“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.”
Sylvia Plath
“Sometimes, when you fall, you fly.”
Neil Gaiman
“The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.”
Oscar Wilde
I’m supposed to be reviewing my lines before tomorrow’s brush-up rehearsal. Somehow I feel strangely unmotivated…
“You don’t get anything clean without getting something else dirty.”
Cecil Baxter
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Arthur C. Clarke
“Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.”
Blaise pascal
Went to the Bristol Renaissance Faire on Saturday and, as usual, had a way excellent time, thanks in large part to the fact that the day was “hosted” by Caitlin K.’s family full of awesome people. I’ve got video clips of some of the acts, and a few pictures, but I haven’t had time to pool all that into a video yet, so below is one I made out of a video I took on Friday evening when I was, uh… s’pposed to be working on my lines…
In conclusion: I *did* work on my lines that night, thankyouverymuch. Fat lot of good it seemed to do, though. Really biffed it tonight at dress. Ick. I am such an unprofessional boob.
Wishing I was a professional boob,
Ruth
“Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck.”
“I think it’s the duty of the comedian to find out where the line is drawn and cross it deliberately.”
“If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say that the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.”
- George Carlin
I don’t know how I didn’t see this online yesterday but I didn’t.
Comedian George Carlin dies at 71
George Carlin, who died of heart failure Sunday at 71, leaves behind not only a series of memorable routines, but a legal legacy: His most celebrated monologue, a frantic, informed riff on those infamous seven words, led to a Supreme Court decision on broadcasting offensive language.
:(
RIP, man.
On a lighter, and now somewhat awkward-to-mention note, Happy Birthday Jake. :)
“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.”
- Kurt Vonnegut
“You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.”
- James Thurber
“Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate.”
- Thomas Jones
For Sarah Desrosiers, meeting Bushra Noah was not a moment in her life that she would describe as especially memorable. Not only was it brief - lasting little more than ten minutes - but it was rapidly obvious to Sarah that Bushra was not the person for the junior stylist position she was trying to fill at her hairdressing salon.
Sarah’s reasoning? Quite simply that Bushra, a Muslim who wears a headscarf for religions reasons, had made it clear she would not be removing the garment even while at work. Sarah felt that a job requirement of any hairdresser was that the stylist’s hair would provide clients with a showcase of different looks. Especially one working in a salon such as hers, which specialises in alternative cuts and colours. Yet the ten minutes during which Sarah’s world collided with Bushra’s has resulted in an extraordinary employment battle, in which she was accused of ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ discrimination.
For a year, Sarah has been facing financial ruin, due to a compensation claim for £34,000 brought by Bushra, 19, who has maintained she is due that figure after being turned down for a job at the Wedge salon in London’s King’s Cross.
In the event, the tribunal ruled this week that while Bushra’s claim of direct discrimination failed, her claim for indirect discrimination had succeeded. Sarah has therefore been ordered to pay £4,000 compensation by way of ‘injury to feelings’. Although this is a smaller sum than she’d feared she might have to hand over, Sarah, 32, is still outraged. ‘I am a small business and the bottom line is that this is not a woman who worked for me,’ says Sarah. …
Click here for Sarah’s MySpace.
And don’t bother looking up news vids of this on YouTube. You’ll just get videos of some black-haired emo dude. :P
Mystery surrounds severed feet near Canada
(CNN) — Investigators are pursuing a variety of theories in their quest to unravel the mystery of six human feet that have washed up on the shores of the Canadian province of British Columbia in the last 11 months.
The sixth foot turned up Wednesday — a right foot in a man’s size 10 black Adidas athletic shoe, police said. As in the previous cases, however, immediate answers as to the foot’s origin eluded detectives. …
Report: Gloucester Teens Had Pact To Get Pregnant
GLOUCESTER (WBZ) There’s a stunning twist to the sudden rise in teen pregnancies at Gloucester High School. 17 students there are expecting and, according to a published report, most of them became that way on purpose.
Time Magazine is reporting that nearly half of the girls confessed to making a pact to get pregnant and raise their babies together. None of the girls is older than 16. …
Normally, the school has about four pregnancies per school year. …
A recent graduate who had a baby during her freshman year told Time she knows why the girls wanted to get pregnant. “They’re so excited to finally have someone to love them unconditionally,” Amanda Ireland, 18, said. “I try to explain it’s hard to feel loved when an infant is screaming to be fed at 3 a.m.” …
“Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.”
Elbert Hubbard
“No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.”
Lily Tomlin
The Profit Motive Behind The Sexualization Of ‘Tween Girls
In the book, Durham identifies five myths of sexuality and provides advice and resources for caring adults who want to discuss the issue with young girls.
The myths are:
– If you’ve got it, flaunt it. Bare a “Barbie body” as often as you can. But don’t celebrate or enjoy any other body type. “It’s really excluding a lot of girls from enjoying and recognizing pleasure in their own bodies,” Durham said.
