vodka snowclone

Last night James and I were playing the Extreme Engineering drinking game again, and there was an episode about an indoor ski park in Dubai. I swear to god, one guy announced that "Eskimos have 200 words for snow." That is when I decided/realized that if you are a linguist and playing a drinking game--and I don't care what it's based on or what the rules are--if someone says that Eskimos have n words for snow, you must drink an entire drink. In fact, I think that you need to drink an entire drink even if you are not currently playing a drinking game.

l.a. arboretum

I went a little crazy with James's Canon SX10IS yesterday at the Los Angeles arboretum. Here are a few of the 150 or so photos I took. I am pretty sure my next major(ish) purchase will be my own SX10IS...because I have a lot of fiscal self-control like that.

Updated to add: Someone asked me whether these were cropped, and the answer is no. I prefer to frame my photos old skool style; isn't that half the fun?

ass menagerie

I've been on a spree of creating crocheted and knitted mascots for my coworkers:

A dolphin for Amanda:



A dachshund for Dan:



Cthulhu for Casey:



A gibbon for Jim:



A jackass for Lon:



A mutant, bacon-eating panda for Andy:



6/10: Updated to add an aardvark for Johan:

I predict I'll be sleeping in tomorrow

James and I have discovered the best drinking game EVAH. It involves watching the Discovery Channel's series Extreme Engineering. Here is an approximation of the rules. Take a drink any time:

1. Something's mass, length, weight, or other physical feature is described in terms of some other (often itself fairly inscrutable) measure, e.g., "X is enough to fill the Roman coliseum TWENTY TIMES," "Y is as heavy as TWO THOUSAND SUVs," "Z is as tall as THIRTY EMPIRE STATE BUILDINGS," "enough cable to reach from San Francisco to Kathmandu EIGHT TIMES," "enough for EVERY MAN, WOMAN, AND CHILD in JAPAN"

2. Someone mentions lasers

3. An imaginary worst case scenario involves a fire in a tunnel

4. Football fields or 747s are used as a measurement unit (subset of rule 1)

5. A painfully awful simile is invoked, e.g., "it grips the earth like Titan's fingers"

6. Anything is described as "the X-est Y in the world," e.g., "the longest tunnel...," "the tallest structure...," "the most advanced test site...," etc. (worth two drinks if they say "in the history of the planet" instead of just "in the world")

7. A painfully awful cliche is invoked, e.g., "the bigger they are, the harder they fall"

8. Someone likens something to a LEGO structure

9. An imaginary worst-case scenario involves an earthquake or a typhoon

10. Cheesy ethnic stereotypes are invoked, e.g., Swedish construction workers referred to eighty times as "Vikings"

11. Someone says "Disaster is averted"

12. An imaginary worst-case scenario involves a last-minute life-saving outcome (worth 2 drinks if they actually refer to this as a "happy ending," and 3 drinks if the "happy ending" involves something being able to proceed through a tunnel).

I'm sure there are more, but I am too fucking drunk to remember right now. The really beautiful and/or scary thing is that you can watch this series via Roku on Netflix, i.e., instant play, one after another, all damn night if you want...or until you run out of alcohol, whichever comes first.

senility: it's what's for breakfast

Yesterday I received in the mail a comped copy of Vickie Howell's new book, Pop Goes Crochet!, as I had designed and produced a hoodie for said volume. As I was flipping through its pages looking for this garment, I came across a pattern for a pair of cute red socks with crocheted cuffs. These socks looked remarkably like my previously published Granddaughter Socks, just in another gauge and color, and maybe with a slightly different version of the squares.

"Hey!" I thought to myself. "That is a total ripoff of my design! Who had the NERVE to submit this for publication?!"

I checked the credit line: "Designed by Karen Baumer."

Oh. Right. I made those socks. This also answers a question I had recently as I was sorting through some yarn, namely, "Where did this partial ball of red cashmere come from, again?"

I can't find a photo of the socks, but here is the hoodie:

HOODIE!

reruns--volume 1

I've decided to just be lazy and revive some old posts from the India days. There are a bunch that I redacted last fall for various reasons that I am no longer as concerned about, so what the hell. I was reminded of this one today by something Robin said:


Today I wore my pink and beige custom-made salwar kameez to work, and, I won't lie to you, the office basically went berzerk. The outfit apparently screams "pretty." People all day were telling me how pretty I was. (And not a single person called me sir, come to think of it!) One of my linguists mentioned it in her daily email update. The office manager lady who is waiting for the rapture (that should probably be its own post someday) made a special trip over to my desk to inform me how pretty I was. ENGINEERS were noticing my clothes. Engineers. 'Nuff said. It was all very funny and kind of sweet. But my favorite comment came from our adorable adorable adorable security guard (I think his name is Jayir--he's the guy who loves to make Alex speak Hindi). His English is not that fluent, and when I was waiting for the elevator at the end of the day he exclaimed, "You are looking better in that dress, ma'am!"

