Monday, March 31, 2003

I saw a man get run over on his bike this morning. He was okay.

Saturday, I had a date and we met for a drink and then halfway through his fifth drink after I suggested that this drink might be his last, he confessed to me that he was an alcoholic and by the way, he had been hopped up on ecstasy for the past 25 hours. Great, I said, as I left the club in disappointed annoyance.

On the news last night, there was a map of Iraq and a bunch of arrows, indicating our attack strategy. It was like a football plan. It got me to thinking, hey! We should bring in Jon Gruden to coach this war. Enough already.

'Our philosophy is to do whatever we have to do to win,' he said [Gruden, of his coaching strategy.]
'If we can run the ball every single play and if we feel like a defense is vulnerable, we’ll do that. We like to be versatile, we like to be creative and we like to distribute the ball evenly, get some balance in terms of our attack, a lot of personnel groupings. There are some plays and formations, maybe that we’ll try to mix up on a weekly basis.'

Thursday, March 27, 2003

I think having a zillion cats is neat. I think cat colonies are neat. There is nothing creepy to me about having a zillion cats on your cat colony. But dammit, if you are going to have a cat colony, take care of them.

This story makes me sick:

Animal cruelty investigators who entered an elderly couple's motor home near Cortez [Colorado] this week weren't prepared for what they found: more than three dozen starving, sick and feral cats feeding on the carcasses of at least as many dead animals.
'Inside, it was just filthy black, and the stench was overwhelming,' said Cortez animal control officer Lari Ann Pope, who helped rescue the surviving animals Tuesday. 'We had full-grown cats that weighed 2 to 3 pounds, and so many bones piled upon bones that we didn't do an actual count (of dead cats).'

Wednesday, March 26, 2003

The article I wrote today:
Principles over Victory

Tuesday, March 25, 2003

Presenting this year's book-film-tv-video critiquees victors, per blogcritics.org.

Saturday, March 22, 2003

thinking today

Snow is melting. Ground is slushy mess.

I had a dream last night that my bank really wanted to hire me. I couldn't understand why.

I want to write a script for a creepy movie. I am trying to think of what gives me the creeps:

  • Birds, of course. That's been done.

  • Little kids with twisted grown-up minds: Children of the Corn.

  • I have it: Birds of the Corn. They recruit little kids to do their evil bidding indoors.

  • Friday, March 21, 2003

    thinking today:

    ...this is a war to secure the oil reserves, but the US is not alone in being greedy and self interested. Everyone wants a piece of the pie.

    Snow Day, Part Four

    I am still trying to sort out my feelings on Iraq.


    Thursday, March 20, 2003

    Snow Day, Part Three.

    Went to work for three minutes. Had to evacuate building on account of roof's collapse. Probably won't work tomorrow, either.

    Two more days off. Then the weekend.

    Driving to work this morning was dismal.

    The roads are deserted and show early signs of flooding... Misplaced trenches, ridges and gaps dot the barely driveable highways and streets. Giant potholes are found in every lane, though most streets are reduced to only one, on account of the snow's piling.

    I looked at the damage and thought, wow. This is nothing.


    what are you talking about?

    Wednesday, March 19, 2003

    What's happening in Baghdad?

    The radio plays war songs from the 80’s non-stop. We know them all by heart. Driving thru Baghdad now singing along to songs saying things like “we will be with you till the day we die Saddam” was suddenly a bit too heavy, no one gave that line too much thought but somehow these days it is sounds sinister. Since last night one of the most played old “patriotic” songs is the song of the youth “al-fituuwa”, it is the code that all fidayeen should join their assigned units. And it is still being played.
    A couple of hours earlier we were at a shop and a woman said as she was leaving, and this is a very common sentence, “we’ll see you tomorrow if good keeps us alive” – itha allah khalana taibeen – and the whole place just freezes. She laughed nervously and said she didn’t mean that, and we all laughed but these things start having a meaning beyond being figures of speech.
    ..the worst is seeing and feeling the city come to a halt. Nothing. No buying, no selling, no people running after buses. We drove home quickly. At least inside it did not feel so sad.

    hope for the bestinsallah

    Snow Day, Part Two.

  • Getting cabin fever.
  • Considering return to primitive state of nature.
  • Will watch Pride and Prejudice instead.
  • Amazing how an incapacitating blizzard with consequent collapsed buildings and thousands of power outages can make local news reporters forget for one second about impending war.

    Showdown With Saddam is not receiving its usual top billing.

    as seen at the bottom of every television screen in the Rocky Mountain Empire

    [ed. note: News 4 Colorado, I know that you're television news and not print journalism, but that's little excuse not to remember that it's is only used as a contraction. Its is the possessive you are looking for. Associated Press, you ought to be ashamed...]

