| Zhaba Zhournal | |||
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Friday, May 09, 2003
A discovery Last night, I made another amazing alcohol-related medical discovery: a glass of white wine completely wiped out my menstrual cramps. (I promise not to talk about menstruation too much more.) Must be that muscle-relaxant thing. Can I get a grant to study it? (My other amazing alcohol-related medical discoveries: red wine is darned good for sore throats, and the best thing in the world for colds is my personal recipe for hot spiked lemonade.) I'll get out of that parenthesis and provide said recipe: Put 1 tbsp. each honey, lemon juice, sugar (white or brown), and rum (light or dark) in a mug. Fill with hot water. Garnish with cinnamon and/or nutmeg, if you feel like it.It clears congestion, soothes sore throats, and generally makes you feel about as good as you can, considering that you have a cold. While I'm talking about alcohol, here is my Handy-Dandy Super-Duper Surefire Hangover Preventer: For every shot of liquor, glass of wine, or bottle/can of beer, consume a full 8-oz. (or more) glass of water. Yes, you have to get up and pee a lot, but that beats having a hangover. [ at 1:39 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] On TV This anecdote demonstrates a) the importance of actually paying attention to the news, and b) the importance of capital letters. I was half-listening to the local news and heard the anchor say, "Will snow be back?" And I thought, "Jeez, isn't it finally too late for snow?" (This was not the stupidest thought in the world; for the past month or so the weather's fluctuated wildly between 30 and 80 degrees.) And then I realized the sports reporter was answering, and that the anchor had actually asked "Will Snow be back?"—the 76ers basketball player Eric Snow. (This is also not the most ridiculous mishearing I've had in the past few days: when I was half-awake and listening to the news on the radio a few days ago, I heard "tomatoes" instead of "tornadoes.") I also did some talking back to the TV (which J. and I engage in from time to time), when a U.S. soldier was talking about a detained Iraqi who was suspected of being a spy: Soldier: He was answering our questions in a suspicious manner. Me: In Arabic. (Probably unfair, but it amused me at the time.) Then we watched the Discovery Channel's David Attenborough series, The Life of Mammals (the first three of ten hours, anyway). Amazing filmmaking: I can hardly imagine how they got such great footage of such rare animals. I mean, he was frolicking with platypuses. (Platypi?) I had a complete Cuteness Overload for much of it. J. had to keep telling me "no, we cannot have [x] for a pet" (echidna, raccoon dog, numbat, serval...). (A raccoon dog, incidentally, is not the same as a coon hound: it's a wild dog that looks, well, like a raccoon, with thick fur and short legs; J. said it looks like a "walking ottoman.") I also had one of my bonk-on-the-head revelations: I realized halfway through the third hour that David Attenborough and Richard Attenborough are not the same person. I'd sort of lumped them together as one eccentric gray-haired knighted British guy who somehow found time to act and make nature documentaries. J. opined that they were brothers; I did some on-line research, and, yes, they are. (Also, Richard is no longer a "Sir," but a "Lord.") (As I write this, my boss, who also works as a professor, is chewing out a student who turned in a plagiarized paper. I'm very glad I'm not at the other end of that phone line: "Why would you think you could get away with that? Why would you jeopardize your college career for it? In my opinion you no longer belong at the college. It's useless to talk to me at this point.") I have some other things to write about, but I'll do them in separate posts. And, oh yeah, my lunch break is over and I have to do that Work Thing. [ at 12:15 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] Thursday, May 08, 2003 Poetry generator I promise not to do this too often. I plugged my blog into one of those poetry generators—specifically, this one—and ran it a few times. Usually the results of these things don't do much for me, but this one is actually pretty appealing; nice beginning, great ending, and some not-too-bad stuff in the middle. Zhaba All the [ at 4:04 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] Damn, this is hard If you want to see just how well-informed or ignorant you are of the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and North African parts of the world that have been so much in the news in the past few years, take this test. I did very well on the countries that are popular for Biblical archaeology (big surprise), and I got Morocco because of Casablanca and Algeria because of Algiers, and Turkey because I don't like it and Armenia and Cyprus because they're right next to Turkey, but other than that, um, I didn't do so well. I had another of my temporary-dyslexia things, getting Iran and Iraq mixed up; and all those -istans were pretty darn hard. (The blog I swiped this from speculated on how well Bush would do on the test. Not very, I suspect.) [ at 12:00 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] Wednesday, May 07, 2003 Ew ew ew ew ew A bonanza of new links on Weird Links, including the following: Many Moons Washable Pads, as in "menstrual-blood-absorbing pads." (Marketing genius behind the company name, clearly.) Okay, okay, for millennia women have been using natural materials that they had to reuse over and over because they only harvested the flax once a year, or whatever, blah blah blah...but hello, twenty-first century here! I believe personkind has come far enough that, whenever possible, we should take advantage of not having to hand-wash menstrual blood out of our clothing and/or accessories. (I think the average woman spends quite enough time over the course of her puberty-to-menopause years washing blood out of her clothing due to early, late, or unexpectedly heavy periods anyway.) My favorite part of the Web site is that their answers to the question "Why use washable pads?" come under the headings "Earth Friendly," "Body Friendly," and "For Women." Ummm...aren't menstrual-blood-absorbing products always for women? (Intended for women, anyway; if there are men who use them for any reason, I don't want to know about it.) My second-favorite part is that, should you choose to purchase these washable pads, you can get them in leopard print. (You have to scroll down the page a bit.) I, however, will continue to get my leopard-print-undergarment-wearing fix from Frederick's of Hollywood, and my menstrual-blood-absorbing products from o.b. [ at 9:35 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] The Patriot Act Herewith, the gist of the two-hour Patriot Act meeting J. (who works at a university library) attended this afternoon: If someone comes in asking for information about a patron:
[ at 8:12 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] Temporary (I hope) dyslexia This was very odd: I had to rebuild BAR 23:06 (a two-step, 5-10 minute process). I went through the whole process and belatedly realized I'd built 26:03 instead. So I built 23:06 for real—at least for the first step. Then I blithely finished the build with 26:03 again. Having belatedly realized that, I successfully built 23:06. Then, when I went to copy the files from the Output to the Resources folder, I decided to clean up the folder first, and get rid of those 26:03 files, so I wouldn't get confused anymore. Whereupon...you guessed it, I deleted half of the 23:06 files, along with half of the 26:03 files. At which point I just made sure to really, really, really copy 23:06 to the Resources folder and close everything else the hell down. It's weird, and unsettling, because I've never had anything remotely resembling dyslexia, that I can recall; reading is perhaps my greatest skill. Admittedly I'm much worse with numbers than with letters, but I've never had this degree of difficulty. It's striking because it wasn't just once; it was three times, during the second two of which I was actively attempting to do it correctly. (And never mind how many times I typed the two numbers wrong while e-mailing J. and writing this.) Well, hopefully it was a one-time thing. Or maybe it only relates to multiples of 3, or something. Anyway, it's one of the stranger things my brain has done since getting all the medication stabilized. [ at 3:36 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] More Santorum This has been around for a few weeks, but I only recently discovered it: Santorum Denounces "Icky Kinds of Sex." (Brought to you by The Lemon, which is kinda like The Onion, except that it's written by one guy and it's only been around since March 27th.) [ at 1:43 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] Woo-hoo! My missing diamond earring finally turned up. I felt like a complete moron for losing it; but I did so on a day when I'd left my house, gone to work, gone to the train station downtown, taken the train to Delaware, gone to my parents' house, and gone to my psychiatrist way out in southern Pennsylvania. I had no idea when in the course of the day I'd lost it, so I thought it was hopeless. But my mom's cleaning lady found it on the floor of my room in my parents' house. Very cool. (I'm glad she didn't vaccuum first.) [ at 12:17 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] Nah, we don't have too many deer Video: Deer visits downtown Wilmington. Runs down sidewalk, jumps off overpass, dodges traffic on busy street; is finally caught so it can be released into the wild and shot by hunters. I heart my home state. [ at 11:46 AM • by Abby • permalink • ] A teenage girl and her supportive mother On the Today show's "Nips, Tucks and Teens" series (oooohhh, what a clever title): an interview with a teenage girl who said her mother had been telling her since she was 13 or 14 that she would get plastic surgery. (I'm pretty sure it was "would," not "should.") The girl said she resisted