– Anatomy of a sex goddess. “Media reinforce a ridiculous ideal of being both extremely thin and voluptuous — a body not found in nature,” Durham said. “You have to go through borderline starvation and plastic surgery to get it.”
– Pretty babies. Representations of sexual girls are getting younger and younger. Many of the images presented as the most sexually desirable are images of girls as young as 11 or 12. “It’s problematic in many ways: It encourages sexualization of girls too young to make good decisions about sex. It legitimizes the idea that young girls should be looked at as sexual partners. And, presenting pre-pubescent bodies as the sexual ideal pressures grown women to achieve the body of a child who hasn’t even matured yet,” Durham said.
– Sexual violence is hot. Media aimed at children — like PG-13 “slasher” movies — convey the message that violence is sexy or that sex should be violent.
– Girls don’t choose boys; boys choose girls — and only hot girls. Women and girls are supposed to focus on pleasing men. But little emphasis is placed on women taking pleasure in their own sexuality or bodies, or on guys striving to please gals, Durham said. “It’s a very one-way construction of sex.”
“The book definitely isn’t anti-sex,” Durham said. “It starts with the recognition that girls are sexual — everybody’s sexual — but that girls deserve good information that will help them make good decisions. We have the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the industrialized world, and a study by the Centers for Disease Control just reported that 1 in 4 teen girls in the U.S. has an STD. Clearly we’re not giving them the kind of information they need to take care of themselves sexually and transition to adulthood in safe ways.” …
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I’m writing a Craig’s List ad and let me tell ya’: It sucks. If I never put another letter between tags it’ll be too freakin’ soon.
Also: I wish I wasn’t already done with my spagetti-o’s and my Diet Mt. Dew, ’cause lemme tell ya– that was one tasty dinner. I could almost go for another can of Dew. Mmmmm… Diet Mt. Dew…
I’m a big girl. I have my own apartment. I have my own car. I pay my own bills. I am “I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-T. Do you know what that means?“
It means, foo’s, that I can have another can of Diet Mt. Dew if I want one.
I’m catching up on this season’s episodes of “The Office” and having. a. blast. The episode I’m watching now is the one where Michael gets called in to Jan’s deposition about her termination and everyone is given a copy of Michael’s personal diary. I *heart* Toby.
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Never mind. I don’t know if I really feel like a Diet Mt. Dew any more. Or– wait… Shoot. Deciding things is hard. :S
I wish I worked at Dunder Miflin. Or some place like Dunder Miflin. I wish there was a Dunder Miflin Milwaukee branch. I’d apply.
“He’s simply got the instinct for being unhappy highly developed.”
Saki
“Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.”
Paul Gauguin
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I’ve been spending the bulk of my evenings on YouTube lately. Books hold little appeal right now. I don’t have much interest in emailing people or talking on the phone. I want to sleep all the time but when I try my brain races towards misery. But I’m not ready to hop on the Prozac Express or anything so don’t get all anxious. I’m just sort of… not… lately.
It’ll pass. It always does.
But back to YouTube.
I’ve subscribed to several folks whose videos I really enjoy, and now that I’ve been watching their regular updates for several months, and going back and watching all of their older episodes, I find myself constantly refreshing my home page to see if they have any new videos posted even though I know they’re not due to post anything until the next day.
What can I say? I like these people. Some people follow celebrities. I follow YouTube peo– well I don’t “follow” them. I couldn’t tell you much about them or their personal lives beyond what they explicitly share in their videos and that’s more than fine by me. But I do enjoy watching their interactions with each other because they’re real people in a real medium that everyone has access to. If you’re popular it’s usually because you’re worth the popularity you’ve received.
I enjoy these people. I really do. I enjoy watching sxephil do live chats with Michael Buckley from the whatthebuckshow. I enjoy whatthebuckshow doing shared vids with nigahiga. Applemilk1988 cracks me up and reminds me- in a very positive way- of every girl my brother has ever dated. I could listen to sykesmarcus recite Shakespeare for hours. And there’s almost nothing Kelly at betchslapdotcom could sing about that I wouldn’t desperately want to listen to.
Because it’s true.
You can’t text message breakup.
This week I’ve been watching Joanna Newsom videos, Jonathan Brandis dedication videos, Carl Sagan videos on astrology, the brain, the likelihood of finding intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy (that’s the one I grabbed my entry title from), and episodes of Jesus People. (Watch out, kiddies. It’s painfully funny.)
Today two people I don’t know subscribed to my videos. What’s up with that? And I’ve logged an average of 116 views per video, and I don’t know 116 people. I know 6 of my laughably piddly 13 subscribers. And 2 of those 6 I’ve only ever met online. (Karen and Rick- I haven’t forgotten I owe you drinks if/when we meet.)
