If these don't cheer you up, nothing will.
Cute Overload
http://www.cuteoverload.com/
Kronsh!
Giant Microbes
http://www.giantmicrobes.com/
I totally want to order the "Calamities" set!
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Comparative Language School
In Australia, to say "expensive", speakers use the first syllable to create the slang term "exy".
example:
"I hear it's a good restaurant, but it looks a bit exy."
Americans say "expensive" by using a variant of the second syllable, and also a verb associated with expensive things: "spendy".
example:
"I wanted to get the iMac with the 24 inch monitor, but it was too spendy, so I only got the 20."
example:
"I hear it's a good restaurant, but it looks a bit exy."
Americans say "expensive" by using a variant of the second syllable, and also a verb associated with expensive things: "spendy".
example:
"I wanted to get the iMac with the 24 inch monitor, but it was too spendy, so I only got the 20."
Puritan in my brain
I have woken up this morning better but with a bit of a headache. I was browsing around the internet just now and had this conversation in my head.
"Last week was a bad week."
"How could it have been bad? You had two days off!"
"I had a cold, though. I was in pain and uncomfortable the whole time. Wait a minute, having a cold is bad! It's not time off!"
Who is that puritan in my head that thinks any time off work is a holiday? It reminds me of the people who told me when I was unemployed for so long, "Oh, you're so lucky! Enjoy the time off!" Unemployment was definitely not time off. For 18 months (and think hard about how long that is, people), every single day, I woke up in immediate panic, thinking, "What can I do to get a job?" Every day, all day, I had to do everything I could that would get me a job, and nothing that did not get me closer to a job. Every day, all day, I worried about money. The long months of repeated rejection ate away at my self-confidence more and more, so I had to lean on my partner more and more for reassurance, and after 18 long months of it, it became too much for him, and he decided it was much more fun to hang out with his hobag imbecile dress designer homewrecking cunt of an ex-girlfriend in the trivial imbecilic up-itself full of shit city of Berlin. Rather than love me.
So, people, unemployment was not "time off" to "enjoy". You bastards. And having a cold is not "time off" either. My head hurts and I'm uncomfortable! Having a cold counts as having a bad week, just as much as being overly busy at work would count.
___
Must be some angry karma in the air this morning, because I just downloaded the Realaudio player and the sample video that was showing in their homepage menu was "woman being dragged underneath sliding car", complete with grainy still picture. Which was upsetting (the still picture was, I of course didn't click to watch the video). And Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac poem was all about people who kill kittens and puppies. Argh! I think I need some coffee.
"Last week was a bad week."
"How could it have been bad? You had two days off!"
"I had a cold, though. I was in pain and uncomfortable the whole time. Wait a minute, having a cold is bad! It's not time off!"
Who is that puritan in my head that thinks any time off work is a holiday? It reminds me of the people who told me when I was unemployed for so long, "Oh, you're so lucky! Enjoy the time off!" Unemployment was definitely not time off. For 18 months (and think hard about how long that is, people), every single day, I woke up in immediate panic, thinking, "What can I do to get a job?" Every day, all day, I had to do everything I could that would get me a job, and nothing that did not get me closer to a job. Every day, all day, I worried about money. The long months of repeated rejection ate away at my self-confidence more and more, so I had to lean on my partner more and more for reassurance, and after 18 long months of it, it became too much for him, and he decided it was much more fun to hang out with his hobag imbecile dress designer homewrecking cunt of an ex-girlfriend in the trivial imbecilic up-itself full of shit city of Berlin. Rather than love me.
So, people, unemployment was not "time off" to "enjoy". You bastards. And having a cold is not "time off" either. My head hurts and I'm uncomfortable! Having a cold counts as having a bad week, just as much as being overly busy at work would count.
___
Must be some angry karma in the air this morning, because I just downloaded the Realaudio player and the sample video that was showing in their homepage menu was "woman being dragged underneath sliding car", complete with grainy still picture. Which was upsetting (the still picture was, I of course didn't click to watch the video). And Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac poem was all about people who kill kittens and puppies. Argh! I think I need some coffee.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Head cold
Somewhere in Julia Cameron's book The Artist's Way she describes a cria as a great spiritual outcry, a block, a crisis, but also a declaration, a song, an invocation to the universe. I was looking for the page in the book but couldn't find it so I might be adding some things to her definition, but cria is the word I'm after.
