The forecast said mixed precipitation turning into snow; we've a foot on the ground left from last week. I'm looking out the window, thinking:

Rain, rain, rain.
So long as you're not snow,
I'm not going to complain.

L.A. business idea?

Why is it legal to get paid for having sex in a movie but not if the cameras aren't rolling?
It seems there is a loophole in there.
Why not start a business where a person can pay to star in his own movie, with the porn actor of his choice?
A single copy of the film is made, direct to DVD. The DVD is given to the client, so he can relive the experience in the comfort of his home.
Is that legal? If not, why not?

55 million miles

55 million miles away.
Someday it will matter.
Mars at perigee--
Aunt Sally will be that much closer,
Or some other relative who settled there.
Her voice will be clearer
On the telephone, with less of a delay.
The supply ship will reach her with drugs she needs.
"Balto" will be painted on the side
of some unmanned craft to reach
our colony on the neighboring planet.

gang aft agley

We are all just living in our corner of the galaxy, making plans and saving up and hoping that the Cosmic cleaning crew doesn't notice and wipe us out.

Knowing that some day it will.

Like that mouse in the Burns poem.

9th ant doesn't count

Friday morning, a small ant crawled across my desk. Without much thinking, I reached out to crush it with my finger. It was only wounded. Nature has made ant exoskeletons extra hard. I tried to crush it again, to quickly end its misery, but wasn't sure I succeeded. I considered what to do, then walked down the hall and threw it into the spider web. Seeing it suspended there, I felt guilty. It hadn't blundered into the web. It wasn't its fault. I had interfered with nature. On the other hand, an ant that walks across my desk in the middle of the day doesn't have the survival skills necessary to make it to the next generation.

The dormant spider woke and made a speedy L to the ant. She quickly wrapped it up. I considered that this death was at least more useful than in the wastebasket or down the drain.

Having ruined the scientific validity of my observation of the spider, I wondered if by feeding it I had invoked the stray-cat rule and made it my pet. I decided it was more like a bird feeder in the yard--the birds and squirrels remain wild.

This morning, there were still only eight ant carcasses in the corner. As if the spider knew that we cheated; it hadn't caught that ninth ant on its own. It was just a bonus, so it ate it up and didn't save any.

1 NH Democrat, 3 Weeks before the Primary

I don't see the point of John Edwards this time around. A good speaker with not much experience is done much better by Barak Obama, and without the $400 haircut. Plus Obama is African-American, and has lived in a foreign country. These are good things. I do like how Edwards emphasizes the importance of helping poor people, but good intentions aren't enough.

Lack of experience worries me. Our country has been damaged, and Iraq nearly destroyed, from the blunderings of a pig-headed amateur. I'm hesitant to vote the country to someone who may be well-intentioned, but have a steep learning curve. I'd rather vote on resume and mostly ignore the campaign promises. That's why I'm leaning toward Richardson. He was in Congress, ambassador to the U.N., Secretary of Energy, and now governor. He ought to know how government works. And he's fluent in a second language.

I don't understand why so many of my neighbors have Hillary signs in their front yards. She elicits such visceral hatred from so many non-Democrats. Why do Democrats think she can win? She is, I admit, a great campaigner, but I think there is too much prejudice against her. In the last debate, she said she would like to unite the country. She can hope, but I think she has the least chance of it. In spite of her being the most right wing.

Two people at my synagogue said they want her because they want him back. They loved what Bill Clinton did for the economy, as reflected in their retirement funds. Their wanting her because they liked him raised my feminist distaste at the first female President being a famous wife first. I want someone in because people wanted her.

Revisionist Rudy

I saw an ad on TV last week that made me say "Rudy Giuliani doesn't deserve to be voted dogcatcher, let alone President." He credited Ronald Reagan for getting the hostages released from Iran, something I don't think even the most partisan of Reagan supporters ever claimed. He said Reagan managed this feat during his first hour of his Presidency because "the best way to deal with terrorists, dicatators and tyrants is to stand up to them. You don't back down."

As I recall, the hostage crisis began because President Carter wouldn't back down to pressure from Iran, but allowed the deposed Shah to come to the U.S. for medical treatment. (Giuliani also refers to the captors as "mullahs", when at the time the T.V. news called them "students", but that's minor. I'd grant him the "mullahs" if the rest of the ad made sense.)

My husband, who is from NY, was more sanguine about the revisionist history. "Giuliani is a self-promoting egotist who's catering to the shallowist follower of politics. Reagan sold arms to Iran, that ended up with Hezbollah. Then the money went to the contras. So he supported terrorists."

