Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:54 PM

So, after all our griping about our TV set over the year, last month we got a replacement when Ian's great aunt went into a nursing home. It's same brand, slightly larger screen, and doesn't have the problem with insufficient brightness that caused so many problems with our old one. However, this one has a slightly different problem that one of the circuit boards may be loose, meaning that we'd get audio but no video unless we thumped the back of the screen numerous times upon first turning it on. [We really don't watch enough TV to make a new one worth buying.]

Finally, a few days ago, we realized that merely tilting the television back a few degrees was sufficient and eliminated the need for repetitive thumping. Just something small -- about an inch or two thick or so... maybe the size of a moderately-sized book would do the trick.

Right now, our television set is being propped up on a copy of Charles MacKay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions & the Madness of Crowds. It just seemed appropriate somehow.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:20 PM

Several days ago I was IMing with a friend. At one point, in the midst of a longer thought, she wrote:

I never quite personified Writer's Block in that manner, which seems odd given my various other peculiarities.

Spontaneously, my mind flipped over to Neil Gaiman's American Gods, with its notion that minor deities can be killed. And I started wondering whether there actually were god(s) of writers block, and what would happen if they could be killed off...

I suddenly envisioned the world coming to a crashing halt as the floodgates opened and everybody filled with fervor and began to write. And what a wonderful world that would be -- at least, until people finished their great works and asked friends and family to read them... [I do believe in Sturgeon's Law, after all.]

Still, I find it actually useful to think about writers block in a different way. Makes me wonder about rituals that might banish or dispel writers block, as I did for the rebellious character right before NaNoWriMo. Still, lately I've been taking walks over lunch and I can visualize the next scenes in my story so well I could almost reach out and touch them... but I haven't written a word in ages. It's partly lack of time, partly lack of energy, but partly... block.

Any pagans or other writers care to share tips, techniques or just a good laugh at my general silliness in wondering about personification of the block and rituals?

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:45 PM

Last week, Ian picked up the DVD box set of the Indiana Jones movies. [I personally had considered avoiding them, just for the stupid decision to rename the first film (don't those idiots understand anything? Indy was one of the raiders of the title!), but Ian wanted the widescreen.] For something to do while folding laundry, Ian decided to watch the second move, which he'd never actually seen before.

I had been about 14 when it came out, saw it in the theaters, and really didn't like it. People keep talking about the Highlander movie(s) that "there should be only one" and I really think that holds true for Star Wars and Raiders as well. The producers added some interesting things to the world and mythos with the later films, but none of the sequels were as strong as the original, and doing so also managed to dilute some of the things that made the first film so unique and special.

A few years back, Ian almost watched Temple of Doom but the Xena episode homage to Indiana Jones was on opposite. After the opening sequence, we switched to Xena, because it captured the spirit of the first film better than the actual sequel. Not only does Indiana Jones act out of character straight from the opening sequence (wouldn't a professor of archaeology be more interested in the urn of the first emperor than the diamond he trades it for?), not only is the whole tone of the movie too dark and gruesome for the genre (this is the movie that precipitated PG-13 ratings), but I cannot stand the female lead, the screechiest, whiniest, most annoying female sidekick until Perpugilliam Brown! And Ian made an excellent point as we watched the opening sequence. Why does she get on the plane with Indiana? She has no in character reason to do so. She has several decent opportunities to leave Dr. Jones and go on with her life (split up and get her own guide to Delhi?) but never does. She's there only for the contrivance of the plot, has no chemistry with Indiana Jones, and her banter and hairstyle don't even feel period. Ugh. Needless to say, I didn't stay to watch the whole thing.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:22 PM

A coworker left a copy of KM World Magazine in the kitchenette the other day, and I brought it home for the weekend to read several of the articles, including one on blogging. But I was particularly taken by the opening sentence of this article:

Having taken classes in knowledge management and competitive intelligence, that's exactly how I see it -- and one of the reasons I find them so much fun.

