And it's things like this that make me think, despite my disappointment with Obama, whenever anyone tries to argue that he's just the Democratic W -- "No. He could never be that bad."
Everyone affected is in my thoughts.
Lizzy L, I sympathize. There's a still-smoldering (controlled, but still smoldering) fire Down East here in NC, and we've been told that absent a hurricane or tropical storm, it will just keep smoldering and we'll keep getting Code Red or Code Purple air-quality days whenever the wind blows from the east. It is not a good situation and I'm so sorry you're having to deal with it. Stay safe and healthy.
We have got to get global warming under control. This can't go on.
Names are funny things. I have essentially two. "Caroline" is my legal name, and the one I use professionally. I go by "Carrie" to family and close friends -- I was nicknamed before I was born.
While the one name is a diminutive of the other, mentally they feel like two entirely distinct names. Caroline is a slightly different person from Carrie, although they're both me -- slightly different personality aspects get emphasized. Caroline is a little more careful and a little more thoughtful, and I like being Caroline here.
I agree with Xopher on the pronunciation of Marilee. "Mary Lee" has stress on both the first and last syllables, while Marilee has stress only on the first (identical to "merrily"). And I was born and bred in NC (admittedly, with Yankee parents).
Lee @ 282: any song that showed up in a dream recently
Did I mention here that a few weeks ago, I Rickrolled myself in a dream? It was truly fantastic.
If I dream of music, and I don't often, it's usually music that my brain has created for the dream. (The other night I half-dreamed, half-hallucinated something that sounded like Prince but wasn't any Prince song I've ever heard.)
The last game I was in, somebody drew "love"... and everyone agreed that it should be discarded and another card drawn.
Oh good heavens!
Rikibeth @ 280, I hadn't thought of it, but you are entirely correct. "Extraordinary Girl" does have a very Beatles chord progression. That helps explain why I like it so much.
Add my vote to the "can't not hear lyrics" pile. If they're understandable, I hear them.
I also remember lyrics, which are apparently tagged by keywords in my brain. Seeing or hearing a word that features in a song immediately calls it forth as an earworm. Sometimes this is a totally subconscious process; I'll notice that I'm humming something, and sometimes I'll run across the word again and think "Oh! That's why I'm humming this song!" (For example, I recently went to San Francisco and stayed in a hotel on the Embarcadero. For the entire week, I went around humming Wilco's "Via Chicago," because it uses the word "Embarcadero" in the first verse.)
This appears to be a hereditary propensity; my mother and maternal grandmother do exactly the same thing.
There is (or was) a board game called "Encore!" which rewards this skill -- you get cards with single words on them, and have to sing a song whose lyrics include that word. People have absolutely refused to play it with me and my mother -- unless we are put on opposite teams.
It also takes an effort of will for me not to sing along to any song I know.
Verbal circuits: I can't code or write while listening to music whose lyrics I know. I can code or write while listening to instrumental music, or music whose lyrics I don't know -- and in this case I do not glom onto the lyrics.
I can't talk or read if there's music with words (or talk radio) playing at any volume; it manifests with me feeling extremely agitated and nervous as I try to carry on the conversation or read the page.
Actually, I can't do much of anything requiring serious concentration and attention with unrelated verbal signals occurring. This is because I am a verbal learner, and when I'm doing something hard, I'm thinking in words that I have to pay attention to. Even while coding, if I run into something where the logic isn't obvious and I have to think it through, I will turn off any music with words.
Has anyone here been able to get through to the Obama campaign (866-675-2008, option 6 from the first menu)? I just tried again to call, and again got stuck in an endless loop of "We're sorry no volunteer operators are available to take this call, please leave a message" -- "No messages can be left at this time, please press 0 to transfer to an attendant" -- "We're sorry no volunteer operators are available...." Should I just try sitting on hold for longer and an operator will open up, or have others gotten through quickly?
Madeline F, your friend might consider CareCredit. They offer no-interest payment plans if she can pay it back relatively quickly, and interest starting at 11.9% for longer-term loans.
The only experience I have with help for vet bills is on an individual level -- with mod approval, people will sometimes ask for help in the Livejournal kittypix community, and others will donate via PayPal. People are very generous in online cat-related communities, in my experience. If you or your friend is involved in one, maybe ask the mods if it would be okay to ask for help?
And albatross @543, congratulations. Please do talk about happy things. I certainly need to be reminded that happy things are still going on every day.
So tell us about your new house!
One thing I know: every time a progressive politician compromises and progressives throw up their hands and give up, the Republicans win. Obama's let us down. Instead of giving up, let's engage in some corrective action. He invited us to join his movement. Let's show him exactly what that entails.
Right on.
I got like this in 2000 -- I was one of the third-party voters who got fed up with some of the anti-progressive letdowns of the Clinton years (and there were some) and decided to send a message. (I voted for the Socialist Party candidate, not Nader, but it doesn't matter -- I supported Nader in terms of campaigning.) I really thought it was a good idea at the time; I thought the Democrats would get the message, that so many people were fed up enough to vote Green, and that when Gore won he'd take that into account.
We all know what happened.
