Just Kristin

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Orig­i­nally uploaded by justkristin

Let the man­gled mus­cles in my lower back stand as proof that aging does not, as a mat­ter of course, tow wis­dom in its wake. Thanks to nifty cow orker Den­nis, how­ever, I will be tow­ing this lovely cart in my wake from now on, espe­cially when there are books involved. :) I couldn’t bring myself to do the wheeled back­pack or brief­case thing, as the for­mer is too ele­men­tary school for me, and the lat­ter too pro­fes­so­r­ial. (My humor may visit ele­men­tary school every once in a while, but I don’t look the part, and while I might be able to pass exter­nally for a pro­fes­sor, I am nowhere near that level intel­lec­tu­ally — where it counts.) I plan to deck the thing out, per­haps adding an inner fab­ric bas­ket of sorts, and hang var­i­ous trin­kets from it. I might like to pad the han­dle as well, but should I use store-bought? Or cro­chet some­thing? How should I pimp my cart?

Smoo has been work­ing quite earnestly with class­mates all evening, try­ing to cure the world of poverty, prej­u­dice and cli­mate change. D has been away in Vegas all week for a con­fer­ence, dur­ing one sec­tion of which he learned about — and then Boinged onto the intar­web — this video:

And so, weep­ily, I pick up this message-bearing bot­tle, absorb it, and toss it out again. It is a small thing, and the con­tent is not mine, but the sen­ti­ment may as well be.

Why can well enough not be left alone? I am sad enough that one of my favorite mag­a­zines is on track to becom­ing a BH&G for the under-30 (which is noth­ing like what it started out being). The way it is hap­pen­ing, how­ever, reeks of the cor­po­rate crap­pi­ness that hap­pened to Blue­Moun­tain when I worked there.

The story of Ready­Made magazine’s employ­ees find­ing them­selves out of work is more than just another sad, chang­ing media land­scape story. After all, edi­tors of the Berke­ley do-it-yourself mag­a­zine said the 8-year-old title was doing well. Its co-founder said ad rev­enue was up every month over the past two years and cir­cu­la­tion was hold­ing steady.

But ReadyMade’s New York par­ent com­pany, Mered­ith Corp., pub­lish­ers of Ladies’ Home Jour­nal and Bet­ter Homes and Gar­dens, is fac­ing the same adver­tis­ing and rev­enue declines as other media con­glom­er­ates. With its net income down 44 per­cent over the pre­vi­ous year (as of Sept. 30), last month Mered­ith cut 7 per­cent of its employ­ees, shut down Coun­try Home mag­a­zine and announced it would relo­cate the cre­ative staffs of Ready­Made and Parents.com to Des Moines, Iowa.

That meant Ready­Made staffers had a choice: Move to Des Moines or try to weather the reces­sion in the Bay Area — or else­where. None of the half dozen edi­to­r­ial employ­ees chose Iowa, accord­ing to a rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Meredith.

I, for one, am glad that no one at Ready­Made took the relo­ca­tion offer, because they would prob­a­bly have found them­selves, in a year or so, laid off away from home. I look for­ward to any­thing the real Ready­Made staff do next. As far as Mered­ith is con­cerned: Don’t even bother send­ing a “time to renew” notice.

Sat­ur­day night’s bout was fab­u­lous, by the way. D will have a whole set of pic­tures up soon, but I stole one to share here.

Poor Pos­sum

Orig­i­nally uploaded by justkristin

Cha-cha has dis­patched her sec­ond pos­sum, mak­ing her total hit count read like the end of a carol:

Three feral cats,
Two large-ish pos­sums
And the skunk that made her sis­ter cry.

What are we going to do with her? She sees the back yard as her own pri­vate race­track, no doubt, and the “get-the-small-furry-speedy-thing” train­ing is no doubt far too ingrained at this point to train away, espe­cially since she is a night-time killer and we are never aware until it is far too late.

• ACADEMIC WRITING

2/12/2009

• Cubic Ani­mal Papercrafts

2/7/2009

• Nobody liv­ing can ever stop me

1/18/2009

• She Said “Yes”!

1/18/2009

• CROSSING GENDER LINES: BOYS DOING DOUBLE DUTCH

1/9/2009

• How to hal­lu­ci­nate with ping-pong balls and a radio

1/12/2009

• It’s Time to End ‘Courseocentrism’

1/12/2009

• Acclaimed ani­mated movie can’t be shown because of licens­ing costs for 80+ year-old music

1/6/2009

• Abused IT Work­ers Ready To Quit

1/13/2009 — Hrmmmm.…

• SODOMY LAWS

1/2/2009

• Faves: Big Pharma

1/3/2009

• A New Time-Wasting Game

1/3/2009

• “The 15 most kick­ass women on television”

1/3/2009

• National Museum of Health and Med­i­cine Photogallery

1/5/2009

• Aki Sasamoto, judg­men­tal hopper

1/5/2009

• Ask Aun­tie Hoy­den: “she swal­lowed my cork”

1/6/2009

• CAPTCHA Poetry

1/4/2009

• Frozen soap bubbles

1/5/2009

• Al Franken vs. Ann Coulter

1/5/2009

• National Geographic’s Inter­na­tional Photo Con­test 2008

1/5/2009

I now am a huge fan of Mike McPhaden, has he has passed on to pos­ter­ity, this:

Wm. Shakespeare’s Five and Twenty Ran­dom Things Abovt Me

1 Some­times I Feele so trapp’d by iambic pen­tame­ter… Does that make me a Freake?

2 I haue been Knowne to cry at Bear-baiting.

3 I am not uery tick­lish. I am Not. So prithee, do not euen try. Waste. Of. Time.

4 I can­not keep Lice, and know not why.

5 Some­times I thinke plays are all Talke, Talke Talke, and wish for a cart-chase scene. I tried one in The Merry Wives, but it looked like Shitte, so I cut it. The men play­ing the horses were so Pissed at me.

