a round of champagne and funyuns for all my friends
It’s my birthday! I have tea and a cheesecake-topped brownie and three iTunes gift cards for a downloading binge (shout-out to my teenage cousins, for whom the cards were originally meant: if you don’t show up at the party, you don’t get any gifts). I am also surrounded by a swirl of activity, which is a little weird. The cleaning person is here doing her twice-monthly thing, the nanny came to take Nora away somewhere fabulous (more on this in a moment), and the electrician is stomping around with big muddy boots (sorry cleaning person) and replacing some of the hideous light fixtures that came with this house. I feel a bit like a Victorian Lady of the Manor giving directions to the Tradespeople. Use the back entrance, please. Wipe your feet. An extra shilling for you, ‘tis the Christmas season.
On the one hand I am happy that this stuff is getting done—a clean house and non-hideous lighting are both good things—but on the other I am getting cranky because I’m HUNGRY and I don’t feel comfortable chowing on a gigantic sandwich where there are people here working for a living. Oh boo hoo, wrist to forehead, I have no real problems whatsoever.
So as to the whereabouts of my little hood rat: she is at an indoor skate park. With her deck, and her pads, and her helmet, and today is Girls Skate Free day which she thinks is hilarious. Santa brought the skateboard (featuring a fire-breathing dragon and wheels with flames) and Nora pretty much has not stopped carrying it around since. She gets up in the morning and puts on all the gear. Is breakfast really going to be that dangerous to life and limb? Because you look kind of silly eating a bagel with full pads and wrist guards. Thank goodness for indoor skate parks, though, it sure beats sighing dramatically and wishing for spring and postulating that the sidewalks don’t look TOO icy, and maybe skateboarding would work in the snow after all, etc.
TELEVISED FOOTBALL THINGS I HATE
Brett Favre holy christ SHUT UP ABOUT BRETT FARVE. Dear Mr Favre: You are an elderly penis-photo-texting hillbilly. Go ride your tractor.
Playoff talk in which someone says that a team “controls their own destiny.” Please read some Euripides because you can’t control destiny. That is the very definition of destiny.
Constant repetition of the words “National Football League.” In case any viewers were confused about whether they were in Canada.
TELEVISED FOOTBALL THINGS I LOVE
Clearly visible (even to the novice lip-reader) expletives from a coach during a sideline shot.
When a giant defensive dude gets an interception and takes it to the end zone. He clearly has no idea how to run or really even to hold the football, and he just sort of rumbles on down to the touchdown looking ridiculous. I like how the whole team seems to get a huge kick out of a non-scorer making a score.
OH REALLY
Have you heard of this “alignment” schema? Chaotic good, neutral evil, etc? I hear this referenced sometimes, most recently in this great graphic about The Wire. (Oh! Just looking at that makes me so nostalgic for the show. I know I can watch it again but nothing will compare to the first time.)
Anyway, every time this formula comes up I idly wonder about its origins, but I never remember to Google it or anything. In the back of my head I had assumed it was invented by some philosopher, and my brain usually went to either Nietzsche or Spinoza because (a) it made a certain amount of intellectual sense, and (b) I have not studied or read either of those guys in depth.
You know where this is going, of course, but you cannot imagine my outrage when I finally get around to Wikipedia and find out that it comes from GODDAMN DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS, and I cannot believe I devoted brainpower to feeling inferior about not being aware of a philosophical algorithm that seemed so widespread. If I had been thinking clearly, the very fact of its being widespread and pop-culture-applicable might have tipped me off that maybe the source text was not SPINOZA, for crying out loud. Maybe I really am as dumb as I look.
IT IS GOOD TO HAVE GOALS
Although unlike Nora, mine do not involve gaining weight. My mother got us a scale for Christmas, a present about which I am still not sure how I feel, and now Nora is obsessed with weighing fifty pounds before she turns eight years old. She has six pounds and about one more month to go, so I should probably stock up on lard or something. And lay off the skateboarding! Video games only, please!
—mimi smartypants, birthday girl.