heebie-geebie

Book review: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.
( copied in here for easy fangirl comments )

Today was the first rehearsal for this year's Christmas pageant. We're doing The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, which was originally a book by Barbara Robinson. The story is about a family of horrible awful juvenile delinquent kids who muscle in on a church Christmas pageant, take over all the roles, and wind up Teaching Everyone A Lesson About Christmas. Yeah, I know. But it's going to be fun. The kids are really excited.

This year we're going with simplicity. Most of the exposition comes from a narrator, a teenage boy who will be reading from the script. A teenage girl plays the mother who gets roped into directing the pageant, and she also has a fair number of lines. The younger kids (who play the rest of the roles) have just a manageable few lines each.

The thing that's really ideal about this story, at least from my standpoint as the director, is that the play-within-a-play aspect means that I don't have to worry about the little kids learning where to go and what to do. If they need to be herded around the stage by adults or they wander off or whisper to each other? It'll just pass as realism. And I do have reasonably sharp kids in the key child roles.

Against my better judgment, I gave Alex a speaking part. She really, really, really wanted to be Gladys Herdman, the youngest delinquent kid, who winds up with the part of the Angel of the Lord in the pageant. She has one line, which she delivers at two different points: "Hey! Unto you a child is born!" Hopefully she will manage it all right. I painted a vivid verbal picture of how she'll have to deliver her line in a church full of people she doesn't know, and she insisted that she could. Cross your fingers for us.

Also, as if that weren't enough, I am gearing up to teach OWL again. OWL is the UU comprehensive sex education curriculum. It's a 27-session course aimed at grades 7-9, or about ages 12-14, and covering everything from the mechanics of the reproductive system to equal rights for GLBT people to dating and relationships to what people do when they have sex. It's intense, and fun, and draining, and awesome.

Neither of my two previous co-teachers are repeating. Instead I'll be teaching with my friend Laura and with Michael. Michael! Will be teaching OWL! Which means that we are going to need childcare for OWL every week, unfortunately. But Michael was the only likely male volunteer, and you can't have OWL with only female teachers. And Michael will be great.

We have parent orientation this coming week (twice - once Tuesday evening, and once Saturday morning) and then we start with the kids on January 5. Whew.

Almost every Saturday night we have a "family dinner" at our house, with us, J and R -- a couple we've known for decades, who are our children's Jewish-equivalent-of-godparents, our friend Db, and sometimes other waifs & strays. R is a seriosu oenophile with a strong preference for bargains, so he brings wine that he thinks will go with whatever I've planned to make. And a couple spares, just in case.

One of the many things to love about this arrangement is that we get to drink a wide variety of wines without having to dither over which to get, while R gets the fun of tracking down and trying many different wines.

In this process we've made a curious scientific discovery. There is a chemical in some red wines that I (and I believe the children) can taste, that is undetectable to most people -- even R, whose palette for wine is extremely sensitive and well-trained. We have informally named this chemical "substance P", because it gives me the pip. P is never found in white wines, AFAICT, so presumably it's something in the skin/stem/seeds.

To me, a red wine with substance P tastes *exactly* like a cranberry that has gone bad -- a taste with which I am all too familiar, from decades of picking over cranberries to make sauce. It's quite repellant.

One of R's wine-choosing pleasures is trying to predict which wines will contain substance P. He's gotten pretty good at it over the years, so we were taken aback last night when I tasted the Andezon Cotes-du-Rhone 2006 and went "gack!!!" before going to wash my mouth out. I haven't hit such a high concentration of substance P in a *looong* time.

The big trouble (for me) with P-containing wines is that they are not rare. Many Cabernet Sauvignon-based wines contain P, and I am quite leery of red Bordeaux in general because of it. hmm. I wonder if we could do a little genetic testing when my whole family is here for Christmas -- I wonder if my parents and brother are P-sensitive.

Anyway, it occurs to me that P-sensitivity is never going to be found in wine critics, because they have to drink too many different kinds of wine. Robert Parker, for instance, gave this Andezon a "90", and believe me that is absolute proof that he is P-insensitive. So although oenophiles and wine critics are expected to have very sensitive and accurate senses of taste, they can't be *too* sensitive -- they have to be sensitive only to the things that are considered important, but they must be taste-blind to chemicals like P, which are not considered important.

There's an analogy here to qualifications for being a critic of books, movies, etc., which I leave as an exercise for the student.

This entry was originally posted at http://mecurtin.dreamwidth.org/116729.html. There are comments there for this post.

Poll #1495343
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 42

My feelings about my Yuletide story can best be summed up as:

This is the state of my Yuletide story:

I have the following miscellaneous feelings about my Yuletide story:

Puzzle: The Valencian Eye. With thanks to mos_self.

This entry was originally posted at http://mecurtin.dreamwidth.org/116328.html. There are comments there for this post.

Finally got around to putting some links on the sidebar of my live journal. I'm sure I'll be tweaking it some, but I'm pretty happy with it so far. It's in no specific order yet, but take a look if your interested to see some of the sites I frequent for news and what not.

Mostly it's a handy reference for me--like having a bookmarks page that I can call up no matter where I am!

I catch flies with rum.


I wish someone had told me that the Harinezumi was being sold at UO.
because shipping was a BITCH.

Thao With The Get Down Stay Down: Cool Yourself from scottbateman on Vimeo.

Book: Bartholomew and the Oobleck. In honor of today's weather in much of the US.

This entry was originally posted at http://mecurtin.dreamwidth.org/116112.html. There are comments there for this post.

