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Wednesday, April 30, 2003
Eeeew. Maria Shriver interviewing Celine Dion. It's like watching aliens take over the planet. (Actually, it's one of the few situations in which Celine Dion looks like a relatively normal human being.) [ at 11:16 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] Fact of the day Whaddaya know. Henri Cartier-Bresson is not dead. [ at 3:57 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] The letter of the law This rocks: Li'l Kim in a burqa and not much else. (I found it on 953party.com.) [ at 3:30 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] The Dante's Inferno Test This seems to be spreading around the Web like hellfire. Herewith, the results of my indulgence of my inner lemming: The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Seventh Level of Hell!
I took the test twice and got Level 7 both times; I guess it's the suicidal ideation and the sodomy. (Although according to some definitions lesbian sex isn't sodomy.) [ at 1:26 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] Mr. I.H.I.D.V.F.H. Santorum Perhaps this is not the best choice of words, but Mr. I.H.I.D.V.F.H.* Santorum seems to have a real bug up his butt about homosexuality. Not only does he equate it with bigamy, polygamy, adultery, and incest, he seems to think it's on par with terrorism: see here. Jeez, buddy, can't you find something else to crusade against? Of course, it is just as or even more disturbing that he's not exactly a voice crying in the wilderness: some Republican leaders are falling over backwards to call him "inclusive" (of what?) and generally a good all-around guy: viz. Well, at least he's not a frickin' Holocaust denier. (Not yet, anyway.) *I.H.I.D.V.F.H.=I Hope I Didn't Vote For Him. I don't remember exactly who I voted for in every election. I'm pretty sure I didn't, but I can't prove it. [ at 9:27 AM • by Abby • permalink • ] Tuesday, April 29, 2003 Observations Futility Clutching a TV Guide and shouting "Entertain me!" at the TV set does not result in any actual entertainment (except for anyone who happens to be watching you). Yahoooooohhhh yuck So I'm innocently checking Yahoo!'s directory of mood disorder organizations to see if New Directions is in it, and Yahoo! in its wisdom decides I need to see this link: "Featured Category: Irritable Bowel Disorder." Jeez. Serves me right for going anywhere near the "Health" directory, I guess. [ at 8:55 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] Fun with titles In the Department of Redundancy Department: a TLC special called "Prophets: Seers of the Future." "Prophet" and "seer" are pretty much the same thing; and once you've said that, do you need to add "future"? There's not much money in predicting the past. [ at 1:55 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] Spelling On Passyunk Ave.: a pizza and/or sub place proclaiming itself "Best of Phily." [ at 10:31 AM • by Abby • permalink • ] New Directions The New Directions Delaware Sopirak program went well last night—we had David Satcher, the 16th Surgeon General, speaking on mental health in children. (He's the guy who did the first Surgeon General's report on mental health, which you can conveniently get here.) Our camera guy bailed at the last minute, so I did the videotaping (and probably did a better job than he would have anyway). I did a fair approximation of knowing what I was doing, although I did almost kill the camera when I hit the black balance button. Those three years of film school occasionally come in handy. Dad drove me to Philly this morning; I had to get up at 6 so we could leave at 6:30. I was home by 7:15; when I got there, J. wasn't even out of bed yet. I've had lots of coffee but I'm still tired. Morning person:me :: good pet:cockroach. (I know there are people who keep cockroaches as pets. I do not understand them. Then again, I guess a lot of people don't understand keeping mice as pets. But at least mice are cute and furry.) Should get back to that work thing. CMS at hand. Let's see what I can do... [ at 9:57 AM • by Abby • permalink • ] Monday, April 28, 2003 Consistency, please. Okay. I expect authors to be inconsistent. And I have never met an author who had a copy of the Chicago Manual of Style (hereafter CMS) on their desk. But I do expect publishing houses to be at least somewhat consistent. Especially when they are writing a style guide for their authors. And when said style guide instructs said authors to use CMS style, I expect the style guide itself to use the frickin' CMS. Jeez. F'r instance: CMS for parenthetical in-text citations is (author date) but they use (author, date); and it's (author date, page) but they have (author, date: page); two authors is (author and author date) and three is (author, author, and author date) but they say both two and three should be separated by "and"; and it goes on... Bozhe moy. As J. would say, they are bad people and God will punish them; unless they're another one of our Christian publishing house clients, in which case I guess He won't. (There being nothing in Leviticus about parenthetical in-text citations. Not that I noticed, anyway.) [ at 12:12 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] Sunday, April 27, 2003 More bugs Well, one more bug. One of those big black roaches in the mouse room. J. says they don't breed in houses—they breed outside, preferably in damp places, and then come in—but there's been an awful lot of them in that one room. Dear God, don't let us have a plague of big black roaches. (We've already got a plague of