October 5th, 2008

No Politics

I try not to ever talk about politics with people I don’t know well, not because I don’t have opinions but because I am so pathetically ill-informed that I can’t defend them properly. But sometimes I get blindsided by politics, and I manage to learn a little something, about something or other.

1.

D: To even do ok in the debate, Joseph Biden had to be so smart and so erudite and so careful, and all Sarah Palin had to do was not be a monkey. Really, people are thrilled that she formed complete sentences and didn’t fling her own feces.

2.

J: So, everybody knows that light has amplitude, right?

Me: Ok, now I know, but only because you just told me this second. I don’t think normal people know that.

J: Normal people?

Me: Well, most people.

J: The people who are going to be allowed to vote in two weeks don’t know this? Oh no!

My mother says what you gonna do with your life
RR

August 21st, 2008

Doings

1) Today–A profile of me in the Canadian Jewish News by Ruth Mestechkin.

2) Monday August 25–Reading aloud on Julie Wilson’s weekly Readers Reading podcast–sixty seconds of me and Mr. Updike, to your ears by the miracle of digital recording! I am thrilled by the technology (and the text).

I didn’t ask you
RR

August 12th, 2008

Mayumi

So, yes, I did it: I bought a digital camera. It doesn’t usually take this much Sturm und Drang to buy a camera (or a house) but I have a tough time with electronics. Thanks to all who supported me in my invented problem, and thanks especially to the subject of my first digital photo, beautiful Afshan in the unbeautiful rain:

The other major event of the weekend was a haircut that reduced my attractively uninteresting (boringly benign?) shoulder length curls into the Emo-Boy Special–a jaw-length tangle that flips over my entire face the moment I nod. Leaning forward, I could be in My Chemical Romance. *You* try to guess the difference:

See, impossible to tell who’s who!!

Look forward to more amusing guessing games of this nature with the help of Mayumi. Mayumi is the camera–I name my appliances to make them seem less threatening, and this camera is of Japanese parentage.

My heart is far away / tell me what to say
RR

July 12th, 2008

Photographic Failure

My camera experienced existential doubt in, oh, April, and in a sense really ceased to exist, since a camera that doesn’t take picture is like the tree falling without an audience–what’s the point?

The point is I have no camera. Sorry, focus. That camera that died had a good run, since it was a film camera that I got in (I think) the nineties. Yes, film. I’m not much of a photographer–I rarely even miss the ability to take photos, except on occasions when someone I know does something photogenic, like the Idle Tigers live on stage, be-glittered and brilliant. Oh, last night was very very good, and it did make me sad to be camera-less.

I have been for some time ready to take the leap into digital photography (once more, bravely into 2002!) I even have money set aside to purchase a simple yet effective model. But I can’t *stand* the thought of losing half a day to comparison shopping, learning what a megapixel is or whether I care about them, and why, being chased by Future Shop employees, eventually buying something I saw in the first hour of the jaunt for $20 too much because I’m just so tired, and then getting teary-eyed over the warantee.

I am not a good technology shopper.

Please please, if you know the name and model number of a simple yet effective digital camera, tell it to me and I will go purchase it (maybe also tell me where to go?) Yes, I am outsourcing my thinking on this matter, but really, almost anyone’s going to be better at it than I am.

All this goes also for laser printers.

In the meantime, sometimes I get photographed by professionals, and that’s really both easier and more effective, because this shot here by Donna Santos is far better than I normally look. Also some other lovely authors you might recognize.

Wear your pink petticoat
RR

April 18th, 2008

What is it?

Thumb drive?
Jump drive?
USB key?
USB port? (that one’s just wrong, the port’s the hole in the side of the CPU, but I’ve still heard it used for drive)
Flash drive?
Key drive?
Port drive (no, really)

Unlike ipods, walkmen, xerox machines and blackberries bits of technology that made their way into our culture under the auspices of a single brand, we have nothing to call this thing that everyone seems to have come up with simultaneously.

I have never used mine, and the reason is probably laziness but I like to think it’s for lack of a noun. Thoughts?

Something underground’s gonna come up and carry me
RR