Hockey, you and I are back ON…for now. Thing 1 and Thing 2’s team had a great game on Wednesday night. They lost 2-1, but it was a scrimmage against a team from a higher tier and the boys still competed extremely well. I was impressed.

Sabres, you are on Jessica punishment. That means every last lazy-ass, non-scoring, non-winning one of you. Even you Ryan Miller. I don’t care if it is not your job to score! If your teammates cannot possibly score ONE measly little goal in an entire game, well then TOO BAD. You are just going to have to let in negative amounts of goals. Or score one yourself. Make it work. If a bunch of 9 and 10 year olds can score against a team in a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT LEAGUE, then the NHL Sabres should manage to score against the NHL Washington Capitals. In fact, on your current four game losing streak, Sabres, you have been outscored 15-6, so you are clearly ALL to blame.

I think it is super cute that many of the Sabres’ dads have accompanied the team on this Thanksgiving road trip. The Buffalo News reports that the fathers and sons have been visiting tourist spots in Washington, D.C. and that the dads were on the practice ice for a group photo.  They also took some shots at the goalies. (Hey–I wonder if THEY managed to score and, if so, can we sneak them onto the roster? Does it really matter WHICH Roy wears #9?) I love that the team did this father/son bonding trip and I find it very sweet. But what I would REALLY love is if those dads could dig back to their days of coaching their sons (because surely many of them did) and curse and yell and scream at their boys to get their asses in gear. That is what the coaches on Thing 1 and Thing 2’s team do. Thing 1 told me recently that when the coaches (all dads) yell, “It is a little scary and it makes you feel uncomfortable.” In other words, it works.

Just a teeny tiny suggestion, Sabres dads. From one parent to another. After all, we both want to see our boys WIN.

Album “Grrr…”

Par Bishop Allen – Track #7 “True or False”

Date de sortie: 10 mars 2009

Label: Dead Oceans

Stéréotypes: Indie Rock US

Liens: site de l’artiste – myspace – label

I don’t see why every good song out there is all explicity and nasty. Right now I’m listening to Tik Tok by Ke$ha and its so …. Why do songs have to be like they are? They make all these references that I never realize untill I sing them out loud and my mom goes “What are you listening to???” And I’m like “oh… That’s what they meant…” And that song 3 by BritneySpears is really disguisting. I just don’t understand why artists have to swear and make gross references in all of their music.  

Sunny Side Up

~bunny~

Why do I even bother walking my dog with a leash?

Why do I even bother putting a muzzle on her mouth? Yes, it prevents her from eating shit on the street (literally..shit. and other shit) and get some nasty bowel disease. But on the other hand, it prevents her from protecting herself.

And if dumb people walk their bitch with no leash and no muzzle and let her jump on innocent dogs, my baby should be able to defend herself and bite that bitch in the ass!

Gosh, I never came back so shaken up from a walk with Skye. It started out fine.. then we saw a guy walking a horse..wait, a big Doberman, on the other side of the street. He/She was black, and tall, and pretty free with a long long leash behind him/her like he’s/she’s a harmless Pug. So Skye started barking and pushing, but that what happens when she sees a huge threat and I just said to myself how lucky we were for walking on the other side of the road.

Then, we quickly turned right to avoid the barking and pushing, and saw a lovely little doggie walking on his own. He got excited about Skye and decided to cross the road and nearly got hit by a car. But it was a circle, so the car slowed down and saw him. The doggie kept hopping towards us and then the love story began. They sniffed each other and circled each other, and doggie was excited and peed in the bush. Then he had enough of Skye’s booty and walked away. It was cute.

So we took another right turn to go back home then this huge black bitch, yes one of those scary dogs, came running towards us, no leash, no muzzle, and much bitterness and probably jealousy of  the beauty of my precious Skye. The stupid couple were riding their bike and their evil bitch just started jumping on my dog! The woman called the man to come while I’m in the middle of the fight, trying to get the bitch away from Skye and I guess I could’ve gotten bitten also! It’s worth it though. I saw her face on Skye’s stomach and I shouted NO!. It was horrifying. Then the man came and held his bitch and I took Skye and checked her for wounds. Luckily, nothing was there and there was no bleeding. But I literally saw how my baby’s gonna be in pet hospital soon.

