Month:
September, 2004
Excerpted from the chatroom I frequent:
10:09:05 [Anarkey] i am a flighty and ditzy girl, because yesterday i claimed my never-ending love for sed, and the day before my deep infatuation with cut, but today it’s vim that’s making me squirm and swoon
10:09:27 [shasticon] Fickle and faithless wench!
10:09:31 [Anarkey] i LOVE vim
10:09:46 [Anarkey] indeed shas, but is there not enough love in my heart for all three unix utilities?
10:10:34 [shasticon] Monday you’re going to come flouncing in here all gushy about grep.
10:11:30 [Anarkey] ah yes, i do a harbor a crush on grep
10:12:47 [lanfaedhe] sed seems like a useful tool. I’ve only recently learned cut and it rocks and I love it
10:12:51 [Discordanian] Grep is good. Very good. But then. Come on and we can make it ten! Look! Ten utils up on top, we’re not going to let them drop.
10:13:21 [lanfaedhe] with grep I can hop and drink! you windows folks cant do this I think!
Hope you found this as amusing as I did. Happy Friday!
I forgot to mention this earlier, and doubtless it’s something everyone has deduced by now, but Ivan was pretty much a non-event around these parts. We didn’t get any rain at all. None, not a drop, and I may have to water my lawn to keep the grass from dying if it doesn’t rain soon. There was some ominous cloud activity, and a little wind, but that was really all. I guess the west side really is the weaker side.
However, it did put my mind to thinking about whether in an older non-instantaneous news time, people standing under strange yellow clouds 100 miles from the hurricane eye had any idea that they were being missed by a hurricane. Is there a now lost skill of weather sensing without instruments? How much could they know with any certainty and how little? Did they just think it was a somewhat unusual summer thunderstorm? I’d love to know.
These are the things that my hairdresser said to me, when I went to see her about four weeks ago:
- That my hair is unmistakably falling out, by the handfuls, as she put it.
- That she didn’t think shaving my head was a good idea and that she would prefer to take me out and buy me alcohol to forget my worries instead.
- That she needed to cut two inches off the bottom of my hair because it’s just too noticeably thin.
- That there is new growth visible in the bald spots, so apparently there’s some hope.
- That I need to be taking biotin.
- That if my hair is still falling out this much in 6 weeks when she sees me again, that she’s going to tell me to go to a doctor and make sure they check my thyroid.
- That I should buy a satin pillowcase and sleep on it.
She’s a good person and she looks after me. She’s one of the many, many people whom I will miss when I move away. I let her cut the two inches, and to be completely honest, I hardly notice the difference. My hair is now about two vertebrae up from my waist instead of waist-length. It’s not a deal and no one else can tell and I could only tell the first couple of times I braided my hair and got to the end sooner than expected. I bought a hair, skin and nails supplement that has biotin among some other nutrients that people have suggested that I take. When Sophia sees me taking the supplement she says, “Mama, that’s to make your hair grow up.” Indeed. The satin pillowcase I’m waffling on, even though I’ve read about it on a number forums and websites and it’s a supposed must for people who have long hair. It seems so extravagant, so 30’s movie star, if you know what I mean. It’s possible, even likely I guess, that a satin pillowcase isn’t even very expensive compared to a high count cotton thread one. I don’t know. I just know I’d feel like I was putting on airs to shop for one. I don’t even know where to shop for one. So that piece of advice is still under consideration and not yet acted upon.
I’m still losing an amazing amount of hair. However, it seems to no longer be a colossal amount of hair. At least, I hope that’s the case. These things are a bit difficult to judge, though. I really, really don’t want to go to a doctor over this, so I certainly hope the next time, possibly the last time, I go see my hairdresser that she will tell me that my hair loss situation has improved.
For those of you who aren’t followers of what categories posts go to, this is falling under the rant category. You may not recognize it, or me, because it’s been a very, very long time since I ranted about anything (a quick check shows me the last thing in this category was written in March of this year, six months ago). It’s been kind of hard for me to get good and angry lately, since I’ve been grieving Simone, but I think I’m ready to get some things off my chest. This is a rant I’ve been pondering for a long time now (in fact, I reference it as the next rant in the last paragraph of my previous rant, so you can’t say I don’t follow through). At any rate, here are the rules and disclaimers for rants : everything ranted about is my opinion and I’m venting here so while I will usually start at the point of facts I will likely end completely in emotional territory. If you don’t agree, power to you, but I don’t really care. Here we go, hang on while we tread the controversial grounds of politics and I foam at the mouth.
Although I don’t often write things that are directly political, it’s probably become pretty obvious to most readers that I’m somewhat left leaning in my political views. I would probably be most at home living in a social democracy of the type that can be found in Scandinavian countries, the main problem with that being that I’m not really all about the snow, if you know what I mean. My political ideas are considered and I’ve always taken politics somewhat seriously. Nothing like growing up in a military dictatorship to emphasize the importance of voting. That said, the last time I voted for a major party candidate in a presidential election was in 1988. Yes, I voted for Dukakis (not that it’s anybody’s business who I voted for and will vote for). I voted for, to my mind, the lesser of two evils. My voting choices were much more immature then, and I voted for Dukakis because I very firmly believe that no one who has been director of any of the branches of the secret service should become President. This seems like an obvious conflict of interest. Back to the point though, discounting local politics, where I often have no choice but to vote for major party candidates, I generally vote outside the major parties. This is because the two major parties suck.
