Beth's Contradictory Brain

Behind the Blog

Just so you know, the whole time I was writing about wishing I were a super genius yesterday - the only thing I heard in my head was "Wiley Coyote - Super Genius" in his famous drawn out style!

Last one

One last thought on this gay high school stuff. Quotes like this have been fairly common: Then there's the argument about feelings, social comfort: Gay kids — obviously gay kids — come in for a very rough time in school. (Or at least they used to. It's been a while since I was in school. Is it cool now? If so, the wheel has indeed turned.) Feelings are important — more important than some of us right-wingers are given to admit. But, as New York's Conservative party boss Mike Long pointed out, what about fat kids? What about clumsy kids? What about kids with acne? What about handicapped kids? Do we farm them all out, ghettoize them, to protect them from the bumps and bruises of community living?"

So, gay kids are just like everyone else when you don't want them to have their own high school. But gay people are different enough (in a bad way) from straight people that you don't want them ruining the prescious institution of marriage??

I see how it is. (Nerdstar's favorite phrase of mine!)

Speed of Light

Sometimes I wish I were a genius. I mean, someone who could really understand things like physics and math and astronomy and history and such. I know there's not really any one person who's an expert in everything about one of those topics, much less all of them, but my wish is that I could be like that.

Every once in a while I'll watch a news story or tv show on the universe, galaxy, new planets, and such and I just don't get it. So I was wondering who figured out the speed of light and how. (This link has a fantstic short history of the people who did this.) And how do we know it's right. Then I thought about how the people at NASA and in Russia who designed the rockets to go to the moon and such were all pretty damn smart. I can't imagine all the math that went into that. (I'm sure there many books on this subject, maybe I'll look into that.)

I guess my idea of heaven includes that we all become super geniuses - completely understanding everything ever.

Update:

In 1983 scientists defined a meter as 1/299,792,458 the distance light travels in one second. They did this becaused they knew the distance light travels in one second more accurately than the definition of the standard meter.

So, since 1983 the speed of light is not measured in any way. It has been defined as a standard.

Ok, so it's easier to accurately measure the speed of light than it is distance? See, if if that statement is true, and understand that the sentence is true, there is so much information in and behind that statement that's beyond me.

More:
I'm still surfing around this site: solar system
and reading sentences like this: "The planet Saturn is less dense than water - it will float on water." Huh?
and this: "Uranus is a gas giant. It is made mostly from water, ammonia, methane, hydrogen and helium."

I guess I've always thought of planets as having LAND. Yes, I realize that's a silly assumption. I mean, I guess I thought that under all the gas there was still land of some sort, rocks, something solid.

More on gay high schools

HMI was founded in 1979 in response to an incident in a NYC group home. A 15-year-old boy was beaten and sexually assaulted by other residents. Group home staff addressed the incident by discharging the young man, explaining to him that the attack would not have happened if he were not gay. When Doctors Emery S. Hetrick and A. Damien Martin learned of the case, they marshaled the support of concerned adults and founded the Institute for the Protection of Lesbian and Gay Youth (IPLGY). The Institute was renamed in their honor after their deaths.

Yes, countless kids of all types are bullied and harassed every day in every public school in this country. Yes, straight kids are sometimes killed or driven to suicide, or sometimes even murder. So are gay kids. I'm sure a simple google search could find lots of studies and personal testimonies to the plight of lesbian and gay students. But really, it's not just their school days that are hell, as often as not their home life is hell, too. They're trying to find their place, their sense of self, in a world that constantly tells them they're freaks at best - abnormal, sinful, deviant. The stress can be unbearable.

So what harm is there in there being a few schools around this country that are a safe haven for gay and lesbian students? A place where they can leave the hassles of who they and their fear at the door, and just be students trying to learn.

Gay High School

The Harvey Milk High School in New York is a school that caters to gay, lesbian, bi, transgendered and straight students who feel they need a safe place to go to school. Michele has an interesting take (read the comments as well) on the upcoming opening of the school's new expansion site. I guess I see two different issues. No, having a gay high school should not "let the district off the hook" when it comes to solving the problems of harassment, bullying, ignorance and so forth. But, unfortunately, there is a need for this school as a students who feel they need a safe place can go.

Look around the site for HMSH, found out why it was started, why and how it's being expanded, and then tell me if this is a good or bad idea.

Read Rossi's two cents (which is really worth much more than that).

Ewww

I find it interesting that the three or four people at work who really make my skin crawl if I have to talk to them have all started being pals. Which only multiplies the skin crawling on my part.

A must read

A note of thanks to those who serve
by Christy Ferer

Some were blunt. "Why are you going there?" They could not understand why it was important for me, a 9/11 widow, to express my support for the men and women stationed today in the Gulf.