I was cold, and then I was sweaty. And shaking. and breathing heavily. And when we got home Skye saw my sister visiting and got excited, and probably forgot the whole thing happened.

Oh, and to top the stupidity of those people, when the dogs were finally apart the man said to me “when this kind of thing happens, you need to release your dog”. Thank you asshole!! Great tip! I’ll be an idiot like you and release my dog so the two could fight each other to the death.

People like that should be executed.

Dear Hockey,

I think you and I need to take a teeny tiny break. Just for a few days.

It’s not you, it’s me. No…actually, it IS you. This past weekend with you was just too emotionally draining. First Friday night I get all dolled up to come and see you, go out to dinner, buy some drinks, and your response is a 2-1 Sabres overtime loss to the Bruins. I deserve better.

Saturday afternoon I drove three hours round trip for you only to watch Thing 1 and Thing 2’s Squirt team get outshot 47-1 and lose 9-0 (although the scoreboard stopped keeping track after 5-0, I knew the real score. And it was painful.)  Their team spent so much of the game in the defensive zone that I literally forgot that you are a transition sport. I caught myself thinking that the only point of the game was to keep the puck out of our net. Sometimes I wonder if I even know who you are anymore.

That night I decided to spend a quiet night all alone with you. I love our Saturday nights, curled up in my Sabres slanket, flipping between the Sabres game and Hockey Night in Canada. I should not have been at all disappointed that Buffalo lost in Ottawa, because they ALWAYS do, but I thought this season things might be different. I should know better than to get my hopes up. You can be so fickle.

And then came this morning, when Thing 1 and Thing 2’s team skated their little asses off, valiantly trying to erase the memory of yesterday’s debacle. Their reward? A lucky goal scored against them in the final minute to lose the game 1-0. Heartbreak once again.

I think a few days apart will help rekindle our magic and reinvigorate our mojo. At least it had better. Next weekend we have some big plans–3 Sabres games and 3 Squirt games in four days–and I am counting on you not to let me down.

Make it work, hockey. Make it work.

Until Wednesday,

Jessica

So Seth and Ryan and I were talking about bones for some reason yesterday, and I couldn’t quite recall all my anatomy/physiology stuff, so I looked it up. So turns out Seth was right, each bone in the finger is an individual phalanx; together, phalanges. But that’s not the point.

The point is, Hannah Montana’s bone dance song is anatomically incorrect! She starts off with “Phalanges I have ten, and metatarsals then…” She /should/ be saying phalanges I have twenty-eight! Or maybe she could stick with one foot and have fourteen!

I am very upset about this!

I took running friend Karyn to the Boston game last night (Worlds colliding!). She had not been to a Sabres game in years, and I can assure you that she and her bad mojo are not coming to one with me again anytime soon. But it was fun, at least initially, to share the Jessica game experience with someone new. As we walked past the ticket scalpers outside the Arena, one with a “Need Tickets” sign and the other a little further away yelling, “I’ve got TICKETS!”  Karyn observed, “Someone should get those two together. Need Tickets, meet Has Tickets.”

During the first intermission, my new usher Rich and I agreed that the Sabres had played well in the first period, which was especially heartening after their poor showing against Florida on Wednesday. Rich is a new character this season  in Jessica-ville, and he has a pretty big red jacket to fill. My former usher Dave, who moved on to greener security pastures, was super nice and VERY easy on the eyes. His only flaw was that he was a real stickler about not letting me go past him to my seats until a stoppage in play, no matter how charming I was. Wait for the whistle my ass. I have high hopes for Rich. He seems eminently charm-able. I will keep you all posted (and hope that Rich is not a big blog reader).

I was one drink away from reaching out, kitten-like, and batting at these tassels.

Then came the second period. BORING. The Sabres were outshot 14-3, and (except for Ryan Miller) they suddenly and inexplicably didn’t seem all that interested in this game. Their nonchalance permeated the Arena like a fog, enveloping players and fans alike. It was an odd night too because many of my season ticket peeps were not in their usual seats (“amateur night” my dad calls them).  The woman in front of me, who was a stranger, wore a Sabres winter hat with not one but TWO dangling tassels, and lulled by the Sabres uninspired play, I found myself watching them bob tantalizingly in front of me like a cat drawn to a string.

