The Linear Journal Thread

[ARTelevision]

maleficent,
...found in nature:

[maleficent]

Girl watching is a sport, to some males, that's the only way I can figure out that this qualifies to be shown on ESPN. I'm flipping channels and stop on ESPN, and what's airing? Two young women, a blonde and a brunette, playing ping pong. They are both wearing short tennis skirts, not white though, and tennis sneakers. The announcer is really getting into it talking about one of the players "Powerful backhand"

This is ping pong for pete's sake-- it's a teeny tiny ball that weighs a feather, it requires no power to hit it. Good grief. And watching them serve was pretty funny too, though I suppose the camera shots of them trying to see what's under their short skirts is considered sport.

Wiith apologies to all the professional ping pong players out there

[Supple Cow]

I just returned from my first ultimate frisbee team practice and I feel absolutely fabulous (as ab fab as those hilarious british ladies on comedy central)! It has been far too long since I've had any decent exercise routine combined with great people to do it with and a fun game for it to be framed in. The last organized sport I played was softball in high school. After one summer league season, one JV season and one varsity season, I decided to quit (a ripe old 10th grader ) to do bigger and better things with my trumpet.

Finally, a whole SIX YEARS later, I've come around again. Ultimate is also a much better fit for my personality than softball was. My flick (forehand) is looking good after all the one-on-one tossing sessions I had with my friend this summer, and the biggest obstacle ahead of me is what is always ahead of me: staying focused and getting my brain wrapped around new concepts. I'm easily distracted and I'm a delayed but sudden learner. I was a little thrown off in the beginning when the coach set up an overly complicated drill that had even the veterans confused. Luckily, I came back during the scrimmage and made some nice plays. Once I understood the concepts, the moves felt pretty natural.

I skipped and hopped all the entire 8 blocks home. I have to say that the endorphins and seratonin that are still with me (practice ended over an hour ago) are making every difficult or awkward moment worth it. I'm really looking forward to a healthy and fun year with the ultimate women. Just think of what kind of place the world would be if all the seratonin junkies got their high from exercise instead of tapping their veins... what a thought

[ARTelevision]

Glad to know your flick is looking good!

[Supple Cow]

Originally Posted by quadro2000

SuppleCow - ah, the evils that lie in the dicks of men... And this guy didn't think anything of it.

Indeed, quadro. That's the part that I don't understand - these particular guys never seem to think anything of it.

Art - congratulations on being relieved of that achy-breaky tooth! I wish you a quick recovery from the extraction.

BlueBongo - The feelings you describe are very familiar to me, but I'm pretty confident these days that life is good at working itself out in due time. I hope you're feeling better soon.

[maleficent]

As if I don't have enough to complain about - one more thing got added to my bitch list. I really need to go find some Chill Pills... Or at least care a little less...

So, arriving in my email this morning is a template for my performance review. Oh Joy, Oh Rapture. I've been with this company for going on seven years, this will be my 2nd review. We haven't seen pay increases, not even adjustments for inflation in over 3 years - -and I doubt we're getting them this year, so this is an exercise in -- FUTILITY.

We're a small company under the umbrella of a large company and HR is making us play along with their silly games. If my boss has a problem with me, he'll scream at me... Then we move on... Life is happy... Reviews on paper just go against my nature. Don't like them, find them pretty pointless.

I know where I screw up, I know where I need to improve, I don't want to put it down on paper... (and I'm really bad at lying) This will bea nice exercise in creative writing.

[quadro2000]

I have been negligent in commenting on people's journal entries. Before I go and type one of my own, I want to apologize. It's often difficult to comment on something because you're a few posts (physically) removed from it. But I have been reading all of them - and I'm happy that Art's tooth is out, that at least I got to see the back of Maleficent, that SuppleCow is a frisbee-throwin' maniac and that raeanna now has a beautiful place by the water.

[roachboy]

still struggling with a sense of alienation generated by this surrogate journal-form.

i think it is the lack of distance.

======
this announcement is simply bizarre:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Sep17.html

everything about it is bizarre, from the origin point of the story onward.

====

the collective seems to be interested in moving further into soundscape fabrication, which translates into acquiring even more tape recorders, but of a higher quality.

i am reading daivd toop's new book "haunted weather" --which i am using for one of my classes----and which is, more or less coincidentally, about some of the outer frontiers of soundscape recording and manipulation.

i would recommend it--a diverting, engrossing read that raises more interesting questions than it actually addresses.
which is sometimes what is required.

for some reason it is becoming even more obvious that a sound image can be understood with equal weight falling on both terms.
if you see the sound image, you can manipulate elements on visual grounds, use visual prompts as logic in themselves, and not just as ways to organize the sonic elements.

on the other hand, sometimes i wonder if the reason i do not think i have ever had acid flashbacks is that they are continuous and spread out, so do not announce themselves as such. i might well live in one. so i cant be sure.

===
sorry to hear of the dental ordeal, art--glad that you are on the mend.

maybe i'll start to comment on other journals, now that we are all in an explicitly public space, on the weekend.

between then and now, i will have had the enormous privilege of seeing ornette coleman perform. i cannot tell you how exicted i am about this. the excitement distracts me.