As always - read the whole thing. (found via Sgt. Stryker)

Non Sequitur

I finally thought to add the link for the NonSequitur daily cartoon. Other than I love the way the cartoonist thinks (hmmm guess I need to do a little research on the cartoonist, seeing as I know nothing about them), Nerdstar is pretty much the queen of non sequiturs.

Update: Wiley Miller - cartoonist.

Movies

Most of my weekend consisted of eating and watching movies. Friday after work I rented Final Destination 2 and Talk to Her. I had also recorded Gaslight earlier in the week. Then last night I caught Cool Hand Luke on TCM.

"Final 2" wasn't as good as the first one, because it wasn't as novel. The deaths were still very imaginative and all, but I think if the films had taken themselves a little more seriously and been for an audience other than teenagers, they could have been some of the scariest movies ever. It would have been like watching the first Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street. Instead Final just really required too much suspension of belief because they didn't put the budget they should have into it, or the real indepth plot. But the idea of Death hunting you down... scarry. I also learned that while I'm not usually affected by scarry movies, it's still not a good idea to watch them at night while living alone and then going out to walk the dog on insufficiently lit streets. I guess it resonated with me because I've been reading Neil Gaiman's Death comic books. Fortunately, Death is much nicer in his world.

Talk to Her is by the same guy who did Y Tu Mama Tambien, Alfonso Cuaron. I watched "Y Tu" probably about a month ago. It was ok, sad, but not a great movie like I'd expected. Talk to Her was a little weirder than I'd expected, but enjoyable as a lot of foreign films are. But today I read that Alfonso is going to direct the next Harry Potter movie - fine - but he also: Regrettably, he also feels it necessary to compare Lord Voldemort to George Bush ("[i]n combination with Saddam," no less). That doesn't bode well for the originality of thought he'll bring to the enterprise.

Gaslight With the amazing and beautiful Ingrid Bergman was painful to watch simple because the man she marries is so completely evil.

And finally Cool Hand Luke with Paul Newman. He's not exactly handsome, but he certainly had appeal when he was younger.

So, I watched a modern day horror flick, a mystery movie from the 40s, a prison movie from the 60s, and a foreign film - I'm nothing if not ecclectic.

I think the movies from the 60s and 70s fascinate me because while those time periods aren't that distant in the past, they were so very different than today. It's kinda fun to see what the grownups were watching and doing when I was a little kid thru the movies of those times. Hmmm... but 30 years from now would I really want my kids to think they can get a glimpse of my current life from watching movies made now? Probably not.

Are movies really a good representation of life in any given time period?

Blogroll

I did some house cleaning on my blogroll yesterday and this morning. I really do use the list every morning (and probably two or three times more each day) to hit all my favorite sites. I realized there were a few sites I wasn't really clicking on, so I deleted them. I also added two new ones:

Spoons just bought his first motorcycle this weekend - gotta support fellow riders! And he's got a great site.

Ipse Dixit is CD Harris' site. I find he's always got great stuff, too.

Check them out!

He's back

Chris Muir is back early - woohoo!! Go read today's, and then keep reading him every day!

New Car

New Car

I'm really happy with this car. I knew I was getting older when I first realized I liked Cadillacs. I'm all about the car being roomy and having a very smooth ride! I still can't believe it only has 48K miles on it. This must have been an old people car. It doesn't have cruise control, but that's ok. And it only has an am/fm radio. I find that I set the radio to "scan" and just listen to bits and pieces of stuff, never really stopping on much. And when I do stop on a song, the stations never manage to play two good songs back to back.

Anyway. I'm happy with my choice.

All Grown Up

It finally sunk in last night that I really don't deserve to be stuck driving a piece of shit car and that I'm really not poverty stricken. I'm not sure why I thought otherwise for so long. But I'm over it.

My family was lower middle class when I was growing up - and I had no idea. I never felt like I lacked for anything. My mom stayed home, dad worked and came home at 4 pm every day to read the paper until dinner was ready. Sure, I knew there were kids who had cooler things than I did. But there wasn't anything I really, really wanted that I didn't have.

At Baylor it started to sink in just how much money we didn't have. But again, I was also very, very aware of just how hard my parents had worked to enable me to go to college. That was one of the biggest reasons I finished my degree, I couldn't waste all the love and money they'd spent allowing me to get my degree.

I graduated from Baylor in December of 1990. I can't believe it's been that long. I worked at a company called Success Motivation my last semester of college and the following year. Then came my first layoff. I was still living in Waco and wanted very badly to move to Austin.

I came down to Austin for about a week and tried to find a place to live or a job. I'd been coming down here for maybe a weekend every other month or so for at least a year to attend this church I really liked. But that week, I had no luck whatsoever.

