Cult · of · Solri · Invictus

Mol needs to get out out more as she is in danger of losing the plot.

I seem to develop a crush on every half decent guy that I spend more than half an hour with!  The lanky climber with the hair, the cute Capoera guy with the green tea fixation and the PerfectGentleman<tm> who I spent Saturday night with.
Lord, this is the kind of thing that happened in the 1950s isn't it?!

One thing I don't miss about not having much of a weekend social life are the wandering hands... Did that EVER work, boy?  Did any girl who was sober and worth the effort just turn round and through herself at you?!?

I do like arriving home when the sun is coming up though.

Maybe I should do what my friend and I were in hysterics about the other week.  We were talking about how often it is that the location decides the date of a wedding.  Places get booked up so fast that they will phone you with the three weekends they have spare, rather than you choosing the exact date that you want.
We decided that I should book the wedding location and THEN find someone to marry.  2012 is a good year I reckon.  I think there's a film script in that somewhere.  Richard Curtis where are you?!

(1) Whom did you see?  vs  (2) Who did you see?

Over the years I've got used to the idea that 'whom' in (1) is used in very formal English and has a very stiff ring to it. Even grammar books (Understanding And Using English Grammar by Betty S. Azar for one) point it out. But the other day a good friend of mine told me that it's still a compulsory norm and condidered a sign of good education and upbringing. She gave an example of an American family she was visiting a couple of years ago who persistently corrected their son every time he said 'who' instead of 'whom'.

What do you think and is this the same for American and British English speakers?

Thank you.

Today was a low-key vacation day. fractal9091 gave us gifts he’d brought: a Sega game collection on PS2 for D., toffee for R., and a netsuke-sized tiger’s eye elephant from Malaysia for me. Mostly D. and fractal9091 then spent the rest of the day playing the Sega games - Sword of Vermilion until evening, and now Phantasy Star III. We also walked over to a neighbor’s house so D. could play in the afternoon, and went out and looked at the stars just now.

sal93 very gently reminded me that I am remiss in one of my duties. This weekend having been the 4th of July, it was standard for ajrose93 to do a post on patriotism and the ideals that founded this nation. Well I am not entirely remiss: I went to see a documentary that opened quite deliberately on the 4th because it was about another man, another writer, who shared many of the same values as Jonathan, if a little more explosively.

The film, Gonzo, about the life and legacy of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, was funny and exhilarating and sad and provocative as was the man himself. Using much previously unseen footage and tape recordings, the filmmakers did not shy away from the less flattering aspects of a complex personality. But writers tend to be a difficult sort and oddly similar in many traits (my god, are they all packrats?) and that is the source of their artistic magnetism. They think things more deeply, feel them more deeply and are therefore wounded more deeply.

Thompson, like Jonathan, took his patriotism very seriously. For them, the past 6-plus years have not simply been unpleasant, they’ve been downright despair-inducing. That brave men and women have been sent into the field to fight not to defend this nation but for economic predation alone with no concern given to their wellbeing now or down the road, that torture has been not just condoned but treated as some act of courage instead of the cowardice it is, that the Constitution that many fought and died for has been used like a table napkin burned in these two men like the phosphorous grenades we hurled at the people of Falluja.

As George McGovern observed, Thompson’s writing was the least factual but most truthful of any reporting. Because Thompson was not simply a reporter but a philosopher, as Jonathan was not simply a novelist but a prophet. And while we may not, in the short term, be able to affect political change, understanding, remembering and spreading the deeper truth is a good and honorable and, yes, patriotic, act.

So I hope y'all had a fun and safe 4th of July but I also hope you thought a little on something more than just sun and barbeque and fireworks. Oh, and I didn’t tell you about the bats. I figured you’d find out soon enough.

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2008/07/07/the-dismal-guest-blogger/

http://www.feministe.us/blog/?p=7697

Hello everyone – this is your newest guest blogger, reporting for duty! My name is Allison Martell, and I write about feminism and economics at Economic Woman. I also contribute to the group blog over at Shameless Magazine. Like Shameless, I’m based in Toronto, where I supplement my stats homework with cycling, vegetarian cooking, and productivity geekery.

