Random Thinking

As I was reminded earlier, Beth is in the Goth group at her school. So here is a picture of Beth dressed up. Notice the green hair and the corset. Corsets are big in the Goth world. And notice the clashing of the plaids. Apparently dressing according to the rules is a violation of the rules.

Another one of Mikey’s favorite shows is Kappa Mikey. It’s a cartoon about an American boy who wins a chance to be on a Japanese TV show. He ends up being so popular that he becomes the star of the show! The basic premise of the show revolves around the confusion caused by the clash of cultures between Mikey the American and the rest of the cast who is Japanese. The animators remind us of this clash by drawing Mikey in classic Hollywood cartoon style while everyone else is drawn in Japanese anime style. Even the name of the show reminds us of this fish out water theme as kappamaki is a type of sushi.

The theme song of the show is done by a Japanese punk group called, The Beat Crusaders. Their “thing” is that according to Wikipedia, “when they perform their faces are masked by drawings resembling themselves as printed by a dot-matrix printer.” It is a very catchy tune called HEY(X2) LOOK(X2).

I read about this in Newsweek back in January but it all started with a website dedicated to romance novels, www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com.

Paul Tolme is a nature writer. Back in 2005, he traveled to South Dakota and wrote an article about the black-footed ferret, an endangered species. Then, three years later he received an email telling him that his writing had been plagiarized for a… romance novel! Naturally Tolme was a bit susprised so he ran out and got a copy of the book, Shadow Bear by Cassie Edwards, and discovered standard romance novel schlock, in this case about a love affair between a Native American man and a white woman in the mid-1800′s. As Tolme describes, breasts heave, muscles ripple, wind blows through long hair, and the male star has a longing in his loins. Soon they proceed to a nearby teepee and “their bodies rock and quake until both explode in rapturous pleasure.” Then after their love making is complete, the two main characters in their “postcoital glow,” discuss… ferrets.

Shiona then tells Shadow Bear how she once read about ferrets in a book she took from the study of her father. “I discovered they are related to minks and otters. It is said their closest relations are European ferrets and Siberian polecats,” she says. “Researchers theorize that polecats crossed the land bridge that once linked Siberia and Alaska, to establish the New World population.”

Shadow Bear responds: “What I have observed of them, myself, is that these tiny animals breed in early spring when the males roam the night in search of females.” As the ferrets bound off into some distant bushes, he continues: “Mothers typically give birth to three kits in early summer and raise their young alone in abandoned prairie dog burrows.”

As Tolme says, that’s some clunky dialogue but that’s because it isn’t dialogue but rather text taken verbatim from Tolme’s article. Here’s what Tolme wrote:

“Black-footed ferrets, so-named because of their dark legs, weigh about two pounds and measure two feet from tip to tail. Related to mink and otters, they are North America’s only native ferret (and a different species than the ferrets kept as pets). Their closest relatives are European ferrets and Siberian polecats. Researchers theorize polecats crossed the land bridge that once linked Siberia and Alaska to establish the New World population. The animals breed in March and April, when males roam the night in search of females. Mothers typically give birth to three kits in June, and raise their young alone in abandoned prairie dog burrows.”

Here’s more sexy talk about ferrets from Edward’s romance:

“Ferrets stalk and kill prairie dogs during the night. Using their keen sense of smell and whiskers to guide them through pitch-black burrows, ferrets clamp a suffocation bite on their sleeping prey—an impressive feat, considering that the two species are about the same weight. Coyotes, badgers and owls in turn prey on ferrets, whose lifespan in the wild is often less than two years. ‘It’s a tough and quick life,’ Livieri says.”

OK, so who is Livieri? Livieri was the guy who was driving Tolme around South Dakota. Yep, Edwards has her Native American love machine quoting a guy who wouldn’t be born for 100 years.

Edwards has claimed she didn’t know that she was supposed to quote her source materials. I guess she figured grabbing any old quotes off the internet was sufficient. Nothing much has happened about this in the last month other than a few laughs at a woman who was never a very good writer even if she did get dozens of books published.

