July 2006 Archives

You can read all 48 of Joy's Blogathon entries on her Blogathon archive page. Right now, however, she is sleeping.

And so I bid adieu to my 24 hour blog-fest. I am exhausted and I don't anticipate having a coherent thought anytime today at all, but I had a great time and I raised just over $300 for Reach Out and Read, counting my non-verified dollars. I can't wait for next year!

No, wait, I can't wait to go to bed. Then we'll talk about next year.

At one point much earlier, I said that while I had a top ten list of books, I could probably stretch that out into fifty. Done. In no particular order (except for perhaps the top five, which are genuinely top five material), here they are. I have pretty eclectic tastes, so not everything is going to appeal. Feel free to email me (joy@laughatlantis.com) and ask me why anything is on the list, why things aren't on the list, and why I didn't put explanations on this list. (The answer to that, by the way, should be pretty frickin' obvious.) I've been working on this list off and on for eight hours.

The Stand - Stephen King
Beach Music - Pat Conroy
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell
Battle Royale - Koushun Takami
Archangel - Sharon Shinn
The World According to Garp - John Irving
For Better, For Worse - Carole Matthews
The Jungle - Upton Sinclair
Danny, The Champion of the World - Roald Dahl

Last Chance Saloon - Marian Keyes
The Eyes of the Dragon - Stephen King
Genesis Code - John Case
The Westing Game - Ellen Raskin
Marley & Me - John Grogan
To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie Willis
Midwives - Chris Bohjalian
Pope Joan - Donna Cross
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
The Alienist - Caleb Carr

Fingersmith - Sarah Waters
True Love (and Other Lies) - Whitney Gaskell
Moo - Jane Smiley
My Sister's Keeper - Jodi Picoult
The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett
The Lords of Discipline - Pat Conroy
Light a Penny Candle - Maeve Binchy
Misery - Stephen King
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
The Eight - Katherine Neville

Plain Truth - Jodi Picoult
The Burg-O-Rama Man - Stephen Tchudi
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - Mark Haddon
A Time to Kill - John Grisham
Light on Snow - Anita Shreve
Hominids - Robert J. Sawyer
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal - Christopher Moore
Lucky - Anna Sebold
The Source - James Michener
Zulu Heart - Steve Burns

Girl With a Pearl Earring - Tracy Chevalier
Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton
Microserfs - Douglas Coupland
High Fidelity - Nick Hornby
Broken for You - Stephanie Kallos
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Heart of Gold - Sharon Shinn
The Once and Future King - TH White
The Anatomy of Motive - John Douglas & Mark Olshaker
The Inn at Lake Devine - Elinor Lipman

Ta-da.

I know what you're thinking. "Joy, that's not even a word! The 24 hours of writing has turned your mind to jelly! What the hell is pornospactology supposed to be?" Well, there are answers there. No, it's not a real word. Yes, my brain is officially jelly.

But the question of what pornospactology is - that's an interesting one. For the past six years or so, I have been doing improv comedy. I've worked with a handful of troupes and found myself in front of a huge number of different audiences. And inevitably, when asked for an input, someone in any given audience will call for porn, a proctologist, or a spatula.

Now, I understand the porn and the proctology suggestions. That's the audience member attempting to be funny. (For what it's worth, they should realize that they have just paid us to be funny. They themselves are not required to attempt it themselves.)

But a spatula... what is so funny about a spatula? Why, when an improviser asks for a suggestion of a household object or something smaller than a breadbox or just a random word that starts with an S - why does the mind go right to a spatula?

And so we have the concept of pornospactology. Obviously il's not a real science; it's just a brilliant amalgamation of three supposedly amusing inputs. If it were actually science, I guess it would be the study of why people think things are funny. And I bet that no amount of study would come up with an answer for that question because really... spatulas?

Hmm.

I had some momentary difficulty dealing with TC's suggestion of Minnesota, but that was fleeting. My co-worker Scott, however, is what is known in the Manilow world as a Fanilow. Thus, I feel some pressure to make this a good entry.

So, I went to what I considered was my best source: my iTunes collection. I have four songs in there by Barry: Ready to Take a Chance Again (meh), I Made It Through the Rain (eh), Mandy (a bit maudlin, but worth a thumbs up), and Copa Cabana, which just kicks ass.

But none of this was really giving me enough to produce a blog entry. So I resorted to the iTunes library and hit pay dirt. I Can't Smile Without You.

I really believe that 'I Can't Smile Without You' played a huge part of who I am today. Why? Because it is the first song that I can remember getting up in front of my parents and performing - not just singing, mind you, but really performing, with a little dance and jazz hands at the end. My parents were impressed and I was proud of myself and I wanted to do it for them again and again. Accolades are awesome, and I think that experiences like that brought me forward toward wanting to pursue arts here and there. Performing can be an incredibly gratifying experienc - an adrenaline rush coupled with the knowedge that you 're making someone else happy too. And I guess I know that in part because Barry helped me see it.

So thanks, Mr. Manilow. And I hope that satisfies my friend the Fanilow.

I just have two hours left but I keep falling asleep. The only thing that is keeping me going is the fact that my computer seat is pretty darn uncomfortable. I think I am going to take a quick walk around my house, get some water, and see if I can come bock to do the three - four? - entries that I need to finish this thing off properly.

Cross your fingers for me.

When Rod and Noel returned from the bar this evening, they were, erm, tipsy. While they were in the bar, apparently there was a lengthy piece on ESPN about funny cars. They decided that I should research this phenomenon for them, in that they couldn't hear the coverage.

I am inclined to say that a funny car is simply one from which 17 clowns emerge. I'm currently at hour 22. Screw research. If they want research, they can go here to find some funny car pictures. I'm not sure if that's what they were talking about or not, but it's amusing regardless.