    Tuesday, March 18, 2003

    if not for the children, then for whom?

    waiting for laundry to finish. watching Reality Bites.


    1) Story behind your blogs's name:
    When I lived in Brentwood and my roommates and I used to fight over the phone bills, Ben discovered we could itemize our bills by assigning calling codes. I came home and he and Greg had already picked out a code for me.
    I envisioned something even and palindromey--484 or 2112. Something big. They told me the code they picked reminded them of me.
    What number? What number? I asked.
    They answered: Seven.
    Seven? That's an odd number, I said.
    We know, they answered. But it's Lucky. Lucky Seven. Good things always happen to you. You're really lucky. So your number is seven.
    Lucky seven. I liked that.
    2) Favorite place to be:
    On a sailboat, in the sun.

    3) Least favorite place to be:
    In an aviary.
    4) Type a line you remember from any book:
    he used the word gamut.
    5) A random lyric:
    though in reality you were hardly there, in my heart you were everything.


    Now you answer some questions and post them as comments. Idle distractions, ahh, how long you make the day...

    snow day today! no work, no school. i want to go sledding. sometime between writing a paper and laundry obligations...

    Monday, March 17, 2003

    ha. I want the jr. crack ho shirt.

    grr. my veggie sub from Quizno's had guacamole slapped into it. I scraped off most of it and was hungry enough to forget for one second about my allergy to avocados. An hour after lunch, the allergy's coming back to me...

    mmm. Quizno's for lunch and a staunch possibility of a snow day tomorrow. What could be better at this moment for me, who is hungry and tired and doesn't want to work? Food and rest rate high on my hierarchy of needs.

    As does world peace. What has happened to diplomacy, Señor W? No one will negotiate so you're resorting to brute force? No, no, no. Did you learn nothing from Hulagu Khan? One either negotiates effectively or one strikes sharply. To succeed, one does not do both.

    Ladies, ladies, ladies: If you aspire to spinsterdom and need the accompanying cats, take good care of them. When I am a spinster, my cape-wearing fifty cats are going to live large. None of this A.S.P.C.A. craziness.

    Friday, March 14, 2003

    I think most Americans who support a war against Iraq are in favor only because they think it will stay over there. Bring the war to their front yard and everything changes. How many Americans would support a war--for which the motivations are vague and ill-explained--if it meant that our streets would be torn up, power stopped, buildings demolished, personal safety threatened...

    Chris Rock was on Letterman last night. When guest host Will Farrell asked him how he felt about the war against Iraq, Chris replied that a war was when the opponents could fight back. America's not at war with Iraq, he said. America is jumping Iraq.

    Today's radio surprise song is Bjork's Headphones:
    ...it lulls me to sleep, to sleep, to sleep. What a dream.

    I don't think she was unhappy on the go... She ran away from her seemingly overbearing responsibilities and her "devout and affluent Mormon family," though no one will say anything because of the big freaking deal the media made about her alleged kidnapping:
    [Upon discovering the girl], "we took her aside ... she kind of just blurted out, `I know who you think I am. You guys think I'm that Elizabeth Smart girl who ran away,'" [Officer Bill] O'Neal said.
    Obviously, the girl ran away. Come on--the girl partied with the couple! That's why she could hear her uncle calling for her from 15 feet away but never responded. That's why the teenage girl and alleged kidnappers always looked so comfortable together:
    "They were always very pleasant," said Richard Mason, a 45-year-old homeless man. "She didn't seem like she was kidnapped. She acted like she was part of the family."

    [ed. note: Nice that the newspaper refers to Richard Mason as a 45-year old homeless man. I'm sure Mr. Mason loves that, after four and a half decades, a 45-year old homeless man becomes his lone descriptor.]

    And what about the man originally under suspicion, held in jail for a parole violation--the man who, while in prison, died of brain hemorrhages? You don't just die of a brain hemhorraging, do you? Doesn't your head need to be bashed against the wall, or something equally horrifying? We hear little mention of this man.

    Thursday, March 13, 2003

    I've just returned from a baby shower at the office. Wow, was it boring. Maybe you have to be a mom to appreciate the Precious Moments figurines. I just smiled patiently through all of the gift unwrapping, thinking about the forthcoming chocolate ice cream.

    Must everything be passed through the crowd? I get the idea from six feet away; I don't need to hold those infant pajamas in my own hands to grasp their concept. Ooh, the crowd coos in unison. gag.