Now I'm seeing the same frustration -- I've been seeing it for a while from people who never supported Obama, and now I'm seeing it from people who did, including myself. Lots of calls to vote third-party to send a message. But I think we've already run this experiment, and it did not yield the desired results. I understand being angry, but I don't understand willingly walking back into 8 more years of Bush because maybe the Democrats will get the message to move left this time. The definition of insanity, etc.
There are two options that I see. Some political genius actually manages to mount up a viable third party and steals sufficient support from the Democrats to take over. I don't think that's bleeding likely, given the electoral system we have, and I especially don't think it's bleeding likely before November. I wish things were different and more open, but they are not.
Or, we remake the Democrats from within, pushing progressive candidates in and the DINOs out. This is the option that seems most likely to succeed, and it's the one I'm going to pursue.
It looks like you (or I) actually could start such a fundraising page. Would be nice if some of the big liberal bloggers would get on board with such a thing -- that's how it'd get enough exposure to be worthwhile.
Also, do campaigns usually answer the phone on the weekends? I've been trying to call Obama's campaign to express my displeasure and can neither get to a person nor leave a message. Should I wait until Monday morning?
(I'm going to call my senators to tell them to vote no, but since my senators are Burr and Dole, I doubt it'll do any good.)
Michael I @ 536, I frankly don't care if he thinks this is the best the Dems could get. He teaches constitutional law. He should know better than anyone that this is not a compromise, it's a capitulation. He should stand up for the effing Constitution. He did before. That was one of the reasons I liked him so much.
I flatly disagree with the people who say that if he took on this fight and it passed anyway, he'd look weak. No, he'd look principled. Not taking a stand against it, because he knows he's going to lose this fight? That makes him look cowardly.
In January, he said, I share your commitment to this cause, and will stand with you in the fights to come. Apparently not. I am REALLY angry.
I'm only this angry because I liked him so much.
Tlönista @ 505, it sounds like a variant on the Western Union or cashier's check scam (often originating in Nigeria these days) -- buy something online, send a fake cashier's check or a fake moneygram for more than the amount needed and ask the mark to refund you the difference. Works best with cashier's checks, because the bank makes the funds available to you before confirming they're available from the checkwriter, then pulls the funds back out of your account when they discover the check was a fake -- and of course the scammer hits after the check has "cleared" and before you realize it was fake.
The only name I've heard for it is "overpayment scam."
Mez -- you could tango to it. Or cha-cha. This opinion is based on beginner's lessons in both.
Xopher -- sounds like a winner to me! I'm chewing over a post about What Marriage Means To Me, and the answer is not TIOM. It's mostly about declaring someone my legal next of kin for all the purposes that would have. Interestingly enough, that's what has emotional meaning to me -- the idea of having everyone recognize that my partner is my family. Because I think of it that way -- as essentially a way of officially stating that you have chosen a new next of kin -- I see no reason why it shouldn't be extended to partners of any gender combination (and in numbers greater than two). Families can look like lots of things.
I cry at gay weddings in a way I never cry at straight weddings. Love triumphant against the world. Can't imagine what a mess I'll be if I actually attend one.
I watched a news clip on YouTube, that featured one couple apparently doing an interview, and when one woman turned to the other and said "Will you marry me?", I totally lost it and started bawling. And the NYT featured an incredibly adorable picture of two brides and their baby daughter that made me cry again. I've never in my life been a Wedding Story kind of person but for this, I am.
I almost said "the world's most adorable picture" but I think the picture in this post has a strong claim for world's most adorable picture. I've rarely seen two people look more totally overjoyed. I want to go back to CA and stand outside various city halls throwing rice and handing flowers.
As I said to my boyfriend last night, "They started doing gay marriages in California today. You will note that the world has not yet ended." And the sun rose this morning, and everything!
Wow.
I am trying to decide whether cancelling my Sunday paper would be an effective protest, or whether it would just hurt my local paper and not hurt the AP at all.
Graydon @7 -- "But the language is that of Mordor, which I will not utter here." I can't help thinking, very superstitiously and irrationally, that saying it calls it into being. So I don't say it even though it haunts me.
My mother prayed hard the night Obama won enough delegates to put him over the top. She was remembering Robert F. Kennedy.
She carried on after 1968 though. If this is my 1968, so will I.
Xopher @ 28, hm, logical. Like fiction and non-fiction getting reversed in some people's minds (because they remember "not real" and associate that with the "non-" prefix).
Also, Xopher @22, interestingly enough the person who is arguing that I ought to want religious leaders brought into the fold and my mistrust is misplaced, is Wiccan, and ze says "I don't know, as a religious person it makes sense to me that he should meet with them." I found that to be a really interesting statement.
(Ze is also arguing that evangelicals as a community are really more about social-justice issues than you'd think, and the stereotypes of the religious right aren't any more fair than rap representing all POC. That's an interesting tack to take, especially for someone who isn't Christian. It's certainly shaking me up, because I grew up and live in the Bible Belt and I haven't seen a lot of evidence of that, but now I'm wondering. I know some radical peace-and-justice Catholics, because I was raised among them, but they tend to be considered, and sometimes to consider themselves, pretty fringe. And Catholics are generally not considered evangelicals, at least not down South.)
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 104 |
| 2007 | 186 |
| 2006 | 68 |
| 2005 | 14 |
| 2004 | 6 |
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