TC asked that I blog about Minnesota. When he said that, I thought to myself, "I don't know anything about Minnesota. What the heck am I going to do with that?" I mentioned the input to my husband who immediately responded 'Mall of America' and I realized, "Hey! I've BEEN to Minnesota."

Perhaps eight years ago, I went to the National Catholic Youth Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota. At the time, I was working at a CYO in the Diocese of Providence (long story there, but never mind) and I was there both as a participant and as a chaperone for some of our younger members. I remember going to the Mall of America along with about 20 sexually frustrated Catholic teenagers. Fun!

The conference closed with a big concert, with a big name contemporary Christian singer performing. It was Michael W. Smith, whose music I loved. At some previous point, my friend Chris and I had made up a dance that went along with one of his songs, 'Seed to Sow.' We used it at a diocese-wide retreat, so all 27 of us who were there from Providence knew the song and steps.

So Michael starts singing, and we start dancing, and the dance catches on. Suddenly the Massachusetts contingent behind us is all doing the dance. Then I look over and all of the New Yorkers have picked up on it. I looked around the stadium hall, where there were 10,000 Catholic youth gathered, and it looked like 70% of the place was doing our little dance. Chris and I just stared. Michael W. Smith kept singing the chorus over and over again, and we all just danced and danced.

A short while after that, I left the Catholic Youth Organization and I haven't bought a Michael W. Smith album in years. But I do wonder if perhaps audiences still do our dance at concerts. That would be cool, huh?

I was in the process of entering a post when this song came up in iTunes and it was so appropriate, I just had to share. Jackson Browne's "Running on Empty."

Running on - running on empty
Running on - running blind
Running on - running into the sun
But I'm running behind

Everyone I know, everywhere I go
People need some reason to believe
I don't know about anyone but me
If it takes all night, that'll be all right
If I can get you to smile before I leave

That actually rejuvenated me quite a bit!

There are, as far as I can see it, three approaches to recycling.

1. The Whatever Recycler - This is the most common choice, I think. You have blue bins. There they are, sitting outside where blue bins go. You have an empty bottle or can. You toss it in the bin because hey, it's there. You may occasionally exert the energy to consciously get the recyclables into their bin but if not, the world won't fall apart because of one can in your regular trash.

2. The Rabid Recycler - This type will recycle anything and everything - not just soda cans and beer bottles but laundry detergent containers and pickle jars and Spaghetti-o cans and piles of newspapers carefully tied with biodegradable twine. Perhaps they even have compost heaps. They must be careful, however, because the line between Rabid Recycler and the Recycling Nazi is fine indeed. If they are happy to berate people for not recycling, they have crossed it.

3. The Non-Recyclabler. These guys just don't bother. They don't see the point. But there is a fine line for them too. They run the risk of becoming an Anti-Recycling Freak, constantly pointing out the pointlessness of doing it because it just costs more for recycled goods and they aren't any better quality that the regular stuff.

Personally, I'm a number one. I tried to be a number two for a while but I live with a hardcore number three. Sometimes the bother just isn't worth it. Oh, the shame.

I thought it would be a good idea to leave the sponsor-inspired ideas for the middle of the night. I figured that it would allow me the freedom to not think. Well, now I feel like I'm not giving my sponsors their money's worth. My brain is slowing down and I'm not quite as witty as I'd like to be. Damn my brain! I still have five sponsors' worth of posts to produce. Work, little brain, work!!

how to get to Sesame Street?

I can. It's via children.

Sesame Street is one of the staple shows out there that have around forever, so it seems, and will last long beyond any single cast member or charcter. Everything that happens on Sesame Street has a lesson attached, but it's not an so obvious a lesson as to hit a kid over the head with it. It has all the elements that appeal to a little kid - cartoons and puppets and songs, grumpy people and funny people and confused people. It teaches math and spelling without kids even realizing that they are learning things that will help them way down the line.

Jim Henson, the creator of the Sesame Street Muppets, was a genius with puppetry. The Muppets are certainly not life-like, but they have a humanity to them that is amazing. That was further expanded in The Muppet Show and, explored on a large scale with detail in the movies Dark Crystal and Labyrinth. I was a huge fan of both of those movies and can tell you plot points and probably tell you which of the Sesame Street puppeteers played which of the movie characters. And it all started from the Muppets on Sesame Street.

This post is dedicated to Jenney. I'm sorry it's not more exuberant or funny or whatever. It is, after all, 4 in the morning.

Oh! I should add this, just to add a bit of a link with my charity. I had a book when I was very young entitled "The Monster At the End of This Book," in which Grover tried desperately on each page to stop you from reaching the end - building a wall on the page, or chaining the book shut. Of course, you just kept turning the pages watching Grover panic until you got to the end, where Grover turns out to be the monster. It was very clever and cute - and one of my absolute favorites. It made me giggle to see Grover's antics. I understand that they remade this several years to add Elmo to the mix. I hope it's still as much fun.

I now have no idea if I am ahead or behind on posts. I am going to eat some tuna fish and then attack a few other sponsor ideas. Protein goooooood.

Edited to add: SWEEEEEEEEET! I had my dog outside about a half hour ago and he sort of slow about coming in. I was insistent - I shook the puppy treat bag in order to convince him that he would be better off inside. And just now I got the scent of skunk from outside. I was able to avoid skunkage by the use of Snausages. YAY!!

It's 3 in the morning and I am being to seriously lose steam. But just now iTunes brought up 'My Sharona.' You can't listen to that song without moving around a bit - it's the law. And now I am slightly inspired.

When I graduated from my improv training at Boston's Improv Asylum, we had a grad show (as does everyoutgoing class, obviously.) Our grad show was meant to be about one-third sketch, one-third short form games, and one-third long form improv. The sketches went off beautifully; the short form stuff was pretty good, and then we got to the long form. In this case we were getting one input. We had our weakest player ask for the title of any eighties song. People shouted out some great suggestions that we be able to have a lot of fun with - Tainted Love, Freeze Frame, Livin' on a Prayer, Hungry Like the Wolf - I think those were all among the ones tossed out. Cool stuff, ripe with possibilities. But what doe he pick? My Freakin' Sharona. Not particularly inspiring as far as an item to build fifteen minutes of scenes about. And you know what? It's from 1979. Not even an 80s song!

