goddess of clarity: a blog about politics, culture, and serenity

Archive: December 1 - December 31, 2006

December 31, 2006 — 13:45 EST

It's a Fact! It's a Toid! It's a Factoid! (pt. 1)

The top four "most popular" video downloads on CNN.com as of midnight last night were:

1. Hussein in hangman's noose
2. Hussein's body wrapped in shroud
3. Hussein's final moments
4. Monster python found in home

Update: The video of the 13-foot python found in a Florida woman's bedroom has now risen to number 3 on CNN's list. Even the execution of a brutal dictator can't distract Americans from their love of "When Animals Attack!"

It's a Fact! It's a Toid! It's a Factoid! (pt. 2)

Yahoo! reports that the top search query this year was "Britney Spears." In 1997, when I worked for MSN Search, the top search query was ... "Britney Spears." Back then she was just a mediocre singer. Now she has two kids, K-Fed, and missing underwear, so I guess that's progress for you.

Epilogue: Yahoo! also reports that the top two news stories on the Internet this year were the death of "Crocodile Hunter" Steve Irwin, and the death of Anna Nicole Smith's son. The Iraq war came in third.

—lori.

December 22, 2006 — 16:28 EST

I was at the mall the other day -- with the rest of the population of Rochester, New York -- and I saw something that made me do a double take.

Santa was on his usual throne, in front of his little North Pole backdrop, and kids were lined up to sit on his lap. No surprise there. But then I looked at the kid who was at that moment sitting on Santa's lap, and I noticed that his mother was taking the kid's picture with her own camera. I looked around for the photographer, but found none. The next kid jumped up on Santa's lap, and his mom whipped out her cell phone and took a picture. When did we hit such a low in customer service in this country that we've come to tolerate self-serve Santa photos?!

Mind you, I don't think the skills of a young Alfred Stieglitz could have improved upon these 70s era Santa snaps.

The first one is my favorite. That's me, screaming holy terror in the middle of the mall. My younger sister was still in the "confused blob" phase of babyhood and didn't yet have the good sense to be scared shitless. I love the look on this Santa's face. He must have been thinking, "Never again, man. This is the last year. Next year, I'm getting a job at Kinney Shoes or something." The decorations in this one are also classic. It looks like someone hung the last remnants of a dying artifical Christmas tree from the ceiling then stapled some tin-foil snowflakes to the wall. Nice.

Next we see the "mathing outfits" years my sister and I were subjected to, and by the time we get to the last picture I must be about seven years old. That seems a bit old for a mall Santa visit to me. By now my younger brother was two years old: prime Santa territory. But he's nowhere to be found. Maybe he had the good sense to be scared shitless.

—lori.

December 18, 2006 — 11:10 EST

Is anyone else sick of Sting and his fucking lute?

It's OK if it's only me. I just thought I'd check.

—lori.

December 14, 2006 — 20:43 EST

I don't know who the first German guy was who decided to chop down a tree outside and drag it inside, proudly displaying it in his pagan equivalent of a living room. And I don't know who his mates were who -- instead of worrying about their friend's obviously tenuous grip on sanity -- decided this was an absolutely fabulous idea, and started decorating the tree with fruits, nuts, and candles for extra flammability. But whoever those crazy, pioneering Germanic tribesman were, they were certainly on to something.

We put up our first adult-sized Christmas tree last weekend and I must say it does lend a certain festive air to the place. I've always liked decorating for the holidays, but until this year "decorating" meant taking my tiny apartment Christmas tree out of its box -- the box that it traveled from Pennsylvania to Seattle to Rochester in -- and sticking it on top of my bookshelf. There. Christmas. Done.

This year there were a lot more decisions to make. First we had to go though the great "Real vs. Fake" debate. There was a lot to be said for the Real camp. "It's so much more Christmas-y!" my friends said. It smells like pine, and you can go to one of the local Christmas tree farms and chop one down yourself, stopping for a mug of hot apple cider and a side order of sugar plum pudding on the way home.

But in our new house, with its 1916 forced-air heating system and heat vents along every wall and woodburning stove drying out the air to a nice crispy crunch? A real tree would just leave visions of house fires dancing in my head all season long. Suddenly there was a lot to be said for Fake.

So Fake it is. Next we had to get some decorations. This process felt a little odd, since in my experience Christmas ornaments are something you just have -- or rather, something your parents just have -- in a big box in the storage space. We have no such box, so off to Target we went. Who knew Christmas had start-up costs?

It was there, in the Christmas decoration aisle at Target, where Mr. Goddess revealed a side of himself I had never seen before: his inner Martha. It never occurred to me that he would care at all about how the tree was decorated. After all, I had won the battle for colored lights over white lights without much resistance. Little did I know that he was simply lulling me in to a false sense of security. All of a sudden, this otherwise reasonable man was insisting that the ornaments be color coordinated. The color scheme he suggested was red and gold. Tasteful, yes. Fun, no. Not really.

I tried to explain to him that having gone with the multi-colored lights, we had to go with the crazy-colored ornaments. You've got to commit to the gaudiness. He reluctantly agreed, but suggested by way of compromise that if we go with different-colored ornaments we should at least get ornaments that were all the same shape: round. I laughed out loud. I thought he was kidding. He wasn't.

So off we went with our bags full of round ornaments. Because a relationship is about compromise. Especially around the holidays.

—lori.

December 6, 2006 — 20:57 EST

A new book by copy editor and novelist Kitty Burns Florey takes after my own heart. Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences is definitely on my must-read list, after I get through my trio of "The Iraq War Is A Complete Mess and Here Are Several Reasons Why" books. In Miss Becthel's fourth grade class, diagramming was a fun new game and I felt like I was the only one of my classmates who had discovered it. It was my little grammar secret.

The point of diagramming sentences is to create a visual representation of a sentence's structure in order to see how that structure works to create relationships between words and -- ultimately -- meaning. So when I heard about Florey's new book, I wondered if diagramming sentences might help illuminate the meaning behind some of the more ponderous statements from our current president.

Let's start simple.

"They misunderestimated me.

Now let's try something a little more poetic.

"Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream."

And lastly, something for this festive time of year.

"During these holiday seasons, we thank our blessings."

—lori.