I started Economic Woman in reckless moment shortly after WAM! 2008. I say reckless because I’m only marginally qualified to write about this stuff – most econ bloggers are professors, or at least graduate students, and my only relevant experience is as a freelance journalist and undergraduate economics student. But economics can be a lonely discipline for a woman, a feminist, really any sort of leftist. I wanted a place to chronicle my own intellectual development, and I also wanted to try to bridge the gap between the feminist and economic blogospheres.

Thanks for all the great input – you folks have made planning my posts much easier. Over the next couple weeks I’ll do my best to address your questions and suggestions. I’ll also point you towards some further reading and online resources about economics and feminist economics, and introduce you to some other fabulous bloggers.

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/010414.html

Ars Technica's Jon Stokes on "IT Consumerization and the Future of Work":

[T]he cheap, ubiquitous transistors provided by Moore's Curves have completely changed the sites--and by this I mean the actual physical spaces--in which we develop our sensibilities and expectations about what technology can and should do, as well as how it should behave. The end result is that the office has gone from being the place where you spend time with cutting-edge technology, to a technological boneyard where you're perpetually trapped about three years in the past. Meanwhile, the new tech Meccas are retail spaces like Best Buy and the Apple Store, where you go to run your fingers over the future, and maybe take a piece of it home with you. The end result is that consumers bring to the office the expectations that they've developed through their interaction with consumer hardware, and in most cases those expectations are frustrated by the reality of corporate IT.

This phenomenon is also at work on the network, where users develop their sense of how networked apps (messaging, collaboration, and archival) should look and function through daily contact with the lively ecosystem of consumer-driven Web 2.0 applications. Next to something like Facebook or Google Maps, most corporate intranets have an almost Soviet-like air of decrepit futility, like they're someone's lame attempt to imitate for a captive audience what's available on the open market.

Stokes isn't dismissing corporate IT departments' reasons for handling things as they do, so those of you who spend your days trying to keep your incorrigible users from downloading network-trashing viruses from AOL Instant Messenger can lean back from the let-me-tell-you comment you were probably about to post. He is, however, observing that as virtualization becomes easier and easier, and the attractions of "cloud computing" more substantial, more and more business users are going to demand that their IT departments allow them greater individual discretion over their work-related technology than they've enjoyed in the past. In an increasing number of fields, not just the tech sector, IT flexibility will be a significant recruiting factor. Certainly companies that enjoin their employees to master the Internet and develop forward-looking business models while simultaneously chaining those same users to locked-down computers and noisome net-nanny programs are going to find themselves falling behind in the struggle for talent and innovation. This is obvious from the trenches; it will be interesting to see which companies, particularly which media companies, come to find it obvious from the executive suite.

Look at all my foods! Still, the fact that I cannot get snacks every time I axe vexes me deeply. I have written a letter to Senators Clinton and Schumer, and to Obama, axing that they look into this situation. Also 7 on Your Side, the Give Me A Break douche, and the president of the co-op. And the New York Times.

This is like that "water water everywhere but you can't make him drink" saying, ya know?

I have occasionally rhapsodised on the joys of pimple squeezing - oh man, this one time I had these two massive ones side by side on the crown of my head, and I popped them by feel and they exploded up through my hair in showers of pus and it was AWESOME - and I'm in general pretty comfortable with the squishy, smelly processes of the healthy human body.

Which is to say, regardless of what advertising sells you, we are not, nor are meant to be, made out of shiny, impermeable plastic.

This leads to conversations like the following:

kphoebe: Oh, gross.
kphoebe: So I just leaned my forehead wistfully against the window as I stared out over the bay.
kphoebe: And when I pulled back, there was a little greasy patch smeared on the glass.
revena: Ahhh, hygeine! Do you ever squeeze the pores next to your nose in case something might come out?
kphoebe: I never thought of that!
revena: I never had either, until Jameson did it one time while I was in the bathroom.
revena: I WAS ENTRANCED.
kphoebe: Excuse me, I have to go do some science.