Schmuck.

Gulp.

Point One. Stadiums
Both teams have wonderful, traditional old stadiums that have stood the test of time. But Wrigley Paark was built on the grounds of a seminary, which obviously gives it a spiritual sense, as opposed to Fenway, which was just stuck in the Fenway area of Boston. Not as significant as Wrigley. The week before they opened Fenway Park, the Titanic sunk. So - there wasn't much newspaper coverage. The first homerun in the history of professional baseball was hit at Wrigley Field. So the opening of Wrigley Field was met with far more fanfare. Cool, huh?

Point Two. Team Names
A lot of teams have names that suggest aggression or have specific connections to the cities with which they are associated. Not Boston. They're named after socks. At least the Cubs have some animal associated with them - not to mention connection with the Chicago football team, the Bears. Cool, huh?

Point Three: Curses
The Red Sox had the Curse of the Bambino. The Cubs have the Curse of the Billy Goat. Babe Ruth is dead, and No No Nanette is a crappy musical that nobody likes. They're gone now and so is the curse. Billy goats, however, continue to thrive. Thus, no matter what bad things happen to the Cubs, they can always blame it on the existence of goats. Cool, huh?

Please tell me that's enough. It hurts too much. Cool, huh?

I have now officially switched over into late night mode. I just moved from my "Relax" playlist in iTunes into the "Energy" playlist. Hopefully, there will be more dancing, as I think I am going to need it. My next entry is going to be very painful for me to write.

Very, very painful.

And in advance, I want to thank Charlie, in the most honest way possible, for sponsoring me. And then, in the most sarcastic voice humanly possible, I want to thank Charlie for blatantly making me put forth opinions and say things that are patently untrue. I'm going to do the very best with the challenge at hand, attempting to be fair and honest. But I don't have to like it.

Even nastier than mice are silverfish. Silverfish aren't fish at all, they are nasty horrifying grotesue bugs that have no wings but lots of hairy feet and these long antenna coming out of their heads. They sort of defy description. All I can say is that they are vile nasty creatures that occasionally crawl out of the drain and try to kill you.

Literally.

Last week there a bunch of dishes in the sink that I needed to put in the dishwasher. I picked up a dish and then grabbed the sponge. A silverfish leaped up over the edge of the the sponge in a clear attempt to suck the soul out of my body. And I thought mice made me shriek... I dropped that sponge and dish and ran screaming from the room. Seriously. Rod had to go in, take all the dishes out of the sink, find the silverfish, and kill him in the disposal before I would enter the kitchen again. No boxes on the fire escape for the silverfish - just painful death inflicted at the hands of someone willing to be in the same room as such filth.

Even writing about silverfish is creeping me out. My next post will be about something more pleasant.

There are two living things in this world that I find incredibly, horribly, noxiously repulsive. Those first of these is mice.

It is widely acknowledged that mice are evil. They make scritchy scratchy noises and they scurry rather than run. They crawl under your bed or into your trash or into the kitchen at work and they wait for you to look in the opposite direction and then run. So your eye pops in their direction, you see them, and you have no choice but to shriek. It's a natural physical response to such a horror.

When I lived with my friend Tracey, we would shriek and flee, or shriek and try to corner, depending on the situation. We would then put out mousetraps spread with peanut butter or cheese. My bedroom was closest to both the kitchen and the living room, so I was normally the one to hear the snap. And so we would go into the Dead Mouse Room, use a piece of cardboard to nudge the trap (along with its resident dead mouse) into a box. We would then wrap the box firmly with packaging tape and put it outside on the fire escape until the next trash day.

Why? Because you never know what a dead mouse would do if you just put him a trashcan. It could become a killer zombie mouse. We just couldn't take that chance.

This post is for my sponsor Mirren, who also happens to be my mother-in-law.

I got lucky enough to marry a wonderful man who understands my sense of humor, accepts my random idiocy, can deal with my occasionally crazy family, helps me through my down points, celebrates my highs, and is from Scotland. Cool, huh?

Scottish clans, as you may know, each have their own tartan. However, Begbie is not a Scottish name; it's actually English. Some of you may be thinking, "But Joy, wasn't there a character in Trainspotting that was Scottish, and his name was Begbie too? WHat about that?" Yes, that is correct, but that doesn't make the name any less English.

Anyway, when Rod and I got married, I had to search high and low to find a dress, where his outfit was a given - kilt with full regalia and accesories, It was just a matter of picking out the tartan. He used his mum's maiden name - Robertson - and had two choices. There was the more traditional Robertson Red and then another Robertson, which is green and blue plaid. I like green and blue plaid. I can deal with green and blue plaid. But the Red is the more traditional.

But the Red is BRIGHT red. Like, day-glow. With yellow stripes. Day-glow stripes. Seriously, I don't know how they made this red back in the days of expensive dyes, but this thing was seriously, seriously red.

My wedding was a fall wedding - shades of cranberry and gold and peach-y orange. Day-glow red wasn't going to cut it. So we got the Robertson Not-So-Traditional. Rod was okay with that.

Next month is Rod's sister's wedding in Scotland. It's a given, once again, that Rod will be in his kilt. I am trying to find a dress to wear myself... and on Friday I found a nice one. I covere up most of my bad points, accentuated some of the good, and was generally a good dress, with one serious flaw. Color. If you put me together in a picture with Rod in his green-y blue plaid and me in my crazy blue-and-brown-and-ivory print dress, you would potentially be blinded by sheer oversaturation of pattern.So, back to the drawing board on the dress front.

