Di renpet nofret to all my Jewish Dear Readers.   >> 11:31:18 PM 
 
 
So my mom was babysitting my nephew -- that's my sister Jenny's kid, for the uneducated -- last night. The kid is, I think, four years old (is he going to be five soon? my, how time flies) and sharp as the stock he came from.

Anyway, at some point during the night, he turned to my mother and said, "You know what, Ma?"

(Yes, my nephew calls my mother "Ma". I call my grandmother Mima, and my mother called her grandmother Mimi or "Lotte". It's a longstanding tradition in our family not to call our grandparents by traditional titles.)

My mom replied, "Yes?"

He looked thoughtful and then replied, "I really like your daughter."

My mom said, "Well, that's good, Brett. I like her, too."

And there's a vague ghost in my head that says I may have said something similar to my grandparents, once, about my mother, though danged if I can remember if that's true or not.   >> 11:20:55 PM 
 
 
I find myself really wanting to see Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou ("His and Her Circumstances"), but either it's been licensed and fansubbers have stopped releasing it, or it's too recent for any of the fansubbers to be distributing it. Harrumph.

Oh. I see. It's been licensed. Hmmmmm. Spring 2001? Drat.   >> 4:59:32 PM 
 
 
Oh wait. Hah hah. That's right. Next weekend is the happy union of the Metzener-Livingstons.

So I guess not ;)

Gun shops? What gun shops? And how can I trust a guy who sees UFOs on his Nikon 950?   >> 2:02:27 PM 
 
 
I wish I could say, "Huzzah! It's Friday!" like the rest of the gang here in Mooville and associated Mooville sites, but I can't because this is not a happy plump bouncy relaxing weekend like I would like it to be. This is a finish-cleaning-up-the-old-place-and-run-off-to-Archon-and-go-to-Johnny's-birthday-party weekend. And I still have so much packed-up stuff I need to put away and set up (like, say, my computer). And then on Monday it's back to getting the SimuCon site done and working on Web 2.0.

Next weekend will be easier, I hope.   >> 1:58:03 PM 
 
 
Mmmm...lahengas.

If I had more money, I'd be more interested in fashion, but I don't, so fashion sort of falls by the wayside for me...except when mom sends me money specifically to buy things.

Gundam Wing: Endless Waltz airs October 20th on Cartoon Network. The next Jubei-chan DVD comes out October 3rd. And I'm guessing the third one comes out in November sometime.

And guess who just got paid. ;P   >> 1:15:50 PM 
 
 

9.28.2000

This is the post that will determine if my mom is still reading my journal.

I've been warring with posting about the results I got back from my blood test, mainly because I already knew what they were going to be, and at the same time I didn't want to know that. And because I knew my mom probably still checks in here every other day, along with the rest of my family, I didn't really want to deal with talking about it with them right now.

(And, to be honest, I still don't. We have identified the problem and are working on it. Please accept our apologies for this delay in service.)

But I digress.

Anyway.

My grandfather didn't tell anyone when he was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, and if I had known that immediately after he died -- instead of seven years later, when mom finally told me -- I would have resented it. I don't now...it's past, after all. And I'm not dying or anything, but my total cholesterol levels were at 291 or so, which is, hrm, bad. And not unexpected. I have a sedentary lifestyle. I'm not lazy, but everything I'm active in is mostly cerebral -- writing, drawing, counselling, watching animé....

But....

I do have high levels of cholesterol, and I have to correct that. I have a borderline thyroid condition. I'm going to go talk to the doctor on the 5th about it. I'm going to get more blood testing done next month.

I've been trying for most of my adult life to figure out a way to get myself to eat right; well, I may have just hit on it. I know I have a definite revulsion right now towards the foods that could potentially kill me. And while I've got my share of ancestors who will be happy to see me over on that horizon, if it's all right with the rest of you I don't really want to have to go just yet. I still have too much to do here.

So I'm not sure if this initial reaction that has caused me to reexamine what I eat is temporary or not. It's been a very sobering past couple of days. Something about the new place is encouraging me to get up and go to bed earlier. So maybe somewhere in there I can work in some fitness training as well.

I know, you all were expecting something worse with that intro. But I'm not pregnant, I'm not dying, and I'm not going to be the next Elvis, so you'll all just have to live with me having high cholesterol levels. :)   >> 5:48:01 PM 
 
 
Watch your pursestrings this week. Lots of friends running into sudden money troubles. Luckily, I've been safe so far.

Jubei-Chan: Ninja Girl was just the thing I needed after struggling with this stupid move. It is very, very, very funny, with just a touch of drama (so far). It's also very bizarre. It's a magical girl, combat-oriented, comedy, romance, drama show all rolled up together. I really like what I've seen of it so far.

Archon this weekend. Final relocation of the junk is tonight, and then tomorrow night I get down on my hands and knees (get your brain out of the gutter) to scrub down the bathroom. And then no more Remington Apartments.

