One of the things about the clothes we wear, even people who aren’t obsessed with fashion or looks, is that for most of us, some events or feelings actually imprint themselves upon what we are wearing at the moment something happens. How many men do you know who have a “lucky” pair of shoes or shirt or the like? How many women wear some particular outfit because it was what they wore when they got a particular job or met someone or just had a great day the first time they took it out, and it still makes them feel like a million?
I am not even sure where its box is right now, and will never so much as fit an arm in the thing again; but my wedding dress is one of those artifacts of my life I’ve never found a way to “give up” … Not least because giving it to any relative of mine would bring with it the knowledge that I was a rotten bride and my marriage broke up, but also because I’m not close “like that” with any of my cousins, and my nieces don’t appear to be stacking up (ahem) to the same build I had (chest-less), and my style in 1993 probably isn’t to either of their tastes anyway. But that dress was made for me – literally built ONTO me, over the course of a day – by a friend I still consider deeply dear to my heart. It is a thing of gorgeousness, and its fate – preserved in a box, never to see the light of day – seems largely inescapable. Who would wear it? I can’t bear to cut it into crafts projects. It is the only garment in my life I ever expect to be one-and-done, so to speak; worn only one time and literally never again.
But even lesser things have their psychic cachet. I can tell you exactly what I wore to work on the first day of my last job; one, because Cute Shoes remarked on it to me as the first clue I had some style. And two: because it was the dress I was wearing when I was laid off, on a gorgeous day in spring, from the previous job – and that dress deserved better than that. It got it; I had hated previous-job anyway, and been looking for months before I won the layoff lotto at an employer that “never” did that. Except that one time.
Today, I wore a dress with an odd mix of emotional ghosts attached. It’s a tasteful number in beige and white, just longer than the knees, sleeveless but conservative, an empire waist with a tie, and a little pattern from there up. It made as good a choice as possible, during the heat of an August day, when I had to go to traffic court: and found myself served with a half-million dollar lawsuit.
The lawsuit is over, and at about the moment that happened, last year, I purchased my Prius – getting rid of a *car* freighted with too much emotional weight – and somehow this dress, the thing covering me at the moment I experienced the greatest horror and cowering fear in all my life, does not bring with it the latter emotional recall, but only its own light color and comfortable wear. Yet I can’t wear the thing without knowing its history.
I color that history now with gratitude – because that ordeal IS over, and I am intact. And it feels GOOD to know that, to remember the fear, to have that in the past. And the dress looks nice, its lightness speaks of spring and of summer, its conservative and flattering lines give me a power-boost at work, and the memory of the people who have said it is a nice dress feels good too. Even my MOM liked this dress. It’s a good dress.
And memory is good, and keeping myself honest, and being grateful – these are all important.
Some days, it can feel important just to look slick. Looking slick in comfort: bonus points.
But memory is always there. Of the important things – and the less-so. The day you were wearing the comfy jeans you like, walking alone on an autumn day, kicking leaves. The boots you had on once when you almost slipped on ice, and didn’t – whether they really saved you or not, you’ll always think of them as Good Boots, and you’ll have them repaired if you can, rather than tossing ‘em and buying new when the leather stresses or the laces go or a grommet on an eyelet comes loose. We can develop actual gratitude even for clothes, if the serve us well.
This is why the disposable clothing industry is sad (even aside from its implications for our natural resources).
I have a little jersey jacket. They’re wonderful, little light cardigans that can stretch a sleveless top’s seasonal functionality, or take us from chilly morning to warm afternoon with no changing or little fuss.
This one, I happened to buy the last time I saw Mr. X.
I’d arrived in the town where we were meeting, and it was early afternoon, and I didn’t “need” to check in immediately, so before I got to my hotel, I stopped at a Ross Dress for Less, and bought a couple things. A long blue sundress with beading around the neck; this little taupe cardi with a bit of a peplum and a nice drape.
The thing about jersey – particularly lightweight jersey – it’s a very flat fabric. If it develops a hole or even a run, there is little that can be done. And what heroic measures would even the best seamstress take with a $12 garment already three years old?
This little jacket is great, I use it all the time, through three-quarters of the year. It’s flattering, goes with many things, and stretches any number of outfits’ utility and versatility.
