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THU 08.21.03 @ 4:17pm
Personally, I think I put together bitchin' mix tapes. Years and years later, I still go back and occassionally listen to the mix tapes that I made off the radio. There's one in my car now. Sure, it's got Bel Biv Devoe on it, but it's also got the extended remix of "The Violence of Summer" from Duran Duran and a 15 minute mix of every Depeche Mode song the DJ could find. Plus, this dance song I've been trying to figure out the name of so I can try to download an MP3 of it. Unfortunately, I cut off the DJ talking after the song, so even if she was going to name the song/singer, I'll never know.
So today I was flipping through my CD's because everything on the radio was CRAP, and decided that this blank CD-R had been in my case for long enough, I might as well figure out what the hell was on it.
I have since dubbed it "Mysie's Airplane CD", since I put it together for the flight to Chicago in June. I always like to bring a few mood-setting CD's along for flights, but this time had the foresight to put together a mix CD. Yay me!
Crazy - Patsy Cline
Somewhere Over The Rainbow/What a Wonderful World - Iz
The Killing Moon - Echo & The Bunnymen
Bela Lugosi's Dead - Bauhaus
Through A Broken Window - Andy Taylor
Your Song - Ewan McGregor
The Rain - A Violent Impression
The Seventh Stranger - Duran Duran
Porcelain - Moby
Touched - VAST
Elephant Love Medley - Ewan McGregor & Nicole Kidman
Tiger Tiger - Duran Duran
Windmills In Your Mind - Sting
Secret Oktober - Duran Duran
Come What May - Ewan McGregor & Nicole Kidman
Right Here, Right Now - Fatboy Slim
I think it's damn brilliant. I like to listen to mellow, moody stuff on airplanes, and that's exactly what this CD is. But then at the end, after lulling myself into a quiet, romantic state of dreaminess, I built a crescendo. It works wonderfully. The only thing I would change today would be to add on Orbital's "Halycon & On & On", and possibly The Dining Rooms. Scratch "The Seventh Stranger" and "Your Song" to make room. Shift some things about so that "Touched" is still the middle-point, it's own crescendo, but that something more mellow than "Elephant Love Medley" would be after it. That ones a little too uplifting to flow smoothly into "Tiger Tiger".
Hope I haven't just bored you to tears!
THU 08.21.03 @ 11:39am
Last night I had two dreams that I think were inspired by Shark Week. For the first, I was in a Jaws movie with Arnold Shwarzenegger. There was a flooded school. It was predictable, just like a horror film.
The second one I liked better. It started out in the water, and I was kind of afraid sharks would come. People were taking this escalator down to a lower level of the ocean, under the ocean floor, like a cave. I could see that there were sharks down there. But everyone seemed to be having a good time. In fact, the place looked like a hip, happenin' pad from the 70's, but filled with water and sharks swimming around. So I decided to go down the escalator and check it out. And here's the nifty part. I realized I could breathe underwater. Now, I dream this alot. Usually, it's right before I'm about to drown, and I take a breathe, and realize I'm not going to drown afterall. So this time, when I realized I could breathe underwater, I thought to myself, "Wow, this is just like my dreams!" I spent a while down there, what felt to me at the time like half an hour or so, and when I came back to the surface, I asked someone how long I'd been under. They said about 60 seconds. I decided to keep the whole breathing underwater thing a secret.
My "breathing underwater" dreams usually disturbs me upon waking, because I'm afraid that if caught in a real drowning situation, somehow my brain will instinctually think I know how to breathe underwater. This time, the dream was filled with so much wonder and delight, at being able to experience the ocean like that with such freedom, that it was definitely a positive dream. Despite my initial fears about the sharks.
Other dreams that I have repeatedly, other than visiting Hawaii and thinking "this time it's not a dream!", are about getting on the wrong highway or having to climb impossible stairs that I just know I'm going to fall off of. Oh, and that my husband is cheating on me or leaving me or otherwise being an incredible jerk.
FRI 08.15.03 @ 9:24am
I have been watching Shark Week on the Discovery channel with much enthusiasm the past few days. It has been exciting, eye opening, and sometimes depressing.
I thought the RoboShark episode would be lame, but it turned out to have some of the best animal footage I've ever seen. Not since I fell in love with the Trials of Life series (yes, it's on my wishlist, if you have $200 to spare!) in Psych 200 have I been this mesmerized by an animal film.
Steve was just talking last weekend about a group of sharks that hunted cooperatively. Roboshark was deployed to check out this annual sardine migration that can stretch 90 miles long. First, the dolphins show up, then the sharks (possibly following the sonar of the dolphins to dinner), then a huge whale errupted from nowhere (if it's aim had been off, it would have been "so long RoboShark!"), and there were birds diving in continuously like missiles to grab their fill. So much action, it was spectacular. And the sharks were definitely working cooperatively - they swam fin to fin, side to side, sometimes partially on top of each other to form a wall of shark. Can you imagine that many hungry mouths and bodies of pure muscle aimed at you? Amazing.
Two of the other shark shows I've watched have been entertaining, but it was the oddly advertised "Sharks Under Glass" that really stood out. What on earth was Heidi Klum doing there? Was she just a giant advertisement for Paradise Island or what??? She was barely in it, after they hyped her half-naked form all week.
