moominmuppet

Happy impending New Year! 2010 hasn't been as rough on me as on many folks I know, but it has been pretty full of financial woes, so here's hoping that improves next year. Today's another incredibly quiet holiday at work, and I've got a ridiculous number of linketies to get through. I've also got the commentary on The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus to watch, which I'm much anticipating. Despite the mixed reviews, I loved it. Not really surprising, since I adore Terry Gilliam whole-heartedly. I'm pretty certain he's my favorite director, bar none (Guillermo del Toro and the Coen Brothers are probably second -- I love big, extravagant, fantastical films). Otherwise, I'm really achy and tired today, but cheerful. The achy and the cheerful partially share a cause -- the weather's shifted radically, and it's been mid-fifties today. It's lovely, but sudden changes always mess me up (yeah, I know I choose to live in Ohio, so I can't complain much). Also, Grafton got home, and the house feels right again. We had Coco for the morning, and there was much snuggling and napping. Also, weird as hell dreams. One where I brought all five cats to work for some reason, and was, in fact, herding cats trying to round them up to go home again before my ride left. Another with old wooden ships along a pier that'd been turned into communal households. Someone did something bad (I don't recall exactly what), and blame bounced around until Verne Troyer was being thrown off the boat as the guilty party. Discovered just in time that it was the cat (a very smart cheshire-ish sort), not him, and got him untied.

Iconic face of Rosie the Riveter poster dies
More: Geraldine Hoff Doyle, one of the women who inspired the character of Rosie the Riveter, died today at the age of 86. In her honor, please enjoy this thorough and fascinating look at the history of women factory workers during World War II, and their portrayal in popular culture.

MTV's No Easy Decision Segment Gives Abortion A Human Face
Related: MTV's 16 and Pregnant Takes on Abortion: One Reason Why
Related: On MTV’s special, “No Easy Decision.”

42% of American Kids Live in Low Income Homes

Plastic-Foam Ban Likely To Pass In San Clemente

2011 Hybrid Car Buyers Guide Helps Drivers Explore Cleaner Options

Italy Bans Plastic Bags

Education Hot Spots Of 2010

Skylights Over Libya

Thick tow truck driver.

80 Percent of Antibiotics in the U.S. Go to Farm Animals

Right-Wing Groups Abandon Conservative Forum For Inviting Gay Conservatives To Participate

Norway made a historic announcement earlier this month that didn’t receive the fanfare it deserved when the country declared it would ban fur from Oslo Fashion Week in February.

Grandparents Take on the Recession

Illinois Walgreens Converts To Geothermal Energy

Vermont Announces Plan to Restore Bald Eagles

New FoodCorps Will Get Food Into Kids and Kids Into Gardens

Dads in prison are learning and passing on the joys of reading aloud to their kids. The New York Public Library has teamed up with Rikers Island Prison to create a program called "Daddy and Me," in which incarcerated fathers record stories for the children they’ve left behind.

Scientists Write "Merry Christmas" On A Snowflake! (Video)

Deepwater Horizon’s Final Hours

What Makes A Good Teacher? Ask The Students!

Lolland: A Hydrogen-Powered Community

New York Restaurants Move Toward Sustainability

Reusable Bag Recall Inspires Other Retailers

Ivory Coast UN Ambassador Warns of Genocide Risk

Assange, Manning, and the Rosenbergs: Is nothing secret anymore?