but wait there's more

There's an article by Jane Fonda at The Huffington Post with the headline

Adolescent Pregnancy Must Become a Priority for All Americans

So get out there and start impregnating teens, people! Jane Fonda says so.

syntax is your friend

Headline spotted this morning on MSNBC:

MRS. EDWARDS TALKS ABOUT HER HUSBAND JOHN'S AFFAIR WITH OPRAH

inappropriate animals

I just got an email from James, who is down at his house near Los Angeles. The subject line was "guess who was climbing the loquat tree?" and the attachment was an m4v file titled "bear-in-yard."

I do not make this stuff up, people.

is mah birfday w00t!

It's birthday week here at Casa de Phibetakitten: mine was last Tuesday and James's is this coming Tuesday. James showed up last Monday, and when I got home and saw this hugemongous box in my living room I thought I'd finally gotten that pony I've always wanted:


Turns out it was an iMac 24", which comes in at a very very very very very close second to a pony. Plus, as Jenny Jo pointed out, it's way better than a dead pony in a box. I have to give her that one.


I'm really wondering what James is going to do for Xmas this year, because I am running out of room for Apple products in my home. Maybe I really will finally get a pony!

April is a dangerous month for my pocketbook, because it turns out that I can justify quite a lot of things by telling myself they are "for my birthday." I don't exercise a lot of fiscal restraint during the remaining 11 months of the year as it is, so you can see where this attitude might get me into trouble. My favorite birthday present to me this year is this painting, which I got from a Romanian artist named Andrada Anghel:


It's called "Outer Space Landscape." (Click on the photo to enlarge it and get a better sense of the texture it's got going on.) I love it.

We spent this weekend in Santa Rosa, visiting one of our favorite restaurants (GG's Earth and Surf) and our favorite brew pub (Russian River Brewing Co.) and going on a geeky hike called the Planet Walk in Sugarloaf Ridge state park. I don't have anything particularly funny to report about any of this, but since I refuse to miss an opportunity to use my "inappropriate animals" tag, allow me to present to you two rattlesnakes I noticed hiding out under a bush:


We also saw two ridiculously large wild turkeys running down the trail and making ridiculous noises.

Even though James's birthday isn't till Tuesday, I was unable to resist giving him one of his presents ahead of time. This is handknit sweater #31:





And by that I mean it is #31 for JAMES, not the 31st that I've ever knit. I have no idea what that number would be, but particularly if baby clothes count it is easily in the many hundreds by now. I may need to get a life.

hello, dolly

Recently I was talking about the mini news headlines that I see on the TVs at the gym, and my fascination around the choices made as to which stories to "report" on in this way and how they attempt to convey the salient content with half a line of text. Well, apparently I am far from the first person who's been struck by this, because I recently learned that you can in fact buy tee shirts from CNN with various of these actual headlines printed on them. I saw another good one earlier this week: "CHARLES MANSON SPENDS MOST OF HIS TIME ALONE." Uh, isn't this guy in solitary confinement? Also, I think that right around the time you finish carving a swastika into your forehead is also right around the time when you are making a decision to henceforth spend most of your time alone. I am not seeing the news here.

This brings me to my mom. Last time I visited my parents, I was working on a fiction piece involving the concept of giving young girls a "last doll," and I was wondering whether this sort of thing, this manikin moratorium if you will, had perhaps been common in wartime or other occasions of economic stress in the past (I encountered the idea in an antique photograph; I didn't make it up). Mom reported that no, she had never been given an official "last" doll, and then went on to casually mention that she'd had a doll she called Edda, named after Hermann Goering's daughter. This caught my attention. The manner in which she conveyed the information suggested that naming one's poppet after the child of a war criminal was somehow, you know, what's the problem? Given that she was maybe six years old at the time and had spent her entire life in Nazi-ruled Germany, I wouldn't expect her to have questioned it then, but to report on it 65 years later as though it were the most normal thing in the world, and with no apparent retrospective queasiness...that to me was a bit odd. I pressed for further details. Turns out the Goering family was sort of Fascism's version of the Pitt-Jolie clan. They were celebrated in the press and there were Goering family propaganda calendars with scenes of the carefree, wholesome tots frolicking happily through Teutonic meadows or some such. One of these hung in my grandparents' home.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this, except...Goering family calendars!!?!!?

