July 2002 Archives

AI: A performance art piece in 3 acts

*sniff* i share this award with all you who made me what i am today: my stylist, my publicist, my personal psychic, my phrenologist, my homies, my roadies, my minions, the grunions, and most of all, my kitty, without whom this blog would not be possible.

(thanks guys)

and congratulations to VASpider for best new blog.

so today, in the midst of a spirited discussion on copyright and intellectual property over at Jon Sullivan's site, an anonymous happy-fairy dropped in to spread sunshine and denial: why don't you all go take an ativan, a nap, or a soothing walk on the beach! seems to me alot of time wasted on Fear of the Unknown....take it a little easier, your'e going to wear yourself out!. and i thought, you know, it's a scathing indictment of our pharmaceutical culture, that there are fluffy hug-bunny types out there advocating sedatives and naps and bliss and ignorance, as a viable alternative to debating important issues. (alert: major digression ahead), and i remembered my denis leary:

"I'm just not happy. I'm just not happy. I'm just not happy because my life didn't turn out the way I thought it would." Hey! Join the fucking club, ok!? I thought I was going to be the starting center fielder for the Boston Red Socks. Life sucks, get a fucking helmet, allright?! "I'm not happy. I'm not happy." Nobody's happy, ok!? Happiness comes in small doses folks. It's a cigarette, or a chocolate cookie, or a five second orgasm. That's it, ok! You cum, you eat the cookie, you smoke the butt, you go to sleep, you get up in the morning and go to fucking work, ok!? That is it! End of fucking list! "I'm just not happy." Shut the fuck up, allright? That's the name of my new book, "Shut the Fuck Up, by Doctor Denis Leary. A revolutionary new form of therapy." I'm gonna have my patients come in. "Doctor, I.." "Shut the fuck up, next!" "I don't feel so.." "Shut the fuck up, next!" "He made me feel so much better about myself, you know? He just told me to shut the fuck up and nobody had ever told me that before. I feel so much better now." Whining fucking maggots.

now. i'm not saying people with clinical depression should ignore their symptoms and suck it up, no sir or madam. that's not my subject at all here. but at what point in our collective history did someone decide that we are supposed to be happy all the time? what kinda pressure does that put on us, leading ordinary average lives? lives that involve struggle and pain and difficulty and frustration? a life can be very good indeed and still include lots of stressful soul-searching and second-guessing. and that's not a bad thing. but feeling deprived of some unrealistic ideal? not good.

i feel fairly certain that our distant ancestors didn't spend a whole lot of time and energy searching for meaning in life, they more or less were kept busy not being killed. their lives consisted of long periods of intense life-or-death struggles, and brief moments of joy and celebration.

well, life is easier (at least in the developed countries) today. and so we have enough time to sit and ponder the meaning of life, and then we end up with all these pop-psychology fluff-purveyors, telling us that life is supposed to be a bowl of cherries in a rose garden. but it's not. it can be good, and feel bad, and there can be nothing at all wrong with that. and do *not* tell me not to worry. i know what i'm doing with this worrying, ok? ok.

disclaimer: this is a rant. when i hear those don't-worry-be-happy types, my head explodes, so, please consider that before you yell at me for this. thank you.

my brief sojourn into the horrors of dialup was blissfully cut short by the renewal of my DSL service, due in no small part to authorizing a debit that will surely send me into overdraft protection. it's ok. i'm fine with that.

i did indeed nuke an AOL CD last night, several cool pictures in my camera, some uploaded to the old windows PC sitting across the room from me. lurking, actually, all AOL'd up, probably never to see the network or the DSL line ever again. god knows what it's done to the TCP/IP settings, eh? i can't deal with it. i'm afraid to even try. i know that much madness that way lies.

batgrl dropped me some seriously cool linkage to CD art: glitzy garden globe and sculpture of 642 CDs. and stacey assures me that my crazy venture into letting AOL know i might be interested, will result in a flood of more CDs. i'm on a mission with this, i am.