I find myself getting irritated when people post comments about videos on the blog where I embedded the video, but not on the YouTube video page itself. It makes me feel like I’m posting to the ether. I find myself getting irritated when I watch a stupid video and the first three pages of comments are all, basically, “wut a faggggg.” I find myself getting irritated when fun videos that people love get taken down because of 5 second clips of copyrighted music playing in the background.
You know whose videos fail on YouTube, though their view counts may be high(ish)? Videos posted by megas. Orgs. Big groups. Videos posted with ratings turned off, and no way to comment. Like those Scientology videos? They’re a joke amongst YouTubers because the people posting them have totally prevented viewers from being able to interact with the vids in the ways that have made YouTube as successful as it is.
So what is all this? I don’t know for sure if I love YouTube or if I mistrust it enough that I want to keep it close. But I think I love it.
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I was Stumbling earlier today and came across a porn site that must’ve been tagged “nature” or “art” or something ’cause it is oh most definitely porn and it oh most definitely popped up when I hit “Stumble!” *meh* It happens. I still *heart* SU.
I was going to click “Stumble!” again to be taken to another page when I noticed that the girls in the picture didn’t look, well, porn-y. I clicked “back” until I got to the first pic in the series so I could grab a screen shot of them in their clothes. To be honest, the clothed shot is about as clean feeling as the later, unclothed shots. They’re all of a bunch of smiling, normal looking girls playing around by a waterfall. And not “playing around” as in “wink wink nudge nudge playing around.” Just, you know, walking and smiling and splashing. And uh… getting undressed at some point. Y’know: likeyoudo. No sultry looks. No gettin’ all frisky like with each other. Just being cute. And outside. And naked.
Here’s a screen shot of the first pic. Let’s break this down by girl, shall we?
1) Belly flab.
2) Belly flab.
3) Heavy legs.
4) Flat chest.
5) Totally, unquestionably hot. Don’t know how she snuck in.
6) Forgettable. (Would that be considered a flaw?)
Anyway: It left me awestruck.
Almost all of these girls- who are all totally cute- have figure features that would eliminate them entirely from the running in their eligibility to appear in conventional pornographic pictures, websites, etc. And yet here they are! On a porn page!
And do you know why this is cool enough to merit mentioning? Because it’s a reinforcement of the idea our dearest male friends and favorite ex-boyfriends have been trying to tell us for years: Many men really do find “normal looking” women attractive. Enough so that there can be money-making sites dedicated to that look.
Ta-da!
I think I might bookmark that page, actually. I think I’d like to have it on hand to go back to on days I’m feeling particularly less-than-Megan-Fox-y.
And please: No comments from the female side of the peanut gallery on how almost every woman reading this post probably outweighs them and wouldn’t bend over like that in a two-piece and can’t be in water when cameras are around or their makeup will run and reveal their acne/ freckles/ fear, etc. etc. I know. I know. I’m just sayin’…
*sigh* Oh man. I just really need to go to bed. This has gone on long enough.
“When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.”
Norm Crosby
“The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal.”
H. L. Mencken
“Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.”
Evelyn Waugh
Haven’t eaten since 6 pm last night and lemme tell ya’– I’m starvin’ over here. Yeesh.
And as soon as Beth gets back? Ooh I am SO outta here!
But to where?
If I drive home and make myself a sandwich then I’m spending more money on gas than I’d spend if I ate someplace near the office, but food near the office will cost more. What to do, what to do…
On the other hand, I lose more time by going home to eat, and time is of the essence right now…
But I’m so sick of the food around here! And I do *not* want McDonald’s again! Now don’t get me wrong– I love me some greasy cow flesh from Yours McTruly. But my tum-tum’s aching from not having had anything put into it in over 18 hours besides about 10 chocolate covered espresso beans that I ate to fend off the caffeine headache I knew was inevitable since I’ve had no caffeine since Tuesday night.
Ugh.
The body- she’s a cruel mistress, no?
But then, is there any other kind of mistress worth being?
“There is no greater impotence in all the world like knowing you are right and that the wave of the world is wrong, yet the wave crashes upon you.”
Norman Mailer
“Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.”
Robert Frost
As soon as this video finished uploading to YouTube– it is taking so stinkin’ long!!– I will have finished with making Dallas Blogs. Woo hoo, man. Seriously.
I think it’s worth attempting to post, though. I mean- I cut stuff and did stuff and whatever. It’s like 3% more advanced than the first 18. Still nowhere near as advanced as the vids being posted by foul-mouthed 9 year olds who only seem to know how to post videos whose titles and tags lead you to believe you’re going to watch a clip from a show when actually it’s JUST A JOKE!! HAHAHA!!!1!111!!!! LOL ITS THI SDUDE AN HE SCREEMIN AND U HAD YER SPEEKERS UP !!!!! HAHAHAHAHA!!!
