Thursday, October 28, 2004

I wrote a long and kind of funny (wait, I mean TOTALLY PANTS-WETTINGLY GENIUS) post that refers to a specific video online, and now that video's host has pulled the plug because, I am guessing, too many people watched it. Stupid ISPs or whatever they are.

I just want you readers to know that I am Thinking Of You.

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

Everything seems to be taking SO LONG lately that suddenly it's the end of the day and I've only finished half of what I planned to do. Plus it's autumn, which puts me (and everyone) in a productive mood; it's the back-to-school schedule that was imprinted upon our minds at an early age. It makes me want to do new things and learn and make stuff. (More on Craftytown today about that.)

Went to the Elliott Smith tribute show last night at the 11s. It was incredibly packed, not just with musicians but with college students and older folks from all over. The music was great; it's the closest I'll ever get to seeing Elliott play. It was an early show and I missed about an hour of it, but I got to hear many of my favorite songs. The crowd was mostly reverent, enthusiastic, and focused, except for a few times when people decided to just keep talking loudly over the performer.

The Bunwinkies played last, to my knowledge. I'm not sure I totally get what they're about. I heard them play two songs but I didn't recognize either of them. Were the songs really obscure Elliott Smith songs, or Bunwinkie originals? I overheard someone in the crowd say "I guess this is supposed to be avant-garde...?" Word. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.) I like all those folks in the band, so I do not mean to diss them. I am just uninformed.

Also, a friend and I went to the Dakin animal shelter and played with some cats and kittens on Saturday (my sister: "So that's what you guys have to do for fun up there?"). It was quite nice. We evaluated each cat and narrowed down the choices to the best two or three. But I am not going to adopt a new cat until my current one stops costing me about 100 bucks per week in vet bills. Right now she is getting goo stuck in her eyelid twice a day (which she HATES), a steroid pill forced down her throat every morning (almost as bad as the eye goo-application), and her thyroid meds mixed into her breakfast. And I am still waiting to hear from the x-ray consultants at Cornell or wherever about her weird spot on her lung. Sigh. She is lucky she's such a beautiful and sweet animal.

Monday, October 25, 2004

I earned another gold star today. A big fucking one. I've earned so many gold stars for good behavior that my little book is almost totally filled. Maybe once it's complete I'll stop judging and second-guessing myself all the time. Most likely I'll just add the book to the pile and begin work on filling up another one. I forgive other people a million times before I'll forgive myself or forget a flaw for even an hour.

I should have a little medic-alert bracelet that says "Caution: Wearer is extremely tender-hearted. She may appear retarded or aloof; please treat with kindness."

Friday, October 22, 2004

Just a quickie to point you all to my homegirl (well, college homegirl) Avani's blog: Places I Go. She is in the middle of an intense business school experience, and she is rad as hell. Go read!

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

I am sorry I have not posted. See, I have to write something for work, and I keep waiting for the "muse" to "hit me over the head with something heavy" so that I can get down to business, but it has not happened. Also I was in NYC for a meeting yesterday. We drove. It was rainy and trafficky. I actually had to take Bonine on the way home. Ugh. But we did get to eat ultra-hip lunch at the ultra-hip W hotel, which is sort of ultra-hip circa 2000, if that makes any sense. They play techno-dance music in the elevators, for god's sake. I had grilled shrimp on baby greens; I think some aspect of it was "lime-infused." Like many things on the menu, it was totally carb-free (because all super-hip people are on deprivation diets), which is just not enough food for me. So I got some crazy couscous thing on the side. Also on the menu: a breadless BLT. My no-nonsense co-worker ordered it "with bread." Because really, people at the W. Get over yourselves.

Friday, October 15, 2004

This morning my bedroom passed through a warp coil or a ripple in the space-time continuum or something. I was putting my black velvet shirt away in the closet, and I realized that my black velvet shirt was already in the closet. In other words, I was holding my black velvet shirt outside of the closet, while seeing it hanging inside of the closet. I have only one shirt of this sort. "What," I said aloud, as I pulled out the shirt from the closet, comparing the two side by side. Same shirt. Same exact tag (some weird, cheap brand of which I have no other clothing). One tiny difference: one is size XS, and the other is size S. I had gotten the size S as a hand-me-down from a friend a few months ago. I have no idea where the other one came from. If this isn't due to some tearing of the fabric of the universe, it must mean that my shirt has asexually reproduced, and the new shirt hasn't grown to full size yet. How else could it have happened, since I look in my closet almost every day, and have never noticed the two identical shirts? I don't have so many articles of clothing that a duplicate shirt would not stand out. Is one of you playing a trick on me?

Thursday, October 14, 2004

I'm back. The eagle has landed.

