In Which Squirrels Don't Help Any.

My grandmother has been working on compiling her memoirs for a while now. Yesterday she told me that she has so many vivid childhood memories, she doesn't think she'll be able to get around to writing beyond the third grade. Her mind is still keen, but those memories are the most vivid for her. I remember my grandpa could tell me about all the cars his parents had owned, but it seems like more of his yarns took place in adulthood. It makes me wonder, if I am lucky enough to see my ninth decade, which parts of my life will be the most vivid in my memory.

Grandma said that when she was 2 and some months old, she was whisked away to a neighbor's house and told that when she went home the next day, she would have a new baby brother or sister. When she came back, her mother was lying in bed nursing the newborn. My grandma began screaming, "The baby's eating Mama! The baby's eating Mama!" and had to be carried from the room shrieking and kicking. She said she remembered someone trying (unsuccessfully, obviously) to distract her by pointing out a squirrel in the yard.

I guess that would pretty much scar you for life, wouldn't it?

I started C fortnight out right with a visit to colorfulveggies. Her sister was visiting too, and I went shopping with both of them. I don't get to see them together often, so watching their personalities play off each other's was intriguing, especially when they disagreed. Now I know what happens when the Irresistible Force meets the Immovable Object.

Today I went to the CD store and got myself some Concretes and Calexico. I had a coupon that expires tomorrow, so I used it to get discounts on used CDs. Man. I sure do love a Deal.

The Concretes - Miss You

In Which I Live the Dream.

At the Bins, a.k.a. the Goodwill Outlet, Bee and I sift through the detritus of civilization. We are not like archaeologists, who listen carefully to every found object to hear the history it has to tell. There are many tales here, enough to drive you mad if you stop to listen. No, we are hasty, opinionated, and ruthless; it is the Way of the Bins.

The First Rule of the Bins is: Look before you grab. Some things are sharp -- broken glass edges the dish bins -- and some things are sticky, we don't want to know with what -- and some things are decaying, like that blanket with the synthetic fill. Oh, and avoid the underwear at all costs. Don't stare too long at the yellow sheen on that collar. Try really, really hard to keep from touching your face. Your nose doesn't itch; you're just imagining it.

The bins of household items may have had some semblance of order when they were wheeled out, but now they are a crazy stew of castoffs: dishes, belts, computer monitors, parts of toys, luggage and bric-a-brac. I bump a stuffed chipmunk from its prone position; it turns up a face that is a chewed, featureless mass, the stuff of nightmares. I shudder, then pick it up to scare Bee with. There's a lovely cast-iron skillet, but it's too heavy for my skinny wrist. I find a book on raising hedgehogs that I carry around for a while before coming to my senses: in the unlikely event that I find myself caring for a young hedgehog, the internet will be more than happy to help.

The household items are like a freak show, a bizarre museum of the things people pay for. I would like to believe that each of these things has been loved in its day, that each one had significance to some human at some point. But that seems hopelessly idealistic, even to me. No, this is the overflow of a consumer culture gone berserk, rolled off the assembly lines of less prosperous nations, each in the company of thousands of identical twins. Many of these items were purchased by people who didn't need them, and owned by people who didn't love them, simply because the American dream means Having Stuff, lots and lots of it, and being able to buy it whenever you feel like it.

Don't get me wrong. Bee and I are Americans, and we are here because we like Stuff too. We are both bargain-hunters, and share an unspoken understanding that there is a kind of virtue in getting cool stuff for cheap. Most of the cool stuff, we know, can be found in the clothing bins. But the work is harder here; the clothes are piled high today, and it's hard to do a thorough survey. I abandon my philosophizing and dedicate the full force of my brain to processing the bewildering morass of clothing in front of me. We get about halfway through before we give up, feet weary, backs complaining. Bee's prize find is a baby-sized green sweater, hand-knit; mine, a corduroy skirt that will easily find a good home even if it doesn't fit me. The trying-on will, of course, take place after everything has had a good washing. We pay for our gleanings by the pound and go in search of food.

* * *

Today's the last of fourteen B days. I have climbed Powell Butte, eaten blueberry breakfast bars, and watched The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (To whomever it was that told me I would really enjoy that movie: Alas, you were terribly mistaken). I am still reading Blue Highways, and though I'm enjoying it quite a bit, at this rate I'll be reading it for many, many weeks to come. But the B I've been working on the most lately, the one that has really interfered with the blogging, is Bedtime.

