Snow community is funny. Other weirdos out with dogs and cameras were jolly and taking our pictures and one added to our gallery with a small snow dog and it was all chatty and friendly. If I walked over to the park right now, no one would talk to me except for the drunken guys who like my "smile".
New York was a lot of fun, until the Americans ruined it.
My first thought was, "what the hell is this man's idea of "mainstream"? My second thought was, "what, back when it was New Amsterdam?" My third thought was, "ah. The smugness of hippie librarians".
And actually, combining his thoughts with Ms. Powell's--I've never known a witty hippie. Does that mean they don't feel pain? I thought so.
12.22.03 I Blame Video Games
When I was 19, I had dinner at a house in San Jose for some reasons that will go unexplained here. I remember two things about it. One: I was given an enormous number of coupons for free cones from Baskin and Robbins, as the lady of the house worked in their corporate offices. Two: I was informed that "when I got older", I wouldn't find time to read much at all. I argued that the amount of time in a given day would remain the same, and reading or not was simply a matter of priority. Well, that and insomnia.
But I was just tallying up my books for the year, and comparing it to the last two years, and see it's dropped considerably--I'll barely hit 200, down from a peak of nearly 400 just two years ago. Partly, it's my surgery: I was in such a fog between June 13th and early August, I didn't read much at all. Partly, it's because of games like Baldur's Gate and D&D Heroes and Mario Party and Muppet Party Cruise. Partly, it's seeing a lot more movies than I used to. The first is excusable. The second two are a shift in priority. I think there's one more reason that I started to see the effects of last year: the more I write of my own, the less tolerant I am of other's words. It's not that I'm all that; it's that now instead of reading some amazing book and wanting to read all that author has ever written, I read some amazing book and get all inspired to go work on my own Amazing Books of the Future. I guess that counts as a shifting priority, but it just feels like ego until I've got a book contract or three.
Actually, it feels like id.
12.18.03 Grr!
Obviously, something like this could have been done in most any administration; just like any large corporation, sometimes things change and it's not exactly a lie. Other times, like right now, I just get so mad that I don't bother caring about bias. 1.7 billion versus 166 billion? Um, what?
On another angry note, I would like to ask someone to explain to me how handing off nearly 4 billion in government "incentives" to Boeing results in a good thing for the state. Apparently, approximately 1000 new jobs will be created, and each Boeing job will somehow result in another job being created in other industries. (Presumedly, not all of them at minimarts near the Everett plant?) So. 4 billion for ~2000 jobs. Boeing has laid off 36,420 folks since December 2001. 975 of them occurred just last month. If every time a Boeing employee is hired it makes another job, that means that Boeing is indirectly responsible for another 36k jobs being lost since 12.01, doesn't it? I know that the state doesn't actually have 4 billion in cash to use for retraining these 73,000 people, and many of them likely don't want retraining anyway, and even if they were retrained it doesn't mean they'd be able to find some other layoff-proof job. But I don't get it. If small businesses across the state were given similar tax breaks, might not the job total increase for at least 2,000 jobs? And might that be better--to be spread thinly instead of concentrated with one company? I don't get it, not at all.
12.17.03 Dressie Bessie
Thanks to Brothermine for the link that has given me my true name. Captain Bess Cash. You may call me either Good Queen Bess or Captain Cash; I am perfectly contented with both. Good Queen Cash? After my book contract comes through. Or a giant bag of money falls out of the sky onto my head.
Electrolicious is working on something I find interesting. Her thought is that jobs we love can be bad for us; jobs we like allow us to continue doing what we love for fun. I noticed a while ago that eating in restaurants is hard to do for fun anymore, even when it is for fun. But reading books hasn't gotten less fun--in fact, reviewing them makes me think and pay more attention to all the books I read, which is a very good thing. Even though I get cranky when I read a half dozen bad books in the same week. I'm not sure what it is exactly--I haven't thought enough about it yet and don't want to just spout--but it seems like most everyone I know reacts with over-the-top passion to one of the first (often the actual first) "real" jobs they get. It's not about making big money or having an office or anything, although those things can be part of it. It's about thinking you can Change the World and healthy arrogance and shameless passion and ignorance of deadening beaurocracy and a tendency to treat coworkers like siblings and bosses like parents and an inability to establish boundaries with them any more than we can typically establish boundaries with family at that age.
I am still arrogant and passionate and think I can Change the World, but am better about boundaries and don't have any coworkers and little beaurocracy. I also pay most of the bills with other sorts of writing, which is sort of Electro's point.
