August 2002 Archives

first of all, i've really been enjoying the ongoing discussion here regarding the song 'Hallelujah'. lots of interesting facts contributed.

the site that spawned me spawning my own blog, surreally dot com, has been quite enjoyable lately, we have a new aussie, and i couldn't be happier about the posts and the general sense of camaraderie over there. surreally will be two years old on september 10th.

need blogspace? surreally.org is open and operational. email me if you are interested.

it's been five years today (princess diana) and still i get sniffly if i think too much about it.

finally, the nuked AOL cds:
one · two · three

other: during the hallucinating / nightmaring / not-really sleeping of last night, my drug-addled brain entertained me with many purposeful plans for the day: leg-shaving. installing linux on the spare partition here. letting kid take pictures and starting his photolog (kurtwood.com is where it'll be, eventually). the dishes (it's been awhile). and um. buncha other things i thankfully can't recall, i mean, way too busy considering the side effects of quelling the protestations of the militant tooth.

and you know what? i have such a polite cat. it was one of my drifting-towards-awake times, barely light out, and i heard kitty crunch-cruncing in the kitchen. then it was quiet, and i sat up to ... i forget what, maybe water? and then he goes 'mrow?'. he was waiting patiently by the door for some sign that i was awake. now that's just sweet.

where was i going with this?

hypothetically: if you have a searing toothache, is it more appropriate to call (a) a dentist that you've never seen before, and don't intend to see for at least two or three weeks to ask for something to get you through (the pain)? (it's not abcessed. it just hurts like hell, and this is *not* the time for a dental appointment and all that that entails. i need time.) or (b) a doctor you have seen exactly once? a dentist i have never seen would probably want to see me. this isn't really feasible at this juncture.

i hate asking for pain meds, no matter what. because let's face it i like them. have i ever asked for them outside of extenuating pain circumstances? no. but for some reason when i ask i have this feeling that the answer will be "no, they are bad because they make you feel good" (i'm not making that up, a doctor really said that to me once.)

i don't have any solid dr./patient relationships established. i'm not a doctor-goer. only when it gets really bad, so i'm usually there for something druggy. and that makes me feel like a druggy. and i have certainly been all kinds of druggy in my past, but those were quite different drugs and boy am i ever rambling.

and i have not yet been able to bring myself to make any phone call at all regarding this. instead i'm babbling at you guys. *sigh* i don't make a lot of sense.

pills just kicked in. warm. was considering going to the daughter-graduation from massage school which is at 6 but i would have had to drag the kindergartener and he was already fidgety and whiny from having to spend the afternoon at my work, and would be unmanageable at a serious event. however this *is* really important, and i was really up in the air over the issue (or the opiates, one or the other) and then i heard the water. this seals it. the child is now armed with a hose (i.e., unapproachable) and hopelessly muddy by now.

it's such a helpless feeling hearing the water running full force and splashing all over the place, knowing i can do nothing but wait it out unless i want to get really, really wet. and i don't. it's now been something like 15 minutes, and the water just went off. imagine the mud.

this is what i heard about 7:30 last night. bored? with videos and playstation and toys and...?

... i wanna go to school.

ahh. well, that makes sense. take a kid that lives in a neighborhood full of old people and nuns, who is essentially an only child, and finally put him in a place where there are 20 or so other kids just his age, with fun activities and a playground and snacks and things and stuff ... he wants to go there all the time now.

i'm sure he won't always love school this intensely, but he is off to a good start.

and you know, i wouldn't mind being in kindergarten myself right now. oh wait. i was miserable and unsociable and some kids once handed me a glass and told me to close my eyes and drink and it was sand. never mind that.

my son, for all his only-childness, has great social skills. he's not aggressive, but he's not passive and shy with 'make fun of me and give me noogies' tattooed on his forehead in special bully-only ink. *sigh* i must resist rambling on about this and get back to working.

still tired. should get to bed at a decent hour but probably already a little late for that. so. here we go with what i've got, which is not alot, but anyway:

mardi gras beads

big neon margarita glass

much drinking

hoopty and krix

classic hoopty

glitter girls

Tam and Jamie at the shaving

the cake

T & J ready to cut the cake

T & J cutting the cake

T & J feeding cake to one another

hotties

fun with shaving

plugging the shave sponsor

the shaved j

r&b band singing i've got friends in low places

obligatory shot of the big baker thermometer

now, it's like, off to bed with my tired butt.

they lined up, and marched into class. kindergarten classrooms are very cool places. there were kleenex and cookes afterwards for the sniffly mommies (and daddies, i suppose, but kurt's daddy didn't go). do wish i coulda been there, but work ...

picking him up today, i did notice that, in spite of my worries, he's not particularly hyper or wild. the other boys are pretty much the same. they're little boys.

well, not so little anymore ...

it's four thirty am on a tuesday
it doesn't get much worse than this
in beds in little rooms in buildings in the middle
of these lives which are completely meaningless
help me stay awake, i'm falling
asleep in perfect blue buildings
beside the green apple sea
i wanna get me a little oblivion, baby,
try to keep myself away from me
counting crows

trying to hold onto the afterglow, and falling anyway. and it's only two thirty and it's technically wednesday. and i can't sleep (again), which is fine.

i spent some time recently delving into the darkside, the angry places that appealed to my lesser judgement. and no more. no sir or madam. this is not where i meant to spend my self. and i am spent. i see people shutting down here and there and this is not what i had in mind, not at all. hence there is this requirement that i disassociate myself from the negativity and embrace what inertia i still posess, however faint it might seem at this moment. i will say this: there is goodness whether you admit it or not. your choice.

so i release the anger. all of it. right now. oh not entirely, surely it will resonate in my veins and bones for some time now. but i will try to free the rest of me and eventually i will be viscerally free. i believe this. foolish as this may or may not seem to you, as you are reading in the light of day this silly late/early strangeness, the sorry state of affairs i've expressed here in this mess. it gets better.

peace.

the epic skits has proposed a blogger-meeting type thingy, just the remedy for those of us aching to have another blogcon, and a good introduction to the goodness that happens when bloggers convene, for those who couldn't make it to vegas.

here are the details. i will be there, if at all humanly possible, probably with my kid tagging along like last time. santa monica!

don't know how many times we've told the boy that as he bounced around the house this evening. because tomorrow is his first day in kindergarten.

i wanted to write something eloquent but instead i'll just sigh heavily and go upload some blogcon photos.

there's a poll up on the main page of the blogcon site, to vote for the venue of next year's convention. i voted for New Orleans, because (even though it's far from me) it's a much more reasonably priced place, and still a party town. but always open for more east-coasty suggestions, as it's only fair to alternate sides.

we simply *must* do this again.

the thing about 99.95% uptime, is that there is .05% downtime. that works out to about four and a half hours a year.

well at least that's out of the way, eh? or, well, partially -- i think only about half that time, it was all the way down. flickers. just flickers. either that or that was my own eyesight flickering as my life flashed before my eyes.

so i spent the time shopping for different hosting. better deals. didn't find any. finally just went to lunch, figuring a watched website never boils or something. sure enough, returned with my spicy chicken bowl from taco bell, and all is once again well.

but that was a rough coupla hours there. *shiver* such a terrifying sense of disconnectedness.

i'm sorry, i have to do this, and i have to do it here, there's really no choice if i don't get this outta me in some way i ... don't know.

no please anything but that!

and yet here it is. woke up on the same old couch, got into the same old car, drove the same 3 or 4 miles to the same job. such startling contrast.

woke up this morning out of some bizarre dreams, thinking, this is going to be the longest monday of the longest week ever.

sorry for the whining.