A while later James and I were watching movie previews on his Apple TV, and we called up the trailer for The Reader. Neither of us had heard of it yet, and it was unclear at first what it was all about. Then the scene switched suddenly to Kate Winslet sitting in a severe suit as a defendant in some kind of war crimes tribunal, and I said, "Ohhh, I see. She's someone my mom would have named a doll after."

crafty crap

I haven't had any home dec updates lately, mainly on account of my spending 111% of my time sitting on my ass and knitting. But today I installed some really cool wall graphics to show y'all (click on the photo for a better view). They come from this Etsy shop, and if you're looking for a fairly inexpensive way to spruce up your walls on a large scale, take a look at their designs.

I haven't posted much knitting lately either, I guess. Here are some recent highlights, brought to you straight from my couch:

kitties in vegas

The MEOW kitties (a.k.a. my internet knitting posse) decided we'd have our semi-annual retreat in Las Vegas this time, so a bunch of us rented a vacation home for the long weekend and we're enjoying the lovely weather as well as the drinking and the gossiping. And the knitting, of course.

Technically we are in Henderson, NV, which I'm told is a popular location for finding dumped bodies on C.S.I.

Speaking of knitting, I would like to present to you young Diego modeling the 'aviator helmet' I made for him a while ago. Wow that is a cute kid.

seriously?

Dear guy on the 38 bus,

Do you seriously think that The Joy of Gay Sex is appropriate reading material during evening rush hour?

Also, I can't decide whether the fact that it was a library book makes it better or worse.

Sincerely,

Karen

there are some things that should be illegal

...and profusely sweaty, balding, foggy-eyeglassed men at the gym on stationary bikes grasping the Wall Street Journal in one hand and checking their stocks via their iPhone in the other hand are definitely one of those things.

making headlines

When I work out at the gym I frequently turn on a news channel on the little personal TV screen they have attached to each treadmill and watch without sound. As you no doubt have noticed, it is now de rigueur to have a constantly running stream of mini-headlines scrolling underneath the main features. As a linguist I dig seeing the attempted synopses of various stories into such brief snippets; often it feels like you can only understand the little headlines if you're already familiar with the stories anyway.

For instance, today they periodically ran a line that said something like "Comment leads to Missouri standoff." OK...thanks for letting us know! The other day it was "Caylee's grandfather under suicide watch." Who the fuck is Caylee and why do her grandfather's death-wish issues warrant time on the national news? Sometimes the headlines are funny for entirely other reasons; my favorite one from today was "Men see bikini-clad women as objects, scientists say." Shouldn't that be a headline from The Onion? Who are these scientists? I want to know who designed the study protocol for that one. And whether any of my tax dollars were involved.

Speaking of questionable uses of my hard-earned money, the San Francisco Municipal Railway this morning provided yet another notable public transportation experience. I was heading to work on the 38, and an older woman in a dingy hoodie and sparkly but tattered skirt was sitting near me. Her personal odor was not altogether agreeable, but I've seen and smelled a lot worse on MUNI, and since I was reading a magazine I only really noticed her when she started softly and repeatedly lilting "James Brown!" in dulcet tones, followed by the observation "He and I are from the same place." The she looked at me and asked if I knew the time. I was unwilling to dig out my cell phone, so I showed my bare wrists and said "Sorry, I don't."

"You don't know the time?"

"Sorry."

"I have to take my psych meds."

I smiled and nodded sympathetically. Then she asked, "What are you?"

"What am I?"

"Yeah, what are you?"

I hesitated and replied, "I don't understand the question."

"Are you a nurse?"

machine learning

As I have mentioned previously, I have a fairly severe allergy to science fiction, but enough smart people had told me that I would nonetheless enjoy the new Battlestar Galactica series that I finally went ahead and Netflixed it. And I do indeed like it well enough, particularly the parts involving Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, who is a hot, blond fighter pilot with a no-bullshit attitude, and who also is very hot.

Moving right along. So, I just started season 3, which so far I am liking the best of anything in the series so far. Based on the initial two episodes I feel it can perhaps best be summarized as Watergate Meets Birkenau. In other words, exactly the sort of kitten-filled happy rainbow festival I tend to love.

Oddly enough, James--whose brain inhabits science fiction approximately 98% of the time--had not ever watched BSG, so I got him started on it as well. When I visited him in Los Angeles this past weekend I commented that the machine Cylons really freaked me out, but the human-form Cylons didn't scare me much at all. James looked shocked.

"For me it's exactly the opposite," he said.

"Really?"

"I understand how machines work. Why would anyone be afraid of a machine? That's stupid. That would be like...being afraid of your car. Or something."

"I'm a little afraid of your espresso machine, to be honest."

