I loooove using PhotoPhiltre! It's a free photo-enhancing program that doesn't hog memory or resources, as so many of them do, and just does such wonderful effects. You'll remember this as part of a larger photo posted here previously as "Mrs.D, May You...", but I wanted to do just a portrait of her. Yes, I made her look a TRIFLE younger here; still, I think I've managed to be truthful without overdoing it. I only wish I had photos of all my other teachers and friends. Sigh. This is what happens when you're a frustrated artist!
My novel is coming along----sloooooooooowly. Unfortunately, my laptop isn't behaving very well and I'm looking to replace the damn thing BEFORE the hard drive poops out again. The volunteers at Comcast Forum are the most wonderful, patient (well, not FRED, at least) people you could hope to find ANYWHERE on earth, when it comes to explaining what SHOULD be common-sense computer practices to us am ha-aretzim (dummies). I'm soooo ignorant I often can't explain what's wrong in an intelligent manner, and end up sounding like a five-year-old making up words as I go along. Poor Fred was reduced to titling one of his replies "...what the f*** are you talking about?" the other day, when I described how bad my hard drive was messed up. For those of you old enough to remember that MY FAVORITE MARTIAN show on TV back in the early 60s, my explanations must have sounded like "Uncle Martin's" when he described his ship to Bill Bixby, the actor who went on to become THE INCREDIBLE HULK.
At any rate, I'd advise AGAINST installing XPsp2----unless you've cleaned out your drive and updated everything BEFORE adding it. I THOUGHT I had, but probably I forgot to do something, as usual. As for those FBI and CIA files, I've been told by several computer technicians they ARE exactly that. Nothing earth-shattering, of course, but it IS annoying. I still can't rule out the possibility that those programs, automated or not, had something to do with my laptop problems. Like I'm gonna go sue the government. Hmmm, I wonder if suing the government would be one of those three cases where the Supreme Court has original jurisdiciton? Mrs. D, who taught us government (and those three cases, which I can't remember) would most likely roll her eyes at this point. Well, I never WAS focused. That's ADD for you.
One good thing about Blogger, though, is I can't lose what I've posted here. I've been burning CDs like crazy, trying to save all my applications, photos, files, etc before THE CRASH happens. For some reason, screwing my hard drive seemed to have enabled my burner to work again. Go figure. Hope you've all had a good Thanksgiving. I spent most of mine doing back-to-back craft fairs, and I'll be going full tilt until December 11, too. After that, I'll "rest" for about a month, doing a couple fairs here and there until May, when the whole crazy cycle starts again. For a "booming economy", however, I have to say I've never seen a slower season. Frankly, I think the economy went "boom", all right. IMPLODED might be a better word, for all the sales I've had since this election. Oh well, that's the chance you take when you start a business. Haven't gone bust yet, kinenahora. And there's always next season.
On that note, this luftmensch will close. Take care and be well.
Monday, November 29, 2004
Mrs.D---A Closeup
Friday, November 12, 2004
Yep, We're Gonna Democratize 'Em, All Right
Just had to comment on Dubya's vow to bring democracy to Palestine. Yeah, like we really think we're gonna make the whole world just like us. Puh-leeeeze! I heard enough of that during the Cold War. Remember when the Soviets vowed to bring socialism to the rest of the world, and we screamed? So it was wrong for them but right for us, huh? It never ceases to amaze me that we keep on believing this garbage. Don't you think other countries MAY want to decide what kind of government they want THEMSELVES?
Thursday, November 04, 2004
The Dybbuk---And It Ain't Ansky's
My laptop seems to have become possessed lately. Everyday, something else denies me access, and it looks like I'm gonna lose ANOTHER hard drive. I tell ya, it ain't easy exorcising these gazlans (yeah, I know it's probably supposed to end in "im", but in AMERICAN Yiddish you can ignore a lot of those fine points). Any minute, I'm expecting a ghostly voice to come out of my speakers, and up here in NH there's no chance of hooking up with a "wonder rabbi". Of course, I COULD try the local priest, but he'd most likely just tell me to take the thing in to a technician. Then again, I'm registered as a Democrat, so maybe this dybukk is actually the ghost of Lee Atwater. I DID vote for Kerry, y'know. Too bad Georgie Porgie won. Maybe this the initial assault of the new Republican Moral Majority---cleansing our sinful hard drives of political heresy and--- Oh, all right, I'm joking. Still, this stupid laptop is driving me NUTS. I've gotta get this novel blogged before the month is out, or at least MOST of it, at any rate.