See:
NYT
http://giuliani2008-blogger.blogspot.com/2007/12/rudy-giuliani-tv-ad-one-hour.html
http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2007/12/guiliani_tv_ad_questioned.html

spider eight

She had an eighth ant in her web today. From early to late morning she brought it to the top of the web. After lunch I noticed the eighth ant deposited in the corner over the tiles, practically on top of another ant.

I've also noticed what looks like the ghost of a spider, where she sometimes hangs out in the corner. Could it be a discarded exoskeleton? Do spiders shed skin like snakes? The shed/dead thing has legs.
I'm pretty sure the spider has been growing. When I first noticed her, she was a much smaller spider. If she's the same one, of course.

This is in an approx. 7'x8' bathroom, which remains dark when no one turns on the light.

spider update: 7!

Tuesday evening I noticed the spider had another ant in her arms, in the middle of her web. I blew at her, to see if she was comatose from ant blood or possibly dead, and she scurried up to the corner of the web nearest to the corner where the ladies' room walls meet. She dragged her ant package up with her, and attended to it at the top of the web, where she'd be less affected by the wind. I wondered if she'd leave this latest ant with the six others. The next morning I noticed that she had. So now there are seven ants wrapped up in the corner of the ladies' room where the single row of vertical tiles meet the wall.

It occured to me that a spider's life is like that of a military patrol. She waits and does apparently nothing for days on end, but is always ready to spring into action for a kill. Then return to dormancy.

My husband's guess is that the ant stash is for baby spiders to come. I'm pretty sure that all we know of the natural history of spiders was learned from Charlotte's Web.

I hope the cleaning people don't get conscientious and clean up her stash, or her. I'd like to know what happens next, and that will possibly take a number of months.

song begging for alternative lyrics

Driving home, listening to WOKQ on the radio the other night, I heard a song whose refrain went:

I don't give a dern what other people think
What do ya think about that?

It's a fun song to sing in the car.

Some googling and I find its name is what do you think about that. Sung by a duo called Montgomery Gentry. And it is #10 on the billboard hot country chart.

The lyrics continue:

I wear what I want to, overalls work boots
Crank my music up loud

Like to sling a little mud in my four wheel drive
Trek it all into town
Shot a little eight ball down at the pool hall
Drink a beer with my friends

Now this is way too masculine for anyone else's opinion to be more than a paper tiger. If you're the toughest guy on the block, your nonconformity is a non-issue. How about singing in that deep low voice something more along the lines of:

I wear my feather boa every day to work
Clicking my high heel shoes.
If I didn't have a different boy every Friday night
A civil union's what I'd choose.

Then you can continue on with the original, but with a more rightfully defiant meaning:

Now don't judge me and I won't judge you
Cause we all get judged in the end....

Some people care about what other people think
Worry about what they say
Let a little gossip
Coming from a loose lip ruin a perfect day
Say, blah, blah, blah, just a jacking their jaws
Gotta letta roll offa my back
What do ya think about that

Say, I don't give a damn what other people think
What do ya think about that
What do ya think about that

spider stash

The spider whose web is in the corner of our office's ladies' room has six ants neatly wrapped up just above where the tiles meet the wall. Are they for winter? For expected spider babies? Or do spiders just do that?

last.fm's AI picks my top artists so far...

Here's a widget generated from the website Last.fm:


I'm not sure how it picks some of these as my top artists. For example, I don't know what Mary Black sounds like, but since it says she sings Irish music, she must have popped up when I asked for "celtic harp" or "Alan Stivell" or "Silly Wizard".

The others were from typing in "lute" or "harpsichord" after typing in "john dowland" or "dowland". I actually did type in "James Blunt" specifically, since his song No Bravery was in my mind. The AI read my mind and played that particular track. Or maybe that was the default track...

It's an interesting site for wanting to hear music that is like something in particular, but still have randomness and surprise. e.g. Jimi Hendrix pops up for harpsichord, since there was a harpsichord on one of his tracks.

NANO!

I'm writing my blog while listening to my new nano. How ought's is that? (We're in the ought's decade, aren't we?)
Have to stop typing. Sting singing Flow my tears just has to be listened to.
First question: No, not the new nano with the TV in it.
Second: And the earbuds aren't bothering me, and they aren't falling out.
oops. spoke too soon. left ear itched; tried to scratch it, now the left one won't go back in.. The apple support website ipod manual really ought to have some directions for the things. ok. it's in. but my left ear is itching again. inside.
Jeff got a free nano when he bought his new apple laptop. He asked me if I wanted an iPod. I said sure. I thought he'd give me his old one now that he had a new one. I'd figured eventually someday I'd get an old shuffle from some niece or nephew who was upgrading. But no. Jeff generously just gave me his brand new in a box shiny blue nano.
And love, is love, in beggars and in kings.
Right. He said I owe him a favor. That made me consider giving it back. Nonspecific favors to be repaid at indefinite dates are something to be cautious about.
But the fact is, we already owe Melinda and Jeff lots of favors. They've
Though all my wares be trash...the heart is true--the heart is true.
been wonderful. For years.
Nano! Nano! Nano! Yay!
Thank you Jeff!

political question

I don't dislike any of the Democratic candidates. John McCain's the only Republican candidate I respect. Should I vote Republican this year, so I can vote for McCain?