[I also rather liked this opinion piece trying to define "smart." I don't know if I'd call his list of characteristics exhaustive, but I see myself in everything he came up with, and thus think I agree with it. ]

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:00 PM

I've mentioned in the past how evil our cat can be, but some people don't seem to believe it and think our cat is sweet and cute and innocent. Don't believe that for a minute. These photos just came back from the shop, and show her to be the diabolical mastermind we know she's hiding behind that furry facade:

What's that?

I think she wants to be fed now. I have to go.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:55 AM

In no particular order; just some thoughts I had earlier in the week:

Finally, I would like to repeat a prediction I made last August, just to have it on the record:

The 2004 Democratic Convention will be held from July 26-29, 2004.
Who is willing to bet that there will be some major terror alert that weekend or shortly beforehand? The 24-hour news channels constantly need new "urgent" material, and these warnings suck up all the media attention. Time it right, and the Democratic convention speakers won't have time to react. And with all the Dems booked at the convention, they won't be free to appear as opposing viewpoints on the news shows, giving an even more lopsided tilt to the conservative talk media. All combined, this could suck the oxygen out of the convention and thus eliminate the traditional post-convention bounce the party normally picks up.

Any takers on that bet?

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:30 AM

I suppose that keeping a blog makes it both easier and harder to write up a year in review. On the one hand, I've already got easily accessible what's effectively a personal diary of things I thought worthy of writing down over the course of the year. On the other hand, a lot of that is political or national news, and formatting it into a chronological list view still gives me over 700 posts and 400 pages to skim through.

Still, I think I can narrow things down further into a more succinct review of what 2003 has meant to me. To keep things somewhat brief and focused, I've decided to skip most of the political stuff and I wrote a separate post to recount my reading over the year.

Reviewing the year, I can already see several days I want to draw attention to as among the best:

• Friday, March 21: Spent the day in Seattle with Jeff.
• Sunday, May 18: My commencement at Simmons, with my family
• Saturday, June 21: Surprisingly, I didn't blog my birthday party, but even pulling an all-nighter to read the newly-released Harry Potter, it was well worth it.

And a few posts that I feel particularly pleased with and wish to remind folks about:

And, amazingly enough, that's about it. Wow that took longer than expected for something I suspect few people will read in detail... Next up should be my wishes for 2004 and a couple predictions I've made...

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:10 AM

For no good reason, Ian and I haven't been sleeping well this week... Ever have one of those evenings where you just don't feel like going to bed, even though you have no reason to stay awake and really should go to sleep? That's been us for the past two days, neither of which I got to bed before 2 AM. Dunno why, but there you have it.

So, we were in a mood for a low-key New Year's. [Besides, that seems to have become a tradition for us in this house; we moved in December 31st 1999, and the shlep was so exhausting that we didn't even stay up for the odometer flip. Hadn't hooked up the TV either, so we had to check the newspapers the next morning to make sure Y2K didn't make the world collapse.] I was thinking of renting a movie, but was in an odd mood and needed to come up with just the right movie. I wanted something familiar, but fresh (not anything I'd seen too recently); not too dark & heavy, but not too goofy-silly either. Finally, this afternoon, I thought of the perfect program I'd been wanting to watch:

My father videotaped the series when it originally aired on PBS, and I held onto it, but unfortunately, several years back, our rewinder broke the tape. We paid to have it fixed and tried to watch an episode a few months ago, but it sounded as if it had been wound too tight, and really wasn't watchable. I really wanted the DVD, and particularly wanted to watch it with Ian, who had never seen the TV version before.

So Ian and I went out after work and bought a copy.

We grabbed a quick dinner at a nearby Japanese restaurant (after being tempted by the descriptions of traditional Osechi Ryori mentioned here) and then we went home to watch the DVD.

So much fun.

One of the impressive strengths of Hitchhiker's Guide is the way it adapts to so many different media -- audio, video, prose, interactive computer game... -- in such a way that it feels native to that format.

My only problem with the TV version is the actor playing Ford Prefect. In the radio series, the character was voiced by Geoffrey McGivern. But apparently, he didn't look quite alien enough, so for TV they recast the role with David Dixon. And... it's hard to articulate, but the TV Ford Prefect always has this rushed, breathless quality about him. He never seems quite in control of the situation -- almost panicky at times, (which the character should never do, imo). The actor was good-looking in a suitably odd but mostly inconspicuous way, and has gorgeous blue eyes, but didn't project the proper sense of confidence I feel the character needs. This is an old gripe of mine, which Ian has heard many times before.