And it has a little hole in the back, in the peplum, in a broad stretch of fabric that wouldn’t lend well to mending even if I had the skills. A patch would be bulky and unsightly – and, indeed, any bulk over a weak spot could actually create weak spots in its own perimeter. This fabric is THIN.
And the jacket has had three years already – in a variety of garment generally manufactured to last six months or less. This is actually part of the design/making of disposable clothes. They’re meant to be ditched. Not fixed. Just replaced. There’s another cardigan jacket out there just as good; there are fifty; a hundred. This is meant to be tossed, replaced by new.
This is something I wore three YEARS ago, when last I saw the man who ruined me for all the other ones. When last I saw the friend in this world who knows me better than even my oldest. When last I saw his laughter, heard it, MADE it. He’s touched those sleeves, put his arms around the back of this jacket. Felt how soft it is, even as I have a hundred times since, without him.
There’s really no way, even with the finest needle, to pick that hole and pull it back together. It’s small, but it is a hole. It can’t really be fixed.
And yet. And yet. I resist throwing the thing away. It keeps me JUST warm enough, it looks good in front still.
If only I didn’t know it had this flaw. This unfixable, and un-hide-able, flaw.
Showing posts with label superstition. Show all posts
Showing posts with label superstition. Show all posts
Monday, May 4, 2015
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Fortunate Cookie
I am one, and I am so grateful.
About one year ago, these two fortunes popped out of a cookie in my delivery Chinese:
Yep, that second one especially.
About one year ago, these two fortunes popped out of a cookie in my delivery Chinese:
Yep, that second one especially.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Bad Whig
I've talked before about whig history before, but one of the things I have never gotten into is the key thing any amount of research on a subject should teach ANYone, if they read enough. It doesn't matter the subject, nor even the depth - if you get enough breadth, the thing you should notice from using multiple sources: is that your sources are, fortunately and not, for good or ill - human.
People have a tendency to think of history texts as having a fairly hard-stop sense of authority, but it's like the Bible - read more than a little bit, and the multiple tracks, the contradictions. You notice the many voices, and you learn, if you're wise, how spongy "learning" really is. Historians may be lazy, they may be head-bobbing celebrities, they may have passion ... but passion, necessary as it it to pursuing anything, can lend itself to bias and selectiveness.
And, really ... all of us are lent to storytelling. We read it - and we tell it - history - as a progression of events. Progression. And frequently, we expect progress to be evolution - to be a process of constant improvement. This gives us an unconscious presumption of superiority over, say, The "Dark" Ages (leavened only by liberal scholarship's bias to tout Arab learning of the time, in one of those Noble Savage tropes we depend upon to make ourselves feel better), or a certain fear of The Enlightenment (ask any social conservative: Humanism sucks!). It also gives us Star Trek - that future in which we've gotten it ALL right. Instead of just having *most* of it right, which history reassures so many that we have now.
This maybe why I like DS9. It looks at the future and sees sentient life as being just as messy, just as conflicted as ever. It may be the most diverse show in the canon; and it questions the supposed perfection of The Federation - that entity so often presented as utterly enlightened, perfectly advanced; all that humanity (ahem) is headed toward. The birthright; history's inheritance. DS9 was that Trek story people balked at for its darkness - at its heard, a giant war. And on its periphery, not at all rarely: explicit commentary about the vulnerabilities, the inherent arrogance of The Federation's presumptions of superiority ...
It's been a long time since I believed evolution was a story with the happy ending of perfection. The fact is, I don't believe in perfection. This is why, in those times I have told Mr. X he is perfect for me, when he resists being called perfect, I explain he isn't - but that those flaws he has are suited to mine. Belief in perfection is a kind of belief in bigotry. If there can be perfection: there is always a way to look down on anything else. There's prejudice against whatever isn't perfect.
The Dark Ages, of course, is hugely reassuring to your whig-storian. We get to peer down our noses from the inclined path of or position, toward the descent which is the past - assured that it's all ascent from here. And, of course, that we are so high up now. No more slavery (untrue). No more dying of smallpox (and those people who die of minor things aren't in *our* lives). No more feudal system (ever peek at some of those governments we like to peer down our noses at today?). We are Better, now. And on our way even somewhere better still.
