the thoughts and experiences of Heather Meadows
From the McDuffie Mirror:
Cathie Ryan, one of the nation’s leading voices in Celtic music, is looking forward to bringing her unique style to the people of McDuffie County.
“It’s so nice to be in a place like Thomson,” said Ms. Ryan, who will perform Thursday, Feb. 24 at 7:30 p.m. at the Depot.
[…]
Admission is $8 for individuals and $15 for couples. For ticket information, call 597-1000 or 267-5416 in Augusta.
I want to go see her perform!
From Japan Today:
Abbas A-Ali Al-Malky, who is believed to have contracted leukemia from depleted uranium used in the Iraq war
Wait, they’re still on that?
Okay, this is getting irritating. Many intelligent people have rationally explained that depleted uranium is not dangerous. But so many people claim otherwise.
Is this going to be like the global warming debate?
I realize that we all like to try and find a reason for everything. Hell, I know better than anyone. Nobody has a clue why I got leukemia, and that is really annoying. But isn’t it wrong to use this child’s death to make a political point that is not supported by science?
From Mainichi:
Thousands of hungry people flocked to Yoshinoya restaurants across Japan on Friday for a special one-day revival of its popular beef-on-rice dish, with one excited customer smashing his car into a store and another customer becoming violent because the beef bowls had sold out.
The Yoshinioya [sic] chain suspended sales of beef bowls, or gyudon in Japanese, on Feb. 11 last year, after the Japanese government banned beef imports from the United States following the discovery of mad cow disease there.
Gyudon is delicious. I know how to make it, nyah nyah!
I just noticed that Jen Garrett uses something called Sideblog. Pretty cool! This is definitely an option.
Blogger has updated its comments system. From the Blogger Dashboard:
Good news everyone! We’ve updated the way comments work. Among the many improvements are pop-up windows for comments and the ability for commenters to fill in their name and web site info–no Blogger account needed.
– Biz [2/10/2005 05:06:00 PM]
You just watch, this will totally fuck up my comments exporting code. :>
Seriously, though; I’m glad they made these changes. I don’t really care about the pop-up windows, but letting people post comments without requiring a Blogger account is a huge improvement.
One other feature that Biz doesn’t mention is the change to the posting form. Now you can see the post and the comments while you’re writing your comment, which makes it far easier to respond to people!
Just so you know. (Currently mirrored at National Lampoon)
And now, Spaceballs the Animated Series.
No imdb entry yet. They’re slipping! ;>
Lokitorrent has caved to the MPAA. Check out their site now. (A screencap is available at BoingBoing, too.)
I’m just kind of…amazed. It’s like the MPAA has become some sort of Internet totalitarian regime.
I received news of what was probably a very cool Edgar Allen Poe one-man show this morning. The show took place last night.
Gee, thanks, RSS! (And why, AikenOnline.com, would you not post a story like this earlier in the week?)
When I shift my blog over to WordPress, I’m thinking about adopting Derik‘s idea about using del.icio.us as a “clip blog” (the “Supplement” part of his sidebar pulls his 10 most recent additions to del.icio.us). I make a lot of brief posts that relate to the news, and these push my more lengthy discussions and rambles, the things I really want people to see, out of the limelight.
Luke deals with this problem by embedding a second blog in his main blog. This way, people are still able to comment on his clip entries. That’s a thought, too.
I was also thinking of simply establishing a category in WordPress for news-ish posts, because that way people could easily get to my more journal-y posts (by clicking that category), and yet could still comment on the clip posts. I may end up doing this, ultimately. I don’t think that my news clips are less important just because they’re short. All of my posts ultimately give the reader insight into my personality, which is the entire point of this blog.
At any rate, there’s a lot of news today:
Lesbians are the “new” (10 years new) sweeps gimmick. (Via Jen Garrett.)
Here’s an interesting piece concerning the problems with ecommerce websites and their requirements for user logins. I’ve seen people get really up in arms about this at 2go-Box. “Why can’t I delete my account? I don’t want to have an account anymore. Delete my account!” (Via BoingBoing.)
Here’s a hotel at which I would be terrified to stay. (No sentence-terminal prepositions here, bucko.) And yet, I am compelled. I would love every minute of it, I just know it.
Hitler is still getting mail. I am intrigued by the fact that the postcard “arrived at its intended destination”. How exactly is that possible?
The FAA has drafted some guidelines for commercial spaceflight.
