Spam Haiku

Inspired by a suggestion (or dare? You decide) from Mr. Elinoire, I have unleashed my poetic soul.  The first one is more an interpretation than a direct reference, but it's based on my favorite one of these so I had to work it in somewhere. Click the links for more.

It's time to Refill

Sad armadillo.

He takes unleaded.

Bad bunny, bad bad

bad bunny. Guess who?

Your dog will love it

They like to take turns
You have received a postcard!
HELLO ME NOT DEAD

Yes, I'm going straight to hell.

My Evening, in Three Parts

Part One, in which Mr. Elinoire realizes it's garden spider season again.

Mr. Elinoire, just after walking through the gate towards our cottage and, immediately after, through a Very Large spiderweb: "... so tomorrow we need to BLEEEAAARGH!!"

Me: "What?!  What?! [Sees outraged spider climbing away] Oh."

Mr. Elinoire: "Ugh, yeah, watch out for... [turns back towards house and takes another step] BLEEEAAARGH!!"

Me: [Watching second spider climb away in a huff] "..."

Part Two, in which we are all about the opposable thumbs.

We met friends at the San Diego Zoo after work today.  The zoo stays open until 9pm in July and August but sometimes we miss that window and then I'm sad because I missed my chance to see the slow loris and Mr. Elinoire is sad because he has to listen to me whine about it for the next ten months.*

* The slow loris** is still there and still as awesome as ever!  Team Slow Loris!  Yeah!  Let's hear it for venomous elbows and GIANT BEADY EYES.

** Who should really be called the Deliberate Loris because that's what he is, not slow.  

Before the slow loris, we checked in on these guys.  


Mom was hanging out on her rock and that black and white checked hammock you see there was suspiciously heavy-looking.  But then a little foot stuck out from the edge, and then another foot, and then Mom said "this is boring and you are way too slow" and unceremoniously pulled the edge of the hammock down so the baby flopped out, catching a branch on the way down, and did a forward sommersault around the branch and landed in Mom's arms.

Mr. Elinoire: "I think it's actually a really drunk little kid in a panda suit."

Part Three, in which we go for Italian instead, thanks.

After the zoo, we had dinner with our friends in Little Italy.  This is the window of a restaurant we chose not to dine in.

Dog is my copilot

My dad got a puppy a few weeks ago. There is almost nothing better than visiting a puppy that is excited to see you but remains someone else's responsibility. My dad is one of those people who need to get to know a pet before giving them a name,* so we were all saying "the puppy" for a few days.

* I am too, though that's only been for the last couple pets. I used to choose the name before I knew the animal, but now I know better.

He was a stray in Baja California (Mexico) and was brought up to a San Diego shelter by an organization that does that, which is where my dad met him. We have NO IDEA what went into his mix... some Great Dane, maybe? He's long-legged and surprisingly mellow. Aussie? He's got that blue merle pattern going on, but with the wrong kind of fur. Terrier? He's got the whiskers and the love for digging, but like I said, he's mellow, not terrieresque. He's 100% Mystery Dog is what he is.



Now his name is "Akimbo" or sometimes just "Kimbo" because it's easier. His elbows, or knees, or whatever, all stick out when he sits or lie down, see? And he's still super uncoordinated? He is the most gangly, akimbo dog I've ever seen and it's adorable. The last time Mr. Elinoire and I were visiting, we watched Akimbo fall off the couch. To us it looked like a train wreck in slow motion (a funny train wreck) but to him it was clearly No Big Deal.

Watching him navigate stairs is still funny, btw. He can do up, but down remains a challenge.

First trip to Dog Beach. He was an easy convert.



Post-beach nap. He's curled up like a cat! Fine, sometimes he doesn't live up to his name.



Oh, and another great thing about the name Akimbo? No one gets it. They say "is that an African name?" and we say "nope." It cracks my dad up.

That's MISS Snottybottom to you, buddy

My friend Sandy (AKA Crabbygloom Rottenshorts, but only (let's hope) seasonally) sent me this link so I could find my Grinch Name. You may address me as Woefulwhiner Snottybottom,* thank you very much.

(I think the last name is funny but I worry that the first is a little too close to home.)

In other news, here's a picture of a relatively new installation at the Getty Center in LA. It's a reproduction of one of my favorite pieces of theirs -- a watercolor of a stag beetle by Albrecht Dürer.



