Biannual Review

I've now been on Blogger for over two years, so I thought I'd go back and review.

First post ever: I don't care if you're gay—get your hands off my breasts!
Shortest post: The roses are dead.
Longest post: The Rise and Fall of the Artificial Breast
Freakiest multimedia link: Sex and Metamucil
Best multimedia link: Travel the world in the comfort of your own dorm. and Supercool History of Religions Map (tie)
Best photograph: Happy Halloween
Best list: Ways to make my life interesting enough for me to be truly literary:
Best treatise: Should I take a chance and spring for the buns?
Best news item: Real-life Superheroes
Best aphorism: Then comes heights, corpses, and vermin
Worst poem: (oh, so many to choose from!) Sonnet #2
Most colorful post: "Each new day a bullet—each victim someone's son"
Most venomous post: Dear exboyfriend,
Most melodramatic/PMSy post: Dear Jake Barnes,
Most pictures in one post: Sevilla and Report on the Decemberists at the Crystal Ballroom (tie)
Most scathing review: I Cry for the Children of the Eighties
Most quotes: Pearls of Wisdom from My Extensive Collection of Virginal Make-out Music
Most idealistic post: The Perfect Man
Concisest imagery: Lightning cracks the sky, revealing the white-hot heavens above

Report on the Decemberists at the Crystal Ballroom

If the Grateful Dead were the Decemberists, I'd be a Deadhead.


On Wednesday night my sister and I went to the Crystal Ballroom to see the Decemberists' second Portland show. The tickets were a birthday present, and I don't think I've ever received a better one.


Since my life has been pretty boring so far, I'd say those two hours when they were on stage are in the top experiences of my life. The Decemberists sparkled (or to be more literary but less lyrical, they coruscated). Who needs pyrotechnics when you can play Guess What Instrument Chris Funk Will Play Next? Who needs costume changes when the harmonies shine forth from the stage with power of their own? Who needs one-name singers when you know the characters in the songs better than you know yourself?


They played all of my favorite songs except "The Legionnaire's Lament." Colin Meloy has a beard. Jenny Conlee played four instruments at once unless she was on the accordion, sometimes playing a glockenspiel with one hand and a keyboard with the other. Her amazing abilities made me regret what I said about her singing, and she sang better in person anyway. Nate Query plays the cello, the string bass, and the guitar, and he looked like Anthony Howell in his vest and tie. People have a strange fascination with Chris Funk.


John Moen stayed in the back most of the time. Oh yeah, and Laura Veirs herself sang "Yankee Bayonet" with Colin Meloy! "Sixteen Military Wives" was dedicated to Mitt Romney. (I hope this isn't a Jerome K. Jerome–like prophecy.) The audience sang along to most of the songs, though it was a little embarrassing when Colin Meloy turned the microphone for the crowd to shout, "sixteen military wives!" and then he kept the microphone out through the confused mumbling of what should have been, "thirty-two softly focused, brightly colored eyes."


There were some problems, like the drunk dancing girls who elbowed in during "The Mariner's Revenge song," and the incredibly and olfactorily unwashed couple nibbling each other's fingers in front of us. And my sister was, I think, embarrassed at my enthusiasm. But I don't care.

Future Plan #679

When I return from wherever my church sends me on a mission, I think I may open a stationary and office supply store in Camas or eastern Vancouver. The need is definitely there: the closest office supply store is a very ghetto OfficeMax way down Mill Plain. I could use my design skills to create résumés, wedding invitations, and fliers too. My mom already has a bunch of insanely practical ideas about whom I could go to for help (who knew there was a organization of retired small business owners just waiting to advise people like me?) and what kind of loans would be best. My dad thought it was a dumb idea (shock of the year!).
I could call it the Necessary. Maybe that's too glib.
Anyone wanna give me business tips?

There Is Hope for the Youth of America

I Cry for the Children of the Eighties

Last night I decided to watch Flashdance to see how exactly it defined the generation of people who've turned forty recently. Unmoved by a long string of bizarre modern interpretive dances which are supposed to be exotic dances at a lower-working-class bar (lower-working-class guys want simplicity—scantily clad girls wiggling around—not a strobe-lighted interpretation of the modern condition), I tried to focus on the story. There isn't one.

