Nil was just talking about IM, and I've been thinking a lot about it lately, too, although in the last year I haven't done it much... at work I am too easily busted, and it's one of those things I get so distracted by- I mean hours and hours of fun, while nothing else gets done- that I usually log on as invisible.
Also, I only ever use the Yahoo messenger (this provides a lovely new mail notification service), and most everybody seems to use something else.
so I've just discovered this very interesting messaging device called "Trillian," by Cerulean Studios. Has anyone heard of it? Here's their little blurb: "Communicate with Flexibility and Style. Trillian is everything you need for instant messaging. Connect to ICQ, AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and IRC in a single, sleek and slim interface."
I downloaded it very easily on my pc at work. Unfortunately they aren't ready for the Mac OS... as soon as they are, I'm there.

ok, ok, I KNOW these quizzes are cheesy.
I just can't help myself for some reason.

See which Greek Goddess you are.

Jish asked me to say HI! to my webloggers webring neighbours.
» to the left of me: twodolla.org.
» to the right of me: Sin on Wheels.

oh, this cracked me up:
from the "Corrections" section of the New York Times today:
The Books of The Times review on Wednesday, about "Just Like Beauty" by Lisa Lerner, misstated the name of the protagonist at one point and of her friend at another. The protagonist is Edie, not Lisa; her friend is Lana, not Lara. The review summarized the plot incompletely; although Edie and Lana drive off into the sunset, they change their minds and return home.

The review also quoted erroneously from a definition of literature by the poet Marianne Moore, cited as a measure of Ms. Lerner's novel. Moore wrote of writers who create "imaginary gardens with real toads in them," not tigers.

is anyone paying attention??

just the photo for a personal ad.
I like the url: bush.daughter.drugs.

Curves can kill... be careful!
via somebody's comment on jish.nu.

weird dreams about people I haven't seen in years, and people I haven't even met yet, in imaginary cities, with my family there just to confuse everything even more. (or maybe to cast a pall of reality on my little dream-world...)
it's too early in the morning. when am I going to learn to sleep more?
I finally got my upgrade to OS X v. 10.1, and naturally I had to stay up and play with that.... it took me a month of battling with Apple "customer service" to get it fed exed to myself at my own expense. bastards. (I still say the first one they shipped was stolen by some unlucky, unhappy, BAD KARMA-RIDDEN mac user at work. who probably realized the cds were useless and just tossed them. grrr. maybe I'm getting paranoid.)

Astrid Lindgren died today...
I cried when I read this.

(no NYT log-on? get one! it's free!
stubborn? read a shorter article here.)

---

PENRYN, Pa. (AP) - The police department has refused to direct traffic at a YMCA triathlon because it says the club promotes witchcraft by reading Harry Potter books to children.
oh, lord. what's wrong with people?

---

Actual NYC report card comments, from Netizen news:
4. Your child is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot.
6. The student has a "full six-pack" but lacks the plastic thingey to hold it all together.
ok, yes, I know this has been around and around in various forms for years.
I still think it's damned funny.

---

and:
(via Jish)
Up from the Ashes, 8 designs for a replacement for the WTC.
What the hell...?
although number 3 is cool. anything with pedestrian-only spaces is just ducky, in my opinion.

K. is attacking the much neglected bathroom walls and ceiling with a sponge mop.
there are shouted curses and various exclamations coming from the room now.
Spike is hiding under an armchair.
I'm sitting near that armchair on the floor, wishing I had taken a shower earlier.
(crash! argh!!)

It was supposed to rain today, and I was so glad, so much to do, so much easier when the sun isn't shining, shining, beckoning.

I missed seeing Joe Goode the other night when I was so sick (oh, hours of clutching my stomach and moaning), and I am pissed. I got to the restaurant where K. and I were meeting friends, and everything started going WHOO-ooo-WHOO-ooo and I took a cab home.
so now it's Sunday at 4:30, and as usual, I'm congratulating myself on having done my laundry, and wondering if I can really cram all that homework into the next 3 hours.
sigh.

stomach flu, or food poisoning?
no way of knowing, really, and what's the difference, anyway.
not pleasant. not in the least.

new favorite google referral:
i want to dress up like putin.

iLoJack: A fantastic story of how AppleScript helped keep sensitive data from the prying eyes of a thief and helped recover a stolen iMac.
via nil so ill
It brings tears to my eyes, too.
mostly from crying over how little I know about scripting...

Bouge Pas Je L'Arrange, or, Hold Still I'll Fix It, by Hob.

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence,
and toughness multiplies toughness
in a descending spiral of destruction...
The chain reaction of evil --
hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars --
must be broken, or we shall be plunged
into the darkness of annihilation."

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

I went to see "The Royal Tenenbaums" last night with D. I liked it much more than I expected to. In fact, I didn't hate it at all.
How's that for glowing endorsement? "Run right out- I promise you won't hate it."
I'm a one-woman PR machine.

Actually, I did like it. What pissed me off the most was that I've had the preview shoved down my throat for the last however many months, and I already knew all the characters inside out.

this just in:
Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments, by Justin Kruger and David Dunning, Department of Psychology, Cornell University.
scientific evidence, at last.

Car vs. MZ 125 Bike.
My brother said this review made him laugh until he wet himself.
I must say there's a great photo on page 4 of the rider hanging out of the car...

