clare
Thursday, January 22, 2004
HEAR YE, HEAR YE
almost a year after its inception, i'm shutting down this blog. it's lunar new year, see, and i need a fresh start.
the one of you who reads this knows how to reach me if you need to, anyway. i'll keep writing to myself, but i'm not quite sure what i'm doing, putting my thoughts out there. there's so much other worthwhile stuff to read--better to get a good brainful reading ann's stuff or the many, many intelligent lefty political blogs out there. and, if you want to know how i'm doing, i'd rather you ask.
maybe i'll take up hand-written letter-writing, instead.
cheers!
clare
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
INFORMAL POLL
for the one of you who actually reads this hooey, WWYD? that is, what would YOU do?
hypothetically speaking, say your 14-year-old car needed "work" to the tune of, oh, let's say $1000. do you:
a) "trade in" (aka junk) your car on a newER car
b) shell out the $1K and hope it lasts you long enough to make it worth your while
c) sell your car for $500 and build yourself a nice little stash of morphine... or try to lobby your local legislature for better local public transportation. either way, it's a waste of time and energy.
i'm guessing not c, then. hm. given options a and b... WWYD?
a) PROS:
- a newer, theoretically more reliable car
- a shiny newer car
a) CONS:
- a car payment of some kind, plus interest (i.e., more debt... but a big hug for your credit report if you make your payments!)
- the hassle of trying to find yerself a car
- higher car insurance
- hey, wait, where is this money coming from again?
- and you just paid for new tires, and you got new shocks & struts for graduation last year... aww man!
b) PROS:
- your savings wiped out all at once (rather than bit by bit)
- you could potentially be saving all of those car payments for the rest of the time you have your current vehicle
b) CONS:
- your savings wiped out all at once
- the potential that your car could have other, similarly expensive issues in the future
am i forgetting anything?
of course, the PROS and CONS listed above should be weighted... somehow. damn that statistician in me! like, the value of having a reliable car (one with some kind of warranty, even)--is that close to the value of the potential un-reliability of your new vehicle? is it greater?
none of this would even be an issue if regular commuter rail (or even bus! bus bus bus!) service were established between portland and brunswick. i think i'll write a letter to my local representative.
Tuesday, January 20, 2004
GOD LOVE 'IM
what gift do you get for the guy who has everything, then proceeds to give you and your partner his old computer?
beats the hell out of me.
ahh, god love 'im. we now have a "new" computer, complete with internal burner (slick!) that works (slick! slick!) and is expandable and upgradable because, unlike our previous "machines," it's a desktop.
nothing like a clean (slick!), newish, nicely-purring computer to grace the side of your desk. granted that it's equipped with a pentium II, but it's better than our old compy. i hope the kitties don't get jealous.
meanwhile, our other new toy has proved to be oodles of fun. although we seem to be the type of folks who take shot after shot of our (eek!) cats. could we get any more... how should i say it... pathetic?
i guess it's better than the pictures of bushie's beaming puss, which will appear, no doubt, on the teavee tonight as he recites his state-of-the-union sto--i mean, speech.
points for anyone who can find me a place where i can read the transcript of the speech, rather than listen to him.
bonus points for anyone who can tell me where "teavee" comes from.
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
HAR HAR HAR
when i saw this site (and i reFUSE to give them any more power by giving them yet another link to their page--you can access it from Rahne's post for today, i laughed out loud. c'mon, now. DA-DI? this acronym means (for the curious among you) "Dads Against the Divorce Industry," and this page is choc-a-bloc full of all kinds of right-wing insanities--o! too many to list. misogyny, homophobia, racism--you got it all here, folks! and, hey! look! they found the "homosexual agenda"--it's right there at the bottom right of the page!
ooo, don't forget to check out their reading list--and remember to NOT read any of those pathetic excuses for "books." better yet, read 'em, and deconstruct them for yourself--know thine enemy and all of that. but, wait, what's that one that's co-authored by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Cornell West--a "feminist scholar and noted African American intellectual" on the Amazon page for that book? what's that one doing there? hmm, someone should notify them about that... but it's not going to be me. the webpage is even funnier with that book on there. now, i might have to read it.
Friday, January 09, 2004
"THEY SAY THAT THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE
BUT, THEN, SO WILL THE LIE
IT DEPENDS IF YOU'RE TRYING TO GET TO THE PROMISED LAND
OR JUST TRYING TO GET BY"
--Ani Difranco, "Promised Land"
sortof puts most of america into perspective, doesn't it? i mean, it's hard to focus on the military-industrial complex when the heat in your car is broken (i.e., not working) and weather.com puts the current temp reading at NEGATIVE EIGHT DEGREES (Fahrenheit, folks, not Celsius). not that that's, like, happened to me today, or anything.