    I want to start my own collectable line. I'll call it Primate Moments. It will feature devastatingly cute yet hopelessly ceramic monkeys, hanging from trees and bassinets and stuff. The Banana Line will feature them eating bananas. It will be a sensation among expectant-mothers and retired ladies alike.

    Monkeys are way cuter than those doe-eyed infants, hanging from crosses. Seriously. She got a ceramic baby, hanging from a cross. That's just weird.

    Per my brother's request, I have crossed-out this post because, like so many times over again, it makes me sound like a callous bitch. His words.

    Wednesday, March 12, 2003

    In a way related to today's series on despots, it seems that Iraqi soldiers aren't terribly keen on fighting: go here.
    [I was referred to the article by junkyardblog. Thank you.]

    An excerpt from a blog out of Baghdad, worth a look, saddening yet encouraging all the same:

    Life doesn't stand still every time America threatens war. It gets more difficult, true enough, but it goes on- which, by the way, is driving the foreign journalists crazy. They want some action here and seeing people go about their daily lives is just a waste of time and film, it seems.

    Absurdistan

    I love this guy. I know, I know, he's a dictator.

    But he declared himself President For Life! He gives his people free water, gas and power.

    I think if you must have a dictator (and free speech is of little matter to you), at least Saparmurat keeps things interesting.


    Tuesday, March 11, 2003

    Oh my lord. Oh dear lord. Please see:

    one of the lamest, to politely say the least, things I've ever read. Be sure to continue on to something nicer for your consideration. Or read its summary here.

    I love Mike Watt. He is responsible for this morning's surprise radio song: Liberty Calls. If you don't know who he is, you should learn. This page offers a nice intro to Mike Watt's influence. Or refer to this interview.

    I know about Mike Watt because, years ago, my older brother told me that learning about him would make me a better person. He was right. Every once in a while, my brother will give me some specific directions in life. He likes telling me what to do because he knows that I'll listen. He's always right, so why argue with directions that are just intended to make me a better person?

    He helped me to stop saying 'like' all the time when I was in middle school. He said that I sounded foolish and to improve my speech, everytime I was going to say 'like', I should instead stop and think about something else to say. To my listeners, it would sound as if I were taking a dramatic pause: Much more powerful than the ubiquitous like filler.

    You can imagine my pride last night when I met up with my brother to give him the present I bought for him last weekend. He looked at it and said, in his perfectly timed pacing:

    This is the greatest thing that I've ever seen in my life.
    Really, I asked.
    Yes, he confirmed, I've never seen anything greater than this.


    It's my brother's job to keep me cool. It's my job to buy him stuff. I accept that.

    I finished the problem set due tonight. Finally.

    Monday, March 10, 2003

    My advice to a friend on how to move on after a relationship:

    It's entirely arbitrary, you know. You have to flirt with the checkout girl a lot and then one day, say, hey, Susie, do you mind being my grocery store girlfriend? It's just for when I'm in your aisle, you'll be my girlfriend. She'll look at you oddly while she mulls it over and then she'll smile as she thinks the idea is pretty neat and say okay.

    Voila! You've moved on. Everytime you go grocery shopping, you'll have a girlfriend. You can tell other people you have a girlfriend and feel good knowing that you are not lying about it.

    Find a girl that you see everyday, typecast her into some role, and then request that she becomes your girlfriend for this role. Make the girl in the cubicle next to you your cubicle girlfriend. She'll love it.

    I'd like to get paid for this.

    Incidentally, I have my first exhibit coming up this September. That gives me six months to hype up my paintings and their significance. I'll price my paintings at $500,000 each. If I just sell one, I'm set for a duration. I need to get on this... after I finish my problem set.

    I must start my problem set. It's due tomorrow. I've had two weeks. I don't know what is keeping me. I have all of the answers; I just need to check them. Come on woman, I think to myself, get motivated. No, I answer, you've got time. It's not due until tomorrow, I tell myself. Lazy, I answer back.

    Arg.

    Without fail, I find that I am most productive when there is something else that needs to be done

    (see: project due Tuesday).

    Sunday, March 09, 2003

    Foolish anachronisms make me giggle:

    Gladiator made one of the most foolish cock-ups of the lot, putting saddles and stirrups on the horses when in fact they weren’t invented until 185AD (the saddles and stirrups, not the horses).

    This has to be beaten only by the crate of oranges under the table in the market scene of The Sound of Music, which are marked up as coming from Israel. Except, of course, Israel didn’t exist back then.

    Gas in Vail is currently $1.98/gallon. Eeek. Because of this
    Middle East Brouhaha, Denver is approaching record gas pricing heights... despite the fact that Denver gets most of its gas from Kansas.

