Tuesday, May 25, 2004

05/25/04’s illustrious band:

Bunnysuckle


Brought to you by Frere Rabbit, the Backyard Bunny.


As I’ve mentioned before, a family of rabbits lives under the shed in the backyard of Sensational Acres, my sprawling country estate. Yesterday Mother Media observed one of the adults taking his breakfast in a most amusing fashion. He chose, among the zillions of gone-to-seed dandelions in the front yard, the one with the most succulent stem. He bit it off at ground level and then smoothly nibble-slurped up the entire stalk, just like a person slucking spaghetti. Look, Ma, no hands! He sneezed away the poofy seeds and moved on to the next dandelion delicacy.


And all this time I thought I was cool because I could whistle.


Today around the world: May 25 is Organization of African Unity Day in Africa and National Missing Children’s Day in the U.S.


It’s also Towel Day here in America in tribute to Douglas Adams, author of the sci-fi/humor classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He believed, and rightly so, that “A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.” Thumbs up, Doug!


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Monday, May 24, 2004

05/24/04’s illustrious band:

Materteral


Brought to you by A Word A Day (www.wordsmith.org) .


"Materteral (muh-TUHR-tuhr-uhl) adjective, also materterine


Characteristic of, or in the manner of, an aunt.


[From classical Latin matertera (maternal aunt), from mater (mother).]



This word is the feminine counterpart of the word avuncular (like an uncle). The word materteral has its origin in maternal aunt, but now it could be applied to aunts on both sides, just as the word aunt originally meant paternal aunt, from Latin amita (father's sister), from amare (to love), but now applies to aunts of all kinds."


That's me -- Materteral Media. I can't wait to become Super Aunt to Sister-san and Chef Jeff's baby, due in September. Mother Media and I have taken to referring to this future child as Bob, since we won't know until Birth Day whether I have a niece or a nephew. I realize that Bob sounds like a boy's name, but in our family, Bob is the name for anyone you don't really know, but want to refer to in a not-impersonal way. I mean, we can't call the kid "it," can we? Nor Cletus the Fetus, like my friends Mark and Paula did when they were expecting. And the generic Baby is already overdone. So Bob it is until we hear otherwise.


Mother Media, soon to be Grandmother Media, is spending a couple weeks with me here at Sensational Acres, in case you hadn't heard. She and I have already done some shopping for Bob at the finest European clothing establishment the Mall of America has to offer. I'm learning a whole new materteral vocabulary. I now know what a onesie is, for instance, and that you shouldn't call a onesie a singlet, because that's what wrestlers wear. Both often come with cranial accessories; the onesie looks good with a primary-colored sun bonnet, while the singlet requires regulation headgear modeled after Princess Leia's hair.


Stay tuned next week, when your humble, materteral narrator expounds upon the finer points of footies vs. sockies.


Today around the world: May 24 is Day of Slavonic Script (Education Day) in Bulgaria. I knew a Bulgarian couple once: Todor and Latinka. Todor, a bosom buddy of my ex-husband's, was a pompous, oily, alcoholic, smoke-spewing jackass. The lovely Latinka, his unfortunate wife, was super-smart, softspoken in half a dozen languages, and a timid driver. She also smoked, but I still liked her a heck of a lot better than her husband. They had us over for New Year's Eve one time and served pickled fish and some other salty stuff, and vodka. And nothing else. Wow. I lost track of them when I split with my ex. I hope Latinka has left Todor by now and started her own international Internet design company or something.


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Wednesday, May 19, 2004

05/19/04’s illustrious band:

Not Just Me


Brought to you by BandName.com, et. al.


And here I thought I was being so creative. But apparently I’m not the only person who sits around and thinks up names for bands that don’t exist. If you go to BlogWeb.org, a simple search for “band name” will bring up at least four band name-related blogs (out of 3 million blogs registered with the site), including mine. Typing “band name of the day” into Google’s search yielded 316 hits today, including one on my blog. A similar Yahoo search resulted in 714 hits, the first two of which were my blog. (Lots of repeats in that list.) I must be one heck of a trendsetter.


Today is the day Mother Media arrives for a two-week visit. I’m excited! We’ve got a lot of things planned, some of which MM is aware of and some she’s not. The main goal is to get some painting done at Sensational Acres, and maybe some weeding in the yard. We’ll also be borrowing a pickup and transporting some bookshelves, applying for a passport for me, attending a Nia dance/exercise class (optional for MM) and at least one T’ai Chi class (also optional). We’ll do some walking and/or biking around the local lakes and rivers if the weather isn’t too lousy -- although after checking the prognosis on Weather.com, I’m losing optimism.


It won’t be all work and no play, though. Not by a long shot! There’s plenty of entertainment to be had around town, or at home with a bowl of kettle corn if we choose. And of course we’ll do our best to sample the local cuisine at every opportunity. The Soup Group is petitioning for a meal with Mother Media, and we’re meeting some family friends for brunch or dinner, we hope. I think Mom needs a Juicy Lucy burger at Matt’s Bar, don’t you? And a stop at the Grand Ole Creamery or the Cold Stone Creamery for dessert.


