Random dumb thoughts

This page is to put those little weirdnesses of life that don't really fit anywhere else, or aren't worth a page of their own

Saturday, June 28, 2003

Here's one for the "what the hell are they thinking?" files. This afternoon, I am heading out to a birthday party for a two-year-old. I had asked his mother "what does he want or need", and she said the kid had so many toys that books would be nice. The boy's father likes to read to him and act things out. So yesterday I head over to BigBoxBookstore and look around the book section. I'm wandering around, being a bit confused, because there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason how little kid's books are grouped. I'm coming across all kinds of books like "Izzy the Farting Dog", "Joey Has Two Mommies", and "LaKwaNzia's Glorious Kinky Hair" (okay, not the exact titles, but really close) and wondering where all the nice basic books for small kids are. I found Clifford, Seuss and Curious George, but I know this kid has those.

So I'm thinking and thinking and suddenly a lightbulb goes off -- I'm going to get this kid a copy of my favorite picture book, ever. I'm going to get Richard Scarry's "What Do People Do All Day". This is a glorious book with wonderful illustrations, that has many many stories set in various countries around the world, but animals are the actors. For example, there are "Flip and Flop, the Greek Painters" -- two little pigs that get confused about which way they're painting the house -- white with blue windows, or blue with white windows, so the house has two sides one way, and two sides the other. They're great little stories that would be easy to act out (and I would pay biiiiiig money to see this kid's father act them out -- we go back a ways) with wonderful pictures. I still read through my copy when I'm up at my parent's house when I come across the book.

So I finally locate this book in BigBoxStore. I'm really excited, but the book looks a little thin. Lo and behold, there on the front cover it says "abridged edition". "Abridged"? What's up with that? I decide not to get that one, but get another Richard Scarry storybook, which has some of the What Do People Do All Day stories, but other things thrown in as well.

I get home and look on the internet, and you can't find an original 1968 copy for love or money, only the new abridged ones. I bet I know what happened. Some genius in "marketing" looked at the books and must have decided that some of the stories were too "stereotypical" and "offensive", and deleted them from the edition. So the message to the world is that homosexuality, flatulent dogs and stories that introduce racism by making sure to point out in Big Bold Letters that so-and-so is Very Different, and probably Odd, are okay topics for little kids, but a Siamese cat is too offensive.

Argh. I better call my mother and tell her to make sure not to touch my Richard Scarry books, because you can't get new copies.

.: posted by Lily Saturday, June 28, 2003

Okay -- the comments are fixed, and please note the new addition to this page -- my weatherpixie is now at the very bottom of this page, and in honor of the summer, I have decided to go red. A girl deserves a change, doesn't she? But just in case you still jones for the old weatherpixie, have no fear, she's still available on my home page. If I'm more inspired later in the day, I may just change the template entirely on the blog, but I'm still a fan of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", so it may still remain this lovely shade of puke green.

**Addendum, as you can tell, the puke green is now gone. On my system, it's kind of a pinky-purple. If you see something completely different, let me know -- I have had some very interesting Mac/PC color disconnects in the past.

.: posted by Lily Saturday, June 28, 2003

This new blogger is not getting high marks from me. I finally got things to post yesterday, but I've noticed that anyone using the combination of Blogger and YACCS comments, the comments counter no longer works. For example, the entry below shows zero comments, but people have politely commented in there. A shout out to Feffer -- hey, I see you now -- you did great! Same thing in Bet's blog -- I can see that she has comments, but it shows that no one has commented when in fact there are people conversing.

Well, school's out; fairly anti-climactic. No fanfare, just the way I like it. A friend did pop by my apartment just as I was starting this blog earlier, and we went out to dinner. We wound up going to this hole-in-the-wall Tex-Mex place with really good food. As we drove up, I realized that this was the place that W. himself has been known to bring people to dinner. Think what you like about the man's policies, but he ain't pretentious, that's for sure. Not a lot of "power dining" in this place. Vinyl tablecloths, entire meals for under ten bucks. The food was some of the better Mexican around here -- my friend had a burrito with fajita meat. Nice burrito -- the inside was just a nice quantity of tender, moist, well seasoned flank steak -- not a little bit of dry, chewy meat surrounded by loads of beans and rice. Covered, but not doused, in melted cheese and a nice sauce. On its own (no "platter"), around $4.50. Good chips, good salsa. I had the special, which was grilled chicken and fried yuca with a nice cabbage salad. Price -- $6.50. The entire meal for two people, with drinks and a dessert - $17.50.
I've never been much of a Tex-Mex/Latin American food person, but there's a huge Latino community in this area, and now that my friend has come to town, and she really likes that kind of food, we've been eating in a bunch of these hole-in-the-wall places. I'm getting to like it better, and now that I've had the authentic stuff, I really understand why I never liked the "Old El Paso/Taco Bell" versions of "Mexican" food. I think I'm gravitating towards the Central American variant on this food, but time will tell. There's a whole lot more restaurants to try.

