Steamy situations

One thing about me is that I'm really good at straightening, I rock at organizing, and I get top ratings in general cleaning activities like doing the dishes and making the bed. What I'm not that great at is really cleaning. Like scrubbing the toilet, cleaning the shower, vacuuming, and the worst ever: mopping the floors. In general, I don't even notice when the floors get dirty. Josh does most of the vacuuming around here because he is the one that sees the dirt on the floor. I just float above it and concentrate on alphabetizing my spices or resorting my books by sub-topic.

Occasionally, though (like when we have a houseguest, or people come over), these cleaning tasks must be done. What could possibly make cleaning the floor more fun? Steam!

My sister got me this Enviro Steamer for a wedding present (just the regular one, not the "deluxe" edition pictured above), and I just love it to death. All you do is put some water into it, put a reusable cloth pad on the bottom, plug it in, let it heat up, and then blast your hard floors with steam! You do have to sweep first (which would be much easier for me if we hadn't broken our broom years ago while trying to kill a roach so now it doesn't have a handle but I still use the head of it to sweep instead of going and buying a new broom), but the steamer cleans up most dirt and stains and it claims to also kill nasty bacteria. I don't know if the claims are true, but I'd rather kill bacteria with superheated water than icky chemicals that smell if I have that option.

I'd also like to point out that the Enviro Steamer makes awesome steam poof sounds while you use it that really make you feel like you're doing something.

Now if only someone would find a way to make cleaning the mildew in the shower fun, I would be all set. If you have any tips, let me know as I plan to tackle the shower of grime later this evening. Bleh.

Meat

Yes, meat.

Library Geek Out

I added a new little blog widget to my sidebar down there (just scroll on down... little further... little further... yes, there). It pops up a random list of all the authors I've got in my Library Thing catalog. Look how cute they are down there! I love looking at my random authors in tag form. You had better love it too, suckas.

Song of my reading list

I love to read novels, short stories, non-fiction, plays, magazines, and even experimental things, but I don't always like to read poetry. I'm not sure why this is. In general a wide variety of prose writing will appeal to me at least a little bit, but only a few poems seem to break through. I do have a few poetry books that I've read and really enjoyed: some Anne Sexton, some anthologies from college, chapbooks by Josh's mom, and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (the 1855 edition).

[As an aside, a lovely site with full-text and images from all Whitman's editions of this ever-evolving work can be found here. And scanned images from some of his notebooks are on this very nifty site.]

Prior to its coming up on my reading randomizer, I'd only read parts of Leaves of Grass -- sections from "Song of Myself" and all of "I Sing the Body Electric." When I read these in college, I remember thinking that Whitman was awesome. In fact, that is probably when I bought this book. I loved his philosophies about the interconnectedness of all things; his lists and descriptions of people and places in the pre-Civil War United States; and his acknowledgment and appreciation for the physical, be it in a couple of bodies, the grass on a hillside, or the work of a carpenter.

Twenty-nine year old Kristy still liked quite a bit of Leaves of Grass, but Whitman's idealism and somewhat preachy sense of righteousness is less appealing to me now. Still, I'm glad I took the time to read the whole book in context, and to see how all the poems fit together.

One bit I was both glad and frustrated to read was Whitman's preface to this first edition of his life work. Frustrated because he occasionally flew off to crazy-spiritualism-ville and glad because I came across bits like this:

"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

Now that, I like.

A post in which our hero analyzes her hair salon experience

For most of my five and a half years in Austin, I have gotten my hair cut at Sophia's $6.99 Haircut on Guadalupe (recently renamed Sophia's $7.99 hair cut due to the rising costs of providing haircuts to college kids). Sophia is great -- she cuts hair really fast, she doesn't really talk to you (and when she does, she has an awesome Turkish accent), and she doesn't do any unnecessary washing or spritzing. You are in, and then you are out. Back when it was $6.99, I would give Sophia a ten, and she was always very impressed with the tip.

