feng shui take two

P1000963
Originally uploaded by freyjawaru.

part one: pink sheets.

whoa

you know, maybe I shouldn't move back to New York. I'm not saying I'm likely to end up like this guy, but I did hang out at the Indonesian Consulate on the Upper East Side quite a bit when I lived there (owing to gamelan rehearsals, complete with blonde, white, suburban housewives who spoke fluent Javanese).

Given the fact that I was about five blocks away when that chick got bricked in 1999 (while on my lunch hour--I worked about seven blocks away on Madison and 35th), and that a woman was knifed walking out of the subway stop I always used at a time when I usually walked out of it, it's all a little too close for comfort. But then, NYC is sometimes just that way--I can't think of another place where I would run into my 6th-grade teacher from Boulder, Colorado on the one time I would take the D train to the Bronx to see a Yankees game, nor where I would find myself living a block away from my Head Resident from college and about five blocks away from the respective homes of about seven a capella singers, nor where I would just run into Yoko Ono while shopping for used classical CDs.

Geburtstag

Happy birthday, Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

It would be pretty damn cool to be in Salzburg right now. I happened to be there on the anniversary year of his *death* in 1991. Which was awfully weird. They were selling Mozart chocolates absolutely everywhere. And I do have to say that Austrian Mozart chocolates are much, much better than the ones you can find here. My personal faves happen to be the true Kugeln, or balls. Balls that are perfectly round and covered with gold foil. Although, perhaps one can find those in the US now. I'm amazed at how much cool stuff is finally becoming available more frequently. Like Ritter Sport bars and gummi peaches and macademia nuts.

I'm a tad annoyed because my class decided we will be reading Wicked. Although I suppose it's better than having to reread Life of Pi. Ah, well--such is the nature of "book club" books, I suppose.

I'm also fiendishly jealous of everyone who's going to the Mozart party tomorrow night. Sigh. At times like this I wish I was in the musicology department. J and C, you're probably chuckling as you read this. Because I'm sure you're going. And so you should feel sorry for me. But that's OK--because I'm going to my friend's gig, so maybe it will get my mind off the numbing agony of not going. :)

If I were going to a Mozart party, naturally I would want to go dressed as Cherubino.

romantic getaways

So my friend is celebrating her anniversary with her boyfriend this weekend. She said she needed to get out of Urbana, so of course, she and her boyfriend are going to stay in a hotel in Champaign for the night.

I asked her, "Um, haven't you guys heard of Sybaris?"

Seriously. If *I* wanted a romantic getaway, I'd be all over having my own water slide in my room.

Here is Sybaris's Web site.

feng shui

Since my love life has pretty much continually sucked and/or been nonexistent my entire life, it has been suggested to me that I perhaps set up some feng shui around the relationship area in my home. I am pleased to try this--it can't hurt, plus I have found that Eastern beliefs in energy flow and stagnant problem-areas actually work, at least in terms of acupuncture. I think feng shui follows some of the same principles--perhaps that part of my life has just been dormant or stagnant and needs to be revitalized. It goes to show that the last two men with whom I've been in love have unhealthy relationships that they're obviously already in and are leading lives that are themselves stagnant, possibly owing to their inability to get out of said relationships.

I have a Feng Shui book for Dummies. I need to find a cheap bamboo flute. I also need to find some kind of cheap indoor fountain. The book says something about essential oils and fragrance and how important it is to have quality essential oils or smells around your environment, not that cheap Glade crap (since it's synthetic anyway). It got me thinking--what about dog feng shui? Dogs absolutely love the most horrendous smells--if a dog finds a rotting fish for example, he must roll in it so he can keep smelling JUST LIKE IT. So would a dog need an Essence of Dead Baby Bunny or something in his home?

alamo

P1000940
Originally uploaded by freyjawaru.

