Category Archives: random

National Jukebox

Did you hear about the National Jukebox project unveiled by the Library of Congress earlier this month?

When I heard it on NPR, I was so excited I almost crashed my car into the truck with a Calvin peeing sticker in front of me.

The National Jukebox is, according to NPR,

“the largest collection of historical recordings ever made publicly available online.”

The new website provides access to more than 10-thousand historical recordings for free on a streaming-only basis – no downloads. It covers the first quarter of the twentieth century and includes music, poetry, political speeches and other spoken word recordings. Right now, it only includes recordings made by the Victor Talking Machine Company, which Sony controls. The project is also a collaboration with the University of California, Santa Barbara – and its Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Records – which is helping to create a searchable database for every recording in the National Jukebox.

I am so happy that the big shots over at Sony decided to grant the access to and sharing of the recordings they own. This is a truly amazing treasure trove of historical records that one could spend a lot of time on, just by randomly browsing the catalogue.

Popular music (3585)
Ethnic music (1525)
Opera (1366)
Classical music (1223)
Ethnic characterizations (729)
Humorous songs (613)
Ragtime, jazz, and more (603)
Religious (486)
Comedies (222)
Monologues, dialogues, and recitations (205)
Descriptive specialties (133)
Blues (112)
Ethnic spoken word (94)
Traditional/Country (73)
Whistling (62)
Speeches (35)
Yodeling (32)
Spoken word (13)

Some of these categories intrigued me: “Ethnic spoke word”. “Ethnic characterizations”. Remember, these were from the first quarter of the 20th century and we all know what it was like back then. Therefore, the LOC posts this warning on every single page:

WARNING: Historical recordings may contain offensive language.

and the full disclaimer says:

These selections are presented as part of the record of the past. They are historical documents which reflect the attitudes, perspectives, and beliefs of different times. The Library of Congress does not endorse the views expressed in these recordings, which may contain content offensive to users.

Good times, eh?

My favorite feature has got to be the Jukebox Day by Day. You select a date, and out pop the available recordings made on the said date. Naturally, I tried my birthday.

By Paul Whiteman Orchestra recorded on July 11, 1924. I was truly not born then. (For once, I am being honest about my birth year…). And it was composed none other than George Gershwin.

How amazing that we now have free and open access to the following recording, with George Gershwin himself playing the piano?

By Paul Whiteman Concert Orchestra, recorded on June 10, 1924.

Technology rocks. Internet is awesome.

I just have one question…

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I went out for emergency shopping for Mr. Monk, my second grader. The school field trip next week requires in addition to everything else, RAIN FUCKING BOOTS. Rain boots. Seriously, where the fuck could I find rain boots on a random day?

So I ran to Target.

I also discovered that Targets carry clothes. (Ok, I have known this fact for a long time but they used to strike me as “For High School Girls Only”) Nice ones for $25 on average. So I spent almost an hour in the empty dressing room past 9 pm trying on spring and summer dresses. This is quite a big change from my usual ensemble of t-shirt and jeans. Now that I have to go to this new office with younger and hipper people, I have begun to wear jeans and blouses. And shoes with heels. I have figured this out: As a woman, you can wear almost anything and still look put-together as long as you are sporting a pair of envy-inducing shoes.

(With regarding the topic of the importance of possessing kickass heels, I will have to defer to the two sexy goddesses, Vapid Blonde and Wicked Shawn…)

Hey, a little bit of Retail Therapy, especially the French kind, would not hurt anybody, right?

Now I really just have one question…

Where the fuck did my waist go?

The Perfect Storm

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When I was pregnant with my number two child, Mr. Monk, I suffered Deep Vein Thrombosis (aka blood clot) : my entire left leg was swollen before I realized it was not a muscle strain that’s been causing me excruciating pain, but rather something that could be life-threatening. My Obgyn immediately sent me to the emergency room – yes I drove myself (but I was not having a heart attack so I was not as crazy as this other gal I know…) and they put a filter into my aorta so no broken pieces of the Titanic-sized blood clot would get into my heart and stuff.

It only happened because the stars were lined up just so. A perfect storm so to speak.

Turned out I have a genetic disorder #$^%@%* that makes it easier for blood clot to form if my body has extremely low level of folic acid.

The amount in prenatal vitamins would have been more than adequate to prevent that.

By then I had been throwing up for about four months so no, I was not absorbing my prenatal vitamins properly, and I was severely undernourished, sustaining mostly on Gatorade. (Btw, I bet severe “morning sickness” would have been qualified for disability IF men could get pregnant…)

Your blood turns thicker when you are pregnant due to female hormones.

