so anyhow. my pseudocousin had her kid, and so did the manager here at work who was pregnant. babies breaking out all over, i guess!

i, personally, just have a left knee big enough to be one of those kids. ow ow ow.

tonight, nathan and i are going to go to the new thai restaurant near our house. the local weekly is raving about them, so we'll see how it is.

BBC NEWS | Business | Bush 'buried' critical budget report

The Bush administration reportedly buried a report commissioned by the US Treasury which predicted a budget deficit of over $44,000bn and called for tax rises.

that is, in case you are large number impaired, forty four TRILLION dollars.

Yahoo! News - No sex in Iraqi cinemas proves a big turn-off

Basra's three cinemas closed their doors earlier this month after several visits by serious young men on motorbikes who told them that if they showed "sinful" movies they would be burned to the ground. This week they tentatively reopened, showing old Arabic films and American action movies.

and this is in the "oddly enough"/news of the weird section?

NEWS.com.au | US plans death camp (May 26, 2003)

THE US has floated plans to turn Guantanamo Bay into a death camp, with its own death row and execution chamber.

if anyone sees anything further about this, please let me know.

so far, i'm giggly and alone.

sad me.

but i'm at wiscon! right now. i am sitting in the hallway, where there are four computers, and typing along here. behind me, in the capitol ballrooms, the goh speeches are going on. i heard a little bit of carol emshwiller's speech, and a little bit of china mieville's, and now i think they are on to the tiptree awards portion of the night, where john kessel is going to get his award.

(dear mr. brin. this year, not one, but twooooooooo males won a tiptree. thank you.)

i have crochetted my way through my first skein of yarn on the current baby blanket, and have started the second. i had a small amount of time there where no one i knew was breeding, but boom! here everyone goes. this one, i hope, will be for my pseudocousin's kid. (she's a second cousin once removed or some damn thing. i do not understand the geneological intricacies.)

many people who i was hoping would be here are here. i met ann b and recognized her right off and then confused her for quite a while while i was trying to stumble upon the set of words that would remind her of where she knew me from, and then got to meet kathryn b as well. piglet is here, with the basket that i most recently saw a picture of karma in, and stef and kyubi are here, as is the fabulous lisa c. heather blair is not here, and it makes me sad. (heather! we miss you!)

later tonight there will be the livejournal party. last night was elise's haiku earrings party, the club vampire party, and the tor party. overflowing party goodness. club vampire got dj bloodlossgirl in to dj, and i liked it a lot. she had some electrical issues where the music kept cutting out, but i asked to be emailed the set list, so that i can go buy some cd's. (she played an utterly creepy goth version of "eleanor rigby". yum.)

friday night, davey and sigrid and i retreated back to the room and stayed in and talked, sig and i not having seen davey much recently. that was good, but i was sad to have missed the carl brandon society dance, which ian h was dj'ing part of.

i am having a good weekend, even though i'm a little mopey. mope mope mope. but sig is feeding me chocolate chip cookies and sushi (oh! quick madison restaurant review: ton ton. good sushi. i had the dragon baby roll and loved it. the other sushi was also good. everything but the sushi took for ever and ever and ever. we waited an hour for the entree we ordered. oh the slowness. the end.) and being nice to me, and everyone here who i don't see very often is happy to see me, which is a very happymaking thing.

soon they will announce who the goh's will be for next year. i will be here next year, and am registered for it already. (unlike this year, where i had to register at the door. but wiscon, because they are sooooooo smart, prints up badges for concom and program participants whether or not they were smart enough to prereg. so i have my little badge that says "betsy lundsten cc" because i am concom.)

i volunteered in the artshow, which was good practice for convergence, and also a lot of fun. i think that i successfully bid on two pieces (although i had to armwrestle a certain beth for one of them and if i got it it was only because she had to leave for dinner before bidding closed) and i will find out in the morning.

there are people wandering around in the hallway dressed for parties, waiting for the ceremonies to be over (since nearly everyone is in them) so that there will be more than six people at the parties. i mean six people total, not per party.

this will be funniest to... well... me, but i feel compelled to tell you all anyhow.

so my company has a time tracking tool called claim. and i just got an email from a manager saying "Please CLAIM today, Wednesday May 21st."

i thought "what, for spain?"

ta-daa!

(if anyone else laughed, please email me so i don't feel so giggly and alone.)

wiscon is this weekend, and i watched the last episode of buffy and two of the last three weeks of angel in preparation last night. it's very important to be up on these things. the secret feminist cabal is very into buffy.

tonight is the last buffy ever! we'll see how it ends.

Dividend Voodoo (washingtonpost.com) by warren buffett.

When you listen to tax-cut rhetoric, remember that giving one class of taxpayer a "break" requires -- now or down the line -- that an equivalent burden be imposed on other parties. In other words, if I get a break, someone else pays. Government can't deliver a free lunch to the country as a whole. It can, however, determine who pays for lunch. And last week the Senate handed the bill to the wrong party.
Supporters of making dividends tax-free like to paint critics as promoters of class warfare. The fact is, however, that their proposal promotes class welfare. For my class.

