Mother issues, Father issues; what's a girl to do?

i was just reading my blog and noticing that i was having mamma trauma right around Mother's Day so i suppose it's only appropriate that i should have Father issues right around Father's Day, correct?

Correct.

Actually the paternal issues are quite more predictable because any contact with the Dad means ISSUES if communication with mom is fraught with trouble communication with dad is non-existent and usually means "dis-inheritance" since he doesn't have anything else to seem to retreat to.

Anyway, after having Sent his father's day gift, in order to avoid The Telephone Conversation he called and left a message wanting to talk to me--i had my mother call him as i was working every night and would not be able to talk to him and did not want him to think i was avoiding him.

When i finally tried calling him i got his wife on the phone and asked her to have him call me back on my mom's number (my cellphone was not working well and as i have no land line and my mom who lives next door has a cordless which operates at my house) the "evil stepmother" said okay, so i wait for a phone call which never comes...

After a few days i get a letter saying he never called me back because i did not ask for him and because it was obvious my mother was meddling in all of his affairs.

So i dutifully try again on my breaking up cellphone--this time my stepmother tells me to try another time because they have company....

Alice down the hellmouth

Okay, so i've already admitted my Buffy addiction--you know every once in a while i'm going to have to read one of the Buffy books (after all i own all--or at least most--of them). One of the latest to come out is Go Ask Malice: A Slayer's Diary by Joseph Gordon Levy which is purportedly Faith's diary from shortly before she is called as vampire slayer. Like most of the Buffy series this is a YA novel and is a quick and easy read. It faithfully (sorry but i just had to do it) follows Buffyverse cannon plus adding interesting details to Faith's history. I thought it was actually fairly well written and i loved the additional (rabbit, rabbit) surrealistic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland allusions (Alice being the inspiration for Jefferson Airplane's song White Rabbit which was the inspiration for the original "diary".)

So if you're a Buffy fan pick it up and see if you agree with me.

swarm sketch

here's an interesting site if you feel like expressing your artistic side but aren't quite sure where to start or don't really want to put yourself out there all alone.

"SwarmSketch is an ongoing online canvas that explores the possibilities of distributed design by the masses. Each week it randomly chooses a popular search term which becomes the sketch subject for the week. In this way, the collective is sketching what the collective thought was important each week. (Due to increased traffic sketches are currently being updated after about 1000 lines)

Each user can contribute a small amount of line per visit, then they are given the opportunity to vote on the opacity of lines submitted by other users. By voting, users moderate the input of other users, judging the quality of each line. The darkness of each line is the average of all its previous votes."

They all look a bit of a mess to me but kinda fun to fool around with i guess...

Dracula said what, and when was that?

Have you ever thought that you read a book and when someone is talking about it--like major plot elements, concepts, themes, or characters you have absolutely no memory of them? That was my experience recently when i, in one of my Buffyobsessession throes was checking out some of the slayer timeline sites and saw some references to a story in the grapic novel Tales of the Vampires by Joss Whedon, Ben Edlund, Jane Espenson, Brett Matthews, and Drew Goddard. Now all the slayer timelines i've found are incomplete as far as i'm concerned so i'm working on one of my own (among my many other projects)--anyway i'm thinking i don't remember that story and i did read that book--didn't i? So i go pull it off my shelf--start rereading it and in fact i never did finish it--the story in question really isn't that great (or that memorable in fact--maybe i just blocked it out) But overall the collection itself is pretty good--now if they would just get those watchers' journals out!

went to the doctor and the doctor said no more monkeys jumping on your head...

i only wish it were so easy.

went to the my neurologist today because the latest bout of migraines has been especially bad--i have had to leave work or not go to work a number of times in the last couple of weeks (and when you're a chronic migraineur you learn to live/work through major pain) But i have grown a little weary of constant nausea, vomiting, light/sound sensitivity, never knowing if what i'm hearing, smelling, seeing is entirely accurate and having to decide if the pain is actually bad enough to medicate because i have to worry about rebound headaches or dependence.

Sick and Tired of being Sick and Tired.

and it all gets overly wearisome (to say the very least)

and what is your long-term strategic plan???

