MARNIFERA

08:44 am - Glad to be a Folkie

I'm just appreciating, now that i answer the generic
"concerts" email for the Seattle Folklore Society, that
i don't have to respond in any way to the booking inquiry
from an artist known as "Atari Teenage Riot".  I kid you not.

09:41 am - tv vs radio: the republicans

It's amazing how different it is, watching vs. listening -
i started out listening to the Sarah Palin announcement speech
on NPR while doing dishes. Forming one impression -
and then moved over to the tv just now, and got the
visual - the most striking difference is the visual of McCain
standing next to her, winking to the audience like he's got a
tic, and smiling in a grimace like something hurts somewhere -
i'd bet his gut, and maybe his feet too, from the look of him.

And boy does he look old next to her.

That's just weird.

And she spoke so jingoistically about her oldest
child being sent to Iraq, and that he's going on 9/11,
and that he enlisted on 9/11...  The manipulativeness
of it all, and the idiocy if she actually believes a thing
she's saying -

And the contrast between seeing Obama speak last night,
and Biden the other night -

Why is it that Republicans all seem to look and feel to me
like they're lying through their teeth? It just screams.

Obviously not everyone sees it that way.

I wonder if i'm picking up subliminal cues? (not that i'm
always quick to tell when i'm being lied to - but often
my intuition is good for something) Or is it possible that
i so deeply know their positions to be false, that i hear and
see through that filter?

You could say i've decided in advance that republicans are
going to lie to me and to us as a country. You'd be right, and
i've decided that on the basis of a hell of a lot of evidence.

I _feel_ a lot more truth in what i heard at the democratic convention.
That felt good, and uplifting, and like the doors of inspiration and
possibility for some healing and some sanity, after the last 8 years
of madness and hopelessness and frustration and depression,
are finally opening, and not a minute too soon.

05:53 pm - more convention listening

And while we're at it?

New cabinet-level position - Secretary of the Environment: Al Gore.

Oh please, oh please, oh please.

10:55 am - Science Fiction & Politics

I'm listening to Joe Biden's convention speech on-line, and
about 20 minutes in, when he was talking about military strategy,
i found myself thinking about some of my favorite SF authors,
who create characters who are brilliant strategists, who
have so thoughtfully analyzed history and character - authors
like Lois McMaster Bujold, whose Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan
and Aral and Miles Vorkosigan are such brilliant thinkers and leaders;
and Orson Scott Card, whose Ender and Bean and Petra's genius
and insight must spring from somewhere inside the author and from
his synthesis of his extensive reading of history and strategy. In
the Ender and Ender's Shadow series, he shows an amazing ability
to take current situations and dynamics and extrapolate how things
might develop.

In Card's alternate history, the Alvin Maker series, he
shows a brilliant ability to think through questions of
"what might have happened if _this_ variable had been different?";
"what motivates people and how do personal and interpersonal
factors affect the political situations and outcomes that affect
us all?"  His magical and supernatural elements make up a lot
of the story, but that doesn't diminish his examination of real
historical, political, and characterological themes.

And his stand-alone Pastwatch: The Redemption of
Christopher Columbus, while again using a mythical
device (the past-viewer and time travel), presents all too
cogent a possible future, in which we finally figure it out,
stop fighting each other and cooperate, using our technological
abilities for the good of all - but not before the tipping point
of environmental destruction has been reached, too late to
turn the tide. His exploration of questions like "how did we
really get here?", "what were the intervention points, where
a small turning in the path would have made a huge difference?"....

My point is that _these_ are the minds i want doing political analyses
and advising the government.  I think we have a huge untapped
resource in our brilliant speculative fiction writers, who are
precisely talented in analyzing and extrapolating: if you posit
these people and this situation, what might happen? And talk
about thinking outside the box! What a wealth of analysis and
creativity.

12:50 pm - new phone!

The Nokia 5300 turned out to be a tremendously crappy
phone, despite the great lilac color. Ah well...

So when i finally broke it beyond functionality, i seriously
considered, again, a switch to AT&T and the new iPhone
(funny how i fry my T-Mo phones concurrently with iPhone
releases! What's up with that? ;)....

But instead i went with the Heather Grape Motorola W490.
and i have to say, so far i am liking it a heck of a lot.
Way better sound, battery life, features, not nearly so fragile.


                         

Isn't it purty? And - it doesn't suck!

