Just Kristin

My guess is yes, but I can hope. Apple, if you are out there and listening:

Today iPhone OS4 was announced. It looks fan­tas­tic, except for the bit about 3G phones only get­ting some of the fea­tures, mul­ti­task­ing not being one of them.

iPhone OS 4 will work with iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and the sec­ond– and third-generation iPod touch this sum­mer, and with iPad in the fall. Not all fea­tures are com­pat­i­ble with all devices. For exam­ple, mul­ti­task­ing is avail­able only with iPhone 3GS and the third-generation iPod touch (32GB and 64GB mod­els from late 2009).

Is there, then, dear Unka Steve, an early renewal/upgrade deal set up for those of us whose con­tracts with AT&T would only have an upgrade avail­able in, say, Octo­ber? I will get another iPhone. I will. But, jee­bus, do I have to be hob­bled until my reg­u­lar renewal date? (Of course, my inner demon reminds me, an early renewal would mean pos­si­bly miss­ing the new iPhone hard­ware — if there is some — for 2 years…)

Good lord, things get ugly when geeks get denied. :)

Hanna is just — I mean just — squishy enough to do imper­son­ations. Smokey does it a bit bet­ter, so I will have to get pics next time I am vis­it­ing his house. In the mean time, here she is:

I’m a greyhound!

I’m a sharpei!

Over the week­end, Smokey, Dar­win and Ella tried their hands at another kind of imper­son­ation: (Click Smokey’s chest for more pics. Click Smokey’s mom’s chest… oh, oops. *duck*)

We are Easter doggies!

Of course, Elvis is too much a baby to do much more than cuddle:

I am a babydog!

It occurred to me, as D and I drove home with bel­lies full of Kosher and a frozen love­bird in the back seat, that there are two kinds, or two lev­els of sur­re­al­ity. One is home to the sur­real con­tent born of your own mind, on pur­pose. Access to this level of cre­ative non­sense is had when you take hikes along the perime­ter of your san­ity, skip­ping into the unmapped areas to make dew-angels in the moss, yelling secrets into the shad­ows past the safety of its bor­ders and record­ing for pos­ter­ity the gar­bled replies that echo back thru the trees in voices that belong to other ver­sions of you. This sur­re­al­ity is the kind under­stood, to some degree, by the per­son who chan­nels it, because it is born of them. It is their inter­pre­ta­tion, in a way, of the fringe of their own exis­tence. It can be humor­ous, and often is, much in the same way that mis­heard state­ments are often laugh-inducing, and its humor — or any other emo­tion it con­jures — can eas­ily be shared between artist and audi­ence, as we all wan­der those same stretches some­times, and hear those same echoes.

The other kind of sur­re­al­ity gen­er­ates art which is more engi­neered than inter­preted. It is a struc­ture made by the artist out of bits and pieces found on ram­bles — a wolf’s ear, a stalk of wheat, a small child’s skele­ton encased in the cor­ner­stone of a build­ing, a bile bean, a rain­bow, a pubic hair in a bar of soap — and held together by the glue that is the artist’s sense. The artist may not know what she is piec­ing together, but judges each piece aes­thet­i­cally: the essence of the thing is not in the fab­rics of the patches, but in how they get stitched together. This sur­re­al­ity is less often humor­ous, as it speaks to dri­ves more pri­mal than humor (that is, when it is under­stood by its audi­ence). If the bridge between artist and audi­ence is made, this art can daz­zle, or even bring on epiphany or eupho­ria. If the bridge is not made, how­ever, the art is, to the per­son left search­ing for its entrance, at best a beau­ti­ful enigma.

“The tax card has been played to death. We’re forced to pay taxes to incar­cer­ate indi­vid­u­als who threaten the well-being of the body politic. Should we revert to Wild West vig­i­lan­tism in order not to have to pay taxes for this pur­pose? Now we’re going to be forced to pay taxes in order to (at least try to) cure dis­eases that threaten the well-being of the indi­vid­u­als who com­prise said body politic. Why do we take for granted the legit­i­macy of the for­mer but not of the lat­ter?” — Brett Robbins

It had never occurred to her to lie about the bruise. She had been sub­con­sciously care­ful while bend­ing down to check the ripeness of the squash, but once sat­is­fied that it was still dinner-worthy, she stood with such pur­pose that her temple’s impact with the cor­ner of the kitchen island made her feel tipsy before the pain came. She remem­bered her inter­min­gled laugh­ter and tears while answer­ing the first con­cerned com­ment from a coworker the next morn­ing, and was con­fused at their inabil­ity to offer at least a sym­pa­thetic smile. Was she so clumsy, so ditsy here at work that this fur­ther proof of her lack of coor­di­na­tion made peo­ple worry for her health? It was only after the fifth iter­a­tion of “Oh, I hit it on the edge of the butcher block in my kitchen,” that she real­ized her office-mates might actu­ally be sus­pect­ing Louis of abuse! She cursed her lack of fore­thought and, tho it was already too late, began to for­mu­late a men­tal list of less attention-getting pos­si­ble causes for her dark rain­bow of an eye. She would have to be more care­ful in the future lest some well-meant, nosy soul call the author­i­ties to her home to check on her. She might even have to move Lou out of the chest freezer, just to be safe.

