here she is...

'miss america is more than just a beauty pageant,' they say. 'it's about talent, and scholarship, which is why we attract the kind of women who wouldn't enter the Miss USA pageant.' (and yes, miss usa is separate from miss america)

talent and scholarship.

which is why the talent competition now counts for twenty percent of contestants' final scores, instead of the forty it was last year. and why evening wear, swimwear and casual wear competitions are now all separate categories on the scorecards, accounting for twenty percent apiece, as opposed to two categories accounting for forty percent total.

talent and scholarship. no, really. it's not about rewarding the 'prettiest.'

fucking hell. no wonder the viewing numbers for the miss america telecast are declining rapidly--at least the miss usa pageant doesn't pretend that it is something other than what it is: essentially, a showcase for meat on the hoof. we may all be slaves to the cult of beauty, but we're not stupid, and we don't like being lied to.

Posted by shivery at 12:35 PM | Comments (1)

picking.

when i was a kid, my first camera was one of those kodak disc-film cameras--idiotproof machines for the velcro generation (people such as myself who had trouble mustering the digit dexterity to actually thread a proper 35 mm camera). and i loved it; i swore i'd never forsake it for another. but, times changed. kodak stopped manufacturing the disc film, and i started getting curious about the family albatross--the pentax 35 mm that none of us had the heart to get rid of, neither did we know how to properly wield it. until now.

when i left home, i took the pentax with me and decided that i was going to learn how to use it. and learn i have, and learn i shall continue to do, but i like to think i'm slowly getting the hang of it.

for your viewing enjoyment, some of my recent experiments. read on if you want to know what they are, and click them to see bigger versions (or just the complete picture).

1. big daddy: i took this on the last day of our trip in new orleans; we were wandering around the french quarter in search of some decent music; i was sick as a dog, and very pleased with the profusion of colorful neon signs advertising titty bars on bourbon st.--some of those places had some very savvy marketing people. we finally found a place with some very raucous, cheery zydeco music, complete with a frenetic man playing the washboard and practically cartwheeling about the stage. we later found out he wasn't really with the band.

2. buoys: i took this in maine, after the parade. the weather was perfect and blinding, but not too hot. i wore my sister's cowboy hat, and we ate peppermint ice cream as we wandered down the lane, towards the blacksmith and towards the yarn-spinners. as we walked back, a man at the church recommended i come back at twilight for a truly beautiful photo; 'at dusk, it glows,' he said. that night we grilled lobsters and drank local beer, sat out in the field and watched the fireflies and the fireworks, and i seriously contemplated just staying on there forever. but the mosquitos changed my mind.

3. cornerstone: also from new orleans, from the jazz museum at the old US mint. moments later i had my first taste of alligator, and that night we missed the jazz at preservation hall because we lingered too long over hot chocolate and beignets at cafe du monde. it was the first time i'd seen the mississippi.

4. the american car: part of the fourth of july parade in round pond, maine. it was surprisingly political, and a great time. we drank awful sangria (i put in too much brandy) and enjoyed our collective freedom to make tasteless jokes and insult our political leaders mercilessly.

5. red window: i barely remember taking this picture, which means i took it the day we touched down in england, having barely slept the night of travel. so really. i was just having fun with focus and color. Posted by shivery at 11:40 AM | Comments (3)

less quiet on the eastern front.

if you've been keeping up with the weather, you might know that at this particular moment, crews in new york are preparing to build a legion of arks to deliver us from what is about to become a flooded washout of a city; we may be an island nation off the coast of the united states, but too many more nights of rain like that and we will be headed off to sea in no time at all. despite the horror that has been the weather of the last few days, i was not deterred in my course last night to engage in a much needed and long overdue ritual: girly movie cookie night. never mind the fact that one of the girls is a boy and that ice cream had to stand in for homemade cookies: we had romy and michele; we had the fab five, and we had each other. and i know we've seen romy and michele, like, thirty six times, but i never get tired of making fun of it.*

one thing i will say about last night's storm, though: killer lightning. really spectacular--i could see it with my eyes closed. i got off the subway nanoseconds before midnight and during a lull in the storm; i was met halfway by my delicious escort, and we scooted inside just moments before the heavens really opened up again, resulting in the loveliest light and sound show imaginable from the safety of our cozy bed.