I was also extremely dehydrated which did not help with the blood thinning department.

Long story short: everything worked perfectly and BOOM! I had DVT, blah blah blah.

Why am I telling you this now? Because once again, the stars have aligned perfectly:

New job (my company was acquired)

+ New office

+ Two computers to deal with

+ Two systems

+ Two business processes

+ Two to-do lists

+ Longer commute (including my “I am on a fucking boat” moments, yes, I realized that)

+ Longer hours expected

+ Same kids

+ Same husband

= STRESS

STRESS = TEETH CLENCHING (which I did not realize I do all the time until now) = Massive and Rapid Bone Loss in My Teeth = Oral surgery to be expected

It is not like I have been having nightmares about losing all my teeth since I was young…

Head. Meet desk.

Hello, more stress. Nice to see you show up with more of your friends. Just come on in. Move right in. Mi case su casa.

So here is what I have… I found this blogger who has quite a few cartoons with cultural/social media commentary that make me:

OMG. ROTFL. DNPMPL. ITA. FML. IYKWIMAITYD.

Mr. Dave Walker actually encourages bloggers to embed his cartoons on their blogs. He has been doing this since 2005 and is probably one of the first people online to understand the concept of Sharing is loving...

So I am sharing this because Dear Internet, I love you, and I miss you, but I really need to prioritize the many things on my plate and focus especially on the ones that will help ensure I continue to have good dental insurance…

I am taking cover and waiting for the storm to be over.

cartoon from www.weblogcartoons.com

Source: Cartoons by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

A Love Song for Sandi

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A dear dear friend recently had a medical scare. She is home safe now but I did not know about this until tonight.

Sandi over at Being Peachy and its wicked twin The Pits of Being Peachy had a heart attack and drove herself to the hospital. At this moment I am confused about the sequence of the events since I learned of her heart attack, her subsequent stay in the hospital, and her finally being able to go home all from posts by friends on her Facebook.

Her dear sweet husband, the one that she occasionally makes fun of her on her blogs, posted an update for her today. This post made me laugh, smile and cry at the same time:

Lloyd started by saying, “She is not dead,” on behalf of Sandi, and that’s 100% Sandi. And then Lloyd showed us the reason why someone so beautiful and caring and loving and passionate about life with a big heart and a great sense of humor such as Sandi fell in love with and chose him to spend the rest of her life with:

Thank you for caring about my wife, and my kids. They mean the world to me. Your thoughts, well wishes, tweets, texts, wall posts, and blogs kept her phone going off in my pocket all day long, and I saw her sense of humor coming through in your words.

I don’t remember exactly when and how Sandi and I found each other on the Interweb. But as soon as we did, there was an instant bond (forgive me for the cliche…). The first time we exchanged Facebook messages, they were long. Long with lots of run-on sentences like the kind of you wrote back and forth with your best buddies in high school. I fell in love (and trust) with her when she sent me the Friendship Disclaimer which she later turned into a video.

She is nuts. She is passionate. She goes all out for her friends and families. She is fierce. She is kind. She is loving. She is the forces of nature. She is a lady. Woa woa woa she’s a lady.

(Here is the part when you throw your underwears to me on stage. Thank you very much.)

She talked me off of a ledge once. Or maybe twice. She created a space on her blog called “You Write Here” for bloggers and non-bloggers who wish to get something off of their chests but for one reason or another they cannot do so openly or even on their own blogs. And most of us did not realize that she has been going through a lot. Much more heartbreaking, much more difficult shit that she has been shouldering than she let on. When I read that post, I was like, “WTF? Why did I bitch about my life in front of her? And why did she not tell me to STFU? Compared to what she has been going through, my life is indeed peachy…”

This event threw me off balance. I KNOW I have come to think of and care about most of you as real friends. But it was not until the shock and the relief that hit me that I realized, WOW. THIS is for realz. What we have going on here. THIS. IS. FOR. REAL.

Dear Sandi, to quote your best bud Anissa, ” NOT dead FTW.” Here is a song for you, “Your Song”, that I stole from Elton John. I don’t think he cares now that he has a baby and should NOT be getting any sleep. So it is YOUR song now. You are welcome.

And to continue our cheesy high school girl love affair, I am going to quote you some of the lyrics from YOUR SONG. Are you ready? Ok, here it goes:

And you can tell everybody this is your song
It may be quite simple but now that it’s done
I hope you don’t mind
I hope you don’t mind that I put down in words
How wonderful life is while you’re in the world

(And yes, baby, you keep the sun turned on, in addition to many other things…)

“I am swamped” sayth Prince Humperdinck. He said it, not me.