Maybe I could go back in time and grab an old kilt from my Catholic school days at Bay View Academy. It wouldn't be the same tartan as Rod's but it would be crazy funky print either. And it would have the obious plus of taking me back in time to 8th grade, when one is at one's most awkward stage in life. Man, you could not pay me enough to go back to being thirteen again.

But you could pay me to wear the plaid!

This next post is taking me a while. My husband and his friend just came home. My husband is quite drunk and was very excited about the prospect of eating 7/11 sandwiches. Um, ew. They are about to play Donkey Conga, which I can only imagine is HYSTERICAL for drunk people to play.

Damn. Now I have to stop singing and dancing. Poop.

I have a bowl of cake in front of me, a cop of milk and a glass of water for after. I have danced to several Songs That Shall Not Be Named. I have been dancing like a lunatic. I was doing some sort of flailing motion when I looked out my window and realized that the people who live directly in back of me are having some sort of barbecue and are still out in their yard. Not embarrassing at all, really. I went downstairs and made myself a bowl of cake, and have returned to some slightly more mellow music. I now have a basset hound by my side and, though I know he is only there because he thinks that I might give him some cake, that makes me awfully happy.

Life is good.

My blogathon monitor just came by in the previous post's comments and "gave" me cake. Now I want cake. I really want cake. I have been jonesing for carrot cake for weeks now but I am trying to lose weight, so that is most definitely out of the question. (The frosting on a piece of carrot cake has approximately 8 kajillion calories in it.)

Down in my kitchen, however, I think that there are bowls of cake, those litle microwaveable bo...

Sorry. 'Golden Years' just came up on the iTunes. Must dance now.

We have reached the halfway point and I didn't even notice! Here are some random updates on my day and insights fhat I've had about next year's experience.

- Having some sort of shtick is probably a good thing. I'm looking forward to writing about Minnesota, recycling, and why I love wearing tartan later in the evening. (Just think! You could donate five dollars and suggest something for me to write about! ANYTHING!)

- Having your dog puke is not a good thing. It puts a crimp in your blogging momentum and you wind up having to do a lot of laundry - and backtracking. Actually, having your dog puke is just a bad idea in general.

- Goals are just that: goals. Don't actually expect to get anything done. If you do, cool. If not, that's okay You still spent 24 hours doing something very cool!

- It's a bad idea to have caffeinated soda for the first time in several months. It gives you the shakes, which makes it very difficult to type. Not to mention (and frankly, I probably shouldn't mention this, as it's kinda gross) it gives you gas pains. Ick.

- Come to the conclusion that some people just won't listen. My husband never did get me Chinese food. My dog never did clean up his own puke. And people have actually recommended coming here, armed with the knowledge that I could be sitting here shrieking out the lyrics to Huey Lewis tunes!! If I was taping myself, you'd all be cringing right now.

Or maybe you'd be singing along to "I Want A New Drug" - one thing or the other.

I really did sort of drift off there... not in a sleepy sense, but in the sense that I got so caught up in checking out other people's blogs (and singing loudly) that my mind kind of lost the fact that I have another blog entry to post. I am at a bit of an ebb as far as fun thoughts are concerned, but I don't want to go to my sponsor inputs yet (still to come: Barry Manilow! Sesame Street! Pornospactolotogy! And MORE!) because I think they will come in handy at three in the morning. So right now, I am sort of at a loss.

Inspiration, desperation, inspiration... looking around my room... okay!

On my floor (remember how I said I was going to reorganize? Yeah, Not so much.) there is a book called Bucket Nut. I haven't read it - I probably won't; I got it in a book lot off eBay. But the title brings me to my dog. About two weeks ago, Bacongot skunked. He's been skunked before but in the past we've dealt with it in our downstairs bathroom. The house winds up smelling strongly of skunk and it's pretty bad overall. So this time we took a new approach and handled the deskunking outside. Rod and I both got down on our knees and rubbed Nature's Miracle (that's the name of the deskunking solution) all over the Bacon Dogg. Rod usually sits back and takes pictures of the dog looking sad when he gets deskunked, and leaves me to do the work. But this time he helped! Shocker!

Anyway, we got the soapy stuff all over Bacon and needed to rinse him. Personally, I thought we'd be best off using the hose, but Rod didn't want to walk around to the side of the house where the hose was. "It's dark!" Ooooooookay. So instead, he went inside and filled a bucket with warm water which he then threw - not poured over, but threw - at the dog. He just splashed the water somewhat in the region of the dog. Since I was holding the dog at the time, you might imagine that I got a little wet. The dog got away from me a bit and just slunk around the deck while Rod tried to throw more water at him.

Unsurprisingly, the dog now fears the bucket. Too funny.

I was just wandering through some other people's blogs. I am approaching the halfway point now, but there are folks out there who are almost done - with the drooled-upon keyboards to prove it!

There are a lot of people who came up with cool stuff to do while blogging. I've seen people sewing, running trivia quizzes and scavenger hunts, going out and taking pictures... all sorts of things. Maybe next year I will do something like that... once I figure out if I can make it through twenty-four hours remaining lucid the whole time. Some of the other bloggers have been creative and productive with things outside of just their blog.

But they don't have dog puke now, do they?? No! I'm SPECIAL!

Now that the guys have left, I get to do something that I couldn't do while they were here - something ... fun.

Get your mind out of the gutter!

While they're out, I can listen to iTunes and belt out songs. Loudly.

Now, I'm a pretty good singer. Not great by any means, but quite solid. I've been in shows where I have gotten up on a stage and sung - and I've been paid to do so at times. I even got to sing (a duet with my lovely friend TC) over the credits of a short film (produced by my lovely friend Ilene).

But let's face it. There are certain songs that I want to sing, but I frankly don't want people to hear me doing it. There are certain guilty pleasure songs that I don't want people to even know that I know all the lyrics to. Hall and Oates. Kenny Rogers. REO Speedwagon. Random maudlin songs from the 50s and early 60s. All the big numbers from the Sister Act movies.

