I got a nice high score playing Bejeweled on my phone during the train ride home.

Then I checked my RSS feeds and found a post from author Neil Gaiman, linking to this crrrrazy video.

For this crrrrrazy song.

Which I now love.

“If my cat looks scared /
it’s because it knows /
it won’t /
be going to heaven…”

It’s been around for a while, but it’s new to me. And it makes me smile, which is important when I’m this tired and beginning to feel depressed (just because I’m stressed a little… lack of sleep. I hope. Disturbing “I = loser” thoughts have been running through my head lately, so it’s time to put some of that, “hey - I am a smart cookie!” cheerleading to work.)

Goodnight. Kind of. More tomorrow.

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I left my work dinner at 8 so I’d get home at a decent hour.
I got home at nine and - though it seems like five minutes have passed - it’s now 10 pm.

In a nutshell: I am tired.

So… something scary I read today:

MANCHESTER – Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich yesterday said the country will be forced to reexamine freedom of speech to meet the threat of terrorism.

Gingrich, speaking at a Manchester awards banquet, said a “different set of rules” may be needed to reduce terrorists’ ability to use the Internet and free speech to recruit and get out their message.

“We need to get ahead of the curve before we actually lose a city, which I think could happen in the next decade,” said Gingrich, a Republican who helped engineer the GOP’s takeover of Congress in 1994.

I’ve already read two articles about this particular speech and both have jumped to the “Gingrich wants first amendment abolished” conclusion. I’m not saying that’s incorrect, but it’s just the kind of thing that creates a wave of exaggeration and untruth as it radiates out. The synopsis on BoingBoing was “Newt Gingrich has called for America to tear up the Constitution and throw out the first amendment, because free speech helps terrorism. Didn’t this guy take an oath to uphold the Constitution? This is a new low, even for Gingrich.”

Of course, using this hyperbole - “tear up the Constitution” - makes for great quotes and creates heightened drama for discussion. As I’m displaying even now. I don’t know if this is good or bad, honestly.

In one sense, it’s putting words in someone’s mouth and I think it’s not a good way to play things if you ultimately want to come out on top; putting words in someone else’s mouth makes you some brand of liar. Then again, making the story sensational (even a teensy bit) pretty much guarantees that the core issue - in this case, the first amendment - will be discussed more purposefully in the very near future. People will ask questions. People will think. That’s a good thing.

Ah, well. No more of this. Damn, I’m tired. I hope I can fall asleep naturally - this sleeping pill stuff is getting tired and I don’t want to have to rely on them.

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The answer to that question in our family seems to be, “pointless arguments that ruin the day.”

I take some comfort in the fact that mine is not the only family with this particular flavor of dysfunction. I recall that last year, we had a departmental dinner for work at a restaurant where the dishes were served “family style.” My co-worker asked, “Served family style? What does that mean?” to which I replied, “Perhaps it means they serve the food along with a disparaging remark?”

He laughed heartily and reassured me that this is not an isolated experience.

Anyway, there was petty bitchiness all day and I ended up getting lectured about “showing respect” - which I was too angry to respond to then, but I wish I’d said, “Don’t talk to me about respect until I can get through one day with this family WITHOUT someone calling me a bitch.”

If it comes up tomorrow, though, I will. It’s bullshit. I prepared this dinner today and only asked for help with things I really could not do with this weak and aching left hand. I mean, here’s the site of the incision:

It’s still swollen and I have very little range of motion since the tendons and muscles are really tight from the surgery and from being stuck in a cast for a month. The skin on my left forearm is dry and peeling and I keep slathering it in Kiehl’s Ultimate Strength Hand Salve. It’s good stuff.

Anyway, I was so upset after dinner/dessert, I went to bed at 8:30 and then woke up at midnight, did my first bit of holiday shopping online and just now turned on “The Lady from Shanghai” with Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth (trivia: the movie was made towards the end of their marriage . According to trivia on IMDb.com, “they were constantly fighting at the time and (some say as a comeuppance to Hayworth) he made her cut off most of her long, luxurious red hair and dye it bright platinum blonde.”)

Oh, and why does it have to suck to live in the United States sometimes?? Penguin UK is publishing six classics with “pure white, art-quality covers for people to design their own book jackets.” I read about it on BoingBoing.

Maybe I’ll place an order with a UK bookseller. It’s just annoying, though, that I can’t get them here (yet, anyway.)

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…and I’d like to share this picture of my hand.

