bye boston...hello new york!

this is really hilarious...because...it's ME!!!!! i'm JUST like this whenever i go home...whether it's to boston or to vancouver. i bring "good books" and other reads, i end up watching movies 24/7, eating non-stop and of course, my resolve to "start to exercise from home" is completely down the toilet! AHAHAHAH


NYTIMES
December 24, 2006
Stultification: How Sweet It Is
By MIKE ALBO
WHENEVER someone asks where I’ll be for the holidays, I always do the same thing: roll my eyes and say, exasperatedly: “I guess I’m going home for Christmas. Hope I don’t go insane!”
It’s been part of my conversational repertory since my early 20s, the time when you start having to prove to yourself that you are a self-governing adult, but before you realize that adulthood basically involves complex and enervating tasks like Internet dating, shopping for jeans, trying to remember your 15 various log-on codes and passwords, and deciphering your Verizon bill.
Now I am 37 years old and I can’t wait to go insane at Christmas in that comfortable padded cell known as “home.” Instead of being tedious, going home has become an indulgent retreat from my fried-out issue-driven city life. It is a place where I line my mind and body with the fatty lard of my suburban youth and experience not one moment of regret.
For a brief week, I get to be as ugly and out of it as Americans are always accused of being, and no one has to see it.
I have almost no choice. Every year I arrive at my parents’ house in Springfield, Va., armed with my healthy self-edifying projects — big leafy Penguin classics, Chomsky-explains-it-all books and a backlog of fortifying magazines. And every year I think I am going to actually read a paragraph of one of these things. But then I walk in the front door, say ‘hi’ to my mom and dad, stand at the kitchen counter and start eating cheese.
That’s not all that’s in the house. In case there is a terrorist attack at the Price Club, my mother has stocked up on boxed food, durable bags of meatballs, bins of croutons, an entire spectrum of cereal, jug wine and other pleasures that would never be reviewed in food and wine supplements.
After inhaling some combination of sustenance entirely made of carbohydrates and trans fats, I will go upstairs and change into an infantilizing outfit of fleece sweat pants and an old high school T-shirt that says “Go Spartans!” on it.
Then I go back downstairs and begin to watch television. In this consumer Green Zone, I can finally, really, watch TV. I am unfettered, and free of my ironic eye, op-ed anger and Web site snark, I can enjoy TV the way it was meant to be enjoyed — sitting there with my mouth open, too lazy to get up and go to the bathroom.
There are no Whole Foods here, no Bikram yoga, no concerns about my personal carbon emissions. I lose touch, for once, with my online pals, bloggy buddies, Netflix friends and MySpace chums. Finally I am logged off from the incessant broadband stream of information of my daily life. I don’t have to eat properly, act locally, think globally, sync up, detoxify or Move On.
I don’t have to check the label of my carefully selected non-animal-tested facial scrub to make sure that there are no secret traces of benzene. I don’t have to take only two minutes of my time to provide a free mammogram to another low-income woman by simply signing an online petition.
Instead, I simply sit there, eating Edy’s ice cream and watching a marathon of lesbian "Next" episodes on MTV. For once, I have zero concern for the homeless, global warming, my future and Darfur. It’s like my brain has been deprived of vital nonnutrients. I sit there on the couch in the living room drinking up the lack of intellectual stimuli like a steamy hammam of nothing important.
Under my bed is a suitcase that contains my old diaries. There are entries from when I was a 19-year-old member of Queer Nation and Act Up, and I would come to the dinner table filled with a defiant anger, quoting Annie Sprinkle, the self-described post-porn modernist sex activist, while saying grace.
If that 19-year-old saw me now, he would roll his eyes. He would think I had been padded and stupefied by the entertainment-industrial complex. He would say that the American consumer machine has swallowed me up in its accommodating mouth.
But I seem to remember that 19-year-old needed this week to relax his white-knuckle grip on reality, too. He would creep down the stairs at 3 a.m., grab a stack of windmill cookies, and channel-surf through the late-night infomercials beaming from the screen like a soothing strobe light.
Mike Albo is the author of two novels: “Hornito” and “The Underminer: The Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life,” written with Virginia Heffernan.

this is pretty funny...

MERRY CHRISTMASSS!!!!!!!

i just counted the presents list from 2001 (of the presents i've GIVEN!). i've kept the records since 2001 christmas just so that i don't duplicate any gifts every christmas. average presents list? 14. i don't think that's bad...but then i'm single, so that means, when (and if) i get married, it'll AT LEAST double. not a pleasant thought. i like gift-giving. i often wish i were rich so i can give people what they need (i'm a firm believer in need-gift-giving, not want-gift-giving).

read this book in about 2 days - a quick read for dog lovers. i cried in my bed, at night, at the end. a must for a holiday read! (only if you like dogs!)

what a great job this is - what a great thing to do! how cool!!!!!!!!!

