Comma Dot Comma

It’s 63 degrees and sunny out. The trees are budding. Still! Am I in a deceptively warm and happy dream sequence, which at any moment will turn all waa-waa phantasmagoric with giant man-eating maggots and nuclear waste sunsets, and from which I will wake with chills and sweats, feeling like sleep is more difficult than wakefulness?

Or is it just global warming Jack Abramoff’s doing?  (edit made in response to Kate’s complaint)
I’m thinking maybe today in my meeting I will keep one eye crossed the whole time and see if anybody notices.

Oh, and Nate, the author of the raven article, posted some comments about my comments on it. We’re so meta! If you want to get meta-meta, you can comment on his comments on my comments.

Yep, you got that right. Come August, the Mister will be Professor Mister.
We will be moving 8.05% of the way around the world, God willing (that last phrase is a little something I picked up in West Africa, where it is considered presumptuous to assume anything about the future).

Where exactly is that, you ask? Well, here’s a few hints.

• The distance from Annapolis, MD to this city is 2004 miles.
• The typical air quality of this region is 1 (on a scale of 0-100, 100 being best).
• Famous former residents of this state include Cesar Chavez, Kerri Strug, and Charles Mingus.
• Household pests we may encounter include scorpions, roof rats, and rhinocerous beetles.
• It is sunny 300 days out of the year.
• The highest and lowest points in the state are, respectively, 12,633 ft and 70 ft.

We will be skulking around and causing our usual havoc somewhere near latitude 33.542 N, longitude 112.071 W

Most of the information for this post came from here and here.

We’re excited!

She’s on the tall side, and she moves as slowly as her cigarette smoke.  But one by one, evildoers have learned to fear those sleepy-looking eyes.  Her name? Dottie Comma.

 Dottie Comma:  Sorry to interrupt, but I have this problem I just can’t figure out.  Will you help me really quick?

Boss-Type Person:  Sure, what is it?

Dottie Comma: Well. Will you write down, in all caps, the words “Read, Study, Grow”?

Boss-Type Person: HAR HAR HAR HAR.  Okay, okay! It was me! HAR HAR HAR!

Dottie Comma can get a full confession with two questions or less.

Today when I walked into my office I found, perched on top of my computer, a blue paperback titled

PRO EVO: Pro Evolution — Guideline for an Age of Joy.

With a post it note stuck to it.

Here it is:

It was self-published, by a house in Switzerland. Now, who could this be from? My office mate swears he didn’t see anyone come in last night or this morning. And it’s not his type of joke really.

Does someone think I need to evolve? It’s true; only yesterday I declared myself a fluffy monkey to the entire internet.

Maybe the “Age of Joy” refers to the fact that I sometimes put a wiped-off-but-not-washed fork in my desk drawer. Somebody has observed my lack of dedication to dishwashing detergent! Before you get all grossed out and swear to yourself that you will never kiss my extra-germy mouth (either for the first time or again), I should clarify that I do wash the fork before I use it the next time.

I bet my mouth is cleaner than a monkey’s anyway, evolution or no, because unlike a monkey I don’t knowingly eat the feces of myself or others.
Maybe its the night janitor. We pass each other on our way to and from public transportation. Whenever I work late and she comes into my office to empty the trash she says, “Whooee! Pretty hot in this building tonight!” Or, alternatively, “Whooee! Damn cold outside isn’t it?”

In both cases I say, “Yes, yes it is!” I say thank you about the trash can, and by then she is gone.
Ordinarily I wouldn’t count that as philosophical conversation leading to the exchange of edifying reading material, but maybe I overlooked something.

Maybe it is the notorious grouch on our floor. Maybe she is only pretending to be grouchy, when in fact she has the secret of true joy, and stealthily spreads her message to those she deems worthy.

My next step: collecting handwriting samples. I do, after consultation with the connivingest department members, have a clear suspect.

