to wear or not to wear

who knew seattle officials could be so stuffy? but finally this double-mastectomy woman has won the right to go swimming without wearing a top. i'm glad she won that fight, because body image is a major thing for women without breasts who don't have reconstruction. i mean, i don't think i could go swimming in a public pool without being covered up. it's hard enough for me to find something decent to wear to work that doesn't make me self-conscious. but it would be really nice to be able to live without having to worry about what people were going to think about your shape.

the mile-high club?

oh good grief. we are totally losing our perspective here. two airplanes humping? on the cover of a magazine? no sense in studying anthropology ... we're back to being cavemen.

string 'em all up

14,000 vs 460 million. i agree that $14,000 seems a little low to compensate for a ruined holiday, ruined clothes, frightening experience, inconvenience, etc. but $460 million? fucking lawyers are the leading cause of insanity in this country today. okay, one of the leading causes. sheesh.

where's the sled? the snow shoes? the blanket?

i wanna move to alaska!! 172 inches of snow and counting! yay!!!

blindfolds and heads in the sand

i've been curious about physic things for as long as i can remember. someone is always wanting to call it bunk, someone else claims it's all true.

i've experienced the kind of thing in this article as have an awful lot of people. i enjoyed the article and would love to see the scientific world accept this stuff, even if they don't understand it. americans will probably be the worst about accepting it though.

i still remember one time when my girlfriend and i were staying in canada and were driving from somewhere back to our camp. all of a sudden i realized we were going the wrong way. there were no signs and i had no idea where we were or where we were headed since she was driving and i wasn't paying any attention, but i KNEW we were going the wrong way. so i told her we needed to go back and get on the right road. we turned around and went a few miles back and sure enough, she had missed the turn.

i actually attribute this more to a strong sense of magnetism in my body than a physic thing because i knew we should be going north and i felt that we weren't. but still .... it's all strange.

yawn...

well, nevermind. jasper fforde's first two books were pretty good, but i just finished the third one and ... yuck. finished as in, read the first 71 pages and skipped through the rest. ho-hum and yuck. oh well.

no writing?

you don't have to learn how to write in indiana anymore. that's amazing. at my headquarters office there is a department which sets out rules for us to follow for correct grammar, how to write a memo, what form of address to use for who, yet there's a state which no longer needs to teach writing skills?

i'm pretty much stumped by this decision. it's not as if we walk around with keyboards on our arms. and even if we do in the future, that situation isn't here yet. one more nail in the coffin for this country, as far as i'm concerned.

sure i think keyboard skills are important. but i also think writing is important. there are any number of scenarios in which a person would be without a keyboard and might need to communicate or remember something.

indiana is crazy-thinking, but then our schools have been messed up for a number of decades. sheesh!

no dessert, thanks

americans are a lot more overweight today than there were in 1995. the state with the highest obesity rate is mississippi and the lowest is colorado.

blah blah blah and then on down the article is this statement:  "Some groups say such behavioral initiatives are not enough, arguing that food manufacturers and restaurant chains need limits on how they market to children."

oh good grief. where did this start? this thing of making everyone else responsible for your decisions? i hate it. if people get overweight how can that be the fault of a restaurant or manufacturer? get real. people can leave some of their food on the plate, or take it home in a doggy bag, or just quit eating out if there's too much temptation.

letting/making/having other people be responsible for us undermines our integrity. enough already!

silly old bear...

upcoming movies that hep, good-natured, old people might enjoy: Super 8, Mr. Popper's Penguins, (the new) Winnie The Pooh, or Cowboys & Aliens.

little ones

the husband and i just watched babies. i wanted to see it when it first came out, but it just didn't happen. that's actually probably a good thing though -- i laughed uproariously when hattie's dad put her on the slide and she rode her little car-thing down the slide and on away down the park until she upended into a sandpit. i don't know why i thought that was so funny. but anyone at the theatre would have given me really dirty looks and maybe called the cops thinking i was a child abuser.


that little episode aside, gosh! the husband and i are amazed that anyone in mongolia or namibia survives. or that their family jewels do, at the very least. what living conditions they have!! it wasn't unusual for the little boy in mongolia to wander among the cows, pants-less. and the kids in namibia were forever sitting in the dirt, pants-less. and the flies!


i'm just very very glad i had my kids where i did and that we have lived the way we have. blessed are we!

dumb bunnies

what do you think of this wikileaks thing? frankly, i think it's bad. i mean, anyone who discloses information like they've been doing should be thrown in jail.