The Sabres effort in the third period was much better, though by late in the period it became  clear that the Bruins would be perfectly happy to get at least a point by letting the game go to overtime.  I helpfully explained their trapping ways to Karyn, showing her four Bruins lined up in the neutral zone ready to thwart the Sabres offensively. She was understandably riveted.  I assured her that defense is a LOT sexier when your team is the one that is playing it.

Still, I was optimistic about our chances in OT or the shootout, but 47 seconds later it was over, as Boston scored to win the game in OT a deflection that left Ryan Miller and I equally disgusted. We all shuffled out of the Arena bereft of Gilbert Perrault’s victory serenade for the second straight game. Karyn and I decided two things instantly: 1.) We would find a way to salvage the night and ease the pain of losing 2.) Whatever we chose to cheer us up would likely translate into a VBR the next morning.

Why don’t men ever listen?‬‪

From the soon to be ex, to Black to just about every other bloke I happen to interact with every single day.  Why can’t they listen and pay attention?‬‪

I’m not the best communicator. I find it difficult to talk about the things which bother me, I find it difficult to talk about things I want to talk about.  Right now I have a whole load of inane but need to have conversations in my head that I want to chat to Black about, but everytime I see him it just never seems ‘right’, so the conversation gets shelved‬‪.

What’s frustrating me more than ever right now though is I keep being told I don’t talk, but when I do want to talk, when I can get my head and my voice to work together and string together a cohesive sentence, no one wants to listen, they’re always too busy to bother, or if they are sitting with me pretending like they’re listening they aren’t really, nothing is going in and so I never get any reaction back, or help in getting better a talking.  It makes me want to scream, but what’s worse and more scary than that is that it makes me want to go back to not bothering and just letting everything go again…‬‪

Which means I end up with more issues that I should talk about, which I can’t….. Grrrr‬‪‬

not so bad!

So, a couple of days before the first day of school it was decided tat Samuel needed a hair cut. It was getting kind of shaggy, and we wanted to make sure that he looked appropriately cool for kindergarten! Normally Doug cuts the boys’ hair (except for William), but we didn’t want any unevenness (is that even a word?) to impede him in the friend making department. So, while we were sitting around the table Doug was instructing Samuel on how to talk to the hairdresser. He said, “make sure you tell her that you want a #1 military, all over.”

The next day we headed to the salon, and I told the lady, “#1 military, all over.” She looked at me and replied, “No, you don’t want that.” I then explained that was what my husband wanted. She asked me if my husband was in the military. The hairdresser then suggested that we start with a #2. If I still wanted it shorter the we could do that later.

Halfway through the cut the stylist tried to make a joke and told Samuel that she was done. Haha, not funny to a five-year old! The whole thing was crazy, but when it was all over, I thought he looked good.

We get home, and Samuel runs outside to show his dad, at which point Doug comes running at me asking me what I did I answered, ”#2, military style.”

“Why would you do that?”

“You told me to.”

“I was joking!”

Apparently I didn’t get the joke!

Every year with the drastic change in temperature + lack of sleep + go to an event where you shake a lot of people’s hands = a head cold.  And I’m really good about not touching my face with my hands after being in a very public place, really, I am. I think about it constantly – don’t touch face! don’t touch face!  But, alas, I caught a pesky cold anyway. It’s just annoying…makes me sleep in late and mostly feel like shit, I lose all motivation (build new blog, apply for jobs, work on art, address postcards, clean house!) for doing anything more strenuous than posting to FB and Vimeo. (See the latest Goody video here).

Why don’t we all take a nice little nap, eh?

One of the great joys of the new building at my university is that gaining entry to my office is through a swipe-card. Unfortunately, this means that it is very possible (and this is not the first time I’ve done it…) to lock myself out of my office. This tends to happen only for my 9am seminars.

I needn’t have worried – it has been raining for about 6 hours, which means that the trains have gone down (electrical failures) and buses are packed. Yes, rain can shut down this country. Rain. England. Quite frankly, it makes the empire a miracle rather than even a lucky chance. All of which meant that a record four students turned up to my 9am seminar.