the idea at first, but changed her mind when she realized she continued to have low self-esteem. Ummm...could her low self-esteem not be related to having an imperfect nose, but to having a mother who's been telling her for years that she's so hopelessly unattractive she needs surgery to be presentable? Just speculating, mind you... [ at 10:08 AM • by Abby • permalink • ] Tuesday, May 06, 2003 Who doesn't need to know this? All the drug slang terms you'll ever need (at least until next week, when there'll probably be a few dozen more): the official government list of Street Terms: Drugs and the Drug Trade. [ at 5:02 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] Eww. Angel Snot. I'd heard of it, but I didn't expect the product description to be so, well, earnest: Heaven ScentAnd I bet if you look at it while thinking about rocks or elements or angels, you can sell it as an essence. [ at 4:22 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] Reproduction Well, maybe I'm not such a bizarre, hideous freak of nature: Studies show that couples who choose not to have children are happier than those who do. (If you don't subscribe to Salon.com, you have to watch an annoying commercial before you can read the article.) I don't know if we'll be happier than any given couple, but we'll certainly be happier without children than we would be with them. Especially since I just plain don't get children. It's not a matter of like or dislike, but of sheer indifference. You know the "awwww" reaction that people get when they look at something cute or appealing? I get that over rats, but not babies. I just...I just don't get it. I find the idea of pregnancy repulsive (think of that scene from Alien), the idea of childbirth both repulsive and terrifying, and the idea of actually having children...just plain unappealing. The only reason I can ever think of to have children is so I can have somebody to take care of me in my old age, which is clearly not a good reason. This has long disturbed me; it seems like I'm fundamentally lacking one of the most basic aspects of any living being. But apparently I'm not alone: Cain has come to believe that lack of interest in childbearing might be biological, like being gay. "Researchers have found that within mice there is a gene, the Mest gene. When it was in place in mice, and the mouse gave birth, it was a nurturing mother. When the mouse was Mest-deficient, it was a non-nurturing mouse. I think down the line we're going to discover that just as homosexuality is something that's physical, the same thing will be discovered about women. Why do some women melt at the sight of babies while other women are indifferent? It would seem to me it's something innate."I've seen those mice; what this article fails to mention is that, not only are they non-nurturing, they tend to eat their babies. And I've used the same metaphor before, talking about how I feel there's something wrong with me: "If I was a mouse, I'd be one of those ones who eats her babies." Fortunately, unlike a mouse, I can choose not to bear offspring. And if it's biological, it's as much a part of me as my non-heterosexuality; and yes, that's not normal (or at least not typical), but it's not the most incredible bizarre horrendous thing in the world, either. Sigh...I've always known I'm not normal; it's just nice to know that not being normal doesn't necessarily mean I'll be miserable. [ at 3:33 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] Just what we need A new species of giant jellyfish. Fortunately it's a deep-sea critter, so you can't get stung by one at the beach. [ at 2:49 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] World's dullest crime The mayor of Norristown, PA has won a lawsuit against the creator of an unofficial Norristown Web site. Yes, those visiting www.norristown.com will no longer experience the horror of seeing a picture of the mayor and an incorrect e-mail address. I suppose this represents a major victory for the official Web site, www.norristown.org. Um, we're not talking about an unauthorized Web site infringing the copyright of a major company. We're not talking about Photoshopped naked pictures of a celebrity. We're talking about Norristown, PA. Good Lord, I didn't know there was one Web site for Norristown, let alone two. (Let alone two with a feud between them.) Incidentally, they both suck, but the unofficial one is better. At least in terms of not being hideously pixilated. Although they could do away with that flashing banner. Flashing banners are so 1999. [ at 11:43 AM • by Abby • permalink • ] Gray day Just one of those days: cool bordering on chilly, raining or threatening to rain, and gray, gray, gray. (Just like my mood last night. I'm trying to keep my mood this morning a little brighter.) I figured out at least one reason I was in such a bad mood last night: the bad people at Comedy Central rearranged the afternoon TV schedule, depriving me of my usual 5:30 Daily Show fix. For weeks I've been making sure to get out of work by 