NY TIMES
December 17, 2006
To Sketch a Thief
By TOM MUELLER
Noah Charney hasn’t stolen a major artwork, as far as is known, but he gives it lots of thought. I met him one day last spring in Rome, in a cool, shadowy side chapel of the church of San Francesco a Ripa on the west bank of the Tiber. He stood with his hands clasped reverently before him, gazing at Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s statue of the Blessed Ludovica Albertoni. Bernini seems to have caught the pious mystic just as she passes to her great reward; she lies prostrate on a tousled bed of marble and jasper, her back arched, her eyes slitted, her lips parted and her right hand pressed to her breast in an ecstasy of divine transport that, as more than one critic has observed, resembles a far earthier kind of ecstasy. “I’ve spent hundreds of hours here with Ludovica,” Charney said, less to me than to the statue, about which he wrote his master’s thesis in art history in 2003. “We have a special relationship. I want her in my living room!”
Charney, a slender, courtly 27-year-old from New Haven with a back-swept mane of jet black hair, pointed out details in the statue and the ormolu molding around it that suggest an inner meaning few observers have perceived: a pomegranate and a flaming heart, which signify Ludovica’s passionate love of God, and her shoes, which prove that she isn’t on her deathbed, as most people have assumed, but is experiencing the fierce, heart-melting heat of divine rapture. “A lot of art history is detective work,” Charney told me. “Instead of just staring at a piece, you’re studying it and gathering information.”
Then, with the same probing eye, he noted what for him were even more essential qualities of the statue: how it might be stolen and by whom. The nearby window, the old-model motion sensors and the doubtless un-manned surveillance cameras would all facilitate theft. Yet the stature of the Blessed Ludovica herself, a cool ton or so of stone, would give any thief pause. “To get her out of here, you’d really have to be obsessed,” he said. Then again, he reckoned someone who was truly smitten with the work could find a way to pinch it. “And if Ludovica were ever stolen,” he said, “I’d be the first suspect.”
Charney is completing a doctorate at Cambridge University in a field he appears to have invented: the use of art history, combined with the more conventional tools of criminology, psychology and deductive logic, to help solve modern-day art thefts and to prevent future art crimes. The stolen-art trade is now an international industry valued as high as $6 billion per year, the third-largest black market behind drugs and arms trafficking. Yet the solution rate in art crime is reported to be a startlingly low 10 percent. Investigations are hampered by the cult of secrecy within the art world itself — museums sometimes don’t report thefts, fearing to reveal their vulnerability to future crimes and thereby hurt their chances of receiving new donations. “The art trade is the least transparent and least regulated commercial activity in the world,” says Julian Radcliffe, chairman of the Art Loss Register, a London-based company that maintains a leading database of stolen artworks.
Charney wants to cut through this murk by treating art theft as a scholarly discipline, drawing on a wide range of sources in an attempt to reach the first unbiased, statistically based conclusions about the nature of the crime. He has reviewed police files of art crimes in Europe and the United States from the 19th and early 20th centuries, looking for ways that past thefts might illuminate current trends, and he has questioned investigators from the F.B.I., Scotland Yard, the Spanish Policía and the Italian Carabinieri about their often distinctive attitudes and crime-solving methods and about the different cultural and bureaucratic barriers that each force encounters. Charney has explored the legal aspects of art ownership, sale and copyright by consulting with lawyers, federal prosecutors and art insurers, seeking to chart the complex currents in the flow of stolen art worldwide and to understand how laws in certain countries smooth the passage of stolen pieces into the legitimate market.
More than anything, Charney is interested in understanding the motivation and mentality of art criminals, an area that has traditionally received little attention from the police. He has scrutinized the biographies of famous collectors like the financier J. P. Morgan, as well as legendary art thieves like the Victorian-era burglar Adam Worth, looking for ways that the details of their emotionally charged, obsessive psyches might help investigators understand the criminal mind — and, specifically, the art-criminal mind. He has also studied Hermann Göring, commander of the Luftwaffe, whose conception of Aryan supremacy, according to Charney, led him to loot even second-rate works by northern European painters rather than genuine masterpieces by “degenerate” artists like the French Impressionists. Both collectors and collector-thieves sometimes form a bond with an artwork that is as intense as a love affair. According to Charney, several owners of Ghirlandaio’s “Portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni,” the famous profile portrait of Lorenzo Tornabuoni’s young wife who died soon after she sat for the painting, have said that she reminded them of their own deceased wives. And Stéphane Breitwieser, the French waiter arrested in 2002 for stealing some $1.5 billion in art from museums and galleries in seven European countries, declared that he was fascinated by the eyes and the beauty of the woman in the first painting he stole, who reminded him of his grandmother.
In a more contemporary approach to the criminal mind, Charney wants to apply to art thefts the techniques of criminal profiling that forensic psychologists use to help solve serial rapes and murders. To supply the necessary raw materials for this analysis, he has begun to compile a database of art thefts that records salient details: the way the work was stolen, for instance, along with biographical information about everyone involved, including thieves, fences and the collectors who eventually bought the purloined artwork. This is an arduous, time-consuming task, which is complicated both by the limited number of cases in the public domain and by the police files themselves, which typically have no separate category for art theft and lump the crimes together with other burglaries. Eventually, however, Charney says he hopes this project, along with his other initiatives, will establish a clearer, more empirically rigorous understanding of art crime.
Major thefts often result in a number of contradictory theories about the identity and intentions of the culprit. Consider, for example, the robbery that took place in 1990 at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the largest art theft in American history, the solution to which is currently the holy grail of the art-crime world. At 1:24 a.m. on March 18, 1990, while Boston slept off its St. Patrick’s Day excesses, two men in police uniforms and fake black mustaches knocked on the side door of the museum and said they were investigating a disturbance. Once inside, without using weapons, they subdued the guards, duct-taped their hands, feet and mouths and stowed them in the cellar. For a leisurely 80 minutes, they had the run of the place. In the end they made off with $300 million in art, including a Manet, three Rembrandts and Vermeer’s “Concert,” one of only 35 or so extant paintings by the enigmatic Dutch genius. Surprisingly, however, they left behind works by Raphael and Fra Angelico, as well as Titian’s “Rape of Europa,” one of the greatest masterpieces in any American museum collection. Instead, the thieves took five comparatively insignificant Degas pastels, a Chinese beaker and the eagle-shaped finial of a Napoleonic battle flag. (They tried to get the flag itself by unscrewing the lid to the glass-fronted case that held it; when this failed, they didn’t smash the glass as most criminals would have done, but contented themselves with the unprotected finial.)
The wide range of explanations proposed for this crime, which remains unsolved despite a $5 million reward offered by the museum, suggests the equally wide range of criminals who steal art, as well as the uncertainties that plague law enforcers. Experts have variously blamed the Irish Republican Army, South American drug traffickers and gangsters like James (Whitey) Bulger, the widely feared head of organized crime in Boston when the Gardner theft occurred. Others maintain that it was the work of thieves who intended to use the art as a bargaining chip — to negotiate immunity for another crime, perhaps. Still others, noting that paintings like the Vermeer and the Rembrandt are too famous ever to be resold on the open market, argue that an obsessed collector commissioned the crime in order to procure artworks he could never have acquired legally — works he intends to keep for his own private delectation. In art-theft circles, such a figure, frequently evoked after the disappearance of a masterpiece, is known as a “Dr. No,” after the reclusive criminal genius of the James Bond film, who inhabited a cave on a Caribbean island bedecked with stolen art treasures.
