Friday Free For All - Things I Love to Talk About A-Z

See, I'm not so cynical. Source

Today's Friday Free For All concept was stolen from Julie at one of my favorite blogs: Peanut Butter Fingers. I give you Things I Love to Talk About A-Z! Instead of just listing the simple things that make me happy, like Julie did, I am listing the that I should start writing more about, because it's best to work on things you love, yes? I've already got some great ideas swimming around in my head. I just need to make some time to start working on them. Also, it's Friday, and that means I can do something fun. Right now, lists are fun, so here you are!

Things I Love to Talk About A-Z

A - Anne Rice and Asparagus Soup - They tied.
B - Body Image
C - Crescent City and Cats. Also, Cassadega.
D - Duran Duran! Duran Duran! Duran Duran!
E - Elder Care
F - First Person Narrative
G - Gender Politics (There's a high concept for you)
H - History - Micro and Macro
I - Interconnection of Ideas in Music, Film, Art, and Literature (The Spider Web)
J - John, Elton
K - Kane, Citizen
L - Law, of the Copyright and Public Domain varieties.
M - Music and Motion Picture History
N - Normalcy, and How it Doesn't Exist, Not Really
O - Orson Welles
P - Pop Culture, Palatka, and Pensacola. Poetry - not so much.
Q - Queer Theory and My Theory on Why We Maybe Shouldn't Call it That
R - Robots. I love robots.
S - Speculative Fiction? Screenplays?
T - Time  Travel
U - Unity Mitford, Because She's Interesting
V - Volunteering and Violence
W - Wilde, Oscar
X - Xanatos Gambit
Y - Yoga
Z - Zen

So, yes. That should keep me busy for quite a while. In the meantime, I have some Uranium J updates for you!

Eins! Did you know that your local library probably has access to research databases and that you can search them from home? Me neither, until today! Now I have a shiny new library card and the ability to start working on some academic writing, if I am so inclined.

Zwei! I got my business cards! Pictures will be posted soon.

Drei! Deep training went well on Saturday and Sunday. I have been placed with my teaching partner, and I am all set to starting teaching with the program on the first Monday of October. I am so excited!

Vier! I'm gonna go see The Possession tonight. Oh yeah.

So, yeah, that's about it.

What are your favorite things to talk about? Do you have any updates you want to share? Comment! Comment! Comment!

Praise You Like I Should - Meandering

I don't say much about j^C on here, and I don't say enough nice things about him in general. So right now I would like to soapbox about one the the wonderful things about my husband: He lets me meander.

What the hell does that mean? you ask. To answer that I must first explain something about myself: I am a meanderer. Merriam-Webster defines the word thusly:

Meander: intransitive verb
1) to follow a winding or intricate course
2) to wander aimlessly or casually without urgent destination; ramble

This is me. I like to meander. I am a meanderer. Some people merely tolerate my meandering. Others indulge it. Then there are those who don't understand the concept of meandering. I don't care for spending time with these people. They rush me and herd me and which sends me into a spiral of anxiety and stress leaving me a frazzled mess for an indeterminable lenghth of time. "Why are we leaving? We just got here!" I think to myself. There are boxes of records in thrift stores that need to be examined at one by one, just in case there's a copy of Captain Fantastic and The Dirt Brown Cowboy or a first pressing of Some Girls. Why don't you all just let me look? What could be more important? The history's not going anywhere, the records might. This also applies to books, CDs, movies, and the little placards at the historical site because I am a woefully slow reader.

Banned. Just cuz the queened up Judy Garland. Source

Most often this happens on vacations. I can handle being annoying. I cannot handle being stressed out. I don't like  taking Xanax at this point. (I don't like taking any drugs at all, but that's another story for another time.) I am to the point now where I might start getting "lost" so I can spend my sweet time exploring what I think is the most interesting. I found some time ago that I would rather visit very small towns on vacation instead of the big tourist destinations for this very reason. In a small town, there's a finite amount of things to see and do, so taking my time and immersing myself will not be done at the expense of another attraction or activity. In a bigger place, you just cannot do that. If you want to get the most out of your visit, you rush around like a madman from place to place and thing to thing. Still, you never really see all of it. Not seeing it all stresses me out. I would rather explore a few things thoroughly than a lot of things superficially. It's supposed to be about pleasure and making memories, right? How am I supposed to remember so many things crammed into one day? My brain not work so good.

