Fun with Fotos!

Check out this picture, from the front page of nytimes.com:



It strikes me that they're in a classic Western showdown set up. The camera is from the perspective of Billy Gates, the villainous cowboy (and, most likely, cattle rustler) who's been terrorizing the impoverished, one-horse town of Europe for far too long, and he's keepin' his eagle eye fixed on the shootin' hand of Sheriff Neelie Kroes, Europe's antitrust chief. If I had photoshop and some skillz, I'd add in the tumbleweeds and the holster on her belt. Plus, I'd edit out the guy on his cell phone.


I'd say the photographer is painting a pretty nice portrait (mixed-media metaphors are fun!) of what an antitrust chief does. She's bringing the rule of law back to this here town, where for too long the common folk have been forced to use Internet Explorer.

Things I find interesting about the photo:

1) The sheriff is a woman, at the center of the shot, and looks to be much more confident than any of the men around her
2) The attitude seems to be pro-anti-trust. Which is somewhat unusual in modern American mainstream media.
3) Look at the giant Polish sign! Don't forget about Poland!

My favorite quote from the accompanying article:

Inside her office, her tough image is reinforced by the presence of a cube-shaped, metallic sculpture of prickly rose thorns, and a brick on her conference table with the word “no” inscribed on it.

Can I PLEASE have an office like that!?

Am I to go through the weary round again?

Sometimes, insomnia happens. It comes in bursts, usually a week at a time or so. As it is currently 5:03 AM and I have yet to sleep, I must assume that now is one of those times. A few days ago I went to sleep at 6:00 AM; I think tonight I might outdo even that dismal affair.

When I'm in the grip of this condition, I always feel like I should be able to use my extra waking hours productively. Sadly, that is never the case. When I can't sleep, I also can't think, or do anything useful. I stare at screens, blankly. I skim books and magazines and newspapers, never taking in any of the words. Eventually, I eat, but I don't really enjoy it.

Whine, whine, whine. I should just medicate myself and be done with it, but I don't really trust pills, especially those that affect my sleep cycle. Those particular pills and I have a spotty history. Remind me to tell you about the time that I took one Benadryl and passed out on the floor of an Irish pub. Hilarity, of course, ensued, as it is wont to do.

PDX

I am sitting in the airport in Portland, Oregon, having reached the end of my five-day vacation visiting Violesbian in Eugene. The trip was (has been) excellent, and is rather neatly chronicled by the new items in my luggage and on my person:

Approximately one pint of blackberries, picked in the alleys and along the streets of Eugene, in the Friendly Neighborhood
Assorted gifts of the handmade variety, purchased at the Saturday Market in Eugene (details of which will not be divulged until they have been presented)
6 books from Powell's "City of Books" in Portland
1 dozen (correction: 11) doughnuts from Voodoo Doughnut in Portland

And innumerable cat hairs from Isabelle and Sophie, affixed to my sweatshirt.

My flight boards--I must cut this shorter than intended. Thanks for the free wireless, Portland Airport!

Quick hit

Today, in the tourist town of Sisters, Oregon, a small boy dressed like Adam Lambert told me I looked like John Lennon.

Messy

The inside of my head is a mess. Thoughts are disjointed:

That woman who was murdered at Yale was engaged to be married to an acquaintance of mine from high school. I still think of him as about 14, since I haven't seen him in years; I never met her. I have a very good friend studying at Yale right now and I don't want her to be murdered. I don't want anyone to be murdered. I hate that this might be some kind of serial killer of women students.


A very close relative may have prostate cancer. A more distant relative definitely has bladder cancer and is having many organs removed. Mom's prognosis isn't the greatest right now either.


I intended to keep this list of disjointed thoughts going a lot longer, but they've all gotten tangled.

The System Is Down

I have been having problems with the internet. Not the usual problems, like I can't go to sleep because there's so much on it, or commenters on various blogs make me want to punch holes in the walls, or similar there-is-too-much-internet-and-there-are-too-many-people issues. No, these recent problems have been of a more technical nature.

Exhibit A: Facebook News Feed. Yesterday and today, Facebook decided to recycle a bizarre selection of posts from the last week and tell me that those were the ONLY posts I'd be allowed to see. They were non-chronological, and mostly came from people whose posts I generally ignore.

Exhibit B: Gmail. Yesterday, I couldn't get a secure connection, and so my browser flipped out and kept shouting long strings of letters and numbers at me in the place that usually says "http://mail.google.com/mail/" A few days ago it was down entirely. Today it disconnected me in the middle of writing an email and refused to save a draft or allow me to attach files.

Exhibit C: Pepvan. For those of you who have never had the joy of working with the system that runs basically all left-of-center voter-related campaigns, you won't understand. It's a steaming pile of system errors and buttons that lead nowhere, held together with twine and silly putty. Don't get me wrong; it's far, far better than non-computerized systems, and it's a godsend for keeping track of not just voters but also volunteers, but it's got problems. If any of you are programmers, you could probably do a great deal of good for political leftists by donating your time to fixing it. I hear the Republican version is sleek, smooth, and elegant.

Exhibit D: Safari: sometimes the scroll bar is missing. I don't know why. I just have to quit and reopen or there's no way for me to see anything below the top of a web page.

Exhibit E: Adium: Normally a wonderful instant message program (handling my gchat(s), AIM, Facebook chat, and the like), it has decided of late to stutter. I will receive an "instant" message at 5:17 PM. Then again at 7:08, the same message, no longer instant. 7:42, another reprise. 9:30, a final encore. This all seems to be through Facebook chat, so perhaps it is related to the eternally looping news feed. Irregardless, its iteration is irritation itself!

How's that for some vocalic alliteration? Did it cause you to miss the fact that irregardless isn't a word at all? It sure fooled my spellcheck...

Word of the day!

The title of my last blog entry, in conjunction with a recent game of Facebook Scrabble with Z2, reminds me of a great word I never really have the chance to use:

fewmets


Why doesn't that come up more in conversation? Anyone?