Filed under: Missouri, Pop Culture | Tags: Birthday, Mark Twain, Missouri, Samuel Clemens
Happy Birthday Samuel Clemens (AKA Mark Twain)!
My favorite Twain Quote:
She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.
Share you favorite quote from this great, American author in the comments below.
Filed under: Bird, Cockatiel, Cute, Pop Culture | Tags: Bird, Cockatiel, Cute, Pop Culture
Samantha think Pierrot looks like she's preparing to dive into the sink
Filed under: Bird, Cockatiel, Cute, Pop Culture | Tags: Bird, Cockatiel, Cute, pop C, Pop Culture
Pierrot loves corn.
But it gets stuck to her beak. She is such a cute, messy bird!
My friend Kyle Kontour (Isn’t that a great name?) started a worthwhile chain list: Over a 15 minute time frame, name 15 books that impacted your life (don’t over think it, you have 15 minutes) and send the list to 15 friends.
Here is my list:
- The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon – This is my standard for every novel, especially every historical fiction novel.
- Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy, by Kevin Bales – Woke me up to labor issues.
- Another Roadside Attraction, Tom Robbins – Started me on the path to vegetarianism, also influenced my love for strongly, slutty, central, female characters.
- Promiscuities: The Secret Struggle for Womanhood, by Naomi Wolf – Naomi put to paper what I felt at an 18 year old — how do I balance my human sexuality and my social status as an intellectual woman in post-feminist revolution America?
- The Handmaid’s Tail, by Margaret Atwood – Scary shit.
- Island of the Blue Dolphins, by Scott O’Dell – Have you ever wondered why all super-heros are orphans? It’s because many (most?) children secretly fantasize about abandonment…
- My Side of the Mountain, by Jean Craighead George – Hence why I like this book as well…
- Little House series, by Laura Ingalis Wilder – And I LOVE this series because I secretly want to live off the land (and kick Nelly Olsen ‘s butt)
- Outside Over There, by Maurice Sendak – I also have a bit of a super-hero complex…
- Of Parrots and People: The Sometimes Funny, Always Fascinating, and Often Catastrophic Collision of Two Intelligent Species, by Mira Tweti – Parrots!!!
- Ragtime, by E. L. Doctorow – Excellent Historical fiction — makes me glad to be an adult American awake for the new century’s turn.
- Clan of the Cave Bear, by Jean M. Auel – More abandonment / living off the earth / historical fiction/ general awesomeness (but I had to drop the series by the third book when it turned into a trashy romance)
- MAUS, by Art Spiegelman – Groundbreaking.
- Organizing For Social Change, by Kim Bobo, Jackie Kendall, Steve Max – Helped me to organize my priorities
- Crisis and Opportunity: Sustainability in American Agriculture, by John E. Ikerd – Moving forward in the new century…
Severe cuteness alert! Head scratching this Muppet-like bird leads to incessant cooing and requests for more head scratching. Caution is advised.
I’m writing a plan to to increase the number of food stamp and nutrition program recipients who shop at DC farmers’ markets. I attended to a farmers’ market managers meeting at the Food Research and Action Council (FRAC) yesterday to collect some useful background information.
For several years I worked with FRAC employees in a budget coalition. Visiting their office in a different capacity made me feel as if I had been resurrected… and not in a good way. I felt like a zombie. Colleagues who were seeing me for the first time since my layoff did a double take. Their eyes said, “My god! She walks among us!”
I know that my zombie metaphor reflects my insecurities and not (necessarily) the outside world’s perception of me. And of course everyone was lovely and happy to see and work with me. What surprises me most is that it took me a whole month to finally come up with a zombie metaphor for my un/under-employment situation.
I have a love/hate relationship with zombies. I am the proud owner of a machete. Its practical use is to cut down the mass of bamboo from overtaking my vegetable garden. But truthfully, when I saw the machete in the gardening section at Home Depot I thought, “Well, that’ll be just perfect for the zombie apocalypse. I mean, my field hockey stick would not last very long against hordes of the undead and I’m never gonna get around to buying a gun (besides it would just run out of bullets eventually).”
Seriously.
Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, applying for jobs…
If there’s one thing you should know about me/my online personality it’s that I LOVE cute animal videos. It’s not a surprise, I fit the CuteOverload demographic (white, Gen X, woman). Its more of a warning: If you’re not into cute animals view discretion is advised.
And with that, I leave you with Maru, that cat that has a serious obsession with boxes and bags (seriously he runs into them like a Slip and Slide).