Not that Remington was bad. Not that they were great. Dave made a salient argument in that they liked to play good landlord/bad landlord...didn't matter that we consistently paid our rent on-time for four years and never caused any trouble. They still varied between being very nice, and being very snotty. Harrumph.

And let's face it, there's just something eerie about a place where all the streets (Ithaca, Browning, Remington, Ruger, Mossberg) are named after guns.
 

I'm paraphrasing, because I can't completely remember what he said.

You know that they had no word for ownership in their language. There was no "mine"; everything was shared. So when a bunch of Europeans showed up asking if they could own the land, they couldn't comprehend it. They just took what they gave them and let them pretend they owned what they'd "bought".

Hey, look, I know most of us who went to California schools have heard this before, but it didn't strike me until Sunday. Cat logic is like that.

So later that night, when I was sitting at dinner with my Nisut (AUS) and Imakhu Inibmutes, the conversation of some things I'm planning on doing with soaps came up, and Ini asked if it was okay for her to "use" one of the ideas I had come up with (embedding hieroglyphs in soaps). And Fred's words came back to me.

I think one of the problems with the modern age is that we hold on to things too tightly. We associate fame with respect, money, power. Actors put their pants on just like the rest of us, and yet we devote entire lines of magazines to them. To their image. To some intangible thing that we want, that we think they have.

Respect should not be based on how pretty you are, though. Respect should be universal.

Should be. Not saying it is. But it should be.

Somehow, that thought connected to what Fred said, but I can't remember how. It popped into my head this morning following along on that line of reasoning, and I don't remember how, but it did come through that pipeline.

Ini's fish died, and I -- who have had many fishes die in the past -- was pretty cruel to her when I didn't know how attached she was to it. I'll be honest and say that a fish is just a fish to me, but I do feel bad for making her upset. So why is it I would be perfectly understanding if her cat had died, but fish, to me, are just the pet equivalent of a knick-knack? Been warring with my cat nature on this all last night and this morning. A fish is just a fish to me, but to her it was something special.

More moving fun tonight. Jeff locked his keys in his car. Big silly.   >> 12:06:12 PM 
 
 

9.26.2000

You should have seen my "Steph Won a TiVo!" dance.

It made Jeff laugh like a girl.

Mike just won one, too.

Some people say he's a victim of circumstance
But he's not; he just volunteered.

I rule.

I wish I could tell you guys what I wrote, but I didn't keep a copy. I, uh, didn't think I was going to win. :)   >> 11:47:30 AM 
 
 

9.25.2000

Bruce! What a great idea! Next time I go home, I'm going to get my mom to do a guest blog. Yeah!   >> 4:39:17 PM 
 
 
Y'see, the thing about prescience is that I knew that someone in a large red vehicle was going to try and cut in front of me at the point where the two-lane I-270 offramp splits into single lanes -- the left lane going east (St. Louis), and the right (which I was on) going west (Kansas City). I knew they were going to wait till the last possible moment, and then pull in front of me to get ahead of everyone else who patiently got in line to take the KC exit. And I thought, glancing over to my left, that it was going to be the big red van that was next to me, but no -- it was the big red Ford SUV monstrosity behind it.

So I knew it was going to happen, right at that crucial point where the offramp turns into a "V", and when the guy did pull in front of me, I was not surprised, and I was ready with my foot on the brake and my hand on the horn.

To give Missouri some credit, their drivers are a lot wimpier than the Chicago maniacs I had to deal with all this weekend. And I could tell he was surprised when I honked and waved my fist and threw my best angry look at his rearview mirror. In Missouri, all the reaction I got was a quick look over the shoulder and the nervous blush of his brake lights. If it had been L.A., he probably would have returned my little friendly honk with a little friendly shotgun fire.

But I wanted to throw some negative reinforcement at a person who, for all I know, has pulled this stunt countless times in the past. I don't care how busy you are or how fast you need to get someplace -- you ought to wait in line with everyone else, for the sake and safety of not just yourself and your passengers, but the people whose lives you could potentially ruin by cutting them off in bad weather. A maneuver like that is dangerous enough during good driving conditions. When it's pouring down rain and half of the freeway is a windy, hydroplaning nightmare, it goes from being stupid to potentially lethal.

Speaking of Chicago maniacs -- this weekend was a barrel full of fun, from the really excellent food to the really excellent football game to the really fascinating pow-wow I got to go to. Yes indeed, Dear Reader, yours truly got a chance to do my horrible rendition of the Crow Hop, though mine looked more like the Anvil-Fell-On-My-Foot Hop. There is some thought that we might try to go to the big one in New Mexico.

Desktop yoga!

Wheeee. Four hours of driving. Wheeeee. Dr. Jane's Fossil Fever saved me from stopping at a reststop to sleep, and a double helping of The Gypsy "soundtrack" got me past annoying people in big red Fords who think cutting off tiny Saturns in rainy-bad weather is okay. Thanks, Music!

They said: "Why are you here?" I said: "I'm doin' time --
Cuz I'm willing to break laws, but I won't commit no crime."
But there's more to making choices than luck and happenstance
I hope I do it right, next time I get the chance.

