July 1999 Archives

excuse me while I step upon my soapbox.

the press covered the last shuttle mission with interest, since it was the first mission commandeered by a woman. my initial reaction: big deal. but that wasn't, apparently, what the press (or the public?) thought - a shuttle mission commandeered by a woman was somehow newsworthy. I think it'll be more newsworthy when these "look at this - women can do this too! who knew? wow!" stories are no longer selling newsmagazines. yet it's a double-edged sword - advances in women's roles and achievements are important to note, certainly for young girls to see and perhaps emulate - but, as long as these things are covered in the press, women will be relegated to a "special" status. "special" does not allow one to be considered "equal" by one's male peer.

along these lines: John Dvorak's asinine comments in his PC Magazine column about the "girly," "Barbie" iBook remind us of the gender-based assumptions that are still thriving in the IT world. didn't you know that computer hardware cases are an extension of your sexual orientation? it seems Dvorak thinks so. Janelle Brown of Salon has a wonderful rebuttal

my mom is doing much better. her sense of humor is incredible, her perseverance amazing.

okay, if you haven't seen it, it's news to you, right? from memepool: cat-scan.com. it was just one of those serendipitous sightings of something insanely silly, viewed at exactly the right moment - I spazzed into a fit of laughter that lasted all morning. the kind of laughter that makes your middle happy-tired.

my closest friend from college is driving up here today. today is her birthday - she turns 25. tomorrow morning we'll depart on our own little National Lampoon vacation in the Black Hills of South Dakota. looking forward to eating things on a questionable grill, religious use of wet wipes and bug spray, and, of course, the tequila libations. maybe I can convince her of a shorter trip - but then again, the journey is half the fun.

SQUUUEAL. someone's finally taken the weblog and distilled it to the brittle perl script that we all knew it really was. build your own weblog at pitas.com. (Thanks Peter.) and be sure to visit the nubbin's bastard child at http://web.pitas.com/arianafrench/.

I love it. Some honest commentary about weblogs.

I went swimming this weekend with some friends. I felt 5 years old again - I played in the wet sand, looked at the rocks on the beach, splashed around in the water.

I remember when I first read about Jung's theory of synchronicity. (that Police song would not leave my head for days.) I still dig it, even if his leap of faith could have cleared the proverbial football field.

if I could brace myself, rub enough stones, burn enough candles, light enough incense, maybe...maybe I would have an easier time dealing with the knowledge that my mother had a heart attack. maybe I need more faith in something, just for comfort's sake.

there is nothing quite so hard, so challenging, so arduous or so draining, as trying to make a cat swallow a pill.

last night I had a dream I was flying a kite in a thunderstorm.

I usually hate going to parties where I don't know 90% of the people there, and I have to make idle chatter about the weather with the girl by the crackers and cheese, or I might even feign being a non-English speaker (sometimes this works, other times I just end up laughing). I went to a couple of parties this weekend where I knew only a handful of people at each, and I started thinking about how weird it was that I meet some of these people, and we exchange a few words, then one of us mingles elsewhere, and that's it. you get these glimpses into other people's lives at parties, where you're in the same house, eating the same food, drinking the same drinks, but you really know nothing about them. you could pass these people next week in the parking lot at the grocery store, or be 2 rows down from them at an upcoming concert, but you wouldn't know it. they could have dying grandmothers, be suffering through a divorce, be celebrating a graduation, have just received a raise...but the glimpse you get is never big enough, and soon, everyone goes home.

the long holiday weekend was a good one, though, of course, I didn't get everything done that I wanted to do. whenever I get a block of free time, do I spend it wisely, doing housework/running errands/making bread/reading?? nooo - somehow I end up in front of the TV more often than not, watching movies from the mid-1980's that TBS or USA play during the day, or get stuck in strange documentaries like "The Poetry of Polymers." (I watched a solid 10 minutes of QVC this weekend. damn near bought a sharp viewcam.)

I'm convinced: within all of us lies an insatiable, unexplained, uncompromising, natural compulsion to take the stickers off our fruit and stick them on our monitors.

I remember back in the olden days of the web, I'd use the well-traveled Justin's Links to the Underground as my guide to the web. Justin seemed to have the best links to things that were fun, and this was before there were all those fancy shmancy search engines. then the web exploded into a million different links, the search engines came in, and little pages like Justin's became obsolete. I turned to the search engines as my surfing guides, and I'd spend hours feeding the text fields the pieces I wanted to find. but now, I spend nearly all my surf time at weblogs like memepool or camworld...sites that are pretty similar to Justin's old Links to the Underground. seems like I've come full circle.