The Best-Laid Plans of Squirrels and Bears (Are Indeed the Best)

A Scientific Guide to Hibernation or Why I Wish I Were a European Hedgehog

1. Eat everything in sight in order to build up body fat.
2. Sleep for months in a warm place during the howling winter.
3. While slumbering, use up said body fat to keep alive.
4. Emerge in spring, among flowers and sunshine, newly slender.
5. Rinse, wash, and repeat like it's your mode of existence. Oh wait. It is.
   

Water and Salt Balance in Aquatic Environments

"Freshwater mosquito larvae replace the ions lost with urine by actively absorbing Na+ and Cl- from the water with cells in their anal papillae."

Well there's a sentence I never thought I'd have to read. Thank you, Ecology textbook, for that wondrous bit of education.

On a related note, I seem to have a bug bite on my ankle. In January. Should I be worried?

Abdominal Souvenir

In the fitness room tonight, the TV in front of my elliptical was tuned to the E! channel—evidently people enjoy torturing themselves with images of thin and toned celebrities as they work out. During my half hour of profuse sweating, the show about Hefner's ex-girlfriend Kendra was on, but it would seem that married life has tamed her wild side. She was pregnant to the point of popping, but I don't see why following her around with a camera is necessary or even lucrative, because she just sat on the couch with her dog, went to the doctor's for an ultrasound, and attended a Lamaze class.

Until, that is, she and her husband made a plaster cast of her baby belly. Much like my relationship with the bowl in the servery containing heavily salted, crisp-yet-fluffy pita chips, I simply could not turn away. Her husband covered her naked breasts and protruding stomach with wet strips... and when the mold had hardened enough to remove, this hollow replication of Kendra's torso (complete with E-cups, as she pointed out) was the centerpiece of their holiday dinner.

Needless to say, this was just about the oddest scene I have ever exercised to.

At least I was a tad comforted by knowing that my own stomach, at that moment, was far less rotund than a glamor model's.

Raunchy Pop

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Of Mornings

When I am too old to make a living but have enough money saved up in order to live quietly in a cottage, I will begin each morning by sipping tea, nibbling on a perfectly crisp English muffin, and doing the newspaper's crossword with a gentle-giant cat on my gentle-giant lap.

But right now, I have been blow-drying my hair for less than a week and am already bored of doing so, I have learned that Honey Nut Cheerios "Milk 'n Cereal Bars" are not as good as they sound, and I have not learned to tumble out of bed without wanting to remain asleep, where dreams are what I make them.

Winter Television "Events"

January 6: People's Choice Awards

January 17: Golden Globes

January 23: SAG Awards

January 31: Grammy Awards

February 7: Super Bowl XLIV

February 12-18: 2010 Winter Olympics

March 7: Academy Awards 

March 15: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony

March 27: Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards 

That seems particularly crowded.

...I can't believe I noticed this density and then spent time preparing the list, particularly since I plan to watch only the Oscars, the Super Bowl half-time show (Pete and Roger!), and maybe some curling.* However, I do find it disgusting that the American public consistently watches celebrities being given awards to add to their ridiculous money and fame. I can understand wanting to recognize talent, but must we do it with such expensive sets, outfits, and goodie bags? If we took all the money that would otherwise go to the promotion and slime-making for the Kids' Choice Awards (because what kid should be staying up to watch TV on a Sunday night anyway?) and put it toward supplying the Haitians with food, water, and medical attention, I would have a lot more faith in my country.

*Am I kidding? Maybe.

Time for a Change

This is a little late in coming, but I suppose I might as well "publicize" (put on a blog that hardly anyone knows about) my "resolutions" (goals I will rarely if ever attain) for the new "year" (semester, really, because we all know that summer messes everything up).

So, without further ado but with many split infinitives, the list for 2010 (effective on the 18th):

1. To not stay up past 2am
   
2. To not sleep past 11am
3. To stop vegging out, particularly on desert items
4. To stop eating those deceptively delicious fried vegetable sticks altogether
5. To continue not drinking soda (negated by my increasing intake of sugared coffee anyway)
   
6. To work out at least three hours a week
   
7. (Corollary to #3 and #5: To see actual results on this lump of flesh I inhabit)
8. To learn to knit cables, particularly on fingerless gloves
   
9. To read at least a poem a day
   
10. To write poems that are worthy of submission to the wide, if dwindling, world of publishing
11. To live deliberately
    
12. To enjoy myself

The ever pessimistic crystal ball says... only #8 will find fruition. We shall see.

Hair Today

I got a rather significant haircut today—perhaps too much in advance of spring, but a good reminder that I have decided to be a happier person this semester—and was not twinged with remorse about it until my mom pointed out that I could no longer hide behind a curtain of dirty blonde.

A Positive

Today I gave blood for the third time and despite the knowledge that my pint of plasma and platelets could save three lives, I don't think I'll ever get used to the idea that a part of me might soon be coursing through someone else's veins. Maybe "I" will be part of a truck driver from Nebraska or a six-year-old in Georgia, even if only until my red blood cells die and are replaced. That's a beautiful and terrifying thing.