The last cou­ple days Smoo has been ill, and I have had lonely dri­ves to and from work with­out her. When not talk­ing to mom, I have been using the dri­ves to lis­ten to a lot of the pod­casts I have been neglect­ing. On my way home today, I lis­tened to the first half of a recent This Amer­i­can Life which dealt with the effects of early parental death upon the sur­viv­ing child. To say it caused inter­nal panic would be to grossly under­state its result upon me. I have, over the past few years, become a bit more afraid of death. I sup­pose that, com­pared to pre-med me, this is a healthy, or at least desirous thing. Many of the things that I am hav­ing to come to terms with now that I can access them — fear of my own mor­tal­ity, anx­i­ety at my capac­ity for anger at peo­ple other than myself, a sense that I may actu­ally be capa­ble of doing some­thing worth­while — all these things make me ter­ri­bly uneasy. Never before have I felt so alone on the water with­out pad­dle or compass.

Oddly enough, my old stand-by cure for men­tal anguish still works. I have whipped out a bunch of Geof­frey Abbott books and calmed myself with the tor­tur­ous ends of peo­ple too far back in his­tory to engage my rage. What is wrong with me!? I think I need this shirt for a mul­ti­tude of reasons.

As a crazy per­son, do you divulge the mis­giv­ings that haunt you at the risk of admit­ting that you believe in lit­tle green men, or do you keep your lit­tle green men to your­self, risk­ing, of course, some­one see­ing you talk­ing to them?

I have pre-ordered Geof­frey Chaucer’s lat­est work, Geof­frey Chaucer Hath a Blog, which I have been read­ing all the while, but now will be able to read any­where, to mark up and learn from and laugh and require oth­ers to lis­ten to parts and to (pre­tend to?) find it as hilar­i­ous as I do! I do not know who the Chaucer blog­ger is, but I love them, and am grate­ful to them for all their work. I hope to see this book on the NYT Best Seller list! Buy it, every­one, buy it!

There was much Frito sweat at junior derby prac­tice this morn­ing. Pics can be found here. I was amazed, hav­ing not attended for a few weeks, how much all of the girls have improved! Way to go, killers! And, for the record, there is noth­ing quite like a derby dance party. Here is Smoo prac­tic­ing that very impor­tant skill:

I just watched my grey­hound, Sache, chew at her itchy spots so vig­or­ously that, once sat­is­fied, her head was low­ered to the sofa with a “thud”: She had worn her­self out scratch­ing at what itched her. After an after­noon of hunt­ing for answers, I get the feel­ing that I have done the same.

Up until a few min­utes ago, this post had con­tained a sec­ond rant against the Wash­ing­ton DC Catholic Arch­dio­cese and their deci­sion to strike out against the help­less in order to make heard their tantrum against those pesky, evil homo­sex­u­als. It was accom­pa­nied by a graphic show­ing my con­ver­sa­tion with a Tweet­ing nun who is vocal in her sup­port of their big­otry. While I am leav­ing a link to that image, I am replac­ing the rant. I do so not because I think any dif­fer­ently, nor because I am any less desirous of a real answer to my ques­tions, but because there was, in the first iter­a­tion of this post, far too much essence of the lit­tle girl who was ever frus­trated to the point of seething over the priests’, nuns’ and CCD teach­ers’ inabil­ity to answer any of her more dif­fi­cult — but infi­nitely and impor­tantly mean­ing­ful — ques­tions about the faith they wanted her to adopt. Her frus­tra­tion had been born in large part out of fear that not believ­ing all things Catholic would dis­ap­point the adults who so wished her to be a good and pious girl.

I do not need that lit­tle girl to speak for me any more. I no longer look for answers to the ques­tions she asked, as I am cer­tain that no one has them. No priest or nun can con­vince me that their insti­tu­tion­al­ized big­otry and sex­ism can bring me to a bet­ter rela­tion­ship with god. Reli­gion, I have come to under­stand, is - at best - a tool used to mea­sure, and to bet­ter, one­self. Wash­ing­ton DC’s Arch­dio­cese lead­ers, and thru her endorse­ment of their actions, Sis­ter Anne, all serve as a per­fect exam­ple of how reli­gion ought not be — but too often is — used: as a thick, barbed yard­stick used first to mea­sure and then to inflict pun­ish­ment upon oth­ers. If the Catholic Arch­dio­cese of Wash­ing­ton DC wants to penal­ize the needy in their com­mu­nity, as well as their own parish mem­bers, over a law made out­side of their orga­ni­za­tion, then let them have their tantrum. In the end, this whole thing will empty their pews and fur­ther define their hypocrisy in the eyes of those who had per­haps wavered in their opin­ions. Sis­ter Anne’s and the Archdiocese’s pathetic attempts to cite legal (read: state-granted) “reli­gious free­dom” as a rea­son or an excuse for their actions sim­ply skirts the real issue here: They are beat­ing their own fam­ily for the sins of the neigh­bor. Inexcusable.

Sis­ter Anne, you are no more equipped to give me a straight answer regard­ing the non-legal, the ethical/moral aspect of the Archdiocese’s actions than were the nuns of my child­hood. Faith is not enough. A call­ing and its implied spe­cial unity with the god­head is not enough. A sim­ple, hon­est answer would be enough, but none of you are capa­ble. Since I no longer desire the run-around, the excuses and vague plat­i­tudes, I beg you: don’t even try. You might strain something.