The fact that institutionalized exploitation isn't designed to survive, and despots fall, doesn't remove the urge to exploitation from the human equation. Exploitation ... is what we do. It starts at small scale - and exists there in all time periods - and always, someone shares enough of its rewards (while gripping hard to their own outsized portion) to make it worthwhile to enough someone else's to make it grow.
Greed is what we do. Shutting out those unlike ourselves is what we do. Hatred is a seasoning deeply mixed in humanity stew. We don't improve on that. Some of us believe in *attempting* perfection. Some believe in perfection itself (and maybe they are right after all. Maybe I am wrong). Some believe in perfection - but that it is beyond us.
Some believe in hatred. There's an abundance of these successfully delivering racism, sexism, and homophobia, running for president these days.
Prejudice against time is no more enlightened than prejudice against race, or gender, or sexual preference.
And believing that we are "advanced" is a danger which excuses us from working for advancement. We aren't "done" with anything. There *is* no done. And, for now, we aren't perfect.
People have a tendency to think of history texts as having a fairly hard-stop sense of authority, but it's like the Bible - read more than a little bit, and the multiple tracks, the contradictions. You notice the many voices, and you learn, if you're wise, how spongy "learning" really is. Historians may be lazy, they may be head-bobbing celebrities, they may have passion ... but passion, necessary as it it to pursuing anything, can lend itself to bias and selectiveness.
And, really ... all of us are lent to storytelling. We read it - and we tell it - history - as a progression of events. Progression. And frequently, we expect progress to be evolution - to be a process of constant improvement. This gives us an unconscious presumption of superiority over, say, The "Dark" Ages (leavened only by liberal scholarship's bias to tout Arab learning of the time, in one of those Noble Savage tropes we depend upon to make ourselves feel better), or a certain fear of The Enlightenment (ask any social conservative: Humanism sucks!). It also gives us Star Trek - that future in which we've gotten it ALL right. Instead of just having *most* of it right, which history reassures so many that we have now.
This maybe why I like DS9. It looks at the future and sees sentient life as being just as messy, just as conflicted as ever. It may be the most diverse show in the canon; and it questions the supposed perfection of The Federation - that entity so often presented as utterly enlightened, perfectly advanced; all that humanity (ahem) is headed toward. The birthright; history's inheritance. DS9 was that Trek story people balked at for its darkness - at its heard, a giant war. And on its periphery, not at all rarely: explicit commentary about the vulnerabilities, the inherent arrogance of The Federation's presumptions of superiority ...
It's been a long time since I believed evolution was a story with the happy ending of perfection. The fact is, I don't believe in perfection. This is why, in those times I have told Mr. X he is perfect for me, when he resists being called perfect, I explain he isn't - but that those flaws he has are suited to mine. Belief in perfection is a kind of belief in bigotry. If there can be perfection: there is always a way to look down on anything else. There's prejudice against whatever isn't perfect.
The Dark Ages, of course, is hugely reassuring to your whig-storian. We get to peer down our noses from the inclined path of or position, toward the descent which is the past - assured that it's all ascent from here. And, of course, that we are so high up now. No more slavery (untrue). No more dying of smallpox (and those people who die of minor things aren't in *our* lives). No more feudal system (ever peek at some of those governments we like to peer down our noses at today?). We are Better, now. And on our way even somewhere better still.
The fact that institutionalized exploitation isn't designed to survive, and despots fall, doesn't remove the urge to exploitation from the human equation. Exploitation ... is what we do. It starts at small scale - and exists there in all time periods - and always, someone shares enough of its rewards (while gripping hard to their own outsized portion) to make it worthwhile to enough someone else's to make it grow.
Greed is what we do. Shutting out those unlike ourselves is what we do. Hatred is a seasoning deeply mixed in humanity stew. We don't improve on that. Some of us believe in *attempting* perfection. Some believe in perfection itself (and maybe they are right after all. Maybe I am wrong). Some believe in perfection - but that it is beyond us.
Some believe in hatred. There's an abundance of these successfully delivering racism, sexism, and homophobia, running for president these days.
