Fall into Winter

Perhaps that title should be Autumn into Winter, just to avoid the pun potential but I couldn’t resist. Winter encroached on fall territory today, with the first foray of the Christmas holidays falling on November 30. As of today, it’s officially only four Sundays until Christmas, and so I lit a candle even though the leftover turkey isn’t entirely gone yet. Of course, when it’s cold, gray and dark by 4, it doesn’t really matter if it’s officially fall or winter. It’s just nice to be inside, with homemade cookies, a warm blanket and the cats curled up on their favorite chair. The candle just adds an extra little glow of warmth to November’s last Sunday. Besides, my Christmas wreath hasn’t arrived yet, so it can’t be December yet.

Is there a point to this? No, I’m just stretching my writing muscles, remembering how this works. And I thought it appropriate to leave this here, in November, so I can find it again later, when I want to remember fall.

This month brought me an intersection of blogs and life: Because construction blocked my routine commuting path, I walked on the opposite side of the street and got to see my usual route with fresh eyes. The trees in various stages of leaflessness blended their silhouettes together against the low gray of the sky, where the sun was only just making a vague promise of appearance against the curtains of mist. You know, it’s still dark at 7 a.m. in November and your boots crunch through dead leaves and muddy puddles and slate-gray seems to be the underlying color choice even in the autumn foliage. What’s left of it. And then I saw an orange glow from a tree that was a black bony structure curving on someone’s front lawn. No leaves, but something reddish pulsed at me through the morning gloom like little red lanterns hung high in the skeleton of branches. As I stood, transfixed, I suddenly knew – these are persimmons. And I knew this because I read food blogs, where these strange fruits popped up recently. This confluence made me happy. Not only to see the beauty of the persimmons, not just to recognize them, but to do so because of a thing that brings me joy elsewhere (yay, food blog). That morning, past the persimmon tree, my heart glowed warm like the little red lanterns behind me.

YES!

Obama Sweeps to Victory

Happy day!

We went to vote this morning and happily stood in line for a little over an hour before casting our votes. It was wonderful to see the line, which never got shorter behind us but kept adding people.

Now, watching the election coverge, with all stations calling this for the good guys and McCain giving his classy concession speech, I can hear the joyous hoots and hollers on the streets of DC. I can hear the U Street party from my living room and my heart soars.

That map is so blue. It does my heart and soul so much good to see that much blue. We needed this. We needed to give the finger to eight years of Bush and the bancrucpy and corruption of Republican “government.” The damage that cabal did to this country has not been fully accounted for yet, even now, but now at least we have some hope that it will stop.

Let’s get to cleaning up. Let’s do this right.

I am so happy right now. Come what may, this is a good night, this is a great result, and this country – we – did us all proud in electing That One. Congratulations to President-Elect Barack Obama!

P.S. I am also heartened by the fact that Colorado decisively voted down the ridiculous Amendment 48 (Full personhood rights to fertilized eggs) and South Dakota looks to be rejecting (again) the draconian arbortion restrictions (I’m crossing my fingers).

Friday Cat Blogging

Because now I can.

Meet the new residents at our place.

One of our new cats.

And the other new cat.

Aren’t they cute?

Oh right, the names. After meeting these kitties at the Humane Society and waiting for our adoption application to go through, we were trying to come up with names for these two. And we were having a really hard time. We considered the names of movie characters, naming them after characters from our favorite TV shows, after songs or bands, literary figures, and even cocktails. But as much as I might enjoy the thought of having Gin and Tonic scampering around, it just didn’t fit.

Turns out, it’s a good idea to get to know the creatures you are going to name. So once we brought them home, we watched them for a while. After an initial period of observation and giving up a full night’s sleep (cats like looking out of windows – our bedroom window is also where the head of our bed is), I was inclined to name them Crazy and CatNip Fiend.

Yes, there was a period of adjustment as the two cats got to know each other better by hissing and chasing each other across our bed. But they’re much nicer to each other now. They still chase each other across our bed, but now they don’t hiss any more.

