I Had A Shoggoth
Mamacita says: Please watch through to the end. My daughter sent me this video today, and I’m still laughing out loud. I’m also exhausted, watching this wonderful ASL sign-language lady, Judi Miller. The song is hilarious, and Tom Smith is brilliant, but it’s the interpreter who steals the show. Such grace – honestly, she turns this language into a dance.
This is a kids’ song, written for The Funny Music Project, and performed live at MarCon 2008. ASL signing by the amazing Judi Miller, who had no idea what was coming.
A good kids’ song, naturally, just like a good kids’ book, will appeal to ALL ages and absolutely WILL NOT “talk down” to the audience, and this song certainly appeals to everyone, unless you’re a humorless twit.
All language is ART, of course, but even though the song is funny and witty and cool and completely off the wall, the sign language for it lets us see the ART, and no doubt about it. Judi Miller dances with infinite grace throughout this song about vampires and hunchbacks and monsters and various genuinely funny very odd lyrics and nonsense words. You’ll be worn out at the end, too. Enjoy.
I wish I’d had this song at Camp Towaki. It would have fit right in.
Things Nice People Already Know
Mamacita says:
1. If anyone in your family/group can’t behave properly in public, that person should be left at home. Nice people don’t permit their children – or anyone else – to disturb others in public. This applies to restaurants, theaters, schools, churches, and anywhere else people congregate. Behave, or go away. Period. If your kids won’t obey you, please feed them at home, or eat in public only in the off-hours. You might also want to look into why they won’t obey you. Are you a pushover? Good parents are not pushovers.
2. Litterbugs are criminals. A nice person will put a poopy diaper in his/her pocket or purse before he/she will leave it on a park bench or by the side of the road where others can be grossed out by it. People who flick ashes or – even worse – drop a used cigarette on the ground are criminals, too. Dirty, dirty people! Nasty people who befoul the world.
3. If you are a person who leaves a mess on the table in a fast-food restaurant instead of throwing it away when you leave, please see #2.
4. People who do not flush are not nice people.
5. People who bring their portable offices to a busy restaurant during rush hour and spread it out over a four or six-person table and LINGER, are not nice people. If the restaurant manager permits this, he/she is not a nice person, either.
6. Regarding #1: It isn’t always children who cause disturbances and ruin the morning/afternoon/evening/meal/experience/life for other people in public, either. Some of the worst theater offenders are old people who have forgotten how to whisper, and men who require a full meal during the show. People with miniature bladders who don’t sit on the aisle aren’t nice, either.
7. Latecomers who insist on being seated after the show has started are not nice people. Theatre managers who permit this are not nice, either.
8. Any person, regardless of age*, who does not understand the concept of “indoor voice” and will not change his/her volume upon request, is not a nice person. *If the disturbance is caused by an infant, the infant should be removed from the room by the parent and soothed. IF the infant calms down and can be quiet, then and only then should he/she be allowed to return to the public place where nice people are trying to eat, experience something, listen, read, etc. There is nothing on this earth lovelier than well-behaved children, and few things more obnoxious than a brat. Except maybe the parent of a brat who won’t acknowledge or take charge of his/her child’s public behavior, ie require that it be changed, or remove the child until such time. . . What’s that? Your children don’t obey you? Well, then, you’ve got far worse problems than we can address here, don’t you. Shh, I think I hear the Jerry Springer people trying to contact you.
Item: I am not talking about special-needs people here. Don’t start in with me.
Item: Yes, I said “brat.” Perhaps if we all started using the word “brat” again, there might be fewer brats.
9. Nice people sit in their assigned seat. That includes gymnasiums, airplanes, classrooms, theaters, and wherever you go where you have a ticket with a seat number on it. I’m sorry you paid good money for a bad seat. Next time, buy your ticket earlier and purchase a good seat. Yes, they cost more. Nice people already know that, too. People who insist on sitting in someone else’s paid seat are not only not nice, they are morons.
10. If everyone in the world would simply buck up and behave themselves wherever they go, the whole world would be pleasant and infinitely more fair. Nice people have always known this, but they are constantly thwarted by people who choose to behave as they please wherever they are. Nice people are usually too nice to make a fuss when they are confronted by these bad people, but I think perhaps it’s time the nice people stood up for themselves and insisted that bad people be escorted out of any public place when they act up, and forbidden the premises until such time as they can prove improvement.
I’m not in a bad mood today, really I’m not. I just get extremely frustrated by our society’s constant catering to the lowest common denominator all the time.