Charney says he believes that the Gardner case has the earmarks of a Dr. No type of thief and that his study of prominent past collectors and their criminal doppelgängers can help narrow the suspect pool. Only a criminal collector, he says, would design a theft of such exaggerated selectivity and delicacy. He speculates that the person who arranged the Gardner theft was a wealthy connoisseur who had seen the works many times before ordering their theft and that a list of past museum patrons, as well as records of previous sales of works by the artists he stole, particularly the Degas pastels, could help to identify the culprit.
Behind other crimes, Charney sees a very different criminal personality. During the 2004 theft of Edvard Munch’s “Scream” from the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway, for example, robbers in black balaclavas ran into the museum in broad daylight, brandishing guns and terrorizing onlookers. They tore the delicate painting off the wall (and later wrenched it from its frame) and roared away two minutes later in a black Audi before the police could intervene. “The Scream” was returned in August; though the Norwegian police have yet to explain the circumstances of the recovery, Charney theorizes that such a violent, thuggish crime, which could easily have damaged or destroyed the painting, was not commissioned by an art lover. Instead he blames “Russian Mafia types,” members of one of the criminal networks that in recent years have been increasingly active in art theft.
A third crime, which Charney has recently discussed with Scotland Yard, was the December 2005 theft of Henry Moore’s “Reclining Figure,” an 11-foot-long, 2-ton bronze sculpture that was taken from the late artist’s home in Hertfordshire, England, by thieves using a flatbed Mercedes truck with a crane mounted on the back. Some observers, citing the work’s bulk, have again blamed a Dr. No, while others, including the British police, have assumed it was sold for scrap. But Charney, who says that the metal itself was worth as little as $3,000, thinks he has a better theory. Recalling numerous precedents in art history in which looted bronze artworks were melted down and used to create new art — Gian Lorenzo Bernini himself stripped bronze from the Pantheon to make the massive canopy over the high altar of St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican — Charney suggests that the Moore sculpture was actually stolen and melted down to make forged antiquities, small items like statuettes or “Greek” coins that could easily be sold to noncriminal buyers at markets or on eBay. By using stolen bronze rather than buying it, the thieves would eliminate the paper trail of the raw materials, he says, and laments that the police failed to target foundries as well as scrap yards during their investigation.
Though Charney’s work has thus far been largely theoretical, he has plans to put it to active use. “I’ve been a student all my life, but I don’t want these things to remain locked away in the ivory tower,” he told me. He is establishing a nonprofit consultancy based in Rome that will employ the same international, interdisciplinary approach to art crime that he has used in his scholarship, with a staff trained in criminology, statistics, museum security and art history. In June, as something of a trial run of his art-theft enterprise, Charney organized a two-day conference at Cambridge University titled “Art Theft: History, Prevention, Detection, Solution,” attended by the same broad spectrum of art and art-theft authorities with whom he has conferred during his dissertation research. “It’s going to be fun,” he told me a few days before the conference. “Besides the presentations, we’ve laid on lots of social events — teas, formal dinners, punting on the Cam — to get people comfortable talking to each another.”
The Cambridge conference was probably the most eclectic group of people ever assembled to discuss art theft. In fact, at first it seemed almost too eclectic: the art-theft agents from the F.B.I., Scotland Yard and the Italian Carabinieri moved with the spring and swagger of aging Olympic wrestlers, and they stood out like giants among the slender, self-conscious, soft-spoken, tweed-clad academics, in whose company they evidently felt out of place. “The two days of this conference are the longest time I’ve ever spent at university,” Vernon Rapley, head of the art and antiques unit of Scotland Yard, told me. He said it with a laugh, but there was also an edge of working-class angst. Yet the initial tensions and incomprehensions soon melted away, and the value of Charney’s interdisciplinary bridge-building became apparent. The police, in their presentations — punchy PowerPoint slides — taught Charney and his fellow academics some important lessons about how art theft works in the real world. One of the biggest hindrances faced by law enforcers is an enduring public misconception of art theft as the harmless fleecing of a wealthy, well-insured elite. “All too often, the general public sees art theft and the looting of antiquities as victimless crimes,” Col. Giovanni Pastore of the Carabinieri said. As a result, police departments devote far fewer resources to art theft than to crimes like terrorism, drugs, organized crime and street violence, which the public sees as more menacing.
In reality, however, because fine art is safe to steal, easy to transport and extraordinarily valuable, it has become a useful tool in the hands of precisely those criminals whom the public fears most. Bob Wittman, the senior investigator of the F.B.I.’s art-crime team, included in his presentation a slide of Pierce Brosnan in a winning pose, and he asked how many people in the audience had seen “The Thomas Crown Affair” or another of several recent films that portray art thieves as debonair rogues who steal purely for the love of art. Hands went up around the room. His next slide showed the mug shots of several convicted art thieves, a rogue’s gallery of brutish-looking kidnappers, drug dealers, racketeers and murderers. “Here’s what art thieves really look like,” he said. Scotland Yard investigations have revealed that criminal organizations regularly use stolen art as collateral to buy drugs or arms. Gabriel Metsu’s “Woman Reading a Letter,” stolen in 1986 by Martin Cahill, an Irish gangster, from a manor house near Dublin, was recovered four years later in an Istanbul hotel room as it was being swapped for heroin, while Vermeer’s “Lady Writing a Letter With Her Maid,” taken in the same burglary, was left with an Amsterdam diamond merchant as collateral for a $1 million loan to buy drugs. Wittman told me that the sale of looted artifacts has also been linked to the financing of terrorism.
The scholars, for their part, appeared to persuade law enforcers of the benefits of collaboration. After watching Danielle Carrabino of the Courtauld Institute describe the seminal importance in art history of a late Caravaggio painting of the nativity stolen from a Baroque chapel in Palermo in 1969, Wittman remarked that such specialized information could be a real asset in his work. “Knowing how important these works are culturally could help people understand the true value of what is being lost,” Wittman said. “Maybe scholars could even help to predict what might be taken next, based on their knowledge of what types of art are popular right now.” Also, the data-analysis groundwork that most police departments now have no time for — collating documents, performing interviews, scrutinizing raw data in search of trends — is a scholar’s bread and butter and appears to offer an ideal opportunity for outsourcing. By the end of the conference, Vernon Rapley said that he would let Charney study his files and also make Charney and other interested academics special constables of Scotland Yard with a brief training course. Giovanni Pastore offered to take Charney to interview art thieves in Italian prisons, and Julian Radcliffe agreed to give him access to the Art Loss Register archives.
Since the conference, the seeds of cooperation Charney helped to sow are taking root. F.B.I. agents and art historians have convened in Philadelphia to talk about art and crime, and Robert Goldman, an attorney who prosecuted a number of important art crimes in the United States (and attended Charney’s conference), has begun advising the British Museum on art thefts. Charney himself is concentrating on his nascent art-theft consultancy. With the help of a professional fund-raiser, he has applied to the Getty Foundation and the Ford Foundation to finance the first three years of the project (he estimates it will cost $1.7 million), and he has persuaded Wittman and Pastore to serve as trustees, together with Dick Ellis, a leading private detective. Charney will probably never wear a gun or chase Dr. No down a dimly lighted alleyway, but his encounters with crooks, which until now have taken place on the comfortably lofty plane of scholarly theory, may soon happen in the grittier realm of the criminal underworld.