12:31 pm - Star Trek mental mashup

Was just listening to The Vinyl Cafe all-cover tune show. 
I've heard about William Shatner's singing (and heard him sing
on Animaniacs ("my little friends, my... small....friends"), but i've
never actually heard him sing Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, or -
until moments ago - Mr. Tambourine Man.  Oh. My. God.

So what should then go through my head, but - wouldn't it be a
hilarious mashup/parody to take a  Deep Space Nine episode,
when 20th Century pop music  is being played/sung in Vic Fontaine's, and
Vic opens his mouth to sing but Shatner's voice comes out; Vic looks at himself in horror.
(Worf and Nog are even more horrified.)  And maybe it degenerates into one of
those "holodeck takes over the ship" things, where the Shatner-gram starts to
actually, uh, physically replace Vic....

Wesley-Crusher-Save-the-Ship, Indeed!

05:29 pm - Another Violet

http://www.canyoncreeknursery.com/Images2/v.dblerussian.jpg

05:21 pm - Violets of the Day

Someday when i have a perma-place (or as much as one
can in this world of impermanence...) one of the things i
dream about planting is a variety of really cool violets.

Like this one:

http://www.canyoncreeknursery.com/Images2/vfreckles.jpg






Also these:


http://www.canyoncreeknursery.com/Images2/duchessedeparme.jpg



And these are the best of all:

http://www.canyoncreeknursery.com/Images2/kingofdoubles.jpg

11:39 pm - In New England, pt. 1

I'm out here for Peter & Linda's wedding, and figured if i'm going to fly across the country,
i might as well get some good dance gypsying and other visiting in while i'm here,
as well as some general tourism. So far so good on both counts.

Last night i flew into Manchester NH and got a rental car and drove to
Portsmouth, where i stayed at the Port Inn. Perfectly nice.

I will say this: so far i have yet to be given directions that i both
manage to follow and that, if followed, do what they are supposed to.
Seriously. That includes Google Maps. We're running about 50-50,
with me exiting early and winging it (with some phone/internet help
from Seattle :) or deciding to try something random without knowing
if there was a good _reason_ to go exactly the way i was told...

But then when i try to go exactly the way i was told, it seems to me
that it's not there! And yet i have, in fact, managed to get everywhere
i've tried to go so far. And it's not like i'm in a hurry for anything.

Which is a good thing, considering how omnipresent speeding
cops are around here. In two days - no, 26 hours! -  i've already
passed a couple that were speed-trapping, and seen 3 or 4 others
doing their thing. And in downtown Portsmouth there were cops
hanging out in the square by the North Church (which is beautiful -
as is Portsmouth in general!)

They're like little red & blue bells of mindfulness, those guys -
i see them and i notice my speed and slow down - to 30,
or 60, or whatever is going on. And i get to watch my inner speed -
i'm so used to - damn, what i'm really used to is running late for things.
So. What a great exercise. Even when i'm just ambling entirely
on my own recognizance, there's this tendency to rush. And
there's purely no external reason for it. So i'm adjusting to slowing
down. There's nothing to rush to.

I'm getting sleepy, but i want to bookmark some of the other things
i've been thinking about sharing with y'all:

leaning-back airplane seats and my long-awaited intervention

more about Portsmouth town and stuff there - including the purple
houses! the amazing purple houses! i have pictures, oh yeah!
Will post the pictures.  A bunch of white houses have really nice
purple shutters too. :)

Rye beach, ocean, etc. Lobsters at Petey's, not Ray's, and
intuition/chance vs. directions: which do i regret more
when i don't like the result, that i didn't listen to my gut feeling
and/or the unfolding wisdom of apparent randomness,
or that i didn't listen when someone else told me so?

Driving Rye to Concord, - why are beach shops (Yes, Hampton NH,
i'm talking to you!) so certain that their clientele are so obnoxious,
unbright, and crass? How many t-shirts and bumper stickers, etc,
asserting that one is a supreme b-i-t-c-h do people really need?
(that's zero, zip, zilch, not a one!) And do i want to be on a beach
with people who think this crap is worth spending money on?

(why was i even looking in those shops? i was looking for a towel,
so if i wanted to put more than my feet in the ocean, or lie in
the sand at some beach or other, i'd have... a towel.

My first Scout House dance tonight. The most in-sync long lines...
etc comments on quality of dance and welcome (both very good.)

And other stuff no doubt, but now for sleep.