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I know it is kind of lame to keep on writing posts about how I am totally swamped and apologizing for MIA. I am being a selfish blogger at this moment: all taking and no giving back. I am compelled to write this post because I want to use this quote:

“I’ve got my country’s five hundredth anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Guilder to frame for it. I’m swamped.”

Prince Humperdinck, as quoted by William @ Poop and Boogies

It’s ok though because I have told William that Imma gonna steal this quote. Because it is way cooler than putting up this picture on my homepage.

And now I am going to encourage all of your who are also under the water, barely hanging on to your multitasking sanity to steal this quote and post it on your blog.

We have a gorgeous day here in Chicago. In the 80s. I took a water taxi this morning to the new office.

I was on a friggin’ boat!

This song really was what I was humming the whole time I was on the ~~water taxi~~ boat.

(Note to self: Do NOT show this to your kids. Too late I guess. Now let’s hope they heed your warning of not repeating the bad words…)

Ok. I will come 100% clean. I am posting (instead of writing a check to IRS for the fines associated with our 2009 filing) because I want to pimp this video below…

Mother’s Day. Schmother’s Day.

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I am so glad Mother’s Day is finally coming to an end. In less than 30 minutes.

I was not going to write anything about Mother’s Day today. Apparently I have written several posts on how and why I hate Mother’s Day ever since I started blogging. The act of “Oh I don’t really care if you guys do anything for me on Mother’s Day” is painfully obvious to me yet maddeningly unrecognized by the others in this house. The angst is palpable.

The good thing is: The Husband happened to be out of the country for a big meeting attended by hundreds of engineers (yes most of them men) every Mother’s Day for several years now. This actually helped me relax. If he is not here, well, he cannot be expected to bring me breakfast in bed, can he?

To be fair, he did surprise me with a package from FTD this year:

I was not expecting anything, and fortunately I recognized the FTD logo on the box and decided to open it right away.

I remember the last time I received a proper bouquet was in 1995 when we graduated and moved into an apartment together. Giddy with excitement at the sight of these flowers sitting on the kitchen table, I was content with half an hour of this this morning and considered today a success…

Really, life is what you make of it. Make no big deal out of today, then today is not a big deal.

I cooked. I cleaned. I did the dishes. I picked up the house. I did the laundry. I folded and put away clothes.

Just like any other day.

It worked out better this way really since I’ve been wondering “What’s the point if I have to clean on the Monday AFTER Mother’s Day?”

Except that I am happy for The Husband that the following conversation did not happen today. Well, because he is not here so he could not have on Mother’s Day.

“Look at my arms! They are not that flabby, right?” I pinched my right forearm with my left hand and show it to The Husband. I continued, “I wonder why my arms always look so HUGE in pictures! They are actually kind of firm when I do this.” I then pinched my forearm some more.

“Maybe it is like the Kobe beef,” he said, after declining my invitation to pinch my forearm and see for himself.

“Huh?”

Pause. “Made with muscles and fat.”

5 seconds after I hit his face with a pillow…

“How about you treat me like Kobe Beef [sic]…”

“What?”

“Feed me beer and give me a massage!”

I did neither. It was not Father’s Day.

p.s. I do sincerely wish all the mothers, grandmothers, foster mothers, guardian angels out there a Happy Mother’s Day. I hope your day was full of relaxation and joy. More than that, I wish you a Monday After with NO increase in workload.

For the Bard

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Yesterday April 26 was Shakespeare’s birthday, well, it was the day he was baptized. Nobody knows the exact date when he was born but traditionally it was celebrated on April 23. I can tell you that on either day there was no Google Doodle for him and “Shakespeare” was not on the Twitter trending topic list.

So there’s that.

I did celebrate yesterday by playing with this randomizer for Shakespeare’s insults: The Shakespearean Insulter

And I have been trying to memorize as many of the insults as I could. You never know when one will come in handy.

Idol of idiot-worshippers!‎

Be put in a cauldron of lead and usurer’s grease, amongst a whole million of cutpurses, and there boil like a gammon of bacon that will never be enough.

We leak in your chimney.

Thou cockered onion-eyed clack-dish!

Thou art essentially a natural coward without instinct.

Thou froward common-kissing scut!

Thou odiferous dizzy-eyed fustilarian!

Thou qualling elf-skinned foot-licker!

Thou puny lily-livered death-token!

