Yard now 3/4 done, and all that's left is about 15 minutes worth of in-the-shade stuff. I might be nice and do it diagonally. It's as fancy as I ever get with my yard work, doing the front yard at angles instead of straight across. Gives the house a nice, slimming look at the waist (har).
After that's done: midafternoon warm bath, and a nice sundress and sandals for dinner with neighbor and her family this evening. She's made something called Beef Lombardy, which intrigues me (not least because the Lombards are among the few folks my ancient king didn't try to kill off).
I *really* like my neighbors.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Fleur Nerdin'
This wonderful clot of yellow and loveliness is the longtime result of a small volunteer patch from my previous next door neighbor's penchant for gardening (it's the neighbor's house in the background there). My current neighbor and the previous one are both MUCH more interested in the beautification of their estates than I have been, fortunately or not. The most love my own yard ever saw came from my brother (and the mockingbirds and I *still* miss his fresh lettuce and those unbelievable pea-sized tomatoes).
Anyway, this little stand of irises crept under her fence three or maybe even four years ago, and has slowly and unobtrusively been developing ever since just on my side. This year is its first blooming.
And one can't fault this blooming! Wonderful.
Anyway, this little stand of irises crept under her fence three or maybe even four years ago, and has slowly and unobtrusively been developing ever since just on my side. This year is its first blooming.
And one can't fault this blooming! Wonderful.
I may be having a hell of a hard time finding a job. But G-d does give good blessings. You just have to be grateful for them.
And share.
Truckin'
So the company I had a phone "interview" with (in which the HR guy apparently couldn't be troubled to *ask me questions*) is going with three other candidates. And if all three of those are just a terrible match, they'll be back in touch. Seriously: the HR guy actually said that. To which I say: I'm not your pathetic ex girlfriend, man.
HR people: please save your backhanded conciliatory statements of this nature. Because WOW is it insulting to have someone say, "if the people we picked over you turn out to stink, I guess we'll have to call YOU back." Holy smokes.
And so now I've applied for two actually good looking positions with a DoD contractor.
Places one does not *expect* to see smiley faces: at the conclusion of a job application for a DoD contractor.
Hee. Awesome.
I also like their auto-email closer, actually. It's about the nicest sentiment I've had from an auto-emailer throughout this job search.
So thank you, whoever set this particular defense contractor's electronic application systems up. Very thoughtful.
And, um. Cute. Heh.
Smiley faces! Wow.
HR people: please save your backhanded conciliatory statements of this nature. Because WOW is it insulting to have someone say, "if the people we picked over you turn out to stink, I guess we'll have to call YOU back." Holy smokes.
And so now I've applied for two actually good looking positions with a DoD contractor.
Places one does not *expect* to see smiley faces: at the conclusion of a job application for a DoD contractor.
Hee. Awesome.
I also like their auto-email closer, actually. It's about the nicest sentiment I've had from an auto-emailer throughout this job search.
We strongly encourage you to apply for all positions that suit your interest and
qualifications. We wish you the best in your job search.
So thank you, whoever set this particular defense contractor's electronic application systems up. Very thoughtful.
And, um. Cute. Heh.
Smiley faces! Wow.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Music and Writing
I sometimes think I am uncool in that I cannot listen to music while I'm writing. So many people I know have super-cool stuff they like to listen to as they work on various super-cool stuff, but I can't seem to do that. I'm not sure, but it's possible that this is related to the necessity of rhythm, for me. Syllabication is the central guiding force in my writing. It has to be particularly inflected, definitely limited. (Yes, yes, I know - Diane limits her use of words? Well, in a SENSE at least, yes.) The central use of my mental thesaurus is in order to get the right number of syllables into a sentence, or to properly balance a paragraph.
The thing is, I know that typing this semi-weirdly overstates the emphasis I put on rhythm. It's something I'm consciously aware of, and do intentionally emphasize, but the execution isn't as neurotic as perhaps the previous paragraph reads. Taken outside one's skullbone, *most* of our personal motivations look a little odd, and sunlight always makes stuff stranger than it is when it's hidden in the shadows of our private brains.
But I think that this is the source of my problem with being able to actually hear anything coherently musical while I am writing. When I'm at work and setting up a presentation or something, I can keep the radio on "at a reasonable volume" (inaudible to any ear more than two feet from the speaker, and generally just quiet enough for tunes to be often-unidentifiable even to myself). But when I am at home, even just *reading* my novel, as I have been since finishing it, I find music to be impossibly intrusive on the experience.
