The bacon salt arrived and I opened the bottle of hickory flavor to turn a serving of plain cream of wheat into a cunning vegetarian imitation of bacon grits. NOM NOM NOM.

Other than that my brain has melted from sleeping-as-stress-relief this week and sleeping with the radio on makes me have really bizarre dreams, particularly during The Story.

...

Not something I dreamed: A six-pound chunk of metal that crashed through a Dallas roof turned out to be a part that broke off a commercial mulching machine at a business near the house and not a piece of space debris.

For a fleeting moment I knew what key my tinnitus[1] is in and bolted out into the living room to grab one of the electronic keyboards and a set of headphones to confirm it. Unfortunately Vogon was asleep and Laurel was watching TV, and its horizontal scan rate noise throws my perception. I am ready to unplug that irritation box. Vogon assures me LCD television sets do not make that noise (the one we own is in his study and not the living room), but the harmonic between the TV and my tinnitus has been annoying the crap out of me since I quit watching TV last month. DO NOT WANT that noise.

I'm going to hole up in the bedroom again with more soothing BBC World Service and get back to reading Oliver Sacks. I smile every time he references Jourdain and all the mentions of plasticity. Does neuroplasticity count as a fandom?

I am tired of the TV-noise and need to either cajole Vogon into enabling wireless connectivity or just run a network cable into the bedroom so I can have internets without the torture of TV-noise. I keep having good ideas spoiled by hearing the same few episodes of iCarly, Hannah Montana, and Wizards of Waverly Place. Sufficiently annoyed by TV-noise, I would happily beat up all of their casts and knock Billy Ray Cyrus about the head until he stops using that dreadful "cuntry" (misspelling intentional) dialect.

Good noise was on Selected Shorts this week, though; Percival Everett's "The Appropriation of Cultures" read by Ruben Santiago-Hudson. I laughed so hard I almost peed myself. The next time I see the Confederate flag, I will hear the story's main character say "That's the black power flag, brothers."


1. If I heard a high A continuously as Schumann did late in life, I would sell everything I own for any medical intervention to make it stop.

"Harmonicas are easy to pick up and play, and it sure beats sending tubas."

Damn you, NPR, for making me laugh so hard I had a coughing fit.

(And yes, we're seeing the doctor today. Gotta rule out strep and have the kiddo's cough evaluated since it's been a week without improvement. We had last week off school, but I didn't want to send her back with a cough that didn't become more productive or quieter after application of respective cold medicine formulae.)

Fifty years ago this month, a San Francisco municipal court judge ruled that Allen Ginsberg's poem "HOWL" was not obscene.

Last week a public radio station chose not to broadcast a 1959 reading of the poem due to fear of an FCC fine.

You can listen to an online broadcast of the poem at HOWL Against Censorship.

Bedroom chatter the other night...

Me: I wonder how much I enlarge my carbon footprint every time I have a lot of gas.
Vogon: ...
Me: Like cows and methane.
Vogon: Why isn't Al Gore against eating beans?

...

These science tattoos rock. They remind me of the time I discussed tattoos with toddler_hiway and he mentioned that if he ever got one, it would be the formula for Euler's number.

...

I heard Dr. Robert Zubrin on All Things Considered on Friday. I kept being distracted by thoughts of That's Eliot's stepdad! while he was talking. Evergreen really is too surreal to be home forever.

Garrison Keillor has a doppelgänger and he lives in Dallas.

He e-mailed me last night about my Craigslist posting offering some gently used pet items for sale. We met up today so his grandson could examine the two 10-gallon aquarium tanks in my listing. After a very long examination of them for chips and asking why I wanted to sell them (they were sitting unused for months and were recently displaced by a large birdcage Vogon bought), we agreed on a sale price of $15 for the pair.

Sadly, he did not volunteer to tell me the news from Lake Wobegon. Oh well. (:

Happy repeal day!

