getupgrrl at Chez Miscarriage has really amazing news.

Also, I wanted to tell you that my son has peed on me nine times since Monday.

woohooo!

so, anyone out there ever come to a balance about how much you initiate interactions with someone you're interested in or dating versus how much you sit around and fret? bonus points for answers that talk about needing interaction to feel valued, and double bonus points for answers that address having been told by a partner that you need too much interaction and that you should go find someone else to give it to you.

(the dogs think i need a perfectly fine amount of interaction. the dogs wish i didn't have to go to work and leeeeeave them all alone.)

why betsy hates walmart, part nine thousand six hundred and forty two:


Opinion | The Pensacola News Journal:

You can't buy the Pensacola News Journal at Wal-Mart anymore.
The store ordered us off their property, told us to come pick up our newspaper racks and clear out.
So we did.
A few people called last week, some even wrote letters to the editor, and wanted to know why they couldn't buy the newspaper at Wal-Mart in the days after Hurricane Dennis.
Some managers at Wal-Mart didn't appreciate a column Mark O'Brien wrote last month about the downside of the cheap prices that Sam Walton's empire has brought to America.

the gist of the column is the absolute honest truth, that walmart has such low prices because they under pay their employees and do not offer benefits, so we all pay for walmart's employees' medical care, via medical assistance or other sorts of welfare. (almost typed "walfare"; an oddly appropriate typo...)

avedon is very snarky and funny. i advise not drinking anything while reading her pages.

The Sideshow July 2005 Archive: "Yes, it's always a mark of courage when a president chooses a white man to sit on the Supreme Court, as it so rarely occurs."

found this on the great poets community on livejournal. it's singing to me at the moment.

Balance

Balance is noticed most when almost failed of-

in an elephant's delicate wavering
on her circus stool, for instance,
or that moment
when a ladder starts to tip but steadies back.

There are, too, its mysterious departures.

Hours after the dishes are washed and stacked,
a metal bowl clangs to the floor,
the weight of drying water all that altered;
a painting vertical for years
one morning-why?- requires a restoring tap.

You have felt it disappearing
from your own capricious heart-
a restlessness enters, the smallest leaning begins.

Already then inevitable,
the full collision,
the life you will describe afterwards always as "after."

by Jane Hirshfield

i'm going to russia in august. in case you're one of the six people on the planet that i have not yet told that. here is where we'll be staying, at the ukraina hotel.

for those of you (well, also those of me) who do not speak russian, the site is also available in english.

ooooh i'm so excited!

darn you, elizabeth bear. you made me cry. darn you!

(elizabeth bear, _scardown_. read _hammered_ first, as _scardown_ is book two.)

the following is in french french, not canadian french, but that's because the book is out in the car and i am in the house, but it's what got me.

Je vous salue, Marie, pleine de grâce.
Le Seigneur est avec vous.
Vous êtes bénie entre toutes les femmes,
et Jésus, le fruit de vos entrailles, est béni.
Sainte Marie, Mère de Dieu,
Priez pour nous, pauvres pécheurs,
maintenant et à l'heure de notre mort.
Amen

amen, amen.

i really really don't like "bombing for choice" as a name, even though it's googlebombing, a practice that i appreciate. however.

Anti-abortion ideologues beware: I'm promoting objective, factual information on:

• Roe v. Wade


• abortion

You can too. Join me in Bombing for Choice.

i put the links in my sidebar, and here i am posting about them.

Results...: "
You are Simon, the young, brilliant doctor. Your
devotion to your sister drove you to part with
the world you knew. Raised on a civilized
planet, you are not used to coping with the
situation you have landed yourself in - though
you seem to be adapting well enough to suggest
robbing a hospital.


Which Firefly character are you?
brought to you by Quizilla"

an lj post made up of quotes by and about brits, dealing with the 7/7 bombing.

Steve's random and often beligerent Journal - Quotes of the day:

'They did their worst, and they managed to disrupt our transport network and get fatalities in the low double figures. That happens on a fairly regular basis anyway, you twits. What's your next trick - a fiendish weather control device which makes it rain on a bank holiday weekend?'

that one's my favorite.

a picture from CONvergence 2005, in which i am awake!

that was when i had just recently wandered downstairs (thus the wet hair), had had a banana, and was trying to find someone to eat the rest of the poundcake, which was a little strange.

i turned on the computer this morning to the news that sandra day o'connor is retiring off of the supreme court. my friend vito posted this poem on her lj, and i find it compelling enough to post it here. (also, it's much more eloquent than my immediate reaction.)

Mark Jarman, Unholy Sonnet #9

Someone is always praying as the plane
Breaks up, and smoke and cold and darkness blow
Into the cabin. Praying as it happens,
Praying before it happens that it won't.
Someone was praying that it never happen
Before the first window on Kristallnacht
Broke like a wine glass wrapped in bridal linen.
Before it was imagined, someone was praying
That it be unimaginable. And then,
The bolts flew off and people fell like bombs
Out of their names, out of the living sky.
Surely, someone was praying. And the prayer
Struck the blank face of the earth, the ocean's face,
The rockhard, rippled face of facelessness.

i'd love to be wrong. i'd love to be proven to be too cynical. i'd love to hear that when i asked for morning-after pill recipes in my livejournal last night that that was silly because there won't be a time when i'll have trouble getting prescribed it if i need it. i really want that to be true. but i'm having a hard time believing that this morning.