nathan sneers at online personality tests. i don't see why.

Jenny Turpish Slapped Me: Quizzes - Better Personality:

You are an SEDF--Sober Emotional Destructive Follower. This makes you an evil genius. You are extremely focused and difficult to distract from your tasks. With luck, you have learned to channel your energies into improving your intellect, rather than destroying the weak and unsuspecting.

Your friends may find you remote and a hard nut to crack. Few of your peers know you very well--even those you have known a long time--because you have expert control of the face you put forth to the world. You prefer to observe, calculate, discern and decide. Your decisions are final, and your desire to be right is impenetrable.

You are not to be messed with. You may explode.

from a review of my life, bill clinton's autobiography.

The Village Voice: Features: Wonder When You'll Miss Me by Gary Indiana:

A quality that informs much of Bill Clinton's My Life, however self-congratulatory its author's account of events may be, has been expunged altogether from American public discourse by G.W. Bush & Co. and by the media conglomerates who are among its few beneficiaries. That is, a sense of the greater good. The concept that the United States is a community of persons entitled to equal treatment under the law, and that every life in that community has intrinsic value, rather than a variable monetary one, had already been rendered so alien by eight years of Ronald Reagan's polished, senile performance as a ventriloquial doll and four years of miserable sequel under the American Andropov, George Bush the First, that Clinton's election in 1992 was perceived by the country's owners as a dire threat to their property rights.

one more quote.

Salon.com Life | The girth of a nation:

Your book points out that the rates of dieting continue to skyrocket even while the country's average weight had risen. Why?

The connection is causal. Dieting makes people heavier than they would be otherwise. There are a lot of studies where if you take two cohorts of people of the same initial weight and compare people who diet and people who don't, in the long term people who diet weigh more than the people who don't.

from salon.com. you have to watch an ad to get to the article, if you don't have a salon subscription, but many of their ads come from the aclu, so it's not too awful.

i want to quote the whole article, but i'll just quote this part, on the statistics waved around by the weight loss industry.

Salon.com Life | The girth of a nation:

Do you base your argument on what you found in studies, or have you also reported out this hysteria by talking to people in the weight-loss field?

I started out by reading studies and again and again ran into the same phenomenon: There was this disjunctive experience of reading the data and not being able to understand how conclusions about the correlation between weight and health stemmed from this data. I soon found people who were willing to say flat-out, 'The reason you're having that experience is because those conclusions don't flow from that data.'
I asked a very prominent epidemiologist at the CDC [Centers for Disease Control] about the latest study that came out in March, claiming that 400,000 deaths a year are a result of poor diet and a lack of activity level. I asked her how accurate that number was, and off the record -- because she wants to keep her job -- she said, 'I think it's pretty accurate with a margin of error plus or minus 400,000 deaths a year.'

hee hee hee.



"The Pilot"


Which Firefly character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

my knee is an unhappy camper today. it's swollen up and likes it that way. sadly, my calf does not like it that way, and my calf is starting to cramp up.

convergence is this weekend, and i think we're all set. denae is taking care of the last minute worrying about the database, and i am working on making sure i get enough sleep between now and then and figuring out how to get the sixteen cubic yards of art that's in my house to the hotel. whee.

oh my goodness.

firefly fanfic, pg rated as far as sex and violence goes.

solid

At one point Wash made dying noises, but Mal just looked at him and he stopped.

if you were thinking maybe about sending me email, today would be a good day as i am bored bored bored bored.

the rest of the song is about trying to rebuild a badly damaged relationship, but this part... well... if you are my friend or my love and you are dented around the edges, it's likely that i have wanted to pet your hair and sing this bit to you.

if you call, I will answer
and if you fall, I'll pick you up
and if you court this disaster
I'll point you home

(Barenaked Ladies - Call And Answer lyrics)


good grief; when did i get so schmoopy? must be bedtime.

i have seven gmail invitations. if you want one, email me at lundsten at gmail dot com with your first and last names and i will give you one.

this last saturday, we threw a surprise 90th birthday party for my grandmother. by me, we were successful on all counts-- she was surprised to have the party, she was surprised how many people showed up (about 50!), and she was surprised that her two best friends from up north showed up. the three of them are not in the best of health, and there's now a four hour drive in between them, and they're all about 90. so she wasn't expecting to ever get to see them again. but there they were!

