December 24, 2006
Bring me the head of Harry Potter, and other Christmas stories
I love this holiday.
For one thing I love the decorating. Like the most of families, my family will cheerfully hang on to ornaments that are cracked, ugly, or created by a five year old, purely for their sentimental value. For example, we've got a broken Harry Potter ornament, tragically decapitated in a fall last year, whose disembodied head we now hang on the tree and claim he is wearing his invisibility cloak. (We also like to hide the body somewhere around the house to be found in March or April, or just wait until a guest has his head turned and drop it in his wine.)
We've also got holiday embarrassment covered, in the form of felt reindeer antlers which the Moms insists we all wear whenever we are in the house, and which she likes to force on our guests, like a test to see how much humiliation they can endure before they stop coming over.
I love the surprise element: watching the Moms slyly slip presents into the dog's stocking when the dog is out of the room, so that she won't know what's in there. Because she drools a little less when chowing down on her pig ear* if she knows beforehand that it's coming.
I love being woken up on Christmas morning by both my parents dancing outside my room. "Aren't you awake yet? It's SIX A.M. It's CHRISTMAS MORNING. We've been up for hours! Let's get the lead out!" For the record, they've been waking me up on Christmas morning since I was eight. Because while it is exciting to get out and open that new Lord of the Rings DVD, it's more exciting not to fall asleep with my face in my breakfast an hour later.
I love the new annual tradition since we got Molly the dog, of Molly stealing one Christmas treat from under our very noses. One year it was a breakfast pastry, this year twenty of the thirty Christmas cookies my dad and I spent four hours making and decorating. It's always exciting to see what she'll steal next, and whether it will contain enough chocolate to kill her.***
Most of all I love spending three or four days at the parental estate, where laundry is free, floors are sparkling, food is cooked by someone else, and the plates are cleaned by a magical robot called a "dishwasher."
I hope you, too, my readers, have a holiday filled with cleanliness and stupid pet tricks and the disembodied head of Harry Potter. Merry Christmas!
*Those who do not have dogs will be interested to know that yes, it really is the ear from a pig, now dried. Sometimes it comes with the little bristles still attached to parts.**
**Sorry, Dianna.
***I love Molly and do not want her dead. But those cookies did take a hell of a long time to make.
Posted by didofoot at 10:02 AM | Comments (1)
December 19, 2006
Blogger has gotten funnier lately, but not that funny
Local blogger K. Larson has broken an unfunny streak with two recent posts, both of which were reasonably amusing, her friends report.
"The thing about MUNI that she clearly invented, the quoting from Sherlock Holmes, and that one entry complaining about her phone service that she posted and then took down again right away, those weren't really very good," said an anonymous source. "But I like the two new ones pretty well."
"I liked the story about getting drunk," another source told reporters. "I'm not too sure about this spate of fake news articles though."
A random poll of internet residents has indicated that in spite of the recent fluctuations in humor value, they are still willing to check out Larson's page on days when Sean has not posted anything, or has written something technical about baseball.
Posted by didofoot at 03:45 PM | Comments (1)
December 14, 2006
Impressing the boss's wife and other smooth moves
The Lad and I went to his office holiday party last night and had an excellent time. I know, because I woke up still drunk.
Even as the gussying-up beforehand is often the best part of an event, the post-party conversation the next morning is always enjoyably illuminating.
Lad: I'm trying to remember if we did anything stupid last night.
Me: I think we were okay.
Lad: I did like your conversation with the CEO's wife.
Me: ...What? I didn't...wait...
Lad: You had a long conversation about what it means to be the boss's wife. You were very focused on the term "boss's wife."
Me: Oh, hell. [Holds head and groans.]
Lad: And you kept threatening to find Brenda* and spill a drink on her. (*Name has been changed to protect the innocent, and that bitch Brenda.) But you didn't want to waste a drink ticket. Man, you were telling everyone about that.
Me: Once we got to the Indian place it's all kind of a blur. I remember taking my shoes off, and a long conversation about how to get Jared's friend out of jail...and then nothing until I was walking down Market Street barefoot and yelling.
Lad: Yelling? I don't remember...
Me: Our voices were echoing off the houses on our street.
Lad: Huh.
Me: Oh my god! I've become one of those girls! The two a.m. girls who come into our neighborhood and shriek and wake everyone up!
Lad: Yup.
Me: At least you and I can be two a.m. girls together.
Lad: Do you remember how you announced you were going to read a few Wodehouse golf stories when we got home?
Me: [Holds head and groans.]
Lad: Well, I'm pretty sure I didn't do anything stupid.
Posted by didofoot at 10:32 AM | Comments (2)
December 08, 2006
Girlfriend's book much, much bigger than boyfriend's book
San Francisco resident K. Larson announced yesterday that she has begun reading The Sherlock Holmes Treasury. "This book has six hundred and eight pages," Larson told reporters. "My boyfriend's book only has four hundred and five, and that's including the index."
The woman's boyfriend is reputedly reading Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, a dense, fact-filled book touching on an important subject.
Larson's book is about a fictional nineteenth-century detective and includes illustrations on every other page.
When contacted for comment, Larson's boyfriend claimed that he "hadn't really thought about [the relative sizes of the books]" and doesn't feel threatened. "I just want to find out what Dawkins has to say on this subject," he explained. "I don't think we're in a competition."
Earlier today, Larson also began reading The Erotic Works of D.H. Lawrence, a five hundred and sixty-seven page compilation which includes prints of Lawrence's paintings. She also keeps a bookmark in Gravity's Rainbow, a super hard book with no pictures that she is totally going to pick up again one of these days.
Posted by didofoot at 10:33 AM | Comments (3)
December 07, 2006
Syntax Holmes
Yesterday I jumped into Sherlock Holmes for the first time, and ever since then I've been splashing around happily like a large dog looking for a thrown stick in a lake but not especially caring if she finds it.
I did find this: the wind cried and sobbed like a child in the chimney.
I was delighted with that all day. What a wonderfully macabre image, a child stuffed up a chimney.
Not until this morning did my brain reparse the sentence into what Doyle probably intended it to mean: the wind cried and sobbed in the chimney, like a child crying and sobbing though it was not in the chimney.
Oh well. These are still great stories.
Posted by didofoot at 09:28 AM | Comments (6)
December 04, 2006
Things I learned in school
From Age of Humanism notebook:
The Tunning of Elenor Rumming (Skelton)
- drinking chickenshit makes you look younger
From Biological Anthropology notebook:
Anecdotal information unreliable. So he says.
From margin of Biological Anthropology notebook:
Possible jobs:
- waitressing
- customer service
- drunk?
consider applying for double major
Posted by didofoot at 09:30 AM | Comments (1)
December 01, 2006
Ambition and Distraction
A couple of MUNI cops ran a random scan on my train last night to ensure everyone was carrying a ticket. The lady next to me spent several minutes scouring her bag as they worked their way through the car and had emerged with two different transfers when the cops reached us.
"Ma'am," said one of the cops wearily, "I'm going to need a transfer that's valid for today, November thirtieth."
"These are valid," the woman insisted.
"You've got one here for November tenth, and it looks like another one for November twentieth."
"Which makes thirty," the woman said, triumphant. "Can't you do math?"
They were still arguing when I left the train.
Posted by didofoot at 02:30 PM | Comments (0)
