Ginger's follies, foibles and fixations.
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| You Listen to Me, Mr. Kick-Ass Ginger's follies, foibles and fixations. |
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Friday, July 05, 2002 Inspired by Carrie's blog (see link at right), I've decided to start answering The Friday Five each week. It's sorta like one of those e-mail questionnaires but infinitely long, chopped into bits and spread out over forever. 1. Where are you right now? Well, obviously, in front of the computer. Specifically, facing the West wall of my apartment, sitting on the foot of my futon/bed (currently folded into a couch), with the Vornado fan pointed at me. If you want to know what I'm wearing, please enter your credit card number. 2. What have you lost recently? My camera ran away from me a couple of months ago at the Star Wars convention in Indianapolis. I suspect it was mad because I was making disparaging comments about it earlier that day. 3. What was the first CD you ever purchased? Does that embarrass you now? I suspect this was written by a young person who did not start out buying cassettes or LPs. I don't remember my first CD, but my first LP was Freeze Frame by the J. Giles Band (I was 12). I am not easily embarrassed by my musical taste, no matter how much I should be. 4. What is your favorite kind of writing pen? Pretty much any fine-point roller ball. Currently a Uni-ball Deluxe Micro (black). 5. What is your favorite ice cream flavor? For summer, Mint-Chocolate Chip (Soy Dream or Tofutti Cuties). posted by Ginger | 10:09 PM Wednesday, July 03, 2002 A little early: Happy birthday to my July 4th-born friends!  posted by Ginger | 9:40 PM Well, the boss showed just as I had hit "publish" on the entry below, and I had only slacked about a half hour at work, so that was okay. And it was good because I have been a little grumpy about work the last couple days and she always manages to get me turned around and excited about it again. We are complete opposites in almost every way which makes us a brilliant working team. Even our birthdays are at opposite times of the year. I need to clean my apartment and I'm just procrastinating, so I'm off. posted by Ginger | 9:07 PM Hey cool--I'm on the front page of NYC Bloggers--at least for the moment. I'm not "just added" but the name change makes me feel (oh yeah it ma-a-a-akes me feel) shiny and new. For any new visitors - HI! Welcome! Don't be too afraid of my liking of the Hanson. My friends generally think I am cool anyway. I'm bad in two ways. I'm writing this at work because my boss is at home laid up with an injury and I don't want to write this grant I've pledged (to myself) to finish today. Second, I left the A/C on at home. When I woke up at 7:30am sweating, even with the fan pointing directly at me, I knew it was going to be a bad one. I didn't want to come home to find Krispy Fried Kitty, so hopefully this won't completely bankrupt me. Perhaps this is residual sympathy for the cats in the apartment next door. My neighbor is out of town for the holiday, and she has yet to install her new air conditioner. Her two cats were actually panting last night when I stopped over. Yikes! I put ice cubes in their water and left the fans on, but they are going to be pretty unhappy the next few days. I just hope they don't die on my watch. Speaking of neighbors, there hasn't been much to report about Loud Bob lately. Maybe the A/C and fan are drowining him out. But the other day as I was carting laundry downstairs, I did hear him say over and over "You so craaaazy. You so craaazy" without further elaboration. Then yesterday morning I heard him yelling "SEX SEX SEX SEX SEX!!" Who needs a TV? posted by Ginger | 12:33 PM You may notice there's been some blog re-arranging. Something to do besides the work I sorta took home, and the cleaning I must do (a guest is arriving this weekend, poor thing). Since I don't know exactly what I'm doing with my rudimentary HTML knowledge, I just find a site I'm trying to emulate, and hunt around for the code that holds the secret to the change I want to make--in this case, a wider message body. I wonder if anyone reading now noticed all my trial-and-error messing about? I guess if you don't keep hitting "reload" every couple of minutes it's not so obvious. Anyhoo, the name change: yet another cult-movie reference. Anyone know it? OK, I'll tell you -- Christopher Meloni in Wet Hot American Summer, which is quickly moving up to greatest movie of all time status in my comedy-starved brain. If you've only seen it once--or (horrors) not at all--I'd recommend seeing it about 500 more times, then you'll see how funny it really is. More obvious changes -- the archives are weekly now, so you can visit my old ultra-wordy posts in easier-to-swallow caplets. And links links links! Oh, so many links. That oughta keep you busy (how do people find the time to read so goddam much?). Oh yes, and Steve told me to ask: "Why [were] Dubya's SEC transgressions in the past dismissed?" So there you go. Anyone care to weigh in on that one? posted by Ginger | 12:19 AM Tuesday, July 02, 2002 A quote from Adam Curry's blog (that's right, the VeeJay-turned-Internet-Millionaire -- fun blog!) Bernard M. Baruch: Approach each new problem not with a view of finding what you hope will be there, but to get the truth, the realities that must be grappled with. You may not like what you find. In that case you are entitled to try to change it. But do not deceive yourself as to what you do find to be the facts of the situation. Very appropriate regarding the way I'm feeling right now about my job. I enjoy the idea of the work and the purpose of the work, and even the day-to-day reality of the work. But it's a task so enormous, so much work to be done, work I have no real experience with, that I keep finding myself grinding to a halt, caught in ever-spinning whirlpools of "I can't do that until I have that, but