The show was really fascinating, finding out all about how sharks are maintained in aquariums. But it was the segment on catching wild sharks that really turned my stomach. sprhrgrl has mentioned that she dislikes zoos, that keeping wild animals in captivity is wrong. My stance has always been that zoos are great for conservation (Woodland Park Zoo has signs hyping this up all over their grounds), but that ZERO animals should be caught in the wild and brought to replenish zoo "stock". I continue to naively hope that this is what conscientious zoos do.
This is not what aquariums do, and that sucks. There are companies out there that only exist to catch wild sharks and fish and ship them to aquariums, pet shops, and private collectors. How disgusting is that? They do so much to make sure their quarry is safe during transport, which was fascinating to see - these giant tanks for each animal. But animals belong in the wild, not zoos or aquariums.
They had many clips from one famous aquarium's curator (Chicago?), and during this segment, they had a soundbite of him saying something like "taking animals from the wild is only good if you can put something positive in the other column, and I believe the things we learn do that." That's total bull shit! I think it's great that they've learned so much about sharks, their behavior, their health. But all that's done is made it possible for them to keep sharks healthy in aquariums. It's doing JACK MOTHERFUCKING SHIT for the sharks in the wild.
I think they have a point, that kids going to aquariums see sharks and are fascinated. They get to hear myth-destroying facts. They get turned on to animal science. But Shark Week does a hell of a lot better at that every year than aquariums do. On a personal level, anyway.
I love aquariums, even more than zoos. But I think it totally sucks that they capture sharks from the wild. I don't know how to reconcile these feelings in my head. Knowledge can hurt.
THU 08.14.03 @ 8:49pm
I am feeling especially brilliant right now. I have recently discovered the band The Dining Rooms, and they are fantastic. I've never listened to college radio before, but since Ian's girlfriend works at the newest UW station, I was flipping on the radio to try and find it. I still haven't yet, but landed on the UW's KEXP instead. And heard 3 great songs in a row. One was "False Start" by The Dining Rooms, an Italian band. I was really grabbed by how clear the sound was for radio. Now that I've downloaded a copy, it sounds exactly the same. Something about the bass just creates this amazing atmosphere, like you're all alone in the dark with your headphones on just chillin'. Even on a sunny day sitting in front of your computer speakers. Odd, but in a good way.
So, I'm not so good at describing music, but apparently Amazon thinks I might enjoy "downtempo" or "hi fidelity lounge" now because I've added all The Dining Rooms' albums to my wishlist. Might have to look into that. That is, after I've acquired the other 141 items on my Wish List. Hint, hint.
Of course, I'm still an 80's child. I was also trying to find Prince's "Batdance" from the original Batman movie soundtrack. No luck. Fark.
I *really* dislike Limewire these days. Ever since I've upgraded to the OS X version, I have to quit Internet Explorer, or everything on my computer goes so slow, it's almost like everything locks up. Even force-quitting apps is damn-near impossible due to lag times.
But here I go again, looking for that damned Batdance. I'm such a sucker.
WED 08.13.03 @ 8:39pm
I was so desperate to listen to something that didn't suck during the drive to Wild Waves, I had Stephanie unearth some old mix tapes stashed in the glove compartments. I found "Mysie's Driving Mix 2", and boy, it doesn't suck. Granted, I was a very angry driver at the time, which doesn't quite suit me these days. Just how angry? These are the first 4 songs:
Ministry "Burning Inside"
Nine Inch Nails "Heresy"
L7 "Shitlist"
Stabbing Westward "Guilty"
From there, it gets all dancey with lots of Republica, some techno Tori Amos, Orbital, and... well, now I can't remember the rest. But it definitely doesn't suck.
I want an iPod so bad. Coming home and trying to duplicate my Mix Tape in the playlist of iTunes is so difficult, since about 75% of my mp3's are on my external hard drive. My lunatic ramblings about how OS X hates to play mp3's off of said hard drive should be well documented somewhere in many previous entries.
I was offered a smoking deal on a 10gb discontinued (1st generation) iPod, but I just couldn't do it. Next month I finally have to start making payments on our sofa, it's student loan payment month (I have one that only bills quarterly - it sucks), and I recently made an extravagant bedroom purchase.
I got the above duvet cover and matching sheets, but skipped the beautiful pillows because they were just way too expensive after that. The picture must be oddly lit, because it's actually made of irridescent fabric that from one vantage is deep red, and from another dark green. The details are mostly metallic gold. It's gorgeous. I've always loved Middle Eastern and Indian inspired designs, so I just fell in love with this set. So now I'm planning on doing a whole Harem theme to the bedroom. That is, once I have money again. Whenever the hell that is.
So y'know how "they" say once you learn how to ride a bike, you never forget? They're liars. I can't ride a bike. I adjusted the seat of Eric's bike, and could barely get comfortable. Then I tried and tried, and just couldn't control myself to actually pedal. When I finally did, I couldn't steer. I have no idea why. I was convinced it was because the bike is too tall for me, making me stretch uncomfortably to reach the handle bars and steer. So I came in and announce the bike was too big for me and I was giving up.
