Reality = Propaganda, an unabashed rant

When I was a kid struggling through puberty and toward my early teens, faced with the knowledge that I was "different" (which turns out to be true for everybody, but even to this day my first thought is that it was more true for me), I learned from my school that I was "from a broken home." Possibly I'd heard it on the television, too, but my teachers and principal told me directly.

Was that reality or propaganda? Should my parents, who lived apart but spoke more and had a better relationship than most together-parents I'd met, have sued the school for imposing the school's morals on me?

In this day and age, were the same thing to happen, I'm sure the parents could indeed sue. Picture some poor, sniveling kid coming home, just a wreck because he'd had it made clear to him by figures of authority that he was from a broken home and therefore he, himself, was broken. He could never be like those other kids. Alright, it's a little far-fetched with all the divorces and everything, but it could happen. And the parents would have a case. And I have mixed feelings about it, but I think that it would be wrong.

Somebody has to teach a child to translate the many stupidities of the world into concepts that make real sense. At some point a child has to make her own way. She can, as I did, disagree. And it's very likely the responsibility of parents -broken or otherwise- to teach this to their child. It's not the kind of thing schools are set up to do. Kids will be faced with propaganda all over the place, and they're going to have to learn to differentiate. Yes, the commercial does tell you that if you eat chocolate all day long, you'll be happy. No, it's not real.

Okay, but what about the fact that we were taught history?

Is it reality or propaganda when you teach a room of boys and girls about all sorts of interesting ways that men have shaped the world; when you have them memorize a whole lot of important men's names; and then you lead them to learn about daily life in early Canada, when women took care of the home while the men went out to work? Reality or propaganda, people? Because I have to say, the message seemed pretty clear to me.

Schools are a messy, sloppy place. I can't say I'm happy with how the public school thing is going, but I can say that it's a fair representation of how messy and sloppy real life is, pretty much everywhere. Schools are responsible for teaching kids how to learn. They dwell a lot on what to learn, because frankly it's easier to assess knowledge than ability. Also, the what in our world is a language all its own. Facts are building blocks to higher concepts, and you do need a certain number of facts to get from a to b in the learning process. So okay, schools are also responsible for teaching facts and concepts, representations of the real world kids will face, stuff that maybe they can't learn in the home.

So now we have school-teachers here in the States having the nerve to represent the fact -the fact- that there are gay parents with kids in the world. "Non-traditional families." Is that reality or propaganda? Should parents be allowed to sue the schools for imposing the schools' morals on their children? Shouldn't the parents' lawyer be able to show these parents some stats about the fact that non-traditional families exist in the world, and just say, "I'm sorry, I'd really like to take your money, but we're not going to win."

And why do I have the feeling that they could win anyway?

Today's "news" on CNN:

School wants lawsuit over gay discussions dismissed

"Robert Sinsheimer, an attorney for the parents who filed the lawsuit, called the homosexual discussions and materials 'a form of propaganda' that goes against the parents' religious beliefs."

Maybe it is about God again. Maybe, since some people have got the perception that God is being stricken from the record by crazy liberals, there should be a tit for tat thing. "Okay, if you get to take God away, I get to take gay parents away."

That's fair, isn't it? Well, here are my arguments:

First, God isn't real. Gay parents are real.

Yeah, I'm thinking that wouldn't go over all that well. But God has his own schools, all set up to teach your kids about God! Reality doesn't have any schools at all, if you start taking real people out of what's being taught by our teachers.

Which leads me to my second argument: Let's just take all people out of what we teach in schools. You want tit for tat? How about I sue the school system for teaching my kid (yes, yes, I know I don't have one, bear with me) that straight parents are normal, that straight parents are the foundation of our society? That there's always a mommy and daddy. That a "real family" has a mommy and a daddy, and so therefore when I lived in a "broken home," my family wasn't real. If you look at a lot of the early stuff kids are given in schools, I expect that's what you'll see. The simple, charming, no-nonsense model for life. How is that not teaching my child the school's morals? Shouldn't I get to decide what to teach my child about what's right for a family? So let's take all people, all relationships of any kind, out of the schools.

Let's therefore stop teaching history and literature, thank you. And language is probably out. Math is probably okay... except that + and - looks awfully sexual, so we'd better take Math out too. Let's not even talk about sociology, psychology, politics.

I know I know! We can just take them to school on the bus, and have them sit there, and then we can take them home again!

Oh wait, we already do that. Hmm.

Reality check: Gay parents exist. Often, they are happy. If this fact is shown to your child, it is not propaganda unless you consider reality is propaganda, unless you just want to keep your child from learning about the world. If you want to limit your child's learning to what you and your preacher can teach him... Keep him home. On the whole, I don't think our society would suffer too much from his sniveling ass staying out of our schools and our reality.

For everybody else who has the guts to send their children out into the world, to grow and become fully-fledged individuals, to face new ideas and maybe even "wrong" ideas and find their own strength to handle them one way or another... Remember that schools are just as messy and sloppy as the real world, and it's your job to teach your children about how you deal with that messiness and sloppiness, or if you don't, then how you want them to be more courageous than you have been.

Difficult? I can only imagine. But from what I've heard, pretty much the only part of making new human beings that isn't difficult... is that + and - part that God doesn't approve of anyway.

Gluck!

Useless trivia

I just changed the profession listed in my Blogger profile.

One day and a wake-up...

Slackers, sicknesses, and some other stuff

I'm doing a crappy job with my courses this semester. It's awful. I keep telling myself that I'll be able to do better once I'm finished with the day job (three more days to go!), but I don't know. I just took a look at the paper I submitted last week, and the paper I submitted last night... and the APA is wrong.

The fucking APA is wrong!

It's totally embarrassing.

Meanwhile, my Dad is in the hospital. Even with the worry, which gets worse as the days go on, I'm still amused by the scenes he's described to me of his everyday life right now. The really funny part is that I keep describing this to others the same way, in reference to the same TV show, and I have yet to come across anybody other than myself that has actually seen the show.

This is how it goes: Have you seen the TV show "House M.D."? No? Okay, well, it's a current TV show starring Hugh Laurie as House, and he's a doctor who is regularly faced with bizarre medical mysteries. Anyway, Dad's reached the point where every new doctor that comes in to see him says something like, "You know that show House? Well, that's me."

Dad's a bizarre medical mystery.

Anyway, they poke and prod and try all kinds of fancy tests, and so far they've discovered that some of what used to be wrong with his heart appears to have gotten better, but his heart isn't working as well as it should for some reason, and they haven't come up with a good explanation for the fever and the pain in his thighs, but it might have something to do with a low red blood cell count and a suspicious and complete lack of iron. All of which leads them down unfortunately scary roads... except they still don't actually have an answer, good or bad, so... I wait. Being a thousand miles away makes it strange. It's like... there's a distance between me and what's going on. Well, it's not so much like that, as it is that. Ack.

In the meantime, I had to put up a "home page" for my classes, to introduce myself to my classmates and so on. I was so rushed for time and feeling so uncreative, I just used Google Pages to put something -anything- up. To use Google Pages, I had to sign up for Gmail, for which I had to use my phone to receive a text message. I don't do the texting thing, so it seems quite bizarre to me that in order to even use a service, I must A) have a cell phone, and B) be willing to use the texting feature. But I guess that's commonplace now, eh?

What's really bizarre is that after I signed up for Gmail, put a stupid page up, and went to bed... I got up this morning and tried to log in to Blogger, and I couldn't do it.

Password didn't work. Had I forgotten my password? Uh, no, that's my password. Had I forgotten my login name? For crying out loud, it's my email address, I think I know my email address. Finally, Google told me that it did not have a user by that name. What?!

Google switched my login. Automatically. My login is now my Gmail account.

How the heck was I supposed to know this? Holy crap!

That is all.

Black cat tales

Not until just this moment did it occur to me to note the irony: I'm known for launching myself at difficult things with the question, "how hard can it be?" and my cat is named "Simplicity."

Yeah, well, sure, it's easy for HER...

What?!

From Canada compensates man U.S. deported to Syria

"The Canadian government now has taken several steps to accept responsibility for its role in sending Mr. Arar to Syria, where he was tortured," Leahy said in a statement Friday. "The question remains why, even if there were reasons to consider him suspicious, the U.S. government shipped him to Syria where he was tortured, instead of to Canada for investigation or prosecution."

He said the U.S. Justice Department intended to respond to his demands next week.

U.S. Ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins, on Wednesday chastised Canadian Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day for continuing to press Washington on the Arar matter.

"It's a little presumptuous of him to say who the United States can and cannot allow into our country," Wilkins said.

Haha, news!

Alright, so it's probably pretty obvious now, but here's the news you've been waiting for:

I have resigned from my position at the college. Yup.

I feel terrible. It's really sad! I have such great admiration for my current boss, and I really do hate to leave her in any kind of bind, but there you go. Now turns out to be the time.

Instead, I am going to be self-employed, with my own company named Virtual CKS.

Yes, ta-daa, new company: Virtual CKS. Website to follow.

Virtual CKS offers editorial services and document design. That's one of them so-called "umbrella terms" for "anything and everything that I know a bit about." Logo design, brochure creation, newsletters, press releases, proof-reading and copy editing and typesetting and so forth and so on... heck, give me a shot at greeting cards, and I'll probably do it.

I have plenty to learn, but this is where the "how hard can it be" mantra comes in handy. In my experience, especially in this day and age, all the information I need is pretty close to being at my beck and call. I've got some stock trips up my sleeve, I've got an in-house Excel and PowerPoint expert and Business Manager to boot, and I've got some great reference materials and some friends in many usefully related trades.

It looks really good, and fun, too.

I will work from home in my home office. I make too big a deal of this, but I'll work in my jeans (or jammies), which I just consider the epitomy of "civilized." I won't have to commute, I'll save money on gas, and I'll do work that interests me and utilizes my specific skills.

