october 12 hang out the flags a new world order's on its way This is procrastination.
I've got to transcribe some (mostly) boring people talking about boring marketing for their (sometimes) boring cable networks and ... zzzz ....
Anyway, instead I'm here writing an entry probably nobody reads anyway, which is fine since I'm not writing for anybody in particular besides me. But it's been a week or thereabouts and it's time to write again. Harder to do when the whole world isn't ending, somehow -- less to write about.
Oh, except that people are getting infected with Anthrax here and there. Tra la la.
Oh, and my grandmother has cancer. Loop de doo.
Actually, that's not to be trite. It's pretty horrendous. The last time I saw Buddie ("bubbe" is Yiddish; willful semi-Jew I was even at my earliest days I refused to call her anything but "Buddie," and being the eldest grandchild I got dibs on the name, so now all four of us call her that) she complained of being out of breath a bit, but some of her new pills explained that one side-effect was breathlessness, and being 80 she complains about the shag on the carpet if she can, so needless to say I clucked sympathy and asked her to sit down and didn't reall think about it. That was Rosh Hashanah. Well, Sunday as I hammered stuff into the wall opposite the bookshelves she called and said she had "some bad news." She never calls with "bad news," so I really had no idea what was going on. So she explained that she was still having problems breathing properly, so she went to the hospital for tests and they found a small spot on her lungs. (She still smokes; rather, she smoked when she and I were running around making food for RH. Rather, she was sitting smoking -- "don't tell Mother I still do this" -- and I was clapping together matzo meal that looked like solid barf into balls. Tasty, though, in the soup.) So there was a week of tests and CAT scans punctuated by a three hour wait outside of Holy Cross Hospital when a bomb scare was called in. Mom wants to know what the patients in the middle of surgery did; I figure there must be some brave doctors who just kept working, but since it was all hushed up and not on the news, nobody asked the question. We don't know what happens from here. Buddie sounds great (or, rather, she sounds the same) and her biggest worry is missing Passions while she's out getting tested. She loves that Sheridan and Luis, and I tell her what I can since that's my gig. (I'm endlessly amused that she falls totally outside the target demographic for that show, which is 12-17 year olds.) I sent her a heart-shaped vase Passions sent me once as a Christmas gift, then asked the publicist to send her a photo of Luis, which they even got autographed (to Marion, instead of Marian, but whatchagonnado) and she, separately, wrote a lovely note to the show -- for which the show sent her a Passions T-shirt. That woman is rolling in it. That show and Weakest Link, and she's in heaven. Er. Yeah.
Anyhow, that's where we stand on that. I'm holding off on the vacation days until I know if I have to hurry home. I can't see her undergoing chemo, or a major surgery, so even though you can't say it on the phone, I fear these are the waning days with my last and only grandparent. I don't want to be married with a kid, but if that would make her happy, I'd wish it right now. It would make her happy.
This has not been a banner year, I tell you.
In other bad news (on a different magnitude altogether), I may need a new computer, less than three years after getting the piece of shit that I now have. What seemed like a monitor or video card problem (I get random yellow and blue bars on the screeen, and sometimes a full blue screen, which goes away with a little voodoo, most of the time) turns out to most likely be a motherboard problem. Computer genius Peter (you may recall our visit to the Indian food restaurant) took my baby (computer) over to his place on Sunday and I watched him fiddle with new video cards and software updates, and we still got funky problems. So he thinks it's the motherboard, which is a mother of an annoying fucking problem. Which means I have to get a new machine. So I'm walking on eggs with this one, hoping it doesn't die for another five years. What will likely happen is it will die at a semi-inconvenient time, and I'll freak out about getting a new one, and when did I last back up, and then I'll run out and not be prepared and get a new piece of shit that will also die soon. I need to check into Dell, I really do.
So I'm procrastinating, 'cause I have to transcribe. I promised I'd do three shortish interviews this weekend of transcription, so I don't fall behind. It'll happen. I just hate the getting started part.
Another Islam class on Thursday, this one also not exactly up to my scholarly expectations. We spent 90% of the class having a Q&A period, which in and of itself isn't so bad, but everyone was asking questions like, "Do Muslims believe in the crucifixion?" The Christians were insisting on seeing the religion through their own filter, the Jews through theirs, and I just wanted to hear our soft-spoken Kuwaiti professor do his thing. I wanted to ask, "Tell us about jihad and the five kinds and how it works into the concept of Islam as a whole." And I didn't, because by then I felt like a freak. I also didn't because for the first 15 minutes of the class my sushi/miso soup dinner and the heat of the room made me soporific and I was half-in and half-out of it, despite my best efforts.
After the class, which I left a few minutes early, I actually hauled my cookies out to Astoria for another (better attended) city council campaign meeting. Our fearless candidate is a bit tired of it all, and I'm sympathetic. It's hard, having no money and not being part of "the system" which kind of rolls along on its own power and rolls over those who aren't "of" it. I brought along the remainder of some Mexican wedding cake cookies I'd made from an ancient recipe Julia gave me -- dated 1986! (that's it on the left) -- which were a big hit, particularly with the Candidate. I also asked to speak frankly and told them if they were going to make another flyer that featured a picture of the Candidate, they really needed to get a picture of him in a suit and tie, or at least smart casual wear. (The one they currently have is a kind of doofy head shot and then one of thim in a campaign T-shirt talking to an old woman.) Nobody votes for people in T-shirts. I'm in the party, and I don't vote for people in T-shirts. You have to at least project the image of competency -- here's what I believe, and I can get the job done. They suggested places where the photo could be taken to convey being part of Astoria - the subway platform with the Triboro in the background, the power plant stacks we're all against. In a semi-joking way a photo of the Candidate standing in front of the Statue of Liberty (and doing a Libertine pose with a notebook and a Poland Springs bottle) got passed around. One guy in the meeting (he sponsored a party where I got the first walk-to-subway a month or so ago) protested the idea of a suit or any formal wear, saying it was a kind of sell out. "Why should he pretend to be like everyone else?" And I said you had to know where to draw the line. This guy had suggested the Liberty photo might be a good idea; I said, well, he's holding a plastic bottle of water in that picture. Plastic! How anti-Green. So where do you draw the line? I am a pain in the ass. Got a walk to the subway again, though. Working on it. Peter says he'd have made a move on me by now if he was this guy (yeah, we had the discussion during computer reworkings) so I think the situation is probably hopeless. But the cookies went over well.
Had an interview with a guy from my show on Thursday, and about midway through we managed to get on to politics so I shut off the tape and discovered:
1) He voted Republican because his dad voted Republican.
2) He really voted Cheney, not Bush.
3) He thought that Republicans are for lots of government, setting new laws and aiding the people via more laws, more government.Needless to say, the boy needed some straightening out. I got his email address and told him I'd send him some links. Yeah, he's a former Marine, but he's too young to be this willfully ignorant.
One at a time.
This entry's food of choice (not counting Mexican Wedding Cake Cookies)
Yum is right!
