Lintefiniel Musing...formerly Jen Speaks!

Wednesday, July 23, 2003

Obligatory Daily Link

I think I’m going to have to make this it’s own category - What Bryan McAnally Posted Today That Made Me Laugh Out Loud.

Here’s today’s Clarity Amidst Chaos link. Today’s topic - the haircut.

Posted by at 01:35 PM
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Rangel’s Mouth

Rep. Charlie Rangel needs to muzzle himself.

[...]

When an incredulous Sean Hannity expressed dismay at Rangel’s comments, the Harlem Democrat shot back, “How can you get so much satisfaction that two bums have been killed? We got bums all over the world and some in the United States.”

Then Rangel mocked the U.S. military’s success in killing the two Hussein heirs, saying, “I personally don’t get any satisfaction that it takes 200,000 troops, 250,000 troops, to knock off two bums.”

OK, let’s inject a little reality here, the average bum on the street in the US isn’t beating a food taster to death or raping and torturing women or kneecapping soccer players because they lost a game, etc.

In addition, it’s hardly an assassination when the “two bums, but bodyguard and son” are in a four hour battle, firing back with “small arms” (which turned out to be AK-47s, yeah, that’s small) from a fortified hide out.

Rangel should be ashamed of himself.

LATER: LT Smash has an interesting list of the “two bums’” accomplishments.

Posted by at 12:11 PM
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Comments Welcome

I’ve had several people apologize for posting lengthy or many comments. Let me say this, I welcome all comments, even (or especially) if you happen to disagree with me or feel the need to correct me. This happens a lot, actually. It’s to be expected when a strong opinion is expressed.

So bring it on…

My only caveat is that I do not welcome profanity or personal attacks to me or other commenters. Respect is the key - you can disagree, but don’t disrespect me or anyone else. Got it?

Posted by at 12:04 PM
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Crack (Flash)! Boom! Blackness!

We had some thunderstorms come through last night. I was online and considering shutting everything down when there was a bright white flash of lightning, the immediate boom of thunder, and the all-consuming darkness of the power going out.

Whelp, that took care of that question…

When the power came on about 15 minutes later (just after I located and lit the candles to read by), I decided it wasn’t worth the effort to log back on. So I reset my clocks and read for a little bit before going to bed.

Posted by at 10:59 AM
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Tuesday, July 22, 2003

A Day Late, But Not a Dollar Short

LT Smash has another great post, this one his analysis of the Blair speech. Yes, he’s a little late on this, but give him a break - he’s fighting a war.

Snippety snippet:

Tony Blair is a liberal.

Well of course he�s a liberal, you say. After all, he�s the leader of the Labor Party in Britain, and they are the party of the left, and as we all know, liberals are leftists, right?

This is where the meaning of words becomes important. �Liberal� does not mean �leftist.� Indeed, most leftists aren�t liberal at all. The word �liberal� comes from the same root as the word �liberty,� which is synonymous with �freedom.� In the Eighteenth Century, when it first came into popular usage, it described those brave souls who struggled against authority to achieve greater freedoms for their fellow men. Visionaries like Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson.

Go read the rest.

UPDATE (Wed AM): Sorry about the lack of the link. It’s been fixed…

Posted by at 10:04 PM
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The Best Chips, Bar None

Who do you think makes the best tortilla chips?

I think it’s Utz - preferred variety is the Round White Corn Tortilla chip. They are, to me, the perfect chip.

Here’s where you can get ‘em. If you live outside of that blue area you may be able to get select varieties of the Utz product. For instance, I was able to get just about all of their products in New Hampshire, except for the Round White Corn Tortillas. So when I came home to Virginia, I would stock up on the jumbo bags that I would hoard, slowly opening a bag on the rarest of occasions (and never when other people would be around, I was that selfish with them) to make them last until my next trip home.

The good news is that you can order their products online, although it looks like you’re limited to “bundles” of products. I don’t have a need for the online ordering option, I have access to them at all stores in my vicinity. *gloat*

Posted by at 09:27 PM
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NCC-1701 Creator, RIP

Phern of Damaged Goods posts about the death of the creator of the Starship Enterprise. I thought my Dad would want to know.

Posted by at 09:21 PM
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DC’s Commuter Tax Idea

...is crap.

[...]

“Our neighbors to the north intend to exact a new source of revenue out of the pockets of thousands of Fairfax County residents employed in the nation’s capital in order to compensate for their own financial mismanagement,” Supervisors Michael R. Frey and Stuart Mendelsohn, Sully and Dranesville Republicans, said in a joint written statement.

