daily guilt

the feinswog story

2009-03-06T20:42:00.010-06:00

Have I ever told you the Feinswog story?First, you should know that my last name is Feinswog. It's a name that probably started out as a perfectly normal name in... oh... let's say Eastern Europe somewhere... and mutated into it's current form at Ellis Island. I'm sure it went something like this:Ellis Island Guy: What's this name here?Ancestor Feinswog: *incomprehensible garbled sound*EIG: What?

iNesting

2009-03-06T20:32:00.002-06:00

Ok, so this is how it happened.First, my blackberry keypad started dying. I've had it for over 2 years, and it's given me a lot of love, so I'm not holding a grudge, but I had to start thinking about a new phone, and the big question... iPhone? Should I? (yes, of course I should. why did I even ask?)Second, I started downloading free apps for the iPhone I bought - before I got it, yes. It was

you wanna see my id?

2007-07-28T18:16:00.000-05:00

As if to prove a point, my friend and I were at Cafe Express last week, and ordered a bottle of wine. The check out girl, who I admit was a few olives short of a salad bar, actually asked us both for ID. We are 42 and 40.Ta da!

passover seder in a bottle

2007-07-28T00:16:00.000-05:00

Among other things I collect, I have a bathroom cabinet filled with aromatherapy shower gels. I can't help myself. I like how they smell, and I like using them in the shower. If I walk into a Bath and Body Works sale, I willfully suspend my critical consumer thinking and will buy 5 for $25 without calculating that "on sale" still means that 10oz of what is mostly water and sodium laurel sulfate

the sky is falling

2007-07-19T01:22:00.000-05:00

Speaking of fear...I see this ad on late night TV and it makes me want to scream. Can someone introduce statistics to the American people?I'm going to hermetically seal my teenager. Much safer.

addendum

2007-07-13T20:09:00.000-05:00

Executive Privilege"Balanced" news18 months of presidential campaignReally stupid people (although these guys were entertaining)Credit industryMosquitoesNot having a ceiling fan in my bedroomThat in the last 30 years the Internet has been invented, cell phones, cable modems, wireless internet, ipods, iphones, TVs are wide screen and hi def, and yet somehow "good car mileage" still is in the 30

angry

2007-07-12T20:21:00.000-05:00

I have always tried to make these posts more than just a daily journal of my life, although it's always been a little bent that way. I prefer my writing to be entertaining and to make people laugh, if not be downright laughable. But I find that everything I want to write about, everything that I think about lately, just really pisses me off, and when I start writing it takes about a paragraph

am I back?

2007-05-30T23:26:00.000-05:00

I need to start writing again. I have been, oh, a little busy with other things, but I always feel better when I write, so I'm going to try to get back on the horse. here I go.

more important things

2006-11-13T23:32:00.000-06:00

I don't care what they stand for, Citizens for More Important Things has the best name in the world. How jealous am I that someone else came up with something so simple, meaningful, and easy to remember, yet with enough Monty Python in it to make me actually laugh out loud while reading the NYT.It's almost a shame that CMIT (which, I suppose could be pronounced ComMIT, if they wanted a decent

catalog season

2006-11-13T02:19:00.000-06:00

For most of my life, the whole "getting ready for the holidays" thing coincided with activities like pulling out another sweater box, or buying a new ice scraper for my car. I lived in NJ, upstate NY, and Washington State before I settled in Houston. The stacks of store catalogs that pile up inside my in my mailbox used to have multitudes of uses, from brushing snow off the windshield of my car,

entropy monkeys

2005-12-02T02:04:00.000-06:00

So, I have a newish dog who has separation anxiety. That means that I can't leave him alone in the house because... well... experience tells me so. It's a long story, but it ended with him eating my kitchen door. Anyway, now every time I leave the house I have to leave the dogs in the garage. Then, when I come home I have a new pile of debris that I have to clean up, figure out where it came from

guilty pleasures

2005-11-28T05:10:00.000-06:00

Oh god help me. It's 5am, I have not slept (thanks to nine solid hours of ambien improved sleep last night and a cup of coffee at 4pm yesterday) and as some weird companionship to my insomnia, I have the tv on in the other room. I'm not really listening to it, but in the last 12 minutes the running infomercial has penetrated my subconscious and has set of a string of synaptic activity going that

