July 2007 Archives

I completely ripped off that title from this story about a cat who can tell when a hospice patient is about to die, and curls up with them for the last several hours of their lives. It's quite remarkable.

About six weeks ago, I wrote about buying a Dell laptop loaded with Windows Vista, and the way that decision allowed the gaping maw of despair to open up beneath me.... Mercifully I know how to wield a roll of packing tape and a Sharpee marker, and before long the laptop and all the peripherals were in boxes and back on their way from whence they came, and ere a little longer, the nightmare ended.

That's right: I've been to Dell and back.

The good thing about that experience was that it gave me a better sense of what I really wanted and what I really didn't want. I waited until the charges were removed from my credit card, and then I bought a Lenovo, aka an IBM ThinkPad.

And I love it! I just love it!

My apologies to the person to whom I promised an entry today about shoes.... I'll post it tomorrow. Today, I just had to provide a link to this amazing "art in a rice field" entry on Pink Tentacle, which I found via salon.

You gotta check this out.

So, I have this unusual skill, though I don't use it very often or very well: I can control my dreams.

I started being able to do this seven or eight years ago, when I was finishing up grad school. It's not like I set out to acquire this particular skill; I just discovered one night that I could do it. But it didn't come to me out of nowhere: partly because I wasn't always that interested in the work I was supposed to be doing for grad school, and partly because I suffered from an array of mild but chronic maladies I wished would go away, and partly because I wanted to become more ethically and spiritually deliberate and aware, I started pursuing all these activities that would help me develop my spiritual and intuitive faculties and give me more control over my body and mind.

Last time I posted a picture of shoes, I wondered why I don't buy more colorful shoes. And then, the other day, I was shopping and I found some mustard yellow shoes marked down from $80 to $10.

I thought, huh. Mustard yellow.

It used to be one of my least favorite colors in the world. I didn't like yellow or orange or earth tones in general. But then, about ten years ago, I decided it was stupid not to like a color, because it deprived me of pleasure. So I set about cultivating an appreciation for earth tones. And now I like orange just fine.

Mustard yellow I'm still not all that crazy about...but the shoes were really cool, and they were only ten bucks, so I got them. I'm wearing them even as I type, and they look like this:

It's really hard to photograph your feet at any angle except straight down, by the way. I wanted to show off the nice wedge heels, but it was hard.

One thing I didn't see in Salem, Massachusetts (I started an entry about going to Salem but haven't finished it because it's depressing) because I didn't know it was there but would have visited had I known about it is the Nathaniel Bowditch House.

Who, you are probably asking, is Nathaniel Bowditch?

I've said this before on my blog, and I'll probably say it again: my friend Troy is awesome. He just sent me a link to his latest editorial in the Salt Lake Trib, in which he offers a "queer eye for Mormons." Here's a highlight:

You can't complain when people don't believe you are Christian if you teach that all other Christian faiths are apostate. That never goes over well at interfaith functions. And remember, "as ye sow, so shall ye reap."

If you continually attack the LGBT community, then karma will eventually come back around to bite. Nobody likes a bully. And Mormons, of all people, know what it's like to be a persecuted minority. Imagine, instead, if the Latter-day Saints were to rally to the defense of the poor, marginalized and oppressed - wow. You could so change the world.

I like to think that Joseph Smith would have been cool with the queers. He, too, lived on the fringe of respectable society. And, like Mitt, he loved this country enough to run for president.

I personally doubt JS would have been cool with the queers--he was thoroughly homosocial but too into promoting a patriarchal power structure built on men's sexual power of women, and sex between men would have complicated that. But I like the other points Troy makes a lot.

Sixteen months ago, I included a map of the states I'd visited, and it looked like this:

But as of last week, the map of states I've visited looks like this:

create your own personalized map of the USA

That's right--I've done some traveling, and added three more states to the list of those I've visited, bringing the total to 41. A year ago I went to Alaska on a cruise with my family; and I spent most of the first half of July in Massachusetts, which I had never visited before, and made a day trip to Connecticut, which was another state I'd never seen.

There will be more about my trip in the future, but I wanted to explain why my posts have been uncharacteristically brief.

This is currently one of my favorite plants. I like it because its buds are pink, but its blossoms are white.

I took a couple of photos trying to get the whole plant, but none of them showed it to advantage. It grows in a mound, with stalks extending out of it, and those are where the blossoms appear.

Anyone recognize it? I'd like to know what it's called.

People are sometimes surprised or disappointed by my interest in war literature. It's gruesome and depressing; why would I want to study stuff like that? Maybe because then I already know about stuff like these "routine atrocities" reported by The Nation and can try to prevent it happening again.

What might erupt in your face if you jiggle or upset it?

Dinah might!

(OK, I know that's a terrible pun, but really, I couldn't resist.)

During my recent visit to Toronto (the one that afforded the opportunity to meet Dale), I stayed at a really lovely b&b near High Park. The hostess had agreed to give me a room with a private bathroom, and when I arrived, she said she had two rooms available, one with a shower and one with a bathtub, and asked if I had a preference for baths or showers. I said, "Actually, I prefer baths," because I do. So she showed me to a room that included this, immediately to your left upon entirely the main room:

It was huge! It dominated the room. If you liked bathing with an audience, it could be cool, because there were two ways you could be seen: someone could just lie in bed and watch you take a bath, or someone could stand in the hall and have quite a good view.

That door you see a bit of to the left is the door out into the hall. There were no locks on the doors, and the latches weren't entirely tight--the door sometimes blew open if another door in the house was shut forcibly. So I had to prop a chair against the door to ensure that it wouldn't blow open while I was sitting in the tub.

If I ever stay there again--and it really was a lovely place, so I wouldn't rule that out--I'll take the room with the shower.

I don't always check my blog stats--I'll go weeks without even looking at them, and one reason is because the searches that lead people to my blog often distress me, as in the current batch:

was i date raped?
filipina women put fish in their vaginas
sorry for date raping you
existential dread
what is existential dread
frigid mormon women

The filipina women one really freaks me out.... but whatever. I don't want details.

Over the weekend I read A History of the Breast by Marilyn Yalom, which should be required reading for anyone with breasts or an interest in them, which I realize doesn't cover everyone but covers a lot of people. The book was fascinating, and full of memorable illustrations and photos, including a set depicting a "Bosom Ballet." It told me many things I'd never considered which were obvious once they were pointed out to me, like the significance of the name for the kind of animal we are: mammalia, coined by 18th-century Swedish physician Carolus Linnaeus, comes from the Latin term mammae (milk-secreting organs) and literally means "of the breast." So as a group, warm-blooded animals with a four-chambered heart are named for an attribute only half of them share: the ability to produce milk for suckling their young.

It also answered a question I'd been wondering about lately: Why is that galaxy up in the sky most of us can't see any more because our night skies are so marred by light pollution, called "the Milky Way"? Why is it considered milky? Why not "the Sparkly Belt"? Why not a lot of things?

Well. Turns out we have Greek mythology to thank for the name. Yalom states,

Today is Canada Day, which has nothing to do with me, aside from the fact that I like Canada, but then, I like a lot of countries, and I don't always know when their nationalistic holidays are. And it's not like I'm going to display a maple leaf today, or find a hockey game to watch. I like to celebrate Canada Day quietly, in my heart.