Supposedly this was The In Thing in library administrative/management planning about ten to fifteen years ago according to one of the listservs that i am on so it only makes sense that our library system is doing it now (and now that they mention it--i do remember the whole SWOT thing from library school--god, was it really a decade ago--more on SWOT later if i have the patience/fortitude).

So anyway, now they've had the community planning meetings and now we have to meet as individual libraries and decide within the specific areas that the community has laid out for us what our library's goals are. One meeting per week, very dictated form--Can you say FUN? (i can--it's my new mantra--i say it over and over and over and over again, silently inside my head)

Why is it (or so it seems) whenever someone comes up with a good idea groups of people get a hold of that idea and tweak it until it becomes a wearisome "Management Technique"?

Do you have Salt Lake City Punk?

is the question that seems to be on the minds of a whole bunch of teeny-boppers lately and i can't help but wonder why (of course while inwardly snarling and correcting them with an almost judgemental SLC Punk!)--do they know that the scene they are describing (while fictionalized) is twenty years old, and that the old fogey they are addressing behind the desk was actually part of the very scene they are somehow thinking is so very cool (and would they think it was so very cool if they knew)?

I was listening to a local radio show today talking about the "old" punk scene and reliving it a little, can't the kids come up with their own stuff? Why do they have to steal ours--although i guess we've all been doing that--time and time again--so can i really complain?--of course i can!!!

my horrorscope for today:

and yes i do know how to spell horoscope but just look at what my cellphone-generated horoscope message sent me for the day--"it may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others" now i have to admit i kinda like it, but i'm not sure what to think. One day (and i must admit it WAS a REALLY Bad day) i luckily didn't happen to check my messages until 12:01 a.m. so it was technically the next day when i read the LOVELY message "Today just may be the straw that breaks the camel's back." Now if i had read that scope when the message had actually been received it just might have been that final straw (not to mix any metaphors or anything--is that mixing metaphors or is the straw that breaks the camel's back the final straw) Anyway, i'm curious is there an actual astrologer writing these horoscopes or is someone just out there trying to mess with my head (not that that would be an altogether difficult task)?

Good thing i don't really believe in astrology (much).

Although some of the books in my library might have you thinking otherwise.

proud to be a quirkyalone

I just got and read a wonderful book called quirkyalone: a manifesto for uncompromising romantics by Sasha Cagen. The definition of quirkyalone, by the by is:

Quirkyalone: noun/adj. A person who enjoys being single (but is not opposed to being in a relationship) and generally prefers to be alone rather than dating for the sake of being in a couple. With unique traits and an optimistic spirit; a sensibility that transcends relationship status. Also adj. Of, relating to, or embodying quirkyalones. See also: romantic, idealist, independent.

I first stumbled on the quirkyalone website after finding the TO-DO LIST blog (a fun site you should check out, which is also apparently going to be made into a book in 2007). After reading a bit on this site i decided that quirkyalone definitely described me, and that i was proud to be one. Now, in case you are wondering, it is quite possible to be quirkyalone and to be in a relationship (called quirkytogether)--you just don't HAVE to be in a relationship to be happy.

Some famous quirkyalones throughout history: Eve (of Adam and), Siddhartha, Socrates, Rumi, Elizabeth I (one of my personal faves), Lucy Stone, Thoreau, Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas (a perfect example of quirkytogethers), Virginia Woolf, Rosa Park, Helen Gurly Brown, Bessie & Sadie Delaney (Having Our Say: the Delaney Sisters' first Hundred Years), and Gloria Steinem. Emily Dickinson, it must be noted, was both quirky and alone, but not quirkyalone--we quirkyalones are sociable people.

Check out the site, check out the book, with us or against us it's a movement, it's fun, it's who i am!

blah, blah, blah...

...has always been one of my favorite phrases (and much better, in my oh so considered opinion, than the (not-one-of my-favorite shows) Seinfeld-coined (or perhaps not coined but at least claimed) "yadda, yadda, yadda..." I often use it in the same sense as those Seinfeld folks--to fill in the, often boring or mundane, predictable details of people's conversations or goings on of my day to day life, etc., blah blah blah.

