Monthly Archives: January 2006

If I’ve spent the last 3+ years being bored out of my mind for approximately 8 hours a day, 5 days a week (oddly enough, the same 8 hours each day), what are the chances that I’m permanently damaging my ability to be interested in things?

Alternatively, what are the chances that I’m THIS CLOSE to completely losing it and going postal all over my place of employment?

… that’s 6,720 hours a year …

… which is 403,200 minutes …

… or 24,192,000 seconds …

… and counting.

A rodent-eating snake and a hamster have developed an unusual bond at a zoo in the Japanese capital, Tokyo.

Their relationship began in October last year, when zookeepers presented the hamster to the snake as a meal.

The rat snake, however, refused to eat the rodent. The two now share a cage, and the hamster sometimes falls asleep sitting on top of his natural foe.

“I have never seen anything like it,” a zookeeper at the Mutsugoro Okoku zoo told the Associated Press News agency.

OK, I tried to hold off, but I have to liveblog this. (Exchange in the Squab household: Me – “I should totally liveblog this.” Mr. Squab – “Don’t be retarded.” Me – “But that way I can share my snarky remarks with all the world!”) I frickin’ love the Golden Globes. Scroll down for updates.

7:10 pm – God, George Clooney is hot. And way to make a Jack Abramoff joke! Extra points for you. But wtf is Adrian Brody wearing? Why the ascot and vest, Adrian, why?!?! And have you heard of these people “barbers?” They can really make a guy look good. Think about it.

7:12 pm – Um … is Rachel Weisz pregs? Or is her dress just really, really not doing her any favors? The color, at any rate is blech. Anything that can make someone that gorgeous look that green-at-the-gills needs to be tossed out.

7:19 – Holy SHIT, Kate Beckinsdale! Are those emeralds dangling from your ears or small countries? Can you say ostentatious?

7:21 – Yay, Sandra Oh! Love her, love her show, love that she apparently can’t find her way to the stage right now to accept her award. How cute is she?

7:27 – OK, I love Drew Barrymore, but I wish she hadn’t delegated her presenting duties to HER NIPPLES. Oy. Don’t get me wrong, nipples are beautiful things, but they’re just a little distracting when they’re staring at me from my TV screen. … So, does anyone else hate Emmy Rossum? She reminds me of a set of girls I went to high school with that were fairly talented and fairly pretty and completely snotty who I always wanted to smack. Is that unfair?

7:31 – Can someone just tell Nicolette Sheridan to quit with the botox already? Honestly, it’s not natural to have so little movement in your forehead. Jesse L. Martin, on the other hand, is smokin’.

7:35 – Ooh, the male lead in a TV drama category has got to be the hands down hottest set of nominees. Mmm … Patrick Dempsey … mmm … Matthew Fox … mmm … Hugh Laurie … excuse me while I clean the drool off my keyboard. Woof.

… Why is it that the speeches are so much better at the Golden Globes than the Oscars? Is it the booze factor? Is it because there aren’t such draconian time limits? Less performance anxiety? I dunno the reasons, but there have already been 3 great acceptance speeches this year, and that’s more than you sometimes get the entire ceremony at the Oscars. Maybe they should start taping flasks to the seats at Academy Awards or something.

7:44 – Poor Dakota Johnson. She is not looking too happy to be the Golden Globes Girl this year. Or maybe it’s just the humiliation of having Melanie “I’m-Still-Mentally-Stuck-at-16” Griffith as her mom. I know that would give me a permanently sour expression.

7:50 – Woohoo!! Steve Carell wins for The Office! He’s like, the funniest man on the planet. I love it when the right people win. Plus now we get a hilarious speech. Woot.

7:58 – Whoa. Is Tim Robbins sporting a shag? Please let this be in preparation for a role, and not some weird midlife-crisis related fashion error. Me no likey.

8:00 – Reese, baby, I love you, and you kicked some serious ass in Walk the Line, but what’s with the weird top to your dress? You normally look soverycute all the time, and now you’re sporting this weird lamé fringey thing that sort of hits you mid-nipple (is this a theme?) – I don’t know … I’m not feeling it.

8:11 – Can I just state for the record how much Kiera Knightley BUGS?!?! Quit pouting, already. You are not that precious. You seem like a nice enough girl – if you could just be a little less self-conscious maybe I could watch you on screen without gritting my teeth. OK, then.

8:36 – It’s not that I don’t like Desperate Housewives – it’s totally my guilty pleasure – it’s just … it’s getting a little overexposed, no?

8:41 – Why do the foreign films always look so much more interesting than most of the American films? And why do I nonetheless see almost none of them? These are the imponderables of life.

8:56 – Seriously, how fucking gorgeous is Gwyneth Paltrow? She must be, what, 5 months pregs? Talk about glowing. I want to look like her when I grow up.

