Bloglet, the gentleman's mock turtle soup -- Moss made it sweeter than myrrh ash and dhoup
License plate of the car in front of me: "ATATURKK".
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11:03:11 PM,Monday 21 December 2009
In drugstore. Homeopathic cold medicine comes in both brand and generic versions. I find this exquisitely funny.
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(8)
10:54:12 PM,Thursday 17 December 2009
This morning opened with the son of a naval scrap dealer instructing me on the virtues of Pierre L'Enfant. Who knows what random wonders the rest of the day might bring?
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(3)
10:11:57 AM,Monday 14 December 2009
The strangest news article I've read in a long time. It was originally written in 1994, but I just discovered it in a random Google search, thanks to the glories of the internet.
Basque elver lovers versus sinister Japanese plot to design counterfeit baby eel extruder!
Napiform.
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01:25:39 PM,Sunday 13 December 2009
Five years ago, I sold a copy of The Motorcycle Diaries to Ivanka Trump. Tonight, after transcribing a reading of Latin-American poetry, I stop into the pet store to buy some more litter, where I see a woman fastening a little pink leash and harness around the shoulders of an impossibly beautiful cat. "She likes to breathe the air," says the woman. "She can't stand spending all her time in the apartment." She bends over to pick up the end of the leash and I see something black and spangly flutter to the floor. "Your earring!" I say. "Here," she says. "Hold her while I put this back on." I cradle the little thing like a baby, as she looks warily at the Yorkie in the next line. "Her mother must have slept around," says the woman. "Look at this. Her body is all brown, and here's this funny grey striped tail." "She's very soft," I say, handing her back to the woman. "What's her name?" "Ivanka."
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(2)
09:14:28 PM,Tuesday 8 December 2009
1. "There was, according to my recollection, an occasion previous to
this wherein my sanity was compromised; and yet it was not an entirely
unwelcome experience." Crazy - Gnarls Barkley (guessed by Moss) "I remember when I lost my mind.
There was something so pleasant about that place."
2. "Here upon the causeway you may observe several specimens of the
species Cocos nucifera. They are comely, are they not?" I've Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts - Danny Kaye (guessed by Martin) "I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts. There they are, a-standing in the road."
3. "Our seventh president's collicular ascent is induced by the complementary
torsion of active and inactive sarcomeres." Lydia the Tattooed Lady - Groucho Marx (guessed by Remi) "When her muscles start relaxin', up the hill comes Andrew Jackson."
4. "The Sabbath opens upon a scene of carnage, whose instigator, taking
advantage of his observers' disrupted lines of sight, effects a swift
and tidy disappearance." Mack the Knife - Brecht/Weill (guessed by Gillen) "On the sidewalk Sunday morning lies a body oozing life. Someone sneaking round the corner."
5. "I am the temporary possessor of this dandy horse, and I permit you to make use of it." Bike - Pink Floyd (guessed by Neil) "I've got a bike. You can ride it if you like."
6. "Have you arrived here by means of the Ciconiidae, or perhaps through
some coagulatory process involving hydrocarbons and tree bark?" The Bjork Song - Lore Fitzgerald Sjoberg (guessed by Moss) "Were you brought by the stork? Or were you created from butter and cork?"
7. "Should you find yourself affected by melancholy and unable to take
your bearings, I advise you to seek the company of moneyed popinjays." Puttin' On The Ritz - Irving Berlin (guessed by Moss) "If you're blue and you don't know where to go to, why don't you go where fashion sits?"
8. "Rodents teem in the poorly lit recesses of the place in question." Dives and Lazarus - The Oyster Band (guessed by Libby) "Hell is dark! Hell is deep! Hell is full of mice!"
9. "It's not infrequently that I conceive a momentous idea: To wit,
a fluvial felo de se." Goodnight, Irene - Lead Belly (guessed by Neil) "Sometimes I take a great notion to jump in the river and drown."
10. "Though we are at this moment descending precipitously, our animating
principles nevertheless embark on an upward trajectory." We Both Go Down Together - The Decemberists (guessed by Remi) "We fall, but our souls are flying."
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(40)
12:41:40 AM,Saturday 5 December 2009
I find my eye caught by the back cover of the self help book the guy next to me is reading:
"unintentionally erect in the business world."
Why, yes, I see how that could be a problem in one's work life. But how much can a book do? Offer helpful thought templates on dentistry and baseball? I look again.
