Brain Drain Blog

Archive for the ‘Daily Drivel’ Category

In memory of the day that marked the end of life as I knew it and my flight attendant career , I offer an adaptation (pulled from frantic writings) of my personal account. This was written to reassure family and friends of my safety, to reach out to those I hadn’t heard from, and to process the day’s events in some way that made sense, if only chronologically.

September 13, 2001
Tuesday and Beyond

On Tuesday I arrived at the Continental Training Center across the river from lower Manhattan at 8:30 a.m. My three hour drive from Albany that morning was basked in sunlight. Bands of fog, like webs of spun gold, stretched between the trees. By the time I reached the skyline of New York, it shimmered with the warm hues of sunrise against a crisp blue sky. I cursed myself for leaving my camera on the kitchen counter.

Upon my arrival, I sat in the Continental Training Center’s cafe reviewing for the FAA’s annual training. As I tried to recall things not published in our manual, things like weapons identification and hijacking procedures, people approached the windows with urgency saying, “You can’t see it from here.” I asked what they were looking for and couldn’t believe what I was told.

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Hello?my fellow lit, film and social justice?heads,

I am off to the small village of Have, Ghana to volunteer for four weeks and won’t be updating this blog while I’m away. I do hope to share my daily experiences at my travel blog, Alfajiri: Destination Africa, electricity permitting. Stop by and say hello. It’ll be nice to?converse with familiar folks from home.

See you in August!
- AtticFox

I learned last week through the WordPress pingback feature that?a substantial?number?of Brain Drain posts had been mentioned?on another site. As any blogger would probably agree, to see a pingback to what you’ve written?is an honor of sorts, a hat tip to your brilliance or at least a?mockery of?something quirky you’ve said. You smile,?feel full of yourself?for a minute (sometimes two)?and move on.?Instead, this?list of pingbacks aroused suspicion. This is a partial view:

• literature linked here saying, “Silence Speaks Louder In response to Richard Barsa …”
• literature linked here saying, “Anne Finch: Creating Her Own Space The poem ?The …”
• literature linked here saying, “Quills: Voyeur as the Voice of Reason The Voyeur a …”
• literature linked here saying, “Objectivity: A Question of Perspective In referenc …”

Although I’d like to think I’m that important, nobody is worthy of?being legitimately quoted?twelve times in a single day.

I followed the pings to?their source. There, a solid,?orange banner bore the photo of a young woman-child. She wore a skimpy, green silk halter and?cowboy hat. Her long, blonde highlights were?seductively fanned by some off-screen electronic device yet there was an innocence about her that threw me.?The small image was cocked to one side and framed as if it were a film negative but?that?didn’t produce the?negative feeling in my gut as much as the?title?”literature” in bold letters (with a?lower case?L and quotes included) under which were all my latest posts. Only one, Aisha in Rwanda: In Need of Humanity,?had been?offered up for redistribution, NOT?MY WHOLE DAMN BLOG.

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Senior Seminar Midterm Regurgitation?

Mary Robinson?s ?London Summer Morning? is a cheap rip-off of Swift?s ?A Description of The Morning?; she gives us a list of London sights and sounds ? but without the satirical bite.?
?? [Fictional] Professor Larry Hunt?

In Mary Robinson?s poem ?London Summer Morning? (1800) and Jonathan Swift?s ?A?

Description of The Morning? (1709), each poet similarly departs from the classical pastoral tradition. These poems record the less aesthetic details of urban noise and filth surrounding the daily preparations of industrialized London rather than idealizing the dawn as a time of beauty, peace and renewal. While this strong similarity exists with almost a decade between publications, this does not constitute a ?cheap rip-off? on the part of Robinson, regardless of her allusion to line seven in Swift?s poem. Poets have often shared common interest and observations of their mutual societal surroundings and have engaged in discourse with each other over time through the poetic craft. Robinson?s engagement with the subject matter of Swift?s poem, as well as her own surroundings, is no less valuable than Dryden?s allusions to Greek mythology in order to reference the common social shorthand of understanding.?

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My friend Erin keeps a blog called Feed Your Head? in which she regularly?compiles random information. As I read this month’s update, I couldn’t help but think of?several of those wiley pre-romantic?poets.

… even though the average American moves 11 times in their lifetime, 61% will die in the same state in which they were born. Cheers to Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” and all those farmers who probably died in the same town as where they were born.

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What British Romantic Poet are You? Your Result: You are George Gordon, Lord Byron! Byron was as well-known for his lifestyle as for his remarkable works. He was a poet, athlete, womanizer, and gunrunner, who was once accused of writing poetry “in which the deliberate purpose…is to corrupt.” He died at 36.
You are John Keats!
You are William Blake!
You are William Wordsworth!
You are Samuel Coleridge!
You are Percy Shelley!
What British Romantic Poet are You? Create MySpace Quizzes

Hmmm. Not sure how I got this result.

• My work is not remarkable… I’m a jane-of-all-trades?but?master of none
• I’m SO not athletic
• I am a woman, not a womanizer
• Gunnrunner? My dad made me shoot?a .22?when I was young, but I’m no Dick Cheney.
• I’m not out to corrupt anybody, just enlighten them, but I can see how?perspective would depend upon point of view.
• Last but not least, I’ve already outlived this dude.