Like I said, it looks really good.

The next two weeks will be the hardest, as I'm juggling my day job, where I really want to do my best to make the transition easy for Sue and Olivia; and some new contracts in my new job, which I'm certainly not about to turn down!; and the two classes I'm taking with Dr. Hopper, which may yet kill me.

After that, we can talk. I plan to make time for a regular appointment with the gym, and a serious change in diet. I expect to take over more of the housework, since Luther is now working part-time in addition to going to school full-time. But other than that, I have to say... it already looks like I'm going to be plenty busy with my new employer: ME!!!

Should be interesting. I won't say the words. They're a given.

Ships and sails and sealing wax

This is a long'un, and none too fascinating, but it is time to update the far-flung friends. Otherwise I will have to read a textbook or something, and I'm not quite up to that this evening.

So... in chapter form:
1. I wrote another short-short story.
2. Luther and I started our own company.
3. I am apparently responsible for snow in Toronto and St. John's over the past week.
4. Luther started a new job today.
5. Stay tuned for Important News.

1. I wrote another short-short story.

Yes! This was great fun! Jason Evans again blessed us with a fun flash fiction contest, complete with inspirational photograph and 250-word limit. I promised myself I'd participate, then didn't have any energy and wasn't inspired, then wrote an exactly 250-word story, and then despite Wil's promising assessment (he reported that he almost cried), I decided to write a different story, something about a bike courier coming to a dead end (so to speak).

And then I didn't have any time, so I sent the original story to Jason.

I think he liked it! I placed second! Woot! Thank you, thank you, Jason, for another grand challenge and the really enormous ego boost. Your contests have been a lovely break from all the daily stupidities, and I'm truly grateful.

You can read my story here.

2. Luther and I started our own company.

Well, it is really a "sole proprietorship." I am doing more and more contract work, proof-reading and copy editing and document formatting and graphic design, and all the sundry little tasks that bind these things together. Our research suggested that it would be wise to lump the various jobs under a common heading, so that's what we've done. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you Virtual CKS.

Why CKS? If you know us, you may be able to figure it out. If you don't know us... Well, get to know us!

3. I am apparently responsible for snow in Toronto and St. John's over the past week.

"Write what you know," they say. Well you know, that story that I wrote for Jason's contest was very much inspired by real events in my youth. Dad and Sarah and I lived together in a flat in downtown Toronto, on Robert Street, and the kitchen door exited on a little space between the houses. Dad hired slow Russian movers, and my move was to a tiny 3rd floor bachelorette North of High Park. I think of the Robert Street flat and remember old walls, old grime, and noisy neighbors. But I also remember family, and the memories invoked in the writing of a little story made my recent trip to Toronto a little surreal. All that history! Sometimes it is difficult to hold the emotions in check.

I hung out with Dad and Sarah quite a bit. Isn't it strange how people can change so much and yet somehow seem just the same as always?

I again stayed at the Madison Manor Boutique Hotel, which is to say, next door to the Madison Pub. I highly recommend this location for your next visit to the greatest city on the planet -but please do understand that the Madison caters to young fools on Fridays and Saturdays, and from midnight to 2:30 a.m. it is not what you'd call... peaceful. If drunkenness offends you, stay at some lame airport motel. But if you want to pretend for a sweet few days that you once again live in the city... stay at the Mad.

I also saw some friends, though not nearly enough of them. Antun Bosanac spontaneously dropped by my hotel with a tin foil packet of homemade birthday cake -his Dad's specialty is divine! I was able to share dim sum and martinis with the beautiful and amazing Cheryl Zalameda, and catch up on at least some of what my adopted sister and our brothers (such as Jesse!) have been up to. I finally got to meet Martha Heder, who is making our friend Doug so very happy. And I had a nice, long talk with my oldest friend of all, Liz Bischof, who I first met when I was 11... and living in that very same little flat on Robert Street. See how it is all connected?

Next time, I need to see the wee Max. I need to be pampered by Catherine, the most amazing hair stylist in the world. I need to see JamesJames or he's really going to finally disown me as a friend. And damn, I might even finally get to see the infamous Danny Sadder again... if he knows what's good for him. But the visit was short. I was on my way to St. John's, Newfoundland.

Here's the funny part: It snowed. Apparently, it had been a mild winter thus far, but as soon as I show up, you know what happens. Yup. The sky fell, and it was cold.

It snowed Sunday. It snowed Monday. It snowed some more on Tuesday, but the storm had gone East... which is convenient, seeing as I was flying East myself. After an hour of circling over a runway in St. John's, my plane landed for refueling in someplace named Gander. What a crazy night! But thankfully, we took off again and gave St. John's another try, and this time it was more forgiving.

You know, it has only snowed in Georgia once since I moved here, and that time... happened to be when my Mom and Paul were visiting. So I don't know, there might be something about our family and snow. I need to be a bit more careful about scheduling these trips. I could at least warn people to get out the mittens and booties before I arrive.

St. John's was beautiful. I stayed with Mom and Paul in their incredibly gorgeous Victorian home (which is not a bed & breakfast anymore!), and only on the last night did I actually feel the wind shaking its foundations. Boris is as fat as ever, and being a very generous uncle to the newcomers, Cleo and Julius. We ate lamb. And we hung out at the Duke. Life in St. John's is really, really good, I have to say.

Alas, the visit was short, and I was once again headed home. Here's how geeky I am: I am actually intensely proud of finding my own car and driving my own self out of the airport. It's like I'm all grown up!

4. Luther started a new job today.

Luther is a full-time college student at Macon State College, studying for his Bachelor of Science degree in Business & Information Technology. What this actually means is that he wears earrings, flirts with all the girls and some of the boys, and does far, far too much homework.

Well, now he is also going to be working. He landed a position through a co-op program on Robins AFB. It's not clear what he's going to be doing, but I missed him all day! It was awful!

I really need to win the lottery. This thing of having Luther working just plain sucks.

But the money will be useful, that's for sure.

Congratulations, Luther. I'm very proud of you. I hope it isn't too horribly stupid for words.

5. Stay tuned for Important News.

After many long discussions, quite a bit of research (mostly done by Luther), and probably not nearly as much hesitation as it deserves, I'm about to try something new.

Only... I gotta actually set that up officially, first.

And then I'll write about it here.

That's it for now! There's your update! You want more, you'll have to come back again sometime.

I don' wanna work in education no more

Pattern recognition is the foundation of all human learning.

You know how much formal study I've done into human learning? That'd be: squat.

But pattern recognition is the foundation of all human learning, and pattern application is the key to growth and change.

I don' wanna work in education no more because so many of the people -the professionals- who seem the most likely to "have the say" in an educational setting seem to also be the least likely people to be able to communicate patterns.

There it is, that magic word: communicate.

People don't learn in a vacuum. If you think people come ready-made with abilities and talents, and they just "happen," stop reading now. I am done with you. I am seriously done, today. That's it, I've got no more patience. People don't just "know" stuff. They learn, or they don't learn. I'm surrounded by people that haven't learned and I gotta tell you, this isn't just happenstance. Their environments did not supply them with the necessary patterns.

Well, when you go to a school -presumably an institute of learning- and the "rules" are vague to begin with, vaguely defined, vaguely conceived, vaguely applicable to everyday life (witness: dress code says how long your pants can be and exactly which students can wear earrings, but fails to require any degree of cleanliness) and then the "rules" are also only vaguely enforced, what does one learn from the rules?

Nothing. Actually, no. One learns that rules are bull shit. One learns a very clear lesson on why one should never bother to actually try to follow rules. Don't run by the pool, you say? Don't play with guns? Pfft. I've heard rules all my life, and they never amount to much. They don't mean anything.

What's worse, in my mind, is the lost opportunity. Are all kids in school ready to learn? Hell no. But this is, at the very least, their "status." They are identified as students. In the best of all possible scenarios, they actually identify themselves as students. This is their role, and when you fail to clearly define and then SUPPORT your systems, your structure -your "rules"- then you fail them. You fail these kids.

At work, I'm told on the one hand that I cannot advise. I am not an advisor. I do not advise students. I should not register students for classes. Faculty advise students. Faculty register students. On the other hand, I'm told that I should not send a student away if I can help a student. I'm told that students feel they get the runaround, and if I can help them now, rather than sending them away, I should help them.

When I send them to a faculty member, the faculty member might or might not see them. Might or might not register them. Might or might not check to see what their degree requirements are, what classes they've taken, what they need to do in order to fix that GPA, whether or not they need to take a test THIS SEMESTER or have to take and pay for otherwise unnecessary remedial classes. In the best of all possible scenarios... the faculty member picks up the phone and calls... me.

But I am not an advisor and cannot help the student except oh wait, I was supposed to help the student.

. . .

It's not just the students that are having trouble with pattern recognition in this situation.

When you change the pattern, when you "flex" your rules, ask yourself, please: What does your audience -er, student- learn from the change?

When you send your student to me for "not-advising," what does the student learn? To come back to you next time? or to see a "not-advisor"?

When your student waited until the last possible minute to register, and you let him or her into the class, what does the student learn? to register early if it's crucial? or to beg and plead?

When your student scrapes by, at the end of the semester, having ditched assignments through much of the semester, and you say, "yippee! You did it! Congratulations!" what does the student learn? to pay attention next time?

I don' wanna work in education no more. I suck at it. I haven't the heart for it. I just don't. Because I've never been a rules person, but if I had been clear on the patterns, if I'd recognized clear patterns and seen their value, I could have succeeded in a whole lot of things. And now that I can recognize patterns, I AM PISSED TO HIGH HEAVEN THAT ANYBODY WOULD FUCK WITH PATTERNS.

That is all.

The green headed monster

As long as I'm going to be jealous about other peoples' talent and adventures, I might as well share.

