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October 27, 2007
Newly Tattooed
Thanks to John Cothrane at American Ink on Brainerd Road, I have a gorgeous new tattoo. I'm ever so glad he was available yesterday. The one year anniversery of my grandmother's death is Tuesday, the family is coming in town to observe, and I really wanted to mark the visit and anniversery with something kick ass and happy. It's been a year of death, sadly enough, and more unfortunately, the phenomenon hasn't been limited to my family. The tattoo specifically honors my grandmother and grandfather who passed on this year, but I sure don't mind the Day of the Dead imagery honoring others whose funerals I've attended this year.
On another note, I was ever so impressed with American Ink. I was despairing at finding a really consistantly good shop in town, and had even checked out Lone Wolf up in Nashville recently. But John is talented and happily does custom work. He reworked ideas I had sketched out and made them ten times better. The prices are pretty darn fair too. Check it out if you're considering getting work done.
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October 26, 2007
Friday Butterfly
Hopefully this makes up for the fuzzy photo last week! I dug this butterfly out of the bottom of my photo barrel, which hopefully will be replenished as soon as I get my camera batteries charged.
This should be an exciting weekend-- I'm getting a big new tattoo this afternoon which I'm very nervous/excited/hopeful about. I'll let you know how it goes. Plus a great hoard of family is descending upon us, which is always nice.
Hope you all have lovely weekends! And here's this week's Friday Ark!
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October 24, 2007
The Triumphant Return Of Me To Worldess Wednesday
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October 23, 2007
Being an Asshole Makes Me Want Your Product More!
Between all the flurry lately over Comcast throtteling service and now hearing on Yahoo News about yet another crack down by international police on a bit torrent server (this is just a few days after someone spooked torrentspy.com, too), I've got something stuck in my craw.
I'm all for artists getting paid for their music. I would want to get paid if it were me. But as far as it goes with the record companies being such whiney bullies over it not working like it did in the hey day of rock, they need to really try to adjust. People have gotten used to getting their music for free one way or another since I was old enough to have musical tastes of my own, and in industry terms that's a pretty long time. It has it's pros and cons, but honestly, the meaner the Record Industry is the less fuzzy and happy and Sandra Dee I feel about buying CDs from them. It was bad enough that most of my money was going to line the pockets of executives instead of the artists or producers, but now I'm supposed to buy a CD and skip away knowing that money is spent on sueing people? No thanks. I want to buy CDs, but I don't want to support the record industry spending money on trying to sue every one hundredth drop of water coming out of a leaky dam instead of trying to move into the digital age in a legitimate way.
Posted by Spike at 11:09 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
October 19, 2007
Friday Cicada...Or Some Other Really Huge Bug
It's not my best photograph, and it's not hard to tell I ran the thing through Photoshop filters, which I don't like. But I DO really like the fact it was a bug bigger than my thumb, maybe even bigger than my USB drive. Definitly an inch long. They were all over campus for a while, but sadly I found this dead one at night and the lighting in my apartment is...blegh.
What I really like though is that I had this on hand even if it's not my best because I haven't had to time to stalk any animals or Wordless Wednesday scenes this week. Soon all the family is going to be in town and then right after I'll be going on a trip to Denver, so I have to get like two weeks worth of homework and assignments done this week and over my (measly) fall break. I'm having fun researching Arab immigrants working as peddlers in Gilded Age America though, that just doesn't make for quite as grabby blogging as cute animals.
Check out others' cute animals on Friday Ark, though, and I'll catch you next week with my weekly photo blogs.
Posted by Spike at 10:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 16, 2007
Hundreds of Roleplayers Reinact Imaginary Dirty Bomb
This is pretty darn cool. Glad to know someone out there is doing something other than buying duct tape and plastic sheeting to prepare for the terrorist attack de jour.
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October 14, 2007
Sandwiches From Heaven
A faithful reader followed the sandwich recipe I posted a while back and sent me a photo of the finished result. Yum yum!
I made a new sandwich this afternoon for lunch:
Today's excellent sandwich consisted of:
* 1 slice oat bread (I still like Pepperidge Farm breads the best)
* Deli-sliced roast beef
* Even coverage of woostershire sauce
* Enough tomato to cover the whole slice
* Onion
* Italian seasoning
* Black pepper
* Provalone cheese
Follow previous instructions of assemble ingredients, toast until cheese melts and bread is crisp. Fold in half and stuff in face!
I'll have to ask permission to share my dad's new Rueban sandwich system-- I got a small sample the other day and it was pretty damn awesome. It seems Ruebans are the big thing for the mens in my life-- my dad and dear boyfriend have recently discovered they both like them a lot and I'm afraid I've been converted too.
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October 13, 2007
"An Authentic Life" and Women's Power
I picked up the latest issue of Newsweek this afternoon while taking a break from studying and ran across a nice essay by Maria Shriver entitled "An Authentic Life," part of their cover theme focusing on "Women and Power."
