RAWR!

strange how changing the part in your hair can seem such an extreme shift. i’m experimenting with a straight-down-da-middle divide (bangs included) and feel like my head’s been re-torqued.

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mmm, fall. i wish the northern hemisphere would retire spring and double up on autumn. it’s a fortifying, comfortable couple of months, during which i somehow feel more confident than usual.

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owls are hot right now. we’re talking in-in-in. i spend six hours a day scratching the internet for information like this, so trust me.

while a parliament of us braved the muddy terrain of the renegade craft fair on sunday, i couldn’t resist pointing out all the owl motifs. i guess i over-made my point, since later brynn felt obliged to send me this supplementary comment (scroll down) on how owls rate.

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a new tab rag with an introductory price of a buck-eighty-nine? sold. i’ve been flipping through celebrity living this morning. now, i’m a real discriminating dora when it comes to this sort of publication—and here's my review:

double-spread coverage of astonishingly minging and/or magnificent frocks:

four rawrs (out of four)

mine-deep analysis of why renee and kenny broke it off:

one rawr (no progress report regarding jack white’s amazon-spoof revenge marriage)

keeping the "desperate housewives" and "apprentice" previews to the barest minimum:

two rawrs

photo essay evidence of b-list stars’ rubbish interior design taste:

three rawrs (sleb personal trainer jillian michaels prefers wicker to teak—hah!)

readability (that is, more-than-occasional use of complete sentences):

three rawrs

"lymphatic involvement often is manifested by overlying skin strea king and regional lymphadenopathy. more severe infections may exhibit numerous vesicles and bullae along with petechiae and even frank necrosis."

frank necrosis? zoiks! i'm not sure if kim's in real danger of this formidable phrase, but he has been diagnosed with eysipelas (partially described above), tradionally known as st. anthony's fire. my first reaction to the news was I TOLD HIM IT WASN'T THE FLU. my second, almost-simultaneous reaction was: oh, why am i here and he there?

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"right now, fat people and sex freaks have more civil rights than blonds. BFB [Blonds From Birth] and all blond people must fight that."

uh-oh. now i'm feeling all contrite. i've never once given thought to the stark struggles Blonds face. i even thought "blond" was spelled with an "e" at the end. i hope mom/molly/abi/joe/agnes/kerry/alison/grandma/kara/any other butter-haired type i know will find the grace to forgive me.

oatmeal's already a pretty cute food. i mean, it's all gloopy and cheery and harmless. but apparently there is a way to make oatmeal even cuter: add jeff tweedy's kids.

sheesh. i just noticed how long it's been since i posted. here's some short-cut-catch-ups . . .

saw beck last night. the opening band was rubbish, the crowd wouldn't shuddup (even when mr. hanson accoustically covered the lips' "do you realize"), and beck patently refused to make out with me. still, a most triumphant wednesday evening.

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while walking to work yesterday, i noticed a narrow-suited man kneeling on the sidewalk. he was protectively hovering over something on the ground. i assumed his briefcase's handle had broken or something. then i noticed he was shouting over his shouder, upwards, to nobody. so i assumed he was a well-dressed nutroller. but when i was close enough to pass him, i noticed that what he was protecting was a small bird with a mangled wing. and he was actually shouting at a window washer many stories up. they were holler-discussing how best to save the bird. me and big assumptions.

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on monday, i went on a juice fast. it wasn't as hard as i expected, though i'm not so into the mechanics (i'd rather just suck the guts out of an orange than properly juice it). but when i woke up early tuesday morning shivering and upchucky, i re-thought my approach to natural health. now i'm doing more of a raw-foods-put-down-that-soda diet. it feels pretty good. tell me i look great the next time you see me, okay?

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nope, i'm still not employed as a librarian. kim still lives in another country. i'm still a guest at the co-op. i'm still broke and still chubby and still feeling more than a little powerless. good thing i'm such a naturally patient person.