Losing your job, quitting school, going broke and moving back home with your mother after living abroad for years would be tough on anyone.
It's even tougher when you're a former military dictator who once had the power to execute opponents at will.

Ex-dictator, jobless, lives off his mom

this morning, chris drives me to work so he and the kid can have the car for the day. on the way, we spot a very, very large lady. we're talking like four hundred pounds large. and from the back seat, kurt says, 'you don't wanna see that'. and chris says, 'no, no i don't'. kurt elaborates: 'too fat'. and i decide to seize the moment and remind the kid that we don't say these things when people can hear us, because it hurts their feelings, and that's mean. and we ask him how he'd feel if somebody said something mean about him, and he replied, 'i'm not fat'. so chris asks, well, what if they said you were short? and the kid says, 'i'm not short, i'm five'.

*sigh* five is such a literal age.

so. the spider and i were in the IM, scheming on what to do with all those AOL CDs. of course you could send them to nomoreaolcds.com, but hell, there are enough to do that and have some leftover to make art. so here we go:

first, go to CD-ROM's in the Microwave and read up on the subject. notice they don't recommend using older microwaves, and warn that if the inside of the microwave becomes coated with CD smoke, that it could be a bad thing. hooha.us, its associates and subsidiaries, take no responsibility for what you might do to your kitchen appliances if you acccept this assignment.

but you have AOL CDs don't you? of course. if you don't, wait a day or two, it'll come to you. do something artistic and wild with them. go in the backyard with a fireproof tarp and a butane torch. microwave them. smash them with blunt objects and arrange them artfully.

take pictures and post them. mmmkay? you know you want to.

no wait. i don't.

but when michele posted an apology for some of the content posted during her blogathon, namely boobs, i had this tremendous sense of deja vu, because it wasn't so very long ago that a small war broke out over another incident in which breasts were bared, and semi-bared, on the internet. i know, i know, what is the world coming to, who will think of the kittens, all that.

this is so un-switzerland of me, because i had friends vehemently on both sides of controversy number one, and i am directly involved in controversy number two, in that i was a little nervous the night before blogathon so i got quite tipsy, and the combination of (a) admiration for her choice of charity, the Daniel Pearl Foundation, (b) feeling bad about not being able to donate more than pocket change myself, and (c) a digicam and a dsl line and (d) beer, caused me to donate some cleavage to cause. as did any number of others. also, i confess that my frequent visits to the site throughout the long 'thon, helped keep me happy and awake.

so i'm going to go out on a limb and say, while i understand there are people that find this horrifyingly, um, exploitative or something? yeah, i think that's the standard objection. anyway, when madison avenue stops using boobs to sell everything from ... well, everything, when we can turn on MTV without being assaulted by boobs (and navels, lots of those too, it's like, all you see anymore), ... ok wait i see the flaw in that logic. because if boob projects on the internet are exploitative, then we should also be mightily offended by pretty much every magazine in the checkout line, every ... oh, never mind.

i know i've just pissed off and/or alienated some friends here. but every once in awhile even switzerland has to stand up and say, ok, i've thought this over, i've given it careful consideration and looked at all sides of the arguement, every side has merit, no one is wrong, and these are my boobs.

happy monday.

so. i got home. and i had no internet. why? well. i lose things. like ATM cards. so i ordered a new one, which i also promptly lost. and all those electronic debits? every single one bitched at me except direct DSL.

i meant to call and give them the new number (i have the paper the card came on, so i have the number, that's all). i really meant to call them.

so i had no internet. i laid on the couch feeling this odd tightening in my chest cavity, this strange and entirely unpleasant spinning in my head. and i came up with a plan.

first, find the modem. where is it? oh, there it is. untangle it from the phone, palm cradle, two phone cords (1 50' in length) and some other crap. plug it in. and ... brace yourself ... pluck a cd from my AOL CD collection, install AOL, and ... *sob* get on the internet on an ancient windows box with a 14" monitor on a 45333 connection. on AOL.

