Friends

nellorat has just posted three phrases from our household idiolect ("beowulfs", "making an offering", and the immortal "thanking the pig"), which reminded me that I'd been meaning to resume posting such terms myself. And in honor of the occasion--Readercon--the obvious candidate is "boosk".

However, I see I've already posted a definition in a post outside of this series:

Years ago, Kathryn Cramer saw a yard-sale sign which proudly proclaimed the sale of "Toys--Furniture--Boosk". She decided that once "books" reach a certain critical mass, they transform into masses of "boosk".

Specifically, I would say that "books" reach the point of being "boosk" when they stop being "something you can read" and become "something you have to design your furniture scheme around". Boosk can be obstacles, boosk can be furniture, boosk can be decorations ("boosk do furnish a room!", as Athnony Pwoell declared)--but while a book contains entertainment, or information, or escape, boosk are only a burden.

I've been lurking here for a while, but finally something interesting has happened, so I can post!!

My name is Rachel. I've lived in my current house for over 11 years. It's a biiiig house. I love it, and it has such a great history. ( Read more... )

Well, for a while the activity was pretty strong... then it sort of died down. Now it's coming back and I want to tell you about this experience I just had. I just got back at 12:30 from a showing of The Dark Knight and I was getting into my pajamas. I was the only one awake on the second floor of the house. Just as I closed my door, I heard a girl say my name. It sounded like she was trying to grab my attention before the door closed. I looked around in my room but saw nothing. There was nothing outside either: my parents were asleep, and everyone else was either on the top floor or on the bottom floor.

It was spooky, I must admit, but the entities are nothing to be scared of. They do enjoy sneaking up on me in the middle of the night, though, and filling the tiny room my computer is in with cold. They also enjoy standing outside my door. I can hear them walk down the hallway and just stand there. Anyway, I'll keep you posted on this, since I'm actually very excited to have them back. I kind of missed them!!

AT about ten o'clock, a car pulled up and T deposited C off with me, with strict instructions to keep her in the house. C stomped in, and T and I chatted at curbside. It seems that the trip to Wisconsin or whatever did not happen because C---like she does with me---didn't pay attention to the time and they took off without her. C then had a meltdown and a tantrum. Of course, she lost---accidentally on purpose----the watch I gave her.

Back inside the house, C asked for something to eat. After nine she's not allowed to eat or drink because of her...problems, shall we say. I reminded her of the time. "You know you're not supposed to eat or drink anything after ten."

C went to the kitchen, keeping out of my sight. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing>!" (Undertone.) "God."

"What are you doing?"

"I'm having a piece of sausage."

"What did I just say?"

Silence.

"What did I just say?!"

Sullenly: "I dunno."

"Get out here."

"I'm coming."

"It's the kitchen, it's not Sri Lanka."

"I'm just...."

"Oh, no, you're not. Get out here before I get up and come out there."

She will literally do something almost in front of your face immediately after you tell her not to. And she lies about it, too, which means she knows she's doing something wrong.

After that she started whining about how could she go to the house with all the big girls? Could she sit out on the front step---this little girl who runs away whenever she gets the chance? Could she just....? Could she call her mom and ask her if she could? Could she just go to her grandma's? Could she call her mom from her grandma's house? (Somewhere in there she managed to call T three times. This despite the fact that T just dropped her off.) "No. No. No. No. Stop asking me."

I sent her to get into her PJs when K arrived.

Earlier in the day, K and R---her best friend----were being assaulted by this sawed-off little sociopath named D2, to distinguish him from D1, who is C's little friend. Cops came and dispensed a talking to, but K now brings word that the little shit was actually taken to juvvie after he gave the cop some attitude. His mom bailed him out just now.

However, the big news is that K and R are no longer friends. This happens, if not on a daily basis, at least a biweekly one. So no big surprise there. There are tears and sobbing and calls to Mom. There is drama. There is whispered sisterly conversation in the bedroom. There are hissed conversations out the window. There is much stomping and flouncing and drama. There are accusations and counter accusations. Finally, after about an hour there was a treaty of Versailles and text messages and a teary rapprochement and OMG she wants to talk about boyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz........Save me.

K: I hate being 12.

Me: I didn't like it either.

K: Like there's peer pressure and stuff....

Me: Don't give in. Don't. Be true to yourself. You have to learn who you are, and you hvae to stick to it. Do you understand that?

Oh, God, we're going to be talking about boys all night.

Yesterday I bought a ticket to take a floatplane to Victoria tomorrow, avowedly to meet one of last year's workshoppers but in fact because the weather's going to be good. Today I bought dark chocolates with hemp seeds, wasabi, and beets in them. Tomorrow I'm going to wear a scarf with polka dots on it.

