morning after

[mrissa]

Last evening was no good, but I'm better after sleep. Still shaky on food, still supposed to ice my face periodically until mid-afternoon. The ice is good but inhibits activity. (The Vicodin as well.)

So. Um. What are you reading? Is it good?

Have you got a song in your head? What song? Are your earworms random or significant or some of each?

Tell me about a childhood comfort object.

Tell me about a time you underestimated yourself.

Comments

[panjianlien.livejournal.com]

Blergh, so sorry for the ouchies and oogies. I am eternally grateful to my weird genetics, for I have never had even the slightest hint of a wisdom tooth anywhere in my head.

I don't have an earworm right now, but I did last night: the Monty Python song "Sit on My Face and Tell Me That You Love Me." It's just so jaunty.

Childhood comfort object: when I was a toddler my mother made me a Pooh Bear out of tan corduroy and stuffed it with old nylons that had gotten runs in them (she saved them up for some time). Pooh is decrepit and his fabric is torn in spots from sheer wear and loving tear. He has no facial features left. But I still have him, and though I do not snuggle him much due to his being a bit on the ephemeral side now, I still find his ragged old presence greatly reassuring in times of duress.

I think most of the "times I underestimated myself" stories are too long for an LJ comment box. Also it may be too early in the morning.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

May you be better soon!

Thinking of you-

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Oh: When I read this, I was mentally singing a line from Thunder and Lightning, an anthem for All Saints Day: "Oh ye winds of God, bless ye the Lord."

[brithistorian.livejournal.com]

1. Right now I'm rereading a collection Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot stories. As much as I love Sherlock Holmes, I'd have to say that Poirot is my favorite fictional detective. He's just as much of an insufferable know-it-all as Holmes, but he's got much more (and better) personality.

2. Yes: The Asylum Street Spankers' "Tie a Yellow Ribbon (round your SUV)." I think earworms are just random. Given some of the earworms I've had in the past, I hope they're random.

3. I had (still have, in fact) a stuffed boy named Pete. He has a plastic head, plastic hands, and a cloth bean bag body. I used to squeeze all the beans out of his legs and up into his body and arms (which gave him sort of a "fat scarecrow" appearance and hold him by his legs.

4. Ummmm - I'm living it. I chronically underestimate myself. (And what's worse, I recognize that I do it and then mentally beat myself up about it.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I just finished another of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe books. If you haven't tried them and are looking for an insufferable know-it-all detective....

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

I just finished The Glamour by Christopher Priest, and am rereading Brokedown Palace, because it was next to whatever I wanted on the paperback shelf yesterday morning when I grabbed for a book.

Some of my earworms are significant; it's often the way my subconscious tries to get through to me about people. This morning, it's been "Cold Parade," by Stew of the Negro Problem: "It's not exactly pretty, this collection of the lost/You've heard about the nitty-gritty -- well, here's how much it cost...."

My childhood comfort item would be my Cricket doll. Tressy was the 11.5 inch high fashion doll with hair that grew if you pressed the button at her waist, and was the first doll I was given. Oddly enough, though they made Tressy dolls in black and white (and mine was black), her little sister Cricket came only in white. Hwever, given the wide range of skin tones in my family, this seemed perfectly reasonable to me. Until I was in my thirties, Cricket traveled with me, wrapped in a silk scarf and tucked into a corner of my suitcase.

Will hold off on the last story till later.

[orbitalmechanic.livejournal.com]

Last night I was working up a playlist for "twisted love songs" and my roommate said, "Don't you have one of those English folk songs about girls who turn into swans or something?" He meant Loreena McKinnett but instead I have "Wind and Rain," sung by Gillian Welch. "They made a fiddle bow of her long black hair, oh the dreadful wind and the rain." So cheery! And it's rainy today, too.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

I am reading slush. It varies.

Or, I am reading, taking another crack at, William T. Vollmann's Rising Up and Rising Down: Some Thoughts on Violence, Freedom and Urgent Means. (Curse you, lack of a serial comma!)

Not the seven-volume version. The abridged. I read the preface and first few chapters when it came out and I had it from the library, but even the abridged is a Good-Sized Book and there was just No Way. So I took it back, and picked up a copy on Amazon last year. I'm not far enough in yet to know if it's good, but it's sad and thoughtful and has one of the loveliest prefaces I've ever seen.

