when the status quo frustrates.

I have done evil things to children…

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

…by feeding them the Big Lie: the false promise of the Happy Ending.

Makiko, who heads my theatre company, just finished directing a local elementary school play in English, an adaptation of four tales from “The Brothers Grimm” for third graders that she’s been putting on there for the past three years. Once upon a time, she finagled me into writing a song for the big finale, wherein Sleeping Beauty’s curse is lifted, and her castle (portrayed by all 75 children in the cast) wakes up. I show up for the last couple of rehearsals each year to play the underscoring and accompinament on a live piano. This year, I must say the show was in fact a stunning success. We may have ruined a few more young lives, tempting them with the siren call of the theatre.

So, for your appreciation, here is the rehearsal version of the big finale, “Fairy Tales Do Come True”. It features cameos by the Brementown Musicians and the witch from Hansel and Gretel. (For the record, I wrote and recorded this well before my recent foray into Muppetophilia. Though of course like most people my age, as a child I certainly was a Muppetophile.)

(Download link)


Creative Commons License

Fairy Tales Do Come True by Quin Arbeitman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Unrelated personal thoughts about blogging that nobody actually wants to read but probably will anyway though I don’t know why you’re inflicting it on yourself when I gave you fair warning, after the jump.

(more…)

02.03.2009 A Punkass Original Production, Asides, Jazz is Dead, Music, Public Procrastination No Comments

Thought for the Day

Sunday, February 22nd, 2009

(Via.)

22.02.2009 Punkass!, Asides, Economy Blues, Governmental Failures 7 Comments

I Haz Tiny Little Gurlz Feet

Saturday, February 7th, 2009

Photobucket

My new job is at a construction site, and my old steel-toed non-slip workboots had finally given up the ghost after seven years of hard use. Now, I got those old boots via my first company out of college, which simply passed around a mail-order catalogue to its new hires with the allowed makes and models circled; we just picked out our own size in our preferred color or style and voila! two weeks later–workboots. The set of workboots I owned prior to that had been issued to me by the Army…you see a trend here..? In short, I did not realize what an ordeal buying my own steel-toed, non-slip workboots was going to be.

Now, I am not an unusually small woman. I am five feet eight inches tall, with a medium build and average bone structure. My feet are a very generic women’s standard width American size 8. I rarely to never have real trouble finding shoes I want or need that fit my feet, regardless of whether we are talking athletic shoes, dress shoes, casual shoes–you name it. The picture captioning this blog? I had no trouble at all finding a pair of those kind of boots that fit, as you can see.

After having spent the afternoon shopping for a new pair of steel-toed non-slip workboots, I am being forced to come to one of the following conclusions:

1. Women do not work on construction sites.
2. Men are vetted for construction jobs based on shoe size.
3. Gender stereotyping by the retail industry is alive and well.

I found exactly one line of steel-toed non-slip footgear for women, charmingly referred to as the “Amy” line; however, they are not boots. They are what is known as “factory shoes,” which are fine for manufacturing floors but not for construction sites–essentially, they’re not boots; they look like running shoes.

So, I was finally forced to buy the absolute smallest size workboot I could find, which is a men’s size 7. Whatever my foot size is in men’s boots, it is shorter by at least an inch than a men’s size 7–but I can keep the damn things on, at least, and that’s clearly the best I am going to be able to do on short notice. I’ve put in an e-mail to a friend of mine who works in the safety department of a previous job, who will hopefully provide me with some links to online ordering companies specializing in steel-toed non-slip workboots like whatever company it was that provided the boots for my first job out of college. But since I need these boots next week, for now, I am stuck with boots that do not fit and will probably rub my feet raw and fail to contribute to my gracefulness in navigating trip hazards on the construction site.

<—-pissed OFF!

07.02.2009 Asides, FUCKING IDIOTS, For the ladies, If I have to suffer you have to suffer, What Patriarchy?, Work 19 Comments

Hope the internet doesn’t fall apart without me

Sunday, November 16th, 2008

A simple experiment.

I have come to the conclusion that I spend too much time surfing the web. It’s fun and can be enlightening, but often it’s just a procrastination tool, and done to excess (like, well, recently) I begin to suspect that there are probably more rewarding ways to spend my time.