so, she cried, which is good. i mean, cried because she was happy.

there was a sizable lindberg lady presence; her sisters were there, the milwaukee descendents were there, lots of relatives from the minneapolis area, a few from the building she lives in now... just lots of people.

some recommendations: the drovers hotel was really good to us. the food was expensive, but hotel catering always is, and the executive chef came out and talked to us about serving times and when we needed things and made sure it all happened right. plus, the food was great! the room was nice, we got to decorate it some, and the front desk gave us more chairs when we asked. a. johnson florist on grand avenue in st. paul got the flowers just perfect from my frazzled description.

anyhow. happy birthday, grandma!

to be brief about this, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

if you use antibacterial soap, stop now, okay?

New Scientist:

Hospital superbugs with resistance to a 'last resort' antibiotic have emerged independently in at least eight different countries, reveals a new study.

and one more try.

today, the weather is very nice and cool. yesterday i was hot up here in the attic, even with the a/c on and a fan blowing on me. today it's about 70f, and humid. much nicer.

and i rebooted calliope, so maybe now publishing will work. it could happen! you never know!

Quiz
created by Polly Snodgrass.

WATER OF AIR. You're aloof, depressed and seasoned. You'd make a good psychologist, executioner, black widow, arsenic poisoner, heretic queen or commentator. You're too witty for your own good. Have to get up early in the morny morn to fool you, as you spot lies a mile away. And WOE TO THOSE who dare attempt such a stupid move. You're Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween, when she cuts Michael's head off. You're Anne Robinson, the host of The Weakest Link!

i am tired and am pondering going to bed, but first i want to make this publish. publish, darn you! publish!

why oh why did that last post not publish properly?

hmm. i will natter on here for a minute and then try it again.

i am watching old episodes of angel in syndication. gunn just showed up about three episodes ago, and now we have lorne.

angel just killed a protector demon who was stupid enough to leave candles burning near his futon while he was gone. not so bright, that demon.

i had a weird dream this weekend. i dreamt that i was on a bus trip, and that an ex of mine was also on the bus. we were chatting pleasantly, and i was very glad about that, but i also thought "gosh, i'm glad i'm not dating him anymore. because if we were still dating he'd be nonconsensually groping me in public like he used to."

then, to add insult to injury, i called him the name of a different one of my exes. heh.

dear subconscious: i am pretty clear on the having broken up with him due to not having felt safe. got the memo. you can stop sending copies of it now. thx.

elmo! yaaaaay!

i have an elmo doll that m. socks got me when i was in high school. i loooove elmo. he came to college with me, and he helped me demonstrate how to feel other people's auras. no shit.

CNN.com - Black History Month 2002:

Kevin Clash provides the distinctive voice for Elmo, the immensely popular Muppet character introduced on 'Sesame Street' in the 1980s. Told to provide a voice for Elmo soon after joining Sesame Street as a puppeteer, Clash came up with Elmo's distinctive voice and laugh, turning the puppet into one of the show's most popular characters. It also netted Clash an Emmy Award.

i was looking around for wiscon pictures, and found this one of sig and i from wiscon 26.

no new exciting pictures of me from this year, yet. still hoping. ;)

wiscon, part the first:

i packed frantically on wednesday, went to bed earlyish, and then got up and found that i had nothing to do until my dad came to get me at 11am so that we could get lunch and he could drop me off at the airport. so, we had lunch, and then he dropped me off, and i got on the world's shortest plane flight to madison wisconsin.

once i got there, i realized that i'd been on the same flight as lori and steven, so we all rescued our luggage, found susan palwick who also was on a flight that came in at close to the same time, and then steven called to get us a shuttle bus to the hotel. while we were waiting, davey came running up. i had apparently totally flaked that her and chip's flight was in only ten minutes after mine. (whoops.) but we held the bus so that chip and davey could leap on.

