TiYBoM Introduction.

From "I Love Music and I Love Science-- Why Would I Want to Mix the Two?" (the Introduction) of This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel J. Levitin:

The Oxford historian Martin Kemp points out a similarity between artists and scientists.  Most artists describe their work as experiments"n concern or to establish a viewpoint.  My good friend and colleague William Forde Thompson (a music cognition scientist and composer at the University of Toronto) adds that the work of both scientists and  artists involves similar stages of development: a creative and exploratory "brainstorming" stage, followed by testing and refining stages that typically involve the application of set procedures, but are often informed by additional creative problem-solving.  Artists' studios and scientists' laboratories share similarities as well, with a large number of projects going at once, in various stages of completion.... What artists and scientists have in common in the ability to live in an open-ended state of interpretation and reinterpretation of the products of our work.  The work of artists and scientists is ultimately the pursuit of truth, but members of both camps understand that truth in its very nature is contextual and changeable, dependent on point of view, and that today's truths become tomorrow's disproven hypotheses or forgotten objets d'art.... For the artist, the goal of the painting or musical composition is not to convey literal truth, but an aspect of a universal truth that if successful, will continue to move and to touch people, even as contexts, societies, and cultures change.  For the scientist, the goal of a theory is to convey "truth for now"-- to replace an old truth, while accepting that someday this theory, too, will be replaced by a new "truth," because that is the way science advances.

... I just figured out how it actually might be possible for the biochemist and the scenic designer to live happily ever after.  More importantly, this explains Ross and Rachel.

Have You Hugged Your Muffins Today?

I made the most amazing cornbread muffins tonight for the Thanksgiving potluck at work tomorrow.  Well, I think they're amazing.  You should make some and tell me what you think.  They're slightly spicy, but not really.  Everyone who knows me will tell you that I'm a spice wimp.  The chile powder in these just gives the muffins a little extra flavor.  Also, salt is optional.  I put salt in because I like salty cornbread.  People who like cornbread on the sweeter side can just leave the salt out.  This recipe makes about a dozen small muffins.  Enjoy!


Lightly Spicy Super Tasty Cornbread Muffins

2  8.5oz boxes corn muffin mix, I used the old school (super cheap) Jiffy mix
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup milk
1  8.5oz can creamed corn
1/2 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
1/4 tsp Ancho chile powder
1/4 tsp Cayenne chile powder
1/4 tsp Schilling (generic) chile powder
1/2 tsp kosher salt (optional)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

In a bowl, mix together all of the ingredients. Fill muffin cups (in muffin tin) about 3/4 full.  Bake in the center of the oven until just golden and muffin springs back when gently pressed, about 15-20 minutes.  Let cool about 10 minutes.  Ta-da!

Well I Feel A Lot Safer Now

(Okay, first news post with Maggie.)

THE STORY:

WalesOnline
New Haven Register

THE INTERPREATION:



Are you fucking serious?  How in the world do you not notice a DEAD PERSON in the front seat?!  Granted, I'm more sensitive to noticing dead people since I'm constantly aware of any potential zombie threat... but seriously?   

Now, taking into consideration the fact that parking enforcement personnel have no souls and therefore would never consider waking up a sleeping driver to ask them to move their vehicle before ticketing them, I might be willing to accept that the University's parking attendants didn't do anything the first time they ticketed her SUV.  But to ignore a "sleeping" driver two more times when there were already tickets on the windshield?  How low can you get?

Or maybe they never even saw the dead person in the driver's seat... which, if true, is even more terrifying.

Even if the driver's side window is tinted so that you can't glance in and see the driver slumped in the front seat, I did my research and found that according to New Mexico code 66-3-846.1, section B1, when tinting is used on the windshield, it "...shall be used only along the top of the windshield, not extending downward beyond the ASI line or more than five inches from the top of the windshield, whichever is closer to the top of the windshield..."  So clearly, we know that the parking attendants were capable of seeing into the vehicle and noticing the dead chick in the front seat.   They just chose not to.  And yes, at that point, it's a choice.  When you're walking around the world "just doing your job" (or whatever excuse you want to use), and don't look through the windshield you're placing a parking ticket on to notice a dead woman in the front seat, you're choosing not to see her.  It might not be a malicious choice, but at some point in the parking attendants' lives, they did make the choice to stop looking.

So what's next for the University of New Mexico?  Campus security patrols ticketing a housing unit for excessive noise at a party and "not noticing" the rohypnol lab set up on the coffee table in the front room?



When it comes down to it, the real story here is either:

1.  It's all about the money.  On the off-chance that it actually was just a really stupid freshman leaving his car in a red zone for a week, University personnel would rather continue to cite a vehicle for repeated parking violations and milk their cashcow for all its worth than contact local officials about a seemingly abandoned vehicle.  Because Lord knows the ticket money means more than the school's reputation for safety.

Or

2.  We really are that dumb.  We see what we're supposed to see.  We're so focused on the tasks immediately in front of us we only see the piece of paper and don't look through the glass to what lies beyond.  Call it distracted if that word sounds nicer to you, but I think it's just plain dumb that in a world where a day's value is measured solely by our output and we're so obsessed with just getting through our jam-packed to do lists, no one has time to stop and smell the dead people.