"Try pork in the morning!"

Welcome to the Midwest.   >> 2:08:47 PM 
 
 

9.20.2000

Someday very, very soon I want to hunt down the two development teams who created Adobe ImageStyler and Macromedia Fireworks and beat them senseless with a roll of wadded-up papertowels.   >> 7:25:17 PM 
 
 
Make one stupid (but innocent) comment about wearing a wet shirt, and suddenly your site is the darling of Google/Yahoo!.

Driving four hours straight come six a.m. tomorrow. Blah.   >> 4:26:04 PM 
 
 
Ah! Ah! Dancing undead wolf head thing! Hee.   >> 12:42:10 PM 
 
 
Who needs to watch the Olympics when I can just read Suz and Gryph's sites?

I was a lousy athlete, but I loved soccer. And softball. And rugby. And swimming.   >> 11:57:22 AM 
 
 
I realized yesterday as I was doing my usual doodling that my art has gotten better in the last few months. Mainly because I'm finally getting the hang of that whole "draw an oval for the head" thing. I was even sort of thinking about finishing The World Tree story as a manga instead of writing...but seeing as it's been a year since I've updated the story (gomen ^_^;) I doubt I could find the time anywhere soon to actually do something that would require that much work.

Grave of the Fireflies ranks up there with Windaria as perhaps one of the saddest animés I've ever seen -- moreso than Windaria because Grave of the Fireflies is based on actual events. And Windaria -- which, up until the ending, I found incredibly dull -- didn't make me want to break down bawling. I have a very, very short list of movies and books that make me cry, and it involves a particular storytelling convention that was present in Braveheart, Gladiator, Where the Red Fern Grows, and Magic's Price.

November is when the next Fushigi Yuugi DVD set comes out. I'll have to find some way to go up and see Donna during that time so we can have a Fushigi Yuugathon. Must...see...conclusion...to...series....   >> 11:53:20 AM 
 
 
I hope my Christian readers have a sense of humor...   >> 11:26:02 AM 
 
 

9.19.2000

What Gryph wrote about today reminded me of something Neil Gaiman talked about once in one of his prefaces or epilogues...I don't remember where exactly.

Anyway, his comment was in regards to AIDS, and friends of his who had died and how he refrains from removing them from his address book. At the time, I didn't fully grasp the meaning until Terry died....

I go through my AIM list sometimes to weed it out a bit -- to take out the names that I know are no longer functional...but the one I can't bring myself to remove is TAAtwood -- Terry Allen Atwood.

When I was thirteen or so, my Mima told me that I was anthropopathic after we drove by an abandoned carnival and I commented on how sad it looked. I was speaking of the rapidly oxidizing Ferris wheel that loomed up over the fairgrounds, rusted into perpetual stasis.

It's a mixture of empathy and anthropopathogy that causes me to not want to take Terry out of my AIM list. Technically, it's just a name. It's not a person. But at the same time, it is. It's that Kemetic dual-level worldview -- the word is the thing. Deleting Terry's name is, in a sense, very much so like deleting a piece of Terry.

For good or ill, I seem to apply my pathos to more than just my fellow man. Ferris wheels, invisible friends, and even those people who abandoned emotion in favor of some other gain.

To coin a term: panpathic -- sympathy for all things.

Except spiders. Man, I hate spiders.   >> 3:10:35 PM 
 
 
I'm such a goober. The only thing I could think was, "Oh cool. Someone I admire swiped one of my design ideas."   >> 2:30:21 PM 
 
 
When you just don't know what to do which flowers to get someone, this site can help.

"A Change of Address"
or
"The Trials of Calling One's Creditors"
a play in five parts
Part One:

Longest Wait:
CompUSA
 
Worst Phone Menu:
Sears (of course)
 
Nicest Rep:
CompUSA
 
Rep Most Likely to Be a Relative of Ben Stein:
Sears
 
Sexiest Phone Menu Voice:
USAA
 
Strangest Identity Confirmation:
USAA Credit
(they asked me what model of car I drive)

Calling all these companies to change my address is really very wearying. I still haven't gotten to all of them, but at least my insurance is updated and my fridge got delivered. It's cooling down nicely. We should have gas by later today, and if so I'll take home all my hair stuff, put up the shower curtain, and not have to worry about showering at the apartment tomorrow (which would be nice).

Still no home connection. Tickets for November trip to Ohio are secured. Trip to Chicago begins Wednesday night. And hopefully the Archon people will get back to me about what panels I'm on, if any.

The cat got acquainted with the new place a lot quicker than I expected. After half a day of being catatonic (no pun intended), she finally started wandering out of the laundry room (where clever me had put the kitty litter) and would follow me to the perimeter of her explored territory (the entry landing). By day three she was upstairs and exploring (where clever me had put the food). By last night, she was following me all over the place and tried to get into the garage. By this morning, she was back to trailing me into the bathroom and yelling at me.