Prejudice against time is no more enlightened than prejudice against race, or gender, or sexual preference.
And believing that we are "advanced" is a danger which excuses us from working for advancement. We aren't "done" with anything. There *is* no done. And, for now, we aren't perfect.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Confirmation
I had wanted to write about my confirmation in the church this past Sunday, but seem to have let myself get distracted. It's the sort of thing you want to think of as important, but "no big thing" in the sense of epochal personal development - sometimes, it's too hard to contemplate the magnitude of the spiritual, and for me it is just too presumptuous. It is hard enough for me to give myself up to guidance. Harder still, when the power of my own emotional experience asserts itself - and my emotional assertion tends to take the form of attempts to control my life.
When I started to look for a church (my gracious, it'll be three years ago in spring), I was on guard against exactly the emotional experience I think some people hope for in this sort of a search. Being a drama queen, I found I wanted something else to take me where I needed to be, rather than to turn this into A Very Special Episode in the mental narrative I tell myself as the story of my life. In the end, it was fellowship and prayer which bound me to my congregation, and the beauty and sense of comfort I felt in our sanctuary.
When the search for a leader yielded the Priest In Charge, getting to know her, I felt the blessing of her coming, and have been as grateful to know her as if I had been a "real" member of the church family. So "getting my papers" now, so to speak, it is like a confirmation of something more than simple congregational validity. And, to my honor, I was blessed by our Bishop on the same day she herself was named Rector. We get to keep her; the ministry is hers, and that is wonderful.
Against those early wishes against being dramatically swept up in the moment, on Sunday I did feel a bit of that impulse. The bishop's hands on my head as he prayed over me - a sensation I will remember, clearly. And he meant it to be memorable - his hands were firm and direct, not avoiding really touching me. His fingers moved, his pressure wasn't impersonal.
It was a little hard, this high-churchy-ness, on my mom. A lifelong Baptist, there is a mild sense of her giving me over to another team, and as much as she wanted me to find a church home, she did hope I would find one more familiar to her. The maternal dynamic of confusion at a child's rebellion was in play. But she was there for me; as was a friend, my dear and generous B. When the service was over, I got a "mazel tov" from her - and then from the priest.
Another step, and a blessing both in the religious, AND in the personal sense. I am confirmed. It feels good.
When I started to look for a church (my gracious, it'll be three years ago in spring), I was on guard against exactly the emotional experience I think some people hope for in this sort of a search. Being a drama queen, I found I wanted something else to take me where I needed to be, rather than to turn this into A Very Special Episode in the mental narrative I tell myself as the story of my life. In the end, it was fellowship and prayer which bound me to my congregation, and the beauty and sense of comfort I felt in our sanctuary.
When the search for a leader yielded the Priest In Charge, getting to know her, I felt the blessing of her coming, and have been as grateful to know her as if I had been a "real" member of the church family. So "getting my papers" now, so to speak, it is like a confirmation of something more than simple congregational validity. And, to my honor, I was blessed by our Bishop on the same day she herself was named Rector. We get to keep her; the ministry is hers, and that is wonderful.
Against those early wishes against being dramatically swept up in the moment, on Sunday I did feel a bit of that impulse. The bishop's hands on my head as he prayed over me - a sensation I will remember, clearly. And he meant it to be memorable - his hands were firm and direct, not avoiding really touching me. His fingers moved, his pressure wasn't impersonal.
It was a little hard, this high-churchy-ness, on my mom. A lifelong Baptist, there is a mild sense of her giving me over to another team, and as much as she wanted me to find a church home, she did hope I would find one more familiar to her. The maternal dynamic of confusion at a child's rebellion was in play. But she was there for me; as was a friend, my dear and generous B. When the service was over, I got a "mazel tov" from her - and then from the priest.
Another step, and a blessing both in the religious, AND in the personal sense. I am confirmed. It feels good.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Hope and Magic
I've always been fascinated by the idea of magic, but I really haven't ever felt it to be real in my own life. There's still a swath of me open to it, and like most people I practice sympathetic magic and superstition in small ways, at least. But my belief in a concept as sweet as that seems mostly to be as witness, rather than as a participant. I've seen my brother and sister-in-law touched in small ways by magic. I've heard the most beautiful story of the spirit, from my grandmother. I know magic is that aspect of spirituality we can't explain concretely ... but my life is pedestrian, and largely easy to explain.
