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Month: October 2003 Page 1 of 3

Monday Digest

Be Nice To Me…

I gave blood today. Says so on the sticker.

It seems like I’ve been meaning to get around to donating blood for….ever, really. It’s not something I ever woke up and decided to do (“I think I’ll go give blood today.”) Whenever I saw a blood drive in progress, it was always a bad time to stop. So, here at the ripe old age of 33, I had never actually gone and done the good thing.

Well, we were on our way home from a concert from our favourite local band, Screen Door, and noticed that the Methodist church on the corner at the end of our street was having a big community fair-on-the-grounds, including a bloodmobile. kitanzi mentioned that it had been far too long since she had last given blood, and I said “I’ve never done it.” So, we resolved to get up in the morning and donate, and then check out the rest of the fair.

We arrived at about 11 and did the pre-screening. All was well except that my blood pressure reading was….abnormal. As in “That reading indicates I should be seeing a doctor immedately”. I’ve always had borederline high-blood pressure, but at 180/120 reading would be cause for *serious* alarm, especially since it had never been that high. The nurse at the registration sent me in to be rechecked, and after another couple of high readings, it finally occured to all of us that they should be using the extra-large cuff. (*I* should know this by now, but I wasn’t thinking about it — this is one of the reason why the little supermarket check-your-own-blood-pressure kiosks are useless for me. My arm is just too big). After a much more normal reading with a larger cuff, we proceeded to go through the litany of questions. I think the nurse found me somewhat amusing.

“Have you had sexual contact with any person who was born or lives outside the United States?”
“No. But not for lack of desire.”

Having been satisfied that I wasn’t a risky donor, we went and did the whole jab and drain routine, which was uneventful. I didn’t really find it any more uncomfortable than when I had an IV in while I was in the hospital.

Of course, due to a series of events that Kit has already detailed, she hadn’t started her donation by the time I finished mine. So I sat down at the far side of the bus, ate Nutter Butter cookies and drank juice, and chatted with the nice church folk who were volunteering to help out the Red Cross folks. Once Kit got started, she had a hard time finishing, since she apparently ran out of blood midway through, but we finally got square and went on our way.

The church fair was a sort of combination yard sale, craft show and dinner on the grounds. We found several books for cheap and Kit found three pairs of shoes that fit her, but we were starting to get hungry at this point and decided to head off for a quiet cool place to eat. We ended up at local restaurant Hops, which is a steakhouse/brewpub, and had a marvelous lunch, brought to us by a seriously cute waitress.

We then stopped off at the only used bookstore in Alphretta, treated ourselves to a small stash of books (most notable: Harcourt has come out with a new hardcover reissue of Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer’s “Sorery and Celia”, which in it’s previous paperback incarnation was nigh unobtanium. Nice to see it back in print). And came home for an evening of relaxation. A full day, indeed.

Well, dammit.

Oh well. There’s always next year.

Thursday Digest

Shocking footage of Roy Horn (of Seigfreid and Roy) being attacked by a tiger:



Escher recreated in LEGO, along with some other bits of great art. Thanks to John Scalzi for the link.

ladysprite muses on sunrises and sunsets. I just wanted to point it out because it’s such an absolutely lovely piece of writing.

agrumer has a line on the new CCG, Mormonism: The Gathering!

And finally, doctorpepper links to an article in Electronic Gaming Monthly where today’s kids play the games *we* played as kids.

ACLS Game 7

And so, at last, it comes down to this. It always comes down to this. The Red Sox never do things easily.

ESPN’s Jim Caple had a lovely passage in his column on tonight’s deciding game:

Clemens and Pedro may be facing off against each other on the mound, but they won’t be alone. It’s never just the players on the field when these two teams meet. It’s also all the players who have ever played in the rivalry.

Joe DiMaggio will be taking batting practice with Ted Williams. Billy Martin will be challenging Jimmy Piersall to a fight in the stadium tunnel. Carlton Fisk and Thurman Munson will be wrestling in the dirt behind home plate. Bucky Dent will be going yard, Reggie Jackson will be admiring his home runs and Carl Yastrzemski will be raising his bat high as he squints at the pitcher.

Will this be the year the Red Sox finally go all the way and defeat the Curse of the Bambino? If so, what better place from which to step onto the World Series stage than the House that Ruth Built? And what better pitcher to overcome than former Sox superstar Roger Clemmens?

Tonight’s the night. One game. Nine innings. Backs against the wall. One team goes to Florida to fight for the championship, the other goes to Florida to play golf.

Cowboy up!

Wednesday digest

laurel points to a story that follows up with three guys who got makeovers from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy‘s Fab Five. Where are they now?

When I saw THIS cartoon, I instantly thought of Three Weird Sisters, and their “Dumb, Dumb Dorothy” song:



(Committed by Michael Fry)

Speaking of the Sisters, they got a writeup in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution!

Following up on last week’s Latin translation of Sir Mix-a-lot’s “Baby Got Back”, stronae gives us a paean to geek girls! (Thanks to aiglet for the pointer!)

aiglet also passes along a great job opportunity!