One night that week I called my mom and talked things over. My grandmother had been diagnosed with lung cancer, so Mom suggested I move back home and could help out with my grandmother and go back to school and get certified to teach. Sounded good to me.

This is when my financial life went to hell. I assumed after spending about a year and a half getting certified to teach, that at the end of that time I'd be making at least X amount of money a year. I charged up a few thousand on credit cards.

The teaching job never materialized. The move to Austin finally did. A friend of mine from Baylor was living here and offered to let me live with her until I could get on my feet here. (That ended up being a horrible living situation for the next five months - but that's another story.)

That debt I'd gotten into while back in school and then the expense of trying to live in Austin on my own with only crappy little jobs was just too much. So about five years ago I blew off all my debt - probably just over 12 grand. I just stopped paying them. I knew I'd have bad credit for a long time, but at that time I decided I'd rather have bad credit than to have to donate plasma all the time.

My life has improved in so many ways because of Nerdstar, and now one of the more tangible ways is financial. I've had the same job for almost three years. That's the longest I've had a job since college. I've got a couple thousand in stocks, I've got about five grand in my 401K, and I've even got money left over in my checking after paying all the bills every month.

But the one thing that really kept making me feel poor was my car. After my camaro completely fell apart two years ago, I knew I couldn't finance a new car, or even a good used car. So, Nerdstar and I pulled together all the money we could and bought the ugly assed 89 Buick LeSabre that didn't even have an a/c. At the time I didn't think it was that big a deal, it was only for driving to work. Nerdstar's car had a great a/c for all the other driving we do. Then, as you all know, her family took it back with them to Houston while she's on active duty.

So, long story longer. Last night I did a couple of hours of searching on the internet for a reasonable used car at a reasonable price that I would summon the courage to go see if I could get financing for. And I found one!

I got up at 7:30 this morning, got to the used car place just after they opened at 8 and asked if they still had the car I'd looked at - a 1997 Buick Skylark with under 50K miles for $5K - and they did!! It was the easiest sale the guy could make.

At about 12:30 this afternoon I finally drove away in my new car. I feel very grown up! I was even very savy. I'd signed all the paperwork and was waiting for the salesman to come back and decided to look it over one more time. The finance guy had gone over stuff about a "guarantee" for so many months and so many miles, I hadn't realized they had added over $2250 to the total price of the car. Sneaky bastards! So, I walked right back in there and said that we could take that off, I didn't really need it. My payments are only $134 a month for three years. The only reason I'd take that long to pay it off would be just to have a longer payment history for my credit record. I don't see taking more than two years to pay it off really.

The rest of my summer should be much happier now!! Next weekend I'm going to head up to Dallas and see my family, and not sweat off ten pounds doing so!

Go!

At 9 am Saturday morning the Blogathon starts. If during that 24 hour period you come by my site and don't click on over to Michele and at least say howdy for me - well, then you're just not very nice. Trust me, she'll be very entertaining! It's all about the 70s, 80s and 90s. You remember those great decades don't you. Hell, if you even pass VH1 on your way to other channels you know all about the 80s! (you know, for you damn youngsters who weren't here for it the first time around!)

So go - give her lots of comments and support!!

Good/Bad

Good news - it's friday!

Bad news - Nerdstar's unit is moving from the hotel they've been in for a few weeks back into even worse icky old barracks tomorrow.

Good news - I bought Nerdstar a plane ticket home for Labor Day weekend.

Bad news - there doesn't appear to be very many jobs up in the Tacoma area right now.

Thanks

Thanks for all the feedback! I'm feeling better today. Hopefully Nerdstar can get some info about everything so we can make some decisions.

We're kinda thinking that the house buying would only be here in Austin, since I have a steady, stable job here. Moving to the Tacoma area AND buying a house would probably be a little riskier than we'd like.

I'm just one of those people who needs a plan of action - even if every two days I completely re-write the plan. And I'm not sure which plan is scarrier - committing to buying a house, or picking up and moving to another part of the country and looking for work. I know that nothing's permanent, but I guess I'm getting more cautious in my old age. Nerdstar hasn't really decided what her preferences are either. Hopefully our conversations yesterday helped us to get on the same page and she can decide what she's most comfortable with.

No matter what, once she knows she's headed overseas for sure, I'll go up there for a week or two, depending on how far in advance she knows.

And more Plans

Poor Nerdstar. Emotionally she and I are nothing alike. She's really good at living in the moment and not thinking too much and maintains a really nice calm. Me, not so much.

We had about an hour and a half phone call - partly because the first half was a lot of silence and frustration. Thankfully we got past that and into some specifics.

The most likely scenario for her is being in Tacoma until late September/mid October then maybe six months or more in Iraq and then back to Tacoma for maybe a month or so. We'll be lucky if her orders aren't extended after the year they're for now and she'll be home by next June.