j^C, being the nice guy that he is, indulges me. We can spend an hour or two at the thrift store while on vacation. He will let me wander around the museum aimlessly reading all the things there are to read, looking at the art and exhibits until my little black heart is content. When I travel with him, I don't feel hurried, stressed, or otherwise put upon. It's really nice, and I am truly grateful for his patience with this matter as I know I will never have his understanding about it. This quirk of mine aggravates him just as much as it does everyone else, but since he knows that my meandering is important to me, he doesn't grouse. In return, I try to be mindful of time and I make sure we don't spend all day rummaging through boxes of moldy vinyl. While part of me wants to know what is in every single box, there are other things to explore, and maybe like the history, the records aren't going anywhere either.

Friday Free For All: Bringing Back the Naughties with Lists

I read somewhere recently that the first decade of the new millennium (2000-2009) are referred to as the "aughts". I love this, but I also find it a bit clunky. Nearly every term I've heard that refers to this time period is quite clunky in fact. But then I read that the British refer to the decade as the "noughties" and I love it. "Nought" is a term used non American English speaking countries for "zero", so it is both appropriate and fun to say. Being that I am an American and I must bastardize everything, I'm calling the decade after the 90s "The Naughties". Isn't that fun?

Why am I talking about this? Because it's Friday, and I can, for one - but also because I am feeling nostalgic for the halcyon days of blogging on LiveJournal when a list could be considered compelling content. I'm tired and I burned myself out last week with the videos and the writing. I want to post something meaningful, but I want it to be simple and elegant. I want to post a list, and so I shall. I give you,

Things I Suck At
(idea lifted from Amy Estes at Coffee & Sunshine)

Brevity
I can go on and on and on about any and everything. If you don't believe me, please refer to my very first VEDA video. Like my hero, Ernest P. Worrell, I never know when to quit.

Cleaning
I don't know why this is so hard for me, but it is. Something that would take a normal person twenty minutes to do will take me two hours. It is incredably vexing, but as I grow older, I am learning how to cope with my shortcomings. That's a kinder, gentler way to say that I am becoming complacent. I hope that the next house I live in is about half the size of the present one. I had a lot less problems with this issue when I was in college and confined to a finite amount of space. Bigger spaces just mean bigger messes. I would have much fewer problems if I lived in a box. I wonder if I can find one with a reasonable mortgage?

Confrontation
I recently told a close friend of mine that j^C and I are going to have to start having our arguments via email. My feeling is that I can think more clearly on paper and therefore have a well reasoned and logical argument. This is just a ruse though. The truth is I don't like confrontation and I will do nigh on anything to avoid it. I will roll over, cave, and become the milquetoast we all know me to be to avoid a fight. That's kind of sad, and something I should really work on.

Selling Things
I totally stole this one off of Amy's list, but it is so true for me that I couldn't leave it off. If I had to make my way in the world selling myself and/or my wares, I would starve. I feel like a great big jerk when I am trying to promote anything. I don't like people trying to sell me things, but since I hate confrontation, I'll cave pretty quickly to make them go away. Conversely, since I hate to be sold I don't like to sell. Of course, maybe the real aversion is to being turned down.

Staying on Task
That sounds like something a teacher would say, doesn't it? "J, you need to stay on task." Pfft. Please. I don't now that I would classify it as a weakness, but it's definitely a hindrance at times. My brain tends to go faster than my hands or my mouth. As such, I am usually involved in several things at once, all in various stages of completion. The problem with this is that things tend to linger on in a state of incompleteness. In these moments I wish I could do something from start to finish, but I'm just not wired that way. I think that's OK.

Alright kids, that was 5 things. Any more and I fear we will be descending into a Sneaky Hate Spiral. I began to wonder though, is there anything I wish I sucked at? Yes! I wish I sucked at cooking sometimes. I like doing it, but it can be a hassle. Also, if I sucked at cooking I wouldn't feel obligated to take culinary masterpieces of the baked goods variety to parties EVERY TIME. I could just go buy a frozen cake and be done with it. Alas, the burdens of being good at something. Poor me.

What do you suck at? Do you think it's bad that you suck at these things? Is there anything you wish you sucked at?