.: posted by Lily Saturday, June 28, 2003

Thursday, June 26, 2003

Tomorrow is a throwback to my childhood -- the last day of school. I'm switching assignments, so today was spent cleaning out my desk, packing things up, returning folders and files, etc. Everything is now moved, cleaned and thrown away -- I have a pen and post-it notes at my desk and not much else. So tomorrow it's going to be reminiscent of going in on the last day, and waiting for the teacher to let us out. Only in this case, I think a nice lunch will be in order. What's even weirder is that it will be the last day of school for some kids around here, whose school year went longer because of the awful snow and ice we had this winter. So we'll all be running around throwing papers in the air at the same time.

Also, Blogger is now completely reformatted. Let's see if this works.

*So far, not too well. Let's try this again.

.: posted by Lily Thursday, June 26, 2003

Sunday, June 22, 2003

And for today's reading pleasure -- a list of Lily's most-hated gym machines.

1. The non-recumbent bike. I don't know how any machine that you can use while actually sitting down can manage to be so #$@! uncomfortable. Just which descendant of the Marquis de Sade designed the basic bike seat? I can only assume that men find it just that slight bit even more uncomfortable than we women do.

2. The old treadmill. There's no where to plop down my discman or water bottle, so I don't even bother to get on it. If it's the only machine available, I head over to the weight machine instead. I've fallen off this one twice, and I'm not going to let it get me anymore.

3. The rower. There are times that I don't mind the rower -- you can do it from the seated position -- but this one is so low to the ground, and the awful grey carpet is musty and smells bad. I don't like being that low to the ground, especially as it's rather too close to some of the other machines, so if there are other people using the other machines, I always feel like they're all about to start jogging on my head.

4. The elliptical trainer. At least this is not a proper stair-stepper, so it's marginally better. This little bastard is quite deceptive. You get on and start moving -- no big deal, it seems, so you set the machine for thirty minutes. Somewhere around minute eight -- WHAM. And it's a downhill (well, uphill actually) battle from there.

5. The new treadmill. I hate this one, because there are so many counters on it, it keeps me on it for the full thirty minutes, full tilt. Just as I'm about to put the speed way down, I look down and some factor (mileage, calories, time) is always really close to a whole number, so I make myself keep going until that counter flips over. Something about being compulsive, I guess. By that time something else is about to go, so onward. So whereas I might get through three miles in the half hour, I hate the little bastard so much that I'm filled with such rage when I get off that I inevitably throw something. I still don't know who came up with the idea that exercise makes you feel better. That's a big fat lie, perpetuated by the health nazis, I assume.

6. The recumbent bike. This puppy needs new batteries, and some kind of arm rest so I can stabilize my arms to hold a book steady so I don't get seasick on the thing. It also gets a bit wearing on the knees.

You've guessed it -- that's all of them, folks -- at least the ones in my building. A really impressive list would one generated from a fitness center on a military base. Lots and lots more to hate there, although the one on the Air Force base where I lived did have the universal gym circuit of weight machines -- the one set of gym equipment I rather liked, although it meant trips there at 2 am in order to be able to go through the circuit without having to share or wait. I know many people view going to the gym as a social event, I view it as a complete waste of a period of time in my life that can never be regained, so I want to get it over with as quickly as possible and am not interested in chit chat.

Before you say "just don't bother" -- I've tried that. If the weather actually gets substantially better and the bike/jogging trails and divest themselves of their layers of mud and puddles, I will resume the "weekend walkabouts". Until then, it's to the gym.

However, there are a few songs that make the machines bearable -- I can actually get into some kind of rhythm with them and zone out that particular three or four minutes. At the moment I nominate two songs for "kickass-at-the-gym-on-some mind-numbingly-repetitive-machine" award. The first runner up: "All My Life" by the Fighters of Foo. The overall winner by a long shot is....."C'Mon Every Beatbox" by Big Audio Dynamite. I think it has something to do with the screaming.

.: posted by Lily Sunday, June 22, 2003

Comments by: YACCS