I am currently kicking ass singing the Howard Jones classic. "No One Is to Blame." I'm doing it justice quite nicely.

Just... don't tell anyone.

I'm caught up! That last entry was actually the 7:00 entry and I put it up at 7:08! Woohoo! Go me!! I KICK ASS!

Crap. Now I have 16 minutes before my next entry is due and I've wasted precious seconds telling you how up-to-date I am. Gah, I am dumb sometimes.

Regarding my "5:00" entry... Rod came up the stairs aa little while ago and I was sure that he'd come up to tell me that he and Noel were happy to order Chinese with me, for I was lovely and good and sweet and wonderful and clearly hungry. But no. They were leaving to drink. And so, I am alone, Chinese food-less, sitting at my computer desk sobbing and watching the tears roll onto the keyboard as I softly whisper "Peking ravioli" over and over again...

Ah, melodrama. How I love you.

And now LaughAtlantis is proud to present part two of A Series for Monica...

Pistachios: The Idiocy!
(starring pistachios as pistachios and Joy Begbie as the idiot)

Last year I wanted to do something kinda cool for Easter. I asked some people over and I made some food and we had a pseudo-Easter-y event. One of the things I made was a special appetizer that I got, I think, from a Todd English cookbook. It was grapes wrapped in a layer of blue cheese/cream cheese mixture then rolled in pistachio pieces. So I started a day ahead of time shelling the pistachios and chopping them. You have no idea how hard it is to chop pistachios until you've done it. They squirm and wriggle and don't want to stay under the knife. But I kept plugging away because the recipe sounded awesome. The combination of flavors! Of textures! Tasty goodness!

So I worked and worked, slicing pistachios over and over again. I cut my fingers. Pistachios are really very hard and you have to put a lot of pressure on the knife, so my hand hurt and I was just generally miserable. I finally finished my huge pistachios and was ready to go to bed, knowing that I could do the cheese-and-grape rolling tomorrow. My hand ached too much to do it then. I looked at the recipe, hoowever, and it said I should refrigerate it overnight, so I rolled all those damned grapes in cheese misture and pistachio mixture. It was late and I was really miserable at that point. Just miserable beyond belief. My hands hurt so much.

And then, in the process of cleaning up the kitchen, my eyes came upon... a rolling pin. A rolling pin! All I'd really had to do with the friggin' pistachios was put them in a plastic bag and roll them until they were crushed. That's all. Just that. A rolling pin. No fuss, no muss... just roll.

I had fought the pistachios, fought hard, and I'd won... but the pistachios had the last laugh. Damned pistachios.

I shake my fist at the sky!

(Crap, there might be pistachios up there. I'll put it down now.)

It's time, I think, to address one of the sponsor-provided inputs. Pistachios. Thanks to the lovely Monica for providing me with this inspiration. Two stories have popped into my brain that I want to share. Thus, here we have ...

Pistachios: The Trickery!

This is my recollection, which may not be the best, but here it is, as I remember it.

When my great-aunt was alive, she used to make this wonderful pistachio cake from scratch. It was so damn good. Even I ate it, and I thought pistachios - and all things pistachio-related - were fairly vile. It was moist and delicious and superb. I can remember my mom asking her about it, what the recipe was, and there was never any clear-cut answer that I knew of.

After she died, my mom found the recipe. Apparently, it was "Betty Crocker Cake Mix" + "Jello Pistachio Pudding Mix" = "Homemade Pistachio Cake."

I'm an hour behind, but I shall forge on, damn it all!

My husband's friend Noel has arrived from Ireland and I have been subtly trying to convince them that they really want to order food in before they go out drinking. So I have been saying things like, "if you're going to order something, let me know... and if not, keep me posted..." and then I wander back through the room, saying "Yup, just tell me if you decide you're going out or whatever." But I never let on that I'm hungry, but I really am, you see. Really, really hungry. And I would be thrilled to get some Chinese food. I don't want to order food by myself, because you can get extra food free if you spend a certain amount, and I am a cheapskate and I like the opportunity to get something free. If maybe Chinese didn't appeal to them, I'd be happy to order stuff from Dining In if there was something that Noel and Rod were particularly interested in eating. But no, they don't seem to have any interest in food, the bastards. Hmm, I wonder how I can make my hunger more obvious to them, while not being too pushy. .

You don't suppose they'll happen to read this post on the laptop in the living room where they are hanging out now, do you?

I'm down by two entries. Here's my "official 4:30 entry." I should actually look into whether I can actually backtrack and make up these entries, claiming extenuating circumstances, or if I should now chalk this up to experience and walk away while I still can. Yellowish-green dog puke on light blue and maroon sheets would count as extenuating circumstances, wouldn't it?

I had to clean up more puke and make sure the dog was okay. Apparently Dentabones don't digest as easily as one would hope. He went outside, puked some more and then went apeshit because there was something in the next door neighbor's yard. Could've been a moth, bird, a squirrel, a giant man-eating monkey, who knows? Bacon will bark at anything, given the chance. He likes to pretend he's an alpha dog. He is so not. Two weeks ago we went to a basset hound rescue event that was themed "Bassets on Safari." Bacon is somewhat small for a male basset and he's been neutered, so he doesn't give off that my-ears-longer-than-your-ears attitude. As such, Bacon was humped. Extensively. And frequently. Not surprisingly, he didn't enjoy the experience.

And so, he barks at anything he feels like barking at. If only he would bark out an "I'm going to puke now" warning... I would appreciate that.

I can't take too long here right now so, to quote Inigo Montoya, "Let me 'splain... No, there is too much. Let me sum up."

My home office is on the third floor. I walked downstairs and into my bedroom where my dog was sitting at the foot of the bed making That Sound. You know That Sound. It's the gurling, wet, churning sound that can mean only one thing: the dog is gonna hurl. And lo, he did. A lot.

