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Kettle Corn
A little bit of sugar, a little bit of salt.
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To link to this blog from blog posts/comments, use [blog Noisy_Introvert], from anywhere else use http://personals.girlfriendsmag.com/blog/Noisy_Introvert, and to read it remotely use the  feed.
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| The two faces of Rexburg, Idaho |
Nov 12, 2008 5:20 pm
11716 Views |
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In late May 2007, the Dawg and I packed up his Prius and drove from San Francisco to Toronto by way of some of the most glorious scenery America has to offer. I wrote about our trip, and described a lovely little town in southwest Idaho we stayed in just outside of Yellowstone Park, called Rexburg:
What can I say about the people of Rexburg, ID except, salt of the motherfucking earth, yo's. At the local grocery store getting supplies, we were asked by pretty much every stockboy if we needed help, and one in particular thanked us profusely for our patronage, telling us how much they appreciated us. We city folk were pleased but confounded. Also, a nice young man took our groceries to the car for us, like they used to do on TV. Along the way he told me he was born and raised in Rexburg, as was his wife, that he had 3 kids and another one on the way, and it was as though he couldn't contain his excitement at the beautiful simplicity of his life.
I remember my good friend eastwest10 in particular was moved by that passage, the reminder of the goodness that still exists out there in the heartland.
Well, sorry to burst your bubble, easty, but our old friend the blogosphere just reacquainted me with Rexburg in a most disappointing fashion: somebody posted a blog that featured a news item from a local Rexburg television station, about second and third graders on a school bus chanting "Assassinate Obama! Assassinate Obama!" For reals. I'm sure most of them didn't even know what it means. At least I hope not.
I still like to think about that warm, friendly encounter with the man who took our groceries to the car, raising a family of four kids in his hometown, happy with his place in the world. I really hope those weren't his kids.
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15 Comments
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| Where have all the poppies gone? |
Nov 11, 2008 6:27 am
10203 Views |
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It is Remembrance Day in Canada (and Veteran's Day in the US).
In Canada, in the weeks leading up to this day, it is a long-standing tradition to wear the red poppy pin on the left lapel, over our hearts, as a symbol of our gratitude and acknowledgment of the tremendous sacrifice our veterans have made (and continue to make even now in Afghanistan). We choose the poppy because of the popular poem, "In Flanders Fields", written by a World War I Canadian military physician, Lt-Col. John McCrae:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Every year when I walk the streets of Toronto, I notice these colourful pins. I look for them. And every year, their numbers seem to diminish.
The poppies are usually distributed in exchange for a donation by veterans in prominent locations such as malls and subway stations. I see these men, most of whom are elderly, and I want to apologize for all the people who pass them by, lapels unadorned. Has the earth around their hearts grown so cold it is no longer fertile ground for the poppy to grow? It makes me ashamed.
I want to say thank you, but I don't know how. Nothing seems big enough. So I wear the poppy and hope they know.
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11 Comments
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| Ketchup |
Oct 28, 2008 9:24 am
Mood: 34, 16763 Views |
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At work, I keep a bottle of ketchup in my desk drawer. It's embarrassing, but it's just a lot easier than my old system, which was either bringing unused takeout packages to work, which didn't last, or filling a little mini guy with ketchup in the morning on days when I knew I'd need it.
Many of you will scratch your heads and wonder, what the hell is Noisy eating that she regularly requires a mini guy of ketchup in her lunch bag? Well, I have a few mainstays that I enjoy a bit 'o the Heinzy with, including the Jenny Craig Breakfast Scramble (eggs, homefries, cheese and bits of ham... at least I think it's ham...), the Jenny Craig Sunshine Sandwich (like an Egg McMuffin but way less tasty - it comes with a little packet of ranchero sauce to try and zest it up, but I find the addition of ketchup really kicks it up a notch in the acceptability rating), and the Jenny Craig Turkey Burger Sandwich.
Yes, I eat Jenny Craig food. It's not something I'm terribly proud of, that my eating issues are such that I cannot be trusted to portion food out on my own without going back and eating seconds, thirds, elevensies, etc. But you know, it sort of works for me, so, whatever.
