December 2010
55 posts
Holiday Challenge (Day 2): FOOD
It’s after midnight; all I have eaten since waking up this morning is chocolate of every kind, and half a banana.
Probably all I have eaten since last week is chocolate, actually. Chocolate from all over the place. Chocolate for me.
Chocolate, and various grain-foods with cheeses, and chicken prepared every-which-way, and some type of onion-flavored dip with my vegetables, handsome sugared...
Term I should use more often:
“formidably attractive”.
"You and I should have a
family picture day. With, like, props. Sandwiches, and balloon animals, and a dozen friends to stand-in for our kiddos all Lord’s Supper apostles-style.
And maybe a thousand books and some mugs and some lightbulbs in a ceramic bowl and one fluorescent one in a vase. And Mac products hanging out in every corner, open to Google interfaces. Some tangled-up crepe paper and maybe a rabbit...
Twenty empty wrappers
for Lindor dark peppermint truffles.
Twenty pages into a couple beautiful books, twenty books left to explore.
Twenty songs, and twenty songs again, twenty episodes of Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, threescore episodes of The Outer Limits. Three sweaters. Three warm things: blanket, stuffie dog, slippers. Three boxes of tea. Three siblings in three piles of undone three days’...
“… quite simply, I was in love with New York. I do not mean “love” in any...”
– Joan Didion, “Farewell to All That” (via drinkyourjuice)
Interesting thought about typeface: →
Though I’ve never managed the ‘bubbly’ print of a typical teen girl, apparently a font based on my handwriting would be relatively friendly to dyslexics. Long ascenders/descenders and irregularly shaped mirror-letters and a minimum of serif for the win.
This completely discounts the fact that writing words turns my script into one long, squiggly line.
Holiday Challenge (Day 1): TRADITIONS
— Christmas decorations go up late, no matter what. Last year it happened on Christmas eve; so far this time, Mom took all us girls to go pick out a Home Depot tree yesterday, and Edward and I were banished outside to throw lights on the bushes the night before.
The Christmas tree is standing in our family room, undressed and smelling good. Maybe I will put lights on after breakfast...
“Fast away the old year passes! Hail the new, ye lads and lasses: sing we joyous...”
– Third verse of Deck The Halls, Traditional
5 Day Holiday Challenge
heckyeahtumblrchallenges:
Here’s a super short challenge for those who can never finish them!
Day 1 - Traditions
Day 2 - Food
Day 3 - Presents
Day 4 - Memories
Day 5 - Miscellaneous
I like this one because the notes say Santa Claus submitted it.
It's absolutely okay to tell us all
about what you’re eating. I encourage it. Food is joy.
That said, I want everybody to know that there’s some crab fried rice currently making my world right now.
To people without a favorite color:
I do not understand you.
Though I have tried, my mind remains deep in File Not Found, and gets lost in an eternal Unable to Connect to Server. What is your life. How does your brain work.
ENTIRELY MYSTIFIED.
Not only do my favorite colors come in a priority list, but I have favorite subcolors, and color genres. I have favorites and antifavorites specific to use: for instance, nobody looks...
Before I check my dash →
morrrgan:
I just want to let you all know that I met a 50-something year old gentleman today named Lewis Pollack and I don’t even know what to tell you about our two hour long conversation and how it warmed my whole heart and soul, but at the end of it all, this good-hearted man that once played golf with Bill Clinton and who once owned an art gallery and used to get stoned and stare at...
Article: Eclipse-Solstice tonight! →
I will be awake and outside tonight to say goodbye to Fall and hello to Winter. Total lunar eclipse on the solstice, my friends, that is where I will be.
For the short of it: North America, if you’re around the edges of the country the skies should be clear enough to see the eclipse begin at 1:33 am, be complete at 2:47, and end about an hour later.
If you’ve never realized how...
Ever wonder if you could →
drinkyourjuice:
just live in a cabin? Just decide to have the balls to go out somewhere remote and raise pine trees or make benches anonymously.
Live a solitary lifestyle. No bank accounts. No small talk. Just a porch and a wood stove and a shitty car for emergencies. Singing to plants on your windowsills to make them grow. Reading books. Doing dishes. Letting your hands get rough.
Learning...
About a week ago, my little sister
started with the whole leg-shaving. She doesn’t even catch that one bit by the dip in her ankle like I used to do. Nice to know we improve with the next generations.
My mom, say what you will, has always been pretty good with the whole ‘womanly guidance’ thing- which is to say, in my case, she didn’t give too much. Enough, I mean; she handed me a razor when I asked for one...
foxwithsocks:
mammals:
beirut // postcards...
“What happens here counts in countless ways.”
– Some cheesy college website (Metropolitan State College of Denver); after my initial gag reflex, this turns into beautiful language. Sincerely, overthinking the concept is thinking about it just enough. I like this.
