romyolivia's Xanga

Remarks on cat litter commercial

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:40:45 GMT

There's this cat litter commercial, but I can't remember what the brand is. Anyway it was on last night during (reruns of) The Office, and here is the basic gist of the commercial:

A cat puts up signs all over town saying she needs a blood hound with a good sense of smell. (Good is underlined in the hand-written signs as well.)

The dog sniffs around, and then finds the cat (it's not really clear what he has to go on, but neither is it clear how a cat writes or a dog reads, so let's suspend reality...).

The slogan/tag line of the ad is something like, "It masks odors so well, don't be surprised if your cat can't find the litter box." See? The blood hound had to come over to the cat's house to help it find the litter box!

What I don't understand is: Obviously you want the cat litter to mask odors. But do you really want your cat to not be able to find the litter box? Doesn't that mean your cat will just get so lost, she will go anywhere in your house? That's not great, right? It's possibly even worse than a smelly litter box.

I'm just saying.

How to eat squash (zucchini/courgette) if you don't like it.

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:03:24 GMT

I don't like squash/zucchini/courgette at all. I always buy it because it's good for me. But I do not like it. Similarly, I have had a bad experience - okay, not bad (sorry, Jude!) but not, like, awesome - with quinoa.

In such a situation, you would think I would not want to cook a recipe made up of quinoa + courgette/zucchini, right? Wrong. Because I am an optimist, and I think, "Hey, I bet this time, I will REALLY LOVE IT." And I think this tendency is accelerating because I used to only think that about squash once a year, and learn from the bad experience. But now this is happening about once a month. Soon I will be eating food I dislike once a week. ONCE A DAY.

So, last night, I cooked this quinoa + zucchini recipe, which you can find here. My quinoa was kind of "instant," so I didn't toast it or soak it, but I basically did the recipe, except with less quinoa and more zucchini (I know, I'm a freak), and plus cumin + chili peppers + chili powder, and without the cheese, and it is delicious. Seriously. I want to keep eating it. I think it is the fresh coriander, which makes everything taste like coriander, and the garlic, which has a similar effect. Still, it's healthy, right? And I'm not hating it, which is good because there is a LOT.

Look! cats!

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:17:50 GMT

I love this video.

my brother's girlfriend's very cute cats from Olivia Allison on Vimeo.

The impossibility of signs: 12 Hour Parking

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 02:04:56 GMT

I really like to think a lot about what signs mean. I do this so that I can make fun of them when they mean nothing, or bizarre things. When they say the stairs at the Tube station are closed due to adverse weather, I make fun of their understanding of causality relationships. Etc. This is pretty much my favorite thing about the modern world.

So this weekend, I went to New York City at the last minute for 4th of July because some of my friends from London were there. It was an amazing thing to do, involving a 5-hour-each-way bus trip that cost $35 roundtrip, and on which I finished not 1 but 2 audiobooks (Freakonomics and The Year of Magical Thinking - both very good, in very different ways); I had started both before th trip.

Anyway, all of that is to say that when the bus was stopping in Philadelphia, we passed a sign that said this:

12 Hour Parking
7 a.m. - 7 p.m.
Mon - Sun

Obviously it was formatted differently - green and white in a normal parking sign. But the point is:

That makes no sense. The whole point of something that says ___ Hour Parking is that, if you stay there longer than that, they will give you a ticket. But the point of the __ a.m. - ___ p.m. part is to tell you when this rule is in effect.

This rule only applies for a 12-hour period every day, making it actually impossible that they would ever be able to give you a ticket for exceeding the limit for parking. If you parked there 13 hours, even if you got there at 7 a.m., you would only violate the rule after the rule is no longer in place. And even if you get there at 6 a.m., they will only start counting your time from 7 a.m., and thus it is still impossible for you to violate that rule until after the rule is no longer in effect.

That is really all I have to say about that, but since I saw it, I have felt like it was a riddle, or like maybe I did not understand what it was trying to convey. If you want to correct my logic, or explain this cryptic sign, feel free to do so...

1939: year of intrigue

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:19:57 GMT

Okay, thank goodness we're done with that Corsica trip because I have more interesting things (in my opinion) to write about. I have the type of brain that likes to aggregate ideas and themes, and come up with a vaguely interesting intellectual quest. I had a thing about tunnels, for instance, which I won't go into now. But I also have the type of personal motivation that does not allow me to do this because I am too busy doing other, more meaningless things. Like today, I googled whether you could use "probate" as a verb, a question prompted by a CNN anchor's use of it as one earlier today. (You can, but it is rarely done.)

So, I have a new thought process I will share with you.

