Snoqualmie

Guards!

Last Thursday, you'll recall, I was trying to finish up some reading and a reading response for my two-unit class on Discworld. I had a fairly busy evening before getting to that, though, involving midterms, household chores, archaeology research, and helping my housemate, um, generate some empty beer bottles in which to put her homebrew ale. In short, when I wrote my reading response it was already past midnight and I was tired and punchy and slightly drunk.

The reading response which I turned in, for the first half of Guards! Guards!, is replicated here verbatim for your enjoyment:

A press release from the Patrician's office:

Though some bits of the city've been roast,
And that sword-waver should have been toast,
The dragon is beat
(Or at least off the street).
You may all now return to your posts.

But, from the Watch police blotter...

Dragons don't just turn into thin air,
I'm damn certain, because I was there.
Someone's at silly buggers,
But I need some Bearhugger's
Before even beginning to care.

And now a word from local merchant Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler.

My good sir, this is no kind of trick!
For that dragon will roast you right quick.
You will soon come to harm
If you don't buy a charm
...While you're at it, a sausage, on stick?

Oh lord, deliver me from the demons of Project Accounting.

An expended fee summary sheet
Is just numbers, all tallied and neat.
But they scramble my head,
And I find I've just said
Things I couldn't politely repeat.

I'm trying to work on things I could politely repeat to balance out the ones I couldn't, such as, "This teeming morass of unfamiliar terms and mysteriously appearing numbers, combined with the inherent difficulties of classifying data from several related project phases occurring simultaneously and attempting to identify to which simultaneous phase a given half-hour of work properly belongs when the data provided to me contains few clues which I am presently equipped to decipher, renders this activity thoroughly unenjoyable." I'll need to spend at least an hour memorizing that in order to repeat it, but at least it's polite.

Whoops.

I brought this to my workplace today,
Though I've no idea what it might say.
Even if they might cuss,
It's in French, so no fuss.
...But my boss is Canadian, eh?

My plan is to run away to lunch so that if there turns out to be something horribly unacceptable in some of these songs, I won't be around to get in trouble for it.

Edit: this is a really crappy limerick. What was I thinking?

Perfectly fair, but still sucks.

"Write my paycheck today," I implore.
"It's not payday, I know, but I'm poor."
And the boss said okay,
But she came in today,
Said, "No time now!" and walked out the door.

This casts a moderate pall over my day off tomorrow, namely that I have to choose between remaining destitute (which involves a combination of cutting out plans for the weekend, taking money out of my savings account, and depending on my bank's overdraft protection) or coming in during my glorious 3-day weekend to pick up my check. What's so bad about coming in during the weekend to pick up the check, anyway? The answer is, "it costs $6.20 to get here by BART and I'd have to take more money out of my savings account for a ticket."

Not actually the breakfast of champions, but the dinner of Diannas.

Take an onion, and chop off a round,
And some broccoli, a third of a crown.
Then a carrot, chop chop,
And two green onion tops,
Add some tofu, and scarf that shit down.

I mean, you may want to put it all in a frying pan and sautee it for a few minutes at some point, but that's all just details. I've decided that, given my previously-mentioned inability to deal with food-related decisions, I'm going to plan right now to subsist for the winter on the above. I'll keep those five ingredients in the house at all times, and any time I find myself opening the same cupboard more than once without having decided on a meal I will immediately implement the Scrambly Plan. It's easy, it's fast, you can put it in a burrito, and if the act of reaching for the tortillas sends you into a fit of despair you can just grab a spoon and eat it out of the frying pan.

Note to self: tortillas are emotionally draining; invest in a teflon-safe spoon.

Oh my god, it totally slipped my mind.

Mr. Kerry, you think you're all set,
But I'll win on election day yet!
For I've seen your big flaw.
To our friends in Warsaw:
Dearest Poland, I'll never forget.

This is what afternoons off are for.

I just picked up the phone and appealed
For a package to come to me, sealed.
It's a presenty piece
For my bot's age increase,
But its nature will not be revealed!