FOIA was put in place to  legally get information, and there have always been moles and informants. but, gees, to get and distribute information which threatens our safety and way of life? i mean, does anyone really think these types of documents shouldn't exist? if so, you have no connection to reality!

trying to make everything the government does totally available to the public is just idiotic. you cannot run a large country by making every single thing public knowledge. do the terrorists operate that way? hell no. and have they been effective? pretty damn. do other countries honestly tell us what they're doing? hahaha.

transparency is a nice ideal, but get real. and people who expose sensitive and classified information should be allowed to rot in jail. without tv, books, computers, or yard time.

go a little ways then turn left at the tree and go awhile longer ....

how are your gps skills? we've never gotten around to getting one and now i may be glad. it seems that using a gps (using it a lot, i would guess) may turn your brain to mush.

three studies have been done which conclude that how we navigate around today may impact the way our brain functions as we age. the article talks about the spatial navigation strategy versus the stimulus-response strategy.

it also talks about grey matter and alzheimer's and the hippocampus, blah blah, but i found it interesting. it would be particularly telling if they did another study made up entirely of air traffic controllers. controllers use spatial reasoning a lot! and if that group had a smaller percentage of alzheimer's victims, you'd think the theory really had truth to it.

regardless, i enjoy using maps and envisioning routes, and finding my way around, and i don't care if i get lost. it's a quick way to learn about the vicinity. of course, the way that guys give directions and the way that gals give directions are completely different and worthy of a study by itself!

anyway, read the article -- it's food for thought.

better this way? or this way?

i see this web site every once-in-a-while which shows a hair and face makeover for women. sometimes they look better, but sometimes they just look different. and, honestly, sometimes they look worse. of the 48 pictures i looked at today, i decided there were only about 27 that i thought looked better.

and, really, can those women style their hair they way the professionals do? get it all poofy and laying just right? probably not, which means they are probably going to end up going back to their familiar style.

and the makeup -- yuck! always so much eye shadow and tons of foundation. just gross. and they usually leave off their glasses for the final picture ... what are they supposed to do then, stumble around? nope, the glasses will go back on.

it just feels icky to me, but then i don't like plastic surgery either. yes, you can make the most of what you've got, but sooner or later the makeup is going to come off. what then?

maybe a previous life?

i love bagpipes. i'm not sure why, maybe it's because of that underlying drone which feels comforting. and scotland calls to me for some reason, again, not sure why, but this little bit shows how beautiful scotland is.

i want to say one word to you, just one word. are you listening? plastics.

jennifer grey is pretty, nose job or not. but there is absolutely no way nadya suleman looks ANYthing like angelina jolie!

some of these people make you cringe (jocelyn wildenstein), some of them make you go 'oh yuck' (donatella), some of them make you shake your head (david gest, for more reasons than his plastic), some of them make you laugh (danielle/melan), and some of them leave you jaw-droppingly astonished (amanda, where is your husband the joker?)!

curious? here you go .... but only if you're brave or love horror movies.

upper crust

since i shop online for everything except groceries, i got a lot of catalogs from companies i've never heard of -- per list-selling and all that.

this one just had me totally shaking my head. i don't begin to have enough money to shop with them and besides .... why would i want to? they have one flower arrangement (moss, 2 roses, a twig, some leaves, couple of mushrooms) for $124. they have a small tray with 2 candles, some twigs, and a bole of cotton for $68. there are 3 votives and twenty 3 1/2" candles for $98.

but enough of the ordinary stuff. they also have 3 ceramic bowls for $98, a wooden bowl with 3 packages of soup mix and a small soup cookbook for $198, a tiny ceramic colander to rinse off your berries for $64, 4 caramel apples for $48, 12 oz of sesame seed brittle on a platter for $98, a pound of pistachios for $38, and a branding iron with your own logo at no given price although if your order totals more than $1,000 they'll waive the one-time set-up fee of $395.