Businesses in North Augusta are buying up inexpensive property on West Avenue because of its curb appeal: many of the shops are renovated vintage homes. I wouldn’t mind working in one of those :)
There has been a delay in plans to set up a nuclear fuel plant at SRS. I don’t really know a lot about SRS, though I’ve heard stories, such as: 1) People who work out there get paid a lot of money, because they end up sterile. 2) There’s a long stretch of nothingness as you’re driving past on the highway, and all of a sudden a huge white dome looms in front of you. Somehow, you never saw it on your approach, and it soon disappears. 3) There are guards there along the highway, and if you spend too much time in the area–stopping for photos, perhaps, rather than simply driving straight through–they will come and get you and escort you out. So, yeah; SRS has always seemed spooky to me. I want to visit, and yet…don’t.
And finally…you’ve all heard by now about North Korea (President Bush: “Okay, so, nuclear weapons are bad.” Kim Jong Il: “You’re not the boss of me!”). Here’s Japan’s reaction. (I want to note that right now, the top stories on MSN.com are “Why Some Men Cheat”, “Women: What to Wear on Feb. 14”, and “6 Signs You Should Quit Your Job”. I guess Pyongyang’s announcement doesn’t warrant permanent highlighting. But I remember that when Sean and I were in Japan for our honeymoon, there was a news program on TV highlighting how Pyongyang might fire missiles at Japan, and what steps could be taken to intercept the missiles. I remember being extremely disconcerted by this notion. The war in Iraq began a few days after we got home.)
Today after lunch–ate way too much, such that I have no calories left for dinner–I tried to read more of The Power That Preserves (I finished The Illearth War the other day), but I found myself literally falling asleep over the book. I was lying on my stomach, and I closed my eyes, and a few minutes later I realized that I wasn’t going to open my eyes anytime soon. So finally I gave up, bookmarked my place, took off my glasses and rings, and curled up into sleep.
I slept from then until just a few minutes ago, and I (of course) had an odd dream.
I had given birth to a baby girl. She was maybe a week or so old. But the labor had been painless–I wondered if someone had perhaps given me an epidural, and the details were so hazy that it was unclear to me that I had given birth at all. The realization came that I had a baby, but had not been attending to it at all. My dream consisted of me desperately trying to make that first week up to the child.
I began by talking to her about how I had managed to overlook her for those long days. My narrative was interrupted, though, and I desperately thought, “That’s all she’ll remember if I don’t rectify it soon. All she’ll know is that her mother forgot about her.” So I got back to her and kept talking, and explained how I loved her so much, and how I would never let her go.
At some point, I realized she was breathing strangely, and had an irregular heartbeat. Someone said that she had too high of a sodium intake, so she was now very fragile. I vowed to make my own baby food for her. “I’m going to start only buying frozen vegetables, so she can have those. I can cream them in the food processor,” I said, but the other person remarked that she was too young for baby food, and I felt ridiculous.
I spent the rest of the dream holding her, trying to make her smile and yet afraid of endangering her heart and lungs, and then–inexplicably–I went to a bar with my boss.
Just now, for example, he intoned: “Mithril alloy. Ah-ha.”
I love that doofus.
The producers of the film “Eyes on the Prize”, a documentary on the Civil Rights Movement in America, could not afford to renew their rights to the copyrighted historical clips used in the making of the film. This means that this important piece of history is largely unavailable to those who want to learn. (Here’s BoingBoing’s original post on the subject.)
The “Bay Area Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement” have written a powerful essay denouncing the inaccessibility of “Eyes of the Prize”:
To us, knowledge is a human right every bit as important as the right to vote and the right be treated with courtesy and respect. Therefore, we do not believe that reading, or viewing, or listening is, or should ever become, a crime. Nor should access to information become a luxury sold only to the wealthy.
I agree. It is completely stupid to deny people access to this information. More copies should be allowed to be produced. It should be on DVD. The film should be freely available at libraries and schools. That it isn’t is a sad commentary on the state of copyright law. (Via BoingBoing.)
I love the idea of this t-shirt, and now that it is reality, I love the t-shirt itself.
I would actually wear it if I thought I could get away with it. But, ultimately, I’m married, and the slogan might give people strange ideas about our relationship. I could give it to Sean (he’s already got PA’s old Got Wang? t-shirt, with an arrow pointing to his crotch), which I suppose would be less controversial. I just feel bad that I can’t wear cool t-shirts myself.
I did, however, buy a hot pink babydoll tee with the word “flirt” on it the other day at Target.
(BTW: Welcome back, PA.)
At least, according to this article in Yahoo! News – Oddly Enough.
“Big gift givers make important contributions to China’s economic development,” an unidentified economist was quoted as saying in the International Herald Leader ahead of the beginning of the Year of the Rooster.
“But what they are doing could be called a form of corruption.”
Officials must report any gifts worth more than 50 yuan (3 pounds) but few do.
Notable are the search (and seizure?) tactics of some government agencies regarding gifts.