But back to ketchup. When I was a kid, my brother and I were ketchup demons. My mom used to have to buy one of those KEGS of ketchup once a month. This was before the days of Costco. (Aside: I wonder if they now have ketchup in a box, like how you can buy wine that way. That would be kinda awesome.) There are some foods that I crave just so I can put ketchup on them: french fries, Kraft dinner, grilled cheese sandwich... none of which are sanctioned by Jenny. (Actually, Jenny does have a Fish and Chips entree which I get every week, as well as a Maccaroni & Cheese entree. They are good, but teeny portions. In fact that's what they should call them: "Good 'n' Teeny".)
The other day, I had my ketchup bottle out on my desk and my new boss passed by. He did a double take, and came back to eye the bottle bemusedly. I was hostile and defensive: "WHAT?!" He just shook his head. This was before he was my boss. In fact it was about a week before I applied for the new gig, which, by the way, I got, despite (because of?) my aggressiveness re: bizarre workplace condiments. Anyway, I am promoted and it's all very exciting. This is unrelated to the ketchup thing (except for the fact that ketchup has since become a running joke with my new boss, whom I am having lunch with shortly; I'm definitely ordering something that does not require ketchup, to show him I am well-rounded and not just in the hips).
Well, that's about all I have to say about the whole thing. |
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31 Comments
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| Ominous warning to overqat and other online lovers |
Oct 24, 2008 7:52 am
14054 Views |
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I want you all to know that thus far, I have not managed to crack overqat's password, nor convince him to reveal it to me, no matter how much Fancy Feast I have offered him. I guess two teats will never be enough to sway him. However, I have been steadily working through all the permutations of tssssssstttt, not to mention various lameass iterations of FastCupid passwords. His furry brownstar is safe... FOR NOW!
All you other online lovebirds: take heed! Change your passwords regularly, lest you talk in your sleep. YOUR VERY LIFE MAY DEPEND ON IT!!!
ANGRY ONLINE "DIVORCEE" KILLS VIRTUAL HUSBAND IN CYBER REVENGE
TOKYO - A 43-year-old player in a virtual-world game became so angry about her sudden and unexpected divorce from her online husband that she logged on with his password and killed his digital persona, police said Thursday.
The woman used another player's ID and password to log onto the popular interactive game "Maple Story" to carry out the virtual murder in May, a police official in the northern city of Sapporo said.
Police said the woman admitted to carrying out her cyberspace revenge and has been jailed on suspicion of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data.
"I was suddenly divorced, without a word of warning. That made me so angry," the official quoted her as telling investigators.
The woman, a piano teacher, had not plotted any revenge in the real world, the official said.
She has not yet been formally charged. If convicted, she could face up to five years in prison or a fine up to $5,000.
The woman used login information she got from the 33-year-old office worker when their characters were happily married to kill the character. The man complained to police when he discovered that his online avatar was dead.
The woman was arrested Wednesday and taken 1,000 kilometres from her home in southern Miyazaki to be detained in Sapporo, where the man lives, the official said.
The police official said he did not know if she was married in the real world.
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22 Comments
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| Rhyme Time |
Oct 15, 2008 7:46 am
16399 Views |
Hey folks! It's Poetry Wednesday! And I ain't no poet (don't I know it) but I always loves me a rhyme (with a tweest of lime, any time).
Some local station has been promoting their line-up of syndicated sitcoms, and they always show this clip of Friends from the Thanksgiving episode where they played football outside. Monica says to Ross, "Losers... TALK!" and Ross says back, "Losers... WALK!" And then Chandler pipes up, "No, actually, losers rhyme." I love it.
Call me a loser, I love to rhyme!
So I propose you comment with a word or a phrase that tickles your fancy, and I'll reply with a great mordancy!
In closing, I shall leave you with this Ode to Sean Hannity, by the great John Cleese:
Aping urbanity
Oozing with vanity
Plump as a manatee
Faking humanity
Journalistic calamity
Intellectual inanity
Fox Noise insanity
You’re a profanity
Hannity
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| Noisy Grab Bag |
Oct 6, 2008 8:51 am
18123 Views |
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Heya folks! Didja have a nice weekend? I thought I'd say heya and give ya a coupla quickie thoughts and happenins from the life of Noise. Reach in, grab somethin ya like, and let me know whatcha think!