Given that reality, we can work towards one of two goals - buying a house here in Austin or moving up to Tacoma. So, she's going to look into rent and jobs up there and see if me moving up there is feasible. And we're going to try to find a mortgage company to talk to and see if us getting a mortgage is even possible. I have really bad credit that won't go away for another couple of years, but I've had a steady job for almost three years. She has better credit and no work history. We figure our best chance of buying a house is here in Austin while she's on active duty, because we have no idea what kind of job she'll find when she's done. It's better to talk with a mortgage company now so that if there's not a chance in hell we'll get approved, then we might as well work on the moving.

I told her I just need either a good reason to show up at work everyday or the knowledge that it's only for x amount more of time.

Mostly I'm glad she's finally understand what's in my head and is more ready to figure out what she really wants instead of just rolling with the punches.

More on Plans

Eleven weeks ago today I took Nerdstar to the airport in the middle of the night. It just really seems longer than that. I don't mean to whine about all of this. I know that I'm very, very lucky to have her stateside, to be able to have her call twice a day, and to have seen her twice in those eleven weeks, and could see her more if we really wanted to. I have a friend who's husband is in Iraq and she gets a two or three hour call from him every seven to ten days. I don't know how she does it. I apparently suck at this long term life on hold stuff. My brain keeps looking for ways out, it sees this as a problem to solve and doesn't turn off until it finds a solution. But there isn't really a solution other than wait and see right now.

Persephone recommends a leave of absence from my job to take time to go see Nerdstar and to try subbing. I'd been thinking of this a lot today, so it was nice to see someone else had thought of it, too. Not for three months, but maybe for six weeks or so. It's definitely something Nerdstar and I will discuss tonight. But it comes down to a money issue. Our two biggest dreams for the past three (or four even) years is to move to a cooler climate and/or buy a house. The money we're saving while she's gone will allow us to do one if not both of those things (depending on just how long she's gone and if she goes overseas). So I'm trying to not jeopardize future goals for immediate happiness. It's not like my life is an unbearable hell, in fact, my job is more cushy than a lot I could have. I'm just not very good at being patient.

No Plan

Ok, my mood has improved to mildly frustrated. I keep racking my brain to come up with a PLAN and just can't. I'm about to decide I'm a big ole coward. Or at the least I'm way too cautious. I talk about life being short, and that you shouldn't base decisions on money, but I'm not really living that way. It looks like Nerdstar will be in Tacoma maybe as late as October. She wants me to come up there and spend some time, a week, a month, something. I keep saying the logistics are too hard. I don't know how to find someone to take care of the house and pets if I'm gone that long. (Ok, I haven't tried very hard yet.) I keep trying to ration out my vacation days. But, I could probably take more time off if I needed to, even if I have to take it unpaid. I also don't want to spend that much money right now. I have this really strong desire to save all of the money possible until she's done and home. I'm trying to work on the delayed gratification theory.

There's still no word or new information about her maybe getting transferred to Kansas - which has it's own pros and cons.

If every day didn't feel like a week this wouldn't be so hard.

Then there's the whole this job doesn't make me happy, but I don't want to risk a different one crap. School starts August 19th in Austin. I've thought about going back to being a substitute teacher. The take home pay wouldn't be that much less but I wouldn't have any benefits. Then again, I could roll my 401K over into a Roth IRA, and I haven't used the $400 I've paid into my medical insurance this year anyway. The essential question is, do I want to be in a boring easy job where I can surf the web most of the day but that frustrates me for reasons I can never really explain, or do I want to take a chance and deal with little kids every day. (Although I'm certified to teach grades 6-12, I would probably substitute in elementary schools, the older kids in Austin are just too tough.)

Well, I've got three weeks (or longer really) to decide about subbing. Maybe, just maybe in that time Nerdstar will know more about the army's plans for her. If I could just get my brain to let it all go until then.

I don't get it

Sorry if you've had trouble getting the site to come up today - something about Hosting Matters moving sites to a new server - which would have been fine with ANY advance notice.

I don't understand evil. Really. I'm sure I've written about this before, but I'm too lazy and pissy (yes, still) to look it up right now. I can't fathom living in a country where this is anything other than a really really bad movie:

A chef at Baghdad's exclusive Hunting Club recalls a wedding party that Uday crashed in the late 1990s. After Uday left the hall, the bride, a beautiful woman from a prominent family, went missing. "The bodyguards closed all the doors, didn't let anybody out," the chef remembers. "Women were yelling and crying, 'What happened to her?'" The groom knew. "He took a pistol and shot himself," says the chef, placing his forefinger under his chin.