She writes, "So many women my age thought that success meant being like a man: wanting the same job a man would have and getting paid the same money-- basically copying the male resume. But I think a lot of us who went that route now feel ambivalent about the sacrifcies we made. ...Did we have to fllow the male role model?"
Shriver brings up a point I entirely agree with. Why shouldn't we question the personal satisfaction we individually get from the two options we theoretically have? One half of the female population is always getting squeezed-- sometimes it's been those those who weren't particularly interested in motherhood and preferred to pursue a career at times when motherhood was the femininity de jour. During other periods, it's been women questioning the worth of trying to juggle kids and a job when they would really like to have the acknowledgment of effort that comes from a career directed at their mothering. Despite the reality of a broad spectrum of interests, feeling on the matter, and actual possibilities as determined by economics, personal or familial values, etc, it seems there is always a tug of war between these two camps.
What neither camp seems to particularly address, however is why women are choosing between either the "male model" or the "feminine model" but men never seem to have much of a choice to make-- there position hasn't changed a whole lot throughout all of the debate, paychecks going down from family sized to a single and expectations on a date aside. I see some men beginning to test the waters of adopting feminine power for a change-- the growing movement of stay-at-home dads, for example, and the occasional news-worthy fit thrown when parenting articles online and in print continue to promote "mom" as the caregiver, rather than including the new "dad" culture.
Still, a perplexing double standard exists, one that results in women's power being marginalized no matter which side of the fence you sit on. As long as we have to choose between the feminine camp associated with Feminist rhetorics of oppression by patriarchy or stifling religious edicts and "family values" (for better or worse, true or untrue, it's an impression that's stuck) and a camp associated with "liberation of women" but only by shrugging off traditional femininity for power-suits, putting off kids, and wondering where our groove went, we are only turning on one another. Real equality and liberation for women AND men will only come when there is no stigma for either gender pursuing the paths once laid out for one or the other.
Posted by Spike at 02:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 12, 2007
Friday Creature or The Floating Dove
I like this photo because even though the powerline is clearly visible, it seems to me that the dove is floating without flying. The amount of blue sky around it lends to that effect.
Can't wait to see today's other Friday Creatures on the ark!
In other news, I've been thinking about change lately. Something I never anticipated about my 20s was that you don't just magically become an adult in the midst of things being the same as they always were. I assumed without really thinking about it that going to college or other such post-high school plans somehow transforms you into a grown up as if by magic wand. It never occured to me that things were going to change, almost constantly, and those changes would force me to play catch up, or even knock me with the wand without my noticing.
The pace of life has speeded up since high school, which I remember as being excruciatingly slow and stretching ahead of me like a dull highway to the horizon. Losing friends and family to disagreements and death in the past year is probably the most obvious source of change and has added a sense of urgency to getting some of the marrow out of life (as Thoreau so excellently put it). Indeed, I'm going to another funeral today which has pushed all this to the forefront of my mind, that of family friend, excellent writer, and inspirational life Ken Smith.
But there are also little things that serve as less stinging, less dramatic reminders that things keep moving. Professors I've known since I was four retiring when it seemed they were as much a fixture at the university as the bizzare 70s architecture, for example. Or the English department faculty/student softball game and after-party, both of which have gone on at least as long as my family has been in Chattanooga, and the later of which is being hosted by someone new this year. Every once and a while something little catches your eye and remindes you that everything is carrying on, but without the comfort of it being in a story about times, people, and places that have already done so. It's a little sad, and a little scary, but it's a reminder to keep participating in life, and to not be left standing stagnant.
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October 10, 2007
Wordless Wednesday
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October 07, 2007
A Mighty Sandwich
I pride myself on making damn good sandwiches. I take them very seriously. There is no reason to eat a boring, tasteless sandwich ever. I think I might start sharing some of the better outcomes here, since I have yet to see much sign of what readers like that I have to offer.
Today's excellent sandwich consisted of:
* 1 slice sourdough bread (I like Pepperidge Farm breads the best)
* Generous spread of dijon mustard
* Thin sliced turkey
* Enough tomato to cover the whole slice
* Onion
* Italian seasoning
* Garlic pepper
* DiGiorno Shredded Three Cheese (scroll to the bottom, on the left, to see the product decription).
Assemble ingredients, toast* until cheese melts and bread is crisp. Fold in half and stuff in face!
*Toasting is key to a good, yummy sandwich. It releases and mingles the flavors better than leaving it cold, and it keeps me from feeling cheated by a cold lunch.
Posted by Spike at 10:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
National Geographic, Politics, and a Little Perspective
The recent October issue of National Georgaphic features a nice little essay by Bill McKibben entitled "Carbon's New Math," on some basics we've heard before as far as slowing global warming goes. But it got me thinking in a way similar articles ands peeches mentioning similar things-- wind power, rising industrial powers, cars-- haven't.
One gracefully simple line, "We'd need to be grown-up enough to have a real conversation about taxes-- say, about switching away from taxes on things we like (employment) to taxes on things we hate (global warming)."