I don’t work in DC, thankfully. But if I did and I knew a commuter tax was headed my way, I would start looking for a job in Virginia.

Virginia has it’s own financial problems as does Maryland. We don’t need to be subsidizing the District’s failed budget. Now, there are some in DC who claim that the commuters are a drain on DC funds - I bed to differ. Rather, they help or balance it out because they pay for parking, taxis, food, supplies, etc within the city limits in a work day. Many of the things the commuter pays for are taxes already. They shouldn’t have to be taxed again.

Posted by at 01:37 PM
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Clever Poetry

Ok, I’m going to say it again, if you haven’t visited Clarity Amidst Chaos, you must. Today’s gem:

ode to a highway shoe

how you got there I do not know
brown, abandoned, and laceless
a speedbump in the traffic flow
commuters can be so graceless

is your mate covering a foot
while you lay on the road in state
once a proud strong leather boot
unknowing your inevitable, unfortunate fate

who did you know while you trod on the earth
Doctors Scholl and Martin, or maybe Buster Brown?
your Easy Spirit making room for extra wide girth
cushioning the heel as you strode around town?

your owner searches for you in his room
hopping around with one foot unshod
perhaps unaware of your horrific doom
eventually giving up with a discouraged nod

how many miles did you travel to and fro
what did you step in that needed a cleaning
what adventurous places did you reluctantly go
have you discovered your sole’s deeper meaning

you are now just a speck in my rearview mirror
you’ll be saved by a highwayman, part of a crew
picked up and set apart - you’ve nothing to fear
I will sorely miss you, lone brown highway shoe

Posted by at 01:32 PM
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It’s Too Early

This is why I have a coffee pot with a timer.

It’s also why I have a hard addiction to Venti White Mocha from The Evil Empire. It kills me that I so happily hand over my $4.18 in the morning for something I can get for next to nothing at home.

Posted by at 01:14 PM
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Insurance & Weight

I wasn’t actively listening when I heard a brief snippet of Neil Cavuto’s interview with...

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson will join us to talk about new health insurance plans that would be based on your weight, eating and lifestyle habits. Is that fair? I didn’t hear the whole thing, so I can’t claim to know what Thompson is promoting or supporting, but on the face of it I don’t like it. My fear is that premiums will increase and it will be harder for folks to get and maintain health insurance if they do this kind of (and I hate to use this word, but it’s the only one I can think of) discrimination. Because I know plenty of skinny people who eat like pigs, have high cholesterol and high blood pressure because it’s in their family, and are completely sedentary. And I also know some heavier people who are very healthy eaters and exercise, have low cholesterol and blood pressure, but for some reason they carry more weight on their bones. So basing a person’s health plan on those things seems just a little wrong to me.

And I think this is coming out of the fact that Americans are getting fatter. Here’s my assessment of that problem:

1. We eat too much - portion size is ridiculous today. I know that at most restaurants we go to the portions served are enough to feed two or three people, not just one. But we feel compelled to eat it all to get our monies worth. Right?

2. We eat too much processed food - we don’t eat whole foods anymore and the low-fat, low-sugar, low-taste crap we’re eating isn’t helping us to lose weight or eat healthier. I’ve stopped eating margarine and use mostly butter because while it may be higher in fat, it’s real food and the fat is less “dangerous” than the trans-fatty acids in margarine. I don’t buy much low-fat food, I do buy 1% milk and part-skim ricotta and sour cream, but everything else I buy is fully loaded. Why? So that I’ll eat less of it, because I am one of those people who will see a label that says “1/3 less fat” and eat three times the serving (I’m thinking of cookies).

3. We are sedentary - we watch too much TV, play too many video games, and spend too much time in front of our computers. This is where I’m the most guilty - I’m lazy.

Posted by at 12:05 PM
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Monday, July 21, 2003

The Underblog

Darren at The Living Room is taking nominations for Underblogs. What is an Underblog?

Who links Who

The Blogosphere Ecosystem

It got me thinking though - so many of the blogs on the lists I’ve never seen or heard of. Many of them don’t attract a whole heap of links - yet many of them are posting great material.

So I thought I’d start a campaign to unearth some of these ‘underblogs’.

Yes, it’s similar to TTLB’s New Weblog Showcase, but looking mostly at Christian blogs (at least judging from the nominees I saw when I posted my own list). Darren has two follow up posts here and here.

