A group of people sick to death of the rollercoaster of fundamentalist manifestos have formed to refocus themselves (and whoever wants to join them). The Manifesto Group seeks to ‘reclaim the questioning and creative spirit of the Enlightenment, particularly the idea that human beings can make their own history.’ Bravo, I say.

It’s hard sometimes to remember that choosing your philosophy isn’t a multiple-choice thing, even though that’s obviously true. We’re all surrounded by (mass media) voices all the time, but doesn’t it seem like all the voices are saying more or less the same things? They fall into a few camps, but there’s not nearly as much variation as one might hope. Even on this here magickal interweb, most of the prevalent philosophies can be loosely classified in the same terms: liberal, conservative, fundamentalist, and crazy talk. Of course that doesn’t mean that each of us can’t have our own way of reading the world, and of course that way can be as optimistic and active or passive and pragmatic as we like. But it’s good to be reminded. And it’s even better to see people taking the initiative to bring others along with them.

So, again: bravo.

I’m sorry, but when this headline surfaced in my Google Reader, I had to double and then triple-check to make sure it wasn’t 3 years old. Or 5 years old. Or 11 years old. Honestly, have they ever released an OS on time?

When things get stressful, it’s good to have lovely warm fuzzy creatures who love you unconditionally to curl up with and hide from the world. And I’m not talking about boys – I don’t like them all that fuzzy. I’m talking about lovely little kittens.

I’ve recently adopted two gorgeous 6 month old tabby-and-white cats. No, I haven’t given them names yet – I’m waiting until they’re brave enough to spend less time under the bed and I see their personalities. This is beginning to happen now, (scant) evidence of which can be found on Flickr.

Tuesday the 14th
They arrived around 8:30 in the evening. They came together in a carrier: one huddled in the corner, the other hidden under the cat bed put there to make them comfortable. We opened the door to the carrier and still they sat inside it, not sure whether to come out, not knowing where they were or what was next. When they did come out they dashed immediately for cover underneath the kitchen cabinets, where they stayed until I went to bed. I didn’t see them again, except as pairs of ears and eyes in the dark, for days.

Wednesday and Thursday
Their first few nights in the flat, they made an unholy racket. Every morning I got up and expected to see nothing but wreckage when I came out of the bedroom. Amazingly, though, their messes are confined to small corners, and they’ve not broken anything at all. Yet.

Friday
I woke to the sound of purring coming from under the bed. This made me grin like a fool even through my hangover – they’d settled in, they were happy. But still, I was the unknown quantity – yes, I supply food and clean litter, but was I just another temporary mama? They hadn’t quite worked it out yet.

Sunday night
They finally worked themselves up to playing with me. Still with a toy (fuzzy fabric on a stick) but they’ll pounce closer and closer. Now, when they come through the lounge while I’m on the sofa, they stop and watch me for a bit instead of dashing past, low to the ground, trying to be invisible. They’re still skittish when I get up and walk around, but they’ll stay and watch at least as often as they run for cover.

Tuesday the 21st
And then there was last night. I got home and, as usual, lifted the bedskirt to greet the girls. I talked to them for a minute or so and one started to purr. Then she came over and sniffed at my fingers. And then she came back and rubbed her face against my hand. Breakthrough! She still wouldn’t let me stroke her for very long, and she wasn’t keen on coming out from under the bed, but I’m being allowed to make physical contact. It’s only a matter of time before the three of us are curled up on the sofa watching old episodes of Buffy on DVD. Which will do me the world of good.

I do love Phineas.

One of the best things about music is how when it’s good you can lose yourself in it completely. But what’s equally good if not better is when the opposite happens. Not that you find yourself, per se, because that would be pretentious nonsense – but rather when you hear it and parts of you that you’d forgotten could be moved stir and shift and stretch and grow and you’re welling up with it and it’s beautiful. And that sounds like pretentious nonsense too, but I can’t help it.

I went to see Death Cab For Cutie at the Astoria last night and it was that kind of night. Ben and the gang make beautiful, clever music, but I had forgotten the power it packs when they play it live. Lush and layered guitars give way to intricate jazz-inspired rhythms and then spiral back up into a joy that makes your heart hurt. You find yourself grinning like an idiot and your eyes are full of tears and you’re so inside the moment that when it’s over you realize you’d lost all sense of time.

See, I’ve been trying to write about the show off and on since I got home last night and all I keep coming up with is this rubbish. So I’ll just say it was beautiful and fantastic and you should have been there and I’ll leave it at that. Hie thee to the gig the next time they’re in your town. You won’t regret it.

And to the band (on the very very off chance you’re reading this): thanks, guys. You made my whole week.

*Mr. Vonnegut has been known to say, “the only proof of the existence of God is music.”

This is too good not to share: gorgeous photos of food transformed into landscapes, complete with tiny people (and animals).

Thank heaven for BoingBoing.

The office in which I work is probably best described as XTreme Open Plan. It’s noisy and really ill-advised for agoraphobics, and can get pretty depressing if you sit toward the middle of the building – while the sky outside the windows is more often than not gray, at least you’ve got a constant reminder that there is a sky out there, which makes it somehow easier to be indoors. But probably the handiest (and most dangerous) thing about the office design is how easy it is to eavesdrop. Stand around in the right general area long enough and you’ll hear all sorts of Secret Stuff. Then again, you’ll also hear all sorts of rubbish. So I’ve learned to tune my ears to pick up only the more-than-marginally interesting or excruciating or absurd. It’s the absurd things that stick, usually. Today’s gem, which I just heard repeated, increasingly emphatically, about 3 times in a single conversation: “THE PROCESS HAS TO BE SEEN TO BE DONE!”