The Missouri Review offers a critique of Shrub’s attempt at poetry.

almeda muses on bad SF cover art.

China sends a man into space

When Memes Go Bad…

So the big buzz today is how the person who put together the “Secret Crush” meme is now offering to reveal the contents of zir database for a mere $4:

Who has a crush on autographedcat?
The below numbers indicate what sorta crushes autographedcat‘s friends have on him, as taken from the results of the original LJ Secret Crush Meme.
Questions? Please read the FAQ.
2 people have a Secret Crush on autographedcat.
3 people have a Public Crush on autographedcat.
1 people have an Ex-Crush on autographedcat.

How many people have a crush on you?

As I’ve commented elsewhere, I’m not entirely sure whether to be amused or disgusted. On the one hand, the person didn’t disclose when they collected this information that they would offer to release it to third parties. In fact, I don’t even recall if they indicated that the information would be stored. So there’s a certain amount of justification to feeling that somehow this person is doing something a bit underhanded to raise cash. And their FAQ makes them out to be a complete prat.

On the other hand, I just can’t quite manage to get all up in arms about it. I mean, when I took the meme in the first place, I didn’t really take it very seriously — no more than “What LOTR Character are you?” — and I don’t think anyone else did either. Anyone who’s really upset that this info might get disseminated needs a quick tutorial in “Not Giving Personal Information To Anonymous Parties On The Internet.”

So yeah, it’s wrong. But it’s wrong in a very small potatoes kind of way. I doubt if there’s enough low-self-esteem casualties desperate enough to pay for the names of their “secret crushes” to make the guy more than about a hundred bucks, so I don’t see any reason to expend too much energy in getting upset over it.

On the other hand, I admit that I am *curious* who the folks who listed me are. (Hey, i’m just as shallow as the next person! *G*) Don’t think I’m curious enough to spend four bucks, though. So let me know if you wanna.

Somewhere in the celestial bleachers, Steve is smiling…

From Ron Rapoport, a sports writer in this mornings Chicago Sun-Times

Goodman would have lots to sing about these Cubs
by Ron Rapoport, Chicago Sun-Times

It’s root, root, root for the home team,
If they don’t win, what else is new?

It’s funny, really, but for all the notoriety Steve Goodman got from the two songs he wrote about the Cubs–“A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request” and “Go Cubs, Go”–I always had a special affection for his version of “Take Me Out To the Ball Game.”

It wasn’t just the sneaky way he fooled with the lyrics, but the good sense he had to play his guitar quietly in the background during the instrumental while Jethro Burns put down some simply sensational mandolin licks. Of all the versions of the song that have been recorded over the years, it always has been my favorite.

It is hard not to think of the times you would go to Wrigley Field and see him standing in an aisle with his guitar singing “Go Cubs, Go.” I don’t know if Gary Pressy knows this, but every time he plays it on the stadium organ, a significant number of fans who grew up on it sing every word along with him.

Goodman wrote the song for WGN in 1984, and it was a constant presence during that rollicking season. His requests to do a benefit concert after a game were denied, however–maybe the Cubs didn’t want him singing about “the doormats of the National League” and “their ivy covered burial ground”–but he was scheduled to sing the national anthem before their first playoff game that year.

Alas, Goodman, who had been fighting leukemia since 1969, died four days before the Cubs clinched, and his friend Jimmy Buffett filled in for him.

Al Bunetta, who was Goodman’s agent, said he once asked him if “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request” was about himself, and he said it wasn’t. “Take Me Out To the Ball Game,” on the other hand, was a song he could have written yesterday. And when I put it on the CD player again Monday, it almost sounded as if he had.

Tuesday digest

What a cool project. How many album covers can you identify? Here are 60 album covers, stripped of all indentifying text. One of the things I miss about vinyl records is the covers — yeah, some CDs still have interesting art, but it’s so SMALL!

Finally, a political movement I can get behind! (Thanks to lysana for the pointer!)

rmjwell shows us the most compelling evidence yet that Schwarzenegger is just a puppet governer:

filkerdave points me at this lovely tool for translating a phrase into and out of foreign languages until it loses all sense or meaning.

http://home.cwru.edu/cgi-bin/multibabel

A very amusing eBay auction. Be sure to read all the text:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?MfcISAPICommand=ViewItem&item=3146042998

from rec.humor.funny

Up in Heaven, Alexander the Great, Frederick the Great and Napoleon are looking down on events in Iraq. Alexander says, “Wow, if I had just one of Bush’s armored divisions, I would definitely have conquered India.”

Frederick the Great states, “Surely if I only had a few squadrons of Bush’s air force I would have won the Seven Years War decisively in a matter of weeks.”

There is a long pause as three continue to watch events. Then Napoleon speaks, “And if I only had that Fox News, no one would have ever known that I lost the Russia campaign.”

[Courtesy Mark Hoolihan and the Hoolinet (www.hoolinet.com)
Copyright 2003 Boniface Bugle Productions. All Rights Absurd.]

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