(if you don't know who warren buffett is, he is ceo of berkshire hathaway inc., and a very very very rich man. smart, too.)

Eschaton by atrios.

Liberals aren't the statists we're painted as, aside from some minor appropriate interventions, most of us just think that contrary to the rhetoric from the other side the rules of the game have been rigged for the wealthy and powerful, and they have all the refs in their pockets. Or, another way to put it - government intervenes all the time, but from steel tariffs and agricultural subsidies feeding the pockets of large corporations down to corrupt town planners and zoning officials, it just tends to intervene in favor of the winning team. Plenty of industries - from oil to pharmaceuticals to aerospace to advanced electronics, etc... etc... - have lots of "special rights" and cozy relationships with the federal government. And, at the more local level plenty of wealthy developers have cozy relationship with state and local officials.

It's wrong to think that liberals are somehow enamored of government while conservatives aren't. It is true that conservatives and Republicans have adopted libertarian rhetoric, but aside from cutting taxes on capital and bringing down top marginal rates, there's very little follow-through elsewhere.

Let me see, uh, well, why did we invade Iraq? by ellen goodman, originally in the Boston Globe.

What haunts me is an offhand remark of a congressional aide in a New Yorker piece about missing weapons of mass destruction. The man said he didn't think their absence would "sway U.S. public opinion much." After all, he said, "everyone loves to be on the winning side."

and back at work!

we saw the matrix reloaded on friday, and x2 on saturday. both quite good. neither one of them the totally amazing things that the first movies in their respective series were, but second movies never are. i quite liked them. (jean and logan kissing! woo!)

it's nathan and i's anniversary today. we are going out for dinner to the place where we had the wedding. his idea. aw.

my stomach hurting seems to be related pretty directly to the diet coke drinking.

grrr! grrr i say!

Star Telegram | 05/15/2003 | Putting the Legislature out of our misery

Most of us thought it was pretty funny when Rep. Debbie Riddle popped out with her now-classic statement: "Where did this idea come from that everybody deserves free education, free medical care, free whatever? It comes from Moscow, from Russia. It comes straight out of the pit of hell."
[...]
The creepy thing about the far-right Republicans, who are definitely in the majority in the House, is not that they are dismantling government because they won't raise taxes -- they're dismantling government because they think it shouldn't help people. They really think that health and human services should not be provided.

i want a new knee. just one. two would be better, but i would settle for just the left one.

people at work today were talking about walking to the dairy queen which is only a mile away.

my thought on that is that if they were giving out scotch and codeine at the dairy queen, so that maybe the pain would settle down enough so that i could walk back after, i'd walk out there. but just ice cream? not good enough.

i am having a fine day today.

watched buffy with sigrid last night, and we both made squeaky noises at the appropriate times.

next week, there will be a last! buffy! ever! gathering at my house next week; email me if you want to come!

:: Dean For America ::

May 3, 2003
In the first presidential debate, held in Columbia, South Carolina, Howard Dean again showed why he has captured the imagination of the country. The following are his closing remarks:

'The great unspoken political lie, which comes from stages like this, is "elect me and I'll solve all of your problems."

The great unspoken truth is that the future of this country rests in your hands, not mine.

You have the power to rise up and take this country back. You have the power to give this party the backbone to challenge this President, and all of the harm he has done to our country. You have the power to create jobs, balance the budget, and bring us our dream, which Harry Truman put in our platform in 1948 - health care for every American.

The reason people don't vote in this country is that we don't give them a reason to vote. This campaign is about giving all of you a reason to vote.

Abraham Lincoln said, "A government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth." President Bush has forgotten the ordinary people of this country.

It's time to take our party back and it's time to take our country back.'

You are a banana! Good job, captain obvious.


which rejected character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla


mwhahaha.

Frustrated, U.S. Arms Team to Leave Iraq

Task Force Unable To Find Any Weapons
By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 11, 2003; Page A01
BAGHDAD -- The group directing all known U.S. search efforts for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is winding down operations without finding proof that President Saddam Hussein kept clandestine stocks of outlawed arms, according to participants.

today's book is paper mage by leah cutter. i know leah, so i felt compelled to buy the book (on the "supporting the artistic endeavors of the people i know" front) even though i wasn't sure about it from reading the copy on the back.

ha. i read just a few pages while waiting for my computer to boot, and found that i was fifteen pages in and the computer was booted and i should really work now. wheee!

or, maybe you can't imagine them accurately. that's okay, too! you can come up with unpleasant things to say about libertarians all on your own, just don't attribute them to me.

from without conscience, pg. 75.