I thought I had something to say on the subject of Mr. Hussein, but I just got all sad trying to put my feelings into words. How about this: stop debating the details or feeling smug for knowing what you know, and pony up some bucks for something you think adds some kind of beauty or justice to the world.
12.12.03 Six Months Later
My fusion surgery was six months ago tomorrow. Yesterday, I checked in with the surgeon to go over a CT scan I had two weeks ago. I had the scan because Doctor Man wanted to see if any metal pins were rubbing on my sciatic nerve. I was sure they weren't, and I was right. However. It may be that one side of my fuse site didn't actually fuse. I had another set of xrays, which were also inconclusive. One side looks different--even my laygirl eyes can see that--but "different" doesn't necessarily mean "unfused". The only way to know for sure at this point is to have another surgery. If they open me up and find it's not fused, they will yank more bone out of my hip and fix it.
No. No, thank you. No way in hell, thank you. Open me up to discover I'm just fine and the scans were misleading? Open me up to have more holes drilled in my hip? How about "none of the above". My plan is to try and forget about the appointment for now and start my physical therapy and keep trying to feel better and have another CT scan in three months or so.
And with all my whining, it's important to remember I got basically what I expected out of all this. I was told to expect a three-point reduction on the pain scale. I've gotten that. I've also gotten a harder-to-quantify benefit of shorter recovery times when I do something "stupid", like bake cookies and cook dinner on the same day, or go to a movie at Cinerama, or sit at a bar for longer than an hour or try to put in an actual 6-hour work day. After any of those things, I am not actually crippled the next day--a few hours of lying down and I actually start feeling better. It's good; not perfect by a long shot, but good.
12.10.03 Maw-widge
I was married for a brief period almost 14 years ago. The ceremony was performed in a hospital chapel (Boom's pop had a cardiac arrest the Monday before and we moved it from the Arboreteum) by the son-in-law of the woman we had agreed to have perform it. No explanation as to why he was there and not her; he had a Sylvester the Cat speech impediment that had my X and I snorting and giggling through the entire deal. In many of the photos, he was unzipping my Glinda the Good Witch dress, so I am half turned and smacking him to get him to stop. When I was presented with my engagement ring, we were surrounded by about 70 AA members who were all outdoing each other with stories of what awful people they used to be. Basically, it was a farce, from start to finish.
So. Fast-forward these almost-14 years, the last almost-six of which have been in the company of Sweetie. So amazing: 68 whole months and we still like each other! Crazy! For the last couple of years, I have been thinking far too much about the issues of marriage. Early this year we signed a bunch of paperwork that gives us all the various rights (our wills) and obligations (power of attorney) of being married, without actually Doing It. (actually there's been a lot of Doing It. heh.) There are a lot of reasons for us to not make it official, one of which is covered here, and many more are discussed in the fabulous book written by these people. There is one reason for us to make it official: sometimes it seems like a fun, good idea. Especially after I found the drive-thru chapel. Marriage seems like it might be ok for us; it's the ceremony that is almost guaranteed to make people feel like asses. While I will probably always think unmarried relationships have lots of good things about them, I also think that not getting married as a protest seems a little like not voting as a protest--there are obviously better ways of fixing the problem.
Geez. How did people procrastinate at work before the Internet?
12.9.03Goodness
While I'm sure news reports will turn up donations from Champions and Display and Costume, and possibly even Elvis's estate, for right now this makes me very, very happy. Where is my Cabbie Spice?
In other news, the sun failed to rise. I can't verify this online, but just look out the window. See? No sun.
12.8.03 My Pants, They Are The Cranky
Actually, my pants, they are the linty. Today's Hot Tip: Don't wash light-colored corduroy with black cashmere. Unless lint is the new bellybutton ring. If that's the case, I'm the most fashionable girl in town.
Of course, I'm that already. I am also Gigantor.
My long-time fussiness with modern playwrights is spreading to fussiness with modern novelists. It's not easy to remember that most of the pop novelists from what I like to call "yesteryear" just aren't around anymore; they died in print the year after they were born in print. That will happen to most every one of the books I've read this year, except oldies like Middlemarch and Pri-N-Prej. For most of them, it's about a year in print longer than they deserved. So much for immortality through art. I sometimes worry about what might happen once I've read every old novel there is (still published or readily available); at my reading speed, this is actually, sadly possible I think. If everyone I liked started writing a novel right now, that should give me an extra year or so of reading pleasure before I die. Get on it, won't you? It's that or subscribe to RD. What do you suppose the "mystery gift" is?