Tooth Fairy, Part II, Unclear on the Concept

So I was getting ready for work the first morning after the tooth fairy's first visit to our house when I heard Zoe crying and crying. "What's wrong?" I asked my husband.
He says "I don't know."
I went to Zoe's bed. The tooth case was out, the dollar on the sheets, and Zoe was sobbing.
"Look, the tooth fairy left you a dollar!" I said, or something of the sort. Zoe just kept crying. I cuddled her until she could stop crying enough to speak.
"My teeth are gone!" She said. She didn't want to even look at the dollar.
Unclear on the concept, I think.
"But, that's what the tooth fairy does. You give her the tooth, and she gives you money for it."
"I want my teeth back!" Zoe cried.
"Why? What do you want them for?"
"I want to play with them!"
I truly don't care if the tooth fairy ever visits the house again. I don't feel comfortable lying to Zoe anyway. It seems to me that in childhood we tell our children there's a God, Tooth Fairy, and (sometimes) Santa Claus and Easter Bunny. Then when they grow up we tell them we were lying about all but the first of those. I wish we could be honest, but there's too much social pressure not to be.
And I don't care if she has the teeth or not. Ugly small bloody things. I'm glad we didn't throw them out. She can have them. But how to maintain the lie?
"Maybe if you write the tooth fairy a note, she'll give them back to you...."
We make up stories about maybe today when Zoe's in school, Daddy can find the teeth in the woods where the fairy hid them. By evening we decide to put some shiny sequins in the tooth box to buy back the teeth. (Zoe rejects the notion of giving back the dollar.) But when bedtime comes, the tooth case is lost. Now it's Monday night, and I haven't heard anything else about the teeth.

Tooth Fairy, Part I

Zoe had her first loose tooth while she was still in kindergarten, last May. It didn't fall out, but the one next to it also became loose over the summer. Months went by. The two grownup teeth started to grow in behind the loose baby teeth, but they still didn't fall out. After two months, Zoe gave up asking me when they would fall out. I was as mystified as she. I don't remember enough about being in the baby-teeth-falling-out age to know if this is normal or not. Finally, last Thursday, during second day of first grade, she "pulled" them out. I'm not sure if she always could have done so, but, I came home from work and learned that Ro and I needed to play tooth-fairy that night.
"If you told me before I left work, I could have stopped at the bank and seen if they had any dollar coins," I said.
The tooth fairy job was complicated by Zoe not using the traditional envelope. After yanking out her teeth, Zoe was sent to the school nurse, who presented her with a white plastic tooth-shaped tooth case on a gold cord. The tooth-case looked too small to hold anything but maybe a dime.
Ro wondered how we'd get the case out from under Zoe's pillow. I snuck it out easily. Children do sleep soundly. If they didn't, I don't think this tooth fairy custom would be so widespread or have survived so long.
We wonder what to do with the teeth. "I think my parents threw them out," I say. I remember that's what we concluded when we reached the age to know the Truth about the Tooth Fairy.
"It seems like something we should save," said Rodrigo. "I should call my mother and ask her what to do with them."
"She'll say throw them out!"
I take the teeth that Ro has put an envelope. Where to hide it? Zoe goes through all of my stuff. I put it in Ro's drawer, too high and stuck for Zoe to open.
Since it was two teeth, we thought we should put two dollars in the case.
We considered ironing the dollar bills so they'd look nice, but I figured I'd have to fold them up very tiny anyway. The tooth case was too small for two dollars. I only managed to fit in one dollar bill, much creased and folded, and then rolled up to fit inside the case.
I snuck it back under the pillow.
How I wished I could see her expression the next day when she opened the case and found the dollar!