9:20 – Joaquin, Joaquin, did you learn nothing from the Hilary Swank episode? How could you forget to thank Reese? I mean, I know it must be nerve-wracking up there, but that is rule ONE.

9:26 – Oh, Renee, so serious. It’s the Globes, baby! Have a little fun!

9:40 – What did Dennis Quaid just say about Brokeback Mountain? “It’s a controversial film … let’s just say it rhymes with ‘chick flick’.” WTF? Did he mean “dick flick?” And if so, um, holy crass comment, batman!

9:53 – Is anyone else depressed at the contrast between the best women’s and best men’s performance categories? The best male performance was chock full of really solid performances in major films; the best female performance was … slim pickens. (Thank god for Felicity Huffman, who rocks.) I mean, it’s not like there aren’t absolutely amazing woman actors out there, just itching to get their claws on a really meaty role – so why aren’t those roles being written for them? Where are the major, critically acclaimed, wide-release films with juicy roles for women? It’s always a problem, but this year seems worse than usual.

10:00 – Well, another year done. Overall, nice but not outstanding ceremony. Decent speeches (but no drunk Sharon Stones to lighten the mood), high fashion (though I lament the lack of any Bjork or Cher-level disasters), and the awards mostly went to the right people (yay, Philip Seymour Hoffman!). Now, to start prepping for the Oscars …

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair. I say to you today, my friends, that even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow. I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; that one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to climb up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!”

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that, let freedom, ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi and every mountainside.

And when this happens, when we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old spiritual, “Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”

Because they make drama for babies. Really small babies. Check it:

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – The audience for a new play at Stockholm’s City Theater was getting restive only half an hour into the dress rehearsal. One had crawled stage left. Two others were being discreetly breast fed.

Not that the actors were fazed by the audience’s antics. The play is aimed at babies 6 to 12 months old.

“Baby Drama,” which opened this week and is already sold out, was written by psychoanalyst Ann-Sofie Barany and directed by Suzanne Osten, renowned for her work in children’s theater.

“Babies are the perfect audience,” said Barany after the dress rehearsal. “You can’t find a more open, unconventional, and honest spectator.”

The hour-long play shows the cycle of parenthood, birth and early life with the help of props such as red velvet curtains representing the womb and baby-bouncers that drop down from the ceiling, in which members of the audience are invited to sit.

Barany and Osten said the intention was to encourage tots to develop a new understanding of their existence and make parents rethink how they relate to their children.

God, I bet that’s hilarious to watch. I dunno if those babies are getting much out of the experience that they couldn’t get at the playground (though I appreciate the lofty/existential goal of the producers), but how can you not love a show where you can bring your baby, breastfeed, and use the bouncy chairs that drop down from the ceiling? And you KNOW it was state-funded. I gotta start learning Swedish. (via DaddyTypes)

… I just reorganized my iTunes 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s smart playlists so they pick songs from the ACTUAL decades (1971-1980, 1981-1990, etc.) rather than the years usually referred to as the decades (1970-1979, etc.).

Because it was bugging me.

I’m 25 weeks today! And boy, I am really feeling pregs. For one thing, my belly has really popped in the last week – I’ve gone from looking maybe fat/maybe pregnant to hello, pregnant! As my friend Erin (who’s expecting her first kid in late February) said recently, “I don’t know if it’s a basketball or a watermelon in there, but it sure is taking up a lot of room!” Other earth-shattering news from the third-trimester front:

– The hair. Holy crap, is there a lot of it. I mean, it’s not like I was exactly lacking in the stuff before, but jeebus I have a ton of it now. Seriously: in the mornings, Einstein has nothing on me. It would be pretty rad, if I didn’t have to maintain a vaguely presentable appearance during the workday.

– The nails. Again, I’ve always had pretty good nails, but god, they’ve never grown so fast! And I really, really hate that clicky-sound of long nails on a keyboard – I think I’m going to have to start keeping nail clippers at work for clicking emergencies.

– The hormones. I am getting both stupider and more emotional by the day. It’s truly charming, as I’m sure Mr. Squab will attest. NOT. I read in a parenting magazine that some studies have shown that women who are carrying girls tend to experience more “pregnancy brain” than women carrying boys. That would align with all the folk-tricks and family members who are sure I’m having a girl. But I’m getting real sick of not being able to remember, oh, my key card for work, my lunch, where I’ve left my phone/iPod/car keys, when and where my meetings are – you know, minor stuff like that. And the emotions – well, here’s a recent example: I was reading in a magazine that there’s some evidence that babies cry in utero – Not because they’re sad, but possibly as practice for later. Just thinking about Hoss crying in there totally made me start crying! And those Johnson and Johnson commercials? The ones that end “having a baby changes everything?” Yeah, I cry at all of those, too. And these are commercials that would normally make me engage in fake gagging gestures.

So, yeah, I have all the symptoms. Up next week: increased heartburn and round-the-clock peeing!