frequent flyer

2005-11-22T18:59:00.000-06:00

My son just called. He's getting on his plane to come visit for Thanksgiving, and wanted to remind me that I shouldn't call him in the meanwhile because his phone's off. I really hadn't intended to. I'm pretty sure I can save whatever burning questions I have for him for 2 more hours. Anyway, his call reminded me that I have to go to the airport early to trade in an old, unused ticket for a new

technology overkill

2005-11-22T18:18:00.000-06:00

That's it. I quit. I refuse to participate in a society that produces a toothbrush with an onboard computer chip. It's DENTAL FREAKIN' HYGIENE FOLKS! It's not rocket science!!! The hardest part of dental hygiene is remembering how to spell "hygiene" for gods sake!Brush. Up down up down up down. Don't forget the teeth in back. Floss. Use toothpaste with fluoride. (Especially now that we drink

it's over

2005-09-25T13:54:00.000-05:00

Ok. The "storm" has passed. I'm back home. There's a big pecan branch in my walkway which fell precisely between my roof and my fence. There are lots of little branches that fell pretty much everywhere. There are a couple of big big big trees down around my neighborhood, particularly at a bend in the street where it looks like the wind must have gotten really pissed off at being blocked. That's

boring

2005-09-23T21:03:00.000-05:00

hurry up and be done with it already. Jeez. I realize this is probably not the right attitude to have, and surely I'll pay for it in another lifetime, (or even this one, just later), but I'm bored with waiting for the storm, and just wish it would hurry up and get here. I mean, since I actually got stressed enough to start popping anxiety meds again *before* the damn storm started, I should have

hurricane central

2005-09-23T15:46:00.000-05:00

Well, not really. I'm just holed up with some friends and another of their friends. Basically it's 4 geeks and a wireless network. I have learned how to play a new solitaire game (Russian solitaire) and have introduced my dogs to a whole new house. It's much bigger here, so they can build up a lot more speed as they race around the dining room table.Most of the food I brought is for them. I also

update

2005-09-22T19:06:00.000-05:00

A couple of things. 1) I have now, in violation of my diet, snarfed down a healthy portion of ice cream under the guise of cleaning out the freezer before the electricity goes. To be honest, though, it's fat free and made with Splenda, so it wasn't a huge splurge, and I got brain freeze before I could finish it, so my guilt level is almost non-existent. 2) the thing I most wanted to post last

ah, nap...

2005-09-22T16:42:00.000-05:00

ok, I've had a nap and I feel way more human. I've spent all day flipping between the news and the weather channel (and sleep) and I have noticed a spectacular phenomenon. First, all the highways are packed with angry, overheating people occupying puttering, overheating cars. Many of these people have started their journeys 10-12-14 hours ago. They're running out of gas. They're suffering from

'rita

2005-09-22T11:46:00.000-05:00

mmm... tequila and lime juice. That's pretty much the only way I want to have a rita right now. Unfortunately it looks like I'm going to have a bigger, less alcoholic, one shoved down my throat.Hurricane Rita, like everything in Texas, is looking like it's putting Katrina to shame. With any luck, the damage to the city will not be as Texas sized, but Galveston will surely get its ass kicked. What

katrina

2005-09-10T13:31:00.000-05:00

I keep forgetting that when I get all pissed off and tense and it starts affecting my sleep, that I can unload some of the internal stress into a rant, tuck it into a nice little html envelope and send it into blogland and be done with it. Since I'm not updating any of these blogs with any regularity, something I would have initially reserved for the be appalled blog I'm going to just stick here.

jeopardy

2005-07-22T22:21:00.000-05:00

My son is coming back from camp tomorrow. I haven't seen him in a month, and after he leaves next week, it'll probably be at least another month, he'll have turned 15, and will be allowed to drive in New Mexico. I started looking at his baby pictures (because I just watched a very excellent movie - My Life Without Me - and I got parentally weepy) and was thinking about some of his Zackisms.One

this or that

2005-07-11T10:42:00.000-05:00

I don't seem to do anything in moderation. I haven't written in here in MONTHS, haven't been able to write at all, in fact, but suddenly, after 2 cups of coffee and an inability to sleep, every draft post I've picked up I've finished. My only explanation goes back to the introversion thing, now several posts back. I guess I've just let myself get locked up in this lethargy of background

