As Beautiful, As Soothing, As Kind, As Fleeting.

For a large part of my growing up, I dreamed of being an opera singer. I sang all the time, listened voraciously to classical music, watched what opera I could catch on Public Television, and tried composing my own music for the keyboard. I've tended to, recently, keep my love of the Opera under wraps...afterall, I've long since come to the realization that one does not become an opera singer without training since a wee age and afterall, I do not like all opera. The difference in quality between one opera singer and another can be so profound that to me their work sounds, at best, like two wholy different genres. But to listen to those who truly love what they do and who are not masters of the music but synonymous with it...The transformative quality of Pavarotti, Caruso, and Jose van Dam's voices have been called ethereal. However, I appreciate them more for their ability to ground me...to make me feel at peace with the earth. On a warm autumn day, I like to come back from the library, clean from top to bottom (okay, mostly just the bottom), fling open the windows so my mix and match lace white curtains billow in the breeze, put on a recording of Nessun Dorma and sit out on the front steps with a book. While we still have his recordings...I'll miss Pavarotti's presence in this shared universe of ours. He was an amazingly beautiful person, transforming the world (and not just the privileged) with his golden voice.

Why Bush should be the new Miss South Carolina

I'm going to assume everyone has seen Miss Teen South Carolina attempt to answer a question about why Americans can't find their own country on a map. She gave a really really really excellent answer in my opinion. They always say to teachers, "show, don't tell." Well, she was just demonstrating to the audience how Americans think or...don't think. Americans, she informed us, are just dumb.

Anyway, here is why I think Bush should be crowned the new Miss South Carolina...



That's right. He's got just the right amount of intelligence for the job. But how does he look in a swimsuit? *shudder*

On Senator Craig

I just wanted to put out there what the media isn't bothering to say: It doesn't matter whether he is gay or not. While the nightly news, newspapers, the Senator himself, and others are sounding more homophobic than ever in pursuing the question of whether he is or not, I don't give a hoot. It is completely irrelevant to whether he was propositioning people in a public bathroom or participating in any other lewd behavior in the same location. Being gay is not a federal offense, nor is it lewd and had he done the same thing in a women's bathroom to a female officer then we would not be discussing his heterosexuality, as if this was the problem.

Adult ADHD

If you like me, have ADHD then you'll appreciate how much harder it is to get information about this than getting information about childhood ADHD. There is a great deal more information now than ever before, books and such, but it was nice nevertheless to find this dated video on the subject.

Posted Feb 19, 2007

ADHD in adults and other important information

FedEx Sucks

This is just the second time that I've ordered something that was supposed to come via FedEx. The first time, I changed the address I wanted it delivered too shortly after placing the order and while the computer said that they had this information and it would be delivered by the end of the week to that location, the driver instead tried delivering it to the old address and then took two more days to figure out what the correct address was...the address I had given them a week before and which they had in their computers.

This second time, I was impressed that they deliver on Saturday since UPS doesn't and was happily awaiting my package at home. About 2pm and still no package so I decide to track it online. It says it was delivered to my front door not 15 minutes before (signature service not requested)! Now, there are several people here and none of us saw FedEx even drive by. I check the front door, no package. I consider asking the neighbors if they got it but going out and taking a walk up and down the street I see no package at anyone else's front door. So, I call FedEx and tell the lady who says yeah the driver said he delivered it to your address. So My 200 dollar package is AWOL but like before they say they will tell my local FedEx facility (who I was told customers I not allowed to call themselves) and they will talk to the driver and eventually, days later I should get my package. FedEx sucks.

Wise Words

I was watching the inspirational speaker, Dr. Wayne Dyer, tonight. A quote from him: "It makes just about as much sense to me to have a smoking section in a restaurant as it does to have a peeing section in a swimming pool."

And from someone he quoted: "Wisdom is knowing I am nothing. Love is knowing I am everything. And in between the two, my life moves."

The Pinker the Better

That last video was Pink. So is this one. An artist who sees the world with open eyes...

Dear Mr. President,

TwoCrows posted this on her blog and I love it so much that I'm posting it here.

iReading

I have something over 200 books in one small space...they always surround me but I like it that way. I've always dreamed of having a proper library or of living in a library, getting locked in a library, etc., etc. Anyway, these hundreds of books were more numerous in the past and I had to (painfully) pack some away because of allergies, etc. Books do unfortunately hold a great deal of dust and other allergens (incl. mold if there is enough humidity in the air) because they are made from organic material. Luckily, we live in a digital age and many of those books that I might have bought in a used bookstore, along with all the requisite nostalgia causing mustiness, I now own in electronic form. With a large enough screen and good backlighting, I have found reading text in electronic form to be quite rewarding. Recently, Sony came out with a nice reader just for this purpose. This may be a little reminiscent of those flat pads the crew used to read from on Star Trek: TNG but, even without being a fan of new technology, anything that allows me to carry around an entire library of books in my pocket is a winner with me. Note: I carry about 180 titles on my PDA and have had no difficulty reading from it, even in dimly lit environments.

I can't remember if I recommended it already or not but the Korean movie, Kim Ki-duk's film "Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring", is a very good (Buddhist) tale. I think of it often. Was thinking of it while listening to an episode of Chinesepod today about monks (the movie is about a monk and his son/disciple and so is the children's story in the ChinesePod episode). I also highly recommend Chinesepod (did this already on my other blog, Yinyangwriter, last year.

Taking a Writing Break...