Here's a blog I try to keep up with. What is not to love about a gorgeous woman who takes beautiful photos, understands what's fun about Aaron Sorkin, apparently is some kind of lawyer (I'm quite mystified about this), and likes good food and good drink? I mean... okay, I'm just living vicariously, but damn, it's a good vicarious life.

She's in India right now. Quote: "So anyway. I saw a monkey masturbating today. NOW my trip to India is complete."

And if that doesn't make you feel totally lame in comparison, this will. Thinking With My Skin: What Happened to My Daughter on Friday It's by Bill Cameron's daughter. Who the hell is THAT creative? Damn. I'm such a slouch.

Bill's pretty cool, too.

That's all for now.

A six pack for brains

Alright, no Happy New Year post from me, no nothing. I've half-written half a dozen posts but finished none. Well, half a dozen is six of one, you know what I mean? And contrary to the Gumpism, stupid is as stupid is.

We've had a glorious week of adults only in the crazy blue house on the hill, and despite total insanity at work, I've been able to enjoy some quality time with my Luther. Last night was no exception, but the quality was in the viewers and not at all in the television. Ack!

Ack, I say!

We idly watched a little bit of a show called, "1 vs. 100." It's a game show. One contestant is pitted against a 100-person "mob." It's not really clear how they're actually "against" each other, since the contestant can call on the mob for assistance... But it has Bob Saget as the host, so I don't suppose we should expect it to make sense.

I am surprised I didn't actually break anything while watching this little bit of this show. Rather bizarrely animated blond contestant (she did this wild, full-of-elbows air-drumming thing when she was happy -it gave me nightmares, it really did) is asked, "how many six packs would you have to have for 99 beers on the wall?"

Now, she didn't have to provide an exact answer or anything. She just had to pick one of three:
More than 15
Less than 15
Exactly 15

HOLY CRAP!

Her response? She said it was a "strange question." What the hell is so strange about arithmetic?!

And then it got worse. It turned into this BIZARRE comedy of horrors. "I don't even drink beer." She asked the mob for help. And 20% or something of the stupid mob got it wrong. "I only drink wine."

I ONLY DRINK WINE!

OMG

In the time it took to gasp and giggle and squeal over this "strange question," she could have counted it out.

So Happy New Year, my odd little group of readers. This year, we will accept even greater stupidity than the last. We will actually pay people to go on television and react to simple arithmetic as if you cannot know the answer if you didn't "learn it" from somebody else. We will no longer build knowledge, create understanding, find or figure. Nope.

We'll ask the mob.

Virgin birth

Check it out!
Virgin birth expected for Komodo dragon in UK zoo

Of course, we recall that "love can't replace a mother and a father."

But nature can. COOL!


And on that note, we are all heading off to do the family thing in California for the holiday. Sadly, Mom-Vicky has to be in Greece, having lost her Dad, Luther's Papou (grandfather), a few weeks ago. Our hearts are very much with her, and we promise not to trash her house while she's gone.

In January, I'll be traipsing up to Toronto and then St. John's to see the Canadian side of the family.

And then when I get home, Luther and I will be looking at exactly what crazy things we want to do for our 2007.

How hard can it be?

Happy holidays, all!

The Slavery Controversy

One of the things we talked about at dinner with friends recently was the concept of the "Slave controversy."

To graduate with any degree from a Georgia state college or university, students must learn some Georgia history. Luther had his history from a California college, so he was given the option of taking a "test out," and had to read a study guide for Georgia history. The little book spoke often of the "slave controversy," as if there was any controversy. Slavery, bad. No controversy at all!

Meanwhile I have to admit that the "Tape controversy" continues. Here's the thing: 3M Scotch Gift Tape (Invisible) sucks! Holy smokes, I had no idea, but seriously, it don' stick so good!

I wound up practically begging for the shiny tape Luther originally purchased. And in some cases, I used a stapler.

Invisible tape my ass. If it is invisible by virtue of not being used, why buy it?

ily Luther. Thank you for the tape, and for helping me with the boxes. You rock.

Letter to a friend

My dear friend 4.0,

I'm sorry it has been so long since my last contact. I admit, my thoughts have been so full of other things, I have once again failed to give you the attention you deserve. And here you are again, the end of another long semester, propping me up when my own efforts should have been deemed insufficient at best. All I can say is, thank you.

Remember when I thought I'd lost you forever? I even gave your eulogy! I had so little faith, it seems, but you were stronger than I'd thought possible, and held on, and stayed with me.
The thing is -and I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but... it seems like the longer I have you in my life, the more pressure you put on me. I know you have high standards, and I know you mean well, but sometimes I try to avoid you so that I can relax, put my feet up, have a drink or three, and just get by, you know?

So if I don't seem as attentive as I should, I hope you'll understand. I know I will, when you finally leave me. Maybe... next semester.

Your friend,
bekbek

Well, whattaya know?

Does anybody really know that they know stuff, that they can do stuff? Because it turns out that I typically just "can do" things, and I don't know that they're special skills until somebody goes wide-eyed and mentions that nobody else can do the same stuff. I mean, I sit there and say, "but... it's easy. It's not hard. Anybody could do it."

Is that normal? Or do most people actually know that they have talents? I wonder what that would be like.

Christmas Twenty Questions

Since I'm clearly not writing a novel anytime soon, and the screenplay is going nowhere fast, and the Simplicity comic is still just a bunch of sketches showing no sign whatsoever of developing into actual drawings... I have time for a survey! This one is courtesy of Bill Cameron, who got it from some other fine folks, and so on, and so on...

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate?
You know it's interesting, but I bought some egg nog recently, on my way home from gift-shopping, thinking that I'd have some nog while setting up the tree, and... it's just not all that great. I mean, I like the taste fine, but it's awfully thick and awfully sweet and in the end I'm wondering... wouldn't I rather have a beer?

That said, egg nog with Mount Gay is the way to go. Alternately, bittersweet hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps and a dash of whipped cream. I guess the answer to this first question is, therefore: Both, and I'm clearly a drunk.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree?
Santa doesn't exist, hello, but when the gift is for the whole household (including myself), it's a useful "from" name to use on the tag.

Presents are always wrapped. Even if you have to cover them with a Mexican blanket, there has to be some "unwrapping" going on, or there's almost no point!

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?
Both on the tree! I like the white lights because they look like little twinkling stars, but I like the colors because they're so festive.

4. Do you hang mistletoe?
No, it already grows on all the trees around here without my help or anything. Fancy that, eh? Mistletoe growing, like, for real and everything!

I get a lot of kisses. *wink*

5. When do you put up your decorations?
When the last of the homework is done, and especially when I'm itching to put some presents out. Have to have somewhere to put them! I put up the little plastic tree this year (just this past weekend), when normally I insist upon a real tree, because we're going to be in California for Christmas and the poor cat will be all alone in the house, and I figured a plastic tree with only the plastic ornaments was the way to go under such tempting circumstances. She's already been under it once, but to be honest I think she was more interested in the presents. I do love the little plastic ornaments...

We do have exterior lights, but man oh man are they a pain, so for the past few years they have just sat in the closet...

6 What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)?
Fruit cake and Wensleydale cheese with port around the fire with Mom and Paul. And whatever they're serving for breakfast the next morning! YUM!

7. Favorite childhood Holiday memory?
This has to be when I bored everybody (Mom especially, I am sure) with a year-long campaign for an electric train set I was sure I could never actually have, and then Christmas came and the entire family got together to give me an N-scale train set. People just kept pulling little packages out of their pockets, and each one was an engine, or a car, or some plastic cows or something, and I got more and more and more excited, and then Dad and Paul went outside together and came back with a huge piece of plywood with a track nailed down to it, all ready to go! And then when we ran the train, a light came on inside the Pennsylvania line passenger car that my sister had given me, and you could see the tiny, tiny people inside, and it was almost like I was on a train trip with them.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
There has never been a Santa. "Santa" is a fun game that we play at Christmas. There are some movies and stuff that go along with the game. Miracle on 34th street was a particularly good little fantasy story.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?
More and more often, yes, but I don't really like it. I miss the whole getting up early, all excited Christmas morning thing, and starting with the stockings, everybody in pajamas, and the sun just coming up, and the frost on the windows, and the shiny paper everywhere, and then breakfast and old movies on the television. But it gets harder and harder to find the old movies, and the presents are less and less likely to be toys that one plays with for the rest of the day, and one of us actually has to make the breakfast now, and I've gone and gotten mixed up with someone with a whole different set of traditions, to boot. So... the presents happen whenever, but usually early.

This year will be interesting because we'll be with Luther's brother and family. Sadly, Luther's Mom will be in Greece and not in California, because her father passed away last week. I don't know what Mike and Robin's traditions are, other than the upside-down tree. And what about our presents to each other? Do we open before leaving for California, or do we hold them until New Year's?

10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree?
First, the annoying untangling of lights. I wrap them up perfectly nicely when I put them away, but somehow they never come out of the box like that. Then the ornaments one by one. I try to make an event out of it. I like to think about where we got each ornament and what it represents. But this year, like I said, most of the ornaments stayed in the box for safe-keeping and anti-cat-ness. I did hang our souvenir from Greece, though, in Mom-Vicky's honor and in memory of meeting her Dad in Athens a few years ago. It is a simple little brass cut-out of a pomegranate.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it?
Love it. Of course this is easier to do, now that I never get to see any. I miss shoveling, but I think I would probably die of a heart attack if I actually had to do any.

12. Can you ice skate?
Bill wrote, "Not really. I mean, I can scoot around on skates a bit, but I have a hard time stopping and usually crash into the side of the ice rink. But I think it's very fun, actually." And this is a pretty good description of my relationship with skating, too. I used to be able to get up to a good speed, but that only works if there aren't too many other people skating, because my direction control is a little sketchy...