long rambling barely coherent entry in which i attempt to remember more than i'm capable of. forgive me any forgetfulness i may demonstrate here:

i miss everybody already. i'm almost sort of recovered from the excesses of the lost weekend, and ready to go back and do it again. i feel extremely fortunate to have met so many people, those i've known online and some new ones too.

every time i sit down to write about the fun times, i just vapor-lock. it was so intense. i got to be roommates with Jilly, and that was just the best. here's someone i've been admiring from afar for a good long time, and we got to hang out and talk and talk ... frankly and honestly and ahh, it was just wonderful. the night before, i got to camp out at batgrl, who is every bit as bubbly with energy as she is on her blog. she only kicked me once, but it's ok, i was more or less wide awake the whole night anyway. and she did a great job on the parties at Jon's place, including draping shiny mardi gras beads everywhere. so festive! and as for the beads i brought home, i must say that my son is very happy - he just loves shiny beads (he didn't get the special one with the boobies on it though :)

and Jon -- with that camera, wandering tipsily around vegas, taking the greatest pictures. you want good pics of this event, see Jon -- i took a few, many of which didn't come out too well, and i haven't gotten around to the organizing them yet. Jon also brought his germs, but i think enough alcohol was consumed to have an antiseptic effect. tequila! woo.

met some new people (as in hadn't really read their blogs before) - Mikey and Marcie. now Mikey was hanging over at hoopty and CC's pad, which along with Jon's place was another one of those party central places. Mikey is a fun guy and a great-floor sleeper. this is a talent i never really mastered. and Marcie, i didn't really get to hang out enough with, but it turns out we live close enough that that can be rectified. all is good. oh and John from pixel-streams. lots of fun hanging out with him, and it was his birthday!

and krix!! the resident local, she came along with us on our touristy outings and partied with us in the hoopty-room till dawn. she is definitely someone i wish i lived closer to, we could so hang out. oh, and you simply *must* go check out her animated gif's of the hoopty shaving. they are here, read through the post to find them.

and (*sigh*) Chicken Little. they sky does seem to fall when you meet this amazingly incredibly lovely girl. i have a confession. on the saturday night she and the amazing Suzie got all glittered up. and miss Chicken Little had on this top. this amazing top. i feel guilty for staring at her cleavage in odd moments, but quite honestly it couldn't be helped. she doesn't know it yet, but i'm already plotting a roadtrip to the bay area, in which i will descend on her, Jilly, hoopty, and possibly even Jessica. road trips rock. but that's another post -- my roadtripping fantasy plans.

now Jenn -- showed up saturday and joined us for dinner and after-festivities, with her friend Denise, who is new to blogging and got one heck of an intro, both of them dressed to the nines and ready for maragaritas. yay, tequila! and Jenn has a whole .photo album online already, much more organized than i am!

now the weddings -- two of 'em! i attended neither due to incredibly intense needs for naps, but i did make the reception of the Tam and Jamie union, i totally missed the frykitty and Bill elvis extravaganza, but what better ways to start married life than being married in a gondola, and by elvis, respectively. two weddings! how many geeky conventions can boast that?

oh and the epic skits and her equally epic hubby Francisco. it was so great to see them again and hoping that this trend continues, they are completely awesome people.

i know i've missed people but i've been rambling for a good couple hours or so and deeply need to go visit some blogs and have my memories refreshed.

oh one more thing -- it seems waistdog was with us in spirit, at least -- go see the awesome vintage vegas images over there! go now!

while i try to remember who and what i forgot. there will be more posting of this, to be sure.

* * *

and how could i forget Jenny?!? oy vey. she came all the way from australia to dazzle us with her energy, her adorable accent, and tiny stuffed platypusses (sp?) and then educated me as to the truly bizarre and unique nature of the animal. and she's such a world-traveling adventurer, off to new york next. wish i could do that too...

because her son reads her blog. she got a lapdance in vegas. apparently, it did rock. and it made francisco so very, very proud. and we'll just have to imagine what other effects it had on her hubby.

vegas did rock.

oy vey. you know i'm no longer into the sex right? i've no desire. so it goes like this: (he) i've just got the boy to bed. let's ... (me) i'm busy now, i have to install a copy of movable type, and i have these pictures to upload. (he) i have to install a copy of penis.

(me) oy vey.

(thank goodness he didn't use any upload euphemisms)

i have never been so lost in my whole life. i was disoriented from the minute i hit the LA freeway system and realized i hadn't memorized the mapquest directions, and had to read them by vanity mirror light at 75 miles per hour, even moreso when the directions stopped making any sense somewhere in La Verne, and when i hit the bizarre and overwhelming lightshow of vegas at one AM, after five hours of highway insanity, the last traces of my otherwise excellent sense of direction left me entirely. and i was lost. i stayed lost for days. at no time could i find my own ass with both hands. i don't suppose the beer, or the gin, or the tequila or the days without sleep helped any, but that's beside my point, if i have one.

i got lost trying to find food. i got lost trying to find people. i got lost trying to find booze. i got lost trying to find my own room. (actual conversation, end of last night, as i was hesitating about elevator choices -- jon: which tower is it in, north or south? me: i do not know.) but then again i always have episodes of cognitive deficiency when opposites are concerned -- left/right, east/west, etc/etc. my sense of direction is not something that has neat labels and arrows, it's more a feeling, a general spatial orientation. and it usually works quite swimmingly, except this weekend.

thankfully it returned as i left las vegas. i was able to find the freeway right off, got on it going the right direction, realized i was out of gas around the outskirts of town, got back off the freeway and found a gas station and my way back to the 15 without incedent. much loveliness driving through the desert at quite a high rate of speed (after the traffic cleared, which was 100 miles or more). when i got to the 15/210 transition and it dumped me unceremoniously off the unfinished freeway in rancho cucamonga, i managed to find, without even trying hard, the road i should have found from the original mapquest directions, and follow it (the 30 is more of a route than a road, many turns, never a definite sense that you are going any one direction) to the 210 which becomes the 134 which becomes the 101. by the time i navigated that bit of merging and hit the familiar valley offramps, my navigating abilities had returned full force and i lost that ever so disconcerting feeling of having no idea where i was going.

i should note that aside from one general 'am i going the right direction' question (i was) in La Verne on thursday night, i asked for no directions whatsoever. i may not be a man, but i play one in the car.

it was a lost weekend, but it was still very wonderful. now i must hook the laptop into my network and get my pictures.

is what i should have posted before i left.too late for that .... anyway i'm home now, getting settled in and having a beer that didn't cost five bucks. ahh, ventura.

i really did mean to post more while i was there. i'm about to make up for it though.

i've just been drunk in a bar with hoopty, krix, Jamie, and nerdboy mikey. most of us were completely draped in mardi gras beads. and we were nowhere near the most unusual people in the place, trust me on that one. an R&B band played 'i've got friends in low places'. this is just so surreal. i have pictures. i even called my daughter just to tell her i was drunk in a bar in las vegas. she didn't mind, she wishes she was here.

for all of you not here, i wish you were. i fear that blogging the whole event will be entirely beyond me, as far as what wonderfully weird things are going on.