The original work is maybe as big as your hand, but if you use the top of Mr Elinoire's Mr Snottybottom's wee little head at the bottom of the picture for scale purposes,** you will note the reproduction is much, much larger. Plus there's the addition of the mounting pin. That's a recent addition is what that is.

(I am not a huge fan of insects when they're up close and personal, but I am all about seeing them in art.)

In holiday baking news, I baked several batches of gingerbread cookies last weekend in my parents' kitchen, and the plan for this weekend is to join Tyee at her house and ice cookies like a madwoman while she starts her holiday baking. Wish us luck! Hopefully by Sunday I'll have pictures. Or a wicked sugar hangover. Or both!

* But only via this blog. And please stop after the end of December.
** Sorry, the small brown cat did not volunteer to join us at the museum in order to be on hand for scale purposes or any other reason.

Bleeeeaaaarrrrgh

I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry. I'm a terrible blogger. I have the best of intentions and the worst of the, uh, follow-throughs. (Is there a (plural) opposite of "intentions"?) Plus I think Blogger and Safari had a falling out on the playground or something because they won't play nicely together right now.

What can I say? I'm easily distractible. Possibly (but not very probably) even more so than a certain small brown cat. And speaking of said cat, here she is, for scale purposes of course, helping me show off my dorky fabulous new hat.



And here is the ever-patient Mr. Elinoire being suspiciously investigated.



We went to the Getty Villa the weekend before last. You can tell the hat is from that trip because it's so classical. I'm pretty sure it won't turn anyone to stone, though, so no worries there.

Or accordian consonant earPlugs playing his head onsh

It's official: I am old. Mr Elinoire and I went to see The Pogues last week. I foolishly thought "at least the crowd will mostly be people my age for once," but I was only sort of right. There were many of my fellow Gen Xers there, but also many people who had not been born when I got addicted to Irish Punk.

Sigh.

That being said, the concert was EXCELLENT and much bouncy fun was had by all, or at least by Mr Elinoire and myself since I did not bother to survey any other concertgoers on their experience. Also? Things have changed since I started going to concerts in the '80s. A few random observations:

• Phones are the new lighters. I saw two lonely little flames when the band left the stage but there were at least 30 glowing cell phones.


• Speaking of phones, there is a reason they don't care if you bring in your phone with camera: the totally unsaleable quality pictures like this:



• The opening band, Ollin, said they were honored to have been asked to perform because they were "a bunch of Mexicans who like to cover Pogues' songs."


• The lime green faux snakeskin freebie "wristlet" I received with my purchase of Clinique products was the perfect size for my ID, cash, phone, and a lipstick.

During the concert, I kept thinking "I should write myself a note so I'll remember to write about somethingorother in my blog!" Unfortunately, bouncing around while trying not to spill your beer as you sing along to songs you learned in college is not the most conducive way to take notes. So I started texting myself little messages to remind myself later of all my Briliant Thoughts.

Remember how I said I was bouncing? And drinking beer? When I looked at my messages the next day, I had to spend some time decoding. Read the title of today's post again if you don't believe me. I wrote that. And sent it to myself.

Here is the probable translation for the message above:

"Something that I now forget was either one thing Or another; I usually don't like accordian music but for the Pogues I will gladly make an exception; Shane MacGowan's impressive substance abuse over the years hasn't killed him like I assumed it would* but it's turned him into an old man and somehow stolen all his consonants; Ohmygod am I glad Mr Elinoire went out to the car and found those earPlugs** for us; when MacGowan started banging what looked like a hubcap against his ear during the last song, Mr Elinoire said "he's playing his head! and he was right; onsh? What the hell is ONSH?! Oh! I think I was trying to write "mosh" and the cell phone had no idea that was a word. (I used to think that the best place to be in the audience was right on the outside edge of the mosh pit because there was a big (mostly) open space in front of you and very little view obstruction, but now I am too old to dodge moshers and come in contact with sweaty people I don't know so I will enjoy the concert from over here instead thank you very much.)"

So there you go.

* I never thought I'd get to see this band because I assumed the lead singer would die of an overdose or drunkenly walk in front of a bus before I ever got the chance. Let's hear it for aging rockers who reunite and tour so they can cash in on their older-and-therefore-more-affluent fan base!

** No, I don't know why I capitalized the P, and yes, the earplugs are further proof than I am old.

Mr. Elinoire will be your guest blogger for today

Approximately one thousand of your earth years ago...