December 5th is the anniversary of the day the United States repealed the Eighteenth Amendment and gave us all the constitutional right to consume alcohol. [trivia source] [image source]

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I had to turn off the NPR live coverage of the Gates confirmation hearing because I kept typing phrases I found funny into the PTA newsletter I'm preparing for print.

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I saw trshtwns01 late this morning so I have been dancing around singing "panang" to the tune of that M.I.A. song again, but no-one's around to hear it so you're all safe. T., I'll send you a list of menu options either later tonight or tomorrow.

I looked up my favorite toy store in Denver to find pictures of the menagerie of non-monkey sock animals I mentioned to her. They don't have the rhinoceros I like so much online, but they do have a sock gorilla, a sock turtle, a sock moose, a sock bear and a sock frog. Cute! Last time I was there I bought the "beep-beep car" that's my Travel user icon and Laurel charmed her way into a whole bunch of things, including a pair of castanets that look like a ladybug. I think I like toy stores a little more than the average adult.

...

I dared myself to sit down and type up meeting minutes as soon as I got home from the meeting last night. Around noon, I got an e-mail from one of the recipients of said minutes (which I'd mailed as an attachment with a summary of the actionable items as the main body of the e-mail) that read "Thank you! You rock!" and I am feeling absurdly proud of that.

I'm going to let Laurel get some free time in on the computer before dinner. I'll be around later after tonight's meeting since House is a repeat tonight ("Three Stories", the Carmen Electra cameo episode). It's a rather embarrassing reflection on our cultural literacy that 54% of poll respondents on the House website didn't understand the "thirty pieces of silver" reference at the end of the new episode that aired 28 November 2006. Hint: the episode's title is "Finding Judas". *palm to forehead*

Blogged for vogonpoet's future reference: Oboist Liang Wang: His Reeds Come First

I know a bunch of you love This American Life. Branching out from that, I recently got hooked on Radio Lab, a limited-season show from WNYC.

Today I teared up with joy at one segment. The site's synopsis for "Goat on a Cow":

Producer and gumshoe Laura Starecheski brings us along on a hunt that traverses the country, and time. The mystery to unravel? A box of old letters found on the side of the road by Erick Gordon. Git your teeth ready for a nail-bitin' chase through clues and suspects--a Manhattan middle school teacher, homesick WWII soldiers, Rte 101, an estranged wife and mother from the past, Bob and Carol, unfriendly landowners--that all revolve around, yes, a goat standing on a cow.

You can stream or download the segment from that show's page, "Detective Stories (April 14, 2006)".

Listening to assorted public radio podcasts while tagging posts in npr_junkie, I came across one especially irritating verbal trait in a past installment of North Texas News and Commentary (podcast info).

In the story "Schools use new techniques to keep poor and minority students in gifted education" (transcript / MP3), the reporter has sort of an edge of mouth/hissing thing going on and I can't quite put my finger on what it's called or how a speaker could compensate for that sound. Any ideas?

Listening to today's episode of 50 Skidillion Watts Of Good Will, I thought of a few things I'd like to say to revme before they fall out of my head:

• I love your dad's sense of humor. In a parallel universe where I don't have circumstances that keep me from traveling too often, I'd like to move to Seattle and be adopted by your family for awhile and eat really good food and stuff.


• It seems like Elephant Six is everywhere right now. I'd call it a sign from a higher power, but it's really just the corner of my music library I've been listening to lately. (:


• I almost cried toward the end of the show when you played one of my favorite Talking Heads songs. Also, isn't there something in the Sand in the Vaseline liner notes about "And She Was" being inspired by a gal that would get stoned on a slope overlooking the Yoo-Hoo factory?


• I still want to marry Henry Rollins and read Heidegger to our babies. (That has nothing to do with the show, I just wanted to say that.)


• I am confused by the Ditty Bops' tour schedule. They have a bunch of Colorado dates this year and I'm not there. So frustrating. If I budget well between now and August, I think it'd be neat to buy their new album and a t-shirt as consolation prize/birthday gift. Bike!


• "Dead Man's Party" makes me want coffee. Weird.