5:15 so I could make it home to see the 5:30 repeat of the previous night's show. Now they've moved it to 7:30; I can still watch it, of course, but by 7:30 it's a bit late to chase away the end-of-the-workday blues. They are bad people and God will punish them. I thought I had something to write about but I forget what. Guess I'd better do that work thing. [ at 9:00 AM • by Abby • permalink • ] Monday, May 05, 2003 Secret code for "guilty as hell" In the Wife-Murdering Scumbag Dept., Scott Peterson's lawyer vows to find the real killer. Hm, maybe he can team up with O.J. [ at 10:28 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] The Matrix I've finally joined the '90's and seen The Matrix. (Well, at least the parts that happened when my eyes weren't closed.) I wasn't in an especially good mood going into it and I didn't find anything particularly interesting in it. Four-word summary: Berkeley in black leather. I suppose it wasn't worse than oral surgery, but at least for that you're medicated. I think all I really got out of film school was a deep and abiding dislike of watching movies. (That, and the ability to coil an electrical cord like nobody's business.) I've been in a fairly low mood all afternoon/evening; I shouldn't read about Santorum too late in the day, it just ruins my dinner. [ at 10:05 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] More Santorum Yes, Mr. I.H.I.D.V.F.H. is back in the news. He apparently held his breath and disinfected himself long enough to meet with the parents of lesbian and gay children. According to the parents, it did not go well. Links: Philadelphia Inquirer: Santorum meeting went badly, parents say; and the more blunt Philadelphia Daily News: Parents of gays: Santorum stunk. [ at 4:47 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] Dictionary fun Don't worry, I'm not going to start posting obscure words-of-the-day. But I do find this amusing. I did a search for "cardreader" in the Merriam-Webster Unabridged on-line (subscription only, so I'm not linking it); it wasn't included, but they gave me the following suggestion as a "similar word": "swartrutter." The entry for which is: Main Entry: swart·rut·terTheir idea of a "similar word" is clearly not the same as mine... Update, 01/20/04: Hey, why are so many people searching for "swartrutter"? I've gotten 16 search requests in the past four days—most of them from the UK, with one each from Australia, Canada, and the U.S. Did it show up on a quiz show, in a crossword puzzle, on a history program? If anyone knows, drop me a comment. [ at 2:03 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] Unsent Dear Wawa: No, I do not want cheese. No, I do not want extra meat. No, I do not want frickin' bacon. I just want a plain turkey sandwich, okay? Sincerely, Zhaba Really, what is it with the new Wawa touchscreen ordering system? What's next, "would you like your sandwich smeared with lard?" If I want fattening add-ons, I'm perfectly capable of selecting them myself without being prompted by more and more screens. Jeez. Presumably this is actually helping them make money. It's depressing how impulsive and receptive to suggestion consumers are getting. Of course, we're being conditioned by hearing about it all the time. "Supersize that?" "It's only 50% more if you buy another one." "Free shipping for an order of $150 or more." "Would you like to sign up for our in-store credit card?" Bozhe moy... [ at 11:47 AM • by Abby • permalink • ] Mice A problem I don't have yet: 30,000 mice. [ at 11:06 AM • by Abby • permalink • ] Google search of the day "attention deficit" child children: 246,000 hits. (Adding other keywords like "teen, teenager, kids," and the like, gets more.) "attention deficit" adult adults: 76,300 hits. The Yahoo! Health entry for ADD doesn't even have the words "adult" or "adults" on it. I know it's a problem for children (and sometimes an overdiagnosed one), but it's not like you outgrow it the minute you hit voting age. And in kids, I think the disaster scenario is "s/he will fail in school and never get into college and never get a good job," which admittedly would be a bad thing; but in adults, the disaster scenario is that you can't keep a job if you manage to get one. Who cares what your third-grade math test scores were if you get fired for never getting any work done? Sigh... [ at 10:12 AM • by Abby • permalink • ] Sunday, May 04, 2003 Apocalypse right this minute It's here. The end of the world. The pale horse, the sky rolling up like a carpet, the stars dropping like figs from a tree, the whole deal. The Olsen twins are on People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People list. So's Susan Sarandon. That's going to piss some people off. (Although I have to say that, altogether, the anti-war protesters are a good deal easier on the eyes.) And so is a flamenco dancer named Farruquito. There's a stage name for you. (At least I hope it's a stage name.) [ at 11:23 PM • by Abby • permalink • ] |
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