Posted by at 10:43 PM
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Vacations

I’m not taking a vacation per se this summer. I’m saving my leave for a trip to The Happiest Place on Earth™ with my former employer (and that’s a whole story unto itself how that came to be). I’ll be taking a day here and there for long weekends until holiday season starts.

Anyway, I bring this up because at lunch we were discussing vacations and I shared about the < sarcasm > fantastic vacation < /sarcasm > my family went on when I was in junior high. It was a fun vacation, but we had some problems along the way, with much bickering and some tears.

We never really took many family vacations. We moved. And we lived in so many places, that we never had the chance to develop any traditional places to go as a family. Besides, each move was an adventure in itself.

But when I was in junior high, we lived in Washington state, and we knew that my Dad would be getting orders for our next move soon. There was an assumption made that we would be heading back east, so one Christmas my parents decided to give us a family trip to sunny California - fully loaded with promises of San Fransisco, Hollywood/Los Angeles, DisneyLand, Universal Studios, San Diego Zoo, SeaWorld, and a visit to Dad’s ship (USS Kitty Hawk, which was based in San Diego). The plan was to go during Spring Break with a couple extra days out from school after the break. We would be driving down, to enjoy the sights along the west coast.

For the rest of the story, click

Still Speaking...

So the time was nearing and my parents asked some folks in our church if we could borrow their van (this was a full size van, before minivans existed). It was great, Jane and I each had our own bench to stretch out on. which minimized fighting and maximized sleeping. The only bad thing was that rather than a cassette player it had an 8-track player. Yes, this was in 1981 - the dying days of 8-track and disco. My family never had an 8-track - my Dad was prescient enough to know it was not a technology that would last (but he was not so lucky on the Betamax idea).

I had a sense of pending disaster when, on the day before or the morning of our departure, Dad was backing the van out of the garage and managed to swipe the passenger side mirror off. Oops.

The second “issue” came when we were piled into the van and ready to go. I think we were a block or two down the road when Mom casually ran through her final checklist of things that needed to be done before departure...

“Turn on the dishwasher...”

“What? We can’t leave with the diswasher running. What if it leaks?” So began a litany from Dad of possible disasters in our house if we were to continue on our merry way while the dishwasher ran it’s cycle. And there followed a ~~fight~~ discussion between our parents on whether or not we needed to turn around. Jane and I huddled in the back, scared that this vacation might not happen after all and that we’d have to go back to school on time. Common sense prevailed, however, and we continued on our merry way.

I won’t bore you with the details of our trek south through Washington (although we did pass not too far from the area near Mt. St. Helens and saw the piles of ash still on the side of the road) and Oregon. Honestly, I don’t remember anything in particular about those days of the trip. Maybe Mom, Dad, or Jane could fill in anything I miss in the comments.

And I don’t really have any specific memories tied to that vacation from northern California. I think it’s because, ironically, we ended up moving to northern California (Monterey) rather than back east, and so I have vivid memories of that area from our 18 months of living up there. Maybe sometime I’ll write about our day trip to San Fransisco/Oakland when Dad lost something valuable on the BART train and how we inadvertently got high at the A’s baseball game.

I will say that another thing that was consistent on the trip was the angst over meals. Dad would ask where we wanted to eat. Mom would say it didn’t matter, where did he want to go? Jane and I were happy for anything, but kept silent. Dad said he didn’t care either and to just pick a place. I don’t think they managed to pick a single restaurant without that 20-30 minute debate. It’s still that way today, a little bit. We’re all so laid back, we may have a preference but we’re willing to do what the others want. It’s not that we’re indecisive, it’s that we want to be considerate of the desires of the others since we don’t have a preference. It’s a vicious circle that involved much eye-rolling and sighing.

Back to the vacation...my main memories are in southern California. I think we’d all agree that we were a little underwhelmed with Hollywood and LA. We did the typical touristy things - Grauman’s Chinese Theater, the Walk of Fame, etc. We were even underwhelmed with DisneyLand. It’s much smaller than I expected - just the Magic Kingdom portion with a few extra rides thrown in. Plus, I was a jaded teenager who wasn’t excited to be seen having a good time with my parents in a childish amusement park.

Universal Studios was cooler, there’s a picture of me with one of the Battlestar Gallactica Cylons. (I’m not a complete geek, I had to look that up. And no, I will not be posting that picture.) I wasn’t happy about having my picture taken with him or at all, for that matter.

We toured the NBC Studios, saw where Day of Our Lives was filmed - this was exciting for us gals since we all watched Days... religiously. We saw The Tonight Show studio, but there weren’t tickets for the show that night available so we didn’t get to see Johnny Carson do his thing.