Life is pretty strange and cool.

Are you hung up on superficiality?. Or do you consider things like pedigree, Education, IQ?

My perception of something attractive is specific, and ingrained based on my ideals, and beliefs. I could see a scantily clad woman in a nightclub and feel revulsion, where most men are feeding her compliments.

When choosing a mate I think about procreation first; because 1) once you fucked up your blood-lines, there's no way to fix that, and 2) When you read Biographies of important people, the way a grandparent looked doesn't matter compared to their occupation and status in the world. Important people procreate leaders. Mediocrity procreates mediocrity for the most part, Etc., I truly think you follow a path in life based on what two people choose when they decided to breed.

Anyway, this turned into a ramble, but I want to hear other peoples opinion on what they consider attractive in the opposite sex.

more <a

I'm still at work. That's because I was a very bad girl and I didn't work at all today. Well, I did send a request to IS to come install the updated version of Adobe Flash Player on my computer so that I could watch You Tube videos and more easily make music play lists and they did come do that. So I think that sort of counts towards me working. I also answered my phone when Dr. B. called. I could have stayed home today and not answered the phone, so that counts as work.

I don't stay home with this job, though. I like it here.

I get off at 4 p.m. but I feel too guilty to go home now.

I think I'll take this pile of paperwork and my laptop home and if I even do a little bit of it over the weekend, I'm certain to lose the guilt in a timely fashion.

I had my 3 month review a while ago and I got a raise. A buck and some change per hour.

I love my office.

I still love my job, too, but after being off work for a week and staying up so late, I can hardly get into the groove. I'd rather call friends and have them come have coffee or lunch with me. Today, I went home for lunch.

Dr. Barry is in Europe for a month, biking from Antwerp to Amsterdam and then he's going to Paris. I miss his hugs. I miss BIG burly hugs. Barry's not really big, though, he's shorter than me, but he knows how to hug a woman, that's for sure.

Yesterday I had a meeting on my first day back. It was another lunch meeting and lunch was GREAT. We had chicken caesar salads, a cold pasta salad with sweet peppers and olives and tomatoes in a vinaigrette, rolls and fresh fruit skewers. It was so perfect for the weather. I don't think I'll ever want to leave this job. Where else am I going to get a laptop (that has more music on it now than anything), an office, and catered meetings? I'm spoiled. I'm glad they like me. I better not have any more days like today for awhile.

Got invited to a birthday party for Mick Jagger last night. I'm very excited about it. It's on the 27th. I'm going to get super drunk and be loud and flirtatious and dance. I'm going to make Mick proud. Ken's bringing Bianca.

I wish we could all party together.
That would be fun.

I need new clothes.

I know I haven't been posting much lately, so if I disappeared for a couple of extra days none would notice. Regardless, I thought I should mention that supergee and I are going to be at Readercon this weekend in Burlington, Mass. The only programming item on which I am scheduled to appear is the New York Review of Science Fiction at 20 panel Sunday morning--and I encourage everyone to attend. I expect I will be kibbitzing some from the audience in many other events. See you there, if you're there, I hope!

So I just got done talking to the cops about a little scumbag around here. I walked out of the house about a half an hour ago to find this little shit grabbing and yanking R----K's on-again, off-again best friend----right in front of my fucking house. When I yelled at him to stop, he sneered and called me a white bitch and told me he was going to burn my house down. Okay, you little shit, I just don't need this. This is the kind of kid that inspires birth control invention.

Legally I can't pound some sense into this kid's ass, but he just assaulted R and earlier in the day K was complaining that he was hitting her. He's also mouthed off to me more than a few times and with the heat and shit I just threw up my hands. He wouldn't leave my yard so I just called the cops. He sneered enough to maintain his macho pose but fuck that shit. What an arrogant little fuck, and at twelve, too. These boys treat the girls like shit and I wasn't too happy with the cop saying the girls needed to stand up to them. Well, that's what I try to do. She said that the hood had let the boys get away with shit, and I rather proudly related to her my reputation as the neighborhood bitch who yells at kids and tells them they need to show some respect to their elders.

I now have this little shit's mom's name, phone number and all that stuff. Given the malice he's exhibited--and it's there and chilling----I guess I'm staying up tonight. However, it was heartening to hear the cops talk about how the kids that this little shit ducked into gladly ratted his ass out. He has quite the reputation as the bully, it seems, and he's gone after much littler kids for far too long. He also steals bikes and other things, and it seems that he's made no friends with all that.