The problem is: the other people in the salon aren't as awesome as Sophia. Most of them are a lot slower, try to talk you into unneeded hair treatments (one tried to get Josh to get highlights -- I could not possibly think of a man who would look more ridiculous with highlights than Josh). Also, now that I'm working on the other side of campus, it is a hot and sweaty proposition to get over there, and parking is not so great.

Lately I've taken to getting my hair cut at the hair place by the HEB near my house. The hair cuts there are about $15.00, so with a tip I usually would pay $20. I had maybe two really nice hair cut experiences there, and about five frustrating ones. Since it's first come first serve you would never know if you would get a nice stylist or a stoner dude that would take an hour to trim one inch off your all-one-length hair and then put your part back on the wrong side of your head. Plus there would always be way more stylists than people there, and a bunch of them would just sit around and gossip really loudly and watch you get your hair cut. I had a nice stylist the last time I was there, and she put some long layers in my hair that I liked, but then she moved to Las Vegas. I really needed a haircut, but I didn't really want to go back there, and I didn't want to risk not getting Sophia at the $6.99 store.

So: I went to a salon. Wow. I have not gone to a real salon since I was 16 or 17 and I would go with my mom to get my haircut by her stylist. Ever since then I've been a Supercuts kind of gal. And what changed my mind? First, Carrie recommended this new salon that opened up right by my house (the JR Salon on Burnet), and noted that the cuts were only $30 and they didn't accept tips. Then Amanda wrote a post about going to a salon where they gave her coffee and treated her all nice and that sounded like it could be all right. The appointment was made.

Here is what I got for my $30:

1. First, confusion. The receptionist lady walked me around the store and pointed out different areas, and then pointed to a little room and told me I could change in there. Change? For a haircut? I went in the little room and realized I was supposed to leave my coat in there and put on a smock thing over my clothes.

2. Once I was in the waiting room, a woman came up and offered me some coffee or tea. I had coffee in a real cup with a saucer, and then later a glass of water in a neat glass. The dude next to me somehow scored a glass of wine, but I think it was because his stylist was running late and he had to wait a bit.

3. I met my stylist and we talked about what I wanted done to my hair. Then she took me back into this darkened room and gave me a head massage with good-smell oils, washed and conditioned me, and even put a hot towel over my eyes and ears for a few minutes. Nice.

4. Hair cut was accomplished quickly. I really liked my stylist, who provided just enough chit-chat without asking me my life story or telling me hers. The 20 minutes she spent blow drying my hair reminded me again why I don't own a blow-dryer.

5. After the haircut, she gave me a hand massage. Hand massages kind of weird me out, more than any other kind of massage, because they are so intimate. All intertwining fingers and rubbing of palms. It felt nice, though, and the super-strength lotion she used helped my dry hands.

After all that, I did end up buying the special magic hair serum that she recommended because it was only $10 and I liked the way it smelled. So the experience really cost more like $40.

The next time I need to get my hair cut, I'm totally going back. And next time I'll try to score a glass of wine.

[And I know the picture up at the top is a little blurry, but it came up when I Googled "hand massage" and I think the little face on the thumb is both cute and disturbing. Ditto for the tiny drawings of organs.]

Cooking Tip

Instead of making your meatloaf and putting it into a loaf pan like a sucka, divide that shit up into twelve muffin tins coated with cooking spray and it will only take like half an hour to cook instead of nearly two hours of your life. Meatloaf muffins are also ridiculously cute, although I neglected to take any pictures of them.

Faster meatloaf = happier tummies.

The best FBI costume ever

[from the UT Campus Watch]

Criminal Trespass Warning / Assist Outside Agency:  A non-UT subject was reported as impersonating a federal agent while in a 4th floor men’s restroom.  The 4th floor of the building is reserved for use by faculty, staff and students.  When located by police officers, the subject had a dollar bill with the letters FBI written on it clipped to his t-shirt.  The subject was found to have an outstanding outside agency arrest warrant for a “Human Waste” violation.  In addition to other law enforcement action taken, the subject was issued a written criminal trespass warning.  Occurred on 03-22-06 at 11:44 AM.

Roborific

I make a point to always support museums that use robots as tour guides. Particularly if the robot is named Cicerobot. And a meaner version of the tour guide robot apparently guards archeological sites from grave robbers. What can't robots do?