Former Israeli President Convicted of Rape

Women In Turkish Universities Can Wear Headscarves Again

Ontario Recruiting for Massive Health Study

Ecomodo: Collectivism the Capitalist Way

Off The Rails: The Year In Fox News Misinformation

Steve King Makes Obscure Argument On Abortion Invoking Guns

News of the Weird: Tea Party Calls Department of Homeland Security a “Liberal Hate Group”

Vision: The 10 Most Hopeful Stories of 2010

Cleveland’s Worker-Owned Boom

Anti-Abortion Regulations Increasing for Women Nationwide

Dangerous Advice: Counter-Terror "Expert" Tells Cops to Kill Militant Muslims, "Including Children"

New Evidence Suggests Teenager's Conviction in Triple Homicide Arson Case Is Based on Junk Science

World Net Daily selling discredited book about gays and Nazis

15 Good Things to Celebrate in a Bad Year

Vision: Modern Utopians -- Revisiting the Amazing Communes and Alternative Societies of the '60s and '70s

Medical Credit Cards -- Future $150 Billion Industry Preys on Need for Easy Money

GOP Finally Realizes Fannie/Freddie Privatization Idea Was Ridiculous

Media Continually Dismisses Henry Kissinger’s Long History Of Complicity In Human Rights Abuses

Warren Buffett's MidAmerican Orders 258 Wind Turbines for Iowa Wind Farm

Woman Who Stripped Down to Lingerie in Protest of TSA Gets Banned From Flight

After 16 Years Behind Bars for an $11 Robbery, the Scott Sisters Will Be Free at Last

Oops! Bribing Nigeria for Cheney’s Freedom Not Legal

New Guidelines: One Tip Could Put You on the Terrorist Watch List (And Good Luck Getting Off it)

Megyn Kelly: Calling Aliens 'Undocumented' Like Calling Rape 'Non-Consensual Sex' (VIDEO)

Feds Investigating Christine O'Donnell Over Campaign Money She Used to Pay Her Rent

Recession Pushes Families to 'Double Up' in Multigenerational Homes

2010: The Year the Tide Turned Against AIDS?
A number of new medical breakthroughs, a slightly softened stance from the Vatican and a vigorous new generation of activists offer new hope--but huge challenges remain.

Hexane is a highly flammable EPA-listed air pollutant that is used in the manufacture of cleaning agents, glues, roof sealer, automobile tires, energy bars, veggie burgers, and soy, corn, and canola oils. If these food products are not certified organic, some of the ingredients have probably been processed with hexane, no matter how many times the word "natural" is stamped on the package.

Study: Conservatives Have Larger 'Fear Centers' in Their Brains
He cautions that, because the study was carried out only on adults, there is no way to tell what came first -- the brain differences or the political opinions. -- This is a _really_ critical point, folks.

Why Corporate Capital and Finance Are Waging an All-Out Cyberwar Against Wikileaks

Infamous Police Commander Who Oversaw Torture of Over 100 Prisoners Awaits His Sentence

2010: A Precedent-Setting Year In the Fight Against Coal

Vision: The Idea That Drug Addicts Should Be Treated, Not Locked Up, Is Making Waves
The U.S. and Canada are making significant strides towards mainstreaming harm reduction, but there are still walls to knock down.

The Year of the Big Lie: 6 Outrageous Falsehoods That Took Flight in 2010
From Breitbart's smear of Shirley Sherrod to Glenn Beck's use of Mein Kampf to malign George Soros, right-wing and mainstream media embrace the Big Lie.

8 Smears and Misconceptions About WikiLeaks Spread By the Media

Vision: How We Can Mobilize the Unemployed for a Massive Economic Movement

Food Emergency: Millions of Americans Are Heading to Foodbanks for the First Time in Their Lives

Confession time: The only real reason that we bother putting up a tree at all is for the cats. Yes, we actually bought our decorations with them in mind! Everything is shatterproof, bright, and is easily batted around the house. Most of the decorations are balls, and we find them all over the house for *months* after the tree gets put away. The cats really love it, as you’ve seen! (ridiculously adorable cat-and-tree pics; this 'embrace the chaos' approach could actually tempt me to finally put up a tree next year)

For Marcel Proust, one of the after-effects of eating asparagus, was that it “…transforms my chamber-pot into a flask of perfume.’’ This unusual phenomenon is well known by a (disputed) percentage of asparagus-eaters who are lucky (or unlucky) enough to be able to nasaly detect the vegetable’s odorous metabolites in their (or others’) urine. And it has been the subject of fairly intense scientific scrutiny for more than a century. -- Asparagus is my favorite veggie, so I'm thoroughly familiar with this. I didn't know this was one that not everyone could detect, though!

