Sick day

Crap. No, make that mega-crap. SUPER mega-crap. That's how I feel today. I called in sick and told the guy I kinda-sorta work for (my place on the org chart tends to drift around) that I felt like someone had stuffed my head full of soggy cotton ... and then nailed it in place through my face. Did I mention that I feel like crap? With a side order of warmed-over homemade fuck? Well, I do.

Later...

Announcing the announcement

Haiku Buckaroo is coming again! Warm up those 5-7-5s and get ready! OK, the actual announcement of the commencement of the Second Annual Haiku Buckaroo contest has not been made yet, but Leslie has the announcement of the announcement of the contest at My Mommy's Place. And since I was the winner of the First Annual Haiku Buckaroo contest (and I have the badge over there⇒ to prove it) I will not be participating in this contest. However, I will be assisting with the judging. So be nice to me.

Martin Luther King quotes

Today we honor Martin Luther King. He's probably most famous for his "I Have a Dream" speech, but here are some quotes from other speeches he made that are also still applicable today:

This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to national disaster. America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism.

Dr. King is best remembered for his fight against racism but he was also just as involved in the fights against the war (Vietnam then) and against poverty and economic disadvantage.

[UPDATE]: I see that MSNBC has an article up titled "Tributes to MLK tend to ignore his complexity".

Oh, boo-hoo!

BBC News online has an article up with the headline "Sub-prime crisis hits US bonuses". So, I clicked in to see just how bad this crisis was on Wall Street. Come to find out that the bonuses are still being paid but they've dropped almost FIVE PERCENT to an average of just $180,420. Oh, boo-hoo! Only one new Beemer SUV this year for you!

HRC viewed from overseas

Gay City News is running an op-ed piece today about the HRC by Yoav Sivan, a resident of Tel Aviv who has lived in the US, entitled "Changing America, and Changing Itself".

It needs to be read, but here are some selected excerpts to whet your appetite:

HRC is stuck in an obstinate rut.

As a gay activist in Israel who works closely with other LGBT activists around the world, I can assure HRC that we're all familiar with, and indeed disgusted that, America's most powerful LGBT organization could be either so incompetent or so vicious toward the transgender community.

LGBT activists outside America look to a country like Spain, which in former generations was a stronghold of the Catholic Church, and is now a beacon of LGBT rights.

HRC can't even get a law passed that would outlaw discrimination against a human being based on gender identity? Thousands of us around the world are in disbelief.

If we end up with a Democratic majority in Congress and a Democratic president in November, what excuse will HRC and Barney Frank use then to exclude transgender folks from ENDA? It would seem that everyone is watching and waiting for that answer, both here and elsewhere.

Haiku 10

Words break up the sky,
Garish pictures extol junk.
Billboards don't belong.

My upcoming album

I don't normally do memes, but I saw this one at Hammer's and thought it looked like fun. It was, but it was also a little strange.

First, the meme:
You are in a band. Your band is about to release their first CD. Now, follow these directions to build it. Go to

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The tail (last three or four words) of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4. Use the graphics program of your choice to put them together into your first CD.

Now, my results:
1. The first time, I got the Wikipedia entry for "Only Inhuman" which is a Swedish metal band. I figured I shouldn't take someone else's name for mine, so I hit it again. The second time, I got the entry for "Colin Steele" who is a singer, among other things. Same thinking as the first pass, so I hit it for a third time and got the entry for "Heimosodat". (The Finnish term heimosodat is in English literally "Kindred Nations Wars", "Wars for kindred peoples" or "Kinship Wars")

2. The tail of the last quote was "synonymous with manliness". Oh, yeah - just what I wanted: another gender marker.

3. Finally, the third picture on the Flickr page was of what appeared to be a morning glory, entitled "Purple Magic". Ironic. And purple just happens to be one of my fave colors.

So, here's the cover for Himosodat's new CD, "Synonymous With Manliness"

Did Wrigley fund this study?

Wired Online has posted an article headlined Warning or Miracle? Too Much Sugar-Free Gum Could Cause Extreme Weight Loss. Unfortunately, it tells that the drastic weight loss is caused by extreme diarrhea as a result of ingesting lots of sorbitol, the sweetener used in sugar-free gum. I wonder if Nicole Richey and Calista Flockhart and whichever Olsen twin is the stick figure chew sugar-free gum.

What did I read?

Like some others, I'll admit that I did not get nearly as much reading done as I wanted to on Day to Read yesterday. But then again, I don't get nearly as much money coming in as I want, either. That's just how life is sometimes. But I did get to finish google sex mp3 britney+spears world+cup by Andrew Hinkinson-Hodnett.


