rochelle.mazar.ca

blue found me this fabulous site, and after showing it around, it turns out that Wonder Yuka is enamoured and might even get one! The story: Helga, our friendly neighbourhood farm hand, gets attached to the cows who then are led off the slaughter. One night a horrible thunderstorm hits. She writes, when I went out to feed the cows, I found them beneath a split and blackened tree, all dead. Six little calves huddled together a few feet away. As I led the orphans back to the barn, something inside me changed. The years of accepting sad reality were over. If these little guys had survived an act of God as powerful as that storm, they sure weren’t going to be killed by an act of man, not if I could help it!

That’s how the cow sanctuary began.

Trouble was, I wasn’t a rich heiress. I was a farm worker making minimum wage. These calves weren’t even mine. They belonged to the man who owned the farm. How was I going to save the calves?

I exchanged six months’ wages for the lives of those calves. Never was money better spent, I thought as I hugged them. But what next? They were growing fast and would soon weigh at least half a ton each. No matter how hard I worked, farm wages weren’t going to be enough to feed them. “How? How? How?” filled my thoughts.

The answer came to me as I lay in the straw snuggling with my cow family: I’d make life-size stuffed cows for others to snuggle the way I snuggled with my real cows. And with that, Helga’s Cowches were born.

I decided to enjoy a little This American Life this evening. Thank God for streaming radio. Tonight’s chosen episode: Living the Dream: There’s a deep impulse in American culture that says that you can make yourself into anyone. Today, three stories about people who tried to do just that.

Bad Girl Swirl
Things to do with your old Bridesmaid dresses: Throw a bridesmaid beauty pageant for your friends, with prize categories like “most reflective”, “biggest butt bow,” and “all-around ugliest.”

Things to do with photos of your evil ex: Write embarrassing sexual stats on back, laminate, and trade with all your friends. Mail off to inmates in local prisons with a touching and titillating letter of introduction. (Include your ex’s return address and phone number, of course.) Spread one inch apart on ungreased cookie sheet and broil on high. Bury in backyard with a dead fish. Drain toilet and superglow to bottom of toilet bowl.

How to clean under the bed:
What you need:
* Endust, Pledge, or other aerosol dusting spray
* a long haired cat or small fluffy dog
* pet comb
What you do:
* Spray fur of cat or dog with Endust and bowl pet under the bed until all dust-bunnies are picked up and clinging to pet.
* comb pet’s coat thoroughly.

The tremendously wild hair I woke up with this morning (a shower for bed is always good for morning entertainment), the lovely comments in blue’s LiveJournal, my new funkis in the bathroom; a transparent red phone; sunshine in the morning; email from Evita; blooming geraniums on my balcony; clocks of all varieties and sizes; my kitchen without any cabinet doors; a new song uploaded (a Dar Williams song about Mary Magdalene, with some mistakes in it and a very drastically messed up ending); eggplant parmigiana in my fridge (only one quarter gone); Sunday morning radio; warm days and cool nights; being me!

Well…today I build a silly generic room, and finished off the last little bits of the Generic Talking Stick room. And I spoke to my lovely friend Evita today, who’s sounding sort of blue. I discovered that she works on a moo more local to her, which is sadly lacking in tools. This isn’t their fault, it’s not really anyone’s fault, it’s just that the basic moocore doesn’t come equipped with a whole lot of stuff. Well, comparatively speaking. Especially these moos that don’t have a) any programmers, and b) a whole lot of people to know what else is out there and what can be ported over.

Well, I love Evita. Though I know I shouldn’t talk about it right now, it’s one of my greatest hopes that I’ll see her living in my neck of the woods shortly. And for the most selfish of reasons. I just think my life would be so greatly improved by her presence…she’s one of those people, you know, the ones who will understand (and take seriously) some of the sillier things in your mind that you really want to take seriously. I’ve never met anyone like her. It would just be nice to be able to hop on the subway and end up at her doorstep, bottle of wine in hand, and spend an evening talking shop/fun/social/chicks and so on. But we can do that in any case, even if she’s NOT in my neck of the woods. Ah, the dissertation drama….