Religulous
I saw it on Saturday afternoon. I was surpised how full the theatre was for a 4:00 showing. I laughed my ass off. I know there will be critics who found it mean-spirited and shallow, but whatever. I don't think Bill Maher's trying to change the world or anything. It is entertainment first and foremost. Probably my girl Sarah wouldn't care much for the gotcha journalism. I don't know, though. Most of the time he was just holding up well-known tenets of the various religions, and asking people to defend them in a way that made sense. Of course, the people he assembled to defend the various religions he mocked would make my girl Sarah look like a person who reads... well, anything... so, maybe not a fair fight.
But as I said to my grrrldate when the show was over, "He makes a decent case." Paws up.
This week's Tina Fey
I was real pleased to see that if I wanted to, I could have been a comedy writer on SNL. On Friday when everyone was debriefing the veep debate, I was goin around saying that if there'd been a drinking game and "maverick" had been a drinking word, we all would have had alcohol poisoning or been passed out on the couch (I tried to change up the punch line here and there, just to keep it fresh). I got a good laugh when Tina Fey rounded out the SNL parody of the VP debate by saying "For those Joe Six-Packs playin a drinkin game at home: MAVERICK."
(If ya didn't getta chance ta see it, google "SNL videos".)
Booty Camp
I signed up! It's a four week program, twice a week, outdoors after work. Women only. Tonight's my first booty-kickin. Wish me luck!
American exceptionalism
I know I've been watching too much CNN lately. But man am I ever sick of hearing all this rhetoric about America being the greatest country on Earth. My girl Sarah continually promotes it as an admirable quality, as opposed to an obnoxious, boasting, superiority complex that suggests the rest of the world population is somehow lessened as individuals and as nations because we are quieter in our patriotism. (And then there's the whole debate about whether patriotism itself is a good thing or an ultimately divisive and dangerous concept... I struggle with that one too, being a proud Canadian.)
The USA is not the only democracy, ya know! I don't understand why it's so important to go around trumpetting their greatness. It reminds me of a decade or so ago in Toronto, when there was this near-constant buzz phrase in the local media about Toronto being a "world class city". People got pretty tired of hearing it; it came across as pushy and insecure. You don't hear New York or London going on about themselves this way. They just understand and accept this about themselves.
Tories losing ground; yessss
I woke up this morning to the news that the Conservative Party's bid for a majority government is looking less and less likely. We have the totally cocked up American stock market to thank for this, so a tip of the cap to good old fashioned corporate greed.
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| Suffragette Shitty a.k.a. The Night of Terror |
Oct 2, 2008 8:30 am
18383 Views |
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Hey blogstars,
I just got an e-mail from my girl the Tork regarding the struggle of American women some 90 years ago to attain the vote. I had no idea it had ever gotten so gruesome; I was shocked. I was about to forward it around to my peeps and decided to post it here for a wider audience. (I've edited it a little bit for brevity and formatting.)
If anyone has seen or heard about the HBO movie referenced, please comment. I haven't heard anything about it and it's not at my local viddie shop.
(Folks who are curious about the experience of Canadian women, there is a post script that briefly addresses our own struggle here.)
To women in both our great nations: GET OUT THE VOTE!
This is the story of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers; they lived only 90 years ago.
Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.
The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote. And by the end of the night, they were barely alive. Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of "obstructing sidewalk traffic".
- They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.
- They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack.
- Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.
- When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.
- For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food – all of it colorless slop – was infested with worms.
Thus unfolded the "Night of Terror" on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson's White House for the right to vote.
Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO's new movie Iron Jawed Angels. It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.
All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.
My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women's history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was – with herself. "One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie," she said. "What would those women think of the way I use, or don't use, my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn." The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her all over again.
HBO released the movie on video and DVD. I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn't our usual idea of socializing, but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.
It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn't make her crazy.
