mishmash.

check out dj stylus, finally joining his poemcees crew on the sidebar.
and anybody seen a vagisil(?) commercial that seems to suggest the product will do for one's vagina what it indirectly(?) suggests it did for the on-display recently-detangled-now-fluffy skunk, smoothed-out porcupine, et al? i only caught a piece of it the 1 time i saw it and am curious whether the impression i got of their pitch was accurate...
more wifely follies (and i just linkologically updated that now-linked post): after somehow magically recovering a similar previous mishap and rendering the favourite green shirt wearable again, i've now stained grims' hemp shirt, bought while visiting his sister in oz. the 1st time i did this shit it was a beautiful pale green shirt stained blue; this time it's a pale blue stained green. i hate feeling incompetent about something as basic as laundry, plus i feel guilty for fucking up another of his favourite shirts. somehow i don't ruin mine, which i could live with; just his, so i can feel shitty. grrr.
walk good.

mastana bahar, and other music-related fare

no word from keif or google on what mastana bahar may mean, but he prob'ly busy (new home and all, and i haven't had a chance to catch up lately) but this saturday i must choose between the ramayan (for my mind; see last link) and dance class (body+mind).
there's actually another class i could take today that'd let me watch the ramayan and fits my work schedule better overall, but an asshole teacher named taurus @ our studio fucking killed that option by being the dick he apparently is.
i picked up the dance studio gig because 4hours/week @ the desk gets me all the free classes i can take- sweet deal, except (and this is not a complaint, because who could complain about...) i been in enough shows that half the time i'm not working and thus don't get those perks (unfortunate, because it woulda been nice to keep in shape with certainty during equus) and the rest of the time, between the shakespeare gig, radio station and rehearsals i'm usually too busy. i got into a groove last year with a class+teacher i loved then she went off to grad school, leaving me with classes i'm not interested in during my free time and classes i love but can't fit into my schedule. so i've not really been able to take full advantage of the gig. when edward3 closed i decided to give myself some downtime, then find a class to take.
so i did, and the other day (back when i 1st caught the ramayan on d.c. tv) i tried to take taurus' class. as i left home the gremlin rang so we talked the whole walk to the studio, trying to figure out travel plans for an upcoming wedding. knowing that studio policy says you can take class if you arrive within the 1st 15minutes, i got my shoes changed and water out of my bag while we talked, got off the phone @ the 13 and stepped in, ready to dance. taurus didn't actually look directly at me- he glanced up @ my reflection the mirror and tried to shoo me out with a flippant hand gesture. i looked, then pointed @ the clock and said, "it's 1.14, i'm not too late...", because i work there and have to enforce this policy all the time so i know, and he knows this. he looks @ my reflection and shoos me again, this time shaking his head 'no'. i stormed out, knowing i was right, went to the chicks @ the desk and asked if he had any special stipulations attached or if his class is subject to the same rules as all our other drop-ins, and naturally, i was right.
i stuck around chatting with the girls for awhile about the manu chao show and @ 1.35pm this woman comes in saying she's taurus' guest and wants to take class even though she knows she's too late. desk-chick (going to manu, but only because she bought tickets for thievery corporation- also good, but not manu- and then heard how good manu is) says she can't because 1.15pm was the cutoff, and besides, they were forced to turn somebody away @ 1.14. but then taurus sticks his head out the door to say, "she can take class. she's a company member and knows to warm herself up first."
needless to say, i was livid. who the fuck cares what company she's a member of? studio policy is studio policy and besides that, just because taurus don't know me my dance experience going back to age6 suddenly don't count? fuck no! and had it been somebody else while i was working the desk, i would've let them go in because they were inside deadline, then had to deal with them bitching when the asshole kicked them out rudely, and not be able to say anything but, "sorry, you're right but there's still nothing i can do because i can't physically force him to let you dance..."
so i hate him and can never take class with the unmannerly, no-broughtupcy asshole taurus, and thus am about to miss the ramayan. this class better be good.
walk good.
ps: inserting links for this post made me realise i never really posted about edward3; i think the experience deserves it so i'll see what i can manage, so long after the fact...

snailmail from a birdbrain

it just slithered through the slot in the door and i quick sorted it, to find junk from nationwide ("on your side" advertised even on their envelopes) addressed to: Grims'firstname None Grims.
words fail me.
walk good.

calling angel

so in your original comment, you said "...when we part company he hints he may want to see me again. i understand men not calling..." and i'd like to clarify- are we talking about man asking for your digits, or man hinting at wanting to see you again and you offering digits? is the question about the hinting, number acquisition, or both, without follow-through?
get back with me on that, dragon-tamer.
walk good.