i don't know if i can get to my outlook express yet so i seem to have an AOL address, if you need to mail me. it would be kdblog at aol dot com. i think. how would i know? this is a fucking nightmare.

but at least i'm online.

so i took several dozen online tests...

i was never more happy in my life, to turn off a computer. through much of the time i was blogathonning, i was thinking, nope, i won't do this again, but by the end, i'd changed my mind, and i would definitely do it again. something about how everyone and everything came together, hard to explain, it was a great ride.

i'm still brain dead. but strangely exhilirated. however you spell that.

i think Jett said it best: ...the several hours after you wake up from the post-thon sleep session. It's like you were plugged into the matrix and you are allowed to come up for air...the world is a gentle assault on your somewhat raw system.

But everything looks fresh and pure in a way.".

i would have liked to say that, but i'm still not really awake. in fact, i fell back asleep, not all the way but a deep drowse, the sort of sleep you sleep on the couch with nicktoons blaring a dozen feet away, while listening to a five year old frolic through the house, tuned in to anything that might need some no-saying, but otherwise non-conscious. my body and brain wanted this sleep very much. and the five year old, not more than a couple hours from a big sandwich for lunch, decided he wanted a hot dog.

and he came up to me and with his face inches from mine, loudly informed me he wanted this hot dog. it felt like his voice entered through the forehead and was pulling and tugging at my brain, trying to ... i don't know. but it's different to be forced from sleep by a loud, insistent voice, than roused by other sounds not directed at you, or even an alarm clock. alarms have snooze buttons. five year olds are missing that function. a serious oversight, really.

ok, so now i really am awake. i thought i'd be sick of the internet and blogging, but i'm not. i'm just a little tired.

nothing to see here. i have my supplies, and am well prepared for a day of blogathonning for the cause:

ahh, the 'thon was grand...

chocolate ass

"The parties are advised to chill," Judge Alex Kozinski wrote for the three-judge panel.

so i made an appeal to Dan, in a rather direct and pushy manner. Dan had written me apologetically explaining he'd already sponsored bran (who is, herself, blogging for a damn good cause) ... and i whined that we were so close to four hundred ...

and now we are at four hundred dollars. this rocks.

total for all the blogathonners at this writing? $49941.67.

If 2002 NT7 crossed paths with the Earth, it would enter the atmosphere at nearly 64,000 mph and strike with the explosive energy of 1.2 million megatons of TNT, according to JPL estimates.

so why can't we all be nice to each other in the meantime?

the current totals: Currently: 213 Participants with 2023 sponsors, donating a total of $49628.67.

anybody wanna help push that puppy over 50K? hmm?

there's nothing better than a great excuse to indulge in one's vices. i went to get some lunch and got carried away with goodies. i bought some french vanilla french roast and set the grinder to between espresso and turkish. right now, it's sitting here next to me filling the office with the most mouth-watering aroma. i purchased a seven ounce hershey symphony bar, but that may not make it though the afternoon intact. i got not one but two rockstar energy drinks. i have the caffeine and sugar part pretty much handled.

i'm still undecided about whether or not to add a little alcohol to the mix. i am hoping to discuss a lot of eff-related issues, and those of you who know me, know that when i get to nippin' at the bottle, the only issue on my mind is informing people how intoxicated i am. that's the first sign of me being drunk, is me saying 'i'm drunk'. over. and over.

but it's a night to indulge vices for a good cause. or at least that's my excuse. i'll be wired, tired, and possibly a bit less than sober.

you know? i can hardly wait. this is going to be such fun!

so i was rummaging through the mess that is my desk drawers, and found this picture. it's a self-portrait my son took with a spy kids toy camera (happy meal prize, plastic, uses 126 film). i really need to dig that camera out of whatever toy box it's in now, it's a keeper.

now the fuzzyness is more of a lighting thing, the camera doesn't really leak light like that yet -- it actually takes decent regular pictures (see?), or it did. maybe if i drop it a couple times? i so envy people who have those cool Holga cameras, with those leaks that add artistic effects to regular old pictures.

anyway, that was my son, the camera prodigy, age three.

stolen directly from: Slacksonville (Xkot's new group venture)

There was once a young man who, in his youth, professed a desire to become a "great" writer. When asked to define "great" he said, "I want to write stuff that the whole world will read, stuff that people will react to on a truly emotional level, stuff that will make them scream, cry, wail, howl in pain, desperation, and anger!"

