Just Kristin

Glad to see that I was not alone in my dis­gust over all the “poor, sad, emas­cu­lated men” ads dur­ing this lamest-ads-ever Super Bowl. Whiny rather than clever, the ads alien­ated every view­ing female, as well as the less testosterone-fueled troglodytes men in the bunch. The video below is one of the best responses to the whole fiasco I have seen:

Thanks for shar­ing this, Emile!

EMBED-Awesome Who Dat Dog — Watch more free videos

Accord­ing to CBS Corporation’s Diver­sity page:

CBS Cor­po­ra­tion, and its divi­sions, are com­mit­ted to fos­ter­ing an envi­ron­ment that cel­e­brates and encour­ages dif­fer­ences in peo­ple, their ideas, beliefs and cul­tural back­grounds, which, in turn, pos­i­tively influ­ences busi­ness con­duct, the pro­duc­tions, shows, prod­ucts and ser­vices we deliver, as well as, our respon­si­bil­i­ties to the com­mu­ni­ties we serve and soci­ety as a whole. This com­mit­ment enables us to attract and retain employ­ees with the tal­ent, cre­ativ­ity and inno­va­tion nec­es­sary to grow our indus­try lead­er­ship posi­tion and to deliver the finan­cial per­for­mance required by our stockholders.

Really? Unless, of course, you are a woman who wants con­trol over her own body. In that case, you are trumped by the right-wing fringe-loony group Focus on the Fam­ily and its well-on-his-way-to-permanent-dane-bramage col­lege ball star patsy, Tim Tebow. Adding insult to that injury, ads that crit­i­cize Bush or con­tain non-hateful mes­sages regard­ing the GLBT com­mu­nity have been rejected. What can we do about this?

• Sign a peti­tion or five — they have no real power but they are a venue for noisemaking
• Con­tact CBS directly and let them know what you think of their unfair, unbal­anced ad prac­tices and their back­wards mosey into the 1950s
• Con­tact other Super Bowl spon­sors and let them know you will not be watching.

Any other ideas, anyone?

I am enchanted by sto­ries of insan­ity, espe­cially those of long ago. This per­for­mance of “Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song” is beau­ti­ful in its near-frothing lunacy:

The moon’s my con­stant Mis­trisse,
And the lowly owl my mor­rowe,
The flam­ing Drake and the Night­crow make
Me music to my sorrow.

Face­Book is a huge, extended-family reunion. It is a huge, extended-family reunion that you get to wan­der in and out of. As such, it is a given that you will run into some of the peo­ple dear­est to you, includ­ing a few whom you haven’t seen in ages, and you may even get to speak to them for a bit. You might also be lucky enough to nib­ble some tasty food and get the recipes, score the phone num­bers or email addresses of peo­ple you haven’t heard from in a while, play a game of extreme bocce with your cousins, or roast a few marsh­mal­lows to per­fec­tion over uncle Bert’s Weber grill. How­ever, if you take a look at the amount of time spent at the reunion, and give an hon­est account­ing of it, you will note that only 5 to 10 per­cent of your time at the reunion is spent at the above activ­i­ties. The rest of your reunion stints will be filled with: answer­ing the same ques­tions about your life posed by count­less peo­ple you should have thought but didn’t think you’d run into there, hav­ing the peo­ple you *do* want to talk to get pulled away by other fam­ily mem­bers, eat­ing copi­ous amounts of junk food, get­ting roped into play­ing stu­pid games for stu­pid (if any) prizes, lis­ten­ing to count­less bel­liger­ent drunks spew forth about what is impor­tant to them and should be impor­tant to you as well, and guilt­ing your­self into stay­ing late to help with clean up.

I love reunions, but I always end up feel­ing dis­ap­pointed and wish­ing I could have my time back. I curse myself for get­ting sucked in. Once you are there, how­ever, you can­not leave with­out hurt­ing someone’s feel­ings, or even worse, wor­ry­ing about whether any­one noticed you leave. It is a lose-lose(-lose?) situation.