I've got a bad cold. When I get colds they're worse than for other people, always, because of the asthma factor. The sequence goes like this, from immediately upon viral infection: I get a few days of feeling frustration, inadequacy and despair, usually around not exercising enough; then I actually get some symptoms and realise that's all it was; the first day is bad with runny nose, cough, sneezing, etc., then the next two days I start to get a bit better, then it all takes a sharp turn down. Things start to be the wrong colour. I feel hot and cold and shaky, I feel a poisoned liquid hollowness in the centre of my body. So then I have to start on the antibiotics, and often it takes two courses, so that's another week, week and a half. And it's probably two more weeks where, with exercise, I get back to feeling like I did originally, pre-viral.
I knew I would get sick here. I was thinking it would be two weeks after my international flight, but since I didn't sit very close to anyone I escaped it. No, it was the Christmas trip that did me in, and the coughing boy who was sitting next to me on the plane.
The Christmas trip was a psychological demarcation point anyway in this whole move. I had to power through the first two months at work, then everyone went away for a week, and I had a whole change of city and environment and companions and everything.
In the last two days of the break I was getting my typical migraines - florid visual spectra and loss of information in the visual field, sometimes with pain, sometimes with a surreal feeling. Migraines often happen to women with stressy lifestyles when they finally relax. Actually, men too - I remember a work colleague telling me his family holidays always started out with his father in bed for two days. So, I think my Christmas migraines were from being relaxed for a whole week, after how many? - six months of very high, constant, mind-squeezing stress.
And then now, I have the cold. I have the infection. I have started the antibiotics. I am home from work to rest. I have a feeling this is going to be a millennial cold, a demarcating cold, a transformative cold. One of those colds, as my sister once described, where you forget all your PIN numbers. Actually, that already happened today, at the grocery store when I stopped to lay in a weekend's worth of chicken soup. I will emerge cleansed, rebooted, different. Maybe more Wisconsonian.
Pray for me.
I've got a bad cold. When I get colds they're worse than for other people, always, because of the asthma factor. The sequence goes like this, from immediately upon viral infection: I get a few days of feeling frustration, inadequacy and despair, usually around not exercising enough; then I actually get some symptoms and realise that's all it was; the first day is bad with runny nose, cough, sneezing, etc., then the next two days I start to get a bit better, then it all takes a sharp turn down. Things start to be the wrong colour. I feel hot and cold and shaky, I feel a poisoned liquid hollowness in the centre of my body. So then I have to start on the antibiotics, and often it takes two courses, so that's another week, week and a half. And it's probably two more weeks where, with exercise, I get back to feeling like I did originally, pre-viral.
I knew I would get sick here. I was thinking it would be two weeks after my international flight, but since I didn't sit very close to anyone I escaped it. No, it was the Christmas trip that did me in, and the coughing boy who was sitting next to me on the plane.
The Christmas trip was a psychological demarcation point anyway in this whole move. I had to power through the first two months at work, then everyone went away for a week, and I had a whole change of city and environment and companions and everything.
In the last two days of the break I was getting my typical migraines - florid visual spectra and loss of information in the visual field, sometimes with pain, sometimes with a surreal feeling. Migraines often happen to women with stressy lifestyles when they finally relax. Actually, men too - I remember a work colleague telling me his family holidays always started out with his father in bed for two days. So, I think my Christmas migraines were from being relaxed for a whole week, after how many? - six months of very high, constant, mind-squeezing stress.
And then now, I have the cold. I have the infection. I have started the antibiotics. I am home from work to rest. I have a feeling this is going to be a millennial cold, a demarcating cold, a transformative cold. One of those colds, as my sister once described, where you forget all your PIN numbers. Actually, that already happened today, at the grocery store when I stopped to lay in a weekend's worth of chicken soup. I will emerge cleansed, rebooted, different. Maybe more Wisconsonian.
Pray for me.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Up to date
Just filled in all the posts on this blog tonight, and got them all up to date.
Reading them now, I notice a funny oscillation between "I am home" and "I am lost", right throughout the collection.
Well, both are true. Just as I am both American and Australian at the same time, I am also both back where I come from and belong, and in a confusing alien land having an exotic adventure.
Geminis, hey?
Reading them now, I notice a funny oscillation between "I am home" and "I am lost", right throughout the collection.
Well, both are true. Just as I am both American and Australian at the same time, I am also both back where I come from and belong, and in a confusing alien land having an exotic adventure.
Geminis, hey?
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
2008: America Decides
So, Barack Obama won the Iowa caucuses, and Hillary Clinton won the New Hampshire primary. I watched the results for both races come in, and watched the speeches afterwards. Partly out of civic responsibility, since I've been away for a while but have to vote in this one, and partly because the writer's strike is still going and there's nothing else on TV.
