Dancing Queen

This morning, I got invited by my friend MP to go to a bhangra dance class tomorrow. The highly coincidental thing about that is that I was watching Bride and Prejudice for the third time last night, and I was watching the dancing scenes really carefully. Man, that stuff is HARD. At least, it looks hard to me. In fact, in watching the Behind the Scenes about the making of the film, Naveen Andrews expressed some initial concern about his ability to do the dancing and the need to perhaps hire a body double. But he ended up learning to do the moves himself. Hmmmm...
Will I end up making an ass out of myself? Yes.
Would it be good exercise? Yes.
Do I like the music? Yes.
Does it start at the same time I usually put on my pajamas? Yes.
Would it be a good story to tell people about afterwards? Yes.
Am I a chicken shit? Yes.
Do I need to get over being a self-conscious chicken shit? Yes.
Pros outweight the cons, and I suppose that I should at least TRY so that I won't be accused of being a "Will Darcy." But at least I know better than to say to someone: "I'm a hopeless dancer, but this looks like you just screw in a light bulb with one hand and pat the dog with the other." Yikes. Maybe I should look into hiring a body double.

Back to school

My youngest sister had her first week teaching last week; she is teaching history to high school freshmen. That is something totally unappealing to me, but she seems to really like it, although there definitely are some interesting people in her class, like the 14 year old girl who is pregnant. Just hearing about that person made my uterus give an involuntary spasm. (No babies, no babies.)

I was in my car driving late last night, and I started to think about what I would want to teach if I were a high school teacher. Hands down it would be geometry. I would explain that solving proofs is just like playing "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon". Instead of connecting movie stars through films, you connect (or prove) statements through theorums. I wish someone had told me that in high school; I would have gotten "A"s right off!

What are you thinking about? Whirlpool.

Neens and I had one of those mornings sans boss and spent much of the time talking about the bigger questions in life: love, jobs, gay marriage and Target. It was interesting.

But now the boss is in, and we spend a lot of time looking over our monitors giving each other funny looks.

Oh the workplace, how thee totally sucks.

The Price of Rising Water

From today's NY Times, an article called "Police and Owners Begin to Challenge Looters" in New Orleans:

Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said she was "furious" about the looting.
"What angers me the most is disasters tend to bring out the best in everybody, and that's what we expected to see," Ms. Blanco said at a news conference. "Instead, it brought out the worst."
All sizes and types of stores, from Wal-Mart to the Rite Aid to the St. Vincent de Paul thrift shop, turned into bazaars of free merchandise.
Some frightened homeowners took security into their own hands.
John Carolan was sitting on his porch in the thick, humid darkness just before midnight Tuesday when three or four young men, one with a knife and another with a machete, stopped in front of his fence and pointed to the generator humming in the front yard, he said.
One said, "We want that generator," he recalled.
"I fired a couple of rounds over their heads with a .357 Magnum," Mr. Carolan recounted Wednesday. "They scattered."
He smiled and added, "You've heard of law west of the Pecos. This is law west of Canal Street."
Though no one excused the stealing, many officials were careful not to depict every looter as a petty thief.
"Had New York been closed off on 9/11, who can say what they would have done?" said Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, vice president of the New Orleans City Council. "When there's no food, no water, no sanitation, who can say what you'd do? People were trying to protect their children. I don't condone lawlessness, but this doesn't represent the generous people of New Orleans."

I feel like the things going on in New Orleans are happening on another planet, or at least not here, not now, in the 21st century. This is like Tombstone or Deadwood, circa 1875. Next thing you know, a modern day Dalton Gang is going to end up on Canal Street, and there is going to be a stand-off between law enforcement and the looters, or "liberators", depending on where you are getting your information.

The sad thing is that there are plenty of people looking only for the basic necessities to get their families: food, clean water, first aid and a clean dry bed. However, an HP DeskJet printer is not going to do that for you. Neither are guns stolen from WalMart (I hope Michael Moore is celebrating the irony), jewelery, cases of Coors Light or large screen televisions. Especially when people are going to be lucky to get power back in two - four MONTHS.

I can only imagine how desperate these people are feeling right now, especially since so many of them have lost everything, all of their material possessions, and are going to end up as refugees in Texas. But rule of law must be restored, order must prevail, if for no other reason than to protect the people who are trying to rescue those still in harm's way.

Art, or something like it

The last time I was home, my mom and I checked out an exhibition at the New Britain Museum of American Art called "NEW/NOW" featuring the watercolors of Gene Wilder. Yes, the Gene Wilder. Crazy hair, Willy Wonka, Blazing Saddles tooting Gene Wilder. They were really lovely with lots of delicate brushwork and bold use of color. I was really impressed by his work as a painter, when in my mind he is an actor, and a damn funny one at that. It gave me a whole new appreciation for the man.

But it still didn't stop me from walking through the exhibit while singing "Puttin' on the Ritz" in my head.

Urgh-y Words

I have some friends who have words in the English language that make them uncomfortable. To be plain honest, the words give them the heebie jeebies. I have one friend who cringes hearing the word "custard". I have another friend who throws up her hands when the word "panties" is mentioned. Then you have the ever famous "episiotomy", which used to make the women who lived in my college suite cross their legs and wince.

For me, I am totally bothered by the word "moist". It doesn't make me think of nice soft gooeyness, like in "moist cake". Instead, I think that it sounds like something really dirty, that you would find under a stone along with some mushy slugs or something. I think that it is that dipthong in the middle that just gives it that twist that pushes it over the edge. MOIOIOIOIST.

Eww.

Day One back from vacation, or I want my MTV...back

I keep reading on Boston.com about the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) that were held over this weekend in Miami.

Stop the presses: MTV still shows music videos??? Who knew?

Remember the good old days of videos, like Ray Parker Jr.'s one for "Ghostbusters" or Dire Straits' "Money for Nothin'"? When "120 Minutes" showed videos by cool alternative bands like The Cure at midnight on Sunday? (My best friend used to tape them and then we would watch them at her house after school on Monday.)

I think that I must have stopped watching MTV for the videos after the one for REM's "Everybody Hurts" came out. I think that about says it all. Between the high class episodes of reality programing such as "The Real World", "Road Rules" and "The Osbournes and Dr. Drew vs. Real World/Road Rules", I stopped seeing videos on MTV. I assumed that they went the way of Martha Quinn and Tabitha Soren, sorely missed.