Luciano Pavarotti passed away on the 6th of this month and, although I didn’t know him, it saddens me.

One of my favorite memories about being a flight attendant was a 1998 trip?to Italy. Pavarotti was seated in first class.?The famous tenor’s?manager had arranged with our airline?to provide?a special?meal on board. Once in the air,?Pavarotti stepped into our galley to be sure that his request?wasn’t causing any trouble. A jovial man, he made us laugh, broke out into song, and suggested we take a group photo. He was?singing as?he posed with some of our crew.?

Before the month was out, I just wanted to?recognize?Pavarattoi’s much appreciated good will and cheer that will not soon be forgotten.

Chaos has moved in. We are in the midst of installing the new wood floor… which must be done before we install radiant heat (as to avoid shooting nails through the tubing)… AND, we need to finish ripping walls out of the basement to pour new flooring over said tubes… AND yes, with 40 degree weather last night, we realize that time is of the essence. Can you say ?frenetic??

I came home from class yesterday to find the living room crammed into the dining room. Our friend brought his tools and his son, Zack. Poor Zack. He?promptly stepped in?dog shit. Still, we managed to move forward. The couches are now stacked in a way that defies gravity. Like ?The Fountain,? a urinal turned on its side in the name of modern art, they seem to say, “Sure, we ‘normally’ offer ass support, but if you sit here now, we’ll snap you up like a Venus flytrap because?you must BE an ass to have placed your faith in form alone.” The dog is lost, as are most of our shoes. His bed is shoved in a corner, our shoes in the office closet. All comfort, familiarity and order is destroyed in the name of two rows of boards which were?finally nailed into place prior to midnight.

When life gets turned upside down you notice things, like the table that has been quietly sitting in the main hall for three years. Last night, for the first time in forever, I thought, ?Hey, I like that table.” Of course, other things get lost, like my husband’s wallet, which he returned to retrieve only shortly after leaving the house. As for me? I realized during lunch, after spending an entire morning on campus, that I had been wearing one black and one brown boot. One lost, one found ? in each color.

When you no longer blend into the background, say, by not wearing the same pair of shoes, things begin to stand out. Following a tractor beam stare to the object of interest I discovered, much like found poetry, my new-found style. No fanfare for this nut. Instead? Instant mortification followed by paranoia. I wondered, ?Are other people looking at me? If so, have they noticed? Will they say anything? Are they thinking, ?That?s the dumbest shit that ever walked the face of the planet in two different boots???

I was not only hyper-aware of the impact my footwear had on the judgment of others, I was also forced to recognize the ways in which I feel pressured by the fashion police. Yes, even I thought, ?I am the dumbest shit that ever walked the planet in two different boots.?

Why should any of this matter as long as the body?s extremities are protected from the elements? Aren?t warmth and protection the premise of clothing at the most basic level? As I was reminded today with new vision, the frightening answer to that question is no. Clothing conformity matters because we assign meaning as a label-obsessed society. Breaking the rules reaps real consequences when we step outside our class, gender or ethnicity. The boots are no big deal, I realize, but they provided an interesting experiment, allowing me to feel society?s demand to define identity through appearance.

Here was my chance to throw back my head in defiant laughter, revel in the moment, and shove my feet in the face of the fashion police. Three blocks worth of prideful strides carried me to my car and I enjoyed every inch travelled. Will I do it again? Not intentionally. Besides, fashion anarchy is nothing new. (If you?ve ever seen pictures of St. Mark?s Place, NYC in the ?80s, you know that my boots and I offer no competition.) Still, I learned what it felt like to be on the outside, if only in my own head. You should give it a try sometime.

How does any of this relate to Winterson?s novel,?Written on the Body? Maybe I?ll explore that question tomorrow when I can?get down and dirty?with the book.?Tim just got?home.?I need to get down and dirty hauling out old carpet and feeling the brute force of a compressor and nail gun.

The Big, Boring Picture
Being an avid genealogist, I have scanned and catalogued every existing photograph, document, and memory, audio tapes of my paternal grandfather and great grandmother, and 1920′s video?of my maternal family. The amount of data has far exceeded the capacity of my computer and required housing on a 300 gig external hard drive. In order to share the wealth and make some space,?many boxes of originals have been packaged up and sent off to the living descendants of ancestral lines. Having nearly completed this treasure chest of family history, a small collection of movie reels were the last remaining, or at least “obvious”?unknown still in my hands.

The Latest Exciting Project
When Tim and I took out a second mortgage for a barn we are no longer going to build (a story I’ll tell later), he asked me what one thing I wanted to do for myself with the money. Eyeing up the set of three 8mm film reels on my desk, I decided it was time to bite the expensive bullet and convert them to DVD.

The Bigger Mystery
The blue reel came from my father and I knew it was my parents’ wedding, but the two gold reels were discovered in my grandfather’s basement among a pile of things stored by an assortment of nearby relatives. The date at the tail end of?one film suggested that?it could be my aunt’s wedding, but the other was unmarked in any way. Could this be footage of my cousins’ childhood? Another wedding? The possibilities were endless and thrilling.