I have always loved music, and have always composed songs of varying niceness and silliness to myself and my pets. I sing an awful lot, actually, and have been able to tell over the past five years or so how much my poor ability to breathe has affected how I sound. I used to have, if not a particularly talented voice, at least a pleasant one, but that has eroded over time.
I've always been friends with musicians, too, and people with musical talent and affinity. Among my friends are a lot of particular-genre geeks, or people with remarkable knowledge of this or that aspect of musicianship or musicians.
As for me, I usually joke that I can scarcely name a Beatles song if pressed to do so. I've never *concentrated* on music the way real lovers seem to. I don't care what genre something is; if I like it, I like it. I don't seek things based on other things, nor peg exceptional loyalty to certain artists, the way some people do. Sure, I go on about Bowie, but my "love" of him is pretty much skin deep, and is more about particular songs than it is about the man (or persona) himself (anymore). My affinities are NOTHING like those I am witness to in others.
And yet, my love of particular pieces of music is every BIT as deep as those people experience. It's just particularized. I tend to be very specific, when I really respond to something.
It's the same as writing. When I know the rhythm is right, it's terribly satisfying. And when it's been done properly, when I go back to something long after it's written, I find it genuinely exciting. I seem to be able to do that 'pacing' thing rather nicely. Much as I hate battle scenes, the ones I've revisited seem to have their own internal momentum and structure. And I *believe* that this fidelity to pacing and rhythm may be a major part of why the whole, strung together across four and a half years of writing, has turned out to be as coherent as it has. The thing doesn't feel too sputtery to me, it's not lurching in one place and turgid in another: and that's got to be because of the premium I place on rhythm, doesn't it?
I don't know. Maybe it's not as good as I think. And maybe it's some other manner in the way I use language which is the key to continuity. Maybe my character insists, or G-d is my copilot. Heaven knows, as much awareness as I have of what I've been doing all this time, I am constantly surprised by this novel, and find it absolutely as fresh as if I weren't the person who *wrote* the thing after all.
It can't be known, and I know it doesn't matter.
But my little wandering brain gets caught like floss on things like my inability to listen to music while I write, and it gets me churning up mental jetsam, and I barf it out here. Because that's what blogs are for.
For now, I think I am off to the car - where I ALWAYS prefer to listen to something - and perhaps some nice tasty, fresh hummus. That's good brain food!
And then back, for a little reading, and maybe a voice mail from the prospective employer, who will be asking me to come in as soon as I can so they can interview me and fall in love and offer me wonderful amounts of money to come and be their employee ...
The thing is, I know that typing this semi-weirdly overstates the emphasis I put on rhythm. It's something I'm consciously aware of, and do intentionally emphasize, but the execution isn't as neurotic as perhaps the previous paragraph reads. Taken outside one's skullbone, *most* of our personal motivations look a little odd, and sunlight always makes stuff stranger than it is when it's hidden in the shadows of our private brains.
But I think that this is the source of my problem with being able to actually hear anything coherently musical while I am writing. When I'm at work and setting up a presentation or something, I can keep the radio on "at a reasonable volume" (inaudible to any ear more than two feet from the speaker, and generally just quiet enough for tunes to be often-unidentifiable even to myself). But when I am at home, even just *reading* my novel, as I have been since finishing it, I find music to be impossibly intrusive on the experience.
I have always loved music, and have always composed songs of varying niceness and silliness to myself and my pets. I sing an awful lot, actually, and have been able to tell over the past five years or so how much my poor ability to breathe has affected how I sound. I used to have, if not a particularly talented voice, at least a pleasant one, but that has eroded over time.
I've always been friends with musicians, too, and people with musical talent and affinity. Among my friends are a lot of particular-genre geeks, or people with remarkable knowledge of this or that aspect of musicianship or musicians.
As for me, I usually joke that I can scarcely name a Beatles song if pressed to do so. I've never *concentrated* on music the way real lovers seem to. I don't care what genre something is; if I like it, I like it. I don't seek things based on other things, nor peg exceptional loyalty to certain artists, the way some people do. Sure, I go on about Bowie, but my "love" of him is pretty much skin deep, and is more about particular songs than it is about the man (or persona) himself (anymore). My affinities are NOTHING like those I am witness to in others.
And yet, my love of particular pieces of music is every BIT as deep as those people experience. It's just particularized. I tend to be very specific, when I really respond to something.