so this is one of the profiles i got matched on eharmony today. what can one say?

I DON'T THINK SO

The most important thing G__ is looking for in a person is:
You want me, but you don't need me-in other words you're not an emotional stalker; you're sexy and you kiss well. I take it you're also in good physical condition and not overweight. You have an excellent sense of humor and understand irony. You have your own life.

this was a fun quiz! har har harrrr

What American accent do you have? Your Result: Boston You definitely have a Boston accent, even if you think you don't. Of course, that doesn't mean you are from the Boston area, you may also be from New Hampshire or Maine.
North Central
The Northeast
The West
The Midland
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The South
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

today at work, the postwoman gave us a choice to pick a SANTA LETTER to respond to. basically, you have to get the item(s) on the letter. so i picked one. she saids she's 3 (i think someone else wrote it) and would like a dora tv & cassette. the postwoman said i can just give one, saying santa will probably bring the other one in the mail next year. so i'll get her this. i think it's pretty reasonable. :)

so, finally the long awaited video #1 & #2 of sarah mclachlan. she is sweet & nice. it was for the etown on npr. #2 is with leigh nash of sixpence none the richer and she was HORRIBLE. she is really tone-deaf.

this is TOO FUNNY!!!

Satire: Troop morale boosted by surprise visit from First Dog

POSTED: 4:12 a.m. EST, November 30, 2006

Editor's note: This may look like a real news story, but it's NOT. It is from the The Onion, a humor publication that calls itself "America's finest news source." CNN may beg to differ, but we do enjoy a good laugh, and hope you will enjoy a weekly selection of their satire.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (The Onion) -- U.S. troops stationed in Iraq hailed an unannounced and unaccompanied visit Monday from Barney, the senior White House dog who belongs to President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush.
Landing in Baghdad's Green Zone amid extremely tight security, the Scottish terrier met with nearly 800 troops at a military mess hall, then visited Camp Victory, the U.S. military headquarters on the outskirts of Baghdad. In both locations, the 6-year-old First Dog was greeted with loud cheers and standing ovations by servicemen and women.
"Barney's visit really cheered us all up," said Army Spc. Anthony Udall, who was given the privilege of escorting Barney across the airport tarmac. "I can't tell you how great it is that the White House would send one of its own to spend some time with us out here."
Although was in Iraq for less than a day, he maintained a busy schedule while there. Events included handshakes with top U.S. field commanders, a tour of the base's new recreation facility, and a ride in an armored vehicle. Besides sitting and staying at a military briefing, Barney also participated in the ground-breaking for a new visitors reception center at Camp Victory, during which he energetically dug alongside camp officials.
"As soon as he stepped off the plane, it was clear he was interested in what was happening on the ground here," said Gen. George Casey, commander of Multi-National Force-Iraq who met with the First Dog in the courtyard outside his office at Camp Victory. "He seemed extremely enthusiastic about the whole situation and he was even visibly excited about some of the progress we're making."
But the visit's highlight was the First Dog's encounter with soldiers, who were clearly taken with his presence. Sitting with his head cocked to one side, he listened intently to the soldiers' concerns before receiving a treat and a pat on the head. Barney showed further solidarity with the troops by accepting an impromptu invitation to a belated Thanksgiving feast, during which he impressed servicemen and women with his hearty, nondiscriminating appetite.
The First Dog also received a tummy rub courtesy of the 100th Infantry Battalion.
Barney's appearance marks the first time a high-ranking Bush Administration official has toured the war-torn nation since Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's visit in April.
"Barney seemed very genuine and sincere, like he was really into being here," said Pfc. Steven Koch, who participated in a photo op with the First Dog. "The fact that he took time out of his busy schedule to play ball with me and my buddies means the world to us. It's nice to see a happy face from home."
Added Koch, "He's a good boy."
During his visit, Barney impressed top military leadership with his attentiveness and steadfastness, yet he tactfully avoided addressing such highly charged issues as extended tours of duty and the shortage of effective body armor.
Critics say the visit diverted time and energy away from Barney's domestic responsibilities. Yet a statement issued today by the White House defended the decision to send Barney to Iraq, saying it was "the absolute least this administration could have done for the brave men and women fighting for freedom" in Iraq.
The statement also pointed to the success of the January 2006 visit of the Bushes' other Scottish terrier, Miss Beazley, to troops serving in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, and, in November 2005, the favorable reception given to Ofelia, their Crawford, TX-based Longhorn cow, in areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

The First Dog Barney, the highest-ranking official to visit Iraq in months, had a full schedule:
8 a.m. Morning walk with generals on the ground
9 a.m. "Sit-down" with troops
10:30 a.m. Game of catch
12 p.m. Lunch, photo ops
1 p.m. Bathroom break
1:05 p.m. Moment of silence for fallen soldiers
2 p.m. Treats

© 2006 Cable News Network LP, LLLP.A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved.

this made me cry:

NEW YORKER

IN THE MUSEUMS
DO NOT TOUCH
by Nick Paumgarten
Issue of 2006-11-27Posted 2006-11-20
Before Nuria Chang went blind, at the age of eight, she had wanted to be an artist. When she was one, she could draw a human figure; at four, she was using perspective to sketch her bedroom. Still, by the time she lost her eyesight she had never really seen any art, so she grew up with no sense of what it was supposed to look like. (She is from Ecuador, and moved to New York in 1963.) That changed around fifteen years ago, when a ceramics instructor escorted her to the Museum of Modern Art, stood her in front of a sculpture, and encouraged her to touch it. In violation of the museum’s rules, she reached out and felt what seemed to be a leg. This was a human figure, apparently. She felt some more, then exclaimed, “Oh, it’s a naked man!”
Since then, Chang has become a MOMA regular. She often visits under the auspices of a museum program for people who are sight-impaired. A lecturer leads them through the galleries, describes paintings to them, and encourages them to touch a few sculptures. There have been no mishaps, although there was one session, in the sculpture garden, when a visitor’s Seeing Eye dog relieved itself.
Chang is now a sculptor, but at MOMA she has come to favor the paintings of Picasso. “If I could see, I’d be painting something similar,” she said. “I still think in color. When a person talks to me, I visualize his face, and as he pronounces words I imagine his lips.”
One morning earlier this month, Chang and six others who were either blind or partially blind gathered on the fifth floor of the museum. Along with their lecturer, Amir Parsa, a poet and a writer, they had the galleries to themselves. They gathered around a Seurat—“Port-en-Bessin” (1888)—and Parsa began to describe it, in a didactic and modulating tone: “The very bottom third is what you might think of as land; a body of water occupies the upper two-thirds. That bottom third is a greenish earth-color tone that suggests this landmass to us, and above that we have bluish hues that determine this watery body. You really have a lot of horizontals.” It was hard to see it, if you couldn’t see it, but the visitors were rapt, re-creating Seurat on the gallery walls of their minds. “He actually uses only dots, small dots,” Parsa went on. “He uses the very tip of the brush to create what we just described as a scene, and he does not mix colors, meaning that these small dots, juxtaposed with each other, in a complementary manner, create this effect.”
“Excuse me,” Chang said. “So when the artist wants to create different shades of color he will use primary colors and mix those dots so that from far away it will look like different shades?” Parsa nodded. “And also,” Chang went on, “what I feel is that maybe the shapes are not perfect, but our imagination adds to them and makes them perfect.”
The next stop was a series of sculptures by Matisse—five heads of Jeannette. A sign next to them read “Please Do Not Touch.” Parsa described the progression from one head to the next. Then everybody put on polyethylene gloves and began touching. The gloves made a rustling sound. This group tended to start with the small features and proceed to a fuller caress of the entire head, a sense of the whole proceeding from its parts. A man named Dennis Sparacino, a professional singer and a “dedicated decadent,” pinched Jeannette’s nostrils, felt her lips, then her chin and eyes and cheekbones, and only then did he wrap his hands around the skull. Moving on to the next head, he mistakenly touched the arm of the man to his right—“That’s actually Richard,” someone told him—and then went for Jeannette’s nostrils again. “This one looks ugly,” he said. “This is—not as nice a nose.” He pretended to choke one, exclaiming, “I told you to stop that!”
They huddled up for some commentary. Sparacino said, “I’m not sure the artist knew what he was doing. I can see no reason for his taking these turns.”
“I have another view,” Chang said, with some curtness. “I feel that the artist is trying to convey that things are not the way they seem, that things may change as your feelings toward them change.” It was her theory that Jeannette had spurned Matisse, and that this had altered his view of her.
“I have a question for Nuria,” Sparacino said. “If Jeannette lost interest in him, did he get even with her?” Chang shrugged.
The next stop was a Duchamp readymade. Parsa’s depiction was brief: “It is an actual bicycle wheel with its forks still in, turned upside down and thrust into a white four-legged wooden stool.” One by one, his charges stepped forward and fondled the components. A woman gave the wheel such a brisk spin that the work nearly toppled; museum staff jumped in to steady it. Chang touched the spokes and said, “Two words come to mind: motion and stationary.”
“You can get from this whatever your mind leads you to,” Sparacino replied. Another member of the group announced that in her opinion Chang and Sparacino, regardless of their aesthetic differences, always had astute things to say. Everyone nodded.
After the tour was done, Chang said of Sparacino, “The thing is, I don’t think Dennis was ever into doing art. We don’t talk about art, he and I. We hardly ever talk. We only see each other in the museum.”

today was:

eating yesterday's leftover
pies for b'fast
walking around harvard
meeting up with an old friend who i haven't communicated with for the last 10 years!

oh and getting embarrassed at the local staples for asking for a product that was "sold out in 3 minutes, exactly at 6:03 AM." (for the record, that wasn't me, but my brother!)

ha haaaaaaa

today i ate:

• turkey
• stuffing
• butternut squash thingy
• sweet potato
• mashed potato
• green beans casserole thingy
• cornmeal thingy
• cranberry sauce
• red wine
• sparkling apple cider
• crackers (& cheese, but i couldn't have the cheese)
• lactose-free eggnog
• pecan pie
• pumpkin pie
• apple pie

*PLOP*

oh I TOTALLY FORGOT that i had my first in-the-face racial slur thrown at me the other night.

it was friday after the sg...from tina's! i was coming out of her apt, 85th & 1st, walking towards 86th street to get the bus and then this black guy passes me and says:

YOU F-ING GOOK!

i think i was in shock cuz i didn't realize he threw that at me for at least 10 sec. i looked behind me only after that and nobody was behind me!!!

i'm sure i've been called names at least behind my back, whether racial or not, but this was a real shocker. i can't believe i forgot all about this until now!!!!

it's been almost a month since i've joined second life. last night, i searched under "church" and i got a ton of mormon churches, etc but only a couple of "christian" churches. this is the "snapshot" from the front of one of the churches that offer counseling, prayer room, etc. pretty cool huh? (that winged creature is ME!)

took the V to work this morning. when i got out, i smelled evergreens. i was like, no....but they there were at citicorp center! they're putting out the christmas decorations. awwww i love christmas!

