In the News: Be Afraid

Don’t Talk to Invisible Strangers – New York Times and IMs: What’s a Mother to Do? – Washington Post—goodie! More fearmongering article to annoy me. It’s not that I don’t believe that people (not just kids, but anyone) can get into trouble on the Internet. Hell, be honest. Anyone can get into trouble anywhere by sharing the wrong information with the wrong person. Only the clinically paranoid would conclude that people should never ever talk to anyone else as a result. Yet the conclusion of these sorts of articles is a catalogue of fears and a long list of don’ts that ultimately result in families severely limiting access or taking away access altogether. Just once I’d like to see a positive spin on building community and establishing safe online persona. As long as fear sells though, it’s not likely to happen. What we need to be afraid of is how fear is shaping our ways of moving through the world.

Daily Work: Filth Management

For reasons that still aren’t clear to me, I went to bed last night at 10:30, and I actually got hours and hours of great sleep. Woke up completely refreshed, and ready to tackle the world. From this well-rested perspective, I found myself absolutely annoyed with the messiness of my desk in the office. I spent the bulk of the day on a Filth Management Project, cleaning up junk, putting away stuff from lessons that have already published, clearing piles of mail, putting away lingering holiday decorations that had stacked up. It’s so lovely to rediscover your desk. I even found time to take care of some online detritus, cleaning up broken links on the site.

Daily Work: Opossum Trauma Abates

The harrowing night of the opossum yielded to the treacherous morn of the opossum. In other words, when I got up this morning, he was still in the driveway. He hadn’t moved since that rolling over that I noticed at 9 PM last night, so I decided that he had to be dead or extremely stupid. What opossum lies in the same place for that long, especially when there’s very bright sunshine and a barking dog in the neighbor’s yard.

So I called Animal Control, and they told me that they don’t deal with wildlife so I’d need to call a pest control company. Great. So I called the office to alert them to the fact that I was going to have to figure out how to get rid of a opossum before I could come in. Fortunately, Sharon reminded me that my driveway was really the alley, so he was technically a opossum in the street. Lo and behold, the phone book actually has a listing under Public Works labeled “dead animals in the street.” I called them, and they said they’d send someone over. That crazy critter was out of my way in 10 minutes. All hail Public Works!

Sharon says that the lesson we have learned here is that if opossums die in your yard, get a shovel or rake and shove them into the street so that you don’t have to deal with them.

I know it’s heartless of me to think not of the poor soul of the opossum. In his last moments of life, I threw rocks at him and wished him ill. I am currently punishing myself for this evil by building a memorial in the driveway, er, alley. I believe a large stone marker and memorial tree would be best, but I’ll have to get city approval first and the city hall people didn’t sound too pleasant when I talked to them about this shrine.

Musings: Playing Opossum

This evening when I got home from work, I was “greeted” by a opossum, lying across the driveway (artist’s representation). He won’t move. I drove up to him, and he just sat there. I beeped at him. I finally had to drive around him to get the car to the garage. After getting my stuff in the house, I went back out and politely asked him to leave. He didn’t respond. I threw rocks at him, not to hit him but to land near him and convince him to move along. On the third rock, he lifted up his head and looked at me, then put his head back down. I have checked hourly or so all evening, and he is still there. He rolled over a bit around 9 pm, but otherwise, he seems to really like that particular spot in my driveway. What the hell am I supposed to do with a opossum in my driveway? Damn his opossum ass.

Daily Work of a Sort

I finally gave up on the GIC blog publication as it was and put the blog on my other server. So now available for your perusal is tengrrl @ gic.blogshares.com. Other than that, I watched the Oscars and mainly lamented my lackadaisical existence.

Daily Work: Lazy Disappointment

I’m such a wastoid today. I never managed to get any of the things done that I should have this weekend. How do I manage to accomplish so little? I know. By sleeping all day. But I just can’t manage to do anything other than sleep. I did watch the Oscars, and I finally gave up on the GIC blog, which means that I choose somewhere else to put it. I tried and tested over and over, but it just won’t publish to my regular site. I ended up putting it on the Lists of Ten site, but at least it’s live and published now: tengrrl @ gic.blogshares.com.

For Windows: Free! Icons for your website or application at MaxPower

Not sure that I’ll ever need a huge collection of Free! Icons for your website or application at MaxPower, but it’s one of those things I figured that I better save or I’d never be able to find it again.