Love that cat :)   >> 1:05:31 PM 
 
 

9.18.2000

I have no patience for anything today. PMS is setting in.

GET OVER YOURSELF, DAMMIT.

No, I don't mean me. I mean you. YOU. Get over it and get on with your life already.

There. I feel better.

(wanders off for some chocolate)   >> 6:13:03 PM 
 
 
* Amber has found a real mousie!

So....

So one of the funnest things about moving is playing the What's Under the Couch After Four Years of Living Here? ^TM game. When you own a cat, this game becomes even more interesting because cats smack things around in such a fashion that inevitably they wind up under a couch or a chair or a dresser that they can't get under, and then they forget about it.

And there it stays.

For years.

We found something like fifty-two rabbit-fur mousies. As I picked up the most intact ones and began adding them to a pile, I noticed that there was one in particular that looked incredibly lifelike. And, it turned out, there was a very good reason for that -- though "life"like might be a bit of a misnomer since it was unmistakably dead (and halfway to skeletal).

I know, I know. I'm a horrible housekeeper. My cat killed a mousie and I wasn't there to see it. She must have added it to the graveyard o' mousies under the couch by smacking it around, where it stayed -- until Saturday.

It was given a quick burial in the nearest garbage pile. There were other horrors awaiting me amidst the rest of the stuff we found from the couch cleaning, but I won't go into them. Suffice to say I probably won't be eating Toblerone chocolates for a while.

Jeff wants lunch, so very quickly....

Thank you to Dave, who got my monitor to my car safely. To Jeff, who navigated the UHaul through dangerous redneck territory. And ultra sparkling gorgeous mucho thanks to Russ, without whom our move would have taken even longer than twelve hours.

Susan, I know that feeling. You're probably over it by now, but I will say that you did what I would have done and pampered yourself.   >> 1:32:03 PM 
 
 

9.15.2000

The downside: Best Buy sold my refrigerator to someone else (!) and is now out of stock on the model I ordered.

The upside: Best Buy will, however, furnish me with the next model up at no cost (the $589 model as opposed to the $499 one).

The downside: They can't deliver it till after the weekend.

Hm. Gosh. Let me think about that one. The fridge at home is still operational...Mike is lending us his mini fridge...and...uh...hell yeah I want the better one!

Lucky. I have to go through things to get to the good stuff, but I am nothing if not lucky.   >> 4:48:10 PM 
 
 
They're shutting off stuff around the house today and starting up new stuff at the new house. Jeff's already over there. I'm at home writing this entry because I was woken up at 9:30 am-ish to restart all the games on one of our machines (and that is, incidentally, why I'll be late to work today, oh blog-reading coworkers).

Words, words, and more words. Today we have nine Remetj becoming Shemsu. Nine is a great number.

So anyway, one more night here at the old digs, and then I'll be sleeping in a new place by Saturday night, providing all goes well. And no from-home blogging for a while since we'll have no connection for two weeks or so.

(Insert crash of thunder here.)

Have you come here for forgiveness?
Have you come to raise the dead?
Have you come here to play Jesus
To the lepers in your head?

I have beautiful blood inside me. That reality keeps me warm.   >> 11:27:18 AM 
 
 
Beautiful.

Went to bed extremely early last night (8:30 PM) and got up around 8 AM from a dream about pickled pigs. Hm.

Today we sign the papers for the new lease and the place is officially ours. It's raining outside, and I had to fast for twelve hours because I'm getting bloodwork done (again). They want to test me for some other possible problems they didn't test me for before. Mom and Cindy both have thyroid problems, and while I've been tested for that before, they're going to do some checking into other things that are related to their disease, but not the same as.

I'm not going to expand too far into it but: Finding a good gynecologist is like finding a good mechanic. Really. The last one I went to left me feeling like trash for days after and kept me away from the doctor for two years. That had to be one of the worst experiences of my life. I can't tell you what a relief it is to find one who doesn't make me uncomfortable and insists on a female nurse being in the room with me during the more sensitive examinations.

Oh, and ladies -- the doctor says most of you don't do your monthly BSE. Speaking as someone who's been doing them since she was seventeen, I have to say I'm surprised. You gotta do that, my fine friends of the female persuasion. It's your first line of defense against being a statistic.

Sometimes I wish I could write as well as Dave does. I'll have to see about eating his brain someday.

Braaaaaains....   >> 8:49:01 AM 
 
 

9.13.2000

Y'know, I try not to get involved in politics but...Bush is incompetent for the job of president, in my opinion. All of this is in regards to the executions of Betty Lou Beets. On one hand we have this statement:

Bush, in his autobiography A Charge to Keep, acknowledges that "the worst nightmare of a death penalty supporter and of everyone who believes in our criminal justice system is to execute an innocent man".

He has, therefore, called the last hurdle before execution -- the clemency process -- the "fail safe". Nine states, including Texas, allow a governor to grant a pardon or reprieve if it has been recommended by a clemency board -- before which Beets's appeal was pending until last Wednesday, when it was turned down. The fact that he had no recommendation from the board was his constitutional get-out.