"Learn how to get past the language barriers we unintentionally erect in the business world."
Ohhhh.
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06:22:04 PM,Friday 4 December 2009
So I've got an RSS feed searching Craigslist for various keywords, including "typist" and "transcriber" and "transcriptionist". I haven't taken a job from it in years, but it never hurts to see what sorts of things might come up at odd moments. For instance:
Topless Stenographer (Murray Hill) from craigslist new york | gigs search for "typist"
Professional stenographer or simply an accomplished typist needed to record conversations at a cocktail party next saturday. There will be nothing sexual involved, but you must be topless. You will sit in the corner of the room and attempt to accurately record the conversations of those nearest you. At various times throughout the evening you may be called upon to recount earlier statements, so please be comfortable with public speaking. Unfortunately, some of the conversations may reference your naked breasts, as some partygoers may lack tact. Although the theme of the party is "An evening of Accurate Records and Nipples," there still may be some confusion as to what you are up to in the corner, typing furiously while your breasts gently sway from side to side.
All body types welcome, graduate level degree preferred.
Pay will be generous. _
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(6)
08:49:18 PM,Sunday 29 November 2009
K: "Batwolf is a lot scarier than owlbear, if you ask me."
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(1)
07:05:42 PM,Sunday 29 November 2009
Goth girl with facial piercings, stompy boots, and ripped fishnets playing a cheery polka on her accordion.
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(1)
09:55:32 PM,Monday 23 November 2009
This month's QMH (NSFW) has some damn funny bits, but every time they mention softball or tennis or gym teachers, I have horrible flashbacks of the unathletic misery that was my childhood (And, indeed, adulthood. Though less of the athleticism and consequently much less of the misery). I played softball for a year in elementary school. Our team was sponsored by Koala Springs, so at least we got complimentary bottles of it after every game, but the rest was sheer hell. I couldn't throw. I couldn't catch. I couldn't run. I hated standing, the uniforms were brick red and scratchy, the game was boring to watch, boringer to play, and I always cried when we lost. We usually lost, and it was usually my fault, and I cried anyway, big petulant involuntary tears, even though I didn't care about the game or the team or any of it; I cried all the same. Who knows why, but it meant I was a whiny baby and a bad loser to boot. I hated softball so much. And don't even get me started on gym class. The time I got in trouble when the quarter my brother gave me fell out from behind my watch during sprinting practice. (He was paying for me to take a CPR class, which I adored, but he gave me the quarter to keep until I got my certification; before I was properly trained, he said, I would have to call 911 in case of emergency. After I finished the training, he let me give the quarter back to him, because I'd earned the right to tell someone else to call 911 while I saved lives and stuff.) The time I cracked my coccyx while doing a forced crabwalk and couldn't stand up without wincing for six months. Every year I got really excited on rope climbing day, only to find that I couldn't climb a rope to save my scrawny-armed life.
How I ever turned queer at all is a mystery to me.
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12:31:19 AM,Friday 20 November 2009
A man in his 60s or 70s is whistling a sad little tune very sweetly. I listen for a while, then remember my manners and offer him my seat. "No thanks," he says. "I whistle better standing up." "What's the tune?" I ask. "It's a Neil Young song. At 34th Street I heard a young man singing on the platform whose voice was like Neil Young's, and it put his songs into my head."
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(3)
12:40:36 PM,Sunday 15 November 2009
K. just handed me a graph-paper notecard inscribed with "EU HROF U TPPL" in 10 resplendent colors. I am a lucky, lucky woman.
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12:22:32 AM,Sunday 15 November 2009
On the phone with K. She tells me we need basil, peanuts, honey, and ginger ale. I write them down and say goodbye after a few pleasantries. I look at the paper. I have written "basil, pegnuits, money, gin crab."