Today around the world: May 19 is National Play Day for Health in the U.S. -- but the staff of the award-winning health magazine I work for didn’t get the memo, so it’s a bit late for that now. However, there’s still time to participate in the Holiday of Poetry, provided you’re Turkmenistanish.


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Monday, May 17, 2004

05/17/04’s illustrious band:

Bunny Hop


Brought to you by my back yard bunnies.


The neighborhood around Sensational Acres is home to numerous rabbits, a few of which live under the shed in my back yard. In addition to grazing that part of the yard down to the dirt, these local long-ears entrance my feline companions. The cats watch them raptly through the windows and, if allowed outside, stake out the shed for hours at a time. The rabbits, being professional prey animals, have a good -- but not perfect -- record of evading capture.


On Saturday two of the rabbits were apparently feeling their oats. The first would rush at the second, who would spring about two feet straight in the air and land a yard or two away. Then he’d wheel around and return the favor, causing his friend to levitate. Rush, hop, rush, hop; the game continued for at least 10 minutes. The cats looked like they were watching a tennis match.


That wasn’t the only action around the Acres this weekend, though. Since Mother Media arrives for a visit this week, preparations kept me rushing and hopping, too. I had a house to clean, a car to clean, a lawn to mow, a fridge to stock, an interview to conduct, and laundry to fold, in addition to some editing projects that needed finishing. I also talked to some friends on the phone and computer, watched a couple episodes of Farscape on borrowed DVDs, finished a good book (Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities), and attended my usual T’ai Chi classes. Whew! Almost makes work seem like R&R.


Today around the world: May 17 is Discovery Day in the Cayman Islands, when everyone tunes in to the same educational TV channel.


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Friday, May 14, 2004

05/14/04’s illustrious band:

Catapulitzer Prize


Brought to you by the Chicken Step Lady.


For the first time in at least 25 years, I got TinkerToys for my birthday. Remember TinkerToys -- construction sets consisting of wooden discs with holes in the middle and around the outside, plus wooden dowels in various lengths to plug into those holes? Well, this year, CSL got me an “executive” set (thanks for the promotion!) for my desk. It contains just 10 rods (8 short, 2 long), 7 disks (6 regular, 1 with a center hole big enough for a rod to go all the way through), and 1 green fin-shaped flag. But it’s still enough, with the addition of a rubber band, to build a working catapult. Office neighbors, take cover!


I loved construction toys as a young ‘un, too. My friends and I spent countless hours building houses and towers and go-karts for our stuffed animals with TinkerToys and Legos. My crowning achievement was the TinkerToy turbolift elevator I built in my teens. Using a hand crank, I could raise my Star Trek action figures from the engineering deck, a Lego structure at floor level, past the Lego sickbay a few shelves up, to the bridge of the Enterprise, on a chest-high shelf.


Except for the bridge, a nonLego plastic model that came in a kit, we built the various rooms free-form. I never knew anyone who built the structures the Lego kits were designed to produce. The instructions were always the first things to go, and each kit’s contents was assimilated into the general population.


I loved Lincoln Logs, too. The logs looked like long, stale Tootsie Rolls with notches near the ends for easy stacking. I never had enough logs to build Johnny West (a cowboy action figure) his dream hacienda, but I stacked up an endless procession of little houses on the living room carpet prairie. They always reminded me of the Johnny Spaulding Cabin (click on "Area Attractions" and scroll down a bit), my hometown’s tiny log cabin museum, which I called the Sandwich House because the dark logs alternating with white chinking looked like slabs of salami on slices of Wonder Bread.


Although I never had an Erector set (whose complex metal parts were made obsolete by the introduction of high-tech plastic Legos in 1958, but which is now back on the market through Brio), I did have a Rivetron (apparently now defunct). The Rivetron was sort of the Erector set’s milquetoast cousin: It had plastic rods and panels instead of metal ones. You fastened them together with rubber pop rivets you inserted through the holes using what looked like an ear-piercing gun. Rivetron structures were always kind of floppy and disappointing, since the flaccid rubber rivets made for halfhearted joinery at best. As with Legos, I usually tossed the instruction manual aside and built carefully balanced, symmetrical monuments instead.


With that kind of construction background, is it any wonder I ended up working for a home-improvement magazine for a while? Of course not. But I had toy doctor’s kits, too, which explains my graduation to an award-winning health publication. And from where I sit now, I can use my TinkerToy catapult to lob used Post-It notes at Senor Editor, my colleague across the aisle, who now works for that handyman mag. You see, it’s all tied together as snugly as if I’d used the Rivetron gun.


Today around the world: May 14 is Unification & Integration Day in Liberia, where Legos and Erector sets now live peacefully side by side.


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Tuesday, May 11, 2004

05/11/04’s illustrious band:

Jack Asked


Brought to you by Mary Higgins Clark.


I’ve been listening to the audiobook version of Ms. Clark’s novel Fleeced in the car recently. It’s a highly abridged presentation of what was a very fluffy book to begin with. No time is wasted on minor details like characterization. Also, the two romantic leads, although unmarried to one another, share the common last name Riley. I’ve never known an author to name people that way before, but then again, I don’t get out much. Maybe it’s the latest trend in crime-lite.