bleeeeeeeeeding

2005-07-11T10:05:00.000-05:00

www.strindbergandhelium.comI'm going to start bleeding today. I'd say "I'll start menstruating today", but aside from it sounding like I was 14 and was about to have a bad day in gym, "menstruating" is one of those impossible words to pronounce, and since I listen in my head when I write, and it's something I always trip over, I just avoid it. It's the combination of the "nstr" consonant block

sales

2005-07-11T02:01:00.000-05:00

Speaking of sales people, I'm sure it has not been overlooked by anyone likely to be reading these pages, that on average, the people in the sales and marketing departments of your average, say, software company, are sexier (in the GQ/Cosmo way) and use more hair product than, for instance, those in the development or IT departments. On average! (...and yes, I realize that most people reading

the pathology of introversion

2005-07-10T23:40:00.000-05:00

If I knew the code to open the Task Manager for my brain, it would show up on my desktop perpetually lit at 100%, like it had spyware all over it. Most of these processes would be background stuff, but sometimes one might be something useful. Like, say I'm trying to figure out what kind of career doesn't require another degree but might make use of my desire to spend all day researching things

pooooooooooooooooope!!!!

2005-04-09T01:43:00.000-05:00

Well, the pope died. No surprises there, but the whole process has nonetheless been kind of sad, even for a non-practicing Jew/born-again atheist like me. Partly because ol' JP wasn't a bad guy, and it's hard to watch a nice old man get older and more frail, particularly when he wields wicked-awesome global power. Partly because I remember being 13 and watching his white smoke fart up a Vatican

storytelling 101

2005-02-18T13:37:00.000-06:00

My son called me the other night. This was approximately my conversation with him.Z: Hi mom. I broke my hand.Me: What? How?Z: I slammed into a parked car.Zack tells stories backwards, and only if you pull them out of him.Me: Ok, what exactly were you doing when you slammed into the parked car?Z: Thinking about a girl in my physics class. I wasn't really paying attention.Me: No. WHAT WERE YOU

purple morning

2004-12-16T05:37:00.000-06:00

It's 5:30am. I am up for some unspecific reason, possibly related to my sudden, and jarring, lack of sleepiness. For the second morning in a row, my eyes are gluey with irritation, and in trying to pinpoint a cause for my morning optic goopiness, I discovered that my brain's metaphoric center is communicating in a manner that's so beyond purple, it's damn near ultraviolet. An example: "My only

quantum card

2004-11-17T18:03:00.000-06:00

If I said that I once had a cat named Schroedinger, dressed my son as Captain Entropy for his first Halloween, and have sung in a group called the Lager Rhythms, it would probably come as no surprise that I am sometimes hard-pressed to find an appreciative audience for my conversation - particularly among customer service representatives. I had another chance to prove this just the other day.

you're kidding me, right?

2004-11-04T02:27:00.000-06:00

I have been waiting for this day for months. When I can stop thinking about what might happen, and start thinking about what will happen. This, however, is not the scenario I had in mind... I have lots to say on the subject. Right now I happen to have a few too many Miller Lites in me to express it even remotely well, so I'll let my 14 year old son have a say for a minute, since he's not old

yogi yogurt yurt

2004-10-31T23:10:00.000-06:00

I was in Whole Foods today buying, I don't know, sprouts or something, and there was this guy behind me in the checkout line who looked SO much like the stereotypical yogi/mountaintop guru - wizened Indian features, long graying stringy hair, long long long long white beard, skinnier than Kate Moss. In his basket he had a small head of lettuce, some parsley and something else that would leave a

a penchant for bubble wrap

2004-10-31T10:31:00.000-06:00

I remember when I was 4 years old. Like most kids my age, I was starting to ask questions about where I came from. Unlike most kids my age, though, the answer I got was not “you came from your mommy’s tummy”, but rather “mommy and daddy chose you, so you’re special.” My brother, I knew, came from my mommy’s tummy, but me, I got chosen. The word was “adopted”, but “chosen” seemed an adequate

experiencing operating difficulties

2004-10-18T10:49:00.000-05:00

Communication is a fairly sensitive system. Developing a language that is understood by all, learning to deliver that language understandably, and interpreting the reception of the language consistently. Already that's a lot of delicate balance required. And, then there's the nuance: Like, the email written with the half-jest, whole-earnest jibe, followed by a ;) to imply "I'm just teasing, but