The other night, I was watching the old version of The Women, which was filmed or released in 1939. It was already interesting, for a lot of reasons, including the fact that it was re-released and I can't imagine any of "today's" actresses playing those roles. It was also interesting in that it included a tirade asserting that women "today" (i.e., in 1939) are now equal to men, which is pretty ballsy/delusional, given the circumstances.

But more importantly for this post, 1939 is a big year in world history! And that didn't really come through in that movie. In fact, it was jarring to me that one of the women in the film said she liked to sleep "spread out like a swastika" in her bed. Obviously, to anyone who knows what happens after 1939, that is a really jarring statement. You can just use the word swastika? Without any moral ties? Just as a kind of joke? A normal noun?

And that got me to thinking about the set of 1939 Encyclopedias Brittanica (is that how you do the plural?) in the pub in my old village, Hebden Bridge. It was obviously compiled a while before 1939, given even modern publishing schedules, but it writes about Hitler as if he was a little bit racist and right-win, but a basically normal guy (the way the Guardian would write about contemporary northern European politics, really). And when defining race, it discusses the various types of race, ultimately assuming there is a heirarchy of races (guess who comes out on top), and if I remember correctly, asserting the usefulness of eugenics. I don't have my notes from it here.

Similarly, under "Evolution, organic," it writes:

"The triumph of the human race over the lower organism and again of the higher races over the lower, has been brought about through mutual help, cooperation, self-sacrifice and subordination of the individual."

Higher races over the lower, huh? Sound a little bit like a famous world history figure from 1939?

Relatedly, my boyfriend David wrote in response that he had encountered something like a Peace Yearbook from 1940, and "it was weird because it discussed a lot of conflicts, like colonial conflicts, that you wouldn't have thought people were too concerned about at that point." It is strange to us from here because obviously at that point you might know how big of a deal it was going to be - you wouldn't have called it WWII yet, obviously.

Basically, I find this whole thing interesting because of the following:

Not surprising, most of the ideas that led up to and made the whole Hitler/holocaust thing possible were known about, justified and/or accepted as normal by, um, everyone else (i.e., UK and US), but no one knew they would go wrong. That's true all the time, I guess. There are lots of ideas in any given historical time that could explode into something nasty, if they are taken to the extreme, but it's interesting to see ideas that are now offlimits intellectually being treated seriously.
Mostly, I think it's just weird to watch all these people not knowing something huge was about to happen in their lives. Reading their encyclopedias. Watching them on TV. They have no idea. It's like all these articles published the week of or right after the Soviet Union's dissolution, saying it would be around another 15 years and was an extremely strong system. Really we have no idea, and that ignorance is fascinating to me. It's not like the obvious comparison to how big world events change us instantly (i.e., how things were before and after 9/11 - a really mundane comparison), but more how we are not changed by what turn out to be huge events. It's basically the opposite of the 1960s, where everyone is conscious of a change

Obviously, you can assume that means that at any given historical time period, something huge is about to happen, and you can get paranoid about it, as many people do. I am not really interested in any paranoid or conspiracy theories about the likelihood we are currently like those people in the TV or those encyclopedia editors.

(But, I mean, we kind of are. We're all human, and we all have no idea. And that's fine.)

Anyway, enough philosophizing. I'm just interested to see if anyone else has any similar examples, like from 1939-40, or another parallel (i.e., before WWI as well - Thunder at Twilight is an interesting book a little about this)? I think it is a really interesting historical moment - oblivion.

Next up: Fascism and the American Right-Wing Opposition. As homework, some of you may want to look up the definition of "fascism," as an understanding of this word appears to be lacking.

Corsica III: Calvi and its environs II + Nice

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:17:29 GMT

Alright, today I finish with my photos from that trip. Here are the pictures from a church at the top of a hill:

Pretty, huh? That was on Tuesday or something. Anyway on Sunday, at really really early in the morning, we took a boat ride to Nice, France, and then took a train to Paris. The boat was extremely cold in the inside parts, so we sought out less-windy parts on the deck where we could get sun-tanned. I read 2666 obsessively because it is amazing. The boat was less Soviet than the other one, but generally weird.

So we get to Nice, where I had some immediate comments to make about signage. First, this one is pointing to the "Cyber heart" of the city:

Hahaha. It probably has 1 internet cafe.

Second:

That is a Best Western hotel called New York, but in Nice. I mean, it looks nothing like New York, and anyway it's in France, and also it's an American hotel chain so there is no excuse for that kind of perplexing name. I do not approve.

Anyway, here is a square with some plastic men sitting on tall poles:

We almost went to a Bollywood restaurant near there because we were tired of charcuterie, but then it was really empty and thus kind of scary, so we had steak + frites.

Here is the beach in Nice:

There is probably a lot of nakedness, but it's hard to see in that picture. Sad for you guys.