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my grandma winbigler's funeral last weekend was actually one of the better family get-togethers i can remember. for several years, i've felt my connection to that branch of the family atrophy. not because of bad blood, really--mostly because of geographic distance and the sad pressure of grandma's illness. but last weekend was full of reunion, affection and what felt a lot like renewal.

my grandma winbigler died yesterday. i’m relieved that jennie’s letting me borrow her car so i can attend the visitation and funeral this weekend. i’m also relieved that grandma winbigler is finally gone.

she’s really my step-grandmother, my mom’s husband’s mom. and although i think of her as “grandma winbigler” in my head, i’ve always addressed her as “barbara.” not because i don’t love her; but it’s hard to start calling someone by a familial endearment when you’re 15.

she was easy to love, generous and good-natured. i’d usually see her on sundays, when she’d make a full, scrumpy brunch. egg-and-sausage casserole. cinnamon rolls from danner’s bakery. grapes and wheat toast and bacon. she and her husband, hugh, never made me feel like an interloper, or anything less that a grandchild deserving affection. i loved that she would buy birthday cards and hugh would insert $20, and write out the subtraction of years in the corner to designate how old you were. 

mom and john (and abi and joey, and aubrey and molly) eventually moved out of galesburg to live on the same farmstead as hugh and barb. i still saw the grandparents less, though, because i was at college and didn’t have time for much that required a 25-minute drive. eventually, i heard and occasionally witnessed that barb was getting very forgetful, a bit spacey, and seemed less cheerful than was natural for her. it was hard not to suspect alzheimer’s—but it was much harder to know what to do when the disease was eventually confirmed. hugh, especially, went into denial.

soon enough, as far back as five years ago, barb was in the late stages of the disease. i can’t recall the last time she recognized me, or even smiled. she suffered longer than most people, even seemed like a case study for prolonged symptoms. her most common expression was one of watery fear. that was the worst: not being able to reassure her. alzheimer’s is especially cruel because it makes you forget everything except the fact that your mind is failing. hugh never accepted that barbara wasn’t just being stubborn; and he lost his own steel grasp of reality and responsibility.

so i’m glad grandma winbigler is gone. she left a long time ago, and deserves peace.

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if reuters if reporting on it, it can't be a hoaxy picture, can it? and an image like this would, after all, explain the tragically slow authorization process of katrina aid.

apparently, england's gone (considerably more) mad (than usual) for cricket in the two months since i left. even kim's made time to watch a few matches, despite the grand prix racing season not yet being over. and now there's definite reason for even fair-weather cricket fans to whoop it up: england just won The Ashes.

though i always enjoyed getting caught up in UK crazes, i'm not sure i could have kept up with this one. what i know about cricket fits into one clumsy compound sentence: as a cricket player, you must wear all white, you must beat australia, and you must whack a ball or something with a board or something.

seriously, can you decipher what this recap, from the guardian, is going on about?

"At one stage, England were wobbling at 127 for five and the Australians were circling, expecting the kill. Instead Pietersen took the fight to them - thrashing 38 runs off five overs after lunch in a display of belligerent, counter-attacking batting that will live long in the memory. He rode his luck - he was dropped three times - but fully deserved his maiden Test century, which included 15 fours and an Ashes-record seven sixes. Rightly, he was named man of the match."

someone "fully deserved his maiden test century"? what could that possibly mean?

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nothing's quite so inspirational as old-fashioned diet tips from steve martin.