The only spell I ever cast is by wearing some talisman in hope it can evoke some manner of blessing ... in praying ... in scenting my domain in perfume and candles ... in the things of the heart, speakable only between mine and X's, and most of those not even then. Unlike many people, I've never seen magic in death, no special timing, no visions afterward. I've never seen animal magic, really - as much as I am breath-taken by the power some of them contain.
Once, I had an experience of Christ, which to this day has held me in love.
But in this world, I practice hope, more than incantation. Some hope is blessed with expectation; some with nothing more than the trembling magic of innocence, tenderly and shyly wished. Most hope, of course, doesn't come to anything.
But the smart person knows how to cultivate the hope that can be realized. To farm it, work it, expect harvest. The domestication of magic. The control of destiny. The direction of will to what is attainable.
Perhaps this strips the ineffable of its luster.
But it does make for satisfaction.
I muse on this, because just now, setting out my things for tomorrow, I found myself indulging magic. I put out my perfume.
I never wear perfume, except in those moments I need magic. Which means I rarely put it on these days. It's almost never part of my wardrobe for work - so seldom, I probably haven't worn it one day since starting the "new" (one year this Tuesday ... !) job. I did wear a drop to church today, and still it haunts my skin so quietly.
For all I don't believe, as much as I believe in magic - I still find it romantic to court it. To flirt and make myself open to magic. There is a softness, a familiarity, a beauty ... and a hope. Always, so many hopes.
If much of my hope is ambition - there is that in my heart so much more childlike. Needing escape from the day-to-day. Needing reassurance from G-d ... or my father ... or just that breeze I felt this morning, after church, talking with my dearest friend there ...
Romans says it - "For in hope we were saved" ...
Sometimes, the vulnerable, open part of myself just wants to remember how to let go ... and thereby be best served.
The only spell I ever cast is by wearing some talisman in hope it can evoke some manner of blessing ... in praying ... in scenting my domain in perfume and candles ... in the things of the heart, speakable only between mine and X's, and most of those not even then. Unlike many people, I've never seen magic in death, no special timing, no visions afterward. I've never seen animal magic, really - as much as I am breath-taken by the power some of them contain.
Once, I had an experience of Christ, which to this day has held me in love.
But in this world, I practice hope, more than incantation. Some hope is blessed with expectation; some with nothing more than the trembling magic of innocence, tenderly and shyly wished. Most hope, of course, doesn't come to anything.
But the smart person knows how to cultivate the hope that can be realized. To farm it, work it, expect harvest. The domestication of magic. The control of destiny. The direction of will to what is attainable.
Perhaps this strips the ineffable of its luster.
But it does make for satisfaction.
I muse on this, because just now, setting out my things for tomorrow, I found myself indulging magic. I put out my perfume.
I never wear perfume, except in those moments I need magic. Which means I rarely put it on these days. It's almost never part of my wardrobe for work - so seldom, I probably haven't worn it one day since starting the "new" (one year this Tuesday ... !) job. I did wear a drop to church today, and still it haunts my skin so quietly.
For all I don't believe, as much as I believe in magic - I still find it romantic to court it. To flirt and make myself open to magic. There is a softness, a familiarity, a beauty ... and a hope. Always, so many hopes.
If much of my hope is ambition - there is that in my heart so much more childlike. Needing escape from the day-to-day. Needing reassurance from G-d ... or my father ... or just that breeze I felt this morning, after church, talking with my dearest friend there ...
Romans says it - "For in hope we were saved" ...
Sometimes, the vulnerable, open part of myself just wants to remember how to let go ... and thereby be best served.
Monday, July 11, 2011
Juicy Drama
"Kings" may have been the most audacious series ever to air on television, and I ws fairly blown away by it while it was on. I flagged, though, when it became clear the show would never (be allowed to?) last, and quit watching. As much as I liked it; as fascinated as I was that it was ever mounted at all - I retreated in fear when I thought we would lose it, and I told myself I'd find it in my own time.
