Celestial Buffet: Seen

If you're at all interested, and I don't see why you should be, this page reads from the bottom up. The most recent entry is at the top. It started out that way, and because I'm stubborn (read: lazy as hell), I'm stickin' to it. --Brulee

I'm doing a zen thing for the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, you can check out Ume's Weekend Bestiary. Not that there's anything particularly mythical about it, I just like the word.

When you're done there you can check out my MFK Fisher page too.

Take care, y'all. --Brulee

Before I head off into the hinterlands and leave y'all high and dry for a couple of weeks I had to share an exciting piece of information. No, it's nothing about a certain tv show or anything like that, but in my little world it's especially good news.

Those of you who live in more humid foreign parts may not be familiar with the phenomenon of static electricity, well, not in as intimate a fashion as we in the dry places are. We're plagued by the build up of charges in our persons that can make a spontaneuos display off affection or the opening of a door painful business. Yes people, I am talking about getting shocked.

Laugh all you want, but I've had to deal with the most annoying problems getting out of my car in the winter. For a while I thought there must be a wiring problem in there. I would drive around, get out of the car and no matter what I did - ZAP! My mechanic thinks I'm batty as it is and this problem confirmed his opinion. But I'm here to tell you this: It's not in my head! Not this time! So HA!

I found this website that explains it so that even I can understand the basic physics behind this annoying charge problem. It also gave several good tips for dealing with it, including driving in the buff. That's not legal where I live, so I'm settling for the touching the car door with the key before I close it method. When you do that, it explains, you discharge the energy (up to 20,000 volts, no wonder it hurts so damned much) that's built up in your body (from squirming around on your upholstered seat) on the tip of the key, not your dainty finger.

You can check it out too:

http://www.amasci.com/emotor/zapped.html

Look at the Car Sparks section. I'm telling you, you'll learn something you can bore all of your friends with.

Hey, it's sunny out there. I'm going to hit the road. My trusty bike is ready for another season of pot holes and car exhaust. Gotta love the urban biking thing.

I'm off to see what kind of mischief I can get up to in the out of doors. Anything interesting happens I'll let you know. I'm sure you're sitting on the edge of your seat somewhere wondering, "Is Brulee enjoying herself on her ride? I hope she's wearing a helmet, because that chick's wacked in the head as it is. Imagine what she'd be like if she had another head injury. At least I'm assuming she's had a head injury before... could someone get like that without one?"

That's the last time I let you wonder about me. What else are you saying about me out there? Geez.

Strangely enough, I'm not a big surfer of the internet. This may be for one or both of two reasons... The first being that I'm too narcissistic to look at other people's websites unless they reflect back an image of myself that I can appreciate. Two, I'm an ADD (attention deficit disorder) freak and websites in general make me anxious. Note the use of the calming blue tones on this page...

Every now and again I look something up and get lost in a run of links. Did I mention the ADD thing? This is more apt to happen on the weekends or when my beloved is off visiting with her mother, like now. Anyway...

There's something exciting about the possibility of infinite discovery. And I click the next link that promises to unfold yet another truth and possibly the meaning of life. Then I run into a page that's all pink and about doll collecting and I'm snapped back into enough self control to return to the original thread of my inquiry and read the first damned page I'd looked up.

Though I have to admit a certain dark fascination with the pink doll collecting page with its list of a young woman's favorite things. Like a bruise I couldn't stop poking at I read that her favorite colors were orange and blue (so why the hell was her site pink?), that her favorite state was Georgia, that she was obsessed with cartoon dolls (whatever those are)... basically, she finds herself as fascinating as I find my own self, only I express myself in more tranquil HEX colors and use a vocabulary that can be purchased in any SAT prep course.

This all started when I was looking for a site on Freya Stark. I found a site that has a bio page of sorts. I couldn't resist the link at the bottom, and before I'd read the Stark bio (did I mention the A.D.D. thing?), I had to click it. It said, "Ministry of Information". What can I say? I'm an Orwell fan. And I found a page written by yet another narcissist... She has a thing for Nietzsche (big surprise), or so you'd gather from the quotes she's got on that page.

I also found it interesting/creepy that she mentions dolls... was it online sinchronicity?

Freya Stark was a cool lady. I was thinking about her, because I was contemplating travel and anxiety. This woman was fearless, or extremely stupid... I can't think that anyone who wrote that well could have been daft (not the best measure of intelligence, I know). She may have been limited in her outlook, but we all are, so I can't fault her too much for that. If you're interested in judging for yourself, here's a link to that bio:

http://www.chickpages.com/brainiacs/living-dead-girl/stark.html

This site is lower on the poke the bruise meter and has a concise bio:

http://writetools.com/women/stories/stark_freya.html

Help! I'm wearing a rut in my floor. Every time I hear George Bush's voice on the radio, I dash over and turn it off. For a while, I left the radio off, but then I thought that if the world was going to hell in a handbasket and George Bush was driving, I'd better keep an ear tuned so that I can know when to crawl under my desk. Oh, that only works for earthquakes...