Stephanie promptly went outside and rode the thing around the block. She's at least 2 inches shorter than me. That girl needs to learn subtlety. I tried to mention it to her yesterday, but I'm not sure she gets it. Don't go rubbing people's failures in their noses. Right? Right???
I'm such a loser.
SAT 08.09.03 @ 7:58pm
Why have I not done these things yet? Why do lists work at my job, and not at home? Because of emotion. Some of those items cause real fear in me. But they need to be done. So knowing that I need to get something done, and being faced with something easier to do, I tell myself I can't do that, I need to do the hard thing. But I don't want to do the hard thing. And nothing gets done.
Rosa told me during our last visit that I could always imagine what she would say to me. I told her that I spent most of our time together doing the talking, so I didn't know her well enough. But she always supported me, and more likely than not agreed with me. I think she would agree with this assessment.
It's my job to work through it and see myself on the other side, tasks completed.
Tomorrow.
I'm off for a night of fun and games at Jenni & Steve's. Adios.
SAT 08.09.03 @ 12:19am
Things to do:
call vet (ball-chopping day)
call VW (recall repair)
call podiatrist (heel spurs)
call dentist (cleaning, wisdom teeth)
call doctor (mirgraine, gyno exam)
call mom (invite to BBQ)
send thank you's (Eric's family)
rearrange furniture to permanent places
nail down BBQ plan
plan BBQ menu
clean-up yards
get deck furniture
see if anything needs fixing before BBQ
make invites for neighbors
Why have I not done any of these things yet? Because they've all been floating in my head at the same time, and with so many things to do, it's all rather intimidating. So I block out all thoughts of being responsible and veg in front of the TV or go out and spend money. I end up feeling sorry for myself, instead of doing anything about it. Maybe, with a list, I can focus on one thing at a time and just cross things off one by one. It works at work, so what is my problem????
SAT 08.09.03 @ 12:19am
I'm not quite sure what's wrong with me. I'm not exactly sick. It's not exactly a migraine. I got the same amount of sleep last night that I got all the rest of this week, but today I really dragged. When I woke up, I thought it was just trepidation over facing work again, because yesterday was on hell of a crap day. By the end of yesterday, my whole body was aching, not just my head.
And I woke up feeling similar. So I went to work, and it felt like... I don't know. Like I was just exhausted. I wasn't moving normally, I wasn't thinking clearly, my head was throbbing mildly. I finally just went home and slept for almost 2 hours. Or at least that's what the clock said. It felt more like 3 or for hours.
Still kind of tired, kind of achey, but better. It felt almost like the aches of the flu, except without of the any "sick" symptoms like runny nose and fever. Weird. Probably just not enough sleep. It's really bizarre how much sleep I need to feel human.
Hopefully, once summer is over, this site won't be so dead anymore. I'm just so tired and non-inspired lately, with too much going on. Between work and the house and babysitting, I'm feeling once again like there's too much on my plate and I'm going to crack.
I keep trying to watch movies in the hopes that something will inspire me enough to write a real movie review, and then I'll be back on the wagon, writing regularly again. But despite watching great films, I just don't ever get off the couch and come up here to write about it. I'm not writing anymore, and that bugs me. But apparently not enough to do much about it.
We are having a Housewarming BBQ on Aug. 30, a Saturday. If you'd like to come and haven't received an evite, just let me know. I can't seem to find a way to link to the evite that other people can see.
I am afraid we won't be able to get this place into shape by then. We are so fucking lazy. We're bums. It's been downright shameful around here this last week. In the past, we've told people "you can't come in!" when the apartment got this bad. But we've been watching Stephanie all week, and I didn't even realize this place was so bad until Thursday. The entire family is now going to know just what kind of slobs we are after this.
FRI 08.01.03 @ 9:51pm
So what have I been up to while I tried not to wither from the heat? I did manage to peak on the internet every now and then, but my neice does not allow for much privacy. I don't think I'm a perv for looking at things with a sexual nature on the internet, but I have no desire for her to witness any of it over my shoulder.
That said, I did accidentally stumble over the weirdest link. I was grabbed by the "Fantasia 2003" reference, and was searching the article for said Disney reference when I caught a teensy glimpse into hell, which here is called Sixteen Tongues. The IMDB tag line makes it sound rather banal, compared to what's at the first link: a blow by blow of the first gruesome, pseudo-sexual scene. Ick.
So with the disturbing mood set, I bring you some disturbing news clips from the past week or so.
Here we have New York's (the world's?) first gay public school. That's right, boys and girls: if you're gay, you can apply to attend your very own discrimination-free zone in New York. Yippie! To Hell with trying to get the school boards, local governments, and national government to give a shit about the hazing, bigotry, and violence against gays in our public school system. Let's just send all those fags to their own little "safe" house!!! Yee-haw! It worked so well for Liberia, dontcha think? If you can't tell from my sarcasm, I think this is a load of CRAP. Pooh. Excrement. SHIIIIIIIIT. The daily learning environment for out kids in public schools is in large part horrifying. But putting them away doesn't solve a fucking thing. It makes the school district look like a hero for being giant wussies. Pansies who can't do the hard thing and hold their establishments accountable for not protecting all the children under their care. Not to mention the loud SMACK of segregation. Fuck, is this shit even CONSTITUTIONAL??? Someone on Seagoth mentioned that there is an African American Academy in the Seattle School District. Holy Shit. How does this stuff happen? And how the hell does the community stand for it? Disgusting. Teach tolerance in schools. Teach African American history, and not just during Black History Month. Kick out the screw-ups who can't look at someone different than them without resorting to violence. But don't put the "different" kids in a nice safe little corner, where no one will have to look and deal with them again.