Teaching 16 hours per week was a very bad decision.

I lived and worked by Norwich Airport for two years. I know people who have lived by RAF bases, gunnery ranges and various other military or civilian facilities for years. My present home is under a flight path used a lot by EasyJet to land at Bristol Airport. I watch Air Crash Investigation and Seconds From Disaster in bed and regularly fall asleep during them.

As you may have gathered, I am not bothered by aircraft noise. Nor are a lot of my mates.

It always makes me laugh whilst at the same time completely baffles me that so many people have problems with living near an airport, complaining about how much it ruins their cheap house or even claiming it’s damaging their brains or hearing or whatever.  Don’t get me started on Plane Stupid; that group of semi-suicidal hooligans couldn’t have a better or more appropriate name for themselves if they tried.

My answer to anyone who laments having their cut-price posh home by Heathrow is usually “Wanna swap houses?”

This edition of Secondhand Sunday is a bit different. I think it’s pretty obvious right off the bat that neither this song or video is more than a few months old. Well, let me put it this way. For some reason I completely missed that Bishop Allen had put out a video for “Shanghaied,” and yes I know they already have another new one. This is one of my favorite tracks off of Grrr  and the video is just extremely cute. All it entails is Bishop Allen sitting around and singing on a couch, in a hallway, and to a rabbit. One thing I also love about this video is that singer Justin Rice was wearing the same blue hoodie when I interviewed him back in March on the release of this record. The video was directed by Bob Byington, who also made the movie Harmony and Me in which Rice stars in (It comes out 11/17). In other Bishop Allen news the band is on the final week of their tour with the last two stops at Union Hall (Friday, 21+) and The Bell House (Saturday, 18+) in Brooklyn. Fun!

Watch Bishop Allen’s “Shanghaied”

I woke up and I was hungry. A delicious turkey sandwich was ready for me to attack. This is the song I pleasured my ears with.

Enjoy the music, and go here to get free tickets.

Thanks earfarm

I’m not going to make it. But I’m trying out anyway! Haha! In your face logic!

sunny side up

~bunny~

Windows Live Messenger is now forcing people to upgrade! What the hell. I don’t want a new upgraded messenger. There’s nothing better about it. There’s no need for it. And since when do IM programs force you to update to one and only version? Dictatorship! Boo.

I couldn’t sign in unless I upgraded, and then of course  something was messed up with the install. Dumb msi file. Made me all frustrated for a couple of hours. I started imagining life without messenger. Will I go back to the 90s and ICQ? Holy molly. Looking at wikipedia, 330,000,000 people are connected to live messenger. Are they all hating it now? Probably not.. just my fellow geeks. I kept watching the install process and that dumb roll back, whenever it hit 80%. After a long day at uni, I was ready to kill someone if it meant I could somehow reach 100% and see Johnny Depp smiling at me from my display picture.

I eventually uninstalled everything related to windows live, and the anticipation for a full install was sickening. THEN, live messenger resurrected. Magic. I still hate you, bitch.

Now I should just sit back, forget about messenger being Mussolini, forget about neorealism and its precious Rob Rossellini, and maybe hope for pasta tortellini. Oy, italian theme. University days are over, weekend started. I love wednesdays after 8pm.

you had better enjoy hanging my art work all over our house.

because i hate it.

and i won’t do it.

i WON”T!!!

so thank you in advance for hanging my pretty pictures that i have yet to have taken.  : )

*Vanessa*

i LOVE the romeo and juliet film with claire danes and leonardo dicaprio! it’s all about tybalt for me

“Peace? I hate the word.” he makes all the cringey lines sound cool. But Leonardo…he makes me cringe, especially in the balcony scene.

i know who would make a good romeo tho…harry…

god, i’m obsessed.

harry…

robert pattinson looks okay sometimes, but I prefer jackson in the twilight movies. same with the old romeo and juliet, benovolio is FIT, unlike the benovolio in the baz luhrmann film – he’s ginger! benovolio is supposed to have montague dark hair!