Last October another bride, 18, was dragged, resisting, into a guardhouse on one of Uday's properties, according to a maid who worked there. The maid says she saw a guard rip off the woman's white wedding dress and lock her, crying, in a bathroom. After Uday arrived, the maid heard screaming. Later she was called to clean up. The body of the woman was carried out in a military blanket, she said. There were acid burns on her left shoulder and the left side of her face. The maid found bloodstains on Uday's mattress and clumps of black hair and peeled flesh in the bedroom. A guard told her, "Don't say anything about what you see, or you and your family will be finished." From Time magazine. Found via The Corner who I still won't link to.

I also can't imagine anything but sheer joy at the news that this evil fuckhead and his brother are dead.

So when the democrats respond with shit like this:

...I'm running for president because I believe George Bush has left us less safe and less secure than we were four years ago. I'm calling for new national leadership because the Bush-Cheney bravado has left us isolated in the world — fracturing 50 years of alliances, calling into question our credibility, squandering the global goodwill that was showered on us after 9/11.

I'm seeking the presidency because foreign policy isn't a John Wayne movie, where we catch the bad guys, hoist a few cold ones and then everything fades to black. Richard Gephardt

The AP reports that Howard Dean "shrugged off" the news saying, "the ends do not justify the means."

Well, needless to say all that just makes me even more pissy.

Can you even imagine having a man as president who wouldn't even see it as a good thing that mudering, raping, fuckhead dictators were not only removed from power but dead??

The words less safe would have a whole new meaning if a democrat were elected in 2004.

Good news

How cool! SH's two sons are dead.

Pissy

It's hard to blog when I just don't give a flying fuck about what's going on in the world. I mean, who really gives a shit about the kobe circus?? No one should. I'm so tired of the media. And I'm even more tired of the dumbfucks who pay attention to it.

I'm still hating the feeling that my life is on hold until Nerdstar is finished with this active duty tour - and we still have no clue when it could end. Even though you would assume that worst case scenario is she'll be home next May since she only has orders for a year - well, it's the military, and I don't think even God knows what they're going to do from day to day.

For the record, I hate when my coworkers wear sandals that I can hear slapping against their feet when they walk. I can hear them coming miles away, it's annoying.

See, today feels so much like Monday to me that I'm in a pissed off Monday kind of mood.

Monday

It's almost noon here and I'm catching up on reading websites and having leftover Cheesecake Factory's Hersey's Chocolate Almond Fudge cheesecake for breakfast. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the only thing I eat today. Although, I really need to go to the grocery store.

Well, Nerdstar is on a plane from Dallas to Seattle right now. I miss having her around the house!! We tried like hell to find a later flight or find a way for her to stay one more day. We couldn't. I'm really, really ready for her to be done with all this and come home. I can't even imagine how all the people with loved ones over in Iraq feel. I know I'm lucky that we can at least visit each other while she's stateside. My second wish is that we had any idea what's next and when.

I've spent the last two days trying to decide if I want to fix the a/c in my car, which would cost about a grand, get a different older used car for under four or five grand, or make car payments on a newer car. All I can say is that I hate spending money and as of this morning the answer is none of the above. I don't want to put that much money into the piece of shit that I'm driving. I don't feel like taking my chances with another used car. And I really don't want to get locked into car payments until we know what's going to happen with Nerdstar.

Hopefully she can get another pass to come home labor day weekend. By then I'll make up my mind.

I could have gone in to work for half a day, but it seemed like too much effort. Now I'll feel guilty if I don't do something productive around the house. We'll see.

Hot as hell!

Hi everyone!
This is Nerdstar, coming at you from hot and sunny Austin, Tx., where I am currently on a 4 day pass from my military duties. I arrived late on Friday night and Beth was right, I should have flown Southwest, but no...I was trying to save some dough! It is so nice to be with the pets, all of whom, because of the intense Texas heat, are in some sort of a heat-induced stupor, sleeping a lot. I don't blame them, in fact, I had been sleeping a lot as well. We went to eat at Saltgrass steakhouse, Co Co's (this Taiwanese eatery), and tonight we are going to launch our attack at Rudy's bbq, you see, people in the Northwest don't really appreciate things like that.
I wished that we could have gone to some places and done some things, but the weather is hot, and the summer movie selections are less than exciting, or even watchable at best, so we just stayed in our little duplex most of the time. I know that Beth tried to keep the place clean, but I think that it's about time that we call a molly maid or something!!
I am leaving early tomorrow morning and I wish that I could take her and the pets with me, part of me thought about what would happen if I just decided not to get on the plane!
Yet, getting deployed has been giving us steady pay and some possibilities for a sort of career so I guess I must stick it out. I wish I didn't have to make a living fighting, but when the economy has been the way it is, drastic times requires drastic measures.
Oh, by the way, I also should mention that you can't get fish tacos in Seattle, my welcome home meal was held at Magnolia's, very nice! Also, we trekked to Amy's ice cream on her bike and I had myself a big cup of peanut butter banana ice cream,it was nice!
I'll start exercising next week......