Thou loggerheaded fat-kidneyed pumpion!

Thou roguish fat-kidneyed horn-beast!

Thou dissembling folly-fallen hedge-pig!

Thou bawdy earth-vexing whey-face!

Thou paunchy bat-fowling apple-john!

I will be getting up at 4 am to take the first flight out for yet another business trip. A pox upon thee!

While I am away, please try and memorize as many of Shakespeare’s gems and use them on each other.

For the Bard: This is one of the most revealing scenes about the power of theatre I have seen. (And it is from my favorite TV show ever Sports Night. I am still waiting for it to come back the way I am waiting for a chance to see Freddie Mercury live…)

I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.

— Oscar Wilde, himself a gifted word master excelling at the art of insult

A flower for me

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As I walked out the train depot, I saw his familiar face from afar. He has taken over the position from Mr. Jim, the white-haired veteran whose presence has been a staple at this corner of the corridor connecting people to the bustling city life.

I used to give something every time I walked by Mr. Jim, before he retired, until he said to me one day, “You don’t have to do this every time you walk by me you know?”

I looked at him puzzled.

“I mean, you don’t need to pay to get out of jail every time you pass by me.”

I laughed at his witty reference to the game Monopoly and his prime guarding position. “So I can just pass go?”

“Yes sweetie. I know your heart is in the right place.”

Now it is the new guy’s job to be holding that telltale locked red tin box outside the train station during morning rush hours. New Guy. That’s what I call him inside my head. I have not asked him his name yet.

It was easier for me to ask Mr. Jim for his name because he’s in his 80s, I think, and there was no risk of my curiosity and may I say good manners being mistaken for some sort of brash romantic advance. But the new guy is younger, well, younger than 80, and I did not want to give any wrong impressions. Mr. Jim loved to hold my hand while we talked and I let him flirt with me because I enjoyed seeing the sparkles in his eyes when he laughed.

I have noticed that less people stop to chat with New Guy as they had done with Mr. Jim. I am not sure whether it is because of the missing front teeth that strike people as unsettling. Or perhaps at merely middle age, he has not earned the right to hang that sign above his head that says “I am very old so yes it is ok to talk sweet nothing to me.” I also noticed that very quickly New Guy added a suit jacket and a fedora in addition to his original ensemble consisted of a pressed white dress shirt and tie.

Not wanting him to feel unwelcome in the midst of the ecosystem of harried suburban commuters, I make a point to say hi to him whenever I see him even though I no longer stop to chat.

This morning I stopped to put a folded dollar bill through the slit on the top of the red tin box.

“How are you doing?”

He smiled and I could see the gap in his mouth where the front teeth should have been. It no longer looked unsettling. It felt familiar now. I saw that his smile was genuine through his eyes which warmed my heart.

“Oh. Wait. Take this.” He held up a flower to my face. “Put it in the button hole here,” he pointed to the lapel on my trench coat, “Someone gave it to me but it won’t fit in mine.”

“How come it doesn’t fit in yours?” I took the flower from his outstretched hand and leaned closer to look at his brown tweed jacket.

“Because it’s sewed!” He laughed. I laughed too because somehow it was amusing.

“Well, cut it open or something and I will bring a flower for you next time!”

He looked surprised and then quickly became a bit bashful. “Nah. You don’t have to bring me a flower.”

“We’ll see about that. Thanks for the flower!”

I could almost break out into a song when I was walking towards my office building, with a flower in my hand. All this time I thought I was doing him a favor, turns out it’s the other way around.

I cannot wait for spring to come.

But the Kitchen Sink

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(This post was written while I was waiting to board my flight)

My flight is at 9:05 pm on a Sunday night. Tonight.

It is really not a surprise to those who have been living in this part of the world for a long time that the weather went straight from Winter to Summer. Forget about that bitch Spring who’s been a no-show anyway. 86 degrees. People were out and about in hot-weather clothing, including sandals and straw hats, as if we were in the more fortunate coastal areas. I HAD to take the kids out for a drive. It would have be hubris if we had simply ignored what Nature decided to bestow on us on a whim.

The result is that I had absolutely no time to pack for my business trip. The taxi ended up waiting for me for 10 minutes. Whenever I pack in a hurry, I overpack, almost comically. So now I am sitting here, waiting for my flight while taking stock mentally – since I never have the foresight to NOT put my “unmentionables” on the very top in case any TSA agent decides to ask me to “Please open your luggage right here, ma’am, right in front of the horde eager to distract themselves from the boredom through the security line.”

