RAWR!

'appy 'alloween, killer zombie drac cats!

if your tongue isn't coated with smartie dust yet, consider yourself a hallo-weenie. i've already moved on to getting ill on starburst two-packs and tootsie roll midgies.

and rawr has certifiably ditched its cub status: i created it three (seemingly stretched-out) years ago. one of the first posts:

happy halloween, lions. halloween is a strange holiday, even for a holiday. its american name, a version of "all hallows eve," connects it to the roman catholic observance of the night before all saints day (see, you were supposed to make the night before "hallow" to prepare yourself for, um, saint stuff). all saints day got started when some bratty roman catholics (note to lions: not all catholics were or are currently bratty) decided to make something up to replace the pagan festival called feralia, which was held to honor the dead (and, presumably, to drink lots of mead).

but really what we do on halloween doesn't come from that festival, either. it comes from another pagan freak-out: samhain. samhain, which can only be properly pronounced by a drunk scottish ghost, was all about harvest being over, the days getting shorter, the food being plentiful, and the dead being antsy. i'm betting pumpkins were involved.

i should probably offer some concise reflection on how my life has changed in the last three years, or how the themes and tone of rawr have shifted. i should at least add a postscript about how these popular albino pumpkins are a mockery of everything that's decent and orange. but, you know, all this typing is getting in the way of candy wrapper removing.

[ruffle my mane and leave some comments, costumers!]

i’ll be at this temp job for another week, which is both depressing and comforting. depressing because i’ve already been here eleven weeks instead of the originally proposed four—and because i’ll probably just shift to another temp gig when this one ends instead of librarian-ing somewhere. comforting because . . . well, because it’s ever so agreeable to be able to pay rent.

one plus of working downtown (and there are more than i would’ve guessed or owned up to three months ago) is that it means jennie and i can share a commute in the mornings. she already has to motor down lakeshore to hit i-55 toward maywood, so i tag along about half-way, until we pull up behind the art institute. i like avoiding the red line (and red liners), and jennie likes that i do the driving through the oft-perilous LSD traffic.

and we both like the opportunity to actually see each other at least once a day—because living together doesn’t really guarantee that happens otherwise. jen has a lot going on and i—well, i don’t, but i manage to regularly fill up my evenings. so we appreciate the 40 minutes of enforced hanging out, even if at least one of us is always sleep-crusted, under-drugged or crabby.

+  +  +

sox sox soxxy soxxy sox sox!

any event that makes my city so swollen with pride (except for wrigleyville, which can go piss in an alley), makes me feel obliged to eat a lot of corn dogs/hot dogs/brats, and makes skyscrapers spell things out with their windows at night is awe-some!

kim's response to yesterday's post [i.e., i'm too lazy to write anything original this morning, and hope he doesn't mind my ripping off his email]:

I tried that BBC quiz out and it said I was an 'interpersonal thinker' and should be a politician or a counsellor. I knew that was wrong and that I must have lied a couple of times. So I did it again and came out the same as you that time--'linguistic thinker.'

The problem with those quizzes is they ask things like if you wonder what other people are thinking all the time and if you say yes, all the time, they assume you care what other people think, or that you're nice.

They may as well just describe the types and let you pick yourself out. I think I'm a 'grouchy thinker.'

though i'm not asked to think much during the work day, i'll claim to being a pretty regular thinker otherwise. and now, thanks to this gentle bbc quiz, i know what type of thinker i am:

you are a linguistic thinker. you like to use language to express complex ideas. you appreciate the sounds and rythyms as well as the meanings of words. you prefer discussion to introspection. other linguistic thinkers: william shakespeare, sylvia plath, anne frank. professions suited to linguistic thinkers: journalist, librarian, salesman, proof-reader, poet.

spot-on, eh?

i'm no mathy poo, but when life gets frustratingly static, i do like to compile personal statistics. crunching numbers creates a sense of control and progress--even if the numbers themselves point damningly to chaos and regress. often enough, i can be comforted just by the indication of change.

current RoryStats . . .

days since i've seen kim and gritty: 98

total days i've lived with kim: 678

total days i've lived with gritty: 522

weeks since i've been employed as a librarian: 25

total weeks i worked as a librarian: 72

percentage of body weight i'm attempting to get rid of: 18.9

percentage more income i'd need per month to break even: 13.4

last weekend was knox college’s homecoming. i motored downstate with brynn to join in the awkward fun (and fun awkwardness). though i’ve been back to galesburg a record number of times in the last few months, i’ve not actually set foot on the twenty-acre campus that was my whole world for four years.

