This Christmas, I got Pete a build-your-own Tinysaur and build-your-own Tiny Mammoth from this store on Etsy (cleverly hiding them in several nested boxes filled with books and other cloaking agents).  Unassembled, the pieces for each occupied a card smaller than a book of matches.  Assembled, they are, as advertised, tiny.

Tiny dino rests easily on a quarter.  But he wasn’t content to rest.  Tiny Dino wanted to go exploring.

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I’m no longer at all apologetic or self-conscious about my resistance to going out on New Year’s Eve.  I am, in no particular order: too lazy; too resistant to standing for hours in subzero temperatures and windchills of -30F to see bands and fireworks; too cheap, non-drunky, and uncool to pay $30-$150 for some event; and too apathetic to rub elbows with strangers at a bad party that I feel obligated to not leave before midnight.  And so, the rest of the evening will be spent with two different varieties of cookies currently chilling in the kitchen, the DVD of WALL-E I picked up with the week’s leftover grocery money yesterday, some Wii games, and the knitting that I’ve been veritably ripping through during the past few weeks.  At least until a couple of phone calls trickle in at midnight, after which I will go to bed, then lather, rinse, and repeat the day after.  I learned from the CBC that the largest gala is taking place in Québec City, where they’re closing out the 400th anniversary celebration (repeated theme: “We think we’re well-prepared this time!”) and starting the countdown ’till Jacques Cartier’s arrival in the Gaspésie 475 years ago.  Speaking as someone largely from the Midwest, where a bicentennial is a big venerable deal: dang, this country is old.

I’ve seen a year in review meme bouncing around the interwebs, which I won’t fill out.  (A lot of the questions are repetitious and/or boring.)  That said, it’s got me thinking: even though I still–and probably always will–think of years as revolving around the academic calendar, 2008 was actually pretty big.  It’s the first year that really sticks out since 2002, which was the year of graduating college / moving to Madison / moving in with the boyfriend / experiencing the first half of the massive beatdown that is my program’s Master’s year.  And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  In 2008, I:

• Concluded 2.5 of low-level drama (i.e. academic drama on a bare simmer over a back boiler) and passed, after a series of excruciating scheduling  catastrophes, a dissertation proposal of epic length through my committee
• Made substantive progress towards my PhD despite some serious geographic and social distance between me and my home institution
• Finished my last semester of teaching (sniff)
• Bought my first car
• Sold — OK, technically just transferred the title to a family member– that same car
• Orchestrated a Seriously Complicated and Sometimes Scary move to a different country
• Moved to freakin’ Canada
• Landed, for the first time, in a new city without a safety cushion of friends, work colleagues, or any other built-in social cohort
• Learned some French

It was sometimes tough, but pretty good.  2009 will, I think, bring a bit more flux.  Postdoc positions are only 2-3 years, which means that Pete might be sending out a round of job applications to some other distant city (!) or looking at the next rung up on the academic ladder.  I’ll need to come to some kind of peace with my liminal state vis-à-vis employment; I’ve been reminded that completing my PhD is something admirable in and of itself, and may have some long-term employment benefits, but I’ve been chugging away at it for so long that I’m paralyzed in the headlights of the non-academic job market.  Continuing assessment will be needed.  Life will continue to be lived; knowing me, cheerfully.

I’ve also seen a number of people choose themes for the upcoming year.  Which seems like a more thoughtful thing than New Year’s Resolutions, though the idea of having a theme makes me think of a High School prom or costume party.  Like: 2009’s theme will be “A Twinkle of Twilight”! Or “Naughty Schoolgirls”!  Or “Trout”!

Okay, I don’t know exactly how the last one would work.  But if you want to make your theme for 2009 “Trout,” you are awesome.  In the oft-quoted words of the Dismemberment Plan, here’s to another goddamn New Year!

… include pop songs with spoken-word interludes. Because my husband all but refused to acknowledge that such a (distinguished! uplifting!) subgenre exists, I spent an evening — plus some remarkably productive time between 1 am and 3 am, while a couple loads of bedding all-too-freshly infused with cat vomit cycled through our building’s coin-op washer and dryer — doing research.

