farrago, jumble, miscellany, salmagundi, gallimaufry
February 5th, 2009 | Uncategorized
Whoever makes a coherent comment incorporating all the random items that comprise this post WINS!
1. Last night I went to Outright Vermont, our local queer youth organization, for their annual celebration and awards ceremony. Here are some pix taken by the board chair, who is also a professional photographer.
2. Here’s my cat watching a hairy woodpecker this afternoon. She hurls herself against this window fifty times a day, but I have yet to capture that part on video.
3. A concerned citizen emailed me to notify me about Rachel Maddow’s appearance on the Martha Stewart Show. She thinks Martha has a crush on Rachel. Just watch Martha’s hand on the carrots–that’s all I’m saying.
4. Here’s an interesting argument in the Women’s Review of Books by Carole DeSanti about “what women writers’ lives look like these days.”
5. The phenomenal Gretchen Phillips has just released a new album, “I Was Just Comforting Her,” and is about to do a West Coast tour.
53 Responses to “farrago, jumble, miscellany, salmagundi, gallimaufry”
Your cat looks just like my late beloved cat Alison a 15 lb calico Maine Coon cat named after… Alison Bechdel! She passed away a little over 2 years ago. She was a grand cat, worthy of her name.
what a cute kitty, she is so cute!
1)awsome pictures of the award-shoes and you and Holly!
2)i never get the cutest pictures of our cats
3)i think that rachel has a crush on martha, did you see the way she was playing with her glasses, and martha didn’t know what to do with her hands, maybe the crush goes both ways??
4)we are all in support of ourselves, some never get outside support…thoes who do, are rare and very lucky
5)gretchen phillips–yay!! what more is there to say?
Peace
1. Great photos from Out Vermont event.
2. I’m emailing my writing group Carol DeSanti’s excellent article.
What a great blog today. Lots of pics of lots of happy people. I think “concerned citizen” was right about Martha. I don’t think I have ever seen her so tongue tied.
I admit that the agent had me going with “amanuenses” and “factotums” but a nice article.
Since I lived in a small town in Ohio during High School (Fairborn, just down the road from one of those libural colleges, Wittenberg.) I’ll always love small town Basketball. It’s a real business in Southern Cal with recruiting between high schools.
Off topic but of note, I think, I received an email from the courage campaign about prop 8. The Cal Supreme Court will hear arguments in March. The ever odious Ken Starr is not only putting his efforts into keeping Prop 8 alive he also wants to make it retroactive and invalidate the marriages of those who were married after the Courts decision (18000 couples).
Here’s a very nice link to a video put out by the campaign, with music by Regina Spektor, called “Fidelity”.
http://www.couragecampaign.org/page/s/divorce
EXCERPTS FROM TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS AT THE FUTURE HEARINGS INTO THE BANKING ETHICS SCANDAL:
Opening Statement: This committee is not chaired by the Green Lantern, but we seem to need him at the moment to deal with the likes of you, a latter-day Solomon Grundy.
Q: Did you knowingly mis-sell any credit-based investments in order to turn over an immediate profit?
A: I am prevented from answering that question due to the terms my contract of employment with Wells Farrago.
Q: You used TARP money to install a sauna on your private jet? Where do you find the gall? I’m aufryd I don’t understand the sense of entitlement under which you must operate.
A: I conduct meetings on that plane with high-end investors, who are accustomed to a certain level of comfort. We’re asking them for millions of dollars to be placed in our institutions, not selling brownies at a jumble sale.
Wow – the Rachel-Martha show was almost more than I could take! It might just be shivering from cold (I am in MN, after all), but I seem to be trembling. I definitely think there are crushes going both ways…… I wish I had a cherry julep right now!!!
J.
I think Maggie wins!!
Martha Stewart to Rachel Maddow: “You’re a lot more like James Bond than I’d ever imagined.” Girl-FRIEND! That pretty much says it all…
Maggie FTW!
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/venerable-gay-bookstore-will-close/?scp=1&sq=bookstore&st=cse
OK, I’m just adding another random thing I think is worth mentioning, from the Times this week. Seems DTWOF related. Sorry if it was mentioned and I missed it!