Back in December I predicted that there would be giant potholes in the road by this time, with partly visible orange warning cones stuck in them. Due to snow and salt and municipal negligence.
Well, shut my mouth and call me a fluffy monkey

because I was way off. I haven’t seen snow round these parts since I wrote that, until this morning.

Snow was falling as I trudged past the Pepsi warehouse to the Light Rail station. But it was coming down so apologetically, you almost couldn’t call it snow. More like winter dandruff. I’d have tapped the sky on the shoulder to recommend a good zinc shampoo if I had known where the sky’s shoulder was.

The best “easy-listening” internet radio show for people who thought they had very discriminating musical tastes in college, and would never say “easy listening,” preferring the term “chill”:

Metropolis at kcrwmusic.com

It’s mellow enough not to distract and interesting enough to keep the energy levels up. The DJ will play a remix of some Coldplay song, then something from India, then some latino techno, then something funky. He makes it all seem like it belongs together.

The best “work’s boring, better listen to something interesting” internet radio:

The Cool As Folk station on music.yahoo.com

It’s where I get my Decemberists fix, among other things.

The best “work is really boring, I gotta laugh at something” internet radio. Well, this one’s not music but hey you can’t go wrong with

This American Life

The best “I’m on a deadline and got to go into The Zone” internet radio show, although sometimes this one gets a little too creepy (in a Matrix II mosh-pit-scene kind of way). All electronica.
Nocturna on kcrwmusic.com

CDs that also serve this purpose, making me listen to them over and over obsessively for days on end even if they are only 30 minutes long:

Neilsen Hubbard, Sing into Me — The sweetest Christian-tinged folk you can imagine.

Mia Doi Todd, The Golden State — “Gravity and entropy, they have it out inside of me”

The Violet Burning, Strength — electric guitar you can disappear into.

Well, it’s been quite awhile since we had a quiz on here. And we haven’t devoted nearly enough time to commas, periods, semi-colons, and dashes. Someday we should discuss which fonts show each of these punctuators at their best. If I recall correctly, Garamond REALLY does right by the semi-colon. In my dream world my word processor automatically picks my preferred font for each punctuation mark as I type it.

But while I’m waiting for someone to invent that, one of my coworkers found this cool grammar website, www.chompchomp.com . The creator has this to say:

“Robin recommends that folks visit another grammar site if they think a tyrannosaurus biting off a limb is too violent a punishment for a wrong answer.”

If that’s not incentive, I don’t know what is. So here is a quiz on commas. Well, comma splices. Rar! (Reminds me of a cute two-year-old nephew quote, on his aunt pretending to be a bear: “I’m coming out here to get away from the RARness!”)
Comma Splice Quiz!

It’s taken me awhile to get back to the story of the Raven I mentioned last week, but here we are. The author makes use of the story as part of an essay on individual paths to faith — intuition, tradition, and revelation. He builds on an idea I first encountered as a teenager, in the writings of C.S. Lewis. In addition to nature, the thinking goes, some of God’s truth is encoded in the stories and beliefs of every culture. Then, when a people encounters the gospel, they have been prepared by their own long-codified search for meaning. Hence the suffering raven who takes the form of a human and eventually brings light to the whole earth resembles Jesus enough that the Messiah story makes sense to the native Alaskans.

I, too, am an “all truth is God’s truth” type, and I find it fun to search for God’s unveiling everywhere. And yet, one of the reasons I take such pleasure in these old stories is that they are essentially amoral. Sure, the old guy is hiding the light. But there’s no benevolence in Raven’s curiosity– he just wants to get that light, by golly. You read a story like that, and you’re not sure who to root for, and the ending has as much to do with the capriciousness of fate (the eagle swooping down) as it does with any grand plans of any of the characters. The topsy-turvy back and forth in the fight for hidden treasure is both empty and charming.

Compare this with the stories of the New Testament, in which the good guys, the bad guys, the stakes, and the ultimate outcomes are quite clear. The “whys” are as important as the “hows.”