So there's this Pixar movie coming out November 5 called The Incredibles. There's already plenty of merchandise for sale, and being interested, I checked it out. The teenage daughter is voiced by Sarah Vowell, and I'm a fan of hers. However, the merchandise was depressingly one-sided. As it always is.

Here's what they had:

Small plush dolls of:
Mr. Incredible
Flash (the son)
Syndrome (the [male] villain)
Frozone (Mr. I's buddy)

There are also big talking versions of Mr. Incredible and a babbling baby Jack-Jack. (There's also an interactive Edna doll which gives out fashion advice. She's voiced by Brad Bird.) They also had 5-inch action figures, but guess what - the only Elastigirl and Violet figures came packaged with Jack-Jack and Flash, respectively. The only way I could have bought a Violet is by getting her as part of a set. There are two women in the five-member Incredibles family but they are nowhere to be seen on store shelves. Fuck you, you marketing bastards, for deciding that this is a movie "targeted" for boys, and for assuming that boys don't want to play with female characters, even female characters that have awesome superpowers (Elastigirl as a toy is a no-brainer; make her be a Stretch Armstrong-type thing). Keep on perpetuating the stereotype of men=action and women=all about doing nothing but looking pretty, even when the movie itself has the opposite message. Fuck. You. Seriously.

Sunday, October 10, 2004

I'm gonna be away from the officecomputer for a few days as I'm going away on business. I'll be back Thursday, but in the meantime, perhaps you'd like to revisit some past posts in the archives, or try one of the pre-approved blogs linked at right?

Friday, October 08, 2004

I got a nice piece of spam today. Very poetic!:

For example, buzzard defined by ribbon indicates that power drill inside necromancer write a love letter to insurance agent around ball bearing.
When about cashier is niggardly, cloud formation of give secret financial aid to spider behind.
Where we can slyly fall in love with our mirror.
Indeed, living with bride bestow great honor upon defined by piroshki.

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

Dude, if spraying Summer's Eve on my "personal area" makes it glow as brightly as a lighthouse, I'd rather go without it. (Props to Some Girl for the link.)
My twin sister is stopping by the office with her baby tomorrow, on their way to Brooklyn from New Hampshire. I am excited beyond all reason. I get to show my little niece to all of my work-friends, as if to say, "Hey look at what a pretty baby I'd make, if I had, you know, a husband and a more stable living situation! Ha ha! No, really, I'm looking forward to going home tonight to my bachelorette's apartment and my cat. This is just where I wanted to be at 32!"

I kid, I kid. My personal female-role-enforcing demons are fond of poking at me occasionally, but I'm trying to ignore them and just live my life. It's a pretty good one. I will say, though, that non-twins don't really understand the subconscious comparisons that constantly occur between my sister and me. It can be a lot of pressure, even though we've discussed, aloud, the pros and cons of our current, differing lifestyles.

Anyway, who needs a baby anyway? They need constant attention, they drool a lot, and they stink sometimes. Stupid babies.
This has already been blogged to death, but in case you haven't seen it: Last night during the debate, while deflecting Edwards' criticism about Halliburton, Cheney invited people to check out the facts at Factcheck.com. Unfortunately for him, he meant to say Factcheck.org. Factcheck.com was an available domain, so within an hour George Soros bought the site and had it redirect people to his website, titled "Why we must not re-elect President Bush." Hee!

Try it out here:

www.factcheck.com

www.factcheck.org (which, by the way, is none too pro-Bush/Cheney either)

Edit: I gots to fact-check myself, it seems. So Soros actually had nothing to do with the redirect. Lifted from elsewhere:
Cheney cited FactCheck.com, a for-profit advertising site based in the Cayman Islands. The company decided to redirect traffic to the Soros site after it became inundated with hits -- about 100 a second after the debate, John Berryhill, a Philadelphia lawyer for FactCheck.com, said Wednesday.

"This was to relieve stress on the service and to express a political point of view," said Berryhill, who spoke with the site's administrators shortly after the debate ended.

They picked Soros not only for his political views, Berryhill said, but because the billionaire could afford the costly deluge of hits the site would receive in the wake of the debate. Plus, the site administrators didn't want to point surfers to a candidate's site that was asking for money.

Monday, October 04, 2004

My cat is now on a special diet (Limited Ingredient, which in this case is cat food made from duck and green peas - and nothing but) so that I can rule out any possible allergies that may be causing her coughing problems. She's also on steroids for her inflamed bronchial passages. Her new diet/meds is having one major side-effect, and that is paint-peelingly-stinky poops. This morning she came into the bathroom and laid down some pipe in the litterbox as I brushed my teeth, and the stench was so horrible I could almost see it. And even now that I'm at work, it's like my nose has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, because I keep thinking I can still smell it, even though that's totally impossible, unless some stray scent molecules managed to hitch a ride on my clothes. Lord have mercy.