I once thought this was my own personal phrase (not that i believed it was such a profundity or anything, i had just not heard anyone else utter it) so imagine my surprise and elation/disappointment when i found a t-shirt with my grad schools name on the front and a big

BLAH!

BLAH!

BLAH!

on the back (i think in perhaps it was in place of RAH! RAH! RAH! medon'tknow it was just serendipity) i just had to buy it.

But lately it all just seems to be blah, blah, blah. Or perhaps, more explicitly just Blah.

so i drift through the days without even the energy to rampage...

blah

blah

blah

it was a dark and stormy night...

once again i am up in the night
migraine
insomnia
the wind
the rain
the lightning
outside
so what has kept me up (besides the migraine) reading all night long? Illegal Drugs: A Complete Guide to Their History, Chemistry, Use and Abuse by Paul M. Gahlinger. This is an incredibly interesting, comprehensive, and informative book.

Of the many things i learned was that often drug laws are made because of political stigmatization of certain ethnic groups. Chinese and opium. Germans and prohibition. Mexicans and marijuana. Also William Randolph Hearst was one of the driving forces behind the demonization of marijuana in the 1930s and by extension hemp. The reasoning behind this--he owned a great deal of forest land which he wanted to put into paper production use, which up until that time had been mostly made out of hemp. Get rid of all that hemp production and those forest lands would become SO much more valuable (interesting how the hemp movement seems to be reversing itself today--huh?) I already knew this but i still wonder why mandatory sentencing laws for drug possession of things like marijuana are longer (like 25 years) than for violent crimes (trivial things like, say, Murder, often carry minimum sentences of 7 years)--just curious...

Anyway this book is an excellent resource as it discusses just about every drug you can think of, its history, its uses, its dangers, signs of overdose, lifesaving measures, etc. There were some chemical discussions that were a little beyond me but most of it was perfectly comprehensible and very objective.

Is YOUR Marriage in so much DANGER that it needs Constitutional PROTECTION?

This is probably a subject i should stay away from, being single, and not really understanding the point of view of people who want to interfere with other people's lives in areas where i don't see that it has any affect on them; but it really is something that i have a hard time keeping my mouth shut on (here comes the rant--if you're not in the mood stop reading now.) Firstly, regardless of your personal views a constitutional amendment hardly seems necessary because (a) there are (too) MANY state statutes in place already (laws governing marriage are usually a states' rights jurisdiction--an area our beloved president traditionally likes to stay out of) and (b) since when did we start making constitutional amendments actually discriminating against certain groups of people (rather than preventing discrimination against groups of people)? Doesn't that seem a BIT contrary to the philosophical ideals this country was founded on (whatever those might have been--however we're interpreting them this week)?

This issue actually confuses me somewhat--are there a limited number of marriages available and if other people get married that somehow reduces the availability? Or perhaps you're afraid that your possible partner might somehow fall "prey" to a same-sex other--and if so how possible a partner were they for you? How does the reinforcement of someone else's commitment threaten yours? Again i stand confused.

The fact that historically marriage has always been a love match between one man and one woman is a misfounded notion to begin with. Here's yet another book recommendation for you (i am a librarian after all): Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy or How Love Conquered Marriage by Stephanie Coontz, a sociologist who really knows her stuff but is also very readable (she also wrote The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap and The Way We Really Are: Ending the War Over America's Changing Families, both of which i highly recommend). Reading any, or, preferably , all of these books will give you some of idea of how biased and jaundiced our western, judeo-christian ideas have coloured our politics.

As we fight wars, kill, and lose lives to bring "Democracy" to the world shouldn't we make an effort to keep it in this, the "greatest", nation?