Just in case you didn’t hear me: the two major parties suck.
I’m not one of those people who believes that there’s no difference between Republicans and Democrats, though I’ll often say as much because I like to see both sides sputter and magnify differences that seem fairly minute to me. I’m not a one-issue voter (I’m a three-to-four-issue voter and if I thought anyone but me cared I would go into a lengthy explanation about which issues and why) but on all the issues that are most important to me Democrats and Republicans usually fall into the same boat. For example, civil liberties are extremely important to me. Again, see the military dictatorship of my childhood and draw your own conclusions as to why. Ok, let’s look at civil liberties and then look at both major party candidates. Most people would agree that the latest ballyhoo over civil liberties is the Patriot Act. Bush signed it, Kerry voted for it. Is there a difference there? None that I can see. In fact, the Patriot Act was passed with overwhelming support from both parties. Pot, kettle, black. I could go on like this, ticking off all the things that are really important to me and showing that the differences are either negligible or non-existent between the two parties. I will readily admit that this is not the case for most people, as for most people there are issues that are very important in which the two parties differ on standpoint, approach and policy. It just happens not to work out that way, nine times out of ten, for me. Frankly, if the two party system works for you, you’re riding high, because that happens to be the kind of system we have. You get to stay within the confines of the party that exactly speaks to what’s most important to you and vote with the vast majority of the rest of the people. That doesn’t work for me and so part of my striving against the two majors is the hope that in a lifelong pattern of independent voting I can strengthen some of the smaller parties so that there will one day be more true choices for people like me.
And now, finally, we arrive at why I’m truly angry. Last week I got a letter from the Democratic Party that included a glossy 8×10 of their candidates (suitable for framing) and thanking me for all my great support. I don’t know if it’s because of my gender or what (my husband got no such letter) but excuse me, exactly where do you get off sending me this waste of trees? I am not now, nor was I ever, a member of your party. I have not now, nor likely will I ever, give your party money. I try not to give your party votes, but sometimes that can’t be helped. In case you haven’t noticed, I think your party sucks. This fawning letter was really the straw that broke the camel’s back for me, because for months I’ve been reading about how all us leftish independent voters are betraying the country and giving George Bush the election because we won’t vote Democratic. I’ve been told I’m stupid, that what I do when I vote a third party is pointless, and that I’m a traitor. Strangely, these insults and threats coming my way from Democratic pundits, bloggers and friends are not so different, from where I’m standing, to Cheney’s threats that we’ll have another attack if we vote against Bush, though I’m sure the people uttering those statements are themselves sure it’s a completely different thing.
Let’s get this straight Democrats : I’m not your pawn and I am not in your pocket. You don’t own me. I owe you nothing. I’m sick and tired of your patronizing attitude. If you wanted me to vote for your party, then you should have nominated someone I could stomach. There was someone, by the way, that I would have crossed over to the major parties and voted for with a skip in my step. He wasn’t good enough for your party leadership and now whether your candidate gets elected or not is a whole lot of not my problem. I vote my conscience, and my conscience sure doesn’t point to Kerry. If Bush gets re-elected, it is not my fault, and your saying that it is my fault won’t make it so, any more than Powell pointing at satellite pictures and saying there were WMDs in Iraq made it so. You can’t cajole me or bully me into voting for someone as a vote against someone else. I vote for candidates, not against them.
I’m sorry that your party is in such a disarray that you feel you have to use these offensive tactics against me to try and draw me in. It reeks of desperation on your part. I’m just letting you know that they’re not convincing me, just making me angry.
My next two long-brewing rants will be taxes and religious ambushes in the workplace.
More dream. It will be obvious to most where this is coming from, as it requires less analysis than usual.
The Times-Reporter [Link courtesy of Discordanian].
I no longer have any friends or relatives living in the Greater New Orleans area, but I do have plenty of acquaintances there, as well as places I love and people whom I hope are being safe.
I found this picture, from the article linked above, to be incredible:
<%image(20040915-0915neworleans.jpg|240|363|I-10 coming out of New Orleans)%>
We are bracing for Ivan here also, although we only expect wind and rain and maybe a power outage. I will remind you that our site is hosted on a box in our home, and that if we lose power for any length of time all Slithytoves will go down, including this blog. Don’t worry about us, we’ll be back as soon as we are able.
Take care, keep dry.
I have much to tell you but not much time in which to tell it. Had a great Labor Day weekend, followed by a very difficult week. I hope to have time to go into both at some point. Have composed numerous blog entries in my head that have not made it here (yet). I have been quite busy and foresee no letup in the near future. My reward for not writing these dreams down when I had them (other than the loss of clarity) is to not have had a remembered dream for a good week now. So, without further meanderings, here are several dreams had in the recent past, or what is left of them.
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This blog, Among Mad People, and its contents by Anna Schwind are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.