reading

2004-10-13T09:39:00.000-05:00

I haven't written here in a few days, and I'm trying to figure out why. Usually I'm spinning with desire to share my each and every thought "aloud" with anyone who will "listen", but I'm sort of feeling quiet and mellow - I mean, heck, I'm almost not even nervous about the election. I've also been sick, which may have something to do with it. But, that seems like a lame ass excuse. I think,

public louse

2004-10-05T10:44:00.000-05:00

In some weird twist of the cosmic aether, talk of head lice has invaded my privacy twice in the span of 15 hours. I figured I was done with that when my son moved in with his father and I was no longer connected to the world of public schools. The first was in a discussion with my friends last night (one of whom spent 5 hours picking nits from her son's public school head) . The second was a

freedom update

2004-10-03T14:19:00.000-05:00

In case anyone was wondering, now that I'm living alone for the first time in my whole life, I have been: eating mostly frozen or pre-prepared foodssometimes eating them in bedleaving my laundry in a pile after it's been washedwatching CSI or Law & Order repeats almost endlesslyplaying computer games AT THE SAME TIME AS WATCHING TVacquiring mounds of plastic bottles and aluminum cans because I

post-debate junk

2004-10-03T11:41:00.000-05:00

As I wrote back in July (or maybe August. I'm too lazy to check.) somehow I got put on a republican mailing list, and I haven't removed myself because sometimes the emails are just darned entertaining. At 5:30am, the morning after the debate, I got an email from Ken Mehlman, Bush's campaign manager. I'm pretty sure his team spent the entire 8 hours after the debate creating this piece of work,

someone you wouldn't mind being

2004-10-02T14:32:00.000-05:00

I'm reading a book by Anne Lamott right now. Joe Jones. It's the only one of hers I hadn't read, and it was the first one she wrote. It'd been out of print for awhile, but someone finally came to their senses and republished it a few years ago. I'm only 35 pages into the book, and I've already marked 4 quotes. It happens that 3 of them either were intended to be epitaphs, or could easily be

palm reading

2004-09-29T19:29:00.000-05:00

It was about 4 years ago. I was working as an e-commerce consultant at a company that was starting to recognize that, well, e-commerce didn't need much in the way of consulting. I was killing time at the job by helping the marketing department (ok, it was one person) edit articles written by strategists to make them readable by normal people. I had also just gotten my first article published in

when i was a boy

2004-09-28T09:36:00.000-05:00

I haven't figured out why yet, but watching a 10-year-old spit like a professional makes me smile. Standing on the mound, face, ball and hand buried in a much loved glove, the brim of a sweaty cap moving back and forth the only indication that this little elf is shaking off his catcher's sign. "TIME!!" The catcher trots up to the mound. I can barely make out what the pitcher is saying. "Hey!

remains of the day

2004-09-21T18:36:00.000-05:00

My friend and I were talking the other day with my buddy Kirk. It was a brief thing, he came in, found us having coffee, said hi, talked for a few minutes, and left. When he left, he said, "Be good." Which I thought was parental and weird, but it's Kirk, so anything goes. It immediately triggered the collection of neurons that store the little ditty, "When she was good she was very, very good,

the dog/child paradigm

2004-09-19T18:11:00.000-05:00

It's hot in my house. It's a big house, no central a/c, only two working window units, and a couple of strategically placed fans. The two functioning units are in the kitchen and my bedroom. So, when I come home from a day like yesterday - several hours driving around in ultra-hot Houston with the top down, followed by two hours on stage, under hot lights, wearing snappy looking, but polyester,

digger

2004-09-19T14:39:00.000-05:00

Is it just me, or does "Digger the Dermatophyte", Lamisil's repugnant mascot, make you vow to chop your toes off if you ever develop nail fungus instead of living for one moment with the infective, pus-colored, and clearly evil creatures inhabiting your nail beds? barf. I want to hear from the Lamisil marketing folks here. I want to see the results of focus groups, I want to see the studies...