Analyze THIS

So i usually have pretty weird dreams--or at least that's what people seem to think when i start describing them. But my dream from last night was truly strange. Firstly my little sister, who is now 25, with three children, is almost always a kid or a teenager in my dreams (usually a kid) last night she was a teenager and she took me to a house/mansion/multi-level warehouse full of other teenagers doing all sorts of drugs and having all sorts of wild indiscriminate sex (let me just add here that my sister is The Prude of the family--while i am The Wild Child--and yes, before you ask--those are our official titles)

So anyway, here we are at this WILD (even by my standards--and trust me i have an interesting history which, perhaps, might be shared at another time) party, my sis and i hanging out with these girls for a while--a few things happen...
and eventually i get separated from my sister and i am search of a phone for some unknown reason--you know how dream logic goes--and i stumble upon these somewhat STAR-TREKIE-TECHIE-GEEKIE-COOL guys (you know the type i mean) and i am suddenly very interested in flirting--with teenage boys--yes my forty-year-old-self forgets about my poor helpless teenage sister and flirts heavily with a pimply faced boy who is, at best, semi-interested.
Meanwhile, the very long ash from the cigarette that i am smoking (i have mentioned that i don't smoke--except for that maternal issue night--haven't i?) is dropping onto some kind of electrical wire thingy, and starting little electrical fires, which the boy i am so intensely flirting with keeps trying to put out. I keep dropping ashes, keep starting ever increasing fires, his semi-interest is ever-waning, i am noticing the fires but not really caring. The boy is beginning to get more and more annoyed with me and yet i continue to flirt (also, by the by, intense flirting with Anyone, is usually not one of my highest priorities).
okay--analyze...
oh and let me also add that i have a little phobia about electrical fires (not plain old pyrophobia because i actually have very Minor, Slight tendencies toward pyromania at times just electrical fires, mind you) and explosions (atomosophobia-and i actually have died by being blown up in a few dreams)...

WHERE do we learn to hate?

Stumbled across the movie Foreign Student the other day on cable. It was a sweet, sentimental movie, set in the 1950s in the South, baby-faced cutie Marco Hofschneider plays a French foreign exchange student named Philip who falls in love with a black teacher named April (played by a pre-Mike Tyson Robin Givens). Foreign Student also features Charlotte Ross (in a somewhat multi-personality role) and Rick Johnson who absolutely shines. It is almost a stranger in a strange land kind of plot as the European Philip has absolutely no understanding of the racial (beyond) tensions America has going down. This movie has a very interesting perspective and is very easy to watch. It might make you think, (it brought up a few questions in my mind) but it definitely doesn't shove anything down your throat--and i think you have to come up with your own questions the' the movie makers may have had something else in mind it does seem a bit youthful and wistful). I would recommend this film as something to watch on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Of course another movie you MUST see (but not something that i would call Easy to watch) is American History X featuring Edward Norton, Avery Brooks, Edward Furlong, and Beverly D'Angelo. If you've never seen this movie it is an absolute must (although interestingly enough neo-nazi's and skin-head white separatists absolutely love to check it out from the library--they seem to be missing the ultimate point--oh well what can we do...)

still spinning

Spin State is a first novel by Chris Moriarty. I am not a quantum physicist while apparently Moriarty is or at least he/she (gender is questionable because reviews refer to Chris as both, I believe he is a man but i really don't know) or at least reads the material and understands it so when Moriarty writes about it the explanation is not always there. This is HARD cyberpunk scifi, which is not my usual flavor, but if i just let a little of the jargon slide and tried to get past my usual obsession to try and understand every word and went with the story, i actually found it quite enjoyable. Overall a good debut, i think i'm looking forward to more, though i believe i would have to read it sandwiched between some things a little more my style (like that's really a problem--book addict that i am)

like i really need to read another cat book--let alone a kitten book...

Demetra is officially beyond the kitten stage (though she often seems to think she's still a kitten--or sometimes even seems to suffer species confusion and act like puppy), but somehow i couldn't resist. I keep threatening to write my own cat book someday--or rather ghostwrite a catbook with the three resident feline experts, so i guess i can call it research. Anyway this book: Complete Kitten Care by Amy D. Shojai is very well written and does have some new tips to offer, although i don't agree with everything she has to say (she recommends purebreds over mutts because there health is often better, although she does talk about researching responsible breeders versus kitten mills she seems to think you can not get a purebred from a shelter or know history if you pick up a shelter kitten {and i question the validity of purebreds being healthier considering the health problems associated with inbreeding, but whatever...}--which is not always true and in this world of way too many unwanted animals put to death i must advocate shelters.) Overall there were more positive points than negative and i think i might need to add this one to my already swollen collection.