konsole is kewl

why it takes me so long to answer email

100 things about me

1) I like filling out questionnaires, surveys, and silly email forwards
2) I constantly analyze everything I do, and often worry about my motives
3) I prefer cats to dogs because dogs are emotional and needy
4) I am an only child
5) I don't know off the top of my head how many times I've been arrested
6) I collect "how to" books on many subjects but rarely finish reading one
7) I've never screamed; I'm not sure I know how
8) One of the last things I turned the TV on to watch was the Berlin Wall coming down
9) The summer after I quit watching TV I was asked to participate in the Neilsen ratings
10) I haven't set foot in a Walmart since 10 October 2003
11) It really annoys me when people use nonwords like "notarary," "irregardless" and "unthaw"
12) But I think ebonics is kewl
13) I think country colloquialism is kewler
14) I think organized religion is the work of the devil and detracts from real worship
15) When I do what I consider prayer I always look at the sky
16) I fainted once, when I was twenty
17) I think I would be content living the life of a hermit or nun
18) I used to think there was a magic age when suddenly you knew all the answers.
19) I love plants, the way they sprout from seeds and turn to the sun
20) I've never believed homo sapiens is the most intelligent species on earth: we control fire & stuff because we have thumbs, not because we're smarter
21) Bugs fascinate me, especially the flying kind, and I don't believe we have an accurate idea of just how well they see with those huge complex eyes
22) I hardly ever wear perfume or makeup or jewelery
23) I don't do anything special to take care of my skin or hair
24) Some days I don't even brush my hair
25) People say I'm pretty, but I think that's just because I am tall and have long legs
26) I have tattoos and I regret getting them
27) I have contemplated suicide ever since I was age seven or so
28) I don't think I'm going to do it
29) I am anal when it comes to text - if I start putting a period at the end of these sentences I'll have to put one on every one
30) I take a foolish pride in not using a spellchecker or an html editor
31) I became a bookworm at age seven, as the result of a three-week hospital stay
32) When I was eleven years old my favorite book was the Rand McNally road atlas
33) I've never had any difficulty either reading a map or folding one
34) In 1998 I had lasik done on both my eyes - my insurance didn't cover it but I think it was well worth it
35) I wore coke-bottle-bottom glasses from the time I was seven until I got contact lenses at age fifteen
36) I have an alcohol tolerance to be proud of
37) I drink every day, except on days when I don't. I sometimes wonder if I should worry about this but it's never been a problem in any way
38) I don't have any childhood friends, because my dad was army and we moved every year
39) I have only three first cousins
40) I've never done a cartwheel
41) For much of my life I envied short petite girls and women because I felt gangly and awkward and not a bit cute. I still feel awkward, but I've gotten over the envy bit for the most part
42) I keep my eyes open underwater. This was a problem when I wore contact lenses
43) I don't own nor want a cellphone
44) I don't like to replace things until they are completely worn out
45) I don't get bored; there is too much to do!
46) I'd rather fast than exercise
47) I bought inline skates because the advertisement said, "I hate situps"
48) All my life I've wanted to be able to shrink a person and hide them in my shirt pocket, so they could see what my day was like
49) I am much more likely to cry over an animal's death than a person's
50) I was an 'A' student when I wanted to be
51) One of my strengths is being able to reword complex ideas so everyone else can understand them
52) I am mechanically inclined and can usually take things apart, fix them, and put them back together
53) I am a generous tipper
54) I got married on my parents' twentieth anniversary and my son was born the following year on my twentieth birthday
55) Although I'm indifferent to having meat in my daily diet I am not a vegetarian
56) When I really need comfort food I fry a lot of bacon and butter each piece as I eat it
57) I like to knit and crochet but I even though I'm a beginner I have a hard time restricting myself to a pattern
58) Back when I had access to them I was very good at Ms Packman, pinball, and pool
59) I get an emotional shot in the arm from finishing a project
60) It sometimes takes me years to finish a project that should only take hours
61) Cigarette smoking is the toughest addiction I've ever given up
62) After trying it in all its forms I can conclusively say I don't like cocaine
63) The main reason I hardly ever smoke pot is it changes (in unpredictable ways) the way alcohol affects me, and I'd rather drink
64) I was still climbing trees (for fun) when I was thirty
65) I've spent many hours in a tree reading a book
66) I've worked construction in many settings and I am comfortable on a construction site and in an all-male environment
67) I love heavy equipment and think a trackhoe would make a nifty lawn ornament
68) I can draw a map and/or write directions to a location so that even the most directionally-challenged person can find it
69) Sometimes I swing from total apathy to manic exuberance so fast I think I need medication
70) When I was eleven I ran away from home, taking a shower curtain and a gallon of water and a couple of books. Mom got mad when I wouldn't explain why I'd taken the shower curtain down (she didn't realize I had run away)
71) For a while, recently, I tried to "lie it forward" by adding five years to my age (to make me closer in age to most of the people I hang out with) but it was too confusing to pretend I remembered JFK getting shot
72) I've never learned the art of small talk and am usually uncomfortable and bored at parties
73) I'm not good with tact either and often blurt things I shouldn't
74) That's one reason why I'm more comfortable writing to people than talking to them
75) I usually carry a pocket knife, in my pocket
76) I usually wear denim jeans and a cotton t-shirt or sweatshirt
77) I once grew a kiwi from seed and it vined all around my porch and was pretty but never bore fruit
78) I once grew tomatoes from seeds that turned out to be hybrids, and the fruit ended up a beautiful tomato-red color but practically hollow, and with beaks
79) I hate to wear a bra and usually don't unless I'm at work
80) I'm usually barefoot when there's not snow on the ground

