answer to sham contest

Napoleon Dynamite, durn it. Gorsch!

I'm running out of new ways to spell that.

If anyone is looking for a Christmas present idea for me, there's this t-shirt:

http://www.glarkware.com/securestore/c181846p16737910.2.html

If you're too lazy to click on it, it reads, "Good grammar costs nothing." It's a take-off, but edited for grammar, on "Love don't cost a thing." Get it? Eh? EH?



Ben claims I will be the dorkiest teacher in school if I own it. But I'm thinking a little dorkiness might not be a bad idea right now.

ben vs. missymussy, installment one

This is a series I should have started long ago. Like back in May 2004, when Ben was housesitting and I was there, enjoying the satellite TV, and he let me "use" the remote control for 20 minutes, getting more and more frustrated with its spastic and unpredictable performance, until I realized I had the remote for the stereo, and he was secretly changing the channels at whim with the real remote shoved between couch cushions.

Anyway. Those of you who have ever conversed with me have probably heard that story several times. It was, possibly, the catalyst that turned our fling into true love.

Today's Thanksgiving-themed episode finds us home from dinner at my parents', watching the 2-hour Apprentice we taped. Ben gets up to make a snack, won't let me into the kitchen to see what he's making, then returns with a mug of hot chocolate for me, which I refuse to drink, even though I am not quite sure what he's done to it. This does nothing to diminish his glee at crowing, "It's not hot chocolate, it's gravyyyyyyyyyyy! Mwah- ha- hahhhh!" as he pours it over his bowl of reheated cornbread stuffing.

He's already bragged about how he "almost made you drink gravy" twice this morning. I guess he thinks it's funny that I couldn't identify its graviness by smell. Garsh, what a boob. (Him, not me.)

shamefully begging comments with a sham contest

I know I'm behind the curve here, but name the movie this line is from for a super-cool prize!

Bow to your sensei. Bow to your sensei!

For some reason, I keep thinking it.

some things i miss about living on the mainland

• being able to go to the 'Dyne without fear that the next day, someone will call out, "I saw Miss going into a bar!"
• appearing in public without fear that the next day, someone will call out, "I saw Miss with her boyfriend!"
• going out to eat after 8 pm and not feeling like a degenerate
• Old Navy, Charlotte Russe, and other purveyors of cheap knockoffs so I don't have to go to Macy's for expensive, less-cool knockoffs
• Cost Plus World Market
• no geckos in the house
• friends, obviously. GOSH.

Move over, Alanis

What better time to catch up on my posting than when I've just sat down to write a lesson on compound verbs?

It's times like these that I realize I am not an English professional. I am not a grammarian, as much as I like to act like one. I don't even know all the verb tenses, which is, like, 4th grade stuff. It turns out I coasted through my academic "career," such as it was, on an instinctual grasp of English gleaned from voracious but narrow reading. This means that I can, if pressed, write like a 1950s schoolgirl, or, as more often happens, string my thoughts together in cheap run-ons imitative of the mysteries I reread as a nerdy teen. Perhaps because of this reading, and the fun I found in doing my schoolwork, I can pick out the mistakes in a church newsletter, restaurant menu, or eavesdropped conversation like that, and I'm always right.

But "teaching" grammar? It blows! When pressed to explain why a fragment is a fragment, I fall back on, "You can just tell, because it sounds bad." And teaching kids to interpret literature with graphic organizers (flow charts, pie charts, Venn diagrams), which is all the rage, goes completely against my technique of staying up all night until the meaning comes in a flash of coffee-buzzing intentisty and desperation, then turning it furiously into a paper.

I've also had to start professing a false allegiance to such bunko high school "literary terms" as rising action/climax/falling action, and my nemesis, theme. And, last week, I think I taught 30 9th-graders the wrong definition of "irony." (According to my textbook, it turns out it really is like a free ride when you've already paid.) If only I had a strong, caterwauling voice with which to profess it across the pop radio airwaves! I could do an entire album on vaguely erroneous literary-theory ballads, then live, moderately, on the proceeds for the rest of my life.

this is how our world now turns

Here is what we do for fun 'round these parts.

[Truth be told, I'm the one who carefully carved the doggie-door from the box, trying to fashion a box for shipping an ukulele to Albuquerque. Ben was quite disgusted with the result (I don't know how I thought it was going to work)].

It's funny how it's come full circle; some of my best childhood playthings were made from reused boxes. My series of playhouse-forts; the Barbie house Beth made for me (yes, I spurned it at first, but it was a feat of Hawaii-sodden cardboard, bbq skewers and crochet--I'm sorry, Beth!); the sled upon which we slid down grassy knolls at Konawaena. The miniature golf course we tried to fashion from Crest and Sun Flakes boxes. I could go on.

And now, look at me. Still finding joy in life's simple pleasures, and passing on that joy to my domestic partner.

This is what Benj said as he revealed his handiwork: "Maybe if I dress up like a television, Missy Mussy will pay more attention to me!"

To all of Benji's friends who once knew him as a radical, rabble-rouser, channeler-of-all-his-energies-into-world-changing-pursuits, non-TV-watching-book-reader, I apologize. He has come over to my side now. We take turns: I watch The Apprentice for an hour, he plays Grand Theft Auto for an hour.

the mullet returns

Vote for who you think this looks like. From the front, the sh-long effect is especially pronounced and Little Richard-esque. The layers around my face sproing up and make my head look funny-shaped.

If you tell me it looks like it always did, I'll be sad! But I will probably feel the same way in a few days. In the meantime, I'm straightening it with my CHI IRON for which I shelled out 140 clams over 2 years ago. I'm finally getting my money's worth.

Coming soon, the Ben and Missymussy follies in photos.

my ugly, ugly haircut

Sing that to the tune of "Hungry, Hungry Hippos." It's the soundtrack to my life this week. I miss Julie at Mark Pardo! And Silvia at Studio 929! The executors of the greatest haircuts I've ever had, and now it's all undone in one over-priced hour at the salon I chose at random from the phone book.

I also picked it because it sells Aveda, which has always led me to skilled scissorhands in the past. Not this time. My head looks enormous, yet the hair is too short to be put into a ponytail, or even a claw clip. With the right styling, I could pass for an early Claire Huxtable. With no styling, I look like Little Richard.