Happy Thnanksgiving

for the children's theater production of the godfather

This morning, Roo and I went to Target where we saw this gigantor pony toy on display. Just now, I was doing my round of blog-reading, (don't judge me-I've gotten a lot done this morning) and I see the same horse featured on Cynical-C. It was too weird of a coincidence and too funny of an item, so I had to share.

Here's the pony:



But here's the best part--written under "product features" is this:
Adults take note: Pony comes unassembled in box with head detatched.
You may wish to not open the box around your children if they may be frightened by a box with a decapitated horse inside.

How wrong is it that I think that's hysterical? And what does it say about me that the first thing that I thought of was some kid waking up on Christmas morning with just the head in his bed?

how to choose a writing prompt

First day on the job today. I think it went very well.

During my interview (in addition to taking five multiple choice quizzes) I was asked to write, on the spot, 500-1000 words on one of the following:

1) Your friend from Argentina has sent you a penguin. Tell about your first day with your new pet.

2) Describe your workspace in vivid detail. What items are on your desk? What pictures do you have on the walls? What does your trash can look like? Why are things the way they are?

3) Is the opinion of the majority a poor guide?

4) Something interesting happened in the last week/month/year - tell us about it.

5) "An orderly society must never compromise in matters of law." Discuss.

6) Any other topic...

I thought I'd share what I chose to write (Let's see if some of my astute readers can find the details and symbolism that I put in there, which I'm sure were completely lost on my new employer... I kind of felt like I was pulling a Keyser Soze) I knew it might be a risk...but it was fun to write and I figured If they're going to hire me--they should know what they're getting...a goof that writes about a penguin)

My New South American Friend

I stared at the single word written on the small card that was taped to the crate, "Enjoy!" Okay, I thought to myself.

Harry told me that a gift would be arriving for me, and here it was. I popped the top with a crowbar, and all four sides of the crate fell to the floor revealing a penguin sitting in some straw. Harry had sent me a penguin from Argentina. He was one of those macaroni penguins with the shocking yellow feathers darting out in all directions from his brow. Harry had sent me a penguin from Argentina.

"Hi," I said, trying not act nonplussed (I didn't want him to feel uncomfortable) "What is your name?"

My new friend stood up and began waddling around my living room, pushing around the fan of magazines on the coffee table with his beak, then flipping through the stack of bills, adverts, and NetFlix sleeves on my desk. Dissatisfied, he shuffled over to my library of CDs. He carefully beaked them aside one by one, staring for a moment at each cover. He slid one to the floor and began pecking at it. I discovered that it was This Year's Model by Elvis Costello. Grinning, I said, "Okay, Elvis it is."

Harry's card had directed me to "Enjoy!" so I decided to show Elvis a good time. We headed to downtown Chicago. Our first stop was the Art Institute. Elvis greeted the majestic lions with some apprehension, but soon relaxed when he realized that they were ornamental as opposed carnivorous. I introduced him to Picasso, Seurat and Magritte. He seemed duly impressed but eager to move on, so we headed over to Navy Pier. We quickly found out that Elvis is afraid of heights while on the giant Ferris wheel. It was not pretty, and I will spare my gentle reader the unpleasant details. Elvis' macaroni brow was furrowed in my general direction for the better portion of the next hour. We were able to catch a matinee of Hamlet at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, to which Elvis gave resounding applause. We then headed over to the Billy Goat for cheeseburgers. He seemed to like them okay, but the chips were difficult to eat with his beak. I think he tried to communicate that he wanted fries and perhaps would have preferred Coke to Pepsi, but I informed him that he would have been categorically refused.

When we returned home, he waddled up to the TV and began pecking at the screen. Hmmm, I thought, what should I show Elvis? March of the Penguins? No, too obvious. Pulp Fiction? Mmmm, maybe too disjointed and violent for his taste (again, I didn't want to offend). Aha! You can't go wrong with the best movie ever made, Casablanca.

I set Elvis up on the recliner, popped some popcorn, put in the DVD, and settled in on the couch. Of course, it totally kept his interest; He blinked rapidly during the casino raid, sending his macaroni feathers into a bouncing yellow blur, and tears pooled in his eyes when Rick made Sam play As Time Goes By. Toward the end of the film, I stared at Elvis, who was drifting off to sleep and echoed Rick's sentiment, "This looks the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

pain in the neck

While walking to answer the door on Halloween, I fell. It was a funny fall--a cartoon-like "lady steps on a toy truck and falls into the splits" kind of fall. Hi-sterical, right? Sure, even I laughed at the time. But it's been two weeks and my neck has been in varying degrees of pain ever since. I must have wrenched it while I was catching myself as my legs pointed in different directions, one foot still on the tow truck that was saying, "Hey buddy, hook me up!" my left arm flailing in the air with a flourish that should have ended with me saying "Ta-Da!" and my right arm, shoulder, and side of my neck taking the brunt of the impact.

