Put another nickel in, in the nickelodeon... All I want is loving you and music, music, music!*

It's the Music Meme - in this case, I found out about it from Norbizness. Go to Music Outfitters and search for the year you graduated from high school. I wrote some of my thoughts in the comments thread over at Norbizness.

An interesting alternative meme was to look up the top 100 from when you were 13 years old. Here, I must confess, we hit upon a few songs I am still quite fond of.

11. Tainted Love, Soft Cell
16. 867-5309 (Jenny), Tommy Tutone
67. I Ran, A Flock Of Seagulls
68. Somebody's Baby, Jackson Browne (only because it reminds me of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which I saw when I was 13)
79. Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic, Police (probably my favorite song by The Police)

In 1983, I was very into popular music, because I loved a lot of the songs that were in the top 100 that year:
10. Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This), Eurythmics
11. Do You Really Want To Hurt Me, Culture Club
13. Come On Eileen, Dexy's Midnight Runners
17. Hungry Like The Wolf, Duran Duran
18. Let's Dance, David Bowie
23. She Blinded Me With Science, Thomas Dolby
25. Little Red Corvette, Prince
26. Back On The Chain Gang, Pretenders
32. Sexual Healing, Marvin Gaye
33. (Keep Feeling) Fascination, Human League
36. Mickey, Toni Basil
41. 1999, Prince
42. Stray Cat Strut, Stray Cats
48. Dirty Laundry, Don Henley
51. Goody Two Shoes, Adam Ant
52. Rock The Casbah, Clash
53. Our House, Madness
55. Is There Something I Should Know, Duran Duran
62. China Girl, David Bowie
84. (She's) Sexy + 17, Stray Cats
91. Pass The Dutchie, Musical Youth

By the time 1987 rolled around, I was no longer listening to much popular music.

*I'm channeling my mother, who has a song to go with any word you mention.  ¶ 7:35 PM 0 comments

  Online writing workshop This is slightly old news, but the Phantom Professor is offering an online writing workshop on her blog.

My answer for assignment 1 is in the comments, and if it sucks, you should know that I spent maybe 45 seconds on it. (As always, my enthusiasm for a subject does not necessarily translate into action).

I'm looking forward to participating! It will hopefully be a good warm-up for my second year of NaNoWriMo.  ¶ 12:34 PM 0 comments

  Batty Recently I posted about my experience with a bat inside the house. If you read that post, you know that it ended with our cat, Casmir, making a big kill.

Cas has apparently acquired a taste for bats since then, because 4 times this week, we've found a dead bat on our back porch. Cas has never left treasures for us before, but he is really proud of his bat killing abilities.

Because I really would prefer the bats around our house to stay alive and eat lots of little bugs, I've decided that Cas just can't be allowed outside at night anymore. I really don't need to start another day with the clean-up of a dead bat.  ¶ 8:04 AM 0 comments

  myths for modern times Well, how typical. My first post - which I worked on for over an hour - was just deleted. So I will delete the expletives, as well.

Why Loki? For one thing, we're in the middle of summer at the moment, nearing the end of one of the classic "dog days of summer." "Lokabrenna" refers to Loki's star, the Dog-star Sirius. Since my original post is now lost, here is a quick summary of where my thoughts have been wandering.

The Cold War was a real-world analog of the Norse Ragnarok, the "Twilight of the Gods," the end of the world. Loki, the god of free-wheeling thought and inventiveness, was foretold to be one who would help bring about that final reckoning. But nothing could be farther from the truth. Loki was the spirit of dissent in Asgard, the voice of the loyal opposition. He could never support what George H.W. Bush referred to as "a new world order," whether that world government should come about under the aegis of corporatism or Communism. There should always be a rival point of view, ideas challenging those holding power with what they'd prefer kept under lock-and-key: the truth.