At any rate, we finished the series at about 11:30 and then watched some of the DVD extras until shortly before midnight. We toasted the new year a little early with some Martinelli's sparkling cider (I don't particularly care for champagnes). It really seemed like the perfect low-key way to ring in the new year, and I was quite pleased with it.

[By the way, either I've been reading too much slash fanfic or the 1970s were a much more innocent time. Because this exchange of dialog suddenly had me picturing the potential for a totally different direction than Douglas Adams intended:

   "Listen to me -- I've got to tell you the most important thing you've ever heard. I've got to tell you now, and I've got to tell you in the saloon bar of the Horse and Groom."
   "But why?"
   "Because you are going to need a very stiff drink."
   Ford stared at Arthur, and Arthur was astonished to find that his will was beginning to weaken.

I've probably read fanfics where characters confess their love in precisely that manner. I should so not be thinking along those lines. I should so not be thinking along those lines.]

Anyway, Ian just went to bed, and I should probably get some sleep too.
Hopefully tomorrow (today) I'll be able to finish my 2003 in review and polish up my wish-list for 2004.

Goodnight, all! Hope your New Year's Eve met your needs as well as ours did.

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:30 PM

Since I don't think I'm going to finish any more books in the nine-and-a-half hours remaining in the year, I suppose I'm now free to finally post this:

I have read 66 books this year: approximately 1.25 books per week; one book every 5.5 days. This is slightly over a third as many books as I read in 2002. Then again, last year's reading bordered on the addictive, and I did get a full-time job this year, so this was probably a healthier pace. Also, I haven't bothered to record most of the numerous novel-length fanfics that I've read, and I feel a need to remind folks this list doesn't include any comics not collected into graphic novels nor shorter works nor books I didn't finish. So, all-in-all, I'm pleased with this amount.

These 66 books included 20 fiction, 17 nonfiction and 29 YA titles (all but one of which were fiction). I've continued to expand the extent of my knowledge of British history backwards to Henry VIII and forwards through the end of the Stuart dynasty. I'm not terribly interested in working further back (I keep trying and discarding books on the Wars of the Roses), but would like to continue moving forward into the Hanovers. The longest period I went without reading was November, when I spent my time trying to complete NaNoWriMo.

Although I wouldn't count any of the books as bad (after all, I did read all of these completely) I can try to narrow down a few favorites in each category, listed alphabetically by author.

Fiction titles I'd most recommend:

• Jasper Fforde, The Eyre affair
• A.J. Hall, Lust over Pendle
• Harry Turtledove, Ruled Britannia

My most recommended nonfiction:

• Linda Babcock & Sara Laschever, Women don't ask: negotiation and the gender divide
• Patrick Dillon, Gin: the much lamented death of Madam Geneva
• Al Franken, Lies and the lying liars who tell them: a fair and balanced look at the right

And among the YA books:

• J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan
• J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (UK)
• Louis Sachar, Holes

I'm still working on my more-detailed 2003 year in review, but this portion is self-contained (and ready) enough to be its own post now.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:25 PM

This morning, I was thinking about menstruation. [Wanna guess why?]

Anyway, I started wondering about the biological and evolutionary history of menstruation. Most mammals don't menstruate, so why do we? [According to one article, this is a trait human women share with hedgehogs, bats, shrews and elephants, along with about one-ninth of known primate species. Quite a rarified bunch.] So, before leaving for work, I Googled and found a couple pages that purported to share the various theories to explain how this came about:

• Adrienne Fan's The Evolution of Menstruation, created as part of a Biology class at U.Texas
• An abbreviated form comes from Stu Craw's Mobius Strip Tease, Issue 42

As I was thinking about this, I was reminded of a brilliant and incredibly funny Gloria Steinem essay I read when I was in high school, titled "If Men Could Menstruate." I went looking, and sure enough found copies online in several places, this one appearing to be the most complete. [For real purists, it's brief enough you may be able to read the entire thing through Amazon's search within the book feature in Outrageous acts and everyday rebellions.] If you haven't read it before, I highly recommend it. Here's part of the set-up from the introduction:

    [Ms. Steinem relates several anecdotes which help her] finally understand the power of positive thinking. Whatever a "superior" group has will be used to justify its superiority, and whatever an "inferior" group has will be used to justify its plight. Black men were given poorly paid jobs because they were said to be "stronger" than white men, while all women were relegated to poorly paid jobs because they were said to be "weaker." As the little boy said when asked if he wanted to be a lawyer like his mother, "Oh no, that's women's work." Logic has nothing to do with oppression.
    So what would happen if suddenly, magically, men could menstruate, and women could not?
    Clearly, menstruation would become an enviable, boast-worthy, masculine event:
Steinem goes on to give various examples, but this paragraph's my favorite:
    Street guys would invent slang ("He's a three-pad man") and "give fives" on the corner with some exchange like, "Man, you lookin' good!"
    "Yeah, man, I'm on the rag!"

I could go on (the following paragraph about TV shows also amuses), but it's a short piece, barely 1100 words. So just read it, already!

Naturally flowing from all this research, I rediscovered the Museum of Menstruation, an online site dedicated to the topic, combining medical and historic information, plus a healthy dose of humor. I'll confess, the site could probably use some better design (both UI and organizational) but it's a nifty place to browse.

I remember back in high school reading a book of futurist/feminist essays from the 1970s (hey, it was close enough to SF) in which a character decided her period would be too inconvenient that month, so used an extraction device so she wouldn't have to deal with it. I've found this page, which provides some details on how it works, but it looks like there's yet another useful bit of future tech that never came to pass. Women's only options for dealing with menstruation remain basically the same ones we've had since primitive times (better fibers, improved comfort and wearability, but inherently, we're still on the rag). And instead of looking for other solutions for inconvenient periods, the medical community has decided the best answer is to muck around with women's hormones, even though science doesn't fully understand all the ramifications. [See this post I wrote last month on the unpublicized sexual side-effects of the Pill.]

So, now that I've gotten all that off my chest (or, more accurately, from a little lower in my anatomy), I'm just wondering whether any men have actually stuck around to read the whole thing, or whether I scared you guys off.
For you squeamish sorts, just think of it this way: at least you only have to read about it, rather than dealing with it directly on a regular basis. There are many more disgusting details I could've shared if I were so inclined. Hopefully, this subject won't need to be a regular topic (see what happens when I avoid writing about work?).

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:50 PM

Out of curiousity (mostly), the other day I bought a taro root in the produce section of the Asian grocery. Now I'm trying to figure out what to do with it.

Can anybody share some good recipes or cooking tips? I'm game for either savories or sweets, but I really need some help figuring out exactly what I can do with it before it potentially goes bad. If you think you can get better answers by reposting this request to other food-based communities or discussion groups, you have my permission -- just let me know where you're asking so I can see the responses for myself.

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:15 AM

By my calculations, this morning's post titled Discuss was my one-thousandth post in this blog.

Just sayin'

[Post 500 was published on June 10th; post 250, a little over a year ago; post 100 the previous July; and, of course, my first post was April 2002. What a long(winded) strange trip it's been.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:00 AM

Have you ever noticed how many metaphors we use for stress and dealing with stress come out of Victorian technology?

• Bottling things up
• Under pressure/pressure cooker environment
• Letting off a little steam/blowing off steam
• Cracking from the strain
• Blowing a gasket/blowing one's top/blowing one's stack

I know there are many more (please, add to the list in comments!) but that's all that comes to mind at the moment.

Clearly, early psychology developed around the same time as steam technology was all the rage and thus borrowed the popular terminology to explain what's happening internally.

But this raises further questions:

1. Are these accurate descriptions of how the body deals with stress, or were they just convenient analogies?
2. How did people refer to similar feelings/issues before this technology?
3. How much do these metaphors help and hinder understanding? After all, there comes a point where they must diverge and what's good for a locomotive is bad for human beings.
4. Any other cases where the popular technology has so shaped our perceptions of an unrelated field? Are we perhaps misusing computer jargon in modern biotech, for example?