...that is, a break to do some writing. So, I'm back to blogging here every now and then (rather than daily) and will focus my blogging energies on Yinyangwriter as a complement to the actual writing of the novel. At Yinyang, you can even track my progress on the novel with the wordmeter. Hopefully, I truly do have something to say and I'm not just wasting my time ...writer's anxiety, writer's anxiety. I don't care so much that this particular book is published/successful. I think I just need to get it out of my system so that I can finally write something more commercial. I've learned a lot about writing already that I didn't know when I started, so this is certainly a learning experience. As everyone says...the only way to become a writer is to write. I'm considering simultaneously outlining something commercial...I have some ideas when it comes to the structure (and the symbolism to use, etc.) but not the plot itself so much. Or rather I seem to be drawn to ideas that require fairly extensive research and I don't want to go down that path with the next book either. Researching rather than writing is sometimes just plain annoying.

Addicted to Colbert: An Autobiography Part II

This one had me in stitches.

Addicted to Colbert: An Autobiography

We're All Busy People :-)

Irrelevant Nonsense

I am so busy again...writing my novel and typing in another for revision and potential publication. Here's something amusing a fellow writer had on his blog. Apparently, I had the word "kill" on my blog 3 times too many and 1 "dead", thus the rating. Oooooooo...

Happy Harry Potter Day, Muggles, Witches, and Warlocks!

Word of Caution: I make some very controversial and somewhat uneducated guesses about what will happen in book 7 at the end of this post. I have not read, not to mention laid eyes on, a single copy of book 7.

Well, not sure what to call today but Harry Potter is apparently more important even than one's own birthday. "That's a minor event. Harry Potter is a major event, " Little One tells me. So, we're waiting for the package to arrive...maybe by apparition, maybe by that magical bus that they send for wizards and witches in need, and maybe by UPS...but I'm hoping that the story strand about eliminating slavery was not eliminated itself but was in fact further developed and is crucial to the plot in this final volume of the series. Hermione seemed to lose interest or steam or else was working completely behind the scenes in Book 6 whereas in Book 5 her campaign was in full throttle. I say Free the House Elves and all similarly employed adult and child muggles in sweatshops around the world now or risk finding that you are complicit in something more evil than he-who-must-not-be-named!

My Prophecy (aka silly guess as to what happens):
Snape saves Harry, in an unexpected and crucial moment coming in to save the day and clearly choosing good over evil...and then Snape himself is killed (perhaps he had to sacrifice himself to save Harry) and then we all go for Kleenex. And I would hypothesize also that Snape or Voldemort is Harry's real father but this has already been debunked by Lady Rowling so I won't go there. Afterall, it's a children's book aaaand that plotline is a bit played out already since Star Wars, etc. :-) Have fun reading everyone!

Hook a Canuck: Courtesy of Michael Moore

I just saw Sicko (finally)! I want to leave this country so bad. Or let us all lead mass demonstrations in the street for healthcare. Else, what's the point? A lot of the time, it seems you tell Americans they are getting screwed and they nod and go back to work. Did everyone else already visit hook-a-canuck.com? Here's the video from the website.

Ducttape Your Windows: An Atmosphere of Fear

Don't Judge a Woman by Her Cover?

Haha, this video made me laugh...and that's a good thing.

"We Think a Brother did This."

I believe it was 60 minutes that I was watching last night where they had a story on how crime often runs in families and were making the claim that this was a genetic connection between relatives. Unfortunately, this was just one more case where the writers/producers of a story failed to work through an argument logically. Their argument is that because the children of convicted criminals often become criminals themselves, the family carries some sort of criminal DNA. Of course since many of the people we have convicted and imprisoned are african-american, this was really the old story claiming that black people are genetically criminal. Wow, how we have progressed as a society! Not. But, what is wrong with this argument? Surely, I can't disagree that there is some connection, given the statistics...afterall, I'm a mathematician. It is not, however, the statistics that I am questioning. It's the logic of the argument, the conclusions they are drawing from that data. Given the same information, it is very easy to make a completely different and not unreasonable argument about why some criminals have "criminal families." First, consider who most convicted criminals are, where they come from. Never was white-collar crime discussed in the story. We weren't apparently talking about Martha Stewart or Scooter Libby. And most prisoners in our society do come from disadvantaged, low-income communities with terrible school systems (which I have taught in). If you live in Crenshaw, CA or Camden, NJ, drug use and violence are familiar parts of your life. Okay, so here is where the crime is coming from and it didn't require any nascent criminal tendencies. When people have very little to look forward to in their lives and few positive role models in their community, it's easy to get pulled in by the bad crowd. Just go talk to any group of teenagers if you doubt that.

But then, once imprisoned, surely we cannot expect their children to be attending ivy league schools and starting fortune 500 companies or otherwise being well on the way to completing their American dream? By looking at the children or even the siblings of convicted criminals, we are immediately narrowing our focus to those people who are also living in an environment that has demonstrated itself to be conducive to criminal behavior. If your father is in prison, then you are growing up in a single-parent household and thus your mother is working her butt off to support you all the time and therefore likely not around, as much as she might like, to keep you from giving in to the temptations of the neighborhood. It's a well documented fact of psychology that people often unconsciously copy the behavior of "lost" parents, no matter how abusive. These kids are disadvantaged and abandoned because their parents are in jail. What's to stop them from following in daddy or mommy's footsteps? I think the producers of that story are focusing entirely on nature and neglecting to look at how "nuture" or environment plays a role in the opportunities that people have in life. And the truth is, it's not always a 'bruther' that did it.

Furthermore, where was the positive side of this? Knowing that relatives are more likely to commit offenses, why don't we use this to enact preventative programs...why not focus all the more on educating those children of our most lost members of society. Believe me, the children aren't lost. They are not doomed by DNA. On the contrary, they need us more than anyone.