off to the hotel, and i unpacked about half my stuff, and then downstairs to stuff millions and millions (okay, only about 850) packets. i found joan, and we did part of the interview that she wanted to do with me, and then we had to run run run off to the readings at room of one's own. eleanor arnason read a funny story about big mama, and patricia mckillip read something that made me want to lock her in her hotel room until she finished the book it was from. then there was dinner across the street at angelic. the food was passable (must remember to never ever order anything in strange restaurants that comes with rice pilaf. never.) and i think i'd have liked it better if i drank beer. sadly, i am a cider kind of girl, and they only had woodchuck. ah, well. better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, i suppose. met several people, and i still even remember some of their names!

i went to sleep early again, figuring (correctly) that i'd be short on sleep the rest of the weekend.

got up for a 10am breakfast with jane (my programming database goddess who i cannot at this point in my life say enough good things about), justine (who handled the academic track this year), and joan (who is handling the academic track next year). so we ate breakfast and did our best to frighten joan off. joan is brave and wasn't scared. so we took her back to the green room and tried some more, by showing her the database (which is fine and lovely and good and a titch confusing if you're not hip deep in computers all day long), but she is brave brave brave and will not be frightened off.

joan and jane channelled my mother and told me to go take a nap. yes, mom.

i got up in time to spend some time at the gathering before dinner, and lucky lucky me! joanna grabbed me by the arm and said "aaah, this doesn't fit any of us, you have to try it on!", so i did, and then i quickly bought a very nice north bound leather corset that fits me just exactly despite being custom made for someone who it doesn't fit. (i am very sad for her, but very happy for me.)

for dinner, i went to one of the himalayan places with lisa, kathryn, ann, and henry. yum yum yum. opening ceremonies were friday night, with a very funny skit called conablanca.

from 830pm to 1030pm i sat in the green room and waited for problems to come appear before me. only one did, so i ran off and with the help of someone who i appreciate so much that i cannot remember their name, fixed it, only to find that three other issues had appeared and attacked jane and luke while i was gone. rocket widget and melbatoast also popped their heads in to say hi and i was as i'd predicted they'd find me-- blond and frazzled.

after that, quick dash upstairs to change into the corset, and to drag heidi who was sadly sick and napping out of bed with a promise of party goodness. so we wandered around to various parties and i spent some time in the consuite and got my picture taken by lisa. then, to bed!

i am not sure that i remember the rest of the weekend in order.

sig bought me a lovely elise necklace called "the weasels are thinking of ireland" and a fancy glass bead necklace. "happy wiscon!" she said.

i managed to have dinner out every night, despite my fears. i ate at an afghani restaurant named kabul on saturday night, and a lao/thai place called vientiane on sunday night. both were quite yummy. saturday was dinner with lynn, victor, nathan, beth, and two minnesotans whose names i managed not to catch. sunday was a soc.bi dinner of sorts, with lisa, aynjel, someone whose name i didn't catch, julian and juliana (i think), ann, kathryn, and sev. i was trying to have dinner with lee on sunday, but after saturday night, i sadly never saw her again! foo.

i talked to a lot of people about the panels and whether or not they liked them (survey says: mostly yes!), hung out with nathan and beth, stuck my head into the tiptree auction for a bit, talked to ian and made arrangements to get some things from him, went to parties, went to the trouble with wives panel, went to my panels on sunday, had a lovely lunch with the program committee on sunday, played the part of vanna white at the post mortem, went to the haiku party, wrote a haiku that i really quite like, cried on nathan and heidi about it, and then was dragged off to consuite for protein by heidi. (smart, that girl.)

i am leaving out the fangirl drooling when i met people. also, the whining about not enough sleep. but i had a great time.

i'm torn between "sing it, sister!" and preening.

s1ngularity::criticism:

What I learned at Wiscon

Damn. That was fun. Mortgage your house so you can go next year.

dan savage, despite occasionally being a pain in the rear (he really doesn't understand about fat girls, for example), usually rocks my world. here's why.

from Savage Love, Leaky Pipes, by Dan Savage (06/03/04)

Younger sex partners are like campsites, DOM. You should always leave 'em in better condition than you found 'em. Don't knock 'em up, don't give 'em STDs, and don't mislead 'em about the long-term possibilities (which are nil). Make sure they're having fun, be open and accommodating, and combat their youthful ignorance about sex by answering their questions.

what fine advice.