Rambling rumbling musing....
Nov. 29th, 2010 09:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatWatching and incredibly bored by Lennon: Naked. By the way, what's with all the Beatles stuff all of a sudden? Is it just because itunes finally got the rights to Beatles songs and is selling them for 99 cents a pop? Or is there another reason? I like the Beatles well enough, but after a while their songs all sound a bit alike to me. (Blasphemy, I know.) Much prefer The Stones, The Who, and Pink Floyd. Which is odd, considering the Beatles is more crooning and less heavy instrumental, and normally I'm a lyrics girl. But Floyd's Animals record is a work of genius, as is The Wall.
Momster asked what I wanted for Xmas. She wants me to email her a list. I've no clue. Not books - have too many already, hence the Kindle. We're sticking with buying books for the Kindle only or renting from the library (that's not a mistake by the way - I actually mean "renting" - because I can't read a book in the amount of time libraries are willing to give me. The days in which I could finish a book in well less than three weeks are long gone.) Also picked up another cookbook over the holiday weekend - The Babycakes Gluten-Free Desert Cookbook. Big disappointment was the scone recipes all used spelt flour and not gluten-free flour. Can't have spelt flour - it's an ancient cousin of wheat and as a result has the nasty gluten protein (a rather complex and huge protein that makes me very sick, but vegetarians everywhere love and often use as a substitute for meat protein - hence the reason I avoid most pure vegetarian and vegan restaurants.). I'm guessing that's more information than anyone wanted to know.
A bit strung out today. Was watching the sky outside the train window...on way home from work. The clouds looked fuzzy, and the sky painted in shades of orange and pink, and the building a brown/gray silohouette against it. The trees brushing the sky with their branches. It sounded more poetic in my head on the train than it does here on the white computer screen. Perhaps a more colorful backdrop would change that? Somehow I doubt it. Call me crazy, but I'm a believer in my words speaking for themselves.
Was thinking about correspondence too today. Always wrote letters. As a child, I kept them in a shoebox, filled with other odd keepsakes. Including the chrome bulldog that was screwed on the front vendor of Mac Trucks - which my father brought me one day. His client had been Mac Trucks. Explaining what my father did for a living when I was a small child is about as easy as explaining what I do for a living now. Possibly a might bit easier. Which means, at least, I got practice. Most of the kids I knew had parents who did straight-forward jobs - real estate agent, doctor, lawyer, dentist, gardner, Aerospace Engineer (it was the 70s, half our neighborhood was made up of out-of-work NASA Aerospace Engineers). At any rate, into the shoe box went such things as letters, keepsakes, all of which are long gone now. Thinking back on it - reminds me a little bit of the keepsake box, Scout had in To Kill a Mockingbird. If there was ever a book that I identified with as a child - it was that one, in part, because my father looked a lot like Gregory Peck's Atticus Finch, and acted a bit like him too.
Except for the lawyer part of course.
My correspondence started when I moved from PA in 1978. Winter. In the middle of the 5th grade. We moved clear across the country, from the land of the Pennyslvania Dutch to Dorothy's Kansas, albeit not as flat as it was advertised. I remember being very disappointed about that. Yet also a bit relieved. Also it was so different. Not as many trees. No real forests. The number of trees on the East Coast threw my Granny for a loop...how can you live around so many trees she used to ask, don't you feel claustrophobic? No, oddly not. If anything safe. While in Kansas, I often felt exposed.
The correspondence was with my best friends at the time...a relationship that did not last, as time wore on, a scant five years in actuality, we lost touch. The letters began to dwindle. Only to be replaced by new correspondents, two gals in France, one in Turkey. An Aunt in Nevada...who enjoyed writing as well. After and during college - I wrote people at college when I was home, and people at home when I was at college. Long, meandering letters...much like these posts. About whatever I was thinking about at the moment I was writing it. Or rather whatever entertained me. And if I was lucky, I'd get responses, most often not in direct response to what I wrote - often making me wonder if they received my letter at all. I miss letters. The writing difficult to read. The multi-colored inks.
The doodles along the page. The pictures, the nick-nacks wrapped as hidden surprises, and the feeling of surprise and delight upon receipt.
Try as it might, the internet has yet to duplicate that.
Those letters and postcards are long gone now. Replaced by Facebook, Email, and Livejournal blog posts.
Off to watch tv, I think. And hopefully to feel more focused. Today lacked focus. I felt scattered. Frazzled. Spent most of it worrying about something that I could do little about. Towards the end of the day, I did manage through the course of two long phone conversations to settle the problem a bit.