For the past several days, I've been setting my alarm for bedtime instead of for getting-up-time. It's a strange experiment, and I am lucky to have the flexibility in my work hours necessary to conduct it. My primary goal is to establish a consistent sleep schedule for the first time since I entered college, if not before. I'm also interested in finding out how many hours of sleep my body really wants per night. The thing is, I fall asleep pretty quickly once I'm in bed; my problem lies in convincing myself to get there. So the alarm clock signals it's time to get ready for sleep, and on a weeknight, I am not allowed to argue with it. Yes, the snooze alarm is fair game, but I can only run upstairs to hit it so many times. Apparently my sense of the absurd is more acute at 10 p.m. than at 7 a.m.

(And for those of you who protest that the post time doesn't agree with the above statements: Come on, it's the weekend!)

One B song for you: strange, but nice.
Back in Judy's Shack - Burning Cold

In Which I Rearrange the Alphabet, Sort Of.

I've been doing pretty well on B foods: bread (in the form of sandwiches, or toasted with butter), turkey burgers, bananas and root beer. Not so well on the B activities. Of the two movies I saw this week, at least I can say that one, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, starred Albert Brooks. I went to see it because I had a free preview pass, and because I was under the impression that it was a documentary. The concept could have been a really great documentary, but as a comedy it was mediocre at best. Then there was Capote, which was a worthwhile film, though not a very fun one. Still, I probably chuckled more at Philip Seymour Hoffman than was entirely appropriate, and almost laughed out loud when the guy in front of me started snoring.

Friday night Evan lured me out with the promise of board games with friends, but then we all ended up playing a card-based variation of Cranium instead. (Bait-and-switch starts with B!) I considered walking out then and there, but you know, they had brownies.... For me, one of the highlights of the game was when I attempted to draw a rave, Pictionary-style. I mean, how exactly do you depict that? How do you draw a dark room, strobes, glowsticks? Particularly if you've never actually been to a rave, and are fairly confident that no one in your audience has either? Obviously, I didn't have much success, but it was fun to hear the guesses: "Disco?" "Rock concert!" "Prom?" "Woodstock!" All I could do was giggle and draw more stick figures: holding hands, lying on the floor with X-eyes.

So what with Comedy, Capote and Cranium, it looks I'm kinda jumping ahead a week or two. And I think what this means is that I'll have to fit some Bs into the time allocated for C. Which should work out pretty well, considering my plans for the immediate future.

In other news, the lovely and talented Ah has contributed a t-shirt design to Threadless, a site that accepts submissions of wearable art, then makes and sells those rated highest by site visitors. Click the detail to see the shirt:

If you like the design and want to help her out, you can sign up and rate the shirt anytime in the next 4 days. However, if you then proceed to rate other shirt designs in the running, you may find it to be strangely addictive (and therefore also alarmingly time-consuming, given the number of submissions on any given weekday). You've been warned.

In Which I Am Distracted by Socks.

Last night I was all set to tell you about my evening with my brother and his girlfriend and her friend from work, and how we watched Fun with Dick and Jane and laughed pretty much the whole time, and then went to Applebee's for happy-hour-priced supper, and how the boneless buffalo wings were actually a little too spicy for my internal comfort. I was going to tell you how we kept on laughing even though the movie was over, and how they all played with their cell phone cameras while we waited for our food, and how my brother's girlfriend was trying to figure out a way to steal this huge Madonna poster (not really, Mom, she was joking), and how her work buddy convinced me that the Hollywood/television stereotype of the gay guy friend actually has a basis in reality.

I was going to tell you all this when I got home, even though it was late, because B is for blogging. But I ended up looking at socks instead.

Today was less eventful. Except for the part where I locked my house key into the house when I left for work (not any other keys, just my house key), and then had to play phone tag with several different friends to get back in again. Oh yeah, and I'm getting a head start on something related to the next letter of the alphabet, but you have to wait a couple weeks to hear about that. It's too early to have much to report about it anyway.

So really, I'm only posting to tell you that I don't have anything to tell you.

In Which B is Begun.

