Monday, August 21, 2006

Blog explosion confusion

I thought I understood the way blog explosion works. They have recently started "blog links" which I don't understand, but willing to give it a shot in the interest of increasing the number of readers. I enrolled, copied the HTML and pasted into my template and re-published by blog. I now see -- nothing different. Did I do something wrong? Is there an error in the HTML code? Has blogger not started this feature yet? Beats me. All this can be so frustrating.....

Saturday, August 19, 2006

Ab-Reaction

So someone DID ask me about the battery recall. I leaped up onto my chair and shouted "I'm not going to take it anymore!" Then I closed my applications, logged off the server, shut down Windows, powered off the computer, undocked it, and prepared to HURL it out the window! Except by then everyone had wandered away, I was feeling kinda foolish standing on my chair getting the seat all dusty, and anyway the window was closed. So I sat back down and mused on our tendency to latch on to any piece of information and BEAT it to death. Take the JonBenet thing,you'd think we had wrung the last drop out of that sorry mess long ago, but apparently there is still a little more to come. And digging up Jimmy Hoffa, how many of you out there even remember who he was and what he was doing that got him so comprehensively eradicated, raise your hands? That's what I thought. And what would they know if they did find his bones? Well, that he was killed. A long time ago. Duh. Maybe we do this because our own lives are so dull, we take vicarious pleasure out of the lives and events of other people? The global version of gossiping over the back fence. It would be nice to blame the media for the feeding frenzies, but you know they only give us what we want.

Maybe if we could learn to take what we hear with a handful of salt, and wait for the whole story instead of just the 20 second sound bite, we wouldn't be so pulled here and there by the winds of speculation and hysteria.

But what do I know? Maybe if we didn't have the media to feed us, we'd sit around a fire and make up tales of gods and demons to entertain ourselves, the stuff of legends. Then gradually they would stop being legends, become "historical fact", we would argue about whose version was right, found organizations based on our version, go to war to kill the guys who believe something else. Yeah, maybe we would do that.

Has anyone heard anything about a big quake in California?

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

The Latest Word(s)

OK, now I know all of you drive, right? So you won't mind if I point out a couple of teeny problems. First, when an emergency vehicle is hard on the siren, lights a-flashin' behind you, and the person in front of you courteously pulls to the curb, you DO NOT think "Ah HA! They have pulled over so I can whisk past them!" INSTEAD, you too pull to the curb, in consideration of the person in the ambulance/burning house/being mugged, etc. Are we clear? And then, when a whole line of you are edged to the curb for said emergency vehicle, and the coast is now clear, you DO NOT say "ME first!!" but instead everyone pulls back into traffic together, it's only sensible. Got it? I'm so glad we had this little talk.

I have been Laid Low by the dreaded migraine monkey, who apparently takes special notice of those times when I am Most Stressed to visit. As if regular headaches aren't enough to work through, now I have a throbbing headache with nausea, bright light and loud sound sensitivity, and a strong desire to lay in bed with a pillow over my face. Very limiting, what one can do while wearing a pillow. I have a Special Medicine for just such times, which I failed to refill after the last bout, hello? Did we think it would magically reappear in the medicine cabinet, hmmm? And still wait up for Santa, too, do we?

I am writing this on a Dell laptop, model Inspiron 600m, bought between 2004 and now, and if ONE MORE PERSON asks me about the battery recall, I will be forced to react violently. No, mine isn't one of the pyrotechnical batteries. Darn. I think it would be lovely irony to have the computer in the safety office burst into flames, don't you? It would be all of a piece with the labs in the Eye Institute that don't have an eyewash, the same labs with door numbering in beige-on-beige waaay up high on the door frame, so that the only way to read them is to squint sideways or use your fingertips to feel the numbers (thereby confirming that you NEED to be in the Eye Institute). This is part of the same medical center that has only one handicap-accessible door, which is NOT anywhere near the handicap parking area. That still has signage throughout the buildings that point the way to departments and offices that moved elsewhere some 10 years ago. I'm sure they will get around to updating any day now. As soon as the indigenous porcine population begins to defy gravity.

Meanwhile, here's hoping everyone out there is being thoughtful, kind, and reverent, remembering the Golden Rule (he who has the gold makes the rules) and prepared to watch those pesky civil liberties be tattered beyond recognition by those ever-helpful folk in Washington, who know Better Than Us What Needs to Be Done to keep our country safe. Riiiight.