from TCCI

1. Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly? Gene Kelly
2. The Great Gatsby or The Sun Also Rises? Great Gatsby
3. Count Basie or Duke Ellington? Duke Ellington
4. Cats or dogs? ouch.
5. Matisse or Picasso? Matisse
6. Yeats or Eliot? Eliot
7. Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin? Chaplin
8. Flannery O?Connor or John Updike? O’Connor
9. To Have and Have Not or Casablanca? To Have and Have Not
10. Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning? de Kooning
11. The Who or the Stones? Stones
12. Philip Larkin or Sylvia Plath? Plath
13. Trollope or Dickens? Dickens
14. Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald? Holiday
15. Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy? Tolstoy
16. The Moviegoer or The End of the Affair? Moviegoer
17. George Balanchine or Martha Graham? Balanchine
18. Hot dogs or hamburgers? hamburgers
19. Letterman or Leno? Letterman
20. Wilco or Cat Power? eh?
21. Verdi or Wagner? Verdi
22. Grace Kelly or Marilyn Monroe? Grace Kelly
23. Bill Monroe or Johnny Cash? ouch.
24. Kingsley or Martin Amis? eh?
25. Robert Mitchum or Marlon Brando? Brando
26. Mark Morris or Twyla Tharp? eh?
27. Vermeer or Rembrandt? Vermeer
28. Tchaikovsky or Chopin? Tchaikovsky
29. Red wine or white? Red
30. Noël Coward or Oscar Wilde? Wilde
31. Grosse Pointe Blank or High Fidelity? High Fidelity
32. Shostakovich or Prokofiev? Shostakovich
33. Mikhail Baryshnikov or Rudolf Nureyev? Nureyev
34. Constable or Turner? Turner
35. The Searchers or Rio Bravo? Searchers
36. Comedy or tragedy? Comedy
37. Fall or spring? Fall
38. Manet or Monet? Monet
39. The Sopranos or The Simpsons? Simpsons
40. Rodgers and Hart or Gershwin and Gershwin? Gershwin and Gershwin
41. Joseph Conrad or Henry James? Henry James
42. Sunset or sunrise? Sunrise
43. Johnny Mercer or Cole Porter? Cole Porter
44. Mac or PC? PC
45. New York or Los Angeles? ew.
46. Partisan Review or Horizon? eh?
47. Stax or Motown? Stax
48. Van Gogh or Gauguin? Duh.
49. Steely Dan or Elvis Costello? Elvis Costello
50. Reading a blog or reading a magazine? blog
51. John Gielgud or Laurence Olivier? Gielgud
52. Only the Lonely or Songs for Swingin? Lovers? Swingin
53. Chinatown or Bonnie and Clyde? Chinatown
54. Ghost World or Election? Ghost World
55. Minimalism or conceptual art? Conceptual
56. Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny? Bugs
57. Modernism or postmodernism? Post
58. Batman or Spider-Man? ew.
59. Emmylou Harris or Lucinda Williams? Lucinda
60. Johnson or Boswell? Boswell
61. Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf? Woolf
62. The Honeymooners or The Dick Van Dyke Show? Dick Van Dyke
63. An Eames chair or a Noguchi table? Eames
64. Out of the Past or Double Indemnity? Indemnity
65. The Marriage of Figaro or Don Giovanni? Giovanni
66. Blue or green? Green. No. Blue. Wait! Aaah!
67. A Midsummer Night?s Dream or As You Like It? Dream
68. Ballet or opera? Ballet
69. Film or live theater? Film
70. Acoustic or electric? ouch.
71. North by Northwest or Vertigo? N x NW
72. Sargent or Whistler? Sargent
73. V.S. Naipaul or Milan Kundera? Naipaul
74. The Music Man or Oklahoma? Music Man
75. Sushi, yes or no? yes please
76. The New Yorker under Ross or Shawn? Ross
77. Tennessee Williams or Edward Albee? Williams
78. The Portrait of a Lady or The Wings of the Dove? Portrait of a Lady
79. Paul Taylor or Merce Cunningham? eh?
80. Frank Lloyd Wright or Mies van der Rohe? ouch.
81. Diana Krall or Norah Jones? Norah Jones
82. Watercolor or pastel? Pastel
83. Bus or subway? ew.
84. Stravinsky or Schoenberg? Stravinsky
85. Crunchy or smooth peanut butter? smooth
86. Willa Cather or Theodore Dreiser? Cather
87. Schubert or Mozart? Mozart
88. The Fifties or the Twenties? twenties
89. Huckleberry Finn or Moby-Dick? Huck Finn
90. Thomas Mann or James Joyce? Joyce
91. Lester Young or Coleman Hawkins? Coleman Hawkins
92. Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman? Whitman
93. Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill? Churchill
94. Liz Phair or Aimee Mann? Liz
95. Italian or French cooking? Italian
96. Bach on piano or harpsichord? hmm.
97. Anchovies, yes or no? sometimes
98. Short novels or long ones? short
99. Swing or bebop? ew.
100. “The Last Judgment” or “The Last Supper”? Judgement.