I know MLK Day is nearly over, but I did want to share this amazing essay about what it's like to be a fan of fantasy/sci-fi who doesn't have pale skin. Anway, glimpsing the world through someone else's eyes is always topical, innit?

Auspicious was the word for A, for beginning a new year like a snowy field, still un-footprinted, slightly blinding with its possibilities. I'm not sure yet, but it looks like the word for B may be Busy. B is for budget. B is for baking, bathroom (as in 'cleaning the'), and, yes, blogging. B is also for brother, and board games, and bookstore. And a number of other things have crept into my schedule, things that are important despite not beginning with B, such that it looks as though this may be my only quiet evening at home until the weekend. Which is good. I think. I generally really enjoy being busy, until sometimes, quite suddenly, I don't anymore. I hope that doesn't happen this week.

I mentioned I was excited about various authors who begin with B, but I hadn't actually decided on one yet. So when I found a grubby copy of Blue Highways today, left in a place I'd be sure to spot it, I knew just who'd put it there (an as-yet-un-aliased writer friend) and why (he's been telling me to read it for a year now) and what to do with it (duh). At over 400 pages, it will probably take me well into C territory, but that's okay. I wasn't going to get a book read every 2 weeks anyway.

Only the second day of B, and I have already eaten baby corn (stir-fry) with beef at a Thai restaurant. I've ingested a piece of butterscotch candy and a couple of black bean burritos and an apple (Braeburn), and listened through several hours' worth of B musicians in iTunes (Beck! and more Beck! and some Bloc Party). Also, mustn't forget bathing and brushing teeth. Which might be a good idea right now, come to think of it.

In Which I Wish I Worked in a Post Office in Ghana.

Archery: check.
I am so out of shape, it's not even funny. Except that it is, actually, pretty funny, to be wiped out after an hour of stretching a few arm/shoulder muscles and strolling back and forth to fetch arrows. Funny enough that I held out for about an hour and a half.

Fletcher wasn't shooting his best either, and toward the end of the session he started talking to himself. He said, "Okay, this is for the big one! The world championship. The other guy missed, so all you have to do is hit the yellow...." There was a lengthy pause as he sighted and aimed juuust right, frowning with concentration, then released the arrow. It hit squarely in the X ring.

"And the crowd goes wild!" I said, throwing my arms into the air.

"The crowd goes wild," he echoed, and grinned.

I should probably mention that Fletcher is actually a world archery champion.

Apples, apricots: check.
Also: Altoids, Ak-mak and Advil!

African music: check.
I listened to Oliver Mtukudzi while washing the dishes. He's from Zimbabwe, so I'll definitely be listening to him next Christmas, when it will be time for Z-themed music. And probably quite a bit between now and then, too. He has a very sweet voice, and his music is very warm and peaceful and joyous -- a good antidote counterpoint to the raucous shake-yer-can street rhythms of Konono No. 1 (which is probably the African band getting the most attention from America at the moment).

If you are ever looking for some good African music (U is for Uganda, Z is for Zaire...), you really can't go wrong with Benn loxo du taccu, an MP3 blog that offers several fresh tunes out of Africa every week (with podcasts, for those who are into that sort of thing). The writing is informative and to the point, and the songs are diverse and unfailingly interesting. It's a different kind of music-making than I'm used to -- longer songs, more repetition -- but it's that very difference that makes it educational.

I didn't get this track there, but it's one of my most interesting MP3 finds in quite a while:

The University of Ghana Post Office - Canceling Stamps

In Which I Dream About Sleeping.

I want you to know that I actually pressed the button to post last night's entry with my left elbow.

I've been really drowsy most of today, after trying to recover from my nocturnal vacation habits all at once. This morning, after hitting the snooze alarm once or twice or maybe five times or something, I dreamed I was knocking at a neighbor's door. As she came to answer it, I struggled to keep my eyes open to greet her, because how awkward would it be to answer your door and find a sleeping person outside of it? But I couldn't. It was kind of embarrassing.

When I finally woke up enough to look at the clock, I was embarrassed all over again.

I have another A song to share today, and for once it's not a yousendit link:

The Owls - Air

In Which I Approach the Alphabetical Annum.