There's something kicking around the back of my head about barbeque sauce in relation to your Seattle restaurant post at stevefm, but it's going to continue fomenting for awhile before it makes sense. I may wind up drawing a map under some acetate and pouring different kinds of sauce onto their respective geographic areas to help illustrate my point just because it would look REALLY cool. I don't know.

...

And on a totally unrelated note except that it happened while I was listening to the show:

[1939] Seg: Girl, you know everyone.
[1939] Me: No, just the freaks.

Heard today on NPR: What's Triggering Your Migraine?

Included at the site is a list of food triggers in PDF format. Most of it I already knew, but I was surprised to see soybean products on it and would be sad if they triggered migraines for me.

...

Vogon picked up a bottle of Dr Pepper Berries & Cream to try. It tastes like Dr Pepper and cream soda with just a hint of berries. I like it better than Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper, which I thought the vanilla flavor was too aggressively fake-tasting, but not enough that I'd buy it again.

Perhaps I should cut back on my HFCS intake and start buying Dr Pepper-flavored lip balm.

There's something slightly hysterical about hearing a story on PRI's The World about an invasion of giant beavers while sitting in the car outside an elementary school.

After that line, Vogon kept intermittently bursting into chuckles until the story wrapped up with "and no one knows how far the giant beavers will spread".

...

From The World: January 30, 2006:

Beavers in Chile threaten environment (5:45) (Listen in WMA format)
Beavers in southern Chile are gnawing their way north and causing concern. Biologists fear economic and ecological mayhem if something isn't done to stop them. Reporter Jen Ross has the story.

Links I decided to blog instead of bookmark:

• From owlstretching, Stabilized Zapruder film


• Where to recycle in North Texas


• Collard Greens Recipes from the Montgomery Advertiser (Vogon, the recipe you wanted is "Wilted Greens", about halfway down the page)


• Information on next month's Gently Used Book Sale benefiting our local school district


• How To Kill A Lobster (dedicated to David Foster Wallace), Trevor Corson's response to DFW's "Consider the Lobster" essay


• "What Teachers Make" by Taylor Mali (I keep forgetting to e-mail the link to my sister)


• Slow-Roasted Salmon with Melted Cabbage is really, really good (Vogon made it tonight)

In unrelated news, while Googling to find a link to Make Believe Ballroom, I found out that host Jim Kelso passed away last February. When I lived in Goldsboro, I tuned in to Public Radio East every Saturday night so I could "roll up the rug and get ready to cut a new one because it's Make Believe Ballroom time". The past year has been bad for my favorite local public radio shows. *shakes head*

I don't know what's up with my ISP connection lately. While uploading a couple photo updates to oddharmonic.org I'd forgotten to upload after they were ready to post, my connection has dropped twice and I'm barely two-thirds done now. Argh.

On the bright side, Vogon is talking about moving to a high-speed connection here. It would be very welcome, especially since I found free podcasts of a professional journal he was interested in and downloading five separate feeds that were 15-30 minutes long apiece took an awfully long time on dialup.

I also subscribed to the Earth & Sky podcast because I don't always catch it on the radio. Now I'm off in search of more public radio podcasts and anything else that sounds sufficiently interesting. I've got my fingers crossed for WFMU to podcast Radio Thrift Shop sometime in the not-too-distant future.

I'm all ears (ha) to any podcasts you recommend.

It has to get better after this week -- at least the PMS and trouble sleeping, anyway. I've put off trying a new undereye concealer until the psoriasis flareup around my eyes simmers down, or at least stops burning when I apply Eucerin to the scaly patches. Grr.

I put in some quality time on needlework over the past few days, so digitization of the New World Discovery pattern is just under 50% done (when complete, the design is 272 stitches wide by 203 stitches high; the kit packaging gives an approximate finished size of 16.5"x12.5" on 18-count Aida) and I'm working on the border of the Winnie the Pooh baby announcement I'm doing for a friend whose baby was born just before New Year's.