We went to Knott’s Berry Farm, which at that point in my life was the best amusement park ever. They had the best rides and we had a great time. And I was introduced to the new favorite flavor of mine - boysenberry. I think Mom or Dad got a boysenberry cobbler or similar dessert for one of our meals and I have loved boysenberry ever since. Funny what you remember, huh?

The most memorable portion of the trip came in San Diego. We enjoyed the tour of Dad’s ship - an aircraft carrier is enormous, their rooms are tiny, and that place is loud, all the time. I had a whole new respect for Dad after that visit, knowing that he had spent the better part of 3 years in that tiny little room with a roommate and under the flight deck with the constant booms and crashes of jets taking off and landing.

We went to the San Diego zoo where, before we could even enter the gates, a bird decided to poop right on my mother’s head. If we had had a video camera that video would have won us the $10,000 prize on AFHV. Of course, she was terrible upset. And we found it hilarious - being callous youth, my sister and I howled with laughter. Mom, I’m sorry we laughed. Well, not really, it was too stinking funny.

That was potential disaster #1 at the zoo. Disaster #2 occurred in one of the gift shops and involved my sister. She and I were bored, we’re also tactile - so we were constantly touching stuff and being told not to touch anything. I didn’t see the following event, just heard it. I was nearing my mother when we heard a crash. Dad asked, “Where’s Jane?” to which I shrugged, “I dunno,” like any self-respecting teenager would. And I helpfully pointed in the general direction of where I had left her, looking at a wall of refrigerator magnets.

It was, literally, a wall. With hundreds of tiny ceramic magnets shaped like zoo animals, of course. Apparently, Jane had pressed one of the magnets a little too hard and the wall came crashing down. Did I mention that the magnets were ceramic? Yes, there were many broken magnets - and these were days of “You break it, You buy it” rather than “the customer is always right.” So Dad shelled out an undisclosed amount of money for magnets that were not only not wanted, but broken. (On a happier note, my mother is very resourceful and a big believer in garage sales. She managed to sell just about all of them in various garage sales later.)

We also went to Sea World where we were happily drenched by Shamu #362 and my father was spat upon by a walrus. That’s all I remember about that. Heh.

One other family-insider tidbit I remember: beep-beep - and if one of the others feels like sharing what that means, they can in the comments.

So that’s the tale of the Jen Speaks Family Vacation of 1981. We moved to California in 1982 and then back east in 1983. Our move in ‘83 is a week-long tale as well, of our driving trek across the most boring parts of the USA - to one of the hottest summers I had experienced in my life to that point.

Done Speaking...

Posted by at 05:30 PM
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Magic Opal

I colored my hair this weekend - to touch up the roots. I usually buy my stuff at Sally’s Beauty Supply, but I didn’t make it there, so I just bought a whole kit at Wal-Mart. I picked a color I though matched my current color and a differnt brand (I usually use L’Oreal but went with Clairol Herbal Essences).

I like this brand - it doesn’t have the typical chemical smell, it didn’t make my scalp itch, and the color is great. And my hair is softer too. Overall, I’m pleased.

And this is how boring it is today...that I have nothing to say, but feel the need to post something anyway. Maybe I’ll submit this to the Bonfire of the Vanities this weekend.

Posted by at 01:42 PM
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Sunday, July 20, 2003

Memory Lane

Alan K. Henderson reminded me that today is the anniversary of the moon landing/walk - July 20, 1969.

I have a pretty good long term memory - I can remember details from my childhood that you wouldn’t believe. My first true memory is of watching the men on the moon on TV. I was two years old.

We lived in Oak Harbor, WA. My sister was exactly one month old. My mother’s parents were visiting. I was sitting on my Granddad’s lap, watching the coverage on the console TV we had. I can’t remember if it was color or black & white, although I remember the picture being black & white, of course. I remember understanding that what we were watching was a very big deal, it was years later that I knew exactly why.

So on this day, it makes me sad to think that we somehow lost the vision and passion to continue exploring the moon, space as we did in the 60s. And in light of the Columbia tragedy this year, I’m even more saddened that we may never get that vision and passion back.

If you’re interested in learning more about NASAs quest to get to the moon, rent From the Earth to the Moon - it’s one of the best TV miniseries, entertaining and educational all at once.

Btw, my sister thinks the moon landing was made up - complete fiction ala Capricorn One. I’ve mentioned this before, but I thought I would again because she is a freak, of course.