just be.

the world is a confusing place.

you know how people always say don't put anything in an email you wouldn't want the world to read? i blew it tonight.

using twitterific, i feel like my mother-in-law: i love the benefits of the newfangled technology, but i don't always get it. the differences between direct replies and general tweets are not always (okay, almost never) clear to me. and that's where disaster entered the picture today.

my friend katie and i had been having a conversation on the facebook about who would play us in a movie (i can't remember how it started, but there it is). we have never met in person, and i'm not even sure we've ever seen photos of each other—we met on ravelry and continued our friendship in email and fb. anyway, i declared that i pictured helen hunt or julia louis-dreyfus. she sent me a direct tweet saying, "can't remember her name, but I picture you played by Best in Show trainer." (that is one of my favorite movies, so that endears me to her, of course.) so i tweeted back, "Omg. She very dykey, but he is hilarious. The one who hooks up with jennifer Coolidge and starts bitch magazine?"

now. if you know me, you know that i'm using "dykey" ironically (and you're as shocked as i am that someone i've never met in person nails my persona so accurately. i talk way more like jane lynch than like helen or julia, though i'm nowhere near as willowy and pretty as any of them). but i am *mortified* that i sent the message out. without the context of what we had said before the tweet, it sounds like (a) i'm using "dykey" as a slur and (b) either i'm talking about some guy or i'm talking about the same woman and saying that she can't be dykey and hilarious. or something. i have been shaking and sick to my stomach ever since i hit send and realized that i'd sent it to all my twitter followers—some of whom know me but many of whom don't—and not just katie.

so i'm apologizing for any pain or confusion i may have caused anyone who read it, out in public like my words were. i hope that putting it into context alleviates any concerns, but really i'm just sorry i said it and humbly ask for forgiveness. it's not the worst thing i've ever said and wished i could swallow—but those are stories for another day. and yes, i know that putting it here on the blog opens it to a way wider audience than my twitter followers, but i'd be terrible at apologizing in 140-character snips, and i believe that an apology should be given as publicly as the wrong involved. so here it is on the blog.

and i'm getting rid of twitterific in search of an app that is a little more my speed. (speed 16.)

and now to the headlines:

• dick cheney continues to astound me with his awfulness.
• i wish i were half the wife nancy reagan was—and continues to be—to ronald.
• lawrence o'donnell was better when he was less rabid, less rude, and used fewer of his words to call people names than to state principles.
• you don't have to be a racist to oppose someone of a different race from yours.
• someone who attempts to glue your locks—twice—and who cuts the lines for your surveillance system and who drills holes in your roof is not committing vandalism. that person is preparing your location for a crime that he or she does not want you to escape and does not want watched or recorded for evidence. a crime like, say, using explosives or gas to kill everyone inside. we knew this 15 years ago when i interned with the national clinic access project. these are not new techniques or ideas. nor are they secrets. they are well-documented, widely published, nationally known methods used by a sick, misguided, sad segment of our society that is smaller than, but not qualitatively different from, any loose coalition of terrorists motivated by political or religious rationales. so let me give you a little tip for them, in case you see them: political voices can and should be expressed by voting and free speech. religious voices can and should be heard through free speech and free exercise of religion. spread the word. seems the message (and the methods) aren't making it around to everyone.

no pithy headline tonight.

• killing someone for doing something legal within his or her profession is not legal, no matter how abhorrent that something is to you. it is not self-defense.
• it is really, really cool to see a space shuttle piggybacked on a jet.
• fish should not be 15 feet long.

a little editorializing:

i have three friends who i know have had an abortion. i'm sure there are more—those are just the ones who've told me. two were single teens, one of whom had a child already and did not want to increase her family while she tried to put herself through school and lived partly on public assistance. another was married and had children already and was already overwhelmed.

abortion is heartbreaking, to me. i do believe that life begins at conception—that is, life in the sense that any organism is alive. when the one friend i knew while she was wrestling with this wrenching decision was agonizing over it, i asked her whether i could adopt the child if she carried it to term. (my husband and i do not intend to have children biologically or through adoption, and i have had my tubes tied for 11 years.) when she decided to terminate the pregnancy, i mourned the loss of a child with genes contributed by this wonderful woman and her amazing husband, a sibling for her other children.

but in no way do i believe that it is my place—or my government's place—to force any of these women, or anyone else, to carry a child to term if that woman does not believe that she can do so. it is not my place to tell her that (fill in the blank) is not a good enough reason to end her pregnancy or to make any other determination about her physical or mental health. that is up to her and her doctor, perhaps with the help and guidance of some spiritual authority or her partner or both. but it is never up to me, and it shouldn't be. my belief that the thing inside her is alive is not the same as believing that it is a person in the same sense that she is a person.

it certainly is not the same as believing that a medical professional who performs a procedure on her—a legal procedure, with her informed consent—is a murderer. and it is not the same as believing that vigilante punishment or vengeance against such professionals or their clients, families, or associates is in any way acceptable, let alone laudable. shame on randall terry and his ilk.

more news than is fit to print.