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the chicago public library announced last week that the new one book one chicago is pride and prejudice.

i’m, you know, okay with this. it’s a classic novel, well-wrought and often delightful. [i mean: oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy.]

when i first saw the 1995 mini-series*, i hadn’t yet read the book. i’m not sure i’d read any austen. but by the time colin firth’s darcy declared that “and to all this a fine woman must yet add something more substantial—in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading,” i was savoring the original text.

i’m not fully convinced that P&P is a spot-on selection for a chicago-specific, chicago-wide reading program. plenty of would-be readers will suspect that something written so long ago, by a woman, and about marriage, couldn’t be much more than over-stuffed fluff. i’m curious how CPL plans to promote it to people not in the “hey, bridget jones’s diary was loosely based on this!” crowd.**

mare daley uses this approach in supporting the book:

“In addition to being a great read, this One Book, One Chicago selection acknowledges the long-standing connection between Chicago and the United Kingdom. The Chicago Public Library was founded through a donation of books from England following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the British Consulate General in Chicago. Pride and Prejudice honors this continuing friendship.”***

* all 300 minutes of which is being screened next month at sulzer regional library! who wants to be my date? be forewarned that i’ll want to arrive ten hours early to assure a decent seat and will probably repeatedly exclaim, “oh mr. bingley!”

** hey, it just occurred to me: maybe i should try to get a job with CPL!

*** i suppose i’m doing my part, as well, to nurture “the long-standing connection between chicago and the united kingdom.” though the british consulate general—along with the american embassy in london—can bite me.

as someone who sends more text messages than the average (american) person, i was a tiny bit indignant to read this story about jurors in hot water for texting each other during a trial. come on, what's the problem? i mean, really. they're obviously not the sort to pay close attention, anyway. and they weren't exchanging case-related secrets. and they were being quiet. sheesh.

i might not be able to live in the co-op past the end of this month, so i've been cruising craigslist looking for potential short-term room rentals. this ad is the sort to make me wonder if i wouldn't be better off renting a camper van and sleeping in humboldt park.

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i just spent a couple of hair-frizzing hours walking around downtown, hand-delivering (as opposed to, say, nose-delivering) some invitations. almost everyone who received these invitations (i mean, who had their receptionist receive these invites) was an investment banker or finance lawyer. which made sense because who else would be interested in the "structured sales investment lecture and social hour" embossed on the invite's high-grade parchment?

while i was stuffing the invites into their thick, cream-colored envelopes, i couldn't help but read the personal notes written by my temp company's president. for 60 separate invites, there were only five different messages:

"what's this i hear about your improved golf game?"
"hope you can make it: i need some rich guys to attend!"
"let's schedule a teeing-off time soon!"
"hope you can make it: i need some cute girls to attend!"
"golf soon?"

the last was my favorite, because he took the time to add tiny dots to the three "o"s, making them look like golf balls. this man makes 25 times more than i ever will.

wowzers: what a lineup. sure, it's in the wilds of the west loop and hosted by columbia college, but who wants to come to this awe-some exhibit with me?

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"and so many of the people in the [astrodome], you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them." --barbara bush

what a disgusting thing to say. yet, it's almost a relief to be disgusted by a different bush once in awhile.

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to this ticklish list, i'd add: hopping into the lion's enclosure at lincoln park zoo, with pockets full of antelope jerky.

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i've been going on about this for years; now there's finally a society to support my mania. burn in font hell, comic sans!

the footage and news from new orleans is getting worse and worse. it's like "mad max" only without mel gibson's mullet to giggle at. walking to work this morning, i thought the trib's hard copy hedder of "thousands dead in lawless city" was OTT at best.

but now, after reading/watching/hearing first-hand reports like these, i think it's true: the big easy is dying.

i want to help but am at a loss. i can't send money--and i'm not sure that's what's needed most right now anyway. if our co-op wasn't a 16-hour drive away from the affected area, i'd ask the other members if we could offer up a couple of our spare rooms. i can't imagine struggling in the anarchy of the superdome hoping only to survive until you're herded into the astrodome.

if there's anything you rawrsters can think to do, i hope you do it.

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on the phone with kim yesterday:

r: so, when people ask when you’ll get to move over here, what do you say?

k: i say christmas.

r: oh, that’s too far away. why not just say easter? i say thanksgiving.

k: it doesn’t matter what i say—people keep asking again and again.

r: it also doesn't matter what we say because we don’t, you know, have any say.

k: but i hope by christmas.

r: sometimes i say halloween.

k: are you crazy?

r: yes.