(Source: Guardian Unlimited UK)

When asked about the case on the campaign trail, Bush said he would have to wait for the parole board’s recommendation before he made a decision.

"A governor cannot stop an execution in the state of Texas," Bush said Friday on ABCNEWS’ Good Morning America.

Actually, in capital cases, Texas law does allow the governor to grant an offender one 30-day reprieve of a scheduled execution without a parole board recommendation.

[...]

What’s most shocking to Margulies [Beets' attourney] [...] was how close the vote was, in the end. If the board had voted before last July, the five votes would have been enough to save Beets from the death chamber — at least for awhile. But a change in the law now requires a majority of the board as a recommendation for a reprieve.

"Five votes is almost unheard of," Margulies said. "We’re disappointed, but we still think the governor has to look at this and say ‘you don’t get five votes out of nothing.’"

(Source: ABC News)

I'm not saying this woman was innocent -- she had two of her husbands buried in her backyard and a history of problems with her other spouses -- but read about her trial and my God what is wrong with us that we're putting people to death who ought to have been caught and put into therapy years ago? A woman who, by all accounts I've read, was poorly represented by a lawyer who was arrested later for soliciting a bribe to fix a capital murder trial.

Not a lot upsets me. This does. And the worst part about this whole stupid election is I don't even like Gore, but I will vote for him just to keep George W. Bush out of office.

I feel like I'm in a Transmetropolitan comic. The Smiler or the Beast? Which will it be.

At least Gore has the Buddhists on his side. (sigh)   >> 5:16:14 PM 
 
 
Thank God for sunglasses, or I would have never made it through this too damn early morning.

Music for a Bast festival: "Adagio for Strings op. 11" by Samuel Barber.

I got up at 7 am today to come into work because I'm the tech on call. Anyone who knows me knows that, unlike the rest of the human breed, I am distinctly nocturnal -- making me get up at 7 am is akin to keeping my diurnal brother Antybast up past 11 pm. So today, amongst other things, I am onduty, packing for the move, handling websites and probationers, cooking dinner, getting my yearly gyn exam, and celebrating a festival of Bast. And I went to bed at 2:30 am because I was scripting a silent piece of paneled art (that is, a comic) called "Odd Angel". When it rains, it pours....

One thing about me getting up early, though, is that it fuel-injects some chemical in my head that makes me a compulsive cleaner. I found myself actually tidying up my cube before I realized it, and then I shrunk back in horror at what I had done. I ran to the kitchen to scrub my hands, to try with frantic physical actions to relieve the intangible side of my flesh of this travesty, but the dust just mocked my efforts and pointed out that, by trying to wash it off, I was cleaning once more. I screamed at the horror, the horror, the horror. My soul is stained. It doesn't wash off.

But at least I have tunes!

As I returned across the fields I'd known
I recognised the walls that I once made
I had to stop in my tracks for fear
Of walking on the mines I'd laid

I swear to you all, I didn't remember today was a festival of Bast when I wrote the entry below. This is how She works, though, so -- happy Bast day, everyone.

Heh.   >> 12:54:33 AM 
 
 

The Lady and the Tiger: Unshrines

Back a long time ago, when I was following Bast but wasn't following Kemetic Orthodoxy (because I didn't know it existed), I had an "unshrine".

I call it an unshrine because it was the sort of thing I'd had since I was a young girl -- a place where I put the things that made me think of or reminded me of that nebulous entity I deemed to be God. Dr. Jane and Cindy had their own little places of that sort -- though I fancy theirs were more ceremonial -- and it inspired me to make my own.

The one of Dr. Jane's that really stands out for me was the one she made for her stepmother...her mother? Whichever. Her stepmother was quite unkind to her, but despite this, and despite the fact that Dr. Jane never really liked her, she set aside a space of her living quarters for her, this matronly figure she had disliked and who had harmed her in childhood. She populated it with sunflowers, because that's what this woman had liked. And in that vein, I decided to do something similar for Bast.

I collected cat things. Pogs (they were popular in the mid-90s) with characters from The Lion King on them, drawings and cat whiskers, feathers, leather, a pewter cup with cats on the handle, a green scarf, brown silk upon which rested a glazed Japanese incense bowl, and a tiger mask I clipped out of a newspaper.

My unshrine traveled with me from Berkeley to Southern California (where Cassie-cat chewed on the feathers), and was present when I cursed and bound an enemy, asked for money, and demanded/pleaded with Bast to tell me where I was supposed to go next now that I'd found Her. It was there when I first met -- online -- kai-Imakhu Antybast and his future wife, now-Imakhu Ini, then the seemingly innocent Donna.

I disassembled the unshrine and cannibalized it for parts when I made my first shrine in the tradition of my religion. The pheasant feathers I threw away (they were ratty from cat-chewings anyway), the leather now lines the top of my computer desk, the Japanese bowl is on my dresser, and the pewter cup is my vessel for liquid offerings in the current shrine, the scarf is hung over the opening to shield it from unsuspecting eyes.

