Thursday, September 14, 2006

Poem for Thursday


My Rules
By Shel Silverstein


If you want to marry me, here’s what you’ll have to do:
You must learn how to make a perfect chicken-dumpling stew.
And you must sew my holey socks,
And soothe my troubled mind,
And develop a knack for scratching my back,
And keep my shoes spotlessly shined.
And while I rest you must rake up the leaves,
And when it is hailing and snowing
You must shovel the walk...and be still when I talk,
And — hey — where are you going?

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Thought that marriage poem was an interesting contrast with the epithalamion from yesterday and I saw Pleasantville for the first time earlier on cable -- not sure how I have managed to miss it, considering it's absolutely packed with actors I like and was well-reviewed, and I love movies about the '50s breaking down into the '60s in general, a la Hairspray which Pleasantville reminded me of in its absurdist approach if not its style, which is classier and more restrained (though only slightly at times -- the first thing Mary Sue's old fashioned boyfriend sees in color after parking with her is a wet red rose!)

Not sure I like how much violence is defined as a necessity for social change -- to a large extent, in the latter half of the film, the girls gain color by discovering their sexuality, the boys by discovering their capacity to hurt people. I did like that the film was nonjudgmental of female sexuality, but it would have been nice if some of the women discovered they were artists and poets at heart instead of just discovering that they wanted to have sex and get out of the kitchen. Well, I loved seeing Joan and J.T., and Reese and Tobey were delightful as siblings, and ironically 101 Dalmatians was on while I was at the dentist this morning so I had Jeff Daniels on the brain anyway...even though my attention in the live-action film is so completely on Glenn Close as Cruella De Vil that I had forgotten Joely Richardson and Hugh Laurie were in the movie. I was kind of sorry when my teeth were clean and I had no real excuse to stay and watch the end! Even though we have it at home on videotape and it's not like I've put it in since the kids outgrew it!


The dentist was the high point of my day, as I have no cavities. I looked at books at the Borders in the mall but ended up not buying anything since I have such a big unread stack already, ate lunch at Jerry's upon remembering that the microwave isn't getting fixed till Friday, came home, retrieved younger son and took him to violin, then retrieved older son and watched as both kids demonstrated programming skills on their new Texas Instruments calculators (younger son's was older son's so is new to him; older son got the latest model, since he wanted it and since younger son needed one for school). Seems that it's Mario games that they were programming, not homework, but you can't have everything.

Trek news was Cingular releasing the HTC Star Trek phone in the US and Bakula talking about wanting to talk about something other than Star Trek, heh. Am thinking about volunteering to serve as an election judge for the general election since clearly there are not enough in my county; the only thing is that people are expected to work 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. with absolutely no break, and I'd have to have my entire family on call for my kids to manage those hours. I don't understand why they don't allow half-day shifts. No wonder they don't have enough judges!


Close-up of JFK's PT boat, salvaged by Robert Ballard, at the Mystic Aquarium's Institute for Exploration.


Someone who's read the Eragon books: are Djimon Hounsou (Ajihad), Jeremy Irons (Brom) and John Malkovich (King Galbatorix) playing good guys or bad guys in the movie? My son read them but was not in a conversational mood when I asked him, as I had just ordered him to put his calculator away and go do his homework!

It's the anniversary of Princess Grace's death; the date has always stuck in my head for some reason. She was one of my favorite guilty pleasures. And speaking of politics, I'm sad about Ann Richards. She was truly one of a kind.

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