He now works for Microsoft writing error messages.

i've sat here staring at the glowy screen trying to come up with some coherent commentary about this, with the intent to send you over to read Ezrael's post. couldn't come up with any, so i borrowed some of his:

The identity of anything is a mosaic of associations, pasted together over the course of its existence, carrying charges of conceptual energy that can come together in a dizzying blizzard of forms. Any attempt to understand that does not take the potential of this multiplicity of orbiting thought into account is doomed to failure.

it's something i am going to keep in mind when i'm flinging myself argumentatively (is that a word?) to one end of some spectrum or another.

ok, i've been awake for nearly an hour. awake being a relative term, meaning, upright, eyes mostly open, and able to perform simple tasks not involving, you know, complex thought. and i'm thinking, in only two days, it will be saturday morning and i'll have to get up at six am. six. am. in the morning. and start blogging. and then do it for 24 hours.

and i'm happy to be doing it, really i am. because blogging is really the only thing i could -athon about these days, i'm in no shape to marathon or walkathon. so a sit-and-type-a-thon is right up my alley. and i've been wanting to do something for the EFF for some time now, since i first read about what they're doing in the LA Times sunday magazine and i thought, wow, there's a group that's fighting an uphill battle against some extremely wealthy and powerful interests.

i can do it. but i can't promise to make any sense at all for at least the first two, three hours. if i manage to express anything at all, it's gonna sound really, really whiny. hey, maybe i'll get the most tired but made it anyway award! i'm whining already!

my daughter has never driven my car. and i had a reason for this, beyond being an ogre-type mean ole mommy. basically, it was because i am living on a very tight budget with no margin for paying deductibles, should anything happen. she's had a permit for a year and a half, and the poor girl's had a helluva time getting people to let her drive their cars.

so she finally got to the point she's ready to take the test, and her boss agreed to let her use her car. i had to go with, as a licensed driver over 25 years old. have i ever mentioned that i'm a really, really nervous passenger in every situation? i have some control issues. in any case, i knew it was of paramount importance that i remain calm, not panic her on the way to get her test. here she is, ready to go. would have taken some pictures while she was driving, but i was busy holding on to stuff in a way she wouldn't see. not that she was doing badly, i'm just a spazz.

long story short, we get to the DMV after making damn sure we had all the paperwork in order and -- the registration on the car was expired. well, not really, but the tags hadn't come. *heavy sigh* so, we head on back to boss's place, dejected, return the car, she finds out her 5:30 cancelled (she's a massage therapist in training) so i'm going to take her home. wait. 'can i drive', she asks? and after all the saying, oh i wish we'd had my car when we were at the DMV, well, what was i going to say?

so i let her drive my car. and i was actually a lot calmer by this point, partly because she was more relaxed, and partly because a buick regal drives a helluva lot nicer than a honda passport, which for all its newness, drove like a big white box.

so, for the next test, we take the buick, which has all its papers in order. and we'll both be much less nervous. that's definitely the bright side of this, rehearsing the stress without having to take it to level of the actual driving test part.

and from now on, i think i'll let her drive, when we go places. she's quite good.

so. i was searching for lyrics to don mclean's song 'american pie'. and i found this, this majorly brilliant requiem for napster:

i am somewhere between two and three on this scale. i'm tired, headachey, and cranky, but i'm making it work for me. the dark mood and the pain around the edges of my brain -- it's the perfect psychic space for me to be coming from. i meant to do this, ok?

i know i'm not making an incredible amount of sense, but trust me i know what i'm doing here. it's all part of my nefarious plan.

lots of updates at the blogcon site, including a schedule of events now including two weddings! vegas, baby.

another reason you should go check out the site is to meet our spam-troll bernie. bernie wants to sell us wi-fi access, or geek cruises or something, and he figures he oughta make a comment on every single entry, just to make sure we don't miss it.

and maybe Kelly can add another species to her troll field guide. SpamTroll.

still thinking about the death penalty. enjoying the dialog between Lee, Shelagh, Tess, and myself, among others. and so this morning, i went off looking for some statstics, some facts, some major trend, something obvious...