Disturbed yet? Take a look at Marc Schultz's ordeal in Atlanta last month when he was visited by the FBI. For reading. In a book shop. Waiting in line for the new Harry Potter. What on earth was this sinister man reading? A print out of an online article his father had forwarded to him. For some inexplicable reason titled "Weapons of Mass Stupidity", despite being about the evils of Fox News. [OMG, did Bill O'Reilly *really* personally threaten the son of a 9/11 victim because he was against the war? What a nutjob!] I just don't get it. What are crazy people trolling around bookstores doing calling up the FBI because they were spying over their fellow Harry Potter patrons? And what the FUCK was the FBI doing taking that shit seriously? To the point of threatening this man as if he were hiding something. What, a Harry Potter conspiracy????
Doesn't anyone remember that annoying Bruce Willis/Denzel Washington movie, The Siege? Why are we turning America into a military state? It's not enough that terrorists are attacking us, but now we're going to treat our citizens like traitors? Over reading material? McCarthyism was bad people. Remember??? I'm getting a little tired of people merely going, "If it helps safety" every time their civil rights are taken away. Things are getting more and more creepy around here.
And while I'm being paranoid about America's current paranoia, I'd like to make a case for ADC.org. The local radio station ran by high school students, KNHC, does regular public-service announcement type blurbs. They call them "special reports", I think because the person reading it did the research on the topic. Today I heard one about discrimination. Have you been discriminated against? Go here. Has the local police, FBI, or government discriminated against you? Go here. Have the airlines discriminated against you? Go here. Almost all of the "Go here"s were sponsored by someone called "ADC.org". I went "Hmm, wonder who that is?" and popped on the internet.
ADC.org refuses to load. Little notes about the loading at the bottom of my screen say things about "forbidden" and "error". So I went to google, to see if I could at least find out what the ADC was. Right there, link #2, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. OK, I guess that makes sense. So I click on the cached version of the page, a handy use for googling defunct pages.
Try it yourself. It looks benign enough, doesn't it? Stuff about investigating hate crimes, human rights awards, the Supreme Court upholding Affirmative Action. Typical stuff for an anti-discrimination group to talk about. So why is their site down? Why is their content "forbidden"? I'm not saying I think these people were necessarily saints or squeaky clean. Hell, the front page mentions "Israeli Propaganda Strategy" and "6 Common Israeli Myths", both of which sound like a nasty can of worms just waiting to piss you off. IF you could click on the links.
So why can't I? Did someone decide I shouldn't be allowed to? I heard on the news recently that there was another wave of Arab organizations being targeted for investigation for assisting Al Quaida or Iraq or somesuch. Nifty. I'm sure that with the FBI's gung-ho attitude lately (see above), they'll be finding lots of guilty people, I just hope they remember to let the innocent go when they're done with them.
But are they shutting down websites too? Shouldn't they tell us they are? Do they even have a right to do this at all? I seem to remember hearing something about sites being shut down after 9/11, but that seems so long ago now, I can't remember any details. Is this somehow tied in to that?
Because this has to be a recent shut-down. KNHC special reports change all the time. They don't reuse them after a week or so. So whoever did research on the discrimination topic was able to access this website sometime in the last few weeks.
And now you and I cannot. Because a) they shut down, or b) someone shut them down.
I'm hoping it's option A. I really am. Because this is America guys, remember? Bill of Rights? Constitution? Innocent until proven guilty? Freedom of Speech? Freedom of the Press?
Please, NOB, let there be an intelligent Democrat on the ticket come election time. Bush is one scary man. One day of hell created by a foreign madman, and he uses it to turn our world upside down and make himself King. Emperor. Hell, I bet the man believes he has personal conversations with God. Isn't it election time yet????
FRI 08.01.03 @ 11:40am
I can't believe I forgot to mention Rosa. It's been such a horrible week for being creative or motivated, due to all the heat.
Wednesday was my last regularly scheduled thereapy appointment. It just came out of the blue, that I'm feeling much better lately, more stable. Rosa was very agreeable to the idea of not seeing me for awhile. She wants to see me in 3 months, mostly to make sure my meds are going ok. We had a long talk about everything that's transpired.
It has been an amazing journey to this person whom I am today. On the one hand, I feel like a completely different person. On the other, I feel exactly the same. A strange combination. But I like it. I was really nervous after I made the decision to go it alone, but I was set on it nonetheless. I walked out of her office and just couldn't stop smiling. It was a wonderful feeling, to think of myself as healthy and normal.
I'm always going to be coming at things from the disadvantage of depression, but my meds and my lessons help me level the playing field. Here's to good health.