*sigh*
Dallas Blog. Number 20. We out.
P.S. Jenny K.: There’s a special clip in it just for you. ;)
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I’m working on my resume and so far it’s slow (boring) going.
I copied and pasted EVERYTHING from past versions and updates and notes and things into a new version. It’s a total mess. And so much of it is just— ugh. So poorly written. Some of it’s from right after high school. I had no idea what I was doing or saying and boy does it show.
So here I sit with stuff I’ve got to completely rewrite, mixed in with template suggestions from various web sites, and more superfluous data than I know what to do with as I’ve been copying and pasting from resumes used for everything from office jobs to teaching jobs to campus jobs… and it comes to two pages.
I don’t know how I want to format it yet. So many that I’ve looked at don’t read well visually, but at the same time I know that the viewing/reading methods that work best for me may not be how others will want to see what I’m including so I’m freakin’ out that I’m going to find an awesome, clean, easy to read format and will find out that no one uses it because HR types can’t stand it.
Phooey.
Regardless: Once I format it it’ll shorten up a little, but mostly I’ve now got to start cutting things. This shouldn’t be too hard since I literally have EVERY job I’ve ever had on there. Lookin’ at 14 total. Gonna shorten up real quick-like.
It’s describing the more recent/relevant positions using those God awful “action verbs” that’s really getting me antsy. I feel like using them is finding a way to maintain honesty while lying about what you’ve done. “Implemented redesign of human resources support program” should not be used as code for “When I was sent to buy a can of Folgers for the break room I decided to pick up Maxwell House instead because there was a stick on tattoo inside that I wanted for my kid.”
Ick.
“I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.”
Sir Winston Churchill
“The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that carries any reward.”
John Maynard Keynes
I’m flying back to Dallas this Monday morning at 6 am.
Yeah. 6 comes in the morning, too.
I’m flying there with one of the techs to pack up some things into the Sprinter we have down there, and then he’s driving that back and I’m driving back an F-150 that another guy is meeting us with when we arrive.
I’m bringing Alfred with me, naturally. Though after the last trip he doesn’t seem terribly keen on making a repeat performance of the whole “driving back to Wisconsin” adventure…
*shrugs*
Whatever.
Did Martin Luther King, Jr. really say “It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.”??
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Marilyn Monroe Sex Tape Sells for $1.5M
… Heavily redacted, declassified FBI documents from the 1960s talk about a “French-type” film starring the late actress …
Uh… “French-type”? Wha-???
Tom Cruise Concerned About Posh Spice’s Influence on Katie Holmes
… During another recent outing to Madeo, Katie and Posh shared a green salad without dressing, one piece of fish and one side of steamed spinach, Life and Style reported. They also ordered one regular Coke and two glasses of ice.
“Katie poured half the soda into each of their glasses, then filled up the rest with bottled water,” a Madeo regular told the magazine.”
What?! *Gah!* If that’s what it takes to be thing– man I’m just not so sure I want it…
100 Best First Lines from Novels
15. The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new. -Samuel Beckett, Murphy (1938)
46. Ages ago, Alex, Allen and Alva arrived at Antibes, and Alva allowing all, allowing anyone, against Alex’s admonition, against Allen’s angry assertion: another African amusement . . . anyhow, as all argued, an awesome African army assembled and arduously advanced against an African anthill, assiduously annihilating ant after ant, and afterward, Alex astonishingly accuses Albert as also accepting Africa’s antipodal ant annexation. -Walter Abish, Alphabetical Africa (1974)
47. There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it. -C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1952)
78. The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. -L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between (1953)
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In other news: I’m an idiot.
I’m reading Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series (it’s incredible) and I just finished the second book about an hour ago and was all set to dive right into the third book when I realized, much to my horror, that the book sitting on my shelf isn’t the third book but the fourth!
I bought books two and (apparently) four when I was in Dallas in November so that as soon as I finished book one I could move right into the next one. I’d intended to buy two through four at the time, but decided to save a few bucks and some space in my luggage on my return trip to Wisconsin, so I put book (apparently) three back on the shelf.
Whoops.
For some reason I cannot understand myself, I spent ages and ages finishing up book two. Don’t ask me how or why I did it; glutton for punishment perhaps. In the meantime I’ve been ignoring the book on my shelf because it didn’t matter yet, so I had no idea that all this time I’ve been sitting here with a book I can’t read yet!
Well it damn well matters now that I want to read book three and can’t! Doggonit…
I thought it was book one that i put back since i already have it (just in a different edition). I’m so confused. I was sure I bought two through four and put back book one…
I’m picking it up at B&N tomorrow on my way home from work, as well as putting in an order for the WUD script.
*sigh* How am I ever going to memorize that bloomin’ thing…