I’m going to try an experiment. I am going to see what it feels like to go cold turkey for just one week. After I finish writing this and hit the “publish” button, I am not going to use my web browser for anything at all for seven days (with the single exception of e-mailing, which is necessary for my job). If I need to look up a word, I’ll use a real dictionary. No IMDB to settle arguments. No online train timetable searches. No losing myself in a dozen open Wikipedia windows. And most of all, no reading blogs! Not even this one.

There’s millions of other non-virtual ways to procrastinate, so it’s not I expect this to solve all my problems, but… I just want to try it and see what it feels like. If my will is strong enough to go the awful distance, then I’ll check in again next Sunday. (If it’s not, I guess you might be seeing me sooner.)

Bye for now!

16.11.2008 Asides 2 Comments

How much punk would a Punkass ass if a Punkass could ass punk?

Tuesday, September 30th, 2008

Lisa and I would like to hash it out a bit and try to figure out constructive rules for engaging each other when we disagree. At least between the two of us. It may be relevant for others as well, too, though. I won’t provide a link, but I still vividly remember a great moment of shame in this blog’s history, when for the sake of a minor rhetorical ploy, a recently-deceased pet was virtually sodomized.

So what the hell, we can at least have a go at setting some ground rules for proper snarky manners. It’ll be a snoozer for most people, but for anyone interested, I hereby decree that this thread will be where we try to agree among ourselves just exactly how punkass a PunkAssBlogger ought to be. (Or at least how punkass me and Lisa ought to be.)

It’ll probably just be us two, but outside opinions are welcome.

(I’m off to bed now. When I wake up in the morning I expect there to be dozens of messages telling us exactly how unbearably snottily dismissive we are. Come on, people, don’t let me down!)

30.09.2008 Punkass!, Asides, Circle Jerking, Let's Go Meta!, Looks like someone needs an intervention 13 Comments

Hot night, cold beer

Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008

Today one of my students attacked me. He’s only six years old, so he couldn’t do any real damage, though he did leave a couple of satisfactorily bloody scratches on the side of my face. Funnily enough, I remember thinking earlier in the lesson, “That kid needs to cut his nails.”

I really wish I could share more details. The incident gave me some thoughts about working with children that I wish I could get out in the open. But I’ve signed a confidentiality agreement with my company, I’m not using a pseudonym here, and let’s put it this way: my boss is on Facebook, and he’s not afraid to use it.

After spending some extra time at work to deal with the aftershocks from the incident, I made it home. That’s when an earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale hit northern Japan. I was 350 miles south when it came, and it still felt pretty big to me.

Anybody else have an interesting day?

23.07.2008 Asides 3 Comments

What food crisis?

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008

Why I hate capitalism, in one headline or less:

G8 summit: Gordon Brown has eight-course dinner before food crisis talks

No words. None.

Hat tip: lovableatheist

09.07.2008 Asides 4 Comments

Next Time, I’ll Scrape The Blue Fuzzy Stuff Off Before Eating The Expired Tofu

Tuesday, July 8th, 2008

Hooray! It’s time for another edition of… STRAINED ANALOGIES!

You’re driving a truck full of your own loved ones– children, significant others, your mom, pets, and whoever else is important in your life– over a treacherous mountain road. You’re determined, at any cost, to get to the scenic village at the peak. Too dangerous for a family outing, everybody said? HA! You’ll show them. No backing down now.

Every tight corner features a thousand foot drop with no railing. At first you overcompensate by veering away from the edge, hugging the inner rock wall. You reconsider this tactic upon passing a low row of white scrapes along the wall, and then an outcropping where a pair of tire tracks bounce away into the void. The children’s eyes are saucers, and your mom’s lips are moving wildly as she beseeches her God in silent prayer. Even the pets are shitting themselves.

Your significant other clutches your forearm and speaks in hushed tones. “Listen, hon, let’s just slow down and turn around. We can just stay at that motor inn we saw at the base of the mountain, right?”

