sports

ok.

Phrodaux has a confession to make to the tubes.
I don't understand sports, maybe women's roller derby a bit, but that is about it.

My dad apparently played football in high school and in college, and played with a guy who went on to be semi famous (I'm not saying Grizzly Adams, but I'm not saying it wasn't).

(this is a creative commons image)

But we never watched or engaged in "sports".
{Fairy Queen sidebar: Oh, Phrodaux, you lie. What about swim team, diving team, water polo? What about how we are fairly certain that my 10th grade self saw your 12th grade self IN A SPEEDO when our teams competed in water polo, 16 years before we actually met????}

Football.

I really really don't understand football.

A game goes on for something like an hour, but that hour can last for....ev....er.

especially when you are waiting for your non-football related show to start that is coming on in 2 mins when the freaking game is over that started sometime in the early paleolithic era. Who knew what sorta high jinx would ensue in a show called "hello down there" in that time when the sports thing was spose to end and when their oxygen was going to run out.

Downloaded 10/9/13 from http://mubi.com/films/hello-down-there

football. a game where only a few times in a match (game, festival, event, gathering, fet, or #$@$, argh) does the ball come in contact with a foot. By this logic, softball in my high school PE class should have been called "testicle ball" or to be honest, really softball still kinda works.... (shut up)

Mr. Watson--come here--I want to see you...and wear something asex-ahay.

ok.

Yes, you are reading this, if you were not, then that would be kinda meta, or not meta, what is the opposite of meta (atem?)

Yes, we read blogs (see above).

Used to be, back in the the early dark days of the web (mosaic anyone?) back in the days when statements like  "no one has figured out how to make money on the web" were published in dead tree magazines with names like "Yahoo!" there were things called "websites" and those websites were written by things called "people" and those things called "people" also were interested in other websites written by other things called "peoples".

Then they would put links to those other websites on their websites as they figgered that if they found those pages interesting and you were looking at their pages then you might find those other "peoples" websites interesting.

Again this was in the dark days before "people" would put ads on their pages and would somehow make money from putting pictures of hamsters dancing on a webpage.

if you are not old (or wise), click here

so.

Given that we don't currently make money on our website, or really have any plans to have schemes to make  money on our blog, we just want to know: What do you find interesting on this silly little thing we call "the web" (aka, the tubes)?

Oh, and to mention the yahoo article. Ebert was saying that there was no way to make money on the web, and he was overheard by a guy whose wife figured it out. Oddly enough the answer was porn. Most of the questions to life can be answered with porn, or cheese, or porn and cheese. Plate of shrimp (movie ref... blah, blah, blah)

This would be the time that you would go to comments and tell us about the websites  you like, that we might like, or that that guy you met on the bus that one time that had a squirrel in his pants might like. Or you could go to comments and say "quit being such a bossy pants, we don't like the web, and would rather stay home and look at pictures of weird manly women from the turn of the century and maybe some pictures of hamsters and while we eat turnips, you bastards).

Puppy speed

Puppies seem to come with two speeds, ON and off. Mo's ON is ON ON ON ON ON. He will happily relocate garden hoses,

oak leaves,

furniture,

and dirt.

Only rarely, and with much resistance, does he rest.

Unfortunately, his zest for new adventures outstrips his survival instinct. In the first few weeks he was with us, we found him chewing a piece of glass, nibbling walnuts (the squirrels were working the tree out back), sampling weird mushrooms that sprang up in the yard when it rained, and - here's the best one - eating a pill Nubie left in his bowl.

So...two nights before the "meet the puppy" visit with our regular vet, there we were with the vet on call, presenting a puppy who may have eaten one of three different meds, all of which are prescribed to a ~16 pound dog, not a 6 pounds and change puppy. By the way, have you ever tried to weigh a rambunctious puppy on a plate on a kitchen scale? Because really, this is the definition of good times.

But I digress. According to the super nice on-call vet, 2 of the 3 meds would be no big deal. But on the off chance it was #3, the blood pressure lowering thing, that would be pretty bad for Mr. Mo. So: vomiting induced, subcutaneous fluids administered, slightly chastened puppy sent home with us, with warnings to watch out for fainting and seizures, and to be prepared for serious sleepiness and possibly upset stomach. We were told to stop and get some tummy settling meds, as he was likely not going to be interested in food for a while.

Well.

Sleepiness lasted for two very cute hours.

Maniacal puppy runs re-commenced right around human bed time.

Stomach? It did not seem to be upset so much as persistently empty. This is AFTER lunch, the hopping lunge at the food bowl.

We might be too old for this. And Nubie is STILL not sure this is a good idea.

The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation...eww.

ok, here we go. Fairy Queen is hollering/bellowing/yelling and trying to get the little white dogs to run in here and bite me, anything to get me to stop...

{FQ sidebar: She neither hollers nor bellows. She suggests, gently and firmly. And in the case of this particular post, she was spectacularly wrong.}

...and yet, I post.

there is a song from my youth, well not quite youth, but not quite growed up, more like a grup.