(The last two sentences are, "Thank you for reading this book. My sincere intention in writing it was to be helpful." And he says, of the abridgement, "All the same, it's not necessarily worse [than the full version]. For one thing, the possibility now exists that someone might read it.")

Not particularly earwormed at the moment, but I've an Aimee Mann CD I've been listening to, and "Stupid Thing" comes and goes.

I'm not sure quite how to answer the last two, and must go pack some mice up anyway. But I'm not sure there's been a time when I haven't underestimated myself. So!

Books

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"What are you reading? Is it good?"

The Wisdom of Crowds (http://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Crowds-James-Surowiecki/dp/0385721706/sr=8-1/qid=1160658173/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-7977781-1757709?ie=UTF8). Yes.

B

Re: Books

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, interesting. From the Amazon description, I've been trying to make that point in an amateurish way since college; I should read and see how a pro supports it.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

I'm reading Monkey and The Scar. Both are pretty good. Scar is much less gross than King Rat was. :)

I do have a song stuck in my head, but I don't know what it is. It was a country-ish song they played on the MPR Morning Show. I think it might be called "Travelling Soldier".

The smell of menthol cigarettes on clothes always made me feel a little bit comforted. My Dad, favorite uncles, and grandfather all smoked them. It was like distilled essence of wisdom, competence and safety.

[ckd]

I'd guess that it's probably the Dixie Chicks.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Glad things are improving. Years and years ago (when I was around 20, maybe?) I was told I would someday have to have my wisdom teeth out, because there was no room for them and they were at funny angles anyhow. However, they weren't yet fully developed, because all my teeth grow slowly (at fourteen, I still had five baby teeth - my father used to tell me I was dentally retarded) so the dentist at the time said there was no point in trying to remove them then. In his memorable phrase, "they would be like greased marbles." Fourteen or so years later, nothing in my jaw aches. I haven't had insurance that would cover their removal anyhow, so they're still, presumably, in there. (I don't think they just go away on their own.) Someday when I have insurance again, I'll get an X-ray and another opinion. It would be nice, if unlikely, if I could just leave them there indefinitely. But since I assume that sooner or later I'm going to have surgery like yours, I appreciate reading your account, since it gives me a realistic sense of it being bad but manageable.

Let's see. On audio, I'm listening to Going Postal. I'm reading Le Guin's Voices for the first time. Over the weekend, when I was in the wrong frame of mind for a new Le Guin, I started rereading Dick Francis's Shattered, but I didn't get very into it. I want to read his new one, but I can wait for paperback. On the very intermittant occasions that I manage to read aloud to Julian, we're picking our way through...five books, according to mood: The Game of Kings, Fool's Run, The Heir to Sea and Fire, Raising Demons, and The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street. When she reads to me, right now we're getting near the end of The Search for Delicious.

I don't really have anything stuck in my head right at this minute, except the rhythm and sentence melodies of Peter S. Beagle's reading-aloud voice, but, connected to that, I've periodically been humming "Who will come and buy?" the way he sings it on the recording of Tamsin. Annoyingly, I'm missing pretty much exactly one line out of every six.

The only thing that songs sticking in my head are usually significant of is that I don't know the full song. Typically, I'll get something I don't know fully stuck in my head, and then, after a few maddening days, think, "The only way to fix this is to LEARN the damned thing!" so I do, and then, because I've been going over it and over it to get it right, it's stuck in my head more for a few days, before finally tapering off.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Sigh. Sorry about the failure to close italics, there.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

I'm reading The Dragon Waiting by John Ford, in memoriam but mostly for pleasure. What a great mind! Love how he interweaves history and fantasy so cleverly. Randomly, it just happens that I recently reread Tey's Daughter of Time, also presenting Richard III as, well, not the hunchbacked evil plotter of Shakespeare.

Similarly, I picked up my husband's bio of Cicero, then found the new novel Imperium featuring the same character--and had recently reread Roman Blood, also focussing on that gentleman. Times haven't changed much, evidently--corruption in the Senate, leaders using the fear of terror to take over power in a slowly eroding democracy...

Hope you feel much better soon.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

I'm reading Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe. First thing I've read by him. He has a very intriguing style. I like it so far.

[fiddledragon]

I'm reading Matriarch by Karen Traviss. Yes - good - VERY good. *happy blissful sigh*.

I have the Punky Brewster theme song in my head. It's all Kingdom of Loathing's fault too :P. Usually they're random - most of the time sans prompting - unlike this one.

