rebeccakuder

A new use for butter


Although I’ve never cut her hair, my two year old has a very trendy hairstyle, apparently. (A friend told me that all the teenage girls are wearing a sort of shag/mullet style these days, similar to Merida’s.) So as a public service to those teens, I thought I’d post a new way to do the ‘do. Try this:

1) Have a responsible adult prepare toast with butter.
2) Sit in your high chair and eat some of the toast.
3) Periodically rub your buttery fingers through your hair, concentrating first on the back and sides. (Omit the front of your hair, unless you are going for an extra greasy look.) Make sure to get the “product” evenly distributed through your locks.
4) Look up at your parent or cat, and smile.

rebeccakuder

Micro$oft’s bad karma file format

When Micro$oft released Word with the .docx format, it caused nothing but problems for so many users. Sending files back and forth that were unopenable without a converter or open source word processor (such as NeoOffice) meant that anyone using older versions of Micro$oft’s own Word (with .doc extension) could not open the new .docx files. And of course it was slightly complicated for basic users to change the default file format in the new version of Word to save in an older format.

Now, it comes out that Micro$oft stole the software from a Canadian company.

Ha ha on Micro$oft! Merry New Year, suckers! (I’m sure they will find a way to snake out of it, but still, today, this verdict makes me happy.)

rebeccakuder

Dented Can of the Week: Hamster Hotel


I read about this place in Nantes, France, where you can pay to pretend you’re a hamster. It strikes me that this is a good way to kick off my optimistically planned, weekly column, “Dented Can of the Week.”

My friend Arden, who has developed an impressive, hilarious, and exquisitely effective argot over the decades, coined the term “Dented Can” to mean a person who was highly damaged at some point in life, and is still playing out, in highly unhealthy ways, the issues that lead to the dent/s. My interpretation of the metaphor includes the fact that a non-dented can might contact botulism from interaction with the contents of said dented can.

Can a whole concept hotel be a “Dented Can?” I guess this rodent-themed auberge is more playful than some weird places might be, but it struck me that places, as well as people, might fit into this category. Discuss…

rebeccakuder

More Nearsighted Monkey madness!

What on earth does getting this email on December 15 mean?

“We now have delivery date(s) for the order you placed on October 22 2009 (Order# 103-4260598-6558627):

Lynda Barry “Nearsighted Monkey”
Estimated arrival date: November 08 2010 – November 15 2010″

They’re testing me!

Actually, it kind of reminds me of Jim Krusoe’s novel, Erased, of which I’ve read about 60 pages so far. But in Erased, the protagonist is receiving postcards from his mother, who he believes is dead. Jim Krusoe’s novel is engrossing. But I want my Lynda Barry book!

rebeccakuder

The three layers

I am new to writing nonfiction. In working on my birth essay, I have really struggled about what should stay in, and what should not. As I mentioned here, it’s one of the hardest things I have ever written, maybe the hardest. I think I understand part of the reason why.

There seem to be at least three layers to the story:

1) The first layer is what happened. The truth. Or maybe The Truth. The Facts. The situation. The lived-experience.
2) The second layer is “Our story.” Like the details about the interpersonal relationships that were created and sustained on that day, during that prolonged moment.
3) The third, final, and possibly publishable layer: What I choose to construct so that it fits in the (hopeful) market and will be interesting to readers.

Readers might not care about the little inside jokes between my husband, my doula and me. They don’t necessarily care what the sky looked like as we drove to the hospital, and so many other textures and details that just don’t fit in the 2500 word limit.

It’s disorienting and difficult to construct something tidy from the messy, complicated, ineffable nine months, and then 36 bolded hours of my life.