last minute edit

2004-09-19T13:44:00.000-05:00

A few days ago, I wrote an entry in this blog, dated it today, and saved it as a draft, just waiting to click the right button and tell the world (my very small version of it) some news, and how I came to the decision that I had. Most of the entry stands as is, but as usual, at heart I'm more of an editor than a writer. So I edit. I have been singing with a group called the Lager Rhythms for 10

reusable pumpkin

2004-09-15T08:56:00.000-05:00

My nomination for best product of the year (and for all I know it's been around forever and I just saw it for the first time the other day) is the fake, carvable pumpkin. It's lightweight. It's not messy. It's imperfectly shaped. Best of all, if you forget it outside until mid-November (uh... not that I do this...) it doesn't turn into a messy glob of greenish/blue pumpkin pulp that you have to

because

2004-09-14T19:40:00.000-05:00

"Why do I have to go to bed?" "Because you have to get up early for school" "Why?" "Because you need to learn new things." "Why?" "So you can go to college or become a musician or an artist." "Why?" "Because one day you'll need to make a living and support a family." "Why?" "Because I won't be able to take care of you forever." "Why?" "Because I'll get old and won't be able to

democracy vs. capitalism

2004-09-10T18:46:00.000-05:00

Why does it seem to me that when the US goes out and tries to spread democracy, what they're really talking about is spreading capitalism? Particularly a capitalism that US corporations (typically owned by cohorts of the administration) can take advantage of. I mean, hell, we don't even have real democracy in this country. It's not even a representative government when you figure in all the

freedom is choice...

2004-09-07T22:27:00.000-05:00

I have CHOSEN to reclaim the side of the couch that was not originally mine. I am somewhat irritated that I hadn't realized that it was more comfortable over here before. I have also chosen to be addicted to the ongoing CSI marathon running on Spike TV - TV for men. I am not a man. I am breaking the rules. My choice. I used to think I was breaking the rules when I wore men's watches. Until

freedom

2004-09-07T19:22:00.000-05:00

I wrote recently that I've never lived alone in my near 40 years of life. I also wrote that that day would soon be coming. Well, that day is here. Today is the first day in my life that I woke up to a house that would not get any fuller in the forseeable future. I woke up to a phone call from my buddy Kirk bugging me for the composite cd that I'd promised him. Ugh. Hate waking up to phone calls

magic 8-ball

2004-09-07T09:19:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure where in my personal aether-theology that my magic 8-ball fits, but I'm going to have to work it out, because I believe in my magic 8-ball. Deeply. Not only that, but it gets me jobs. Granted, I've just recently blogged about how some of these jobs I've gotten cause me great deals of anxiety and perhaps aren't the best basis for belief, but it's still gotten me jobs. In different

found poetry

2004-08-30T14:44:00.000-05:00

"The multitudes were packed as dense as broccoli florets..." It doesn't *really* count as found poetry, like that bizarre shopping list I once found on a discarded napkin, but it was stuck in the middle of a New York Times article, and therefore, since it was obviously lost, I now consider it found... Ok, so it's almost Bulwer-Litton-y, but in the New York Times? You have to love it...

vicarious thrills

2004-08-30T14:02:00.000-05:00

Every time we go to Central Market for lunch, my friend and I see the same woman. She's tall, thin, African American (in the sense that she doesn't seem like she's been in the states very long) and she has *totally* gotten the hang of how to eat in the US. Every day, as my friend and I share a sandwich (they're huge) and drink our unsweetened iced tea, this woman sits down and decorously eats a

doing well

2004-08-29T20:36:00.000-05:00

“He’s doing good.” There are some rules of grammar that I can forgive when they’re spoken, but hearing this come out of the mouth of my son’s second grade teacher was more painful than a date with an Epilady. On the plus side, by the age of 7, my son had developed his own impatience with the public school system, took control of the situation, rolled his eyes and muttered, “Well.” I would

pieces of string

2004-08-28T15:20:00.000-05:00

I have two books on reducing clutter. Two. I'm not sure if I need to describe the irony of that, but let's just say that I could seriously use some help implementing the ideas of either of them. It's not that I'm a packrat. Well, ok, I'm a packrat. But I *have* had some experience in getting rid of things, and it's not emotional attachment that keeps me from throwing things out. It's really

language and thinking and writing and speaking

2004-08-26T14:32:00.000-05:00

There is something wrong with my speech center, I'm sure. Whether it's the ADD or some other neurological dysfunction, I lose track of what I'm saying, or forget the word I'm supposed to use, right in the middle of a sentence. It's one of the reasons I prefer to express myself in writing. A) I have time to edit before anyone gets to see it, and b) I don't lock up quite so much. In any case, my

