This is just to make me feel better

Open letter to the lady who was so rude to me yesterday while I was driving:
I am sorry you were having a bad day. But did you really have to try to ruin mine as well? Honking like that, just because I merged into your lane (in a safe, legal, polite way) is really obnoxious. I didn't cut you off, didn't make you miss the light, didn't make any gestures at you. We were hardly moving as it was, and I used my blinker. Part of the responsibility of driving is being able to subsume your own desire to get somewhere and your own self-centeredness under the greater good of traffic flow and civil society. I know I am not always patient with other drivers myself, but if they use their blinkers and don't do anything that might cause an accident, I try to cut them some slack (Note: Benjamin might disagree). So, for the sake of anyone else who has to be driving around you: Grow Up, learn the rules of the road, and let someone merge once in a while.

Changes, sigh

I am a creature of habit, and I don't like change much. Changing seasons, OK. Changing clothes after going to the gym (and after a shower), OK. Changing the color of ink in my fountain pen, OK. Changing phone numbers, not so OK. Changing residences, not so OK (although I like being somewhere new, eventually). So, I am really getting sick of every single thing I use to organize my life on the interwebs changing. Now, not only do I have to adjust to the new settings on the Facebook feed, there are big changes coming for the profile in general - to make it, what? My memory? The keeper of my life events? That's the way I have heard it described. I use Facebook to keep in touch with friends and family in far-flung places (and to annoy people with lots of links to articles); I don't need or want it to be the keeper of my important events, memories and photos. So once again I am going to have to go through and change settings, adjust what I see in my feed and what I let others see.  Already I use it less than I used to, and I don't see a new profile changing that.

And today, the promised/threatened migration of Delicious finally occurred. For those of you who don't know, Delicious is a social bookmarking site that allows you to save links/bookmarks and tag them, so they are available on any computer you use, and so you can share them with others (if you so desire). Because I often use two or three computers in a day, I primarily use it to organize all the sites I like to visit on a regular basis, like web comics and magazines and blogs so they are always up to date, no matter which machine I am on. I don't use it to share pages and links with other people. I do that on Twitter and Facebook (which is kind of the problem, to the Delicious developers).  But, the new incarnation (which was made necessary because the original developer of Delicious was going to kill it, before another company took it over) is primarily designed to help you share links with other people, and to discover new things to read/look at that other people like. I really don't need anything else to read, and I don't particularly want to share everything I read with random strangers. Also, because the site is still in beta mode, a lot of the functions and features that I used every day are not working. The only way to sort my bookmarks is by date added. Honestly? I really don't know when I added things, and don't care. I look for something by its name (what a radical idea1). Not all the tags work correctly right now either. So, in an attempt to find something that works, I was forced to turn to my Google Bookmarks list, which I first set up when the future of Delicious was in doubt. But none of my tags carried over, so I had to go through and re-tag everything, and re-delete things I have deleted in the last few months. Which took time that I really should have been using to do something else. And I don't really like having every part of my life on Google - what if they suddenly decide (wrongly) that I am trouble and shut me out of my account? It has happened to people - their entire lives are disrupted.

Then too, Google Bookmarks really wants you to share everything with the public. What is with this need to share everything? Can't we just be by ourselves once in a while? Can't we keep the various aspects of our lives separate once in a while? I like compartments, I like organizing things to be separate that don't really belong together. I don't keep my food in the bathroom, and I don't keep my clothes in the living room. I like that I leave work behind at the end of the day, and I like that I can go to tennis and hang out with friends that don't know and don't care about what I do at work. These are things that keep me sane; it's the same online. For me, it isn't so much about privacy, although that is a valid concern; rather, I don't care about what other people do online, and cannot for the life of me understand why anyone would care what I am doing all the time. I do like to share - see all the articles I share on Twitter and Facebook, not to mention this blog - but sometimes, I like to use these tools just to make my life easier. And to do that, I don't want them to be constantly changing in ways that some faceless developer has determined will be "better."

Tennis again, and a recycling rant

The fall tennis flex league starts this week, so tennis will be taking up more time in schedule again for a while. I've only been going to one class a week, and not playing outside of that since the end of July. I have a match today after work, and Benjamin played two matches this weekend. At least the weather is a lot cooler than it was this summer!