Society has many rules, some formalized in laws, and others consisting of widely accepted beliefs about what is right and wrong. Each protects us as individuals and strengthens society's fabric. Fear of punishment certainly helps to keep us in line, but there are other reasons why we follow the rules:

• a rational appraisal of the odds of being caught
  
• a philosophical or theological idea of good and evil
  
• an appreciation of the need for social cooperation and harmony
  
• a capacity for thinking about, and being moved by, the feelings, rights, needs, and well-being of those around us.

i have unpleasant things about libertarians to say here, but you can just imagine them, 'kay?

so, on with the writing something even if i don't want to.

i'm in the process of reading everything j.a. jance has ever written. the library has a few books on hold for me that i should go get. at the moment, my current book at work is without conscience: the disturbing world of the psychopaths among us. oh, so cheerful.

my stomach hurts; i'm beginning to think that this might be the end of my days as a diet coke junkie.

i went to the doctor on thursday, and she says i have an ear infection. it doesn't hurt, but i can hear my pulse.

nathan and i watched two episodes of coupling last night, keeping us up until midnight. then we set the alarms for about six (aka "way too early") and went to bed. nathan got up and took a shower and was very nice to me when i explained that i was just going to sleep a few more minutes so that the dog could get her shower before i got mine. after pirate had had adequate time and we determined that she must not want a shower this morning, i groggily stumbled into the shower and drove nathan off to the airport.

i feel pretty astonishingly crappy. i mean, i remembered that i like starting work later in the morning because it lets me get the extra sleep which is just better all the way around. i hadn't remembered the part where i constantly wanted to lean up against doorways and catch just a quick nap.

The New Yorker Dept. Of Connections-- The Contractors, by Jane Mayer

there are, after all, a few connections between bin laden and iraq.

Bin Laden’s estranged family, a sprawling, extraordinarily wealthy Saudi Arabian dynasty, is a substantial investor in a private equity firm founded by the Bechtel Group of San Francisco. Bechtel is also the global construction and engineering company to which the U.S. government recently awarded the first major multimillion-dollar contract to reconstruct war-ravaged Iraq.

Fascism, Anyone? by Dr. Lawrence Britt

Dr. Britt studied the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany),
Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet
(Chile). He found the regimes all had 14 things in common, and he calls
these the identifying characteristics of fascism.

Rob's Amazing Poem Generator

you give it a url, and it gives you poetry. like this.

stuff this crap,
i have problems, but i
should work is that is my
demicon was silence for you, only have
anime people from unreasonable paranoia about
how many people having sex. no, doubt the less
frightening normal colored diet coke. the profiles
of the hotel my choir
concert. his choir concert. his house until it meant that
parties were in
that was so that
i kept thinking about the business
center has said Right
the parties were
in england.

here is my demicon report, reposted from the mnstf natter mailing list. i decided since i already wrote it up once, that was good enough.

so, demicon was this past weekend. i saw a few people from natter there. (i remember david wilford, spk, nathan who i live with, laurel krahn, kevin austin, and... i think that's it.)

they were in a new hotel in downtown des moines, the hotel fort des moines. it's a very nice old hotel. my one quibble with it is that they're polling about "would anyone still come if we moved demicon to july", and the hotel has no airconditioning, apparently. this fills me with dread.

on the plus side, the hotel's business center has a printer and i forgot to print out supercon flyers, but i had a pdf in my email... [innocent whistling]

the consuite is a nice space-- two largish function rooms with a foyer in between. good socializing space.

the programming rooms were spread out over second and third floors-- not ideal, but it worked out. there was also a music room which i didn't go to, but it looked as if it had some very nice performances going on. i am not a music sort of person, so i don't know if there were any music circles or things like that.

parties were sparse, but i can attest to the fact that there was a karaoke party DIRECTLY ACROSS FROM MY HOTEL ROOM, dadgumit,
until three am, both friday and saturday nights. fortunately, one of my superpowers seems to be the ability to sleep through multiple drunk people warbling "let's do the time warp agaaaaaain!".

the parties were spread out so that they were smoking on one floor and non-smoking on another floor. this was really nice as it meant
that i was able to go to more parties. sad in that it meant that i totally missed out on the jello shots party, having never gone
to the smoking floor, but oh, well.

there was a brewery/pub directly next to the hotel. good food, and smurf blue cream soda. i stuck with the less frightening
normal colored diet coke.

the drive back was covered in torrential rain until ames, at which point it was merely a downpour. we made it back in time for my father's choir concert. his choir sang the vivaldi gloria, which i hadn't previously heard, and the rutter requiem, which i've sung twice, and had to try not to sing along to.

octavia butler was the writer guest of honor. sadly, they schedule the "hour with octavia" for ten am, so i didn't sign up because i was certain that i wouldn't be awake. i was so right!

the art show had lots of beautiful art. oh so pretty. denae and i were runners for the auction. i figured that i should work on an artshow before i ran one, so this was my chance!

You are blue. You are somewhat innocent, in the fact that your genius only extends to the physical world. You have a false sense of contentness. You are usually the quiet one, the genius. Everyone can count on you to help when they have problems, but you only fall short of being able to solve your own.

What inner color are you?

yes, all of the pictures have anime people having sex. no, i have no idea why.