The entire thing is available on DVD for under thirty dollars, and it's on Netflix to boot. If you are interested in the strangest soap opera since "Soap" itself - steeped in the Old Testament; filled with astounding, unusual dialogue (some of it exceptionally good, much of it beautifully-functionally declamatory ... no small portion rather badly read - even by a cast, annoying as some of them may be at times, still well chosen to their roles) ... a marvelous looking show, and a pretty amazing surprise, I would very much recommend it.
The thing is Dallas on whatever the Judeo-Christian version of a vision quest might be. It's earnest beyond most contemporary stomachs, about G-d. It's remarkably exploitive of Him, too.
But then ... the Old Testament itself rather was. If we're honest.
But more than anything: it is drama. The most incredible, power-packed - crack-addled - drama. Let's face it, the OT was that and then some, and we love it.
Dallas in "Gilboa" - a mythical, modern-looking kingdom, yet imbued with the most medieval aspects of an monarchy. iPads and the finger of G-d ... salacious palace intrigue and portents and pronouncements from (Reverend) Samuel(s).
Ohhhhh ... but the drama.
My Lord, kids, this thing DARES. It does things even J. R. might have never been scripted with. And revels. And excels. This is perhaps the most astounding thing I've ever seen, not for the presence of G-d, the light casting shadows.
It's the things the camera dares to see in those shadows. Holy cats, this is Grand Guignol. This is unfettered.
Hell, it stars Ian McShane. It has to be.
Every uber-angsty goth kid should be buying this. Every drama or Bible nerd. Everyone who ever loved Ann Baxter as Nefertiri in "The Ten Commandments" - but thought it was too understated and rife with verissimilitude. All the addicts of those 1980s nighttime wealth-porn soaps. (Because this is wealth-porn, every bit as much as all the rest of these things I am gushing about.)
It turns out, I missed some of the most amazing things. I just bumped across an acre of wrinkles and reversals, only to find something enormous said to have taken place offscreen.
I'm interested to see how true that turns out to be.
I'm enjoying the ridiculousness - the SUMPTUOUS indulgence - rather immensely. Bravo!
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
That's What You've Got?
A talking elephant head on ABC news tonight, complaining that the president's refusal to continue enforcing the Defense of Marriage act, takes issue with this approach to "an institution that existed before the United States" ...
Ohhhh honey.
Polygyamy existed before the United States. History is in fact somewhat FAMOUS for things which are now archaic. Get it? And if you want to invoke history as some sort of "defense" of the DoM act, do remember the million teeth it has, to bite you in the behind, Hoss. If you protest your fondness for things that predate the US, you might just be forced to review the association I can only presume you have, for the Tea Party - an institution which, by the way, takes its very name from an act of revolution against institutions which existed before the United States and which (sullied though its name has become) actually gave birth to said country.
Existed before the United States. That is actually IMPRESSIVELY weak.
Ohhhh honey.
Polygyamy existed before the United States. History is in fact somewhat FAMOUS for things which are now archaic. Get it? And if you want to invoke history as some sort of "defense" of the DoM act, do remember the million teeth it has, to bite you in the behind, Hoss. If you protest your fondness for things that predate the US, you might just be forced to review the association I can only presume you have, for the Tea Party - an institution which, by the way, takes its very name from an act of revolution against institutions which existed before the United States and which (sullied though its name has become) actually gave birth to said country.
Existed before the United States. That is actually IMPRESSIVELY weak.
Friday, January 21, 2011
Quote
This is about the best description of, and insight into, Tea Partiers I can think of:
Yep, that's about the size of it. Strangepersons fear The Intellect. *Sigh*
Men often oppose a thing merely because they have had no agency in planning it, or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.
--Alexander Hamilton
Yep, that's about the size of it. Strangepersons fear The Intellect. *Sigh*
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Straw Man
Wow, so my last two Netflickings have been the two versions, in order, of "Wicker Man." Chosen not out of frothing interest, nor frankly high expectations - and certainly not surpassing them at all. The surprise is that Nick Cage's version 2.0 isn't bad in the egregiously wonderful sense so many of his flicks are, but in an almost moral sense.
I don't mean the religious positions. Christian I may be, but offended by *depictions* of paganism I can't say I am in (ahem) spirit.