* * *

update: sitting in the foopty circus room (we're live on that cam there) with hoopty and krix and Jenny and CC.

i have not slept (that i'm aware of) though i tried. i haven't eaten since yesterday noonish. i am not particularly hungry or tired, but there is a psychedelic edge to everything. i have been extremely lost since i got here and have made countless illegal u-turns. it took me nearly an hour to find an airport 4 miles away.

i now have to try and find Jon and batty and Jilly, who are elsewhere in the hotel, presumably with food and caffeine. but first, i had to blog, you know, first things first.

to anyone wishing to live this blogcon thing vicariously, some facts about vegas:

1. it's a dry heat. why they say that like it's a good thing is beyond me.
2. if you have to ask, you can't afford it. i'm referring to bottled water.
3. i saw people smoking indoors. and drinking outdoors. i want to do this myself but it feels so ... wrong.
4. i think i'm allergic to whatever they put in the air to keep you from sleeping. oxygen? no, must be something more sinister. but all i've been able to do so far is lay down and kinda forget where i am, no actual sleeping involved. what's up with that?
5. sleep is highly overrated
6. i'm having a great time.
7. i'm going to hate myself come monday.

i'm all atwitter knowing that batgrl is actually in vegas. right this very minute. so i'm supposed to be concentrating but i'm not. no way. can't be done. so i surf a little, and find this at michele's: Action Figures Alive. observe standard food/beverage precautions before proceeding to her site.

budget guy: i'm giving you a free upgrade
me (thinking): mustang!
budget guy: it's a ford taurus. it's brand new.
me (thinking): that's an upgrade?

but it's nice. it's red. it's got 350 miles on it. it's got power everything and a little remote control thingy and even shiny aluminum wheels and i think that's leather.

oh. and a six disc in-dash cd player.

wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

i am not awake. not one bit. got up, fell back asleep, dreamt of vegas. not a great dream, it involved the elevator not working and having to walk up fifteen floors. with hairy legs. damn that leghair. and damn me, you'd think with the constant nightmares that i'd have done something at this point. but no.

got to work around 10 (late for even me, i usually shoot for 9:30), found a starbucks gift card from a happy client. this amazes me, but does not wake me up (i'm not amazed the client's happy, just that they would know me so well after such a short time). maybe it was the seven cups of thier nice office coffee i drank during the first meeting. anyway. i know, i could go for coffee, but i'm here, i should stay.

even though my brain's already halfway to vegas, and i don't see productivity as my strong suit any time today. let's not even get into how much stuff i have to do to get ready. this is very boring. i'm sorry. i'm just not awake.

it looks like i killed a poodle in the bathtub. i mean, i may be a girl in all sortsa ways, but as far as not shaving my legs since may or march or something, i had manly woman-hair on them leggies. it was not like normal shaving. the motions involved were rather more like hacking your way through the jungle with a machete.

but before this i ... *gasp* ... shopped. yes i did. i went to ross dress for less in the 'womens' department and i went all nutso with the ole debit card. i got two pairs of pants, and three shirts (two must be worn together, for appearance's sake, the other is a standalone type shirt). both will go with each other, of course, i'm practical. so having dumped fifty whole dollars on two outfits, and decided that for better or worse my hair will have to remain unchanged, i am ready for vegas, baby.

and as a result, i now have a numerical value for the size of my ass. that would be eighteen. oy vey. that would be a whole new number for me, having been living in a pair of chris's old sweats for however long, all summer. those things had some man size (xl?) and i didn't really want to know how that translated into ladies wear. and now i know.

i work tomorrow. i pick up the pretty rentacar at five, i take it home and pack everything and get appropriate music for the road and other supplies. by seven pm i will be dropping off chris at the car place so he can have the buick, and hitting the highway. i have printed-out maps and many cell phone numbers.

i am prepared.

ok, i have the repetetive theme song from the weird frog/wizard level of crash bandicoot stuck in my poor head. there are several versions of this level, and my son is good at all of them, he goes there to get plenty of lives when he is facing a more difficult level, cause that game over guy is way annoying.

i can even hear the little sound effects (it's so distinct i sometimes think i'm actually hearing it from a distance). detailed sonic memories.

it can be very annoying. how am i supposed to hear the voices over all this racket?

i have reserved a rentacar. i went with Jason's suggestion of budget rentacar, and indeed they take debit cards, no problem. the difference in rates between the tiny boxlike cars and the hyundai sonata-class cars was about four bucks. i said whatthehell let's splurge.

i pick it up thursday at 5PM. or thereabouts, something like that.

i'm going to vegas, baby!

xkot: hey what's that cheap poweder that kills bugs? borax or something?
matt: Cocaine?
kd: yep. but it's not that cheap.
xkot: the crack under my back door is so big that i see bugs just waltzing in
matt: Ground up human femur?
kd: what kinda bugs?

kd: mayonnaise is yummy
kd: i could eat it from the jar
kd: in fact i often do
matt: It's Satan's ejaculate, you know.
kd: it's eggs
matt: Nope.
kd: yep
matt: That's just what they tell you.
kd: ooooooooookay

how hard does Faith rock?

very, very hard

FEAR THE CAT! FEAR IT!!

(free davezilla)

so last night Keith is telling me about some band, something you young folks listen to i imagine. forget the name. Vines (i really did forget. because i'm old.) anyway, there is apparently all manner of new stuff out there, and where have i been? stranded in the wilds of ventura county, i whine. he says, don't you listen to kjee? you could get kjee! what have you been listening to?

and i admit rather sheepishly, um, classic rock. take this morning for instance. way to work, madman across the water. ahhhhhhhh. that's a long song, it gets me almost all the way to work, and then they play knockin' on heaven's door. i had that on the 45 fer cryin' out loud. 'lord put my guns in the ground, i can't shoot them anymore', i'm singing along as i park the car. i get out feeling oh, so old.

Keith, i'm totally gonna program that station into my buttons.

this seems like a really cool idea. let's see what it looks like and if i can find a place to make this a regular feature here somewhere. maybe down in that area of the sidebar where stuff gets kinda messy anyway?

here 'tis:

[note: to play, click the blog name you think is the answer. it will pop up a pop up]

ok. so i have enough people that want blogs right now, that it's really bad of me to put off the hosting one more day. so i'm going to do it. today. four days from blogcon, three if you count that i'm leaving thursday night, and let's not forget my undone webproject. mmhmm. and at some point this week i also really do have to shave those legs, and have i mentioned i have nothing to wear to blogcon? and what about my hair?

* * *

totally unrelated: is it possible to sexually harass someone of the same sex if you are not gay? sometimes the most inappropriate comments about hotness come to mind about a certain coworker, who was happily announcing she'd lost her baby weight and now just had fat to lose. and. and. if it's fat she's got, she's got it in all the right places just fiiiiiine.

i didn't say anything. but ... *sigh*

if i am curiously absent from my usual comment haunts, just know i'm deeply into the MT templates of one of the hottest women on this internet here. code and hotness. it's a good thing.

* * *

update: a complaint is filed with management

and so there i am, deep in the code, and kitty walks through the kitchen, stops dead in his tracks, and issues forth the most anguished meow i've ever heard. and another one, demanding, even angry. this feline is *pissed*. what? i ask. and then i smell it.

chris had just made tuna, and given none to kitty. bad, bad chris. anyway, it's ok, situation has been rectified, thankfully kitty doesn't mind if the tuna has a bit of mayo and dill relish in it. he's currently licking his lips and looking somewhat mollified.

madly busy on a webproject, big changes in store for a surreally blogger who shall remain nameless. holding myslef back by my own hair to keep myself out of the IM, which if i get sucked into that particular vortex, all will be lost, project-wise.

i used to while away hundreds of dozens of hours a week in the IM, then i more or less went cold turkey. and i changed my screen name and started fresh. and now, the ole buddy list is more interesting than it's ever been. such potential for delightful chat. just a click away.

oh maybe if i just log in for a little bit. how can that hurt?

and i'm about to crash heavily and here i discover this and oh this rocks my whole world. thank you Eric, not only for all the moving and thought provoking comments you made here and there on this issue, but most especially for this post. a clear and eloquent assesment of all the nonsense.

dude. you do rock. and thanks.