The audiobook is read by the author, who should have stuck to her day job. Despite the fact that she’s reading her own words, her phrasing and intonation are clunky and sometimes confusing, as if she’s never encountered these sentences before. All of her characters, regardless of age, gender, and country of origin, sound the same, which means that the California girl sounds just like the young male British butler and the older male French film director. The only differentiated character voice in the reader’s repertoire appears to be Screeching Jersey Broad, and she uses that voice for both an upper-crust Manhattan socialite and a maid who really is from Jersey.


None of this stopped me from listening to the whole book, of course. I sat through all three cassettes, enjoying unintentional moments of humor. For instance, the author/reader has trouble enunciating both the K sound and the final D in “asked.” So every time the character Jack (one of the Rileys) inquires about something and the text reads, “Jack asked,” I’m treated to an earnest pronouncement of “jackass.” Since there’s no voice change to switch us over from character to narrator, it comes out sounding like, “Where are the diamonds, jackass?” Love that hardboiled detective dialogue!


Yes, the simple pleasures in life can be found in the most unexpected places.


I’ve found many pleasures over the last few days in the wishes, cards, and gifts I received for my birthday. From chicken tika masala with the Soup Group to cake with the editorial planning committee, from calls from friends to the Captain Kirk card and the new Tinker Toys on my desk, I’ve turned 35 just the way I wanted to. Thank you all!


Today around the world: May 11 is Sts. Cyrilus and Methodius Day in Bulgaria.


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Thursday, May 06, 2004

05/06/04’s illustrious band:

Rock Faces of Men


Brought to you by Gutzon Borglum.


Yesterday a colleague, Jan With the Plan, showed us a video she’d picked up on a recent trip to Great Britain. It was about the Eden Project (www.edenproject.com), a collection of enormous biodomes in the strip-mined countryside of Cornwall, England. Eden’s mission: “To promote the understanding and responsible management of the vital relationship between plants, people and resources leading to a sustainable future for all.” It contains plants and cultural scenes from five continents.


We saw the first of two videos. The first covered the conception and the construction of the project. It’s a massive undertaking and a marvel of engineering. It’s amazing that human beings could conceive of such a thing, let alone build it, but here’s proof of both.


In that way, the Eden Project reminds me of Mt. Rushmore. I grew up about 90 miles from where four presidents’ faces were hewn from Black Hills granite. With little more than a vision and some dynamite, sculptor Gutzon Borglum and his crew carved men from the mountain from 1927 to 1941.


My family made at least one pilgrimage to Mt. Rushmore every summer that I can remember -- more if we had out-of-state visitors or just needed to get out of town for a while. When I was little I didn’t refer to monument as Mt. Rushmore, but as Rock Faces of Men, which I thought much more accurate. If we were spending a couple days at Camp David, my Grandma Clar’s closet-sized cabin in the Hills, we’d always take a side trip to Rushmore to play license plate bingo in the parking lot, find South Dakota’s flag on the Avenue of Flags, groan over the cheesey T-shirts (“America’s greatest rock group;” a quartet of butts captioned “Behind Mt. Rushmore”), and get saltwater taffy in the nearby tourist town of Keystone. I also learned some of my family history through visits to Mt. Rushmore; my uncle Tom (he lives in a cabin -- really!), so the story goes, was once arrested for attempting to climb George Washington.


Dad was fascinated by the carving and the history and incredible achievement it represented. He could spend a long time gazing up at the carved mountain and its neighbors from the patio of the visitors’ center, and an equally long time watching the documentary videos inside. Eventually I stopped chasing the squirrels long enough to find out what interested him so, and I got hooked, too. Once I began to understand the enormous scope of Rushmore, the talent, technology, and tenacity that went into its making, I began to find it inspiring.


How can I ever complain that my job is difficult? I’m not carving a mountain or cramming an entire world into a corner of Cornwall. But I’ve stood in the shadow of big things and I know they’re possible. Maybe I’ll move a mountain one day. Maybe you will.


Today around the world: May 6 is the National Day of Prayer in the U.S.


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Tuesday, May 04, 2004

05/04/04’s illustrious band:

Zoomsplat Squids


Brought to you by Senor Editor.


It’s busybusy time at Media Headquarters and Sensational Acres this month, but I thought I’d take a moment and share with you the newest additions to my biker babe vocabulary.


I have it on good authority from Senor that the proper name for a super-fast motorcycle is not “crotch rocket,”, it’s “zoomsplat,” because that’s what they do: first the zoom, then the splat. The people who ride zoomsplats are usually squirrelly kids, shortened to squids. You might see squids popping wheelies on the freeway or weaving dangerously in and out of traffic.


Start seeing zoomsplats!


Today around the world: May 4 is Buddha’s birthday to many of this world’s citizens. It’s also Vesak Full Moon Poya Day in Sri Lanka and National Teacher Day in the U.S. If you can read this, thank a teacher. And Buddha, just to be safe.


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