13. Do you remember your favorite gift for Christmas?
My absolute favorites are two gifts I gave to others:

The first was a tree that my sister and I got for Mom and Paul, when they were in Australia for the holidays but then unexpectedly were coming home in time for Christmas. We found an enormous blue spruce, absolutely gorgeous, and took it to Mom and Paul's house and set it up with lights, and the box of ornaments sitting next to it, ready to be put on the tree, and some champagne and cookies, and a little gift tag with a cartoon of my sister and me hanging on the tree. We got out of there just in time! Mom and Paul got home within a half hour of my leaving, and saw the twinkly lights when they were just getting the door unlocked.

The second was by own Ikea stuffed bear, which I put in a box and sent to Luther, his first Christmas after his marriage broke up, alone in the new little apartment without his kids. Apparently it arrived Christmas Day, and the postman decided to go out and deliver a few last packages so people could have their presents, and so Luther had his bear to hug, and it makes me cry all over again to think of.

14. What's the most important thing about the Holidays for you?
Getting a chance to remember what an amazing life I've led, with such an amazing family and wonderful adventures.

Also, the sappy movies.

15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert?
I do like pie, yes.

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition?
The ornaments on the tree, I think.

17. What tops your tree?
Two stars, when the tree is big enough. One is from my life in Toronto, and the other is from Luther and the aformentioned "new little apartment" and the tree he decorated for his children. But if you read the "love tree" post already, you know all this.

One time, someone (it may have been Luther) asked me about the star on the tree. If I don't believe in God and the whole Christmas story, why the star? I said, "I believe in stars."

18. Which do you prefer giving or Receiving?
Yeah, the giving! I love to go all out, I love love love to come up with creative ideas for "just the perfect present." Sadly, this is not always possible, and then I admit to getting a little down. It's just not... as much fun, if I couldn't make them go WOW!

19. What is your favorite Christmas Song?
White Christmas. And lots and lots and lots of Frank.

20. Do you like Candy Canes?
Not really. I'm not a hard candy person. But they sure can be pretty!

Thanks, Bill. :)

No plot? No problem!

I finally got around to getting caught up on my Optimist Realist reading the other day, and was amused to read about James Koole's six-word memoir. Six words!

How the heck does one do this? Mine could be... "Grew. How hard could it be?"

James came across the memoir-writing contest at a site called NaNoWriMo, for National Novel Writing Month -which apparently was all of November. I didn't even know there was a National Novel Writing Month, and now I've gone and missed it!

Still, my novel-writing prospects are looking up: As many of you know, I am plot-challenged, so the idea of actually sitting down and writing a novel pretty much sends me running. NaNoWriMo apparently has a solution for me:


Sounds good. Amazon has it, even. And after all, plot or no plot...
...yeah, yeah. How hard can it be?

It's beginning to feel a lot like... What the HELL?!

Luther bought some scotch tape recently, because we were almost out. He didn't actually say, "and it's the Christmas season, and we'll be wrapping presents," but that was definitely what my mind conjured up when he mentioned the fresh rolls of tape in the drawer.

Today, I wrapped a couple of presents, and OH MY FREAKIN' GOD.

He didn't buy invisible tape.

Who the hell buys anything but invisible tape? Come to think of it, why do the tape people still make the non-invisible tape?

I mean, THIS IS BLASPHEMY, PEOPLE!

I fail to understand. I'm just sitting here, looking at these shiny blue and silver presents with the shiny strips of tape on them and shaking my head. What has the world come to?!

Also, I am printing the cards. If you must have a card, please send me your mailing address. I'm thinking my blog readership is very close to nil (but not nil, thank you, Jason), but all the same, it's a way to get the word out. If I don't have your address, I can't possibly dis you by failing to send you one of our cards.

In the family way

Normally I really don't care to read what amounts to gossip about Mary Cheney, VP Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter. But there wasn't any other interesting news, and I had to read something. This quote caught my eye, in an article on CNN.com:

"Love can't replace a mother and a father."

That's right. Because a committed, well-educated couple that will love and care for their child cannot ever, under any circumstances, be considered worthwhile unless it looks exactly like the ideal mommy-daddy family. It's the image that matters, not the child.

I don't get it.

Forty Helens agree (but only one matters)

I have some really cool friends. Truth be told, a great many of them are people I rarely talk to, and this makes me sad, but at the same time honored. I know that part of why these are such great friendships is that if we go for a year or more without talking, we are still friends for life. One night at the Dip in Toronto with these people is enough to reaffirm something that will make me proud when I'm 90, and something that when shared with Luther, is enough to make the boy jealous... and thrilled at the same time. Thank you, my fine friends.

But I gotta take a moment to recognize the bizarre and horrific accident that is Helen Ferreira.

Helen was already working at Mag North when I started there years ago. I believe we first met in the tape room. Me, a late-twenties white chick with dreadlocks' she, a much younger Portuguese woman with hair out of a shampoo commercial.

It was only natural we should become friends.

Helen is caustic. That is the word. And uses a lot of syllables when she writes, but not so much when she talks. She can handle quite a few chocolate martinis, but sadly not quite as many as she drinks, upon occasion. And she is a gift queen.

Now understand, gifts are like... the meaning of life in my universe. Yup. To really show someone you care, you give a gift. To show you don't care, send a Hallmark card with nothing written in it.

Hallmark really wants you to believe the purchase is the gift, but here's the thing: It really is the thought that counts.

Once, Helen gave me some free plane tickets! Okay, so it was one of those timeshare things, but she'd tested it out and it wasn't going to be too annoying. Luther, me, and Luther's two boys went to Florida for more than a week. We went to Orlando and to Cocoa Beach. And of course we drove there, but our hotel? Paid for by Helen.

Today, we got a big box. Helen is living in London, England, and is working on her fantastic career in television and doing the crazy dating scene and being very far away... but Helen "couldn't resist" (her words) and sent us....

THE UGLIEST FUCKING PENGUIN COOKIE JAR.

I mean, it is foul!

But it came accompanied by the most to-die-for gourmet cookies, that...

Let me explain it this way: I am not actually all that keen on chocolate. Okay, relax, sit down, of course I enjoy chocolate, but yeah, I'm one of those truly unusual persons, I don't actually think of it as all that special. But there are some fudge chocolate cookies in this set that Helen sent to us... and um...

HOLY CRAP these are good!

So.

Helen Ferreira, ladies and gentlemen. She has the best hair in the whole world, is apparently an up-and-coming producer-type for Discover, and from London seems to be able to identify just the right gourmet bakery in Ohio, in order to send treats to Georgia.

I'm writing her number on all bathroom walls from this day forward.

That is all.

The electric squirrel effect

Here's something kinda cool: Right now, we are online courtesy of our minivan.

A few minutes ago there was a very loud BANG! and all our power went out. The whole neighborhood, in fact. Luther took it as an opportunity to test some equipment.

We get some big storms here, and we also have some really stupid squirrels. I don't really know why Toronto squirrels never blew up power sources at the same frequency as these Southern squirrels do, but there you have it. We are one squirrel down in Miller Hills, and the power is out, and there are bits of leg and a tail remaining on a cross bar at the top of a light pole out there.

Given the possibility of something larger than a squirrel taking out our power (you know, something like a hurricane), Luther a while back bought a little power converter, and today we are testing it out! The van is running, and the little box is hooked up. An extension cord leads from the van to a power strip in the den, where we've plugged in our cable modem and wireless router. Then another extension cord runs upstairs, where we've plugged in our laptops, though of course we could have done just fine with batteries for a little while.

And then *blink* look at that. Power is back.

But it's nice to know next time we have a hurricane, we can still recharge our laptop batteries. The cable would probably be out (something we didn't have to worry about today), so there'd be no highspeed internet. But we could get the homework done, at least.

Just another strange little snippet of life with Bekbek in the South. The electric squirrel effect. I'm thinking... BAND NAME!

Clotted cream

In case you really just haven't been listening, I have gained an enormous amount of weight since moving to the States. Now mind you, this is a period of almost seven years (wow!), so it's not like I came here and just ballooned overnight. And it must also be noted that I was not exactly svelte for most of my adult life in Toronto. But in the end (and the middle, quite a bit), I'm just outright fat now, and although I will acknowledge a good life that includes quite a bit of yummy beer, I blame the weight entirely on one thing: The automobile.

Last time I was in Toronto, I discovered that I was actually huffing and puffing a bit as I trekked around town. Of course I had reverted to my usual walking speed, which Luther says is much too fast. And of course I used transit and thoroughly enjoyed being back in my own element, where I know how to get from A to B and how to do so with a free stop (no extra token required) in order to pick up that bottle of wine on my way home. But on this last visit, it was clear that my body was no longer up to city life. It was shocking, to say the least.

More shocking still was a walk up some stairs the other day, when I was carrying my computer and my lunch pail, and I felt the stairs in my calves and my thighs, and got to the top a bit flushed and even light headed. What the hell?

All of a sudden I realized that on top of the walking that is normal in Toronto -because there is plenty of transit, but the bus doesn't pick you up at your door, and the subway is below the ground- there is the carrying to be considered. I never used a car (I didn't know how to drive, in fact), so not only did I walk a whole lot at a decent speed (because I wasn't walking to enjoy a walk, I was walking to get somewhere), but I carried everything I needed.

For those of you who drive daily, think for a moment about how much stuff you tend to have with you at any given time. Purse, maybe, if you're one of those girly types. Bag of books if you're a student. Mug full of coffee, or bottle of water, possibly a big bottle of water if you're spending the day out and about. Wallet, comb or hairbrush. Bottle of wine if you're on your way to that dinner party. Groceries you picked up on your way home. Four six-foot-long boards with which to build your brick-and-board bookcase in your new apartment. You get the picture.

I didn't just walk. I carried.