Remember in my first post when I said that I had certain goals for the day, and one of them was laundry. Well, I've started on that one now. I'm thinking that the other ones may be just unfulfilled dreams.

I'll be back.

Next post will be delayed a bit. Dog just puked. Husband just left the house. The two events are supposedly unrelated.

I took a shower! I'm clean! I smell good again!!

I'm naked!

Holy inappropriate, Batman. I'm going to get dressed and come back when I have at least enough clothes on to make it comfortable for me to sit on my computer chair without sticking.

Erm... this is about quantity of posts, not quality, right?

Did I mention that all of that added up to me not taking a shower yet?

I was going to go have a shower, really I was. I just figured, "Hey, we have a houseguest coming in this afternoon, why don't I clean the toilets before I shower? It makes more sense than showering first and cleaning them after, right?"

But then I thought, "I should air out the spare bedroom," because the dog often sleeps in there. So I grabbed the sheets off the futon, realizing that the place should probably be Febrezed before I replaced the bedding.

Then I looked around, realized that there was some stuff in there that I should probably stick in the closet, some other stuff that needed to go up against the wall... all sorts of little crap. And this whole time, my husband (whose friend it is that's arriving this afternoon) keeps calling out, "Joy! Fourteen minutes til your next post!... Eight minutes to your next post!"

He's a peach, my husband.

Okay, here are quick encapsulations of the great qualities in this year's books...

5.) Burning the Map - Laura Caldwell - This is chick lit with characters that are not just out to find a guy or go shoe shopping; this is chick lit where the characters are still trying to define themselves. The main character here is sensitive and real. Good stuff.

4.) The Girl in Hyacinth Blue - Susan Vreelund... This is historical fiction along the lines of Tracy Chevalier's books - taking inspiration from a work of art and building a story about it. This book fictionalizes the provenance of a Vermeer painting, with a short piece about everyone that the painting touches along its journey from conception to current day.

3.) To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie WIllis... I am not much of a sci fi fan anymore - I used to love it but it's not my thing anymore - but this was a wonderful book, combining sci-fi and historical fiction in a time-travelling tale where the people from the future are comicly struggling to stay in character and in proper time while at the same time trying to make sure that they don't change history enough to negate their present. Very fun.

2.) The Day I Turned Uncool - Dan Zevin... The subtitle of this book is 'Confessions of a Reluctant Grown-up,' which is quite telling. It's non-fiction about getting older - that is, graduating from your mid-twenties into your mid-thirties. At my age (33) this was an ideal read.
It's an extremely funny (yet frightfully true) book.

1.) Marley & Me - John Grogan.. I started this book one morning on the bus and had to keep covering my mouth, I was giggling so loudly. I finished it on the train home at night, and I was hunched in the corner, trying to make sure nobody saw me crying. This is a book for anyone who loves dogs, has a dog, has ever met a dog, whatever. It's a wonderful book.

And now I think I am caught up, time-wise, and thus I can go take a shower! See you in a half hour!

A lot of people cite 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' as one of their favorite books from childhood. While I agree that it's a fabulous book, I prefer one of Roald Dahl's far lesser-known books. 'Danny, the Champion of the World' tells the story of a little boy who lives with his father at the edge of a woods where rich people go to shoot pheasants. The owner of the land is threatening both Danny and his father and something must be done to deal with him. Ultimately Danny and his dad come up with a brilliant plan to basically steal all the birds from the woods on the night before the bad guy is having a big hunting event, so that he will be humiliated. The plan is incredibly creative and convoluted and just plain wonderful.

Personally, I hate the Quentin Blake illustrations that accompany most Roald Dahl books published today. That is especially true of 'Danny.' There is magic in the original pictures - of little Danny behind the wheel of an Aston Martin late at night, of his father in poacher's clothes on the edge of the woods, of a woman running down the street with her baby perched atop a baby carriage filled with pheasants that are just waking up from a groggy drugged sleep... I have gone out and bought copies of those original books off eBay and half.com to give to friends, just because I think that the book is not the same without them. If you have a chance, go out and get this book. It's wonderful. Just... magical.

Rod informed me that book lists are no fun without reasons. I hate it when he's right. Thus, here's why I loved these books when I was a kid....

5.) Bread and Jam for Frances (series) - Lillian and Russell Hoban... This is an illustrated series for kids perhaps 4-6 or thereabouts. Frances was a little badger who would only eat one thing: bread and jam. (In the course of the series, I seem to remember she also got a baby sister, had a birthday, found a best friend, and occasionally went to bed without fear of evil monsters in the form of a pile of laundry.) Frances was headstrong and forthright and had a wonderful imagination and strong opinions. And I can still remember my mom reading me the Frances books, making the stubborn Frances voice. It's memories like THAT which have inspired me to do the blogathon for this charity.

4.) From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E.Frankweiler - EL Konigsburg... A brother and sister run away from home and live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I loved the pictures of them washing their socks in the fountain and digging pennies out of the wishing well there in order to buy lunches. And I loved that that their running away led them to a mystery that they could solve, and was not just an escape from thir parents.

3.) The All-of-a-Kind Family (series) - Sydney Taylor... This was a five-book series about a family of young Jewish girls in New York during the first world war. Simply put, I loved every character in those books. The dad was big and gruff and patient, the mother was warm and inviting, and each of the girls - Ella, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte, Gert (and finally, little brother Charlie) had distinct and wonderful personalities. These books took me to another time, taught me a lot, and touched me deeply.

2.) The Westing Game - Ellen Raskin... I loved loved loved this book. It was a mystery of sorts for early teenagers. A bunch of families were brought together to live in this new apartment complex, then brought to the reading of a will for a man that most of them had little to no connection to. They were all paired off in a special game that was meant to reveal the murderer of the dead man, Mr. Westing. The reader got to see all the clues, got to see how everyone interpreted them, and got to try to fugre out the mystery for themselves. I remember reading it back to back when I first took it out of the library - once just to read it, then again to see whow all the cluesfit in, now that I knew who the murderer was.