I am now taking a whole pill of Celexa each day, up from one half. My regular "lack of concern" is still present. So is my regular back and leg pain. Tra la.
12.5.03 Songs and Laments
Today's choice is between obesity and ugly death. I just received 36 fresh-baked lemon pies, each containing 300 calories. I could eat four pies a day and actually lose weight, if I didn't eat anything else! Of course, that would lead to some combination of scurvy and beri-beri, hence the ugly death. In the meantime, sing with me:
Pie! PiepiepiePie! Pie!
Yay, Pie!
I should never re-read my rants. Yesterday's windy rant mentioned that women had been fighting against unfortunate body issues forced upon them by society/media "for at least a decade", and of course DUH, moron, how about "forever". How about Louisa May Alcott raging against sticking young women in corsets. How about women in Africa and what I like to call Persia trying to prevent their daughters' circumcision. How about bloomers. Hmm. How about bloomers? I like the phrase "wear your bloomers with wild abandon". Seems to me that in moments of "wild abandon", clothes tend to become unworn.
Pies and panties aside, I am agromovated, my new work for being just tired enough of something to fuss but not actually go agitate. For our last big oil war, it wasn't ok to say anything against the actual troops, because all of them are Fine People Just Doing Their Jobs. That still holds true, and now there's this new weird thing that has even hardcore liberals insisting that these Fine People must stay where they are with their guns or Iraq will be even worse than it was before we started the recent batch of killings. Have CNN and the Internet turned us into armchair strategists? At least since our own civil war, and probably before that, we either send troops or stay the hell out; just look at southern reconstruction if you want to get a feel for Iraq today. Things did get worse when union troops went home, it's true, but they weren't replaced with anything else. There has to be a new idea that might actually stop the sick relationship of conquering hero and pseudo-submissive victim.
As far as the whole "support our troops" thing: I will start supporting our troops when they stop carrying weapons. Fair enough?
12.4.03 Nutriwhores All
No one food will make you stonger; no one food will kill you unless you're analphylactic or it's flat-out poisonous, in which case it's not really food. The media is absolutely not to be trusted in terms of health advice; modern nutrition studies are nearly all a form of marketing for food processing industries (soy and meat) or giant supplement companies (any herb or vitamin you ever read about). The coming wave of food additives are "nutricuticals", which are maximized doses of assorted "good for you" chemicals removed from their root source and planted in, effectively, candy bars. (candy bars have a nice high profit margin, you see.) While I tend more towards the "a vitamin is a vitamin, damn the source" side, it makes sense to me that bodies need nice mixed-up amounts of lots of things, and too much of any one thing is bad for you; that's why people get hangovers. Well, not really, but it's a nice analogy on the surface, isn't it?
If anything actually festered in our colons, we would know it by needing to be hospitalized; trust me, I shared a hospital room with such a person. If you have specific family issues that make a specific disease a potential issue in your life--cancer, heart disease, diabetes--than I encourage you to modify your diet in that direction to try and circumvent your specific genes. Best of luck. If you don't, then stop jumping on the soy/green tea/red wine/low fat/low sugar/low carb bandwagons that roll through town.
Try this for a while: eat an equal mix of things you like and things you are reasonably sure are healthy for you, like filtered water, lean proteins and things with lots of fiber. Try to let your body do something fun each day, like walking in the park or doing the sex or playing one of those games that involves moving a sphere in between people who like each other. If you like dogs, get a dog; they force you have to get outside. Mostly, though, stop thinking of your body as something to fight against and starting enjoying it as it is. Look at you! What a nice little body! Happy body! It works! You don't poop in a bag or talk through a box! How nice for you!
I know I rant about this same thing a lot, but here's the thing: I am surrounded by smart, media-savvy people who fall prey to the dumbest things when it comes to food. So I will continue ranting until everyone who visits me changes their attitude from "oh no, cookies! I must eat too many until I feel sick!" to "yay, cookies! I will have two, thank you!"
A special note for men: poor you. Since companies realized they could double the gajillion dollar diet industry by marketing to you fellows, y'all are getting exposed to the same freaky issues women have been fighting against for a decade now, at least. Don't be a sucker. If your body is strong and not sickly, be proud of it, even if you need elastic-waist pants. If it is weak and/or sickly, find a doctor you trust and work with them to make it less so.
This PSA was brought to you by someone who hasn't had her breakfast yet and was kept up all night because her body is neither strong nor especially healthy. Obviously, she knows less than she thinks (which is everything).
