrying it around looking at the pictures. I forgot how completely sadistic some of these are, and thought I'd share them with you.

From this rhyme children learn to impose their religious beliefs onto others, by means of physical violence and bodily harm:

Here is another shot of that page, just so you can see how the cutesy illustrations never actually address the brutality of the verse.

In this next little gem you can see the children playing on a see-saw when the rhyme is actually about slavery:

And who could forget that charming little future date-rapist, Georgie Porgey? Please note the position of the saucy little redhead girl's hand on Georgie's thigh, which lends credence to the saying "You can't rape the willing." These two are equally creepy. That poor little brunette doesn't stand a chance on that playground.

* Pictures shown here without permission from the book "Mother Goose, Book of Rhymes," as told and pictured by Margaret Evans Price.

When I'm Not On Blogger

If I fail to post for a couple (okay, six or seven) days, I'm most likely doing this:

- Drinking copious amounts of coffee. Right now it's Antigua by Gevalia.

- Rearranging the ancient hand-me-down furniture in my house in an attempt to make it appear less hand-me-down and ancient, as though merely its placement could change that. (It now looks like ancient hand-me-down furniture, in a different place.)

- Chase Violet and generally try to keep her away from all things sharp and electrical in the home. That is a full time job in itself.

- Furiously use teeth whitening products to undo the damage all the damn coffee inflicts on my teeth. They are not quite white, but not yellow. They are a shade I've named, in an attempt to make it sound more charming than it really is, "antique lace."

- Start reading at least five separate books, and get halfway through each of them. Right now I'm reading "The Best Awful," by Carrie Fisher. There is a book in each room of the house that I am working on. (But not the bathroom. I've never understood that. If you have time to read in there- you need to eat more fiber. Sorry.)

- Oh yeah, and don't forget the everyday tedium of cleaning, dishes, laundry, diapers, food, etc.

My life is a speeding motorcycle, full of danger and excitement! Can't you just feel the wind in your hair?

Books, Cats... Great Day To Be A Geek!

Today I received three pieces of mail. First, the bad news: the IRS says they need me to sign my form before they send me my refund (although I clearly remember signing it, and the jerks I paid to do my taxes surely would have noticed, right?) The second was a book (Magical Thinking by Augusten Burroughs) from PaperBackSwap. Good thing, because I was ready for a new book. I read his other book, Running With Scissors, last week and it was pretty good, in a sick kind of way. Apparently there is a movie of it and everyone else on the planet already read it like two years ago, but I don't keep up with trends. I live in West Virginia. You're lucky I can read, people.
But I have saved the best for last, just like that horrible song everyone always plays at weddings says. The third piece of mail was Everything Is Wrong With You: The Modern Woman's Guide To Finding Self-Confidence Through Self-Loathing by Wendy Molyneux. She sent it because she was so very dazzled by my wit that she thought I needed a prize. (okay, really I was runner-up in a contest on her blog in which she asked readers to name fictional book titles for people with low expectations. I changed Charles Dickens' "Great Expectations" to "Realistic Expectations.")

Also, an unexpected visitor showed up this afternoon. He, or she- I haven't checked, came running across the street while I was outside. I treated him or her to chicken strips and a bowl of water. Last I checked he or she was still sitting on my porch. Violet will be very happy to see this guest when she wakes up, which will be any time now.

Noise control, please!

Hello. I have just returned from a nerve-jangling trip from the dreaded mall. I deperately needed to get my hair trimmed, as it was looking somewhat mullet-y and thought I'd take my chances with one of those hair places. (I live dangerously!) Besides I am about to give birth any day now and thought walking would perhaps meloriate the odds of that being sooner than later. (No such luck!) It did however make my hips and lower back feel like they were in a vise. I did pick up a couple of books while I was out. One aptly enough sums up my mall experience: Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, Too Tight: What to Do If You Are Sensory Defensive in an Overstimulating World by Sharon Heller, Ph.D. It is about a condition that affects about 15% of people in which their senses are overloaded by stimuli that most people can easily block out (or may not even be aware of.) I have read on this subject before and hope this book has some good advice. My fiance has a tendency to be very restless- shaking his leg, pacing, etc- which all grate against my raw overly-fragile nerves sometimes. I am hoping he'll read the book and have a better understanding, maybe even realize I am not a (complete) control freak or total bitch, but that sometimes those actions and constant noise and movement are just too much for me to deal with. The other book is Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, which of all the Neil Gaiman I read I somehow skipped this one. I have Fragile Things to start up next as well. I bought that for Jeremy but he hasn't started it yet. I am enjoying getting to READ while I am on bedrest, awaiting maternity leave! That is definitely the biggest perk. Well... outside of getting to prop my feet up so they don't swell up like water balloons. I have only been off work for about a week. I thought I'd be a champ, but really- who wants their water to break at their desk at work? Not I!
Well, catch you kids later!