Aicha

Here is something for your listening and comedic pleasure:

http://www.geekoffice.com/search/index.php?searchword=pennmasala

That first song "Aicha" has hypnotised me. Evidently, this acapella group from Penn State is covering a version done by the group Outlandish, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8krO7Q3vSyswhich is a kind of re-mix of the original French/Rai pop song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LFJY3tX9TE. The singer is Algerian, but the lyrics were written by a French Jew. Which is funny, because when I first heard the French version, the language made me think of the Song of Solomon. Here's something else,
the farther you get from the original, the less coherent the lyrics are. For example, the rap version says;

"She moves, she moves like a breeze"

This is from the French;

" I 'll go where your breeze leads me"

Song of Solomon:

"Whither thou goest, I would follow."

The first verse in English:

"So sweet, so beautiful.
Every day like a queen on her throne.
Don't nobody knows how she feels,
Aicha, Lady, one day you'll be real."

In French:

"As if I didn't exist
she passed me by
without a glance, -- "Queen of Sheba",
I said 'Aicha, take. It's all for you.'"

Is it me, or is Anglo-Saxon crap for love songs?

Anyway, this song is not under my skin because of the lyrics. It's the haunting, plaintive, heartbreak in the music. It's like slow sobbing in the key of D, opening up my heart chakra and reminding me that men are good for something.

Rocky Point

These are difficult days.
2 weeks ago I spent a relaxed weekendwith a friend in San Diego, attending a Feng Shui seminar. At a certain point the instructor looked at my hastily drawn floor plan, scribbled with notes and tentative compass points marked out and said "You need to put a fountain here, in your career sector."
Subsequently, I did go home and put a fountain on my bedroom dresser.
Last Friday, I tore my boss and his secretary a "new one." I've been correct but tight-lipped ever since, and I can see everyone move to the edge when I enter the room. Yesterday, I put applications in to the local hospital and the dept. of Public Health. Then I went home, sat on my bed and looked at my dresser.

Coming True

Here I am again. Summer has ended, school has begun, I'm back at work --a place I find myself hating just a little bit more every day, and the Dreamtree calls.
Here is the part where I list my current projects:
1) Lose weight. The neverending saga. This time I've decided to hire a Lifecoach, because I've tried everything else (except diet and exercise, of course, I'm not a fanatic). Love the lifecoach. I've exited both meetings with her exhilarated, aerated, and boyant. Unfortunately, the scale does not register that newfound lightness of being. --Yet!
I plan to continue with this activity in good faith for a while longer. I'm open to peripheral, yet unseen benefits.
2) Travel. I want to go to Turkey, goddammit! I haven't been anywhere except to my mother's house since I got married. Before that, I traveled all over the place, despite my student job poverty. My sister called me last weekend because her husband surprised her by buying tickets to Greece, where they will join one of my brothers. She wanted to know what there was to do in Athens, since she kne I had spent some time there back in the 80's. I have a dream, and that dream is to see Istanbul, a place I've never been, but from the pictures it looks like a fairy tale land. And a place where I won't have to veil and there will be flush toilets, hopefully. As a first step towards this dream, I have purchased a Learn Turkish set of CDs, which I play over and over as I drive kid back and forth all afternoon.
3) Shorter blog posts. 'Nuff said.

Extinguished

This blog is no more. See you in the comments section.

meme by me

Here are seven random facts about me:

1) My ears were pierced when I was 5 years old by a midwife in Naples Italy. Midwiffery must have been a lucrative profession in those days, because I remember her house as being huge and dark. My mother and I and our neighbor, a young farm woman, were all shown into a cavernous room full of furniture covered in sheets. The midwife came out, a very haughty well-dressed woman, who seemed very busy and kind of annoyed. Eventually she passed a needle through a candle flame, threaded it with some fine silk cording, and sewed a couple of loops into my earlobes. I screamed like a monkey when she did it, more in reaction to her manner than out of any actual pain, I think. Anyway, my Mom bought me a pair of little gold hoops with tiny rubies to wear in my ears, which I promptly lost, and for which I have been searching ever since.

2) Right after college graduation, I decided to take a trip to the Mainland and visit with some far away relatives and friends. After about 6 months, I decided to try and get a job, but had no winter clothing, other than a coat and some black winter boots. I was in Pennsylvania at the time, so I headed out to the King of Prussia mall with my last $100 to see what kind of a job seeking outfit I could come up with. After a discouraging tour of the price tags, I drifted over to the makeup counters, and noticed how elegant and well-groomed the women behind the counter were. Then I noticed they were all wearing grey smocks. I ended up buying a black skirt, a black turtle neck and spent the rest of the money on cosmetics and a manicure.

3) When I was about 15 or 16 I picked up a book on Tarot at my High School Library. It had big full page colour illustrations of each card in the Marseilles deck, plus various historical variations. I dreamed about those archetypical images for weeks. Since then I have an ongoing fascination with the communicative power of images.

4) Within the last 30 days I have learned that 2 of my best friends and one of my brothers has decided to become either vegetarian or vegan. Furthermore, my friends and my brother's girlfriend have celiac. Why is it that everyone I know has some kind of major food allergies or dietary restrictions? I predict that some day I will be able to eat only water and stewed prunes.