matt: It's called "Futz, said Julie" and it's by a band named Pain
matt: Kinda skate punk, but not bad.
kd: skate punk can get really annoying if you aren't like, watching punks skate
kd: in which it's ok
kd: xgames soundtracks, that's about it
matt: I kind of find it quaint.
matt: "Oh, look at how angry they think they are."
kd: quaint is a good word for it
matt: I wish I could go back ten years and slap myself around.
matt: "Snap out of it!"
kd: mmhmm. we all do. in one way or another.
matt: Of course, if I could, I'd probably have to fend off visits from Ten Years In The Future Me all the time.
kd: heh. yeah.
kd: that could get annoying
matt: "Don't invest in pork!"
matt: "Damn, what the hell are you...*OW!* Stop hitting me!"
* * *
later:

matt: See, now I'll have to go back ten years and slap me now
matt: Or however that will work
kd: get a time machine to travel ten years hence when you need a slappin'
kd: or just avoid the time machine and slap yourself now.
matt: Hard to imagine going to all that effort to get slapped...although not so hard to imagine doing it to slap.

melly explains it best. which is rather necessary, considering the sorryass state of a flamewar in which opinions are selectively deleted, as adressed quite succinctly by michele (be sure to read the first comment on that post, it's a little added insight). that comment (well, it's an email, actually) clearly re-states this fact: Tess did indeed take offense to melly and i posting about Jess, her CD collection, the robbery, and her wishlist, in light of the Holocaust. she fully admits this. ok. that's not even a leap of logic. there is no logic. it's just a petty personal attack, the motivation for which i cannot fathom. and the mention of a robbery and the Holocaust in the same sentence is rather an affront to the millions of lives lost, isn't it? Ezrael helps to put this in perspective, as well. and i have to ask, if the Holocaust is our standard against which we must measure loss, well, i suppose we should respond to the victims of pretty much any crime with a terse 'suck it up and deal', yes? no, that makes no sense. none whatsoever. [edited to add] also, Faith has some perspective on this, the Holocaust is a very close personal part of her history.

the attack, passive-aggresively couched in the context of linkage to something universally appalling, was a sign of some deeper issues, of that i'm sure. the follow-up post contains more vitriol and rage than i've seen in one place in a long, long time. an ugly thing to see.

for the record, i'm with Nancy. i also think the Holocaust was a Very Bad Thing. it isn't stopping me from helping my friends. i'll continue to have empathy for those who suffer loss, and continue to be puzzled why this would piss someone off. you just never know, i guess.

so i'm in chat. and i type the words 'because you're talking about stuff' (i know, i know, what a fascinating conversation this must be, eh?). and i pause, pick up my salad bowl and as i bent my head down, i had the horrible horrible feeling that i'd typed 'your' instead of 'you're'. i mean, i could remember typing 'your'. i could feel it being wrong. and i looked up and it wasn't 'your'. it was 'you're'. it was right.

that was scary.

i am still loving the meat puppets, did you know they were kurt cobain's favorite band? and do you know that my son's name is a subliminal combination thereof? kurt cobain, and chris and curt kirkwood (the brothers in the puppets) = kurtwood. we were all off into them all in '97. it's a very original name, and how many people own their kid's first name dot com? i do. it will be his photolog, when i get a round tuit. anyway.

lyrics and mp3 follow:

a stranger talked to me at von's today. which is quite unusual, i'm fairly invisible as things go. but my car isn't invisible. well, it kind of is. i mean, gray seven year old buick you know. but the license plates are certainly remarkable.

he walks over, says 'i bet a lot of people wanted that plate' and i told him that yes, i was extremely pleased to find them available as late as november of 2000. and he said, so you have a website? please note that all this is extremely awkward-sounding, i'm not the most conversationally fluent person. briefly it occurred to me to tell him the URL and then i thought, no, not one of those conversations where you try to explain to the uninitiated what a blog is... anyway, i told him i yeah, i do, and i also do this for a living and i also spend all the rest of my time online, only going out for supplies (indicating groceries in my hand). he agreed with that thought, and we awkwardly took our leave of the conversation.

if he didn't think only leaving the house/internet for supplies was weird, maybe i should have given him my URL.

"It's only natural to be a little curious about Yoda's penis. I've certainly asked myself all the usual questions: How long is it when flaccid? How long erect? Is it circumcised? Is it shaped like a human penis? Is it the same shade of green as the rest of him? Is it wrinkled? Veiny? Freckled? How much pubic hair does Yoda have? Is the hair curly or wispy? Is there enough hair to hide the testicles? And how large are the testicles? And how pendulous?"

i know you want them. i see you looking at my comment permalinks, touching yourself. go on, i know it feels good.

and the good news is, they are very easy to do! there may be a tad bit'o'wonkiness if you use the popups, because the permalinks go to the entry page itself, but i don't think it would be bad wonky. they do work best with the 'inline' style of comments, just so you know that before you dive in.

see more for code:

by which i mean, a better day. kinda surprised by how well things went. in the morning first thing we had a grief counselor/pastor kinda guy and a group snifflefest (well everyone but me, i only cry when it's inappropriate to do so). then client meeting that lasted for hours in which things went entirely well. and then a company-wide lunch thingy. which i usually avoid.

in fact i never say much to anybody but today i made the effort to ask people how they were holding up. i congratulated the guy that proposed to his g/f on monday night after having thoughts about wasting time in life. i am going to keep working on this. and stop avoiding the picnics and the xmas parties and the like. maybe. well, we'll see.

in any case, it was a better day.

* * *

oh ... you know that Jessica was burglarized on monday, monday was *the* bad day, apparently, and her (incredible) CD collection, along with jewelry, boots, and purses (my god. the monsters that would do that. you know?). not just valuables, but treasures. that's so evil. in any case, she has a wishlist set up, and we can help her get that collection back together.

because you may have the day off work and not know it.

*sigh*

i've taken up playstation coaching. my son has the mad controller skills, but i'm the strategist. i tell him things like, when you've gotten safely past the monster, don't go back and jump on him just for fun. the point is, you've passed him, and if you go back, he has the chance to get you again. hmm. could apply to a lot of things.

anyway, (forgive me, i'm slow sometimes) at some point i realized i had the internet here. internet. gamers. mmhmm. and there we were against the monster at the end of level four, and it seemed unbeatable. i type in 'beat n gin crash warped' in google and lo and behold. specific instructions. he beat that monster on the first try with me telling him the exact weak points of the robot and then the spaceship. we make a good team.

and boy, wait till he's done with the game and i tell him about all the extra super secret levels and special tricks you can do! there's at least half again as much of the game that's hidden away in secret places. i can see that this could get verrrrrrrrry addictive. oh man, i love the internet.

chris often tells me i am yelling at him. when i am in fact not yelling. and he's not the only one, my daughter and my boss tell me the same thing. and my initial response is always to insist i'm not yelling, but yelling is more in the ear of the beholder, if you think about it. and people get stressed when they percieve that i'm yelling, and so they don't hear my words, they react to my tone. so i've learned to temper my voice, because apparently i've listened to too much loud music and i'm slightly hard of hearing. it doesn't seem like yelling to me. however, i now make an effort to lower my voice. and it takes conscious thought, to overcome this natural tendency towards loudness.

the point is, that i want to be listened to, rather than reacted to.

Linda adds to the discussion:

I myself have lived in a world remarkably free of color, meaning I never really had to take notice of it (how convenient for me). I went to a hippy-dippy granola school where everything was all "peace, love, smarts," and then I went to college, where I learned to use the phrase "person of color" and "first-year student." So I had some diversity street cred. And then I moved to Washington, D.C., and started discovering just how white I was.

