Archive | January 2005

Napoleon Dynamite

Jan8

The four older children and I watched this movie tonight. I picked it up at the movie rental place because I had heard that it was funny. What an understatement! I haven’t laughed so much in a long time. In spite of the fact that three of my children found the movie to be “seriously disturbing,” two of us thought it was great. Napoleon is a high school misfit with an attitude problem. His older brother Kip spends three or four hours a day talking to his friend LaFawnduh in a chat room on the internet, and his uncle Rico wants to go back in time to 1981 when he was sort of a part of an almost-winning high school football team. The whole family eats nothing but steaks, and they own a pet llama named Tina. Kip and Uncle Rico sell knock-off tupperware door-to-door until Uncle Rico comes up with an even better product–herbal breast enhancers. Napoleon tells his only friend, Pedro, that he (Napoleon) can’t get a date because he has no skills. Girls only like guys with skilllz–like numchuck skills or bowhunting skills or computer hacking skills.
The great thing about Napoleon is that he doesn’t really believe that he’s a social outcast with a bizarre family. (Well, he does think Uncle Rico is ruining his life.) Napoleon just keeps on plugging even though every day is “about the worst day of my life.” He keeps on doing whatever he thinks will make the next day a little better, anything from begging for a tube of chapstick to trying to throw Uncle Rico out of the house. Napoleon is sweeeeet, and he sure can dance. Don’t take my word for it. Watch it, and you’ll either laugh your head off or end up like Dancer Daughter, curled in a fetal position and seriously disturbed.

Napoleon’s Current Event Report
Last week, Japanese scientists explaced… placed explosive detonators at the bottom of Lake Loch Ness to blow Nessie out of the water. Sir Godfrey of the Nessie Alliance summoned the help of Scotland’s local wizards to cast a protective spell over the lake and its local residents and all those who seek for the peaceful existence of our underwater ally.

Who Is It?

Jan6

1. He was born on January 6, 1878.
2. He quit school after the eighth grade and worked for the next ten years at a variety of jobs: delivering milk, harvesting ice, bricklaying, threshing wheat in Kansas, and shining shoes.
3. He then became a hobo and then a soldier.
4. He finally went to college and became a writer, a socialist, and a labor organizer.
5. He won two Pulitzer Prizes–one for his biography and one for his poetry.
6. He raised goats and collected books.
7. He wrote this poem, a favorite of mine and of my children:

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your
head.
Arithmetic tells you how many you lose or win if you know how
many you had before you lost or won.
Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children go to heaven — or five
six bundle of sticks.
Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand
to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer.
Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and
you can look out of the window and see the blue sky — or the
answer is wrong and you have to start all over and try again
and see how it comes out this time.
If you take a number and double it and double it again and then
double it a few more times, the number gets bigger and bigger
and goes higher and higher and only arithmetic can tell you
what the number is when you decide to quit doubling.
Arithmetic is where you have to multiply — and you carry the
multiplication table in your head and hope you won’t lose it.
If you have two animal crackers, one good and one bad, and you
eat one and a striped zebra with streaks all over him eats the
other, how many animal crackers will you have if somebody
offers you five six seven and you say No no no and you say
Nay nay nay and you say Nix nix nix?
If you ask your mother for one fried egg for breakfast and she
gives you two fried eggs and you eat both of them, who is
better in arithmetic, you or your mother?

Who is it?

Confessions of an Abortion Doctor

Jan5

I found a link to this amazingly open and vulnerable article by an abortion doctor at Christianity Today. It reminded me of Huckleberry Finn, probably because I’m still reading Huck Finn (no, I didn’t finish before this morning, but it’s OK). Huck is so confused about morality and ethical reasoning. He knows it’s not right for him to help Jim, the slave, “steal himself” from his mistress, but he just can’t bring himself to do the “right” thing and turn Jim in to the authorities. So he decides that he’ll just have to do what he feels is right and face the consequences, “go to hell.”
The Boston abortion doctor in the article is just about as confused as poor old Huck. She know the baby in the womb is a child, that she is ending a life when she aborts a baby.

I have the utmost respect for life; I appreciate that life starts early in the womb, but also believe that I’m ending it for good reasons. Often I’m saving the woman, or I’m improving the lives of the other children in the family. I also believe that women have a life they have to consider. If a woman is working full-time, has one child already, and is barely getting by, having another child that would financially push her to go on public assistance is going to lessen the quality of her life. And it’s also an issue for the child, if it would not have had a good life. Life’s hard enough when you’re wanted and everything’s prepared for. So yes, I end life, but even when it’s hard, it’s for a good reason.

