What Do I Do All Day?

I make good (asterisks = good) stuff like this:

from stuff like this:

which comes from stuff like this:

Which comes from stuff like this:

Christmas Sweater + the Godfather of Soul

So good...so good?

Satellite of Love

Lou Reed + ukuleles + tuxedos in a British accent.

This post is dedicated to DLC--except the tuxedo part. And the British accent part.

Bravo-oh-oh-oh!

Sometimes when I feel like I haven't accomplished anything in my life, most especially in the last 6 months, I watch the award-winning film that I directed and produced this summer. That usually makes me feel better. But today, it just wasn't enough. Fortunately, despite my gloom, I had the good sense to take a look at the related YouTube videos, which lead me to this amazing gem. If I hadn't already incorporated the Golden Picnic Knife into my wardrobe accessory collection, I would gladly mail it to "calledkidblast." Bravo, bravo-oh-oh-oh!

Laura's Basic Rules of Etiquette

My friend Laura recently sent me this story (names have been changed):

I went to a potluck dinner last night at the house of a girl in my ward named Tamara. She lives with two other roommates, Kelly and Betty--all late 20's / early 30's--and invited a bunch of single LDS people from around the area. A group of four guys showed up with just one (small) food item between the four of them (these guys are roommates, all about 25-27 years old). After about 45 minutes, they announced they had to go because they were having a party at their place, and then, since they needed food for their party, they piled a paper plate high with several dozen cookies (contributed by various other attendees) and left. I just looked on in disbelief.

A few minutes after that, Tamara, the girl throwing the potluck, announced that she had changed her mind and was going to attend a fireside. And then Kelly decided that she was going to go the other party at the house of the four guys (i.e., the cookie stealers). Leaving Betty, who was not actually throwing this party, with a houseful of her roommate's guests. Eventually, the crowd sort of drifted out, but out of maybe 40 people who had been in attendance, no one offered to help Betty clean up. I was one of the last people there, since I was enjoying a good conversation with a guy I met a few months ago at one of these parties. And then I stayed and helped Betty do dishes and tidy. But quite honestly, I was appalled. People coming to a potluck to take food for a different event, and then the party hostess leaving half-way through only to let her roommate tend to her guests! How did anyone think these could be acceptable things to do? What's wrong with people?

This incident, along with a few others, caused Laura to think about etiquette in the context of LDS YSAs. So, I pass along to you Laura's Basic Rules of Etiquette. These are the rules that she has decided have a meaningful basis in thoughtfulness and are not simply outdated social constructs. In other words, if you break these, you are probably being genuinely inconsiderate of someone, and, whether you mean to or not, you are sending the following signal: "I care more about entertaining myself than being sensitive to you."

Laura's Basic Rules of Etiquette for Small-to-Medium Sized Gatherings

1) RSVP if the host asks for it or if s/he is making food for you
2) Arrive to a dinner reasonably on time (+/- 15-20 minutes, or call)
3) Offer to help with cleaning up if someone cooks for you
4) Don't bring extra guests without permission
5) Praise the food and/or the activity
6) Participate in the conversation

Call me stuffy, old-fashioned, and uptight, but this seems like a pretty good basic set of rules to me. And if you decide not to implement them in your LDS social life, pretty-pretty-pretty please at least implement them in your professional social life. Otherwise, people will think you are rude.

Garden Harvest Feast

Squash and carrot soup, sweet potatoes and apples, homemade bread with home-churned butter, baked apples and oatmeal cookies, fresh fruit, and...

...a mysterious and delicious blend of chard, capers, onion, sultanas, olives, garlic, pine nuts, and white beans. Nice work, Acelgas. Next time with fish.

Dearest October--a few more of these delightful evenings and you will have atoned for your abysmal performance last year.

Forgive me.

Apparently I needed eight years and the History Channel to finally understand.

Mom, Three Meals, and a Museum

In my family there are three foods you must love: Juanita's carnitas, Tony's chile rellenos, and El Grullense Jal.'s tacos al pastor. My self-chosen Spanish name in kindergarten was "Juanita," in honor of the taco shop. We've been known to drive a few hundred miles out of our way to eat them. And anyone who as ever been through Pacheco pass with me knows that I get grumpy if we don't take a taco detour. Needless to say, mom and I made it to each place while she was here a few weeks ago.

We also made it to LACMA and checked out the Islamic Art collection, as well as the "Five Centuries of Indonesian Textiles" exhibit. Both my mom and I love ceramics and textiles, so it was a couple of hours of bliss. This tile panel says something along the lines of "the seeds of the next life are planted in this life."

And the Winner of the Golden Picnic Knife Is...

Reasons to Love LA

One can enjoy tea with high society.

One can frolic at LACMA-meets-the-$.99 Store.

One can win the Golden Picnic Knife at Film Fest.

One can see Mahler's 5th at the Hollywood Bowl.

Albus Gets the Led Out

I was fortunate* to be invited to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince the other night.
It was an enjoyable movie, though it reminded me that I can't seem to keep the HP plot straight.

My favorite part was when Dumbledore first meets young Tom Riddle in an orphanage--mostly because Dumbledore looks an awful lot like Robert Plant. Oooooooooooooh yeah.

Oddly, he moves an awful lot like Robert Plant does nowadays too, though I couldn't find any good Youtube clips to prove it. Sorry, you'll just have to take my word for it, or go see the movie and Robert Plant in concert yourself.