As it is, I'm not too happy about going back to the 1950s, which is where most of these Republicans want to take us. They think the 50s were wonderful; you know, total conformity and all that. Well, I'm just old enough to remember how the 50s REALLY were, and wonderful they weren't. Sunday had to be the worst day of the week, as NOBODY would dare stay home from church and have the neighbors think they were ATHEISTS, God forbid. In THOSE days, atheists were pretty much synonymous with COMMUNISTS, so even JEWS had to be careful on Sundays.
I lived in the suburbs down around Philadelphia then, just across the river from the oil tanks, in fact, and there was no privacy in that land of identical cracker-box houses on postage-stamp lawns. Neighbors felt it was their moral and patriotic duty to keep others on the straight and narrow; after all, we were in the midst of the Cold War then, when Commie-Pinkos were hiding under every bed---just WAITING for the signal from Moscow to start burning down the churches. I mean, people were so terrified of being different that every other house looked exactly the same, every other person DRESSED exactly the same (and on Sunday you had to dress up and STAY that way all day, so you can imagine how us GIRLS felt with all that stiff crinoline under our dress skirts), and NOBODY dared to subscribe to any periodicals that might look INTELLECTUAL, because everybody knew that those pointy-headed brainy types were just the ones TO join the Commies.
What a time that was! My parents were absolutely petrified to raise their voices when arguing because "what if the NEIGHBORS heard them and called the cops?" Yes, that's right. And don't think THEY wouldn't have reported any neighbors who did the SAME, too. Paranoia was a virtue back then, I swear. I can remember one time when I'd awoken before sun-up and decided it'd be the perfect time to ride my bike down Westfield Ave. into Camden---something that was too dangerous at any other time of day because of the constant heavy traffic---and when I got back my parents were LIVID. Didn't I have enough sense, they went on, to know that the neighbors might have reported me to the POLICE for being out so early like that? Gee, the sun had just been coming up when I'd left, so it wasn't DARK out. And then there was the time in 1964 when I couldn't sleep, and figured I'd go downstairs to the den, switch on the radio, and read until I felt sleepy. Well! My mother came flying in minutes later to warn me I'd better turn off the light before the neighbors got SUSPICIOUS; after all, DECENT people didn't stay up all night---unless they were up to something illegal, immoral, or UNAMERICAN.
So you can see why I'm rather uneasy about this Republican sweep. They do tend to think this should be a CHRISTIAN country, God help us, and I've heard countless callers on C-Span piously proclaim that they were going to vote for Bush because he was a Chrrreeeshtunnn. As if Hitler wasn't, right? Okay, so he left the Church, but he had still been raised Christian, not atheist. Frankly, I'd sooner trust an honest CROOK than a hypocrit, if only because politicians have to do some industrial-strength sinning to get to be president. Maybe you've read Moliere's play "Tartuff", about a slick con-man who finds that public piety can be quite lucrative. It's easy enough to Act like a saint around others, while still enjoying one's sins in private. We do it all the time. But to elect a PRESIDENT on his supposed "moral superiority", especially when this guy's the leader of one of the most powerful nations on earth, is scary. To ME, anyway. I like to know my leaders are COMPETENT, first of all, and maybe, just maybe, even one of those "pointy-headed" BRAINY types as well. Certainly DUBYA could never be said to have either of those traits, and his absolute conviction that God is behind him all the way should scare ALL of us.