· · ·

also, for those of you seeking a little diversion, here's some environmentally sound house porn, for your lusting pleasure.

oh, the things you can think if you spend any part of any day with a dead guy twirlin' in the wind outside and an eerie calm of the storm inside you, watching the chaos. observing a boss making the most composed of 911 calls. being ever so bosslike, you understand the coldness in a way and are also put off by it. could there have been no urgency in his voice? then you remember oh yeah, this is a guy whose baby daughter was born with stage three cancer and he watched her die over a four month period. hence the ice. ok.

overheard: is he breathing? no. are you sure? uh-huh. seen: close frend of his goes out because, what if that's wrong. comes back in with this expression. walking agitatedly with no direction. his face. his expression. disgust. rage. helplessness. incomprehension. what? why?

overheard: he just ordered those things there (indicating some phone equiment). he just got those things for his chair (indicating fancy chair device for bad backs).

later, overheard, in an anguished voice: 'he has a voicemail message'. no response.

and for cryin' out loud who the hell hangs themself in an alley alongside the garage of their workplace? how many bizarre things happen in minds that i'll never be able to fathom as long as i walk this earth? either it was to spare his wife, or it was to punish someone at work. and the back injury. no doubt he had to be medicated to work, and he was barely hobbling. with a mind clouded by narcotics not quite numbing the pain, there would be the lowering of inhibitions and the increase in hopelessness. pain wears you down. drugs wear you down.

but what an effort it must have been! a guy barely walking, getting outside without his cane and far enough up a tree to hang from it? in a busy alley? perhaps he meant to get caught. perhaps he stalled a bit, hoping someone would stop him. it's almost always busy -- cars, exercise walkers, lots of people. it's an alley but it's big as most two way streets and runs through a good sized industrial park. i think he hoped to be caught and stopped. the despair would have been overwhelming when he was not. maybe he made a bargain in his mind, if someone stops me i'm meant to live? however consider this is a man with backpain drugs. a good desperate cry for help would have been only on OD away. he chose a much more definite exit. maybe i only want to think he was ambivalent. maybe i don't want to know how bad it would be to have no doubts.

the rest of the day i was a study in contradictions: strangely detatched from usual grocery store errands, with a heightened awareness of the beauty of this world. having weird internal responses to the standard 'hi how are you' of the store clerks. answering 'fine', brightly, so unlike the reality. luckily i didn't blurt anything out. halfway glad i'm reclusive at work and didn't know his wife by name from company picnics, halfway wishing i'd taken more time to make even the small talk with him. he was a guy i knew for three years who i never discussed anything but lunchroom topics: caffeine and calories, mondays = bad fridays = good, the weather. he was a nice guy. he drove a classic vw bug and wore zeppelin tshirts on occasion. and yeah lately he seemed in a funk, but who doesn't have funks? i'm not miss mary sunshine on my best days.

gotta question seeing a bummed guy messing with a length of rope and letting it slide. however it's such an obscure clue. hindsight, of course.

i do hope he found peace. he apparently needed it much more than i can ever imagine.

"We are sharp swords in the hand of President Saddam Hussein to be used to fight our enemies," 14-year-old Mustafa Amir told The Associated Press on Sunday. "I am looking forward to finishing the course as soon as possible to be able to defend the country when it is attacked," Amir said, clad in khaki-colored fatigues, as he cleaned his AK-47.

it's not enough that dubya has to do a little wag-the-dog here to distract us from the corporate crime and the fact the war on terra-ism isn't exactly turning out like he'd planned, but now we have to go shoot at children? even though the threat is vastly overstated and the whole thing's about oil anyway, and then when we're done there, off we go to conquer some more places in the Name of Democracy which is just silly since we're more and more sounding like Hitler's Germany in the early thirties?

can we please not do this?

one of the purchasing agent guys at my work just hung himself in the alley. he's out there right now. hanging. the cops are on their way.

i didn't go look. it seemed ... rude. but in a way i wanted to look, but i also knew i didn't want to see.

he was a nice guy. he's been awful quiet lately. he was a little older than i am. his name was steve.

i've been thinking about this for a long time, planning, procrastinating, having nightmares about the consequences of not doing it.

i am going to do it.

i am going to shave my legs.

this isn't a decision i've made lightly. i was trying to just give up on the shaving and not care, but the recurring nightmares of wearing a dress and having my furry legs out there for everyone to see, are getting to be too much. almost every dream these days (or, nights, but yeah, days too) have a leg hair component. in many of the dreams i'm hardly bothered by it, others, utterly mortified.

i've stocked up on razors, i suspect it might take more than one. it would be nice, you know, if i had one of those poodle-trimmer things to start with, but i'll have to make do with what i can.

are you grossed out yet?

· · ·

unrelated: anyone know of a rentacar company that takes visa debit cards instead of credit cards? i'm leaning towards a rentacar for the vegas jaunt, safer, way way cheaper on gas (i would most likely save half the rental cost in gas).

there are days, and there are days. this isn't one of them.

lacking either a breathalyzer or an estrogen-level detection device on my computer to lock me out when i have no business interacting with the internet, i carry on. this is one of those days my hormones are suggesting i dive headfirst into a vat of foster's. thankfully i have no beer so it's just me and hormones that would peel paint off walls.

i have a lot of things to say and i'm so afraid i'll say them. they never, ever come out right. i'd like to thank Trula for this comment and publicly apologize some more, and also i have rebuttals of a sort but nothing that will hopefully ever see the light of day. i have no business even typing this now and it's amazing i am, considering i'm actually shaking.

there's a reason i generally avoid conflicts and when i do put myself out there in a controversial position it's with the same sensation as one might have sticking one's hand in the fire, again. you know it's going to come out badly.

go poke him. poke him and poke him. keep on poking. trust me on this one. you gotta keep poking.

before we solve the world's problems, maybe we all need to work on our communication skills a bit? either that or develop thicker skins of whatever color and let it roll off like water off a duck's mixed metaphor?

personal attacks = bad. generalizations = bad. condescension = bad. namecalling = ok, fine, i'll let that one slide. maybe we can be like that cracker skits's kid and use the names to break down the discomfort, because apparently, being completely sober, earnest, and serious about this will drive us all mad. Jason made a good point about using humor to diffuse any number of racial situations in his life, perhaps to keep from going mad. Aaron used neon pink and animated hello kitty gif's because he's apparently already quite mad to lighten the mood at his place. oh god do you realize how i just agonized over using the word 'lighten' like light's better? jeez, what a minefield this is. madness.

because apparently the deep feelings we all have are a little too raw to engage in a perfectly proper discussion, and we need a little comic relief even if it is wrong to do it that way. and we probably need to let go of right and wrong in the either/or sense and accept that each and every one of us has a completely unique individual perspective that we've developed through all our lives, and that relating this to each other is bound to offend. and if nobody got offended, that would be a sure sign that we were doing something wrong here. moving beyond the offense taken is the only way that this discussion will accomplish anything.

cracker cracker cracker. the pants i'm wearing are technically khaki, but that's only because it's damn hard to find fat pants at goodwill, so you go with what you can get. so i'm a khaki-wearing cracker bitch. or something. and yeah, it's ok to hate me on that account. i'm surprisingly ok with that, a fact i discovered, just now, writing that.

i'd like to keep talking about this, but maybe to drop the few threads in which we've been attacking each other for having the wrong outlook on this? 'cause, nobody wins? and we do more harm than good that way? and maybe next topic should be: what now? how do we change what's wrong?

i was just about ready to post something relatively combative in my own rather wimpish way, and the mail came, bringing me 'bailey in the snow'. can't find a link on Patti's site to the gallery i first saw this stunning image in, but let me tell you ... it's amazing.

now i have dozens of errands to run, and when i get back, it's quite probable that my continuing thought processes will have reached a swollen, inflamed, pus-filled head, and i'll have to pop them. just warning you. it might not be pretty. one of those errands is, get beer.

and i have procrastinated the leg-shaving one more day, i was really in no condition this morning to be scraping a razor across my horribly sensitive skin (to go with the rest of me -- horribly oversensitive). it's the sort of thing that takes a steady hand.