A small neighborhood boy appeared at the door of the house where Mr. Elinoire grew up, bearing a cake tin he had been tasked by his mother to deliver. Said container contained (that being what containers do), a chocolate cake with green frosting. This cake was a present from the child's mother to Mr. Elinoire's family, the reason for which has been lost to the mists of time (along with the name of the child).

The young boy, having delivered his charge to Mr. Elinoire's mother, hung around the door for a few moments before announcing, "You know, I really like chocolate cake," adding a few moments later, "especially chocolate cake with green frosting." No doubt he is now a highly-paid marketing executive somewhere, but this early attempt to turn events in his favor met with utter failure. It is not recorded whether his campaign was met with admonishment, derisive laughter, or mere indifference, but, in any case, he went upon his way cakeless.

And then hands were waved in the air, and this event was transmogrified from a story into a meme, and thence into a family predilection for the question "what kind of cake would you like for your birthday?" to be answered "chocolate cake with green frosting (of course)." So now you know.

Just like regular cake, only, well, you know.

New York was the first place we stopped during our recent trip. I had originally thought we might do various touristy NYC things, but once we arrived and were settled into our friends' lovely Brooklyn brownstone, we quickly realized that what we really wanted to do was take it easy, hang out with our friends, and maybe go on a few walks. On our first day we visited the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

Our friend Katia, who was graciously showing us her city, took pity on us when it was clear we'd need caffeine in order to continue. (I plead jetlag, despite the mere 3-hour time difference between the West and East Coasts. I'm sure it had nothing to do with getting approximately 15 hours sleep over the four days before leaving for New York. Nothing at all.) We stopped at a coffee place across the street from the scary-strict Brooklyn Co-op (where Mr. Elinoire and I, as non-members, were NOT allowed to buy anything so you'd better believe we didn't even THINK about it) and as we were ordering, I noticed a case of cupcakes.

(Mmm, cupcakes. Just like regular cake, only you usually get more frosting and you aren't morally obligated to share with anyone, which is usually not the case with an entire cake. Not that I'd ever attempt to eat an entire cake by myself because I am far, far too virtuous.)

Mr. Elinoire chose a reasonably-sized black and white-topped cupcake but I went for the larger cappuccino cupcake with the mini milk chocolate chips on the top.



We walked a little further and then sat at the base of a statue at the edge of Prospect Park and dug in. And that was when I discovered that 1. my ginormous cupcake had extra frosting in the middle, and 2. no way was I going to be able to finish it on my own. Luckily Katia and Mr. Elinoire were willing to help. Wasn't that nice of them?



Our trip fell between my birthday, which we celebrated with Chinese food before we left, and Mr. Elinoire's, which we celebrated with Italian food about two weeks after we got home. His family has an odd* chocolate-cake-with-green-frosting tradition that I have occasionally incorporated into the birthday cakes I make for him. This year's version was my own little homage to the Brooklyn Cappuccino Cupcake. Here is a birthday cupcake from the outside:



I made the cake from a mix (shhh) but used very strong coffee instead of water for a richer taste. The frosting is pre-made (shhh again) vanilla with green food coloring, and then grated bits of (genuine Swiss!) chocolate on the top. Each cake has coffee whipped cream** in the center. They were a big hit, if I do say so myself.



Plus? Tonight? After I took the pictures of the Last of the Birthday Cupcakes? Sylvie found the just-out-of-the-dryer load in the little laundry basket and decided to do her own imitation of a New York City cupcake. Awww.



*To be fair, it's not any odder than my family's tradition of dropping lines from this fabulous work into normal conversation.

**This was the first time I'd made "stabilized" whipped cream and I was very pleased with the result. I just added about a third of an envelope of plain dry gelatin to the cream, sugar, and veryveryVERYstrong*** coffee mixture and whipped it up.

***As in "so strong it would make any child who bit into the cupcake expecting frosting and chocolate cake and instead found the equivalent of a double latte inside cry because yuck! coffee!"

The trick is to leave the last bit of the word unspoken...

Mr. Elinoire gamely listened to many, many hours of French lessons on CD before we left for our trip. Some evenings he would come home and greet me with "Bonjour Madame. Est-ce que vous voudriez boire quelque chose? Du vin ou de la bière?," which was adorable, if slightly disconcerting.* (I think the less formal version of "you" is appropriate once you've done each other's laundry.)