The inside story behind the costly quest to clone dogs reveals at least as much about human nature as it does about copying man's best friend.

UK's foreign aid strategy puts focus on safe abortion and contraceptionGovernment commits extra £2.1bn for maternal and child health schemes and targets halving malaria deaths in 10 hotspots

The Weirdest Indicators of Serious Medical Risks

Top Scientific Breakthroughs of 2010

Placebo effects without deception? Well, not exactly… -- Followup to an article I posted the other day about the placebo effect working even when people knew they were receiving a placebo.

Placebo Bands -- hee!
Related: Power Balance admit to misleading claims

Cosmic Nebulas Dazzle in New Space Telescope Photos

Mechanisms of Juvenile Hormone Action in Insects Could Help Fine Tune Pesticides

Each year at Sense About Science we review the odd science claims people in the public eye have made - about diets, cancer, magnets, radiation and more - sent in to us by scientists and members of the public. Many of these claims promote theories, therapies and campaigns that make no scientific sense. We ask scientists to respond, to help the celebrities realise where they are going wrong and to help the public to make sense of celebrity claims.

A massive storm, which could be one of the rare Great White Spot (GWS) outbreaks, has hit Saturn's northern hemisphere where the central squall measures half the size of Earth.

World's oldest human remains claimed in Israel -- If this is substantiated, it'd be a massive shift. Right now I'm waiting for more info.
Related: 400,000 year old teeth could rewrite the evolutionary history of our species

Teams of scientists have cracked the genetic codes of the wild strawberry and a certain type of cacao used to make fine chocolate, work that should help breeders develop better varieties of more mainstream crops.

Cleveland Plain Dealer Community Hero Series:
Community Heroes 2010: The Rev. Max Rodas
Community Hero 2010: West Side Catholic Center's 'Golden Girls' cook up respect for poor -- this Center is just down the road from us, and seems to be doing a lot of good work with the poor and homeless.
Gene Shimandle saves lives one lesson at a time: Community Hero 2010
Volunteer tutor K Callentine knows nothing works like individual attention: Community Hero 2010
And a link to all the rest of the folks who were honored

Ohio minimum wage to go up 10 cents next week

Update on the Galleria Greenhouse project

Link Latte from Dark Roasted Blend (assorted fascinating and cool stuff)

Ancient rock art's colours come from microbes
A particular type of ancient rock art in Western Australia maintains its vivid colours because it is alive, researchers have found.

2000 Vs. 2010: How the world has changed

The Power List: 20 people who rocked science fiction and fantasy in 2010

Best and Worst [SFF] TV Moments Of 2010

What you need to know about the FCC's net neutrality ruling

Screw stairs: German university installs gigantic slides

Snowflakes under a microscope turn into amazing alien landscapes

Still Life with NGC 2170

Eclipse at Moonset

One Million Galaxies

Patton Oswalt: Wake Up, Geek Culture. Time to Die

Scientists suggest culling Vancouver's entire goose population to restore estuaries

Baby Talk Hinders Learning

Cooling caps may allow cancer patients to keep their hair

Vodka, cheese, red heads, severed heads, and how IKEA helps surgeons!

Saturn's rings formed of a lost icy moon

Streams a major source of nitrous oxide, an ozone-destroying greenhouse gas

Here's an interesting idea in permaculture: What to do with leftover meat, offal or carrion that exists in every kind of farm establishment? Some permaculture farms put it in a bucket cover it with straw and make chicken food by farming maggots, a farm-time favorite of our friendly fowl. Simply enough, these contraptions are called "maggot buckets" and are suspended near a chicken coop, where when the maggots fall to the ground, the chickens are patiently waiting.