81) I used to wear a size ten shoe but now I wear an eleven and my feet have stopped hurting
82) I've never broken a bone
83) I still have my appendix and tonsils
84) The older I get the less likely I am to do things I don't want to
85) It often takes me several times of meeting a person before I recognize them when I see them again
86) I worry that I might hurt someone's feelings, which is weird because I'm not really fond of people in general
87) When I was a teenager I suddenly developed a shellfish allergy. I'm happy to report this doesn't include mollusks
88) I weighed 115 when I was twelve, and I thought I was very fat, when in fact I was just very tall
89) I've set foot in 47 states and 11 countries, but I don't feel like I've travelled enough
90) I've never been to Mexico, California, Alaska or Hawaii
91) I can stand extreme heat as long as I don't have to do anything more exhausting than lie on a beach towel
92) I get embarassed over stupid stuff like making a funny noise or mispronouncing a word, and I'll stay embarassed for a long time after everyone else has forgotten it
93) I was a sun-worshipper for twenty-plus years and my final tanline lasted two years after I quit sunning
94) I don't care if cats get on the counters or tables but I don't like dogs on the furniture
95) I can't forget a lot of numbers I don't need - like old boyfriend's social security numbers, drivers license numbers from when I lived in other states, and bank accounts that I closed years ago
96) Aspirin has never upset my stomach
97) Every time I see cattle I get an urge to try to sketch them
98) I think the toilet seat up-or-down fuss is silly
99) I got married in a clearing in the woods next to an old family cemetery away from all traffic noises
100) My husband and I met on USENET

why I can't have nice houseplants

note to my 24-year-old son, in response to a sixteen page letter consisting mainly of "Jesus loves me, this I know"

It's nice to hear from you, but to be perfectly honest, I skim over the religious bits, the prayer and all. I wouldn't have brought it up, but since you asked, my religious views differ from yours by a long shot. Frankly, I think yours are pretty weird, but that's okay. If it works for you, that's fine. Religion is a tool humanity uses to explain and rationalize, and to take comfort from. If you're getting comfort from your god, then it's doing its job. I've never been very impressed with christianity for myself, but, as I said, it's good for a lot of people.