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Personally, I think I put together bitchin' mix tapes. Years and years later, I still go back and occassionally listen to the mix tapes that I made off the radio. There's one in my car now. Sure, it's got Bel Biv Devoe on it, but it's also got the extended remix of "The Violence of Summer" from Duran Duran and a 15 minute mix of every Depeche Mode song the DJ could find. Plus, this dance song I've been trying to figure out the name of so I can try to download an MP3 of it. Unfortunately, I cut off the DJ talking after the song, so even if she was going to name the song/singer, I'll never know.
So today I was flipping through my CD's because everything on the radio was CRAP, and decided that this blank CD-R had been in my case for long enough, I might as well figure out what the hell was on it.
I have since dubbed it "Mysie's Airplane CD", since I put it together for the flight to Chicago in June. I always like to bring a few mood-setting CD's along for flights, but this time had the foresight to put together a mix CD. Yay me!
Crazy - Patsy Cline
Somewhere Over The Rainbow/What a Wonderful World - Iz
The Killing Moon - Echo & The Bunnymen
Bela Lugosi's Dead - Bauhaus
Through A Broken Window - Andy Taylor
Your Song - Ewan McGregor
The Rain - A Violent Impression
The Seventh Stranger - Duran Duran
Porcelain - Moby
Touched - VAST
Elephant Love Medley - Ewan McGregor & Nicole Kidman
Tiger Tiger - Duran Duran
Windmills In Your Mind - Sting
Secret Oktober - Duran Duran
Come What May - Ewan McGregor & Nicole Kidman
Right Here, Right Now - Fatboy Slim
I think it's damn brilliant. I like to listen to mellow, moody stuff on airplanes, and that's exactly what this CD is. But then at the end, after lulling myself into a quiet, romantic state of dreaminess, I built a crescendo. It works wonderfully. The only thing I would change today would be to add on Orbital's "Halycon & On & On", and possibly The Dining Rooms. Scratch "The Seventh Stranger" and "Your Song" to make room. Shift some things about so that "Touched" is still the middle-point, it's own crescendo, but that something more mellow than "Elephant Love Medley" would be after it. That ones a little too uplifting to flow smoothly into "Tiger Tiger".
Hope I haven't just bored you to tears!
THU 08.21.03 @ 11:39am
Last night I had two dreams that I think were inspired by Shark Week. For the first, I was in a Jaws movie with Arnold Shwarzenegger. There was a flooded school. It was predictable, just like a horror film.
The second one I liked better. It started out in the water, and I was kind of afraid sharks would come. People were taking this escalator down to a lower level of the ocean, under the ocean floor, like a cave. I could see that there were sharks down there. But everyone seemed to be having a good time. In fact, the place looked like a hip, happenin' pad from the 70's, but filled with water and sharks swimming around. So I decided to go down the escalator and check it out. And here's the nifty part. I realized I could breathe underwater. Now, I dream this alot. Usually, it's right before I'm about to drown, and I take a breathe, and realize I'm not going to drown afterall. So this time, when I realized I could breathe underwater, I thought to myself, "Wow, this is just like my dreams!" I spent a while down there, what felt to me at the time like half an hour or so, and when I came back to the surface, I asked someone how long I'd been under. They said about 60 seconds. I decided to keep the whole breathing underwater thing a secret.
My "breathing underwater" dreams usually disturbs me upon waking, because I'm afraid that if caught in a real drowning situation, somehow my brain will instinctually think I know how to breathe underwater. This time, the dream was filled with so much wonder and delight, at being able to experience the ocean like that with such freedom, that it was definitely a positive dream. Despite my initial fears about the sharks.
Other dreams that I have repeatedly, other than visiting Hawaii and thinking "this time it's not a dream!", are about getting on the wrong highway or having to climb impossible stairs that I just know I'm going to fall off of. Oh, and that my husband is cheating on me or leaving me or otherwise being an incredible jerk.
FRI 08.15.03 @ 9:24am
I have been watching Shark Week on the Discovery channel with much enthusiasm the past few days. It has been exciting, eye opening, and sometimes depressing.
I thought the RoboShark episode would be lame, but it turned out to have some of the best animal footage I've ever seen. Not since I fell in love with the Trials of Life series (yes, it's on my wishlist, if you have $200 to spare!) in Psych 200 have I been this mesmerized by an animal film.
Steve was just talking last weekend about a group of sharks that hunted cooperatively. Roboshark was deployed to check out this annual sardine migration that can stretch 90 miles long. First, the dolphins show up, then the sharks (possibly following the sonar of the dolphins to dinner), then a huge whale errupted from nowhere (if it's aim had been off, it would have been "so long RoboShark!"), and there were birds diving in continuously like missiles to grab their fill. So much action, it was spectacular. And the sharks were definitely working cooperatively - they swam fin to fin, side to side, sometimes partially on top of each other to form a wall of shark. Can you imagine that many hungry mouths and bodies of pure muscle aimed at you? Amazing.
Two of the other shark shows I've watched have been entertaining, but it was the oddly advertised "Sharks Under Glass" that really stood out. What on earth was Heidi Klum doing there? Was she just a giant advertisement for Paradise Island or what??? She was barely in it, after they hyped her half-naked form all week.
