Personal Service

The tee shirt and CD that I ordered from Perceval Press arrived. When I saw the parcel I laughed. A handwritten label! The mailer is a free Priority Mail envelope and inside that another free Priority Mail envelope wrapped around the tee shirt. The CD was encased in a generic white cardboard mailer. Hah! Just like me, someone went down to the post office clutching a tee shirt, CD and label, got materials, packaged the items, stood in line and mailed the package. Hilarious! But it's sweet, too. Nice to know that someone did it personally. It's funny that a rich guy like VM is so cheap. Well, it might not be him. It might be the other people he works with. I can sympathize. I had a business once. You sure do need to keep costs down.

All that going to the post office thing probably didn't happen though. I see the Post Office picks up. Probably bring you stacks of free mailing containers, too. Oh, well. The label is handwritten. That's something, I guess. More than I get from Amazon.

I was going to put up a picture of me wearing the tee shirt (I got "Support Our Troops, Bring Them Home") but no one needs to see me in a tee shirt. Instead, here's a photo of the personalize label.

I love the CD, Intelligence Failure. It's surreal. Try popping it into your car and driving around on a nice sunny day when everyone's out and about, all relaxed and happy. It's like being in a Mathew Barney movie but it's a lot easier to understand.

Totally unrelated is engage.com. I won't put a link because they are a little stupid right now. There were mentioned on "How To Get the Guy" (which I was only watching because I was at my brother's and he doesn't have a DVD player at his rivah house). So, they put up a pop up, which you can't close, apologizing for the delay. Sounds good to me! Hmm. We're getting a lot of traffic. Let's improve it by serving everyone twice instead of once!! Idiots! Why didn't they just put a notice on the home page? Sheesh.

Current Fads
Listening. Buckethead and Viggo Intelligence Failure; faint rumblings
Watching. between DVD's
Activity. trying to stay awake
Gadget. PDA
News Source. the news feeds in Safari
Reading. Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut; Writing Essays - Harold P. Simonson; On Writing Well - William Zinsser; GD USA; MacWorld; Fortune (Yes, I really am reading them all right now—I'm a reading addict. What can I say?)

zucchinis and world peace

I looked at my Webstats report to see how many visits I'm getting these days. It's sort of weird how visits to my site spike. The spikes don't seem to be related to anything except for a huge one in 1999 due to Kathleen's love of The Backstreet Boys which forced me to upgrade my server subscription. When she went off to college she took her fan site down and said she never wanted to see it again – she was so sick of it. Six years later I am still getting "Document Not Found" reports for a photo of AJ.

One of the "not found" documents that is routinely reported missing is my story of a group blind date I went on in July of 2004. The page keeps turning up as not found even though it is here. I cracked myself up today reading about turning my pickle into a zucchini. I totally forgot I wrote that. Then I clicked on a Google ad for a book about Viggo Mortensen (one of the men I am not dating). Looks like a good book; a bit fanzine and a bit about the actual man.

I'm a cheapskate. I tend to get my Viggo (and some other) news from Perceval. I just learned an impeachment of Bush is afoot. I guess my intuitions about him were correct. I hadn't noticed that Viggo is such a rabid – what is it? – left winger. Here's a quote from his website.

"English Only" and/or English as the one and only official language of the United States are concepts that are unrealistic, undesirable, prejudicial, wasteful, and totally irrelevant. They serve only as politically expedient public relations tools for many of our cynical legislators and supposed leaders. Business as usual these days, in other words. Distraction, disunity, deceit, and dismemberment of democracy continue to reap dividends for the ruling elite and further damage our society.
v.m.

Me, I believe in English. This is America. We speak English here. I also speak German fluently and a bit of Arabic. I've lived in Germany (6 years), Saudi Arabia (2 years), England (18 months) and had an extended stay in Cyprus (6 weeks). So I have some experience with other cultures. Still, this is America and if a person wishes to stay here permanently they should speak the local language. After all, when I was in other countries I was at least polite enough to speak as much of their language as I could.

In Saudi Arabia they prefer Arabic. To stop English from taking over there are rules about Arabic being the preferred language. It has to appear first on any signs and in any publications, especially government ones (which can have no English version at all). I agree with that.

I hope for a united world. A peaceful and free world where we can all cohabit cooperatively with understanding and interactive regard. To facilitate that we need a common language. I really don't care what language we end up speaking but to maintain a little order in the meantime, let's speak the language of the country shall we? It's an important acknowledgment of culture.

I hope all those scary scenarios of evil dictators of the future are just nightmares. As Bob Dylan said, you can be in my dream if I can be in yours.


Current Fads
Listening. Paste Sampler CD #22 ; gunshots in the night
Watching. Monk, Season 2 (2003); the sun
Activity. wishing
Gadget. cheap reading glasses
News Source. the news feeds in Safari; Perceval Press
Reading. The Second Time Around - Mary Higgins Clark; Writing Essays - Harold P. Simonson; On Writing Well - William Zinsser; GD USA; MacWorld; Fortune; Wired (Yes, I really am reading them all right now—I'm a reading addict. What can I say?)

A Name by Any Other Name

Yo! 80's chicks and dudes: Enough already with "eponymous"! Can we have "self-titled" back? It's a lot simpler and won't cause me to consult two dictionaries and read three pages of Wikipedia. For those of you preferring directness and short lists here's a list of eponyms.

I'm guessing the instigator of this invasion is R.E.M. with their Eponymous album which they could have simply named R.E.M. – Dreams. Or maybe they were short on euphemisms and epithets? Stick that in your GRE Exam and see what comes out!

Maybe I missed the memo about a contest to see how many ways the word can be used? Or is it code for "I remember when" and "I'm so cool"? Oh, wait, I get it! We're all intellectuals now instead of freaky, big-haired lounge lizards. Warning! In the big homogenization movement you may find the word banned ... or obligatory. Either way.

P.S. Do a search for eponymous in Google News and be gagged by how many times the word comes up. If only I had a copper for every instance ...

AWAKE ...

On the wild side. Dancing to really loud music. I might sustain a little hearing loss and throw out my back. Yeehaw!!


Album of the Day: White Album –The Beatles

Older Women Screwed

What is the problem with an older woman getting a younger man? I watched "Prime" and "Something's Gotta Give." Sure the women date the younger men and even have a relationship with them but in the end they go back to their age group. What is the problem here? Am I the only one seeing this? It is so so stupid. And I mean that in a bad way. I lived with a man nine years younger than myself for 12 years. It was not a problem. I was very happy. It wasn't forever – most marriages aren't are they? Twelve years is pretty damn good.

In "Prime" the man is judged to be too young to start a family. He was 24. How old do you need to be? 30? In "Something's Gotta Give" the younger man gives way to an older man when he senses the woman still has an attachment to that man. This is so one dimensional. The younger man should have fought for her. Relationships have more than one side. And the younger man was prosperous and handsome and all that. She deserved him.

Again, what is the problem? I once read about a 65-year-old woman having a passionate love affair with a younger man. I know over 65's who've gotten married. What is this locked into twenty-something crap that Hollywood is feeding us?

I'm so tired of younger stuff. Bring on some maturity, some depth, something that I can grab hold of and explore. Sheesh!