I saw "Kong" today. It seemed like a very, very long movie. And it was. I was pretty tired of it after about the first hour and a half. I didn't realize how bored I could get with flawlessly animated monster battles. I guess I really like the guys in monster suits better. (Come to think of it, I preferred puppet-Yoda, too.)

I didn't make any New Year's resolutions, if you were wondering about that. But I recently found out that some friends of mine are living the alphabet in 2006, two weeks for each letter. This means they are planning their entire lifestyle (food, recreation, chores, learning, etc.) around the letter of the, uh, fortnight. I think that's a pretty cool idea, cool enough for me to take a flying leap onto the bandwagon already in motion. It's a good thing that I spent the first few days of the year hanging out with Meep, whose real name starts with an A, and with my sisters and my nephew, who also have A names. I think we may even have played Apples to Apples. Last week I watched "Annie Hall," and today I had dinner at Acapulco. I've been listening to Andrew Bird in my car, and today I told iTunes to play all the songs by artists who begin with A (why do I have so many tracks by Animal Collective and The Arcade Fire?).

Later this week I will listen to some African music, maybe while eating apples or dried apricots. I'll do a little archery and maybe some crunches to work out my abs, or amble around the neighborhood if the rain ever lets up. I might rent "American Splendor" and there's a good chance I'll read the book of Acts. It's a little late to start anything longer, as I don't want to be caught midway through a book on the 15th. So many intriguing authors start with B (Peter Beagle! Nicholson Baker! Jorge Luis Borges!).

With that in mind, the following track has been brought to you by the letter A and... um... my left elbow?

Ananda Shankar & State of Bengal - Pluck

[Edit: corrected minor HTML goof that confused Bloglines.]

In Which I Did/Didn't Start the Fire.

I have this problem where if I neglect some area of writing for a time (correspondence with a particular individual, say, or journalling, or maybe blogging is a good example?), then I feel like when I return to it, I need to write something really spectacular to make up for all the writing I didn't do. It doesn't really make any sense; it's self-defeating, because the mental challenge of trying to come up with something really spectacular just makes it that much harder to return to whatever I was neglecting. But there it is, this weird idea I've always had. Right there. I am putting it on the lawn, see, and I am punting it into the street. This will not be a really spectacular blog post.

Last night I went to the Doug Fir Lounge with Bee and Spider (and their parents, who are visiting from out of town). We saw Sounds Like Fun, Norfolk & Western, and Heroes and Villains. (I wanted to link to the bands, but I couldn't find any pages that didn't automatically start playing music when you load them. Don't they know everybody hates that? You can see photos of the first two bands, and click through to their pages, on the Doug Fir calendar page.)

Sounds Like Fun was three loud guys. They played loudly and sang loudly, and they smiled loudly, showing many, many teeth. I liked them a lot, not only because they made good music, but because they also seemed to be laughing at themselves and us as they played. Like it was the best joke ever that they were up there playing music for a bunch of people.

Norfolk & Western was a bigger band, with a more polished sound that reminded me a lot of the Decemberists. Later I found out that the drummer/singer used to play for the Decemberists. I liked them about as much as I like the Decemberists, which is pretty well, but they weren't as much fun to listen to as the first band. The drummer was awesome, though. And a girl. An awesome girl drummer. Awesome!

By the time Heroes and Villains took the stage, I was too tired to really get much out of their set -- ironic, since they were the reason I was there. But they were of course very good. You have to be wide awake to fully appreciate the complexity of their music, with its frequent shifts in rhythm and key, but even sleepy people can enjoy watching such a strange cast of characters as they are. One of them looks like she was invented by Bryan Lee O'Malley. In fact, I even checked just now to see if he had a sketch that looks uncannily like her, but this was as close as I could get. No, not the snoozing girl at the top; scroll down to the girl screaming on the table. That's pretty close. Her hair is pink, and her little crooked mouth gets all huge when she sings.

I spent some time at the show trying to picture the rest of Heroes and Villains as drawn by indie comic artists. The other girl reminded me of how Gabrielle Bell draws herself. The guys were harder, especially the drummer, because the pink-haired girl was blocking my view of him. (He actually looks sorta like Bee's boyfriend, if you happen to know who that is.) And the other two guys had dark bristly beards. I haven't seen a lot of beards in comics lately, so I kind of got stuck at that point.