Why I like the radio

Walking in the parking lot of our industrial complex at lunch, I hear a U2 song that I like blaring out. It reminds me of why I like the radio. When the radio plays a good song, it's random good luck. And often it's a song I haven't thought of for a while. With an iPod/CD/Cassette, I have to decide and choose. There's nothing unexpected random spontaneous good luck about it. Of course, after switching stations many times with no satisfaction, it's sometimes a relief to push in the CD or cassette and hear that favorite song.

twenty per cent

On August 13th I received an email saying my submitted screenplay was in the top 20% of those entered into the Nichol's competition. This means that about a thousand scripts were better than mine, but about four thousand were worse.
It actually felt very good to get this email. Prior to that, I'd only learned that my script didn't make it into the top-5%-quarterfinals. I started to wonder if the script had been rejected right away as being too weird or whatever. I remember saying to Rodrigo, "It sounds funny, but I feel bad for my characters. I cared about them so much. I wanted them to be understood."
I'd obsessed over the screenplay from last fall until the week before the deadline, when I mailed it. I took a screenwriting class in the 1980's, and wrote a script I was embarressed to read again last year. Since then, I hadn't written anything in that format. Somehow, at the end of last summer, dialogues started to occuring to me, as if dictated by God. I typed them in, tried to put them into story format, and realized it had to be a screenplay. I looked up "screenplay" on Wikipedia and learned about the Nichol's competition.
By the week before the deadline, I knew I didn't have the best screenplay in the world. "It isn't going to win, should I still send it in?" I asked Rodrigo.
"You've been working towards this deadline. You may as well, " he replied.
Twenty per cent may not seem like a great writing credit. But it gives my writing some validation. I'm not a total flake raving about something that's completely incomprehensible to rational beings. Was that worth the $40 entry fee?
That, along with the sense that I tried, and took myself seriously, makes it worth it to me. Those who know how very cheap I am (and how short our funds last summer) may be surprised to hear it.

ear buds

I finally flew on an airplane last weekend, for the first time since the nineties. The airline was called Airtrans, which I don't think I even heard of before a month ago. They gave out pretzels, which I'd been told not to expect, nowadays; and they also gave out ear-buds.

I found a station in the on-board XM Satellite radio playing beautiful opera, and tried to put the ear-buds in my ear. They fell out. I pushed them in deeper. The one in the left ear stayed, but hurt my ear. I took it out and tried again. I tried listening with the earbuds held close to my ear but not so much in that they hurt, but there was too much of a swooshing sound interfering with the music.

I felt like a technological neophyte. I wondered if there was a trick to them that I just hadn't learned.

The lady next to me had brought her own white i-Pod ear buds, so I thought maybe the expensive ones are more comfortable. I looked around the airplane, trying to see other people with airplane-issued black ear-buds. Across the aisle there was a teenager, and in front of him a 50 or 60ish year old gentleman. They both had black ear-buds, and they both seemed content. I checked the orientation of the bud wires with respect to their ears--yes, I seem to have got that right. I couldn't notice anything they were doing that made the buds work for them.

A day later I complained to my sister Frannie about the ear-buds. Frannie has been flying a lot lately, and should know about them. "I think our ears are shaped differently," she said. "I can't get them to fit comfortably either."

All this time I've been envying those silhouttes dancing with abandon in the iPod Shuffle commercials. Now it turns out that I don't want to be among them. Cheap ear phones, like the kind I got on a Virgin Atlantic flight years ago, always worked fine. But now they're probably harder to obtain.

Why I don't want to vote for Hillary

Reasons, rational and not, why I truly hope some other Democrat will get the nomination:

• Hatred of the cynical nepotism that motivates Party movers and shakers to back someone with name recognition over other, more qualified, candidates. This is what brought us the current President Bush. It also got Hillary her Senate seat in the first place. Perhaps one can't argue with elective success, but, given the current state of the world wrought by a dangerously incompentent President, how can one not oppose it?
  
• She says she voted to give President Bush authority to start the Iraq war because she trusted him. Presidents should be a better judge of character than that. They need to appoint lots of people to run things. When they screw up, will her excuse be that she trusted them? We've had enough of that from the current President. ('Brownie, you're doing a hell of a job.')
  
• If we had national health insurance, I'd feel a lot better about her. She should have anticipated the insurance companies' reaction to her plan. As Birch Bayh said, "It takes a good politician to make a good president."
• Feminist Idealism. I'd like the first woman President to be one who came to prominence through her own achievements, not that of her husband. Dianne Feinstein , Susan Collins, Nancy Pelosi, Christine Todd Whitman. Someone like that. Had Margaret Chase Smith run for president back in the 1960's, one could argue that she had originally won her seat because of her husband, but by then she had made quite a name for herself on her own. I don't think Hillary Clinton has the long expericence that justifies a run for the Presidency.
• If Hillary wins the nomination, we'll have to listen to that awful Celine Dion song until election day.