And last but not least, Danny, The Champion of the World... in the next entry!

I just looked at the blog entries that some other people are putting up for this here 'thon thingy, and some of them are SHORT. So I'm going to take this opportunity, while I find myself falling woefully far behind, to give you my quick list of good books for this year, with no explanation whatsoever, and no shout-outs to other books either.. HA!

5.) Burning the Map - Laura Caldwell
4.) The Girl in Hyacinth Blue - Susan Vreelund
3.) To Say Nothing of the Dog - Connie WIllis
2.) The Day I Turned Uncool - Dan Zevin
1.) Marley & Me - John Grogan

I was wrong. I've got 11 books from childhood (plus three series), 8 from this year (when, from my own admission, I've read a lot of crap) and a top five all-time that realistically could spread into a top fifty if I really wanted to make it do so. Poop, poop, poop. Now I am WAY behind. And I really need a shower.

Okay, quick quick, and I will give reasons a little later...
Top five from childhood (which, by the way, I wish I had separated out into smaller, more manageable age-appropriate groups)
5) Bread and Jam for Frances (series) - Lillian and Russell Hoban
4) From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler - EL Konigsburg
3.) The All-of-a-Kind Family (series) - Sidney Taylor
2.) The Westing Game - Ellen Raskin
1.) Danny, The Champion of the World (with its original illustrations, none of this Quentin Ellis crap)

Shout-outs to:
What If They Knew? - Patricia Hermes
Trixie Belden series - Carolyn Keene/Kathlryn Kenny
A Cricket in Times Square - George Selden
The Burg-O-Rama Man - Stephen Tchudi
The Hundred Dresses - Eleanor Estes
Island of the Blue Dolphins - Scott O'Dell
Where the Sidewalk Ends - Shel Silverstein
Lisa and the Grompet - Patricia Coombs
The Trumpet of the Swan - EB White

Gaaaaaaaaaaaahh! SO behind!!!

So, this whole Blogathon experience, for me, is about about both a personal challenge and an opportunity to raise some money for a really good cause: buying books for children.Thus, I think it's only right to give you a look into what have been some seminal books for me. So over the next three posts I will give you the top five books I've read this year (and why), top five of my childhood (and why), and top ten of my life (and - you guessed it - why). That should take me through to 2:00 and give me the chance to go take a shower too.

Every hour, the people who are running the Blogathon do some games. I though I would participate in this one, because I think it's fun. The task is to go to Google. Put in "Your name is" and post the results.

Here are mine:

Laughatlantis is a bad beat in poker
{Pounding) LaughAtlantis is like throwing a hotdog down a hallway
LaughAtlantis is doing things with these people
LaughAtlantis is visiting 31 places
LaughAtlantis is offline

Those first two are on the same page of a message board where improvisers are one-up-ing each other's insults. There are several more fun ones on that page, but none of them showed up in the search. Poop.

I went downstairs and started to make myself a bowl of cereal when I noticed that I still had brie and some nice bread from earlier this week. I love bread and brie. Occasionally I will get some bread and brie and grapes and I'll sit outside and pretend to be French.

When Rod & I were in Paris last year, we sat in the Luxembourg gardens and ate bread from a local bakery and brie from a fromagerie. Sadly, the brie in Paris was nasty. It was like brie mixed with gorgonzola and spiced up with some lovely toe jam.

Rod and I soon turned to bread and Nutella. You can't go wrong with chocolate hazelnut spread.

Well,this is post number four. I really want some breakfast and I think that walking around the house might inspire me for post number 5. In the meantime, let me update you on my last several posts.

1.) I am still blaming TC & Jenney for being behind. Bastards.

2,) Superballs are apparently made of synthetic rubber polymer polybutadiene vulcanized with sulfur. This is a substance that is used not only in the making of Superballs, but also in the illegal baseball practice of corking bats.

3.) Suddenly Susan is not out on DVD. My heart weeps.

4.) Night Court, however, IS out on DVD. I am now having flashbacks to the judge's love of Mel Torme and Brent Spiner's recurring character of the redneck family father with his oodles of children. Not that I'm buying the darn series - I'm just giving it a big thumbs-up on the TiVo and hoping it shows up as a suggestion sometime.

5.) If I ever feel the need to watch Mork & Mindy, ALF, Green Acres, or Welcome Back, Kotter, I can do it on DVD. Um... yippee?

My husband often buys TV shows on DVD. For drama, I can see where that makes sense. You want to be able to see the story arc from one show to the next. After all, you don't want to catch just some random repeat of Lost on television, not knowing where you are in the adventures of life on the island. And if you catch a repeat of X-Files that's beyond season two, you're pretty much screwed.

But Rod has every episode of Friends on DVD. I don't get that. With comedies, it's pretty easy to just tune into any given repeat and say, "Oh. Rachel and Ross are dating," or "Oh. Cousin Oliver is already living with the family," thus making it pretty easy to tell where you are relative to the whole damn series. You can watch them individually without a care in the world as to what comes up in the next episode or the one before. And the likelihood that you are going to suddenly wake up in the middle of the night saying, "Ooh! I want to see the episode where Mr. Furley becomes the new landlord!" seems slim.

I don't know. For me, it just seems easiest to tell your TiVo to record some random stuff and hope that a repeat of Night Court or Suddenly Susan will pop up at some point. I'm certainly not going to spend good money on those.

All that said, I own Taxi, Freaks and Geeks, 21 Jump Street, That 70s Show, Homicide, and several seasons of both Angel and Buffy all on DVD. Do as I say! Not as I do!