In case you don't know, Andy is the author of the Spicy Cauldron blog. He's also a phenomenal poet, which is a good thing, since this is a book of his poetry. And it's phenomenal, too. Some folks may know that I dabble in poetry from time to time, but where my offerings might be pebbles tied together with twine to form a crude necklace, Andy's works are pebbles cut and polished into gems and then mounted into shining jewelry. Here's a sample - one of the smaller jewels:

Write

I watched you sleeping again last night.
I could not sleep because of the voices,
those whispered bursts of creativity
calling me to write, write, write
of how I warm to the curl of you,
delight in your dreams,
comfort your skin inside my buttery, protective wrap.

Your eyes move quickly beneath those butterfly lids,
softness breathing love for this lucky, lucky man.

In the wakefulness of early hours
I wrote the word love on your back with my finger.

Andy has several poems in this volume that are stories of his Dad which strike a particular chord in me. But then again, everything he has written here touches me in some way. Read this book! I think it will touch you, too.

Got my orange on

Do you?

Day to Read

Shhh.h.h. I'm reading.

Huckleberry

Just picked this up and had to pass it on:

Mike Huckabee -
Less wives than Rudy Giuliani
Less money than Mitt Romney
Less decades than John McCain
Less height than Fred Thompson
Less weird than Alan Keyes
Less weight than Mike Huckabee (10 years ago)
Less tolerant than most folks
More righteous than anyone!

Guess what I got?

Tengo mucho chocolate!
Ich habe viel Schokolade!
Eu tenho muito chocolate!
Je prends beaucoup de chocolat!
Ho molto cioccolato!
Ik heb veel chocolade!

I have a shitload of chocolate!

All the way from the Netherlands, I found a treasure trove of CHOCOLATE! in my mailbox last night.


The Smarties package is empty now, but I kept it just to show what I got. There may actually have been more stuff (I don't remember - it's all a chocolate-induced blur now) but it's certainly gone now. I'm not sharing this with anyone because I can be a really selfish bitch when it comes to chocolate. That's just how I roll - handle it.

THANK YOU, JENN! VERY, VERY MUCH!!

Haiku 9

Styrofoam popcorn
Protecting my memories.
Sending them away.

Haiku 8

Typing intently,
Staring at the monitor.
Faking it at work.

Winter Vacation

I have been attempting to craft some witty and concise recounting of our family's sojourn to the North Country of New Hamster for almost a week. I am now admitting defeat in that endeavor. What you're going to get is a random list of stuff relating to that week. Here it is ⇓ Deal with it.

♦ One of the really nice presents I got for Christmas was a new hand-held video recorder that records to a memory card or directly to a DVD disk. It also takes phenomenal still photos. In the rush to leave home for the airport, I left it sitting on the kitchen counter. All our pictures were taken either on my cell phone or on disposable cameras. I also forgot my sunglasses, although I really didn't need them until we got back home.

♦ As I'm the only one in our family with any real experience driving in snowy/icy conditions, I got to do all the driving. And there were a LOT of snowy/icy conditions. Pretty much ALL. THE. TIME. What fun! On a positive note, however, when we reached our destination, there was a shuttle van - driven by someone other than me! - that ran between hotels and ski areas and bars other facilities.

♦ I'm glad to see that my faith in humanity has not been in vain: Grandma Stitters drives in New Hamster, too. You know, the person who drives WAY TOO SLOW just because the driving conditions aren't perfect. Here it's the bozo who gets in the left lane on the interstate in a rainstorm and then goes 30 mph. Up there it was the same, except it was 15 mph in a snowstorm.

♦ The scenery was gorgeous, and the views of the sky were sometimes breathtaking as the weather rapidly changed. (below) It was dark, 26° and snowing when we left Bretton Woods ski area in New Hamster. It was a sunny 75° when we arrived home 9 hours later. That's called "climate whiplash". Also, the kids never did get used to the fact that sunrise was so late and sunset came so early.

♦ My kids learned how to snowboard, although I will admit that Pink Guy did a lot better than Fireball (below), given his experience with skateboarding and skating that she lacks. I had actually decided to take a lesson and try out snowboarding myself, given my own experience with surfing and skating and falling down. But thankfully unfortunately a really big snowstorm blew through on the day I was going to do it and then other things prevented me from going. Next year, though. We did all go sledding and tubing. And since the place we stayed had an indoor pool, the kids spent some time in that other typical wintertime activity: swimming.

