I’ve mentioned that Un mundo inmenso is my favorite YouTube channel with videos about geography. Check out this lovely new video about the Faroe Islands:
These topics are discussed:
the underwater roundabout
Google “sheep” view
mail-order brides
I’d move my family to the Faroes tomorrow, if I could.
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I spoke to my doctor about the anxiety I’ve been feeling, and we agreed that prolonged isolation is taking its toll.
Get a part-time job, she said. When your wife returns from her job, go to a grocery store and stock the shelves.
Somehow, it didn’t occur to her that such an, ahem, solitary job would deprive me of what little contact I have with my wife.
I am reminded of how obtuse my well-wishers’ advice often seemed when I last felt such distress.
This time, the distress is not as bad; but it is bad enough. But here is one saving grace. Most every night, after I’ve talked with Karin and eaten supper and watched a little TV, I feel much, much better.
We’ve been to church twice. Samuel won’t sit still. During the service, Karin & I allow him to roam the back hallways; we take turns supervising him. Afterward, when we wish to mingle with the other Christians, we have to keep him from dashing out into the parking lot. It’s like a game of “capture the flag.”
I wonder if his diet is a cause. I’ve started giving him peanut butter and jelly toast in the mornings. It puts him in an ecstatic mood, and he runs up and down the house, for about an hour.
The other night, we found The Runaway Bunny, one of his favorite books, behind the couch: it had been missing for several days. “Bunny! Bunny!” he said. Then he sat on my lap and paged through that book while I also read.
Presently, I realized that I, too, was reading a treatise of leporine theology: Rabbit, Run.
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A fox has been slinking around in our neighborhood. I saw it last night, and Karin has seen it a few times. Foxes are among her favorite animals.
They’re all named for actors (except Frankie Fox, who already had that name when he came out of his package). I suspect that the next fox I pull out of a drawer or closet will receive the name Michael J. Fox – or Kerry Fox, if she’s a vixen. And after we have used all the Fox names, we’ll help ourselves to the names of various Foxxes.
Samuel just loves all his little animals. He loves the kitties, too, though they don’t often let him get near to them.
He screeched delightedly a couple of nights ago when we watched My Neighbor Totoro. Since then, I’ve been carrying him around the house and dancing to the soundtrack:
We had trouble last night rounding up the kitties and putting them into their pet carriers. They knew what was in store for them.
Ziva darted under our bed. But we caught her in the end.
She and Jasper were hauled away. The vet gave them their shots and scolded them for being fat (Jasper has been ballooning ever since he figured out that Samuel tosses food scraps onto the floor).
Thankfully, both kitties were confirmed to be flea-free.
The rest of the evening was peaceful. Karin used her computer to play a very strange role-playing game from Japan, and I read from the unfashionable philosophy of William Godwin. The kitties didn’t fight at home (which they often do when one of them has returned from the vet). Samuel played with a toy alphabet that he got for Christmas; then, listening to the music of Bambi, he went to sleep.
Tonight, though, our Young Prince is considerably more grumpy.
I was in college when I first saw Todd Solondz’s Welcome to the Dollhouse. I didn’t enjoy it one bit. All the terror of middle school (or junior high, as it’s called in the movie) came crashing down on me again.
My friend Hoku viewed it with me. Welcome to the Dollhouse turned him white as a ghost.
(His middle school years were harder than mine.)
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Dawn Wiener (Heather Matarazzo) may not be quite at the social bottom of her seventh-grade class at Benjamin Franklin Junior High. But she’s close enough to the bottom that when she tries to commiserate with a classmate who’s just been pounded by bullies, he tells her, “Leave me alone, Wiener Dog!” and runs away.
Dawn wises up after that incident. Never again does she try to aid the powerless. Instead, she toadies up to the powerful and berates and bullies her sixth-grade hanger-on, Ralphy, and her much younger sister, Missy.
Bullying Missy is a mistake. Missy may only be in early grade school, but she knows how to work the system like one of the popular kids.
Her parents always side with her against Dawn. One of the smartest things about the movie is how it shows the adults reinforcing the social hierarchy that keeps Dawn and her older brother, Mark, from breaking away from their peers’ contempt.