Loitering
I spent my evening hanging around in the Osco parking lot with the bums, eating ice cream and pizza and letting the time slide by as slickly as the beads of sweat trickling down the back of my neck.

i could seriously hang out with ruthie

Jon has the (un)official BlogCon schedule posted at his site. he's been in Vegas, researching the different things there are to do.

1. don't have to worry about retirement -- just work right up to death
2. no losing ass in stock market
3. unaffected by luxury car recall notices
4. shopping at goodwill = timeless fashion
5. don't have to balance annoyingly large bank accounts
6. low, low tax bracket
7. don't have to take stressful, tiring vacations
8. pesky relatives don't ask for money
9. burglars break in, look around, leave
10. cheap beer still gets you plenty drunk

well. the good news is, they like me, they really like me. the bad news is, they can't afford me. oh, they like having me around, my clients (when i have them) love me, and i build nice websites, this is certain, and they can afford to keep me there, at my current salary which is horribly inadequate and well below my skill level. the good news is they are willing to be very supportive if i want to work part time elsewhere, ease into another job; they'll give me great references. the bad news is, i don't wanna leave.

they put up with me. i work from when i get there till when i leave (uhm, dependability would have been my lowest mark on the review, but still, that's ok with them). i don't have to dress for work, basic jammies are fine, and if my car ever died i could still get there in minutes on a bus that goes right from my house to work.

i've been there the longest of any job in my life, or pretty close to that. by this time in any job i'm the company's pet weirdo, after my usual stellar start my true self in all its idiosyncratic glory has come out, and it's time to go. well, they still want me around. but they feel guilty i can't afford to live.

oh well. i think it's better to have a job i'm pretty sure i'm still going to have, month after month, than go risk it somewhere where i might end up out of work. the last time i made a move for money, i regretted it for ... well i still regret it.

anyway, does anybody know of an opening for a badly dressed, fuzzy-haired web site making person that usually shows up for work eventually?

didn't think so.

so i've always had trouble getting kitty to like me. maybe because when i moved in here, i had major allergic reactions, and it's possible that sneezing, sniffling, whining, and wheezing, freak a cat out. i'm not really affected at all anymore, unless i pet the cat and stick my finger in my eye (did that the other night. not recommended. not at all.) anyway, all this time, kitty was just much, much fonder of chris, than me.

and my dreams of getting a kitten or a nice girl-kitty of my own are on hold while my financial life gets nice and scary again for a little while, and i begin to doubt my ability to be a proper catparent to more than just this guy here.

so i invested in some kitty treats. i keep them here by the computer, and feed kitty out of my hand whenever he comes in. and now, he knows the sound of the treat pouch, and comes to me. it's been a few days of that, but he still only rarely allowed me to skritch his chin or behind his ears, and then he'd go curl up on some unfolded laundry, or on a shelf he could knock some stuff off of.

until just now. i'm sitting here in my usual, crosslegged by the computer on the coffeetable, and i feel kitty by my feet. he licks my toes a little, then settles down so i can just feel fur against my leg. a little time passes, and i feel a small chin resting on my foot. sweetness indeed.

i just hope my feet don't fall asleep anytime soon. this is nice.

look -- polar bear! aww, he looks cuddly, doesn�t he? (oh, i know that�s silly).

and -- the Mighty Geek�s photo/blog entry made me giggle madly today.

i am trying to cheer up. these things help me.

it's barely two in the afternoon. i actually thought it was a different day today, i didn't intend to strand myself at work with no cash and no hope of lunch. oops. i'm not starving, but still horribly unprepared.

and i am ever so tired of driving through jackinthebox for the two tacos for 99 cents. and paying them with ashtray change.

last night/this morning i dreamt of the Osbournes, which is interesting since i've never actually watched them. keep meaning to get around to it. along with all the other things i keep meaning to do. i live such an ineffectual life, but that doesn't make it any less exhausting.