in other news, i am inching ever closer towards the acquisition of my UK passport. after nearly two years of grousing and fretting and being confused (and, more specifically, waiting on my father to follow up on his promise to look in to what happened to my initial application), i have decided to take matters into my own hands. and oh, the mysteries and wonders of bureacracy i have found. i have spent the last couple weeks tracking down my birth certificate, my father's birth certificate, my parents' marriage certificate, all kinds of craziness. and, miracle of miracles, i've actually obtained most of it. the only document remaining that's going to potentially cause me trauma is something called the 'marriage declaration,' which both my parents need to sign. never mind the fact that they're no longer married. discovering this fact very nearly made me shriek loudly in frustration right in the middle of my office--due to the fact that one of the necessary signing parties is in CHINA and the other is on the opposite side of the country. not insurmountable, but knowing my mother's post office habits and my father's general tendency to file me under "to address later", i was distraught at the notion of how much this one piece of paper was going to slow me down. so, imagine my surprise when i get a phone call from my father last night, telling me he'd just finished filling out and signing the form and was fedexing it to my office--so it would be here in time for my mother to sign it during her trip on the sixth. hot-motherfucking-cha. all that stands between me and a passport is the stamford connecticut town clerk and the arrival of a visitor from hong kong (don't ask).

(and yes. i know that getting a passport is a cakewalk compared to what some of you have been through in terms of taking on The Man, and probably not widely considered a monumental undertaking. but this is a journey several years in the making, one that is ending with me finally casting off the vestiges of childhood and at long last ceasing to depend on my father and taking care of the damn thing myself. finally, and against all precedent.)

and last but not least, i have a show on the 7th. at the orange bear. you should come if you're in town. email me for more details (the shiny address is in the sidebar over there)

and that's all.

*that's a quote from the movie, kids. let's not have legions of people telling me that romy and michele are fab, because i already know it.

Posted by shivery at 09:59 AM | Comments (3)

aturiossss!

king arthur. don't sacrifice those two hours of your life. please. keira knightley in an ace bandage and twine (nor the deliciousness that is clive owen) is not reward enough for the offering you make to the cinema gods.

and yes, it IS that awful.

Posted by shivery at 02:13 PM | Comments (0)

foreshadowing

i am getting the distinct feeling that this is going to be the longest day of my life.

that is all.

Posted by shivery at 10:08 AM | Comments (1)

on the sudden changeup

it was too damn hot to wear all that red.

but if you miss the big angry red banner, you can give it a ponder here.

Posted by shivery at 05:03 PM | Comments (1)

dreamtime

so, i keep having this dream. three times now. a wildly vivid, upsetting dream that causes me to wake up drenched in sweat and cling to a sleeping dom, almost disbelieving what my fingertips are reporting, that he's real and alive and the dream is over.

given my knowledge of my own personal psychoses, the subject matter of these dreams is not entirely unsurprising. what makes no sense, however, is why these dreams have suddenly started. after a lifetime of dark, sweet, oblivious insta-sleep, why am i suddenly dreaming so vividly? and why do i only remember THAT DREAM?

Posted by shivery at 01:18 PM | Comments (3)

on the subject of leashing small children.

in case you haven't been reading my comment boxes religiously, i had to pluck out this exchange because it was too awesome to keep to myself:

"what IS the very good reason for putting babies on leashes?

stuart: you're already using the carnage/galoshes logic. erin will be proud.

Posted by k at juillet 20, 2004 11:57 PM

there really isn't one that I know of, I just didn't want to offend anyone who might have a child who needed to be on a leash for medical reasons?