In other news... I thought I had read an announcement that our local public works was going to be distributing new recycling bins this fall that would hold a lot of recyclables and wouldn't require sorting, like my parents have in Bellevue. Can I tell you how much I want this? A lot. Currently, the only recycling Maumelle has curbside is newspapers and aluminum cans. Totally useless to me - we don't get a newspaper, and don't use many cans. You can take other recyclables to the recycling center/transfer station, but they have to be separated by type, and I don't think they take glass. When you don't have city-provided bins for keeping things separate, it is a total pain in the neck to do so - we've tried. Anyway, so today I finally got fed up waiting for news from the city about this and emailed the public works department. And found that I was wrong. They have no plans to change the system that is in place, and "In order for recycling efforts to be cost-effective and not end up in the landfills, the materials must be sorted." Which is, as Bellevue shows, totally false. Not to mention that Conway's drop-off doesn't make you sort anything except glass. So I guess we will have to continue doing what we have been doing, and taking monthly trips to Conway with our cars full of recycling. I have been unable to properly recycle anything at my own home since I moved away from home in 2001 - in Austin, our apartments never recycled anything, so we had to take everything to a recycling center there too - and I am getting tired of it. I mean, how many other people in Maumelle actually bother to take any recycling to the drop-off center? Probably not that many. I do, but I am close to what my cousin (who is one himself) calls a hippy nut-job (I have two compost bins and a worm bin - definitely hippy nut-job). In this advanced day and age, we should have smaller garbage cans and larger recycling bins, and I should have to sort my recycling. Simple things to save the earth, like recycling, should be getting easier, not harder.

What I did this weekend

I got a new tattoo, my second. It is a phoenix, and how geeky am I? So geeky that it is from the cover of a book of literary criticism by D. H. Lawrence. Oh yeah, I am an English Major all the way to the core.  It is on my right ankle, and it hurt more than my first tattoo, which is on my left arm, because it was over more bone (and there really isn't any padding on your ankle). But I like it.

I also went to a union and Wisconsin support rally at the Capitol Building. It wasn't anywhere near as large as some of the rallies in other states, but for conservative, right-to-work Arkansas, it was pretty good.

I have never been to any political rally before, apart from a party in someone's driveway to watch the presidential debates in 2008, but I have been getting more and more angry at the way politicians continue to ignore the people, and at the conservatives who want to balance the budget on the backs of the middle-class and poor, especially women.

I wrote an email to Tim Griffin, my congress-critter, asking him to reconsider his support for the bill that denies funding to Planned Parenthood, and I got a tone-deaf form letter back: "That is why I signed up to co-sponsor H.R. 217, the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act, which was introduced by Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, and which prevents funds from going to Planned Parenthood" and "As your Congressman, rest assured that I will always fight to protect the lives of the unborn."  But he doesn't seem to support the children who are actually born. Nor do most Republicans - check out this wonderful editorial column from Charles M. Blow in the NY Times last week. 

So it was rather heartening to see so many people who support the working class, who know that the problem isn't the high pay given to teachers and the regular state employees like me - 'cause none of us go into this to be rich - but the lack of corporate taxes, and too many subsidies given to those same companies.

In some cities, there were also rallies for reproductive rights, and if there had been one in Little Rock, I would have gone to that too. 

We liberal progressives need to stand up, make our voices heard, take ownership of the struggle, move beyoned Twitter and Facebook and get outside.

Appearance vs. Substance

Why do we so often settle for a proper appearance while allowing the substance of an issue to go undiscussed? This happens all the time in politics - a politician shouts about death panels and that is all anyone can hear, or tries to hear, instead of learning how the changes would benefit society. The TSA says it is making us safer by making 4-year-old children and elderly grandparents go through a full-body pat down.* And the media tends to go along. It uses scary voice-overs and shouting anchors to freak everyone out and get worried about situations that aren't much of a problem, instead of focusing on the actual problems.

Which one serves me better? A doctor's office with a lovely waiting room, but an hour long wait for a scheduled appointment, or one with obviously used furniture and a 15 minute wait? How about a website that doesn't have all the latest features, but does have great customer support and an easily found set of contact information, versus a shiny website with a great flash presentation of the goods you are shopping for, but that is terrible to actually use and has no alternate means of contacting the company?  I would rather have the dumpy waiting room with a prompt doctor, and the usable website. How about you?

I am not saying that appearance isn't important at times, because it certainly can be - who wants to use a nasty gas station bathroom if it isn't absolutely necessary? - but why is it so often accepted as more important? Who does it benefit? Certainly not the customer or citizen, certainly not the employees.

How incredibly frustrating this is! There is so little anyone can do about it. Quite often, there is no-one to whom you can complain or offer suggestions in such situations, because if the deciders actually cared, they would have already worked more on the substance. I am not good at letting such things go, which will probably help me worry myself into an early grave; I have to try to fight back, to point out the absurdity of the situation, to yell that the Emperor has no clothes on.  I may get myself in all kinds of hot water because of this (including with my mother - Hi Mom!), but at least I still have that right in this country (for now, anyway.)

*Check out this rather horrifying photo album of just this.