Dr. D wrote about 'Doctor Death', the individual now known as the most prolific serial killer of all time, who killed 215 people with drug overdoses over a period of 25 years. he asked how i would feel if one of my relatives were among the murdered, if i thought justice had been done (he's doing life, because there is no death penalty in the UK). and i thought, what is justice?

i oppose the death penalty. i oppose it because the justice system is so inherently flawed, with punishments meted out so unevenly, and so many innocent people sent to prison, and even to their deaths. but that's not all. i oppose the death penalty because if killing is against the rules, it should be against all the rules. because in order to occupy a moral high ground one must refrain doing the thing one condemns.

and yes, recently i have been quoted in many comments sections saying i would happily toss Alejandro Avila off a cliff in a sack, or hold Charles Benoit's face in a bed of hot coals. would that be justice? or is it a rage inside me, a quest for revenge? what is justice?

1. The quality of being just; fairness.
2(a). The principle of moral rightness; equity.
2(b). Conformity to moral rightness in action or attitude; righteousness.
3(a). The upholding of what is just, especially fair treatment and due reward in accordance with honor, standards, or law.
3(b). Law. The administration and procedure of law.

so that would not be justice. and it would not be an expression of moral rightness. it would be vengeance. i do not like the rage inside me. i do not want to lower myself to the levels of these monsters, and do unto them as they did to innocent, helpless lives. i want to be civilized and just.

as i commented in Dr. D's blog, there is very little justice in this world. life's not fair, and humans have only the thinnest veneer of civility over our barbaric urges. read the news, it's obvious. we're a bloodthirsty and vicious race. look at history, it's obvious. if there ever were peaceful and passive tribes, i'm sure they were killed off quickly, and their land and resources taken. the gene pool is filled with killers and takers.

and inside myself, i long to rise above this. i long for a truly civilized and enlightened society. not very realistic of me, is it?

i have been doing so much thinking i can't even focus my mind on this beer here. i had a quiet day of laying around staring at one thing or another: walls, kid playing crash team racing, internet. almost blankly. overload? hmmm.

i need to link find some links to rude inappropriate humor. or tell you about that sicko dream that so far no one's made the effort to drag the details outta me. no, well, you're right, you really don't want to know.

maybe i'll play some linux tetris. or another nap? no.

Kelly has the address of the DA in Clay County, MO, and a great suggested letter to send, re: the kitten-burner, Charles Benoit. there should be a great outcry from the public, asking that this crime be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and that the investigation should be extended to find the individuals who stood and cheered him on.

let's let the DA know that the whole country, the whole world in fact, is outraged and demands that this monster and his accomplices be brought to justice.

a moveable beast: when men cry

go on now.

maybe the weird mood is from the dream i had last night (well, this morning really, i more or less slept or dozed till 11) about Elvis. i was back in time, young, but with the mind i have today, and the knowledge i was back in time. that was good. there were islands, probably off Hawaii, and a strange sort of bridge thing and the standard weird house with many rooms and strange passageways, all built over water. and then there was the other island, the tourist place that was often flooded.

oh, it was weirder than i can describe, and the dream i had after, when i fell back asleep, was about trying to remember the dream so i could blog it.

it also featured perhaps the grossest and most bizarre dream sequence that i've ever experienced. way too gross to post here.

but the mood today is excessively bizarre. kidlet is playing digimon rumble arena in a tshirt, undies, and fuzzy slippers, and dancing around as he battles the digimon battles. kitty is twitchy and alert on the porch, who knows what he might be wanting to pounce on and bring in to play with *shudder*. everyone is a little crazier than usual today.

