Saturday is NaDruWriNi (National Drunk Writing Night)
[with credit to the_siobhan]

The rules are simple;

1. The goal is to drink while you write and write while you’re drunk. Drink as much as you want, write as much as you want, but be responsible, and don’t blame me if you write/do anything stupid.

2. Use this as a writing exercise to free yourself of inhibitions. Write in your blog. Write in a Moleskine. Write in a spiral notebook. Write on a bar napkin if you must. Just write.

3. If you have a blog, Facebook, MySpace or presence on any other networking site, post this event. Encourage others to participate.

4. Gatherings of participants are encouraged. Post gathering info in the comments below.

5. You must tell us what you are drinking.

6. You must NOT edit anything you have written. Part of the fun of NaDruWriNi are the Freudian slips. Also, if you write by paper, post a picture of your writing to your site or to Flickr using the tag “nadruwrini2008″ so we can see your awful penmanship.

7. Make an image or steal this one.

8. Have fun!

Prost!

Coworker email: All, please log out, we're rebooting shit.
*log out* *take break* *come back* *attempt to log in* *success*

An hour passes.

Coworker email: All, I forgot to mention that the system is back up now!

********

Gee, might only those of us who figured that shit out get the message?

Business writing tips from the Governator

First, mirror the other party's points to confirm accurate understanding
Underline salient points
Clarify any jargon
Keep points brief

Yield credit where credit is due
Offer your counter-proposal
Underscore how your counter-proposal is the better choice

Extra points for subtlety!

The first: OBAMA'S REAL DEATH PANELS

Obama could still personally order a government agency to murder you.

Which is weird. But not nearly as weird as the fact that you probably don't care enough to do something about it.

The second: MR. OBAMA: RESIGN NOW

Obama is useless. Worse than that, he's dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now--before he drags us further into the abyss.

I refer here to Obama's plan for "preventive detentions." If a cop or other government official thinks you might want to commit a crime someday, you could be held in "prolonged detention." Reports in U.S. state-controlled media imply that Obama's shocking new policy would only apply to Islamic terrorists (or, in this case, wannabe Islamic terrorists, and also kinda-sorta-maybe-thinking-about-terrorism dudes). As if that made it OK.

...

"Prolonged detention," reported The New York Times, would be inflicted upon "terrorism suspects who cannot be tried."

"Cannot be tried." Interesting choice of words.

-----------

In other news, life is good :)

...the only sentence you will need to read all day:

A Michigan pet store employee got himself a mouthful of cockroaches[.]

From: Article

"Why would I need to read that?" you ask? I'm not entirely sure. Maybe I'm just a bad person ;)

My new housemate had his kids over Friday night/yesterday morning. I never thought I'd say this, but...how wonderful! IIRC, his son is 5, his daughter is 7. They were adorable, smart, and funny with a minimum of acting out. The kicker? Turns out (according to the housemate even) that I'm actually really good with kids!?!!@# *blink*

Other than that yesterday was pretty uneventful. It was a much needed day of slack. As for today, I was up earlier than anticipated. 2 cups of coffee later and the bathroom is clean, the guitar is more practiced, and my mind is whirling in a zillion directions trying to settle on a path for the day.

Next up, a little web browser in search of correspondences with Saturn (which has been on my mind quite a lot of late). In particular, I'll be looking up musical correspondences (notes, modes, scales) and will see if I can find some piece (or pieces) of music that would be suitable for meditating on the qualities signified by Saturn. As you may have guessed, no, I'm not looking for crackpots who think they've communicated with aliens from another planet ;) I'll be spending quite some time working with this particular symbol. Going into this exercise, I expect I'll see an improvement in my work ethic, time management, organizational skills, and discipline in a rather general sense. Only good can come of it in the long run but I'm equally sure this is going to suck for a while at least. Just my luck. When I decide to come out of my atheist mode in search of experiences magical and mystical again the very first thing inspiration leads me to is the god of anti-slack. Oish.

I can now add my name to the list of folks who like scrapple. Huzzah, dubious distinctions!