It's the same as writing. When I know the rhythm is right, it's terribly satisfying. And when it's been done properly, when I go back to something long after it's written, I find it genuinely exciting. I seem to be able to do that 'pacing' thing rather nicely. Much as I hate battle scenes, the ones I've revisited seem to have their own internal momentum and structure. And I *believe* that this fidelity to pacing and rhythm may be a major part of why the whole, strung together across four and a half years of writing, has turned out to be as coherent as it has. The thing doesn't feel too sputtery to me, it's not lurching in one place and turgid in another: and that's got to be because of the premium I place on rhythm, doesn't it?
I don't know. Maybe it's not as good as I think. And maybe it's some other manner in the way I use language which is the key to continuity. Maybe my character insists, or G-d is my copilot. Heaven knows, as much awareness as I have of what I've been doing all this time, I am constantly surprised by this novel, and find it absolutely as fresh as if I weren't the person who *wrote* the thing after all.
It can't be known, and I know it doesn't matter.
But my little wandering brain gets caught like floss on things like my inability to listen to music while I write, and it gets me churning up mental jetsam, and I barf it out here. Because that's what blogs are for.
For now, I think I am off to the car - where I ALWAYS prefer to listen to something - and perhaps some nice tasty, fresh hummus. That's good brain food!
And then back, for a little reading, and maybe a voice mail from the prospective employer, who will be asking me to come in as soon as I can so they can interview me and fall in love and offer me wonderful amounts of money to come and be their employee ...
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Don'tcha Bet On It
People have said to me several times now how they wouldn't mind a bit of unemployment. (This is a manner of sympathizing offered by those who can say something like that to me without coming off as nimrods, of course.)
But I've found the stress very seriously exhausting.
And some of my own activity is kind of draining, too.
*KEEPING BUSY!* Whew.
But I've found the stress very seriously exhausting.
And some of my own activity is kind of draining, too.
*KEEPING BUSY!* Whew.
Speaking of "Looking Good" and Celebrities
I saw a bit of an interview with Raquel Welch recently. I never had any problem with her; loved the "Musketeers" movies, and she is cute in them. But it does disappoint just a hair that, at sixty-nine, she's chosen to make an info-tainment soundbyte of herself, disapproving of Heidi Montag having tons of plastic surgery. Now, granted, most of what RW had to display in her day was pretty clearly homegrown stuff: but there's no way on earth a woman of sixty-nine looks like she does ageing "naturally".
One observation she made interested me morbidly. She claims that one of the things she does to keep looking good is "I neve eat past six."
Now, I understand limiting the hours of one's consumption. I've been a weekly faster for something like twenty-two years. But six p.m.? EVERY day? I can see eight or something, but never eating past six p.m. means you never go out to dine and enjoy the company of your friends. You don't break bread with people, indulge in natural human companionship, partake in your community, in celebrations, in sociability. Not 100%.
Food is certainly a problematic center of our cultural sins. But it is also the core of our human experience.
A waistline may be a wonderful thing.
But even I, as someone who actually fasts myself, refuse to place my personal spiritual habit above the relationships I have with others. Half the people I know aren't even really aware that I do it, because (a) people are pretty overtly weird and nasty about fasting, and (b) I would never negate the priority of my family and friends because that would mean eating.
Ah, well. Ranting pointlessly, I guess.
But still. Six o'clock. That just seems prohibitive. No waistline's worth that.
One observation she made interested me morbidly. She claims that one of the things she does to keep looking good is "I neve eat past six."
Now, I understand limiting the hours of one's consumption. I've been a weekly faster for something like twenty-two years. But six p.m.? EVERY day? I can see eight or something, but never eating past six p.m. means you never go out to dine and enjoy the company of your friends. You don't break bread with people, indulge in natural human companionship, partake in your community, in celebrations, in sociability. Not 100%.
Food is certainly a problematic center of our cultural sins. But it is also the core of our human experience.
A waistline may be a wonderful thing.
But even I, as someone who actually fasts myself, refuse to place my personal spiritual habit above the relationships I have with others. Half the people I know aren't even really aware that I do it, because (a) people are pretty overtly weird and nasty about fasting, and (b) I would never negate the priority of my family and friends because that would mean eating.
Ah, well. Ranting pointlessly, I guess.
But still. Six o'clock. That just seems prohibitive. No waistline's worth that.
Eep
Okay, I get creeped when Blogger reads my posts and brings up related ads when I hit the "Publish" button.
Not funny about that Toyota ad, Blogger. Ew. Kind of tasteless.
Not funny about that Toyota ad, Blogger. Ew. Kind of tasteless.
