sprightly spite!: a brief respite from derby posts

There's more to post about events at the < - >, but this is good news, and I have pictures to post with it that haven't been uploaded yet. In the meantime, here are some more things I've been meaning to blather about.

From Slate, there's this slide-show essay about the show Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today at the MoMA. I particularly appreciated being introduced to Synecdoche by Byron Kim (slide 7, if you look at the essay). Fascinating stuff.

Also on Slate, to mark the 5th anniversary of the Iraq War, there's this series of essays from people who, once upon a time, supported going to war. Most of these mea culpas kind of cheesed me off, because they're all like, "Oh, we couldn't have imagined what a debacle it would be, how could we possibly have known?" Uhm, duh? If like, every Iraq expert on earth is saying "This is gonna be a disaster," how could you possibly not have known? A few of them cite post-9/11 "zomg teh terroristses are evarywhere" fervor as having clouded their judgment, but man, we didn't go into Iraq until 2003, and more importantly, it was clear even at the time that Iraq didn't have a damn thing to do with 9/11. The one that pisses me off the most, tho', is William Saletan's lame-ass list of "lessons learned." My jaw dropped when I read lesson #1:
1. Question authority. That's what the Quakers taught me in college. But you don't have to be a pacifist to see how it applies to Iraq. The U.S. government deceived itself and us about the evidence of WMD. I'm a bit too young, or just too poorly read in history, to have absorbed Vietnam's lessons about trusting your government. So I learned it the hard way. I hope my kids don't have to go through another dumb war to get the same lesson.
"(A) bit too young, or just too poorly read in history, to have absorbed Vietnam's lessons"??? Dang, Will. I'm pretty sure I'm younger than you are, and I certainly had no problem picking up the whole "question authority" thing from Vietnam, and countless other examples of governments the world over flat-out lying to their citizens. Jeez. I used to have some respect for Saletan, but he pretty much lost it with that piece.

This was a refreshing blog to read: I'm Black and for Hillary. Get Over it. by Tara Roberts. Slate has started linking to posts on that site, The Root, and I'm glad they have - there's definitely some interesting stuff on there. For instance, take this essay by Alice Walker about her support for Barack, which I found somewhat distressing. The feeling I get from reading her post is that Walker's support for Obama is supremely based on race, even while she's professing that it's not. It's not that I'm a Hillary supporter - I've got just as many problems with her as I do with Barack. But I do feel like this campaign is making it pretty clear that American society is way more sexist than racist. Hillary is getting extra shit piled on her because she's a woman, and Barack is getting handled with kid gloves in some quarters because no one wants to give off even the faintest whiff of racism. It's not that I want people to give Hillary a pass if she screws up, but I would like Obama supporters to take a more critical view of their candidate from time to time. Here, try this bit of frothing at the mouth from Christopher Hitchens as an example.

Getting back to Alice Walker's essay, now, the part that most upset me was not any of the political content, but this passage:
The year I turned fifty, one of my relatives told me she had started reading my books for children in the library in my home town. I had had no idea – so kept from black people it had been – that such a place existed. To this day knowing my presence was not wanted in the public library when I was a child I am highly uncomfortable in libraries and will rarely, unless I am there to help build, repair, refurbish or raise money to keep them open, enter their doors.
It really breaks my heart to think that an author of her stature would, to this day, feel uncomfortable in libraries. It makes me sad to think of anyone feeling uncomfortable in a library, but it's particularly heartrending in her case because of her relationship with words.

Speaking of words, here's some more linguistic nerdiness: NYT article about language use in Suriname. Ostensibly, the official language is Dutch - but the de facto national tongue is a Creole dialect called Sranan Tongo, and there are so many immigrants from so many other places, at least nine other languages are spoken by sizable chunks of the nation's population, too. Craziness! I bet that is such a cool place to visit.

Man, the Old 97's are getting old. Just look at that picture! Kee-ripes. Anyway, they've got a new album coming out on May 13th, and boy do I hope it's better than their last one. :/ It would be great if they toured it down here, too, since Johnny has still never seen them live.

Check out this pair of Where's George hits I got recently:
hit #1
hit #2
Spent at the same place on the same day, hit at the same time on the same day, but actually entered 6 days and 4 states apart! I wonder if that confused the person who hit them...

Speaking of WG, this bill of mine was one of three Wild Georges the hitter found that day! What a lucky duck. I thought I was doing really well, with three Wilds found in the space of a couple weeks (this unmarked one at Langerado, this one from the merch guy at the TMBG show at Revolution, and this one that had been buried on Mom's kitchen table for god only knows how long), but three in one day has me beat. I wish I could find more Wilds. I did get a bunch of bills into the merch till at < - >, so maybe I'll get some good hits soon from that. I've been behind on checking my hits since I had to switch the e-mail account I'm using with WG, but at the same time, the hits definitely seem to be slowing down. I get a lot more dry spells now that last several days than I ever used to. I still don't know if it's a Florida thing, if it's that I'm spending less cash these days, or if hits are down site-wide.