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It’s mildly humorous that just as I’ve read and re-read the Wired article on “the new atheism” and the TIME cover story along the same lines and added the Dawkins (”The God Delusion”) and Harris (”Letters to a Christian Nation”) and Dennett (”Breaking the Spell”) books to my Amazon wishlist, my father is reading “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief” by Francis Collins and told me he wants to read Lewis’s “Mere Christianity” - both of which are books credited with turning atheists into pillars of Christian virtue.

Now, my father has never professed to be an atheist, but he has been far from religious my entire life. If he went to church with us three times in my memory (other than a first communion ceremony, etc.) that was a lot. I hate to say it, but it seems to be something that comes hand-in-hand with a sense of your own mortality.

The idea/thought that “this is it” isn’t particularly uplifting and is even less so when you’re not 16 or 22 or 50. Thus, I can see the justification or need in people’s minds to feel that something lives on - that some element or essence of them “goes to a better place” and that death isn’t really the end.

But that’s not what I believe. I believe that death is the end. Period. End of story. I’m not superstitious and I don’t believe in a larger something. Doing all this reading lately, I’ve been reading about the Brights; it’s a cruddy elitist name for a group, but the ideas are in-line with my beliefs:

What is a bright?

* A bright is a person who has a naturalistic worldview
* A bright’s worldview is free of supernatural and mystical elements
* The ethics and actions of a bright are based on a naturalistic worldview

from the Bright’s home page

All this recent media coverage and discussion of the topics of atheism, rationalism, religion, etc. have been polarizing people and making this a more “in your face” topic, though it’s still not something people like to discuss.

It means that you’re either going to have to politely accept differences in beliefs or start arguing since people feel strongly about these issues.

Perhaps as a result of this focus on the topics, I’ve felt more than usual lately that my beliefs are discriminated against, much like devout/evangelical Christians probably felt prior to Bush 42 taking office. All of a sudden, for examples, it’s cool(er) for teens to be “Jesus Freaks” or members of the “God Squad”; I remember from high school that being religious opened you up to ridicule and torment.

While I have not been ridiculed or tormented for not believing as I do and for thinking as I do, I have felt/experienced moments of discomfort in conversations with friends/acquaintances who are otherwise open to all manner of differences. So be it.

Anyway, this Brights’ website has some helpful info - how to respond to a GBY (”God Bless You”) or other such everyday matters. I like their simple suggestion of saying, “Salud” when someone sneezes. I used to, but then got into the “bless you” (sans god) habit (when in Rome…)

Here’s some info from another site on the origin of the term which is helpful since out of context, it is elitist. That’s not a good thing when creating new nomenclature or neologism in general - if you want a word to be picked up in the general lexicon of the people, you’ve got to make it comfortable to use.

There is a distinct lack of a good, simple and positive label to give to all those people who look on life without the curse of belief in supernatural forces. The usual terms we are familiar with have become bogged down with debates over definition and have become associated with negative ideas…

The term was coined by Paul Geisert and Mynga Futrell.

The word is simply a borrowed word. It isn’t an acronym of anything (please don’t try to make it into one), it isn’t an allusion to some mythical or fictional character, it hasn’t got any baggage at all. That is the point… It is an adjective, but now we are using it as a noun. We are not telling the world we are bright, we are saying we call ourselves Brights.

Being a bright means you do not take a supernatural view on reality. It is very simple. It isn’t a religion or a faith position, being a bright requires no faith. It is a reasonable answer to the question, “What is your religion?”

“Being a bright means you do not take a supernatural view on reality.” That’s what I’m talking about.

I hope this doesn’t become conversation over Thanksgiving dinner; I will want to read up on my Dawkins, Dennett and Harris before we launch into that debate.

Now I am tired and want to enjoy sleeping without the friggin’ cast up my elbow. Mmmm. Glorious stretching.

P.S. I realize that having the “deity of the day” box over on the right here might seem hypocritical. I think it’s amusing to see the variety of gods and goddesses that polytheistic religions have created to credit/thank for almost everything. It’s fun trivia, like a word of the day or other random fact. Maybe I’ll decide to remove it as some point. Maybe not.

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THE CAST CAME OFF TODAY!!!

I sat there, looking at my hand. It was sort of yellowish and misshapen (from the cast squishing my hand) and the skin was/is SUPER dry. So much so that I was able to peel layers off of the back of my hand and my palm. Ewwwww. It truly looks like those mummies preserved in ice or marshes that they show on the Discovery Channel.

The incision actually looks OK. My doctor had his technician take some new X-rays; the doc said that the bone healing is “excellent” and that the wound is healing very well indeed.

