Saturday, February 10, 2007

Thank God I Can Vote

With a white woman and a black man at the head of the Democratic party presidential nominees list, 2007 could have a serious impact on American politics. If things turn out the way the Democrats want them to, the 2008 election will be unlike any in American history in that it will be the first election to ever feature a candidate who is not a white male. Either the color or the gender barrier in Washington will be broken. In many ways, we're already well on our way to that point. The last black man to announce candidacy - Al Sharpton in 2004's election - "cheerfully admitted" he had no chance of winning nomination; this year, Barack Obama came in second only to Hilary Clinton in a study done by a University of New Hampshire Survey Research Center.

The big question is, can race or gender change a viable candidate into a laughable one?

I say it could, but it shouldn't. Obama is an extremely intelligent, extremely well-educated man. His political fortitude has yet to truly be determined - he spent seven years in the Illinois State Senate and has only been a member of the US Senate since 2004 - but his short political career has already gained him a fair amount of popularity, especially in Illinois, and he seems to have fairly solid political beliefs. If he were white, he would be considered an ideal candidate. As for Clinton, who says a woman cannot be a good leader? As "advanced" as America is, I find it extremely telling that while other nations have been electing women presidents for years (María Estela Martínez de Perón served as president of Argentina from 1974 - 1976, Corazon Aquino was president of the Philippines from 1986 - 1992, and more recently, Michelle Bachelet Jeria was elected president of Chile in March 2006), America still finds them incapable of that kind of leadership. Granted, we are a much bigger country than Argentina, the Philippines, or Chile - but that doesn't make our women any weaker.

Unless the Republican party can miraculously pull The Perfect Candidate out of its ass, the Democrats will have my vote in 2008. I think a political shake-up is just what this country needs.

Disgusting

Facing the mirror,
Eyes squeezed shut.
Imagining bones
Peeking out from skin.
Clavicles extruding.
Hipbones poking.
A child.
Turning away,
Ashamed.

Wednesday, February 7, 2007

A Life-Sized Cardboard Cut-Out, I Could Understand

Today marked the offical end of my personal leave at The Factory (a department store). When I started it nearly two months ago, I left to the sounds of over-played Christmas carols. It's true that retail ruins classic Christmas songs for people. After hearing a bad version of "Santa Baby" eighteen times in one eight hour shift, you end up hating it.

Needless to say, I was relieved to walk in and realize that the season for Christmas carols was long past, and I could return to listening to Mediocre Adult Contemporary while I worked. You can imagine my dismay when I discovered that the new soundtrack was even worse than not only the Christmas one, but the MAC one they were playing before Christmas. Among such decent but slightly past-trendy songs as Over My Head (Cable Car), Lonely No More, and Chasing Cars were songs such as Father and Daughter by Paul Simon, which contains this gem:

...I'm gonna stand guard, like a postcard of a golden retriever...
Now, I know the song is about a father loving his daughter, and that's very sweet. But... a postcard of a golden retriever? Really? Like, of all the random imagery they could've come up with, a postcard? Of a not-so-threatening dog? I'm not gonna lie. I laughed.

Monday, February 5, 2007

Love Is Not a Competition

"Night, love you lots," he says.
"Aww," I think. "Love you more," I say.
But it's too late; he's gone.

Maybe somethings are better left unsaid.

Sunday, February 4, 2007

Making It Mine Again

My mom slept on the fold-out sofa the last two years of her life. She claimed it was more comfortable for her than a real bed, and she said that since she got up and down all night long, she would just be disturbing Dad. When she went into the hospital, my sister and I folded the couch up, but decided to sleep in the living room anyway, on an air mattress. It helped us feel close to her. We've slept on that mattress every night since.

Yesterday I made my bed. Mattress pad, sheets, two blankets, a heated blanket, and my comforter. (Yes, I live in Texas, but what can I say? I get cold easily, and besides that my bed is next to two large picture windows. Not to mention it allows me to sleep as close to naked as possible without being cold.) Crawling into bed last night felt...odd. It was like sleeping in a distant relative's spare room. It's familiar enough to allow you to sleep, but ultimately foreign because you haven't spent much time there. It was nice to feel the weight of real bedding on top of me, instead of two blankets and a heated blanket; at the same time, the crowded comfort of another sleeping person and two spoiled dogs was missing.

After two months of practically living in a hospital room, and a month of living everywhere in my house but my room, I'm finally moving back in. I'm not sure yet how I feel about it.

Saturday, February 3, 2007

Bookmark Management

I haven't organized my Firefox bookmarks in ages. This wouldn't be so bad except that when I add a page, I never put it where it should go. I just hit "add bookmark" and let it go into the default folder. As a result, my main bookmarks list consists of 11 [mostly useless] main folders and 52 unsorted links. "How do you ever find anything?" you ask. That's the problem - I don't. I bookmark something to "come back to later," but when later arrives, the idea of sorting through such a long list for something I can't remember the exact name of is too daunting, and I give up immediately.

I think it's about time to do some spring bookmark cleaning. Let's see what I can find...

Flock? What's Flock? Apparently it's "the social web browser." Looks interesting. I'll keep it around, but where to file it? Hmm...I think maybe I need to make a catch-all folder. "Grapefruit" sounds like a good folder name.

Why do I have a folder called Lightening with a bunch of random links in it? A bio on The Knot, a Tiffany's item I don't really like, a random The Knot page, a NaNoWriMo signature page, an Open Table page, a photography tutorial, a deviantART browse page, a NaNoWriMo forum page, the iTunes download page, and a Flickr page. o_O I'm less confused as to why I bookmarked these as to why I bookmarked them together. From the title, though, I think it was one of those "oh no random storm hurry and shut down the computer but first bookmarks all your links in one folder" moments.

Hmm, this looks interesting. The link title is "Refund Please." Ooh, it is interesting. They call themselves "the original online retail price drop tool" and they exist specifically to help you get your price drop refund from various websites, if you're eligible for one. I'll have to look into that later, but for now - Grapefruit.

I think I'm going to change Grapefruit from a catch-all folder to a "check out at a later date" folder. Creating new catch-all folder: Miscellaneous.

Link title: "Question of the Month." Ah, a tutorial about tilt/shift lenses. That can go into my Photography folder.

Oh, here's an ever-useful link, courtesy of OEN: fuck me music. The big question - where do I file it? Hmm. I do have another bookmark with a list of color-related songs, so maybe it's time to start a music folder.

Google search for fruit sauce "sour cream" brown sugar" "orange liquor" (what? I was looking for a recipe) can go into Grapefruit, as can the Dirty Spoke blog awards page. My 2005 poetry page fits nicely into Miscellaneous.

It's sad that I have to open most of these links in order to remember what they are. I really must do this more often.

...Okay. After nearly an hour, my 52 links are all nicely organized and I'm really sick of the internet. I'm going to go watch Breakfast at Tiffany's now.

Thursday, February 1, 2007

Widgets: Good Idea, Frustrating to Code

I'm in the process of pimping my blog. This isn't the complete version - I still have a lot of work to do - but it's definitely an improvement over the simple layout I had before. Of course, I'd be working much faster if Blogger hadn't completely changed the way their layouts are coded. >< As it is, it still feels really simple, but since I have to relearn pretty much the entire code, it's the best I can do right now.

Okay, there's my obligatory "I'm updating the layout yippee hooray" post, for the zero people who read this already. I'm going to stop talking now.