Oh, and I had my 8th Georgiversary on March 24th, and I was too busy that day to even run my Your Bills report. Dang. I am a slacker Georger these days, it seems. Here are my stats from the refresh I did on the closest day to my actual Georgiversary:
This Report is current as of: Mar-25-08 09:26 AM
'Your Bills' Summary Statistics
You have entered 11,085 Bills worth $27,333
Bills with hits: 2,786 Total hits: 3,744
Hit rate: 25.13% Slugging Percentage: 33.78% (total hits/total bills)
George Score: 1,128.00
Your rank (based on George Score) is #613
(out of 51,788 current users with a George Score. [98.8 Percentile])
Your State Rank in Florida is: 84 out of 6,726 [98.8]
I was down to 84 in FL because I hadn't run my report for more than 5 days - when I do refresh regularly, I'm ranked around 36. And I did just enter my 11,111th bill recently. :D

When Johnny replaced my computer's hard drive a few months ago, I lost a few programs like GraphicConverter which came on my computer when I bought it, but didn't come on the system disc. Last time I tried, I couldn't get the current update of GraphicConverter to work on my aging machine, anyway, so I started looking for a replacement basic graphics editor. I was all into the idea of trying GIMP, but when I went to install it, I found the native OS X version isn't ready yet, so I'd still need to get X11 - which Johnny had installed on my machine, once upon a time, but which I hadn't yet reinstalled. So I went to reinstall X11, and after following a bunch of links, I couldn't find a version for 10.3.9 (which is the OS I'm still using) - everything is for 10.4 and up now. And I hate the idea of having to use X11, anyway - it's a pain in the ass. I just want something that is quick, and that works serviceably - I don't need a really full-featured program with a gigantic footprint. Looking for some specific advice on GIMP on 10.3.9, I found the Google cache of an old forum thread from Wilber-Loves-Apple which basically convinced me that trying to get GIMP to work on my machine would be way more of a hassle than I'd want to deal with.

Johnny found me this program called Seashore which sounded exactly like what I was looking for. So I downloaded & installed it, and so far it's worked fine. Simple, no-hassle - it just works. Perfect.

I have been wanting to try playing ice hockey for a while, and I was just pointed to this local women-only league by a message-board acquaintance. I didn't even know there were ice rinks around here aside from Incredible Ice (the Panthers' practice facility, which is all the way up in Coral Springs), but there are like, 3 of them! Apparently there's quite the ice hockey culture in South Florida - well, much more so than you'd think, anyway. The Girls' Night Out league plays at Glacier Ice & Snow in Pompano Beach, but alas, they play on Monday nights, which conflicts with derby practice for me. If we ever have an off-season for derby, tho', I am so there! There's just the small issue of having to drop another few hundred $$ on equipment... but I really do want to play hockey! It just looks like a crazy amount of fun! Too bad the women's league is no-check, tho'. I totally want to take someone into the boards. >:D

I did some poking around on Etsy recently, and that's always such a bad idea, because I find so much stuff that I want to buy, and I don't have the $$ to spare right now. Here are a few of my new favorite sellers, tho': Lost Mitten (the Perler bead video game coaster sets are the best!), Eighty8Words (see also her interesting blog post about how she makes her pendants), dlk designs (someone needs to buy me this necklace, right now - no joke), Shalottlilly (this chica has the prettiest product pics, because she is in nearly all of them), Atomic Veggie (sweet-ass vintage beads and findings), The Builders Studio (rayguns!!!), Kitchens of 1956 (vintage kitchenware, oooh). And, just because they're so awesome, here are a couple of my old favorites: Tigerlillyshop (love love love the plastic rings - really want the new stamp kits she has up), Red Panda Chainmaille (very pretty stuff - I love the necklace I got from her a while back). So, long story short? If you want to buy me a present, I can point you to a lot of stuff on Etsy I want. Just ask. :D

I could use some pretty letterpressed stationery, too. Just FYI. There is also this place, if you're in Syracuse, NY, but they didn't hire Bean when she applied for a job there, so, y'know, they're not as cool as they could be. ;)

Someone needs to buy me this shirt, too (women's XL, please!). To think there was a time in my life when I didn't appreciate Helvetica... I was young, I was foolish, and I know better now.

Speaking of type, and getting back to the politics thing, there's this post on the blog for Helvetica, the movie about the Obama campaign's use of the Gotham typeface, and how that fits in with their larger campaign message.

If anybody sees any more of the series 1 Munny zipper pulls, please snag them for me. I really want the TV one and the banana one.

More from Slate: Are Excessive Lyrics Ruining Pop Music? I don't know about "ruining," but I certainly do think instrumentals are underrated. As far as I'm concerned, the most unassailably cool music on earth is Booker T. and the MG's, and the fact that it doesn't have any words is a significant part of what makes it so cool. There needs to be a serious mainstream instrumental resurgence, dammit. Bonus points to the article for mentioning Ratatat, tho' I'd love them even more if they mentioned Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet or Atomic 7.

Also: John McCain is a good person, but his campaign ads are effin' terrible (seriously - misspelling his name?? Ouch). A visit to a "widow's village" in China - the first of a series about Chinese immigration. Interesting stuff. And it's great that Iceland has tons of clean, renewable energy, but doesn't most any attempt as translation of that local resource to the broader world population (whether by moving energy-intensive manufacturing to Iceland, or by getting more people to come to Iceland, or what have you) still result in a good chunk of non-renewable energy being used up just to get things to and from Iceland? Maybe so, but I am still dying to visit the place. I mean, come on, Iceland - so freaking cool.

Thanks to this helpful post on the official Gmail blog, I'm importing all the old e-mail I can into my Gmail accounts. It does take a long time, but it's worth it just for being able to search my thousands of old messages in easy Gmail fashion. Plus, it means I've got an additional backup of all that old mail. Hooray for Gmail!