The doctor ends her confessions with these hauntingly tragic words:

I feel like I’m doing something so right. How could people think it’s wrong?

???????

Jan5

semiotics: the study of signs and symbols, including words, images, sounds, gestures, and objects
Has anyone read The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco? Did you understand it? I must confess, I didn’t. I must further confess that I only “understood” T.S. Eliot after a kind friend in college explained to me that I should be content in reading Eliot to grasp phrases and sentences here and there instead of trying to bring the poem into a coherent, organized narrative. So that’s how I read Eliot and most other modern poets. And I guess that’s how I should have read Eco, just being happy to understand parts of the whole. Anyway, Umberto Eco, semiotician and novelist, was born on this date in 1932.
I may read The Name of the Rose again someday when I’m feeling particularly intelligent, linguistic, and post-modern. I like Sean Connery and medieval monasteries and mysteries. I can get it, really I can.

Can’t Blog

Jan3

Can’t eat . . . can’t sleep . . . can’t blog.

I must re-read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and have something intelligent to say about it before Wednesday. See you all soon.

Happy Birthday, Professor Tolkien

Jan3

J.R.R. Tolkien, b. 1892, is, of course, about the best modern (twentieth century) writer there is. If you don’t agree, I feel for you. We celebrated Tolkien’s birthday a few days early. I re-read The Silmarillion, and on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, we watched the Peter Jackson interpretation of Tolkien, all three movies in extended editions. This celebration may become an annual tradition.
Yesterday was the first time I had seen the extended edition of Return of the King. I liked it. Some of my children, who shall remain unnamed, are somewhat angry with Movie-Aragorn, and with Mr. Jackson, because they think that Movie-Aragorn was flirting with Eowyn and leading her on in a most unbecoming and un-Tolkienish way. They especially disliked the added scene where Aragron happens upon Eowyn while she is sleeping and gently covers her feet and listens to her dream. I thought it was sweet.
The movies aren’t Tolkien. The movies are Peter Jackson’s interpretation of Tolkien. Tolkien’s books are better than the movies. However, I love the movies in a different way, and I am quite impressed with what some crazy movie makers were able to do to bring a piece of Tolkien’s imaginary world to the screen.
I leave you with a couple of quotes from The Silmarillion:

And the Numenoreans answered: ‘Why should we not envy the Valar, or even the least of the Deathless? For of us is required a blind trust, and a hope without assurance, knowing not what lies before us in a little while. And we also love the Earth and would not lose it.’
Then the Messengers said: ‘Indeed the mind of Iluvatar concerning you is not known to the Valar. . . the Valar bid you earnestly not to withhold the trust to which you are called, lest soon it become again a bond by which you are constrained. Hope rather that in the end even the least of your desires shall have fruit. The love of Arda was set in your hearts by Iluvatar, and he does not plant to no purpose.’

Luthien was the most beautiful of all the children of Iluvatar. Blue was her rainment as the unclouded heaven, but her eyes were grey as the unclouded evening; her mantle was sewn with golden flowers, but her hair was dark as the shadows of twilight. As the light upon the leaves of trees, as the voice of clear waters, as the stars above the mists of the world, such was her glory and her loveliness; and in her face was a shining light.

Last year on Tolkien’s birthday
Thoughts on The Silmarilllion

Social Security Lockbox

Jan1

As far as I can determine the SSA has replacement Social Security cards in a “lockbox” since 9/11. I lost my 17 year old son’s SS card. He needs a replacement because he wants to get a driver’s license. Here in Texas, in order to get a driver’s license, he must show them a SS card. Unfortunately, in order to get a replacement SS card, he has to have a driver’s license or some other form of identification. From the SSA website, here is alist of some of the documents that they might acccept as identification:

* Driver’s license
* Marriage or divorce record
* Military records
* Adoption record
* Life insurance policy
* Passport
* Health Insurance card (not a Medicare card)
* School ID card

Computer Guru Son isn’t married (or divorced), isn’t in the military, isn’t adopted, has no life insurance nor passport, and has no school ID card since he’s homeschooled. He does have a health insurance card, but it doesn’t have his full name on it because his name is too long for the health insurance company’s computer paradigm. And Blue Cross won’t make him a special card with his full name on it (we asked). Social Security says his birth certificate isn’t useful for the purposes of identification. Neither is anything else we have. We’ve been to the SS office three times, and I spent an hour on the phone yesterday arguing with two different SSA people. They both finally told me that Computer Guru Son doesn’t exist for the purposes of the SSA and therefore he won’t be able to get a SS card. Bureaucracy wins again.