So here's the thing. In Toronto, I ate really well. It's hard not to eat well in a city so favored by fantastic restaurants and markets. I drank quite a bit, thank you. And I rarely exercised, if ever. I was not svelte, to be sure, but I was not a damn heffer either!

Next time I hear someone prattle on about improving their quality of life by getting out of the city, I'm going to give them quite a piece of my mind, I tell you. Yay, country life! Where you can become a very happy dumpling.

All of which came to mind sharply this morning as I was browsing some gift possibilities online, and came across a store that sells clotted cream. I was introduced to this delicacy at an impressionable age, and it remains the epitomy of fucking delicious in my mind to this day. A nice, fresh scone. A little dab of strawberry jam. And a generous dollop of clotted cream. The cream isn't sweetened. It's just cream, and it's rich, and incredible.

I won't be ordering any. Not until I have to once again walk to the store. At which point... I'll probably be somewhere that I can buy the cream in person.

Neither patience nor politics are possible for the sleep-deprived

This past week, I had a team project due in my Web Design class, worth a measely 35% of my final grade. Eh. How hard can it be?

Meanwhile I had an instructor's manual to proof and format. And my coworker at my day job was sick all week, so I was running two workstations. There was no time to sleep, and when I tried, I had a tendency to stay awake, fretting about this or that. Not least of the fret points was worry about Luther, worry about his having the support he needs to pursue his own studies, and frustration over Wil, who currently just doesn't do too much of value unless someone tells him point blank to do it and then continues to ask him about it if he is to continue doing it.

I'm not supposed to care. I told Luther I was done with caring. But it turns out, wishing doesn't make it so. Dammit.

Anyway, so the thing is, I've just been going on less and less sleep. Remember the good old days, when we got up after two hours of sleep and went to the dirty set, and shot some more until we felt like we were going to die, and then we did some more after that? Yeah. I'm not so much for that behavior now. I've gone all wimpy.

But truth be told, in those days, I didn't ever have to hold my tongue. That was not part of the deal, and it's a good thing because that's really stressful. And here in middle Georgia, I can't even wear jeans to work, so you know I can't say "fuck you" when I want to. Heck, I'm not even supposed to give my honest opinion most of the time.

And when I'm really tired, I kinda lose control of that aspect.

Two days ago, one of my coworkers was -yet again- mimicking an "Indian" customer service voice. You would not believe how often Americans bitch about this. They don't care about the fucking jobs, they just hate foreigners. Why should they have to put up with that "foreign" stuff? Ugh. So this guy I work with is doing a horrible job at putting on an Indian accent, and he says every other word was completely unintelligible.

To which I responded, "Oh yeah, I know what you mean! When I first came to Georgia, I could not understand a word these people were saying, good Lord, why don't they learn to speak English in Georgia?"

And I might add, it's true. I can't understand these people, even now. It's mostly okay in person, but I am truly grateful that Dell outsources its customer service overseas. If Dell hired Southerners for the job, Dell would go out of business within a week.

But that's the thing. Southerners don't actually pronounce English words as they were intended to be pronounced, but somehow that's okay, but the Indian guy on the phone, his inability to pronounce a few words is just inexcusable.

Idiots.

I proceeded to refer to my coworker as a foreigner. All you foreigners, I can't understand you. And that's when he really got offended. Up and down the hall he's exclaiming, Can you believe what Becky said? She called me a foreigner! Me!

You'd all be so proud of me. I came out of my office and walked past him saying, "Oh Bob, we're all foreigners in the Kingdom of Heaven."

So the next day, I've had even less sleep, right? And I was all by myself at work until one of my other coworkers came in for a little while, to check his email and so forth. And he likes to comment on Canadian news, usually in a pretty derogatory way, and what's surprising is that it took him this long to bring up the recent kerfuffle with Quebec and the Quebec nation and all that jazz, but yesterday he finally did it, and then proceeded to say that nobody likes Quebec, right?

I like Quebec. I'm quite fond of it. I'm very proud, in fact, to be from a country that has two languages, and quite ashamed that I don't speak the second one fluently. So I told him this, and he was suprised, and I said, "Well, I also like France," because I know how Americans love the French and all.

Off he goes, ranting about the arrogant French.

And I said, "I know! They think they're the center of the world or something, when we all know that's Americans."

He's no stranger to sarcasm, this coworker of mine, so he shifts gears and produces his "evidence" of how nasty the French are. He went there on a trip, and he actually tried to speak French, and he got sneered at.

Sneered at.

And I said something like, "I know! It's just like when some dumbass foreigner comes to the States and doesn't learn how to speak proper English! Gah! Learn to speak English, you dumbass! I mean, it's okay if you speak like a Southerner, because 'alls you know is you kin speak English better than them dirty Mayxicans,' because that's right'n'proper English, eh? But foreigners making their lame attempts at a second, third, fourth, or fifth language? I'd sneer at them too!"

He sort of backed down and then defended himself by saying he just didn't like how the French were "uppity." Uppity. That's right, those French people refuse to recognize their place. They keep acting like they actually have something to be proud of. Pfft. Nasty French people, not recognizing that Americans are the best.

Idiot.

I may actually lose my job shortly. But I finally got some sleep last night.

Life is good.

The magic of air travel

Exactly how many planes was he found on?!

Honestly, do they even hire editors anymore?

"Tea" stands for tequila, yes?

Did you ever notice how it never turns out to be the right week to quit drinking?

Jesus scares me

I just woke up from three nightmares. Three. That was some crazy turkey Luther cooked up, I guess.

In the most recent, the one from which I could not escape without an incandescent lightbulb and a computer screen, I was among a band of survivors in a surreal wilderness. It was one of those dreams in which I wasn't actually me, Becky, but rather shifted POVs from one character to the next. Near the end, I was a teen daughter, and I was on watch, and I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore, I was so sleepy, but the dark had gotten so close, and there were small animals getting more and more brave.

Just typing it, I feel the danger. The word for what I'm feeling is... Menace.

Before the daughter, I'd been her Dad. I got a message on my cell phone from a girl that I thought must have been one of my daughter's friends from school. She was leaving the city too, she said, and was coming to freedomland. There was something odd about her having called me instead of my daughter, and the thought flitted through my tired mind: Is she trying to hook up with me? It's hilarious now that the light is on, but in the dream it evoked a strange mix of feelings, a little arousal, a little added menace as I-as-the-Dad felt there was something inherently dangerous about a teenaged girl's sexuality, and horror and sadness both as I looked out at the wild counties that had failed and gone dark in this experiment gone horribly wrong, and I pictured her coming into this thinking she was coming to a paradise, and she'd be ripped to pieces by something before long.

It was a pretty wicked dream. That was just the tail end.

The one before it was like an appetizer, all the threat without any of the substance. Wil was powering up one of his video games, with some sort of oracle and lots of little text dialogue on the screen that you just click through. Somehow or other I agreed to play a round, and I had to climb and swing and try to escape moving structures while animals tried to get me and alligators circled below. It was still a game, mind you, not "real," except I had to actually climb around and stuff, and finally I swung wide to avoid the stupid squirrel that was attempting to run up my arm and bite my neck, and I missed the grab of whatever it was I needed to grab, and I fell to the alligators. I knew it was a game, but I still closed my eyes.

Then the crew packed up the game, but I still had the costume, and I tried to return it, and the guy at the counter made some crack about it being a secretary outfit, maybe I could use it, and I said, "yeah, okay, I can picture me going to work in red and black satin. I AM a secretary."

Which was probably supposed to be witty and ironic, but it sure looks lame now.

The first dream --am I trying to erase the disquiet by working backwards or something?-- was the most unsettling. Jesus was in it. I have to say, I have never before had Jesus in my dreams. That alone should have been enough to wake me up, shouldn't it?

It started with me walking down a rainy city street with my coworker, Olivia. From there, it gets pretty confused, but we were trying to get somewhere, and she had a coffee machine, and we did reach our destination, and I was glad to be with the person that could make coffee.

And then Jesus was there.

He had his loincloth and his thorns. He looked pretty skanky to be honest, and gray. He wasn't exactly a white guy, more like a little bit of everything, but sort of dusty and gray all over. He had eyes like a husky or a malamute, and kept doing that "looking into your soul" look at me, and I just kept frowning at him and reminding him that I'm an atheist.

The dream has faded a lot, so I forget what we were trying to accomplish. There was some danger, and there were a whole bunch of us together, a little like the wilderness dream. We were holed up in this building, we and Jesus, and some of the guys wanted to prove that Jesus was actually Jesus, so he did stuff like say my full name and birth date, even though he'd just met me. Stuff out of my wallet. A parlor trick, that's what I called it.

Only the weird part was that I was quickly certain that he was in fact Jesus. I just felt like the quest to prove it was a bit futile. And I didn't see any conflict between this being Jesus and his being the son of God, and my being an atheist. Now that I'm awake, I can sit here and wonder exactly how that works, but in the dream, that wasn't the problem.

The problem was that I was having a nightmare, so it had to get ugly, and it did. We reached out to other communities, trying to band together against the common threat (whatever it was). And the two Muslim guys that looked and acted unfortunately like every cardboard cutout terrorist of American movies were not convinced and were leaving, and they pushed by a friend of mine, and he fell down and hit his head, and he died.

I went into emergency mode, said to dial 9-1-1, got down there with the body and did... well, I don't know what I could have done, but Jesus was standing there and he said, "What's the point?"

What? I looked at him, and he was looking half bored and half annoyed at the whole thing. I said, "They can do something. They can start his heart again." And Jesus said, "No they can't. He's dead. Forget it." He was really dismissive, you know? And I was a little desperate about my friend. And Jesus made this move, with this whole attitude of being tired of parlor tricks and annoyed by the whole drama of the scene, and he said, "You want me to start his heart? Great." And he put his hand on my friend's chest, kinda clenched it, and my friend started breathing.