number chosen from column a: 44
number where neither or both answers were chosen: 16
so number of answered questions: 84

therefore my tcci index is: 52%

Been saving up memes for a while but I think I snagged this one from Mac

Which political party do you typically agree with?
Democratic

Which political party do you typically vote for?
Usually Democrat but I vote for the Green Party candidate for local elections when there’s one on the ballot

List the last five presidents that you voted for.
I was first able to vote for a pres in ‘92 so I’ve voted for Clinton in in ‘92 and ‘96 and Al Gore in 2000.

Which party do you think is smarter about the economy?
Well, let’s see..under the last Democrat President we actually stopped adding to the deficit for a while there so I’m guessing Dems.

Which party do you think is smarter about domestic affairs?
I honestly feel like the Democrats have better ideas about domestic affairs but they’re probably not as good about implementing their ideas as the Republicans would be if they could come up with decent ideas.

Do you think we should keep our troops in Iraq or pull them out?
I really don’t think we’re helping them there. Seriously all we’re doing is breeding more extremists that hate and want to kill us. And I don’t want to pay to occupy a country for the next twenty years that its undoubtedly going to take for the closest to a democracy Iraq will be able to have but if we pull out the thugs will take over - like they won’t anyway. Geez. It’s a lose - lose situation maybe we shouldn’t have gone there in the first fucking place.

Who, or what country, do you think is most responsible for 9/11?
Al Qaeda is responsible period. And any countries that have *actually* harbored and/or funded their known members.

Do you think we will find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
Probably not. I really don’t think they were organized enough to be able to do anything more than gather materials that might make wmds

Yes or no, should the U.S. legalize marijuana?
yes. I think it has true medicinal benefits and the fda would be able to regulate the quality better than the average drug dealer.

Do you think the Republicans stole the last presidental election?
Yeah I do. I think there were way too many coincidences in Florida for it to be unplanned.

Do you think Bill Clinton should have been impeached because of what he did with Monica Lewinski?
I don’t think what happened with Lewinski was any of our goddamned business. If Democrats started to look into anything remotely as personal with Bush the Republicans would be crying foul from here to Sunday. Clinton shouldn’t have lied but he shouldn’t have been asked in the first place. Whether or not he got a blow job on Easter makes no difference to me. No I don’t approve of him cheating on his wife but I don’t think that reflects all aspects of that man’s integrity.

Do you think Hillary Clinton would make a good president?
I guess so. I agree with a lot of her views but I just don’t think I could stand hearing those damn menopausal / pms jokes I remember hearing when Ferraro was running for vp. What year is this again?

Name a current Democrat who would make a great president:
I’m a pretty big fan of John Edwards. I think he’s smart and has the same kind of charisma that worked so well for Clinton. I like how Dean reflected the anger and disparity that a lot of Americans are feeling these days. I don’t think Richardson would be a good pres - he hasn’t been doing all that great a job as govenor here I’ve heard some fairly bad things about his strong arm tactics that wouldn’t go over very well.

Name a current Republican who would make a great president.
uhhh. hmm. I’ll have to get back to you on that.

Do you think that women should have the right to have an abortion?
yes. absolutely. no question.

What religion are you?
I wasn’t really raised going to church but I’ve studied several different forms of Christianity as well as Judaism, Buddhism, Wicca, Paganism, and many comparative religious texts and classes. I guess I’m agnostic/pagan for the most part.