The Big Surprise
Finding?the best deal on frame by frame transfer with film cleaning, I?boxed up my reels, tossing in one?of my husband’s father’s movies for good measure. I shipped them off with my PayPal charge of $341 allowing for the sound transfer option, but since there was no sound, I receive a notification of a partial refund with?this note:

We put 3 reels on 1 DVD. One reel contained adult content and we put that on its own reel. I hope you enjoy your movies once you get them and we look forward to serving you again in the future.

Adult content?!?!?

The Torturous Suspense
Both my cousin and I had been looking forward to seeing our grandparents dancing on the silver screen, not to mention all the great aunts and uncles who have since passed on. But adult content? Our minds raced through the horrific possibilities. Was it her parent’s honeymoon? My parents’? Could it have been on the reel from Tim’s side of the family? I tried to reassure us both that it was probably some harmless mooning or a flip of the bird. We held fast to that thought for a full two weeks.

The Box o’?Goods
Andy, the mailman, hand delivered my box as I was knee deep in staining our new 12 x 24 Dutch barn. The barn, complete with two garage doors, had been delivered and installed that Friday. “Hey, nice building! Is that from the Shedman?”

Normally, I would have loved to socialize with Andy and tell him all about how the Shedman removed two trees, leveled the lot, used a remote controlled hydraulic trailer to ease the pre-made building onto the six inches of gravel surrounded with 6×6 pressure treated beams, and how all this cost 1/4 of what a shell of a barn would cost to build — allowing us to install new heating in the house, get new wood floors, remodel the kitchen, and turn the basement into a studio… but I really just wanted to finish staining my last wall, clean up, and hit the DVD player. “Yep, Andy. It’s from the Shedman. Have a great day!”

The Big Reveal
I fumbled with the phone as I tore the tape from the box with “natural cedar” colored fingers.

My cousin?must have seen my number on the caller ID, answering with the words, “Did you get it?”

“Oh my God. The case says, ‘Kim Clune’s Memories – Contains Extreme Adult Material.’” I opened the case. “No! They did not! They inscribed the actual CD with the same thing! There is no label to peel!?I can’t even?take this to the dump!”

My cousin flat out laughed. Between snorks she told her husband?and I could hear him laugh too. “Is it in the player yet? What IS it?”

“I think it’s from the forties. There’s a nun looking at herself in the mirror with a very classic hairstyle. The image quality is more gray than black and white. It’s grainy, like a film of?a film… yet the framing is artsy. This reminds me of Un Chien Andalou.”

“Un What? A nun? Tell me it’s nobody we know.”

“I can’t tell yet… Um. Okay, she’s a very sensual and disrobed nun now… one with a facial massager… that’s no longer being used on her face. Oh, and she’s not from the forties. This is definitely the fifties.?”

“How do you know?”?

“The guy spying on her has a greased back DA haircut…”

“Tell me we don’t know who he is.”

“No idea, and particularly not from this angle. I’m getting better quality images,?but not of faces. Wow, hairstyles were much different back then, and I don’t mean on top…

This is definitely hard core and professionally done…

…I think I just blew about seventy bucks on bootleg fifties porn.”

Mystery Unsolved
Well, we know one thing for sure. Our familial camera crew had a very bad eye for composition. Comparing the well centered adult material?vs. the?lack of heads on bodies in both of the wedding?and toddler videos, not only were none of our family members in this film, we can rest assured that none of them were behind the camera either.?As for the source of this piece of… art, some things?might be?better left unsolved.

The joy of genealogy.?

The bees are back. To add insult to injury, after the Shock and Awe Campaign had proven impotent, we have been struck on our home turf once more.

Last month, I lifted the cover off the pristine white box of our wedding album and… screamed. There, curled up front and center, snuggled into the cover, was a mouse fully enjoying the Big Sleep. How he got there is a mystery, but one we will never forget.

None of the album’s pages were discolored and only the box, immediately stored in the outside trash, bore a tiny trace of fluids. There was nothing to clean since the critter looked somewhat freeze dried and intact, but I’m pretty sure the reason we didn’t notice the odor of rotting flesh is because the book absorbed every last perfumed ion. Just the day before my discovery, Tim and I had detected something pleasantly aromatic wafting through the house, something like Asiatic lilies, although we had none in bloom inside our out. That scent source was never discovered.

Our photographer gave us the big “SOL” response to our inquiry of remedying the situation, but I refused to give up. It was heart breaking not to try SOMETHING. I?placed the album in a Hefty bag along with tons of coffee filters filled with baking soda. (Tim was sure to tell me that even if this worked, he was never going to touch our pictures again.) Two days later, after a bout?with high heat and humidity, the book smelled far worse than death. I gave in. We took the entire wedding sack to the dump.

Albumless and sad, we are hanging in there. Nearly a month later, we are still awaiting a quote on the replacement. Like we have a spare $G or two hanging around for a reprint…

Happy first anniversary to us.