I am allowed to move my fingers and start small motions like making a fist (though I can’t just yet) and practice wiggling them. For the next two weeks, I have to wear a regular old brace, and I have another visit on Dec. 7th. Then we’ll talk about physical therapy.

Tomorrow is preparation day. I will need help, but it will be a lot easier to bear since I can use my elbow.
_____

R.I.P. Robert Altman.

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Tonight, my friend told me something that really made me feel sort of crappy - not because it was necessarily a bad thing, but because it made me feel totally ignorant and naive about how I was viewed/treated by the people I considered to be my friends back in my college/bookstore days.

I’m sitting here and it’s making me want to cry as I relive all sorts of interactions and conversations that take on a whole new meaning in light of this awareness… and I feel like not much of anything from that time in my life was real.

Honestly, there was nothing going on - I was working and going to school and shunning parties and get-togethers because I don’t like being around drunk people, esp. when I’m sober, and was really too busy to have a social life… so those years are pretty empty in my mind since I was either writing papers or working retail. Well, were empty since I’m remembering all kinds of shit now. Gaaargh. I feel like I might vomit.

I’m going to watch “Barry Lyndon” now - and then buy a new iTunes giftcard for myself tomorrow so I can download some of the music on the soundtrack. That Kubrick sure knew how to pick music.

By the way, I’m also finding myself becoming perilously close to being a weird sort of quasi-obsessive Neil Gaiman fan. And I’m coming to it in a roundabout way. Most fans of Gaiman came to know him through the Sandman graphic novels, then followed him into his novels and novellas and movies and miniseries. I started with a novel, then a movie, then a miniseries, then a novella, the next novels, THEN the Sandman graphic novels and the most recent book of short stories. Oh, and his blog. It’s a really ‘human’ blog - which doesn’t surprise me, but makes me very happy.

I have a bit of a brain crush here, I must admit. He’s British, #1, and through his novels and blog entries, it’s clear he has a similar (ok, better and keener) appreciation for and understanding of the odd and absurd as I (#2). Also through his writing, it’s quite apparent that he is intelligent and well-read (or does good research) since there are numerous literary, cultural and religious references filling his books to the brim (#3). And he’s funny (#4). He seems like he would be an awesome person to sit down and chat with over a pot of tea.

If only I could find his shifted-in-time doppelganger (a little closer to my age and geography); I’d probably end up a stalker or, perhaps, the pathetic friend with an unrequited crush. Goodness knows I’ve never been that before (the pathetic friend, not the stalker)(to clarify, I have never been a stalker)(really).

Well, that was about five minutes of not feeling shitty since I was distracted. But I’m not now. Movie… book… distractions ahoy.

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Beyond the fact that I loved White Teeth, The Autograph Man and On Beauty, I now have even more respect for this writer for what she’s said about reading. I got this info from BoingBoing. They, too, receive a gold star.

From an interview with novelist Zadie Smith on KCRW’s Bookworm program:

But the problem with readers, the idea we’re given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principle is, “I should sit here and I should be entertained.” And the more classical model, which has been completely taken away, is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has a piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don’t know, who they probably couldn’t comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and that the artist gives you. That’s the incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you practice reading, and you work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it. It’s an old moral, but it’s completely true.

P.S. Had a really great night of hibachi and sake (I had one glass and decided to quit while I was ahead) and toasts and laughter and hot chocolate with my friends. We’re hoping to make this an every other month event since it’s so incredibly enjoyable. And whene’er I have my own place again, there will be a dinner with this group. Huzzah.

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More rain in the Mid-Atlantic tonight. I am loving it. I want to curl up with a cup of tea and a book, but several pounds of hard plaster on my left forearm are making that impossible.

Allow me to share some little joys instead.

Joy #1: the mental_floss blog.

It doesn’t need to be the day of the posting for you to find something interesting to read. Go back through the archives and read some craaaazy shit. But interesting crazy, not crazy crazy.

Joy #2: Seth Godin’s blog.

The link above takes you to a fun little entry about lambchops - not the meat, not the puppet, but as a descriptive term for a certain kind of person. A nice person. “A kind, thoughtful person. Someone who keeps her promises. Someone who does great work but doesn’t always brag about it. Someone you’d like to work with again.” Ties in nicely to an upcoming business book called The Power of Nice

Joy #3: The podcast I participated in at work.

It’s not something I do regularly, but I was a guest to talk about the mother country, Poland, in our overview of destinations for 2007. w00t!