The show was really fascinating, finding out all about how sharks are maintained in aquariums. But it was the segment on catching wild sharks that really turned my stomach. sprhrgrl has mentioned that she dislikes zoos, that keeping wild animals in captivity is wrong. My stance has always been that zoos are great for conservation (Woodland Park Zoo has signs hyping this up all over their grounds), but that ZERO animals should be caught in the wild and brought to replenish zoo "stock". I continue to naively hope that this is what conscientious zoos do.
This is not what aquariums do, and that sucks. There are companies out there that only exist to catch wild sharks and fish and ship them to aquariums, pet shops, and private collectors. How disgusting is that? They do so much to make sure their quarry is safe during transport, which was fascinating to see - these giant tanks for each animal. But animals belong in the wild, not zoos or aquariums.
They had many clips from one famous aquarium's curator (Chicago?), and during this segment, they had a soundbite of him saying something like "taking animals from the wild is only good if you can put something positive in the other column, and I believe the things we learn do that." That's total bull shit! I think it's great that they've learned so much about sharks, their behavior, their health. But all that's done is made it possible for them to keep sharks healthy in aquariums. It's doing JACK MOTHERFUCKING SHIT for the sharks in the wild.
I think they have a point, that kids going to aquariums see sharks and are fascinated. They get to hear myth-destroying facts. They get turned on to animal science. But Shark Week does a hell of a lot better at that every year than aquariums do. On a personal level, anyway.
I love aquariums, even more than zoos. But I think it totally sucks that they capture sharks from the wild. I don't know how to reconcile these feelings in my head. Knowledge can hurt.
THU 08.14.03 @ 8:49pm
I am feeling especially brilliant right now. I have recently discovered the band The Dining Rooms, and they are fantastic. I've never listened to college radio before, but since Ian's girlfriend works at the newest UW station, I was flipping on the radio to try and find it. I still haven't yet, but landed on the UW's KEXP instead. And heard 3 great songs in a row. One was "False Start" by The Dining Rooms, an Italian band. I was really grabbed by how clear the sound was for radio. Now that I've downloaded a copy, it sounds exactly the same. Something about the bass just creates this amazing atmosphere, like you're all alone in the dark with your headphones on just chillin'. Even on a sunny day sitting in front of your computer speakers. Odd, but in a good way.
So, I'm not so good at describing music, but apparently Amazon thinks I might enjoy "downtempo" or "hi fidelity lounge" now because I've added all The Dining Rooms' albums to my wishlist. Might have to look into that. That is, after I've acquired the other 141 items on my Wish List. Hint, hint.
Of course, I'm still an 80's child. I was also trying to find Prince's "Batdance" from the original Batman movie soundtrack. No luck. Fark.
I *really* dislike Limewire these days. Ever since I've upgraded to the OS X version, I have to quit Internet Explorer, or everything on my computer goes so slow, it's almost like everything locks up. Even force-quitting apps is damn-near impossible due to lag times.
But here I go again, looking for that damned Batdance. I'm such a sucker.
WED 08.13.03 @ 8:39pm
I was so desperate to listen to something that didn't suck during the drive to Wild Waves, I had Stephanie unearth some old mix tapes stashed in the glove compartments. I found "Mysie's Driving Mix 2", and boy, it doesn't suck. Granted, I was a very angry driver at the time, which doesn't quite suit me these days. Just how angry? These are the first 4 songs:
Ministry "Burning Inside"
Nine Inch Nails "Heresy"
L7 "Shitlist"
Stabbing Westward "Guilty"
From there, it gets all dancey with lots of Republica, some techno Tori Amos, Orbital, and... well, now I can't remember the rest. But it definitely doesn't suck.
I want an iPod so bad. Coming home and trying to duplicate my Mix Tape in the playlist of iTunes is so difficult, since about 75% of my mp3's are on my external hard drive. My lunatic ramblings about how OS X hates to play mp3's off of said hard drive should be well documented somewhere in many previous entries.
I was offered a smoking deal on a 10gb discontinued (1st generation) iPod, but I just couldn't do it. Next month I finally have to start making payments on our sofa, it's student loan payment month (I have one that only bills quarterly - it sucks), and I recently made an extravagant bedroom purchase.
I got the above duvet cover and matching sheets, but skipped the beautiful pillows because they were just way too expensive after that. The picture must be oddly lit, because it's actually made of irridescent fabric that from one vantage is deep red, and from another dark green. The details are mostly metallic gold. It's gorgeous. I've always loved Middle Eastern and Indian inspired designs, so I just fell in love with this set. So now I'm planning on doing a whole Harem theme to the bedroom. That is, once I have money again. Whenever the hell that is.
So y'know how "they" say once you learn how to ride a bike, you never forget? They're liars. I can't ride a bike. I adjusted the seat of Eric's bike, and could barely get comfortable. Then I tried and tried, and just couldn't control myself to actually pedal. When I finally did, I couldn't steer. I have no idea why. I was convinced it was because the bike is too tall for me, making me stretch uncomfortably to reach the handle bars and steer. So I came in and announce the bike was too big for me and I was giving up.