Have you read the Bible all the way through?
I have. The King James and the Catholic texts on different occasions.

What’s your favorite book?
I think ‘A Prayer for Owen Meany’ is probably the best book I’ve read.

Who is your favorite band?
Velvet Underground

Who do you think you’ll vote for president in the next election?
Anyone who isn’t Bush i.e. Kerry.

What website did you see this on first?
Pesky Apostrophe

ok this is not ‘ecclectic programming’ it’s just plain old offensive. I was watching Frida (which is a wonderful movie btw) on Starz then they showed a nice behind the scenes thing about making the movie and now there’s a goddamned pokemon movie on. Who is their target audience?

So I finished my choices for the Summer 04 Burn It. It’s a nice blend I think. I didn’t get everything I wanted on there - couldn’t find all the songs I wanted online and didn’t have the cds but I still had to narrow about 60 tracks down to 25 and that hurt a lot. But I think this is a nice combination of my varied music, and movie, tastes.

Considering the soundtrack theme this was a great source.

A weird love theme emerged so I’m calling it “Some Kinda Love Soundtrack” - a hat tip to one of my favorite bands who didn’t make the cut (but one of its former members did).

Anyway, here’s the list:

So now I’m working on the label and covers. Once I get the addresses for my group I’ll be sending them out. I’m making five extra copies so if you’re reallyreallyreally nice and email me your address I’ll send one to you too.

This was damn near the perfect weekend for me. Cody worked until friday morning. I accidently took a nap that lasted most of the day then woke up around 11 pm or so and watched Dave Navarro win at celebrity poker then took a long bath and read for a while.

Early Saturday morning we took Winter to the dog park and she got lots of playing time with normal, well-behaved dogs which was nice. Then we came back and took a nap again because we had to go down to his parents house Saturday night. His grandfather is quite ill so Cody’s mom was up there making him dinner so we joined them. We were also behind on some tech support at a few houses so Cody worked at his aunt’s house while I checked the one at his parents house. We aren’t very reliable for a lot of things as far as these folks are concerned - we don’t call often or come to a lot of their parties or remember birthdays but we usually build a new computer to give the family about every year and a half when we gut and upgrade our old systems. And we go down to Los Lunas every few months and work on stuff. So while I was working on his parents’ computer I went over to Dooce’s site to show photos of her hair to my mother-in-law because she offered to cut it for me. She hasn’t had a shop in a few years but she’s always happy to cut my hair when it needs it and while the great color job I got back in Birmingham for Wedfest ‘04 was great my hair was getting scraggly and annoying with all the swimming. Now it’s about chin length just like I like it. Then we went to the big scary Wal Mart on the way home so Cody could get some nicorette patches - which were supposed to be forty-three dollars but kept ringing up as ten. We had the girl check and everything but ten dollars it was.

We didn’t get home until about 3 am and I got to sleep around 5:30. Then Jocelyn came to the house at about 2 I think and we went to the gym. The location we usually go to had its pool closed for cleaning so we went on to a different one. What’s the point of working out if I don’t get my swimming reward?? My house is pretty much exactly between those two locations but we decided we like our usual location better. I’m really getting into a good routine with it but I’m noticing it’s getting harder to get my heart rate up to where I want it which is good.

So after much stretching/cardio bike/weight lifting in various forms/water aerobicising/kickboarding/doing laps I showered and really enjoyed my short hair then Jocelyn dropped me off and Cody took me for sushi..again!!

Like I said, perfect weekend. If only we could keep the dog from locking herself in the bathroom when we leave…

We’re heading down to Cody’s parents house in a few minutes but I just woke up from the coolest weirdest dream.