As I walked into the room, "Don't Fear the Reaper" was playing on the radio—creepy or reassuring coincidence? (At least I didn't develop a fever for more cowbell as I watched my life force flow into a plastic bag.)

(Strange Confession of the Day: I don't mind having needles stuck in me. Sometimes it even makes me giggle.)

"I'll Be Back"

I watched "The Terminator" for the first time last night, and besides thinking "What a terribly written movie" (true) and "Sarah Connor's terror will give me nightmares" (also true), I couldn't help but wonder how the selection to send someone back to 1984 went down...

INT. HUMANS' CAVE IN 2029 - NIGHT

JOHN CONNOR stands on a trash heap, his feet planted firmly in the pile of CPU's and dead rats. The meager population of Homo sapiens surround him, listening intently to their nominal leader. All are dirty, exhausted, and emaciated. Many look worried, but some look ready to undertake his direction.

JOHN CONNOR

(Gazing at the assembled with the intensity of Caesar) My people!

HIS PEOPLE

(Mustering the strength of their collective voices) All hail!

JOHN CONNOR

The time has come...

SOME SMART-ASS

(Sniggering to his buddy) The walrus said...

JOHN CONNOR

Shut up. The time has come for us to make a stand. No longer must we be subjugated by machines! (Clapping from the crowd) No longer will we live underground like vermin! (Cheers and fist pumps) No longer shall we walk this world in fear of termination! (A chorus of "Amen") I have a plan for us, my people, that will lead us out of darkness and into our promised sun!

HIS PEOPLE

What is it, John Connor? Tell us, John Connor!

JOHN CONNOR

Fear not, my comrades, for I will tell you when the time is ripe. For the moment, know only this: if we are to reclaim our rightful throne, we must ensure our existence. My existence. (Pauses, looking as deep into the eyes of the assembled as the feeble light of cave fires will allow) Now. Which one of you brave men will travel back in time to impregnate my mom?

HIS PEOPLE

What the fuck?

About the Author

Here's my problem: for the past five years or so, I seem to have been (is that a split infinitive or merely the strange construction of the present perfect progressive?) making my higher education choices based on what I want my biographical blurb to look like in my first book. Obviously there are multiple things wrong with this way of thinking (not the least of which is "If you plan to deserve a biographical blurb, you had better start compiling the preceding pages"), but recently I have fretted less about the educational information ("She graduated from This College in This Year with a degree in This and This"*) and more about the place of habitation that will end the paragraph ("She lives in This Place with her Loving Husband, Two or Three Children, and a Cat Who Used to Be a Vivacious Kitten But Is Now a Yawning Lump").

What, exactly, will "This Place" be? The city is too crowded, the country is too sparse, so it will have to be suburbia, that meeting point of culture and landscape forever tinged (and rightly so) with the odor of materialism and artificiality. How specific? New England is too general, a town is too specific, so it will have to be a state, providing the hope of tracking me down but without enough clues to do so. Why? So my work is given a sliver of context, a peek into the composer's life? But shouldn't that be evident in the work itself?

Maybe I should simply ask the editor for permission to cut it, standing simply as "She lives."

*However, this still continues (is that redundant?) to be a pressing matter, which may suggest that I am plagued by enough neuroses to be a poet after all.

Sister to Sister

Peering at their letters kept behind glass at the special exhibit at the Morgan, I couldn't help but marvel at the Austen sisters' precise penmanship. So straight, so lacking in errors! To conserve paper, they even often continued their thoughts by turning a finished page and writing horizontally across their own words. And what devotion there was between them, recorded and tangible forever in a way that I doubt emails and text messages will be.

What struck me most, though, was this sentence from the letter Cassandra wrote to her niece Fanny about Jane's death, for it sounds so much like what I feel for my own beloved confidante:

"I have lost a treasure, such a sister, such a friend as never can have been surpassed. She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow; I had not a thought concealed from her, and it is as if I had lost a part of myself."

Captcha and Release

I just had to type "doorstep City" in order to stick a link on Facebook. That sounds like the title of a poem I should write.

Though I will never prefer reading on a screen to thumbing through the care-worn pages of a book, I do love the searchability of online texts... and the ease with which I can peruse New York magazine's "Strictly Personals" from the '80s thanks to Google Books. ("Breathes There A Man—of worthy vintage who's willing to be a friend first and see where that leads?" "If you're amply shaped, let's talk." "One of New York's most eligible bachelors is tired of running and ready to be caught. Can you cure what ails me?") So the fact that I am helping digitize newspapers and novels by decoding images and typing letters makes me think I am contributing to the preservation and dissemination of knowledge even while I'm posting lolcats on my friends' pages.

Here's to you, reCAPTCHA. I'll gladly do your work for free.

(SWF seeks similarly nerdy and bibliophilic M, 18 to 23. Bad puns, writing skills, and Monty Python knowledge a plus.)