Meet Kanoa, Denver's Newest De Brazza's Monkey!

Back to Back Cheetah Cubs - 2 Firsts for Smithsonian

Zoo Basel Welcomes Miniature Piglets

Melbourne Zoo Welcomes a Female Orangutan Baby

4chan Has Been DDOSed.

NYT Mansplains Mansplaining

Browneyedgirl65's continuing awesome coverage of wikileaks:
wikileaks: the tides of information
wikileaks: the leaks march on
wikileaks: wired contradictions
wikileaks: tightening the noose
wikileaks: hit and run

Woman who was last law officer in Mexican border town goes missing

Transgender woman arrested for being assaulted by a cop

Fat Canaries in a Coal Mine

The payroll tax holiday may sound like good news for workers, but women's advocates say it's a dangerous political weapon in the hands of those who want to dismantle Social Security, which provides a lifeline for many older women.

Mobile health units are rolling clinicians into remote parts of Bolivia and helping to lower one of the world's worst rates of maternal mortality.

It's great that Connecticut is about to become the first state to mandate paid sick days for workers. But what about all the other states? Paid sick leave is a worker's basic right and more politicians need to be saying that, says Allison Stevens.

Women may not always be avid adopters of new technology, but Amy Neustein says cloud computing is something to know about. The emerging technology's voice-recognition applications may soon save lives along with everyday aggravation.

In one of the worst areas of maternal care in the world, a health advocacy is teaching Indian women the three big factors in maternal deaths and how to assert political and community pressure to avoid them.

Map of minimum wage by state

In ‘Daily Show’ Role on 9/11 Bill, Echoes of Murrow

India's Poor Reel Under Microfinance Debt Burden

Debate flowchart

6 Do It Yourself Projects That Put Yours to Shame

9 Major Stories Everyone Got Wrong This Year

5 Real Deleted Bible Scenes In Which Jesus Kicks Some Ass

"The Upside of Polyamory"

"Critique of Pure Relationships: On Consent and Compulsory Monogamy"

As I mentioned a few days ago, there's a lot going on with the Peep Alumni Association. I'm going to be back at the end of this month for the PAA meeting. I'm psyched to see everyone, and I'm confident we'll emerge triumphant (by whatever combo of Merry Pranksterism and Putting On Our Nice Faces it ends up requiring). And the conversation on the Peep facebook page has been a wonderful reminder of the chaotic mix of misfit personalities I love so much about the organization -- it makes me positively nostalgic, seeing the text version of the same kinds of arguing and love and weirdness. But one random factoid got dropped in that whole long conversation that has literally given me nightmares (ok, nightmare, singular, but still...)

Kenyon's locked its doors.

I don't know that I can adequately explain how much that disturbs and saddens me, even though I knew it was culturally inevitable that they'd swipe-pass the dorm doors eventually.

I hate locks in general, as anyone who knows me knows. Whenever it's even halfway sane, I avoid them. My Peepmobile wandered Kenyon's campus for several years with the key permanently in the ignition. If it wasn't where I left it, my first assumption is that my coworkers moved it because it was in the way, or that a friend needed to borrow it. I like it best when I live places where friends can stop by whether I'm home or not, and I sometimes come home to little notes that say things like "hey, sorry I missed you. Ate some pop-tarts, wanked, had a nap."

When locks are really necessary, they still grate on me, a general discomfort with my environment, a passionate desire for things to be different. Part of what I loved so much about Kenyon was how well it fit my life in that regard. Of course crime happened, and various minor crimes have happened to me over the course of my life (erm, I mean the non-consensual ones). But the tradeoff has been worth it for me, and I really loved that it was worth it to Kenyon's sense of community, as well. The other night I woke up from a nightmare about being locked out of Old Kenyon. It wasn't one of those "have to get in to be safe" or "have to have something that's inside" kind of dreams... Just that I was there, on campus, and couldn't go into the buildings that're part of my spiritual home. I felt so sad, and so closed out, and it shook me for the rest of the day. I'm still feeling shaken, and a bit uneasy about how I'm going to feel about when I'm back on campus for the meeting. Will it feel like a fundamentally different place because of that? The new buildings, and sculptures, and the continual evolution of the Peeps hasn't had that effect, although the changes to the Bookstore come close. Will the locks finally separate me for the place I lived for almost a decade, that was more iconically "home" than any place I've ever lived?