But then there was a seam that opened up lengthwise on the body. He was breathing, but his body was opening up. It was held together by Jesus's hand, clenched there, holding the skin together. And Jesus looked at me with his husky (or malamute) eyes, and he opened his hand, and the body fell open and all the guts started spilling out. And Jesus said, "See?"

On not blogging

I fell ill this morning. Later, I recognized the horrendous pain in my abdomen as that old ovarian cyst myth, a myth because it has never been proven, but still I find myself doubled over in pain every few years, and I don't bother going to the doctor because I know from experience just how long it takes to arrange an ultrasound and by then it will be all gone.

So tomorrow, I go back to work, and Sue my woundrous boss needs a brochure that I never have found the time or other wherewithall to put together for her, but I'm distracted because I have indeed read dozens of scholarly works on the value of portfolios as experiential elements in the learning process, and no, it's not just a "fad," and she asked me if I had, and I have, only... I didn't keep the papers.

Meanwhile my other woundrous boss Denise is sending me a new job and promising me fame and fortune or if not those things, at least a second pay check, so I'm excited to do the work. But at the same time I feel like I've somehow lost the plot on the class I'm taking, and I have a project partner who is counting on me so I need to get it together and build some wireframes and write up some... thing... that we need.

And the cat needs her stitches out. And today, our wireless network croaked again, and I got up all bleery-eyed from too much Dramamine and tried to fix it, and shocked myself by getting everybody back online... except for Luther. His machine can see the network, but it can't get on to the network. No apparent reason. No nothing. So tomorrow I need to go get a new network adapter on the off chance that this will fix the problem, and it won't, but I have to rule it out, so then I'll have to take it back and stand in line to return the stupid thing.

Ack.

So if I'm not blogging... eh. You understand.

Let it snow!

Someone from one of the other departments here at work just came by to tell us that they had their Christmas tree up and we had to come see it.

American Thanksgiving is next week. So it's a good thing they've got their Christmas tree up. Just in time!

Apparently it is a "display tree." It only has a few branches, and the way they're arranged allows room for "those Christmas villages."

Will somebody please help me to understand what the deal is with little Christmas houses and villages? I bet they come complete with fake snow. The idyllic Christmas village, so perfect and peaceful, so full of perfect little English people.

I think I need to get a muddy Christmas river and some Christmas alligators to decorate my living room. Yes, I need to spend some time decorating this year, because it's one of those important womanly things to do after all. On my muddy Christmas river, I'm going to put a Christmas tire, with a little chocolate boy floating down the Christmas river, past the Christmas alligators.

As we get closer to the actual holiday (in other words, maybe past Thanksgiving), I can start removing limbs, since the Christmas alligators will have got them.

It will be... oh, so sweet...

Simplicity haiku

This Simplicity:
A cat with nine little lives
is in her springtime

Cherry blossoms bloomed
and she fought and defended.
Now she is sleeping.

Claws stretch tense and curl.
Her black fur rises and falls
like the shortened days

The wounded shoulder
a mark of home at last.
Now she is sleeping.

Three in the news

I've got some unrelated snippets for you on this balmy Saturday morning (after 2 a.m., I can call it morning, right?).

The first was sent to me by my bestest friend, Luther.

Humiliated frat boys sue over 'Borat' portrayal

Some apparently intoxicated assholes that got caught on camera for the movie Borat are suing because they don't like the fact that everybody can see they are assholes. Luther sarcastically expressed sympathy for the boys, because obviously they would never, ever enjoy a Girls Gone Wild video, what with those drunken girls that, I'm sure, consulted with a lawyer before signing the waiver agreeing to be on camera, right?

Well that's different, honey. The girls in the Girls Gone Wild videos are HOT CHICKS GETTING WILD!

Totally different, right? Thank you, Luther. :)

Meanwhile, courtesy Google News, I learned that I should experience mild surprise over doctors Googling for medical answers. Duh. Yeah, and it's about time, really! Information Week suggests

Advice For Doctors Stumped By A Difficult-To-Diagnose Illness: Google It

answering the question, "just how awkward can a headline be?"

Why did they have to do a study on this? Googling might turn up answers that are otherwise difficult to find, you say? AWESOME! I never knew that! And here I was, thinking I should rely solely on my own brain and those dusty old books on the shelf, because certainly the billions of people posting information on the Web have nothing of interest to offer.

This, not surprisingly, reminds me of a wee event in my own life. Yay, it's story time!

A few years ago, when we were living in the little apartment and Luther was still in the Air Force, I discovered a lump in my armpit. Yup, a fat old lump. It was tender, and it worried me, so I went online and started poking around for medical advice.

The problem with lumps anywhere near breasts is that you cannot get away from the breast cancer scare. I mean, I'm looking at my lump, right? and I'm thinking, "that looks like a lump in my armpit. That does not look like a breast cancer." But you have to really use your minus signs like crazy to get a search engine to ignore the articles about breast cancer, because the search engines really, really, really want to tell you that you might have breast cancer.

Once upon a time I read about how Victorian doctors pinned all ailments in women on their reproductive systems. I should link to an article here, but I'm all out of Google search wisdom on this balmy Saturday morning (it's now almost 2:45, woot!). The gist was that if a woman was sick, it had to have something to do with reproduction. A man could actually be sick, sure, but a woman... yeah. So here I am with this lump in my armpit, and it's like all roads lead to breast cancer, because obviously women are nothing without their titties (conveniently linking us back to Girls Gone Wild -I should change the name of my blog at this point).

Finally, I found lymphadenitis. It's a lymph node infection. Left untreated, it can be serious -WebMD said it could be fatal. My lump had the exact symptoms listed. It was like a fucking "textbook case," you know? Yay, I have lymphadenitis! And off I went to the doctor to get my antibiotics...

...whereupon the doctor looked crossly at his clipboard and not once at me, and he said I needed to be screened for breast cancer. And oh by the way, his voice said, why the fuck am I having to deal with these women's illnesses? obviously she is ill, therefore ipso facto and all that, she has a problem with her reproductive organs.

So I sat there, shy me (because I'm shy, remember?), and said loudly, "well, I was thinking it was lymphadenitis." No response from the doc, industriously scribbling his soon-to-be-famous signature on my chart. "Lymphadenitis," I said, and listed, one by one, the exact symptoms. Scribble screeches to a halt, eyebrows scrunch. Pause. "Yeah. Could be lymphadenitis."

*snort* YA THINK?

I got my breast exam from a nice doctor at my regular "women's issues" clinic. He, too, was annoyed, but when he expressed his annoyance it came out something like, "Why is that moron wasting this lady's time and money?" because at a glance he could see it was lyphadenitis and nothing to do with my precious titties. He examined them nonetheless (who wouldn't?), and then he looked at the antibiotics I'd been given and got further annoyed, because the type I'd been given were sure to give me a yeast infection. Nice. I got new antibiotics and went home very happy with my World Wide Web and my armpit, too.

It's now just about 3 a.m. and time for me to go back to sleep, so I'll leave you with a third and final news tidbit. This is from "Ireland Online," whose staff perhaps could have spent a few extra minutes considering their phrasing.

Al Qaida’s leader in Iraq today vowed his fighters will never rest until they have blown up the White House and reached Jerusalem.

That guy has a funny sense of direction, doesn't he?

Nighty-night.

A cashier living with a skyscraper

I just received a wee bit of spam in my work email inbox. It's an ad for a weightloss supplement called "HoodiaLife." Who came up with the name, I wonder?

It is a display add, clickable. Obviously I will not click on it. But the ad is very oddly followed by this plain text:

A cashier living with a skyscraper avoids contact with a class action suit.
A cashier living with a skyscraper avoids contact with a class action suit. A cashier living with a skyscraper avoids contact with a class action suit.

What does it mean?

On shyness

I need to work on my blockquote style for my blog, because this comes out looking terribly dull. Still, here's a quote from an abstract for a study published in the Archives of General Psychology:

Conclusion -- Children who manifest higher levels of shyness or have 1 or 2 copies of the short allele of the serotonin transporter promoter gene appear to have a different pattern of processing affective stimuli of interpersonal hostility.

Alright, so we all know I'm no Psych major, eh? But I remembered this study from a much more readable (and therefore suspect) article on CNN awhile back, and recently I was reconsidering the findings.

To paraphrase, shy kids (or anyway, a high enough proportion that one could draw some tentative conclusions) apparently don't recognize aggression and neutrality in facial expressions as readily as non-shy kids do.

Lots of other factors contribute to shyness. Wiki shyness (that'd be the new verb, to Wiki) and you'll get a good glimpse, even though the current contributers to that subject area are especially into the genetic paths to shyness. Events, environment, genetics; there are too many variables to be sure which is acting on any specific shy person.

I consider myself to be shy. I have a great tendency to scare other people because I am bold and straightforward and a little arrogant (a lot arrogant, truth be told, but I like to think I hide some of it successfully); I stride rather than walk, if given a choice; I give my opinion before I am asked (which gets me into trouble); and I avoid interaction; I would rather hide under my blankets; I flush bright red whenever I'm called upon to speak in public; and I can't remember a word of what I said, anytime I've made an impassioned speech. I was really impassioned, I just don't know what I said!

The thing about the virtual balls I display as a shy person is this, perhaps: I know I can't tell what's going on in other peoples' minds. Over time, I've decided that I can't know this, so I won't know this, and I can't let it stop me. I can't stop and worry about what people are thinking or how people are viewing me, because if I do so, I'm miserable. I know. I used to be miserable.

As a shy person, I used to find a lot of money. No, really, this is a true phenomenon. I found a lot of money because I lived in a well-populated city, the paper money was conveniently multi-colored, and I never looked up from the ground. I was afraid, if I met someone's eyes, that they would see me looking at them and think I thought I could measure up in some way. It was worst, not surprisingly, with handsome young men.

