I admit it. I'm a definite fangirl where Josh Ritter is concerned. I can thank Adam for turning me on to his music. There's something in his manner of storytelling -- literate, thoughtful, playful, emotional -- that delights me every time a new album comes out.

His songs aren't immediate, ferocious loves. They're albums you play several times as you absorb the melody, waiting for the full import to sink in, and then eventually there's a moment when the sense of what I'm hearing seeps in, and I hit 'repeat.' A few months later I realize the songs have slowly, gradually, seeped into the soundtrack of my life.

Jeff (aka @eaton) and Larry (aka @TheRealCrell) are two truly nifty and interesting people I've met as a result of being on the fringes of the Drupal community. I've been watching this exchange scroll by on Twitter with a mix of admiration, amusement, and need for aspirin. Will be completely impenetrable and boring to anyone who isn't either 1) fascinated with religion or 2) fascinated with programming structures.

Moments like these are why my co-workers settle in to read my trouble tickets with amusement:

There are notes in the code that specifically indicate the maintainer hasn't written all of the security-related code yet.  (Um.  WHAT?)  The integration issues wouldn't grind our server to a halt if the module actually was respecting access permissions, because then the errors would only be happening for about 3 users.  This simply isn't acceptable, so I've disabled the integration until I can get a better handle on what's going on with this module.  Or stalk the maintainer.  Whichever.

...and that's just one ticket.  It's not even 9:30 yet.  I'm thinking it's going to be a banner trouble ticket day.

I think my frustration with the modern-day obsession with princesses has been noted, right? I fluff my feathers and squawk a bit every time I see grown women sporting clothing that proclaims them worthy not by dint of action or personality, but just by the sheer fact that some bint with a title chose to spawn, and they are the undeservingly-privileged results.

I can understand it in children -- fairy tales are fun when we're kids -- but entitlement stops being cute around age ten.  In adults, though?  Come on.  Princesses are born; women are made -- made through the kind of boring and dreadful Growth Experiences our shrinks keep encouraging us to have.

Thus this article on CNN ("Enough with the princess nonsense!") made me laugh.  A quote:

CNN reported that Dr. Jerri Nielsen has died. If the name tickles a memory in you, she was the sole doctor in Antarctica when she diagnosed herself with breast cancer during Antarctic winter, requiring her to treat herself for breast cancer until a risky South Pole rescue mission could be undertaken as soon as winter ended..

A quote of hers struck me as particularly memorable; it put into words something I've been trying to say a long time but never formulated properly:

"The things that make you strong, and make you feel as though you've accomplished something, are not the easy ones; it's the things you had to work and struggle through. Those are what give us our depth -- that make us not gray and plain and nothing but give us depth and texture and longing."

Indeed.

At this point, I'm just logging for posterity. Everyone gets to stand by their words, and I'd rather them be archived publicly rather than privately. Remember, this all came about because I replied to a piece of hateful anti-Muslim email, pointing out the email was factually incorrect as well as insulting.

In response to the following automatically-syndicated one-liner indicating a new post:

Everyone else has had their say today, and I wanted to wait some number of hours to let my opinions fall into place before providing my response. A full, measured, and honest response here will include nothing new to longtime readers of domesticat.net, but which may come as a surprise to quite a few of the people who knew me only as a child or a teenager, and have only recently found me again on Facebook.

First, the initial introduction.  My name is Amy.  I am in my early thirties. I am married. I have, by choice, no children -- and I am not Christian. That last statement is of little consequence outside the Bible Belt, but of tremendous consequence inside it.

What follows is the transcript of a discussion on my facebook wall regarding the entry 'Belief,' which was posted this morning.  I am posting the transcript from Facebook for archival purposes, and for those reading this site who do not use Facebook. The next post (part 3) will be my response, and would make little sense without this transcript.

I've been thinking about my colleagues today. This article pretty much says it: "Public libraries see more people, but are having to slash costs"

"There are more people, and there's been an increase in computer use," said Kristal Holmes, director of the Auburndale Public Library. Holmes said she has seen many people applying for unemployment and filling out job applications on the library's computers, as well as people filling out forms for Florida Department of Children and Families benefits, such as food stamps, Medicaid and temporary cash assistance.

It's a nasty double whammy. As soon as people can no longer afford to buy books and DVDs, they remember public libraries ... right around the time that library funding gets decimated due to falling tax receipts.

If you don't get punished, you didn't go anything wrong, right?  That's the message Vice President Dick Cheney gave in an interview with CBS' Bob Schieffer on Sunday, suggesting that a president's actions are legal if those actions didn't result in his impeachment. [read the rest of the article]

Via @trickjarrett.  Thanks for causing my head to nearly explode through steam, Patrick.

So by that token, I can go all stabby now, and as long as I don't get caught, it's all good, right?