My Blue Chair

If anyone actually reads this, I now only blog on blogger. It's so much prettier than livejournal. quitstalling.blogspot.com. One day I'll explain why I call the blog "stalling." (There is actually a story there. And it has to do with dropping kids off at the pool.)

Blog entry about The Rule.

The Bechdal-Wallace Rule:

Only see movies that satisfy three basic requirements:
1. The movie must have at least 2 women, who must...
2. Talk to each other...
3. About something other then men.

It's surprising how few movies actually pass the test. And if you think of the reverse rule, a movie with two men in it that talk to each other about things other than woman, the passing list is much larger. Most recent movies I've seen:

Get Smart: PASSES, but so barely. Agent 99 shakes hands with the fat lady Max danced with and says something like, "Nice moves." (Maybe that's why that pointless scene was in there.)

The Incredible Hulk: FAILS. There is a female soldier, but I don't think Liv Tyler speaks with her. If she does, it's probably about the hulk.

Indiana Jones: FAILS. I don't think Marian actually talks to Cate Blanchett's character. Punches her in the face, maybe. But no talking.

Iron Man: FAILS. I would consider the coversation between the reporter and Pepper to be about Tony.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: PASSES. Violet talks to her mom about non-male related things. Violet and Veruca talk briefly.

Little Mermaid: FAILS. The sisters talk to each other, but about how Ariel is in love (with a man). And all Ursula/Ariel talk is about Eric.

Batman Begins: FAILS. Were there any other women besides Rachel Dawes? Maybe in New-Batman 3 Poison Ivy and Catwoman can share tips on drycleaning spandex.

No Reservations: PASSES. It's a butt-boring movie, but there are plenty of aunt/niece bonding, head  chef/manager fighting, and head chef/sous chef cooking scenes. All of them involving and mostly about women. I really hope that's not why it was so boring.

I'm not all pissed off about it or anything, I just think it's kind of interesting to notice. Sad, but interesting.

Curried Coconut Chicken

This looks really interesting, I'm not sure if I'll like it. I've tried to cook Thai food before, and never been quite satisfied. It's almost easier to just go eat Thai at a restaurant. This seems more Indian than Thai anyway, but I'm intrigued enough to give it a try.

Pesto Chicken Florentine

This looks way too easy and too tasty not to try. I'll probably attempt this one first, because it looks so fool-proof.

Baked Lemon Chicken

I love lemon chicken, and this one looks interesting. Plus, easy.

This is always kind of funny: go to the babelfish site and translate things into one language, then translate that right back to English. In my computers and humanities class, we'd do that with scriptures. But it's equally funny with dirty songs. Can anyone name this tune?

English to Dutch English:
I flog will let me you if I it is badly behaves himself only that nobody makes me this manner feels.

English to Korean to English:
It goes out and when it justice it is, anyone the production or impression to act and method is impolite me to be extensive and to carry and and it is to make.

French:
I will let to you whip myself if I act badly it is right that single marks I to feel this way.

Portuguese:
I will leave it to hit me if I misbehave. it will be just that no.one makes me sensation this way.

Japanese:
If I make and feel and do then fair thing everyone me like this immoral behavior is obtained and the fact that I am struck is permitted.

English to Italian to French to German to English:
Hit it to resound it, if misbehave. It is fair that no expirations me clock this sense.

I just walked around my entire company, getting everyone to sign a card for someone that quit. And when I was waiting for the last group of people to pass it around, I realized I had a big red glob of salsa clinging to my light blue shirt. Classy.

Okay, maybe "daily" prompt was a bit too ambitious. Let's try weekly.

Here's this week's prompt:
1. Set your variations. Jill had a question about how to do this. I would roll four dice from the dice website. Match those numbers up to all of the options, in order. Then choose one, two, or three of the options that you will use in your story. (Or do whatever you want, I won't tell the teacher.)
2. Write a story with this situation: The owner of a drycleaner discovers something unusual in the coat pocket of one of his regular customers.

1. Determine your variations.
2. Start a story with the first line: "Yeah I'm bad, but in a good way."
3. Post your story as a reply, or in your own journal. (If you post it in your own journal: Leave a comment, so I'll know to go look at it.)

P.S. Jill: I really did pick that one from random.

My random variation generator results:
2, 1, 5, 5

Female, underaged protagonist; early 20th century romance. Great.

From now on, the prompts will be from this book. To make them more interesting, you'll need a die. (If you don't have one readily available, go here.) Pick two of following lists (you can pick them randomly or hand-pick them) and roll the die. Stick to those limitations and apply them to the daily prompt. If you want an even bigger challange, use three or four at once. If you've done this before the prompt, state that before your story.