As it is, I'm not too happy about going back to the 1950s, which is where most of these Republicans want to take us. They think the 50s were wonderful; you know, total conformity and all that. Well, I'm just old enough to remember how the 50s REALLY were, and wonderful they weren't. Sunday had to be the worst day of the week, as NOBODY would dare stay home from church and have the neighbors think they were ATHEISTS, God forbid. In THOSE days, atheists were pretty much synonymous with COMMUNISTS, so even JEWS had to be careful on Sundays.
I lived in the suburbs down around Philadelphia then, just across the river from the oil tanks, in fact, and there was no privacy in that land of identical cracker-box houses on postage-stamp lawns. Neighbors felt it was their moral and patriotic duty to keep others on the straight and narrow; after all, we were in the midst of the Cold War then, when Commie-Pinkos were hiding under every bed---just WAITING for the signal from Moscow to start burning down the churches. I mean, people were so terrified of being different that every other house looked exactly the same, every other person DRESSED exactly the same (and on Sunday you had to dress up and STAY that way all day, so you can imagine how us GIRLS felt with all that stiff crinoline under our dress skirts), and NOBODY dared to subscribe to any periodicals that might look INTELLECTUAL, because everybody knew that those pointy-headed brainy types were just the ones TO join the Commies.
What a time that was! My parents were absolutely petrified to raise their voices when arguing because "what if the NEIGHBORS heard them and called the cops?" Yes, that's right. And don't think THEY wouldn't have reported any neighbors who did the SAME, too. Paranoia was a virtue back then, I swear. I can remember one time when I'd awoken before sun-up and decided it'd be the perfect time to ride my bike down Westfield Ave. into Camden---something that was too dangerous at any other time of day because of the constant heavy traffic---and when I got back my parents were LIVID. Didn't I have enough sense, they went on, to know that the neighbors might have reported me to the POLICE for being out so early like that? Gee, the sun had just been coming up when I'd left, so it wasn't DARK out. And then there was the time in 1964 when I couldn't sleep, and figured I'd go downstairs to the den, switch on the radio, and read until I felt sleepy. Well! My mother came flying in minutes later to warn me I'd better turn off the light before the neighbors got SUSPICIOUS; after all, DECENT people didn't stay up all night---unless they were up to something illegal, immoral, or UNAMERICAN.
So you can see why I'm rather uneasy about this Republican sweep. They do tend to think this should be a CHRISTIAN country, God help us, and I've heard countless callers on C-Span piously proclaim that they were going to vote for Bush because he was a Chrrreeeshtunnn. As if Hitler wasn't, right? Okay, so he left the Church, but he had still been raised Christian, not atheist. Frankly, I'd sooner trust an honest CROOK than a hypocrit, if only because politicians have to do some industrial-strength sinning to get to be president. Maybe you've read Moliere's play "Tartuff", about a slick con-man who finds that public piety can be quite lucrative. It's easy enough to Act like a saint around others, while still enjoying one's sins in private. We do it all the time. But to elect a PRESIDENT on his supposed "moral superiority", especially when this guy's the leader of one of the most powerful nations on earth, is scary. To ME, anyway. I like to know my leaders are COMPETENT, first of all, and maybe, just maybe, even one of those "pointy-headed" BRAINY types as well. Certainly DUBYA could never be said to have either of those traits, and his absolute conviction that God is behind him all the way should scare ALL of us.
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Sally Starr---For All You Popeye Theater Fans
Well, I've started to blog my novel, but it's going to take a LOT longer than the month this NanoWrimo thing lasts to type the whole damn thing, unfortunately. Sigh. Sorry, I'm a lousy typist, and although I use all ten fingers I still plod along at about 20 words a minute, barring typos and other mistakes. And do I make mistakes! Let's just say my Personal Typing teacher back at PHS was only thrilled to get rid of me---even if she had to FORGE a passing grade for me to do it. So be patient, it's coming. Figure I'll be finished some time next year, if I'm lucky. Anyhow, I STILL haven't figured out how to format the damn blog RIGHT so far. Don't be surprised if you see chapters that look like one long sheet off a roll---like toilet paper(clean, of course). Hey, just be glad YOU weren't one of my teachers. Happy blogging.
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