Nick Rhodes and I Have a Very Special Relationship

I don't want to talk to you about Duran Duran today. I really don't. There's been entirely too much celebrity worship cluttering things up around here, and I'd really like to get back to my story, your stories (should any of you ever choose to submit them) and the general glorification of the mundane. I can't do that though. Not yet. Why? Nick Rhodes, Simon Lebon, and John Taylor came to visit me last night, and since this happens maybe once a year (and that's a liberal estimate), I can't really not write about it.

I was all in the middle of this. Heaven. Source

I was at a this huge arena show, and somehow I was backstage. I had a press pass or something. At one point I was with the whole band, and it turned out that this was some kind of charity show benefiting single mothers. Simon was performing and giving out all sorts of things like he was Maury Povich and it was Christmas. Nick, John, and I wind up in the back of a limo, and I was so tired. Nick was tired too, as he was still recovering from his case of exhaustion, so he let me wrap my arms around his waist and rest my head on his chest. He laid his head against mine and we could have probably fallen asleep like that. I felt so calm and safe. It was nice.

I was between Nick and John. Nick's hair looked fabulous. This was definitely mid to late 90s Nick, my favorite.  When we all started "catching up" I moved my head to Nick's shoulder so I could look at John when he spoke. He looked as though he'd just stepped out of the Ordinary World video, all tailored suit and rock star hair.  I asked them how they were getting on with the new guitarist since Andy had left and whether they thought Warren might rejoin them at any point. I said I thought their best period was when Warren was with the group, although I am glad that Roger came back on board and have developed quite an appreciation for him. They said they weren't sure about Warren ever returning because he was still working with Missing Persons, but the new guy was very good. I agreed.

I told John that I had finally  gotten around to seeing A Diva's Christmas Carol and asked if he was planning on anymore acting in the future. He laughed, "You saw that abysmal movie?" and I nodded. "No, I don't think that I'll be acting again any time soon, as you are the only one who's given me a favorable review." I think I asked him about his book at that point. He and Nick then started telling Duran stories and I asked them if they would like to submit to First Person Narrative. I felt kind of strange asking them, but I thought they might like to help out an old friend. I remember Nick being much more chatty than he is in this narrative, but I don't remember much of what he had to say, most likely because I was swimming in the jade colored pools that are his eyes.

The hair cost him the Emmy. Source

And this is what I have dreams about, kids. I will say this, every time I've had a midnight rendezvous with Duran Duran, and Nick in particular, it has always been very pleasant. He is a very pleasant person to spend a dream with, and I suspect he's equally charming in person.Would that I could get an exclusive Duran story to put up here. I wonder what I can do with my unconditional love of Duran Duran though. What new angle, what new spin, what new story, can I tell about my boys? I have something in the works for NaNoWriMo, which I hope to share with you all starting in December.

You'd get lost too. Source

Meanwhile, now that I am awake, it occurs to me that I would be mortified to meet the boys in person, looking the way I look. I'm sure they wouldn't be mean or judgy, but I wouldn't want to be "that pudgy writer girl" anyway. These are men who've married and spawned supermodels. Gracious and kind as they are to their fans, I don't want to be just another overweight Duranie housewife, but that's exactly what I am. This could be the spiraling depression talking though. I've been binging a lot the past few days. Today alone, I ate an entire Red Baron pizza, and that was after having such a nice time behind my eyes with Nick and John. Imagine what I might have done if I'd had a nightmare. I am seriously thinking about going to a meeting. I told j^C that I've been having "dark thoughts" (make of that what you will) and he's called me 3 or 4 times today from work. My slow suicide isn't in a bottle or a rope or a gun though, it's going down my throat and coursing through my veins already.

That got pretty dark. I'm sorry. To conclude: I love Duran Duran, and Nick Rhodes always seems to enter my dreams when I need him most.

A Moral Compass I Am Not

Not a good look. Source

j^C and I started watching Breaking Bad last night. He had been wanting to watch it for over a year now, but somehow we always wound up engrossed in some other TV show. After finishing the third season of Slings and Arrows on Saturday night (an event that left me in a puddle of emotions at the foot of the bed) we decided to finally watch the show about cooking meth. If you haven't seen it, it's pretty intense right from the start. There was a point in the second episode where Walt's wife is catching on to the fact that he's up to something. Then, this conversation happened:

j^C: "What would you say if I told you that I was thinking of starting a meth lab?"
Me: "Don't get caught."
j^C: "Some moral compass you are."