Now I am taking stock of the things that I have packed:

1 lightweight denim jacket – it is supposed to be in the 70s tomorrow

1 trench coat – it is supposed to be in the 30s on Wednesday night

2 ironic shirts from Threadless – I have to work with some software engineers and I need to prove to them that I am more than just a pretty face. (I am saying this IN JEST. Most of them are less than 10 years younger than my 13-year-old… I am however hoping that my matronly presence will prove encouraging…)

my trusted Aerosmith t-shirt – Just in case some of them are into Classic Rocks

1 Banana Republic white dress shirt with French cuffs – In case I need to “Power Suit” it up

1 Boden shirt in bold purple patterns – In case I need to appear to be BOLD and “Think outside the box”

2 black drape-y tops – in case I need to look feminine and young(er) and sexy with my boobs hanging half way out (Will most likely not be used. Again)

4 old t-shirts – in case I decide to, and have time and energy, to work out. Or at least I could sleep in them.

1 NEW pair of workout pants from Costco – My first ever workout pants. So what did I wear before these? I either wear my pajama pants or I go pantless. What? I only work out at home and only when the guilt becomes too much to bear.

1 pair of pajama pants

2 bras – (Do you say “Pairs of bras”? If not, WHY NOT?) so total 3 bras. I am kind of expecting the weather to be hot and I do not like sweaty boobies. ’nuff said.

A handful of undies that I grabbed before I rushed downstairs because the taxi was here

A handful of necklaces (Ditto)

A handful of silk scarves (Ditto) – I like to dress up like a flight attendant. Leave me a alone!

I also have failed to pack SOCKS. And NO running shoes. So much for my good intention of wanting to work out while away on business trip.

I guess those 4 old t-shirts will all be used for sleeping.

If you have been keeping track and doing some mental calculation, you’d notice that it sounded as if I were about to run around town with my bare nekkid behind showing.

What? No mentioning of pants?

PANTS. Ugh.

Now it has become clear to me: I think pants are overrated subconsciously.

For all these various styles of tops, I have only packed one pair of jeans.

Let’s try not to wipe our hands on them, ok?

Hubris, Or, How Blogging/Tweeting Makes Everything Seem Funnier

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Hubris.

In case you are worried that all your kind compliments may have given me an ever-expanding ego, No Worries, my friend…

I emailed several of my Annie Lennox+Sabina-From-The-Unbearable-Lightness-Of-Being inspired photos to The Husband. I got one line in response from him:

What are you planning to do with those pictures?

And this came only after I hollered at him across the room, “Hey, you never said anything about those picture I sent you the other day!”

“What pictures? Oh.”

Instead of wielding the knife I was holding at that moment, I actually put it down and picked up my iPhod.

Being able to channel my wrath this way actually helped me see things in a very different perspective. As soon as I typed it out inside my head, Click click click. THIS IS SOME FUNNY SHIT! I told myself.

Twitter has saved his life so many times if he only knew. I cannot understand why he has a problem with my Twitter obsession…

What is a blogger worth if we cannot live what we preach?

The other day I so smugly quoted Frank Wedekind

Any fool can have bad luck; the art consists in knowing how to exploit it.

Oh, I thought I was so witty.

Of course disaster struck. In the form of bubbles.

Did you know that Dawn dish washing liquid is blue just like Jet-Dry?

Did you know that the compartment for rinse agent is built into the dishwasher so there is no way to detach the thing when you need to, say, dump whatever was put inside out?

Did you know that adding dish washing liquid into the rinse agent dispenser instead of Jet-Dry is 10 times worse than using it instead of say, Cascade?

Do you like bubbles?

Did you know that it is a futile attempt to scoop out large quantity of bubbles with a bowl because you cannot easily dump them out, so light and fluffy?

Did you know that it took at least 20 rinse cycles and a mountain pile of towels to undo the bubble-producing power of Dawn inside the rinse agent dispenser?

The ordeal — I did not go to bed until 4 am — was made easier to stomach because the whole time I was thinking, “Wow. I need to turn this into a blog post!” totally channeling Frank Wedekind.

While I was on my hands and knees wiping the bubbles off from the bottom of the dishwasher after the Nth time, I was narrating my actions inside my head. I felt detached. Somehow it made the whole thing funnier. It got even funnier when I envisioned the narrations on silent movie dialog cards. Soon I was watching myself in a silent movie, accompanied by piano scores, running around, trying to stop the bubbles from oozing out in vain.

Hilarity ensued.

All this video needs is some nice music from the Twilight Zone series…

The Absence of Alternatives

My therapy sessions…