♦ New Year's Eve was awesome! We all went to a big formal dinner/dance/drink celebration with fireworks afterward. I had never seen a large-scale fireworks display that close before, and I've never seen fireworks over the snow. Have I mentioned that it was awesome? Well, it was. (The pictures below don't come close to doing it justice.) While we were standing outside in the crowd watching the 20-minute(!) display, I overheard the young woman standing next to me ask the young man with her, "Can I stand on your feet? I left my shoes inside." I looked down and yes, she was barefoot. And she didn't even seem to be all that drunk.

♦ The food was terrific (not least because none of us had to prepare it) and I put on a few pounds, despite my best efforts to prevent that from happening. All right - that last part is a lie. They're gone now, though.

♦ I didn't get nearly as much reading and nap time in as I wanted. It's tough when there are two kids and two adults in a single room, regardless of the size of the room.

♦ New Hamster is a very monochromatic state: white snow and white people. Not much in the way of color up there.

♦ We watched the New England Patriots beat the New York Giants on Saturday Night Football because I believe it was a law that every television set in the entirety of New England HAD to be tuned exclusively to that game.

♦ One day, after dropping the kids off to go snowboarding, I was hanging out in the ski lodge trying to do a little reading when someone came through and put flyers on all the tables to notify everyone that RUDY! (that was the flyer's headline) was coming to the lodge that afternoon. I made a note to get the kids over to the sledding hill before then. Shortly thereafter, I found a number of the flyers had been "edited" by someone to add "Ghouliani" after the RUDY! headline and insert "Exploiting 9/11 since 9/12" to the page, also. (No, it wasn't me but I would have volunteered to help had I known the editing session was going to take place.) We never saw RUDY! and all the resort employees I talked to were happy to see him go. Hopefully, that's an indication of how well he's going to do.

♦ When I got back to work, I had forgotten my computer login name. (NO, it isn't the same as my actual name!) I remembered my account password, though.

Lessons learned for next time:

• Bring more money.
• Get two rooms.
• Bring more money.
• Bring real camera.
• Bring more money.
• Fly in to airport closer to final destination.
• Bring more money!

Do we REALLY need this?

MSNBC has an article up headlined "McDonald’s coffee bars to take on Starbucks".

McDonald’s will install coffee bars at its 14,000 U.S. stores, incorporating theatrics similar to Starbucks’ counters, displaying espresso machines and having baristas prepare drinks...

Don Thompson, president of McDonald’s USA, announced the aggressive plan. "We want to move from beverages as an accompaniment to being a beverage destination,”...

"Beverage destination"? Oh, a place you go to drink - like a bar. Well, there is this:

...the drinks cost about 50 cents less than at Starbucks.

WoWe...to hell with it - Haiku 7

Spouse coughing a lot,
But I am sleeping with her.
So - am I sick yet?

Out of the mouths of babes

My six-year old daughter and I were in the kitchen yesterday morning when out of the blue she said, "You know what? When I'm president I'm going to just stop the Iraq." I replied something to the effect that that would be a very good thing to do but that I hoped it would be over long before she became president. A few moments later, whatever talking head news discussion program that was on TV ended the show with their customary "In Memoriam" segment where they list all the big names that have died in the past week and then all of the U.S. military personnel who have been killed. She turned around and pointed at the TV and said, "Those people won't ever know when it's over. But some others will die and that's why I want to stop the Iraq."

Where the fuck did that come from? More importantly, if it's now to the point that six-year olds want it over, isn't it really time to just stop the Iraq?

Happy Blogaversary to me

So I just noticed that my previous post (on January 3) should have also been my TWO YEAR BLOGAVERSARY post. But it wasn't, so this is it a couple of days late. Yay for me. Two years - whoda thunk it?

She's Baaaack!

I'm back! And I've got a couple of things to relate about our vacation trip but that will have to wait until tomorrow. Today, I want to remind everyone about two important days coming up next week.

First of all, next Thursday, January 10, is the Day to Read. That's the day we are asking that everyone not post a blog and simply use that time to read. More info can be found here.

The next day, Friday, January 11, is Wear Orange Day. Six years ago on that date, the first prisoners arrived at Guantánamo Bay and the ACLU is asking that everyone wear something "prison jumpsuit" orange to symbolize their sadness and disgust with the national shame that it has become. More info on that is here.

(OK, so it's not quite a rant, but it's at least a couple of things I have strong feelings about.)