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Riding my bumper is NOT going to make me drive faster. If my driving ten miles an hour OVER the speed limit is not fast enough for you GO AROUND.
If you knew how to drive, you would have already been around me. But, clearly, you DON’T know how to drive, or changing lanes wouldn’t be such an issue for you.
If you had the fortitude to NOT have to hit your breaks at EVER. SINGLE. CURVE. then perhaps you would have been able to go around me when I changed lanes to pass a slower moving vehicle. But you don’t.
So, in a nutshell, you are a bad driver and a coward.
And THAT is why you are now stuck behind the white Honda Element who is going ten miles an hour UNDER the speed limit.
All I can say to you is learn some patience or learn how to drive.
Oh, and also, HA HA!

Sabato sera sono stato rifiutato da un ristorante.

Non che fosse pieno, o che i tavoli liberi fossero stati prenotati. No. Un ragazzo sulla porta, un cameriere o un buttafuori, ha chiesto a me e ai due amici con cui ero: “Do you speak Korean?”

E alla nostra prevedibile risposta negativa ci ha cacciati con un gesto eloquente della mano. E poi, perché fosse più chiaro, ci ha sbarrato l’ingresso con il corpo.

Per la verità non era la prima volta che mi succedeva una cosa del genere. Anni fa mi era successo a Tokyo: ci sono dei locali (ristoranti e bar) in cui l’accesso è riservato ai giapponesi, che si considerano tradizionalmente una “razza” eletta. Che capitasse, era scritto anche sulle guide. [Il ristorante coreano, invece, era addirittura segnalato dalla guida che avevo con me, la Rough Guide.]

Ma chiaramente non è questo il punto. Il punto è che, a volte, è bene essere dalla parte dei discriminati, invece che dei razzisti, giusto per sapere “how does it feel?”.

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?
People’d call, say, “Beware doll, you’re bound to fall”
You thought they were all kiddin’ you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin’ out
Now you don’t talk so loud
Now you don’t seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You’ve gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
Nobody has ever taught you how to live out on the street
And now you’re gonna have to get used to it
You said you’d never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He’s not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And say do you want to make a deal?

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
A complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns
When they all did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain’t no good
You shouldn’t let other people get your kicks for you
You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain’t it hard when you discover that
He really wasn’t where it’s at
After he took from you everything he could steal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people
They’re all drinkin’, thinkin’ that they got it made
Exchanging all precious gifts
But you’d better take your diamond ring, you’d better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can’t refuse
When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

I never thought I’d be one of those people whose mood was significantly affected by her sports teams’ wins and losses. Until now. I’m still not as bad as some people I know…but it has happened. Which means that today, to be dramatic, I’m in mourning. I’m even wearing black.

I suppose you could argue that because last night wasn’t totally unexpected, it should be easier to accept. But honestly, who needs 27 championships?! That’s just plain greedy.

*deep breath*

All right, I’m done for now.

Please enjoy another Andy Samberg classic (which I’m sure you’ve seen), while I mourn – and try to be productive at the same time.

(Throwing things looks like it could be so therapeutic. Sadly, I think that’s frowned upon in the office. Stupid rules.)

Media literacy seminar? Really? Possibly the most boring subject in communication studies. And I already knew that from a pointless course I took last year. So why again? “Oh I know this lecturer. She’s nice. Kinda funny at times. She uses stupid videos from youtube to show her point. And she has the same political views as mine and she’s not afraid to talk about them. It’ll be alright.. it’s right after that other fun course about children’s cinema. Fits fine in my schedule. It’ll be alright”…

Stupid! Nothing is interesting or innovative about media education! There’s new media, and people need to educate themselves about it!

There’s one article about parody in The Simpsons, and how it’s sooo critical blah blah blah. I saw The Simpsons and locked my eyes and mind on that article. Now the problem is I can’t find 4 more articles that would elaborate on this issue for a 20 pages seminar paper! Doesn’t matter I’ve already been through every article on google scholar and my library. The world is against me. Even my TV decided to show green people now. It’s the martian attack on the fat TV. Time to switch to LCD full HD. How ridiculous, a TV-addict who watches green-filtered shows on a big belly television.

She was right in her presentation. Trying to come up with a subject for this paper WILL make you look like this:

And it’s only the end of the 3rd week of the first semester.