"People get uptight about the most bizarre things," Jeff said, nodding, as I showed him the pictures. I agreed.

I'd been zeroing in on a sweet little parking space at the store when the battered blue Dodge had caught my eye. I tossed my car into 'park' after whipping around the row, and had my camera ready before I walked by the car.

While I'm legally allowed to photograph cars, I prefer to do it as inobtrusively as possible.

I had the lens cap removed and the camera turned on before I even came in view of the car. Thus prepared, the actual process of taking two photos took less than four seconds. There was plenty of light; I didn't even bother to check the photos to see if they were acceptable. I just shoved the camera back in its little bag, turned, and went into the store to do my errands.

You can determine a lot of things about a person from what bumper stickers they place on a car. Most folk don't take bumper stickers lightly; the sayings and emblems they place on a car are likely to represent their most strongly-held beliefs. Owners don't put "I like ice cream" or "Blue is my favorite color" stickers on cars. They put things like "Re-Elect Gore in 2004" or "One Nation Under GOD."

Bumper stickers are our casual way of stating beliefs too forceful to be bandied about in most polite conversation. (For those of you who ask, the sticker on my car is "Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script.")

I'm thinking that Mr. Blue Dodge is a wee bit wrapped up in semantics. Anyone whose most strongly held beliefs end up leading him to put up a bumper sticker that says "W.W.J.D.? He'd Use His Own Name - YAHSHUA!" (and another that says "HalleluYAH Means Praise His Name")....I'm thinking we've got some semantics issues at work here.

I mean, shoot me if I'm wrong here, but if you're going to get real cranky about how a name is spelled or written, shouldn't you just go back to the original Hebrew letters and be done with it? Isn't there a certain amount lost in the transliteration from Hebrew letters (which, if I remember correctly, don't indicate vowels) to Latin ones (which do)? Yikes.

Call me theist, but I've always favored the idea of a Creator intelligent enough to know when it's being talked to, no matter what name we call it. I have trouble getting terribly upset about such things, but, at the same time, I know a lot of other people take this sort of thing with a deadly seriousness that leaves me just bewildered.

Take, for instance, the Pledge of Allegiance. Granted, I dislike the actual concept of a Pledge of Allegiance; it always had the distinct odor of Heil Jackboot about it, what with requiring kids to stand up in rows in class to recite words they don't understand while staring at a flag, and all. To me, civilian acts of informed voting and governmental criticism speak more of appreciating one's citizenship than any recited pledge ever could.

- but, in the midst of that pledge, is a sticky little two-word phrase that riles up a good bit of folk, and I'm not so certain that I blame them. I like a rollicking argument over semantics as much as the next guy, but I draw the line at dropping phrases like that into laws (or on money). Cementing specific religious phrases like that one into law will do nothing but hurt those whose beliefs fall outside those whose particular version won the day.

The standard Christian response I've seen to complaints about the "under God" phrase is, "But everyone knows what the phrase means! No one should be offended by a reference to God!"

Hate to break it to them, but that phrase, no matter how trivial, is an endorsement of a religion - Christianity. If we're all talking about the same God, and it doesn't matter how it gets referred to, perhaps we Americans could change to a slightly more inclusive version of the Pledge that would alienate different religious groups on different days of the week.

(See this page, the section marked 'the stand taken', for far better thoughts on this subject than my tired brain is likely to craft tonight.)

Perhaps on Mondays we could say "under Goddess," and on Fridays "under Allah." After all, it shouldn't matter - it's just semantics, right?

I'm guessing the guy driving the blue Dodge wouldn't agree.

Aren't the freedoms of religion and expression just ... grand?

Words don't like forcing. When pushed, they fight back with kick and claw and bite, resulting in nothing but torn-up papers and cramped hands. Finished sentences rarely result, and the ones that survive their troubled gestation usually prove to be truly ghastly infants.

