Mini update

I just updated my links page to include John Scalzi's Whatever and Tom Tomorrow's site . Have to investigate Blogrolling to see whether it's worth it (I suspect it might be) to automate this process.


"Verbing weirds language"
Calvin and Hobbes

Calvin: "I like to verb words."
Hobbes: "What?"
Calvin: "I take nouns and adjectives and use them as verbs. Remember when `access' was a thing? Now it's something you do . It got verbed."
Calvin: "Verbing weirds language."
Hobbes: "Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding."

I've always loved that one. Couldn't find the comic online, didn't look very hard (the dialogue is all you need). But I just finished with an interview and a physician told me that one particular feature of a pharmacutical company's behavior "squeamished me off" using their drug. I love this for several reasons. First, the verbing. Second, that the form parallels pissed off, and I would not have expected squeamish (the verb) to subcategorize that way (/geek). Third...because there is always a third thing.



Viva Las Vegas

(rant)
It appears that weddings are less about the two principle players and more about everyone else around them. I'm sure this is news to no one. Likewise, successful weddings apparently have nothing to do with how festive and fun and celebratory they are. Rather, they are about whose feelings are (or potentially will be) hurt and what obligations must be met in constructing the invite list, choosing the various and sundry celebratory attributes, and so on. So, in this way, weddings are apparently like religion. The victory of form over substance, dogma over spirituality. Structure over function. Not being one averse to quoting from popular television, I like to say that LK and I are trying to stay focused on the marriage and not be distracted by the wedding. So eloping to Vegas (and having Elvis perform the ceremony) is looking better and better every day. Okay, it couldn't be Elvis. But Dr. Wendy could wear an Elvis outfit, which as I type this I think would be absolutely key.

This is an unfocused rant, and there is no point except to rant. Oh, and while I'm at it, I am officially boycotting all references in children's fiction and video to "the wicked/evil stepmother." Please join me. I know with the war on, people's energies are expended elsewhere, but we have to draw the line somewhere.

(/rant)


posted by MT at 11:58 AM |

While nobody was looking...
link via Tom Tomorrow's Blog

LK brought this to my attention yesterday: while everybody's eyes were aimed at the middle east, the vote on Alaskan oil drilling was going on in the Senate. Happily, the bill was (barely) defeated. So Dubya doesn't get everything he wants.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) — The Senate Wednesday narrowly voted against opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling, defeating the centerpiece of President Bush's energy policy.
In a tug of war largely along party lines, Senate Republicans called for allowing oil companies to explore the sprawling refuge, on Alaska's northern coast, to help reduce U.S. oil imports.

Democrats, a few moderate Republicans and environmental groups argue the pristine wilderness should be left untouched in favor of stricter oil conservation measures and drilling elsewhere.

The vote was 52-48 to reject drilling in ANWR.

Congressional sources said key votes were cast by Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman and Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith. Both Republicans opposed opening the refuge to drilling in the past, but had been the target of heavy lobbying by their party on an issue that is important to the White House at a time when the nation is on the brink of war with Iraq.

posted by MT at 9:50 AM |

Bloody hell...

Well, here we go again.

posted by MT at 9:39 AM |

"Have you read Shakespeare's As You Like It?"
"No, but I've red flannel where I need it."
Benny Hill


The human brain (and to a similar degree, the human consciousness) is a messy quagmire of molten, seething goo. Maybe not always molten, but warm, anyway, and certainly seething. This is documented. If you accept this basic premise, the rest will come easily.

I'm driving the other day, out to the Academy to drop off V's new migraine meds with her school nurse. She's on the same meds I am, Imitrex plus Pamelor (nortriptyline) daily (which if you don't know is one of those old-style anti-depressants, one of the side effects of which is -- you guessed it -- depression). Not happy about the high volume of brain altering meds she is now taking, at 9 years, but we will see how things go.

So on the road, I see an SUV with the alarming vanity plate: PUK STPR

Now there are things I will admit here because they become filtered through a kind of an internet-56k-slow-baud dampening field (like when you're stuck on the alien planet during an ion storm and the transporters can't get a lock). And so even if you know me, it doesn't seem that bad because it isn't like I admitted it to you in a close and intimate setting (say over a beer and some nachos). And so I will admit to you that the absolute first thing I thought of was that this was short for PUKE STOPPER. And then the second thing I immediately thought of was "Well, maybe the driver is a gastroenterologist who specializes in chronic nausea and vomiting." And then the absolute third thing I thought of, immediately, was "Or, maybe same driver is a therapist who works with bulemic teens...." I shit you not. All these thoughts in the space of about five seconds.

Of course, the seventh or eight thing I thought of was "Or maybe it's not PUKE stopper but PUCK stopper, and it's a soccer mom whose kid is a goalie." But it took me like five minutes to entertain that interpretation, after I'd run through all the less obvious (to anyone else) alternatives. Like, why if you were in fact a physician would you advertise yourself in such an unappealing and vulgar way? And then I started thinking about all the ways in which the Yellow Pages ads might look: "Who ya gonna call? PUKE STOPPER!" And so on.

Reminds me of the Senfeld episode where the proctologist had the ASSMAN vanity plate.



I have not been getting good quality sleep lately. Perhaps that goes without saying...



posted by MT at 11:28 AM |

Because it's fly soup, that's why, sir...


It's been one of those weeks (well several of them) where you don't know whether to laugh or cry but you know you're going to be doing one or the other. And your biggest worry is that you will continue until it starts scaring those around you.

Haven't forgotten about you all, but it's been a bear. Hostile (like brrrr chilly hostile not making any eye contact with you) clients (and not just with me either), no sleep in a row, and in spite of what you may have heard, the benefits of green tea are not conferred on your laptop when spilled in the computer bag. So I've been without a computer for the last three days. Which is kind of like having a really bad cold, or a eight feet of snow on the ground -- it affords an excuse not to work. Well, not on the computer, anyway. But I'm sort of back, more or less, and still plugging away. And today, for the second time in two months, I left the lights on in the car (because they used to shut automatically when I opened the door, but that little refrigerator-light button on the car door gets stuck in the cold) and the battery was dead. Two hours later, I get a jump and I'm back at the office....*sigh*


Laugh or cry. These are your choices.


I have been making tiny observations here and there, but at the moment I'm too exhausted to share coherently. Although I was most recently in Chicago (land of Mimi Smartypants), and as myself and my client (one I actually like) were riding the train from O'Hare to the Miracle Mile, I observed a homeless man eating a hamburger and having a very animated conversation with himself. He wasn't loud, but the voices were apparently cracking him up. He kept sending meaningful glances toward the empty seat next to him. I wish I had been closer. It occurs to me that Mimi seems to make these observations with regularity, so maybe it's something about Chicago. It was bitter cold. If I had no place to live, riding the blue line back and forth all day would be a warm and safe alternative to the streets, I guess.


Speaking of homes...

It's official (well, more official). Big Evil Newton has been successfully transplanted to LK's place. It took about two days for him to get used to the change in venue, and now he struts around like he owns the place. Which he mostly does, since he's there more than both of us combined. He has taken to eating the spider plants (in the morning, when he wants food; she hasn't got any venetian blinds for him to destroy) and in spite of himself, he keeps vomiting them up. He never vomits. Vomiting means that you have eaten something that hasn't added to the girth. Newton loves his girth. Newton says: Admire my girth. I am festively plump. I am a bodybuilder. He says that.

So even though we're still working on the ring, I've given her my cat, and that counts lots more...right? umm...

We need to do some more ring shopping.


One of these days I'll post those photos... Patience lemurs. Thanks for sticking in there...



posted by MT at 5:57 PM |