i'm rambling and taking focus away from the joy of the mail coming. 'twas joy, pure and simple. thanks, Patti.

you know, i've been living in an alternate browser universe now for some time, and i'm telling you, it's nice here. IE is a good browser, and i know that there are still eighty some-odd percentage of you out there using IE, and IE only. and that's just icky fine. just fine i tell you. ok, it's not. well, i mean, it's still a relatively free country, and what you surf with is your own business.

however. i feel it's my duty to recommend breaking away from microsoft shit. i'm not promising it's easy, then again, it's not as hard as it used to be. oh yes, it wasn't long ago i was bitching about the browser wars being over, but i was wrong (and how many times do you get to hear me say that? hmm?). so in honor of me admitting i was wrong, i urge you to check out NS7, or Mozilla 1.1, which are both in beta, and both really nice browsers. opera's not bad either.

i mean, we all agree we should start backing slowly away from all things microsoft, don't we? if you don't keep up on tech news, you may not be aware of some of the cool new 'features' ms products come with, and what's in the works for the near future, but let me assure you they are at the forefront of the movement to revoke every bit of privacy you ever had. trust me on this. microsoft is very, very evil.

wouldn't it be nice if that ridiculous eighty-whatever percent number got smaller and smaller, day after day? hey, a girl can dream.

is really smart: "Betty astonished scientists by deliberately bending a straight wire into a hook and using it to extract food from a container, the journal Science said on Friday. "

heh. "But Betty's older male lab-mate Abel had a more direct route of securing his meals -- he would snatch the wire or steal the food from Betty."

it's late. whatever.

i envision. i picture myself on the drive to vegas. alone in the largeness of buick leather comfort, stereo very loud, every window very open. singing and spilling music into the desert night, thrilled at the prospect of connecting with all these friends. descending into vegas, the lights. the lights. the sight of the lights, thrilling.

and i love to drive. how else would i get there but in the car? my car's not the best car but i love my car, and it's a car you can love to drive. dynaride, baby.

i'm very excited about driving there in the night, i'll be there two weeks from now, and two weeks from a few hours ago, i'll be driving through the desert night.

When did you first recognize what race you are? - Jason

ok, we're back to grandpa stories on this one. being that i was brought six weeks old into a house on wellington way in san leandro in january of '61, you can be damn sure i never saw a person of another color for the first 3? 5? years of my life. we're back to oakland in '65 or was it '66, my grandparents' house on fairfax avenue, a pretty house so old the garage and the driveway leading to it was made for model t's with spindly wheels.

we're back to me being socially inept, and wanting kids to play with, and having none. and then nathan and lionel's parents moved into the neighborhood. it was our mutual status of outcast - them, race, me, whatever, that made us fast friends. i ask myself, looking back, why would i be so rebellious to my grandpa's obviously racist views? and i answer, the same thing that made me grab my grandma by her arthritic hands to drag her through capwell's basement to the toys. i didn't have that empathy yet, i had that obliviousness that i see in my son, who is that same age now. at five, you don't pay that much attention. at five, there is your own little world, hardly removed from babyhood when it really, really *was* all about you.

so it was all about me, lonely me. and i appreciated the friendship enough that it carried over my whole life, and i never really fell prey to the rampant prejudice around me. in 1970 there were 90,000 some-odd people in san leandro, and six black families. i looked this up on census data sometime back when, i was that fascinated.

i remember in high school or junior high, could have been either, foggy memory, that there were two black kids. either the photographer or the yearbook staff went to the trouble to either overexpose or do the 70's equivalent of photoshop to wash out the pictures. even the backgrounds, so they still stood out from the rest of the black-and-white/greyscale page. why? no answers on that.

but what i know from growing up, and why i am so very drawn to folks who are 'different', races, orientations, whatever, probably stems from the fact i was never a normal white straight person. i was never normal, period, and not particularly straight, but nevermind that now. and there is always a better chance of being accepted in groups that are generally unaccepted elsewhere, if you are willing to go vulnerable and reveal your own inner weirdo. not a problem with me, i can't get the weirdo to shut up long enough to be generally socially acceptable anywhere.

except here. and i'd like to take this moment to celebrate the diversity of blogland and the vulnerability of the folks here who reveal their deepest darkest most innermost, on the internet. i have a long-held theory that people who turn into serious bloggers have something about them. something different, they've held inside for a long time, out of necessity. probably a good many of us, majority or minority, are diagnosably *something*. some of us, myself included, have escaped detection, for the most part. i'm not saying we're all crazy. or i am, i'm not sure. but that's another rant.

there is still horrid racism in the world, the worst kind being the subtle, 'can't put your finger on it it's just there' variety. the stuff that can only be changed if we come out and disccuss this in the open.

i am committed to the continuing discussion.

so there we are at the dmv, daughter waiting to take the driving test. and i'm standing outside the driver side window, and the inevitable question comes up. will my boobs ever be as big as yours? and i am forced to give the same answer, no, honey, i don't think so. and she complains, 'what happened? gramma nora (on her dad's side) has big boobs. you have big boobs. why don't i have big boobs?' and i apologize for having small breasted genes coming from somewhere in my mysterious adopted past, and she looks dejected. i try to cheer her up with the fact that enormous breasts just suck, that they really mess with the ability to find cute clothes, that they are in the way all the time, and try finding nice bras that don't look like tank armor? hmmph. it's just horrible.

i don't understand why anyone would want extra large size boobs. actually, i didn't mind them when i was thinner and they were a reasonable size, but since i've gotten heavier, they're just ridiculous.

i wish she would just be happy with what she's got, they're so much more convenient and practical.

oh, footnote: she did not pass. she did more or less exactly the same thing i did when i failed my first driving test, lo those many years ago. so basically, she just inherited the wrong sets of genes, poor thing.

there is now a place on the message boards for those of you going to blogcon to post general contact info, and then go on to exchange phone numbers so we make sure we all find all the people we want to meet, when we get there.

here's the place to post

and if you want my cell number, so you can find me there, mail me at kd at kdblog dot com.

remember weeee? i forgot about it, really, but there it is.

i'm suffering a horrible case of photo backup. i haven't been able to get pictures out of my camera for a week, and i've had to use the little preview screen and the delete button to pick and choose, so i won't be wandering the world with a full memory card. sure as hell, the greatest photo-ops happen when you have no way of taking the picture, you know?

so i plugged it into the linux box and used the very interesting looking but not entirely functional gPhoto. which shows every other thumbnail, and the presence or absence of a thumbnail is no indicator of whether it can pull a full sized photo off the camera. very mysterious.

and i can't actually get it to save pictures i can open with the gimp. then again i haven't read the instructions. i looked them, glazed over a bit, and decided i needed to go to bed really early tonight.

having a digicam and no way to upload the pictures is a little like having cigarettes but no lighter. (digression alert) i remember one time it was really late at night and i had no matches and nothing was open and so i discovered that if you set a piece of paper on fire with the toaster elements, you can sometimes get a cigarette lit. oh. and. do *not* try that at home, kiddies.