Toys
Wow, another recall for Toyota (Sequoia ... for electronic stability control issues).
Those guys are having a better year than I am. My sympathies, all. Dang.
Those guys are having a better year than I am. My sympathies, all. Dang.
The Things Ya Get
I recently inherited the rather good stapler my dad had at his job (complete with cool-oh, now-retired, super-seventies-mod university logo on top; which: awesome), and two plastic spoons. The plastic spoons are the last things he ever ate with.
They're purple.
I stuck them in a bamboo pencil cup along with a letter-opener my brother carved in the 1980s, some bent scissors, a few scrap pieces of copper from my old gutter system and a pencil with a jolly orange piggy-shaped eraser on it. I really wasn't sure what else to do with them. My family being what it is, trashing plastic spoons my dying father ate from before they drugged him into his final oblivion is a tricky option. While not on par with the memorial tape, or the portrait of Einstein he bequeathed me, they're still an artifact which was saved in the moment. I never knew they existed (per se) until this week. Now I am their keeper. I do this sort of thing. *Sigh*
But the stapler, now, that is awesome. Like my father's tools (dude, I have a heat gun in the basement ... how many women own their own heat gun??), like his shirts, which I wear constantly, like even his jammie pants, and that one red felt tipped pen (amazingly: still writes), the stapler is just not an artifact. It is a useful, happy-making inheritance.
I need to go get some staples to fill it with (it's running seriously low, and I actually staple things at times!). That this trip might take me close to like five antiques and curio shops is merely coincidental. I swear. Really.
They're purple.
I stuck them in a bamboo pencil cup along with a letter-opener my brother carved in the 1980s, some bent scissors, a few scrap pieces of copper from my old gutter system and a pencil with a jolly orange piggy-shaped eraser on it. I really wasn't sure what else to do with them. My family being what it is, trashing plastic spoons my dying father ate from before they drugged him into his final oblivion is a tricky option. While not on par with the memorial tape, or the portrait of Einstein he bequeathed me, they're still an artifact which was saved in the moment. I never knew they existed (per se) until this week. Now I am their keeper. I do this sort of thing. *Sigh*
But the stapler, now, that is awesome. Like my father's tools (dude, I have a heat gun in the basement ... how many women own their own heat gun??), like his shirts, which I wear constantly, like even his jammie pants, and that one red felt tipped pen (amazingly: still writes), the stapler is just not an artifact. It is a useful, happy-making inheritance.
I need to go get some staples to fill it with (it's running seriously low, and I actually staple things at times!). That this trip might take me close to like five antiques and curio shops is merely coincidental. I swear. Really.
Hm.
Ever since I installed new security on my new laptop, I seem to be having issues with my status bar going defunct on me. This is concerning.
One more reason to punch my tech consultant in the neck. *Making a list*
One more reason to punch my tech consultant in the neck. *Making a list*
Okay, Now THAT Is Unexpected
I actually turned on the TV this morning for some background noise. While searching for an appropriate channel to leave it on as I puttered elsewhere, I flipped across Whoopi talking to some very familiar blond woman.
It was Courtney Love.
The reason I didn't recognize her immediately: She looks really well. Healthy, not scary-skinny, good color, clean and kempt. And she was smiling and laughing coherently and genuinely happily. Huh.
Go you, Courtney Love.
It was Courtney Love.
The reason I didn't recognize her immediately: She looks really well. Healthy, not scary-skinny, good color, clean and kempt. And she was smiling and laughing coherently and genuinely happily. Huh.
Go you, Courtney Love.
Things and Stuff
This week I have hit a bit of a wall with planning things to do every day. I'm still coming up with stuff, but the discipline is definitely slipping.
I had it on my mind yesterday that today I should call the doc to get in and discuss a couple things. I haven't done this, and find myself trying to think of other things I can do instead. Balanced my account already. Am eyeing that sunshine and considering errands to get myself out into it. Still haven't called that doc, though.
So it goes.
I had it on my mind yesterday that today I should call the doc to get in and discuss a couple things. I haven't done this, and find myself trying to think of other things I can do instead. Balanced my account already. Am eyeing that sunshine and considering errands to get myself out into it. Still haven't called that doc, though.
So it goes.
Twenty-Eighth Days
Today it is eight weeks since I emailed my first three chapters to the agent who requested them. She takes about six to eight weeks to review submissions she has asked for - but she's busy with a lot of conferences this spring.
It is also the four-week marker of my unemployment, too.