Either way it's just further proof that when the apocalypse happens, we'll be better off.  When the dead people* in the front seats get their vengeance, hopefully all the institutions will crumble and we'll all be forced to take our blinders off or become what my favorite zombie shirt calls 'Post Consumer Human'.


*Yes, people.  Not person, PEOPLE.  While researching this post, I came across numerous other stories (like this one and this one) of dead people being ticketed while still in their cars.

Meet Maggie

After weeks months of saving anything and everything I could, I finally have the netbook I've been dreaming about.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Maggie.
















She's a Samsung N150 Plus.  She's got a 250GB hard drive, 1G memory, 3 USB ports, webcam, and an absolutely beautiful display.  She weighs less than three pounds and her battery life is supposedly up to nine hours.  Given that yesterday I unplugged her at 1:00 in the afternoon (after charging her overnight) and used her continuously until about 8:30 with multiple applications running, I'd definitely believe it.  Oh, and she's a red head.  Sexy little beast, isn't she?

But why the name Maggie, you may be asking.  Well I'll tell you.  The main purpose of this pretty little girl is as a note taking machine for rehearsals.  Which makes her the first investment piece I've made for Blair Legacy Productions, the (yet to be founded) production company that is the ultimate dream I'm always working towards.  And BLP (I keep trying to come up with an 'I' word that I can put in the title to make the company abbreviation BLIP) is named after my great-grandmother, Marguerite Blair.  So if this is the first Blair Legacy keepsake, why not name her after the company's namesake?  Thus, Maggie.

So happy right now.  This computer means my return to internet and a huge boost to my productivity.  And it's always a beautiful feeling to hold in your hand something that you've really worked for.  Yay Maggie!

Le Work

Today marks the start of my third week here at the new job.  Technically.  The first week was only four days long, and the second was only one day, so even though it's the third week, it's only day number six.  But it's still probably high time I told you about what I'm doing, right?  Yeah, I thought so too.

I am the new E-Commerce Customer Service/Order Support Representative for CK Enterprises, which is fancy speak for "I process all of our online orders".  But I haven't been doing a lot of that, since our online store just launched today.  So far I've been doing a little bit of everything; reception, invoicing, order placement, invoicing, filing, invoicing, invoicing, creating pick slips for the warehouse, invoicing, and learning as much as I can about the company and its products.  Oh, and invoicing.  About the company and its products is probably the thing you care about most though.  (And even if it isn't, it's what I'm going to tell you about, so pretend it's what it is.)

CK Enterprises is the parent company of le top, a children's clothing manufacturer.  Le top (the brand) has three lines of children's clothing; le top, le top baby, and rabbitmoon.  Le top and le top baby are typical of what you think of when you think of children's clothing-- colourful, playful, and covered in embroidered ducks and ponies.  Rabbitmoon is much more contemporary-- bolder colours, interesting cuts, mismatched layers, and never, NEVER any ducks.  Rabbitmoon is the line that the business owner says is "what the trendy moms buy".  Which is hilarious to me.  So here's a pictorial example of the difference between le top and rabbitmoon.

Both outfits are adorable, but guess which one is the contemporary outfit that the trendy moms would buy.

In the past, le top has been a wholesaler, selling to high end retail stores (like Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus) and independent boutique stores. Lately though, a lot of the boutique stores have had to close or severely cut back their inventory, so the company decided to open an online store to try to make up for the loss of sales from closed or limited boutiques.  Our online store had it's "soft launch" today, which means you could go buy adorable clothing from the store if you already knew the store's web address (or if you followed the link I just gave you), but you won't be able to access the store via the company's website until next week (or possibly the week after if something goes wrong this week) when the "hard launch" is scheduled.  The online store only has le top and le top baby though, the launch for rabbitmoon's online store isn't until August or September.

The work here is interesting, and actually pretty fun so far.  The people here are wonderful, and as I said before, there's more than one person here who I'm determined to befriend outside of work.  It's interesting and varied work, and it's giving me an opportunity to learn about the inner workings of business and how everything is connected; marketing, sales, packing/shipping, invoicing, etc.  And in some ways, I'm learning about fashion as well.  Not in the sense that I'm learning how to pair solids and patterns, but learning about why certain clothes are made from certain fabrics, what a denim weight is and how you chose one, etc. 

But you can't not notice that it's a company that produces children's items.  You can't escape it.  The website is designed in pastels, there are pictures of children all over the walls of the office, the first four things listed in the what the blog is about subtitle are "pregnancy, babies, kids, [and] parenting".  There's no denying that everything in this building is, at its heart, about kids.  There was especially no denying it last Friday, when we had our "Go See", which is where potential models go to the offices of the company for which they want to model.  Which in our case meant 97 children (and their parents, and their toys, and their snacks, and anything else they wanted to bring with them) lined our hallways all morning.  It was loud and stressful and it was hard to focus on work, but at the same time it was also a lot of fun and the kids were all so cute.