i would have thought, chicken. everything tastes more or less like chicken. but apparently, it tastes like fish

forget the TIPS vigilantes, i have nuns next door and a paranoid ex-catholic in the house with me. me? nothing to hide. willing to live my life right out loud. but chris? still shellshocked from the knuckle-rappings he received in parochial school, apparently.

new nuns next door came by to inform chris that they could hear *everything* from our house. went on to tell chris, oh, we've heard of you, sister mary anita told us about you (yes, chris is famous among nuns). apparently this sister mary anita is fearsome ruthless nun that did something heinous to chris as a child, i think, made him confess to doing something he hadn't done? anyway he's still really, really mad. so chris tells me we have to be quiet and i'm all, why? what are we doing wrong? and he repeats that our life isn't their business and that's that, i'm supposed to now just sneak around, whisper and tiptoe, or else the nuns might hear ...

hear what? who cares? well, chris does. and he's inflicting his paranoia on me with all this SHHHHH!!! stuff. well fuck that. i will continue to live my life out loud. i'll pull up in the driveway with the bloodhound gang blasting out my windows hell yeah** if i have to. shocking nuns doesn't bother me a bit. what are they gonna do?

and i do not like being shusshed. oh, no, i don't. it makes me want to crank up the volume another couple notches, yes it does.

side note: i'm all big talk, and this is mostly hot air. don't worry, no nun's delicate sensibilities will be harmed in the near future.

· · ·

**for lyrics, click more. but not if you're easily offended. no, scratch the 'easily' part. just don't click more. i swear, it'll just upset you.

or, the story of a thursday evening, in three pictures:

one: the kid sees something outside, wants us to take a picture. i bravely hand him the digicam and tell him to go ahead. he comes back with this. tell me the kid doesn't have an eye for composition.

two: i am wandering through the kitchen and see the porch tomatoes on a napkin on the counter. (porch tomatoes are a special sort of tomato that our neighbors grow for ... the reason people grow stuff. they're smaller by far than cherry tomatoes, and, no plans to actually eat the things, but...) they are pretty, eh?

three: i am sitting at the computer and hear a loud rustling in the kitchen. i say, 'who's in the kitchen?'. no response. i say, more urgently, 'who's in there?!?'. nothing. i investigate. kitty has brought a moth the size of ... a really big moth in, and it is flailing behind the food dish. i freak. chris is slow on the getting in there to defend us from the bug (his job), so i take action. i squash him bravely with my colonel sanders cup. i squash him repeatedly. he does not die. chris finally shows up to escort said moth outside.

kitty is pissed. that was the floor show and the appetizer, and we went and threw it outside. sorry, kitty.

so in the wake of the tragic kidnapping/murder of a 5 year old in southern california (in spite of the fact she did know about stranger danger, the stranger just grabbed her), i decided to talk to my son about strangers. first i started by saying, what would you say if a strange man came up to you and said, i've lost my puppy, will you come help me look for him? and he said hmm... and then he said 'umm, yes?'.

and i told him no, that there are bad people, yadda yadda, you know the drill. i said bad people make up stories like that, and you never, ever go with a stranger. you come running to mommy or daddy. and then i asked him, what would you do if a stranger said he'd give you candy to help him find his puppy? and he grinned and said, 'yes!'. so, ok, he wasn't taking me seriously. i will have to wait for a more receptive mood, to get this across.

so, when daddy came home, he told him 'it's ok if i go play with the big kids down the street, because they don't have a puppy'. *sigh* i don't know how to get this through to him. and i don't want to let him outside till i do.

i know they've had tests, where kids who answered all the questions correctly in a teaching setting, were confronted in a real-life situation with a person with a picture of a lost puppy, and many of the kids just went right along. how do you prevent that?

my son is obsessed with color. no, it's not what you think -- we're talking, primary colors here (for the most part, some secondary colors are involved).