Barack is, indeed, a very inspiring speaker. I had the strong realisation when I watched him that I would be right behind him as a candidate if I was still 22. That's a horrible thing to realise, that you're not 22 any more, but they say the over-30 Democrats are going with Hillary, and I find that so am I. I was trying to support Obama, but just as when I watched the Green Bay Packers play the Denver Broncos I just couldn't make myself be happy when the Packers did well, so I find myself following Hillary's campaign more closely, and feeling pleased at her victories, and swelling with an old feminist pride that a woman could be doing so well. She does look "presidential", just as they say. And isn't it amazing that her key problem going into this vote today is that she's viewed as one of the "old boy's network", part of the Washington establishment. How far we've come already.
And another thing. I don't get this "electability" thing they ask people about in polls, or that other Democrats argue about. In fact, I might even object to the very concept and argue that it's immoral to even talk about it. The point of a representative democracy, right, is that I vote for the candidate who I think best expresses my views on a majority of the issues over which the federal government has purview. Right? So, why should my decision of who to vote for be at all influenced by how I think people might vote who don't agree with my views? How can I in good conscience hesitate to vote for Hillary because I don't think Republicans will vote for her? They will or they won't. Depending on how representative she is of their views. Right? Isn't that how this whole democracy thing is supposed to work?
Barack is, indeed, a very inspiring speaker. I had the strong realisation when I watched him that I would be right behind him as a candidate if I was still 22. That's a horrible thing to realise, that you're not 22 any more, but they say the over-30 Democrats are going with Hillary, and I find that so am I. I was trying to support Obama, but just as when I watched the Green Bay Packers play the Denver Broncos I just couldn't make myself be happy when the Packers did well, so I find myself following Hillary's campaign more closely, and feeling pleased at her victories, and swelling with an old feminist pride that a woman could be doing so well. She does look "presidential", just as they say. And isn't it amazing that her key problem going into this vote today is that she's viewed as one of the "old boy's network", part of the Washington establishment. How far we've come already.
And another thing. I don't get this "electability" thing they ask people about in polls, or that other Democrats argue about. In fact, I might even object to the very concept and argue that it's immoral to even talk about it. The point of a representative democracy, right, is that I vote for the candidate who I think best expresses my views on a majority of the issues over which the federal government has purview. Right? So, why should my decision of who to vote for be at all influenced by how I think people might vote who don't agree with my views? How can I in good conscience hesitate to vote for Hillary because I don't think Republicans will vote for her? They will or they won't. Depending on how representative she is of their views. Right? Isn't that how this whole democracy thing is supposed to work?
man-shaped hole
Thinking about what I'm looking for in a partner (after filling in the extensive, time-consuming survey on eHarmony and getting no matches at all). I know exactly what I'm looking for in a partner. As I live my life I can detect the husband-shaped hole in it, and I know its contours exactly. I want a man to shovel my driveway. I want a man to put his arms around me in the evening when I come home from a rough day at work and say, "Don't worry, you are smart and capable and I love you." And when I have too many things to do and get confused, I want a man who listens patiently, frowning slightly with concentration, and then can tell me which three things I actually need to do today, which things I can delegate, and which I don't even have to worry about doing. See? Easy.
The thing that puzzles me is, what would a man ever want a woman for? I suppose I have a history of pining after self-contained loner types who don't express any neediness, much less affection for me, and I have a recent history of the love of my life deciding he specifically didn't need exactly me any more (the Ellen-shaped hole in his life had somehow filled in so I was no longer needed), so that might explain it. But if you think of the above described gaps, what a woman is, what she contributes to a relationship, is to be weak, soft, emotionally needy and with a confused brain. Who would ever want that in a life partner? Who would need something like that to complete them?
I'm sure I'm missing something here, about the whole equation. I'd love for some man to tell me what it is, though.
The thing that puzzles me is, what would a man ever want a woman for? I suppose I have a history of pining after self-contained loner types who don't express any neediness, much less affection for me, and I have a recent history of the love of my life deciding he specifically didn't need exactly me any more (the Ellen-shaped hole in his life had somehow filled in so I was no longer needed), so that might explain it. But if you think of the above described gaps, what a woman is, what she contributes to a relationship, is to be weak, soft, emotionally needy and with a confused brain. Who would ever want that in a life partner? Who would need something like that to complete them?
I'm sure I'm missing something here, about the whole equation. I'd love for some man to tell me what it is, though.
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