angel on my shoulder

to answer my angelic friend: the tea experiment's ongoing, because while i find i definitely make a near-perfect cup every time in a white mug, my tea in the blue mug seems consistently much better than it was when i got mad about the bad tea thing. and i know i'm being more careful with my pouring and proportions, so that alone may explain the blue-mug-tea-improvement. thus, i feel like i need to keep making tea in the blue mug long enough to let myself get lazy again, and see if that's all the difference is, not accuracy.
and as for your question, i'll be back with an answer in a short...
walk good.
ps: on the other shoulder, web 2.0 ...the machine is us/ing us, courtesy julesd.

express yourself

explorer gave me attitude the other day. i tried to do something not out of the ordinary and it popped up this little dialog box i'd never seen before: "sorry, you do not have permission to right click." you believe this shit?
and do languages that use gendered articles actually endow objects with corresponding qualities? even figuratively?
walk good.

self-explanatory

chrissy's the bomb for knowing not just gummibaren flavours, but also for knowing the shoe company that sends complimentary bears with one's order...
it occurs to me that one might wonder why i'd pose questions like that and the ireland thing here, when in the same amount of time and using the same resources i could find out myself- well, i'm just nosy enough that i like finding out who knows what random tidbits. besides, it's easier to remember the answers that way.
walk good.

who knows...

...what flavours regular gummi bears are supposed to be? and do tell, if you do.
walk good.

sounds like a leprechaun on mescaline...

james joyce, reading from finnegan's wake (read/scroll down).
post+title credit: dave, occasional miscellaneous flux drummer (sidebar).
walk good.

misrepresent

grrr- driving back from dropping grims @ work (those of you who know me personally will know when i say i been doing this in whatever stage of undress i find myself in, come morning, so this damp 8.56am it was my mom's old thigh-length satin nightshirt and grims' slippers, 7 sizes too big) listening to wamu (yes, i'm enough of a nerd that i listen even when i'm not working @ the station; i'm also the nerd who had friends over last thursday night for grass and watched the spelling bee- my boy won, too) the female guest on morning edition was talking about the recently discovered would-be terrorists with trini links (as frustrating as us making news because the local religious denouncing elton john when we usually so proud to be such a small country making such a significant contribution to international sports, arts and progress) and kept saying the "jammy-at al musleem" (phonetic) staged the attempted coup in 1990. now, i work @ that station, and i'm sure any other public speaking forum would suggest the same guidelines: if you going to be on national media as one informed about a situation, pronunciation of names of basic players should be known if you the "expert", and checked if you unsure. and even if you aren't. even a basic googling immediately yields the name "jamaat-al-muslimeen", pronounced exactly as spelled. i was so annoyed i had to call and tell them to tell her how to say it.
and speaking of annoyed, i think i'ma have to stop using my favourite blue teacup- been noticing over the last month that it's much easier to gauge proportions of cream+brownsugar by colour (my longtime m.o.) inside a white or other pale-neutral-teacup/mug than the blue, and think i been doing fine by guests but neglecting the goodness of my own tea. this must stop. off to experiment...
walk good.

sweet trini's school for men

...is now accepting questions/comments on an ongoing basis, via comment, email, etc.
as a wise+experienced woman, sweet trini offers this public service to address the concerns of and assist the male population in any personal or relationship-related situations that might benefit from a woman's perspective. or any spouse's perspective. or where necessary, any perspective.

otherwise, in homage to a recent train of thought, the ladysmith black mambazo and kermit the frog alphabet from sesame street: scroll to disc2, track7 and pick your medium. and directly digressing, do brilliant comedians like robin williams and eddie murphy do terrible family movies later in life to make up for all their material that's not youth-friendly, or is it really just about cash?
while indulging random connections, another recent post reminded me that i forgot to mention my new favourite thing shouted @ us during a gig (up there with "don't kiss whitey!" and "get a room!" during juliet)- this little, little, little boy sitting in a group of kindergarteners who i thought shouldn'tve been there in the 1st place (and i thought he was 1 of them until...) shouted "kick him in the nuts!" when romeo+paris fought to the death in the tomb over juliet's presumably-dead body. if you want to see a corpse quit being dead and crack the fuck up, go see r+j, and come up with something similar to deliver in your best 5-year-old voice.