I liked Star Search too

So, who wants to gossip about American Idol?

I think Paula Abdul seems weirdly super drugged up this evening. And for some reason they never turn her mike off, so you hear her weird wooohoooing and laughing for much longer than you should.

Also Mandisa is totally smokin and I love the guy with bad teeth. I'm a sucker for bad teeth.

Who I don't like: Bucky Covington and the pretty boy dude. I do love Bucky Covington's name, though.

Gossip-mode: deactivate.

Look it up

The DJ on the college radio station just played some cover of a Cole Porter song and then noted that she had no idea who this "Cole Porter" guy is. It's not like I'm a musical genius, and I'm certainly not a Cole Porter expert, but I do know who the dude was.

Kids these days. Sheesh.

A stiff one

Next in my pile of "must read before they even get put on the bookshelf" books was Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach (2003). This book is basically as awesome as you might expect it to be. It includes chapters on practicing surgical techniques on dead bodies (or parts of them), the history of finding and using bodies to study anatomy, that body farm you sometimes hear about on CSI where they study decomposition, human crash dummies, human ballistics testers, crucifixion experiments, organ donation, human head transplants, cannibalism, and human composting. Whew.

Sometimes the author's humor can get a little bit irritating, but ultimately she succeeds in writing a personal, and yet practical, view of the body after death and all the strange things that people have thought to do with it.

I also learned that if you do a google image search for the word "cadaver" you will come up with a delightful combination of gross, sad, funny, weird, and strange. Quite a variety. Cadavers are apparently a very interesting visual topic.

After I finish the magazine I'm on, I'll be returning to the wonderful world of random reads. Only the randomizer on LibraryThing knows what jewel I'll be reading next.

More social than ever before

This weekend I experienced both seriously green hamburgers and a giant ring that doubled as a shot glass. The second is featured here. The first was not documented by me as my camera had no battery juice, but I know someone else took pictures of the historic event. They were gross looking and awesome tasting, which is an excellent combination. Much better than the other way around. Drinking a shot off your ring finger is challenging but ultimately worthwhile.

Freaky things and shopping trips

I'm not really a mall kind of person. In fact, they rather freak me out. The only mall I've ever been to in Austin is Highland Mall. I went there the first time with my parents and my sister when they were visiting, once a few weeks ago with Josh to get new lenses for his glasses at Lenscrafters, and the third time was tonight when I made a trip to the Victoria's Secret to buy some lingerie as a gift for a lingerie shower this weekend.

Freaky thing #1: The grackles at Highland Mall. I have always been a little scared of birds, although after five years in Austin with grackles all around being scary and pigeons all over campus, I'm comparatively calm when a bunch of birds are around. And I've seen giant groups of grackles before -- when I used to walk to work, there would be hundreds of them in the trees by the student services building in the morning. The amount of grackles by Highland Mall at dusk was insane. Scary insane. Like every tree was filled with them, all the buildings were lined with them, the sky was full of them flying around and there were hundreds of them just sitting in the parking lot because they couldn't all get a tree perch. When I got back to my car, there were dozens of grackles surrounding it, and four sitting on top. The trees were basically raining bird poop. Like you could hear it plopping down all around. And the birds were so loud with their crazy grackle calls that you couldn't even carry on a conversation outside.

I really like Victoria's Secret's panties, so while I was there picking out my gift, I also grabbed some nice sensible cotton panties for myself. I've only been inside a Victoria's Secret one other time, and this is the first time I'd really shopped around in there. Usually I order my stuff through the catalog or on the internet, which is my preferred shopping method. On the internet, freaky thing number two never happens.

Freaky thing #2: When you buy panties and such at VS, they wrap them up in tissue paper, put them in a fancy bag, and then squirt some perfume into the bag. Isn't that strange? I've never seen anyone do anything like that in my life.

I was going to do more shopping at the mall after going to VS, but the combination of birds and perfume turned me against it. I'm sure I just would have run into more freaky things.