    Obviously, I am listening to the local news right now. Thank goodness because I didn't even know Kansas had refineries. I never thought about it, in any case.

    Does anyone care about the cloud and rain patterns sweeping America, or is that just weatherman fodder to put him on the news anchor's financial periphery? Anyway, homeboy says it's going to be 75 degrees this weekend.

    That is the end of my news report. Thank you.


    What a great weekend. It was super warm and sunny all the days long and--as is occasionally the case--I am reminded exactly why I do love Denver. And the used bookstore currently ten minutes away is moving down the street from me and becomes two minutes away. Walking distance to all the used books I could dream of... they are having a 40% off moving sale now, so I went used book crazy with Papa Hemingway and Bertrand Russell. Go me.

    It was the weekend of commerce bargains. Books, dresses, canvases, et cetera. I saw it all! Stay close for future details.

    There is no better way to begin any drive than with a surprise radio song. Late this afternoon, I got into the car to the surprise radio song of Les Miserable's Drink With Me. One cannot ask for a greater radio surprise song than that. Dammit, I love Broadway. Follow it up with A Hard Knock Life and really, one can't want for a better weekend.

    Friday, March 07, 2003

    I went over to my brother's house last night to watch Lifetime Television For Women with my sister-in-law. We watched the Jacqueline Susann story. Like any Lifetime movie, it was mediocre yet strangely compelling. Jacqueline Susann wanted her name in lights from day one. Nothing was going to stop her. It was interesting to see how preoccupied she was with becoming a star. She did it, though. Maybe you have to breathe fame to achieve it...

    I'm an attention whore. I would love to be a star, in some capacity. I occasionally fantasize that a famous music producer happens upon me singing and is so overwhelmed by the siren-like quality of my voice that he insists I record an album that very day. In my dreams, I have a good voice. We also still record albums in my dreams.

    I also have wandering dreams about mathematics. It's usually seventy minutes into my Statistics class when my attention takes a stroll. I imagine that I can see all numbers and equations holistically. I easily point out that instead of these fifteen steps we trudge through to formula completion, we can just square the original sum to find the same answer. Or something really clever like that. And then I become known everywhere for my genius and people turn to me to solve math problems for them. Oh, I so want to be a math genius. Someday I will appear on seventh grade classroom walls everywhere with a clever quote beneath my image. Someday.

    My point is that I've always assumed that some capacity of fame will beckon me. One day, I will find myself in that perfectly timed place. I could always become more motivated to achieve fame, but it's not that important to me. Unlike Jacqueline Susann, I'd much rather be really happy living a fairly low-profile life now, and then *bam*. My mathematical stardom beckons. I'll be ready.

    As I was driving home after the movie last night, Through the Years came on the radio. The song made me cry. Oh Kenny, wherever you are, you've still got a place in my heart.

    I didn't remember my dream last night, though I am sure it had something to do with my illicit love affair with Kenny Rogers, since I still can't get Through the Years out of my head.

    Thursday, March 06, 2003

    I had the dream about the dead girl again last night. The police were about to arrest me for her murder, though the fact that she was not murdered, nor did I had anything to do with her death, seemed to matter little. My roommate in the dream said that he had a bad feeling it was me that the police were after. He thought that the picture that the newspaper released looked like me. Apparently, it was the electrical tape over my mouth that gave it away. Huh? Twice I was told that my future in Denver was forever blemished and I should leave town immediately.

    I can't wait until tonight to see if I skip town.

    Wednesday, March 05, 2003



    Which Evil Criminal are You?

    DJ Muggs from Cypress Hill has a new solo project out. Get it. It's good.

    Today I become eligible for our 401K plan at work. I feel so grown up. I was thinking I could invest 75% of my income, live like a pauper now, and then rest easy on my investment laurels well into retirement. Probably not though. Probably I'll invest 2% and then when I am 60, or at whatever age you retire, I can go to Disneyland for a week.

    Tuesday, March 04, 2003

    HR from Bad Brains made a solid point when he was on KVCU's morning radio show the other day... he said that were it up to him, he'd give Bin Laden a microphone, a guitar, and some drums and let him put to music all of the feelings he'd otherwise put behind a machine gun.

    ed. note: ditto for our world leaders.

    I had a recurring dream last night. I was at a picnic, sitting outside with two very attractive men I'd just met. There was a beautiful French girl that everyone loved at first, but once they realized how drunk and uninteresting she was, they walked away from her. The French girl came to sit at my picnic table, though she didn't join our conversation. Eventually, the French girl passed out across the table. I felt her pulse and pronounced her dead. We moved tables, though we left the girl where she had fallen over. We continued out conversation. Time went by. We called the police. When they arrived to see the girl slumped over, they wanted to know why we waited a week to call them. We didn't have an answer.

