The smithereens!

Is it wrong to ask a person of color if something is racist?

What do you think, f-list?

You know, I often feel that way too.
Like I want to tell the world exactly what I think about it, not sparing any adjectives.
Do I tell anyone about it? Ah...
Well, there's the difference - I'm just some girl and Rafa is the Liverpool manager - somebody actually listens to him.
So Rafa's rant ends up in the papers, causing bit of grief; while I... while there I am, in the bath tub, relaying my "facts" to a rubber duck.

A man I will admire indefinitely was born eighty years and four days ago. Some may say he was plagued by his own many foibles we never hear about, others - that the Civil Rights Movement would have ran its course and succeeded whether or not he were ever born, but...
He eloquently and irrevocably stated what was true all along, he fought for that truth, and ultimately died for it, but we may never forget.

sorry, sappy post... it's just. it's something I feel very strongly about, it's hard for me to put something more sophisticated than a soup recipe or something more pertinent than a missing button into coherent sentences.

here:

different color, same species. And let such things never divide us again.

So, cause and effect are wonderful things. Unless they're biting my ass right at this moment.
They are.

We went to play footy at Trump's golf course. We played for three hours, saw everybody's dogs, it was a wonderful day all around.
.. : :Enter Stupid: : ..

then we had the shining idea of going to Souplantation straight after. Stick it to the man, be sweaty, eat your way through the joint.
Sounds dispicable, I needn't be told, but yeah - be sweaty, eat your way through the joint, sit by the door(?!)

Needless to say, I've been sick as a dog for almost two days now.

...pizazz? intensity? excitement?
One of those three. I spent about an hour looking at pictures of colorful things, no reason - it just felt nice.
I have a jar of jelly beans on my desk - I don't eat them, I simply stare at them in reverie, because they're so.. SO.
My yarn bin is full of green, white, blue, gray, green, more green, cream, more shades of blue and some dusty rose I still don't know what to do with.
What am I hankering for? Orange? I have orange, it's a bit hard to wear.
I open my closet and there it is... blue, blue, green, white, gray, brown, and dusty rose I still don't know what to wear with.
I know! I need kool-aid, but I won't drink it. I'll stare at it dye with it. Yes, that will work ;)
What do I really? I don't know... loud music, infatuation, fascination, people, images, stories, adventures.
I was never against either 'bland' or 'boring' so long as it's good for me, but I guess now I know why I blanket my lentils in cayenne pepper.

...pain and aching. I'm serious.
No, not the whips-major surgery-stress fractures-dominatrix kind. No, graces, no!
Just the garden variety soreness you feel after not doing anything physical for quite a long time, then running a mile or two, or bench-pressing most of your weight - I don't know.
I stopped running a fair while ago, but I haven't stopped exercising in general - I still do it daily, but I guess I need what those smart books call overload. Or what my step-brother's coach affectionately refers to as "hell week".
Does that mean I'm soon to play [grid-iron] football? I sure hope not... but it might take some ingenuity.

You know what's wonderful though? Tash's Christmas card came in =) *bounce bounce bounce* It actually must have come around Boxing Day, but I haven't been around to see it until fairly recently.
Cara, grazi. buon Natale :) and wow, Australian stamps are pretty.

And I was having such a good morning, until -

George W. Bush is ending his presidency in characteristically aggressive fashion (...) By the time he vacates the White House, he will have issued a record number of so-called 'midnight regulations' - so called because of the stealthy way they appear on the rule books (...)
One rule will make it easier for coal companies to dump debris from strip mining into valleys and streams. The process is part of an environmentally damaging technique known as 'mountain-top removal mining'. It involves literally removing the top of a mountain to excavate a coal seam and pouring the debris into a valley, which is then filled up with rock. The new rule will make that dumping easier.

Also on the plate - concealed and loaded weapons in national parks, coal power plants much closer to them, 'religious reasons' for denying medical help and "self-regulation" for fishing and farming industries.
Nice, isn't it? These will take years to overturn.

