Below are the most recent 18 friends' journal entries.

Thursday, December 17th, 2009
dglenn	5:26a	QotD "Ever since I started the "You Haven't Seen That?" movie night series, I noticed that one sub-genre of movies I really like watching are the Good-Investigative-Journalist and the In-Depth-Newsman genres. All the President's Men, State of Play, Good Night and Good Luck, even Shattered Glass from the 'through a mirror, darkly' angle---you name it. Every time I watch one of those, I feel a twinge: They are heroes; where are they now? I want a few of them more than I want a Superman." -- silmaril, 2009-12-01: DW, LJ (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
dglenn	5:26a	QotD "To sing a wrong note is insignificant, but to sing without passion is unforgivable." -- attributed to Ludwig van Beethoven (b. 1770-12-16, d. 1827-03-26) (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
dglenn	5:26a	QotD "We were once told that civil rights legislation was rushing into something, too much, too soon, etc. The response of the movement was 'We've been waiting 100 years!' "Of course, those corporations and wealthy who benefit the most from the status quo, and their bought conservative politicians and news media, don't want to change a thing unless they see even greater financial advantage for themselves. We've seen it with health care. They stall, obscure the issues, lie, frighten people, use threats and bribery, filibuster everything, block debate about the best solutions - such as Medicare for All, and deliberately weaken the legislation that does get through in the hope that it won't work. Real people, who are sick and dying, mean nothing to them." -- commenter DeanOR at Hullabaloo, 2009-11-29 (Comment on this)
Monday, December 14th, 2009
dglenn	5:26a	QotD "As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality." -- George Wasington (b. 1732-02-22[*], d. 1799-12-14; President of the US 1789-1797) [*] Recorded as 11 Feb. 1731-32 in the Julian calendar, which England and her colonies used at that time; retconned to the equivalent Gregorian date, 22 Feb. 1732, when the Gregorian calendar was adopted in 1752. See a calendar for September 1752 for the changeover (on a Unix/Linux computer, type "cal 9 1752"). Note that different countries adopted the Gregorian calendar in different years. (Comment on this)
dglenn	4:54a	Discombobulated There are five television shows I want to watch on today. Four of them are on from 10-11 PM. ARGH! (I have two DTV tuners. I guess I'd better check Hulu to see whether I can watch any of them there, if my computer can handle that site without burping. (In light of the paragraph after next, I'd better see whether I wrote down which ones I actually set up to record, and watch one of the others where I am. If I'm awake then.)) I keep starting journal entries and not finishing/posting them. Likewise email. This may have something to do with my needing to lie down after any five minutes of activity, and crashing at really bizarre hours. I don't like scaring my friends. Unfortunately, as a result of what I mentioned in the preceeding paragraph, and being asleep at sane times to return phone calls, and not tracking the passage of days well, Sheepie got sufficiently scared by my lack of contact to round of Fred and come up to Baltimore to find out whether I was dead. And then to browbeat me into letting them take me, Perrine, and my car to my mother's house so that Sheepie will know someone has eyes on me until my body is working better. So I'm at Mom's house, Perrine is hiding under the bed, and I have my cane wedged against the bedroom door because I found out a few minutes ago that Pepper (Mom's wee, highly energetic dog) knows how to open it. I want the face-to-face meeting between Perrine and Pepper to happen when I'm already awake, not as a pre-dawn surprise. I'm getting pissed off about cis/trans issues again. Not by anyone here, but at YouTube, Bilerico, and a few other places. Expect a half-education/half-rant entry in the next few days if I can stay awake long enough at a stretch. (Today's xkcd is rather a propos for a big part of it.) Doggone it, I had something else completely in mind to write about before I started editing this file and found a partially completed entry from a few days ago in it. Perrine is still mostly not eating and has lost a noticeable amount of weight. She asks me very emphatically for food, then whatever food I give her -- even wet food warmed up to make it easier to smell -- she sniffs at, turns away from, and resumes asking me for food. But I did coax her out from under the bed with a spoonful of tuna, rather dramatically. She was saying, "If you reach all the way under here I'll let you pet me, but I'm not coming out!" until the smell suddenly reached her, and the front third of her body shot out from the bed to reach the tuna. *whew* I'll be rather less worried when she starts showing some enthusiasm for regular cat food again. I'm coughing again. :-( But at least it's a dry, tickly, feels-like-allergies cough rather than the feels-like-flu cough I had when I was in the grip of the flu. (Still annoying and hard to ignore though.) My teacher from the Montessori school I went to died last week. My brother told me via Facebook (which I keep forgetting to log into). I missed the memorial service. I wonder whether she ever stumbled across any of the things I've said in various web fora about how much I feel I owe to my Montessori education. I still can't remember what I was planning to say just before I started writing. [added @ 5:17] Doh! I just remembered what I had in mind when I picked up the computer -- it wasn't a journal entry at all. I was going to transcribe a bit of music that had popped into my head. Let's see whether I can get it back. Damn you, fibro-fog. (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 13th, 2009