An eighteen-year-old girl who works as a welder in the most dry-ice and flashy-light infested job site I've ever seen and as a dancer in a bar starts sleeping with her thirty-six-year-old boss (the owner of the construction company, not the bar) and then auditions for the Pittsburgh Conservatory of Dance and Repertory. That's the story. There is no arc. The characters do not change in any way. They are like cardboard cutouts. Jennifer Beals and Michael Nouri actually look like they are kissing cardboard boxes when they kiss each other.

When the scene switched to a nude girlie show, I turned it off. It was too ridiculous, and nothing had happened in the first hour of the movie to recommend the rest of it. In fact nothing at all happened in the first hour of the movie.

Dry Socket

I thought I had a dry socket, so I searched the Internet for pictures of a dry socket to compare with the stinking hole in the back of my own mouth. I couldn't find any. Therefore I will describe to the best of my ability what a dry socket (for that's what the stinking hole turned out to be) looks like so that other recent victims of wisdom-tooth extraction will know whether their extraction site has become a dry socket. It was bluish white and wormy looking, with a dark gaping hole to the side. When I squirted water on it to wash some food away, it stung. In short, it was gross. The dentist put a packet of nasty tasting herbs in the hole, and he says that will make it better.

Everything I read on the Internet said that a dry socket should cause screaming pain, but mine just ached a little when I thought about it. Either they don't always hurt, or I've inherited my mother's high pain tolerance. She didn't take any pain medication when she gave birth to me and my brother because she said it didn't hurt that bad: "Well," she admits, "when you actually came out, that kinda hurt, I guess." When my sister was born, my mom took some Tylenol.

Also for women to remember is that estrogen slows clotting, so we should have our teeth extracted during the blank-pill part of our cycle because birth control pills really increase the risk of dry socket. My dentist did not tell me this. I might not have a stinking hole in the back of my mouth right now if he had.

John McCain 2000

Watching the debates on Saturday made me slightly regret the print work I did for Mitt Romney's campaign at the beginning of last year. I just thought it would be a good chance to network, but it wasn't; furthermore his performance in the debate proved him to be both pandering and irrational—a bad, yet common, combination in politicians.

I was specifically appalled at his proposed strategy to deal with illegal immigrants: "Those people should be invited to get in line outside the country with everybody else who wants to come here. But they should not be given a special right to stay here. . . . One, it says to those 12 million people they do not have the right, as they would under the final Senate plan, to receive a Z visa which was renewable indefinitely. That meant these people could stay in the country forever." His plan to deport twelve million people is completely impractical, yet he proposes it to please his fellow irrational neoconservatives. Where does Romney plan to get the money to find and deport twelve million people? Does he plan to pay for it out of his own pocket? Essentially his plan supports the status quo—undocumented workers remain so, the silly wall just makes illegally crossing the border slightly more difficult, and nothing happens.

John McCain, on the other hand, braved the indignation of the self-righteous and acknowledged that completely sealing the Mexican border and deporting twelve million people is impractical. While acknowledging that we did not want so many illegal immigrants here in the first place, his plan accepts the fact that they are here now. His plan to document all undocumented workers is good for everyone except the people who profit from undocumented employees working for substandard wages and benefits.

Mitt Romney's squirreling answer to Fred Thompson's question about mandating health insurance (which may not be a bad idea—we already mandate car insurance) also disgusted me. Say what you believe, Romney!

Since John McCain (visibly shaking on camera) is now too old for me to accept him without a very good running mate, I propose that Republicans invent a time machine, travel back to 2000, and nominate McCain. He would beat Gore by a bigger margin—let's face it, by a margin—and he would have dealt with the past eight years far better than Bush has.

Life Lesson from One Who Knows

Never, ever get your wisdom teeth out the same week you catch a stomach bug. Vomiting is bad for the clots, apparently. In fact, if you can possibly help it, just don't get your wisdom teeth out.