Kate's Ink: Is This Thing On?

OK, if you haven’t noticed, most of my posts contain at least one “anyway” or “it is what it is” (sometimes both), with the latter being something I am desperately trying to excise from my vocabulary because I picked it up from He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. (The appropriate replacement is “what can you do?”)

Anyway (ahem), I am happy to report that neither tops the Most Annoying list compiled by Marist Poll. The dubious honor goes, hands down, to “whatever.”

Cue up the Liam Lynch and get out your ridiculously long scarves. It’s time to dance.

One of the hazards of being my cat is you have to listen to the little songs I make up to annoy you. Some are made up on the spot, but most are just real songs repurposed to increase their Cat Annoyance Factor (CAF). As the CAF increases, so do the angry kitty glares. Sometimes when the CAF reaches dangerously high levels, they angrily claw the furniture near me.

The obvious song for this occasion is Cake’s “Pretty Pink Ribbon,” right? Except I only know two lines off the top of my head, so the song goes something like, “Without her pretty green ribbon / Fred would end up just like me / Without her pretty green ribbon / La la la la see / La la la la la ribbon / La la la la la Fred / Without her pretty green riiiiiibboooooon / Fred would end up just like me.” My lyrics are pretty catchy, if I do say so myself.

Fred-Kitty is so lazy that when you put a ribbon on her back, she doesn't shake it off or chase it like most cats would. Instead, she just falls over.

I dipped my toe into editing some freelance articles last night. I read through pages and pages of the company’s documentation and style guides, trying to psych myself up for that first article. And behold — there it was! It was called “Fun Pokemon Games!” What a perfect way to start — though I was really surprised at their choices for “fun games” (specifically, none of the Gen 1-4 handheld games made the list).

Since then, I’ve read about bicycling through Norway, how to get a turkey hunting license in Florida, the roles of a labor scrubs nurse and the qualities of a music therapist … plus a few other things.

The subject line of my post refers to something I was told early in my editing days: Editors must know a little about a lot and a lot about a little. There’s actually a great, free e-book out there by Dan Reimold called A Little About a Lot and a Lot About a Little: 799 Tips Every Editor Should Know Before Setting Foot in a Newsroom. I mentioned it on my blog three years ago. (Three years already? Wow.) You can download a copy of the e-book here, but you’ll have to rename the downloaded file to add the .pdf extension.

With every piece I’ve ever edited, I’ve walked away with a tiny bit of information that might (but probably won’t) come in handy later. It’s not even stuff I could use on Jeopardy! Of course, now that I’ve made the claim I know a little about a lot, not a single interesting thing is crossing my mind. Hmph.

I have, however, just learned that a turkey grand slam is bagging one of each of the four subspecies of turkey within one year, something that can only be done in Florida because one subspecies of turkey is found only there. Name one situation in which I’m ever going to need that information during the rest of my life.

A few days ago, Grrface posted about her crazy hair, so at 3:30 a.m., I started writing about my own hair, particularly the rainbow it’s been over the years. Here goes. I’m even including some pics. Like Neil Gaiman warns on his Twitter account when he posts a blog post, “WARNING: Contains me.”

I was born with boring brown hair. Actually, full disclosure: I was bald until I was about 3. … Apparently my parents masked this by making me wear a bunch of hats.

I hated having boring brown hair, so I dyed it purple in high school (not the greatest color quality there, but that pic is a dozen years old). Not super-purple, but purple enough to push the limits at my crazy Christian school. My parents allowed me to dye my hair because they said it was a much more acceptable form of rebellion than drugs or alcohol.

I never took my hat off in college. Many people will attest to that. If they haven’t seen me since college, they’ve never seen the top of my head.

Since college, my hair has been (in no particular order) bleach blond, strawberry blond, black, dark blue, blondish with highlights, brown with highlights, black, “normal” red, darkish red, fire-engine red, pink (that thing I’m with is the top of my Trekkie Monster puppet from Avenue Q), back to black … and it’s faded from black to this darkish red, presumably because it was so red before. I take very, very good care of it and condition the poop out of it often.

I only pulled off the fire-engine red and the pink (well, and the dark blue, too, I guess) because I live 700 miles from home and have no chance of running into people I know. If we move back west at some future point, I’ll have to revert to hair colors that won’t offend anyone I know if I run into them at the grocery store. Maybe I’ll dye my hair black with Tiger blue highlights. (So you can picture it, Tiger blue is the color of Cookie Monster.) It would push the limits, but everyone loves the Tigers, so I’d be … patriotic or something.

Last but not least — most annoying hair issue: I have super-straight hair except for one lock on the right side of my forehead that is a perfect ringlet. It’s like half my forehead has converted to Hasidic Judaism.

… And that’s what I wrote at 3:30 a.m. and e-mailed myself. It’s been sitting in my inbox for days.

Yes, today’s P365 photo is of my TV! And what a lovely TV it is: The bottom lights up blue and it has an iPod dock built into the front. The TV sits on top of another TV, which was cheaper to keep around than buying a TV stand. Also making a cameo in this photo: our Wii and the pads we use to scrub Fred-Kitty’s feline acne.