That said,
maybe the 2012 fanatics have a point. It’s so much more tragic and endearing to think of them as wishing for the world to end our species before we get the chance. Hoping, in the long run, it won’t directly be our fault. Hoping for some divine mercy-stroke.
There's been a pot of water boiling
on our stove all day, to keep humidity at some tolerable level.
I think one of the things I’ll miss most, when I’m old enough to reminisce on Good Old Days, is the abundance of water as a resource. It strikes me sometimes out of nowhere: how thoughtlessly we use it for everything, how unlikely it is that our prosperity can last.
Never have I been able to take a shower in less than...
In case you also forgot:
When the blazing sun is gone, when he nothing shines upon, then you show your little light: twinkle, twinkle, all the night.
Then the traveller in the dark thanks you for your tiny spark; he could not see which way to go if you did not twinkle so.
In the dark-blue sky you keep (and often through my curtains peep), for you never shut your eye ‘til the sun is in the sky.
As your bright and...
WatchThis song.
Lady acquaintance: So how old are you now, anyway?
Me: I'm eighteen.
Lady acquaintance: That's right. I keep forgetting.
Me: Yeah. I'm a grown-up.
Lady acquaintance: It doesn't seem like you are.
Me: I get that a lot.
.
And after asking around: it's not because I'm immature. Partly because I've got a young face. Mostly because I insist on calling myself a 'grown-up'.
Anyway, I brought that up because
here I was, listening to men’s choirs singing Christmas carols, writing down a few texts so I could delete them and leave room in my inbox for people to contact me again, and some flicker of my synapse pondered the incredible portion of my life I’ve been doing this for. I’m eighteen years old, so for more than one ninth of my airbreathing, for as much as a seventh of my conscious...
I save the most important texts that I receive.
With no deciding factor in the judgment of Importance besides my own taste and inclination, this ends up being a huge number of texts. But it’s shocking- or it was, when I started- how much of my life story is told in the snippets people send me. So I keep them in my Inbox until my Inbox is full (secret: my Inbox is always full), and then I pull out the latest composition book and write them...
There's a 20% chance
that I’ll be able to finish the last few seasons of Lost before the end of the year, when Hulu takes them down. Twenty percent is worth an attempt. Twenty percent is going to rob me of sleep for the rest of the month.
“Of all the purposes of education, I think the most useful is this: It prepares...”
– Roger Ebert’s Journal, the Suntimes Blogs
http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/11/all_the_lonely_people.html
Eleven o'clock after I was finally warmed
at home from my walk (mostly absorbed heat from standing above the open oven for as long as I could after my brother took the lasagna out), my friend texted me to ask if we could still meet. She’d been after me earlier in the day, back when I was standing in the wind over the reservoir, so I knew it was important. Off went the downstairs lights, and I went through the back door. It was...
My eleven-year-old sister just forwarded
me an email titled “Panda Therapy”.
BABY PANDAS, YOU KNOW. BABY PANDAS. BABY PANDAS.
.
What do cats think of cars?
Like, do they imagine they’re some giant whumphing animals that carry us around inside? Or warmish boulders that we push around with our minds? Seems to me like most cats have figured out the truth, that we turn these machine-things on and off and control them with dials and levers. That we’ve paved everything for our things to roll faster. Seems to me like some cats totally...
THE MOST EXCITING THING →
HEY.
HEY.
AND BY THE WAY,
NASA HAS A TWITTER.
WHAT.
Fascinating word:
Sockets.
Who said the electric plugs were analogous to joints in our body’s limbs? Who decided that? It’s beautiful.
What a thought. There’s a comparison, a kinship, our bodies enable us and our machines enable us, our tendons operate all the energy in our extremities and our wires operate all the energy in our society. How eerily similar.
Wall sockets. Knee sockets.
Perhaps...
The things parents shrug off
when it comes to their teenagers are more than we ever give them credit for.
.
Edward [getting something out of the microwave]: Goodnight, Mom.
Mom: Goodnight. WAIT- Have you done your homework?
Edward [rushing out of the room, tupperware in hand]: Yep. It's all good. Done everything.
Mom: How are you on English? I haven't heard you talk about English homework lately.
Edward [from the stairs, tupperware still in hand, mouth suspiciously stuffed too full to distinguish actual language]: Mmmah, mm doon mah besht.
Mom:
Edward [upstairs, safely away, rather articulate]: Goodnight, Mom!
.
As if she doesn't know for a fact that there was nothing in your mouth and "I'm doing my best" really means "there's no way I'm doing any English homework but I'm not failing badly enough to come up with excuses". You're doomed, brother; I've introduced these parents to all the best tricks. At this point, she's just electing to let the minnow off the hook. Wait for you to grow. Wait for that steamy, salmony report card. Just wait.