6 I once threw vp on a man’s head, from a high Win­dowe. I was so fvck­ing Sicke that Daye.

7 I hate to wear a Ruff, for I haue such a pleas­ing Necke.

8 As a player, I am painful-slow to learn my part. Once whilst play­ing Edward I, I used the prompter so ouer­much that a groundling yell’d ~Stop inter­rupt­ing, Will! And it was my Dadde. (Kydding!)

9 Some­times when I am Stvck for a rhyme, I new-mint a Worde because I jvst want to get the Damned script ovt the fvck­ing doore.

10 I play the Flute yet poorly, but I can make any crumhorn beg for Mercy.

11 When I am happy I call Anne my Kicky-wicky. When I am cross I call her “Olde Fun Killer Hag-Ass.”

12 I keepe my Stashe hid­den in our sec­onde best bedde. Shhh. Don’t tell the Fyve-Oh.

13 The peo­ple that loue my Wordes the best are always the most dis­ap­pointed vpon meet­ing me. Is thisse List ouer yet?

14 On the topic of dat­ing, my daugh­ter Susanna loues to remind me: ~Jvliet was only thir­teen! And I remind her that i) she was Ital­ian, an impul­sive race ii), she was actu­ally played by a middle-aged Eunuch named Ned, and iii) she died. That always shvts her right vp.

15 I deteste it when the Low-Comedians improuise the scenes I writ them… becavse they always make them so mvch fvnnier.

16 I haue, on occa­sion, thovght abovt hir­ing a Boy to fixe my Latin.

17 When I was sixe, my Goode-Friend Charles brovght to Schoole a wood-cut of his mother, qvite naked. After that we called him Charles Nudie-Mummy, whiche did make him Crye.

18 I take my eggs ouer-medium. If I get them O’er-Easily, I tell my Porter, ~You may thinke this is what I ordered, but it’s snot. I thinke that one is a real Slap-A-Th’Knee.

19 I work ovt my calues thrice weekly, usvally three pyra­mid sets of Calf-Rises whilst hold­ing a flagon of Meade. I knowe I should stretch after­wards, but it Bores me so I do it not.

20 As a boy in my Bed, I would shriek i’the night that Witches wovld come to eat me. My Mother (bless her) wovld smooth my Hair and whispr ~ Be not afear’d, the Witches onlie eat the Jews.

21 Whit­sun­tide has become so commercial.

22 Nobody euer for­gets where they were the moment they heard that Thomas Kyd died. I was shop­ping for cod­pieces in West Cheape. I came ovt of the Change-room and the pro­pri­etress was i’tears. I said ~What is it, now?~Kyd is dead. There was a melan­choly qviet, and then she said ~And that Piece is a mite too small on ye.

23 Euery time we do the Tam­ing of the Shrew, some pvn­ter wants his Money backe, because we don’t actu­ally show a shrew get­ting tamed.

24 I do not vnder­stand all the Fvss over Cur­rants. Sure, they are both sweet and Small, but must they bee added to EUERY FVCKING MEAL these days? Yester­month, found I cur­rants in a Tarte of Spinnedge. I meane come on, Peo­ple. Seriovsly.

25 When I am feel­ing Melan­cholic, I con­sole myselfe with the Knowl­edge that, aboue all else, I will be remem­bered for my Musick.

Now, where is your list, Geof­frey? You have been too long not posting.

The other night, I watched D type as he helped me work out an issue with qmail. You can­not tell me that a pair of big, quick hands fin­ger­ing a key­board is any less sexy than a pair of hands drib­bling a bas­ket­ball or catch­ing a pass. Any­way, I noticed as I watched that he would occa­sion­ally pause and type pwd. How fab­u­lous is that?!? I had thought that I was the only one with a “think­ing tic”… I pointed my dis­cov­ery out to him, and shared my own: ls, and we were as thrilled with this mutual rev­e­la­tion as are two teens who, on their first date, dis­cover each oth­ers’ favorite foods. Woah.… geeky.

D and I were on our way home from a lovely New Year’s party, the Matrix as chilly inside as was the night fog out­side. To dis­tract us from the fact that our breath was vis­i­ble, D turned up the radio, tuned to its default KPBS — San Diego’s local NPR sta­tion, and Lo! A mir­a­cle hap­pened! After trail­ing applause came the open­ing strains of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” impres­sively played on solo ukulele. Smiles and awe abounded, I can assure you, and numer­ous thoughts came to mind:

1. Laugh­ter and smiles do heal, and they needn’t be deliv­ered in huge guffaw-loads to be effec­tive. Some­times the source can be sub­tle: for exam­ple, a chuckle born of eccen­tric­ity paired with musi­cal vir­tu­os­ity. I am grate­ful for those who make oth­ers smile, and hope to con­tinue try­ing to return the favor.
2. Do not write off that which you con­sider to be silly or insub­stan­tial, espe­cially if your per­sonal prej­u­dice is based on noth­ing more than hand-me-down soci­etal atti­tude. Even a uke, an accor­dion or a kazoo can be mas­tered to cre­ate some­thing soul-mending.

There were more, but I am tipsy and tired. Happy New Year, all.