In real life I get tired out, trying to assign moral significance to experience. I have been trained to do it by the stories that shape my faith. But is there is more of God’s truth in Raven than a simple prefiguring of the gospel? What about the freeing playfulness of the story? I sense an invitation in the way it makes me relax and let the gods fight it out, trusting that it will work out okay in the end.

In real life this attitude might translate to something like the freedom to simply exist, living with faith that all-powerful goodness has invaded my sphere and is doing its good work. Allowing the Holy Spirit and the prophets to assign meaning as they see fit. Doing the tasks that come to hand, and letting the struggle go on around me without needing to worry or categorize or wave the banner of any cause. Recognizing Jesus everywhere.

My freelance friend Betsy (No, she’s not on contract to be my friend, she just does freelance writing) needs your help!

Betsy writes:

“I’m working this month as a consultant for the USA Network, researching local ‘characters’ from around the country–finding them more like–among the station’s 66 city markets and beyond.  Do you know of an interesting character in your town or another city you’ve lived in or visited?  A name’s ideal…but just a vague detail or two would help me lots.  I hope to locate 100-200 eccentric characters by Jan 30th.

A character is anybody who’s interesting/unusual in appearance or hobby or career…  No rules here!  I’d love to know who’s interesting to you. In San Antonio, there’s an old guy who runs a toilet-seat cover museum–he paints scenes from history on these covers, hangs them in his big garage.  In L.A., you’ve got Angelynne the 60-year-old surgically-enhanced bombshell who drives her pink convertible Corvette in low-cut dresses.  No druggies or alcoholics, please…but all clean special types welcome.

Thanks for your help! Send me an email by clicking this link: Betsy Boyd“

Driving around in our 1989 Mazda is about as embarrassing as audibly farting in a crowded elevator.

It’s not the many street-parking-related dings or the rust spots. It’s not the crooked license plates or falling-off bumpers. It’s not the fact that the driver’s side window won’t roll down so we have to open the door at every toll booth. It’s not the different rattles you hear depending on the idle speed. These particulars give our little car a certain jauntiness that makes me proud.

I cringe because of the clouds of acrid smoke that billow out for the first five minutes when we start the car in the morning. Right when the clock radio goes off I start praying for a nice strong wind. Every time we start the car I think about how I am counteracting all the reducing, reusing, and recycling I do (Yay 3 R’s!), as well as the city bus riding and walking. We try to drive away quickly, without letting the car warm up, before our neighbors see us. We have to hold our breath the whole time we are stationary, which puts a limit on how much idling we can tolerate.

Sitting at a long light recently amid the hazy blue swirls, we noticed a person frantically waving outside the driver’s side window. We cracked the door open. “Your back tire is on fire!” he said. We dutifully pulled over to inspect. No, the tire was fine. He had simply mistaken the thick exhaust for something more dangerous.

There’s nothing we can do. The Mazda has over 200,000 miles on it and the engine valves are just plain leaky. We wanted to just nurse it along until we were ready for the Next Phase, taking the grimaces from the passing public as our just due and adding oil every time we filled the tank. Just last week I realized and accepted the fact that I sometimes prefer saving money to upholding my good girl civic and environmental principles.

But now, fate has tipped its hand, perhaps forcing a decision. The water pump has “fallen to pieces” and the timing belt’s gone. The old-car question rears its ugly head: Pay huge sums for the repairs or call it a day, turn out the light, close the chapter, cash in the chips?

Will we never again open its sunroof or squeeze it into a parallel parking spot no SUV can manage? Never again triumph at fitting Ikea furniture or cross country skis into it? Never again cram in two or more 6 foot + members of my writing group and laugh at the way their heads bump the ceiling? Never again tell the story of how we got the car (Given to us by a church friend in a moment of flummoxing need)? Is this it for the MX-6?