This is a shrine. Please be quiet. Thank you.

my new prospects

Well, it looks like the possibility of moving back to Chicago is looking slimmer and slimmer. This is owing, of course, to the Chicago Public Library, which will not even allow me to start the application process until I have a degree in hand. Seeing as I happen to be a grownup, it looks then like I won't be working for them, since I need to eat and therefore need to have a job lined up to start on May 16.

Luckily for me I made the effort to go to the ALA conference in San Antonio and I turn out to be a rather competitive candidate. :) I had two interviews with NYPL, one with Queens, one with Boston, and one with Philadelphia. I hope that the screening interviews lead to more promising returns. I think I'd be quite happy and challenged working for any one of them. So it looks as though signs are pointing to my moving back East, which probably is the best thing for me anyway. I think I'm a bit out of my element in the midwest.

my trip

Well, it’s been an interesting day. I had not two, but THREE legs to San Antonio from Champaign! Luckily, I only have to make two legs on the way back.

So it’s been all airplane flights, all day. Of course, that totally beat getting my ass to Chicago by 7 AM for flights that each had a four- to five-hour layover on the way to San Antonio. That would have involved getting the shuttle (which runs every three hours from Champaign and takes four hours to get to Chicago) at around midnight. And would have cost the same.

I like to sit in the window seat in general. I suppose the general population is probably pretty evenly divided between aisle and window preferences. When I fly Delta, I make sure to log in and confirm my flight(s) about a week beforehand so I can try to get window seats. Today, when I boarded at Cincinnati for Atlanta, I found a woman sitting in my seat.

This particular woman was quite nasty looking. Remember that poor woman who was mauled by the weird mastiff-type dogs in San Francisco five years ago? The lawyers who owned those dogs looked like (and happened to be) supreme assholes. She looked just like Marjorie Knoller. But was a lot heavier.

In any case, I told her that I thought she was probably in my seat. She responded: “Oh, you want to sit in the window seat?” No, I wanted to sit in the middle. I told her that I’d ensured a window seat awhile back and yes, I did intend to sit in it. She threw a miniature tantrum—sighed, huffed and puffed, and slammed things around in order to vacate the seat for me. She happened to have been assigned to the middle seat and no one sat in the aisle seat. But she stayed in the middle seat anyway and almost leaned over me to continually gaze out the window. Good grief. I think she was trying to make me feel sorry for her and give up my seat to her. Finally, she gave up and moved to the aisle seat and wrung her hands the entire trip.

My little secret: I might have been nice enough to let her sit in the window seat, had she perhaps pressed my hand and earnestly said, “You know, I am really nervous on airplanes and I need to see out the window,” or, “I’m clinically insane and go ballistic on aircrafts when I can’t see outside” or something to that effect.

But no. She thought that if she just SAT in my seat that I would be too pacifistic to insist on sitting there myself. Ha!

Anyway, in a more important vein….

There is this really fascinating “column” in The Nation this week called “Girls against Boys?” Katha Pollitt discusses how the projected demographics for people attending college in the next few years will be 60% female/40% male. She says: “So of course the big question is, Who will all those educated women marry? . . . . If the ladies end up cuddling with their diplomas, they have only themselves—and those misguided ‘advocates for women’—to blame. Take that, you hyper-educated spinster, you.”

So, hmmm. I wonder how much my east-coast education is hurting my dating game in C-U?

deep within my heart

Since I'm going there tomorrow, I can't seem to get this song outta my head:

Deep within my heart lies a melody,
A song of old San Antone,
Where in dreams I live with a memory,
Beneath the stars all alone.

It was there I found beside the Alamo,
Enchantment strange as the blue up above
A moon-lit pass that only she would know,
Still hears my broken song of love.

Moon in all your splendor, know only my heart,
Call back my Rose, Rose of San Antone.
Lips so sweet and tender, like petals falling apart
Speak once again of my love, my own.

Broken song, empty words I know,
Still live in my heart all alone
For that moon-lit pass by the Alamo,
And Rose, my Rose of San Antone.

creative spending

I spent money on two things I really didn't need to spend money on today.