*Sorry about the swine flu, Greg.

Let Them Eat Quiche.

Happy Bastille Day!

Also, Happy Republic Day to Iraqis.

A few more national holidays are coming up. Get you kimchi ready for South Korea's Constitution Day on the 17th, get your coca on for Colombia's Independence Day on the 20th, and fire up your waffle iron for Belgium's Independenc Day on the 21st. Want to know when the Seychelles or Andorra celebrate themselves (i.e., ever want an excuse for a party)? http://www.kidsturncentral.com/holidays/glossary/defindependence.htm

It's Called Appreciativeness.

Thanks to Jill and Reuters.

In the meantime, I guess I will have to blog myself to sleep.

"Women who are married or who have stable partners appear to sleep better than women who have never married or lost a partner, according to research from an eight-year study presented at the Associated Professional Sleep Societies annual meeting."

Parker-Pope, Tara. 2009. Marriage linked with better sleep. New York Times, 10 June. <http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/marriage-linked-with-better-sleep/?scp=1&sq=sleep%20marriage&st=cse>

How Do You Get LAPD to Show Up?

Some things I have learned about the police since I have moved to LA:

1) LAPD does not show up for car accidents that do not involve gushing blood.
2) LAPD does not show up when you call to tell them that there are gang members tagging your alleyway.
3) LAPD does not show up when you call to tell them about the drug deals going on beneath your bedroom window.
4) LAPD takes hours to show up at the scene of a burglary.

So, you might ask, what heinous crime brought LAPD to my backyard one Sunday afternoon not too long ago?



Apparently an enthusiastic game of bocce ball was enough to make them show up.

"Hello miss. Do you live here?"

"Yes."

"We had a noise complaint from a person in a neighboring building. Have you been playing loud music?"

"No sir."

"Any music at all?"

"No, but Brian did make a couple of astounding bocce throws that caused us to cheer pretty loud."

"I see. And what is the occasion for your gathering today?"

"Oh no real occasion. Just a Sunday afternoon picnic here at the picnic tables in the backyard BBQ area."

"And why is everyone so dressed up?"

"We just got home from church."

[His partner walks up from behind: "They're lawn bowling. In suits."]

"Hmmm. Ok, well try to keep the noise down. And give me your phone number so we can call if there are any more problems."

"Sure, will do. Thank you officers."

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DISSY!

Dissy's First Year

After spending a couple of months (and a lot of frequent flier miles) working on some research on coalition politics in Italy, I ran into what appeared to be a research dead end. My frustration centered around not being able to find out about local political party nomination procedures, which, it seemed to me, were an obvious source of political incentives that people should pay attention to. On my last night in Italy, I was sitting at a restaurant compiling notes about my trip (what else does one do at a nearly empty restaurant by oneself when the food takes 45 minutes to arrive?) when I realized that this stumbling block was really the central question I needed to address. So, in one sense my trip to Italy was a failure--I wasn't able to get many of the questions answered that I had traveled to get answered. And, I left knowing that my dissertation probably wouldn't feature Italy very centrally, which made the whole trip seem like a rather long, lonely, and expensive exercise in improving my miming skills. On the other hand, I came away with a much better dissertation topic than I previously had.

These days Dissy has me immersed in the depths of data on Lithuanian preference voting--not a place I would have expected to end up. But, I think it will be a strong chapter to follow the bigger-picture cross-national chapter I've already drafted. The plan is to have these two "finished" by the end of the summer, so I can go into the job market interviews with a respectable chunk of Dissy done.

Anyway, Dissy's birthday present arrived just in time.

I finally broke down and bought STATA for her, since my new computer doesn't seem to want to connect to the school's remote desktop, I've pretty much forgotten how to code in R, and I couldn't get PostgreSQL to work either. I'm excited to be able to do data analysis so easily for a change.

And, as an added benefit (how did they know it was Dissy's birthday?!), they included a bookmark featuring James Tobin. Yeah, I didn't know who he was either. Sorry Dissy, turns out mommy is not up to speed on her Nobel Prize in Economics winners. Maybe for your second birthday I can give you the entire Nobel Prize in Economics Winner Bookmark Series and we can use them as flashcards. You'll be ready to apply to the Ivies in no time! Oh, my little girl is growing up....

Tomato Time

I Hope Someone Is Enjoying Them...Wherever They Are

I opened up an old CD case to hunt down an album that I couldn't find on my computer, only to be reminded of several other well-loved albums that are long-term MIA. The funny thing is that as soon as I thought about it, I actually remembered what happened to each of them--Sophie's got A Ma Zone, Michelle has Bright Lights, and I left Burnin' in a BYU classroom CD player in the SWKT. Weird. I mean, c'mon brain, why can you pull out that kind of impressive performance in more useful situations?

PS--These are really great albums, in case you were wondering. Really, really great. As in, I was shocked that I had forgotten about them, and if I can't find them on my old computer, I'm going to happily buy them again.

Let the Countdown Begin!

364 days before I get to shell out $450-800 to buy this goofy ensemble.
As lame as it sounds, I can't wait. You all know my feelings about costumes--and this one has "Professor McGonagall" written all over it.
PS--If any of you want to contribute to my Buy-My-Graduation-Robes Fund, I am accepting donations.

Je me souviens