Maggie would win with Wells Farrago alone.
Oh, jeepers, Kathy K. I meant to add Oscar Wilde’s closing to my list on this post. It’s really very sad. The Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop played a huge part in my coming out, and becoming a cartoonist, so huge that it’s wrong to even attempt to describe it in the feeble, evanescent form of a blog post.
You can see I’m having a very productive writing morning. But look, I just had to share with you the instructional video I just made. If you’ve ever wondered How To Meditate, here’s the answer.
snow for the morning
sits Alison’s camera
so very cagey
Let’s do the eclectic entertainment jumble! Farrago is my favorite movie, don’t you know. Didn’t Dr. Who come from Gallimaufry? I always had a crush on Romana, one of the miscellany cast of supporting characters. Another being a certain tin dog… what was his name? Anyway, our Rachel is such a nice young woman; she can do much better than Martha Stewart!
Salmagundi. Damn, just missed it! 🙂
Martha has SUCH a crush on Rachel! Listening to her chop carrots as Rachel is speaking and confess her nervousness is a dead tip off. Considering how many of us have a big crush on Martha somehow makes this revealing video very satisfying.
Shucks. I posted this on the last item, but cute kitty kat vids seem more fitting to be posted here …
Someone’s solved the problem of indoor/outdoor cats in apartment-type households. Behold the cat lift:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6CNjM2crgE
I was hoping for some Dr. W. pics. You read my mind!
Our rescued kitty (kind of long story) had a second round of vaccines yesterday, plus he received a microchip, and he’s all fatigued today. This is a normal thing…
Doesn’t everyone have a crush on Rachel Maddow? Smart, funny, doesn’t own a TV. What’s not to like?
What I want to know is, why is there such an assortment of words that mean “an assortment”?
I am smart and funny and I do not own tv but for the past 3 years I have been single.
1 – Great pictures, but what’s with the ruby slippers? That one picture of Whitney Smith holding one and staring at it made me cackle. I can read her mind: “What am I supposed to do with this?”
*sigh* Wish we’d had queer youth organisation when I was a kid. Hell, wish we had one NOW! I’ll be lucky if my lesbian group makes it to March.
2 – Kitty needs a window seat so she can get a better view and so the birds may taunt her even more.
3 – Martha – oh yeah, big time! At the same time, that’s not Rachel Maddow. That’s Mo in disguise sent to seduce Martha for a menage a trois with her and Sydney!
4 – Literary vs Commercial is something I’ve thought about for a long time. True, you can’t swap literary awards for food and mortgage payments. But some feel they are also selling their soul when their public-pleasing half-ass stories fly off the shelves at Bunns and Noodle. Where does one draw the line? I dare say it’s worse for women these days. A lot of society is still trying to cram the female writer into an outdated gender role and criticizes her at every corner. No wonder Nora Roberts began publishing as JD Robb! She knew it was the only way she’d be taken seriously.
5 – Never heard of her before. Two youtube videos later and I’m hooked! Now I must dash off to purchase a couple of her CDs. Ciao!
Oh yeah…high five to Maggie!
Wells Farrago! Brilliant.
Sigh… Rachel Maddow. If there were some kind of queer Tiger Beat, I’d have her picture up next to my mirror so I could kiss it every night before going to bed. Something about bright, witty, politically aware ladies reduces me to the age of 13.
Also, thanks for properly using “comprise”, Alison! Confusing “compose” and “comprise” is one of my hardcore grammar pet peeves.
So what’s SalmanRushdie have to do with sex, cats and videotape? Isn’t gallimaufry a kind of soupy stuff they eat in Boston? I did like Farago, except for the violence – “Is that your friend in the wood chipper?”
Okay, here’s another reminder about nominating DTWOF for a Lezzy from The Lesbian Lifestyle annual awards — so next week it’ll be one of the top three nominees in its category and we can then VOTE for it.