I get some interesting magazines from work now and again. Recently I was turned on to Miller-McCune. Reading the latest issue to come in last night, I encountered this article:

Finding Water from Outer Space

Rather than addressing water found on Mars or the moon, this is actually about new technologies that have made remote sensing possible.

NASA's Landsat satellites record images of the Earth using eight different wavelengths, from infrared to visible light. The most recent addition to this arsenal of space-based imagery became available in 2004, when NASA released topographical data gathered by the space shuttle. That has enabled researchers for the first time to create 3-D views of any area on the planet. "It's a fantastic gift from the United States to the world," Gachet says.

Out of context this bit doesn't shed much light on the article overall, but it makes a mighty damned salient point regarding the value of our space program. Thanks to space-based technologies folks otherwise without a prayer for survival have or will have that most precious of rare commodities...fresh water. And for all the harm we export as a nation, it's good to see that we do occasionally export something of genuine value capable of generating peace dividends...information.

If you believe that the health insurer practice of declining coverage based on a previous history of being the victim of rape and/or domestic violence (or, to be fair, quibbling around with the semantics so that the end results are the same damned thing) needs to be ended (and I'm quite sure you do), how's about a wee bit o' activism:

Being A Woman Is Not a Pre-Existing Condition

...since I can't seem to find/make the time for the verbose version :P

That allergy attack mentioned in a recent post? Well, after the successful shrimp and okra bisque dinner congestion set in. By the next morning it was evidently flu after all. I ended up missing that entire week of work and a couple days the next week. The only good that came of it is that neither of my dinner guests caught my plague *whew* 8 days off in a row spent wallowing in snot and self-pity and/or anxiety about what awaited me at work, ugh. Even when I felt better the anxiety about work undid any other enjoyment to be had.

On the bright side, when I got back to work it was just a 3-day work-week followed by a normal 2-day weekend. Those 3 days plus the next 3 work days were spent largely preparing for a March of Dimes symposium on prematurity (held Thurs/Fri last week). For the record, I emphatically do *not* enjoy waking at 4:30 AM to arrive anywhere for 7 AM ;) The symposium itself was a smashing success. Thank goodness that's now over with. Work can progress in a zillion other directions now.

One of those zillion directions has been fraught with drama. There have been gathering stormclouds in the office...occasional emails that so-and-so will no longer be with us, guarded comments from others about impending changes. It's enough to spook a person! Imagine my spook-ed-ness when I got a meeting invite to sit down with my boss and the Executive Director re: "my role". Eek. Now would not be a good time for a layoff (not that there are good times, but some times are worse than others). That meeting took place the day before the symposium. The surprise guest at that meeting was the HR director. Spooked levels red-lined when she came in. As it turns out, someone else is getting the ax and they were just sharing with me that I'll now be doing significant chunks of that person's job description (as well as my own). In return, when that person has completely "transitioned out" (i.e., no longer draining payroll with their presence) I get a raise. To be honest, while trying desperately to avoid the crassness of saying how much, I am *ecstatic* about the amount of the raise. It is by far larger than any I have ever received in the past, larger even than previous jumps in income when changing jobs. 2 downsides: 1) it doesn't kick in until my predecessor is gone in December (sooner if they give up and leave earlier than planned) and 2) all that extra work.

All the more reason to enjoy the living hell out of my free time when I get it :)

Following the symposium, and thanks to luck of the calendar, I enjoyed a 4-day weekend. The biggest development? I now have a housemate, at least for a few months. The best-tasting development? I finally got those previous guests back for Dinner, Part II...blackened snapper (good luck finding redfish here :P ). It was my first time ever cooking fish, so again with the Proudhomme cookbook, again with a little experimentation re: seasoning. To all reports it kicked massive amounts of ass. My own taste buds concur.

Next up: work, more work, a side order of work, supersized, with a doggy bag for the leftover work. Only 3 days this week, 2-day weekend coming up, 5 days next week, 3-day weekend, and then after that my schedule will get all kinds of goofy as HR tinkers with the compressed schedule and holidays kick in. I believe the real pain from the added work will commence with full force come Jan 2, 2010. After that I'm likely to be even scarcer than usual :/

...I've got plenty of personal shite to share. Will be doing so this weekend. I've got a few weeks worth of hooplah and shenanigans to share and catching up to do :)

What the hell.