In the News: Bloggers on the Reasons Behind Their Daily Words

Bloggers on the Reasons Behind Their Daily Words—I’m sure that I’m supposed to comment on why I blog if I link to this article. The answer, sadly, is who knows; but I’ll try to come up with something more reasonable:

• to record various things I’m doing for later use (like this article)
• to describe events and thoughts that are significant to me
• to think about why am I how I am
• to prove I exist

I hope that’s good enough, cuz that’s the best that I can come up with right now.

Daily Work: Dreaming

It seems that the bad thing about sleeping all day and all night is that there can be very strange dreaming that confuses the bejeezus out of the sleeper. Every inch of insecurities and anxiety seemed to spill out into that freaky dream. It was some strange thing that started out with me in some odd sort of room-apartment under my mother’s house, with a rented apartment in the room beside. There was some creditor calling and calling and calling about a bill that I owed and had forgotten. The thing was they were calling this next-door neighbor, who was now thing to find me. And I was trying to hide and pretend it wasn’t going on. I couldn’t deal with the idea that there was a bill outstanding that I needed to pay for, so I was in my room-apartment with the lights all out, trying to move as little as possible so that no one would see me and no one would find me. The additional problem was that there was a surprise party for my brother’s birthday and all the firefighters that he works with were going to come to mom’s house to celebrate, though the party wasn’t to start until 2 AM when they all got off work. They were sure to discover me, and even if they didn’t, I was going to have to come out for the party and then the neighbor would find me for sure. I could hear her and sometimes even see her talking at length to her boyfriend about these phone calls and how worried she was that I didn’t come out of my room-apartment. She was certain that she should have someone come break down the door. I was inside, terrified and petrified. Then somehow in the way that dreams work, I ended up kidnapped and in the middle of a terrorist plot to be executed the day after Thanksgiving. The evil mastermind of this plot was Gary, and if I didn’t cooperate, I was to be killed. The target was a large mall. They slipped in while Gary talked to the deejays from a local radio station that had a big mobile home at the mall for the big shopping day. As the mall opened, people swarmed in, and the supporting terrorists secured all the doors and rounded people up as hostages. People who didn’t cooperate were shot. In the rush, I tried to get to a phone, to call someone for help; but the terrorists kept sweeping and and I was afraid I’d be caught. I found a place to hide in an oddly-shaped bathroom stall. If I crammed over to the side, climbed up on the step, and crouched down a bit, I couldn’t be seen. I stayed there, terrified and hiding, waiting for the terrorists to finish clearing the room and leave so that I could emerge and do something. When I finally had my chance, I was out no more than a few minutes before Gary found me. There were SWAT teams and police crawling all over the place outside. I made some excuse for where and how he’d found me, and he took me to some candy store that he’d chosen for the headquarters. We all had to crouch down behind the tall bins of brightly colored candies to keep out of the police officers’ sight. Still, somehow I got away, and I was trying to save my father. To get him moved and hidden, but we couldn’t find the crutch that he’d dropped. Kerri suddenly showed up to help, but Gary was lurking again, so I had to hide them and come out to distract him before he found daddy and Kerri. He took me to a beauty salon, which he’d moved headquarters to. Oddly, the salon was still operating, doing facials and highlights. Gary insisted that we all get our hair colored for some reason. I tried to barricade myself in the salon bathroom, a small closed room where I thought I’d be safe, but Gary saw me and wouldn’t let me close the door. The police eventually broke in and started shooting at people, but Gary got away and dragged me with him. I managed to get a gun and tried to threaten him, but he laughed at me. I shot him anyway, and the police swarmed in. Somehow he escaped and he was fine, as if I hadn’t shot him at all. I shot him over and over, in a half-dozen different places; but every time, he was unharmed and found me and made me go off with him. I was unable to get rid of him, try as I might. At one point, the police had even covered him with a sheet; and he was up again and off. Over and over. I would shoot him point blank in the head, and he’d still be fine and dragging me with him to the next hiding place. I never escaped. I woke up, but with a horrible feeling, all these things hanging over me—the unpaid bill, hiding from everyone, and that inability to get rid of Gary. Maybe sleeping isn’t helpful after all. I wish I had ambien. That is a sweet, silent, deep sleep. I could have avoided all this.

Daily Work: Sleeping

The best thing about a day off, for any reason, is that you can focus all your attentions on the important work of sleeping all day long. Okay, so it’s a depressive thing to do, but sometimes avoiding everything that is grinding against you like sandpaper by sleeping all day is the only way.