Here’s how it works: Click on this link http://thelesbianlifestyle.com/the-lezzies/ until February 9 once a day, scroll down to the Nominate button, click on that and fill in the form. You’ll have to have a viable e-mail address because they will need to confirm (no sock puppetry), and you can only vote once a day.
I’ve been nominating this blog in the Culture/Entertainment category because there is no Literary or Graphics/Cartoon category, no Educational, and Humor doesn’t begin to cover what this blog does. We need to cluster our nominations to have Alison rise in the ranks, so let’s stick to the one for now.
Alison, when you get around to reading this, you can (hint, hint) go to the link and grab a graphic to post here, making it easier for us to nominate you, then vote for you after February 11. In the meantime, we’ll do the grassroots thang.
@Ian: Cat lift, thankew! I like brave daring explorer cats. Or faithful trusting dependent cats. Either way.
Yes, Gretchen Phillips is phenomenal! I met her when I was in Austin for a semester and just before leaving in June 2006, shot the footage for this video of Red State / Blue State, which I finally got around to editing last month.
Apparently, the link did not make it, so her it is again
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BijY-eZqCxI
“Farrago, jumble, miscellany, salmagundi, gallimaufry!” — George W. Bush, trying to order a large pizza with mushrooms and extra cheese, Crawford, Texas, Feb. 2, 2009.
Oscar Wilde is closing! I was just thinking about that shop with affection the other day–it was a huge part of my life the summer I lived in NY. What sad sad news…
I thought the same thing about Martha when watching the show, did not notice her treatment of the carrots… I found it funny that Martha asked if that was Rachel’s own muddler, her own shaker and Rachel mentioned something along the lines of she always travels with the right equipment. 😉
THIS is the post that should be entitled, “What’s the World Coming To?” I am just shocked to see Rachel Maddow on Martha Stewart — more so than an article on womyn’s land in the NYT (ok, it’s true, I haven’t had a TV since 1983, so it’s kind of a foreign medium to me, but still!) I just CAN’T get over that! (and isn’t MS in jail?) Rachel is HUGE! And the fact that she is adored for her quirky hobby of mixing exotic drinks… wow! What next? Alison is interviewed by Larry King?!
What I found most shocking was that two women were having an intelligent, prolonged, political discussion in a kitchen setting on broadcast T.V.
What I most loved was everything that wasn’t said. That Rachel Maddow’s a big dyke. That Martha Stewart, like Blagojevich, has also been brought up on criminal charges and went to jail because of them. Undertones, undertones.
Pretty sure I recall Martha saying that she had a crush on John Stewart-this would be a few years ago. So she has a weakness for bright pundits. I use to watch Martha’s show and I don’t remember her EVER so nervous, god she was more calm outside that courthouse after her conviction…
I totally agree, Ellen O–both about the political discussion and the undertones. Those two unspoken facts made the whole thing extra-sexy. And I’m not usually into Martha (but I’m ALWAYS into Rachel).
Gallimaufry is Dr. Who’s home planet.
Kudos to Maggie, that was amazing.
And I agree with everyone who thinks Maddow is hot. I never pictured her in glasses, wow! And Martha is totally crushed out 🙂
Farrago, miscellany, salmagundi, gallimaufry
Father, why do these words sound so wacky?
Saying jumble can be fun ..
Anne – that was a gorgeous vid you shot!
Martha loves Rachel’s glasses! MSNBC makes Rachel not wear her glasses. And she is SO totally Mo Testa! Anyone notice her little giggle/cackle/laugh, btw? I hope her partner Susan is weathering all this incredible fame well – it’s kind of overwhelming!
Doctor Who’s home planet is Gallifrey, not gallimaufry. Would concatenation apply?
Oh how I long to see Sydney attempt to resist Rachel Maddow….There is some off life imitating art thing going on with Martha and Rachel that echoes Syd and Mo.
And of course Stuart has a crush on Rachel too…because as someone else said, who doesn’t have a crush on Rachel Maddow??
I’m trying to come up with a devastating pun to prove that I know my Dr Who lore and it was a joke.
But it’s not working.