So your homework is to write an article that features the phrases, “Cassie Edwards”, “Eliot Spitzer”, and “hubris”. Good luck.

Mikey loves Spongebob. He makes us watch it all the time. He especially loves the episode, The Algae’s Always Greener in which Plankton switches lives with Mr. Krabs. But for some reason he always asks for us to switch the language to French whenever we put a DVD in for him. He seems to enjoy watching in French. Perhaps he was Charles DeGaulle in a prior life. Certainly he dresses the part!

She did it! We went Tuesday to Utopia with two of Beth’s friends and got Beth’s nose pierced. We picked out a plain diamond stud because it takes 9 months for it to fully heal and in that time you can’t take the stud out. So we wanted to get something that would go with anything and Beth wouldn’t get bored of wearing it.

As Michel said in her comments to the other entry, the guy who did the piercing may have been scary looking but he knows how to keep a sterile field. Utopia, the place where we got the piercing done may look like a dumpy store, but the piercing room looks like it could have been in a hospital. The room was spotless. He went over nose care with Beth very carefully. She has to soak her nose in salt water once a day for 9 months. It isn’t as simple as getting your ear pierced. All of Beth’s friends think that it’s very cool and that Beth has cool parents.

And I found out that the reason everyone at school is afraid of Beth and her friend, Brianna, is that they think they are “hardcore”, whatever that means.

Before Barbara Sue Manire died, she told her kids that she wanted an expired parking meter on her grave site. After she died at age 64 and after a year of pondering it, her kids went to eBay and got their mom her parking meter. The best part is the “64 Year Time Limit”. Barbara Sue had a great sense of humor.

Hat Tip: Snopes.

And I’d give up forever to touch you
‘Cause I know that you feel me somehow
You’re the closest to heaven that I’ll ever be
And I don’t want to go home right now

And all I can taste is this moment
And all I can breathe is your life
and sooner or later it’s over
I just don’t want to miss you tonight

And I don’t want the world to see me
‘Cause I don’t think that they’d understand
When everything’s made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

And you can’t fight the tears that ain’t coming
Or the moment of truth in your lies
When everything feels like the movies
Yeah, you bleed just to know you’re alive

And I don’t want the world to see me
‘Cause I don’t think that they’d understand
When everything’s made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

And I don’t want the world to see me
‘Cause I don’t think that they’d understand
When everything’s made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

And I don’t want the world to see me
‘Cause I don’t think that they’d understand
When everything’s made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

I just want you to know who I am
I just want you to know who I am
I just want you to know who I am

From the album, Dizzy Up The Girl, 1998.
—–
John Rzeznik wrote this song for the movie, City of Angels.

Beth has an unusual style of dressing. Her school has basically three groups of kids, the preps, the sports, and everyone else. Beth is in the everyone else group. Update: I have been corrected, Beth and her posse are in the Goth group. The word some of the kids use to describe her is scary although at 5’2” and skinny it’s hard to think of her as scary.

Saturday was supposed to be piercing day for Beth but the fates were against our hero. When I got back from Mikey’s music therapy we bundled Beth up and carted her off to see the piercing guy*. Beth wanted to get an eyebrow piercing but the piercing guy quickly said no, it wouldn’t work out. Beth’s skin is too tight at her eyebrows and although he could pierce her (and most piercers would), her skin would retract and push the eyebrow ring out leaving a nasty scar. Beth decided she wanted a lip ring but I think those are gross so she settled for a nose ring.

We found out that state law requires a notarized form for a minor to get anything other than their earlobes pierced so the young lady at the counter gave us a form and sent us to a local drugstore. By this time it was 5:00 and the notary was gone. So Beth missed out on her piercing. Aunt Cindy is a notary so Michel will visit her this week and get the form notarized and then finally Beth can get her nose pierced. I will take pictures to show the result.

* The “piercing guy” at Utopia is an expert piercer and has the piercings to prove it. Plus he has lots of tatoos. And a fairly large gauge plugs in his ear lobes. Yes, the “piercing guy” is scary!

Tricia over at Unringing the Bell blogged about this online 8th grade science test. I scored a little better than she did.