So there you have it. Does this mean that if I can’t see the process, I can’t follow it? Or that I have to make an effort to appear as though I’m following it even if I can’t see it? Or that I have to be able to see it in order to appear as though I’m following it even when I’m not? No idea. If I want to find out, I’ll probably have to fill in a form.

In triplicate.

In keeping with the ongoing series of nostalgia triggers, while I was digging through old artwork for a piece to adorn the cover of this year’s V-Day CD, I stumbled upon a set of photos of myself and the Last Great Love of my life. Of course, I couldn’t keep myself from looking. What’s odd is that they didn’t make me despondent. What’s odd is that while I felt a pang – a not inconsiderable one – I feel better than I suspect I would if I hadn’t stumbled across them.

I know V-Day is supposed to be the day that I think about how I’m not out with someone I’m in love with, and that I’m supposed to resent all the happy couples in the world… and ok, yeah, I do resent them a little, but what those photos brought back is the memory of what’s worth waiting for. The archive was called ‘Retardeds’ – so named by the friend who took the photos (at mine after dinner one night), because, as he put it, “I’ve never seen two intelligent people so completely retarded over each other.”

And much as there are Sundays when I wish I had someone with me in Columbia Road, and rainy days that fairly beg for curling up on the sofa a deux, it’s also good to bear in mind that Retarded doesn’t come along very often. And that’s what it’s all about. That’s worth just about any risk (and I say this now even though that breakup put me, quite literally, on the floor) – even just five minutes of that kind of joy is reward enough.

So all you boring people? Y’all can fuck off. And retards, raise your hands.

Since when is the whole of winter littered with little nostalgia-triggers? Eh? Or is this just a sign I’m getting old? (I’m still not buying that one.)

But shuffling through my RSS subscriptions this morning, I saw the NYT article on the Blizzard of ’06 and wished myself there. The last snowfall as big as that one that I can recall (and it might not have even been that big, but I was a lot smaller) was in the 70s, when we were living outside of Detroit. There’s something about going out and playing in snow up to your thighs (or big huge piles of leaves) that’s oddly comforting – maybe because it evokes those times when you were little, and your mom would put you in your snowsuit and you’d toddle out into the bright white drifts and come back in only hours later when you probably couldn’t even feel your legs anymore, and there was a piping hot cup of cocoa and a plate of cookies waiting for you.

So, friends in New York, do me a favour: take the Subway up to Central Park and go play in the snow. Then wander into the Library at the Hudson, or the nearby fire-warmed bar of your choice, and demand a piping hot cup of cocoa. And some brandy. Go on, you know you wanna…

I’ve recently finished this book, and really enjoyed it. The bit about the white noise at the end of an LP and how when you’re with the right person it can go on and on and you just don’t care had me welling up with nostalgia and grinning over the memory of dorm rooms and Cocteau Twins records and kissing my first boyfriend back in 1986.

But the entry for ‘Common’ brought back memories too, what with its slipperiness and ever-shifting quantification – which seemed weird because it wasn’t a word that was used in my family vernacular. Lying in bed that night, it occurred to me what it is that’s so familiar about it. Unlike most of the American kids I knew, who had things that were Allowed and Not Allowed, generally for either rational or obvious or because-i-said-so reasons, in our house, with my Very Geman mom, there was the deeply opaque concept of Proper. Or, more to the point, Not Proper. It was virtually guaranteed that anything I wanted to do, right up until I moved out of the house permanently (and indeed for some time afterward – I can’t quite come up with when it disappeared from common usage) would be Not Proper. This included but was by no means limited to:

• going to unchaperoned parties
• giggle fits
• moving in with my boyfriend after I graduated from university
• befriending people who were Not Proper (which list was something of a moving target itself)
• drinking in the company of my friends, unchaperoned (drinking at family events and dinner parties was all right and Proper)
• smoking
• swearing
• slouching
• being unladylike*
• kissing (until I was about 21, then it just wasn’t discussed. I’m assuming it’s still unladylike)
• showing off
• writing insincere Thank You notes (or, heaven forbid, not writing them at all)
• being late
• bad table manners
• folding jumpers improperly
• not tidying one’s room (and don’t even get me started on the concept of tidy)
• seeing films that were Not Proper (which had at least as much to do with personal taste as with MPAA ratings)
• listening (until I was 13 or so) to rock music; after that, a lot of music simply became ‘unladylike’
• dishevelment
• sex

* This was an excellent twist – the concept of unladylike could easily have been confused with Not Proper-status (and indeed, everything that was Not Proper was definitely not ladylike either), but there was something else about it – an aesthetic component, governed by my mother’s personal preferences. Therefore, most of the haircuts (and a fair few hair colours) I’ve had for the past 10 years have been unladylike (and by extension Not Proper), as have been many of my favourite clothes, and every pair of platform shoes I ever owned. Though she might have been right about those.

That makes it sound like my childhood was entirely spent struggling to live up to some unattainable standard, sitting in constricting clothing in stiff and straight-backed chairs but I can assure you this is not the case. While Not Proper was a more or less constant presence, it (strangely) didn’t all that often lead to proper punishment. It was more a psychological tool, meant to modify behaviour through guilt (a mother’s best friend), which only sometimes worked. My friends and I looked on it as a hilarious running joke for the most part, and as such, spent quite a good deal of time coming up with ever more inventive improprieties.

So if you need a way to keep your kids in line and you don’t fancy using Common, try Not Proper. With a less extensive history and lower usage, you can probably get away with using it to discourage pretty much anything – and while it might not work, at least it’s a new and different approach. Just don’t try using it on me.