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(6)
03:03:47 PM,Tuesday 10 November 2009
So I'm taking the RPR tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I'll pass at least the 180 Literary, though I'm less sanguine about the 200 Jury Charge and 225 Q&A. I transcribe at those speeds all the time at work, but I'm used to the rhythm of the way people actually speak; pausing for breath, stopping to think and at the ends of sentences, changing tempo several times over the course of a five-minute speech. The tests make me nervous, because they sound like people spitting machine gun slugs at me, each word precisely equidistant, with no inflection and no fluidity. Also, they're loaded with legal words and phrases that I don't write very often these days and haven't internalized briefs for. So... We'll see. Also, this is going to be rather different from the CCP, which I finally passed on my fourth (ugh) try. There, you walk in, do a brief practice dictation, then do the five-minute test, save the file to disc, hand it in, wipe it from your hard drive, and you're out of there by 20 past the hour. This is a transcribed test rather than a realtime test, which on the plus side means if my writing is sloppy I'll have plenty of time to fix it, but on the down side means I'm there for nearly four hours. After each five-minute take, I get an hour and a quarter to pretty it up, print it, and then print my steno notes. This means I need to bring my own printer.
The printer K. and I usually use is heavy and massive and I really don't want to carry it all the way down to Park Place on the subway. So I'm bringing my old printer, which is relatively compact and lightweight. Unfortunately I haven't used it for a year, and both its ink cartridges are dried up. I didn't discover this until 9:00 this evening, because I have poor planning skills. K., fantastic girl that she is, dug up an unused tricolor cartridge in her desk, but no black cartridge can be found. The testing site (my old steno school) is a block away from both Staples and J&R Music World, but the latter opens at 9:00am, and the former at 7:00... Except on Saturdays, when it's 9:00 as well. Test starts at 8:30. Sigh. I hope the graders don't mind blue ink.
It's okay if I don't pass all three legs this time around. I'm only taking the RPR so that I can take the RMR. (Same three tests, but at 200 for Literary, 240 for Jury Charge and 260 for Q&A.) Even if I pass the RPR this time around, I won't take the RMR when it's offered next Spring, because I have to have been a professional member of the NCRA for three years to take it, and I'm only two and change; also, I don't think my speed's quite up there yet, especially for legal material, and I'm not sure that I could get it up there even with six months of practice. So I have another shot at whatever legs of the RPR I don't pass this time around. I just have to pay another $160. I'm not too freaked out about it. It's much less vital to my career than the CCP was, and I got by okay without passing that right away. So I'm playing it relatively cool. Anyway, wish me luck.
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(8)
11:53:35 PM,Friday 6 November 2009
I'm down on the subway platform, waiting for the train. A young woman who seems to be in her early 20s, with multiple facial piercings and looking pretty well put together, is pacing up and down the platform, talking to herself. At first I wonder if she's actually on the phone and somehow managed to get a signal down there, but then she comes and sits next to me on the bench, still talking. No phone.
"Why is everybody mad at me?" She asks nobody in particular. "I didn't do nothing!"
The train arrives, and as we're both standing up to go to it, she reaches over and touches the top of my head.
I blink, not quite sure how to react. "I'm not mad at you," I say. We head toward different train cars. Just before entering hers, she stops and looks over at me, grinning slyly.
"I just wanted to know what it felt like," she says. We step in and the train takes off.
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(3)
08:00:38 AM,Thursday 5 November 2009
Before the end of the semester, I need to find health insurance coverage for me and my legal-in-Massachusetts-and-supposedly-recognized-in-New-York-but-not-federally-legitimate spouse. I've had a good few months monetarily, though of course freelance work is never guaranteed; so affording it, at least in the short-term, is not my biggest concern. But how do I do this? I'm ostensibly able to get quasi-group rates through my membership with the National Court Reporters Association, but their web form says they have no information for my specific situation, and they haven't returned my calls. The Freelancers Union says it covers domestic partners, which we also are, but I've heard nebulous things about them being not so reliable, and I don't know how to either rebut or substantiate them. A webpage that offers ballpark quotes said I can't be covered as a woman married to a woman, but if I were a man I could get a plan for $600 a month. What do I do?
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(13)
12:04:59 PM,Wednesday 4 November 2009
Just finished The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. Definitely one for the "Class Politics in Genre Fiction" list, along with Mieville and LeGuin.
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11:50:39 AM,Wednesday 4 November 2009
K. has invented this incredible butternut squash, rosemary, and parsley soup that makes me unutterably happy. It tastes sort of like an amazing creamy, golden vichyssoise, but also like its own thing entirely; I've never had anything quite like it. It's magnificent. Yesterday we had it with roasted potatoes and sauteed zucchini, and today we had another batch (somehow even better than the first!) with semolina bread and asparagus (I like mine with horseradish sauce). Then salted caramel ice cream bars for dessert. I love my life.
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(6)
11:50:59 PM,Monday 2 November 2009