Four trips to the Chiropractor for heat packs, electrodes prodding my muscles, and adjustments, several valerian root and Aleve pills, and it still hurts so so much. I have carried my stress in my neck muscles my whole life, and this is just a bad combination of an injury on top of the various craziness going on in my life stress-wise right now.

I'm not typing this to be a whiner. Really, I just can't think of anything else but my discomfort right now, (and I'm in complete denial about starting a life altering job in less than twelve hours) and truly, it was a funny fall that I wanted to describe. I would like to complete the description with...a picture of the culprit:

where be your jibes now?

Laura and I saw Hamlet at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Sunday. (Thanks, so much again, Laura)

It is my all-time favorite play. Hamlet is totally my imaginary Danish boyfriend. Smart, funny, dark, brooding, deep, tortured, passionate, sarcastic...sigh. How twisted is it to have a crush on a fictional character?

The actors were excellent (Hamlet, while not as hot as I would have liked, was an interesting morph of Tom Hanks and Albert Brooks. Ophelia was sweet, honest and went heartbreakingly insane--that scene when she's completely lost it and is singing and rambling and handing everyone imaginary flowers makes me cry every time I read or see it.) The stage was very sparse, black, and I really liked how they removed part of the floor to be the grave with actual dirt in it.

It's been a while since I've read criticism on the play, and I'm sure I've come across this before, but the playbill had a very well written essay in it that's stayed with me. I'll end this post with the gist of it: He wrote about the theme of questions in the play. He begins by saying the whole play begins with the question, "Who's there?" He cites the obvious "To be, or not to be"...that is THE question aspect, and ponders the significance of Hamlet asking questions of Yorick's skull.

What is more ironically silent, than a skull?

I'm going to steal an idea from planetdan, as I am not feeling very creative. He wrote about memories of all of his teachers. This caused a flood of memories about the teacher that still strikes fear into my heart to this very day.


I cried almost every day of first grade because Sister C was so mean... until my mom bribed me with a Sean Cassidy album. The most traumatic moment was when she scruntched my ear, my poor little innocent six-year-old ear for goodness sakes, because I was tapping my bookmark as I was reading. She also dumped my desk upsidedown on several occasions because it was so messy. Then when we were making shamrock stickers, and I accidentally crumpled up the shamrock instead of the scrap pieces, she derided me in front of the class yelling, "What kind of an Irishman are you?" Seriously!!!Who says that to a six-year-old? I remember her smiling at me once, however. She made a joke that only she understood, when she pulled Kaz and I out of line and said "Carol...O'Connor...Carol...O'Connor" in a very Letterman "Uma...Oprah" kind of way. She was a mean, ornery lady, and Sean's dreamy eyes and the Do-Run-Run was poor compensation for her sadistic ways.

colleagues

I accepted the position of producer at a company that makes educational films. I'm not going to blog about the job, at least not at first- but I thought my faithful readers might want to see a picture of my new co-workers:

don't forget

to exercise today



(your right to vote, that is. I mean feel free to exercise too...do some sit-ups, deep knee bends, some four-count burpees...)

maybe if i had a helper monkey...

http://www.bebo.com/FlashBox.jsp?FlashBoxId=1671153413

My lack of posting is due to the feeling that I have been one step behind my life lately. Perhaps it's due to the three freelance jobs (maybe two-and-a-half since my CNet work hasn't started- it's just been Kari and I working with the tech guy trying just to get me connected to the VPN...but i digress) on top of the six hours of (non-paid) work I did for the producer job (who knows what is going to happen there). Throw in Halloween, a piano recital, parent teacher conferences,Tom's business trip, and, you know, JACK, and... I know, blah-blah-blah.

So for this post I will cheat and say here, I wrote this:

http://news.webshots.com/

And how hysterical is it that I wrote this, when I can't even follow any of my own advice?:

http://gonnaget.com/article.aspx?type=2&newsArticleID=4043

And I got to type "sperm" a whole bunch of times here *giggle*

http://gonnaget.com/article.aspx?type=2&newsArticleID=4041

I wrote a whole bunch of other stuff, but it's all, quite frankly, pretty lame

...just like this post.