Notes for context: My default icon is a mural on the wall of the Peep Lounge that was put up during my time at Kenyon. Turtles are a Peep thing. Peeps are a non-greek co-ed weirdness, generally notable for attracting all the folks who didn't quite fit in at Kenyon in some way, which meant we had a wonderfully broad diversity of freaks. Yay, freaks! Peeps are also still many of the most important people in my life, especially since I lived at Kenyon full-time from my freshman year, and worked for the college for another five after I graduated (Kenyon didn't have a non-fraternization policy -- it was essentially five more years of college social life and free classes, and I enjoyed that luxury immensely). I fell in love with Kenyon the first time I visited. I never finished a college application anywhere else. I'm still in love with it, in the convoluted, passionate, exasperated way that years of association with an imperfect institution can create. The reason I titled my last post "nostalgia" was because of the reminders of working for Kenyon. I left soon after the administration changed, because I was feeling that kind of love about working there less and less, and as much as I loved Gambier, and Kenyon, I needed a change.

But I still remember the fun of getting totally obsessed with my wiring projects, creating massive, insanely detailed spreadsheets and diagrams and plans... And that's what I meant about the current work situation making me feel nostalgic.

I'm home today, trying to get this flare more under control. Possible I might go in for the afternoon, but I'm not sure yet.

In an attempt to exorcise the demons of my nightmare, though, here's my immediately post-wakeup conversation about it:

I was part of a group of pre-teen boys in a sort of post-apocalyptic world where there were all these fucked up little enclaves with bizarre rules. A lot of psycho conservative "tough love" camp type places.
Lots of trying to run away, just to end up at another that was fucked up in another way.

Lots of threats, and abuse, and freaky shit. When I finally woke up the last time, they'd just caught us again, and I still had a duffel bag, a small bag, and a hampster in a box. The psycho head of the place was going to kill the hamster as punishment.

The place before that was around a lake, with lots of alligators. I think I was a girl there, actually. Odd how that kept changing. But the paths around the lake were set up to trap kids and keep them from running away. I remember wrestling with a medium-sized alligator.
And I can't even blame it on some fucked up scifi movie in the background, either. I was sleeping to Countdown.
No idea where it came from.
(I was successful against the alligator, though -- it pays not to be afraid of animals, and to have a lot of experience with reptiles)
The problem was getting a good heft on it to throw it far enough into the water while still holding its jaws closed 'til the last possible moment.
And in the last place we were, there were all sorts of rules that they wouldn't tell us, about how far we could go from the main compound before bad things happened to us. Somehow we ended up sitting in a convertible in the woods watching a DVD on this TV in an entertainment center out there.
Hmmm. I suspect a chunk of it is from X-2, actually... That's the last thing I watched or that was on my mind about teens in danger/on the run.
The woods theme is probably from Kenyon, at least in part.
Not sure about any of the rest.
Huh. Reminds me of another weird element. In at least one of the places, there was some sort of visible distinction between teens who'd been deemed old enough to have sex, and had, and those who hadn't. I remember that coming up with one of the other kids.
It's a lot more elaborate, and thematically relatively different from most of my dreams.
Usually my brain has the subtlety of a brick.
Floods and disasters aren't uncommon themes, but it's usually during the disaster. Had a rather interesting one about a town that'd flooded, and all the large constrictors were loose in the water. I was trying to catch them/rescue them.
I remember a gorgeous albino burmese floating past at one point.
Dream symbolism guides always make me giggle. The idea that the same images mean the same thing to all people strikes me as complete idiocy.
Snakes mean totally different things to me than to most people.
Represent different things. Usually caretaking, actually.
How on earth the symbolism could be static between a person who has a phobia, or whose primary interaction with snakes is culturally normative, and a person who's loved them her entire life, and had multiple as pets...
(I was the kid who got in fistfights at summer camp to defend the spiders in our cabin)
There's something oddly halloweenish about my critter preferences; I love bats, spiders, and snakes.
And in 4th grade, I carried The Encyclopedia of Reptiles and Amphibians everywhere, and had it close to memorized (I also have a ridiculous fondness for salamanders; had a lot as pets as a kid)
I was utterly fascinated with the Japanese Giant Salamander, which could grow up to four feet long.
And the current collapse of the amphibian population is hugely upsetting to me on a personal, as well as environmental level.