The past week has been tough. The next few will be tougher. I am approaching the one-year anniversary of Dad's death with something deeper than apprehension but differently-flavored than dread: knowledge conveys its literal meaning, but precariousness conveys its resonance.

It's extraordinarily rare that I talk to anyone about what happened last year. Even now, a year later, I don't have the mental distance or emotional stability to do it, so I leave the words hanging, swinging, between my lips and another's ears.

The mirror tells me I am not fundamentally different.

* * * * *

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Jeff rightfully pointed out that porn, while supposedly the seedy underbelly (there's a bad pun in there somewhere, I just know it) of this interweb thingy, is also quite possibly one of the most [only?] profitable sectors.

We were driving back from Rick's on one of those zero-traffic nights where the space between your friend's house and your own gives you more time to converse than is probably good for you. We'd spent part of the night's socialization talking about various spam-stopping methods, which of course led to the discussions of the worst/most disturbing spams we've each received.

Granted, I have a nice little antispam program that munges any and all HTML in emails it thinks are spam; therefore, I can open such spams as catch my eye and look at them without worry of being tracked, logged, bugged, spied upon, or just generally bothered.

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It must be spring. My hands smell like varnish.

We don't really know the cause, but pseudo-scientific tests have confirmed that my brain has turned to mush. The prevailing theory has to do with the undoubtedly mutagenic chemicals in the varnish, but I have a sneaking suspicion that three nights of forcefully-applied iambic pentameter might have something to do with it.

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Details of the Jackopierce concert will arrive soon, after sleep, the ingestion of sustenance, and stoppage of this strange bouncing that I've been doing for the last few hours. Your normal, reserved, albeit slightly goofy domesticat will return sometime on Monday. For now, the demented impostor that has taken over her body feels the need to go into the living room and squeal for a little while.

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As I crossed the state line I realized I'd missed the grand turning-out of the lights, the unknown but somehow pre-determined moment when all of the good citizens of Alabama realize it's time to go to bed, and turn out all the lights. There hadn't been many lights in Tennessee, but in comparison, Alabama was utterly dark. I took the state line exit onto the back roads, and did not see another car (or an open gas station) for the rest of the drive.Read the rest »

So, let me get this straight - instead of "French fries," they're "Freedom Fries" now because those dastardly French have the temerity to disagree with Dubya's cowboy brinksmanship disguised as foreign policy?

Freedom fries? Freedom toast?
Freedom fries? Freedom toast?
FREEDOM FRIES? FREEDOM frelling TOAST?

In case no one else in this country stops snoring and bothers to say it, let me jump around and yell a bit in the hopes that someone will hear it:

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When we pulled up at the restaurant to meet the crew for Sean's dinner, everyone who was already there ran toward my car. "PLEASE tell us you brought your camera. We all forgot ours. You've GOT to see this Saturn."

"Uh-oh," I said. "Where's the car?" They pointed me off to the left. Before I even saw the car, I saw the glow.Glow is a bad sign. It's the ricer equivalent of a cancer symptom. The appearance of a glow indicates severe ricer issues - ones that, as we well know, can only be dealt with by liberal usage of a digital camera.

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My friend Heather took her camera to Saturday's massive antiwar demonstration in Washington, D.C. Her site, gravitylens.org, contains 124 (so far) of the photos she shot that day, as part of a growing series entitled "This Is Democracy."

This is good stuff. Whether or not you agree with the politics being shown, you need to see these photos for yourself.

UPDATE: - see the bottom of this post.

I've tried to make it as easy as possible for people to subscribe to cat.net's RSS feed. I've updated it to RSS 2.0 (in other words, bit the bullet about the standards argument and just upgraded the silly thing). It's available in the same place it's always been: domesticat.net/syndicated.php

(For those of you who are interested, the feed for geek-chick.net can be found at geek-chick.net/syndication.php.)

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Atlanta. Three-point-five hours of driving to get to the geek farm, where newborn goats were cuddled and cooed over, and dragon*con staff meeting was attended.