Posted by jen at juillet 21, 2004 01:44 AM

I would be disturbed being around a child who needed restraining for medical reasons.

Posted by Stuart at juillet 21, 2004 10:08 AM

Like Damien or some shit.

Posted by jen at juillet 21, 2004 10:36 AM "

Posted by shivery at 04:31 PM | Comments (0)

things i want to do.

learn to quilt. learn to knit. brush up on my french. go to egypt. come up with a band name (suggestions welcome). switch to the bass. become a better photographer. arc weld. make a perfect meal. grow basil. look good in orange. get my cowboy boots fixed. make jewelry. live in paris. resume kickboxing. spend more time in the park. sing for a living. overcome my fear of flying. take the train to washington dc for a day. sculpt.

Posted by shivery at 02:47 PM | Comments (7)

people who must be destroyed (or at least whipped soundly with something covered in spikes)

people who walk through the turnstiles on the subway and then stop RIGHT THERE; whoever designed the plastic packaging that seems to be ubiquitous for small items these days--the stuff you need a blowtorch, a sledgehammer and a full block of butter to open; people who preach the gospel of the atkins diet as though it were a healthy approach to life; people who start slowing down for a red light while the light is STILL GREEN; people who drink PBR (or do anything) purely because it's ironic; americans over the age of eighteen who don't vote (seriously people, c'mon); men who catcall/grab/stick their faces in your cleavage without express permission; people who stop in the middle of a busy sidewalk during rushhour (or at any time in soho) and just look around vacantly; girls who talk about sex ad nauseam--purely for attention; whoever decided that UGG boots are aesthetically pleasing; whoever came up with the notion of comment spamming; the progenitor of fully automated, voice-recognition customer service, which neither recognizes nor serves the customer; members of aggressive street teams whose denizens won't let you walk by without harassing you (greenpeace, i'm looking at you); kevin federline.

who would you add?

Posted by shivery at 05:03 PM | Comments (13)

music for my ears

it's happened again.

after a couple months of relative peace and general goodness, and after a weekend spent having quality time feeding the pod, which hadn't had any such glorious attention for WEEKS, i have murdered another set of headphones. after the last debacle, i had the good fortune to be allowed to shanghai a spare pair of dom's, which were very exciting--covering the entire ear, they allowed me the feeling of total immersion in the music on those long early spring commutes--complete with only the dimmest sense of my fellow commuters. (and to those who cluck their tongues at the commuter essentially isolating herself from her fellow straphangers (inexcusable, really, choosing not to interact with strangers from time to time), i have but one question: exactly how much do you want to interact with the woman who elbows your head mercilessly, or the smarmy man in the middle of the night who sits precisely next to you, despite the fact that the rest of the train is empty?)

but i digress.

let us return to the matter at hand: the fact that in less than half a year, i managed to pull the same trick on dom's headphones as i had on mine: total loss of sound out of the left earpiece. o tragic, o sad sad madness! and so now the decision and task is upon me: replace, or go without music for the foreseeable future. and that, my poppets, is entirely too horrible a fate to consider.

so back to the drawing board. i'm thinking going for those over-the-ear clippy types--your thoughts?

Posted by shivery at 10:49 AM | Comments (8)

gazelles of the mta.

you know, i've been sitting here trying to think of a new post to put up, one that will just get that dratted rant i put up there yesterday out of my face (while i've received no hate mail just yet, i can feel the collective horror wafting out of blogland that i actually touched that subject and delivered an emotional torrent on it, instead of something well-researched. thank god i'm not in college anymore), and all i can come up with is how i knew that today was going to be irritating from the second i walked on to the subway platform. i knew this because waiting at the foot of the stairs was a pack of girls who must all have been models--no less than three, all nudging six feet and with no discernible body fat, looking lost and poignant, picking across the concrete on their gazelle-like limbs as their tiny hipbones jutted out from their stylish clothing, and the sweating businessmen looked on rapturously from the safety of their suits.

and there is nothing, nothing that causes a girl like me to lose all her enthusiasm for a day more rapidly than meeting mannequins in the flesh, because no matter how good i look i am never going to look like them.

of course, none of them could ever dream of having my rack, but that's another story entirely.