1. Your protagonist is:
Roll 1-3: Female
Roll 4-6: Male

2. Your protagonist is:
Roll 1: less tham 18 years old
Roll 2: 18-30 years old
Roll 3: 31-50 years old
Roll 4: 51-70 years old
Roll 5: more than 70 years old
Roll 6: reroll

3. The genre is:
Roll 1: Mystery/Thriller
Roll 2: Literary
Roll 3: Science Fiction/Fantasy
Roll 4: Horror
Roll 5: Romance
Roll 6: Humor

4. The time period is:
Roll 1: Now
Roll 2: 1 to 25 years in the future
Roll 3: 25 to 500 years in the future
Roll 4: Late 20th century (1951-2000)
Roll 5: Early 20th century (1900-1950)
Roll 6: 100 to 10,000 years ago


Jill complained (as usual) that these prompts wouldn't be as restrictive for me since I can browse through the book and choose the ones I like. So to make up for it, I'll always use all four tables. I am just that awesome. To really make it fair, I probably ought to write these with one hand tied behind my back, uphill bothways in the snow, but then it's harder to look like I'm fake working.

You're talking on your cell phone while driving into work one morning. All of a sudden your signal gets crossed and you start picking up another conversation. Write the scene.

P.S. I'm putting my entry as a response, since they usually take me forever.

P.P.S. Jill, look at the previous entry.

Jill, check your gmail account. I left a message on your phone that says the same thing.

Write a 26-word story where either every word or every line begins with a different letter of the alphabet. No more than 3 words a line.

I cheated, the real prompt was to have every word start with a different letter. And I just realized, after I finished, that it says nothing about having all the words/lines in alphabetical order. Of course, I make everything harder than it needs to be. Good hell, this thing ends stupid. (Opposed to the super awesome beginning and middle. Insert eye-roll smiley here.)

Apprehensive, he
Balked when she
Challenged him to
Dance
Even his
Fiance
Goaded
Him
Into
Joining. Although she
Knew his
Latent fear of
Moving rhythmically, she
Naively hoped his
Odd fear might
Perish
Quickly when he
Realized that
Several
Thousand dollars weren't
Unimaginable with a
Victory.
When the
Xylophone played, he
Yelled like a
Zebra drowning alive.

What my work group is doing for our holiday party:



Here's why I'm nervous (besides me just being a wimp):
Through out middle school and high school gym classes, regardless of the sport we were playing, I would get hit in the head with a ball. Volleyball, softball, football, all of those have hit me in the head. With football, I wasn't even playing, I was watching the faculty vs. 9th graders game on the sidelines and an overthrown pass hit me right in the head. For volleyball, the school principal had stopped in the check on the class (7th grade) and wanted to serve the ball for the next round. It hit me square in the face. We even had a bowling unit in 9th grade, with big thick rubber bowling balls. We were supposed to take turns sitting behind the pins to catch the ball and on my turn, I had my legs in front me to catch the ball with my feet. The ball hit my feet, bounced up and slammed me right in the jaw. In 10th grade I was hit in the head during a jogging class. A basketball class was using the other half of the gym and someone didn't catch a pass. Instead, it landed right on the top of my head. I swear, I am some kind of sports injury magnet.

This wind tunnel seems safe, but then so does jogging. And observing a football game. I know that something funky is going to happen that will result in a head injury. My helmet will probably fly off, whip around the tunnel, and end up hitting me right on my now unprotected head. If it's going to happen to anyone, it will be me.

The 10 Video Games That Should Be Movies

I would definitely see Wes Anderson's Duck Hunt (in fact, I think I already have), M. Night Shyamalan's Metroid, and the Coen Brothers' Oregon Trail (awesome!). I'd be interested to see what they do with Tetris, but I'd probably wait for it to come to DVD.

This guy at work is making fun of newscasters who try to be funny and witty and end up looking dorky. This is a guy who quotes himself, repeating jokes he made just a few minutes ago, and then starts to discuss how and why they are so awesomely funny. They're not.  I hope he starts making fun of clueless people who are unaware of when other people are making fun of them.

Facebook made me pick a security question for my account, and almost all of their security questions were really weird and awkward. Like: What was the name of your first stuffed animal? I think that's assuming a lot about a person. That they name inanimate objects, for one. That they have a highly developed sense of sentimentality. And that they have amazing memories. So I couldn't remember any stuffed animal names, that doesn't mean I was weird or anything. Another question: What was your third grade teacher's name? As soon as I see that, I remember every teachers' name, except for third grade. I remember details about every grade except for third. It's a little creepy. I went with a more generic security question, but for what is normally a routine task- picking a security question- I was left unusally unsettled.