As a shy person, I nevertheless made friends, because well... I don't know. I like to talk? and when I was 20, I liked music, and hung out at some blues jams, and met some people. One day I was on a bus, heading to the house of one of these friends on a sunny afternoon. I was standing -the bus was crowded- and avoiding other people by staring steadfastly out the window. The bus stopped at a stop, picked up some passengers, and I, looking out the window, saw another person across the road, and instantly liked her, felt a kinship with her. She was just a nice-looking person, nothing extraordinary, a little bit familiar. Blue jeans, jean-jacket. Brown hair. Green army-surplus bag. Who knows why I noticed her, or why I instantly liked her? I just did.

Then the bus moved, and I saw the light on the reflective bank windows across the road.

I'd been looking at myself.

I've had some seriously defining moments in my life, and that one was by no means the last. In some ways I suppose it was the first, at least of my adult life. I didn't overcome my shyness that day, but I saw it for what it was: a projection, nothing more. I projected my anxieties on others. I judged myself, and so I assumed they judged me. The moment I saw myself without judgment, I realized others might view me the same way.

What the hell does this have to do with a Psych paper? Oh yeah, this: The psychologists and geneticists and other cists all over the world will tell us how something like shyness happens, and I think that's great. But there's always going to be more to it. For instance, I can buy that an inability to translate facial expressions would extend pretty naturally to an unwillingness to interact. That's completely understandable. But what if this inability to translate facial expressions is a result of not encountering them in the first place?

What if it's caused by not looking at facial expressions in the first place? by avoiding them? by taking other, more subtle cues, sensing that there is conflict, and deliberately looking away?

I spent a good chunk of my life avoiding something that was very difficult, very painful. And pure chance forced me to look at it in a light that showed it for what it was: Just a girl in a jean-jacket.

I can love being just a girl in a jean-jacket. I can love me. I just couldn't face all the millions of things I thought I was supposed to be, and that others were supposed to see, above and beyond just a girl in a jean-jacket. So... I didn't look.

I'm still shy, but I look people square in the face whenever I can push myself to do so. And nine times out of ten... they remember that bold, friendly woman who seemed so confident, and grinned, and said her name was Becky.

I can live with that.

Thank you for voting

Today is election day in the States, and I want to take a moment to thank my American coworkers, neighbors, friends, and lover for going out and voting.

I had a bitter, bitter experience with my first vote. It was back when Free Trade was the big issue on the table, and Mulroney's stupendous chin was hovering over the whole thing, and I actually wore a "just say no" pin around and pushed my coworkers and friends to go and vote. They all readily agreed that Free Trade (in the proposed form) was a really bad idea, and of course they were going to vote, and everybody needed to vote, rah rah.

Then when the battle was good and lost, which alone wouldn't make me bitter because that's democracy (of a sort), I quizzed my friends and coworkers who'd been all fired up the day before. And... they hadn't got around to it. "I had to work." "I was going to go, but the Subway is so crowded at that time of day." "I slept in."

It's one thing to say your vote doesn't matter. It's another thing entirely to say that your friends and neighbors don't matter. And whether it would have made a difference or not, those people are counting on you to TRY.

So today I live in a country that only has two viable political parties, and at least fifty per cent (probably more) of the population believes in exactly the opposite things than I did back when I was a voter in Canada. Why should I care if they go out and vote? They've all done a pretty good job of convincing me that both parties are pretty horrendous, and I have only to watch the political ads to see that the plot of this saga was long since lost to cardboard characters. What's the point?

The point is this:

If it won't make any difference to your life, if neither party would really represent you or affect you in a positive way, that's fine. But when you don't go out and vote, you're not saying you don't care who represents you. You're saying you don't care who represents everybody else.

Who's getting shit on these days, is my question? Who is getting shit on that just damn well doesn't deserve it? If it's not you, it's somebody else. And it's your job in a democracy --in a workable society-- to care about how your community and your nation is governed.

It's not just about your own taxes, or your own property value, or your own private schools or local fire department. It's not just about your factory, and it's not just about your pollution controls. It's not even about your fish in the sea (for later sushi). It's about your nation. When things are right, actually, it's not even about your nation -it's about the world.

When you care about that, there's some hope for this idiotic place.

When you don't, there's none.

I know I know. Crazy bekbek. I don't think your individual vote is worth anything, truth be told. But I do think that act itself, of taking your own oh-so-precious time and going out to register a vote for everybody else... is worth a hell of a lot.

So, thanks.

Dates

Hahaha, can you believe I looked at the dates on a couple of recent blog comments and thought something had gone horribly awry?

Well, yeah, I guess that's entirely believable, eh? But things were just fine: I was just reading funny.

The date format displays the day-of-the-month first, then the month, then the year. Nothing wrong with that. Actually makes sense.

I've just... been here awhile.

Winning the War on Words

Via Time online: Bush criticizes Kerry.


And you know, he is so right. (I think someday my eyes are going to stick this way -in a continuous rolling pattern.)

News and Selective Service Gone Wild

Just something I'm working on...

I cleaned my desk at home this morning. Between my coursework, a bizarre taxation accident, a new cellphone agreement, and oh yeah, I landed a cool part-time job because... yeah, yeah, how hard can it be?... my desk was a wreck. This morning I started my day by bleerily filing and chucking and stacking, and the result is a return to at least a vague sense of order.

I found this scrawled note among the myriad loose ends:

Selective Service in relation to Girls Gone Wild

Now, I'm pretty good at this stuff. I can instantly come up with several tenuous connections. What was it, though, that led me to scrawl the note? I had to have thought it was interesting. Any thoughts at your end?

Meanwhile, I have a new installment of...

News of Bekbek

• I landed a pretty cool part-time job! I'm doing proofreading and a wee bit of copy editing for Southern Editorial. I just finished an instructor's manual for a college Lit class, which was amusing in several ways, not least of which was my almost overwhelming desire to rewrite the entire thing. But most of all, I do the work at my own little desk in my own little den, sometimes with my own little cat on the futon beside me, often with my own best friend Luther doing homework at the desk next to mine, and the pretty fall colors out the window.
  
  I'm still working at the college of course, and taking a Web Design class toward my Master's. If you go to my profile, you can drill into my current project by way of my faux "for homework" Writing blog, but please don't do so with IE until I've fixed it for IE... by the end of the weekend, I promise. I could link to it all here, but truth be told I find it a little excruciating (aka embarrassing like a Mary Tyler Moore episode) and so I'll just let you know that you can find it yourself if you're so inclined.
  
  But the proofing thing... I really like it. I mean, well, no, it's annoying as fuck, because it turns out -and here's the bizarre part of the story- I would really like to edit. Huh? Yeah, it turns out I really like to edit. And I'm coming around to the full-circle thing, because when I first tried to find work here in the States, this is exactly what I was looking for. On sanity alone (no stupid commute, no stupid state-college politics), this would be a really sweet career.


• Luther also got a job! Woot-with-reservations! I am very proud of him, but I'm so wholeheartedly in favor of and inspired by his enthusiastic and dedicated embrace of full-time college that I feel a tinge (just a tinge) of regret about this working thing. But it's officially school related, a very competitive part-time co-op opportunity on base, through his Business & Information Technology program. Way to go, sweetie! Will the Mustang be painted cherry, or blood? Ah, how I look forward to that low thrubthrubthrubvvvvvVVVVVVRRRRRROOOOM! Yay!

So we are working, is the news. All-school-all-the-time is about to give way to... all-school-all-the-time-except-for-when-we're-also-working...

Still. Girls Gone Wild. Selective Service. Sometime when I'm not working and not studying and not working... I need to figure that out. Could be important. Could be utter nonsense, but that's okay too. It has never been the thought that counts.

It's the thinking.

Moustache Mash

I really believe that once you can grow a moustache (even a weasel-moustache), you should no longer be able to go out in a casual attempt at a costume and beg for candy on the basis of it being "all about the kids."

Now, don't get me wrong, Luther. You know I think it's great that Wil is going out with his buddies, and he loves to do the dress-up thing, and that's wonderful. But on principle, yeah, I gotta say... once you're shaving (or failing to do so), surely this thing about just being given stuff by strangers cuz you're "cute" should end?

Equivalent for girls, you ask? Oh, I dunno. There is nothing outward that isn't just custom. For instance, once you start wearing makeup on a regular basis, I don't see why putting some on your face should afford you free candy at every other door. I mean, where's the "trick" in that?

But yeah, I'm a meanie and we all know it. Because once your body can make babies of its own, I have to say, I'm in favor of you maybe not acting like one yourself, anymore.

When push comes to shove, though, I just miss the creativity of it all. Kids (and/or their parents) used to do something to earn the candy. Now parents are buying plastic costumes off a rack, or kids are buying plastic costumes with the money their parents gave to them, just so that the kids can run around and get candy given to them for free...

What is the point?

Next year, I'm carving a pumpkin. And I'm giving out toothbrushes and little toothpastes.

...

Does anyone, anywhere doubt that I can, in fact, cause the dictionary definition of "curmudgeon" to include me after all?

The pistachios are long gone

I'm sitting up here in our little office haven. It's sunny outside, and the leaves on some trees are changing color and falling, and the sky is blue.

The cat, who has a horrible wound in her shoulder from defending our property from other cats but doesn't seem to care about it, is sleeping on the futon couch next to me.

And Luther is talking on the phone, banishing the disquiet from an earlier difficult conversation by connecting with his bro, his brother, in California.

He mentioned, just now, a blog that I'd written. I entitled it, "It's time to go back, the pistachios are gone." But I didn't blog that. I wrote it in a web site I created after we got back from Greece a couple of years ago. He remembers it as a blog, I guess, because it had a kind of blog aspect.

The thing is, it is time to go back. I miss Greece. I don't want to wait until I'm ancient to do the traveling that my ...okay, I don't believe in souls, but how about my CORE needs? I NEED.

