toilet humor, anyone?
I know a lot of the japanese-to-english translation stuff is overdone, but I just found this link somewhere on the half bakery, and it's hilarious.

also- cool blog in arabic. now if only I could read some. it looks beautiful.

whew! home again.
we got rained on and had a truly fabulous time nevertheless.
First we went to Mercey Hot Springs, a kind of ramshackle place that's been around (and pretty decrepit) for almost a hundred years, I think... the hot tub/hot spring is great, and we camped, so I don't know about the cabins- there are some folks fixing it up, planning a hotel and restaurant, which would spoil it completely for the rest of us. It looks as if it may take them a while to finish.
Dinner was a lot of thanksgiving leftovers-
deeelicious.
It rained a bunch, but we did get an endless show of rainbows all day on Saturday:


then we caved (it looked like it might rain a lot) and went to Hollister (it was close); rented motel rooms and had a fabulous dinner at a mexican restaurant in town. There were two Edward G. Robinson movies on TV, so we stayed up and watched those--- "The Stranger" with Orson Welles and Loretta Young, and "Scarlett Street", directed by Fritz Lang.
Today, after a big greasy breakfast, we headed to the coast to Ano Nuevo to see the elephant seals lay around on their big tubby bellies (and on each other).
Elephant seals have no problem with relaxing. I think they may even win over cats in that competition.

the bird:


a man very happy about pecan pie:

my attempt to make "lapin aux olives" from Eileen's Jacques Pepin techniques book (the horseradish tail was my own inspiration):

Thanksgiving is such a strange-ass holiday.
it is, however, enormously fun the way we do it, and boy, is that something to be grateful for.
We got there at 11:30 yesterday morning, and at 1:00 am we were still playing poker and nibbling on turkey and desserts.
why can't we have this much fun every week?
must have something to do with being a stinkin' grown-up.


Chris in Manchester, England, sent me a little email titled "hey stooey" and I really think I rather like "stooey" as a new nickname (I'm not really sure how much I want that to stick...) he did refer to me as a "him" on his blog somewhere, perhaps he thought I was Stu.
At any rate-- this is stooey, signing off for a few days--- in spite of the cold, the (huge potential for) rain, and how tired we are, we're going to try to go camping. If it rains a lot I'll be the first one in the cheesy motel.

so today is turkey day...
last night there was a Great Peeling of Chestnuts for the marvelous chestnut stuffing, and we fortified ourselved with bloody marys.
my head hurts just a teeny bit this bright morning.
Somehow we managed not to screw up the pecan pie. (I must have been in a hurry; I wasn't paying any attention to the recipe and managed to put all the ingredients in the bowl (eggs, vanilla, pecans, corn syrup (yik), salt, flour, etc.) before I read the rest of the recipe, where it says to do something special and of course put the eggs and vanilla in last, blah, blah, blah. Anne will appreciate that I did this, as that's how she's been baking chocolate chip cookies for years--- just toss everything in the bowl at once, and stir it up.)
Eileen's pumpkin pie looked mighty fine, and now I starving. better find some breakfast before we head back over to where the turkey is.

oy, my stomach hurts...
I love love love the Altavista translating tools.
I just used the site (instead of my nice dictionary and brain) to try to translate the question of the day on a Russian website, and this is what I got:

"Question: Do consider you that in Russia now there is present political opposition to the President fishing?"

some kind of glitch-- even without my dictionary I can see that for some reason "Putin" was translated as "fishing," which is weird; the word for fish is totally different.

Now, that's what I'm talkin' about.
stress relief-o-rama.
those germans really know how to have fun.

a ha.
there was a mouse in my blog.

pardon any broken links or images, dear readers, until I can sort some things out.
for now, the sun is shining, and I'm going outside for a bit.

I thought I had found a new favorite thing to peruse in textism.com, but for some reason this post, while exceedingly well written, disturbed me immensely.

is publishing working?
I'm making all kinds of changes to my template and it doesn't seem to be working.
ack.

Putin on NPR.
I haven't had a chance to listen to the whole interview yet.

can't get the PBS site to load, but I watched part of a Nova special on bio-warfare that makes me shudder...
Plague in a can of peas... in an old refrigerator somewhere in Kazakhstan, I think. along with hundreds of ampules of various other chemicals and potential bio-weapons. just leftovers...

I must now admit to having had several glasses of the new beaujolais, and it's lovely.
but I'm too tired now to go on and on as much as I'd like to.
schlaft schoen, gute nacht, ich muss jetzt ins bett.

I just added some translation tools from AltaVista's translation site to the column on the left.
I don't speak Italian, and my French is pretty bad, but if the German translation is any indication... oy! pretty funny.
they ain't kiddin' with their little tiny disclaimer:
"If you need a highly accurate translation, you must use human translators and create as many separate HTML pages as you have different languages."
I'd better get to work on my French.

Spike always sits on whatever I'm trying to read or write when I'm at my desk.
He gets especially smug about conjugating Russian verbs.


but I know he's a cheater.

yup, I always knew I loved Paris.
thanks, neille, for sharing that.
when my sister lived there she didn't like it all the time, either, and when I went to visit, I could see why, but still... as a place to dream about and visit, it's fabulous.

it's raining cats and dogs.
I went out to run some errands and am pleasantly soaked. rain is still a novelty this time of year...

eek-
I curse the dweeb in my local neighborhood video store for playing "Boogie Nights" last night while I was in there. I still have "Jessie's Girl" stuck in my head, damn him.
I finally rented "Unbreakable." I liked it, although I admit I thought there would be a little... more to it. I didn't really have high expectations.