The whole trip, however, was completely worth it for another thing I found out about Victoria's Secret. If you are buying a gift, they give you this awesome folded free shrink-wrapped gift box. It is totally fun to assemble when you get home and it comes with two sheets of pink tissue paper. I've decided everything I ever buy at Victoria's Secret from now on will be a "gift" because I love these boxes.

Call it art

Everyone loves the random book reading system, but sometimes (like when you have just bought some new books and a few of them are too fun to wait on the fickle finger of randomness before reading) you just have to read what is sitting in a pile next to your bed. So, this weekend I jammed my way through A Year in the Life of Andy Warhol, a book of photographs by David McCabe with a bit of text by David Dalton (2003).

Warhol commissioned McCabe to follow him around and take pictures of him for an entire year in 1964/1965, but when the project was over, he decided not to do anything with the photographs. In his introduction, Dalton suggests that this might be because The Andy Warhol Persona was created right around this time, and Warhol didn't want the casual/goofy nature of some of these pictures to interfere with the carefully controlled image of himself that he wanted to share with the world.

If I knew more about modern art, I would probably recognize a lot more of the people that turn up in this book. It was fun to see Salvador Dali, Factory folks, and Tennessee Williams (who knew he hung out with these guys -- there are some great pictures of him dancing at a party at the Factory). [A few other photos from the book are up here, this is one of my favorites.] There are also series of pictures from the filming of "Vinyl" and "Kitchen" (the photo above is from the set of "Kitchen." McCabe is the one with the camera).

All the photos are fun to look at on their own, and while Dalton's text is occasionally a little gossipy and overly enthusiastic, it provides some nice context for the photographs and is generally engaging. The best part of the book is the focus on one year in Warhol's life -- you see the same groups of people over and over again (but not in a boring way) and you get a sense of how one encounter might lead into another. Plus, it's a book full of photographs of (and commissioned by) a man who made a career out of playing with the idea of celebrity and the public eye.

This book is also physically fun -- a smallish, dense hardcover from Phaidon that is fun to hold, with nice prints of all the photographs and a pleasing layout.

Medical tip of the day

Backs are really important. Be careful when you reach into the fridge to grab the milk because you might freak your back out. Then you will have trouble moving your arms, your legs, picking things up, sitting down, standing up, walking, laying down, rolling over, sleeping, sneezing, washing your face, brushing your teeth, and lots of other things.

Ouch.

Random Reads

My latest random read was, appropriately, Random Acts of Senseless Violence by Jack Womack (1993), another work from the Dr. Mystery collection. The back of the book calls Womack a "cyberpunk" -- all this made me think of was the Billy Idol album, so i looked it up in the dictionary and found that it means "science fiction dealing with future urban societies dominated by computer technology," either that or a opportunistic hacker. After seeing that, another search showed me that cyberpunk culture is actually very complicated. Who knew?

Womack's other books may be more cyberpunky, but while this one does deal with a dystopic future society, it really has no technology in it at all, beyond television. This book takes place in a not-so-distant-future in New York City, and takes the form of six months or so in the diary of a twelve-year-old girl named Lola. Her parents are both professor/writer types, and they have a nice apartment in Manhattan. But then both parents lose their jobs and they have to move to a run down apartment right outside of Harlam. Lola continues to commute to her private all-girls school, where most of her classmates tease her because of a rumor that she is a lesbian. Through the course of the book, Lola pretty much decides she is a lesbian too, and falls in love first with some of her white girlfriends at school, and then with her new black girlfriends by her apartment. In the background of all this junior-high exploration of sexuality, there are riots going on all over the country, a series of presidents keeps getting assassinated, inflation is out of control, and there is a TB outbreak in the country. As she slowly realizes she can't count on her family to protect her, Lola turns more and more to the streets and commits some rather random acts of senseless violence to match the violence going on around her. Oh yeah, and once she starts hanging out with her new friends in 'the streets' she quickly adopts their very Clockwork-Orange-type new future dialect.