I was mainly (although not entirely) joking, but then I found a photo of his espresso machine's innards:


People, am I wrong? Would you turn your back on this monster? Give me Number Six any day of the week.

flakes

My typical San Francisco MUNI experiences usually fall somewhere between barely tolerable (see Exhibit A: Spare the Fucking Air Days) and excruciating (see Exhibit B: Filthy Crack Addicts), but once in a while there are some perks to the forced commingling of residents from all over this fair city. For instance, the other morning on the 38L line I got to overhear one half of a phone conversation that went a little something like this:

Phone Guy (PG): Eloy, I don't appreciate you calling me a thief. I didn't take your money. I don't do that kind of thing. I don't like it when you say I'm stealing from you.

Woman sitting with PG: He was in the middle of the street, he went downstairs to get another beer! What's he saying?

PG: OK, OK, listen Eloy. I went and got you ALL that body wash, and then I came back and you GAVE me 18 dollars to buy shampoo.

Woman: I had to lead him back upstairs!

PG: Well then...Eloy, Eloy...listen to me listen to me. Where did all that Selsun Blue come from then? How did you end up with five bottles of Selsun Blue? Explain that to me. If I stole that money, how did you end up with five bottles of Selsun Blue? Don't call me a thief!

Woman: He was afraid that his girlfriend would see he was drunk again! That's why, he went down to get ANOTHER beer at the store, he already had three and he went to get another. He didn't even know where he was! What's he saying? What's he saying?

PG: Eloy, THEN HOW DID YOU END UP WITH ALL THAT SELSUN BLUE??

fair trade

James and I have a symbiotic relationship of sorts. He does all kinds of things for me that I am probably technically capable of doing but that I either (a) loathe and/or (2) would put off forever if left to my own devices. Examples of such activities include setting up audio-visual equipment, arranging and installing wireless service, assembling IKEA products, talking on the phone to just about any company about anything, ensuring I have proper web security, installing cabinets and shelving, removing dents from my car, supervising and assisting movers, understanding major real estate transactions, and so forth. In exchange I occasionally knit him a pair of socks.

All this is just to supply some background information to explain why James was working on my taxes yesterday rather than allowing me to simply pay an accountant to do it the way I usually do. According to James, my tax situation this year is so straightforward as to render a professional accountant superfluous. You know, because in 2008 I started paying interest on two mortgages, received royalty payments on various knitwear designs, earned stock dividends, paid property taxes on two houses, and god knows what else. Sounds very 1040-EZ, right? Anyway, so he was using TurboTax software, which has you answer various questions in order to establish what all you need to declare, and at one point he piped up from the next room, "Did you get any Ottoman Turkish empire settlement payments last year? Because that falls under 'other income.'"

"Oh crap," I replied, "I forgot about that. (pause) Oh, wait, no...I bought an ottoman last year. I get those two things confused."

"OK, good. I think I can skip this line then."

I'm hoping James doesn't read this blog, because so far I have him convinced that our little arrangement involves an equitable exchange of goods and services. For what it's worth, here is a photo of the hand knit socks I found in his dresser just now:



He also has somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 hand knit sweaters, as well as quite a few mittens, hats, and scarves. The fellow lives in Los Angeles, for god's sake...he needs help keeping warm.

historiae animalium

There is absolutely nothing funny about half your beloved colleagues getting laid off unexpectedly, so I'm not going to discuss what happened at my company this week beyond saying that there is absolutely nothing funny about half your beloved colleagues getting laid off unexpectedly.

I am back down in Los Angeles for the three-day weekend. I was reminded on the way here that the last time I went through Oakland airport it was just a day or two after the "miracle on the Hudson," which, as you already know unless you've been living under a rock with your iPod turned up to 11 with the Ride of the Valkyries on repeat and a silky sleep mask over your eyes, involved a plane that crash landed in a river on account of birds being sucked into its engines. There is a piece of artwork at the Oakland airport called "Auspicious Cranes," and it struck me last time that this piece of art was maybe no longer so appropriate lining a corridor people walk through as they are about to board planes at an airport that sits on the shore of a major bay, seeing as it basically depicts a bunch of large water birds whose heads appear to be bloodied:



But maybe that's just me.

As many of you know, almost nothing pleases me more than getting a chance to deploy the "inappropriate animals" tag on this blog, and today I have occasion to do so yet again, not only on account of the mangled cranes but also because we were walking at the L.A. Arboretum this morning and encountered an extra-large grade A coyote sauntering across the path ahead of us. As we got closer, he stopped and turned around with his big ol' coyote head poking up over the side of an embankment and I swear to god all he needed was a jaunty bandana around his neck and he'd have been ready to act as mascot for a cheesy Southwest souvenir shop.

"It's a good thing there aren't any roadrunners around here," James opined. "Yeah," I said, "That would be nothing but chaos."