Ya gotta laugh, or else ya'd cry

New titles, contributed by various people, for the visual guides from the Department of Homeland Security, Highlights include,

"if the building is falling down, hide under your desk and pretend nothing is happening. go to your happy place."

"If rap music comes on the radio, please act appropriately."

Thread on Yayhooray
Ready.gov Parody site
Cafeshops t-shirts
Another thread on the subject

Justifiable Violence

Goddammit. The next person that opens the door that keeps the heat in my office is getting my travel mug aimed at their head.

P.S. Shutting the outside door all the way wouldn't hurt either.

Irrational Exuberance

My accounting book displays irrational exuberance. The start of each chapter profiles a perky entrepreneur, typically a dot-commer. It's all very upbeat and we're gonna party like it's 1999. (Oh wait, people were all worried about Y2K then. Well, the economy looked good anyway.)

I'm used to lousy economic times. I was in elementary school during the seventies, and was very aware of the adult anxiety surrounding me, even if I didn't quite understand all the causes. Everyone worried about money. When I entered middle school, school programs were cut. When I entered high school, school programs were cut. When I went off to college, I think financial aid had already been cut. When I entered the job market in the early nineties, my prospects were bleak.

Those few years in my lifetime when the economy wasn't taking a swan dive into the toilet, those were good years. It was nice to live in an era that felt prosperous. Too bad it couldn't last longer than it did. For once I'm doing the right thing for the times, I'm biding my time at my current job, and acquiring new skills (hence the accounting class) while waiting for the economy to bottom out.

It's okay for me, I'm used to it, but what about my younger classmates? They had some reason to believe that the economy might be in good shape when they entered the job market, that they might have a chance to be one of those perky entrepreneurs. I'm sorry it didn't work out for them.

Soon the ice weasels will come...

One of my coworkers promised her mate we'd have spring by March 1. Ha! Let's look at the weather report:

Tonight: Chance of flurries.
Tomorrow night: Good chance of snow.
Friday: Chance of snow.
Saturday: Chance of flurries.
Sunday: Chance of flurries.
Monday: Chance of sleet.

I am so sick of winter. The Gods of winter have had their day, we can move on now.

I can't even get enthusiastic about seed starting.

In praise of screwing up...

Oh, good quote from Cary Tennis of Salon

"You must be willing to screw up a little. Screwing up can be the smartest thing you ever did. It's OK to screw up. It's OK to embarrass yourself. Consider: This is your life and your soul we're talking about! This is not some school play! It would be a far greater sin for you to drift along in a haze of moderation than to start a fire or two. Go fuck some things up."

Booby prize aka Enterprise sucks.

Started to watch an episode of Enterprise this morning, (which has become known as "Booby Prize" in our household). I think we managed to watch all of fifteen minutes, and I'm not sure we should even waste time and energy on the rest, this one's a dog. T'Pol has an illness that's obviously meant to be an AIDS metaphor (life-threatening, contracted during the stigmatized practice of mindmelding). Just to make it clear that she's not queer, excuse me, not a mindmelder, she contracted the disease against her will. So, she's an innocent victim. Excuse me while I make gagging sounds.

In contrast, there's a lighter storyline dealing with Doctor Phlox meeting up with one of his wives. Tee-hee-hee! Look! He has three wives! Nudge, nudge, wink, wink!

Speaking as someone who knows people with polyamorous relationships, I find it funny that this is clearly considered so far removed from reality that it becomes material for comic relief while being gay can't be talked about at all.

Interestingly, Phlox and his second wife do remind me of a lot of polyamorous people I know. Very friendly, very intent on the doings of everyone in their rather large intimate circle, eerily reasonable about the fact that they're having sexual relations with a small tribe, and wanting a great deal of discussion to make sure everyone participating is happy about it. Maybe all polyamorous people are really Denobians?

But seriously, is Star Trek ever going to grow up and have a normal gay character? I imagine that some day the Enterprise lands on a planet where a certain percentage of the population engages in same sex relations. "Cap'n, we've never seen an alien species do this before, it's not in any of the ship's databanks. Think the Vulcans would have anything"?

Sea creatures and snakes.

What could be finer than going to see moon jellyfish at the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History? That's what the spousal unit and I did on Saturday.
Much to our surprise (and relief) the place was not packed to the gills. I think it has to do with it being the end of school vacation week, parents have had all the quality time they can take with their kids, and are ready to tell them to go out and play in traffic.

The very nice volunteer took the milk snake out of the display cage for us and let us handle it. Wow! Beautiful little snake, and very friendly. A tiny, obviously awed child got to handle it too, the snake loved her fleece jacket and kept trying to settle on it.

The volunteer said that milk snakes are all over the place, you just don't see them because they're so shy. I'm going to start looking more closely as I go hiking...

Borders get-together

Other news included getting together at Borders for a CapeMops event on Sunday afternoon. Not much to mention, we did the usual sit around and talk. Borders was very crowded, mysteriously so. People seem to now be using it as a real "coffee shop" sort of hangout which I was glad to see. I even saw two people playing chess at one of the tables. If we must have chain stores, we could do much worse.