I know that I have pre­vi­ously touched upon my issues with change, espe­cially change that I didn’t see com­ing. Change I con­trol? Fine. I could move any­where in the world, as long as I was part of the decision-making process tak­ing me there. Change I can at least see com­ing? Fine. Lay­offs are a piece of cake, because all one need do to avoid being blind­sided is pay atten­tion. (My most recent lay­off occurred between my two inter­views for the Zoo!) Change that takes me by sur­prise, how­ever, can knock me right on my butt. Even small things like hav­ing to rush or wait or make a sud­den deci­sion are enough to get all my mon­keys scream­ing at once.

It is a won­der, then, that I pre­fer change­able weather. We have had quite a bit of rain in San Diego over the last week or so, and it has actu­ally been as close to WI weather as I have seen since I’ve lived here: the rain is inter­mit­tent, with patches of sun­shine between, and there has been thun­der and light­ning and floods, and — rather freak­ishly — a tor­nado warn­ing. There are even patches of green sprout­ing here and there! Still, it is South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, after all, and these bits of flux were anchored in the stag­nant gray of the storm(s) — tiny devi­a­tions from the rain-norm, much in the same way that the occa­sional Santa Ana serves as enough of a depar­ture from the sun-norm to give our mete­o­rol­o­gists some­thing to say other than “another per­fect day, sunny and warm with low clouds in the morn­ing which should burn off by 10.” There is a rea­son (other than mos­qui­toes) that I never visit my WI fam­ily in the summer.

Per­haps this long­ing for change­able weather is what makes me so fond of things like this. I don’t think I have a gad­get that does not have a “foul” weather sim­u­la­tor of some kind on it. I have been stand­ing in the rain lately instead of lis­ten­ing to mp3s of it, tho. Lucky me!

Last time the river between our offices and Fash­ion Val­ley flooded, there were ducks swim­ming across the road. I love ducks! This time, how­ever, the cur­rent is too strong and the ducks are too smart to be out in this weather. Wendy and I went to check it out, and to watch peo­ple (who are appar­ently less smart than ducks) try to tra­verse either road, only to finally honor the block­ades and flip a U.

I love the rain, but I do wish it would soak in. And, as long as I am wish­ing, more ducks, please!

I found a new photo mod­i­fi­ca­tion app for my iPhone: Pho­toTro­pe­delic. It makes things like this:

Gabe has a bet­ter han­dle on the thing. I will add his to the album after I get his per­mis­sion. At any rate, neat app. :)

School started today at SDSU, but I am not there. I am sad to not be there, but I am not there by choice — a choice based, sim­ply, on the following:

1. Tuition went up.
2. Fur­loughs were enacted, causing
   1. instruc­tors to be paid less, and
   2. stu­dents to get less class time, and there­fore less education.
3. Fewer classes were scheduled.
4. The idea that col­lege is sim­ply a series of check-boxes that need tick­ing off rather than a source of learn­ing was thereby strength­ened and reinforced.

As far as I can tell, the only peo­ple pleased with the fur­lough solu­tion for the fund­ing prob­lem are the mem­bers of the CSU Board of Trustees and other CSU exec­u­tives who dreamed it up. The fact that they were some­what exon­er­ated in this cor­po­rate audit earns them no reprieve, in my opin­ion, from con­dem­na­tion for their über-high pay­checks and lib­eral expense claims taken while the edu­ca­tion sys­tem they are employed to pro­tect and nur­ture wilts and stag­nates. Edu­ca­tion means noth­ing to these peo­ple, and they are try­ing to turn it into a high school exten­sion, or a time-killing check­list for the work-force-phobic, despite the efforts of those to whom it means a great deal. At any rate, fur­loughs were not part of the audi­tors’ sug­ges­tions, and they are not part of my plans… not if I can help it any­way. Unlike many, I am there to learn as much as I can, and if it results in a degree, great.

From the audit:

How did the State Audi­tor rec­om­mend the CSU address the audit’s key findings?