Just something I've been noodling with for a while...
[I couldn't sleep last night, so compiled a small backlog of posts on random short subjects which I will probably publish over the course of the day.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:05 AM

Odd question plaguing my mind in the wee hours of the morning: is consistency in one's opinions a virtue and something that should be pursued, or is it (in Emerson's words) a "hobgoblin of little minds" and (in Wilde's) "the last refuge of the unimaginitive"?

Should one look for unifying themes and try to apply compatible values across them all (abortion and death penalty; Iraq and Korea; states rights)? Or should each issue be addressed on its own merits, and ignore similarities to other matters as superficial and possibly counterproductive distractions?Is it fair to call people hypocrites for having different opinions on issues you judge to be similar?

I'm sure the truth lies somewhere in the middle, between these extremes. But what do you do when formulating your opinions -- do you try to find grand unifying themes and judge new issues on how they conform to existing opinions, or do you treat each one independently?

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:50 AM

I really like my current wall calendar, hanging in my cubicle. It came from the local public library as part of a fundraiser. Beautiful photos of the place -- I plan on saving it. But it runs out at the end of the year, and for the last several weeks I've been realizing I'd need another one for my wall at work. Amazingly enough, we didn't get any as holiday gifts. [Last year, we got a lovely one from Chin Deep in Bubbles.]

Normally, I wait until January 2nd, then scoop up the sales at the calendar stores. But I just noticed that the Renaissance Library Calendar is having a special sale -- until December 31, shipping anywhere in the world for only $2.40.

As much as I'd prefer immediate gratification and don't like the possible 3-week wait from Sweden, I've been ogling this calendar since last year, so I suppose it's time I picked one up. I placed my order just before finishing this post.

Frankly, I'd rather have the books and space, but I suppose I'll settle for the photos (and decorating ideas)...

[Other calendars I was considering: I liked the 2003 Library of Congress Shakespeare calendar, because it had a lovely turn-of-last-century painting of As You Like It. Unfortunately, I don't care for this year's selections so much. Other than that, I'd been trying to find one with hawks, falcons, and other raptors, since I seem to have been developing a tropism towards them this year, but I haven't yet seen a calendar on the subject (as opposed to general "bird" books).]

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:55 PM

Boy, am I glad I read Women don't ask over the weekend. After lunch today I met with K and the head of development (HoD) about the email I sent the HoD last week regarding my elevated stress lebels.

I think I did a reasonable job at getting across what I really want and need. Obviously, I can't get everything, but I think we've come to some good agreements, including things I will do (speak up more proactively about my needs) and things K will do (check in with my more regularly). I'm still not entirely sure how successful I was in explaining why I can't really work on open tickets during my phone shift -- and how that doesn't mean I can't work on other projects between calls.

It also helped that I was much calmer and less stressed today than last week. Closing out most of my tickets really helped, and though I hate to use "female troubles" as an excuse, I wonder whether they might have been exacerbating my emotions last week. When I have had PMS (which is both a rare and erratic experience for me ), it's tended to make molehills appear mountainous. That's not to say that molehills aren't genuine problems -- because they are -- but I react to them as if they were disproportionately more insurmountable than they actually are.

One thing which left me feeling somewhat worried, though, was that somebody apparently left a printout of my journal from last week for the HoD. I didn't look too closely at it, but she seemed to have everything from Damsel in dis stress through Long and whining road. I only saw those 4 pages on her desk, and am not sure whether that's all she was given or whether she read my entire blog as it looked on that date. She asked K & I whether either of us left the printout for her to read, but we both denied it. And she said she didn't know either. So now I'm feeling somewhat paranoid. I suppose there's a narrow enough window between Damsel and the following post that I could go through server logs to try to narrow it down, but I'm not sure how much that would tell me.

I don't think I'm in any trouble, but I am feeling a bit uncertain as I don't know whether this coworker is a regular reader or just somehow found those particular pages. When I was first hired, I knew my blog might be an issue, so came up with a personal policy and discussed it with my manager -- but of course, he's no longer with the company. And Lisa Williams over at cadence90 has been writing about work-blogs recently. I don't want to take my blog down or move it to a more secure site like LiveJournal, where I can lock down particular posts -- one of my original goals when I registered this site was to make osmond-riba.org a one-stop-source for all things Lis. But I feel an annoying need to be more circumspect and vague, at least for the time being.