Needless to say, j^C was appalled. I don't know why though. He's not going to be cooking meth anytime soon. If he was already considering recreational chemestry, I can but assume that his morals had already gone out the window. At that point there would be little I could say to change the matter. I just wouldn't want to go down with the ship. If you know what you are about to do is wrong, but you're still going to do it anyway remember - Don't. Get. Caught. Uranium J's golden rule = words to live by.

If your significant other were considering getting into the drug game, what would you say? Am I a degenerate with no scruples? What is your personal golden rule?

Disclaimer: I am in no way suggesting or promoting drug use, drug manufacturing, or general law breaking. If you are at all considering any of the preceding, I suggest you do a critical analysis of the film Scarface and then re-evaluate your position on the matter.

I Just Discovered Beth Ditto, and I am in Love

If I wore makeup, I could be this pretty. Source

Full disclosure: I am now an Amazon Affliliate, so if you want to purchase anything mentioned in the following post, there will be links at the end. This blog is the closest thing I have to a job, so if you want to shop, it'll help me. If not, that's cool too. Thanks for reading!

I want to thank Sarah Von Bargen of Yes and Yes! for turning me on to the band Gossip yesterday. I am in love with their sound and with their stunning lead singer Beth Ditto. Once again I find that I am "Johnny-Come-Lately" to something on the music scene, but that's alright. So I don't have my finger on the pulse of contemporary music anymore - that just means that when I find something new to me that I love I can have the new toy joy that all the longer.

I heard the song "Move in the Right Direction" first, on Yes and Yes!, and I was struck by this big, beautiful woman singer. Who was she? Where was she from? I assumed she was European, since the video was a compilation of Sarah's favorite songs from her current European vacation. Nay! Nay! The Gossip are home-grown Americans. Our lovely Beth Ditto is from Alabama as a matter of fact. Excited! Why these guys aren't a bigger thing stateside eludes me. Hopefully this little post will help a bit in solving that problem.

I also love grey kitties, FYI. Source

So, why am I enamored of Gossip and Beth Ditto? They are so flipping positive! It's feel good music on the level of Lady Gaga (who I think is the second coming, you will recall). Catchy tunes with a positive message sung by a lesbian singer who is clearly in love with her voluptuous figure? Yes please! Let's challenge the ideals of beauty! Let's sing about loving yourself and actually mean it! Let's say "down with body oppression"  "down with the gender binary"! (About that last bit, while Beth may be all glamorous woman, she was in a 9 year relationship with transgendered partner Freddie Fagula - so she's a girl who likes girls that look like boys who like girls who look like girls. I think.)

After looking up some information on Ms. Ditto, I discovered some pictures of her with the designer we all love to hate, Karl Lagerfeld. Now me, I love Karl Lagerfeld in a very standoffish kind of way. His cologne is amazing and his designs are nothing less than art. Sadly, despite losing a lot of weight to win the heart of some boy, Mr. Lagerfeld still carries a lot of fat angst which has caused him to say some pretty mean things, like that Adele is "a little too fat", for example. Adele, another big beautiful woman whom I love, had the grace not to care, but Beth Ditto did one better. She defended Adele in the media, called Lagerfeld out as a former fat person who still has issues, all while still appreciating his work and his talent. She even went on to say that he was a "wonderful man". That, ladies and gents, is what we call "class". Bravo, Beth Ditto. Bravo.

OK America, I'm available for covers too! Source

While I think it is fantabulous that Ms. Ditto is so comfortable in her own skin, I am not, and as such hope to some day fit into one of Karl Lagerfeld's stunning designs. I still think he can come off as a mean little man, but I've never met him and I prefer to judge not. There are people who can be over 200 pounds and remain active and healthy. I'm not one of them, and designer clothes are one of the things I am striving for on the horizon. In the meantime, I have the sexy tunes of Gossip to motivate me every forward as I  "Move in the Right Direction".

So, what do you think of my new musical find? Any thoughts on Karl Lagerfeld? What about the product links and my new affiliate-dom? Let me know in the comments, happy readers!

