Various blogs I read alerted me to the fact that columnist Cathy Seipp is in the hospital, near death, and with no hope of recovery. The news saddened me greatly. I had heard she’d had breast cancer*, but I’d always assumed she’d recovered, because, well, I’d always thought of her as one of those writers…
Category: Daft Musings
The Porn Ring in My Neighborhood
When Peter moved his business to an office in Santa Clara, he upgraded our home internet connection to cable modem, so that he could have the bandwidth to remotely access his computer and do programming at home. But, as it turns out, he still has to go to the Santa Clara office if he wants…
The Fast Runner
When The Fast Runner came out, I was excited to see it. It’s a movie in an Inuit language, based on an Inuit legend, so it has obscure language and obscure culture going for it simultaneously. Furthermore, I was fascinated with Greenland: I’ve been to Iceland and found it spectacularly beautiful, and heard that Greenland…
Outsourced Comment Spam
I now have a blog which allows comments, so ergo, I get comment spam. Luckily, I also have a WordPress extension which catches most of it before I even see it, so it doesn’t bother me. It is amazing, though, the lengths to which spammers will go just in the hopes that my modest blog…
Giving Geeks a Bad Reputation
Peter came back angry from the Resident Evil 3 panel at the Wondercon convention. One of the key people at the panel was Ali Larter, the actress who is starring in Resident Evil 3, and who also happens to play one of the characters in the comic-book-like TV show Heroes. At the panel, the very…
The Great Passport Wait
As an adult, long-term passport holder, all I have to do to renew my passport is mail in the right forms, pictures, and payment. But as I was focused on my passport, I noticed Neil’s passport is about to expire, and it really might not be a bad idea to get Kelly her own passport,…
My New Passport Photo
My passport actually expired a few years ago, which made me uncomfortable. I’ve had a valid passport since I was a baby, and not having one was at odds with my self-image of being an international traveller. Oh, never mind that I haven’t been abroad in nearly 5 years, and I have no income but…
Pick Up Cricket
The Cricket World Cup just got underway. I played cricket once, sort of. Peter and I had taken our children to our neighborhood park. Near the playgrounds, an English immigrant was pitching a ball to his young son, who had a flat bat, and was standing near a small three-pronged rack with a stick of…
Code Pink for Menopausal Mania
One of my older female relatives once sent me the poem “When I Am An Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple.” It’s essentially a cute little poem (which has been passed around for ages now) which pretty much declares that one of the advantages of getting old is being free to be a little eccentric….
Dogs of San Francisco
I recently finished reading Red Zone, Aphrodite Jones’ book about a brutal dog maulting murder in San Francisco in 2001. It was particularly significant to me, because I remember the story from the news at the time, and I often take my children to parks in San Francisco with off-leash zones. Much has been made…