So, say hello to Cider (the calico/white) and Slim (black and white).

[Cider was my husband's idea, and Slim was named after Lauren Bacall's character Marie "Slim" Browning in "To Have and Have Not."]

Life will be so much more exciting. I can tell already. Excuse me, while I go put double-sided sticky tape on the couch.

Recognition

Having ignored this place for so long now, I was going to continue in this vein because I’d only be talking to myself at this point anyway. But then I saw that I have 97 posts and that cannot stand. I must reach 100, even if no one else ever reads this. And I cannot just have a bunch of happy posts about the awesomeness of the world sit here indicating a mood that comes and goes. Sometimes it is very hard to keep in mind that the world can indeed be awesome.

However, there has been a blog-related breakthrough in that I have finally been mentioned in another blog. Hurray! I exist in the digital arena outside of my own little space. Granted, it does not feature my best side – I am shown goofing up movie showtimes – but then we need to acknowledge our faults alongside the inner perfection, no?

I have many thoughts of substance these days but somehow little actual time to sit down and write them out in a coherent manner. Which leads me back to yet aother insubstantial post like this one. But perhaps writing in small bursts like this will help me articulate more interesting ideas. Eventually.

At least until I hit 100 posts, right?

Remember: The World can be Awesome

This just makes me happy. Enjoy.

Champagne Cocktails and GTA4

Instructions to a delightful Sunday afternoon:

1. Finish all your classes that week (by Thursday if possible).
2. Enjoy a lovely walk in the May sunshine.
3. Buy excellent cookbook with gift card (wedding gift!).
4. Drop sugar cube in tamarind mixture.
5. Pour champagne into glass, add slice of pear. Oh, and some Pear Williams too.
6. Add tamarind sugar cube to champagne.
7. Recall impossible name for this cocktail concocted with Pop Culture Elitist and vow never to divulge this name in public.
8. Feel refined while sipping champagne cocktail on a Sunday afternoon.
9. Watch refined and elegant Pop Culture Elitist play Grand Theft Auto 4.
10. Abandon all hope of refinement. Or elegance.
11. Have another glass of champagne cocktail.
12. Repeat.

Ahem

[Clearing my throat]

Not the best way to uphold a resolution: announcing a grand return, with things to say, and then following that up with 7 days of silence.  Brilliant.

I was worried about letting my blog post frequency die down like this, especially since zero isn’t really much of a frequency. But then I read that blog post frequency does not matter anymore, and I was reassured. Of course, I probably don’t have any subscribers to RSS feeds anymore either, what with the non-posting, but I put my hope in the having my dormant feed overlooked and forgotten (if anyone ever subscribed to it in the first place) – and therefore not unsubscribed. If now some entries pop up, maybe I’ll get someone to drop me a line. Or I can just keep talking to myself.

Resolutions

Resolutions for 2008:

1. Blog more.
2. Hahahahahaha.
3. No, really.

I’ve left this space fallow for over 6 months, more or less, aside from harvesting the rich Russian spam collected by my post from Germany. But the goal of this was not simply to read mildly amusing spam, and so why not use the New Year to start things up again?

Thoughts have been accumulating, I’ve been marinating in my own head and it’s time to decant a bit before fermentation causes my mind to pop. So, let’s try this again, shall we? If nothing else, I can talk about my wedding. Everyone loves to hear about those, right?

Random Selections

Almost made it all the way through August without posting a thing. So close. But really, the heat melted my keyboard. My brain was sucked into an alternate dimension. I had a really challenging class this summer.

Ahem.