Anyway, so I found out that Evita has her own MOO to deal with. Well, perhaps you already know that I have commited myself to building generics of late. Initially I was commited to building Bingen, but lately I’ve been thinking about generics. This started when I built the keyword bot (which shockingly worked completely reliably!) because I accidentally deleted the parent of the fake-out kw bot I’d been using up until then. The new was was a kid of $thing only, so no traceback and no conflicts. And solid as a rock. It was pointed out to be pretty quickly (the next morning) that this bot had many more uses than just fixing my own characters in Bingen. It immediately went into use in Marlene’s Russian-English tutorial, and was a hit at the teacher workshops last week. Evita was saying today that it would be ideal for tutoring, because you can program it to repeat information that teachers don’t need to type in over and over again. This pleases me greatly. After the kw bot, I managed to get the whole world to help me get my Talking Stick Room working (it’s perfect now, thanks to leigh). I built a very simple room that you can add and remove noises from as well, for truna, another fabulous MOOprof from Australia whom I simply adore. So I was sitting on a series of generics that were, for all intents and purposes, mine.

And Evita’s moo needed some tools. So I ported them over. Because I love Evita and I want all her pursuits to be as simple and successful as possible. And a lack of tools shouldn’t stand in her way.

Besides, it feels GREAT to be the author of tools people can use. I hope someone does. 🙂

This one’s for blue. Leprosy Barbie

This is just unbelievable…I’m sitting in the library reading this and exclaiming aloud as I do. People must think I’m insane. But read this:

Prevailing attitudes toward children, of both sexes, also led to oversight and confusion. Adults tended to ignore, neglect, and forget their offspring; infants in early life possessed a kind of transparency. It may be that their slim chances for survival prompted adults to keep a certain distance from their infants, to avoid cementing emotional attachments with them until their chances of survival susbtantially improved. Moreover, it is probable that the scant value accorded female babies multiplied the instances of simple oversight. The underreporting of female infants may thus be futher evidence of the negligence or indifference with which a father of this epoch regarded his daughter. Herihy and Klapish-Zuber, Tuscans and their familes

You see what I have to work with? Sheeesh.

not everyone can live
up to what they see of themselves in the shine of your armour,
Joan

—Evita

blue, the finder of wacky URLs, gives us this treat today. Go have a look at the Jesus of the Week .

I intend to take EvaB to this festival one day. We will throw tomatoes with wild abandon!

My friend blue is planning a visit to Toronto! Yay! I’ve decided to make a little list of things we could see while she’s here.

First, of course, the ROM has to be on the list, as far as I’m concerned…I love the ROM. Best museum ever. 🙂 Well, as far as I’m concerned. It’s got so much diverse stuff. And I love those dinosaurs, of course. And then how about St. Lawrence Market, which is just down the street from me? Mmmm….good food, good cooking, fabulous bread and cheese. Mmmmmmm…..and then…some serious cheap shopping at Honest Ed’s! Let’s see, what else…

Oh, well, Casa Loma, which was built by a very rich man who always wanted a castle. We could head over to the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the famous Bata shoe museum! But, you know it’s all happening at the zoo…I do believe it. I do believe it’s true. Or…for the historical touch, we could hit Blackcreek pioneer village. Or, for that foreign flavour, head out to African Lion’s safari, which is just the most obvious thing to have in southern Ontario. Mmmm….we could even take in a very expensive meal at CN tower! And I haven’t even mentioned the island yet….

Reader response to the Hero contemplation

Now lemmee get this straight

You say
You’re tortured because you can’t write
Or
You can’t write because you’re tortured

You say
These times have made me cynical
Or
These times confirm your cynicism

Now lemmee say one thing
I’d rather rope steers
Than talk politics with you

I’d rather get skunk drunk
Under a goose-neck trailer

Your despair is more boring
Than The Merv Griffin Show

Your sniveling whine
Your dime-a-dozen solutions to crime

Get off your tail and cook
Do time
Anything
But don’t burn mine

2/80
Santa Rosa, Ca.