Obama wins Nobel Peace Prize! Why? Improving diplomacy. Um, huzzah? I guess the good folks who dole out these prizes failed to notice that the new emperor with no clothes has failed to undo the most horrible of Bush's executive orders, hasn't made any motion to undoing the harm of the Patriot Act or the Military Commissions Act, is doing nothing to end the war in Afghanistan (but is increasing troop presence), and oh, hell, the list goes on and on.

Peace is dead. Long live peace!

Started off on a bad foot. Had a case of the sniffles Friday that turned into waking hell by Saturday morning. Standard allergy attack for me, but it's flu season so it's better safe than sorry...I canceled my guitar lesson around 10 am then I canceled the rest of the day. I took an unholy cocktail of Tylenol PM and Benedryl after convincing myself my liver wouldn't explode. An hour later I was out like a light. Then it was 10 pm and time for bed. I felt tons better so I went back to sleep. Woke up Sunday feeling right as rain.

( Wherein things get much better and stay that way. May cause hunger. )

Demonstrates a failure to understand terrorism, war, and a great many things

Guh. I'm so beyond thinking knowledge makes a difference to these right-wing warhawks who will lie about and politicize *anything* to get what they want. In my fantasies I would love to tie this fucker and his ilk up in a chamber straight from Hostel and give him a dose of Abu Ghraib hospitality (hot n' cold running waterboard!) while forcing him to read every lying word he's uttered in public, reduce his statements to their underlying propositions, and recant under pain of testicular electrocution. How in the hell does "winning in Afghanistan" = "necessary to defeating Al Qaeda"? Even *if* that's what the Afghanistan theatre is about *snerk*, what makes him think that such bastions of peace and freedom as [insert any number of countries here] won't just become the *next* theatre of war against Al Qaeda?

Want to defeat Al Qaeda? Win the war against enemies real and/or imagined and/or not yet created and propped up? Then take our budget for global military aggression and dump it into legitimately sustainable fuel sources here. Long before we come close to tapping the bottom of that seemingly endless well of war money we'd have sufficient wind, solar, hydro and nuclear resources to go all electric, all the time, and we'd have tons o' cash left over for truly noble causes like [insert just about anything the GOP loves to hate and the Dems pretend to love].

Then do something truly shocking. Share all that lovely tech (in profit-friendly ways) with the rest of the Middle East's big-ticket oil customers. When the only things left to export from that region are sand, tasty food, artisan-crafted wares and assorted drugs the West will have zero reason left to occupy hostile territory there and maybe then the oil wars, with all the partisans and proxies, will finally end and that corner of the world will calm the fuck down.

Or not. It's been about 7000 years now, and the region of the world that started the whole Wars for Resources game with their battles for copper, tin and arable land is still in the center of the ruckus. Why stop now when it's so early in the game?

The Ripple Effect: What One Layoff Means For A Whole Town

Here's a nicely-written piece that portrays the interconnectedness actually in play no matter how little community we may feel around us. More and more, for all my occasional kvetching, I'm glad to have the job I've got. The rotten economy has definitely hurt us, but as long as there's nurses who need to maintain licensure then we have our corner of the market, we have standards to maintain in order to keep it, and I'm secure in helping to maintain those standards. Huzzah.

On the other hand, I do wish the author had perhaps appealed to more than one audience with the depiction of hard times. Granted, a lot of folks in Whitfield's circumstances are feeling the pinch and have limited prospects of things getting better, but one paragraph weakened my sympathies almost instantly.

In the meantime, the family is trying to save. Brian's father, a barber with a shop opposite the courthouse, has some farmland outside of town. Brian planted a garden and takes home vegetables; Debbie calculates that they have shaved $125 a month off their grocery bill, but most of their savings come from other cutbacks. They dropped their membership at the local country club, saving $110 a month. They no longer spend $350 to $400 per month on babysitting now that Brian looks after Logan. Their weekly dinner date? Gone, saving another $175 or so per month.