Here is a protest that sprung up right as we were walking by:

It is not protesting us. It is about maybe the desire to put a tram on the promenade, and it says "_____ pas ma prom." For some reason "ma prom" is a really funny series of words to say.

Here is a trashcan, on which you can see that even the men throwing away trash are naked in Nice:

And here is the sign showing where the English promenade and the US quai meet. It's the trans-Atlantic dialogue, in signage:

Then we passed what is clearly the most important part of Nice, which is the carousel full of adorable children:

David and I then had a dispute about whether adults are allowed on this carousel. You can guess who took what side.

Here are some streets in Nice:

It's a kind of disorienting picture. But it is a really nice city.

I have video of the French countryside but I didn't upload it yet, so that will come later.

The next day, I had a few hours in Paris, and so we went for a walk and ate Middle Eastern food. Yum. This is my only picture from the day, which I forget if I have uploaded yet?

That sign says: "Restaurant Turc" and "Sandwich Grec." It made me wonder if it was really a sign of cross-cultural dialogue, or just an attempt to maximise clientele.

PS - I finished 2666 the other day, and it is still amazing. Possibly more amazing. I am in awe.

What do you expect the recession to kill?

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:18:40 GMT

Here I will take a break from our previously scheduled programming on Corsica to share an observation/thought process, and ask (read: beg) you for comments.

Driving around in the US, there are lots of things I am surprised to see operating. I mean, Half Priced Books is obviously going to survive the recession, right? Even if it's just because I have come back for part of it, and am singlehandedly helping them out with buying too many used books (that I have no idea how to get back to the UK).

But the other night, I was driving around, and I saw a Schlotzsky's, but the Z was out in the neon sign. And I thought, "Hm, Schlotzsky's, that's strange that's still around." I don't know why it was strange, but I think mostly because if there's something that will go down during the recession, it seems like $8 sandwiches might be it, even if they taste good.

For similar reasons, I am surprised by Jack-in-the-Box's continued existence. And then there is the fact that these are still being made (not sold in vintage shoe stores) - that is courtesy of an online chat with a friend.

What do you think the recession will get rid of, or what are you surprised still exists after a recession? My preliminary answers are:

1. Schlotzsky's
2. Jack in the Box
3. Reebok Women's Freestyle Hi Jewels Sneaker

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:36:09 GMT

I'm about to head for the train and then, ultimately, after a brief DC stopover, for my homeland Texas, which I hope does not declare independent because then they might have to use the Texas Embassy again and will thus get rid of the Tex-Mex restaurant currently residing in its building. Anyway, that's the life of the migrant worker-from-home.

We stopped at Corte, where we went early early on Tuesday morning. Here is the train station, and a look at the awesomely ancient and slow (and loud) train:

Although I guess they do eventually change out train carriages, as this shows:

The trains weren't running all the way to Corte, so at this point, in this town (I forget what it is called), we had to switch to a bus. The bus was a great haven for checking out nationalist stereotypes. Like, the Germans all lined up really early and were obsessive about getting on the bus. Obviously everyone was European and thus everyone got coffee in the 30 minutes we had before the bus left. All the British people (plus me, as I am an honorary Brit) had to sit outside because the sun was out, but everyone sat in the shade. Even better, because they were British and not American, they did not address each other even though they all knew they were all British. They didn't say "Hi" or "nice day" or anything when they sat down, they just silently pretended like no one else was there, until they had to put their coffee cup down on the neighbour's table. Then they muttered something to that effect, and the other Brit said okay, and then it was silence again. It was kind of awkward because I felt like, if they were Americans, we would have probably already discussed family ancestry by that point.

Anyway, we eventually got to Corte, which, it turns out, is where Napoleon Bonaparte was born:

That is not Napoleon, that's another old guy.

Anwyay it's a bad picture, but that's what the sign on that house says. I wasn't exactly on a Napoleon tour. I just stopped here to change out of flip-flops into sneakers for the hike we were about to do. I was wearing a skirt and thought the sneaker look didn't match the island chic I had chosen for this trip.

(But, incidentally, I had a conversation or two with people about how huge of a figure Napoleon was in the 19th Century for all Europeans, including Russians, and it's an interesting topic if you would like to bring this up next time we see each other.)

Anyway, out of island chic and into walking shoes. We went up this pretty steep ascent, which actually goes for like 4 days but we only had a few hours.

It was really, really hot. But we walked until lunch, and then we found this little watering-hole/stream thing, and sat there and napped and put our feet in cold water:

And then we went back, which was easier because it was down hill. And we saw a lot of people walking in their swim trunks, as opposed to all the people we saw when we were going uphill, wearing serious walking clothes.