Offended, however, by horrible filmmaking, I can be.
And by terrifyingly blatant, unquestioning misogyny.
Wow.
I mean, Wicker 2.0 is just a primal scream of terror and loathing of women. Not even funny.
***
In a VERY sidelong irony, I wore my bee pendant today for the first time - a gift to me from people, oddly enough, who live in the Pacific Northwest. Heh.
Mine has a different kind of symbolism, of course.
Still an amusing piece of timing, though, with the bee thematics in today's special being about the only interesting aspect of the rewrite of the much more successfully and interestingly bad original
As to the rest, I'll be happy to have Netflix back on a quality movie groove pretty quickly now. For this chapter: so done. Eep.
I don't mean the religious positions. Christian I may be, but offended by *depictions* of paganism I can't say I am in (ahem) spirit.
Offended, however, by horrible filmmaking, I can be.
And by terrifyingly blatant, unquestioning misogyny.
Wow.
I mean, Wicker 2.0 is just a primal scream of terror and loathing of women. Not even funny.
***
In a VERY sidelong irony, I wore my bee pendant today for the first time - a gift to me from people, oddly enough, who live in the Pacific Northwest. Heh.
Mine has a different kind of symbolism, of course.
Still an amusing piece of timing, though, with the bee thematics in today's special being about the only interesting aspect of the rewrite of the much more successfully and interestingly bad original
As to the rest, I'll be happy to have Netflix back on a quality movie groove pretty quickly now. For this chapter: so done. Eep.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Prognostication
If I'm honest, I don't think I'm going to get an offer. Not because I don't think I presented well today, or because my skill set isn't right on, or because there was any particular vibe either over the phone or once I went in for the site interviews. I just don't get a "lucky" sense here, for whatever reason. Not that I have that sort of thing generally, with interviews - or don't, that I can think of - but something about this speed I've been so impressed with seems to me almost "directed", if that makes any sense.
When the SVP told me this morning that I was the final candidate - and today it's only been two weeks since the LISTING even went up! - I just suddenly felt like a string was cut. Like my kite was let go. It just seems (a) too good to be true, and (b) far too "easy" to end in a get at this point.
I'm rightly confident in my abilities, my ability to present them in an interview, and my quality as an employee. I'm very interested in this potential employer. Maybe I'm more defeated than I realize.
But I don't think so.
I just don't believe this can possibly go as well as this would have to, for an offer to be a real likelihood here. I am good, but I'm not so d*mned good employers can detect it at this rate of speed, and act on it so fast.
No, it just seems to me that they did the legal requirement, with interviews, and someone else is in the wings for this role.
I will be disappointed, if I hear it's not mine.
But I would be positively stunned to hear that it could be.
*Sigh*
When the SVP told me this morning that I was the final candidate - and today it's only been two weeks since the LISTING even went up! - I just suddenly felt like a string was cut. Like my kite was let go. It just seems (a) too good to be true, and (b) far too "easy" to end in a get at this point.
I'm rightly confident in my abilities, my ability to present them in an interview, and my quality as an employee. I'm very interested in this potential employer. Maybe I'm more defeated than I realize.
But I don't think so.
I just don't believe this can possibly go as well as this would have to, for an offer to be a real likelihood here. I am good, but I'm not so d*mned good employers can detect it at this rate of speed, and act on it so fast.
No, it just seems to me that they did the legal requirement, with interviews, and someone else is in the wings for this role.
I will be disappointed, if I hear it's not mine.
But I would be positively stunned to hear that it could be.
*Sigh*
Monday, June 7, 2010
Not Very Superstitious
Heh. Okay, so I don't buy into birds-in-the-house luck and broken mirrors or whatever.
But is it so wrong that I figure painting my nails a fairly inappropriate shade of purple really ought to be bringing on calls from HR people? Come ON, people. This is never going to go with an interview suit. Now's the time for me to need to don one!
That, and I'm sick of dog-walking pants. Even if they are "bedazzled".
Especially because they're "bedazzled" ... Ahem.
But is it so wrong that I figure painting my nails a fairly inappropriate shade of purple really ought to be bringing on calls from HR people? Come ON, people. This is never going to go with an interview suit. Now's the time for me to need to don one!