It is! I mean, I wouldn't want to live there, but it's fantastic nevertheless.
I have a new cheating-at-Scrabble geographical location -

Woolloomooloo, Sydney, New South Wales.
Apparently, a 'burb of Sydney. Home to the Finger Wharf, the largest wooden structure in the world.

(see, I told you I was going to brush up on my knowledge of Antipodean locales!)
With all my bragging about being able to pronounce almost anything (besides Spanish and Swedish R's, I know), had I had to articulate double consonants, I'd... need a deep breath, at least.


and yes, I know, the Aussie contingent of my f-list may say that they've known about this place since birth, have relatives there and/or are descended from the person who founded it.
I didn't know until now, I'm trying.

click at your own risk... Although, I must say that it's more funny and awful than it is any kind of titillating.

I am glad, however, someone hands these big feet out - horrid sexual metaphors are just that, and there should be less of them.


"a moth caught inside a lampshade", my dear Maude...

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

( I was once, you know. )*sings*
two of us wearing raincoats,
standing solo
in the sun.

you and me chasing paper,
getting nowhere
on our way back home...

I love FreeRice, I love it, love it, love it. It tests your vocabulary and donates rice on your behalf and based on your achievement.
Now I love this too. Rather than words, it tests your knowledge of what [insert nation here] just don't understand - Geography, and instead of rice, it donates water.
It's a bliss, go try it



Also, I know it says "I love", "I do", but if Andrea hasn't posted about this earlier, I would have never guessed this wonderful charity game exists.
*hugs Andrea*

So, Kyrgyzstan is that dumbbell-shaped country west of China; Spain is easy to discern from others, as it has a Portugal-sized chunk taken out; and Croatia is the strip of land east of the leg of the famous Italian boot.
Now, if I could only figure out where are all those places in Australia...

You know what mystifies me? Cricket.


Yep. I mean, you look at most sports and, without knowing much if, if anything at all, you're able to at least identify a head or tail.
Cricket, however? No dice. I must know how it works.
Yes, I simply must.

*goes to research Duckworth-Lewis method*

Frood's out building networks (much to his regret - computer, not transportation) and I'm home darning our collective jeans and watching everything Setanta cat dragged in.
( sister self-doubt )I was also going to ask Gary, assuming that he's still around, what on good bob's green earth is happening to Arsenal, but come to think of it... Nothing is - they're still top of the table, and the screechy voices calling for Arsene's resignation have been silenced by the void.

Big "WTF Mate?!", however, going to Van Persie, perhaps I'm misunderstanding something major, but from my boat that thump on the goalie looked rather uncalled for.

now, what should I cook for dinner?

Yep.
Everything as it was before - Frood, soccer, knitting, cooking.
The former decided to enable me further by getting me a Setanta subscription - now I barely leave the house.
Sad. Rather.
It's kind of good to be back. I'm tired of hearing of Prop 8, McCain, Palin and other semi-human political huffpuff of this year.
Soon it'll be over... but prop 8? "traditional", good grief.
It's good to be back here. I'll catch up on all of your journals tomorrow, I want to.
For now - good night.
*bear-hugs her friend list*
-- w

It's nearly two am, I feel like munching on something, so I stick my hand in the crisper and pull out a pepper.
Not a hot pepper, but not a bell pepper either - all hot peppers here are cayenne (very rarely - Ukranian bitters) and all sweet - Hungarian wax.
I bite into it greedily and... it's hot as Hades!
Had I not been so selfish (I picked out the prettier pepper), I wouldn't have had to drink those two liters of tap water just now.

All rightey then, I learned my lesson, world. I shall be more considerate.
Meh, at least the tap water here is good.

On another note: MNFF went the way all good message boards go at some point and all bad message boards never leave - drama galore.
I didn't think it'd happen, at least not now =(

here I am, eating kryptonite err, miso soup (I couldn't stand the stuff most of my life, but given my circumstances, it's good stuff and it's always there, so I suck it up and eat it) and contemplating my escape.