Whoop-de-doo. Love anniversaries.
It is also the four-week marker of my unemployment, too.
Whoop-de-doo. Love anniversaries.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
S: B&S - Revisited
Okay, so I have finished watching (season one of) Spartacus: Blood & Sand, and my opinions evolved a bit over the course of a dozen episodes. The impression that they went trolling Iced Earth and Coal Chamber concerts for extras remains, and the level of engagement beginning to show during the first episodes I took in all held true.
It's unfortunate that one of the things that changed was my perspective on John Hanna's role. I said initially he's given more to do here than usual, but by the end I would say his character was actually short-shrifted badly, particularly in comparison with the relative richness and growth on display for most of the other players. He got to do some surprising things, but his actual arc flattened badly, and he lost dimension as the writers enlivened things for the other actors and depended upon his character more and more to just be a workhorse villain.
A bit of a pity, but the rest of that balance did deepen the level of surprise I had in its engagement. And engage it really did. I got involved with the multiple storylines, and really enjoyed them. By the time Spartacus shouts the immortal line, "I! Am! SPARTACUUUUUSSS!!!!", the setup the writers have created gives that a bit of a devastating impact. It is used as an ultimate self-denial, and it is really heartbreaking.
Denying one's person is a pretty amazing self-abnegation. (Denying it to others is the very basis of slavery, as dehumanization is the first justification for excusing ANY behavior toward one's fellow man. *AHEM*) I've been dealing with some issues of respect in terms of self-determination, so maybe the impact here was enhanced by this - but even so, the scene of that speech is very nicely constructed.
The performances here really are great. Andy Whitfield (may he be physically well) is supremely effective, both physically in his role and in his occupation of the character. Viva Bianca ends up with a SURPRISING amount to do, and man does she nail her wonderful role. You do not see this woman coming. Manu Bennett keeps running deeper and deeper, too. Just when you think he's "Iceman" from Top Gun, he gives a pretty necklace to a girl, gets to do a very awkward scene with her, and starts on a road to continuing surprises and unexpected fascination. And the structure and long-term planning of the overall storyline is wonderfully well managed, in both conception and execution. The pace of revelations and developments is nigh on perfect, really. I had an absolute ball.
Sometimes, the wounds CGI'd onto the various gore-fests swim around at different rates than the body parts they're inflicted on. Sometimes, the women are perhaps not perfectly written. (A late development with one essentially echoing Spartacus' own self-negation, asking basically to be used as a wh*re, is pretty quease-inducing; even with the doses of "this character is important" trying to balance the ick-factor, the abasement is not lessened.)
But given the expectations and trappings (and a huge proportion of dialogue-by-declamation), this thing really does come together amazingly well. I *really* liked the actors, and want to see them again, and hope they all find successes.
I was impressed.
YMMV, of course.
It's unfortunate that one of the things that changed was my perspective on John Hanna's role. I said initially he's given more to do here than usual, but by the end I would say his character was actually short-shrifted badly, particularly in comparison with the relative richness and growth on display for most of the other players. He got to do some surprising things, but his actual arc flattened badly, and he lost dimension as the writers enlivened things for the other actors and depended upon his character more and more to just be a workhorse villain.
A bit of a pity, but the rest of that balance did deepen the level of surprise I had in its engagement. And engage it really did. I got involved with the multiple storylines, and really enjoyed them. By the time Spartacus shouts the immortal line, "I! Am! SPARTACUUUUUSSS!!!!", the setup the writers have created gives that a bit of a devastating impact. It is used as an ultimate self-denial, and it is really heartbreaking.
Denying one's person is a pretty amazing self-abnegation. (Denying it to others is the very basis of slavery, as dehumanization is the first justification for excusing ANY behavior toward one's fellow man. *AHEM*) I've been dealing with some issues of respect in terms of self-determination, so maybe the impact here was enhanced by this - but even so, the scene of that speech is very nicely constructed.
The performances here really are great. Andy Whitfield (may he be physically well) is supremely effective, both physically in his role and in his occupation of the character. Viva Bianca ends up with a SURPRISING amount to do, and man does she nail her wonderful role. You do not see this woman coming. Manu Bennett keeps running deeper and deeper, too. Just when you think he's "Iceman" from Top Gun, he gives a pretty necklace to a girl, gets to do a very awkward scene with her, and starts on a road to continuing surprises and unexpected fascination. And the structure and long-term planning of the overall storyline is wonderfully well managed, in both conception and execution. The pace of revelations and developments is nigh on perfect, really. I had an absolute ball.
