July 2003 Archives

Alan Moore: I read League. Well, I tried. Maybe The Watchmen was the apex of your career - it was amazing, and revolutionary, and I loved it. This...

Guy at Dragon's Lair: When I told you my heart was breaking because The Invisibles was over, you recommended Transmetropolitan instead of Planetary. What the hell were you thinking? I could have been reading Planetary years ago!!

My Own Common Sense: How did you not predict that Tadpole would be so vicariously socially awkward that you couldn't bear to finish watching it? However, it was an extremely cool feeling to just go into the indie video store and rent whatever I wanted. I had already cut up my Blockbuster card, so I didn't get the $2 off or whatever they were offering to help me transition away from sending my money on censorship.

Alarming news first:

1. The Dog is potentially smarter than we thought. On Saturday I apologized to her for still being in bed at 8:36 a.m., and politely asked if she could help by pulling me up. She was jumping down from the bed when I said that last part, and she immediately jumped back up with a rope toy.
2. George Bush is still President. Oh wait, that's not news. ActForChange does have a "Regime Change Alert" you can subscribe to that will email you when he's out, though, if that's any consolation.
3. It only takes one drop of boiling water to hurt. And if you're me, to make a big red mark on your hand.
4. Dreamweaver is having a fatal exception whenever I try to use templates, library objects, or make sitewide link changes. Hrm. I guess that isn't news, though, since it only affects my life. And my employer's life, since I'm working on our site at home right now. But like the second item, not news. Just...stuff.

Now lovely news:

1. Some people realize that tax breaks right now are a very bad idea, and they're taking it personally. Or rather giving it away personally. See United For a Fair Economy for more information.
   I have major guilt for not donating my $300 in whatever year that was, but I was very very broke at the time. Broke by middle-class standards, of course, not lacking food or anything. I like to think I'm making up for it now with my Smallest Salary Ever Received By Me In Full-Time Professional Employment. It's more than twice as much as I made working retail stockroom at the Mall of America, but I didn't have any student loans back then and rent was $200.
2. An article in the New York Times, brought to my attention by The Daily Grist, says I belong to a marketing niche. I'm one of the Lohas: "the term stands for "lifestyles of health and sustainability" and was coined a few years back by marketers to define a growing niche of goods and services designed to attract eco-friendly consumers. Lohas offerings range from organic foods to herbal remedies, solar panels to ecotourism." Surely a tailored matchmaking service can't be far behind, and then I never have to date again. Just marry someone who will recycle even the dots that come out of the hole punch and teach our children that running the A/C at 68 will in fact damn you straight to hell for all eternity.

I won't bother linking to the NYT article, since they seem to have the idea that their product should cost money unless you look at it on a specific day. What*ever*.

Of the count-on-one-hand sites that have links to this blog, two seem to have done it on purpose. I just can't imagine why. Not in a low self esteem kind of way, but in a "why is this interesting if people don't know me?" kind of way. It's not like I'm I-ROCK, who blogs about computer stuff that other computer stuff people would want to read about. I just ramble.

[Less so now that I rewrote history by cleaning out my archives, but that's cheating.]

I'm perfectly aware that I am putting content on a website, rather than on my refrigerator, so the number of people who can see it is less limited. But how in the world did a stranger in Australia end up here? Now I feel like I have to say something more interesting.

I could not have set my expectations low enough for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. The best thing about it was the matinee pricing.

However, my walk there proved that I now live only 15 minutes away from The Alamo Drafthouse North and The Quilt Store. They're in the same parking lot - it's very convenient.

As I was deciding in May to discontinue my current relationship, I suddenly became aware of the tiny empty eggshells all over my old neighborhood. I never saw the new birds, but they had left me encouragements. Then I moved to my new apartment and on the second night I was here, the courtyard was full of fireflies. My mother said she hadn't seen any in Texas for decades. And after it rains here, we get big round snails that crawl across the sidewalks and into the flowerbeds and scare The Dog silly by moving their antennae.

I appreciate the universe going out of its way to reassure me that everything is just as it should be.

It doesn't feel like that yet, but I am keeping firmly in mind that since I got back here in July 2000 I have only been single for three months, and I have never ever lived alone before. So the disoriented and somewhat sinking feeling I get when returning to the just-me-and-the-dog apartment is not a sign of impending apocalypse. It's just adjustment.

I feel like I'm going to get caught sneaking out of something, as if there's a life I'm supposed to be in that doesn't involve going to the grocery store alone or turning 29 in September with no ring, no house, and no kids. I remember looking at my friends in Boston, who were around 30 and single with no "prospects" on the horizon, and thinking "How curious." It never occurred to me that I could be there. But I'm not going to wake up and be where I thought I would, since that would require retroactively getting married and having children. That would most likely produce the feeling of "I've been in a coma for six years, look how everything's changed, and now I'm in a made for Lifetime TV movie." I'll pass. Many of my friends seem to think I need a pep talk when I say I'm lonely right now, but I'm pretty sure I just need to sit with it.

The lack of children thing does bother me, though, because I need at least one to take down to the Texas Legislature. It's obvious from their decisions that they've never actually met a child, or they would know something about what children need. If I had one to lend (in a carefully supervised setting, of course), it could do a lot for public policy.