The doctor admonished the men: "Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."
Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know.
We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. Remember to vote.
PS In Canada the women of Manitoba got the right to vote in 1916 thanks to the efforts of Nellie McClung and her colleagues. The rest of Canadian women were allowed to vote in federal elections when the Women's Franchise Act was passed in 1918. However, it was not until 1940 that the women of Quebec got the right to vote in provincial elections – the last province to accord them this right of suffrage.
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| So much for fucking party time |
Sep 23, 2008 11:04 am
20205 Views |
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I think maybe someone at FC took one look at the pity party post and muttered to themselves, "I'll give ya somethin ta cry about!" before gleefully pulling the plug.
Please post your revenge fantasies below. |
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33 Comments
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| Funny money |
Sep 15, 2008 4:59 am
16012 Views |
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Some really good friends from the Netherlands were staying with me for a couple of nights last week. The night before their flight home, one of them was sorting through his wallet, surveying how much Canadian cash he had left, checking his Euros, etc. I asked if they missed the Dutch guilder and they both nodded sadly.
The guilder bank notes were truly some of the most beautiful currency I have ever seen. (I discovered there are websites dedicated to the memory of it if you want to utilize the Goog...) Not that I've seen a whole lot of currency, but I've been around a little bit. The most beautiful of them was the 50 guilder note (pictured), which was bright yellow and featured a sunflower on one side. I would have kept one as a souvenir when last I held one, except at the time I was making about $30K/yr (it was 10 years ago) and that would have been a fairly decadent souvenir back in those days.
I'm sure that moving to the Euro was a great economic move for most of western Europe; it sure makes travelling there a lot easier. But I think a nation's currency is a powerful symbol of independence, history, culture, way of life. Most currencies feature images of cultural icons, whether these are buildings, people, activities, landscapes... things that have specific, often sentimental meaning for the people who exchange these notes on a daily basis with their countrymen and women.
As for Canadian currency, I don't feel an overwhelming affection for it, though it's always a relief to return to it after a lengthy vacation in another country or countries. I know I would miss its unique qualities and depictions of Canadian life if we were to ever merge our currency with the US as they've done in Europe.
I remember when I was a kid, being confused whilst watching cartoons and money was referred to as "green" all the time. I figured they must just be thinking of 20 dollar bills, which seemed like a strange distinction from other money, but given the gaps in my understanding of the reference, I suppose it made a kind of sense.
When I was a teenager we used to go camping in upstate New York, not far from the border, every summer. It used to perturb me sometimes when the very nice people of Fayetteville, NY, would refer to our currency as "funny money" or "Monopoly money" because it was multi-coloured. I still squint at American money and probably cause heavy sighs from other customers in line because I can't tell the difference between a $1 and a $20. I don't know how visually impaired people cope. I guess you get used to it.
Anyway, some random thoughts about currency. Do you like yours? Who has your favourite? Do you see your currency as a manifestation of your nation's cultural identity? |
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| Happiness is... |
Sep 9, 2008 9:04 am
16648 Views |
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I was posting a bemused comment in response to Sysiphus200's elation at seeing a hot shot hot rod wankerton get a speeding citation, when I used the phrase "Happiness is" ("...civic recognition of chronic fuckstickedness", for the record).
Suddenly I thought of my pillowcase from when I was 6 years old. I loved that pillowcase. My brother and I both had it, and we used them til they were tattered and faded. It was white, with a drawing of the whole Peanuts gang standing around Snoopy's dog house, and the caption said "Happiness is being one of the gang."
On a lark, cuz I'm sick of being cancer's bitch, and anyway, it's lunchtime, yo, I googled the phrase. And lo and behold, there it was. My beloved pillowcase.
Happiness is finding Happiness is being part of the gang.
And so, I invite you to please fill in the blank. Sarcasm and sincerity are equally welcome. (Although sarcasm slightly moreso.)
Happiness is...
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34 Comments
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To link to this blog from blog posts/comments, use [blog Noisy_Introvert], from anywhere else use http://personals.girlfriendsmag.com/blog/Noisy_Introvert, and to read it remotely use the feed.
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