February 18, 2008

• Brain Salad Surgery

  I have been on a marvelous blogroll lately, with more things to write about than I have had time at the keyboard to write them, what with the seductive fascination of reading and commenting on some of your blogs, and my son’s requiring the computer for himself some of the time.  This is an attempt to clear out some of that backlog of ideas and free up a few neurons.

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  Mercury Direct Station today and Virgo Full Moon/Total Eclipse Feb. 20/21

  These celestial events are not in aspect with either of the extremely sensitive degrees of my natal chart.  No, not ON one of them, spang in between both of them and within orb of influence of both.  It is curses and blessings all over the place for me… busy, busy, busy interesting times.

  I still cannot walk from room to room without getting out of breath, but that doesn’t kill the urge to go and do.  I cleaned out the spam filter at my ISP today.  I had scrolled through and deleted hundreds of junk emails before getting sick of the task.  When I noticed that I’d already gotten over halfway through the mess, I went ahead and finished it, cleared the folder out!

  I did, or attempted to do, a lot of other such tedious, repetitive and long-neglected tasks, including an incomplete scroll back through the email that has been accumulating in my inbox since September when I became too ill to deal with it on a regular basis. 

  I even got around, finally, to thanking the Xangans whose generous financial contributions brought happy tears to my eyes and great relief to Greyfox’s economic panic over the expenses surrounding my ambulance ride and hospital stay.  I’ll take this opportunity to wave the little begging hat around again, below, because although the hospital’s charity committee is considering forgiving part of our debt, the EMTs and ambulance service have no sliding fee scale so we owe them the entire $1,300+, in addition to X-rays and the emergency room physician’s charges that were not included in the hospital bill.  If Greyfox ever feels prosperous enough to approve the purchase, I would also like to get a portable battery-powered nebulizer, so I can get out of the house and still keep breathing.

  The begging hat link doesn’t, I think, open in a new window.  I put it at the bottom because I don’t want to lose readers at this point.  I’m not done here yet.

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  Arctic Winter Sports News

  Todd Palin, Alaska’s First Dude, the governor’s husband, is a tough and durable dude, indeed.  He’s the defending champion in the Tesoro Iron Dog snowmachine race, which might still be going on, or recently finished.  A few days ago, at high speed, his snowmobile hit a barrel concealed by snow, bent a runner about ninety degrees, and threw him seventy feet through the air.  He had only minor injuries.

  In the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race (not dog sled race, it’s a nose across the finish line that wins the race), Ken Anderson with ten dogs pulled into the Carmacks checkpoint three minutes ahead of Lance Mackey and his team of 12 (10:40 and 10:43 AM, today), about the same time that the #3 musher, Michelle Phillips was leaving the Stepping Stone checkpoint.  Brent Sass, who had briefly held the lead, had dropped back to sixth position.

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  Notable Quotes

  “Beauty is worse than wine.  It intoxicates both the holder and beholder.”

  Aldous Huxley

  “The great tragedy of science:  the slaying of a beautiful theory by an ugly fact.”

  Thomas Henry Huxley

  “If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.

  Albert Einstein

  
  Human virtue is the courage to act like a merciful god would act.”

  Harry Palmer

  (on the current U.S. presidential race)
  “In the celestial caucus room, Elizabeth Cady Stanton is high-fiving Frederick Douglass.”

  Diane Roberts
  

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  Nasty Rumors and False Accusations

  This, from NFP, came in response to yesterday’s entry:
  “I think of you as a boddhisattva and wonder what the hell has convinced you to linger about for our sakes?”

  First of all, if I were a bodhisattva, having transcended all my karmic bonds and liberated myself from the wheel of samsara, I think I’d have clue, don’t you?  Secondly, if it were true that I chose to return to this existence without being forced to do so, at my current level of evolution and enlightenment, my motivation would be curiosity, not altruism.

  Dan, for his own inscrutable reasons, has reacted to my display of the “false” badge by protesting that I am a “True Xangan.”  Xanga doesn’t think so, apparently. 

  As for me, I don’t care.  My recent observations, and the rumors I’ve read, suggest that it is a dubious honor, conferred more for quantity than quality.   If the “true” badge were to mysteriously appear on my pages, I’d accept it.  If it never appears, I won’t feel slighted or disappointed.

  I ripped the “false” badge from its creator, beautifulwolf.  The person who created the badge expressed a hope that it would spread virally, and I chose to help in that endeavor.  If you like it, copy it, please, and upload it onto your page, make it your profile pic, whatever.  I display my copy proudly, with tongue firmly in cheek.  I know nobody wanted to hurt my feelings by leaving me out.  If someone had wanted to hurt my feelings, they’d have to try a lot harder than this.

  For Dan and Featured_Grownups, I hope that clears up the matter.
  

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  Credits and Minis

  I noticed a few days ago that I had somehow accrued almost six hundred credits.  It seemed absurd to leave them just sitting around in my account, so I started dropping a few minis here and there.  Very soon, I was getting frustrated.  I seemed to be getting discounted prices on the minis I gave.  I’d leave a 5-credit mini somewhere, and I’d only be charged 2 credits.  After a brief excursion around Xanga, giving minis to everyone I read, I’d come back to my site and find that people had been giving me minis and the balance of credits in my account would have grown instead of shrinking.

  Last night when I retired and let Doug have the computer, I had managed through diligent commenting to get my credit balance down to just over a hundred credits.  Imagine my shock and dismay when I came here today and discovered that I had 1,113 credits! It was only briefly a mystery, however.  When I checked my messages, I learned that Marc had given me a thousand credits for trying and failing to complete a survey.  *sigh*  Anybody want a mini?
  
  

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  Nigerian Scam Spam

  If you have never gotten an email from a Nigerian, asking for your help in an international transfer of funds and promising big rewards, you probably either don’t get email, or you have a very good spam filter.  There is even a song about these scams, “I am the Most Trusted Man in Nigeria.”

  I recently recalled that I’d been the victim of something like this, originating in Nigeria, even before I got on the electrical grid or onto the internet.

  It was the early ’90s.  A notice from the post office said I had a parcel from Nigeria, postage due.  I  had some clients in Lagos.  One of them ran a newspaper and had compensated me for my work by placing a free ad for me, which had brought in more clients.  I assumed that one of them had chosen to pay for my services with some sort of barter.

  After I paid the hefty postage and opened the parcel, I discovered that it didn’t come from a client.  Apparently the scammer had taken my address from that free ad.  The box contained two tacky plywood figures, what would loosely be called in Antiques Roadshow terms, “folk art.”  Cut out with a jigsaw, and coated in tacky-sticky shellac, they were two-dimensional images vaguely suggesting people in African tribal dress.

  Accompanying them was a letter praising me for my “altruistic humanitarian” efforts, and asking for a contribution in exchange for these objets d’art.
  
  

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   Spare
  change?
  This is my begging hat.  It is
  a link to PayPal.  If you haven’t read the story of why I’m
  begging, my recent ambulance ride and hospitalization, it is there to
  be found in my entries from December.  If you would like to
  contribute, but prefer not
  to use PayPal, my husband has posted his postal mailing address at ArmsMerchant.

  

  • 6:54 pm
  • 30 Comments