Friendship State + Lots of executions=Texas!!

November 20

Man, I have been bored stupid at work. For two weeks, I've had 8 hours of nothing to do a day. I've asked everyone who can give me something--nope, they got bupkis for me. I'm tired of web-surfing. I don't have the chutzpah to read a book at my desk (which would be just as useful). I don't have anything due to me until Friday. Eh.

The good thing is, I'll be out of here next week, which means I'll probably have lots of crap on my desk when I return from Tejas (the Friendship State!) I've done some writing, but I can't really write that well on company time. Not from guilt, but because there's too much noise, too many people walking by my cube or looking over my cube while they stand at the copier (I hate that about my cube). I don't want to be pouring my heart out when they ask me "how's it going?"

I am typing this at work, of course, but on a minimized screen that's hard to see.

Also, it's harder to just sit here because my pants are squeezing me to death. Listen, is the Tight in the Ass Pants revolution almost over? These fit me in the waist but have my butt in a low-riding Death Grip. Geez. I mean, it's good in a way, because I want to eat a lot less for fear my pants will cut of the blood supply to my legs. But I would really love pants that gave you a little room to sit down, fer cryin out loud.

I guess I shouldn't expect so much from the $20 Old Navy specials, but sigh. I miss a waist that actually came up to my waist. I don't need the low-riding ass-squeezing. I have no desire to wear a belly chain, or tiny-tee, because I'm not 14, and even if I were I'd most likely wear oversized shirts and baggy jeans in protest against the misery that was my life.

Speaking of those wacky kids today, my slightly older co-worker was complaining about how the IM-abbreviations kids use are "ruining" the language, which is why he doesn't IM. But it's not a rule that you have to abide by, you know. On the rare occasions I bother using IM, I spell things correctly, because why learn new spellings just to impress teenagers with how kewl I am? Do I want to make them ROFL? Or LOL? Do I care?

No. I haven't got the brain space. I don' t think you can "ruin" a language, anyway. Does it allow you to communicate effectively? Then it's a good enough language. When the IM kids grow up and take over, they can LOL all they want, I won't care. I'll be old, and too busy arguing with my nursing home caretakers to notice.

November 14

There are limits to what a web journal can do. Mine is more serious than a lot of the ones I read, because comedy is hard, and because I have a shortage of real people to talk about things like religion and gender identity with. Writing it down here helps me think.

There's also the confessional aspect; me telling you stories, sometimes embarrassing or sad, of my life, because I think someone who reads them might have felt something similar, and not feel so alone in their weirdness. The kind of thing I would have liked to read when I was younger, especially, to reassure me that strangeness is not a sentence of lifelong loneliness and despair. It might even make you happier, in the long run.

But there is occasionally stuff in my life that just won't translate here. Things I'm still figuring out, mostly, and writing them down would short-circuit or warp the process. Last week had some of that. I'm not trying to build suspense or pique your curiosity here. What I'm talking about is just opinions, plans, and dreams that may or may not be taking shape that I can't write about here just yet, because I don't know what I think. That's my long, overly detailed reasons for not writing much last week. Sorry to be so mysterious.

And now, how about some cats in hats.

Also, Matthew's site is up! He's the coolest boy in school, and I get to wear his letter jacket. Nyah.

November 6

Trying to get back to some kind of regular updates. This is going to be an odd month. At work, it's a slow time between seasons, at least for Production. Matt and I are going back to Texas for a week at Thanksgiving. I'm taking up knitting.

Odd stuff. I continue to write, bits of this and that which may be stories after all, some which won't go anywhere, some that stretch out longer and longer but still may not go anywhere. If I'm lucky, some of it will turn into something useful.

Much like knitting, actually.

We're flirting with winter, here, although this autumn hasn't been that spectacular. The wind has an edge, and you feel it on any bit of skin that's not covered. I predict, with a complete lack of credentials or experience on which to base it, that we'll have a goodly amount of snow this year.

One of my best memories is a freak snowfall we had in Texas when I was about 4 or 5, and our steep driveway iced up. We got out cardboard and trash can lids, and sledded down fearlessly into the street. No one was driving in our neighborhood that day. I have a picture of myself my sister took when I was playing; I'm in bell bottoms which are soaked with snow, no boots, just socks and my favorite green-striped Adidas.I can remember how cold the snow felt when it got under my cuffs and onto my ankles, how excited I was to be out in the white stuff, how I never learned to make a good snowball. And the next day, it melted. I only saw it again, in skimpy amounts, 2 or 3 times after that. Snow was what I wanted every Christmas and never got.

It'll be interesting to see if I get tired of it after I get to freeze my tuckus off a little. You'll be the first to know.

November 3

Even though he's one of my favorite links, James Lileks has become harder for me to read every morning. His hawkishness on Iraq, his persistent refusal to entertain the idea that those protesting this putative war have any ideological legs to stand on, is disturbing. He's a sharp-minded writer, generally speaking, but his promotion of the war seems mostly to consist of straw-men arguments...taking the vaguest, most silly-sounding statements of the opposition and ridiculing them. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are an always-ready source of vague posturing flappery, but there are many more eloquent opponents that Lileks never seems to read.

The troubling lack of connection between Hussein and Al-Qaeda, the way this administration keeps changing tacks whenever they can't defend their current argument, should bother someone like Lileks. Even if he were to still go on to advocate the war, he is a smart enough writer to know bull when he smells it. And that particular miasma has been dogging this administration ever since the election.

A lot of other people can smell it, too, judging by the surprising turnouts at the peace march Matt and I attended a few weeks ago. I engaged in a few small political protests in college, but I'd never seen anything like this. The organizers weren't expecting it to be so large, either, and I think that's very telling. Many, many people there had never attended any kind of march in their lives, but this bothered them enough to make them schlep for hours in a crowded bus to register a protest.

Yet to judge by the news, none of these people exist, the war is already under way and there's nothing we can do about it. CNN's Wolf Blitzer, who made his name in the last Gulf War, has a weekly show called Showdown:Iraq with a snazzy logo, which is a rather unsubtle form of desensitization--I mean, if they've got a whole show about it, it must be already decided, right?

And it's true, our Commandant in Chief could start (or rather, increase) the bombing any old time he pleased, protesters, the UN, international law, and common sense be damned.

But you know, a president named Lyndon Johnson had that kind of attitude not so long ago, and it eventually cost him dearly. Does W. want to continue this less-than-desirable tradition of becoming yet another Texas president who cared a little too much about international pecker-flexing and ended up symbolizing a brutal, pointless war?