It rained. Of course.
I managed to get lost in Atlanta. Of course.

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Death does not take reservations; it comes and goes of its own free will, leaving the living to tend to the resulting disruption.

I am still tending.

So it's been one year. I can look at my watch and remember where I was. A year ago by the tickings of this watch, I was at Colter's. I showered. I had been instructed to get some rest. While I slept on Colter's bed, Jeff worked on Colter's computer.

The future hung over us, shadowy and low. We knew my father's death was imminent; the oxygen saturation of his blood had begun to drop the day before. Previously, his mask had provided him with eighty percent oxygen. We knew that moving him to 100% oxygen would not save him - nothing would - but if it kept him comfortable, that is what we would do.

But - no. That is not the way to remember.

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Since I have received my official notification from the Federal Office of the Executive Cluebat (motto: "We can beat sense into anyone") that the actual beginning of this war means that the purpose of most anti-war statements - "don't go to war!" - has been rendered null and void, it seems that we must find something else to talk about. Failing that, this is what you get. Read the rest »

Motto in this house: "Stupid people are everywhere, and they always take their car with them."

We went for dinner tonight with friends and, at the last minute before leaving the house, I grabbed my camera. I wasn't expecting anything to photograph, but every now and then, the residents of Huntsville surprise me. We agreed to head back to our house for an evening of socialization. Since Byron didn't know how to get back to our house, Jeff offered to ride with him.

I would take the car back by myself.

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We've gotta work on this truth-in-advertising thing. Sure, who hasn't heard that chocolate is bad for you? Rots your teeth, fattens your ass, puts the thunder in your thighs? Sure, we've got it. We ignore it every time we buy a candy bar.

However, in all those PSAs, parental lectures, and root canals, has anyone ever said to you "Stay away from that nasty chocolate or you'll get a one-inch gash on your left thumb?" Don't think so.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am the only person I know who has shed blood over a Sunday morning chocolate craving.I have also, however, managed to prove yet again that the severity of my injuries can be determined by the amount and hue of my swearing just after the injury is sustained. Torrents of colorful and inventive invective can mean only one thing: paper cut.

For some reason, the breaking of bones or the flagrant spouting of blood makes me completely forget how to swear.

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What do I do when I'm not coding? Lots of things, considering that I've been doing almost no coding lately. (All of this week's requests for code have been met with what can only be described as derisive giggling on my part.) Not sure why, but right now, when the brain stumbles onto the word code, I suddenly find myself with an immediate need to be in the living room, clipping recipes out of old Penzey's catalogs.

In other words, not a good sign for the code output.

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Somewhere between poise and thud I had the time to wonder, "What the heck did I slip o-" thud.

After verifying that my unexpected Sunday morning skidoo had not managed to permanently realign any bones, I tried to figure out what in the world had caused me to slip on an otherwise fairly-trusty bathroom floor. It only took me four days to spot the mess.

Ever heard of silicone serum? To those of you with short, fine, straight, or otherwise manageable hair, it's a foreign and vaguely disgusting concept. (I cannot begin to count the number of times I've been asked "You put what on your hair?") For those of us who fall - multiple times - into the latter category (known to stylists as "Oh God" hair or, more simply, as "A Challenge"), silicone serum is revered, worshiped, and hoarded.

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Misty shot up an eyebrow, saying, "You know, I had a friend who did that once."

"You mean I'm not the only one?"

She was highly amused by this. "Nope. Don't think so."

"Damn. There went my claim to originality."See, I keep hearing about this human trait called "normality," and the older I get, the more I suspect I was over getting seconds and thirds from the "quirks" line when I was supposed to be getting my ration of normality with everyone else.

The end results have been quite entertaining. You think you've got quirks? Come over sometime and notice that sure, I keep a folded stadium blanket tossed over the back of the main couch, but I always fold it in such a way that you can never read the entire word (my high school's name) printed on it. It's not out of embarrassment, or lack of pride in the school I attended.

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