After the rain…

January 18th, 2010 § 0

It is no longer rain­ing as though each drop were being thrown, and instead the sun is try­ing to burn thru, its golden fire warm­ing the dusk-and-rain-cloud bruise of a sky. The dogs remain indoors, despite the lull, their ears only low­ered to half-mast, none of them able to com­pletely relax. The sky is split­ting fur­ther toward the Pacific, and the gold is bright­en­ing to orange and pink; we have gone from storm sky to fire sky. No won­der the dogs are rest­less. I, on the other hand, have been relaxed and happy all day, despite my stom­ach being bro­ken. I think I have the oppo­site of SADD.

Unnatural Cocktails

January 6th, 2010 § 2

There is some­thing stir­ring, some­thing stirred up about how I feel lately. I know that age and meds are both wield­ing wooden spoons upon the emo­tional con­tents of my caul­dron. I wish there were some way, tho, to sort out the sources of my spo­rad­i­cally sav­age reac­tions to the minu­tia of my life. I was able, in the past, to do a bit of sleuthing and iden­tify which of my angry erup­tions were based on real affront and which on the flash­backs from pre­vi­ous wars, but that was pre-med, as it were. Now I feel as though I have a kind of emo­tional ADD, an inabil­ity to focus on what I feel long enough to sort it out. Granted, I no longer spend lots of time plan­ning my dis­ap­pear­ance, but at the same time, I am made painfully uncom­fort­able at the idea of direct­ing anger or other neg­a­tive emo­tions at any­one but myself.

Sorry for all the whin­ing, but I can’t seem to han­dle myself today, nor can I han­dle any­one else. I des­per­ately want a small hut, or even a box, some­where near a clear stream and between trees, with lots of blan­kets and a stack of books and crick­ets and birds and a breeze.

For your viewing pleasure…

January 5th, 2010 § 0

…There it is.

December 4th, 2009 § 2

I need to do this to help out the healthy mon­keys, so that they may win in their bat­tle against the stu­pid ones. I am post­ing it in pub­lic because in pub­lic is also where I have the hard­est time being nice to myself. Here is me, trying:

- I am a good mother. I worked hard to raise an inde­pen­dent, strong child. My meth­ods do not match the tra­di­tional meth­ods in many ways, and no doubt Dob­son and his ilk would dis­ap­prove. Even at a young age, she was allowed to have opin­ions on things such as cloth­ing, make-up, meals… When I made food she didn’t like, she was wel­come to have some­thing else of her own prepa­ra­tion, which was, more often than not, the ramen/mac-n-cheese/soup/granola bars/other cur­rent favorite that she requested — by case — from the store. :) I give her expla­na­tions for things rather than sim­ple “No” answers, and allow her to ques­tion them, and even though the answers have not always been sat­is­fy­ing to her, she has learned to advo­cate for her­self and to make informed, healthy deci­sions. It has been a plea­sure watch­ing her develop her own style, develop as a per­son: she is a beau­ti­ful woman, a smart one, a kind one, and above all that and unlike her mother, she is a strong one. I am try­ing to become strong like her.
– As far as rela­tion­ships in gen­eral? I love with my whole heart. I have learned to look for signs of love in what­ever form they take. I hon­estly feel it a priv­i­lege to have the love and friend­ship of my friends and fam­ily, and I do my best to show them such, in my fash­ion. I may be tardy on occa­sion, but in that, there is a love for my hus­band, much as there is his love for me in every trip he makes to bring for­got­ten items to me and my daugh­ter. We are a strong and mutu­ally sup­port­ive unit, and I am grate­ful. I do not betray strict con­fi­dences. While I occa­sion­ally fail to meet a planned goal, I am very care­ful not to use the phrase “I promise” unless I can be sure of com­ing through. I apol­o­gize when I fail (and then some, accord­ing to my daugh­ter, who thinks I apol­o­gize too much). I value my fam­ily and friends more than I do the law (while still main­tain­ing my moral code), and will do what­ever I can to help them when they are in dire straits.
– I am a smart per­son. I may not be a genius, but I have the mix of skills and tal­ents that I have, and I am work­ing on not deny­ing them, and accept­ing praise when it is given. I can write poetry (in form), sing, play instru­ments, develop web­sites, do arts-n-crafts, inspire con­ver­sa­tion, speak and write Japan­ese, learn lan­guages, and take part in edu­ca­tion with a pas­sion to both absorb and assist. I am use­ful and funny and kind. I am tender-hearted and open-minded and pas­sion­ate when it comes to speak­ing out for the down-trodden. I am sup­port­ive of causes I believe in. I refuse to slow down. I will not let my mon­keys beat me.

All that was hard for me, but not as hard as it has been. Slowly but surely, a work in progress. Some day, I will develop a cara­pace of some strength and will kick out all the crappy mon­keys. Until then, thank you for being there. :)

JustHumanist

November 12th, 2009 § 0

Took a quiz on the New Human­ist site today, and was told that I am a Hedo­nis­tic Human­ist. I agree, out­side of the rea­son for becom­ing an athe­ist, which had more to do with hypocrisy and thought­less accep­tance than my own desire to rid myself of eth­i­cal stan­dards. If I do any­thing to jeop­ar­dize my athe­ist stand­ing, it will be through unapolo­getic love of Christ­mas car­ols and the inabil­ity to prop­erly shun Christian-themed art and archi­tec­ture. My ass just isn’t that hard. :)

