Deep Thought of the Day

You can often get what you want by being an ass, but then you have to live with yourself and who wants to live with an ass?

And LAST night

was even worse. S-Boogie has a cold and it's preventing her from sleeping. Foxy and I split the getting up duties, though, so this morning we're both exhausted.

But on the bright side, I'll probably call in sick to work today in order to take care of the sick child while Foxy goes to class, which means I'll have more time for grading papers.

Last Night

11:00. I finished the first batch of student papers (a third of the total) and went to bed.

12:00. I am awoken by bloodcurdling (though I admit, my blood didn't really curdle; would that give me cottage cheese blood if it did?) screams from the next room. The screams don't stop, so I go in and rock with S-Boogie to help her go back to sleep.

1:00. I'm not quite awoken by the sound of someone trying to turn a door-handle in the next room. In my not-quite-awake dream the noise comes from the bathroom, where a mysterious man is about to head over to the next room and kidnap my daughter. I'm not quite awake, though, so I can't do anything. My body does not respond to my command to jump up and attack this mysterious man. Instead I moan very loudly. The moaning wakes me up. I suspect the knob-rattling was S-Boogie but I don't hear it anymore so I go back to sleep.

3:00. I'm awoken by a small person standing next to my bed, saying, "Hi." I pick up S-Boogie, hold her in bed with me until I gather the energy to get up, then go back to her room and rock with her till she falls asleep.

7:00. I'm awoken by more doorknob-rattling. Then knocking coming from the inside of Boogie's door, and a little voice calling, "Come in!" (She usually performs both parts of a social transaction lately; i.e. "Thank you you're welcome.") It's time for me to get up anyway, but it's not time for Boogie to get up for another hour. Foxy stumbles into Boogie's room, tells her it's not time to get up yet, rocks with her, and puts her back in bed.

Naked Women and Other Thoughts

1. It occurs to me that if I want to increase traffic on my blog I should mention naked women more often. This way people using search engines to find naked women will find my blog instead. Of course, they will probably be disappointed because I don't actually have pictures of naked women on my blog. And I doubt that people looking for naked women who find my blog instead will say, "Who needs naked women? This blog with random ramblings about hip-hop music and gay Mormons is much more interesting than naked women." So it would be a little deceptive of me to mention naked women frequently just so that people using search engines to find naked women will stumble upon my blog. So in conclusion I will not mention naked women more often.

2. I am in the midst of grading 78 4-to-6-page personal narratives and my brain hurts. Not because my students are horrible writers, though admittedly a few of them are. I don't mind the bad writing because most of them have interesting stories to tell and interesting insights, bad writing or not. And they're learning to be better writers--that's the point of the class. It's just that I'm a slow reader and this is taking me forever. And it does really bug me when students ask me to read their drafts ahead of time but then they don't bother to make any of the changes I recommend, not even the simple typos and grammatical errors I mark clearly for them. Grr.

3. It occurs to me that the concept of #1 is not all that original. Surely someone has done it before. So I rescind any cleverness points I gave myself for coming up with it. But I'll post it anyway. Naked women.

A Kind and Gracious Host

As I've been watching who comes to my blog and where they come from, I've noticed quite a few seem to be coming here from some search page or other for "the fugees take it easy." No doubt they are looking to download the song and since it's listed in my playlist from a few days back, they think they'll get it from me. Well, I can respond to reader demand.

Go here to download "Take It Easy" by the Fugees.

By way of disclaimer, this is not the nice clear version I bought from iTunes for $0.99. It's a decent version I found on the internet, taped from the radio so it has a DJ talking over Lauryn at the beginning. If you want the DJ-free version, pay for it.

Tori and Racism

As per Th.'s recommendation, which was not really a recommendation but I chose to take it as one, I have checked out several Tori Amos CDs from the library. I like them. As I've mentioned before, I like Little Earthquakes and I've always trusted that Tori is an excellent musician simply because she comes highly recommended by Neil Gaiman. As I've been listening to more of her music, I've enjoyed it. She has a beautiful voice, the songs all have nice piano or other instrumentation, and her lyrics are always interesting.

Here's the problem: it all sounds the same to me. I'm sure it is not all the same, but I don't speak the language of the genre, so it's like how Spanish sounds like indiscriminate noises to people who don't speak Spanish, how all Asian people look like indiscriminate Asian people to people who don't know Asian people, and how all hip-hop music sounds like indiscriminate beats and swear words to people who don't listen to hip-hop.

I suspect it's because I'm racist. See, I'm white but I grew up in Hawaii where it's not good to be white, and I still have that mindset so subconsciously (and occasionally consciously) I try hard to not be white. So I listen to Black and Latin and Asian music (okay, I admit, the closest thing to Asian music I listen to is rap music by Lyrics Born, who is a Japanese American from California) and occasionally I dye my hair black or dark brown because I don't like light-colored hair and when I go back to Hawaii to visit and I'm talking to locals I try really hard to subtly drop a local expression or two or even a slight local intonation (without attempting to speak full-blown Pidgin, which would sound stupid coming from me) in order to make sure no one thinks I'm a (heaven forbid!) mainland whitey. (It never works, by the way. They take one look at the color of my skin and they assume I'm from Nebraska.)

So, being aware of this self-racism, it makes me happy that I can listen to Tori Amos and enjoy it. And unhappy that I cannot distinguish between one song and the next. FoxyJ has Tales of a Librarian: A Tori Amos Collection on her Amazon wishlist, which I think is a good solution--I'm not going to run out and buy every Tori album if I can't tell them apart, but it'll be nice to have some more of her music in the playlist to help me accept my white roots.

I suppose I could compromise and start listening to Eminem, but I can't bring myself to it. Eminem is who white people who like hip-hop listen to.

I'm Watching You (Yes, You)

Today I was putting Blogging: Genius strategies for instant web content on the new book shelf at the library, so of course I stopped to read it. Among other cool tips that I will soon put into effect to make this a more positive blogging experience for you and me, the author suggested that you use SiteMeter.com to keep track of who's reading your blog. So I signed up for a free account. I must say, I highly recommend it. Take a look at the little link at the bottom of the page to see all the statistics Site Meter tracks.

And please don't visit my blog less now that you know I know you're here.