Corte is famous for being the heart of the nationalist/independence movement in Corsica, and there was a lot of graffiti supporting this:

And there was more, especially all over the front of the university there (Corsica's only university). It was all about the colonialism of the French, etc. It was as if the whole town had chosen the university as a graffiti collection point, which really makes sense because if you're not going to have graffiti on the university, what's the point?

There were other, more professionally painted (but possibly less meaningful) murals on other buildings in the clustered town center:

But more importantly, there were really sweet but quite snobby cats:

And that is also a hand-made pottery store.

Okay, well that's kind of the end of the pictures of Corsica. Weird, huh? I had about five more days but didn't take pictures. I think I took some videos but that camera is out of batteries so I'll post those later. Next up: Nice, from the trip home.

Hm. Actually I just remembered some things:
1. That trip to Corte is from Wednesday, I think, not Tuesday.
2. On Tuesday we went walking around Calvi, and for whatever reason those pictures didn't upload.
3. That means you get a bonus day of Corsica photos (they're really pretty) as well. Lucky you!

Corsica II: Calvi and its environs

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 00:46:13 GMT

So, after missing the Ping-Pong Escalade and disappointing with the lack of belly-dancer action (sorry, heyzeus), we will move on to the charming town of Calvi. We had a while to kill time, and we had all our bags (we had to wait until the afternoon to get into our apartment we were renting). So we did what anyone would do in our situation:

We ate.

First, we had crepes. I had Nutella, obviously. It was actually to be my only crepe on that trip. The before and after.

Then I can't remember what we did. I think we sat in a park. Anyway, then I went to this really cute restaurant, and had wild boar and a delicious charcuterie salad:

I don't have any good pictures of the food. Anyway. That was the eating day. We got to our flat, and went for a walk and probably ate more. I don't remember.

The next day we went up to the old city, where we saw the view of the port and the sea:

And really charming doors:

Although this day (Monday) was supposed to be our relaxing day, by the time we'd gotten up to the old city, and had tea, we realized we were late to the beach, which was the afternoon activity we'd planned.

Here's the punnily named Herodateurs stop. I just like the name, especially given Herodotus' recently renewed fame/trendiness. I don't really know what a Horodateur is, or if it's even related to Herodotus.

Indeed it is not. It is a timestamp. Maybe I like it even more now.

Anyway, here is the beach, where I spent two lovely afternoons reading and tanning on a very strict tanning rotation schedule:

Up next: walking and nationalism in Corte.

Corsica I: Gotta start somewhere

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:32:36 GMT

I have really a lot of other things to be doing now, as I am working ridiculous UK hours, which involve night working and really early morning working, and then mid-afternoon sunbathing and gallavanting. Probably I should fix that schedule, and work more in the afternoon? But it is hard when you wake up at 4. Anyway, that's partially why I am not blogging, and partially I haven't felt like it.

Anyway, you guys are here for the photos, right? Here are the beginning of my Corsica photos, from my vacation like two weeks ago, and I am really excited to show them to you. First, I flew to Paris for less than one day, and I don't have pictures of that except on my phone, and I am too lazy to upload those right now. They include such unique things as the Eiffel Tower.

So, then the next day, we got a train to Marseille, which is a big fishing place and port, etc. We had about six hours, so we dropped off our bags and wandered and then ate a tasty fish. Here are some scenes from Marseille, including the old port and some street:

And here is a picture of something with my name on it:

Then we got on this awesome Soviet-style ferry to go to the island; it was an overnight trip. Our arrival on this boat was slightly dramatic, because we were put on the wrong boat at first, and about 10 minutes before we were supposed to leave, and about two minutes before the boat we were on was supposed to leave, we discovered this fact. And honestly we only discovered this fact because the cabin we had booked didn't exist on this other (wrong) boat. What makes this misadventure astonishing is that literally five people checked our tickets.

Anyway, here's the restaurant/bar of the ferry, which hosts an "entertainment" program at night. By "entertainment," I mean really bad belly dancing by blonde women who probably were, one assumes, trafficked or underpaid for their work.

Anyway, here's the sunrise shortly before arrival at the port Ile Rousse, at like 6 a.m. the next day:

And the port, where we sat near the boat (well, where the other side of the camera is) and had coffee until we thought the trains might start running:

And then we bought tickets and waited about 45 minutes for the train (I have pictures of the train later). Here is our luggage, and our waiting spot:

And here is me, and how I chose to spend my time in Ile Rousse:

I was reading Indecision, which I thought started out okay and then I was annoyed with at the end, in this photo.

And here are photos of Ile Rousse, the town, where there is a cute market and other lovely Corsica-like things:

Also there is a ping-pong escalade, whatever that is:

And here is the view:

Next up: Calvi, where we stayed, and the various food adventures that made up our first six-hours-without-an-apartment day.

PS - The weather was beautiful.