• michael steele is hilarious.
  
• dana rohrabacher is :singsong: looney tunes.
  
• megan mccain has potential.
  
• i like hillary much more now than i did when she was campaigning for the presidency.
  
• i prefer less regulation.
  
• sarah palin != hillary clinton.
  
• simon cowell is hot, but nobody needs to leave a shirt unbuttoned quite that much. it's 2009.
  
• i look forward to adding kris allen to my new mitch mix station on the pandora.
  
• even a song as perfect as "a change is gonna come" can be wrecked. there is no crying in baseball, and there is no shrieking in sam cooke.
  
• mitch mcconnell and jim bunning are not interesting enough to me to take up my news-watching time.
  
• the cia knows how to lie and makes mistakes. srsly?
  
• i LOVE baby elephants. all elephants, really, but babies are teh best.
  
• i am now going to have the song "banana phone" stuck in my head. maybe it should become my new ringtone.
  
• i used to love tucker carlson.
  
• john ensign and john o'hurley: separated at birth.
  
• nothing in the constitution confers responsibility for health care onto the federal government.
  
• the global war on terror was neither global nor a war.
• edited to add that james harrison, who was already low in my esteem following his hitting an opposing-team player—while said player was on the *ground*—has officially lost all the esteem points he can have. this is not what my pittsburgh steelers need. 

special weekend edition.

in friday-night news:

• it is equally plausible that members of congress are lying, incorrect, or telling the truth and that staff at the cia are lying, incorrect, or telling the truth.
  
• i do not have to agree with everything my president does if i trust, respect, and admire him. i can still be glad he is my president.
  
• dick cheney = nero.
  
• regent square yard sale = tomorrow.
  
• summer of socks + lace: it's on!
  

have a good weekend. i plan to :) 

drive-by news.

maybe they told her and she wasn't listening. or maybe somebody is lying. i know!

tea parties are for little girls. and their stuffed animals.

they're *accused* terrorists, you twit.

i can hook you up with a fire extinguisher for your pants.

the important stuff

as promised:

• pictures can be useful and informative.
  
• cheney update: still an ass. *and* wrong.
  
• "24" is fiction.
  
• sarah palin is writing a memoir. best test title heard thus far: "the audacity of hype."
  
• keith olbermann pronounces "abu ghraib" incorrectly.
  
• the fact that you *can* torture does not mean that you *should* torture. just like knitting.
  
• robert gibbs is a cell-phone-etiquette hero. (yes, i get the irony of this, given my own cell-phone faux pas.)
  

  that is all. 

in tonight's news

• torture is bad.
• dick cheney is an ass. 
• the president is funny. 
• john boehner takes himself wayyy too seriously. 
• miss california does not understand as much as she thinks she does. 
• pilots should be competent before flying in the real world. 
• ptsd is real and sucks. 
• debris hits spacecraft taking off. 

  you are welcome.

weird.

remember the mall? for my friends and me in high school and on college breaks, the mall was the destination. window-shopping and sometimes real shopping, people-watching, mock-profound conversation about trends and what we could tell about the world by what we saw in the shops.

this morning's news tells me that general growth properties, developer of hundreds of major malls in the united states, filed for bankruptcy. i don't know what this means for the malls themselves, but my guess is that the prognosis is poor. landmark mall in alexandria, virginia, was one of the malls i shopped when living in that town. and tysons galleria is sort of a mecca for shoppers in the dc area, or at least it was back then. the galleria in dallas was a stop when my ex and i visited his family the last time. all those are owned by ggp.

the news analyst said that these developers aren't suffering just because of the current economic downturn—which has hit them hard, of course, with their tenants having trouble paying rent. the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath were maybe even bigger causes: as a report i edited back in 2006 noted, property owners were concerned about security for their facilities, and maybe customers were, too. apparently, sales at stand-alone stores (e.g., target) have taken a chunk of sales away from malls. i'm guilty; i rarely shop at malls any more. we go to an open-air shopping center for our weekly errands, and i look forward to the opening of bakery square right next door to my local yarn shop and on the way home from whole foods and my office when i go in, but most of my shopping is online if it isn't in one of those places.

i'm lucky enough to be employed (and in a job i love and that affords me my comfortable life, so doubly or triply grateful), and i remind myself daily how lucky i really am and never take my good fortune for granted.

ridiculous

*Main Entry: ri·dic·u·lous
Pronunciation: \rə-ˈdi-kyə-ləs\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin ridiculosus (from ridiculum jest, from neuter of ridiculus) or ridiculus, literally, laughable, from ridēre to laugh
Date: 1550
: arousing or deserving ridicule : absurd , preposterous
synonyms see laughable
— ri·dic·u·lous·ly adverb
— ri·dic·u·lous·ness noun
see also zuzu + bathroom trash can with swinging lid.
see also dogproofing fail.

* except the obvious bits, from merriam-webster.

srsly?

i love technology as much as anyone, but seriously. you followed your gps *onto train tracks*? did you somehow not get the joke? we were *laughing* at michael, not thinking he was a genius.