holy shit! realtime interruption- after growing up on sunday indian movies and mastana bahar (keif, you figured out "shashi kapoor"- what the hell does "mastana bahar" mean? anybody? because i looked...) finding a piece of the ramayana on late saturday morning local american tv, even with the worst ads ever, is wonderful. even with footage of d.c. monuments in its immediate wake- not even national ones- set to lame music, it was wonderful. plus, i learned something i'll love using (and also saw my "trini dictionary" links were jacked up, so i apologise for every time i've suggested using the unusable, and fixed the sidebar)- we trinis always say how trini-indians (especially my grandmother) so 'cosquelle' (also 'coskel') and i assumed my jewellery, tattoos and hair beads came from the similar impulse to bejewell and otherwise self-decorate in each major part of my ancestry (indian, african, chinee) but in the ramayana, when sita talked about dressing like an ascetic to follow rama from ayodhya into the forest, this woman said, "it's an ill omen for a married woman to be unadorned."- i can't wait for the next person to ask about my jewellery/tattoos/beads, so i can smile beatifically and explain that "it's an ill omen for a married woman to be unadorned."
and speaking of cultural justifications, why does my yahoo email account tout itself as "yahoo uk+ireland"? did ireland succeed months ago without my knowledge? weren't they making peace just the other day? do the majority of the irish not believe in email? what does it mean? and on top of that, why the hell was i switched from the regular old yahoo account i signed up for way back in 1996? it's not like my email address now ends in "co.uk", just that my inbox says it's in the uk+ireland...

anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programme: questions, comments, concerns?
and ladies, i don't discriminate, i just think men need help offered outright because they don't always realise it's available, while women tend to go looking for answers. but sweet trini's here for you, too...
walk good.

the burgh

wifely lesson learned @ in-laws' gathering in pittsburgh, memorial weekend: the 1 good thing about sorostitute pants (you know the tight black ones that every girl in a sorority owns and wears simultaneously) is they're not baby-pink denim shorts. thankfully, it wasn't the in-laws wearing said offensive almost-pants; the in-laws are considerably smarter.
so friday afternoon+night and saturday morning in the burgh were painless, except for my revulsion @ encountering a sleep-number bed (and as that fool brings up tempurpedic- how sweaty is a bed that dense?) so i was lulled into a false sense of security until discovering our hotel room had no water @ 1pm saturday with the family lunch @ 2pm. we called the front desk who said a water main busted and a water truck was on the way. after much more tension than is justifiable for such a short time, water was delivered and we were about 1hour late, with them having started food a half-hour into the shindig. but i should've known it was a sign.
my relief upon arrival without ruining anybody's big birthday/anniversary/reunion quickly dissipated as i was individually introduced to 20-odd-people who i mostly don't need to remember because they're old and live in america and when i go to trini i don't plan to come back much, who were already seated, each standing to hug/kiss me, who hates being touched by strangers so much that i won't get a massage or go chiropratic or even to a regular doctor and avoids her own family reunions @ all costs.
once i survived that, there was some amusement, like mary ann (crazy, but pleasantly so and occasionally sharp as nails) making bill (thinks he's funny) come all the way around 2tables to look @ the cake just so she could read him what the icing said, twice, but the meal and service were lame (tasteless white filth, anyone?) plus my glass of bad kir was never refilled. but i was just glad to see some alright people and avoid sharon. until momentarily feeling stranded...
trying to make a temporary escape to bathrooom, my reprieve was interrupted by sharon* cornering me outside the ladies' about a girls weekend in new york (she lives a half-hour away and we avoid her all year, every year). now, her teenage daughter katarina's fine, and the then-unknown cousin from p.a. she wanted to entertain would've been fine, but not on my life am i spending any time with sharon- grims hates her, his whole family hates her, she's not even their blood and they're not my blood, so that's a "no"- even if i have to tell her i hate her and hurt her feelings directly to make myslf clear, no weekend in n.y. but outside the ladies', flustered by being accosted, i pleaded no $ or time. "we fixing the house to sell, trying to lock one down in trini, have a wedding in barbados in october, moving to trini in december and have to go to vermont and arizona before we leave..."
i accidentally let arizona slip and she asked who was there and i couldn't come up with a functional lie fast enough and had to admit that conrad's there after nobody told her because she too damn nosy, then i had to warn ginni that sharon knows.
guilt had me thinking about how to fix the damage but when sharon suggested she, katarina and the cousin would all come to d.c. instead and kick grims out for this girls weekend, i ran. i was so distressed that after peeing i made 2 phone calls (in vain) to delay venturing back out. i left the bathroom begrudgingly and stepped out just in time to hear raised voices and glimpse what looked suspiciously like picture-take-outing, so i turned tail back to the bathroom and hid.
this is why i choose my family.
walk good.
*grims pointed out that sharon talks like the boss from office space ("...umm, yeah, i'm gonna need you to, umm, go on ahead and come on in this saturday, okay...") and this weekend validated my hatred of her- mary ann did seating cards to make sure she+hers didn't have to sit with sharon, at least 1person didn't show because he refuses to see her and every person i had a conversation with mentioned hatred and practised avoidance of her...sharon unites people the way the bush administration unites sunnis and shia.