In related news, my shit neighbor down the street got busted by the cops for his damned stereo, after I helpfully informed him the other day that the next time I'd just call the cops. He waved at me cheekily when he saw me on my stoop in the midst of a huge pile of little girls, and then I could just feel his face fall as the cop car pulled to a stop in front of my house.

Erm....There's a pair of panties draped over my fence. Ah, the dilemmas I face, from home defense using poultry to vibrators that pack their...bags....and---oh, God, why did I say that?---and go join the Circus, presumably buzzing happily all the way like a busy little bee. There's a joke in there somewhere, but really....I just don't know how to go for it. Anyhoo, did I mention? There's panties on my fence.

Here's the dilemma: they're not mine.

I mean, theoretically, it's possible that they could be mine, assuming I got so plastered last night that I started lobbing my underwear at my fence, possibly in an attempt to liven up the neighborhood. In what way, I'm not sure, athough I will point out proudly that I have quite the colorful selection from which to choose. However, if I did this, the reasoning remains murky and the effort was aborted: just one pair dangle forlornly out there, perhaps longing for the matching bra. I almost hope I'm responsible. I would hate to think of the unsafe acts that would have to go on for these to be flung out the window of a passing car. Not to mention that the unsafe acts change in complexity if you stop and speculate on which direction the car was going.

Another possibility is that the panties were deployed from a stationary car which is...ew. Dudes, dudettes, all combinations, do get a room. Far away. If their taste in music sucks so badly, one can only imagine ---or hallucinate----their choice of sex partners, acts, attire, aphrodisiacs, positions, sound effects and artistry. The mind reels. Judging from my encounters with Stereo Boy, the favored male uniform appears to be baggy jeans---yes, I'm old, I hate them, sue me---and tank tops that display a vista of hairy armpits, flaccid flesh, and an oddly hairless chest, given the nearby foliage. Girls wear normal clothing that doesn't force one to acquaint one's self with their knickers. I just prefer a handshake as a means of introduction.

And I don't want to see anyone's underwear but my own, thanks. Unless it belongs to a carefully-compiled list of Imaginary Boyfriends and then only if I'm drunk enough to find the imaginary spectacle of Gerard Butler whipping off his knickers and flinging them all the way from the bedroom, through the porch--hitting all the windows just right---before finally landing them on my fence. Er. That would require his underwear to take a sharp left. Oh, dear, this is turning into the Warren Commission, complete with Magic Undies. Was there a Lee Harvey Oswald? Was there a book depository? I've heard of people hiding things in various locations, but a book? No. Also, ouch. And I'm not going near the Grassy Knoll concept for obvious reasons.

Again, problematical from a logistical point of view. I'm so glad I didn't choose to use the word 'logic' there. If there were logic involved, I wouldn't be puzzling over someone's gaudy underwear on my fence post. Okay, that's it. Whew. It's definitely not my own. These have a pattern all over them and they're larger than mine. Okay, screw it. They're not mine! This is disturbing.

Yeah. Disturbing. A good word.

See, if it was my own undies, I could speculate on whether or not Morgie and Jezzie had colluded to unlock the door and let Morgie out to bestow my undies on the fence as some kind of....prank....But why? Hell, Jezzie can open doors, but if they can accomplish all that why not just take the damned cat food already?

There's also the possiblity that Morgie and Jezzie conspired together and somehow acquired the underwear elsewhere.

This means Morgie is cheating on my underwear with someone else's underwear.

You know, I didn't need to explore the depths of Morgie's perviness. Thank you, unknown Panty Punter! Appreciate that!

And of course you know that there's the possibility that the underwear have been worn. THis means there's health issues, ew issues, and etiquette issues. Also, should I check? Perhaps I'd better not check. Perhaps ignorance is bliss. What if the person was just walking by and decided to ditch their knickers? Exactly what leads one to this kind of giddy act? There's also that possibility. "Hey, I'm just strolling down the street, let's...just take off my undies! Air the bits! Ventilate the vagina!" After all, there was a refreshing breeze last night. Perhaps it inspired someone.

Oh, God.

Perhaps I better hope for rain tonight. Then I'll creep out with a stick and dispose of this puzzling enigma. I just hope the neighbors don't see me.

Or Morgie.

I don't feel like saying anything but thought some of you might find this interesting.

Policies Jimmy Carter sought during his term(1977 to 1981):

Sought to raise the fleet auto mileage standard to 48 miles per gallon by 1995. (Even U.S. automakers admitted at the time that they could easily achieve 30 mpg by 1985.)

Exhorted Americans to turn down their thermostats, even if he did look nerdy in a cardigan while urging us to do so.