Waiting

Nothing like making a long day longer... her flight was delayed about an hour and a half. You think that if you're only real responsibility in a business was to maintain an on time schedule you'd do just that. Well, when the government gives you millions in hand outs instead of making you suffer the wrath of pissed of customers, why worry about being on time? (Yes that's a shortened version of the airline bailouts and customer service - but it's not inaccurate.)

Then again, she's the one who chose American over Southwest - silly girl!

Two more hours and she should be in sight!

Oh really?

ConfigSys.boy! Has tiny robots in his pants... at least, that's what he'll be saying over the next few days. Oh, sure, there are more important issues to be discussed in this post, but what fun would that be?

Like Peas in a Pod

I can see where this hand cooling mouse could come in handy for bloggers trying to prevent cancer.

Being Fair

Seems my take on Queer Eye wasn't in line with others... but I'm used to that.

OutOutBlogspot has posts about the ratings and is it just stereotyping gay and/or straight men? Of course it's playing to stereotypes. So? As for ratings, I'm sure it got a huge initial curiosity viewing, we'll see if it can maintain the ratings. Hard to say.

Waiting

14 hours until I pick my girl up from the airport - because I know you'll be counting it down with me!

Blair's Speech

I got home a little early yesterday after taking Ramen to the vet, and I caught the last fifteen minutes or so of Blair's speech in Congress. It was a great speech!

This is part of what I caught, and stuff like this brings tears to my eyes:

"We are fighting for the inalienable right of humankind -- black or white; Christian or not; left, right or merely indifferent -- to be free -- free to raise a family in love and hope; free to earn a living and be rewarded by your own efforts; free not to bend your knee to any man in fear; free to be you, so long as being you does not impair the freedom of others. That's what we're fighting for, and it's a battle worth fighting. And I know it's hard on America. And in some small corner of this vast country, out in Nevada or Idaho or these places I've never been to but always wanted to go -- (laughter) -- I know out there, there's a guy getting on with his life, perfectly happily, minding his own business, saying to you, the political leaders of this country, "Why me, and why us, and why America?" And the only answer is because destiny put you in this place in history in this moment in time, and the task is yours to do. And our job -- my nation, that watched you grow, that you fought alongside and now fights alongside you, that takes enormous pride in our alliance and great affection in our common bond -- our job is to be there with you. You're not going to be alone. We will be with you in this fight for liberty. We will be with you in this fight for liberty. And if our spirit is right and our courage firm, the world will be with us."

Another exerpt:

"There is a myth that though we love freedom, others don't; that our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture; that freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law are American values or Western values; that Afghan women were content under the lash of the Taliban; that Saddam was somehow beloved by his people; that Milosevic was Serbia's savior. Members of Congress, ours are not Western values. They are the universal values of the human spirit, and anywhere -- (applause) -- anywhere, any time ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police.

The spread of freedom is the best security for the free. It is our last line of defense and our first line of attack.

And just as the terrorist seeks to divide humanity in hate, so we have to unify around an idea. And that idea is liberty."

Here's a link to the whole speech.

Nice Surprise

What a nice suprise. I had ordered Death: The High Cost of Living, and Death: The Time of Your Life comic series and they've been sitting on my dining table for at least a week while I finished American Gods.

If you're a lesbian who's ever even considered reading a comic book, Death: The Time of Your Life is a really sweet one. It's about an accoustic guitar playing poet singer and her life and her girlfriend and love and choices.

What made me smile is that the title of chapter one is "Things you just do when you're bored." Caroline once told me that being bored was no good reason to do something. I told her it's sometimes the best reason to do something.

Sleepless

Yawn. It's 1 am and I'm not asleep. I'm not sure exactly why my brain and body won't let me sleep, it's not like they really have anything better to do. But, no sleep it is.

I went to see Pirates after work today. It was a packed theater at 4 on a Wednesday. I really enjoyed the film - and I can't remember the last time I said that about a movie. It was just plain fun.

Our poor dog is still itchy as hell. After yelling at him this evening to just stop being itchy, I decided to check out his belly and make sure there's no real reason for the itchies. Of course, he has these weird dark spots that don't really look like a rash, but aren't bugs, and aren't scabs. So, first thing in the morning I get to make a vet appointment for him. I petted him a lot and apologized for yelling. He doesn't seem to hold grudges.

Yawn. Guess I'll take the body back to bed and see if it's ready to sleep yet.