The Doug Fir Lounge is a really, really nice venue. I was impressed. The building is new, but the decor is retro-rustic, like it was designed in the '60s with a log cabin theme, and the lighting and layout are comfortable yet hip. There is some seating along the sides, but I stood throughout the show, on a raised area of the floor between a pillar and a railing. I had a great view of the stage the entire time, and if you know how tall I am, you can guess how rare that is. Also, the show was only $6. If you live in Portland, enjoy indie rock, and haven't yet been to the DFL, let me encourage you to remedy that as soon as possible.

* * *

I have lit a fire in my fireplace, and am sitting here by it with a blanket over my lap. It's very cozy. "But wait!" you are saying, if you've ever been inside my house. "Your fireplace is not connected to a chimney! It's Strictly Decorative! This sounds very dangerous!" To which I answer: actually, I have lit several very small wax-based fires in glass jars, or as I like to call them, "candles." They are in my new fireplace candelabra that my mom and dad gave me for Christmas. The flickery flames glint off the tile of my pretend fireplace, and they give off just enough heat to warm your hands by, so the effect is ideal for a rainy winter evening like this one. And arrayed across the mantel is my Christmas present from the Ranums. It's bee-yewtiful. And FEROCIOUS.

In Which I Draw the Line.

Dear Internet,

I confess I've missed our time together. When I was entertaining guests, when I was visiting family, I felt bad about giving you my full attention for any significant length of time. But all along you were busy storing up things you wanted to tell me about. My RSS feed was bursting at the seams when I opened it last night, and my e-mail inbox is littered with unanswered messages. I spent a lot of time today sorting through the treasures you saved to show me. They were wonderful, so wonderful that I've already forgotten what most of them were.

Let's see. You told me what my friends and other interesting people had been up to, their holiday highlights and their resolutions. That was nice to hear about. Then you brought me up to date on the weather and upcoming local events and some things you thought I might want to spend money on. Then you had some games for me to try out and some music for me to listen to, and I liked those things too.

But you are kind of a showoff, Internet, kind of an attention hog. I had plans to get a lot of paper-related chores done today, and I didn't get very far with most of them, because you had so much to say. I suspect you are kind of emotionally needy, Internet, because you will stop at nothing to hold my attention. I'm not saying you're boring, mind you, just that sometimes you need to let people have some space. I am going to go finish the laundry now, so you can just read yourself a story and tuck yourself in for the night, because we are not staying up talking until 2 a.m. Not tonight.

Compulsively yours,
Lindsey

In Which I... Gotta Run!

Goodness. Are we back at another Waning Crescent already? I have some excuses for not posting lately, but none of them are very interesting, so I'll spare you. It's been a fun couple of weeks. In fact, it's fair to say that most of my excuses fall into the overall category of The Fun Not Stopping.

Anyway, my old friend Meep flew in today to spend a week. Yay! But this means I probably won't be posting much for the next little while either. So be good while I'm out. And Happy New Year.

In Which I Answer Your Questions About Music and Portland.

[And by "your," I mean "my."]

Q: What on earth is that new, ominous-looking green building on Burnside that bears no slogan but AFSCME?
A: Why, it's the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Which I think is a labor union for civil servants... but may just be a cover for a robot manufacturer, who knows.

Q: Is the first-ever They Might Be Giants podcast worth the download?
A: If you are really a TMBG fan, yes. Otherwise, not so much.

Q: With all the mp3 blogs out there these days, isn't there one that features really good writing?
A: There is.

Q: What if popular musicians wrote songs which were anagrams of their names?
A: They might sound like the Holy Tango Basement Tapes.

Q: Say I want to take public transportation from my mansion in the West Hills to the AFSCME building, so I can see the robots... er, government employees. What's the easiest way to do that?
A: Use Google's Transit Trip Planner, which is currently in beta, with Portland as a guinea pig. It's keen!

In Which I Don't Say Much About Narnia.

I feel like I should write something about the first Narnia movie, some sort of evaluative remarks, but I'm not ready to yet. I'm still processing it. There's so much there for me to consider... maybe not necessarily inherent in the film, but so many layers of meaning built up over years of reading and re-reading. So I'll just tell you that I watched it with my brother, and that we both really enjoyed it.