08:23 am - After almost a year, back to blogging

Well... i should start the 2008 edition of this by tying up some of the
loose ends from last summer's postings.
(That, or delete the tech-y stuff, which i just might do anyway later on.)
 But for now, for the advertent reader, I'll resolve some burning questions:

1. Did she switch to AT&T? iPhone or no?

Nope. T-Mobile let me switch to a much, much better plan for my usage without
having to sign another contract. And so i bought a phone to replace the dying
flip-phone. I like flip phones, and the slider i ended up buying is, in some ways,
comparatively crappy. But i could not resist, and you will see why:






It was the purple, the lovely purple. (and why are they showing the
lame screen, when, if you turn it over, there's a whole big stripe of the purple to gaze at!)
Just in case there are any marketers out there who haven't yet figured out how to manipulate me.

I will say this - i am planning a trip to New England for a friend's wedding followed by a
week of random wandering and visiting and contra dancing, and for this i am really wishing
for an iPhone. The little pocket google mapsing, the wireless handheld email, a better photo/
movie taking/sending set up....the little thing could replace the stack of AAA maps and
tourbooks, etc etc... tempting. But this still isn't really the time for me to take that plunge.

Now, if Apple ever figures it out and makes a purple one - down the chute.


2. My dad got a cell phone! My dad got a cell phone! Yay Dad!

Anyone left who hasn't yet gotten a cell phone is now officially a Late Adopter.  :)

That's the wrap up on a year's worth of technology in my little purple world.

12:32 am - Paint it Palatinate; or, everything you ever wanted to know about purple

Not only have the Liaden Universe authors brought me many many hours
of totally absorbed and captivated reading pleasure, but now their blogs
have led me to this little wonder:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Shades_of_violet

And can you believe that Wikipedia has some amazing and seemingly
mathematically complex system for defining and mapping colors?
Who knew?

I mean, i have searched craigslist and amazon and ebay for "purple",
i have searched tupperware and fiestaware (and even underwear ;o).

I can't stop backseat browsing over at Seattle's own online Purple Store.

(One day they should really hire me to find them purple things.
If it weren't for this therapist idea with the Master's degree and
all, wouldn't that be the dream career. : ) I'm always thinking, "hey
wait, you missed this!")

But it would never have occurred to me to search Wikipedia
for violet. I know it when i see it!

Ok, and since you've read this far, just what is palatinate anyway?

Just remember: Violet is spectral, Purple is extraspectral.

11:23 am - A picture of a man painting a picture of a man painting a picture...

Except in this modern play on the theme, we see a picture of a man taking a picture of a cell phone with... a cell phone!

It's brilliant.

Current Mood: amused

10:11 am - The iPhone pheeding phrenzy

Well, i almost succumbed!

The GeekMan and i were reading forums about where Seattleites would be lining up, discussing outdoor vs. indoor malls, Apple Stores vs. AT&T stores...

What a case study in the power of restricted information to make people feel they must have something.

It's like a guy who won't communicate (ahem) and the way that makes you nuts to know what is going on in there (until, as a mature person who's been around the block enough times, it makes you lose interest....
i am almost, almost there. Hear that, universe? Stop sending them, we don't need any more of that around here!)

Intermittent reinforcement, the Official Psychologists call it.

The rat keeps clicking away, knowing sometimes it gets a pellet, sometimes not, and it has no way of knowing when or why, no control.

This is how you make addicts.

And it may also be how you sell $600 cell phones! (Yes, she eventually comes back around to the point...)

Waiting til yesterday, just a few days before the release, to tell anyone anything about the plans and therefore real ongoing costs and abilities, etc - it's not that i really expected marketers not to be manipulative - but i guess i do expect better from Macsters. I figure (this will be a theme) if something is good, just tell us about it, give us info and we'll figure it out, you don't have to always manipulate everything.

So to pull back from psychology and relationships and return to the Mac Blog portion of this entry here, it looks like the iPhone Version 1 has a couple of serious flaws that pulled my geekiest phriend and me back from the brink of phollowing the phrenzy:

1. No voice dialing
2. Won't work in a VW iPod dock (in the glove department, for those of us not endowed with the world's safest car, and one of the features that makes #1 even more heinous for the GeekMan)
3. Other geeky stuff i forgot already - oh, basically it's a fantastic teeny-tiny web browser, but is it a good phone? For $600? When they give decent ones away for free? (and you don't even want to hear what my dad is saying about that in my head.) (But that's ok, because in my head, i'm telling him "DAD, GET A CELL PHONE!")