Good things about Corpus, numbers 1-8 in a list

Currently, I'm reading Nine Ways to Cross a River and loving it. But that's not really what I want to think about now.

Check this bit about when the author met Pete Seger.

He asked me where I lived. "Near LaGrange," I told him... At this his eyes shones and a beatific look came across his face, and he said, "Yes, I was there once, twenty or thirty years ago..." He spoke of it with nostalgia and longing, as though the town I lived in was some distant province of pleasure that he had once been blessed to visit....And I realized that this is the way it is with Pete. He has an innate respect for place, and his true wonderment of the Hudson Valley in particular, and of all sea-to-shining-sea America in general, maybe really any place at all, is intact and undiminished. His allegiance to the Hudson Valley is legendary, but he's got a broader attentiveness to place, and he believes my little overdeveloped town whose farms have long given way to development, strip malls, video shacks, and pizza huts is worth loving.

I won't lie: I've been hating Corpus lately. The new year rolled around and the thought of eight more months here depressed me.

So when I read this passage, I wondered: Is it possible for me to choose to love Corpus? Frequently, when I call my mother bitching about this or that (generally my love life), she orders me not to be negative. She claims, swears, that positivity is a habit, a choice you can make. If that's true (and I'm not sure it is), I'd like to like Corpus, for whatever it has to offer.

(In the first Pete Seger high I felt after this paragraph, I envisioned interviewing people and somehow generating a photo essay, ala Houston: It's Worth It, but I've moderated my expectations to suit my laziness and lack of photo skills.)

So I'm asking people what they like and compiling a list. The first answers I got were uninspiring, as they're basically corollaries to Corpus' failure to be a real city: no traffic, easy parking, low rent. And I won't accept things that amuse in that ironic love of badness way, like my daily laugh at the local newspaper or my constant ability to mock the NPR affiliate. But I have to admit that I love a sea breeze, the #1 fan of the local hockey team, and the ready availability of good bbq, seafood and Mexican. So it's a start.

I'll keep you updated.

Seen on America's Next Top Model

The model wearing a t-shirt reading "All you can eat."

Why everyone should read trashy novels (but only about once a year)

Please enjoy these gems from Earthly Joys, the trashy historical novel I just finished about King James' gardener. Everyone knows I'm normally a huge book snob. I admit it. But there is something nice--on occasion--about reading something you can just tear through. But I don't go for any old John Grisham whatever. No, it's gotta be something awesomely bad.

Note:

• On the hot summer mornings he awoke with such a desire to live that he could taste it on his tongue, like lust. See, the thing about a simile is that it makes more concrete an abstract concept. Unfortunately, "desire to live" and "lust" are both abstract nouns. There is no more a literal taste of one than the other, so nothing has been elucidated.
  
• John thought he understood the passionate grief and lust of a woman when she can take a man inside her, and by submitting to him become his mistress.
  
• They kissed, lips lingering, pressing, exploring, drinking from each other's mouths. They struggled against each other like wrestlers fighting, like animals mating... until Buckingham said breathlessly "I can't wait! I want it too much!" and lunged toward John and they tumbled together into the darker world of pain and desire until pain and desire were one and the darkness was complete. (1) Seriously, we're talking about the Duke of Buckingham. (2) I don't want any affairs that I describe as "complete darkness." (3) Let's just relive that moment with the "I can't wait! I want it too much!" Awesome.
  
• Buckingham had been in John's heart, had penetrated deep inside him. Is that meant to be subtle?
  
• (Re: the plague) I have lost my apprentice boy George, whom I have loved like a son. You lost your Boy George? Couldn't the author think of any other way to phrase this sentence? Or any other male name for your boy?
  
• Only the two of them knew that the duke was asking if John was still his and his alone; and John was answering: yes, yes, yes.
  

That is NOT what she said.

It took me a while to accept text messaging as part of my life. Basically, it happened when I got rid of my blackberry and added unlimited text messaging to my phone. Previous, I got charged like a nickel per message, so I wasn't so sanguine about it.¹

Perhaps because I'm a tyro, it's still not so easy for me. But I seriously believe it's not just me, but that that the T9 system is making it harder. Contrary to its stated purpose, it constantly suggests the least plausible word possible.

• Today I attempted "Obviously." (Full context: "Obviously, I was a mess at 3am Saturday morning." But that's another story.) What did T9 fill in? First, it proposed "navigator." Then "mathematics." Do people text these terms frequently? Unlikely.
  
• I attempted "rude." T9 suggested "puerile." As far as I can tell, I'm at the curmudgeonly end of the text messaging spectrum based entirely on my insistence on spelling out "you" and "are" and their variants. Though now that I think about it, I'm dying to respond to the next annoying text I get with "Ur abbreviations r puerile."
  