    I kept waking up to this dream, probably five or six times last night. Kim, from work, analyzed it for me. She said I was the French girl who had been hurt for a week and felt like nobody cared about my injuries. Well done, Kim. Where are the two very attractive men who wanted to talk to me all day? I'll exchange my associates' apathy for them.

    Wow am I in a foul mood today. I decided to cut the pain killers because 1. I don't want to develop an addiction and 2. I don't like the loop I feel when I'm all looped up. Except here I am sans pain relievers, in pain and going through withdrawals. I have the chills and a fever like nobody's business. Is this all for naught? I am such a baby when it comes to hurt. I'd better become a better person for this. Sigh. A man was in the office this morning, peddling some kind of shipping service, heavily draped in cologne. It made me sneeze, which really sucks with broken ribs. It was like half a sneeze, then I had to force myself to stop because it hurt so badly. I was left feeling empty and unfulfilled. With an achy belly.

    While driving to work in the snow this morning (yes, yes, an hour late...), I noticed that everyone on the freeway had their lights on, except for one little car. He was on his cell phone. That phone must give him super powers or something where he doesn't need other cars to see him because he's shielded by safety towers. Come on. If it's snowing and it's overcast, turn your lights on.

    Is taking one's coffee light and sweet an East coast thing? We stopped for coffee the other day and my friend asked me how I wanted mine. Light and sweet, I said. What the hell is that, he asked? Exactly how it sounds, I said. As much as I love the freedom to put as much cream and sugar in my coffee as I want here at the midwestern coffee joints with their self-service accoutrement bars, I do miss the Dunkin' Donuts prepare-your-coffee-per-your-exacting-demands counter service.

    The company president just drove up in a Malibu. His Escalade is apparently in the shop (he's neither a pimp nor an NBA star; he's a cowboy). Great in the snow, I remarked.

    The man at work's son died.

    Monday, March 03, 2003

    The last to cave to technology, I finally bought a digital camera. See last night's adventures at the grocery store... After a welcome break, am back at work. I thought somebody had moved my computer around until I finally noticed that I have a new monitor, keyboard, and mouse. Giddeup. Class tonight. Am exhausted. Want to sleep....... that is all.

    Sunday, March 02, 2003

    Wow, I love Strong Bad. He's brilliant!


    I forgot all about homestarrunner...


    thank you, Wil Wheaton, for the blissful reminder.


    Saturday, March 01, 2003

    All I have to do is drive a quarter of a mile to the laundromat to drop off my clothes and damn it. Air Bud is on television and I can't break away from it. What's wrong with me? It must be the medication. It has to be.

    I went to the orthopedic doctor yesterday. He told me that I had a broken shoulder and fractured ribs and would feel better in a month. I'll write you a prescription for a different painkiller, Ultracet, he said. This one won't make you loopy... and it doesn't, although it's not nearly as effective as Vicodin. My entire body itches like crazy. Rumor has it that it's The Opiates. Ugh.

    In a related need for painkillers, Erin got hit by a car last week. She was walking through the parking lot at her work when an illegally-parking car backed over her, knocking her to the ground and slapping her face with its bumper. The car finally stopped, although she is not sure if it's because she was screaming "stop your car! stop your car!" or if it's just because the car finished parking. When the couple got out of the car, imagine their disbelief. They offered to buy her a sandwich, as they were on their way into Subway. Erin, dazed and disoriented, said no thank you and walked to the bus stop. The couple let her walk away. Luckily Erin had enough sense to copy down their license plate. It's been a week and she's in a lot of pain. Which bring my story full circle to the Vicodin... she slept over last night so I could bring her to work in the morning. I gave her a pill to help her sleep. It is probably illegal but she was under my supervision. At the mall last night, she also bought one of those foam pillows developed for NASA. She probably would have had a much better night's sleep had we not stayed up giggling until 2:45am.

    Now it's mid-Saturday morning. I've already brought Erin to work, drove Mu Son to the bus station (where he caught a bus to the mountains to snowboard alone today), and I am currently fighting every urge to go back to sleep. The good news is that with a broken shoulder, I now have an excuse to drop off my laundry and not feel guilty. I will be sure to wear my sling so that they know that I'm not just dropping off my laundry because I am lazy. Okay, okay. Two parts injury, one part lethargy. I love having my laundry done.

    Oh: This morning Mu Son told me a girl at my school died of meningitis last week. That's terrifying. School officials are trying to ease public concern by promising that she had limited exposure to others. How awful.