[maleficent]

So when I'm in the Chicago office, there's a person over the cube farm wall who is a snorter, I'm at a different company today, and there's a person behind me that's a snorter. I don't understand this.

If your nose is runny - I mean seriously, big juicy boogers by the sound of the snorfle, wouldn't it be easier to use a tissue and blow your freakin' nose. Is sniffling a turn on for people that they actually enjoy it and it gives them some sort of pleasure? Otherwise I can't think of a reason to do it.

There's a box of tissues not 2 feet from this woman, why not extend her arm, put tissue to face and blow... I mean really blow... The coughing she's doing is post nasal drip, you can tell by the sound of the cough, and I'd bet anything she'd stop coughing if she'd only blow her goddamn nose.

This is a very unattractive thing that people do, not that I'm an expert on attractiveness, it's also annoying the everlovin' crap out of me... The sound ranks up there as most annoying... and it doesn' have to be.

Plus that she's not covering her mouth whenever she coughs.... Germs Germs everywhere....

[quadro2000]

Yesterday was a great, productive day.

Quadrette and I had planned on taking the morning off to apply for our marriage license. We could have gone anywhere in the state (except for the city proper), but we decided just to head back to the town clerk's office in my hometown, as I knew where it was and it just seemed more familiar to me. After getting the license, we were planning on going back to work, and then going to see a movie with Cynthetiq and Skogafoss.

We got up at our usual time and arrived at the town clerk's office at 9:01 AM, right after they opened. We showed them our IDs and went about filling out the forms.

Quadrette is taking my last name and is intending to make her maiden name her middle name. Apparently moving the last name to the middle is not something she can do on a marriage license, unless she wants to hyphenate her last name or make it part of her last name (neither of which she wants to do). So that temporarily upset her, understandably so. We talked about the possibility of doing a name change in court so she can officially make it her middle name. That cheered her up a bit.

Well, we were all set to get the license and go, except we hit a snafu: the office computers were down, meaning they couldn't enter the info into their database and couldn't print up the marriage license. So we were stuck waiting until the computers came back up - it could be a minute, an hour or all day, they told us.

I was pissed. I know it wasn't anybody's fault but it was just an annoying detour to the day. I wasn't going to go to work without that license - otherwise I'd have to come back another day. And yet I really didn't want to take the whole day off.

Quadrette and I thought about it, and she suggested we both see if we could get approval from work to take the rest of the day off. She had to renew her license at the DMV anyway, so maybe, instead of waiting around the town clerk's office, we could go get that squared away, and maybe do a few other errands we had been postponing.

We both got approval, and off we went to the DMV. I was not looking forward to the DMV (because, really, who looks forward to the DMV?). Thankfully, even with a packed office, it only took us about an hour and twenty minutes from start to finish. Could have been much worse.

From the DMV, we went out another 30 minutes to see our jeweler. We had been out there a few weeks ago to look at wedding rings, and while we found things we liked, Quadrette hadn't made any definitive decisions. We were originally going to go Thursday night, but postponed it to Saturday because of the movie we were going to see. This seemed like a good opportunity to get it squared away, and with the benefit of going in when it wasn't packed to the walls (as it was on the last Saturday we visited).

I'm glad we went. Not only did Quadrette find a great ring, but I found a ring that I liked so much better than the first one I picked out. Both of our rings were more expensive than we had planned - but we plan on wearing these things for a loooong time. So we paid the deposit, and in two weeks, we'll have our rings. Plus, we went her engagement ring back to be re-sized. (Turns out it was half a size too big, this whole year. She just thought it was supposed to be that loose. Who knew?)

After that, we drove back to the Town Clerk's office, found out the computers were back up, signed the papers and headed home. After a quick stop to say hi to the kitties, we were back on our way into the city to catch a free screening for Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow with Cyn and Skogafoss. The movie was okay, not great, but entertaining.

As Quadrette and I walked home after the movie, I realized that we had spent the entire day together - we really hadn't spent more than 10 minutes apart the entire day - and managed to get a lot done, having lots of fun while doing it. I really couldn't have asked for more yesterday. So I had to take a whole day off. No biggie. Well worth it.

[maleficent]

Wandering in Union Station as I was waiting for my train, I wandered into the Swatch store, my current watch is looking a little seedy, so I wanted a new one. The watch that caught my eye? Is the watch that Swatch has called Bunny Sutra. It's a riot. You tap the face of the watch, and the hour and minute hand go nuts for a few seconds. The strap is half pink with a girl bunny wearing a see thru negligee and half blue, with a boy bunny in tighty whities. The face of the watch has 6 scenes of 2 bunnies, fucking, in various karma sutra positions, hence the name, bunny sutra. It's quite risque for Swatch, but, it's working for me - so it's now on my wrist. The train attendant looked at my wrist and started to make a comment on my watch then she realized what the bunnies were doing ( ya know, fucking like bunnies) then she just wandered off and I haven't seen her since.*

This would be the watch

Bunny Sutra

[ARTelevision]

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