Watching/Being Watched

People watching (and overhearing) is just about my favorite pasttime. As I was watching people up in Seattle, and a couple of times since, I got to thinking that no one I watch ever knows I'm watching them. And that, really, we should all assume someone is watching us all the time, just because you never know. These thoughts didn't have the idea of Big Brother in them at all. It wasn't about government spying, it was just about people watching other people and never knowing when they're watching YOU. (desparately avoiding world/stage cliches.)

So reading this take on reality shows in kinda interesting.

Reality shows, as controversial, inane, and, frankly, terrible as they are, may turn out to be the most important social innovation of the last ten years.

Because, magically, weirdly, just in time, they are teaching us what it means to be watched, all the time, and have all of your actions and interactions not only observed by millions of anonymous strangers, but analyzed, judged, and preserved forever. And this is a lesson that we, especially in the United States, desperately need to learn, because it is about to happen to all of us.

Read the whole entry - very interesting!

Ugh

I've watched about ten minutes of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Ummm... the guy's an artist - not exactly mid-america straight. And there's just too many gay boys. Besides, if it were really for a gay audience - the gay boys would be doing life makeovers for lesbians - the only group of people who just might need it more than straight boys!!

Done

Distant hurrican winds are blowing funky clouds across my sky this evening and tonight. It's nice.

"One describes a tale best by telling the tale. You see? The way one describes a story, to oneself or to the world, is by telling the story. It is a balancing act and it is a dream. The more accurate the map, the more it resembles the territory. The most accurate map possible would be the territory, and thus would be perfectly accurate and perfectly useless.
The tale is the map that is the territory.
You must remember this."

I take comfort in this quote because I always suck at telling someone what a book I love is about.

I've finally finished American Gods. It is the most thoroughly, completely told story I have ever read. While I'm sure there is a large percentage of it that my brain just isn't getting, it's still one of the most satisfying books I've ever read. Satisfying like a good meal, except it'll last longer.

I couldn't even begin to compare Gaiman's work to anyone else. All I can say is that if you really love reading, read his books. Neil Gaiman's website.

Learning Thru Comic Books

I should feel unintelligent or something, but I don't. It took reading more of Neil Gaiman's Sandman graphic novel series to know that Robin Goodfellow is a Shakespear character. Yes, I've read several Shakespear plays, and seen most of the movies, but have never read A Mid Summer Night's Dream. Maybe I will now. I've also read enough references to Alice in Wonderland lately to think it's about time I read it as well.

It also took Calvin and Hobbes to teach me the words panache and transmorgify.

I guess all this would fall in line with Michele's ideas that it doesn't matter if your kids are reading comic books, as long as they're reading something!

Contradictory Brain

I'm still not finished reading American Gods, but should finish it tonight or tomorrow. I have no idea why it's taking me so long. But I am enjoying it immensly. The following is just one small part of why:

“I,” she told him, “can believe anything. You have no idea what I can believe.”

“Really?”

I can believe things that are true and I can believe things that aren’t true… Listen, I believe that people are perfectible, that knowledge is infinite, that the world is run by secret banking cartels and is visited by aliens on a regular basis, nice ones that look like wrinkledy lemurs and bad ones who mutilate cattle and want our water and our women. I believe that the future sucks and I believe that the future rocks and I believe that one day White Buffalo Woman is going to come back and kick everyone’s ass. I believe that all men are just overgrown boys with deep problems commuicating and that the decline in good sex in America is coincident with the decline in drive-in movie theaters from state to state. I believe that all politicians are unprincipled crooks and I still believe that they are better than the alternative.

I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we’ll all be wiped out by the common cold like the Martians in War of the Worlds. I believe…that jade is dried dragon sperm, and that thousands of years ago in a former life I was a one-armed Siberian shaman. I believe that mankind’s destiny lies in the stars. I believe that candy really did taste better when I was a kid, that it’s aerodynamically impossible for a bumble bee to fly, that light is a wave and a particle, that there’s a cat in a box somewhere who’s alive and dead at the same time (although if they don’t ever open the box to feed it, it’ll eventually just be two different kinds of dead), and that there are stars in the universe billions of years older than the universe itself. I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of causal chaos, background noise, and sheer blind luck. I believe that anyone who says that sex is overrated just hasn’t done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what’s going on will lie about the little things, too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman’s right to choose, a baby’s right to live, that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life happens when you’re alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.” She stopped out of breath.

If that doesn't sum up a contradictory brain, I have no idea what would!!!

Giving

I decided that if I can blow $50 on a haircut tomorrow, I can donate $50 to MDA to help Michele and company try to buy them an ambulance. This is part of the bigger annual Blogathon where bloggers blog for 24 hours to raise money for their fav. charities.

Cartoon break

No, I'm not taking a break to watch cartoons, although on a Monday afternoon I wish I were!