But, well, there are a lot of words in the French language, and you can only remember so many, you know?



But you know what? He loved France! Okay, okay, he didn't actually use a lot of his newly acquired vocabulary, but Mr. Elinoire was like a lexiconically-enabled vacuum cleaner. He understood so much of la langue française by the time we left that I could only snark about him in French if I spoke really quickly.** Our friend Nathalie even taught him to talk to French cows.***



Here are three words Mr. Elinoire enjoys saying the way French people do: blog ("blugg"), wifi (weefee), and iPod (ee-puhd).

* Also? Mr. Elinoire doesn't drink wine or beer... so he only knew how order things he doesn't like. Note the past tense "knew" in that sentence. He has since learned how to request not one but two different beverages: sirop de pamplemousse (grapefruit syrup) and café au lait.

**I kid. I would never snark about him to his face. Give me some credit.

***Apparently French cows**** don't moo like their American counterparts -- they meugle. Imagine Mr. Elinoire saying "meuh" conversationally out the window while passing random fields and voila! a window into our vacation experience. If you need more, here is an MP3 of a French cow, courtesy of www.randonneur.net.

****Swiss cows really do wear cow bells, in case you were wondering. This is what it sounds like if you step out of the car next to a lush green Swiss valley. And yes, I know we're talking about France, not Switzerland, but hey, cow-related thought.

In which I explain why I have posted so infrequently of late

Mr. Elinoire and I are leaving for our belated honeymoon in just a few days. We're visiting friends in NYC, France, Switzerland, and then having a few days on our own in Belgium and Paris. I haven't taken a trip this complicated in several years and the logistics have been intense and complicated. (Not horribly so, but quite distracting.) So... not much posting, and for that I apologize.

Today I began packing by placing my suitcase on the table and putting things from my "take me" list into them. Naturally, any open container must be investigated.



Here, Sylvie joins the investigative team while Mirabelle checks to see if I've accidentally stowed any finches or lizards behind the suitcases. Hey, you never know, and wouldn't she feel silly if she'd missed the opportunity?



I'm going to be really embarrassed if I say I have nothing to declare and then it turns out that I'm transporting a cat across an international border. Note to self: make sure both cats are occupied elsewhere ("look girls, a skunk!") when I zipper it shut.

Catching up, Part 2

Valentines! Wait, aren't those given in February? That was months ago.

Yeah, well, what can I say? I got distracted. I'm happy to say that they were all given to the people they were intended for on the correct day, it's just posting them here that's taken me so long.



This year I made little felt pins for my family. My sister lives on the other side of the country, so I have to make sure hers gets finished early enough to get to her by the 14th. This usually means that I do hers first, and that means she sometimes gets the short end of the stick. I figure out what I'm doing when I make her Valentine and then the later ones are more complicated.



I realize now that I neglected to include a small brown cat for scale purposes in these photos, so you'll have to take my word for it when I say these are all about 2" across.

These were for my parents.



And finally, our two cats yin-yanged together for Mr. Elinoire.

Some things don't taste like chicken

A friend in Hawaii sent me mail about her moral dilemma: she loves Monarch butterflies and she loves her baby crown flower plant... but so do the Monarchs, one of which has laid an egg on it. She's trying to decide whether to let the caterpillar-to-be stay there and probably munch her plant to death, or whether to squish the egg.

(I voted for letting the baby butterfly munch the plant because, besides being mildly interesting, if one monarch found it, the odds are good that others will. My friend can watch Nature in Action but will have to reconcile herself to buying a new plant after caterpillar season every year. Maybe she coulld consider it her contribution to the Maui gardening/nursery industry.)

But that is not why I am blogging. No, no, I am blogging because her message reminded me of something else entirely and now I'm bouncy and happy and I have to share.* (Though I doubt this is news to those of you (you know who you are) who pay more attention to The World of Science and Bugs than I do.)

Mr. Elinoire often has the TV on while he's using his laptop. The other day we caught a bit of a show about birds. The narrator told us that the small colorful bird onscreen was called the Ptui bird (or at least that's what it sounded like) and I said "wouldn't it be GREAT if was called that because it tastes really bad?"

Mr. Elinoire agreed that it would.

And then (this makes me so happy I can hardly sit still and it's tough to type when you're bouncing around) the narrator said that the birds eat a nasty-tasting beetle and so they (the birds) taste terrible. Isn't that fabulous?! You'd actually take a bite of this little red or yellow bird and then spit it out and say it's name at the same time!