My sister was in an earthquake and she, being my most out-there sibling (it's a tight race), enjoyed it. This is the same sister who used to record electric storms when we were kids. She'd run over to me and hit the play button on this absolutely archaic metal recorder that she'd been holding out the window to get really good sound... and I'd hear this muffled crackling and rumble play back on the tape. Her eyes would glaze over and I'd give her a puzzled look.

You can't always share other people's enthusiasms. After all, did she ever fully appreciate my childhood fascination with flames? But that's just life all over.

Maybe sometime I'll write about the time another sibling lit the chimney on fire...

Another curious enthusiasm:

http://www.btinternet.com/~meridklt/

The short download time is worth the little graphic at the top of the page. I thought so at least.

I sliced out most of that last posting because... Ew.

I'm back and in a less introspective mood. I'm not saying that that's a good thing, but you probably will.

I subjected myself to some culture yesterday. I try to do this upon occasion, to keep my little gray cells from atrophying as I sit and wait for Xena to get out of reruns...

So there I was, sitting in a lovely setting, surrounded by blue haired ladies and a surprising number of young asian women, watching two old dudes grind out a lot of Beethoven from a bunch of wood and strings.

I was reminded of why it is that I prefer Bach and that I really don't care for classical piano. It's so loud. Hurts my little ears.

So there I was, midst all of the hubbub. The performance droned, I mean, crept, I mean, played on. I watched the crowd, but mostly I watched the cellist's hands. Now that's a remarkable thing. To watch hands that have done little else but train to do the one thing they're doing so amazingly well. That kind of skill is sexy.

But they were still playing Beethoven. I wouldn't have minded it all that much, and I would have even probably enjoyed it, had they not made a change to the original program that I had showed up to watch in the first place. But this famous piano dude was in town, and because he's an old coot with a ton of awards and crap, they had him play. So everyone there was very excited, especially the young asian women, who must be a fan base of some kind because at the end of the performance they damn near rushed the stage. Lucky old coot.

Anyway, next time I try to stimulate my gray cells, I'm calling in advance to make sure it's strings all of the way and not some percussion instrument, pretending to be a stringed instrument that I can't barely hear the cello over which is why I'd be there in the first place.

You might get a kick out of this Terry Pratchett site. Do you know his stuff? If not, you've got to try, Equal Rites. Granny Weatherwax rules.

http://www.co.uk.lspace.org/

I liked this page because it's where the quotes is at:

http://www.co.uk.lspace.org/books/pqf/index.html

The point that must be made is that although Herrena the Henna-Haired Harridan would look quite stunning after a good bath, a heavy-duty manicure, and the pick of the leather racks in Woo Hung Ling's Oriental Exotica and Martial Aids on Heroes Street, she was currently quite sensibly dressed in light chain mail, soft boots, and a short sword. All right, maybe the boots were leather. But not black.

-- (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic)

"Actors," said Granny, witheringly. "As if the world weren't full of enough history without inventing more."

-- (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters)

Nothing like the weekend to improve the mood. A drive in the country, rhubarb pie, no job stress...

Here on the internet, I don't have job stress. What a relief! I'll leave up the D. Parker link though - it's good for a lot of moods. Edgy ones especially.

Speaking of rhubarb... I remembered a day when my mother took me out to pick watercress off the side of a highway. This was the 70's and people were doing that stuff all of the time. My mother did it without the aid of drugs, but with the aid of nimble little fingers because hers were usually busy smoking a cigarette. Oh wait, that's a drug. Anyway...

There I was, squatting in some roadside ditch/runoff, collecting "healthfood", because my dear mother had read in some damn book (like Diet for a Small Planet or something like that) that it was a good idea. I'm sure they didn't recommend the roadside thing, my mother came up with that all by herself.

I could also tell you a story about rhubarb and why you shouldn't eat the leaves, but I'll spare you.

To show that I don't harbor any hard feelings toward watercress, I will include this link to the official watercress website:

http://www.watercress.com/

You think I'm kidding?

Because I'm in a mood... I surfed up a Dorothy Parker site. I found this simple spot that puts up her stuff , and if you link to the name at the bottom, you drop into someone else's life altogether. I found this... intriguing. Suited the mood too.

http://www.suck-my-big.org/blah/

Despite the racy address, it's a barebones site with Parker's stuff on it. I wouldn't mislink you.

Did you know that Dorothy Parker hated A.A. Milne (the Winnie the Pooh guy)? They were "literary mortal enemies". I can't help but laugh at the mental image this conjures up. This is why I seek her out when I'm in a mood.