late bloomer

2004-08-25T18:03:00.000-05:00

I was 30 years old when I stopped going to school. That same week my son *started* school, so until this year, when my son moved in with his dad, I've been dealing with teachers for 36 years straight. Don't tell me that doesn't just suck. But, that's not what I was going to write about. Dealing with teachers and administrators for the modern urban school is worthy of it's own entry, and once

the songs i'll never write

2004-08-25T12:12:00.000-05:00

If any of you out there are songwriters, here are the songs that I would love to write, but probably never will, so feel free to write them for me. 1) Don't Look Down - You know how the Coyote always runs off the edge of the cliff, but he never falls until he looks down? It's about that. Except bigger and more metaphorical. Work with it. 2) Walkin' Away - This would be a country western song,

my kingdom for a door

2004-08-24T19:48:00.000-05:00

I dunno. Maybe I'm a big wuss. Maybe I suffer more from anxiety than I realized and I just need to up the dosage on the meds. But, I swear, this whole cube environment sucks really extra hard. I get teased a lot about my apparent inability to be happy in a job. As much as I'm a sucker for a confidently spoken phrase, and as much doubt as I let myself feel because of it, deep down I don't believe

hung up

2004-08-22T16:08:00.000-05:00

I got hung up the other day writing about something that turned out to be bloated and boring. So, after continued, but failing, efforts over several days, I decided to ditch it. At least for the time being. It may show up eventually, but after it's sat decomposing for a little while, it may just be too smelly to post. Plus, and this is a moment of confession, I got hung up playing a stupid

casket kiosk

2004-08-18T01:53:00.000-05:00

Down aisle from groceries, Costco selling caskets Really nothing spectacular about this article, except that I think "Casket Kiosk" would make an excellent title for a novel. If you ever watch Penn & Teller's Bullshit!, you might remember their Death episode and feel a warm fuzzy at the concept of costco selling caskets. I can't sleep. Someone sing to me.

training

2004-08-17T22:39:00.000-05:00

Went out training last night for the first time in a while. When I say "training" I don't mean it in the educational way. I mean actually fishing for trains. It's a weird practice that involves a lot of driving around through iffy neighborhoods, listening for whistles, trying to interpret track signals and carrying around spare change to mush on the tracks. There are at least three things that I

sinus haiku

2004-08-15T14:11:00.000-05:00

pressure in my skull. hot stick in my right eyeball. where's my sudafed?

the age thing

2004-08-15T09:05:00.000-05:00

I got carded the other day. >Beam< I'm actually not sure if the guy at Whole Foods was 100% serious, but he asked if I was old enough to be buying the wine in my basket. I looked at him, perplexed. I mean, I'll be 40 in a couple of months, and tho' I look young, it's been awhile since I looked *THAT* young. Eventually, I just laughed, figuring he was just being funny and nice, but then he said

walden

2004-08-11T09:40:00.000-05:00

There's something wrong here. There's all this talk about sustainability regarding our natural resources, the way we farm, the way we harvest energy, the way we fish, the way we treat our planet in general. But, I think we're missing something else. I don't think we're even living sustainably. No, I don't physically exhaust myself each day by dragging a plow over 40 acres of land, or hunting for

cow pms

2004-08-10T13:36:00.000-05:00

It turns out that the other week was the week the calves were taken away from the cows, and the relentless mooing that kept me awake was just part of "how they get" at that time of the year... Hormones. I totally get it.

changing dicks in mid-stream

2004-08-10T09:36:00.000-05:00

Ok, so what's the deal with the Dick York/Dick Sargeant thing? I mean, say you're nine or ten, and you come home after school to watch the season premiere of Bewitched, and you find Samantha sleeping with another man, AND SHE DOESN'T KNOW IT'S NOT THE SAME GUY!! It's like the Sixth Sense or something! I'm going to take a moment to wallow in my victimhood, and decide to blame my whole misguided

pms

2004-08-08T22:43:00.000-05:00

I am shockingly not creative when I have PMS. Oh, yeah, I come up with curse words I've never used before, sure, but when it comes to having something clever to say, nope. Not there. Plus, I'm cranky. Mostly I feel like curling up in a little ball and sleeping for 4 days. Don't get me wrong, I did quite a bit of that this weekend, but I just don't feel like I'm done yet. I'm at my most fetal,

plate of shrimp

2004-08-05T08:38:00.000-05:00

My cousin Stuart and I have an ongoing discussion about God and his existence. (Gimme a break. I'm just picking a pronoun. I don't believe anyway, so why not make God a man?) Today, I wrote to him the following: ...yeah, but *I* don't think I'm fucked. See, my expectations are kinda low. You go in the ground. The worms eat you. If you're lucky, your children/students/people you've met take

happy birthday Zack!