Mission: Impossible (aka buying clothes for a six-foot-tall, twenty-something skinny male) is almost complete.
Four days and sixty-five (of the budgeted hundred) dollars later, I've acquired twelve pairs of cotton socks, one pair of very snazzy jeans and three pairs of really expensive boxers my dear brother seems so attached to.
I've restrained myself and didn't buy anything orange, (but don't say I didn't want to!) and the remaining thirty-five are going towards (likely) another pair of pants - unless a counter-directive is to be received.

Research done: Sartorialist, Style.Men.com and a crapload of men's magazines of the non-nudie kind.
Fears surmounted: Naked dudes habitually pictured on packaged men's underwear. I don't know who on earth could be aided in purchasing drawers by pictures of beefy, semi-nude men, other than men who are into beefy, semi-nude men.

Quote of the day: Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt. (Herbert Hoover)
Thought of the day: I hate you, Steve Jobs! A Windows-formatted iPod plugged into a Mac (or at least my iPod plugged into a Mac) will re-format itself (i.e. clear all your data) whether or not you've clicked "Yes". I had a very sad, quiet jog right after that happened...
So now I shall have twenty hours of non-stop Dutch electronic music, since that's all Frood's computers have.

Good Bob, this stuff tastes awful when it's cold...

The jolly green dragon doesn't lie. I'm feeling strangely relieved.
I've been doing nothing but cooking and drawing this whole week ("suitcase moods", as my father would put it, rolled in and engulfed anything that doesn't come naturally to me).
Cooking has been fun - there's been still a lot of pizza (we seem to really like pizza), but the other day, I stepped outside my usual guidelines and made flan.
I'm not sure exactly why. There isn't a clear-cut reason for me to feel confident about making it - I've never made either custard or caramel; Deb, my guru of all things food, had a flan fail miserably and now seems terrified of it.
Despite all that, the flan was great. I didn't have very much of it (my veganism has been suspended, my lactose-intolerance has not), but the caramel... the caramel on the bottom was sheer joy. I had it on my pancakes the following morning - I could squee.
The same general stretch of time also yielded pasta with green beans and alfredo sauce. Made entirely for Frood - he loves the stuff. I don't share the consuming affection for creamy things, but as they say, if you want others to love you - let them do nice things for you. What they say is true, I love people all the more if they let me pamper them. On the less-craven side of life, the green beans and broccoli were great - I blanched them (boiled for a minute then dropped into ice water) before adding to the sauce and... it was wonderful.

Veganism? Veganism did safely survive the month pledged to it and then some. Nothing is hard about being vegan, don't believe the hype. Being a pain in the neck to others, however, is something different entirely - I remember my grandfather's face when I wouldn't eat something.
I've never liked meat, my family knows that, but everyone save for my dad also knows that they think it's unhealthy and that I'm much too skinny for my own good.
I'll probably try to take over much of the cooking when I visit (I'm certain my mom will have some directives towards her dad's nutrition as well), but otherwise... I'd rather not watch my recently widowed and grey doctor of nuclear physics personify glum resignation ever again.

The other day, we - of course! - went to the darn Apple store, spent most of the day in line and purchased Frood's glorified mobile device. Needless to say, that's my moment of resignation - he loves these things, I love him and, well, basically, there we go. At least we got to play soccer and collect seaweed at dawn before going there - two of my favorite things!
Playing soccer at the park is something we've been doing almost every day now. I highly recommend it!
I almost like it better than running, which, I think is something I will be doing right now.
Love you all,
-- w

no, not really, but it does sound like fun...
*goes to find mini, fishnets and heels*

 

I've been using this one as a receptacle for everything from soccer to feelings to cooking, which in itself is disorderly.
Worse yet, however, I've been friend-locking most of it all as well, so if my Ravelry-linked blog were to actually serve its purpose (being viewed in relation to my yarn-related exploits), it would also douse the casual reader with everything from memes to my political views.
Somehow, upon finally realizing how polarized this whale of a place is, I don't believe I should expose people to that...

Someday, I will perhaps have a designated journal for each of my hobbies. Yes, I shall need a separate server for that.