la la la la La Llorona

I was listening to the latest Hometown Tales podcast this morning and they were talking about the legend of La Llarona, the wailing woman, which is featured in one of my favorite movies, Mullholland Dr.

On my short walk from my car to the office, it hit me. I should write a song about La Llarona set to the tune of My Sharona.

Brilliant!

Substitute teachers and houses

Last night I realized that a house is like a room full of middle- or high-schoolers. You must earn its respect or else it'll start throwing spit balls and paper airplanes at you while you nervously fiddle with the VCR so you can show the assigned after-school special to the class.

When we moved into our new (used) house, we had a nice month where nothing big needed to be fixed. Kent added a trap to the master bathroom sink, we painted the family room, all went fairly well.

Turns out that the house was merely sitting back and sizing us up. After that honeymoon month, it said, "Ok tough guys, let's see what you got. Let's see if you can keep up with me."

So when Kent replaced the wax seal on the downstairs toilet to stop the sewer smells from leaking into the house, another leak in the toilet developed. After a few attempts to fix the leak, a small crack in the tank grew worse from the jostling that requires us to replace the toilet.

Like a teenager with a vendetta, the house is creative and persistent.

As the weather got colder, the Pergo in the living room started to buckle and come up at the edges.

One of the garage door openers broke and Kent spent a day replacing it.

The roof leaked a bit during the eight days and nights of rain we had a couple of months ago.

The performance of the washer and dryer is starting to deteriorate; the timer on dryer no longer works.

The faucets for the washer sprang a slight leak and though Kent can fix it by tightening the faucet, we really should get them replaced.

I feel like Kent and I are Glenn Ford and Sidney Poitier of Blackboard Jungle and To Sir with Love, respectfully. If we could just show the house that we only want to help it, to nurture it, to make it stronger, maybe it will grow to respect and even love us.

And then maybe Lulu will show up and sing to us...

Christmas at the Beach Cinema

This Saturday Kent and I took in a matinee at the Beach Cinema in Bradley Beach. It's their 80th anniversary this month and they celebrated by showing White Christmas along with a vintage cartoon and the Three Stooges short, The Three Beers. All for 2 bucks. And real butter on the popcorn.

It was such a nice time. There were a bunch of little kids there and even though they got restless at some parts (White Christmas is about 2 hours long with some extraneous musical and dance numbers to pad it out so it's hard to not get restless), they weren't annoying. Neither were the adults - no talking on cellphones or speaking at a conversational volume.

I wish I could open up a movie house just like the Beach Cinema.

Christmas in our first house

We bought the first Christmas tree for our first house last Sunday from the lot next to our local Applegate Farms (how lucky am I - I got to eat their great ice cream at their Montclair location while I was at college and now they're in Freehold!).

This is my desk in our "library," which is the room in the front of the house. We'll fill it with books some day.



O Tannenbaum!

This just might be true

One of The Onion's most believable articles:

Voice of God found to be Cheney on Intercom

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/43189&rss=1

Can I play too?

Today's Salon broadsheet by Lynn Harris describes the current political discussion about abortion; that is, the discussion the menfolk are having. Seems that women aren't even pawns in this game anymore; we're not even on the chess board.

Great.

Podcast alert

For those of you who podcast listen to podcasts, you have got to check out Ritmo Latino. It is awesome!

(Yes, I said "awesome.")


Update
Here's the RSS link.

And here's the homepage although I can't get it to load.

Science rules!

From Reuters:

'Intelligent-design' school board ousted in Penn

By Jon Hurdle Wed Nov 9,12:35 AM ET

DOVER, Pennsylvania (Reuters) - Voters on Tuesday ousted a Pennsylvania local school board that promoted an "intelligent-design" alternative to teaching evolution, and elected a new slate of candidates who promised to remove the concept from science classes.

Thank God!

At The Office

Whenever I get stressed out at work from being forced to listen to long, ill-informed conversations about politics, I get the title song to the American version of The Office stuck in my head and I immediately feel calmer.

Maybe it's because The Office is 10 times more deranged than mine. Maybe it makes me feel better knowing that there must be a million offices like mine otherwise how would this stuff wind up on TV.

All I know is, it works.

(Wouldn't it be sad if that's really all I know?)

Attacking cat

Strange multitasks by attacking Roscoe mid-yawn.

Friday copycat blogging

Top: Roscoe
Bottom: Strange

I have the same cats as Atrios except that Strange, my b/w cat, has a black nose where Atrios' b/w cat has a pink nose.