I don’t have a crush on Rachel Maddow. (since you asked…)
Mostly because it seems like SHE has a bit of a crush on herself. Sure, I understand that given all the adulation she suffers, it’d be hard not to get swept up in it, so, I’m not judging. I’m just saying, she doesn’t do it for me. And I want it to be noted. NOT EVERYONE has a crush on the woman! 🙂
Now, Dr. Winnicott, on the other hand…
Great photos! 🙂 The events at the Vermont capitol remind me of a smaller (and more ill-fated) storming of the Kansas capitol building in Topeka by LGBT activists in early 2005, when we tried (and failed) to block an anti-gay marriage amendment from being put on the ballot. I can say that we braved the Phelps family* anti-LGBT demonstrators to get in (we did), but the Phelps family seems to be picketing everything in Topeka these days. They may not have even been aware that we were coming on that particular day.
Seeing such wonderful photographs of the Vermont participants, particular with the young people of Outright Vermont being so involved, gives this old dyke-loving geologist hope for the future. Life in Vermont seems almost like a vision of another, better world to me. I used to watch the old Star Trek episodes when they were first shown back in the 60’s, and thought of their depiction of a world without racism in exactly the same way. Come to think of it, that’s also how I always thought about the Dykes To Watch Out For comic strip. And I always admired Mo’s unshakable Vulcan logic! 🙂
* – The Phelps family are the religious nuts who picket the funerals of LGBT people around the country, as well as other events. The bravest anti-Phelps act I’ve ever seen was the lesbian couple who joined hands and walked through the line of Phelps demonstrators to get to the ordination of the new Topeka Unitarian minister.
Uh… I didn’t mean to shut down the conversation! Please, talk among yourselves! 🙂
Kate, I don’t think you shut anything down. Everybody just moved on to looking at the new cat video. I will add that I like the four frame sequence of Alison and Holly at the Outright meeting, about half way through that photoblog post.
Alison:
For what it’s worth (about $0.02), I’d like to say that this is one of the easiest-to-navigate sites I’ve ever visited. There’s plenty enough info included to allow anyone to get around and find what they’re looking for. In other words, if it ain’t broke…
Best wishes to all from northwestern Pennsylvania.
Tim T
I don’t know if Alison wlll be back to this page anytime soon… the party moved on to another place, as Andrew B said. 🙁 Too bad; I wanted to tell her that Holly looks like a keeper! 🙂
Nothing random at all about these five things. Four are gay is fab stuff, and the other is about cats, which is about as close to love and romance many of you will ever get, having a cat.
Jeepers, this site really is about the narrowest and self-limiting worldview I can imagine. Americans are pretty provincial, but lesbians are in a league of their own.
Anybody read the Stephen King novel, The Langoliers? I think one just showed up! Well, Mo and Sydney are here to give me a ride home. Gotta go!
This doesn’t tie in all 5 things, but that article about women writers got me thinking. The examples DeSanti used of women who cannot have a room of their own because to do so would be to shut off essential portions of their lives (keeping the house clean, caring for the children, etc.) strongly reminded me of what Woolf writes about Jane Austin who “had no separate study to repair to” and wrote “in the general sitting room.” Yet despite the fact that Jane Austin does not have access to a room of her own, a woman writer’s most essential possession according to Woolf, Austin “was a woman about the year 1800 writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching. That was how Shakespeare wrote, I thought.” Shakespeare is the man who Woolf just finished establishing as the ideal writer in the previous chapter. So how did Austin and how do female authors now succeed in writing works of equal value to those of their male counterparts without that supposedly critical room of their own? Would women writers turn out even greater works if they had these rooms to themselves, as DeSanti suggests? Or would the solitude destroy that part of them that makes them “women writers?” Don’t get me wrong, I like my solitude and I certainly wouldn’t want my only place in the world to be an uncomfortable chair in the general sitting room on which to sit while embroidering. But solitary confinement is enough to drive anybody bonkers. Maybe what women writers really need is someone on the other side of the wall that they can tap Morris Code to.