i got myself a roommate - and this time, no kidding, cuz right in front of me is the roommate agreement & the security deposit! she moves in dec 15. so i have nov.15 to dec 14 free. i should have a party.

i miss playing the piano, i miss playing concerts. i miss music!

coming saturday is my Open House - for roommate choosin. I've gotten some strange but 'Okay' emails from folks overseas, including australia! (hi, i'm moving in February, can i live there?) i'm hoping to settle this soon so i don't have to bother with it. i am actually missing my old roommate who was pretty morose & depressing but nonetheless stayed out of my way, no passive-aggressiveness.

just for the heck of it, i've "opened" up the pool to both women AND men. we'll see what happens.

more roommate saga - if that's even possible:

i wake up this morning, go to the bathroom but the bathroom is closed. that means someone's in there. i look towards my roomie's door & it's closed too. so i'm thinking what the. i go closer to the bathroom door and there's a sign - with a drawing on it. i get closer to read and this is what it said:

"Seapea: i saw a waterbug in the bathroom last night. i sealed everything." with a drawing of something that's supposed to be (i'm guessing) the waterbug's size with the label: "<--- actual size" next to it.

she sealed the entire doorway!!! so i had to open everything and of course there was no waterbug. the waterbug probably got scared of her and went somewhere else. and then i see the cabinet under the sink is all shut & sealed - AS IF the waterbug can OPEN the cabinet doors by itself! if anything, she should've sealed the edges of the bathroom tile & the cabinet itself on the floor, not the doors! sheesh.

yes it's gross to see a bug of any kind. yes, it's freaky. but...

good luck living in manhattan!

from today's NY Times:

November 7, 2006
A Neuroscientific Look at Speaking in Tongues
By BENEDICT CAREY
The passionate, sometimes rhythmic, language-like patter that pours forth from religious people who “speak in tongues” reflects a state of mental possession, many of them say. Now they have some neuroscience to back them up.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania took brain images of five women while they spoke in tongues and found that their frontal lobes — the thinking, willful part of the brain through which people control what they do — were relatively quiet, as were the language centers. The regions involved in maintaining self-consciousness were active. The women were not in blind trances, and it was unclear which region was driving the behavior.
The images, appearing in the current issue of the journal Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, pinpoint the most active areas of the brain. The images are the first of their kind taken during this spoken religious practice, which has roots in the Old and New Testaments and in charismatic churches established in the United States around the turn of the 19th century. The women in the study were healthy, active churchgoers.
“The amazing thing was how the images supported people’s interpretation of what was happening,” said Dr. Andrew B. Newberg, leader of the study team, which included Donna Morgan, Nancy Wintering and Mark Waldman. “The way they describe it, and what they believe, is that God is talking through them,” he said.
Dr. Newberg is also a co-author of “Why We Believe What We Believe.”
In the study, the researchers used imaging techniques to track changes in blood flow in each woman’s brain in two conditions, once as she sang a gospel song and again while speaking in tongues. By comparing the patterns created by these two emotional, devotional activities, the researchers could pinpoint blood-flow peaks and valleys unique to speaking in tongues.
Ms. Morgan, a co-author of the study, was also a research subject. She is a born-again Christian who says she considers the ability to speak in tongues a gift. “You’re aware of your surroundings,” she said. “You’re not really out of control. But you have no control over what’s happening. You’re just flowing. You’re in a realm of peace and comfort, and it’s a fantastic feeling.”
Contrary to what may be a common perception, studies suggest that people who speak in tongues rarely suffer from mental problems. A recent study of nearly 1,000 evangelical Christians in England found that those who engaged in the practice were more emotionally stable than those who did not. Researchers have identified at least two forms of the practice, one ecstatic and frenzied, the other subdued and nearly silent.
The new findings contrasted sharply with images taken of other spiritually inspired mental states like meditation, which is often a highly focused mental exercise, activating the frontal lobes.
The scans also showed a dip in the activity of a region called the left caudate. “The findings from the frontal lobes are very clear, and make sense, but the caudate is usually active when you have positive affect, pleasure, positive emotions,” said Dr. James A. Coan, a psychologist at the University of Virginia. “So it’s not so clear what that finding says” about speaking in tongues.
The caudate area is also involved in motor and emotional control, Dr. Newberg said, so it may be that practitioners, while mindful of their circumstances, nonetheless cede some control over their bodies and emotions.

it's been 16 hrs since i've been up. a Hello from boston! last 12 hrs, i've been holding the baby, cooing the baby, strolling with the baby, getting on my knee & cleaning the new house, bathtub, kitchen, lining drawers, etc. I AM BEAT!!!

tomorrow, Day 2 of Cleaning & Settling the Park family in Boston. and tomorrow, i actually have do some work at WGBH, a local Boston station, where a quartet of ours is being interviewed.

i dunno how young couples w/o families near by do it...cuz i CAN"T! and i'm not even a mommy!

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

UNbelievable!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! the girl who was supposed to become my new roommate emailed me early this morning saying she can't, because she needs more room and the room is too small. this is after i've deleted all the ads on-line. WHATEV!!!!

back to the drawing board.

from today's Wall Street Journal:

Befriending WitchesIs Still a ProblemIn Salem, Mass.
Rev. Wyman Talks to Pagans,Is Expelled by His Church;A 'Kiss' on the Hand
By SUZANNE SATALINEOctober 31, 2006; Page A1
SALEM, Mass. -- The Rev. Phil Wyman presides over a small evangelical church here that befriends local pagans and folks who call themselves witches. It's an odd mission, even in Salem, a city where tourism capitalizes on infamy -- the mass hysteria of 1692 in which 20 men and women were executed for practicing witchcraft.
Salem (pop. 40,000) is home to hundreds of professed witches, psychic readers, potion brewers, mystics and Wiccans, a group that practices a nature-based faith. In 1999, Mr. Wyman, his wife and two friends set out to minister to them, hoping to convert some to Christianity.
Last year, local ministers began saying that Mr. Wyman was getting too close to the witches. They pointed to his friendships, his Web site's links to pagan sites, and a photograph that seemed to show him kissing a witch's hand. Mr. Wyman's denomination accused him of aberrance, revoked his ordination and expelled him. One letter to him said he had strayed from Christian teachings and was disobedient.
In recent days, as tens of thousands of tourists have flocked to Salem's leafy streets in anticipation of Halloween, Mr. Wyman has been hustling to keep his 35-member church going. He denies violating Christian precepts and says he himself is the victim of a witch hunt.
"I can imagine the Salem witch trials were not much different from this: It starts with a rumor and escalates to a trial," says Mr. Wyman.
Mr. Wyman's fans say he has helped bridge divides. "He's actively changed the dynamic between witches and Christians in this town," says Christian Day, a member of the witch community. But some pastors say Mr. Wyman's alliances have tainted him. "There's a fear mentality, if you hang out with members of the witchcraft community, you will come under the influence of the darkness," says Scott Smith, a minister for the Assemblies of God.
Mr. Wyman, 47, and his wife, Beverly, were members of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, a Pentecostal Christian denomination whose adherents speak in tongues and believe in miracles. Foursquare, based in Los Angeles, was founded by famed revivalist Aimee Semple McPherson in 1927. It claims 4.5 million members world-wide.
Mr. Wyman joined Foursquare in his 20s when he was playing guitar in Southern California. Yet he liked the intellectual challenge of talking with nonbelievers. He was drawn, he says, to those following pre-Christian traditions. Once in Salem, he volunteered to work with the city's biggest event, the annual Halloween festival.
Many evangelicals consider Halloween and witchcraft to be Satan's work and have persuaded some schools around the country to drop Halloween parties. Many Pentecostals believe that angels and demons are waging an active spiritual battle, and Halloween is a sign of Satan, says Matthew Sutton, professor at Oakland University in Rochester, Mich., who has written about Ms. McPherson.
Mr. Wyman, hoping to get Salem's pagans to open up to him, tried neighborliness. Christians and witches debated the difference between magic and miracles at his Thursday night Circle and Cross Talk. He chatted with people at Salem's witchcraft shops, and he was shown how tarot cards are read. Some witches sought him out for counseling. Eva Porcello, a potion mixer, joined his church, saying Mr. Wyman didn't dictate beliefs. "He lets people figure out their own spirituality," she says.
Despite his friendships, Mr. Wyman says he has always been careful to observe, not join, pagan rituals. "It's their worship, not mine," he says.
On October weekends, Salem's Essex Street teems with folk musicians, candy-apple sellers, and caped tour guides. Mr. Wyman's church, called the Gathering, provides a stage, sound equipment, live music and hot chocolate.
He also provides Christian-tinged theater. Near the stage, people lined up this year for dream interpretations and "psalm readings," in which volunteers proffered their advice through scriptural passages. In another tent, redolent of incense, James Wilcox, a friend of Mr. Wyman's, was dressed in a monk's cowl as he confessed the "sins of the church," dating all the way back to the Crusades. Mr. Day said some of his witch friends were moved when they heard a Christian admit the church has wronged people. "Sure, he wants to convert people," he says about Mr. Wyman. "But he does it in a way that respects you."
At first, Mr. Wyman's supervisors seemed pleased with his work in Salem, according to other Foursquare pastors and leaders. Mr. Wyman's district supervisor, John Hatcher, lauded him at a convention last fall before dozens of ministers, two pastors said.
Jack Hayford, Foursquare's president, didn't return phone calls, and other church leaders declined to comment. Mr. Hatcher said only: "Phil had a strategy and methodology that was significantly different from how we perceive church life."
In September 2005, four local evangelical clergymen told Mr. Wyman they were concerned about a picture on a witch's Web site of Mr. Wyman bending as if to kiss the hand of Melantha Blackthorne, a Canadian horror-movie actress who appears at the Salem vampire ball as Countess Bathoria.
Mr. Wyman appeared "too familiar, too cozy, too amicable with that community," said the Rev. Kenneth Steigler, a United Methodist Church pastor.
Mr. Wyman said he was playacting, didn't kiss Ms. Blackthorne's hand, and didn't know that Mr. Day had posted the photo online. The photo was removed right away. But Mr. Wyman's superior, Mr. Hatcher, wrote to him several days later saying he was discomfited by local pastors' concerns and Web links connecting the Gathering's Internet site to those run by pagans -- people whose views oppose that of Christians, he wrote.
"I feel you are not seeing the vulnerability you are opening up to regarding demonic activity," Mr. Hatcher wrote. "It is my judgment...that you are crossing the line into the aberrant."
Mr. Wyman, his associate pastor, Jeff Menasco, and their wives were summoned to a hearing in October last year at Mr. Hatcher's church in Weymouth, Mass., before several Foursquare leaders. They grilled the two couples as to how a Christian could be friends with witches.
A few weeks before the meeting, Mr. Wyman got word that an application he had made for a grant from the church-funded Foursquare Foundation had been approved, awarding him $84,000 to teach evangelizing techniques. Mr. Wyman pressed Mr. Hatcher for another meeting, saying he had not been given a fair hearing. Mr. Hatcher refused. In March, Foursquare's board expelled Mr. Wyman.
Mr. Wyman has been using some of the grant money to pay church rent and bills. Once it's gone, Mr. Wyman says he may weld or give guitar lessons to keep his church afloat.
Write to Suzanne Sataline at suzanne.sataline@wsj.com

okay, so i got a roommate! she's 24, korean, lived in dorms for the last 4 years, going to different colleges, etc. she's an illustration major at sva. she'll sign the roommate agreement with me on nov 10 (because i'm away, and she is too until then, etc.). she seems pretty laid back, kinda nerdy (which is always a good aspect in a roommate!) and homey. YAY!

sunday was a really good day: relaxing & watching movies (really recommend this movie called the prize winner of defiance, oh - very touching) and of course church. for some reason, i was really happy during the service & really alert too! :)

on saturday, had 2 girls come & see the apt. 1 was a flake and 1 was okay. have 1 more coming tonight to see the apt. i'll probably decide soon...

so last night...

(isn't that how i always say things?!?!)

i'm minding my own biz...and then the roomie goes...