But actually, I was taking a picture of the Aveeno commercial on the TV. I was pretty sure I saw one of those little warning notes at the end of the commercial, so I rewound. Sure enough: “No balloons got away.”

Now, here’s the thing: The commercial isn’t tongue-in-cheek at all. It’s all about how 100% of women see better elasticity in their face after using Aveeno wonder cream. (Elastic face: Streeeeetch and pop back!) And practically every commercial has a footnote of some sort these days: “Professional driver. Do not attempt.” “Screen images simulated.” “Toys do not actually move on their own.” “Your results may vary.” “Talk to your doctor if you have an erection lasting more than four hours.” So is the balloon footnote one last attempt at humor in an otherwise humorless commercial? Or is it a legitimate concern?

I’m sure birds eat balloons and get really sick, just like they eat the rice that’s thrown at weddings then get really big and explode. I’m not doing any research whatsoever here, but I’m going to assume the perfect storm for a bird is a balloon filled with rice. And maybe a window cleaned with Windex, if the Windex commercials are to be believed. My level of bird panic is hovering around “meh.”

And I’ll willingly admit that, as a kid, I wrote messages with my address on little pieces of paper, put them inside balloons and waited for someone to become my pen pal. But the world was a simpler place then. We didn’t have to worry about birds and balloons and whether people got my notes because, really, what’s the point of pen pals who likely live within a quarter-mile radius of my house?

No balloons got away during the filming of this commercial. Instead, the balloons were caught by a giant net the producers stretched over the entire sky, bringing the commercial's production cost well into the millions. Giant sky nets are not cheap.

Enough about balloons. My level of concern has dropped below “meh” and is closer to “why are you still typing?”

I got some awesomely awesome news today. A company called Demand Media has hired me as a freelance copy editor. It pays well (meaning it’s more money than I’m currently making) and I can do it from anywhere. Anywhere! I could edit on the beach! Or at Starbucks (Is that cliche? That’s totally cliche, isn’t it?)! Or on my couch with my blue pillow and my Tigers Snuggie (… which is where I am now, and is the most likely — and most boring — scenario)! In all seriousness, it’s perfect because I can work in Charleston or Memphis or anywhere in between. I can follow the good doctor/captain on his myriad travels.

I fit right in with their editing staff, which averages more than six years’ experience, but it’s still a first for me in a few ways. It’s the first time I’ve been the first-line and last-line (read: only) defense. It’s also the first job that has paid by the article. And it’s the first job that requires a minimum of 75 articles a week. They promised they had more work than editors right now, and they weren’t kidding: I just logged into my workdesk, and they’ve assigned me 10 articles … but there are 3,968 waiting to be edited. Oy. Guess help is hard to come by. (?)

This is definitely no substitute for a 9-to-5. I had the perfect job. I like to believe I was pretty good at it … and I miss it. I miss the company, I miss my coworkers, I miss playing with numbers and words — not many editors get that chance! Nothing short of having that job back is a perfect situation. But this freelance gig is definitely on the right track. And completely up my alley.

I’m so excited I’d gladly release a few balloons. Unfortunately, that requires helium and ribbon … and the balloons themselves. And there’s simply no way I could personally protect the birds.

Paul and I got the bright idea in 2006 to drive from Memphis to Manhattan to see Avenue Q. Seriously, we took a 19-plus-hour drive with the sole purpose of seeing one off-Broadway show. But it was pretty cool — we unintentionally attended a show followed by a few zeros (maybe the 2,000th show?), so a couple of the producers were in attendance and everyone in the audience got a special Q cupcake.

We also managed to make it to Spamalot and a few other NYC mainstays (MOMA, 30 Rock, the Museum of Natural History …) and had a fantastic time. We also stumbled into Rice to Riches and had the best rice pudding I’ve ever put in my mouth.

But I was kind of on a quest, as well — I wanted to visit the famed Ten Ren tea in Chinatown. So the night we drove in, we took a $40 cab ride to Chinatown (this was before we realized the subway was just as easy and way more economical) and trekked our way to Ten Ren. If I hadn’t been looking, we would’ve walked right past it. I was expecting something flashy; flashy it was not.

I walked away with some jasmine pearls and a couple packs of Eight Treasures tea.

Many tea houses and importers have their own version of Eight Treasures. I bought mine at the well-known (but small and very unassuming) Ten Ren in NYC's Chinatown.

Ten Ren’s Eight Treasures blend includes chrysanthemums, green tea, jujubes, Chinese wolfberries, longan, rock sugar, raisins and tremella. (Yeah, I bought it before I realized one of the ingredients is “Yellow Brain Fungus.”)

If you’ve never tried a chrysanthemum-based tea (my gosh, I’m sick of typing chrysanthemum), I’d suggest it — even without all the other stuff added. But this version of Eight Treasures is really quite good, and since it’s sealed up in little packs, I don’t have to hurry to enjoy each cup.

And because I can now buy it online, I don’t have to drive to NYC to buy more. But in a perfect world — a world where we were rich and had a bunch of free time — we would drive back to New York, this time to see American Idiot and Memphis. The trip’s practically planning itself: I have double the reason to go.