First, some basic boundaries for my list-compiling.  I’m particularly fond of songs that employ the spoken-word interlude to amp up their cheese factor, ideally with a basso voice announcing “girl…” or “baby…” before the interlude gets underway, or which somehow make you smile.  And, as a partial and biased judge, I didn’t include: some classic rock songs, because they’re not so much my thing (e.g. Van Halen’s “Panama“); songs where much of the whole is some kind of spoken word (e.g. most rap candidates, and something like Archie Bell & the Drells’ “Tighten Up“); songs with spoken word introductions (e.g. much mid-career Christina Aguilera); and songs where the interlude is a sample (e.g. the single edit of Len’s “Steal My Sunshine,” or the “rhythm… and melody…” portion of Big Audio Dynamite’s “Rush” (both still very smile-making songs, even today)).  But that nevertheless leaves us with the following beauties:

1. Michael Jackson, “Thriller.”  Okay, so I don’t even know if this counts, given my above-mentioned criteria, but you cannot deny the influence of Vincent Price’s mid-track overdub on an already massive song.
2. Boyz II Men, “End of the Road.” Boyz II Men are absolutely the dominating figures of the mid-90s R&B mid-song spoken-word interlude scene, and “The End of the Road” shows them at their peak, with a full 50 seconds of interlude in their four-minute song.  They also get bonus points for the pimp cane, matching outfits, and end-of-song breakdown with hand claps.
3. Barry White, “Can’t Get Enough Of Your Love, Babe.”  I can’t lavish too much praise on B2M, though, because Barry White is the master.  He gets a few points taken off for wasting most of his best material on introductions, but the overall quality and quantity of his output place him at the top of my (unranked) list.
4. Britney Spears, “Oops!… I Did It Again.”  Britney’s Titanic-referencing voiceover is used to tie together a video narrative about humanity’s exploration of Mars, red vinyl jumpsuits, shirtless guys in suspenders and goggles pushing big curved levers in unison, and the image of schoolgirl innocence established with “… Baby One More Time.”  It’s pretty epic.  (Ms. Spears, like Ms. Aguilera, is also an aficionado of the spoken introduction.)
5. Color Me Badd, “All 4 Love.”  Okay, so I can’t argue against the cheese factor of this one, but honestly?  It’s hard for me to listen to this song and not chair-dance a little bit.  Go on — watch the video and try not to smile.  It’s just so… cheery.  Dig!
6. Beck, “Debra.”  I’m always surprisingly disappointed when I remember that Beck is a scientologist.  I think everyone has a different favorite line from this song; mine is his crooning, “Lady… step into my Hyundai.”
7. The Chi-Lites, “Have You Seen Her?.”  Honestly, this is just a great song.  Any cheese must have migrated to M.C. Hammer’s later quasi-cover of the song, which features some pretty shocking early ’90s wardrobe choices (oversized deep-v blazers worn over a bare chest and chains, ahoy!).
8. Alicia Keys, “You Don’t Know My Name.”  Some say that this song is bloated to the point of unlistenability from too many overdubs, but I have to give Keys credit for fully reaching for the neo-soul vibe she’s trying to capture.  And yeah, the interlude is an essential part of that.
9. Fergie, “Clumsy.”  Quite possibly the only recorded Fergie track where she fails to spell (or misspell) out several words, at length, as part of her lyrics.  Certainly an improvement.
10. Mandy Moore, “Candy.”  The Fug Girls can back me up on this one –Moore’s spoken interlude here is delightfully cheesy, rendering it total, unapologetic teen bubblegum pop.
11. Robyn, “Be Mine!”  Bear with the awkward segue here.  Robyn’s 1996 single “Do You Know (What It Takes)” was released from the same shiny and efficient Max Martin-produced Swedish pop factory that gave us basically every pop single worth listening to in the 90s, and it’s also notably similar to Moore’s 1999 “Candy.”  But Robyn’s self-released 2005 “Be Mine!” is a different creature–propulsive, bittersweet, still relentlessly catchy, and with a spoken-word interlude that somehow doesn’t detract from any of this.  As with Moore above, adulthood suits her.
12. Charlene, “I’ve Never Been to Me.”  This last one is a bit of a cheat, because I’d never heard of it until I started compiling this here list, and it’s certainly not very pop-y.  That said, it warrants inclusion due to how utterly bizarre its mid-song voice-over is–in the video, a Vaseline-lensed vignette of the singer’s head appears, and starts dispensing earnest advice to the listener: “Hey, you know what paradise is? It’s a lie, a fantasy we create about people and places as we’d like them to be…”

Merry Christmas three, originally uploaded by Bork Bork Bork.
Happy holidays, merry Christmas, joyous Hanukkah, an auspicious New Year, etc etc!