Some dreams are gone almost the minute I wake up, others seem to leave shreds of themselves stuck to me, and I spend my morning feeling oddly off-kilter. Last night's seems to be of the latter type.

I don't recall much in the way of details, but the dream was about Yauncey and Juanita. Yauncey was having health problems (I think severe arthritis), but hadn't let any of us know so we could give him a hand. Most of the dream seemed to be about how to arrange to help out without upsetting him.

Yauncey and Juanita were friends from Kenyon; he worked in the maintenance department and was just incredibly friendly and warm. They'd been together since 8th grade, and were still head over heels in love with each other. They didn't have kids of their own, but they "adopted" Kenyon students for years. He especially loved redheads and rugby players, and threw an annual Redhead Party (it didn't matter if you decorated yourself with red string, dyed your hair, or were natural, you were welcome). I was more clearly a redhead back then, and Yauncey came up, out of the blue, and introduced himself to me my freshman year; I was friends with him from then on. They also had groups of their student friends out to their place, which was build into the top of a hill out in the boonies (great for seeing fireworks from all the surrounding areas on July 4th). Juanita was a fabulous cook, and we'd hang out, stuff ourselves with great food, and play with Yauncey's collection of puzzles (the three-dimensional metal and wood "figure out how to take this apart" types), frequently handing them back to him in exasperation, with requests for him to "fix it".

About ten years ago, maybe a bit less, as their health problems got worse, Yauncey retired, and they moved away (Florida, I think). I saw them last at the PWL reunion at Kenyon, in 2002 or so, and they were doing well. One of the Peeps, Stephanie, had seen them pretty recently when I saw her a couple of years ago, and they were doing fine then, but some part of me gets nervous about the idea of emailing her to find out how they're doing now. Fear of bad news, I guess.

Anyway, they're on my mind this morning, along with melancholy thoughts about the aging of loved ones and such.

Yelling back and forth with a fundie minister about abortion, in a church across the street from our clinic (there isn't actually one). Odd thing was I actually managed to communicate that I believe every bit as deeply and as strongly in my worldview as he did in his, and we had sort of a "hug and agree to go our separate ways" ending to it all. Very bizarre. Then taking a train across australia (although wherever I was going wasn't actually in Australia at all, and I believe the setting was futuristic), and then a bit about forestfire and I debating between about 8 different types of pasta sauce. All strange.

Must get dressed for work now -- I just wanted to get the basics of these down before I lost them. If I recall more detail, I may flesh it out in a bit, when I get to work.

But I did have a few funny dreams. I woke up early Sunday morning, watched some various stuff from the DVR, and just as I was starting to get sleepy again, decided to put in The Thing. I thought, at the time, "Gee, it's dumb to put in a movie like this when I know I'm going to fall back asleep; it's a guarantee of fucked up dreams." So, in my dream, our basement was substantially creepier than it actually was, and I was down there with the dogs, and they kept wandering off, and I was getting really creeped out, and kept telling myself "Dammit, I knew I shouldn't have watched that movie when I took that nap; I'm only getting freaked out down here because of the damned movie!"