Okay, it starts out strong. By the sweat of his brow they grow veggies and cut back on their grocery bill. That's a lesson I need to learn as well. And from all I've heard, babysitters are rather expensive. No beef there. But membership at a country club? Seriously? $175 a month (or so, which is like saying $200 or so) on weekly dinner dates (which comes to about $50 a pop or so)? Last I checked, the latter 2 items fall squarely under the heading of luxury.

Somewhere in America I'm sure someone is crying themselves to sleep because their kids ate the last of the ketchup sandwiches and the ramen noodles from lunch have long since left hunger in their wake. I'm pretty sure that family can't save more by cutting out the country club for the $50 dinners for two. Maybe things for the Whitfields are dire and destined to get worse. Or not. I don't know. But if cutting the country club counts as hardship, I dread to think where the rest of the fat lives in their budget. Housing, feeding and caring for 3 on less than $40k sounds like a challenge, but a surmountable one, maybe. Too much remains unknown in this one anecdotal case. Adding a tale of actual impending doom to the story might have helped demonstrate that there's a spectrum of suffering, may have even helped shore up the working class spirit a bit. Oh, yeah, sucks for us now that we gave up the country club, but at least we've got our Hamburger Helper!

Then again, maybe Time's readers are tired of hearing how poor poor really is.

As for me, yeah, I was raised poor. I remember ketchup sandwiches. And I might occasionally grouse a bit about lean times myself, but when I do it's usually because I'm cutting back on something at least a little less essential than $50 dinners for two. Am I guilty for having the odd $25+ meal? Well, yeah. I've also never mistaken those meals for anything other than luxuries.

Funny thing about that article, though...at no point was the cost of health care mentioned. Look out, the GOP will recruit them as the poster family with no health care woes ;)

(and after this, to work with me)...

Based on three headlines, I just feel the need to vent a wee bit o' spleen here. I didn't see any point in reading the articles, since that's something one does for the sake of substance. I don't need no steenking substance.

9/11 marked with Mourning and a Spirit of Service. Obamas Observe 9/11 with a Moment of Silence. Taiwan ex-President Chen Given Life Term for Graft.

On mourning: There's a ton of who, what, where, when, why and how questions to be asked about that. Time doesn't permit such a detailed analysis. While I imagine this is probably an apt word choice when used in relation to the friends and family of those who lost their lives that horrible day, is mourning actually the right word for the rest of us?

On a spirit of service: 1 day of "spirit of service", rather like 1 day of the spirit of Christmas, 1 day of atonement (Yom Kippur), and all other "1 day of selective good intentions", can bite my ass.

On a moment of silence: It's in good taste that the Obamas observe the deaths of victims and heroes alike with their moment of silence. I would appreciate it, however, if the President marked the day itself with anything *but* a moment of silence. A few suggestions for loud observations are in order: flourishes of trumpets and parades in the streets as O takes his Executive pen and undoes the evils perpetrated with Dubya's pen (he'll need some extra ink cartridges); find some nads (anyone's would do nicely) and ramrod repeals of PATRIOT and the Military Commissions Act through Congress; set AG Holder loose on every living alleged (in the sake of fairness) American traitor and war criminal. Tip: odds are good he'd find most of them related to the political and financial machinations of the previous 8 years. Let the courts have at 'em.

On Taiwan: In this case, they set a might fine standard.

Sadly, I think the spirit of the Legendary Pink Dots track ( A Velvet Resurrection applies. )

Today is a stark reminder of what sucks in the world. Dear world, please stop with the sucking already. [1, 2]

[1] Inspired, in part, by amp23. Our messages may not be identical, but I feel they're at least consonant.

[2] The astute reader will note that I omitted the catalog of things that suck. I did that with an eye to brevity and subjectivity.

Supreme Court: campaign finance overhaul in 'Hillary' case?

I'm still of a mind that corporations ought never to have been treated as persons with the right to make campaign contributions or lobby. I'm also still of a mind that things will remain Fucked Up[tm] as long as corporations are treated as persons. If the case goes the way this article indicates, things are likely to get so much worse :/