It was very Elia Kazan / Tennessee Williams but I don’t remember a previous plot like this so I’m really inclined to write it out. Basically there was this pretty little naive hick girl who had a whirlwind romance with a charming sweet hick guy. They’re totally in love only in that way that naive youths in their late teens - early twenties can be. So they get married and are just disgustingly ignorant and cute and happy right? I say they’re hicks and all that but I don’t mean they’re big racist rednecks or anything - just…country but in that slow nice kind of way - not aggressive. Then he invites his young bride to meet his parents for dinner at their house. Turns out his family is just creepy as shit. They like live in a shack and there are all kinds of brothers. There’s a much older sister but she’s severely mentally challenged. The father is stick-thin and doesn’t speak very much, isn’t very understandable when he does. The mother is huge and overbearing and has creepy dynamics with her children. Crazy Oedipal shit going on with those sons. She owns a general store and cooks a strange amalgam of cajun country food with random Japanese influences. There’s a really scary dog with a dachsund head and a terrier body. The son is totally in love with his little bride but his mom clearly disapproves. The bride is just spooked as all hell by the whole scene and was in the process of talking him into going home when I woke up.

Weird huh

I’ve noticed a lot of young punked out looking teenaged boys out and about lately. I’m sure this would annoy the shit out of them but I just can’t help looking at little angry spikey-haired youths or pale, gothed out kids scowling at the IHOP without wanting to pinch their wan little cheeks and screech “you are soooo cuuuuute” worse than any grandmother. To me their little personal missions of angst are just PRECIOUS.

So when I was at the mall a few weeks ago I saw this cute little punk boy with his spikey black belt not doing its job holding up his jeans and I immediately thought of Sid Vicious. Then the kid looks at me and asks for spare change and I just shake my head. And yesterday on the way to the gym we were driving right in front of a grocery store and I saw a young guy with the cu-uutest little spikey ‘do sitting out front. I was probably smiling like a huge dork and my window was down. I noticed he was wearing a Ramones shirt then he asked me for change. I never have change it all goes in the giganto pickle jar when I get home so I said no. Then we slowly drove a few feet and I stuck my head and arm out the window and said “Gabba Gabba Hey though!”. We’re not sure if he understood what I said or not because apparently he just looked confused.

I’m not allowed to get an in-ground pool (debates are still going about the cheesiness of an above ground pool vs me being able to do laps). Cody’s convinced I would either attempt to seduce the teenaged boy we hired to clean it or I would empty it out and let a bunch of skater punks take over our back yard. Odds are much better I’d just annoy the shit out of them pinching their little badly shaven pale pimply cheeks and tweaking their little manic panic’ed spikes like some sad mother hen. “Aren’t your scary lip piercings the sweetest little widdle things you angry rebellious youth you?”

Kung Fu Madness!

All the fun of silly movie references and playing with other people online with no need to download. Come let me beat you up a little. I’m NoLNoodle.

Oh and look what one of my new buddies captured last night! Hee!

So I signed up for this summer’s Burn it session at The Neurotic Fishbowl. Now I’m obsessively making a list of songs from movies. I went through my enormous favorite films list at imdb and if it had a soundtrack link I checked it.

And a pattern of 70s songs seems to be emerging. Summer always kinda makes me want to wear a tacky halter top, grow long scraggly hair, and listen to classic rock. Back to my Alabama roots? Old-school Mountain Dew commercial fantasy? The desire to be back in Panama City? Who knows. Nah it’s not all classic rawk it’s mostly funk, can’t forget punk, some disco, and, yes, some (less known) classic rock songs. If you’re in my group please don’t hate me

Or should I forego the 70s theme and just choose a bunch of cool songs? The theme looked like it would be kinda fun though. Think I would get in trouble if I made two disks? I’m so bad at making decisions.

—————————

Also, we went shopping on Saturday and I bought all kinds of fun stuff. Including a new dress for the next wedding. It’s outside in July so I wanted something less formal than my usual wedding wear. I tried this one on and was totally surprised to find how cute I looked in it. The first one was too big so I had to get a smaller one. That means I’m now two sizes smaller than I was a year ago. Slowly but surely right?

Oh by the way. If you check this before you call: Jocelyn, I called the gym and they’re on regular hours today.

Have I mentioned that Cody is a saint? He is ya know.

Yes pagan anti-religious-establishment me is married to a certifiable patron saint of geeky, patient husbands everywhere. He puts up with my yoyo dieting, spoiled mountain brook girl, obsessive compulsive, non-driving, agoraphobic, depression episodic, goofy, pet obsessed self and actually LOVES me DESPITE, and in some cases, BECAUSE of my insanity. I have some great recent examples of his saintly behavior.