Did I mention how incredibly fabulous "Diary of a Lost Girl" (Tagebuch einer Verlorenen) was? It was part of the Berlin and Beyond Film Festival 2002 at the Castro.
Louise Brooks was pre-tty amazing. here are some lovely nudes of her.
Last night I went to see Gripsholm, the closing night film.
I want to spend 5 summer weeks in someone's castle in Sweden...

incidentally, the link I posted up there is actually to the website for the Swiss band "Kol Simcha," which apparently did the music for the film. There are some lovely links on the page if you want to listen to some of the songs from the movie. The lyrics are by Kurt Tucholsky (who wrote the book, "Schloss Gripsholm," that the movie was based on), but the music is the band's.

la la la.

best reason for having a laptop
(or, why I love my ibook):
being hung over and crawling into bed with coffee, breakfast, and computer.
silly? perhaps.
as long as the coffee doesn't spill and the battery doesn't run out.
speaking of silly, is the pink too, too horrific?

"on hangover," from Mr. Dean Allen.
just to give you an idea.

Daphne and I went to a rather strange and large Russian Christmas party last night; people brought vodkas of all different flavors in beautiful bottles... vanilla, anise, spiced apple, lemon, coffee, ginger, mixed citrus, sesame, tea, spiced orange, spicy hot pepper, blood orange, mango, garlic (which many people smelled and no one actually drank), and others. I tasted almost all of the ones I've listed here, I'm afraid, but I stuck to tiny little tastes, not whole shots.

and I'm not nearly as hung over as I thought I would be, but that must be because I was a good girl and didn't mix.

a side note:
in doing a little vodka research, I just stumbled upon a website called askmen.com. I'm amused to find that information about vodka etiquette is under the heading Power & Money-> Success & Image.

oi oi oi!
those russians, they know how to have a christmas party!

the best onion soup ever.
topped with homemade crostini and melted gruyere.
mmmm.
well worth all the crying during the chopping of the onions.
I use the recipe from the Moosewood Cookbook.

I've hidden the palmier from myself.

a dreamy day

today is very strange and slow; I think I am still a little sick. everything is just very slightly hazy...
went to the best French bakery in San Francisco and wanted to buy one of everything, but limited myself to the following:
a quiche au saumon,
a quiche lorraine
(these are very, very small),
a baguette,
deux croissants (because they actually taste like real croissants, not the delicate styrofoam american version),
a brioche au sucre,
and, because I am weak and I just couldn't help myself, some palmier (the little ones- yum!).

(If you search for "quiche" on Google, this is the first thing it offers you (under the category "Home>Cooking>Dairy>Eggs>Quiche"): "Catholic Encyclopedia: Quiche- The principal aboriginal tribe or nation of Guatemala.")

anyway.
K. is sick; he's been sleeping soundly for two hours now. I'm a little envious, but then, I've just had 3 cups of coffee. I usually only have one, so I feel a little speedy.
We went to look at an apartment this morning and the outside of the building was so awful we didn't bother looking for a parking spot.
depressing.
I was going to make a fabulous onion soup for lunch/dinner (it is getting late in the afternoon), but I realized I don't have any white wine to throw in it and broke into the baguette instead, eating it alternately with cambezola and butter with miel de lavande, which I stubbornly brought back from France despite the fact that it's quite available here.
now I've been sitting here for a while and the onion soup sounds damned good, so perhaps I will go out for some wine after all.

movie selections for the weekend:
"Under the Sand," with the delicious Charlotte Rampling
("Sous le Sable," 2000),
"The Color of Pomegranates"
("Sayat Nova", 1968), and
"The Twelve Chairs"
(Mel Brooks; based on the short story written by Russian journalists Ilf and Petrov in the 20s).

ah ha ha-
one more reason they're so sorry to see the lira go:
In Italy-"Strippers get magnetic panties to cope with euro coins", via Eurotrash.
glad I'm not shaking my booty for coins. 50 cents instead of a thousand lira? must be demoralizing.

this morning, instead of hitting the snooze button, I apparently turned off the alarm clock and happily went back to bed.
all in my sleep.
I keep the alarm clock across the room so I am forced to get up and out of bed, too, so when I pull this crap I know it's time to get more sleep.
but I don't waaaannna go to bed.
I'm reading a new book, Bee Season, and I just want to stay up and read. bleah.

Yippee!!!
Daphne got a sweeeeet write-up in Friction Magazine - but we always, always knew she was front-page material...
xoxoxoxo

My hobbit name is Lobelia Toadfoot of Frogmorton, according to the Hobbit Name Generator.

Last night went to see Wisconsin Death Trip at the Castro Theatre. The Castro is probably my favorite place in all of San Francisco. very calming and reassuring- like Tiffany's for Holly Golightly: nothing bad could ever happen to you there. Also they're renovating it, and the first step is the new seats they've got; very fabulous and velvety. (now if only someone would make a damn movie seat with lower back support.)
The first third of the film was great- imagery was stunning, the old photographes totally engrossing, the people and their sad lives intriguing- but after that it got kind of tedious.

I found this great blog a while ago, but forgot to link to it here. It's called Eurotrash, and with the help of correspondents in various places (it turns out that Nil so Ill is a correspondent), it's a little chronicle of progress and frustration. very, very cool.

Eisenstein as Punker- I want to see this.

The second postcard on this page from the Brunching Shuttlecocks is quite funny.

"with friends like these", from fazed.net.

and here's my friend Rebecca, famous in Pittsburgh. She's doing one of her lovely tours of the country. Currently I believe she's freezing her li'l Texas ass off in New York City (if she hasn't fled to warmer climes yet).

home again, home again, jiggety jig.
thursday already! oops.
our trip was good- I learned to cross-country ski (on my ass), we ate a TON of food and still brought some back with us, and had fun despite the rain. more later.

spike wishes everyone a happy li'l ole new year.