I used to read the Chronicles out loud to my siblings long ago -- four of us in all, just like the Pevenseys. My sisters tolerated the reading, that being the best entertainment available in the absence of television, but my brother was the one who really loved it. In a sense he has become part of the story for me, and I for him. So it was most fitting for us to stumble back through the wardrobe together, after all these years.

Ebert's review of the movie ended with the following rhetorical question:

But it's remarkable, isn't it, that the Brits have produced Narnia, the Ring, Hogwarts, Gormenghast, James Bond, Alice and Pooh, and what have we produced for them in return?

To this I can only answer: Earthsea. I know, I know, it was just subjected to a horrible TV adaptation; but now it's in the hands of Studio Ghibli, the people who brought you My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away. Yes, you read that right: anime! It's a weird idea, but I kinda like it. Even though Ged looks suspiciously Caucasian in the movie poster.

In Which I Tidy Up a Bit.

This weekend I've been obsessed with organization. This is not at all normal for me. By nature I'm a piler, not a filer. If only I had these fits of orderliness more regularly, my life would be... well, much more orderly.

This particular fit began yesterday, when I discovered the Noguchi filing system (thanks to Sanguinity). It seems to have been designed expressly for pilers, by encouraging organization without classification. Though it can't replace all my files, it immediately looked like a better option than my current system (which involves periodically sweeping everything off the kitchen table into a box, which is subsequently ignored). So I spent a couple hours today snipping the tops off 9x12 envelopes and stuffing things into them. There are still several piles/boxes left to deal with, but you know what they say about journeys of a thousand miles.

The other thing I've started organizing is my links, or "bookmarks," or "favorites," or whatever you want to call them. I've never really made use of that feature in any browser, because it was limited to a single computer, and, well, I'm not. Instead, I would e-mail them to myself, or to someone else. Finding the link again usually wasn't too difficult... so long as I actually remembered I had it.

Turns out there is a better system, and it's been around for quite a while. You've probably already heard of it; in fact, you may even already use it (I know Allan does!). del.icio.us is, much like the Noguchi system, brilliant in its simplicity. When you see a web page you want to bookmark, you just click a button and del.icio.us remembers it for you. You can also annotate and tag the link for easy reference. Nice, huh? But it gets better. You can send links to other users. You can see how many other people have bookmarked a given page, and how they tagged and annotated it. You can look at what links are popular today, and what's been most recently bookmarked. You can use it to set up a wishlist (one that isn't limited to Amazon!). The list goes on. If you haven't tried it yet, you really should.

I've decided not to post my del.icio.us page to this blog, because it will eventually paint a more detailed portrait of myself than I'm prepared to share with the world at large. No, I'm not hiding anything sensational; I'm just weird like that. However, I'm more than happy to share with anyone who knows me in real life, so if you're curious, drop me a line and I'll send you the URL.

What makes both of these organizing tools so appealing to me is their flexibility. A fixed system of files (whether paper or virtual) requires constant revision in order to keep up with the flow of incoming information -- particularly for anyone whose interests are continually evolving. But the Noguchi system, by avoiding classification altogether, allows for a purely intuitive means of storage and retrieval. And the tags used in del.icio.us (and gmail, and flickr, and an increasing number of web-based resources) provide a highly flexible system of classification that doesn't limit an item to a single primary descriptor. Someday we'll be able to organize files on our hard drives this way! There's an exciting thought.

In Which It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Ear.

I have a confession to make: I hate Christmas music.

How can this be? I love music, and I love Christmas. Something has clearly gone terribly wrong.

It wasn't always this way. I used to love Christmas music unreservedly. Then I only loved some of it. Then I became alarmed by its tendency to spill over into November, when I wasn't ready to hear it yet. Then I vaguely resented all of it, unless I was singing it with other people, which has happened less and less in recent years. This year, as I was gritting my teeth at the grocery store while some canned singer repeatedly reminded me he was simp-ly hav-ing a won-derful Christ-mas-time, I realized that my distaste has finally bloomed into genuine hatred.

