The Soggy Blogger
I live in a soggy city. I have a soggy blog.
I'd rather be a soggy blogger than a soggy frog.


Friday, March 28, 2003  

Ch-ch-ch-Changes...


Seattlites will appreciate this cool photo-scroll of the 1907 and 2002 waterfronts. Hell, you'll probably enjoy it even if you've never set foot in the Soggy City.

I could play with this thing for hours...

posted by Anne on 10:26 PM | link
 

Dog: "Man bites."


This morning, as I was walking around Green Lake, I saw a man with a dog. (Actually, I saw many people with dogs, but none of the rest come into this story.) The dog was a chocolatey lab, a bit overweight, and his man was running at a pretty good clip. Every so often, this dog would just sit down, abrubtly, in the middle of the jogging path. The man would not see this happening, and would inevitably be yanked back, yoink, to the place where the dog had stopped. Every time. Now the man was clearly getting frustrated, but if the dog noticed, he didn't let on. He kept doing this time and again, and after a while you really could tell that the dog wasn't trying to be annoying; he just. wanted. to sit.

Sometimes I feel like that.

Word of the day: pulchritude, (PUHL-kri-TOOD), n. Beauty, loveliness, attractiveness. (The Soggy Blogger, though exhausted, can't help but revel in the pulchritude of Friday.)

posted by Anne on 11:55 AM | link


Thursday, March 27, 2003  

A league of my own...


While my husband and his cronies are knee deep in their NCAA brackets, I have been involved in a little March Madness of my own: to wit, the Survivor Amazon Fantasy League. (Think fantasy football for the rest of us...) Each week, I sit down and ruminate on the mental and physical condition of all the tribe members, try to determine who will catch fish, who will win challenges, who will cry. Then, I go to the CBS website and lovingly pick my team roster for the next episode.

And I can't believe how poorly I'm doing. There are four of us competing against each other, and I am currently 371 points behind third place. And that's more points than I even have. At this point, short of a miracle, there's no chance I'll catch up to the rest of them.

But I'm okay. In my imaginary world, we're all actually in the Amazon, and I've been voted off the tribe long ago. I am chilling in a posh Amazonian resort with Jeff Probst, while my friends are all still brushing their teeth with sticks.

Suckers.

Word of the day: mordant (MOR-dint), adj. Biting, cutting, keen, sarcastic, scathing. (The Soggy Blogger is very happy in her little Jeff Probst fantasy world...please keep all mordant remarks to yourself.)

posted by Anne on 10:37 AM | link


Wednesday, March 26, 2003  

Tooting my own horn...


I work as a nanny for three boys. The job is often challenging, but can also be extremely rewarding, if taken in the right frame of mind. You learn to grasp the bright spots when you can get them, and ignore the rest. Especially now, as the oldest is officially an ill-humored teenager.

Today I was told, and I quote, that I make "the best grilled cheese sandwiches in the whole world."

Please, try to contain your jealousy.

Word of the day: objurgation (AHB-jur-GAY-shin), n. A harsh rebuke, vehement scolding or denunciation. (The Soggy Blogger's objurgation was proven to be an ineffective tool, today, for keeping a five-year-old from getting paint in his brother's hair.)

posted by Anne on 6:56 PM | link
 

"Daisycherub" from Television Without Pity makes an Oscar suggestion:

"I've been thinking about how great it would be if next year's Best Actress forces Adrien Brody to make out with her, especially if she's old and nowhere near as hot as Halle. Harvey Weinstein, please develop a Holocaust drama starring Bea Arthur! Make this happen!"

...Poor Bea Arthur...always the butt of the joke...

posted by Anne on 12:16 PM | link


Tuesday, March 25, 2003  

Don't I know you...



I'm having one of those days --- do you ever have them? --- where my mind thinks I'm seeing people I know everywhere. Walking down the street, out of the corner of my eye, I will see my cousin. My third grade teacher will, astonishingly, be in the car next to mine, stopped in traffic -- no matter that she died four years ago. These are days filled with second glances, double and triple takes. Good or bad, my subconscious has temporarily disregarded the concept of "stranger."

I generally don't mind this. It doesn't happen too often, and it's not a bad way to spend a day, but lately I've been wondering if there's something I'm supposed to be learning from these experiences. What does it mean that my uncle Mike appeared to me as a window-washer? Is there some sort of code I'm supposed to crack? Some metaphysical equation wherein Woman X = childhood friend and Man Y = my dentist? And what is the answer?

...I generally don't mind, but today I wish I had a cheat sheet.

Word of the day: expiation (EK-spee-AY-shin), n. Atonement, reparation for a sin, crime, or offense. (The Soggy Blogger must rise early and go to the gym tomorrow, in expiation for the decadent dinner she had this evening.)

posted by Anne on 9:47 PM | link
 

There's a fascinating article in this week's New York Times Magazine about HyperSonic Sound:

"Woody Norris has reinvented acoustics. Big news for the world of music. Bigger news for advertising and crime-fighting and combat..."

Be forewarned: it's quite a long article, and you may have to register for a free web-membership in order to read it. If you prefer to forego all that hassle, but are still interested, you can get the basic gist of the subject in this pared-down Popular Science article. Either way, the technology is pretty damn cool, and worth a look.

posted by Anne on 12:00 PM | link


Monday, March 24, 2003  

Vibrant tentacles...


If you ask me why I moved to the Soggy City some six-and-a-half years ago, I will most likely tell you about my transfer to the University of Washington, my brother who lived in the nearby city of Tacoma, or the itch I had to move somewhere (anywhere) outside of the midwest. This is all true, but like much of what I'll tell you, it is true in part. What I won't tell you, but I know to be true, is that I was lured here by fiction. Specifically, the seductive prose of Tom Robbins:

"...the enveloping narcotic grayness of Seattle's light, the nearly perpetual soft-focus glow that seems to be filtered through frozen squid bladders, a kind of synthetic sunshine invented by Norwegian chemists to be sprayed in the atmosphere like a mist of radiated cod paste and bad banana baby food. Feathery and innocuous on the one hand, sodden and ill-willed on the other, it's the meteorological equivalent of Pat Boone singing heavy metal. Yet, there's something strangely comforting about this gray luminescence, as if a sort of quicksilver shroud has been stretched over Western Washington to shield it from the harsh and jagged rays of a more aggressive, less reflective, American pathology."

...And you know, he's right.

Tonight, outside, I could smell the ocean...spring is here...

Word of the day: saturnine (SAT-ur-NYN), adj. Gloomy, sullen, or somber in appearance, manner, or temperment. ("The Soggy Blogger knows that spring is most certainly here, as she can spy vibrant tentacles begining to curl out from behind her city's saturnine edges.")

posted by Anne on 10:53 PM | link
 

I'd like to thank the Academy...



By some strange twist of fate, I won an Oscar pool tonight. And it wasn't even just me who entered -- I was competing against 11 other actual people! Usually I am very bad at this sort of thing, but I think I've finally learned the secret. You have to see lots of bad and over-hyped movies, so you know which ones not to vote for. In the past, I've always tried to see the good movies before the Oscars, but I have learned from my mistakes, my friends. From here on out, I am adopting a different gameplan altogether. I am only going to see the disappointing films, thereby learning which ones not to pick, and assuring a second win next March. Mark my words...victory will be mine!...

Word of the day: adventitious (AD-ven-TISH-us), adj. Accidentally or casually acquired, not belonging naturally to something, associated by chance, not inherent or integral. ("The Soggy Blogger sends a shout out to Marshall Mathers, with mad Oscar props, even though some would call his an adventitious win. Word.")

posted by Anne on 12:06 AM | link
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