The blogosphere is the repository of alternate points-of-view, of ideas held in opposition to the mainstream and to those who wield power over the marketplace. This is the cauldron where ideas - especially ideas considered "dangerous" by the Powers That Be - can bubble up out of the chaos and burst on the scene with decisive impact. The Ragnarok, that final show-down between the gods of capitalist democracy (Asgard observed the Althing, a democratic assembly, and ANYTHING was subject to a blood-price, even the end of the world, the Götterdämmerung) and their rival lords of chaos (the Soviet Union, the region known as Jotunheim to the ancient Norse) - this battle never took place. A glorious rebirth was to occur after Ragnarok, in which the giants drank good ale and renounced violence, while Asgard's survivors presided over a world-wide peace and a renewal of life on the planet. In reality, of course, no such rebirth could be possible after a nuclear Armageddon. We have sidestepped Ragnarok in favor of something else.

A "new world order" may not be the best outcome of a Cold War or any other kind of war. The awful "terror" which today is called Islamic fundamentalism can stand in well enough for the giants eager to end the world. The scary thing, however, is that George H.W. Bush's "new world order" may require opposition, even opposition from such as these. They certainly aren't good, but neither is the world dreamed up by George Bush, Sr., and his "Project for a New American Century" neoconservatives. So where do we go from here?  ¶ 5:31 PM 0 comments

    ¶ 5:30 PM 1 comments

  Shakespeare's Sister had this post up about bats, and if you read the comments, you will read a fond reminiscence of my childhood, when my sister and I would stand outside at dusk, standing still while the bats flew around us. We thought it was very cool. Well, I thought it was cool, I can't really speak for Tree.

Interestingly enough, as I was sitting here playing freecell on the computer last night(because I had insomnia), out of the corner of my eye, I saw something flittering around, and I looked up and there was a bat flying around my kitchen! Would it surprise you to know that I did not say "cool!"? No, I believe I shrieked a very high pitched scream and possibly let out a stream of words that my mother has never heard me say. Bats outside = cool. Bats in my house = most definitely not cool!

I figured I would either attempt a capture and release, or I would run up the stairs and close all the doors behind me. The cons to my second plan included waking up to find the bat was captured by one of our cats, who would most definitely not attempt a release, unless I mean release as in "release the bats organs from within the confines of its skin."

Phew, I'm feeling less anxious now.

UPDATE: Not for those who don't know want to know what happens on Wild Kingdom when predator meets prey.

First, I opened all the doors on the main floor, to provide ample exit opportunities for our nocturnal visitor. Then picture this, if you will: your intrepid blogger, dressed in cotton pajama pants featuring a purple hibiscus print on a fuschia background and a non matching blue t-shirt, a pair of black boots, wearing a grey knit hat with earflaps, wielding a large stainless steel bowl in one oven mitt clad hand and a large frying pan in the other oven mitt clad hand, as she approaches the the swooping mammal with all the enthusiasm of a Young Republican headed to the recruiting office.

For what seemed an interminable amount of time, I attempted to herd the bat towards one of the exits. Then Casmir, our older cat, came hopping down the stairs, and before I could stop him, he jumped up and caught the bat in his mouth. He didn't play with it, he just bit down hard, and then acquiesced when I told him to drop the poor creature. I scooped up the bat and took him way out back, to the point where our backyard meets the backyards of 3 of our neighbors - a small no-man's land that no one rakes or trims or fertilizes, we just leave it as a boundary between our yards. And there I unceremoniously dumped the poor bugger, because between the bat and the dark and spiderwebs I walked through to get through the yard, I was seriously freaked out already.

Although I should probably go scoop up the bat and take it to make sure it didn't have rabies, right?  ¶ 7:51 AM 0 comments

  Ohhhhhhhh, now I get it I always wondered why the Irish American Home Society chose to have their big Irish festival the last weekend in July. In my personal observations, Irish people are amongst the most heat sensitive, sweatiest people in the world - I was sweaty even in the dry heat of Las Vegas. So I always wondered why the Irish Festival was held during a time that was almost guaranteed to be sweaty weather.

But it all came clear today when a pagan friend of mine wished me a Happy Lughnasa. Traditional Lughnasa festivals lasted from July 15 to August 15, but the official Gaelic holiday of Lughnasa is today, August 1st.

Interestingly, the festivals celebrated to the sun god Lugh have something in common with the Seinfeldian holiday Festivus - feats of strength are displayed at both. And to bring this full circle, apparently Festivus was invented by an Irish-American, who no doubt would have been sweating his ass off at the Irish Festival this weekend, had he been there.  ¶ 6:58 AM 1 comments