Love,
Your friends at Jejune.net

Astute readers may recall that Pete and I joined a car-sharing service a couple of months ago, which I reported on with not a small whiff of smugness. We eventually ended up using our rights to automotive transport by booking a car on an otherwise quiet, pre-snow Saturday morning, in order to drive out to a shopping center on the eastern side of the island and pick up an electric oil-filled radiator. (For whatever reason, the electric heat in all of our other rooms works just dandy, but our office is slow to warm up.)  This was, I reasoned, the kind of thing that would be difficult and unwieldy to carry home on the bus.  (Though, speaking of unwieldy, I’ve been charmed by the number of roommates and families I’ve seen walking down the sidewalks, slinging a tied-up Christmas trees between them, or with a smallish conifer slung jauntily over one shoulder.  Much more attractive than bringing your holiday tree home home tied to the top of your SUV, I think.)

Anyway, that one November Saturday has been the extent of our car usage thus far, and the annual winter deluge of snow means that I’ll probably be even more selective as long as driving requires copious amounts of snow-scraping and shoveling.  So I was surprised when I opened up our first monthly bill and saw that we owed the service $54.

“That seems like a lot,” I said blankly to Pete, as I scanned through the account.  Our multi-hour trip had cost us $10.  But then there was also another trip on our bill, taken two days later, plus a $40 service charge marked “Car Taken Without Reservation.”

“The hell…?” I muttered, and wandered off to my computer to check my Google Calendar.  Sure enough, it seemed that we’d made a reservation for Thursday, the 20th, and taken the car on Saturday, the 22nd.

Pete called the customer service desk to confirm.  “Ah, okay,” I heard him saying from the office.  “That makes sense.  It’s embarrassing, but it makes sense.”

I am thoroughly chagrined.  Because, apparently, I cannot correctly read a calendar, despite double-checking the dates.  And because that means that we stole a car.  I mean, no harm (it seems) done; the person who had our car legitimately booked on that Saturday would’ve called the office and been hooked up with another vehicle.

But still.  We stole a car.  And I do not at all feel like a badass.

Porom

Materials: 1 skein Shelridge Farm Soft Touch DKW (100% Wool) in Pussywiillow; Porom pattern from brooklyntweed.  Various sizes of DPN and circular needles.

Time: One week.

Cost: $12 yarn, $4.75 pattern.

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Not much to report here.  French class has ended, which opens up a surprising amount of time in my week, though I think we were all sad to end our weekly “this is the way things are in my country–how about yours?” discussions.  And I think I’m one of the few people for whom the holidays are a relaxing, low-stress time.  We don’t go anywhere, so there are no travel arrangements to contend with, no weather to fuss about, a small and manageable number of parties / seasonal events, and a very, very, very short gift list.  It’s a good deal.

I did, however, make Pete venture out into the aftermath of one of Winter ‘08-’09’s omnipresent snow storms to provide documentary evidence of one of my favorite local store windows.  I should add that the store owners on this street really go nuts with the ridiculously tasteful Christmas decorations.  This store, however, still features what I fondly think of as the Zombie Babies:

See that, there?  Even dressed in a $100 tones-of-cream (parents everywhere release a collective, involuntary groan) outfit, he’s still toddling towards you, arms stiffly outstretched, menacing you with his headless glare.

OK, maybe not.  But there really is something about that posture redolent of the youthful undead.

• Sentence really and seriously uttered at dinner this weekend: “Oh, X.  He’s very active within the poutine community, isn’t he?”  (Which set me off into a flight of fancy about what, exactly, the poutine community does by way of activism and consciousness-raising, which I’m sure pale in comparison to their actual activities.)
• I was also further enlightened about the significance of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s sweater.  Announcing “where is your platform, Mr. Harper?  Where is it?  UNDER YOUR SWEATER?” never grows old.
• I recently sent out a few cards featuring the art of Josephine Wall, which I find truly astonishing in its, er, depth of symbolism and imagination.  I think the pictures are awesome in all of their confused yet florid imagery, and I hope that most recipients are in on the joke.  But!  A search at Amazon reveals that there is also a book, a calendar (also available with puzzle), a great many posters, a t-shirt, some ceramic wall tiles, and even a globe–er, I mean “sphere art.”  Where does a joke turn into an obsession?  I worry sometimes.
• Finally, the Jejune household is struggling with undiagnosable network problems–it may be our network cards, it may be our wireless router, but connectivity is frustratingly intermittent.  (The internet doesn’t cut off completely, but slooowly chokes and gives us an inconsistent array of error messages.)  As a result, I didn’t notice some weird site problems that sprung up over the weekend–comments and permalinks, among other things, were unreachable.  So, if the operation of the site seems odd, don’t hesitate to drop me a line; I might be entirely oblivious.  If the contents of the site seem odd, you can email me as well, but that’s probably more the fault of My Craft than it is of Wordpress.