I used to be pretty into politics. I'm sure I've got my e-mail address on more activist or political agenda websites than most-- Amnesty, HRC, MoveOn.org. But I got tired of the endless arguing that seems to fufill Newton's third law of motion "Every action has an equal and opposite reaciton." I've been drawn more and more over the years to disciplines and subjects that approach the same kind of topics I hear about in political circles, but without all the bickering. History, geography, and English lit seem a litlte bit more willing to look at why we make the choices we make without getting quite so defensive. And it's really, really refreshing. I don't mind studying the history of medieval Europe, for example, even if most everyone was even more religious, superstitious, and conservative than the wingnuts to drive me nuts today, because with the distance of a few centuries and some really good stories, it's a lot easier to accept that hey, God was a big deal to these people, and ideas about God affected a lot of things. Politics has gotten so antagonistic these days, so much about competition rather than really exchanging ideas and strategies, that it makes me think more of the freshman bickering matches I witnessed in entry-level college humanities classes than the elegant philosophizing of such politic greats as Jefferson or Lincoln we celebrate as our political role models.
I'd like to publically thank Mr. McKibben for telling it like it is, and reminding us that no matter where we might personally stand on any number of issues, we'll get a lot farther by biting our tongues, listening to the experts, and getting something done than trying to push our own small opinions forward.
Posted by Spike at 04:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 05, 2007
Friday Puppy
This little guy was really, really, REALLY happy to be let loose at UTC's Culture Fest table. He ran all over the place like a dog posessed and flopped down at everyone's feet to wiggle uncontrolably, I think intending to get a relaxing tummy rub but unable to calm down enough to really get one. Eventually his people subjected him to his leash, I suppose in an effort to get him to take a chill pill, but given this photo, I don't think it worked too well.
Go to the Friday Ark for other creatures of varying hyperactivity levels.
Posted by Spike at 01:52 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 03, 2007
What Happened To Personal Responsibility?
This article I was reading, about a Planned Parenthood opening up in Aurora, Illinois, presents two women's stories about their experiences or feelings about abortion, I suppose to give an example to readers about the sort of opposing viewpoints people bring to the abortion debate. This Waycaster woman's story kind of irked me, though.
To quote, "Waycaster said her mother had an abortion about four years before she was born and regretted it almost immediately. Her mother often attends protests and prayer vigils, she said, and is open about telling people her story. 'She was too young, and she didn't believe what she believes now,' Waycaster said. 'It's affected her whole entire life. She knows that she could have had a much different life - she doesn't know if it would have been better or worse, but she knows that she would have rather found out.'"
Waycaster’s stance on abortion is clearly included as the “pro-life” position. So, to read Waycaster’s mother’s reaction to a regretted abortion as outlined in the article, I don't see how a woman making a bad decision means we should shut down Planned Parenthoods or outlaw abortion. When are we going to remember that we have responsibility for our actions and we can't foist our mistakes off on our parents, corporations, or deities all the time? People are cautioned about making a good choice when getting a tattoo, but I haven’t heard much about tattoo parlors getting picketed because a few people make the mistake of getting Tweety Bird tattooed on their necks for life. Sometimes you have to make a decision, and sometimes when the deal is done you realize you didn't make the right call.
I just checked the website of a Chicago-area Planned Parenthood and you are counseled on your options before the procedure, no matter whether your abortion is medical or surgical. I don’t know if Waycaster’s mother went to Planned Parenthood for her abortion, but it sounds to me like they are doing their best to help women make the best decisions for themselves, unlike a lot of “pregnancy crisis centers” that act pro-choice and then try to talk you into putting the kid up for adoption.
I’ve begun to notice that a lot of growing up is simply about coming to terms with who you were when you were younger and accepting that you did some stupid things, thought some ignorant ways, but you’ve changed, for better or for worse. So the mother’s argument that her beliefs changed comes off to me entirely as “I made a decision I regret, but I wouldn’t regret it if I hadn’t changed as a person over the course of 20 years.” I fail to see how that is Planned Parenthood, or any abortion/contraception clinic's problem.
Posted by Spike at 06:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Wordless...Birthday
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October 01, 2007
West Nile In Hamilton County, Downtown Chattanooga
I was walking down to the University Center this morning and saw a sick little robin. I felt mighty bad for the little guy, he was all fluffed up and wouldn't move an inch even when I walked right up to him (that's all I did though, I'm smart enough not to touch a sick bird). He just moved his head a little bit and looked depressed and helpless. So I called around campus trying to find someone to help the poor thing and eventually got the suggestion to call the Health Department. So I went to their website and saw they had a warning about robins, blue jays, and crows specifically, as West Nile Virus has been confirmed in Hamilton County. The nice woman I got on the phone said they've confirmed birds in the downtown area of Chattanooga with the virus as well. I don't know if this little robin on campus has got it, and Health Department said they don't test except on dead birds, so I called campus facilities to see if they could send him on his way as per the suggestion of the lady on the West Nile hotline.
Whatever this one bird has got, wear your mosquito repellent and buy some of those discs for your birdbaths, because West Nile is in da house. I feel bad enough about this cute little bird without worrying about people too!
And here's my little friend.
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