One was a petticoat. I have a skirt from Anthropologie that would look SO much better if it stuck out more.

And that petticoat site is SO MUCH FUN. I would have adored it when I was little. I adore it now!

The other was a second copy of the 14th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. Or maybe my copy is the 13th edition. I don't know. I shoved it in a box and have absolutely no idea which one it is and it's stored away so it was easier to order it used on Amazon. Supposedly the new edition isn't as good for indexing and that's what prompted me to buy it (for class). Of course, I've needed it a gazillion times since I started grad school (duh) and always wind up using one in the library instead.

At this moment, I am sitting in my LEEP class, trying to pay attention. GROAAAAN. I think I've just logged way too many hours in class already this week. Eight solid hours yesterday. This class will make it four today. And that doesn't include the other five hours of class I have this week. Of course it doesn't help that the course I'm pseudo-listening to is Indexing and Abstracting. Mahler is SO much more interesting.

you know something?

I think Wittgenstein was rather hot. But then, many people disagree with me on hotness factors (I for instance think that Hamilton was by far the sexiest Founding Father)....


In other news, I am probably going to be learning the accordion, which I mercifully won't inflict on my neighbors. It's bad enough hearing my neighbor trying to learn the violin....

damn I'm not too bad

I was right! It was the innocuous-seeming real-estate attorney. But maybe it was just an easy book to figure out. I read a profile of the author and was quite impressed--she lost her father suddenly at the age of ten, married awfully young and had five kids of her own, lost her husband shortly thereafter, and got her bachelor's about 25 years later than most people do. By then, she was a best-selling author.

Now I'm reading Helter Skelter and really ought not to be, since I have lots of other work to do, most notably on Victorian Song and for the grad hourly I hope to get permanently. Well, permanently until I leave this hell-hole, that is. I can't wait until May.

True-crime novels can really make one sick to one's stomach, that's for sure. But it's like a car accident, you know. And then of course, I'm such a sucker for gory details that I had to Google all the pictures of the victims. That search rendered at least one post-mortem picture of each, which I thought was rather offensive to the families of the victims, even over 35 years later.

I am making beef stew and was wise enough to just put two large pieces of carrot in for the flavoring. I will remove them later, since I hate carrots but do recognize that they add something to the flavor of the stock.

I wonder what I would think of living in LA? The public library pays pretty well and I have lots of friends nearby. Hmmm. I never considered California or really anyplace farther west than Colorado. I wouldn't even consider Colorado if it wasn't my home.

Oh, and as an aside--maybe it's because it's a holiday, but there have been a shitload of lame-ass motorcyclists revving their fucking engines below my window ALL DAY while they wait for the light. Not only is this place suckey, but it seems to have an alarmingly high number of men with tiny little penises.

mystery thoughts

I am reading On the Street Where You Live by Mary Higgins Clark. I don't ever read mystery novels but I have to read three of them (only by certain authors, too, and she was specified on our book list) for a class this semester. Actually, it's pretty fun. I always tried to read Agatha Christie novels when I was younger (ok, about twelve or so), but got bored out of my mind pretty quickly. I think some of those British mystery novels are antiseptic and overly polite. But see, I absolutely adored Sherlock Holmes stories and couldn't get enough of them at the time, so I thought it would make sense to get into the genre a bit more.

I can see how the author gets my mind working on who-done-it already and I'm going to say for the record, at 1/6 through the novel (I'm a slow reader), that right now I think it's the nice, seemingly innocuous real-estate attorney. The reason? None of the narration describes how he feels or thinks about much of anything thus far except for his thoughts on some married bimbo who hits on him. The close second is too obvious, I think--he's a hen-pecked ex-academic who moved to the area about twelve years prior to the story and learns enough of area history to possibly have come across the diary of a serial killer from 100 years before. We know that the killer in the book came across this diary and decides to make his own killings on the anniversaries of the first killings.

one of the best reviews ever

A snippet:

"The general opinion of “Revenge of the Sith” seems to be that it marks a distinct improvement on the last two episodes, “The Phantom Menace” and “Attack of the Clones.” True, but only in the same way that dying from natural causes is preferable to crucifixion. So much here is guaranteed to cause either offense or pain, starting with the nineteen-twenties leather football helmet that Natalie Portman suddenly dons for no reason, and rising to the continual horror of Ewan McGregor’s accent. “Another happy landing”—or, to be precise, “anothah heppy lending”—he remarks, as Anakin parks the front half of a burning starcruiser on a convenient airstrip. The young Obi-Wan Kenobi is not, I hasten to add, the most nauseating figure onscreen; nor is R2-D2 or even C-3PO, although I still fail to understand why I should have been expected to waste twenty-five years of my life following the progress of a beeping trash can and a gay, gold-plated Jeeves."

Anthony Lane's full review of Revenge of the Sith from May 2005 can be found here.

speaking of isolde...

.. the most famous one died on Christmas.

Birgit Nilsson's obituary.

record-breaking night

Well, my cousin Rar-head stuck it out for the record-breaking show of Phantom. He didn't get to sing Raoul, of course, but he does much of the time.

I went to see him in the show three years ago. He was playing Raoul that night, and even though I find Andrew Lloyd Webber quite annoying, it was really something to see my cousin playing a lead in a musical *on Broadway*. The people in the audience are always so starstruck, and I remember a few folks around me gasping after he would sing a number. He really is quite good.

Holy crap. I just Googled my cousin plus Raoul and there is some funny shit out there about him. Lots of Phantom-obsessed people blogging about him. I wonder if he ever Googles himself.

Here's a photo of a curtain call--Carrington's on the left.

bringing up baby

I hadn't seen this movie in years. It's tremendously funny, but a bit annoying at the same time--I like other screwball comedies a bit better. But it was weird that it was on the other night--I forgot that there is a song the leopard likes and makes him calm down. It turned out to be a song I've been listening to within an inch of its life this past fall:

I can't give you anything but love, baby
That's the only thing I've plenty of, baby
Dream a while, scheme a while
We're sure to find
Happiness and I guess
All those things you've always pined for
Gee, I'd like to see you looking swell, baby
Diamond bracelets Woolworth doesn't sell, baby
Till that lucky day
You know darned well, baby
I can't give you anything but love.

hot damn, I love the Discovery Channel

OK, there was some super-cool stuff on Blue Planet on the Discovery Channel. They were discussing deep-sea ecosystems and highly unusual underwater ecosystems.

One amazing thing was their discussion of deep-sea vents. The vents blow out chemicals and steam, but at the great depth at which they are located, the temperatures only get into the 300s Fahrenheit. In spite of the extreme heat and chemical activity, though, there is a lot of life down there that thrives on the chemicals produced.



There seems to be a specific color scheme, too, that is vividly red and white. Here's an image with text from a forthcoming National Geographic book on the subject.



Another amazing topic of choice--the underwater pond! It is a pond about 700 meters below the surface of the ocean--a brine pool that, owing to its higher density, does not mix into the surrounding ocean water. It even has its own shore. Here's a nifty link that has a laser image you can click on to see other photos up close. It's off the Gulf of Mexico.

Pool o'brine

Now, that link appears to be faulty from time to time, so try clicking on links here if that doesn't work.

A cool article.

a new funny poster

www.whitehouse.org

qa

A couple of years ago, I found this weird link off Craig's List and followed it. It lead me to a site called Quirky Alone. A book was forthcoming and it was started by a woman named Sasha Cagen. I found that the site and concept resonated with me strongly. I sent it to one of my best friends, who used it in a sermon (she's a minister).