Ashamed of your selfishness, you realize that maybe that this trip wasn’t such a good idea after all. Just what were you trying to prove, anyway? You are just about to apply the brakes, when…

…your heart jerks in your chest… there is a massive shape in the road dead ahead, only yards away… time slows to a crawl… is that what it looks like?… YES, IT IS…

You are milliseconds away from colliding head on into an ELEPHANT and a DONKEY. Just sitting there, in the middle of this narrow mountain road. Who knows why they are there. Perhaps someone is filming a clever political ad. Does it really matter? The fact is, there they are. A donkey, an elephant, and the likely death you and everyone you love.

Moment of truth time. What is your reflexive response?

    A. Swerve right and dive straight off the side of the mountain. Pretty much certain death for everyone, but at least you might have a fun ride for a few seconds on the way down.

    B. Swerve left and take your chances with scraping the rock wall like the car whose tire tracks you noticed before. Thing is, there’s another left turn just ahead, so if you don’t regain control fast, you’ll dive off the mountain anyway. But come on, at least there’s a CHANCE of survival.

    C. Aim to kill the animals by barreling straight into them, hoping that the impact of their destruction will stop the truck before it goes over the edge of the road. After all, there’s not only a donkey, there’s a frigging ELEPHANT in your way. Choose this way, and regardless if anybody is still actually remaining on the road at the end of it all, the highway will definitely be running with blood.

    D. Take your hands off the wheel and shake your fist at the sky, screaming, “Quin, this stupid little story of yours sucks ass. What am I supposed to be gaining from it?” Now, now. Let’s try to be constructive. You can be petulant if you want, but that’s not going to save you and everyone you ever loved from horrible grisly ends, will it?

    08.07.2008 Punkass!, Asides, Fiction, Mutterings Of The Disturbed, Politics 4 Comments

    …and now, some GOOD news

    Wednesday, June 25th, 2008

    From the best of all possible worlds.

    Funny how getting good news — even when it’s completely fabricated — can make you feel so… well… good.

    25.06.2008 Punkass!, Advice, Art, Asides, Brilliant Ideas, Media 3 Comments

    When you think McCain, think…

    Wednesday, June 18th, 2008

    Not safe for work:

    18.06.2008 Asides 2 Comments

    10 million something subscribers, of course one is a physician

    Monday, February 4th, 2008

    It’s 2 in the morning, Kyso has been drinking since noon. Her friend drops her off at home, and she realizes she has a sore throat and headache and fixes herself a cup of Theraflu and goes to tell her roommate about her day.

    Roommate:..uh-huh, hey what’s that?
    Kyso: Theraflu.
    Roommate: Nononononono (takes cup from Kyso and puts it far away from her)
    Kyso (In a huff): What? Fuck you! (Flounces to bathroom)
    Roommate (When Kyso returns): Well I asked [everyone on his World of Warcraft chat thing] and they agree: taking Theraflu while bombed is a terrible, terrible idea.
    Kyso: So the fuck what? What are they, doctors?
    Roommate: Well, at least one, yes. D (another friend of his) checked him out when he first claimed to be a doctor, and he is.
    Other Roommate: What? Oh, wait, ThunderGod, of course.
    Kyso: Grrr. [Goes to bed without mutilating her liver].

    04.02.2008 Asides No Comments

    Before Ayn Rand, philosophy was crap

    Saturday, December 15th, 2007

    Generally I think that it is a bad thing that our current economy shoves our over-supply of articulate, overeducated people into wage slave customer service jobs that are expressly designed to squander the talents the articulate, overeducated people. On the other hand, thanks to the internet, we can all benefit from the combination of an aware mind and soul-gnawing tedium and or absurdity.

    After I took you to the philosophy section to show you her absense in person, you began to explain your personal theories to me.

    You explained to me that Ayn Rand is the first person to radically change philosophy in history. You explained to me, in a soft, intimate voice, that capitalism should in fact be called “liberalism,” due to the fact that it comes from the French word for “free,” and that capitalism makes us free.

    I would like to apologize at this point for the fact that my employer prevents me from engaging in political or philosophical discussions with customers, because instead of nodding quietly, at this point, what I really should have done was point out that liber actually comes from Latin, from which both the French and English words are derived. I also apologize for not explaining that capitalism actually falls under the subject of economics.

    15.12.2007 Asides, HUH!?, Humor, Wankers 4 Comments

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