Author Archives: Miss Kitten

WOTD: superstition

There is superstition…the writing’s on the wall…

Today’s word is a noun, a concept really, defined as, “a belief or notion (not based on reason or knowledge) in or of the ominous significance of a particular thing, circumstance, occurrence, proceeding, or the like.” I find superstition as a concept to quite fascinating. The idea that certain objects or actions could possibly affect the outcome of random future events is something that occurs in every nation on earth. However, like art and literature and other things created by humans, superstitious beliefs are culturally specific. Things that considered bad or good luck in one country have no significance whatsoever in others.

In the United States for example, it’s said to be bad luck to open up an umbrella indoors. Certain numbers are considered good or bad luck. The most well-known of these is the number 13. I’m not sure if it’s really true or just an urban legend that certain tall buildings and sky scrapers deliberately leave out a thirteenth floor because of the ominous significance of that number. However, in Japan the number 13 has no significance and the number four is bad luck. This is because the Japanese character for the number four looks similar to the character for death, or something.

Anyway, what I find really interesting about superstitious belief is that even people who swear they aren’t superstitious nevertheless find themselves altering their behavior because something is considered good or back luck in their culture. When I was living in Japan I remember being at a department store picking out an umbrella. Several others were there and they were all opening and closing different umbrellas in order to try them out. I’d heard people say that opening an umbrella indoors was bad luck, though I never seriously believed it. Yet, I found myself reluctant and almost uncomfortable with the idea of opening the umbrella inside the store. It was weird. How can the action of opening an umbrella indoors possibly have any affect on anything? And yet, I hesitated.

Some of the most superstitious people are actors and sports people. They might have been wearing a particular pair of socks and had an unusually good game or performance, so they decide that those socks must have certain powers and if they wear them for every single performance or game then they’ll have a greater chance of succeeding. Of course it’s all bullshit, and often they realize it’s bullshit, yet they still don’t feel ready to perform unless they’re wearing their totemic item.

Enough for now…

The Original Random Misanthrope

If anyone lives up to the title of “random misanthrope,” it’s my dad. I got a letter in the mail from him a couple of days ago. It contained a personal check for $300 and a piece of paper (dated May 5) upon which was written the most…well, I suppose the right word is random, nonsensical unrelated ideas. These are not the thoughts of a rational mind. The most lucid thing he wrote was the last line, “Please do not cash the check until after the 1st of June.”

No worries there. There’s no way I can “cash” anything. The only way to deal with checks sent from the United States is to send them right back and have them deposited in my Wells Fargo bank account. A few years ago I did some freelance writing work for a website and was paid $50 per article. I was paid by check and the checks were sent to my address in Sweden, where I would endorse them and send them to my mom in California, where she’d deposit them in my bank account. Then I could withdraw the funds here using my Wells Fargo ATM card. I considered just having them sent directly to my mom’s house, but then I wouldn’t be able to endorse them.

At least he remembered to use the correct address this time. I never got last year’s annual check and letter because he sent it to my old address and then it disappeared. It was never returned or forwarded. I tried to explain this to him when I saw him in February but I wasn’t sure if he understood. He did after all. It just took him almost four months to do anything about it.

One thing you have to understand about my dad is that he moves very slowly. Snails seem like cheetahs in comparison.

 

WOTD: Ascension

Today is Ascension Day or Kristihimmelfärdsdag (Christ-Heaven-Lift-Day) as it’s called here in Sweden. According to the New Testament this was the day when Jesus made his bodily ascent to heaven, which took place 40 days after the resurrection. So it’s a religious holiday and a “red day,” which in Sweden refers to a day on which one doesn’t have to work but for which one still gets paid. Sweet.

Such days are highlighted in Swedish calendars with red ink, and thus they have come to be known as “red” days.

Sweden is a funny place in many respects, and by funny I mean slightly odd. In most countries, religious holidays are times for family get-togethers, visits to churches and cemeteries, and moments of quiet reflection. Here in Sweden the major holidays of the year: Christmas, Easter, and Midsummer, are always celebrated on their “eves.” I used to wonder why but I have it figured out now.

The day before any religious holiday or red day is considered an acceptable time to get totally and embarrassingly shitfaced, so the actual day can be used as a hangover recovery day. Practical. Logical. Typically Swedish.

Bye for now…

Utterly disgusting…

…and disgraceful.

Sorry about the pause in the WOTD posts. They’ll resume shortly. I do have one or two things to say about what can only be described as completely apathetic incompetence. Tomorrow is graduation day at my school so today I’ve been really involved in getting everything set up and ready. For the 68 graduating students we set up two big long tables with nice festive table cloths, balloons and streamers. We hung nautical signal flags over them, and Douglas hung up some more flags on the walls, for Germany, Ireland, France, Sweden, and the UK, to emphasize the international aspect of our school.

(But we do have two teachers from the States and one from Bolivia, but neither North nor South America will be represented by their countries’ respective flags. Hmm…must do something about that for next year.)

The students will be served a buffet lunch tomorrow and we’ve borrowed the dishes, cups, and utensils from the cafeteria downstairs. They were delivered around four in the afternoon and right away I noticed that the plates didn’t look very clean. I picked up one plate and noticed several little black specks on it that turned out to be dead fruit flies.Then I found another plate that had a huge streak of yellow grease on it. What the fuck? Did they send us their dirty plates by mistake (or not)? Further inspection of the remainder of the plates revealed more dead bugs, more grease, and various bits of dried food that hadn’t come off. This was totally unacceptable. I still haven’t looked at the cups and utensils. I’m kind of afraid to.

