Today's time-waster....

I used to wonder how cheese and beer were ever invented (and yogurt!). I mean, moldy stinky food--I love it as much as the next gal, but who ever got the idea to pick up some nasty bit of goo and eat it?

Anyway, I used to wonder that, but I'm now pretty sure it was because of the Stone Age forebears of people who spend their time doing these Halloween Tampon Project sorts of things. Oh yes, and let us not forget the microwaving Peeps genre. We are nothing if not a species of creative time-wasters.

"Great fiery gods!" says Troya. "This sheepsquirt stinks."
"Like bad injured foot," adds Bloob. "Or man-droppings."
Troya nods, wondering if the white-covered goo that will come to be known as camembert is a secret way for sheep to stake out territory. "Taste it."
"No!" Bloob recoils in horror. The shimmering mass smells like it might expand inside her mouth and make her head implode. "You do it."
"I drank the bad potato water that sat in the sun until it smelled of a mammoth's secret place. Your turn."

Halloween Eve

Tomorrow's the big day--a thousand children will descend on my neighborhood (I'm not exaggerating--the guy down on the corner counted one year) and make off with all the candy, like African driver ants on a pig carcass. Last year, we gave out 15 pounds of candy (one piece at a time) to the eager young darlings. We sit out on the steps with buckets of candy in hand to keep the hordes from stumbling up our cement steps in a haze of sugar euphoria (one year, we didn't move quickly enough to stop a large[ish] Snow White from landing on her head).

Remember the coneheads? Fried eggs and six-packs--now that's Halloween. Here's a transcript of Beldar and the gang.

no, really--really?

I'm too effin' grumpy to post.

I'm back, yes, I'm back

Okay, I know it's been a while since I've posted--DAYS, even--but I offer as my excuse: (1) my DSL line was out and I'm too lazy to go online with dial-up any more, and (2) we had a party this weekend. So, basically, my little foray into dissolute libertinism kept me away. Mais mes chers, je suis là maintenant, et maintenant, et toujours.

Where did Shehun come from? When I was first teaching, way on back in 1990 when we had to walk uphill both ways through four feet of snow to get to our classroom and don't MAKE me stop this car, I had a dream. I dreamt that I was at school and had forgotten it was costume day; in a panic, I ran through the long twisty corridors of Brink Hall, looking for help. One of the other TAs lent me a horned helmet, a sword, and a fur. I said, in triumph and with a grand flourish of said sword, "Yes! I will go as JA-KAL the SHEHUN."

Anyway, I don't know why, but it's the only nickname I've ever had that's stuck.

Shehun of the Week

Collect 'em all!

If you're a fan of the time-wasting personality test (and really, who isn't?), check out PersonalDNA. Huh? Oh yeah, here are my results.

water, water everywhere

At work: The campus flooded this week, and we've been kicked out of our computer classrooms while the good folk of Balfor de-mildew and re-drywall things.

At home: My landline at home is out, which is good, because it made me go into the basement to look at the phone lines, where a bunch of water dripped onto my head. A minute later, I felt pretty butch holding onto a flashlight (of use) and a screwdriver (of no use at all), saying "yup" and watching the water drip under the sink upstairs. The kitchen faucet is broken so that water only comes out of the little sprayer hose thingy. As they might say in my old home in haddizburg mizzippi, "yup, iyaint gotta phone but i got me some runnin wadduh."

At the house of why, in the "Huh?" room: Good thing our president has declared this week to be National Character Counts Week, or else I wouldn't be able to make sense of the newly Bush-signed Military Commissions Act of 2006.

So last week, in honor of National Coming Out Day, I played with Photoshop and came up with this. It was pretty funny. A number of people were shocked and even awed by it--not that I was gay (everyone knows that) but that I made the cover of Time. Somehow it seemed more plausible that I'd made the cover than that I'd pasted my head on Ellen Degeneres's body. (Eh? No, Skippy, my digital head on her digital body. But thanks for the vote of confidence.)

What was interesting to me was that this cover, which I consider iconic, is not familiar to people "outside the fold." That is, unless you were like me, holed up with your TV in 1997 being thankful that your ABC affiliate didn't participate in the blackout of Ellen's coming-out episode, this white-loafered "Yep" doesn't resonate. Sigh.

god save the queen

So last night I saw The Queen, not because I have any particular interest in QEII or Princess Diana, but because I'd pretty much watch Helen Mirren in anything. If Helen Mirren appeared on crap TV like America's Funniest Home Videos, I'd watch it, even if Bob Saget were hosting and my mute button were broken. Certain folk are Sagetproof. Who else besides Mirren? Mikhail Baryshnikov. Gerry Adams. Vanessa Redgrave. Joni Mitchell. Anyway, the movie was okay, Mirren was Mirren, and the Indian feast I had beforehand also fabulous. But I was wondering about the movie's timing--why now? I didn't really feel sympathy for Tony Blair OR the queen, but I think I was supposed to.

I spent a lot of the day today working on the Women's Studies website, and then gave myself a headache trying to activate my new RAZR. I wonder what kind of cellphone Sagetproof people have...

one cat, two cat, red cat, blue cat

In addition to the lovely AW and my dog Morrigan, I live with three cats. This is me and my cat Eliot, also known as "Smee" and "assmahbigboyyyy" (say that last one slow and you'll get the knack of it). He's a 20-pound tabby trout. My cats don't like having their pictures taken with the webcam--it's been like wrestle-mania here this morning. How do cats see? With their eyes, duh. But can they really watch TV? My friend Terri lent me Video Catnip for my cats and Bijou did in fact watch it. Eliot couldn't have cared less. But then again, Eliot's a staid middle-aged cat and Bijou is a wanky teenager, so maybe it's a generational thing.

Okay, so I said I'd do it...

I made my students start blogs and promised I'd start one up, too. Now I have (2 weeks late), and I can see why they've been alternately amused and weirded-out by it.

I was finding links for them to explore and went to some archive of weird stuff, which led to something about Strawberry PopTart Blowtorches (really), which made me think about that old "microwave the Peeps" website, etc., etc. Sugar is highly flammable. I was stuck on the I-15 between Las Vegas and San Bernardino for hours one time as highway crews cleaned up the carcass of a burned-out semi that had been hauling sugar.

Anyway, back to the Peeps. YouTube has all sorts of movies in which people microwave their Peeps. I like this one which has a plot, of sorts, and apparently gay Peeps with bad French accents. Seriously, though, this "microwaving-the-Peeps" video is like its own new genre.