Encouraged fuel conservation by proposing a 50-cents-per-gallon tax on gasoline and a fee on imported oil —- in effect, a floor for fuel prices.

Invoking the pioneering spirit of the 1960s moon mission, he recommended a tax on windfall oil profits to finance a crash program to develop affordable synthetic fuels.

Carter set a goal of obtaining 20 percent of our energy from solar power by the year 2000.

How long do we have to go?

"The Final Days" was published in 1976, two years after Nixon abdicated in disgrace. With the Bush presidency, no journalist (or turncoat White House memoirist) is waiting for the corpse to be carted away. The latest and perhaps most chilling example arrives this week from Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, long a relentless journalist on the war-on-terror torture beat. Her book "The Dark Side" connects the dots of her own past reporting and that of her top-tier colleagues (including James Risen and Scott Shane of The New York Times) to portray a White House that, like its prototype, savaged its enemies within almost as ferociously as it did the Constitution.

Some of "The Dark Side" seems right out of "The Final Days," minus Nixon's operatic boozing and weeping. We learn, for instance, that in 2004 two conservative Republican Justice Department officials had become "so paranoid" that "they actually thought they might be in physical danger." The fear of being wiretapped by their own peers drove them to speak in code.

The men were John Ashcroft's deputy attorney general, James Comey, and an assistant attorney general, Jack Goldsmith. Their sin was to challenge the White House's don, Dick Cheney, and his consigliere, his chief of staff David Addington, when they circumvented the Geneva Conventions to make torture the covert law of the land. Mr. Comey and Mr. Goldsmith failed to stop the "torture memos" and are long gone from the White House. But Vice President Cheney and Mr. Addington remain enabled by a president, attorney general (Michael Mukasey) and C.I.A. director (Michael Hayden) who won't shut the door firmly on torture even now.

Nixon parallels take us only so far, however. "The Dark Side" is scarier than "The Final Days" because these final days aren't over yet and because the stakes are much higher. Watergate was all about a paranoid president's narcissistic determination to cling to power at any cost. In Ms. Mayer's portrayal of the Bush White House, the president is a secondary, even passive, figure, and the motives invoked by Mr. Cheney to restore Nixon-style executive powers are theoretically selfless. Possessed by the ticking-bomb scenarios of television's "24," all they want to do is protect America from further terrorist strikes.

Two:

"The Military is none of our fucking concern.

Heckuva job, Brownie, er, KBR. You know, if they just even tried to do their jobs, it wouldn't be so fucking bad, but they just take the money and bugger off.

A big problem with re-using the contaminated waste water is the increase of contaminants previously in the raw water. For example, let's say there are 100 giardia cysts [giardia is an infectious parasite which lodges in the intestines and causes vomiting, diarrhea, weight loss and dehydration] in each gallon of raw water run into the R.O. unit. We could reasonably expect the R.O. to remove 90% to 95% of the cysts, which would be flushed out in the reject effluent drain line. This process would therefore produce about 1/3 gallon of very high quality drinking water and the other 2/3 gallon was being sent back to the collection tank for the water plant. When they dumped that water with a now higher concentration of cysts back into the feed water, eventually the treated drinking water and non-potable water would no longer be safe to use. Eventually that number of 100 cysts per gallon would become 1,000 per gallon, then 10,0000, etc.

As long as the money rolls in, who gives a fuck about soldiers, sailors, Marines and Air Force? Not KBR, evidently.

And now for something good

Has anybody heard of this before? Because I hadn't, and it's amazing.

- There are no foreigners in Albania, there are only guests.

The words of Drita Veseli, a member of a family of Albanian Muslims who sheltered Jews during World War II, express the spirit of Besa, an unconditional hospitality unmatched in the world.

Albanian Muslims from Waterbury's Albanian-American community were guests of honor last week at Yom HaShoah, a Holocaust Remembrance program sponsored by the Federation, Jewish Communities of Western Connecticut.

Doesn't fit into the 'All Muslims and/or Arabs and/or Persians are terrorists thing" though, does it? And Muslims and Jews being friends?! Who ever heard of that?! ARe you pulling my leg?!

These are the soldiers we lost earlier this week. They will soon be replaced by more dead soldiers, as the wars grind on and Americans continue in their quest to forget the wars being fought in our names.

(CNN) -- Cpl. Gunnar Zwilling suspected his days were numbered last week, while he and his band of brothers in the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team prepared for a mission near Wanat, Afghanistan.
Cpl. Gunnar Zwilling had a bad feeling about his final mission in Afghanistan, said his father, Kurt.