Anyway, by this time the cafeteria was closed so it was too late to send the stuff back and get clean replacements.One of my colleagues (who must be as blind as a fucking bat) had already begun putting the plates on the table, so I told him to stop and gather them all up again. I said we’re going to have to wash every single one of these plates and possibly all the cups and utensils. He wasn’t too happy to hear that.

But what choice do we have? I wouldn’t serve a dog food on one of those plates.

By the way, the same cafeteria that provided the dirty plates will also be providing tomorrow’s food. Ugh…

To the Graduating Class of 2011

Why should you listen to what I say?
I’m not that important anyway.
Who am I to tell all of you,
What you should or should not do?

I should probably give you some advice,
Like maybe use sunscreen once or twice.
But I know you’d soon forget it,
(Though, if you do you may regret it…)

Words of inspiration are hard to find.
They’re buried deep within my mind.
Our emotions are deep and elemental,
And words are merely sentimental.

They do not express the way I feel,
And cannot make the feelings real.
But the things that you don’t know about,
You’ll soon have that all figured out.

Still, you’ve heard all of this before,
So I don’t really need to talk anymore.
Your time here ends, and with any luck,
You won’t look back and think it sucked.

WOTD: toothsome

Today’s word is an adjective. It’s old-fashioned slang for sexually attractive. The word toothsome originally meant “pleasing to the taste or palatable.” I’m not surprised that the word toothsome has sexual connotations because hunger and sexual desire are often equated with one another.

In ye olde days a young man might say the following to an attractive young lady he wishes to court:

I do declare, Miss Mary, you are looking most toothsome this evening. 

Miss Mary would then blush coquettishly and either 1. retreat, or 2. ask him to bring her another glass of rum punch.

These days a strapping young dude on the make might say this to a smokin’ hot babe with whom he wishes to hook up:

Goddamn, Mary, you look so fucking good I could eat you with a spoon. 

Mary would then lean sexily against the bar and 1. say, “That’s right, honey. You can look but you can’t touch.” or 2. Ask him to buy her another Cosmopolitan.

 

WOTD: hair

Continuing with our hair theme, and with thanks to CC Champagne for the idea…

Hair is very important to us humans. So too is the lack of hair. It’s so important we even named a Tribal Love-Rock musical after it. I haven’t actually seen it, but I probably should because I love musicals, being a total dork in that respect. The themes explored in the the musical Hair include the hippy counter-culture movement and sexual revolution of the late 1960s. This was when love (and STDs) was free and growing out one’s hair was considered a rebellious act, especially if you were a man…

Typical hippies at a typical hippy music festival

In the 1970s and 80s, growing out your hair if you were a man meant that you were into certain types of hard rock music. You might have even been a member of a Hair Metal (sometimes called Glam Metal) band, so called because it was required that each member of the band have a long and big and heavily hair-sprayed style…

The "biggest" hair metal band of them all: Nitro.

Big hair was popular in general in the 80s for men and women alike. I can still recall the smell of Aqua Net hairspray in the girl’s locker room, and how we would tease out our hair and spray it until it was almost bullet proof. We were totally insane. Little white beads of Aqua Net would drip off our over-sprayed hair and onto the floor. Oh the memories come flooding back…

Janet Gardner of the all girl hair metal band Vixen.

Nowadays, when it comes to hair for both men and women less is generally considered more. Body hair of any kind has become a big no-no for women and most of us shave or pluck every bit of it off. The only hair we want is the hair on our heads and a couple of carefully plucked or waxed eyebrows. Additionally, an increasing number of men are now engaging in “manscaping” which is the colloquial term for the removal of superfluous body hair on a man, including back, chest, and genital hair.

As for my feelings on this, well… I like my man have some hair on him. It makes him more manly, and it provides valuable traction.

Until next time…

Shaved

You know that hair,
Down you know where?
There must be a reason,
Why it’s there.
Perhaps to keep,
Your naughty bits warm?
Protect them from
An insect swarm?
Your muff, your bush,
Whatever it’s called,
It’s expected now
To be quite bald.
Way back in,
Previous centuries,
Up till the 1970s,
A natural bush was
Oft desired, loved,
Admired and required.
But alas, the times,
And look have changed.
Pubes styled and dyed,
And rearranged.
A prepubescent look is craved.
And thus our beavers
Are now shaved.

Submitted for Funny Bunny Fridays Week 2

WOTD: money

I walked into the staff computer room at work today to find two colleagues having an interesting discussion about money. Or rather, how far would they go to get a large amount of it. How far I’d go depends on how big of a whore I am. Would I (they were anxious to know) come to a dead stop while walking down the aisle during my wedding ceremony and let out a huge loud fart if I got paid five million dollars? Of course I would. My god, I was expecting them to say a much lower number like, say, five thousand dollars.

Yeah, I’d do it for five thousand dollars. But not five hundred. My humiliation is worth more than that.

Anyway, one of the more interesting facts about modern money is that all of it is more or less worthless. This means it has no intrinsic value. In the past, there was no paper money and coins were made of precious metals such as gold and silver. These days coins are made of base metals, and with very few exceptions, the value of the coin is more than the materials that went into making it. The only reason why those worthless coins and pieces of paper in your wallet can be used to pay for stuff is because the government says they can. This is called a fiat system of currency, from the Latin word fiat, meaning, “let it be done.”

There’s a great song on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album called Money:

“Money. It’s a hit. Don’t give me that do goody good bullshit. I’m in the hi fidelity first class traveling set. And I think I need a Lear jet…”

Stay tuned…