This all sounds rather exciting in capsule form, and the book is engaging and interesting to read. The problem is that there just isn't enough there. We don't get many explanations or context for any of the world problems (which would have been interesting), the new dialect quickly moves from being intriguing to being boring and more an exercise in linguistics than an encompassing new language -- something that really works in A Clockwork Orange but not here. The diary form works better at the start of the book, but soon the diary entries are full of transcribed dialogue and read more like traditional book chapters than twelve-year-old musings, which makes the tone of the book rather uneven. Plus, does this guy really look like he can consistently write like a twelve-year-old girl?

This is Womack's fifth book, and I would be interested to read some of his other books, so I'm not discounting him entirely. Overall an interesting book, and worth reading, but don't expect perfection here.

Wine is in, Patriotism is out

I just took a Jane Magazine sponsored survey "about what it's like being a 20-something today." I can't really say why I took it, other than they emailed it to me and I like to take surveys. And I was desperate to know how "being a 20-something today" translates into survey form.

A sample question:

Would you say that the following things are "in" or "out"?
(Select one answer in each row.)

Patriotism
The supernatural
Gourmet coffee
Sex and sexuality
Jeans
Spirituality
Physical fitness
Wine
Volunteer/charity work

As you can see, this survey is sure to result in some hard-hitting journalism on the inner-most thoughts of the twenty-somethings of today.

I've got Sole

I haven't bought a new pair of tennis shoes since junior high, and those pretty much lived in my gym locker until I graduated from high school and wasn't forced to run around in shorts, a crappy t-shirt and gym shoes for a few hours every week. But something about these super green tennies made me want to buy them. They make my feet a little hot, but I'm growing to really like them. I feel like if I had to run somewhere, I could probably do it in these shoes.

The thing is, I used to hardly ever buy shoes at all. All through college and until about two years ago, I would always just have two pairs of shoes: one closed toe regular shoe and one pair of sandals. I would buy new shoes every other year or so (usually Birkenstocks) and just wear them until they fell apart. But something happened and now I own an unheard of ten pairs of shoes. [How many pairs do other people have?] And I still don't have a good everyday pair of neutral shoes that I like, so I'm thinking about buying another pair. Part of this has to do with being "professional." I needed at least one pair of dress shoes to wear for business type occasions (I've got two of those). I bought one of the pairs for my wedding. My mom gave me one pair. And on and on and on....

Pretty soon I'm going to have to get a shoe rack. And some shoe horns. And other shoe accessories. When will it end?

I think I'm going to need a shoe intervention, folks.

Book Report Time

My latest random read was Angels by Denis Johnson (1989), another one of Josh's books. Apparently the random book generator is much more enamored with his books than mine, because three out of my last four reads have been Josh books, and I just peaked at what the next read will be and it is a Josh book too. Luckily my man has good taste in books or this system would be a bust.

Angels is Johnson's first novel, and it is wonderful. I read his books Jesus' Son and Already Dead a few years ago and enjoyed them, but this one is on a whole other level. It follows a woman who just left her husband with her two kids in tow, the man she meets on a bus, and his brothers and mother. Everyone in this book is on the verge of either completely falling apart or finally getting it all together. They travel across the country on the bus from California to Pittsburgh, to Chicago, and finally to Phoenix. The ending of the book is crushingly hopeful and ultimately inevitable. I wish I was still reading it.

And isn't the cover great? This is the original paperback cover, and I couldn't find a big enough version on the web so I scanned ours. Those tail-lights are perfect.

Love it.

This ad campaign sounds dirty.

My memo to the Academy

I know lots of people hate awards ceremonies, and really hate the Oscars. It is true that they are really long, the speeches are generally boring, and the whole patting each other on the back because Hollywood is so great aspect of them is a little nauseating. Still, I love to watch the Oscars. It's like some kind of national holiday around here. We load up on beers and bourbon, get into our comfy clothes, sit on the bed, and watch celebrities walk around on the tv for four or five hours. It's great!

And now, because I'm in a listy mood, here is a list of Oscar thoughts:

1. I wish they would bring back the dance numbers they used to have. I loved those goofy things. The weirdo slow-motion mime vignettes during two of the song performances this year do not count. Although watching people interpretive dance their escape from a burning car and the life of a pimp, respectively, was pretty cool.