i wanted to see how it had changed physically--were all my favorite magnolia trees still there? (yes.) i wanted to meet up with some of my favorite professors--would george steckley be overcome with fond memories of my in-class genius/wit and invite me over for a barbecue? (no.) and i wanted to introduce myself to five-month-old arlo, the first child produced by a good knox friend—would that be odd? (not really--lilly’s an easy, natural mother, and she birthed a beautiful kid. i confess, though, to being immaturely stunned by all the NIPPLE involved in keeping arlo happily gurgling.)

it was great to see missy and her man, kirsten and hers, rachel (whose man has a girly name that starts with a “k,” too, teehee) and kree and some of my favorite chicago exports. i didn’t randomly see nearly as many familiar friendly-types as i had expected, but that was okay--my current story isn’t as fab and showoffable as i hope it'll be next year.

and i was happy to note that the current students seemed to resent us wandering alumni as much as we always used to resent on-campus alumni: it indicated that hothouse sense of hello-we're-transforming-ourselves-here that a small liberal arts campus needs to thrive.

my favorite homecoming moment actually happened off-campus: four of us returning to our room in the old ramada inn, fatigued from touring formerly off-limit buildings and making small talk with half-acquaintances and grazing hospitality tables. each of us wanted to collapse on the bed--so each of us did, making a grid of worn-out women on the king-size mattress. through the open balcony door, the honeyed afternoon light was just diffusing into a turquoise evening.

we lay there silent for a long minute. four women who'd met eight years earlier. all coming from (what felt like) very different places, sharing nothing but a dorm assignment. in that drowsy moment last weekend, it was humbling to reflect on how much we've shared since.

the most persuasive argument for the awesomeness of the Interwebway? that you can't feel too creepy about being obsessed with some obscure famous son . . . if lots of other people seem to be obsessed, too.

+  +  +

i miss reading the guardian in print, but its online version is a singular treat, too. i scan the book/society/media/politics sections and read half the G2 columns every morning. yesterday morning, though, i got stuck on the top headline. the paper’s main baghdad correspondent, rory carroll, has been abducted.

while living in london, i always noticed mr. carroll’s byline—it tickled me to see my uncommon first name on the front page of my favorite newspaper. and his stories usually were on the front page, especially during the most intense, divisive stages of the war in iraq. i always imagined rory as a strapping young irishman with soft, intelligent eyes. (hey, i get quite imaginative while reading on long commutes, okay?) anyway, according to the photos released by the guardian, i was actually right about what he looks like.

and now he’s missing, after being kidnapped at gunpoint while interviewing a family about saddam's trial. i’m really moved by this. partly it’s because kim’s a journalist, and i’m sickened by the danger that some in his profession must face. partly it’s just the sentimental, silly name connection. but mostly i’m anxious for rory’s safety because i feel like i owe him at least that. his reporting—and his courage, i guess—has done so much to inform my own perspective on the war and occupation. so i'm really rooting for rory's release. if he's okay, the guardian ought to let him cover, say, hawaii for awhile.

[amendment, five hours later: phew!]

i recently got all ingenious and signed up for an extended free trial at an extravagantly appointed gym. i could never, ever afford to actually join this place (nor could anyone i know), but until november 22, my sweaty saunter will be as welcome as any real member’s. which is a relief—as i’m definitely the Rory With Extra Chunks version of myself right now.

+  +  + 

every once in an orange moon, a high school administrator displays some magnificent decision-making. if only the authorities at union had squashed my senior prom: i could have been saved from the indignity of black "satin" gloves and trying to "party" at a ramshackle day's inn afterwards.

gee golly! i never realized how sweet n' sunny the shining could be, if edited just right. [just be patient for a couple of minutes while this downloads (and have the sound on your 'puter turned up)--i swear on steve martin's eyebrows that this clip is worth the wait.]

how many rawrsters' moms bought horses this week? oh, really? that few?

well, mine did. he's an arabian gelding named stormy. (i try not to think about what "gelding" means and think she should follow her instincts and call him "sugar"):

+  +  +

okay, cipher-crunching cats, can you guess who's described below?

the ruler of the world and the ruler of the home who hails from the field of wild garlic

find the answer here, a most excellent use of a baby names book.

+  +  +

i'm not a baseball (or any ball) fan, but i can sometimes be a fair-weather fickler. it helps when a close friend infects me with their over-informed ardor for a certain team. lately, that friend has been sarah, and that team has been the white sox.

last night i even convinced some co-oppers to eat their dinner with me in front of the tv so we'd none of us miss the game. and after the ninth-inning oh-no-he-didn't drama, i think the house might need to buy some tv trays in bulk.

+  +  +

oh, me so crusty. i feel like i took a vodka spray-shower at three a.m. and then went to bed with my hair still wet. while what i really did was sip some almond tea and read a book until midnight--so i'm not at all sure why i'm feeling so poorly.

but anyway i'll claim my current rough state as an excuse for linking to this tasteless article about quote-unquote toads.