Mark directs his efforts toward getting into a good college. This, he supposes, will enable him to finally climb the ladder above his popular, arrogant classmate, Steve Rodgers. Meanwhile, he toadies up to Steve.
Dawn’s strategy is another variant of: If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. She throws herself at Steve.
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Dawn has little going for her, but, astutely, the movie recognizes that someone will find something about her to like.
Enter Brandon (Brendan Sexton III), whose home life is even more troubled than Dawn’s.
This isn’t a movie in which goodness triumphs. Brandon’s reserves of courage and sensitivity don’t carry the day. They’re buried very deep, and the situation is further complicated by his mean streak.
But the fact that Brandon is the tiniest bit hopeful about life, and that Dawn is the person he chooses to share that hopefulness with, suggests that there’s hope for Dawn, too.
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I said I didn’t enjoy my first viewing: it was too painful. But time makes even this sort of pain enjoyable.
The movie is filled with acid humor. It’s all in the details, which I don’t want to ruin. But I can give hints.
Dawn’s and Missy’s rivalry is exquisitely lifelike: the tones of voice, the backstabbing, the parents’ failure to administer justice. (What’s arguably the most horrific scene in the movie has to do with how the parents distribute slices of chocolate cake.)
Then there’s the movie’s use of the vernacular. Certain characters are just learning to swear. They combine their words like hilariously ill-matched fashion accessories.
As in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, the most grotesque, syrupy scenes are set to famous passages of classical music. These are juxtaposed against the garage rock riffs that punctuate angrier scenes.
This juxtaposition is paralleled in one of the subplots. Mark recruits Steve Rodgers to play guitar and sing in his garage rock band. Mark’s instrument in the band is the clarinet. The result is the auditory equivalent of spoiled milk.
This movie isn’t nice. But middle school isn’t nice. Families aren’t always nice. Life isn’t nice. This is one of the best movies of the year.
It was a warm Christmas and New Year’s. But new snow has landed, and outside – where I haven’t gone the last couple of days – it looks like a different world. Tomorrow I’ll trek to IUSB to return some library books. On Monday, I’ll resume my job.
My philosophizing has made great strides in my mind, but not on the page.
It’s my Thanksgiving break, so I stayed at home. Karin went to her job. I read all morning. I missed the armed robbery that occurred at IUSB. In the afternoon, I performed some chores and wrote in my dissertation. Ziva and Jasper were glad to have me with them.
In the evening, I watched Grêmio defeat Lanús, 1–0, in the first game of the Copa Libertadores’s final round. It wasn’t a beautiful game. I turned it off after the first half and watched Midsomer Murders with Karin. In that show, there was one especially nice camera shot. It was from the point of view of a murderous shovel.
For tomorrow’s holiday dinner, we’re planning to eat Greek food, not Chinese. Then we’ll go to Karin’s grandpa’s house to play Phase 10 for several hours.
I’m grateful, this Thanksgiving, for my wife and kitties.
If ever I use the toilet in the night, little Ziva follows me to my bed for a good petting. Last night, I didn’t use the toilet. Ziva showed up anyway, at 5:00 a.m., and so I gave her a thorough petting (I’m being trained for fatherhood, I tell myself).
At 6:00, I was still awake. I went to the living room to watch YouTube. I watched this nice video about the classic Scottish movie, Local Hero.
Ziva and Jasper ran around the living room, wrecking the décor. They often do this in the early hours.
Q: Why is it perilous to go into the jungle between 3:00 and 4:00 in the afternoon?
A: That’s when the elephants are jumping out of the trees.
Q: Why is the crab the flattest of God’s creatures?
A: The crab went into the jungle between 3:00 and 4:00 in the afternoon.
Karin was surprised by my early rising (she usually gets out of bed first). Tonight I’ll be too tired to go to the laundromat, I told her. But no, Karin won’t let me weasel out of going to the laundromat. Our clothes-washing routine is set in stone.
Ana & David have acquired a dog named Russell. Mary and I confer: Where would Russell stay if he were brought to Indiana? The options are meager. Because of our own pets, neither Mary nor I could admit Russell as a guest.
Our fear is that Russell won’t be brought at all. We’ll only get to see our nephew if we go to visit him in Austin (Ana & David are quitting Houston to live in the Texas capital). And then, what would our pets do?