The mask, though, I tucked into a box that got forgotten by everyone but the spiders, until today. And I still think it's so keen. Thin newspaper painted like a tiger, it's been with me for over half a decade in one way or form.

See? I told you I was a lousy packer.
 

Some of us didn't get a choice. I'm already hated by some people for what I am. Not naming names, sorry. I'm sorry for those people. If I could go to them and put my arms around them and tell them there's nothing to be jealous about, there's nothing to hate, that it's a waste of breath and energy, I would, but they'd push me away.

Life's too short to hate.

And after all, if you don't like yourself in this life, who the hell ever said that you'll like yourself better in the afterlife? If there's one thing I've learned about God, it's that God wants us to do our own decision making, our own thinking.

I don't think that changes after we die.

But that's just me. And that really has very little to do with the question, but it was one of those supermarket revelations I had, and I was meaning to share it here. :)   >> 5:19:44 PM 
 
 
I know, I know, I'm linking like crazy today but it's a Monday. And dang -- I want one!   >> 1:15:05 PM 
 
 
Apparently, I'm not the only one going through belongings and finding remnants of my college life.

Gryph, if we can get to the Faire, I assure you I will try and get you a copy of the Jolly Rogers CD. I don't know if we can pull it, but we're going to try. :)   >> 1:11:03 PM 
 
 
For the curious, this is my current highest score at Dropout. I doubt it's going to be hard to beat. :)   >> 1:04:52 PM 
 
 
Wow. There was a time when Jeff didn't have a beard...and this was it:
 

Awwwwwww.   >> 3:12:32 AM 
 
 

This is why we don't invite people over for dinner, you know.   >> 12:56:20 AM 
 
 
Now, one thing about Magnolia did stick out for me -- the music. And you know who that is singing? Well, do you?

Aimee Mann, formerly of Til Tuesday.

Didn't recognize her without the super hair, did ya?

(And my brain adds: It's funny how these things go, isn't it? I was just watching a special on MTV the other day where they were talking about how Til Tuesday swept the awards one year, disappeared the next, and I see that image of that gal with the huge blonde poofy hair thinking, "I wonder where she is now...." and my brain says, Well, now you know.)

But can you save me
Come on and save me
If you could save me
From the ranks
Of the freaks
Who suspect
They could never love anyone

I told you guys I like to go back and read through my notebooks, right? This is something I found from back in 1995. Proof that I was destined to wind up Kemetic.
 

Someday I'll figure out just what I was thinking the day I drew that. Maybe it's a parody of a Levi's campaign that I've since forgotten. Why did I use Horus? The world will never know.

It occurrs to me that I should be minorly embarrassed about having drawn God as a beefcake in Levis, but, well, I was 20. :)

And then there's this...which I think was an attempt at drawing a sinister dryad. For all I know it may even be one of my blood dryads (in the Forest of Night hunting area) from DragonRealms. Since I didn't label it, though, I'll never know.
 

Okay, back to packing.   >> 6:40:28 PM 
 
 
My health care provider refuses to cover the cost for the mouthguard that could potentially correct my TMJ. I'll have to record my jaw popping sometime for all of you so you can hear what I hear every time I open my mouth wide enough.

I'm a lousy packer. I can't sift through this stuff without stopping to stare at things. I have notebooks from when I was in high school and college with all these little drawings and half-written stories in them that I love to go back and look at. And before I know it it's dark outside and I've only gone through one box.   >> 2:08:40 PM 
 
 
Dave Does Cool Wallpapers. Y'know something else -- that score I have on Dropout (71k or so)? I got that after only my fourth or fifth session playing it.

It was probably all luck, too. Though I did play a lot of Tetris back when I lived at casa de la crisis....   >> 2:59:20 AM 
 
 
So I made pea soup and we sat down to watch Magnolia, the 1999 movie by PT Anderson about...stuff.

It was a combination of compelling, boring, and vaguely uncomfortable storytelling, and I get the feeling that the director didn't completely pull off what he intended to pull off. A lot of the sentimentality seemed to be forced. The good stuff was sprinkled amidst long, long scenes of dialogue that seemed to stretch on forever. I don't know that I'd call it a bad film. I think I see what the director was trying to do, but I don't think, for me, he accomplished it. There was a lot of build up, and then a short, exciting, but unfulfilling climax.

So...

I'd recommend it if you have three hours to kill. There aren't any scenes that I can say are worth it. In fact, there's nothing about this movie I can say you absolutely gotta see. It's just long and sprinkled with interesting bits and little easter eggs that, if I cared about the movie at all, I would watch it again to try and catch.