mice, but that's by choice.) We bought roach traps at the supermarket, along with various products that are supposed to kill mites. Question of the day: What do you do when your vermin have vermin? En route to the supermarket: an ice cream truck playing "Moon River." Beats "Turkey in the Straw," I guess. (From now until September, we will be in Ice Cream Truck Hell. At least when the air conditioners are running we won't hear them as much.) [ at 10:41 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] Curiously... Who/what is http://www.pervak.com.ua/gaba/project/chat/exhibit.php, and why do people come to my site therefrom? It's Ukrainian, but I don't think there's anything particularly Ukrainian on my site, except the name. (Everything but the index page of that site requires a username/password, so I haven't been able to figure out anything about it except that the index page has a link to this person/people's vacation. Or so the linked word would indicate.) The wonders of the web. [ at 3:17 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] In the news If the Dixie Chicks are ashamed that Bush is from Texas, can I be ashamed that Santorum is from Pennsylvania? (I'm pretty sure I didn't vote for him. I'm damn sure not going to vote for him next time. Snarl grumble growl hiss...) Oh well. Here's some other news from my fair state. In the "yeah, right" department: Solicitor billed for 81-hour day, "including $10,500 for a meeting that lasted less than an hour." Claims that "the billings in question were innocent mistakes involving misplaced decimal points." Um, those decimal points were pretty far removed from their proper locations... (Especially ironic because the lawyer in question was working for a school district. The fourth-graders could have done a better job with his accounting than he did.) [ at 2:25 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] Thursday, April 24, 2003 Well, this is weird. People have actually been visiting my website. I figured they wouldn't, because there's no links on the index page; you'd think that would dissuade them. But no, people have actually found my subdirectories via search engines. Whaddaya know. Not even trying to list them on Yahoo! or anything. (I've gotten a few blog hits already, which is cool, since I've only been here for, um, a day.) My goal is to have enough content to receive hits from searches that I can submit to Disturbing Search Requests. (I found it via Weird Links, which J. directed me to after he spent a bored afternoon surfing it at work.) Question of the day: Do they call it web-surfing in places where they aren't near oceans? Is it web-skiing in Austria, or web-canoeing in the Amazon? (Do they use canoes in the Amazon?) (Come to think of it, there probably aren't many people using the Web in the Amazon.) [ at 3:47 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] Belated I should have mentioned yesterday that it was Shakespeare's birthday. (And death day.) Actually, I should probably put death day first, since that's the one we have a confirmed date for. We don't know his exact birthday, but it was around April 23, so it's convenient to put birth and death on the same day. Just occurred to me that it was the 10th anniversary of the Shakespeare B-day celebration with Amanda. I feel a slight catch in my throat thinking about that, but not much of one. I thought it would be different then; but who didn't think that, when they were a high school senior? (Especially one in an undiagnosed hypomania.) Sigh; I can never live up to the potential I thought I had. I guess the difference was back then I had so much potential, and thought I could achieve it; now I've passed the point where you have potential, and I'm not sure what I can achieve. Middling middle-class-dom, I guess. But whatever my personal history, it's Shakespeare I think of most on that day.
(If you would like the complete works of Shakespeare online, go here. If you would like them in Russian, go here. I'd post a quote, but Blogger seems to have trouble with Unicode.) [ at 11:27 AM • by Abby • permalink • ] Wednesday, April 23, 2003 Bugs So I go to feed the mice last night, open the door to the mouse room, and turn on the lights. And three cockroaches scatter in the doorway. Huge cockroaches. Huge black cockroaches. Naturally, I do what any self-respecting 21st-century adult woman would do*: scream at the top of my lungs and flee down the hallway, yelling "Bugs bugs bugs bugs bugs!" J., downstairs at the time, said "Screaming doesn't make you safer." But he came upstairs to kill the bugs while I huddled in the bedroom. He really rousted the room - opened drawers, moved furniture, the whole deal. And he reported that he killed three cockroaches. Hopefully that was all of them. I took a Xanax and a half and watched the Tonight Show until I settled down; then upstairs and to bed. I am not merely a bug wimp. I am bug-phobic. Oh well. At least I don't live in a society where I have to eat them. (Well, unless I go on Fear Factor.) *Sarcasm. I'm sure there are women who can handle cockroaches. I'm not one of them. [ at 3:33 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] Mnogaya l'eta... (We'll see about Unicode later...) [ at 12:28 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] For once upon a raw and gusty day... I've almost got this working. FTP=Frickin' Terrible Process. [ at 12:23 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more! That's how I always test a pen, so why not this? [ at 11:12 AM • by Abby • permalink • ] |
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