2. More people need to wear outrageous dresses, or it isn't any fun to point at the fashions. This year the only really weird one was Charlize Theron's bow. Lets take some more fashion risks here, people.

3. Keanu Reeves looked kind of vague and weird to me. Josh thinks I'm crazy. But didn't he?. He looks like a guy that sort of looks like Keanu Reeves.

4. Apparently Gary Busey was there. I think they should have included more of him in the broadcast to pepper things up a notch.

5. Jon Stewart was pretty good. Vaguely funny. I did like the political ads for the Oscar nominees...

6. Any award ceremony involving Dolly Parton is good with me.

7. The celebrity death sequence should have been longer, as that is my favorite part.

8. Robert Altman gave a lovely speech, although I kind of wished he would have stuck it to the Academy at least a teensy bit.

9. It makes me sad when a group of people are accepting an award, one person talks, and they cut everyone else in the group off. At least let them say "hi mom" or thank jesus or something...

10. Jack Nicholson apparently gets a front row seat to the Oscars every year because makes for a good reaction shot.

The Golden Boots of Cleopatra

Want to invest $10,000 in a film? Want to see some NSFW and yet completely weird nude-filled cartoon costume drawings for a PG-13 movie with no nudity? Well, then I suggest you visit this Ebay auction.

Anyone. Anyone.

Another one to add to the "movies that I loved when I was a kid and are still good" pile: Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Some things I didn't really notice when I was a kid:

1. No one says fuck, but people call each other "dickhead" and "shithead" way more than they do in real life. And I think I need to start saying "dickhead" more often.

2. Ferris is really an asshole. He is filled with a sense of entitlement, and he gets away with everything even though he doesn't deserve to. He is also a total dickhead to Cameron. His sister Jeanie is really the only completely likeable character in the whole movie. But when I was a kid, I thought Ferris was one-hundred percent great.

3. The parade scene is so weird. I thought it was bizarre when I was a kid too, but it is really beyond that. Very strange and very hilarious.

4. Matthew Broderick is still my secret boyfriend.

5. The girlfriend from this movie (Mia Sara) was married to Sean Connery's son for several years. And she also dated Jim Henson's son. Weird.

6. A wonderful Charlie Sheen cameo as a guy Jeanie talks to at the police station, including the following dialogue:

Boy in Police Station: Drugs?
Jeannie: Thank you, no. I'm straight.
Boy in Police Station: I meant, are you in here for drugs?
Jeannie: Why are you here?
Boy in Police Station: Drugs.

Charlie Sheen has some comic timing, everybody.

Rock It

The thing about me is I really like to listen to music, but I have almost zero contextual knowledge. I never remember who sings what, what was on whose album, when someone was around, who is in the band, what other bands they were in, or what type of music anything is. This results in me constantly asking Josh "who is this?" sometimes more than once during the same song.

So, I was kind of interested when the next book that popped up in my random book generator was the rather goofily titled Rolling Stone's Alt-Rock-a-Rama: An Outrageous Compendium of Facts, Fiction, Trivia, and Critiques on Alternative Rock, edited by Scott Schinder and the editors of Rolling Stone Press (1996). This is an anthology of lists, essays and rambling thoughts by the critics, fans and purveyors of alternative music, very broadly construed (basically anything that isn't top 40, lots of punk and rockers, with a focus on the 1970s and 1980s and a little of the grungy early 1990s).

The first thirty pages or so cooled my fire of interest. Pages and pages of lists of albums and singles from bands that I couldn't really place, describing the sound in little blurbs that only referred to other bands I didn't know. List after list after list. Bleh.

I almost gave up.

I'm glad I didn't though, as once I got through the mucky first couple of chapters, the book really hit its stride. Some of the essays and things are pretty dated, and some are just goofy, but there is a lot of interesting stuff in there. The best bits are things that were actually written by musicians, the worst bits are the self-conscious claptrap of rock critics nostalgic for their young lives in New York City in the early 1970s.

And Henry Rollins' contribution was mercifully brief.

Brains and bones, ya'll!

This museum needs a new home. I propose it come move in with me. I wouldn't mind at all.