Heat rant #2

Remember what I said last week about how it was too hot here? Well, it seems I was a little premature in my ranting, because this week is even hotter. My dad sent this screen capture along to let us know that we won the heat derby yesterday:

Do you see that? We were hotter than Phoenix and Sedona. Maybe not today, since Phoenix is supposed to be around 110, and we are only supposed to be around 105, but that wouldn't make me sad.  The weather report on the radio said that we got up to 107 for a little bit, which made it the hottest day in 10 years. Lucky us.

I'd stop whining about the weather and talk about something else, if there was anything else going on here. Hmm, I guess I still have pictures from our trip to D.C. to post. Maybe tomorrow, if I haven't melted yet.

Sorry

It has just been too darn hot lately. Even with air conditioning everywhere, it is just too hot. I mean, I go outside at 5:30 to head to the gym, and it is already 80. Or should I say, it still is? Since it never actually cools down during the summer here. And on top of the temperature, it is 85% humidity, which means I can break a sweat simply breathing. The long and the short of it is that the heat has sapped my will to live, or at least to blog or be creative in any way. This weekend, I really wanted to do some sort of creative project that didn't involve cooking (again with the too hot), but I just couldn't. I managed to spend a little time in the garden on Saturday morning, but most of that time was moving the sprinkler around so my plants don't turn into crispy little sticks (too late for some of them. Sigh). I went to the (air conditioned) gym. But no hiking, no painting of any rooms, nothing more strenuous or creative than vacuuming.

I'm tetchy and sleepy and bored up to my eyebrows with summer cabin fever, and it is all your fault, Mr. Sun! If the outcome of global warming is to increase the heat and length of our summers, I am going to be really pissed off.

Bad Post Office!

I am putting this slight rant out into the world in the hopes that it will have some sort of karmic effect on the problem: While we were in Bellevue over Christmas, we took a trip to our favorite used book store and bought some books. And, since it was Christmas at the Donovan household, books were also given as gifts. Too many books to be carried home in our suitcases. So, I packed them up into a box and mailed them to Maumelle using the inexpensive media rate. Over a month later, they have not arrived.

I have never had this kind of problem with the post office before. I have used the media rate many times to send and receive books, and they always arrived within a week or so. I want my books! Are you listening, guardian angel of the post office? Send me my books.

There. Now that I have aired my grievance publicly, maybe my books will be waiting for me when I get home one of these days.

Dear Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Do you want to know why I canceled my trial subscription to your paper? Here are several reasons:

• It takes me less than 15 minutes to read the entire thing. There is so little actual content that it takes longer to read the comics than the rest of the news.
• The front page rarely has anything of actual Arkansas interest on it. Yes, the world is important, but you are a dinky paper who gets all your foreign news from the wire anyway, so concentrate on where you are.
• You ran the most blatantly racist letter I have ever read outside of a history book the other day, and no-one commented at all. Many of your readers say that you are too liberal in your editorials - all I can say to that is WTF?
• Several of your latest hiking "trails" have been the mall and a parking garage. Yes, it is August and August is a hot and buggy time to go hiking, but that does not mean that I want to go hike a parking garage. Please, save that for the senior exercise section.

So, until I can get home delivery of the NY Times (no, they don't deliver around here), I will be sticking to online news sources.

Updated letter After some urging, I rewrote the letter and sent it to the circulation department of the paper. I doubt I will get any response. Here is the new text:
I am writing to explain my recent cancellation. Usually, I like to support my local newspaper, especially for local news. Several factors, however, persuaded me to cancel my trial subscription after only 3 weeks:

On August 12th, you ran the most blatantly racist letter to the editor that I have ever read outside of a history book. The author claimed that the “white liberals…handed this whole country on a platter to these Africans” and that “These miserable liberals have been aided and abetted by the Jewish network.” While you cannot stop your readers from having such repugnant, racist views, you do not need to print those views. Yes, there is a right to free speech in this country, but such a letter should be categorized as hate speech (which could have earned jail time in some European countries) and consigned to the garbage bin, not given space in the newspaper.

The conservative drivel that your readers espouse is sickening. And they have the gall to suggest that your editors are too liberal. Hah! Wake up Arkansas – this is the 21st century, and we are falling behind.

Several of your latest hiking "trails" have been the mall and a parking garage. Yes, it is August and August is a hot and buggy time to go hiking, but that does not mean that I want to go hike a parking garage. There are many hiking trails in Arkansas that can still be enjoyed even when it is hot and humid. Please, save walking the mall for the senior exercise section.

So, until I can get home delivery of the NY Times (no, they don't deliver around here), I will be sticking to online news sources and trying to find my local news elsewhere.