I remember some kind of X-Files like show where a character couldn't remember anything about a particular year in her childhood and it turned out she had been abducted by aliens or was part of some experiment or something. I don't remember exactly, I saw the show a long time ago. So I tried remembering other details of my elementary school years, to see if I could recall anything from third grade.

• Kindergarten (Mrs. Leary) - Some boy brought me rock candy on day. Before eating it, I wondered for a moment if it was drugs, but then I ate it anyway.
• 1st Grade (Mrs. Friendz) - I got my name on the board for the one and only time, because I didn't finish a coloring assignment on time. I didn't finish because I let the two people sitting next to me use my crayons. And I couldn't color something in using the wrong colors, so I just had to wait for them to finish.
• 2nd Grade (Mrs. Noonan) - I told this huge lie in gym class about a back injury because my teacher forgot to give the gym teacher a note from my mom excusing me from gym, and I didn't want to tell the gym teacher that Mrs. Noonan just forgot the note. I had to go to the nurses office and eventually broke down crying, confessing the lie and I'm sure all the teachers thought I was really weird.
• 4th Grade (Mr. Delheim) - His wife worked with my dad, so he knew I was Mormon (I went to school up until 4th grade in Illinois). We read a book with a Mormon character in class (something and the Brain) and my mom made me give him Joseph Smith pamphlets after we finished the books.

I finally DID remember my 3rd grade teacher's name. I had recounted this disturbing experience to my sister over IM and when the name finally came to me I was excited. I started to type it in: Mrs. Slovakia. Wait a second. That sounds SO made up. But it comes from one of two memories that finally came to me from 3rd grade. Our teacher told our class we could remember her name by thinking of the country Czechoslovakia, just take off the Czecho. The other memory was her reading a story outloud to the class. One of the characters in the story was mentally challenged, and when she had any dialogue, Mrs. Slovakia try to act out a fake mentally challenged voice. And it was awkward. Even as a third grader, I remember thinking, "This is really embarrassing."

We had our weekly creative meeting at work today, and I've been skipping them lately. It was very enjoyable, I should make a point to go even if I don't think I want to. Here's the prompt and my response (remember, we only had about ten minutes to write these):

Prompt:
You're eating at your favorite restaurant and order your favorite meal. A couple of bites in, you nearly have a heart attack, when you notice something in your meal that doesn't belong there. What is it and how did it get there?

Response:
As I bite into a sticky wing at Winger's Diner, a tiny piece of metal gets stuck between my teeth. Naturally, I think it's a popcorn kernel and try to get it out with my tongue, but nearly have heart attack when an electric current goes through my spine. The manager sprints over as my sister jumps up, screaming. The manager hands my plate to a waiter who takes it to the back and begins to apologize, offering coupons for free dessert. As I try to remove the electronic device, the manager reaches forward, and stops me.
"Don't! If you touch it again you'll get another shock!" I demand that he explain what the device is and how it got into my food.
"Well, we've had a serious chicken escape problem. We built higher fences, trained more guards, nothing worked. Then someone suggested these." He pulled a tiny silver disk form his pocket. "You put it in their food. They say it's totally safe."
My sister chimed in, "We'll need more than dessert coupons."

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Feel free to post your own response. :)

Is what you do a Job, Career, or Calling? Which of these statements are true? This came from this site. For me, the true answers are in bold.

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1.  While I enjoy what I do at work and am very good at it, I often feel like I’ve “topped-out” and I have to look elsewhere – my home, my spiritual life, my friends, my hobbies, my community service – for inspiration or fulfillment.

2.  I tend to lose myself in my work.  I just feel like I’m in the “flow” and I lose all sense of time.

3.  I like what I do, but I don’t expect a lot from my work.  It just provides me what I need to do the other more important things in my life.  I enjoy my leisure life more than my work life.

4.  My work truly makes a difference in the world.

5.  The greatest experience I have at work is when I’m truly recognized by others for what I’ve accomplished.

6.  If I had to choose between receiving a 10% raise at work or finding a new best friend at work, I would probably choose the raise. The 10% raise for me would be less than $3,000. I'd go for the friend. If we were talking $3,500 I'd have to think about it. ;)

7.  I quite often feel like the work I’m doing is coming from some source bigger than me.  I’m just channeling this energy or this talent and I’m quite often amazed by its power. Yikes! If this is true for you someone call an exorcist! Or maybe your long lost father if using you to translate the Rambaldi document. Either way, this one seems creepy.

