to top

Two Left Feet

A long time ago in a place far, far away, a kindergarten class decided to do a dance for an upcoming recital. The choreographer had the little girls in a formation with the tallest in the middle, gradually tapering down to the shortest at the ends. The girls practiced for weeks and weeks and looked forward to showcasing their talent. The day of the recital arrived. It was a full house. Relatives traveled from hours away to see the kids perform. When the time came for the girls to do their dance, the teacher realized that although they had practiced many times in different rooms, they had never practiced ON STAGE. "Oh well," she figured. "They know their routine well enough. It's too late...

Continue reading

The Other Arm

I'm not a very affectionate person. I don't coo at babies. I feel uncomfortable when people stand or sit too close to me. I have trouble saying "I love you" even to my family. And I don't like cuddling. Yes, that's right. I'm a girl and I don't like cuddling. Because I need my own space when I sleep, dammit. This causes a bit of a problem because J is a cuddler. He loves to cuddle. He's always begging and whining for me to cuddle with him. Being the dutiful girlfriend that I am, (ha - that sounds funny even to me) I oblige most of the time. If he is lucky and he catches me when I'm mucho tired, I will...

Continue reading

I Have Super Mutant Powers

...or so I think. I had written before that I have a gift of seeing color. I always saw colors others couldn't...but I just brushed it off as one of those weird, quirky things about me. Now I've discovered that there may be a scientific explanation: I may be a tetrachromat. A what-a-mat? A genetic mutation that allows some women (sorry guys, girls only) to see 100 million colors as opposed to the normal 1 million. Here is the full article from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Some women may see 100 million colors, thanks to their genes Wednesday, September 13, 2006 By Mark Roth, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Susan Hogan can't be sure, but it wouldn't surprise her if she turned out to be a tetrachromat. A tetrachromat is a woman who can see four distinct ranges...

Continue reading

Jenny vs. Destiny

Is this a deep, thought-provoking, "where is my life going" entry? No. Destiny is a person's name. Keep reading - it gets interesting. Ever since I switched my cell phone number two months ago, I've been receiving numerous calls for someone named Destiny. I had just figured that my new number must be a recycled number, and that the calls will eventually stop. But they never stopped. Sometimes I would receive up to 5 calls a day asking for Destiny. Several times these calls came in the middle of the night. And they were all from men. I should have suspected something. But I never would've guessed...

Continue reading

Music as Visual Art

Are you a musician? Do you play a musical instrument? Do you know how to read music? If any of these questions pertains to you, you might be interested in a composer named George Crumb. Crumb is famous for distorting his scores in shapes indicative of the mood he's trying to set. Case in point, the spiral-shaped score for "Spiral Galaxy: Aquarius": Try playing THAT. I wish I had a piano handy. A few more examples of his scores can be viewed here. (And if you can read Japanese, maybe you can tell me what the site says.) Reading about Crumb reminded me of one of my favorite painters, Wassily Kandinsky. Considered to be one of the fathers of abstract expressionism, Kandinsky was fascinated with the emotional response evoked...

Continue reading