In the late 80's, early 90's from a band called Toto, which had little to nothing to do with the hero of a small movie that didn't quite win the oscar that year of 1939 (blatent plug to get you to get off of the Friendster and look to other parts of the tubes, because it is not a truck).

watch this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTQbiNvZqaY

 

(his other hand is someplace down in "Africa"

Don't hate me because I am beautiful, or because I asked you to watch that oh-so-white band sing about "Africa" and what the hell, the black librarian and what the f!@# was with the black hand and the spear? and those glasses. pla-la-la-lease. It would be like germans singing something about how the "the bris, the bris it went amiss", or "I wish, I wish, for a gefilte fish" (ok, I may be off the rails here a bit, go look up "the dark backward" it has nothing to do with anything here, but it was a weird movie, a guy with a third arm).

ok, stay with me (this may be a bit late, but for those still here the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys) 

Our friend, Sarah, who may be one of the bravest people we know, is now (down) in Africa. Not the Africa that the oh so earnest guy above is touching himself about, but the Africa with real people who have gone through really, really, really horrible things that they all have to live with, and have to figure out how to live with each other knowing what they all have done.

oh, sorry, heavy. yes. we are talking specifically about Rwanda. 

She is there, talking and getting to know people who have both done monstrous and unforgivable things and have had monstrous and unforgivable things done to them. Yet, despite the fact that monstrous and unforgivable things have been done, they are figuring out how to do something even harder, and in Phrodaux's small head, impossible.

They forgive.

yes, you don't want to do what I usually tell you to do and "go look it up", really, don't. Just take my word. 

But, if I can ask one thing, and one thing only of those who will take advice from some random whacko who writes about chupa cobbler and giant salamaders and what may or may not be sheet vinyl, can I ask one simple thing, really, it is a simple thing that you can do, won't cost a thing, really.

forgive.

(It's gonna take a lot to take me away from you...)

and if you are interested...check in with Farmer Sarah herself.

Accidentally onstage

Sometimes the absolute best things in a person's life are completely accidental. Take meeting Phrodaux, for example, or becoming a dog mom, or finding the farm.

Or being in a play. Yes, I know that doesn't fit and it isn't recent but it's the story the Fairy Queen wants to tell today. So settle in, or go check your email or your stock portfolio or your facebook friends, whatever, I'm still telling.

In 6th grade, the FQ was a lone smartypants good girl in a classroom full of delinquents and weirdos. The school loaded up the new teacher out of carelessness or hazing, or both. But my formidable mother, The Empress, bullied the school into swirling me into that mix. She was convinced that Ms. N - young, creative, idealistic - would be good for me. The school obeyed The Empress; you just have to. So there the Fairy Queen was, hanging onto Ms. N's every semi-rebellious word while trying not to make eye contact with her classmates.

As the holidays approached, Ms. N offered to take on the Christmas pageant (this was the late 70s, people...yes, we still called them that). Little did the school know that Ms. N had higher ambitious than first graders dressed as snowflakes. No, Ms. N was going to put on a play.

She bugged me to audition (auditions! for an elementary school play!) but I refused. The very last thing on earth I wanted to do was stand up in front of a room full of people  (grown ups!) and make speeches that weren't even my words. Ms. N relented at last and, in honor of my neurotic powers of observation and twitchy attention to detail, made me stage manager. That meant I organized the scripts, the props, the rehearsal schedules. I was timekeeper, errand runner, second in command. I shadowed Ms. N's every step and memorized every single second of that corny play.

When the girl playing Mrs. Agnes Nelson said she could come to the dress rehearsal but none of the three performances, Ms. N and I snorted in unison. What a lack of professionalism! But then Ms. N turned to me and said lightly, "You do it. You know the part."

"I know all the parts."

"Yes, sweetie, but this is the one we need. Besides, I think Mrs. Nelson's skirt will fit you perfectly."

And just like that, I was in a play. At first glance it wasn't very Christmasy. A group of people on a small plane crash land in the boonies. While awaiting rescue, they share Christmas memories because, of course, they are all trying to get home for Christmas. Mrs. Agnes Nelson wore a long dark skirt, a high-necked white blouse, and a very fine purple pillbox hat. I loved those clothes so much I wanted to take them home and sleep in them.

I became Mrs. Agnes Nelson, who, it turned out, was a retired teacher. Who, incidentally, gave the play's most dramatic speech, about all the students she'd known and taught and loved. All that time backstage, accidentally memorizing the whole damn play, and I never thought to put the pieces together. Until I put on Mrs. Agnes Nelson's natty pillbox hat, I had no idea what the play was actually about.

I did it. I played her three times. It's been something like 35 years but I still remember the long, straight, modest skirt, the scratchy stiff-collared blouse, and that hat. How I wish I had that hat. I was Mrs. Agnes Nelson as I stood before the audience I could not see and spoke of my students, three decades of them, and how I almost thought I could seem them, right out there.

I don't know what happened to Ms. N. I just know that after 15 years of jobs, the Fairy Queen found her calling. She's a teacher. And on crazy hat day she wears this:

Thanks, Ms. N, and thanks, Mrs. Agnes Nelson. I can see you both, right out there.