.	If you're at all interested, and I don't see why you should be, this page reads from the bottom up. The most recent entry is at the top. It started out that way, and because I'm stubborn (read: lazy as hell), I'm stickin' to it. --Brulee I'm doing a zen thing for the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, you can check out Ume's Weekend Bestiary. Not that there's anything particularly mythical about it, I just like the word. When you're done there you can check out my MFK Fisher page too. Take care, y'all. --Brulee Before I head off into the hinterlands and leave y'all high and dry for a couple of weeks I had to share an exciting piece of information. No, it's nothing about a certain tv show or anything like that, but in my little world it's especially good news. Those of you who live in more humid foreign parts may not be familiar with the phenomenon of static electricity, well, not in as intimate a fashion as we in the dry places are. We're plagued by the build up of charges in our persons that can make a spontaneuos display off affection or the opening of a door painful business. Yes people, I am talking about getting shocked. Laugh all you want, but I've had to deal with the most annoying problems getting out of my car in the winter. For a while I thought there must be a wiring problem in there. I would drive around, get out of the car and no matter what I did - ZAP! My mechanic thinks I'm batty as it is and this problem confirmed his opinion. But I'm here to tell you this: It's not in my head! Not this time! So HA! I found this website that explains it so that even I can understand the basic physics behind this annoying charge problem. It also gave several good tips for dealing with it, including driving in the buff. That's not legal where I live, so I'm settling for the touching the car door with the key before I close it method. When you do that, it explains, you discharge the energy (up to 20,000 volts, no wonder it hurts so damned much) that's built up in your body (from squirming around on your upholstered seat) on the tip of the key, not your dainty finger. You can check it out too: http://www.amasci.com/emotor/zapped.html Look at the Car Sparks section. I'm telling you, you'll learn something you can bore all of your friends with. Hey, it's sunny out there. I'm going to hit the road. My trusty bike is ready for another season of pot holes and car exhaust. Gotta love the urban biking thing. I'm off to see what kind of mischief I can get up to in the out of doors. Anything interesting happens I'll let you know. I'm sure you're sitting on the edge of your seat somewhere wondering, "Is Brulee enjoying herself on her ride? I hope she's wearing a helmet, because that chick's wacked in the head as it is. Imagine what she'd be like if she had another head injury. At least I'm assuming she's had a head injury before... could someone get like that without one?" That's the last time I let you wonder about me. What else are you saying about me out there? Geez. Strangely enough, I'm not a big surfer of the internet. This may be for one or both of two reasons... The first being that I'm too narcissistic to look at other people's websites unless they reflect back an image of myself that I can appreciate. Two, I'm an ADD (attention deficit disorder) freak and websites in general make me anxious. Note the use of the calming blue tones on this page... Every now and again I look something up and get lost in a run of links. Did I mention the ADD thing? This is more apt to happen on the weekends or when my beloved is off visiting with her mother, like now. Anyway... There's something exciting about the possibility of infinite discovery. And I click the next link that promises to unfold yet another truth and possibly the meaning of life. Then I run into a page that's all pink and about doll collecting and I'm snapped back into enough self control to return to the original thread of my inquiry and read the first damned page I'd looked up. Though I have to admit a certain dark fascination with the pink doll collecting page with its list of a young woman's favorite things. Like a bruise I couldn't stop poking at I read that her favorite colors were orange and blue (so why the hell was her site pink?), that her favorite state was Georgia, that she was obsessed with cartoon dolls (whatever those are)... basically, she finds herself as fascinating as I find my own self, only I express myself in more tranquil HEX colors and use a vocabulary that can be purchased in any SAT prep course. This all started when I was looking for a site on Freya Stark. I found a site that has a bio page of sorts. I couldn't resist the link at the bottom, and before I'd read the Stark bio (did I mention the A.D.D. thing?), I had to click it. It said, "Ministry of Information". What can I say? I'm an Orwell fan. And I found a page written by yet another narcissist... She has a thing for Nietzsche (big surprise), or so you'd gather from the quotes she's got on that page. I also found it interesting/creepy that she mentions dolls... was it online sinchronicity? Freya Stark was a cool lady. I was thinking about her, because I was contemplating travel and anxiety. This woman was fearless, or extremely stupid... I can't think that anyone who wrote that well could have been daft (not the best measure of intelligence, I know). She may have been limited in her outlook, but we all are, so I can't fault her too much for that. If you're interested in judging for yourself, here's a link to that bio: http://www.chickpages.com/brainiacs/living-dead-girl/stark.html This site is lower on the poke the bruise meter and has a concise bio: http://writetools.com/women/stories/stark_freya.html Help! I'm wearing a rut in my floor. Every time I hear George Bush's voice on the radio, I dash over and turn it off. For a while, I left the radio off, but