"It's gonna be a bloodbath," he told his father, Kurt Zwilling, on the phone, in what would be their last conversation.

Kurt Zwilling braced himself for the worst but held out hope that his son would make it home.

"They were in the most dangerous place on Earth. They were in mortal danger, and there was nothing they could do it about it," he said. "But they were soldiers, so they had to do their job."

With just a few days left in their 15-month tour, Gunnar Zwilling and eight of his comrades were killed July 13 in a clash with as many as 200 Taliban militants during a mission to set up an outpost near Wanat. It was the deadliest attack on U.S. troops in Afghanistan in three years.

In the wake of their deaths, the paratroopers have become symbols of what many say is a forgotten war, prompting the U.S. military to draw up plans for putting more troops and resources into the war in Afghanistan. Video Watch why troops may have to wait for help »

But before they were national heroes, the young soldiers were beloved sons, brothers, fathers and husbands who were drawn to the Army for different reasons.

Cpl. Jason D. Hovater, 24, of Clinton, Tennessee, joined the Army against his family's wishes with the intention of jump-starting his college education.
U.S. soldiers killed
The Defense Department on Wednesday identified the U.S. soldiers killed Sunday when their outpost was overrun in Afghanistan.
• 1st Lt. Jonathan P. Brostrom, 24, of Aiea, Hawaii.
• Sgt. Israel Garcia, 24, of Long Beach, California.
• Cpl. Jonathan R. Ayers, 24, of Snellville, Georgia.
• Cpl. Jason M. Bogar, 25, of Seattle, Washington.
• Cpl. Jason D. Hovater, 24, of Clinton, Tennessee.
• Cpl. Matthew B. Phillips, 27, of Jasper, Georgia.
• Cpl. Pruitt A. Rainey, 22, of Haw River, North Carolina.
• Cpl. Gunnar W. Zwilling, 20, of Florissant, Missouri.
• Pfc. Sergio S. Abad, 21, of Morganfield, Kentucky.

Before joining the service in 2006, Hovater was a "man of God" who divided his time between his father-in-law's landscaping company and playing songs of worship with his family.

"Everything that God deposited in that boy came out when he played the piano," said his mother, Kathy Hovater, who home-schooled her son and his three siblings.

Shortly after Hovater joined his combat team in Italy, his sister said he called home and said he had made a "mistake," but was committed to following through with his service.

"He was a dedicated soldier. He did what he was supposed to do because he said if he weren't over there, all that horror and torment that was going on in the war, it would be over here," said his sister, Jessica Davis.

Cpl. Pruitt A. Rainey, 22, of Haw River, North Carolina, also joined the Army as a means to pay for his college education so he could become a teacher, according to Jeff Terrell, the leader of the youth group at the Glen Hope Baptist Church.

"He wasn't going to be a career military guy, but he believed in what he was doing," said Terrell, who knew Rainey since his teen years. "He felt like this would help him. He enjoyed it, but he had other plans.

"He really wanted to teach. He had a good way with kids. Kids flocked to him."

Before joining the Army, Rainey spent his time doing martial arts, a pastime that came naturally to the high school wrestling star, and volunteering for his church's youth ministry.

"The kids loved to jump on him like he was a big bear," Terrell said. "He was a big kid, but he was gentle."

Cpl. Jonathan R. Ayers, 24, of Snellville, Georgia, seemed destined for military service since childhood.

"Jon was just very military since he was 3 years old. He looked at your shoes, and if they weren't perfect, they were no good," said his father, Bill Ayers. "He loved the regiment of the military; he loved order and schedule."

Despite his fastidious tendencies, Ayers' father remembers him as a "cutup" who never failed to amuse with his Jeff Foxworthy impersonation.

"He loved to see people smile and laugh," Ayers said. "He was not a prankster, but he loved to tell jokes."

For the free-spirited Cpl. Matthew B. Phillips, 27, of Jasper, Georgia, the armed forces satisfied a need for adventure while providing a service to his country.

"Matt had a very individualistic personality. He loved living life," said his father, Michael Phillips. "Even though he was afraid at times, in every photo from Afghanistan, he had a big smile on his face."

Phillips, who left a wife behind, died on the same day that his sister gave birth to her first son, whom she named after him.

No, I'm not cutting this.

I know I'm late to the party on this one, but I just couldn't stand to watch the whole thing. Until I did, well, you know, don't ask someone to do something you can't do yourself.



Have fun!

...I've just found out that starting next week, I can start working at home TWO days a week. So Wednesday and Thursday I can sit around and goof off are my two WAH days now.

WOOHOO! :)