I have to think about the other two. :)

[aet.livejournal.com]

Alternating between "Symbol of dawn : the life and times of the 19th - century Estonian poet Lydia Koidula" by Madli Puhvel and "Traveling With the Dead" by Barbara Hambly. Both give me ideas to wonder about - and is that not why one reads?

I have lost ability to bear listening to music in reality, but whenever I drive Dr. Frank-N-Furter keeps saying "don't you panic" over and over and over in my head.

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

How does one come to lose the ability to bear to listen to music? That sounds like (a) a bad thing and (b) an interesting story.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

My earworm right now is CSNY's "Cathedral." Which is a bitter song of disillusionment with organized religion, and a bad trip in Winchester Cathedral.

My earworms usually are a sign of my creative process locking onto something. I suspect it may be that my inner Kit Marlowe rather likes that song.

Because I beleive in sharing the addiction:

http://www.elizabethbear.com/music/cathedral.m4a

My childhood comfort object was a pillow lion bigger than me. He did not, alas, survive exposre to a succession of puppies who saw him as a threat, or perhaps competition.

[dreadmouse.livejournal.com]

I'm reading Martha Wells' Fall of Ile-Rien series. I'm on the third book now and I can't see how she's going to wrap it all up.

Have you read her? Her characters are dark, but believable. I enjoy the sarcasm and bloody-minded reality she brings to her world. There's not much in the way of rainbows or unicorns in her vision of magic.

Martha Wells

[eileenlufkin.livejournal.com]

I second the recommendation for The Fall of Ile-Rien. She's on Lj as marthawells and she's posting chapters of her out-of-print book The Element of Fire.

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

What are you reading? Is it good?

Harry Turtledove's "End of the Beginning." It's okay.

Have you got a song in your head? What song? Are your earworms random or significant or some of each?

"Oh, it's good to be the Paddy all the time..." Significant, I think.

Tell me about a childhood comfort object.

I'm a textures person, so my childhood comfort objects (and my adult comfort objects, come to think of it, up to and including my husband) are all things that I could rub against my face, that felt good and smelled familiar. Blankets that I loved to literal rags, stuffed animals ditto, nice snuggly husbands and so on.

Tell me about a time you underestimated yourself.

I do not have a history of this. If anything I tend in the other direction, and then sheer stubbornness usually gets me through.

[loup_noir]

I am doing that thing where there are five or six books in progress and none of them fascinates me enough to finish it. Darn it. I just finished Song of the Bones by M.K. Preston. It was okay at best. Started out promising and then dwindled as the mystery unfolded. I need to finish The Medieval Leper. You might be interested in that one as the author divides his time between the Aland Islands and the UK. The prose plods a bit, but the information is good.

This morning's soundtrack is some unnamed jig. We listen to a lot of music here, so the brain has loads of fodder. Unfortunately, silly brain does not manage to pick up entire songs and randomly tosses out chunks of this and that, sometimes cobbled together.

Books were and are my comfort objects. If I'm having a really bad day, a trip to a used bookstore or a library will calm me right now and, in some cases, make my headache go away. New bookstores don't have the right smell.

A time. Gad, all the good examples are boring work-related examples. Hmm, now why are those the "good" examples? Why am I not more impressed about building a house from the ground up or helping clear the property or all the sewing or any of the other creative projects?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Why am I not more impressed about building a house from the ground up or helping clear the property or all the sewing or any of the other creative projects?

Perhaps because this is another example of you underestimating yourself or the worth of what you do?

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

What are you reading? Is it good?

Rereading The History of Reading by Alberto Manguel, and yes, very.

Have you got a song in your head? What song? Are your earworms random or significant or some of each?

Not right now. When they happen, some of each.

Tell me about a childhood comfort object.

Books. Adult too. Foodwise: mashed potatoes and gravy. Adult too.

[scottjames.livejournal.com]

I am currently being horribly, horribly (harribly) earwormed by a ringtone. It's Phone Phone Phone by TMBG (http://www.theymightbegiants.com/).

[telophase.livejournal.com]

My current earworm is the choir singing "Sephiroth! Sephiroth!" from "One Winged Angel" on the Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children soundtrack. But since I played it three times on the way in to work today, I'm not surprised.

I am rereading Brust's Brokedown Palace, which I haven't read in about 20 years, since right after it first came out.