The Audi­tor made rec­om­men­da­tions in six areas: enhanced mon­i­tor­ing of com­pen­sa­tion poli­cies; uti­liza­tion of total com­pen­sa­tion for com­par­ing employee salaries with other insti­tu­tions; con­tin­ued mon­i­tor­ing and addi­tional report­ing on details of exec­u­tive tran­si­tion agree­ments; devel­op­ment of stricter state reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing leaves of absences for man­age­ment per­son­nel; stronger pol­icy gov­ern­ing the reim­burse­ment of relo­ca­tion expenses; and impos­ing dis­clo­sure and approval require­ments on out­side employ­ment for fac­ulty and other employ­ees through changes in state law or col­lec­tive bargaining.

So, CSU execs, how about putting edu­ca­tion back on the top of your lists, giv­ing us our class-time, and instead, cut­ting expenses that need to be cut? The pro­fes­sors have taken their cut, and I have paid my extra dues… Take one for the team and donate your salaries, your expenses. I want to go back to school, dammit. I miss Lau­rel. :)

So, it occurred to me dur­ing the under-caffeinated por­tion of my morn­ing, that it would be pos­si­ble — and indeed quite cheap — to make face blot­ting tis­sues much like those that I first saw while rid­ing on trains in Japan, being deployed by appar­ently less-than-fresh-faced OL on their way to or from work in the muggy sum­mer heat. I wasn’t sure why any­one would use them then, and I am still not sure now: if you can get to a place where it would be pos­si­ble to wash your face with soap and water, wouldn’t that be bet­ter, more refresh­ing? I mean, no one wants to see you sop­ping oil off your skin in pub­lic, dab­bing at your face the way one might get the last of the mari­nara off their plate with a piece of baguette. I mean, the sound the lit­tle crinkly papers make calls atten­tion to your activ­ity, mak­ing it is hard to ignore. Your choice, then, with the lit­tle wipes, is to either be dis­gust­ing in pub­lic, or to use them in lieu of a real wash while in the pri­vacy of a restroom. For me, a no-brainer, but as they now seem to be gain­ing in pop­u­lar­ity here in the US, I fig­ure that the crafty among us should take the oppor­tu­nity cre­ated by their trendi­ness to make some really pretty gifts for the more decorated-of-face among our friends and family.

A pat­terned or bright solid card­stock can serve as a dec­o­ra­tive, match-book-like holder for the sheets. You could even recy­cle some file fold­ers, mag­a­zine cov­ers or other sim­i­larly sturdy paper goods. I needn’t tell you crafters this: you are cre­ative. Here comes the bril­liant part, tho: the lit­tle sheets inside are, from what I have noted by play­ing with one I rec’d from a friend, the exact con­sis­tency and weight as the toi­let bowl cov­ers found in most pub­lic restrooms! Yes, I mean the white, bible-page-weight ass-gaskets dis­pensed from boxes labeled “Pro­vided by the Man­age­ment for your Pro­tec­tion.” Head out to the local 7–11 or office park and appro­pri­ate a bunch. Cut them to fit your previously-made hold­ers and sta­ple about 20 sheets in each. If you want, you could hold them above some incense to add a scent, but be care­ful not to set them on fire — potty tis­sues burn FAST. Fold the book­let closed, in keep­ing with the match­book model and, presto! You could even come up with a neato brand icon of your own to make them seem more hoity-toity (empha­sis, of course, on the toity).

There it is. Have fun, and let me know how many peo­ple you de-shine with this thought­ful gift: noth­ing says “I love you” like face de-greasers… am I right? If Barnes & Noble found it wise (and they did! I worked in hell that year) pimp the South Beach Diet books with signs that read “Great Christ­mas Gift”, I can’t be far from off in my gift-giving logic. Now I am away to find some bibles and prayer-books ear­marked for recy­cling to see if their pages would work in a sim­i­lar fash­ion, because those would make a great gift for remov­ing unsightly sweat halos! :)