I need to go back to Greece. The pistachios are good, yes. So is the air. And the vitality.

Cascading Style Sheets

Holy crap, CSS rocks!

A very few words

One of the faculty members I've worked with for the last four years passed away over the weekend. I wasn't exactly shocked when I got the news this morning, but there is still that odd surprise, thinking that he's actually gone and will not ever again be strolling in with his cloud of cigarette smoke and his styrofoam coffee cup in hand.

I didn't know him well. I liked some things about him very much -his laid-back attitude, his wit, his wonderful skill with language. I disliked other things. I think if we'd ever actually talked as equals we would have disagreed more than agreed about many things. But we didn't talk as equals. He was "senior faculty," and I am a secretary.

But the thing about this guy is, with just a very few words one day, he made a positive impact on my life. I was walking down the hall, and he was in a doorway with his cloud of smoke and his styrofoam coffee, and as I passed him he said, "When are you getting to work on your Master's?"

I was astonished. I can't imagine why he would have thought about me at all. I have no idea what I said in response. But I got back to my office and I sat down and I started thinking, could I maybe actually do that?

Sometimes I wonder if he was just trying to stir up trouble. Sometimes I feel like I'm less and less popular with the "senior faculty" the further I get in my studies, like I wasn't really supposed to do this and am crossing some kind of boundary we secretaries weren't supposed to cross. Have I been stepping on his toes, I wonder?

Did he ever realize, I wonder, that he put the idea in my head?

I'll never know. But I'll thank him as I say my good bye, and I'll thank him again when I graduate. And I'll remember him with fondness.

Have a good forevernevermore, Dr. Adams. You will be missed.

Henry Ford

If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right.
--Henry Ford

Ford offered a car in the color of your choice: Any color, as long as it was black.

We talk about positive language. That's positive language. He didn't say, "you can only get it in black," or "you can't get it in any other color."

Ford knew about being positive. Though I abhor the car-centric world he contributed to building, I still think we can all learn from his experience and positive attitude.

And the walls came tumbling down upon our hearts and minds

I wasted some of my valuable time this morning, reading some peoples' "If I were President" emails on CNN.com. Wow, people can be so stupid.

I was particularly irked at the fantasy aspect of it all. "If I were President I would legalize marijuana, blah blah blah." If you were President, darling, you would not actually have the power to do such a thing, but ooookay, pretend the Prez gets a magic wand. While you're at it, how about world peace?

And then of course, I'm pretty close to going over the edge about this wall thing. "I would build a wall all around the United States, so we would be protected from evildoers and dirty Mexicans."

Is it my imagination, or didn't the United States used to be a land where people fought to bring walls down? Is it just me, or is this fervent desire to put up walls a fair demonstration of what has happened to something that once was great?

Someone, somewhere, is shouting back at my keystrokes. It's unintelligable, really, because his English ain't so good, but he's saying something about how the world has changed since 9-11.

Sadly, no. I think we were working on putting up walls before that. 9-11 just brought it out in the open. Strange that some angry, senseless, hurtful men with a couple of box cutters can shed such light. I don't like what I see.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.

--Robert Frost

An intelligent, energetic, educated woman cannot be kept in four walls - even satin-lined, diamond-studded walls - without discovering sooner or later that they are still a prison cell.

--Pearl Buck

Possessions are underrated

Money can't buy you love, and things can't make you happy.

That said, some things make me happy. I mean, I look at them, touch them, or play with-- uh, nevermind. The sentiment is true, nonetheless. It's the context that makes one happy.

I have a silver bracelet that is handmade. I don't know where it's from. I bought it from my friend/brother Roderick Zalameda, when he was working at a stand on Queen Street in Toronto. The link, the way the bracelet closes, is a screw. And the screw is handmade too, a silver strand wound around and around in a spiral. Not only is it handmade, it is backwards to the "standard." Lefty-tighty, righty-loosey.

I own many treasures. When someone asks, what are your favorite possessions, I'm at a loss, because I don't rank them. How can I rank them?

What are some of your treasures?

3em is even better than 3M

I found the code I was looking for, and I fixed it. How about that? Of course, I started the hunt in the first place because I wanted a black background, and a black background revealed the complete lack of a right margin in the sidebar content. Finally, I found the sidebar widget, whatever that is, and I changed one of the values to 3em, and wow, that's actually too much margin. I set it to 1em and moved on.

Only by this time, I'd stopped loving the black background.

For my next trick, I'll be trying to figure out how to put a gradient into the background, or maybe tile it with a texture. Because...

yeah, yeah. How hard can it be?

The "new look" is a considerably tweaked version of one of Blogger-beta's stock templates. I made the banner out of a kelp tattoo design I've been thinking of actually having tattooed on my own self, like the woman in the banner only... fatter. And then I made a new gif for one of the template's dividers, and I adjusted some colors. Not bad.

I'll be playing with it some more. Hey, I might even crack open that web design book, eh?

Play time

Obviously (I say, assuming I have "regular viewers"), I am playing with templates. I am frustrated beyond reason by the fact that I can't figure out this language on my own. I never had to open a text book for VB, dammit.

That said, let us be clear: I am not interested in this stuff. I have no desire to write my own "code." Don't even talk to me.

But if you can figure out how I can have a bigger margin in the right column, please let me know. Thx.

CNN's cry for help

Here is one possible explanation for the guy named Loveless who says happiness is overrated:

An evil alien dictator (or perhaps the U.S. government) has taken over CNN and is forcing its staff to slant the news -and through the news, our society- in a horrifyingly dangerous and destructive direction. Reporters are literally chained to their desks, cranking out these lies in mortal fear of torture and death.

But one brave soul is fighting back. He is seeding the news with stories carefully designed to set off our alarm bells. Loveless doesn't believe in happiness?! Come on, that's an obvious fabrication.

And now, stingrays are voluntarily jumping out of the water, into boats, in order to skewer unsuspecting old dudes in the heart. That can't be real.

We must save our intrepid reporter before the evil alien dictator (or U.S. government) discovers what he's been up to.

Love not what you can skip to your heart's content

Too, too funny. I'm going to be late for work, but I just have to post this:

In this morning's news on CNN, an article entitled,
Confident students do worse in math; bad news for U.S.

In essence, happiness is overrated, says study author Tom Loveless.

LOVELESS DON'T SHOW NO LOVE!

"If I'm a math student and I don't perceive myself as confident, you think I'm going to major in it? The answer is no," said Francis "Skip" Fennell

*snort* Shockingly, a guy named "Skip" argues that kids should have fun in math class.

This story has to have been made up, right?

Language arts

I just heard from my sister and my Dad in Toronto. My sister just had surgery on her foot. She said she'd taken a big risk: She failed to take a big black marker and write, "Not this foot! The OTHER ONE!" on the good foot before going to the hospital. But all is well, if broken and painful. The little pills should help.

My Aunt Nan, meanwhile, is suddenly due for a triple bypass. I'm thinking there're going to be a lot more little pills in the family.

In honor of the wounded and crippled of my clan, then, I give you... another rant among so, so many. This time, it's about language.

Today when I got home from workschool (the division blurs), Luther greeted me on my arrival with an observation about the poker game on TV, and the names by which the players were identified. "Jessica" was the female player at the table. The other players, all male, were referred to by their surnames.

Okay, so this is not a shocker. I could go off on a tangent, but I'll abstain this time. Instead, let me just provide my reasoning:

Women don't have their own names.

A woman has her father's name until she marries, when she takes her husband's name.

Understand, I don't think the woman at the poker table was the epitome of tradition. But it's a long tradition, and where once I would have blamed an issue of respect, or perhaps an issue of objectification (sexual, that is), I find today that the use of names at a poker table is in its own way accurate. A given name is just a convenient label; a surname is a property, and women don't own property, at least not if there is a man in the family.

Call Jessica "Smith," and one might be confused and look about the room for Smith, for surely this breasted person is not he.

Later, Luther and I talked again about the recent brawl in college football, Florida-style. Luther remarked on the fact that the reports refer to the "players" and the fair or unfair disciplines to "the players" for fighting. Rarely if ever does someone refer to these "players" as... "Students."

Oh, that's right! They're supposedly college students, yes? And every college has a code of conduct for its students, usually published in a fairly concrete form. I went to the University of Miami to look at their Student Code of Conduct but alas, the link seemed to be broken. I wonder why?

Language is everything. There is no equality for women until they own their own names. There is no point in pretending that football players are students until we refer to them as students and hold them to the same standards as the rest of the student body.

I think, until we start to consistently refer to the athletes as students, they will consistently fail to be so. And in the South, mecca of college football, they'll continue to just be poor, black gladiators for the rather limited white populace. How nice.

Meanwhile, I can't do anything about the women thing. I know that I chose to change my name because I wanted to show in a public way that I was making a family with Luther. I would have been happier if we could have had a name all our own, but he's the fourth of FIVE of his name. Hard to just break the mold mid-stream.

But I hate that anybody would ever think I wasn't a Slocombe.

I miss you both. Eat the pills. Love you.

Stupid human tricks

And now, for something completely time-wastingly fun: In the address bar of your browser, do you see a little green B-squared? And if not, refresh.

Ain't it cool?

It turns out to be pretty easy to do this. I made a little square image, and then I went to MyFavatar and uploaded the image.

I'm going to mess with this some more, I'm sure, but in the meantime, oooh, looky at that!

(Okay. That tears it. I am a geek.)

Post-posting notes: It won't show up in Internet Explorer 6.0, but word on the street is that it will show up in IE7. And I don't much care because I avoid IE like the plague. I use Firefox. Finally, I knew I had to delete my bookmark/favorite to my blog and then re-bookmark it, but still I get no little icon in my bookmarks list. Damn. I might have to do some more research...

Visibility is key

Not once has anybody told me that when one is transporting helium balloons in one's car, one should secure the balloons before starting to drive.