Today has thus far included vegan chocolate cake at work, being gratuitously old-fashioned by wandering around the office in my delicate and lovely shawl which is actually an unfinished crocheting project, going home early, a pleasantly productive call to my doctor's office, a pleasantly productive call to somewhere else as per the above limerick, and burning my tongue pretty badly on the molten lotus paste in the middle of a rather freezer-burned steamed bun. All told, I think I'm doing pretty well.

Now: Chinatown, or no Chinatown?

Can she really write political limericks?

Our dear Democratic friend John
Inspires most people to yawn.
But when shove comes to push,
Since he's better than Bush,
His boat is the one I'll get on.

There's a rather nice editorial in today's San Francisco Chronicle. It's precisely the kind of perspective of which I need to be reminded once in a while. I acquired a near-instant disinclination to support the man after his first campaign speech in Oakland, and it was only compounded by the vague feeling that my strategic anyone-but-Bush vote in 2000 had been the wrong decision. I won't, I told myself, vote for anyone who doesn't genuinely represent my interests this time! I'll reject the binary bullshit that Presidential elections always come down to and show that options outside the two-party moderate center are necessary for elections to mean something!

I won't, though, is the thing. I'll yell about Kerry's heavy-handed use of the Salt Shaker of Christian Crap That Doesn't Fucking Belong In Politics, and I'll narrow my eyes and purse my lips and complain that I don't quite trust him on reproductive issues and gay rights, but then I'll remember that he stood up at the Democratic convention and said he'd never see the U.S. at war again. You have to vote for a politician who says that, for the same reason you have to give puppies treats when they manage not to pee on the carpet. If you don't reward the good behavior, they'll just go and do the bad thing again.

Vote for John Kerry: Because There's Enough Pee On The Carpet Already.

A recipe for a good weekend.

Sit in boat, grab a beer, pick up oar;
Make your arms, back and butt kind of sore.
Watch Michele slowly bail
With her pitiful pail...
Guys, we really should do this much more.

I might even have to amend my earlier comments and say that next year we should do this during the horribly crowded early season (so Dustin and Anderson can use the rope swings without actually killing themselves) and then come back again during the late season when there's nobody there. Yeah! More canoeing!

Next time we should all speak only Russian for the entire duration of the trip, though. That's my boat... er, vote.

From the "god's honest truth" files.

There was a priceless headline on BBC Online yesterday that I dearly wish I'd copied down somewhere. As near as I can recreate it, it said,

"Bush says Iraq situation at critical point with elections nearing"

My first reaction was surprise at the surpassing ballsiness of that statement. Playing a bloody political situation overseas for re-election votes at home is one thing; admitting it openly is another thing entirely. My second reaction was also surprise. When I opened the article and read it, I suddenly remembered that Iraq is being geared up to have its own democratic elections at year's end. Oh. Right. Yes, I suppose this is a critical point for that as well.

It's the headline equivalent of those pictures that show an old woman with a large nose, or a young girl with her chin turned up, depending on how you look at it. It's absolutely, 100% accurate whether you read it cynically or stick to the obvious and innocent facts. I think I'm going to call the Met and tell them I've discovered a priceless masterpiece that should be displayed in their galleries.

Peanut ran out and gave me a scare;
I grabbed her, but only caught hair.
But the big raccoon's grin
Made her come right back in
And now she's content to stay there.

Soakin' hot.

A bath is a luxury treat:
Big old tub of cast iron, with feet.
But the part that's so fun
Is that when I get done,
My toes are all pruney. So neat!

Meta-limerick!

The unit is called Anapest:
Two syllables weak and one stressed.
Make your lines twos and threes,
(Fudge a bit if you please),
And everyone will be impressed.

All right, I can't be outdone here.

The man with the death-bunny head
Made Donnie just wish he were dead.
Don set houses ablaze,
Then went back 30 days,
And snuffed himself right in his bed.

Ahhhh, DSL.

Things needful for surfing the 'net
Were what I sent Jacob to get.
He got them connected,
More soon than expected,
And was he rewarded? You bet.

The spirit catches you and you try to think of a rhyme for "lasagna".

Let this serve as your notice, dear reader,
That my entries will now have strict meter.
I believe that this form,
Though it's not now the norm,
Is a trend of which I'll be the leader.