That, and I'm sick of dog-walking pants. Even if they are "bedazzled".
Especially because they're "bedazzled" ... Ahem.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
... And, As Naturally Would Happen ...
I have Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" running through my head, as it always does when I encounter one.
Excellent song - even for a brainworm. But still; I want to get ready for bed un-mentally serenaded.
*Eye roll*
Excellent song - even for a brainworm. But still; I want to get ready for bed un-mentally serenaded.
*Eye roll*
Oh, Man. SuperDUPERstitious
Okay, so bird-brain ended up being in the box of stuff I brought home from my last job. Bad employment luck? Or the little tiny brown bluebird of happiness ... ?
*Snerk*
Good thing I don't buy granny's pronouncements on luck (any more than she did). Sheesh.
*Snerk*
Good thing I don't buy granny's pronouncements on luck (any more than she did). Sheesh.
For the Birds (or the Love of Pete ...)
I had problems a few years ago, finding grackles inside my house. There was a problem with the facing behind my gutters, and more than once I had to practice search-and-rescue inside my bedroom (etc.).
About a year ago, the situation was remediated, but apparently there has been either a new breach or one particularly enterprising little wren has found a REALLY good hiding place for her eggs.
*Sigh*
So, yeah. One bird yesterday, then another this morning - in weather this hot, even opening bedroom windows for a few minutes at a time is exhaustingly wilting, to wrangle tiny wild avians after church. So having to do it not FIFTEEN MINUTES after the first one kindly landed in a pot - and then watching the dang little thing go UNDER the bedroom door (closed) to end up peeping downstairs, in a violent faceoff with a huskabull, was not "in my happy place" to sneer at a phrase.
The best part is, after today's first chicklet obliged me so nicely (I held the plant out the window, it flew away happily), the second one is STILL somewhere in the house. I never could catch the thing - and Siddy La, somehow, apparently remains none the wiser (the bird, overall, is remaining *fairly* quiet). It's somewhere in my office, but has refused to be caught, and - four-day-old headache still in force - I just can't stand to find it by dint of killing the poor thing.
This means it will possibly simply starve to death in situ. Wherever situ turns out to be.
As long as Sid doesn't repeat the performance she gave my mom before I came home, wherein mom found the remains of a bird when she went to pick up after the dog ... (Um. Ew.)
I am a kindhearted woman, and take spiders - and birds - outside when they get in. But they have to work with me a *little*, or I can't bear to scare them right to death.
***
It's supposed to be bad luck when birds get in the house. Granny said so.
I have far more experience with in-house birds, other than cute little yellow ones, than seems superstitiously prudent.
Gah.
About a year ago, the situation was remediated, but apparently there has been either a new breach or one particularly enterprising little wren has found a REALLY good hiding place for her eggs.
*Sigh*
So, yeah. One bird yesterday, then another this morning - in weather this hot, even opening bedroom windows for a few minutes at a time is exhaustingly wilting, to wrangle tiny wild avians after church. So having to do it not FIFTEEN MINUTES after the first one kindly landed in a pot - and then watching the dang little thing go UNDER the bedroom door (closed) to end up peeping downstairs, in a violent faceoff with a huskabull, was not "in my happy place" to sneer at a phrase.
The best part is, after today's first chicklet obliged me so nicely (I held the plant out the window, it flew away happily), the second one is STILL somewhere in the house. I never could catch the thing - and Siddy La, somehow, apparently remains none the wiser (the bird, overall, is remaining *fairly* quiet). It's somewhere in my office, but has refused to be caught, and - four-day-old headache still in force - I just can't stand to find it by dint of killing the poor thing.
This means it will possibly simply starve to death in situ. Wherever situ turns out to be.
As long as Sid doesn't repeat the performance she gave my mom before I came home, wherein mom found the remains of a bird when she went to pick up after the dog ... (Um. Ew.)
I am a kindhearted woman, and take spiders - and birds - outside when they get in. But they have to work with me a *little*, or I can't bear to scare them right to death.
***
It's supposed to be bad luck when birds get in the house. Granny said so.
I have far more experience with in-house birds, other than cute little yellow ones, than seems superstitiously prudent.
Gah.
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