I can't get that without that..." and so on. I had a dream last night about having to take care of several live snakes for a friend. I had no idea what to do with these snakes, and they kept slithering away into corners of my apartment. I kept trying to stuff these slithery snakes into bags with closures so that I could control them, compartmentalize them, but they kept getting away from me. That is me at my job right now. Plus, is it a good sign when your assigned task is to find the funding to make it possible to pay you? Never mind, I know the answer. But hey, four-day weekend comin' up. posted by Ginger | 10:33 PM Sunday, June 30, 2002 This is just...ugh: The Autograph Collector's Best/Worst List Everything from the photos to the pithy comments, this only reinforces my suspicion that collecting autographs is tremendously lame. As a person somewhat obsessed with the concept of celebrity, I feel this is a topic worth exploring (and if you disagree, you're better off skipping the rest of this post). After all, I've obtained a few signatures in my time, but what have I done with them? Alan Rickman's is sitting in a pile of crap here. Penn & Teller's are sitting in a pile of crap at my mom's house. James Earl Jones's probably isn't even real. So why bother? Not all celebs hate giving autographs and I'm sure many are genuinely flattered. But from my perspective, the only reason to obtain an autograph is to "prove" that you met the person--that for some brief moment, you forced a famous person (at least "famous" in your eyes, at that moment) to acknowledge your existence. But does walking by a table at Tower Books while his publicity agent hands you a signed book count as "meeting" Johnny Rotten? (it was like a celebrity zoo exhibit--look but do not feed the punk-rock legend!) Does holding out a magazine for some movie star to scrawl on as s/he walks by count as "meeting?" Did I "meet" Natasha Lyonne when our eyes caught for a millisecond outside of Topdog/Underdog? If I had asked her to sign something, would that have meant more? I thought of framing the page from my Private Lives program, upon which Alan Rickman's signature was artfully placed. It is indeed a fine piece of work suitable for framing. But what does putting this on my wall signify? I can look at it and remember my trip to London, the hilarious play, Alan's bare feet, the chill of the winter evening, the enormous screen on which we watched Harry Potter earlier that day, and so on. But I can remember all this without looking at his signature. The real reason to have it on my wall, if I'm honest, is in the rare event that someone comes to my apartment they can see it and say "Gee! Alan Rickman! Is that his real signature?" Suddenly, I'm cooler because I got within breathing distance of a truly fine actor--though, in truth, this doesn't make me cool at all. Maybe cool in that I appreciate Rickman's work enough to put him on my wall, but I wouldn't need his autograph to do that. So basically, it's pointless. Not that the autograph concept needs to be eliminated altogether, it's just overrated. At its best, an autograph is a relic of a particular moment, ideally if that moment included a genuine human connection with someone you admire or appreciate. One of my most valued possessions (which, oddly enough, is in a box in Nebraska), is a record album cover signed by Jello Biafra. I had spent an entire day with this icon, this legend, the only person I could honestly say was my idol, and still remember with absolute clarity the moment I handed him the record (which he had just given me for free from his merch box) and he correctly writing out my full name without asking me how to spell my difficult surname. Jello Biafra knows that I exist!, I thought. He even knows how to spell my fucking last name! And, for some reason, that made my life more meaningful. Why? There is no answer, but that one personalized note thrilled me beyond reason. [The note, in full (from memory): To Ginger D___: Thank you for the rare chance to de-corn some Huskers. Jello Biafra] So what are these autograph-collectors hoping to achieve? Even more baffling, what are autograph-buyers hoping to achieve? You go on eBay, you purchase an autographed photo of, say, Catherine Bach. You've always loved Daisy Duke, after all. One of those childhood crush things. Now you have her picture. It might even be her real signature (Who can tell? You don't know her. At least 95% of the autographs on eBay are fakes). You put it on the wall. You stare at it. It gives you no memory of meeting Daisy Duke. You never met Daisy Duke. You don't even know if Daisy Duke actually wrote on that picture. But you've got an autographed picture of Daisy Duke. I just don't get that. posted by Ginger | 7:03 PM I'm embarrassed about how late I am up doing aimless surfing, but I had to share this gem with you in honor of the last day of Pride Month: The Gay Test! In the interest of full disclosure, here are my results: ----------------------------------------------- You are 30% GAY! That's less gay than average for someone of your gender and supposed orientation. The typical straight female is 32% gay! Here's how you compare: people less gay than you (50%) people just as gay as you (4%) people gayer than you (44%) ------------------------------------------------ Somehow, I feel a little inadequate. I wonder how different it would be if I had admitted to wearing Birkenstocks. I do still own a pair, though I don't know where they are at the moment and I haven't worn them regularly for years. And did I have to start shaving my legs again a couple years ago, after a decade of sexually-ambiguous hirsuteness? Oh well. Also courtesy of Carrie's blog, which I find addictive (despite not knowing nor having anything in common with her) -- one of the funniest book titles, ever. Hmmmm.... could this be an Advantage Title? posted by Ginger | 2:21 AM |
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