2004-08-05T08:34:00.000-05:00

It's my kid's birthday today. He's 14. Which means he left to live with his dad just in time for him to learn how to drive, go through wicked puberty, and discover that adults are stupid. (Actually, he's known the latter for a fairly long time...) I'll take him back when his insurance rates drop, he's got a girlfriend, and has discovered that adults actually know a thing or two... Love you kiddo

moo

2004-08-01T22:00:00.000-05:00

"Moo" is a totally inadequate transliteration of cow talk. I know this. I spent all night at the Country House (capitalized so you know to pronounce it with a upper-crust, lock-jaw accent) listening to complex cow conversation. In fact, most cows sound startlingly like deaf-mute prison inmates complaining about their accommodations. Really loudly. I got up and went out back stark naked, 'cos,

frequency

2004-07-30T13:20:00.000-05:00

shazam. I once (during grad school, probably between rounds of Tetris) wrote a fortran program (like Latin, a dead language) to take a pre-existing document as input, create a tally of word, word length and letter frequencies, and spit out a new, random document a) using real words with the same word frequency, or b) using randomized words with the same word length and letter frequency. As it

more junk

2004-07-30T08:02:00.000-05:00

Today I woke up to junk mail from the W himself. Ick. The temptation to rewrite was strong, since yesterday's Cheney mail was so damn fun, but I couldn't make it all the way through W's original without wanting to just vomit. So, instead I read a few good editorials from Paul Krugman from the NYT, Ron Reagan in a piece in Esquire, and some guy I don't regularly read in the UK's Guardian. (

junk mail

2004-07-29T09:24:00.000-05:00

I don't know how it happened, but I ended up on a republican email distribution list a few years ago. I never bothered to cancel it because a) I figured responding would just get me spammed by dozens of other unwanted republican sites, and b) it was kind of interesting to see what kind of propaganda they were sending out. Today I got a Letter from Vice Fucking President Cheney. It wasn't

cosmic aether

2004-07-28T16:25:00.000-05:00

For an apatheist*, cynic, critical thinker, realist, etc. I have a weirdly strong belief in the cosmic aether. Not the stuff that was widely thought to be the medium through which light and information traveled in space, but a metaphysical aether. The stuff that connects us all in the weird creepy way that makes you answer the phone, "Hi, mom... yeah, I just knew it was you..." or makes every

acronyms

2004-07-28T13:53:00.000-05:00

Since when did acronyms become things that you can't pronounce? I always thought that the difference between an acronym and an initialization (or an initialism, as M-W calls it) was that acronyms are words like NASA and NATO, and not FBI, CIA, NSA, and IRS. Why does this annoy me? And, why could I only think of government agencies? And, just because word processors make allowances for

vinyl

2004-07-27T12:49:00.000-05:00

An excerpt from a note I'd sent someone explaining how I got to Houston from NJ... "I'd been in Seattle - lovely lovely Seattle - when I made the mistake of getting married to and pregnant by a guy who was going to get his PhD faster than I was. Got dragged to Houston. Now I'm stuck here like the backs of your legs to a hot vinyl car seat..."

Trading Spouses

2004-07-26T22:46:00.000-05:00

I finally found a reality show I could really sink my teeth into. Trading Spouses. On ... go figure ... Fox. The way it works is family number one yields up its wealthy, big-haired, two-steppin', white mom to swap parental control with the mom of family number two, a rural, lower middle class black family, whose dialogue, Fox apparently feels, requires subtitles. The prize? $50,000. The catch?

morning coffee

2004-07-26T09:06:00.000-05:00

There should be something satisfying about getting up in time to relax over a cup of coffee and some breakfast before going in to work. And yet, somehow I'm not taking advantage of the satisfaction. Instead, I'm checking the time every few minutes thinking, "hey, I could get to work early for a change..." But I know I'm not going to actually do that, so instead, I'm here, spending 45