maybe i'm not being fair, after all there are people out there who buy this stuff. but then again, i'm only expressing my own opinion so fairness doesn't enter into it. so -- icky, patooey, gaaack! i'm not spending my money there.

oh for pete's sake ....

i was just reading an article about superstition and the paranormal. i don't have a problem with people believing in ghosts or bigfoot or ufos. as long as people in charge aren't burning people at the stake for their beliefs, and the far-out beliefs aren't hurting anyone, i don't think it's a big deal. live and let live.

it's surprising to me, though, to read this quote: "regardless of the person or the phenomenon, paranormal experiences are purely quirks of the human brain" so says michael shermer who publishes skeptic magazine. i'm not going to bother checking out this guy or his credentials, but really. wrapping it up so neat and tidy just isn't the way the world works.

quantum physics is shadowy and mysterious yet has stood up to rigorous testing. how egotistical for smarmy shermer to declare that paranormal things are just imagined. making this simplistic ruling which discounts and discredits people, that is something that irritates me. buzz off, small man.

hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to mars we go ....

i read an article today about the idea of going to mars ..... and not returning.

they likened it to christopher columbus who sailed off, not at all sure of where he was going or what he'd find. to a certain extent i agree with that thought. new explorations are necessarily into the unknown, and there's a real likelihood you won't make it back.

still .... the idea of going to mars -- as tantalizing as it seems at first -- would almost have to be really, really depressing. i mean, no clouds, no trees, no buildings, no animals. so much sameness. maybe someone who grew up in the sahara could handle it, but i'm pretty sure i could not.

they mused about the possibility that the only people willing to go on that one-way trip would be oldsters, who didn't really have that much to lose with not returning to earth. being with a bunch of oldsters might, in itself, be depressing, and sooner or later someone would get stuck taking care of everyone else.

a number of possibilities and many things to think about. if they knock on your door and ask if you want to go along for the ride, what are you going to say?

let's see -- ignorant? misogynistic? insane?

did you read about the islamic cleric who said there's never rape in a marriage? i was disgusted and shook my head.

and now there's a headline in which an islamic court says it's okay for a man to beat his wife as long as he doesn't leave any marks.

it's dogma like that which leaves me not feeling very friendly toward these people. i remember reading back in  my college days where an ethnocentric person is one who feels his group or beliefs are superior to others. being ethnocentric was regarded as not being a good thing.

weeeeeelll, do any religions in america say it's okay to beat your wife or rape her? not that i know of. especially not in the mainstream.

if islam teachings run along these lines, then let's just say there aren't enough bytes to express my ethnocentricism about it. still .... gaaack!

rod serling and me ...

i've always thought things were really out there when the subject of dimensions came up. i mean, three dimensions I understand, and the fourth, well sure, that makes sense, too. but then they go on about  6, 7, 8, and even 12 dimensions and i just back away. it's too much for me and scary, too. no matter how i try to understand what they're saying, i just can't wrap my mind around it.

oh, ho! but then i was playing chuzzle last night (not to be confused with guzzle, which i don't). if you've ever played that game, it is kinda fun and while it seems innocuous, it's tricky. and while the comparison is in no way close to the real thing, i realized that what i was doing was playing in a whole bunch of dimensions at once.

since we're lifting reality anyhow, you need to imagine the three dimensions as being played out on the screen. yes, it's two dimensions, but just pretend it's three. then we add time, which makes it four. then we add color (each little chuzzle is a different color with about five or so colors being the set), which influences how we play, which makes it five dimensions. then we add right-angled configurations, which makes it six. and i suppose if we're going to be technical about it we should add in the scoring since if you use a 'hint' it subtracts from your score which might influence how you play the game -- that's seven.

whew! and it can get hard to play in seven dimensions! your mind has to shift gears constantly and after awhile, it's tiring. still ... i thought it was curious that all the manipulating i was doing in my mind made me feel like i was dealing with multiple dimensions. very curious.