I have some theories about how this may have happened. One is that Christmas songs, since we only hear them for a short time, don't have to undergo the same Darwinian struggle for survival that everyday songs do. Bad Christmas music gets recycled year after year, simply by virtue of being holiday-appropriate. Another reason is that Christmas music tends to involve a lot of choirs and big bands, which I generally tend to avoid. A yet more significant factor is commercialization: a little bit of my heart dies every time something I once held sacred is cheapened by mass-media overexposure, in a blatant attempt to separate as many people from their money as possible. (See also: Lord of the Rings.)

In a further ironic twist, my first response to this realization was to listen to a lot of Christmas music, in search of some that doesn't make me cringe. After some thought, I decided my primary criterion for Good Christmas Music was that it had to be good enough to listen to all year round without getting sick of it. (Anything I listened to as a child is disqualified, as I can't address it with any objectivity.)

Unfortunately, I was not able to compile an entire mix CD's worth of songs that met this standard. However, I present to you some highlights of my search.

Here is the best Christmas song I've heard this year. I don't know anything about the artist, other than that she's from Canada, and that she makes this old German melody sound prettier than I would have thought possible:
Feist - Lo, How A Rose E'er Blooming

Several years ago, Sufjan Stevens recorded three Christmas EPs for friends. All of them are now available for free online. I wholeheartedly recommend them; they are gentle acoustic arrangements of carols, hymns, and original songs, with Sufjan's hushed tenor at the forefront. They're reverent without being arrogant, and sweet without being precious. You can download all three (zipped files) here:
http://www.chattablogs.com/quintus/archives/019581.html

Finally, if you're going to record obnoxious Christmas songs, you might as well be as obnoxious about it as possible. Last year on MetaFilter, one gentleman noted:

I like to sing Jingle Bell Rock, but using only the words "bell", "rock", and "jingle".... Drives my wife nuts. I'd record an MP3 of me doing it if someone could find me a karaoke track.

Someone could, and he did. As far as I'm concerned, this is now the definitive version of Jingle Bell Rock:
http://quasistoic.org/PinkStainlessTail - jinglerockbell.mp3

Which Is Largely Hit And Miss.

Last night was the first time I picked up a bow in about two months. Turns out it was actually the last open shoot night of the year at the community center, too, so I'm glad I braved the cold. It was good to catch up with my friend the archery gnome, whom I can't resist referring to here as Fletcher (not his real name, but his real occupation). It was good to use those muscles and those parts of my brain that I've been neglecting. It was good to look the target in the eye and say: Oh son. You're goin' down.

Actually, the target got the last laugh; I am totally out of shape. I tried to just focus on form without worrying too much about where the arrows ended up. So if you were an unfortunate beetle wandering around the target, you would have been quite safe on that center X.

Also, I was glad that the other people were shooting compound bows. A recurve archer like myself will typically fire off 3 arrows within a minute or less. But it's a lot easier to hold a compound bow at full draw, so compound archers take their time aiming. Lots and lots of time. I normally get impatient waiting for them to just fire the darn thing already so I can go pull my arrows, but this time I was grateful for the interval to stretch and breathe.

So that brings me up to 7 out of 10 fun things on my post-November rewards list. Still to come are 7) the broadband internet connection (for reasons already described), 8) the visit to the comic book store (because I just haven't got around to it yet), and 10) the blogging. Which I suspect will pick up after #7 straightens itself out.

Oh, hey, you know what? I'm not going to that Andrew Bird/Nickel Creek show after all. It's all Karen's fault. She gave me a 30% off GAP coupon that was good through last weekend. So I took a shopping buddy to the GAP outlet, and we both left with armloads of incredible deals! Whee! But, um, we sort of spent a lot of money in the process. So when I was buying my ticket for the show, and I realized there were going to be more (dis)service charges than I anticipated, and I thought about all the Christmas shopping I have yet to do, my enthusiasm faded before I could enter my credit card number.

I would normally consider excellent music to be more essential than new clothes. But every time I put on my new coat and go out in that biting wind, I think I have chosen wisely.

In Which We Party Like Writers.

This year, regional word counts were one of the features added to the NaNoWriMo website. Portland ranked 11th in the world, ahead of NYC, Boston, and San Francisco, with a collective total of 3,756,412 words.

Last night was Portland's TGIO, the party celebrating the end of NaNo. There were heaps of things to eat, oodles of interesting people, and lively conversations in every corner. We had shared a remarkable experience, even if we hadn't actually all been together or even met before, and now we shared the buzz of triumph. It was pretty great.