I think the frazzled state is mostly the result of having no idea what to do about oh so many things.
What to do about finding a place, what place to choose, what to get people for Xmas, what I want for Xams, what to do about certain church activities - such as what clothes to give away to the church fund-raiser and which ones to keep (I have a beautiful suit that no longer fits me but I can't bear to part with - I keep thinking, I'll lose the weight and be able to wear it, silly I know), what to do about numerous work projects, what to about my cell phone - get an i-phone or stick with the old one. I hate making decisions and often procrastinate on those decisions that I have no clue how to resolve. Which appear to be stacking up on me at the moment.
Yesterday...I retreated from them into movies and tv. Tonight I appear to be blogging. And in the past, I let myself be consumed with my obsession for Buffy. Why I got so obsessed with Buffy - I've no idea. It blows my mother's mind that there are actually college courses taught on it, and whole conventions. But, as I explained to her...it really is no different than teaching a course on James Joyce or Westerns. The metaphors in the series and the characters resonated for people. The show broke a few barriers pop culture wise. Established a female heroine...in a traditional male hero role in a high-school context and a predominately male genre or a romantic genre in which women tend to be damsels. Buffy mocked that trope, kicked it over, and established a new one. That's why I think I got obsessed with it. And may well be why so many academics did as well. Something just clicked. Something new, not borrowed or blue - or sparkly. That had not quite been done before. I think that's when we take notice of pop culture...when it is new. When it is something that...well hits where we live, what we were hunting for, and could not find - and voila - there, it is!
I don't know. I'm just guessing. I've learned that it is impossible to pigeon-hole or analyze this sort of thing effectively. It's...not rational. Or logical. It's emotional. Gut level. And that doesn't always have a clear and reasonable explanation. Also...generalizing about people, heck psycho-analyzing people is never a good idea. I get myself into all sorts of trouble whenever I do it.
Best not to. Doesn't mean I won't. Frustrated psych major and all that. ;-)
Momster asked what I wanted for Xmas. She wants me to email her a list. I've no clue. Not books - have too many already, hence the Kindle. We're sticking with buying books for the Kindle only or renting from the library (that's not a mistake by the way - I actually mean "renting" - because I can't read a book in the amount of time libraries are willing to give me. The days in which I could finish a book in well less than three weeks are long gone.) Also picked up another cookbook over the holiday weekend - The Babycakes Gluten-Free Desert Cookbook. Big disappointment was the scone recipes all used spelt flour and not gluten-free flour. Can't have spelt flour - it's an ancient cousin of wheat and as a result has the nasty gluten protein (a rather complex and huge protein that makes me very sick, but vegetarians everywhere love and often use as a substitute for meat protein - hence the reason I avoid most pure vegetarian and vegan restaurants.). I'm guessing that's more information than anyone wanted to know.
A bit strung out today. Was watching the sky outside the train window...on way home from work. The clouds looked fuzzy, and the sky painted in shades of orange and pink, and the building a brown/gray silohouette against it. The trees brushing the sky with their branches. It sounded more poetic in my head on the train than it does here on the white computer screen. Perhaps a more colorful backdrop would change that? Somehow I doubt it. Call me crazy, but I'm a believer in my words speaking for themselves.
Was thinking about correspondence too today. Always wrote letters. As a child, I kept them in a shoebox, filled with other odd keepsakes. Including the chrome bulldog that was screwed on the front vendor of Mac Trucks - which my father brought me one day. His client had been Mac Trucks. Explaining what my father did for a living when I was a small child is about as easy as explaining what I do for a living now. Possibly a might bit easier. Which means, at least, I got practice. Most of the kids I knew had parents who did straight-forward jobs - real estate agent, doctor, lawyer, dentist, gardner, Aerospace Engineer (it was the 70s, half our neighborhood was made up of out-of-work NASA Aerospace Engineers). At any rate, into the shoe box went such things as letters, keepsakes, all of which are long gone now. Thinking back on it - reminds me a little bit of the keepsake box, Scout had in To Kill a Mockingbird. If there was ever a book that I identified with as a child - it was that one, in part, because my father looked a lot like Gregory Peck's Atticus Finch, and acted a bit like him too.
Except for the lawyer part of course.
My correspondence started when I moved from PA in 1978. Winter. In the middle of the 5th grade. We moved clear across the country, from the land of the Pennyslvania Dutch to Dorothy's Kansas, albeit not as flat as it was advertised. I remember being very disappointed about that. Yet also a bit relieved. Also it was so different. Not as many trees. No real forests. The number of trees on the East Coast threw my Granny for a loop...how can you live around so many trees she used to ask, don't you feel claustrophobic? No, oddly not. If anything safe. While in Kansas, I often felt exposed.