First off, he works nights. Seven pm to seven am. Yes it’s a twelve hour shift but it’s not really that demanding. Just monitoring the state-wide wireless network and the database of ticket sales for the lottery so he really only has to sit around and check that everything’s working every fifteen minutes. That’s how he’s managed to teach himself Dutch, Visual Basic, and Java in the last few months. He’s also programmed some nifty things for work and they’ve sent him around to other states to help out there sometimes. Guess I should mention he doesn’t work the usual Monday to Friday schedule either. It alternates - two on, two off, three on, three off. So he works every other weekend. We like this schedule actually. We don’t have kids so there’s really no reason why we *must* be on a day schedule with weekends off. We like getting to run errands on weekdays and going out to dinner/breakfast on weeknights. This also excuses us from various weekend family obligations too I might add!

So he worked last night. Seven pm to seven am. Before he went to work he knew that I was missing getting to the gym on friday so he said if I got ready by seven-thirty this morning he’d take me and go sit at the starbucks next-door with his laptop. My gym trips usually involve one hour of cardio and resistance work then I reward myself with a sauna and swim (or catch a water aerobics class) for another hour. Swimming makes me so happy. Really, I lovelovelove being in water. So I stayed at the gym until 9:45 and he was waiting in the car outside but he was still nice enough to let me get one of those new light frappucinos before we left.

Not convinced of his sainthood? Ok lemme tell you about thursday morning..

The morning of all our tree guy appointments we were sitting around in the office waiting for the first one to show up. He’d made two big mugs of coffee and brought one to me. So a few minutes and sips later we had swung our chairs to face each other and were talking about new games coming out or something - we’re both pretty interested in Vampire the Masquerade since we’d played the card game a bit - then I turned back to face my monitor and *whack* knocked the coffee mug over spilling almost an ENTIRE BIG MUG into my keyboard! Eee!

So I was frantically toweling the desk off and trying to get all the coffee. I tilted the keyboard..hehehe…and coffee came POURING out of the lower corner of the keyboard. Naturally things were freaking out on the screen all kinds of shit was going on because this was a year-old logitech that has lots of shortcut buttons and volume controls. We’re laughing hysterically too because the sight of that coffee pouring out of the keyboard was just fucking hilarious.

So he goes straight to Best Buy to get a new keyboard for me. This really was the first time I’d spilled shit directly into my keyboard like this I swear so he was going to just get me a new wired logitech like his with the volume dial instead of buttons because they were kind of annoying.

(I’d like to point out that in the meantime NONE of the tree guys that were supposed to be there before noon had shown or called)

Cody comes back about twenty minutes later with a new keyboard and MUST get it hooked up for me immediately. Know how most guys are about cars running perfectly for their wives or girlfriends? This is pretty much how he is about our computers. As long as the car starts and drives noise-free he doesn’t really notice much else about it. But his wife MUST have a fully-functioning computer system and access to the internet at ALL TIMES. Hee.

So he’s up under my desk doing wild contortions trying to reach behind my tower, which is snugly tucked away under the monitor with one of those weird cd drive opener windows in the top of my desk. He’s trying to avoid lifting my giganto hernia-inducing monitor. But the cord for my old keyboard is in the way so he asks for me to pull on it. So I climb over him to do just that. But while doing so I also lift the coffee-soaked keyboard and MORE COFFEE dribbles out, goes through the desk’s open window thingie and lands on his back. He’d taken his shirt off when he got home so it was the perfect naked target. So he starts yelling at the dog because he thinks she’s licking him on the back LOL. Then he sees that she’s sitting on her bed, head tilted, watching mom pour cold coffee down dad’s back so he asks “What the hell is that?”. I hadn’t really noticed up to that point that I was pouring cold keyboard coffee onto my husband’s unsuspecting saintly back. When I did I started laughing uncontrollably (causing more coffee to gush out) and he crawled out from under the desk and let me towel him off. He ended up having to lift the monitor and taking out the shelf to access the tower anyway.

And he wasn’t even mad. In fact he thought it was pretty funny.

See? A SAINT I’m tellin ya!

Only one of the tree guys showed up that day.