Chris Muir who pens Day by Day says:

Due to temporary medical reasons, DBD will be offline for 30 days, and WILL then resume. This notice will be posted on the site, beginning tomorrow (July 14, 2003).

Here's to a speedy recovery!!! If you haven't been reading Day by Day, these 30 days will give you plenty of opportunity to get caught up before he resumes writing it!

Change

I want change
I hate change
I need change
I can't stand change
I must have change
I fear change

Yep, that's my brain.

Coming ashore

Rubber Ducky, you're the one. I saw this on the news this weekend - thousands of rubber ducks are going to wash up on New England shores after being "lost at sea" for ten years.

Misc.

There are two entries over on Four Color Hell (which if you're at all into comic books you should check out!!) that caught my attention.

This entry is about a husband and wife arugment over Harry Potter's popularity being because it's good. I mention in the comments that to me "pop" as an adjective has never meant great or good. Which side would you take in their argument?

The other is this entry on movie theaters that are for adults only. Here in Austin we now have three theaters that serve food and drinks during the movie, so the audience tends to be older, but isn't exclusively adult. Then I saw a news story of a theater that sets aside an 11 am showing for parents with babies. I think the market place is big enough for both. Besides, in the past couple of years it wasn't people under 18 being completely obnoxious in the movie theater I was in, it was adults.

It's all about the comments dear readers. I really don't want this site to be a one way conversation. Shy is no excuse, neither is thinking you don't have anything interesting to say - your thoughts have to be as interesting as mine.

Still Doubt?

Federal appellate Judge Gilbert S. Merritt of Nashville is in Iraq as one of 13 experts selected by the U.S. Justice Department to help rebuild Iraq's judicial system.

Merritt, 67, has made trips to Russia and India to work with their judicial systems. He has been sending periodic reports to The Tennessean about his experiences in Iraq and filed this dispatch recently:

Through an unusual set of circumstances, I have been given documentary evidence of the names and positions of the 600 closest people in Iraq to Saddam Hussein, as well as his ongoing relationship with Osama bin Laden.

Up until this time, I have been skeptical about these claims. Now I have changed my mind. There is, however, one big problem remaining: They are both still at large and the combined forces of the free world have been unable to find them. Until we find and capture them, they will remain a threat — Saddam with the remnants of his army and supporters in combination with the worldwide terrorist organization of Osama bin Laden.

Those are the first and last paragraphs in the story. The article tells how this list was originally published in Iraq, then the story literally disappeared, and how he came to have the information of the 600 people close to SH and the link between SH and Bin Laden.

What scares me is that these two are still not captured.

(found via Instapundit)

Job ads

This could be an interesting turn in the blogosphere... finding people jobs! This just might be the most creative way yet. Check out this guy helping his friend try to get a job. I'm a definite believer in putting the word out to the world and seeing what happens.

Hope Deferred

This entry by ConfigSysBoy is probably just what I need today.

For a real dreamer of dreams the things we hope for can never really be defeated, only deferred. We are confident in our ability to achieve the impossible and to overcome the insurmountable because we believe in the power of dreams. The dreamers can be hard pressed on every side, but can never really be crushed. They can be struck down, but they refuse to be destroyed. A dreamer never gives up and therein lies the power of dreams. They sustain us for as long as we are willing to believe in them. And we know, regardless of what others may say, that one day we can make them real because we know that it is we who are the music makers.

Go read the whole entry.

There's a verse in the bible that talks about hope deferred makes the heart sick. Something to that affect.

I think that's what's getting me down this week. The double wammy of spending time with Nerdstar only to have to come back to an empty house and no idea of when she'll be home for good. Then, the joy of spending time with Zachary only to miss him and then just end up being so damn sad that we don't have kids, that I can't have kids, and that it's going to be a while before Nerdstar can try to get pregnant.

Sometimes it just takes more effort and energy than I feel like giving to stay upbeat and positive. Chasing dreams can seem a lot like spinning wheels - always moving, never obtaining.

Playing Hookie

It's 1 in the afternoon and I'm reading all my email and links so I can start my day. Yep, I called in sick today. I woke up this morning and just didn't want to be awake or at work. I really thought I'd only sleep another hour or so and then go in for the afternoon. Nope, I slept until almost noon. I always feel guilty for calling in sick. But these days I'm so completely bored with my job I daydream about getting fired. It's very hard to get fired from my place of employment. It would probably take more work and effort to get fired than to just show up and do my job every day.

I go back and forth all the time about wanting everything to change and wanting to keep everything safe and the same.

Oh well. Time for a shower. Then I'm off to get some lunch, look at new weedeaters and buy groceries. Very exciting stuff!

Census

For my lesbian and gay readers... I got a link to this gay census in a local email list. I haven't had time to fill it out myself but will tomorrow. Make your voice heard.