A Woman's Guide on how to Pee Standing Up.
brought to you by restrooms.org and Caring Hands, Inc.

I found a few entertaining links on cruel.com's archive page.
I especially liked the Ass-Kicking Chinese Stick Figures and the article from the Dartmouth Review... poor little prudes.

funny thing from Eli this morning:

The REAL-LIFE Worst-Case Scenario Handbook, by Martha Keavney.
I especially like the "Orchestra Seats at Elton John and Tim Rice's "Aida" scenario:
"1) Do not crouch down. Hold your ground, wave your arms and shout. Show the musical that you are not defenseless."

and another from yesterday:
"unfortunately, this is not from the Onion."
"Enduring Freedom Picture Cards presents [sic] the New War on Terrorism in a format that children understand."
oh, yeah.

oh my lord.
now someone from the United Arab Emirates has stumbed onto my page with this search:
"funny bosh bin laden".
uh...
what?
and I doubt they found what they were looking for...

well, holy shit.
I just got home from class after a very long day, and flipped on the television for a second...
what did I find?

Barbara Walters, yes, baba wawa herself (whose interviews I have never, ever been able to stomach for more than a few seconds), interviewing Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.

ooh, she's so awful...
she should get a job as part of the Russian propaganda machine... the whole thing made him look like a freakin' saint.
ok, ok, what did I expect?
tv is evil.

on the bright side, I may actually survive my class this semester, which is kind of a relief. it's been hard.

I like Matier and Ross's dim bulb award for PG&E. The rest of the column is pretty good. I like the story about the people who went through extensive airport security and still made it through with a box cutter by accident.

Eli pointed out that if you do a search for "daisey chain sex" the first thing google will tell you is that you've misspelled daisy. (did you mean daisy? unless of course you mean Mike Daisey.
for some reason I had to re-examine the "daisey chain sex" search results again. my blog comes up as number 61 of 111.
I didn't take the time to read to the bottom of that page yesterday, and oh, my, it is scandalous. The very last one is enlightening-- perhaps this is what our searcher was really looking for (2 bi men looking for 2 bi men, etc.).
3rd from the bottom is this:
"... But- isn't the female sex demon a Succubus?". ... engaged the door's security chain and
checked the deadbolt ... Okay," Cara said. "Upsey daisey, boys." The demon had ..."
go here if you must read on.

Well, right back atcha, Chris, 19, and living in Manchester, England. I have no idea how you might have been linked to my blog. I've experienced the same mysterious thing myself-- last night I found myself searching a 13 year old girl's site, looking for a link to mine.

Bay area commuters may be "shrugging off the threat", but Ken, who works on Treasure Island these days, has been told to bring extra food to work in case they get stranded on the island.

my office is right next to the Bay Bridge and helicopters flew overhead all day.
kinda nervewracking.

But it may be that my current reading material is making me, um, nervous.

Actually, I finished it this evening- "Chienne de Guerre," by Anne Nivat, a French journalist (Moscow correspondent for Liberation). She disguised herself as a Chechen woman (aided by many people and the fact that she speaks fluent Russian) and traveled through Chechnya for 6 months. She finally was arrested by the Russians (she went completely undetected for six months, even through hundreds of Russian checkpoints) and deported back to Moscow.
I can't even begin to describe the horror.
perhaps I'm overly sensitive.
maybe I'm just tired.
but I cried this morning, reading on the bus on the way to work.
At lunch I forgot to breathe while I read the chapter in which she describes being in a house in a village that's bombarded for over four hours.
"The bombardment is horrific. The windowpanes are blown to smithereens. Burning bits of steel tear through the air. The walls tremble. The doors fly open of their own accord. During the attack, Iakha goes imperturbably about her household tasks, sweeping up the splintered window glass, putting the kettle on for tea. Her grandmother is lying against the wall in an adjoining room. I know that the old woman is a little deaf, but she can't fail to hear what is happening around us. During a moment's pause, she shouts out suddenly, in a hoarse, tense voice, 'Is there anyone still alive?'"
When they all emerge afterward every house around them has been flattened.
It's unbelievable, all of it.

here you may read a short interview.
To listen to a longer interview with Nivat by Terry Gross, go to the site for Fresh Air and select April 9th, 2001 (or do a search for Anne Nivat on the archives page).

I've been feeling so incredibly numb about the bombing of Afghanistan- the American media tells me nothing, nothing.
I feel constantly disoriented. I think maybe this book, and the book about Fred Cuny, have given me an extremely helpful perspective about war, about wars like these-
big nation pummels tiny, impoverished nation in the name of fighting terrorism, then distorts the truth and feeds the folks back home a bunch of bullshit.
of course, now I feel I have some perspective, but I'm also totally disturbed.
and I'm possibly more confused than I was before.

oh my lord, what a hoot.
someone came across one of my archived pages doing a search for "daisey chain sex."
I feel so scandalous.
what a phrase!
is it like a girly circle jerk?
with crocheting beforehand maybe?

thank goodness someone found the end.

Eli sent me the link a long time ago and I just now found it again.

here's the archy selection for the day:

"the lesson of the moth"

"we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves"

this morning it was very foggy.
the Bay Bridge would normally be in the background here.