Sam Shepard

Oh yeah……….

The theatre on Yonge street has recently replaced a three month run of The Vagina Monologues with The Puppetry of the Penis. Coincidence?

Heard on the radio just now:

“I laughed so hard my cheeks hurt. All of them.”

A short dissertation on bodies, clothing, and being girlie
This is my backwash column for the day. I’m quite happy with it. I really am. It’s nice to find a spot to spew about this sort of thing, and have people maybe appreciate the effort. 🙂

I have recently acquired a column at Backwash. It’s really a very amazing place…because it focuses on personality, people are actually encouraging me to talk about myself. I mean, do they know what they’re in for?

So far the only complaint i really have is that I can’t update the journal section without wiping out all the links I posted. Bah. Some of us write a lot more than that…i have to stop thinking about that journal thing as a blog and thing of it more as a column that requires more THOUGHT than a blog does. Once I get a better grip on the whole thing, yes, then you’ll see additions to this page to reflect that….*rubs her hands with glee.*

Well, I’m happily in the a/c’ed office this afternoon, though only an hour to go. The one time this shift seems to go by quickly is when I’m afraid to go outside. I’ve decided that I should definitely eat out today. It takes too much effort to make myself something to eat, so I just won’t do it.

Oh, and I should point out that it was Pound that brought me to backwash in the first place….another almost-blog that I saw listed in Bust, a mag which I should read more often, but in reality I only ever see when my sister buys me a copy.

In an hour I will have eaten something, and I might be slightly more coherent.

How would your college/university experience have been different if you had had to sign this in order to attend?

Well, I can’t figure out which one of these is me: Personality & Breast Shape. This is incredibly heterosexist, and disturbing. Surreal.

blue doesn’t think so, but I think these Paper Dolls are kind of cool.

Layers
A whiff of lavender…Could it be that EvaB is looking for you in Tabula?
She pages, “uknow photoshop?”
She pages, “and the idea of layers”
She pages, “visible and invisible”
She pages, “well i think of people like that”
She pages, “if you save the file as mere jpg cause its for public consumption then you flatten the layers”
She pages, “if you save it as .png or .psd its a drain on the memory BUT”
She pages, “all the layers visible and invisible get saved”
She pages, “whether you have made them visible or not”
She pages, “i find that comforting knowing there are layers on layers beyond layers of psd in people”
She pages, “you forget the layer you made and then you make it visible and you realize yeah it was always there”
She pages, “moral: you have enough memory to remember just because you are not seeing some layers now they dont exist but maybe she is not ready to see them”

Things die
Things die, and you don’t have to like it, but you have to accept it. Eventually.

Deleting stuff isn’t usually good
I got frustrated and deleted my a-dock last night. That wasn’t wise. It was just doing it’s job, and I like having it. A-dock is a small bar that floats on my screen and tells me what programs I have open. I really, really like it. I think it also acts as a launcher, but I don’t like that. I want something very clear for that. If I just have one program open, that’s all I want to see. I usually let it float on the right side of my screen, under my apple list of what’s open. This is a fake out version of something that’s in OS X. I really, really like it.

I also deleted what I was using as a launcher. I want a separate launcher that comes up as a small screen that I can open with a hot key and close when I’m finished with it. I had been using something that was a non-floating strip of icons, very small, that I could snuggle on one side of my screen and call up with a hot key. But I was never really thrilled with it. I’m not really sure why. So I downloaded a new one called x-launcher. So far I really really really like it. It’s small and you have folders that when open show you icons of the items you can launch. And it has a ‘main’ folder for stuff you use a lot. Fab. I have it hotkeyed. That’s better. I have both of them in aqua themes, and they look very clean and clear. I like I like I like.

So maybe deleting stuff stuff isn’t always bad.