Sometimes, the wounds CGI'd onto the various gore-fests swim around at different rates than the body parts they're inflicted on. Sometimes, the women are perhaps not perfectly written. (A late development with one essentially echoing Spartacus' own self-negation, asking basically to be used as a wh*re, is pretty quease-inducing; even with the doses of "this character is important" trying to balance the ick-factor, the abasement is not lessened.)
But given the expectations and trappings (and a huge proportion of dialogue-by-declamation), this thing really does come together amazingly well. I *really* liked the actors, and want to see them again, and hope they all find successes.
I was impressed.
YMMV, of course.
Unspeakable
Where do you go with yourself when your mind continues to bring up the deepest, most fundamental spiritual questions, which affect the most important relationships in your life - and which will not go away? What do you do when the one person you can imagine discussing such things with is the one person least available intellectually, because emotions there are such a ... tangle??
Friday, April 23, 2010
Household II, The Explaining
Okay, so the photos below. The mask is my brother's work. (The lamp, I just dig like a double-wide grave.) It's smooth and rough, facial but unwearable, comical and kinda profound, un-personable but wonderfully beautiful. (Like me, the mask is a creature of dualities, not trinities.) It is in my home, but it's always my brother's. His work, his creature, his possession, his gift.
The pics of my kitchen sink are likely trickier to explain. If you click on the bottom one, you can just see that what you're looking at, on those white tiles, is a small gold foil decal, with red writing on it. I believe they're from beers, but the fact is, they've been a part of my kitchen so long I really don't remember. Could've been strange snacks Bro had from the islands. Could've been labels off of a wrapper for chinese food, or chopsticks. I don't know. But I've always had somewhere in my head the idea they came off of Japanese beer.
When I first bought this house - I can't believe, almost nine years ago now - it was a family project. Mom and dad and Bro would all come over while I was at work, and I would come over to find some new piece of work done. I'll never forget the day I returned home to find a large piece of drafting paper, with the note (I think in crayon) that said: "Greater love hath no mother ... than that she tore out your peepee carpet." And lo and behold - when I opened the door and looked into the downstairs bathroom - my mother had sacrificed her gastrointestinal wellbeing, steeled herself, and braved the WALL-TO-WALL indoor/outdoor carpet gracing that room for thirty or so years, and ripped it free of the floor and discarded it.
I'd come home to find my grass mowed, and had actual arguments with Bro about who would GET TO CUT my grass.
I'd come home and find little gold labels insouciantly stuck to my kitchen tiles.
Eight and a half years, at least, those little guys have been there. Probably adhered with a lick of the thumb. They have no "meaning", they're an observation of nothing. They're just something my Bro did because onion-skin-thin mylar feels funny on the fingers, and sticks easily to anything with practically no adhesive. They reassure me of nothing. They're just kind of silly, and they are my brother's work. No greater justification of their presence required.
The pics of my kitchen sink are likely trickier to explain. If you click on the bottom one, you can just see that what you're looking at, on those white tiles, is a small gold foil decal, with red writing on it. I believe they're from beers, but the fact is, they've been a part of my kitchen so long I really don't remember. Could've been strange snacks Bro had from the islands. Could've been labels off of a wrapper for chinese food, or chopsticks. I don't know. But I've always had somewhere in my head the idea they came off of Japanese beer.
When I first bought this house - I can't believe, almost nine years ago now - it was a family project. Mom and dad and Bro would all come over while I was at work, and I would come over to find some new piece of work done. I'll never forget the day I returned home to find a large piece of drafting paper, with the note (I think in crayon) that said: "Greater love hath no mother ... than that she tore out your peepee carpet." And lo and behold - when I opened the door and looked into the downstairs bathroom - my mother had sacrificed her gastrointestinal wellbeing, steeled herself, and braved the WALL-TO-WALL indoor/outdoor carpet gracing that room for thirty or so years, and ripped it free of the floor and discarded it.
I'd come home to find my grass mowed, and had actual arguments with Bro about who would GET TO CUT my grass.
I'd come home and find little gold labels insouciantly stuck to my kitchen tiles.
Eight and a half years, at least, those little guys have been there. Probably adhered with a lick of the thumb. They have no "meaning", they're an observation of nothing. They're just something my Bro did because onion-skin-thin mylar feels funny on the fingers, and sticks easily to anything with practically no adhesive. They reassure me of nothing. They're just kind of silly, and they are my brother's work. No greater justification of their presence required.
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