"Max Baucus."



Nice going, you crooked piece of shit.

( Comments Always Welcome )

Hat-tip John Amato...

You'd think that rape would be one issue Republicans would be smart enough not make into a partisan issue, but no. They just can't help themselves.


As you may recall Franken sponsored a successful defense bill amendment that withholds government contracts from companies that refused to let employees bring rape cases before the courts.

Now, it should be tough voting against rape, but thirty Republicans did just that, and now they're pissing and moaning because of the backlash they're getting. And in their usual state of sheer idiocy, not only are they blaming Franken for the hammering, they're asking him to defend them (!).

From Politico:

The Republicans are steamed at Franken because partisans on the left are using a measure he sponsored to paint them as rapist sympathizers — and because Franken isn’t doing much to stop them.

“Trying to tap into the natural sympathy that we have for this victim of this rape —and use that as a justification to frankly misrepresent and embarrass his colleagues, I don’t think it’s a very constructive thing,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said in an interview.“I think it’s going to make a lot of senators leery and start looking at things he’s doing earlier on, because I don’t think it got appropriate attention ahead of time.”

“I don’t know what his motivation was for taking us on, but I would hope that we won’t see a lot of Daily Kos-inspired amendments in the future coming from him,” said South Dakota's John Thune, No. 4 in the Senate Republican leadership. “I think hopefully he’ll settle down and do kind of the serious work of legislating that’s important to Minnesota.”

"I think it would be helpful for Sen. Franken to come forward and say, 'I’m not suggesting that anybody who (didn't) vote for my amendment is indifferent to crimes against women or anybody else'," said Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who also opposed the amendment.

Kit Bond (R-MO), said, “from what I know of” Franken, he “expected” such tactics.

“It was partisan — and he knew it,” said Tom Coburn (R-OK). “That’s exactly what I’d expect.”

"Partisan," eh? Even though 10 GOP senators voted for it (including all the female ones).

These assclowns should be embarrassed, but instead they're claiming they've been "mischaracterized." Really? Did they vote yes or no? That's the only question that should be debated. All the Republicans who voted against Franken's measure have a lot more to answer for. Bad PR is just the beginning.

( breastfeeding, might be TMI )

Puzzle: Go Cavaliers!

This entry was originally posted at http://mecurtin.dreamwidth.org/115870.html. There are comments there for this post.

I'm sitting in the theater waiting for "O" to start with Kita and Lynne. We've had our gambling funded by a very drunk man. I have a new nickname, given to me by some guy that was impressed with my craps skill: international Texan gambling girl. Lol!

Lynne has Christina Hendrix boobs that have drawn the menfolk like flies, she wanted me to note...

yes, this was taken at Javapalooza

I have never spent any time on Facebook at all, but there is a new Southland Facebook page, and if you page down you'll see an 11 second video of Ben McKenzie thanking the fans for saving the show that is just beyond awesomely adorable. It was linked on Cudlitz's twitter stream, of course. The first time I watched it, I missed the audio of the first few seconds while it was buffering or something. Um, I might have watched it several more times after that, because, Ben McKenzie adds, "Seriously, thank you" and dips his head, smiles, and says "God bless you," and it's squee-producing in the extreme.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/SouthLAnd/326682460095?ref=nf

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comments on DW post.

I gotta say, you guys are absolutely amazing...


I'm delighted to report that - thanks to your kindness - my daughter's food drive for homeless shelter dogs & cats has raised enough money for 54 bags (432 pounds) of food, more than halfway toward her goal of 100 bags!

Needless to say, the little lady is absolutely beaming, and - once again - sends her heartfelt thanks to everyone that has participated so far. (When the drive is over, I'm handing the keyboard over to her to write you all a personal wrap-up on the project.)

If you've not had a chance to donate yet, please consider lending Jessi (and the countless pups n' kits she's doing this for) a helping hand this holiday season. All donated food will go to no-kill shelters only. In this economy - with charitable donations down across the board - heaven knows they need all the help they can get. Thank you again. ☺

Choose Donation Level

One Bag of Food $6.00 Three Bags of Food $14.00 Five Bags of Food $21.00

Excerpted from a great piece by Johann Hari:

Imagine you are about to get on a plane with your family. A huge group of qualified airline mechanics approach you on the tarmac and explain they've studied the engine for many years and they're sure it will crash if you get on board. They show you their previous predictions of plane crashes, which have overwhelmingly been proven right.

Then a group of flight attendants, journalists and plumbers tell they have looked at the diagrams and it's perfectly obvious to them the plane is safe and that airplane mechanics – all of them, everywhere – are scamming you. Would you get on the plane? That is our choice at Copenhagen.

You can read more of Hari's intelligent, insightful articles on the environment here.

Oh, and the next time you run into an "OMG CLIMATE-GATE!" pinhead like this or this, there's plenty of good, real-world information to dismantle their "arguments" both here and here...

...not that you'll ever get anywhere, mind you. These are, after all, flat-earthers we're talking about. They're not only as dumb as a bag of rocks, they plain-old don't give a shit.

This past September, when nearly all the world’s leaders were in New York for a meeting of the United Nations, Platon, a staff photographer for The New Yorker, set up a tiny studio off the floor of the General Assembly, and tried to hustle as many of them in front of his lens as possible...


Here is the result - a remarkable, interactive portfolio of portraits with audio commentary by the photographer. Well worth perusing, IMHO.

Check out Platon's other terrific work here.