Working here simultaneously stirs a desire to have kids and reinforces my desire to NEVER have them.  Which desire will win in the end?  I guess we'll have to wait and see.  But for now, the work is interesting and the atmosphere certainly provides food for thought.

Um, srsly?

So after all of my panicking about getting the audition announcement done by the July 1 deadline, and working on it at lunch day before yesterday and yesterday morning, so that I could email it to T before lunch....  I get a call from T yesterday morning (almost immediately after I hit the send button) wherein he tells me that we're not doing Blue Door anymore.  It's being postponed in favor of doing Fences.  This is of course after we agreed to do A Raisin in the Sun before Blue Door, and then he changed his mind because he didn't want to wait for the confirmation of the show dates and started looking at the possibility of doing Fences at the same time as Blue Door.

...
...
...
...

/sigh. 

I suppose I should be used to T chaning his mind by now.  And it's not like we're never going to do Blue Door, so it's not as if all of my work up to this point has been in vain.  And since we're not doing Blue Door, there won't be any overlap between Fences and Blue Door and between Blue Door and The Wiz, which is dobuly nice because it means I'll only be working two shows at once instead of three.  And since Fences is being put on by a company other than T's and will be performed in a theatre other than the one he typically uses, it will look better on my resume.  And Fences will probably have a larger pull than Blue Door will, plus it's a different city, so there's a lot more opportunity to promote The Wiz.  It's a cut in my stage management stipend (read "cut" as "MASSIVE cut"), but now that I'm working full time again, that's not as much of an issue as it would have been otherwise.  Overall it's probably a good thing... but... I just get so frustrated with T sometimes that he changes his mind so often.  I love him, I do.  But sometimes I think the spirit that leads him is lost and wandering.

Mah Legs

There are few things in the world that I enjoy more than the way my legs feel when they're freshly shaven*.  Well, that's a lie.  There's actually a lot of things that I enjoy more.  If I'd been stranded on a desert island for six weeks and a rescue boat motored up to me and asked if I'd rather have a Red Robin Chicken Burger (no pickle, no bacon**, avocado instead of guacamole) with bottomless fries and lemonade or if I'd rather have shave gel and a fresh razor, I'm pretty sure I'm taking the Red Robin.  But that doesn't mean that the feeling of freshly shaven legs isn't amazing.  Because it is.  It's amazing.

I love the way my legs feel when they've just been shaved.  And it almost doesn't matter what the weather is like; if I have newly shaven legs, I'm wearing a skirt or a dress or shorts.  If my legs got shaveded in the last 10 hours, I'm showing them off.  Which I think is pretty standard for most women (and the occassional man who is into shaving), especially if they're like me and have a tendency to go several weeks between shavings if they think they can get away with it.

But here's where I think I differ from most women (and the occassional man who is into shaving); if my legs are freshly shaven and I'm wearing a skirt/dress/shorts/whathaveyou, it's because I want you too to appreciate how nice my legs feel.  I want someone to touch my legs and admire their softness.  Admire their hairlessness.  Ooh and aah over how wonderful they are.  I want you to do it.  Because if you don't notice how nice they feel, what's the point of even bothering to shave?

You see, I have have very light, very fine hair on my legs.  I can get away with wearing a skirt/dress/shorts without having shaved for a week or two.  I can get away with it, but I don't like to.  Because it feels like I'm getting away with something.  I get this strange almost guilty feeling in my gut when I wear a skirt/dress/shorts when I know that my legs aren't touchably soft and smooth.  Which is just weird, I know.  But the flip side to that is that if I shave my legs and wear leg-showing clothing and no one touches my legs and admires them, I get annoyed.  Like, a lot annoyed.  Unreasonably annoyed.  Because I put a lot of effort into making my legs soft and smooth and touchable, world.  And if you don't appreciate my efforts.... well that's just mean.

Now I know that you can't reach through the computer and appreciate the silkiness of my legs right now, so I won't expect you to coo over my legs right now.  I'll just let you know; if you ever see me in a skirt/dress/legs, I fully expect you to run your hands over my calves and tell me that they feel nice.  Because if you don't... I don't want to issue any threats, but if you don't, I may stop shaving my legs altogether.  And then if you ever do try to feel my silky smooth legs when I wear a skirt/dress/shorts, my almost invisble leg hair will be all prickly and not-smooth.  You'll be upset, understandably.  But it will all have been your fault.



*What is the difference between shaven and shaved?  I'm using shaven as an adjective and shaved as the past tense form of the verb.  I think that's the right way to do it, but I'm not positive.  Does anyone know the answer or feel like doing the reasearch for me while I'm at work?

**Yes, no bacon.  I realize that this makes me a blasphemer to every food lover ever.  I know.  I just don't like it.  Don't like the taste, don't like the texture.  I just don't like it.  No, you cannot make me bacon, or food with bacon in it, or bacon flavored anything in an attempt to somehow prove to me that bacon is the be-all, end-all food.  Stop trying to make me like bacon, world.  I don't.  I'm sorry.  I wish I could live up to your bacon-lover standards, but I can't.  I'm sorry.