I'll write more about non-work topics later on...

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:30 PM

Okay, I've been going back through older posts for a year-in-review type article. I just came across this video which I blogged back in June and it still makes me laugh so hard tears came to my eyes.

Enjoy!

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:25 AM

Yesterday I noticed Brooks pharmacy already had Cadbury Easter eggs on sale and display.

Easter Sunday is April 11th, 2004, over 100 days away!

This is even earlier than I noticed them last year. What is wrong with these retailers?

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:49 AM

Sometimes I really hate being female.

Normally, when my period starts, if I catch it early enough with Midol, I'm pain-free for the rest of the cycle. Normally, it's only the first several hours that I have cramps.

I tried to go to bed on the early side so I could get eight full hours of sleep and be refreshed and on time for work tomorrow morning.

Then I woke up at 1am -- 12 hours after my cycle started -- with cramps which so far Midol and a heating pad haven't relieved. I suppose I could take a couple shots of booze. That usually numbs the pain, or at least knocks me out and enables me to sleep. But that will probably also make it harder for me to get up in the morning, which is why I haven't done so yet.

On a scale of one to ten, the pain is only about a three or four -- but it's three or four from my chest down to my knees.

Not that it will help in time to relieve this particular spell (I'm going back to bed after posting, and hopefully they'll be gone by morning), but favorite home remedies for cramps would be most welcome before next month...

I also think I need to investigate how hormones affect cramps. I'm off to have a quick drink.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:15 PM

This morning, I finished reading my 66th book of 2003, an excellent nonfiction work titled: Women don't ask: negotiation and the gender divide by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever. Quite an eye-opener. Quoting from the introduction:

A few years ago, when Linda was serving as the director of the Ph.D. program at her school, a delegation of women graduate students came to her office. Many of the male graduate students were teaching courses of their own, the women explained, while most of the female graduate students had been assigned to work as teaching assistants to regular faculty. Linda agreed that this didn't sound fair, and that afternoon she asked the associate dean who handled teaching assignments about the women's complaint. She received a simple answer: "I try to find teaching opportunities for any student who approaches me with a good idea for a course, the ability to teach, and a reasonable offer about what it will cost," he explained. "More men ask. The women just don't ask."

The women just don't ask. This incident and the associate dean's explanation suggested to Linda the existence of a more pervasive problem. Could it be that women don't get more of the things they want in life in part because they don't think to ask for them? Are there external pressures that discourage women from asking as much as men do--and even keep them from realizing that they can ask? Are women really less likely than men to ask for what they want?

The book goes on to provide evidence that women generally don't ask for things they need personally, with explanations why, demonstrations how that hurts women, and suggestions for moving beyond the discomfort to get what we want or need out of our employers/lives.

If you were born female and/or socialized as a girl, or if you live or work closely with women, I strongly suggest reading this book. It's relatively new, but most libraries should have copies or be able to get them. The book is also quite readable. I started reading it Saturday afternoon and finished Sunday morning.

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:25 PM

Several days ago, in a weird bout of humor, Ian and I started bisecting commercial slogans and splicing the pieces together into twisted new creations:

• Like a good neighbor, soup is good food!
• Snap Crackle Pop: Oh what a relief it is.
• Nestles makes the very best R-O-L-A-I-D-S.
  [Or, you could take the converse, and go: "How do you spell relief? N-E-S-T-L-E-S."]
• Hungry? Why wait? State Farm is there!

Enough time has passed that I can't recall everything we came up with. Anyway, we had fun with these and wanted to share the pain amusement. Can you come up with any other good ones?

Posted by Lis Riba at 6:12 PM

Today's Boston Globe had an article on Mr. Boston bar guides used a word I'd never heard of before:

A portrait of the fictional Old Mr. Boston himself, a crapulous gent in a Dickensian beaver hat...

Look that up in your Funk & Wagnells!