Hm. So I didn' t hate it, but I didn't like it. It really left me thinking, "...and that's it? That wasn't clever or introspective at all. It was just...long."   >> 2:09:27 AM 
 
 

9.8.2000

Pocket Bishonen! Gotta catch 'em all!   >> 3:56:58 PM 
 
 
Comic Fonts! Cool!   >> 2:05:24 PM 
 
 
Speaking of the Melting Pot.... I just got a look at their prices. I sounded like James Brown. Good God, ya'all! It's okay. I'll be broke for the rest of the week, but at least I'll have eaten dangerously.   >> 12:30:26 PM 
 
 

9.7.2000

The Quote of the Week is from Donna: I hate pity. Don't give me pity. Chocolate on the other hand, is always welcome.   >> 6:52:46 PM 
 
 
So Yahoo! rolled out their "new" WebRing system, and of course it's fragged. I asked for a password reminder, it sent it off to whoever own ID #1 in the draddicts list (as opposed to my ID, which is #112). I'm guessing that person has now got a mailbox stuffed full of password reminders from the other 111 people asking for theirs. Talk about suck.

Not only that, but the administrative features aren't in yet. Well, that makes sense. Roll out a new system, but don't let the people who run the rings do anything with it. Mm hm. Yeah. You'd think, as long as they've waited to release this thing, they could have waited that extra however many days to make sure the admin stuff went in. And whoever QC'd this thing did a lousy job. If I can find three bugs in five minutes, there's a problem.

Meetings today, had to take house measurements, doing lots of work on some projects on PLAY dot NET. Think Dave McKean. I'm going to California for Christmas, Ohio for Thanksgiving. In two weeks I'm heading to Chicago (again) for to see my dad. At the end of September is Archon. And I move on the 15th. Geesh.

If we can, we're going to try and go to the Kansas City Renaissance Festival, though I'm unsure if we'll be able to make it, what with the tight budget and moving and all. I'd like to go. Haven't been to a good Faire in four or five years.

I have a letter from the dead on my desk, which is quite a switch. It's amazing how hard a few little words can hit. Nora, it seems, wrote a bunch of thank you cards after the wedding and Chris found them when they cleaned out her desk.

And there it is, now on my desk.

Tomorrow is Bubba's unbirthday. We're going to the Melting Pot. Yay us. :)   >> 6:40:46 PM 
 
 
I...hate...Netscape.   >> 3:08:31 AM 
 
 

9.6.2000

I want to do a Fox special and call it: When Allergies Attack!

You should have seen me when I was ten. I was kung fu fighting, I was.   >> 11:06:32 PM 
 
 
Susan! Susan! Tell me you're talking about the one who has that sweet Texas accent and cropped hair? I almost became a Munchausen by proxy petowner just so I could see that vet again.   >> 12:29:17 PM 
 
 
According to a blurb on the catalog-of-stuff from Cracker Barrel: "The word goober is derived from the Bantu word for peanut, nguba."   >> 12:21:57 PM 
 
 
"Living with a Depressed Person" More information about that thing we call the blues.   >> 1:31:30 AM 
 
 
Um, Bear? Lay off the pizza before bedtime, kay? Kay? Good. Thanks.

Susan, the redesign was a long time coming. I started this design three months ago, and only now got to it. And I wish I'd known I was getting a house a year ago, but I didn't. Heck, I didn't know we were renting a house until a month ago, when I happened to give Jeff the number for Suz's real estate agent....

Bouncing back to Bear! Thanks for the compliment!

So more than one of you wrote me about depression, which surprised me only a little. Being the totally plugged into the universe priest babe that I am, I had a feeling it was going to be one of those posts....

I had a compelling urge to go swimming last night. Alas, I have no swimsuit. I shall remedy that...soon.   >> 12:42:28 AM 
 
 

9.5.2000

What? What?? David Fincher (Fight Club, Se7en) directed Alien³?? Now I gotta see it.   >> 1:04:29 PM 
 
 
Writing is a release for me, a place to put my thoughts and think about them. Fiction and non-fiction are both this way, though I have more liberty with fiction since I can disguise something behind something else without offending or hurting people. And I get to entertain others at the same time.

Fiction is also, I think, more widely appealing because it is more open to interpretation. When I'm writing non-fiction about my life, there isn't much interpretation -- I'm just stating facts. Fiction is an analogy to something. It's lying creatively -- and getting paid for it.

It's hard to see people in pain. It's hard for me to see my friends who have medical depression struggle with their problems. It's hard for me to know that they have to know, or are coming to know, that they will always be this way. For me, when I'm depressed, I know that no matter how bleak things may seem that this, too, shall pass, that I will get better, and then I'll get on with my life.

For them, though, it doesn't get better, and realizing that can be hard and cold and ugly.

But we -- I, they, all of us -- have to accept that some of us have a medical condition that puts them in a funk that they can't get out of. Suicidal, deep, dark, black days. If I've had days like that, I don't remember them, because they're small, snuffed candles compared to the blazing lights I've filled my life with.

But some people don't have that choice....

So I wrote about it last night, because it honestly frustrates me when I have friends who are so unhappy, and for whom it doesn't matter how many jokes you tell them or how much you assure them it'll get better. I can't help it. I want to extend my hand out to them, to help them up out of the pit, but they have to climb up themselves. I can't do it for them.