*sigh*

saw that on a license plate yesterday, thought that can't be a good thing to constantly remind yourself of, can it? every time you see your car, you think, oh yeah, i'm freakin' tired!

as it is, i think the words all the time. exhaustion is a big subject in my inner and sometimes not-so-inner dialogues. i'll be sitting around talking to myself about it, and i know that putting the thoughts to words makes it worse. i should think energy thoughts, bright! cheerful! hyper! thoughts. but no. and yeah, i haven't been to bed before two a.m. all week. and ... um. huh?

anyway. i just wanted to apologize for having less than motivation and not being on top of things like i used to. i used to be the sort of person that answered an email right away, and now i actually have mails that i let go unanswered 'cause i've procrastinated them right out of mind. i forget. i flake. i float. but i have an excuse, you see, i'm tired. yes, i'm the one tiring myself out. so?

i don't know where this is going. do you? i'm sorry if i'm slacking off on something i'm supposed to be doing right now. it's ok to remind me. i really do lose track.

live anywhere near ventura? driving there? want company?

ok, i'm poor. and while i had planned on driving, i can't imagine myself breaking the news to chris that i'm going to be gone for three days *with the car*. but i will if i have to. that doesn't mean i can actually have the car, it just means i can break the news.

and it's not happy when its A/C is running, but i can just roll the windows down in the desert, right?

i've found a floor to crash on, i hope, but .... look, i meant to have more money by now. i meant to be making more money. i know i'm spending less. but i live in ventura on enough money to live prosperously in like ... some other part of the country. i shouldn't even live here, i just dig the weather. and ... oh man. i'm a bum, is what it is.

maybe i can stay home and administer some kind of group blogcon blog and live it vicariously. that, i could afford to do.

one more addition to the poesy category: this, written 06may00. tonight reminded me of it in a way. for obvious reasons, yes, and some not so obvious.

Sal is back from vacationing three weeks on an island, and has sad news of her dad.

Enzo the kitty may not be doing well. emergency good vibes needed over at Suzie's.

there were other update-type thingys, but i've misplaced them mentally. i'll update the updates if/when i remember.

· · ·

further updates: i got 'em posting poems at poemgen again, and that is great news and great fun. in contrast to the not so great news previously mentioned.

addionally in the updating, i am having some beers and about to fire up the cd player. i don't get enough music.

· · ·

update to the update: all new poemgen posts will be fully commentable and pingable.

that is all. or not. but for now, for sure.

· · ·

final update: goodnight, Enzo, i'm happy Suzie found you, and so happy your last days were filled with love.

and this was autobiographical in 1997, certainly not now. i'm going to start posting a few of these things here and there. or maybe just this one. it/they may or may not suck.

gawd, i love local politics. last month, the city hatched a plan they'd been quietly incubating for two years, with little or no advance warning, during the quiet of summer. in response to a very small problem, they're instituting a rather draconian solution: curfews for all kids under 18 out during school hours. so this means that independent study students, studens in advanced placement classes going to and from the college, and homeschoolers, will now regularly be pulled over, questioned and detained.

this means the good kids, the hardworking homeschoolers heading for a piano lesson, the motivated students taking college classes, and the independent study kids, will start having bad police experiences. try to imagine how it would feel to be pulled over and interrogated when you've done nothing wrong. is this how we want our kids to feel? does this sound a bit like police state, jr. to you? we could do like oxnard and target the actual cause of the problem, or we could just round up the kids first and ask questions later.

sometimes living here is just annoying. what is the city council thinking?

the eggs are coolin', and the butter's gettin' hard.

*sigh* i'm not a big basketball fan, but over the years, being one of those girls that gets interested in sports in the context of having stuff in common with a boyfriend (in the early years, at least) i've watched my share of laker games. and Chick Hearn calling the game is one of those things that's so part of watching lakers...

and this morning his surgeon classified his condition as "one step beyond critical". prodded to define that, the doctor said, "grave".

it's not looking very good for Chick, but who knows, maybe he'll come out of this and be back behind the microphone?

who knew i'd actually mist up writing this?

i love jack in the box tacos. they're so utterly bad for you, so completely greasy, the meat product in the bottom so terribly mysterious in origin -- you just know this stuff requires a hazmat license to transport across state lines.

and i love it. i don't wanna know what's in the things, but they are simply exquisite, as far as something two for ninety-nine cents, that i can pay for with ashtray change. you can't beat that with a stick. and the damn things give you such amazing heartburn, which keeps the afternoon hunger pangs down to a minimum.

yes, yes, i know, i should read fast food nation and all that. but i don't wanna know. i mean, i'm pretty sure there isn't anything that they wouldn't put in these fifty cent craptastic masterpieces of fastfoodsmanship, and i'm totally ok with that.

"I'll never be anything but what I've been. My only hope is to be enough things for that total equation to balance out, somehow, for the shit side of the scale to tip somehow. Sometimes, when I see someone else being singled out for derision or ridicule, it doesn't matter to me if they deserve it...I lash out anyway. It's wrong to mock, my soul screams, it's wrong and fuck anyone who does it. Try mocking me, you bastards. Try it now. Then there are times where that resolve twists, like a knife with a mind, and cuts back in on itself and I mock myself, mock those who I in my somehow infinite disdain consider even worse than myself (and that's pretty damn bad) and then hate myself more for having fallen down the rabbit hole of hate."

please, go read this: Ezrael: Mobius

Suzie has rescued a tiny baby kitty. the name is Enzo, after the pairs of shoes that were spent at the emergency vet's on this tiny abandoned baby's vet bills.

if news of the world seems cold, go warm your heart over at Suzie's.

or maybe, just really ... oh, who knows. but i'm in the process of registering surreally.org (because dot net and dot com are full) and will shortly have some more subdomains for those in need. Tess ranted so well on the subject, and there was mention of the subject of good potential bloggers potentially needing good blogspace on NakedTiny's blog, which is part of the VASpider web, which is part of this enormongous messload of blogs that i host. and they're all good, and you know, blogging *is* the answer.

these are just my excuses, folks. truth is, i do this for purely selfish reasons. i love buying domains and hosting them and setting up copies of MT on subdomains. i love reading lovely MT blogs with the comments and the trackback. it's all about me.

but i share.

and damn near did. i am, however, awake now, and have several things .... this being one of 'em.

remember poemgen? that collection of cgi-generated blogpoetry that used to have a lot of people contributing, but as with all group efforts, they tend to lose inertia. so, to anyone that has login privs there, and you know who you are, you are encouraged to go play there again. i rather like the last one that i did.

the most fun of course, is if you read a person's blog and then see the poetry cmdr taco's lovely cgi generates from its words. it can be damn profound.

let me think now. what else?

"The plan was that there was a bowie knife and it was in a holster. It was on the gear shifter and so we agreed that (the other girl) would reach over, I'd stab him with the knife and hit him with the whiskey bottle and we like got enough courage, like, because you could see his pulse," she said.

two girls with courage. two girls who fought back. thank goodness the cops got there just in time, because it didn't appear they were going to win the battle. so what i'm saying is, teach your kids self defense. teach them to swing the whiskey bottle harder and jab the knife deeper.

california's new alert system, in which freeway signs were used to put the description of the kidnapper's vehicle out in the public, in which getting the information out to every agency (including the animal control officer who made the crucial sighting that brought helicopters and law enforcement just in the nick of time), played a major role in these girls' safety. this is great but not to be expected in all cases.

so teach your kids to be mean little sonsabitches (or daughtersabitches). i'm seriously considering enrolling my son in some martial arts training soon. because much as we'd like to keep them in their rooms till they're twenty-five or six foot four, we can't do that, and can't always be there to protect them.

and while you're at it, teach them not to hit keys while the computer's booting, go into the CMOS settings, and change the boot thingys. oh god. definitely teach them not to do that. so boot option one should be IDE what? oh god.

searching for boot record from IDE-1 - OK

Intel UNDI, PXE-20 (build 067)
copyright(c) 1997, 1998 Intel Corporation

HDP MAC ADDR: 00 D0 B7 68 AA C5

PXE_E53: No boot filename received
Invalid partition table

· · ·

(note: i thought maybe the kid was futzing around in the CMOS on accident but on further consideration, i'm thinking, it just did this all by itself.)

first you must go read Jason's post. make sure to read the link to his own 'black with a small b' rant too. i was going to just comment but it got way, way too intense for that.