8. I’m often not that excited to go to work on Monday morning.

9.  My goal in life is to rise to the top of my field.

10.  There are moments when I think to myself, “If I were independently wealthy, I’d probably still be doing this work.”  I do what I do because I just love it.

11.  I’ve thought pretty deeply about where my work will take me the next ten years and what I need to do to excel in this field.

12.  I’m pretty conscious to use my vacation time and sick days off so that I can create more  balance and  ensure that work doesn’t dominate my life.

13.  I often feel like my work allows me to show the “real me.”  My work lets me use my deepest creative gifts. 

14.  I think work is overrated when you consider what percentage of our lives we spend working as compared to enjoying life.  I don’t think much about work when I’m not there.

15.  I will do what it takes to become a success in my work.

Okay, I know that wasn’t easy. You may have had either a hard time trimming down to just five, or you may have found it difficult finding five statements that represent your perspective on your work.  Here’s how we’ll score them.  The following statements reflect someone who has a “job” perspective: 3, 6, 8, 12, and 14.  The “career” statements are: 1, 5, 9, 11, and 15.  And, the “calling” statements are: 2, 4, 7, 10, and 13.

How many did you have in each category?  Your dominant category will tell you a lot about your relationship with your current work.  If your dominant category wasn’t “calling,” don’t be alarmed, as most people find their calling outside of their work—whether it’s as a Girl Scout leader, a gardener, a tri-athlete, a devoted friend, or an ardent political activist.  The big question you need to ask yourself – and you don’t have to go on a half-week fast to figure this out (and credit to poet Mary Oliver for a portion of my phrasing) – is “Left to your own choice with no external influences, what would you do with this one precious life you’ve been given?”  Or think even bigger, “What’s the legacy you’ll leave long after you’re gone?”

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Okay, my score:

Calling: 0

Career: 2

Job: 3

I guess that sounds about right. Sometimes I feel like Jim on The Office from the episode where he volunteers Dwight to help Michael choose the health plan. As long as I stay right were I am, this is just a job. It's not my career. I could make this my career, but then do I want this to be my career? Sometimes I really like it and most of the time I'm really good at it.

Maybe people put too much importance on what we call things. So I decide this isn't my "calling" and quit. I'd still need to pay rent and would end up working at Barnes and Noble until I found my "calling." And I doubt that "job" would pay me what this "job" does.

Since I'm technically in a new department now (but my job is the exact same), I get to participate in the department's activities. One of these is a weekly half-hour creative writing meeting. This week, we wrote riddles, using an item from this list.

Here are the ones I came up with:

1. Nuclear foot appendage
2. Treasure marking container
3. Mythical midget from a big city

Someone used the same object as my #1, but their riddle was "If athletes get athlete's foot, what do astronauts get?" She remembered seeing it on a Laffy Taffy wrapper. That's actually pretty good, especially for Laffy Taffy standards.

For Jill and the two other random people that read my blog, I'll post the answers in a reply comment.

The programmers in my office have been playing really stupid pranks on each other the last few weeks. They'll do a prank, then another person will do the exact same prank in retaliation and they all think it's hilarious. Well, I've been asked to help in another stupid prank, and I'm way too wussy to say no. They've done something so that the programmer on the other side of my cubicle wall has two mice on plugged into one computer. The second mouse is on my desk. I'm supposed to just move the mouse every once in a while. It's supposed to produce hilarious results, but it just sounds vaguely annoying to me. Maybe I'm just a huge party pooper. My greatest fear is that now that I'm involved in these pranks, I become free game for participating. It has so far remained isolated to the programmers, and while it's very eye-rolling to hear about, at least it never really affected me.

I'm very tempted to come in early tomorrow and send an IM to this programmer and suggest that he come up with a counter-prank before anyone finds out. But I can't think of any counter-pranks involving the mouse. Good counter-pranks at least. Maybe cross wiring everyone else's mouse? But that would require them to come in and start working at the same time. And it's still more annoying than funny. And then I'd really be wide open for future pranking.

At work, my department was moved to the Fulfillment group (or, misc. group it seems like). Other departments in that group: writing, web design, online store/warehouse. And now QA. Each month we have a group meeting and a different person has an assignment for that group. Next month, I'm in charge of the writing/grammar assignment. I know that my director put me in charge of that because she knows I majored in English, but I don't know what to do. All of the writing exercises I ever did were creative writing. I could bring in an artichoke and make everyone write a poem about the experience of eating it without using adjectives. Last month's assignment/workshop was on creating effective titles for articles. I think the adjectiveless artichoke poem may be a bit much. Plus, I don't want to steam a bunch of artichokes.