Our courts allow absurd money-wasting lawsuits to take up time that would be better spent on other matters. Old women so stupid they hold a cardboard cup of coffee between their thighs sue when they give it a squeeze and GASP, who knew? it burned them, and WIN that suit. (For the record, I feel no pity for this woman at all. Hot coffee will burn skin. Did she really not know that? She did NOT deserve that settlement money. She is not a nice person.) Managers and business owners are so afraid of lawsuits from jerks, and bad PR, that they’ve let the bad people walk all over them. Maybe if we made it extremely unpleasant for people to misbehave in public, and pointed and laughed a lot, there would be less of it. Then again, expecting everyone to behave properly might be a little hard on some people’s SELF ESTEEEEEEEEEEEM.*
*Which is viable only when it is honestly EARNED, by the way. Self-esteem is not a given; it’s not even a right. It’s an earned honor. EARN IT. Then maybe you’ll have it. If you don’t earn it, you don’t deserve any.
Ten Things Tuesday
Mamacita says:
1. My sourdough starter is over twenty years old. The bread is delicious. Whenever I use it – and it’s been a while; the starter is currently residing in the freezer – I think about pioneer families, with starters that went back for generations; some starters made the long trip across the sea, even. This makes me really happy to think about. I love the part of “By the Shores of Silver Lake” where Laura explains to Mrs. Boast why the biscuits are so light and tasty. They were all astonished that Mrs. Boast didn’t know anything about sourdough bread, and frankly, so am I, today. In “The Long Winter,” Pa mentions to Ma that he noticed she’d gotten her sourdough working again, and Ma replied that a body didn’t need yeast to have light, delicious raised bread. And so we don’t.
2. I am very upset when I meet someone who has never read the Little House books.
3. I am actually horrified when I meet someone who has never heard of the Little House books.
4. A home that contains children should be required by law to have copies of the entire Little House series* and the parents should be ashamed of themselves if they don’t read them aloud and do a lot of the things mentioned in them with their children. MY mother took us on a road trip to Laura’s last home, for crying out loud. I know, I know, you’re all busy and you all prefer electronic games. MAKE THE TIME. This is important, dammit. Are you the adult in your home or not? Do the job properly. Those horrid, insipid, television episodes most decidedly do NOT count.
5. Why would a student who didn’t have a computer at home sign up for an online or hybrid class? It beats the hell out of me, these things they do
6. It is a sad fact that many just-out-of-high-school students fully expect paper and pencils to be supplied by the college professor. It is also a fact that I blame this trend on the dastardly and communistic community supplies policy many public schools and/or their teachers force their students to do.
7. I was once punished in fourth grade for. . . wait for it. . . having too many library books in my desk. To compound this dreadful sin, all of the books were from sections too advanced for fourth graders. What might the other kids think? Did I want to make them feel bad? Well, frankly, I didn’t care then and I don’t care now. My reading habits were my business, then and now, and I still loathe that teacher for making my business her business. I loathe her for many other reasons, too. She was ALMOST as interesting as a box of hair. Not quite, but almost. The box of hair still had her beat.
8. The one and only thing I remember about sixth grade was that Mr. Norman taught us how to wire a little desk lamp. Math? English? Science? History? I’m drawing a blank. Two fascinating hours out of an entire school year of tedium.
9. I am probably the only kid in the history of the world who hated recess with an unholy passion.
10. When a kid demonstrates mastery, the kid should be automatically moved on and up. Why don’t we do this? It’s CRIMINAL to make a kid sit and endure months of excruciating boredom, waiting for the other kids to catch on. Why do our schools do this to the cream of the crop? Oh yes, I remember now. It would cost money to move them up, and we musn’t do anything to disturb the self esteem of the lowest common denominator. The self esteem of the cream doesn’t matter; they’ll get by, somehow. Bullshit mahoney.
*I know, there are chapters that contain things that some people consider politically incorrect. How sad, that so many people have no concept of “CONTEXT.” I mean, jeepers, people! Get a grip. It’s history, for crying out loud. That’s how it was, BACK THEN. Deal with it.
Doesn’t Mamacita ever blog about positive things? Sure I do. Stay tuned. You have to catch me at the primo momento.**
**I never pretended to speak a foreign language. I only pretend to be witty.
I have stayed awake all day by inhaling one ice-cold Diet Coke after another. I didn’t have any solid food until nineish tonight. That’s not a real excuse for being snarky, but it’s all I’ve got.
Yeah, well, my children love me. So there. (I bought Belle a lamp tonight. She HAS to love me for a few days.) (It has a lovely bright red shade.) (It was NOT on sale.) If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.