then I thought that if the world was going to hell in a handbasket and George Bush was driving, I'd better keep an ear tuned so that I can know when to crawl under my desk. Oh, that only works for earthquakes... My sister was in an earthquake and she, being my most out-there sibling (it's a tight race), enjoyed it. This is the same sister who used to record electric storms when we were kids. She'd run over to me and hit the play button on this absolutely archaic metal recorder that she'd been holding out the window to get really good sound... and I'd hear this muffled crackling and rumble play back on the tape. Her eyes would glaze over and I'd give her a puzzled look. You can't always share other people's enthusiasms. After all, did she ever fully appreciate my childhood fascination with flames? But that's just life all over. Maybe sometime I'll write about the time another sibling lit the chimney on fire... Another curious enthusiasm: http://www.btinternet.com/~meridklt/ The short download time is worth the little graphic at the top of the page. I thought so at least. I sliced out most of that last posting because... Ew. I'm back and in a less introspective mood. I'm not saying that that's a good thing, but you probably will. I subjected myself to some culture yesterday. I try to do this upon occasion, to keep my little gray cells from atrophying as I sit and wait for Xena to get out of reruns... So there I was, sitting in a lovely setting, surrounded by blue haired ladies and a surprising number of young asian women, watching two old dudes grind out a lot of Beethoven from a bunch of wood and strings. I was reminded of why it is that I prefer Bach and that I really don't care for classical piano. It's so loud. Hurts my little ears. So there I was, midst all of the hubbub. The performance droned, I mean, crept, I mean, played on. I watched the crowd, but mostly I watched the cellist's hands. Now that's a remarkable thing. To watch hands that have done little else but train to do the one thing they're doing so amazingly well. That kind of skill is sexy. But they were still playing Beethoven. I wouldn't have minded it all that much, and I would have even probably enjoyed it, had they not made a change to the original program that I had showed up to watch in the first place. But this famous piano dude was in town, and because he's an old coot with a ton of awards and crap, they had him play. So everyone there was very excited, especially the young asian women, who must be a fan base of some kind because at the end of the performance they damn near rushed the stage. Lucky old coot. Anyway, next time I try to stimulate my gray cells, I'm calling in advance to make sure it's strings all of the way and not some percussion instrument, pretending to be a stringed instrument that I can't barely hear the cello over which is why I'd be there in the first place. You might get a kick out of this Terry Pratchett site. Do you know his stuff? If not, you've got to try, Equal Rites. Granny Weatherwax rules. http://www.co.uk.lspace.org/ I liked this page because it's where the quotes is at: http://www.co.uk.lspace.org/books/pqf/index.html The point that must be made is that although Herrena the Henna-Haired Harridan would look quite stunning after a good bath, a heavy-duty manicure, and the pick of the leather racks in Woo Hung Ling's Oriental Exotica and Martial Aids on Heroes Street, she was currently quite sensibly dressed in light chain mail, soft boots, and a short sword. All right, maybe the boots were leather. But not black. -- (Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic) "Actors," said Granny, witheringly. "As if the world weren't full of enough history without inventing more." -- (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters) Nothing like the weekend to improve the mood. A drive in the country, rhubarb pie, no job stress... Here on the internet, I don't have job stress. What a relief! I'll leave up the D. Parker link though - it's good for a lot of moods. Edgy ones especially. Speaking of rhubarb... I remembered a day when my mother took me out to pick watercress off the side of a highway. This was the 70's and people were doing that stuff all of the time. My mother did it without the aid of drugs, but with the aid of nimble little fingers because hers were usually busy smoking a cigarette. Oh wait, that's a drug. Anyway... There I was, squatting in some roadside ditch/runoff, collecting "healthfood", because my dear mother had read in some damn book (like Diet for a Small Planet or something like that) that it was a good idea. I'm sure they didn't recommend the roadside thing, my mother came up with that all by herself. I could also tell you a story about rhubarb and why you shouldn't eat the leaves, but I'll spare you. To show that I don't harbor any hard feelings toward watercress, I will include this link to the official watercress website: http://www.watercress.com/ You think I'm kidding? Because I'm in a mood... I surfed up a Dorothy Parker site. I found this simple spot that puts up her stuff , and if you link to the name at the bottom, you drop into someone else's life altogether. I found this... intriguing. Suited the mood too. http://www.suck-my-big.org/blah/ Despite the racy address, it's a barebones site with Parker's stuff on it. I wouldn't mislink you. Did you know that Dorothy Parker hated A.A. Milne (the Winnie the Pooh guy)? They were "literary mortal enemies". I can't help but laugh at the mental image this conjures up. This is why I seek her out when I'm in a mood. George Sand What time the gifted lady took Away from paper pen and book, She spent in amorous dalliance (They do those things so well in France). - Dorothy Parker This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force. - Dorothy Parker Sigh.

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