When you were little, one of the the coolest things you could with a quarter was to buy stuff out of the supermarket vending machines - the crappy little things that are on the way out of most supermarkets. Most of it was candy - you had gumballs, off-brand Good 'n' Plentys, stale M&Ms, etc. There were also the bubble-shaped containers that had crappy prizes inside - key chains, generic Silly Putty, random ugly stickers, the occcasional troll doll, etc.

But the coolest thing you could get from a vending machine was the Superball. Superballs are made of some sort of plastic rubber-y material and if you drop them, they will bounce nearly as high as where you dropped them from - and if you slammed them down, they would bounce way back up to ridiculous heights before falling and inevitably hitting your dog or little sister in the face - hypothetically speaking, of course.

Eventually, little kids get sick of Superballs. The best way to get rid of a Superball is to bounce it so high that it lands in your neighbor's yard, and you don't have to worry about it ever again.

Of course, two weeks later you'll start to miss it and have to beg your parents for a quarter the next time you're in a grocery store. And with any luck, that Superball machine will be empty and you'll be forced to get that stale candy shaped like fruit. Blech.

Or rather, so I begin. Blogathon 2006, 24 hours of blogging my little heart out in the hopes of making some money for charity, at the price of sleep. It's hard to know just exactly how to kick off this thing. It puts a hell of a lot of pressure on this morning's first post. I guess I should first note that if you donate five dollars or more, you can email me (joy@laughatlantis.com) and give me a suggestion for something to write about. It can be anything: a random word, a song lyric, a top ten list, a pet peeve, an interesting quote, anything. I will use it as inspiration to write. And come on, it's five dollars. You know you have five dollars lying around. Check your penny jar.

All right, I think I will lay out my goals for the day, just to see what I can accomplish in a 24-hour span. I want to clean my office, top to bottom. Currently I have four almost empty bookcases and perhaps two hundred books on the floor. My last reorganization attempt was somewhat of a disaster. I want to clean the spare bedroom a bit. From a convenience standpoint, the Blogathon isn't at a good time right now. My husband's friend Noel is coming from Ireland and he is staying with us for two nights. Luckily, Noel knows just how big a slob Rod is, so he probably won't be surprised by our less-than-immaculate house. Of course, Noel being here means that I will have to shower and get dressed at some point. This seems like a small point, but don't you think it would be comfier to sit around in pajamas for 24 hours? Anyway, I also want to do some laundry - okay, a LOT of laundry. And I want to pinpoint some exact things that I want to see/do while I'm in Scotland next month. (Suggestions are welcome.)

My phone has just rung. My good friends Jenney and TC were checking up on me. They - and I, for that matter - thought this thing started at eight. Chatting with them has made me send this entry six minutes late. Clearly I am destined for failure and it's all their fault.

See you in a half hour.

Blogathon 2006 starts in a mere 10 hours. Why the heck am I even awake right now?? I should be trying to get some sleep while I can!!

So, see you in the morning ... and later in the morning... and in the early afternoon... and... and in the late aftern - you catch my drift here.

Good night!!

- A short while ago, I blogged about my fear of escalators. Yesterday I was on the hotel coming from the Westin Hotel into Copley Place and the escalator stopped with me right in the middle of it. I shrieked a little bit.

- BLOGATHON IS THIS WEEKEND and I don't have nearly as many sponsors as I would like. C'mon, you know you want to help kids learn to read, right? They could grow up to read this blog!! (Okay, that's probably not the best way to convince you.) So please, if you can, sponsor me. Please. Please?

- Rod made me buzz cut his hair yesterday. He seemed to have forgotten that his sister's wedding is in four weeks and it might be nice to have hair when his picture gets taken. Now he is going to color the hair a little bit, because right now it's too pale. He looks a little like a martian. He has a very big head.

- I trash-picked an exercise bike a few days ago. It works perfectly except the seat is horribly uncomfortable. I have to pedal with a pillow under my bum.

- I'm in the midst of filming a mockumentary about candlepin bowling and I have done a bit of research for my part. There is actually a "Don't Do Drugs, Go Bowling!" program. Why do I find that so incredibly funny?

- I've lost 17 pounds. That makes me happy.

- I saw a really creepy guy on the way to work today. More on that later, no doubt. Creepy makes for good reading, huh?

So, I keep meaning to blog about this and then I don't get around to it - which, in this case, may be a harbinger of doom as far as my ability to complete the task at hand.

The task? you ask. What is this task of which you speak, Joy?

Blogathon 2006. Blogging for 24 hours for charity.

This year's blogathon is happening from July 229-30. It starts at eight in the morning. The idea is that I need to post something every half hour for 24 hours. And it will be rough, but I am psyched for the challenge, primarily because it is for a great charity. I'm playing (er, blogging) for Reach Out and Read. It's a charity that not only gives books to young children, but also provides information to parents about the importance of reading. It stresses the importance of reading moth to and with children. And since I am a constant avid reader - largely due to my parents giving me dozens upon dozens of books as a child and truly instilling in me a love of words - this seemed like a great cause.

But I need some help. I need sponsors to help me raise money. You can donate by the hour or as a lump sum - and it doesn't matter whether it's $2 or $20, whatever. I don't have a set dollar amount goal in mind; I just want to make some money for this charity. I appreciate it immensely. You can sponsor me by clicking the handy little button on the right side of this screen. (See it? Up at the top under the words "Sponsor Me"? It's red!)

If you are so inclined, you can also check out the full list of bloggers and their causes at www.blogathon.org. Plus there's a plethora of information about just how this crazy thing works.

And hey, even if you can't sponsor me, wish me luck. I'm going to need it!

How do you like my new look?

I've been on hold with an insurance company for eight minutes now. The call is job-related so there's nothing else I can do until I have the information from this company. Their hold music sucks.

Do you think it would be bad for me to wear my iPod in the other ear while waiting for Blue Cross to get their butts in gear? Or, maybe I could take this time to read... yeah, I don't see that going over well with my boss.

In the process of entering this and then editing it, the total time on hold has increased to 14 minutes. Poop.