What kind of human­ist are you?
Hedo­nis­tic Humanist

You are one of life’s enjoy­ers, deter­mined to get the most you can out of your brief spell on this glo­ri­ous planet. What first attracted you to athe­ism was the prospect of lib­er­a­tion from the Ten Com­mand­ments, few of which are com­pat­i­ble with a life of plea­sure. You play hard and work quite hard, have a strong sense of loy­alty and a relaxed but con­sis­tent approach to your phi­los­o­phy. You can’t see the point of abstract prin­ci­ples and prob­a­bly wouldn’t lay down your life for a con­cept, though you might for a friend. Some­thing of a cham­pagne human­ist, you admire George Bernard Shaw for his cheer­ful agnos­ti­cism and pur­suit of sen­sual rewards, and your Hol­ly­wood hero is Mar­lon Brando, who was beau­ti­ful (for a while), iras­ci­ble and aimed for good­ness in his own tor­tured way. You adored the human­ist Lon­don bus slo­gan (“There’s prob­a­bly no God, now stop wor­ry­ing and enjoy your life”) and are delighted that wild young come­di­ans like Stew­art Lee, Christina Mar­tin and Ricky Ger­vais share your full-blooded rejec­tion of reli­gion. Some­times you might be tempted to allow your own plea­sures to take prece­dence over your ethics. But every­one is striv­ing for that elu­sive bal­ance between the good and the happy life. You’d prob­a­bly bet­ter open another bot­tle and agree that for you there’s no contest.

Bashing as sport

September 15th, 2009 § 0

Kanye West, I think most agree, acted sans class at the MTV Video Awards when he barged onstage dur­ing Tay­lor Swift’s accep­tance speech, stole her mike (and her moment) to spew forth his opin­ion on the legit­i­macy of her win.  I do not watch TV much (and did not even see this event on TV, but rather, after prompt­ing at work, on YouTube) and can­not give a true opin­ion of West out­side of his actions at the awards, but it does take a spe­cial kind of ass to con­sider such a stunt.  None of this, how­ever, is my point.

I am, instead, fas­ci­nated by the num­ber of mash-ups and par­o­dies com­ing out of his train­wreck, none of which serve to make Kanye look any bet­ter than he made him­self look, and most of them mak­ing him look worse, but almost all of them doing so by mak­ing us laugh.  While I admit that it is cer­tainly grat­i­fy­ing to poke fun at a bully, in the end will we remem­ber his act and shun him appro­pri­ately?  Or will we instead end up remem­ber­ing the gig­gles at his (and poor Taylor’s) expense and unspo­kenly adopt him as a kind of vil­lage idiot, allow­ing him access to future events in the hope that he will again pro­vide us fod­der for our need to mash and bash?  Would Palin, the Tea-Baggers, or any other pub­lic fool have been in the news as long as they have been before our abil­ity to share our home-grown cre­ative par­o­dies with one another? My guess is not. Unfor­tu­nately, we have grown a whole genre of broad­cast enter­tain­ment glo­ri­fy­ing dip-shittery: “Real­ity” TV.

I am torn.  Part of me wants to see those who need to dis­ap­pear do so as quickly as pos­si­ble, but I would be lying if I didn’t admit to receiv­ing a good amount of enjoy­ment from watch­ing those with wit make piñatas out of them for the masses to smash.  I would hate to think that our col­lec­tive game of schaden­freude kick-the-can allows those who desparately need to be voted off the island to stay past their wel­come as the token fool.  What do you think?

[ADDENDUM] Besides, to be com­pletely hon­est, even though Bey­once acted with all of her own for­mi­da­ble class and then some (per­haps that which Kanye lost at some point dur­ing the bot­tle his life), her video won over­all solely due to pop­u­lar­ity and a bit of pro­duc­tion tech savvy. It was hardly ground­break­ing, Kanye, and nowhere near the best video EVAR. Nice attempt to get into her pants, tho. Too bad you proved your­self unwor­thy of Bey­once via an incred­i­bly mis­guided attempt to prove your­self otherwise.

I’ll show you mine if you show me yours… (9/8/2009)

September 8th, 2009 § 0

Genres

September 2nd, 2009 § 0

I just ran across a piece of exam­ple JavaScript that included a form field in which one was to choose ones genre — male or female. Cute, no? But more than just cute, I think. I have always been a pro­po­nent of the idea that we are more than sim­ple bina­ries as far as sex or gen­der are con­cerned, and that, along with sex and gen­der, myr­iad other sliding-scale fac­tors com­bine in each of us to form great spi­der charts of our unique intra-personal fin­ger­prints. So, genre indeed.

Does whatever a spider can

August 16th, 2009 § 0




2009-08-04 18:52:11 –0700

Orig­i­nally uploaded by justkristin

We had a spi­der friend who slept like this in the day­time, and who built the most fan­tas­tic webs across a third of our garage door every night. We saw her munch­ing away on the bugs lured into her trap by the motion acti­vated lights on the front of the house. I greeted her every morn­ing and evening. She has been gone the past two days, how­ever. I hope she sim­ply found a bet­ter hunt­ing ground, rather than hav­ing had a bird send her to the happy hunt­ing ground. I miss her lit­tle sleep­ing striped foot­ball form, and her web­ster art.

Quick HealthNet Update

August 16th, 2009 § 0

I am allow­ing myself to become a bit hope­ful about our future together, Health­Net. You finally heard what I’d been say­ing, tho it took the help of Brad, a wor­thy coun­selor, indeed — I am in his debt. (You are also in his debt, as he has saved you from fur­ther vocif­er­ous wrath. As he is an employee of yours, you should strongly con­sider giv­ing him a hefty raise, as this whole ordeal was not his to fix, but he fixed it… he did.) At any rate, the love let­ters list­ing all that you have done to make it up to me — all the charges cov­ered, all the inter­est paid — have made me con­sider unpack­ing my bags, at least for now. Let’s see how things go from here.

Ten­ta­tively Yours,
JustKristin

P.S. -
Don’t for­get to reward Brad. He is worth it.

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