5) I dream one day of going to Istanbul, Turkey. I hope it doesn't get all bombed up before I get there.

6) I can't decide whether I am lazy, or incredibly competent in making my wishes come true. At this point in my life, all my goals of early adulthood have been realized. Oddly enough, I feel sort of trapped in amber, or like I am treading water, waiting to get back to my real life. I tell myself I'm living for everyone else right now, and that eventually they will all be gone. But what will be left?

7) I have three buttocks.

Not really. That was kind of juvenile, but it has taken me a week to come up with 7 random facts about myself. A little harder than what I would have expected. Oh wait, here's something

7') I can sew. Lately I mostly sew kids pajamas, because I can make them exactly like the ones int the catalogs, which sell for $40, for about $5. I give them as gifts, and make several for my own kids every season, because there is nothing better than a bath and a clean pair of p.j.'s at the end of the day.

8) BONUS FACT: I have developed a mild profanity habit. Ex: "A.J says he'll give you a ride home at 11:00pm? A.J can kiss my ass, I'll be there to pick you up at 9:00. --!" I have been told, repeatedly, that it isn't appreciated, especially by my co-workers, and yet I can't seem to discard the offensive wordage.

Note Taken

Here is a comment I left on Greg's blog http://www.geeseaplenty.com/ this morning:

"Last week I saw a speaker on the subject of date rape, --Mike Domitriz. He suggests asking before making the Big Move. As in “I had a great time, I really like you, can I kiss you?” If they say no, you can always say, “Glad I asked, I’d have hated to make you uncomfortable.”
This is one of those ideas which is so revolutionary, and yet so obvious. If someone put their hands on your food, you’d know exactly how to react, but if they put their hands on your body, it’s all complicated and awkward."

Later in the day I thought that this is the kind of thing I should develop and post on my own blog. The thing is, I really don't have much more to say about it. It's a good idea, and I wish someone had suggested it to me when I was in Junior High.

The reason this is all on my mind, and why I went to program in the first place (http://canikissyou.com/ , by the way) is that next week I have to get up in front of about 100 Fifth Grade girls and show "The Film." You know, periods and stuff.

I also have to review all that material for 79 Sixth grade girls the day before. I was thinking I would focus on skin care and make-up this year for the Sixth, and maybe get into dating etiquette as well. I haven't really drafted it out yet, but here are some issues:
1) Most of these kids...wait, ALL of these kids are either first or second generation Mexican. They have no career plans other than marriage and motherhood asap, preferably right after H.S. graduation.
2) This town has held the record for highest number of teen pregnancies per capita for many years.
3) What do I know?

The thing is, I remember once, when I was about 16, my dad showing up at my bus stop to give me a ride home, -- maybe the one and only time that ever happened, and found me just off the bus talking to a couple of tourists, a long ways from Waikiki, who had gotten off with me. My father asked "Who were those guys, why were you talking to them?" I told him I didn't know them, they had just asked me about what to do on their vacation. He frowned and said "The hell with them, you don't have to talk to anyone you haven't been introduced to."
That little piece of Victorian, off-the-cuff advice would pop into my head many times during my future career as a Hot Chick, and no doubt saved me a lot of trouble. It was such a relief to have some guidance in that area. Drunken Frat boys? Don't believe we've been introduced. Guys yelling from construction sites? Nothing to do with me. Rough looking men in the streets who come up looking for the time, or money? Better ask a man. Anyone who wants to meet me, can just get themselves introduced.

I could have used a lot more of that kind of guidance.

Blue MoOn

It is 3:16am and I can't sleep. Which means I have time to blog. Sadly, the only newsworthy thought in my head is the inch long pencil lead my colleague took out of a first graders ear this morning.
Yeah, that's what I said. An inch long pencil lead.
"She kept saying her ears were bothering her, but she had so much wax we couldn't really tell what the problem was.."
Until they found an inch long pencil lead.
The question now, of course, is what they'll find in the other ear.
"Probably the eraser!" says the Mom, which begs the question; where is the rest of that pencil?
Still, this isn't as bad as the Bean Story.
One of the women I worked with the last time I worked at a hospital told us all at lunch one time about how when she was little, she used to have "these really bad headaches." (Can you already see where this is going?) So her mother finally took her in to the doctor, who found she had some kind of an occulsion in one of her nostrils. He was able to get in there with a tweezers and dislodge what turned out to be a bean. But that's not all. This was evidently a magic bean, with a BEANSTALK attached. She said it took the doctor "a long, long time" to slowly tease out all the roots and shoots which had wound their way through the nooks and crannies of her nasal passages.
Can you imagine? I wonder if that doctor's knees were shaking that whole time.
"Josie!" I said, "Didn't they ever tell you not to put a bean in your nose?"
"Yes," she replied, "they did, but I was trying to talk to my Mom, and she wouldn't listen to me, and I just thought..."
Seeing this grandmotherly old lady still trying to justify putting the bean in her nose was almost as entertaining as anything else.