Joy #4: A busy pre-holiday weekend.

Tomorrow night is Survivor’s Night (with the girls from my old job, some of whom are still there - for the laughs, I hope) at a hibachi steakhouse (though not Mt. Fuji, sadly). I have a feeling we’re going to laugh until we cry and I am exceedingly pleased to have this to look forward to. On Saturday, I am having lunch with my friend Theresa and my friend Michelle’s mom. Michelle is living in England, so it’s a nice way to kind of be “in the loop.” Afterwards, we might watch a movie or talk about Theresa’s wedding ceremony. Then I’ll be going food shopping with my mom for Thanksgiving preparations, and on Sunday, I’m seeing my mom’s friend, the colorist, to do something fun with my color.

Joy #5: Cast Removal Tuesday!

I’m hoping that everything is OK and that the doctor deems me ready for a brace and releases my arm so I can unbend my elbow. I’m leaving work a little early that day, so I hope he frees me so I can be comfortable while slaving over a hot stove on Wednesday, when I’m taking a floating holiday to prep for Thanksgiving.

Joy #6: Cooking for Thanksgiving.

IMHO (and from three years of using it), Alton Brown’s turkey brining recipe is the best. Easily customizable with other herbs and aromatics, though his version is lovely. Yes, the Kosher salt makes a difference (large crystals = greater surface area = draws moisture out of meats more effectively). Or…

By soaking meat in a salt brine, the moisture loss percentage is reduced to as little as 15%. During brining, muscle fibers absorb liquid. Some of this added moisture is lost during cooking, but the meat retains some liquid for a juicier meat. The salt causes muscle fibers to unwind and swell. Protein structures are broken which allows water to bind to the proteins. The water will get
trapped in the proteins. During cooking, the proteins tighten and
squeeze water out. As long as the meat is not overcooked, a juicy meat will grace your dinner table.

There’s a great pumpkin cheesecake recipe on Good Housekeeping’s site. We made that last year, too.

There are also some great ideas from Mark Bittman on The Splendid Table site - Mark Bittman’s Minimalist Thanksgiving. Looks good.

Now I’m getting settled in with a book.

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I’m going to lie down with a heating pad since my back is killing me today. In lieu of a personal post, here’s something really funny that came through on the mental_floss RSS feed.

From an actual Craigs’ List ad:

I’m looking for a man to photophosphorylate me all night long. - w4m

“I will fondle your vesicles while you caress my golgi body. My stroma is leaking all over the place. We can do it in the alpha or beta configuration, whichever you prefer. You whip me with your flagellum, tubulin subunits flying everywhere. We can make a mess as I’ve hired some lysosomes to clean up after. Please have a smooth endoplasmic reticulum but know that I like it rough, if you know what I mean. I also prefer my ribosomes bound… tight. Spin me round with your basal body and make sure it’s turgid. Pump me up and down your concentration gradient, letting the chemiosmosis take control. I can go both ways, just like an amphipathic phospholipid. Do you like aerobic respiration as much as I do?

Let me know if this makes you secrete.”

I feel like I should link all the cell parts to definitions so people can get a refresher course in high school bio.

• photophosphorylate = to add a phosphate using light
• vesicles = small blisters filled with liquid that contains virus particles
• golgi body = a net-like structure in the cytoplasm [sort of the amniotic fluid of cells) of animal cells
• stroma = connective tissue framework of an organ, gland, or other structure
• tubulin subunits = a subunit is a single protein molecule that assembles with other protein molecules to form a larger protein; tubulin is one such protein
• lysosomes = not to be confused with liposomes; structures found within the cytoplasm of cells which contain digestive enzymes; responsible for ridding the cell of debris
• endoplasmic reticulum = a membrane network within the cytoplasm of cells involved in the synthesis, modification, and transport of cellular materials
• ribosomes = tiny particle composed of RNA and protein; the site of protein synthesis
• basal body = [phallic reference alert!] a short cylindrical array of microtubules and other proteins found at the base of a eukaryotic flagellum
• concentration gradient = the difference in concentration in two parts of a system (not though concentration, but parts per liter concentration)
• chemiosmosis = the mechanism through which ATP is produced in the inner membrane of the mitochondrion
• amphipathic phospholipid = a phospholipid (lipid = fatty molecule, phospholipid = fatty + phosphate) that is both hydrophobic and hydrophillic (attaching to and repelled from water)
• aerobic respiration = chemical process in which oxygen is used to make energy from carbohydrates

Nerdiness expended for the night.

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