dglenn	5:26a	QotD From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2008-02-21: "To some extent, once it was over we were never more than stepchildren to our peacetime lives." -- Anthony Loyd, war reporter, on the effect the Bosnian war had on him and his colleagues. Recounted in his book My War Gone By, I Miss It So. (submitted to the mailing list by Terry Labach) (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 12th, 2009
dglenn	5:26a	QotD "Apparently the proceedure was a success, and her surgeon was extremely happy with how it went, and how things are going. He is expecting very strong functionality from the leg in the future. I will have to take him at his word, because to my untrained eye the X-rays appear that someone at Pep-Boys was told they had thirty minutes to repair a cat using only what they could find on isle three. Apparently if I were educated in such matters, however, I would see the post-op X-rays and say something like 'Nice work' or 'Masterpiece!' instead of, 'No, Dad... I told you to NOT try fixing the cat yourself.'" -- jathomas, 2009-06-29 (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, December 11th, 2009
dglenn	5:26a	QotD "Primitive understandings of the world in terms of gods and other supernatural forces are largely what shaped and informed both what we might call the externalities and internalities of religions. [...] "But the internalities of religion are comprised also of another dimension, its innermost soul, so to speak, and that is the human urge for heightened mental and emotional states. It is that urge that is perhaps most recognized in the faith of many contemporary individuals, those who feel uncomfortable with dogma, ill at ease with the unbending fealty to organized religion that characterizes traditional fundamentalism but are drawn instead to the soaring religious spirit and the loftiness of its ideals. It's this spirit that informs the quiet and still reflections on our place in the world, our connection to the idea of the divine, and our relationship to our fellow humans." -- Hasidic Rebel, 2009-05-19 [Happy Chanukah to everyone lighting a candle tonight!] (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 10th, 2009
dglenn	5:26a	QotD "You know that game we sometimes play, sitting in a square in the Nest, tossing a ball around? Courage is like a ball, son. A person can hold it only so long, and then he's got to toss it to someone else. When it's tossed your way, you've got to catch it and hold it tight--and hope there'll be someone else to toss it to when you get tired of being brave." -- from "A Pail of Air" (1951), by Fritz Leiber (b. 1910-12-24, d. 1992-09-05) (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
dglenn	5:26a	QotD "The existence of people like Andy Schlafly is basically the reason why I gave up writing fiction." -- realinterrobang, telephone conversation, wee hours of 2009-12-03 after the conversation veered in the direction of the Conservapedia rewrite-the-Bible-to-be-ultraconservatively-PC project (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009
dglenn	5:26a	QotD "We're trying to sell peace, like a product, you know, and sell it like people sell soap or soft drinks. And it's the only way to get people aware that peace is possible, and it isn't just inevitable to have violence. Not just war -- all forms of violence." -- John Lennon (b. 1940-10-09, d. 1980-12-08), 1969-06-14 [via Wikiquote] (Comment on this)
Monday, December 7th, 2009
dglenn	6:47p	Checking In I should probably let folks know how I'm doing health-wise. I've felt mostly over that flu for a few days, little coughs occasionally but not having extended coughing fits any more ... until I started watching Robin Williams on Charlie Rose and laughing triggered more coughing. (Hmm. A test of respiratory function: being able to watch Robin Williams going off on a riff and still breathe okay.) Big problem now is fatigue and still feeling weak. And incredibly achy. %wince% Gradually getting there. Still haven't left the house to go shopping in a while, and lifting a pot of water to boil pasta feels like a strain, but realinterrobang says I'm sounding much more alert and sharp on the phone than I was a week ago or the week before that -- and I feel more awake now, up until the point where I go, "oops, crashing now," and pull the covers over my head again. But apparently not as alert as I'd like -- I think I'd better stay away from moderated LJ communities until I've caught up on my sleep-deficit enough not to do something stupid. A little worried about pain and lack of flexibility in my hands -- especially the last three fingers of my right hand being really clumsy -- because that's been going on for at least four days straight, but maybe that'll clear up as I get my strength back everywhere. A little more worried about Perrine, who has gotten incredibly picky about food. She's not acting frail, and she's drinking plenty of water, but I haven't seen her eat anything lately except a couple of Pounce treats (if I puff the bag in her face first to give her a snootful of the smell), and a little milk. (She usually won't drink more than about a tablespoon of milk at a time, which doesn't seem to be enough to be a problem, but now she's asking for more. And I don't want to give her more at a time, lest it upset her digestion (and I'm nearly out of it anyhow). She was having trouble jumping up onto counters for a while (before she mostly stopped eating), but she seems to have gotten her strength back, so she must be getting calories from somewhere, right? (Comment on this)
dglenn	5:26a	QotD "When you take the human rights of a minority, who suffer widespread prejudice and discrimination, and put it to a popular vote, it should come as entirely no surprise that the the very people they need protecting from vote to take away that protection. "Don't determine the human rights of minorities by popular vote. That isn't democracy, that's mob rule." -- auntysarah, 2009-11-04 (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 6th, 2009