The correspondence was with my best friends at the time...a relationship that did not last, as time wore on, a scant five years in actuality, we lost touch. The letters began to dwindle. Only to be replaced by new correspondents, two gals in France, one in Turkey. An Aunt in Nevada...who enjoyed writing as well. After and during college - I wrote people at college when I was home, and people at home when I was at college. Long, meandering letters...much like these posts. About whatever I was thinking about at the moment I was writing it. Or rather whatever entertained me. And if I was lucky, I'd get responses, most often not in direct response to what I wrote - often making me wonder if they received my letter at all. I miss letters. The writing difficult to read. The multi-colored inks.
The doodles along the page. The pictures, the nick-nacks wrapped as hidden surprises, and the feeling of surprise and delight upon receipt.
Try as it might, the internet has yet to duplicate that.
Those letters and postcards are long gone now. Replaced by Facebook, Email, and Livejournal blog posts.
Off to watch tv, I think. And hopefully to feel more focused. Today lacked focus. I felt scattered. Frazzled. Spent most of it worrying about something that I could do little about. Towards the end of the day, I did manage through the course of two long phone conversations to settle the problem a bit.
I think the frazzled state is mostly the result of having no idea what to do about oh so many things.
What to do about finding a place, what place to choose, what to get people for Xmas, what I want for Xams, what to do about certain church activities - such as what clothes to give away to the church fund-raiser and which ones to keep (I have a beautiful suit that no longer fits me but I can't bear to part with - I keep thinking, I'll lose the weight and be able to wear it, silly I know), what to do about numerous work projects, what to about my cell phone - get an i-phone or stick with the old one. I hate making decisions and often procrastinate on those decisions that I have no clue how to resolve. Which appear to be stacking up on me at the moment.
Yesterday...I retreated from them into movies and tv. Tonight I appear to be blogging. And in the past, I let myself be consumed with my obsession for Buffy. Why I got so obsessed with Buffy - I've no idea. It blows my mother's mind that there are actually college courses taught on it, and whole conventions. But, as I explained to her...it really is no different than teaching a course on James Joyce or Westerns. The metaphors in the series and the characters resonated for people. The show broke a few barriers pop culture wise. Established a female heroine...in a traditional male hero role in a high-school context and a predominately male genre or a romantic genre in which women tend to be damsels. Buffy mocked that trope, kicked it over, and established a new one. That's why I think I got obsessed with it. And may well be why so many academics did as well. Something just clicked. Something new, not borrowed or blue - or sparkly. That had not quite been done before. I think that's when we take notice of pop culture...when it is new. When it is something that...well hits where we live, what we were hunting for, and could not find - and voila - there, it is!
I don't know. I'm just guessing. I've learned that it is impossible to pigeon-hole or analyze this sort of thing effectively. It's...not rational. Or logical. It's emotional. Gut level. And that doesn't always have a clear and reasonable explanation. Also...generalizing about people, heck psycho-analyzing people is never a good idea. I get myself into all sorts of trouble whenever I do it.
Best not to. Doesn't mean I won't. Frustrated psych major and all that. ;-)
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no subject
Date: 2010-11-30 04:08 am (UTC)It wasn't good.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-30 04:19 am (UTC)"Alan's Pyschedelic Breakfast". Heee...
I've learned that it is impossible to pigeon-hole or analyze this sort of thing effectively. It's...not rational. Or logical. It's emotional. Gut level. And that doesn't always have a clear and reasonable explanation.
Also amazing how I manage to post a toon, then read another poster's entry on LJ, and find the toon relates to it. Did that recently with Masq, kinda gave me one of those little "oooo..." moments.
"Atom Heart Mother" Heee... based on a true story, you know. OK, the title was.
Like The Who also, Stones OK. But mostly is geezer music now, sadly, but them so am I. I was in Jr. High School when "Tommy" came out.
Ach.. time to get get outa here vonst. Wiedersehen!
no subject
Date: 2010-11-30 11:02 pm (UTC)I thought the PBS show LennoNYC was the better and more interesting show, it was an actual documentary).
I was always a letter writer too, but it was always hard to find people who were good correspondents, it is actually more satisfying online because people are better about responding to email than they were to writing a letter, getting it addressed & stamped, and then actually mailing it off in any timely manner.