• T9 took my "recall" and gave me "pebbling." I mean, really--"pebbling"? Is that even a word? I had no idea "pebble" could be used as a verb.
  
• "Sexy" and it suggested "sextant." Now this one is inexcusable. Who on earth ever texts "sextant"? In what context would that come up? "I'll be right there as soon as I navigate by looking at the stars using my sextant?"
  
• "Hoon." As far as I can tell, "hoon" is Dutch for jeer. I can't even begin on that.
  

Why, T9? Why do you torture me so? Are you just hoping to embarrass me someday? Like the way that the spell-checker used to automatically change my last name to "Grenadine"?

¹I'll confess this here, because I have nowhere else. I have an ex-boyfriend with no texting on his cell phone plan. He's been annoying the hell out of me lately and it has been extremely hard to fight my admittedly childish urge to send him mean texts at random intervals. So that he would be paying 5 cents each to read, "You mispronounce 'debaucle'!" or "I'm better-looking than you and everyone knows it." or "I won over all our mutual friends... because I'm just cooler." I will also confess that these are the least vindictive of the messages that have crossed my mind.

I can't see the building next door.

This morning, the public radio announcer described the weather in Corpus Christi as "fairly nice."

Nota Bene: The weather here in CC is neither fair, nor nice, nor even a little of either. It is, to be brief, grey. Neither warm, nor cool, just damp. Foggy, I suppose, but with none of the billowy-ness that gives certain London days an air of intrigue, and even made the fog in Fresno a bit exciting. No, just a lingering greyness.

Well, that's not all that lingers. There also hangs that special Corpus miasma, the sewage smell. I'm informed that the smell comes not from sewage, but from the rotting of a particular kind of seagrass that forms a rare and important aquatic ecosystem. Fine, I like rare acquatic ecosystems as much as the next gal, but that doesn't make it smell any better. It does not, I posit, contribute to making the day "fairly nice."

I read an article in Scientific American in which a scientist confessed that when he thought he'd been emailing a Russian girlfriend/penpal, in fact, his epistilary romance was with an internet chatterbot program. (Interesting article, which you can read here.) He was tipped off when his so-called girlfriend described taking a walk with a friend. The author realized that it was February and -12 Fahrenheit in her part of Russia.

You can see where I'm going with this. I admit, I was fooled for a while. But today's misstep--the description as "fairly nice" can only have been generated by a non-human--has clarified that there are no real people behind KEDT. And I must say, that makes me feel a little better about hating Walter Furley.

This takes all the challenge out of the lemon-eating contests I've been training for.

A berry that makes everything you eat afterwards taste extremely sweet. I don't know what I think of this. I suppose it would make dieting easier?

The Shitzu hits the fan.

Lest you fear that we lack political shenanigans around here... Oh, no.

The mayor of nearby town, Alice, stole a dog. But it's so much better than that. This is not your mom's dog theft, oh no. This one has intrigue, obstruction of justice and identical twins involved:

Friends asked her to dogsit Puddles while they went on vacation. She called them and told them that the dog had died. Weeks later, they saw Puddles being groomed at the local pet store. Upon inquiry, they were told that the mayor had dropped off her dog, renamed Panchito, at the store. The mayor refused to return their calls demanding Puddle/Panchito's return.

Shortly thereafter, the called the police to report that the dog had been stolen. The police searched both houses and found no dog.

When reporters approached the mayor for comment, she claimed that she was not the mayor, but the mayor's identical twin sister, though occassionally she would slip and answer to "Mayor." This pathetically thin subterfuge proved her undoing. Reporters located the ranch of the twin and found Puddles/Panchito.

Sadly, the lawsuits will be in state rather than federal court.

The Corpus Christi Caller Times, as the worst newspaper in the entire history of our nation, failed to provide any original coverage of Puppygate. Because they suck.

Lines I will not be using in a wedding toast this weekend:

The one time I was ever alone with David was a rainy night on Lake Como when Deirdre was in a bitchy mood and wanted to be alone. To be honest, we didn't have much to say to one another, so I was quite relieved when two drunk Irish people stumbled into the bar and interrupted us.

While I don't know David very well, I do know that he's an extremely picky eater. This is probably due to his Irritable Bowel Syndrome. It makes me so pleased that he was able to find Deirdre, one of my very closest friends. May she always slide past his picky palate and never irritate his bowels!

I remember when Deirdre began dating David and confided in me, "I'm way smarter than him, but I really like him anyway."

The only other thing I know about David is that he likes football. This distinguishes him from other Texas men not at all.