Thursday, January 08, 2004
YOU MIGHT HAVE NOTICED
that i have added commenting to my weblog. thanks to Nik for making it possible... and so freakin' easy. i guess i could do this myself if i were smahtah, but who needs more smahts when other people have already done the work for you?
i think i'll send him a couple o' bucks for making my life just a wee bit easier. go, nik, go.
HEH HEH
although i'm not entirely sure that this Bob fellow is a Taoist, i agree with most of the thinking behind his posts. perhaps more importantly, several of them made me laugh out loud.
verdict: he's one of the good eggs.
the last word: man, i wish men who identify themselves as left-wingers (as much as i want to hug them) would be more conscious about the ways in which gender structures their daily lives and imbues them with privilege, whether or not they asked for it. for that matter, i wish the same for white people and race, well-off people and class, and straight people and sexuality. in fact, i wish everyone sought out a better understanding of power structures that crisscross virtually every decision made, every action taken in their daily lives--myself included. dig?
Wednesday, January 07, 2004
COMMAS, AND APOSTROPHE'S
aaaaa! i don't mean to be a grammar curmudgeon, but, if you intend to send written documents to a large number of people (e.g., more than 10), please please PLEASE learn when to use commas and apostrophes. For example,
Incorrect: Clare's assertions about "correct" grammar might be perpetuating classism, and not making the world a happier place as she intended.
Correct: Clare doesn't mean to be overly elitist, and she doesn't really want to lord a particular kind of education over anyone's heads.
Incorrect: Nevertheless, Clare will burn any professional document's containing these types of error's.
Correct: Clare will take no prisoners, unless said prisoners' excuses include: "I was dead" or "my name is Leonard Shelby."
super-extra bonus points (i.e., hugs) to folks who use "effect" and "affect" appropriately.
enormo-faboo-huge bonus points (i.e., kisses) to folks who can tell the difference between "i.e." and "e.g."
WOWEE WOW WOW
in the true spirit of geekdom, i just discovered that the most recent version of acrobat features some major functional improvements that allow me to do all kinds of neat and useful things with .pdfs--like highlight text, take snapshots of pieces of documents, and search for words and phrases. wowee! where have i been since it came out?
Tuesday, January 06, 2004
TO QUOTE PETER GABRIEL, "LIFE CARRIES ON AND ON AND ON AND ON. LIFE CARRIES ON AND ON AND ON."
individual shoe prints were still visible in the new dusting of snow this morning, indicating that only a handful of people--six or seven discernable sets of prints--had walked on the street since the wee hours when the snow fell.
the drive to augusta from portland is an otherworldly experience in that it's almost impossibly monotonous. i saw the tire tracks from a car that had skidded across the median, righted itself, and continued on its way northbound, the arc of a panicky moment of lost control. i saw chunks of icy snow hurtling themselves high into the air from the tops of enormous truck trailers, only to plummet to the ground and smash themselves on the gritty pavement. i saw a fleet ATM, quite out of context, on the back of a flatbed truck, travelling on the soutbound side of the road, a money machine in transit. i made a mental note of these things because i needed something to break up the drive.
if you turn off all of your unneccessary accessories when driving, your ears may be filled with a lot of sound, despite the relative quiet. if you listen hard, you can separate the sounds in your head: there, the pistons in your engine sputtering at a speed just beyond the limits of your hearing; there, your tires striking, pulling, and releasing the road in a constant hum of motion; the unidentifiable clicks and whistles of a large object designed to convey you between the past and the future (among other things, of course). an odd sort of purgatory, your car. a vehicle of consumption as much as it is an alternately animate and inanimate solid hulk of chemical compounds. a location--perhaps the ultimate--that travels with you. a space in which time and speed and distance are contained in their own definitions: late! too early. mph. too fast. too slow. i still have so far to go. i'm almost there. a temporary home for plans, hopes, fears, and dreams, no more than any other location, i suppose. a place where the hands of the future reach solidly into the present in surprisingly concrete ways: i will travel on this road until i reach another road, upon which i will turn and reach another road, and so on and so forth. a place where, perhaps, the unexpectedness of the future is felt in a very physical way.
i drive my car 1/2 hour to work and 1/2 hour home each day, not counting the days when i drive an extra hour to augusta and another hour back. although i am strongly opposed to motoring around in this fashion each day, i don't feel terribly guilty about it all because the state in which i reside has built virtually no public transportation at all, nor is any such system in the works, especially given current budget constraints and our current governor's unwillingness to raise taxes even a smidgen. i know it's far more complicated than all that, but...
here i am, anyway, with my aging car in an aging state.