I guess if you must put a label on things, my own belief is closer to a cross between Buddhism and Gaian (pagan) than any of the other organized religions I know of. These days I'm so disgusted with humankind that I'm taking the stance the Earth is a living organism and we are a virus upon her.
I hope she wins. ;-)

I tell you a big problem I have with christianity, is the whole bit about being forgiven for our sins. To me, that's an invitation to not take responsibility for our actions, which makes this world a worse place, and that in turn makes christianity evil. I've wondered if Christ is the devil...

Okay,I take back that last bit, although I have wondered, and then decided it's the people who built a religion around him who are evil, not Jesus himself. But I am serious in saying that the forgiveness bit encourages people to not take responsibility for their own actions, and this makes the world a worse place, because of the INFLUENCE of christianity. So, you may answer, without forgiveness everyone burns in hell, because who is perfect? And there you have another big problem I see in christianity: they require perfection. They require the impossible. They say if you don't completely ace this test, you're as bad as if you got every single question wrong. There you go again, this discourages people from even TRYING to be good, because everyone knows you can't be perfect, and it's perfect or nothing, so why bother trying?

I also don't like the way they changed the rules in the middle: first we're all god's children, then all of a sudden this guy Jesus is god's ONLY son, like, to a greater degree than the rest of us. But that's really a minor point.

The way I see it, Jesus was a good guy, and so was Mohammed, and a few others, who lived their lives in such way to approach perfection. They should be a model for the rest of us. That bears repeating: They should be a model for the rest of us. They should be a model for the rest of us. They should be a model for the rest of us.

But to give them actual divinity, I think there's where the fuckup begins. Now you've got a religion built around worshiping someone who walked the earth, and calling him "god," when that title ought to be reserved for the entity or whatever which first breathed life into everything, or created the stars, or whatever.

Have you read the Clan of the Cave Bear books? These ancient people worshipped Gaia, the "earth mother," whose birth waters created the oceans and rivers. What's spooky is this same story was told ALL OVER the world, way before there was much going on in the way of travel and sharing ideas between different "peoples." Yet people in Asia and the Americas and Australia and Europe and the Far East and Africa all knew this SAME story, and all had these little carved images of a hugely pregnant woman, the Earth Mother, mother of all life. How do you explain that? Maybe the spaceships touched down in threemillion BC and the space people told all the cave people all over the world the same story. I don't know. The Gaia theory makes as much sense to me as anything. This is what the belief systems of "aboriginal" people like the native americans is based on. It involves respect for all life, and acknowledges there is a fragile balance in nature which we have to take care of, and be responsible for. Like in Genesis we are made "stewards" of this world and given "dominion" over all life on it. People have twisted that to mean you can exploit it and use it up and throw it away and disrespect it and not give it a second thought. I don't think it was meant to mean that at all.

Buddhism, on the other hand, says all the souls, and god, began as one single entity, all stuck together. Then for some reason all the souls split off from the god-thing, and ever since then the object has been for each soul to reunite with the god-thing. You do this by becoming perfect, and you have an infinite (maybe) number of chances to get there. Life, or rather, "lives" is like a ladder. In some lifetimes you climb up a few rungs, in others you slip down. Sometimes you remember lessons learned - - I don't mean you know stuff when you're a little kid, but you know things in your gut which keep you on the right track. If you go with this school of thought, it's possible for ANYONE to get to the top of the ladder and once again become "one" with the god-head, as Jesus, and Mohammed, and Gandhi, and probably many many others who lived less celebrated flamboyant lives, have done.

I believe people want to be a "good guy," and when a religion tells you you CAN'T be a good guy, then out of despair or desperation or confusion or unhappiness, people do whatever's easiest, or even do "bad" things. When you're told you're not good and no matter how hard you try you'll never be good enough, how can that be a positive thing? No, I don't believe I'll ever embrace christianity.

Now aren't you sorry you asked? :)