But the best part of the evening was when people took turns reading excerpts from their novels. What an incredible diversity of imagination, tone, style, and personality! They covered the gamut from hilarity to heartbreak, with narratives of bad dates, battlefields, bandits, road trips, drug trips, dockside brawls, people with wings and people with tentacles. It was hugely entertaining. And there was something so satisfying, on such a primal level, about a group of people just sitting around telling each other stories.

Thinking of that now, I also recall that phone conversation I had with my songwriter friend the other week (he needs an alias; let's call him Bombadil). I was giving Bombadil an overview of my novel, and he interrupted me to exclaim, "You're telling me a story! This is so cool! ...And we're adults!"

What is wrong with us, that this sort of experience is so unusual? Because I have a strong sense that it is something we were meant to be doing.

In Which A Herring... Doesn't.... Whistle!

Last night I saw a movie for the first time in ages and ages (okay, a month). I thought I'd long since missed my chance to see Mirrormask, but I caught it on what I think was really its last night in town.

I'm generally interested in anything Mr. Gaiman (the screenwriter) is involved in, partly because he's done some remarkable things, and partly because he's just such a nice guy. Considering the mixed reviews it got, though, I wasn't expecting to be impressed by this one. Oh, but I was.

Sure, it was uneven, parts were boring and/or confusing, and it could have been cut a lot shorter without losing much. But it also offered a fascinating metaphorical examination of what it's like to be a girl at the edge of adolescence.

Helena, the pre-adolescent heroine, gets lost in a dream-city that seems to have been inspired by her own drawings. The windows of the buildings in this city look into her own bedroom, from the walls where her drawings hang. Peering through these windows, Helena sees a dark doppelganger of herself taking over her world: wearing punk clothes and heavy makeup, acting hateful toward her father, kissing a boy (gross!), and gleefully destroying things that are precious to Helena. When the child-Helena shouted in vain from a drawing, "Dad, don't listen to her! That's not me!" I got that weird déjà vu feeling.

When we left the theater, we discovered a huge old mobile stairway-thing right in the middle of the walkway. It was unmanned; apparently whoever was changing the marquee had decided it was time for a break. So, of course, I climbed it. The marquee letters were brittle and hard to move, so I didn't actually get to help out with the sign-changing. But the view sure was nice from up there.

In Which I Am So Glad To Have Finished Way Before Deadline.

My site was down today, wasn't it? It totally was. Man, I hate that. There's not even anything important on my site yet, and it still bugs me.

In other non-connectivity news, I talked to the DSL people, and they said they couldn't possibly help me until December 9 at least. This is because of how many other people in my area are using the same service. Just so you know I'm not putting it off....

Speaking of Andrew Bird, he is opening for Nickel Creek on December 6 and December 7 at the Roseland. If anyone else is as excited by this news as I am, you should probably come and hear them with me.

Unless you live in Japan. Then you're not invited.

In Which The News Is Only Good.

Yes. I finished Monday night, just before midnight. Thank you, thank you.

It's funny how, once the ol' wordcount passes 50K, everywhere looks like a good place to stop. I think my novel would have benefited from being ended a little more conclusively. But I did finish the story arc, so I'm content. There's always the rewrite for things like that.

And yeah, throughout most of this month I thought this wouldn't even be something I would want to rewrite... but as it all started wrapping up, I realized (to my very great astonishment) that parts of the story actually work pretty well, and that I really like several of my characters, enough to already be wondering about future stories for them to do things in.

It needs a heap of reworking, though. I still don't know exactly what I'll rework it into, since it didn't really turn out like I meant for it to, and I have no idea what it wants to be or how to help it be that. But I can figure that out some other month. In the meantime: No! You can't read it.

But! Many thanks to everyone who heartened me this month with enthusiasm and interest, sympathy and competition, food and companionship, and all other forms of encouragment. It wouldn't have been any fun without you.

Also! I tested negative for strep throat, and am feeling well enough today that I will probably actually have to go back to work tomorrow. I guess a full week of Thanksgiving vacation is probably about as much as anybody can expect to get away with.

And! Since a blog post wouldn't be complete without some kind of link, I leave you with the promise of snacks:

Andrew Bird - Tables and Chairs