I've been saving the codes off various soda promotions this summer and entering them at my leisure. It's absurdly entertaining since I use the FlashBlock Mozilla extension, but we actually won something in today's batch of code entries: a coupon for a free 2-liter of 7UP. Whee.

Poking around the less-visited bits of the grocery store paid off today, too. We found Mori-Nu silken tofu for $1 per package sharing markdown space with artificial vanilla blend (not a typo, that's exactly what the packaging said) and assorted kosher products.

We also picked up a copy of the June 2005 Glamour after someone stopped and stared at Debra Messing on the cover. On the bottom center of the Do's and Don'ts page, there's a woman illustrating "too tight brights" that's apparently braless under a tight pink top; I think her visible nipple outline can give my entire rack a run for the money.

It was almost as hysterical as the part of last night's Don and Tasos Show we caught where they were discussing cow-excreta products and one of them sounded honestly confused that cow's milk and urine do not come from the same holes. (Bonus punchline: we were listening to that instead of our local NPR affiliate because Lone Star Saturday Night wasn't grabbing Vogon by the ears.)

Got my ISP e-mail accounts set up here, so I am now catching up three and a half weeks of LJ comments and will answer your fairly promptly if you send mail to either of them. (My livejournal.com address goes to one of them, so if you send something to it I'll get it.) On the other hand, Outlook Express is being touchy about fetching my Hotmail messages, so I still haven't gotten to those. I'm sure most of them are crap anyway since it's become my throwaway account.

Vogon took the slightly past half full card from my camera and his card reader with him today and plans to dump its contents to CD so you may be soon buried in photos as I get them ready and uploaded to Gallery. March and April 2004 photos will not go up at oddharmonic.org until my computer arrives here.

We found a killer way to keep sewing patterns organized: 15-quart Sterilite flip-top boxes (~$3 each) hold pattern envelopes neatly on their sides, but we made them more easily searchable with category dividers. The boxes are a scant 6" deep, so we cut 4" wide by 7" high rectangles from posterboard, creased them at 6", and centered a label on the top folded-back inch. Now the patterns are sorted by category and the tops of the dividers lie flat against the top of the patterns when the box is closed.

In Media Diet news, we get NPR on two stations in strongly here, but I'm fighting the urge to turn it on unless the TV's off. I think I'm in love with KERA.

I _finally_ managed to get an NPR affiliate in on our bedside radio, but I'm mildly confused as to why we get the Boulder transmitter in better than the Denver one. For reference, we are approximately just below the 'n' in "Summit County 89.3 FM" on the CPR Coverage Map.

Not having decent NPR reception is one of the only things I miss about NC.

Incidentally, the copy of Himself's DD-214 we requested in August arrived yesterday. Any bets on when the one we requested last month after being concerned the original wouldn't arrive in time for GI Bill eligibility for next semester will arrive?

EDIT 31 Jan 04: Himself picked up BBC World Service on a low FM station while driving up the hill late at night and said the station identified out of Greeley or Fort Collins. Googled it and found out KUNC plays NPR programming (KUNC coverage map), so with any luck we'll be able to pick it up in the house. Huzzah!

Catering to my massive garlic craving today, we went to Brooklyn Pizzeria solely for a double order of garlic knots. Laurel didn't love them as much as I did and drowned hers in marinara sauce. For a late dinner, he made the most garlicky steak imaginable, which is so luscious I could barely contain myself while eating.

( our dialogue on that and Media diet notes )

Had a very enjoyable visit yesterday with oxymoron02 and her kids yesterday; photos from the swimming portion are up. Himself was especially tickled at the conversation and later joked that if all we had to do was drive an hour and a half for it, we should have done it more often while we were here. I just think finding people on our wavelength was highly unlikely in such a small town.

Last but not least, a happy belated birthday to tinder (my evil twin), caffeinediary (my favorite folkie), digitalusrex (more evil than Nick, and she has a great derriere to boot), and greenisgood (a friend of a friend). May our 23rd year live up to all the excitement of being a prime number and have much good music.