What's particularly amusing about the whole Quirkyalone thing is that several of my good friends think THEY'RE Quirkyalone, even though I don't think they've been single for longer than a few months in any of their given lives. Obviously, they're not. In my opinion (and probably also in the opinion of the movement's founder), anyone who is continually involved in a serious relationship cannot possibly have the same mindset as I do or as a handful of other people have, because I have been more or less single and alone my entire life. I am now 31. The longest relationship I've had was six months, two of which were spent over 1000 miles apart.

I just thought of it and took the quiz again--I'm definitely VERY Quirkyalone. A woman in my program, when I mentioned it to her, said, "Oh, yeah, isn't that the movement where you're supposed to be sick and twisted if you're in a relationship?" Not at all. She didn't grasp any of the concepts whatsoever. People I know who are European are always shocked by Americans and their obsession with being in a relationship. If you're not attached and if you're not having regular casual sex if you're single, there's something seriously wrong with you. On the other hand, if you have casual sex, there's also something wrong with you. I never have casual sex and I hardly ever date. I might go on a couple of dates in a calendar year.

But being Quirkyalone doesn't mean that you don't want a relationship. I can't say how often I wonder what is so significantly wrong with me that I'm always alone. And yes, I'm lonely. But I'm happier than the lonely people I know who are in relationships.

som

Right now, on Will and Grace, they're showing the Sing Along Sound of Music. It's bringing back a lot of memories, because I went to that the first time it was in New York (that's when I lived there). There was nothing quite like it--and it's true that all the gay men in NYC are generally there.

One queen came in full wedding regalia, and he promenaded across the stage, in front of the screen, during the wedding sequence. A woman showed up as Fraulein something-or-other--the woman who wins third place in the Festival and keeps bowing. I don't think I've seen so many men in nuns' costumes in my life.

Interestingly enough, no one came dressed as a Nazi. That, in all aspects of Western society, is strictly verboten. I guess Prince Harry or his brother was a Nazi for Halloween once. The thing is, you're supposed to dress as the scariest thing for Halloween. Isn't a Nazi pretty scary?

The only person who could pull off Nazi costumes parading around, of course, was Mel Brooks. When he won the Tony for best musical, he whipped out a small comb, held it under his nose, and said, "I'd like to start off by thanking Hitler, for being such a funny guy on the stage."

I can't help it

I keep downloading songs that are a bit embarrassing. I downloaded Britney Spears's "Toxic." I think it rocks. One of my coworkers feels the same way, and he secretly plays it a lot. And he has good taste.

With the excuse that I needed good "workout" music, I also downloaded "Barbie World," "Another Night" (Real McCoy), and that Ru Paul song about "Work, turn it to the left / Work, turn it to the right / Sashay, sashay..." I think I like gay boy music (even though my coworker is definitely not gay).

the soon-to-be new teenager hit

Well, Hollywood ran out of things to market to teens so apparently they've done a movie version of Tristan und Isolde (Tristan and Iseult, whatever suits your fancy). Yipes. They've already destroyed Le Morte d'Arthur and the Chretien de Troyes romances enough. Plus it sounds like they've added some rock-ballad horrors to the soundtrack. Think "Everything I do (I do it for you)." Man, that Robin Hood was beyond atrocious.

Well, maybe a new generation will finally be interested in Wagner. They should be--there are orgasms written into the music in that opera.

An aside--I actually liked Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet (even though I hated Moulin Rouge so much I walked out of the theater after thirty minutes). But my big problem with Romeo and Juliet was that the sound editor or soundtrack editor or whatever used the last three minutes of Tristan und Isolde for the final death scene--but left out the Tristan chord! Using the allusion to the opera was a great idea (only in death can Tristan and Isolde be together, just like only in death can Romeo and Juliet be together), but they completely ruined it. The whole musical point of the opera is that this impossibility is reflected in the tonality of the music. The music doesn't resolve to the tonic until the last note--after three-and-a-half hours. That was a monumentally big deal and quite revolutionary in the 1850s. So in my opinion, they shouldn't have made the musical reference at all--they just glossed over the final Tristan chord and went straight for the finale. barf.