Sometimes life is just beautiful. And Google? Google is amazing. I cannot believe I tracked down a page on Pitohuis. (Having no idea how their name was spelled, I just kept adding things like "taste" "bird" "bad" "beetle" to my search.)

I read the whole article and kept waiting for the punchline, but nowhere does it point out that a word pronounced "ptui" is a hilarious name for a bird that tastes bad (but looks pretty enough to eat).**

Wikipedia took the purely scientific and rational approach, too. Huh.

I am not, however, the very first person to ask the tough questions.

* Because Monarchs are infamous for tasting really bad. I know this because I have a book about them.

** My sister's response to following quote in the article linked above: "'I was given a juvenile variable pitohui,' Gregory said, 'and when I licked the feathers, I felt my mouth tingle and go numb.'"

Who the hell does that? If I gave you a random wild bird (or even a domestic, relatively clean bird) would it ever, in a million years, seem to you that the right thing to do was to lick it?

Now, you may be thinking to yourself, perhaps this Gregory person had heard about pitohui birds being poisonous, so there was some reason to investigate. But wouldn't that be an even more complelling reason not to lick the bird?

Entry the forty-second: Another 15 things

To make up for my lack of posts during the last week (it's been a doozy of a week), I will post TWO things today. Don't fall over in shock. :-)

Here are the next 15 items in that list of stuff about myself:

16. With the exception of the-future-and-now-current Mr. Elinoire, the best roommates I ever had were ones I didn’t know before we shared a dorm room/apartment/house.
17. I am embarrassed to be as picky an eater as I am.
18. I think if you can hold your breath the entire time you are going through a tunnel, you get to make a wish.
19. I am mildly allergic to tomatoes, eggplant, walnuts, and swiss cheese, which all make my tongue itch.
20. I love swimming in the ocean but since I am extremely phobic about sharks, I don’t do it very often.
21. My favorite thing about ocean waves is when they are so strong that they knock you over and you have no idea which end is up until you float to the top.
22. I hated coconut until I was in college and then all of a sudden I loved it and it tasted the same as it always had.
23. I like to spell things the old fashioned way: cocoanut, cooky.
24. I like English English spellings of words, but I think it’s pretentious to use them if you’re writing in America.
25. I’m a packrat but I’m trying to reform.
26. Progress is slow.
27. I am not a Good Shopper.
28. I like using capital letters to emphasize certain words or phrases even though I know perfectly well that English grammar doesn’t really allow for That Sort Of Thing.
29. I am uncoordinated.
30. I don’t like talking on the phone.

Entry the fortieth: In which I continue to do stuff that isn't work-related *or* The Resentful Doughnut – a holiday fable

Mr. Elinoire (via Instant Messaging): I got spam where the title is "resentful" and the first line is "doughnut". Sounds like a weird short story.

Elinoire: Once upon a time there was a donut. He was one of those plain, cake doughnuts that some adults like but most kids pass over in favor of the ones with rainbow sprinkles. The plain cake doughnut did not think that was fair. He was just as good -- No, better! -- than any of those decked out razzle dazzle sprinkled doughnuts. The cake doughnut's beauty was more than just skin deep. A customer came to the doughnut's store and decided to buy a dozen. He carefully chose the prettiest and yummiest of them and then, when the sales clerk said that he could have an extra to make it a "baker's dozen," the customer pointed to the cake doughnut and said "I might as well take that boring one. Someone might want it." The cake doughnut was placed at the bottom of the box and by the time it was opened by the customer and the customer's friends, the cake doughnut was squished. No one ate it.

The end.

Entry the thirty-ninth: In which I sometimes goof off when I should be working

This morning, on the way to work:

Elinoire: That fire truck we just passed is really shiny.
Mr. Elinoire: It just got behind us. I think it’s following us.
Elinoire: Uh…
Mr. Elinoire: It’s still there. It’s definitely following us.
Elinoire: Are you on fire?
Mr. Elinoire: Uh…
Elinoire: Because you aren’t paranoid if you’re really on fire.

And now that meme is stuck in my head.

“You’re not paranoid if the enemy really has hired psychics."
“You’re not paranoid if they’re really out of coffee.”
“You’re not paranoid if the birds are deliberately aiming for your car.”