views from the white side? i am an adopted mongrel mutt white something-or-other, and i can trace my lineage back exactly nowhere. i call myself irish because my last name is kelly but that was a father who adopted me, left my mom, and i saw two times in my life after that, both to get money from him. he sent a fluffy blanket when my daughter was born in '82. i don't know if he's alive or dead. oh, and my born name was caroline jean rucker. whether or not that was a made-up thing on the adoption papers i dug out of my mom's closet while being a snoopy latchkey child. so Jason, my fruit has no root either.

around kindergarten age i had to stay with my grandparents because my mom was a working divorcee in the mid-sixties. bastard kid with a divorced mom being taken care of by my grandparents in oakland, california when the black folk started moving in. can you say socially awkward outcast? fat little kid with a shirley temple perm that hung out with mostly old people?

my grandpa was a racist in every sense of the word. think archie bunker only a hell of a lot worse. he had names for everybody. spics, wops, micks, n-words, chinks, you name it. he hated everybody. last name of buttener, what's that english? anyway, he hated everybody else (he was gramma's second hubby, the first one was named kelly, hence my name. he was a 'mick', heh). it's confusing.

so there i am in kindergarten in oakland in '66. grandparents panicked about the resale value of their homes, because 'they' were moving in. my grandpa, for all his prejudice, doted on me, his only grandchild, and he put up with the fact that pretty much my only friends were two (black) boys that moved in down the street, named Nathan and Lionel. their parents could barely afford to live there, and i was spoiled, so i often had them over to my house to have goodies from the easy bake oven or ice cream from that soda fountain toy. we'd play with my extensive lego collection and my impressive set of hot wheels. i loved to share my toys and goodies with them, and they were the only neighborhood kids that would hang out with me. because i was then, and am to this day, rather inept socially and in posession of an impressive collection of complexes.

i never had the issue of race against me, but that didn't make it easy for me to assimilate into society, whatever color. i grew up with conservative parents, watching the news and identifying with hippies and radicals and freaks.

i can't claim to know what it's like to be discriminated against on the basis of race. i always made my own barriers. i know it's not even *close* to the struggles that others have faced. i know there is this 'white privilege' thing, but trust me i've personally sabotaged any privilege i was given. i went from confusing middle class roots to rebellion to white trash, and am headed back towards middle class, though i have come to accept i'll always occupy the 'lower' echelon of the class.

so here i am, whoever that is. and i wish there were no stigma attached to race. but there is, there still is -- i work with racists. they don't even think they're racists. they just think they're defending themselves, or something, i can't figure it out, because they don't make a whole lot of sense. i argue with them as if it helps. maybe someday it will. in the meantime, my performance reviews will always have low marks for 'cooperates with others'. it's that social disorder i have.

Scott Ritter is an expert on Iraq's weaponry and the threat they pose to us. he is also a card-carrying Republican. and he says we ought not go to war.

"The clock is ticking," he said, "and it's ticking towards war. And it's going to be a real war. It's going to be a war that will result in the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. It's a war that is going to devastate Iraq. It's a war that's going to destroy the credibility of the United States of America. I just came back from London, and I can tell you this - Tony Blair may talk a good show about war, but the British people and the bulk of the British government do not support this war. The Europeans do not support this war. NATO does not support this war. No one supports this war."

It is of a certainty that few in the Muslim world support another American war with Iraq. Osama bin Laden used the civilian suffering in Iraq under the sanctions to demonstrate to his followers the evils of America and the West. Another war would exacerbate those already-raw emotions. After 9/11, much of the Islamic world repudiated bin Laden and his actions. Another Iraq war would go a long way to proving, in the minds of many Muslims, that bin Laden was right all along. The fires of terrorism that would follow this are unimaginable.

link via Shelagh who posted it in Jon's comments.

Skits has put together a great new group effort --- snark!fest. it's not just a great concept (snarking about television shows) but it has a great ensemble cast. i give this two thumbs up.

wKen has taken up philanthropy.

and here's Jon Sullivan as you've never seen him before, courtesy of Faith, who never misses a photo op.

Jason ranted about Jesse Jackson and in his next post, indicated he was looking for comments, disagreeable or not. a good debate is a good thing.

the other cheek's little girl got married. *sigh* there are pictures.

lots of other stuff going on too. just, can't remember right now.

good thing i don't have a normal job, where i have to show up at a specific time or else they get pissed at me. good thing sweats and a shickshinny tshirt slightly wet from wiping off the coffee i dribbled on it is ok to wear there. i slept in till well after nine this morning. one exception to the fragrance weirdenss i have? the CKone. i may not like it on every single day, but it wakes me up like coffee, so it's the only one i carry with me at all times. we are such scent driven creatures, or at least i am. god i love driving, i wish the drive were longer but then i'd only get there later. but i love to cruise the buick and listen to the loud music. tom petty: 'you think you're gonna take her away, with your money and your cocaine'. me: hmm, cocaine. ahh, the 80's. weren't they grand? then i remember for much of the 80's i had a boyfriend that liked to take the song words and make them into these stupid jokes. heart = fart, etc. so the 80's b/f would have been singing along with tom, 'she's gonna cut a smelly fart, it's gonna smell a lot like poo'. he also he would switch love for drugs. actually, that works pretty seamlessly, as far as lyric substitutions go. ok so maybe the 80's weren't so great, eh?

remember that song, johnny, angry johnny, this is jezebel in hell? i used to think it was a love triangle, between angry johnny, jezebel in hell, and either-way ivan. of course it just says, either way, either, but i liked my version way better.

i pull in to the parking lot right before ten am. i think in my mind, today's the day i bitch at them about that non-raise. then i think, how can i flounce in the door at 10am and still think of demanding one more dollar an hour (that's all, just one more lousy dollar, how much is that to them, how much of a difference to me)?

no, there's no point here. there isn't supposed to be, really, that would be silly.

ok, if you look close you can see where i hacked it together with spit, duct tape, coathangers and rubberbands. at the moment, there are entries from the old copy of MT and the new, coexisting on this page, and i think that went rather well.

however the moral of this story, for you who call me some sort of regal or mythical creature as regards my MT skills, i'm here to admit the fact is i'm not. i came to the point i couldn't export (too big, server times out) the MySQL issues were giving me fits and error 500's, i couldn't ping or have my recent comments list, and so i scrapped it and started fresh, rather than truly geek out and solve whatever was wrong. it was too much for me.

i feel so defeated. and yet, here this is. almost seamless. almost.

be patient, it'll all be right back. had to do some emergency surgery on this blog, it was not feeling well.

i really have no idea how wonky things might get when i click publish here. wish me some major luck.

rumsfeld defends war on terror -- speaking of bin laden, he said:

"He may be dead, he may be seriously wounded, he may be in Afghanistan, he may be somewhere else," the defense secretary said. "Wherever he is -- if he is -- you can be certain he is having one dickens of a time operating his apparatus."

via michele, who i am holding personally responsible for the images i now have in my head. *whimper* please make it stop.

and no, this is not one of those self-helpy affirmation-type thingys. it's a fact, based upon long term empirical observation of my reactions. i'm different today than i was yesterday or last week, on a very visceral chemical level. not that i'm completely different and new every single day, i just fluctuate between several disparate compositions.

ok here's what i mean. i have an assortment of calvin klein fragrances my daughter gave me for my last birthday. obsession, truth, contradiction, eternity, escape, and ckone. i have some cool avon stuff and some vanilla fields as well, real basic stuff. and i like them all. just not all at one time.

in the morning, i will open the cap of several different fragrances and sniff the nozzle. and on different days, i react completely differently. today, eternity smelled just lovely, while on other days, i'll sniff it and actually recoil in disgust. today, it was that way with truth -- ugh. it stank.

so whatever it is in me that thinks things smell good or bad, is completely different on different days, no real cycle or pattern that i've observed, just, very different.