Posted by shivery at 01:38 PM | Comments (3)

what's an education? GET ONE.

i'm finding it hard to swallow the accusation that bill cosby is treacherous to his ethnic group because he abhors the fact that there are certain sects of it that espouse their ignorance as though it were an anthem. this affliction does not encompass the entirety, and it is not purely the province of that singular group--i don't wish to be labeled racist here. but the fact is that there is a large group of people (of all colors) who appear to have no care whatsoever about the fact that they can't construct a proper sentence, or read; there are many who take pride in it, revering media figures who demonstrate the same lack of erudition and thus perpetuate the problem. and--and this is what gets me--many refuse to accept that it is that apathy that is keeping them down. it is not 'the man' that is keeping them poor and humbled; it is their own ignorance.

i agree with the remarks that cosby made several weeks ago, and for which he has been lambasted since--if you don't learn to read, or to speak properly, you don't get the luxury of blaming society for your failure to advance, to get a job, to do what you want in life. this goes for everyone, in every ethnic group, in every economic bracket. you don't need an expensive education to get ahead. you don't need to go ivy league, or get a phd. plenty of people do just fine with a high school education; some with even less. but these are almost all people who have learned that in order to advance, they needed to be able to read, and speak: skills that can be gleaned through even a partial basic public education.

perhaps i'm a snob. after all, it's all well and good for a middle-class white girl with a college degree from a respected institution and a well-rounded upbringing to bang on about literacy and the need to speak properly. and of course i'm preaching to the choir; if you're a blogger, or a blog reader, presumably you have learned how to interact with words in such a way that you can turn them to your advantage. but it infuriates me to see, interact with or hear about people who have the raw material that it takes to get where they want, but prefer to leave it to fester in pits of apathy and rage and then blame society for their failings. and, more importantly, give up and resign themselves to this life that they loathe. because it's a waste. a waste of energy and a waste of talent.

ignorance is not an anthem. it is nothing to be proud of. and i think bill cosby is right. and maybe i'm an elitist. maybe i'm not being realistic. but in addition to not understanding how people can be allowed to make it to adulthood without being able to read--PARTICULARLY in this country, still unquestionably the richest in the world, which SHOULD be able to support at least that most basic of educational infrastructures--i can't fathom how anyone would be content going through life without such a wonderful skill.

but then, i do have an irrational love of words. and an education.

Posted by shivery at 10:39 AM | Comments (5)

time time time to see what's become of me.

i'm restless. it's four o' clock in the afternoon and i've hit that point where i fear that the afternoon will never end. chained to this desk in a too-warm room, listening to the chirping of a malfunctioning intercom, i can practically avow that i've seen the second hand move backwards these last few hours. i'm counting down the hours until i am liberated from this place, when i will go dashing into the streets of manhattan, waving my arms and charging at top speed towards a stiff drink and a warm embrace, waving my beret all the while.

because it's bastille day, you philistines. it's bastille day and i want to be free.

Posted by shivery at 04:00 PM | Comments (0)

weekend wrapup.