I used to have a large stuffed cartoony rat wearing a nightcap (large as in about 2-2.5 feet tall) won from a carnival and named Great Rat. I don't remember its acquisition, having been too young at the time, but my mom tells me that both sets of grandparents were visiting us when I was 2 or 3 years old and one of my grandfathrs told a joke about prisoners whose punchline was "It wasn't a good rat, it was a great rat!" That evening the family went to a carnival that was in town, spotted the giant rat, and acquired and named it for me.

The joke is, alas, lost to history.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

We thought there was a joke lost to history in my family: we all remembered the punchline*, but no one wanted to ask Grandpa to tell the joke again because he tends to tell his favorite jokes to everyone within reach when he thinks of them. But he apparently told timprov once, so T. is holding it in trust.

*The punchline is holding one's fingers up like antennae and intoning in a squeaky voice, "Stop that shit!" The finger-antennae have become family code for, "stop that shit," and we once alarmed the nursing staff when Grandpa was in the hospital and misbehaving: they walked in and found Mother, Dad, Grandma and me clustered around his bed making finger-antennae at him.

[pameladean]

Rereading Cherryh's Foreigner series, and almost done with Explorer. They are better than I remembered, and I quite liked them the first time.

Earworm is Tegan and Sara's "Noises in the Dark."

I don't seem to have had a childhood comfort object.

P.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I love the atevi. The accrete people and are mathy. They are so very sensible.

[mkille.livejournal.com]

I am reading stuff for school. They do what they're supposed to, text-wise. I hope to start reading the Exciting Unopened Package Book tonight or tomorrow.

I have a song in my head, but it's just the one that was on the car radio as I got to work.

A childhood comfort object...I made nests out of my bed. All my blankets, all my stuffed animals, in big comfy piles to be burrrowed under.

I don't know when I've underestimated myself. I've been told that my high expectations for myself border on the unreasonable.

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

I'm reading Baseball. Books. 30 on the year, 20 to go to make my goal and it ain't looking pretty. Currently the book is "The Hidden Language of Baseball" about signs and sign-stealing. It's OK, an educational kind of a book. But not like the one I just finished ("27 Men Out") which made me cry in public (in a good way). The best baseball books always do.

The song stuck in my head is the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' cover of Sweet Caroline. Why, I don't know ... I like it a lot and I was just listening to it on the bus about two days ago. I like it way better than the original. All speed-punky.

My early childhood comfort object was a silky yellow blanket, which we just called "yellow blank." i had to have that thing everywhere, until I went to school, when I thought it would be silly to carry around a blank. After that it was always books (Little House!). A funny teenage comfort object was I always had to have a tape in my back pocket. I also had a manly wallet in my pocket so that led to a lot of back pockets being blown out early. Anyway, it didn't matter what tape (as long as I liked the tape). It just had to be one of my tapes.

Um ... the hard one came last. I underestimate myself with such regularity that there's not really "a time," more like "the one time I didn't and failed," or something, which I can't really pin down either.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you so much. The combination of baseball and "Sweet Caroline" now has it in my head, as sung by the drunks in the bleacher seats in Boston.

*grumblegrumblegrumble*

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on the 'only local' thing, by the way, because when I was a volunteer at the hospital, I wheeled so many ralphing people to their cars it wasn't even funny. (My hospital called us escorts, not candy stripers. I don't know why they thought that was a better term...)

I'm currently reading (just finished, actually) Will Shetterly's _Chimera_, which as a bundle of ideas is great, but the overall execution is kind of not all that I wanted. (It's fun enough, though.)

Andddd... I've had "Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think" wandering in and out of my head for literally DAYS. This is really annoying. It's a fine song to sing. Once or twice.

Well. My childhood comfort object would probably be either the pink teddy bear (I don't /like/ pink. except for that bear. Well, and half my clothing at the moment, but anyway), or Daniel the Stripéd Tiger, named after the Mr. Rogers character. He's small, and stripey. My grandmother and I were in a toy store once and she told me I could get any (reasonable) thing I wanted, and, as was the way of my world then, I was able to identify the One Specific Thing I wanted immediately. (I no longer have this power. It is very sad.) I looked, and scanned, and saw this tiger, and pointed, and said, "That's Daniel!" And so he was.

I underestimate myself all the time, and I have to go back to work. Possibly I will come back to this.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Some local parking garages will advertise, "Escort service not available." This tends to raise eyebrows.

I sometimes still have the One Specific Thing thing. It is a good thing to have.