Stephanie promptly went outside and rode the thing around the block. She's at least 2 inches shorter than me. That girl needs to learn subtlety. I tried to mention it to her yesterday, but I'm not sure she gets it. Don't go rubbing people's failures in their noses. Right? Right???
I'm such a loser.
SAT 08.09.03 @ 7:58pm
Why have I not done these things yet? Why do lists work at my job, and not at home? Because of emotion. Some of those items cause real fear in me. But they need to be done. So knowing that I need to get something done, and being faced with something easier to do, I tell myself I can't do that, I need to do the hard thing. But I don't want to do the hard thing. And nothing gets done.
Rosa told me during our last visit that I could always imagine what she would say to me. I told her that I spent most of our time together doing the talking, so I didn't know her well enough. But she always supported me, and more likely than not agreed with me. I think she would agree with this assessment.
It's my job to work through it and see myself on the other side, tasks completed.
Tomorrow.
I'm off for a night of fun and games at Jenni & Steve's. Adios.
SAT 08.09.03 @ 12:19am
Things to do:
call vet (ball-chopping day)
call VW (recall repair)
call podiatrist (heel spurs)
call dentist (cleaning, wisdom teeth)
call doctor (mirgraine, gyno exam)
call mom (invite to BBQ)
send thank you's (Eric's family)
rearrange furniture to permanent places
nail down BBQ plan
plan BBQ menu
clean-up yards
get deck furniture
see if anything needs fixing before BBQ
make invites for neighbors
Why have I not done any of these things yet? Because they've all been floating in my head at the same time, and with so many things to do, it's all rather intimidating. So I block out all thoughts of being responsible and veg in front of the TV or go out and spend money. I end up feeling sorry for myself, instead of doing anything about it. Maybe, with a list, I can focus on one thing at a time and just cross things off one by one. It works at work, so what is my problem????
SAT 08.09.03 @ 12:19am
I'm not quite sure what's wrong with me. I'm not exactly sick. It's not exactly a migraine. I got the same amount of sleep last night that I got all the rest of this week, but today I really dragged. When I woke up, I thought it was just trepidation over facing work again, because yesterday was on hell of a crap day. By the end of yesterday, my whole body was aching, not just my head.
And I woke up feeling similar. So I went to work, and it felt like... I don't know. Like I was just exhausted. I wasn't moving normally, I wasn't thinking clearly, my head was throbbing mildly. I finally just went home and slept for almost 2 hours. Or at least that's what the clock said. It felt more like 3 or for hours.
Still kind of tired, kind of achey, but better. It felt almost like the aches of the flu, except without of the any "sick" symptoms like runny nose and fever. Weird. Probably just not enough sleep. It's really bizarre how much sleep I need to feel human.
Hopefully, once summer is over, this site won't be so dead anymore. I'm just so tired and non-inspired lately, with too much going on. Between work and the house and babysitting, I'm feeling once again like there's too much on my plate and I'm going to crack.
I keep trying to watch movies in the hopes that something will inspire me enough to write a real movie review, and then I'll be back on the wagon, writing regularly again. But despite watching great films, I just don't ever get off the couch and come up here to write about it. I'm not writing anymore, and that bugs me. But apparently not enough to do much about it.
We are having a Housewarming BBQ on Aug. 30, a Saturday. If you'd like to come and haven't received an evite, just let me know. I can't seem to find a way to link to the evite that other people can see.
I am afraid we won't be able to get this place into shape by then. We are so fucking lazy. We're bums. It's been downright shameful around here this last week. In the past, we've told people "you can't come in!" when the apartment got this bad. But we've been watching Stephanie all week, and I didn't even realize this place was so bad until Thursday. The entire family is now going to know just what kind of slobs we are after this.
FRI 08.01.03 @ 9:51pm
So what have I been up to while I tried not to wither from the heat? I did manage to peak on the internet every now and then, but my neice does not allow for much privacy. I don't think I'm a perv for looking at things with a sexual nature on the internet, but I have no desire for her to witness any of it over my shoulder.
That said, I did accidentally stumble over the weirdest link. I was grabbed by the "Fantasia 2003" reference, and was searching the article for said Disney reference when I caught a teensy glimpse into hell, which here is called Sixteen Tongues. The IMDB tag line makes it sound rather banal, compared to what's at the first link: a blow by blow of the first gruesome, pseudo-sexual scene. Ick.
So with the disturbing mood set, I bring you some disturbing news clips from the past week or so.
Here we have New York's (the world's?) first gay public school. That's right, boys and girls: if you're gay, you can apply to attend your very own discrimination-free zone in New York. Yippie! To Hell with trying to get the school boards, local governments, and national government to give a shit about the hazing, bigotry, and violence against gays in our public school system. Let's just send all those fags to their own little "safe" house!!! Yee-haw! It worked so well for Liberia, dontcha think? If you can't tell from my sarcasm, I think this is a load of CRAP. Pooh. Excrement. SHIIIIIIIIT. The daily learning environment for out kids in public schools is in large part horrifying. But putting them away doesn't solve a fucking thing. It makes the school district look like a hero for being giant wussies. Pansies who can't do the hard thing and hold their establishments accountable for not protecting all the children under their care. Not to mention the loud SMACK of segregation. Fuck, is this shit even CONSTITUTIONAL??? Someone on Seagoth mentioned that there is an African American Academy in the Seattle School District. Holy Shit. How does this stuff happen? And how the hell does the community stand for it? Disgusting. Teach tolerance in schools. Teach African American history, and not just during Black History Month. Kick out the screw-ups who can't look at someone different than them without resorting to violence. But don't put the "different" kids in a nice safe little corner, where no one will have to look and deal with them again.