And to start things off right, I’m now going to jump on a meme that’s been around so long it’s now a blogging institution – the Random Ten (songs from your iPod that is). I’ve avoided using the shuffle function up until today because I was told it drains the battery faster and, having acquired my iPod secondhand (thanks Pop Culture Elitist!), I just didn’t think I should stress my music box that much. But today I went for it. Behold:

1. El Farol – Santana
2. She Cried – Toad the Wet Sprocket
3. Sneaky Smith – Sopwith Camel
4. Let’s Go to San Francisco – Flowerpot Men
5. Come Rain or Come Shine – Don Henley (Leaving Las Vegas soundtrack)
6. Use Me – Bill Withers
7. Hittin’ the Bottle Again – John Lee Hooker
8. One of These Nights – The Eagles
9. “Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum” from Children’s Corner – Béla Fleck
10. Tangled Up in Blue – Bob Dylan

Ok, that was a bit odd. I’m not a baby boomer, nor am I stuck in the 60s. I also forgot that I had Toad the Wet Sprocket in there. Do I like them? Let’s try this again. Go iPod:

1. If You Don’t Cry – The Magnetic Fields
2. Electrolite – REM
3. It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry – Bob Dylan
4. I’m Sorry I Love You -  The Magnetic Fields
5. (Every Woman I Know) Crazy ‘Bout an Automobile – Ry Cooder
6. Right Through You – Alanis Morissette
7. Danny Boy – Johnny Cash
8. The Needle and the Damage Done – Neil Diamond
9. Reno Dakota – The Magnetic Fields
10. I Was Meant for the Stage – The Decemberists

Alright, clearly I need to have a word with my iPod.  How is three Magnetic Fields songs out of ten songs shuffling at random?  A new try next week.

We Don’t Manipulate the System. The System Manipulates Us

As promised, some musings on technology, communication and what others have thought about this in the past. As part of a discussion on commercialism in communications technology (read: are advertising-supported communications systems inevitable?), my class read an article by David H. Freedman describing the possible future of advertising using cell phones, Internet tracking technologies, interactive wall displays, etc. Personally, I find it all creepy and invasive. Who says I need to have ads on my cell phone? Already, I’m getting random weird text messages about real estate on my phone, messages I neither sought nor solicited in any way, apart from the fact that I have a cell phone in the first place. And now I have to pay for these spam messages? There’s something wrong here.

I also do not like the idea that the information created by my online movements, my shopping and browsing decisions, my Google searches, my reading habits, etc. should make money for companies harvesting my information and selling it off to others. All of this without so much as asking for my permission. And those little tiny-text legalese messages no one reads do not count as properly asking for permission. That’s my data, and why are you profiting from it while all I get from it is yet more manipulation and sneakier sales practices?

Well, along those lines, here’s something I wrote for class that I’m happy with and would like to share.

In an attempt at levity perhaps, Freedman ends his article, The Future of Advertising is Here, on what he probably thought of as a wry note: “So stay tuned. As if you had a choice.” As a closing flourish this strikes me as more chilling than amusing because it raises issues of control and freedom directly associated with technology, and especially communications technology such as that used to spread advertising into every corner of our lives. Officially, we tend to link technology with freedom and choice, in the belief that our new technologies give us more freedom by opening up more options, more choices, for us. But how much choice do we truly have in all of this? Erik Barnouw’s excellent book, The Sponsor, convincingly portraits the broadcasting technologies of radio and television as part of a system that “has made the center of national attention a market item, for sale at auction prices” (p.172) and that reaches far into every realm of our culture and society. Barnouw points out that the individuals working within that system, the network executives and ad men, are not the ones to blame because they are just as trapped within the system as everyone else.

In The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard expresses a similar view when he worries about the levels of social control that “social engineers” and Madison Avenue wield and where this might all lead to one day (bioengineering – a concept that fits in with the vision explored in The Matrix). No one, according to Barnouw and Packard, is entirely immune from the relentless and nearly inescapable message broadcast by the merchant system of communications: that we are all, first and foremost, consumers. Does the choice not to be a consumer still truly exist amid the ever-encroaching technology described in Freedman’s vision of targeted advertising? As communication devices surround us, moving closer to integration with the human body, it becomes that much harder to truly assess the system and to make an informed choice about playing along. Messages that do not fit into the framework become invisible and so we are increasingly presented with false choices (have a cell phone with advertisements or choose not to have one and become disconnected from all your friends) even as it seems that we have unlimited choice – but only as a consumer.