his first favorite color was blue, because blue is a boy color. and he was fiercely adamant about having blue things to complement his boyness. if there were any things that had to be split up amongst members of the household, he was always very insistent about making sure him and his daddy were given blue things (think, m&ms for instance).

and then things changed. suddenly, blue was no longer his color. it's red now, and oddly enough, pink as a second favorite (because it is like red, you see). so, any gender-identity through color coding has fallen by the wayside of his obsession with red. he is, in fact, upset that another kid at daycare also has red as a favorite color. he would like Mando to get a different favorite color, even though, as i told him, there's plenty of red to go around. but no. he's very possessive about red.

oh god. something about typing this just got seventies-era sammy hagar singing 'red' in my head. red, red, i want red, there's no substitute for red...

... you were to vote, and, perchance, you were to be voting for me, well i wouldn't mind atall. :)

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in my tipsy haste last night, i neglected to point out that VASpider has a best new blog nomination, Shelagh is up for blog of the month *and* best design, Miguel of surreally for most humorous, ... lots of good sites to vote for.

skarlet found this awesomely meditative quote:

"Now what is the message there? The message is that there are no "knowns." There are thing we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know. So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns."

well, last night in between shameless bouts of self-promotion, i did manage to work on the blogathon blog. it's at thon.hooha.us, and i did this little thing with the style tags and the MTAuthor variable, so that the posts will be color coded by who wrote 'em. tomorrow, we'll be featured in the EFF's email newsletter, (woohoo!) so i put up a little introduction for the visitors, that's what you'll see when you go there.

also, notice the total! doing pretty well with the donations. (i visited the blogathon blog last night and there are over $30K in donations - does that rock, or what?)

i am getting pretty excited about the blogathon. it's going to be lots of fun -- even the part about (get this) me getting up at six in the morning on a saturday. you *know* this means something to me if i'm willing to do that.

eh. you post something that has you all frothing at the mouth, and nobody froths back. oh well, i guess i have deeper verisign issues than most...

in any case, according to this quiz, my blog is blossom. which is probably perfect, from the description. [via Jessica] yes, i say probably perfect, because, well, i don't really know anything about the ppg.

you see, i *cough* don't get cartoon network. hearing about them on the net, is all i know of 'em. i've never had the opportunity to watch them. i feel so deprived.

also i have never seen an episode of buffy. although i did see the movie. i think. unless i saw the karate kid movie with the chick, and got them mixed up. but i'm pretty sure i saw buffy the movie.

this comes to me from the Linkmeister, who found it at Tara's site:

Verisign has made a proposal to ICANN, in which they would set up a waiting list service for domains. the service would have a trial period of one year and -- guess who is the sole registrar responsible for this list? got that right, verisign. the waiting list would allow people to 'subscribe' to a domain, so that if it becomes available, it automatically transfers to them.

there is a great deal of protest against this, of course there is. the consumers hate it. the length of the list of Verisign/Network Solutions horror stories demonstrates that. Dotster hates the idea too, since this would allow Verisign to provide an exclusive service, one that no other registrar is authorized to provide.

it's monopolistic, of course. it also smacks of desperation. Verisign, sinking under the weight of its own failings, grasping at anything to keep from going under. asking for a complete monopoly on the waiting list business. (and as a side note, i'm forced to wonder just how lucrative this would be? the demand for domains has gone down, and there are so many domains right now being relinquished because speculators aren't willing to keep buying something that won't sell). i think that any hugely inflated income projections based on this proposal that Verisign management may be presenting to its beleagured stockholders, are just more sleaze and lies, from a business that has given us heaps and gobs of that already, along with a steaming helping of incompetence.

what can you do? register your opinion here, or just read the opinions of others. a quick scan of the current comments shows an overwhelming majority in opposition of this proposal. also, there is a petition at petitionsonline.com.

you know what would be really funny? if it went through anyway. i have serious doubts over the fitness of ICANN as a governing board. but, we'll just have to wait and see, now won't we?