It's a long, hard row to hoe. But we all have our skies to lift.   >> 12:48:53 PM 
 
 

9.4.2000

Ben Brown (of the now dead Deepleap.com) sez: "The way I see it, being in a cult isn't much different than being in a startup."   >> 8:43:21 PM 
 
 
The short version: Steph, Dave, and Jeff need Large Home Appliances for the new place, and Steph is the only one with the money and (she thought) the credit rating to afford it all. Steph, ultimately, triumphs over the forces of evil to secure what they need and rides her new upright self-propelled vacuum into the sunset.

The long version:

Went to the loan company. Got shot down for a loan.

Okay. So I'll put it on my Sears card. Checked my line of credit with Sears to see what I could afford. Found out -- to my surprise -- that Sears had reduced my line of credit because I was late for a payment in January of 2000. I tried to call and get it extended back to where it had originally been, got bounced around in their system, then got hung up on.

By now, as you can imagine, I'm starting to get to the end of my rope. Loan companies don't like me. Sears doesn't like me. I can't afford this stuff on my salary alone -- I need some line of cash, and today is really the best day to get this stuff since there're Labor Day sales going on all over the place. What are we going to do?

So then Jeff says, "How about BestBuy?"

Yeah, how about BestBuy? If Sears won't take me, and USAA won't take me, why is BestBuy going to take me? But I relented -- the least they could do was laugh at me, after all -- and we went to our local outlet and I stood in line at financing, where I proceeded to ask for a Large Ball of Cash.

Imagine my surprise when they approved me for enough to buy a new washer, a new dryer, a new refrigerator, and a new vacuum cleaner. On terms that were more generous than the loan company or Sears would have given me -- 18 months no finance charges. I can pay all this off in 18 months, thinks I.

Of course, they try to sell you a service plan all over the place. The arguments are only minorly persuasive. "This plan protects your refrigerator from theft!"

My fridge.

From theft.

Riiiiiiiight.

But it's all nefer. I got the goods. I have a spiffy hepa-filtered vacuum cleaner now. The cat will be in terror of a new appliance. And my house really needs cleaning.

Moral of the story: Sometimes failure is good. And, in the words of my roommate, "Eff you, Sears!"   >> 6:59:55 PM 
 
 
Smile. It makes people wonder what you're up to.   >> 3:19:58 AM 
 
 
There was something really touching about The Iron Giant. It was quite a contrast to Key, yet similar themes -- machines with souls, trying to become more "human".

Funny universe we live in. We don't write stories about humans wanting to become more machine-like, we write about machines wanting to become more human-like.

And, in some cases, we have humans who want to be more cat-like.   >> 12:56:54 AM 
 
 

9.3.2000

Forgot to mention Jackal-Logic.com, home of kai-Imakhu Nakht's blog. Whee!   >> 7:07:33 PM 
 
 
Corey says it's a matinee, and not to expect much. And not enough Methos. Damn. I think they should just make a Methos movie and get it over with. A brick o' Methos. That's what I want.

Javascript is driving me insane.   >> 7:05:29 PM 
 
 
Key: The Metal Idol is pretty good so far. We just finished watching the first seven episodes (the last six don't come out until the 19th), and what can I say -- Tomoyo rocks. :) He's a scientist! He's a bodyguard! He uses a slingshot loaded with rock salt needles! Whoo hoo!

The house is a tidal mess right now. I'll be working on that right after I finish my preliminary design for the Phoenix Coffee site, write some more stuff in the book, and make dinner. Heh.   >> 4:31:00 PM 
 
 
Can someone please mail me and tell me if Highlander IV sucks? Don't tell me the plot. Don't tell me what you did and didn't like. Just tell me if it's an evening, matinee, rental, or catch-it-on-tv-when-you're-bored type of film. The first one is semi-decent as far as b-films from Canada go, the second one earned a place in my phraselist. As in: "How bad was the sequel to The Crow? Highlander II bad, dude!" The third was basically the first with better effects and a cheezier villain. The animated series was a hideous travesty of Sunday morning viewing. And the tv series was....

Well, actually, I was rather fond of Adrian Paul for a long time. There were some incredibly bad episodes, and there was seemingly no timeline in the series bible, but seeing Adrian in tight jeans made it all worth it -- most of the time.

So I don't know. Maybe this one will be good. It has Methos in it, and if there's one character I liked who came from the TV series, it's Methos. Methos! Bwahahaahah. He's smart, he's cowardly, he's indifferent -- he's my kind of immortal.   >> 12:31:04 AM 
 
 

9.2.2000

...which all just makes me think of that song they sing at the beginning of Turn Ben Stein On. The one that goes:

Shut up and talk!
Shut up and talk!
Shut up and talk!

My brain always mentally replaces the "talk" with "blog".

Heh.   >> 9:28:51 PM 
 
 
And then, one day...she woke up and blogged.   >> 1:58:58 AM