okay. so, this weekend was: klonopin and diane lane; spending fifty years in line at immigration waiting to defeat the 'foreigners' line'; identifying a renault from fifty paces; reminiscing about the last exit to chorley wood; experiencing an RAF obelisk; meeting the coolest ten year old ever; getting woken up without fail at 5am by the cat; the cheering england bottle opener; coming thisclose to unleashing righteous, acid-tongued, new yorker fury upon a waiter who had clearly never heard the term 'customer service'; dom's birthday!; the death of my platform boots on the streets of norwich (don't worry--a new zipper, they'll be good as new); crashing the lord mayor's tea party; climbing massive flinty 12th-century ruins in a skirt and little girly sandals; getting the most horrifying neck cramp this side of fish's; discovering i get a wee bit testy if i'm not fed; crash course in cubase; meeting dom's family; driving about ten million miles in our vauxhall astra or whatever it was; seeing a stoat (apparently, they're getting a bit rare); realizing how much i miss the english countryside but not really the weather so much; frustration at having to check our carryon suitcases because they weighed above six kilos; getting very tempted to tell the immigration agent that we were married, could we please be processed together, because though the flying was over, i wasn't ready to be separated for any reason; breezing through customs; taxiing home in the rain; enjoying the majesty that is the american shower.

collapsing in a pile of exhaustion and sushi remains during 'the manchurian candidate.' spending the entire night curled around each other, waking in very nearly the same position in which we drifted off.

Posted by shivery at 02:48 PM | Comments (0)

back for more

why yes, the trip was uber-fab.

more details later.

for now, i need to send out psychic vibes to get someone else here in the office so i can go get some breakfast before i start chewing people's legs off. which i might already have to do anyway, because whoever was using my computer while i was gone not only failed to turn the damn thing off, but completely readjusted my chair. which i'd just gotten the way i liked it. grrrrr.

Posted by shivery at 09:42 AM | Comments (1)

interesting.

just over four hours to go before i get to skeedaddle and get ready for a nice, tasty long weekend in merry olde ingerland. i'm not quite packed, and the paranoiac in me is convinced that my passport is no longer in the place where i left it (i'm sure it is, but you know me and my paranoia), and i'm more than a little worried that dom's best and brightest won't like me one bit, but there's a sedative with my name on it, and a handsome boy to cling to when i start FLIPPING OUT COMPLETELY at the first sign of turbulence, and most importantly FOUR DAYS out of the united states ahead with my name on them.

in other news, i found out that my grandfather's full name was joseph alphonse kramer. no wonder i ended up with a mouthful of a name.

Posted by shivery at 12:44 PM | Comments (4)

and one other thing...

...did i mention that the entertainment on the bus ride home consisted of a documentary on the evolution of the assembly line and an hour-long john tesh piano special?

i mean, wouldn't that make you wonder if the universe was trying to tell you something?

Posted by shivery at 05:26 PM | Comments (3)

mainelining

you know it's going to be a good weekend when it starts with a fifth of rum in a movie theater and ends with biscuits and gravy in maine.

this weekend, in order to assert our independence from the siren that is new york city, dom and i hightailed it up to vacationland to take in some sun, sights and sister for a couple days. the trip started late friday night, with an overnight bus ride that left us almost too wiped out to enjoy the fabulous barbecue that my sister prepared the afternoon we arrived. fortunately, between the mojitos and the mutant mosquitos, we actually managed to stay awake for most of the day.

other highlights of the trip included: the surprisingly political 4th of july parade; meeting my favorite niece (she's the one on the left); eschewing the fireworks in favor of the firefly ballet beneath the stars; the rubber duck race down the damarascotta river and, of course, seeing my sister.

i'm becoming a problematic vacationer, though. i relish being in places that are less emotionally taxing, where the makeup of the soil is more important than the makeup on people's faces, where you can still see stars at night and where you can leave your car unlocked. i want that. i want quiet at night. i want stars. i want to be somewhere that i'm not judged by the make of my clothes or the size of my hips. i want that so much that i didn't really want to come home yesterday.

i love the city that never sleeps, but all this awakeness is starting to tire me out.

note: no, i'm not packing up stakes and leaving or secretly hating my life in new york. i love new york. i love living here. but i recognize that i'm not cut out to be a city girl forever. which i sometimes forget--not leaving city limits for five months will make you forget that there's other life available out there.

Posted by shivery at 09:44 AM | Comments (1)