Rome?! You shoulda seen Naples!

I've been reading a thread on dKos about the downfall of American society (so what else is new?). One person cited the ever increasing rudeness of American drivers as evidence of the downfall. Someone else said that rude drivers aren't confined to America and asked if they've ever been in Athens or Rome during rush hour. Then a third person said:

"The main train station in Naples, Italy, was (is?) one of those psychotic traffic circuses. I used to take friends visiting from the states to a small cafe nearby, and we'd watch the fun for hours.

My mother, who is an awful driver, inspired my favorite Italian reaction to drivers that cut them off, went too slow, or generally pissed them off. The poor driver discommoded by Mom's driving would place their hands together in prayer, and look to the sky while gently shaking their hands back and forth.

Here, we just flip people off."

Maybe that's why I didn't take it personally when the Neapolitan train station employees purposely sent us foreigners to the wrong train during the work strike of June 2004.

But when an American driver pisses me off, I take it personally.

I think aggressive American driving would be so much more fun if everybody would do the shaking of the prayer hands thing.

Alternatively, we could do the waving of raised hands with palms inward, thumbs touching middle and ring fingers. It's not just a stereotype - Italians really do that.

English as She is Spoke

Kent gave me this book for Christmas last year and now it's a website. It's an English phrasebook translated from Portuguese to French to English and it's deliciously horrendous.

Mark Riley zinger

So on today's Morning Sedition on Air America, Marc Maron says, to the disbelief of others in the studio, that he'd like to go to Antarctica because of the peace and solitude: "it's so white and quiet."

To which Mark Riley replies, "You can find places like that in Brooklyn."

Yowza!

Maybe Riley should write more material for the show. Something to replace the WiFi 3000 Headline Translator. That bit is pah-ri-tee stale.

This week's Onion

The Onion hits the nail on the head yet again.

I wonder what the Daily Show has been saying. I keep forgetting to watch it.

These days, at least until the journalists went down to LA, sarcasm is the only source of truth I can find.

The Hummer Brigade

Everyone who owns a Hummer or H2 or any big-ass SUV should be called up to the Hummer Brigade to drive down to New Orleans and pick up as many people as they can.

We have the technology...

Exactly, dammit!

In this day and age, why can't computers be used by the masses like cars are? Yes, you still need to take the car to the mechanic to really fix it (unless you have all the special diagnostic equipment) but at least they give you airbags and seatbelts in case of an accident!

Regender bender

Here's a neat thing Misbehaving.net alerts us to: Regender - it changes the gender pronoun in a Webpage. Male pronouns get changed to female, proper male names get changed to female, and vice versa.

The translation of the Google News front page is kind of funny: "Florida Braces for Yet Another Hurricane as Katrina Strengthens" translates to "Floyd Braces for Yet Another Hurricane as Karl Strengthens."

As a sidenote, I used to think that it didn't matter if I had to read texts that only used male pronouns, but one of the books I read for my thesis only used female pronouns and I found that it did matter. I was so not used to seeing female pronouns used exclusively that I felt proud seeing them in that book as if womenkind had made some huge leap or something. As if we were finally let in on the conversation.

another cool Google map gadget

In my search for motivation to exercise (I pretty much broke my habit when I started writing my thesis a year ago), I came across WalkJogRun.net. It's a pedometer/route planner that uses Google maps.

Go go Google gadgets!

Another interesting discovery - I checked to see if Google satellite maps show topography and I found out that you can't zoom all the way in on Scranton, PA. Hmmm...

(Disclaimer: I own a little over 5 shares of Google. Not much, but I earned enough off of it to give me spending money for Christmas.)

First night

We camped out overnight at the house on Saturday. We ate pizza outside on our patio that evening and slept on the floor on a small, lumpy futon. I woke up to a slight backache - it was great! I'm not sure when we can move over the extra bed, but we'll have to wait until my Mom's truck is available for us to borrow.

The night was cool enough so that we could sleep with the windows open and the ceiling fan going. Around midnight, I heard some whispering outside and thought that people were trying to break into our seemingly vacant house to have a party. My homeowner's instincts are already sharp.

Turns out they were sneaking into the house across the street; the sound just carried. Seemed like one of the teenagers or 20-somethings lived there or knew the owners and that the owners were away. As soon as the emptiness of the house was verified, they swiftly moved from car to house, bottles clinking along the way.

That doesn't worry me - it's a typical suburban happening. What worries me is all items we'll have to buy to get the house and garden running smoothly. But that's just first-time homebuyer's anxiety I'm sure.