First Person Narrative #1 - Beer Girl by Shelley Lloyd

Shelley Lloyd 

On the weekends when my father climbed out of the bottle long enough to remember that he had a daughter living just a few hours away I would be packed up in the passenger seat of his bedraggled 1985 Chevy pick-up truck, with its faded yellow paint, rust holes, and a tailgate that brought to mind waves crashing onto the shore in the way it had become somehow deformed and stuck open. I’d ride into the wilds of Central Florida, bouncing around the cab, and clutching at the cracked dashboard with only the sound of the wind and the woosh of the tires on asphalt to entertain me between lectures. There was no radio. I wasn’t allowed to talk about my school, friends, new little brother, or my stepfather, because it was impolite to talk about things that he wasn’t a part of, so I sat in silence. I listened, to rants about how horrible my mother was, protestations of anger at this example of ignorance, or that, and the occasional lesson on Civil War battles and Southern history.

Sundays we packed up and completed the journey by venturing back into a semblance of civilization in Saint Johns County. But that was in the evening. Before I could go back to my mom, little brother, stepfather, kitty, and new puppy I had to get through the race and supper. The concept was easy, I was the Beer Girl.

My father’s bedroom was a tiny, gloomy room in the back of my grandmother’s house, next to the guest bathroom, and across from my granddad’s study. There was a daybed in the study, but Daddy told me that was for my twin cousins when they came to visit. Their mother had moved them back to Virginia before Grandma had set up the bed. Sandwiched between the bed and the wall in his room though was a faded blue plaid arm chair. The lever on the chair was heavy and wooden, making a dull thunk when you pulled on it. It was on this chair that I was meant to sit, in his lap, holding the popcorn while we watched the race. His beard would scratch my cheek when he bent down to grab his beer off of the floor, and the stench of burnt popcorn, Irish Spring and Old Spice, cheap beer and sweat threatened to choke me. The door was to be kept firmly closed. I don’t know if the windows in that back bedroom even worked. When the beer on the floor had been finished off it was my job to jump down and grab another.

Beers in the Meyers household were rotated in a very particular way. The first step meant going into Grandma’s garage. That’s where my nemesis lived. I’d creep through the door, leaping down the one step and scurrying to the fridge where there was two or more twelve packs of Bush waiting. When I snuck into the garage I never turned on the light, because it would wake IT, and so I’d ease the door to the fridge open as slowly as I could to replace the single beer in the fridge with one of the hot ones beside my feet. I managed to make the exchange and was moving on to step two (changing the beer in the freezer for the one in my hand) when a green feather fell on my little blonde head. I heard claws scratching at metal, seeking purchase on top of the fridge, and the furious beat of wings before it opened its mouth. “Petey, pretty bird. Aach! Petey, pretty bird.” I froze, not waiting to look up at the demonic being that had come to pester me once again, but being driven too as though I had no free will of my own. An oath I’d heard my stepfather mutter on more than one occasion tumbled from my lips as I backed away. Slowly. I was to the door when it opened, spilling light into the cavernous darkness. My grandmother looked more frightful than savior, with her imposing form filling up the doorway. As tall and dark as any Cherokee maiden in the stories my aunt had told me when she thought I was too young to remember, her black hair was pulled back in a slapdash fashion and her dark eyes flashed as she attempted to comfort both me and her demonic pet. I didn’t stick around though, I darted past her, fearful Petey would follow. My socks slipped on the linoleum flooring of the kitchen, and I thought my hand would fall off the beer it was clutching was so cold. I quickly switched it with the beer in the kitchen fridge and hightailed it back to my father’s room, where it was safer. There were no birds allowed in his room.  

***

Today's First Person Narrative comes from my good friend Shelley Lloyd who is currently pursuing her B.A. in Creative Writing at my former Alma Mater, the University of West Florida. Like me, she is a Southern girl who grew up in North Florida, with her roots in South  Carolina. The above piece was written for one of her writing classes, but it's especially meaningful to me because I remember her telling this very same story when I first met her eight years ago. Here at First Person Narrative, we are all about preserving the oral histories of everyday people by writing them down and bringing them to the masses. So here I am, a 21st century Bede, and Shelly is my very first Caedmon. I hope you all enjoyed this feature. I know I did!

If you have a story you would like to share, please contact me at joyce.ann.underwood@gmail.com. 

For more writing by Shelley Lloyd, check out her new blog at http://offtopicbut.blogspot.com/ or follow her on Twitter @wildeparadox!