Disturbed yet? Take a look at Marc Schultz's ordeal in Atlanta last month when he was visited by the FBI. For reading. In a book shop. Waiting in line for the new Harry Potter. What on earth was this sinister man reading? A print out of an online article his father had forwarded to him. For some inexplicable reason titled "Weapons of Mass Stupidity", despite being about the evils of Fox News. [OMG, did Bill O'Reilly *really* personally threaten the son of a 9/11 victim because he was against the war? What a nutjob!] I just don't get it. What are crazy people trolling around bookstores doing calling up the FBI because they were spying over their fellow Harry Potter patrons? And what the FUCK was the FBI doing taking that shit seriously? To the point of threatening this man as if he were hiding something. What, a Harry Potter conspiracy????
Doesn't anyone remember that annoying Bruce Willis/Denzel Washington movie, The Siege? Why are we turning America into a military state? It's not enough that terrorists are attacking us, but now we're going to treat our citizens like traitors? Over reading material? McCarthyism was bad people. Remember??? I'm getting a little tired of people merely going, "If it helps safety" every time their civil rights are taken away. Things are getting more and more creepy around here.
And while I'm being paranoid about America's current paranoia, I'd like to make a case for ADC.org. The local radio station ran by high school students, KNHC, does regular public-service announcement type blurbs. They call them "special reports", I think because the person reading it did the research on the topic. Today I heard one about discrimination. Have you been discriminated against? Go here. Has the local police, FBI, or government discriminated against you? Go here. Have the airlines discriminated against you? Go here. Almost all of the "Go here"s were sponsored by someone called "ADC.org". I went "Hmm, wonder who that is?" and popped on the internet.
ADC.org refuses to load. Little notes about the loading at the bottom of my screen say things about "forbidden" and "error". So I went to google, to see if I could at least find out what the ADC was. Right there, link #2, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. OK, I guess that makes sense. So I click on the cached version of the page, a handy use for googling defunct pages.
Try it yourself. It looks benign enough, doesn't it? Stuff about investigating hate crimes, human rights awards, the Supreme Court upholding Affirmative Action. Typical stuff for an anti-discrimination group to talk about. So why is their site down? Why is their content "forbidden"? I'm not saying I think these people were necessarily saints or squeaky clean. Hell, the front page mentions "Israeli Propaganda Strategy" and "6 Common Israeli Myths", both of which sound like a nasty can of worms just waiting to piss you off. IF you could click on the links.
So why can't I? Did someone decide I shouldn't be allowed to? I heard on the news recently that there was another wave of Arab organizations being targeted for investigation for assisting Al Quaida or Iraq or somesuch. Nifty. I'm sure that with the FBI's gung-ho attitude lately (see above), they'll be finding lots of guilty people, I just hope they remember to let the innocent go when they're done with them.
But are they shutting down websites too? Shouldn't they tell us they are? Do they even have a right to do this at all? I seem to remember hearing something about sites being shut down after 9/11, but that seems so long ago now, I can't remember any details. Is this somehow tied in to that?
Because this has to be a recent shut-down. KNHC special reports change all the time. They don't reuse them after a week or so. So whoever did research on the discrimination topic was able to access this website sometime in the last few weeks.
And now you and I cannot. Because a) they shut down, or b) someone shut them down.
I'm hoping it's option A. I really am. Because this is America guys, remember? Bill of Rights? Constitution? Innocent until proven guilty? Freedom of Speech? Freedom of the Press?
Please, NOB, let there be an intelligent Democrat on the ticket come election time. Bush is one scary man. One day of hell created by a foreign madman, and he uses it to turn our world upside down and make himself King. Emperor. Hell, I bet the man believes he has personal conversations with God. Isn't it election time yet????
FRI 08.01.03 @ 11:40am
I can't believe I forgot to mention Rosa. It's been such a horrible week for being creative or motivated, due to all the heat.
Wednesday was my last regularly scheduled thereapy appointment. It just came out of the blue, that I'm feeling much better lately, more stable. Rosa was very agreeable to the idea of not seeing me for awhile. She wants to see me in 3 months, mostly to make sure my meds are going ok. We had a long talk about everything that's transpired.
It has been an amazing journey to this person whom I am today. On the one hand, I feel like a completely different person. On the other, I feel exactly the same. A strange combination. But I like it. I was really nervous after I made the decision to go it alone, but I was set on it nonetheless. I walked out of her office and just couldn't stop smiling. It was a wonderful feeling, to think of myself as healthy and normal.
I'm always going to be coming at things from the disadvantage of depression, but my meds and my lessons help me level the playing field. Here's to good health.
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