dglenn	5:26a	QotD From the Quotation of the day mailing list, 2008-03-08: "My first visual impression of Mick was that he was all ears and lips, and oh so skinny. Funnily, over the years his ears seem to have shrunk to normal proportions, and the lips, while still notoriously gigantic, have deflated from dirigible size to the more accessible thickness of a pair of meaty kielbasas." -- Long John Baldry, blues musician, in a 1989 essay, recalling his first meeting with Mick Jagger in 1962. Quoted in It Ain't Easy: Long John Baldry and the Birth of the British Blues by Paul Myers. (submitted to the mailing list by Terry Labach) (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 5th, 2009
dglenn	5:38p	What I Really Need From Weather Forecasters When the weather forecast calls for only one to three inches of snow, the question I really want them to answer for me is: will it take long enough to melt that I need to take my pain meds and go clear the sidewalk, or will it melt quickly enough that I can ignore it in good conscience and save the pills for another day? Today the answer was easy: when I looked outside, the sidewalk was wet, not white (snow stuck to parked cars but not to pavement), and it looks like the Winter Weather Event (aka French toast emergency) is nearly over, so I may want to sprinkle some salt now that the sun has gone down, but I don't need to sweep or shovel anything, so I'll probably get away with just ibuprofen. (Comment on this)
dglenn	4:34p	An Ad Too Far My computer crashed last night, so I reloaded a bunch of browser tabs I'd had open before the crash. On one LiveJournal entry, when I went to that tab for the first time after the reload, a Best Buy ad showed up blocking my view of 95% of the window (with the rest greyed out), a jingle started playing, and the "close this and continue" button had a message saying I could only close it after it had played at least four seconds. I was logged in already at the time. A banner ad here, a margin ad there, I can skip over even if they do annoy me when I notice them. This trend of popping up ads that block my view of the content of the page is something I've been meaning to rant about (it gives me the message, "we really don't want you to read what's on this page," or possibly, "our webmaster fucked up"). Showing ads to other people, on my content, without paying me for doing so, was the reason I stopped posting complete entries on LJ and started posting fake-cut-tags linking to whole entries elsewhere (mostly Dreamwidth, also InsaneJournal and others). Paying LJ not to show my ads to my readers would've been an option if the reason I'd reverted to a free account in the first place hadn't been in protest of other policies I wanted to see changed before I gave them more money. This most recent tactic, if it persists, may finally be enough to chase me away from reading LJ (and reinforces my opinion that taking my content elsewhere was wiser than subjecting my readers to ads LJ serves). Seeing a banner ad before the comments when reading an entry by a user with a 'Plus' account is one thing. Stopping me from even seeing the entry until I've turned off my speakers and waited four seconds (at least in the browser I'm using at the moment, the clock starts ticking when I make that tab current, not as soon as the page finishes loading in the background) goes too far. I realize that the whole point is that banner ads are too easy to ignore, but here's the thing: if you make the ad foreground instead of background, its effectiveness goes from not-as-positive-as-you'd-like, to negative, or at best zero: you don't get me to pay more attention, you convince me to go read something else. And yes, this ad did piss me off enough to warrant taking the time to write five paragraphs about it and to make an exception to my links-on-LJ-text-goes-elsewhere policy because I want to make sure my friends who only bother to lick those links when they look especially interesting (there must be a few, at least) see this too. But the basic idea is quite simple regardless of temper: make it sufficiently annoying or inconvenient to read, and I'll find something else to read instead. It's a big web; I'll find something else to read. Read this / comment on it at blurty dreamwidth crazylife journalfen livejournal scribbld (Comment on this)
dglenn	5:26a	QotD "It's not widely publicized by the U.S. Agriculture Department, but marijuana is America's largest cash crop--topping the value of corn and wheat combined. A 2005 analysis by Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron found that legalization would generate $7.7 billion a year in enforcement savings for local, state, and federal taxpayers, while producing annual tax revenues of $6.2 billion." -- Jim Hightower, 2009-11-23 [thanks to Penguirl for linking to it.] (That the next available spot in the quotes-queue when I added this was also the anniversary of the repeal of the 18th Amendment (Prohibition), was a lucky accident.) (Comment on this)
Friday, December 4th, 2009
dglenn	5:26a	QotD To reporters asking for an opion regarding Tiger Woods' recent accident: "Nope. He got in a car accident. What the f---? You guys are the news. You're supposed to report the news. A guy crashed his car. You're making up s---. So are you reporting the news or are you making the news?" -- Chris Rock, 2009-11-30 [ thanks to silmaril and vvalkyri for linking to it] "Within days of PGA golfer Tiger Woods crashing his car, the press has hounded him into disclosing in so many words that he's had some sort of affair. "Now imagine if the press (generally) pursued with the same vigor and tenacity stories that actually serve the public interest and have value for a democratic society. For instance, consider how sad a reflection it is that the personal life of a professional golfer is bigger news than the CIA destroying evidence of illegal activity (i.e. abusive and/or torturous interrogation) and lying to a court about it." -- Hume's Ghost, 2009-12-02 (1 Comment |Comment on this)