Roomie: can i talk to you?
Me: okay
R: a few things...i wanted to apologize for the other night. i didn't mean to get upset
M: oh...
R: see, in LA, when you say something about someone being "passive-aggressive" that means you're a real jerk
M: well..you'll find more passive-aggressive people in NYC who are not jerks
R: so i'm sorry i got mad...and the other thing is that i found an apt right next to my school
M: oh that's very good
R: so...the lady wants me to move in by nov.15. i'm wondering if i should move in by the 15th?
(NOTE: here's the example of passive-aggressive - she's "wondering," instead of ASKING me)
M: well, it's up to you. i'm fine with you moving out on the 15th or Dec.1
R: but the agreement said Dec.1 so...my dad asked me to ask you
(NOTE: another example of she can't think for herself)
M: that's fine. just let me know when you make up your mind. i'm in no rush to get a roommate
R: okay thanks

so! looks like I"ll be freerrrrrrr earlierrrrrr!!!

things are never free in manhattan...or is there?

this morning, i had yet another visit to my one of two dentists (yes, i'm one of THOSE people who have more than a doctor...i have TEAMS of doctors!) who decided that my REAL TOOTH (RT) behind the IMPLANTED TEETH (IT) need to have the fillings re-done so that the IT will not have a big gape between the RT & IT. i was really miserable: not just because there was another procedure (and of course, BIGGGGG needle filled with novocain) but because it'll be one more bill to pay...which i haven't finished paying. then he said "free of charge." i was like WHA???? what's THAT? "FREE OF CHARGE"!

see, i told you...i'm always being "taken care of..." by the BIG GUY UP THERE! (BGUT). i dunno why i'm capitalizing everything. i think i'm still NUMB.

okay, so the roommate saga is now OVER. she is moving out on Dec.1.

so this morning, i'm relaxing and watching a movie and this happens:

Me: (i go to the sink and see food stuff on the mesh thingy) Oh, lalena, you forgot to empty the drainer
Roomie: well, i was GONNA do it, but i didn't have the time.
M: okay (then empty the drainer & get back to the couch to continue with movie)
R: it's not like i left it there, unlike your gross brown stuff
NOTE: she calls my brown stuff = oatmeals
M: what?
R: you left your brown stuff all days and then you just make such a big deal about this
M: wait, are you saying you left your stuff cuz of my "brown stuff" from like 2 weeks ago? Lalena, i don't think that's a good way to communicate
R: well, i've told you stuff before and you ignored me
M: how did i ignore you?
R: you never clean things right away
M: wait, i didn't know that before. as we discussed at your room the other day, we have differences. so we have to communicate
R: well, if i have to communicate every time something bothers me, then i'll be bothering you ever 5 mintues
M: so what's bothering you right now?
R: well...nothing. i can't think of anything
M: well, just the fact you keep track of things, or it seems like you are, that's so passive-aggressive and i can't live like that
R: (all mad) listen, you have MAJOR personality problem. don't call ME names
M: i didn't call YOU a name. i'm just saying i can't live like that
R: well, i can't either but i'm giving you MORE than enough for this apartment and...
M: that's your agreement with me, and that doesn't concern you, what my term is with my landlord
R: well, all i'm saying is, the apartment was NOT ready and i have 3 witnesses who's seen how horrible the apartment is and 20 others who's seen pictures
M: then why do you stay?
R: i told you i'll move out soon
M: no we have to set a date. this isn't working out
R: i told you in the spring
M: no, we have to set a date SOON
R: Dec. 1
M: that's less than 45 days from now but you're fine with it?
R: yes
M: i'll be sending you an e-mail so it's written out

there's actually more to than this convo, but it's soooo ridiculous and just beyond my belief, i decided to just focus on the main things she threw at me today.

THAT'S IT FOLKS

so....just had the roomie sign an amended agreement. i'm free! that means jan.29 notice for mar.14 move out date. i'm happy. but on a funny note, here's what happened before she was about to sign:

Roomie: wait, i don't want this "Bathroom cleaning: including emptying the garbage."
Me: why not?
R: because i consider a bathroom garbage can a personal recepticle so i don't want to touch it, so i don't use it AT ALL
M: but where do you put the hair you pick out from the drain after the shower?
R: i wrap it and put it in my garbage in my room. so...can you have this crossed out? i don't want to empty what's not mine

....she....is....nuts~~~!!!

miracle of all miracles:

yesterday i come back home a bit...happy, from my boss's birthday celebration. it was around 10 PM. my roomie is there. suddenly says

"I just got Click from netflix...do you want to watch it? I'm going to watch it now."

I was...really speechless. Unfortunately i had to decline.

but can you believe it? A MIRACLE!

feeling good this morning. drafting up the amended agreement. don't get me wrong: she still has to move out...she is crazy! (her logic, etc.) but i'm glad we had it an open discussion about her moving and stuff. so we'll see how it goes. i have 2 months to "evaluate" the situation and if it gets worse (who knows? this morning i said, have a nice day and again she didn't say anything back to me), now i'll have amended agreement to say sayonara 45 days before, nothing to do with 6 months, etc.

yay!

God is great. he is truly wise. he moves hearts like nobody can.

tonight, i decided (after many gulps & would-be scenarios in my head) to talk with my roommate. just ALL OUT.

that talk, which i was going to have for 10 minutes, ended up being 45 minutes.

the end result is that she was smiling and i was happy.

this is what happened:

i approached her and asked if we could talk and she was very cautious about saying yes. after me standing by her doorway and her still sitting at the desk, i asked her, "i feel like...you really resent me. and i'm wondering why." then this is HER story:

that she came here, for the first time ever, out of her parents' house, and wanted to start CLEAN, in every sense, with her schooling & being independent. what she found was that, while the room she rented was clean, other parts of the apartment was not clean according to HER standard. then she was busy cleaning every weekend of the first month of her being in a new city and instead of enjoying, she was cleaning on her knees and i was like "whatever" about it all.

my rebuttal to that was:

why does she have to clean like that? i never asked for it. 2 roommates who lived here never complained about cleanliness. and yes, when i moved to this city, my dorm was brand new so i never experienced anything like what she was talking about.

so i told her: listen, i don't want to make anybody feel resentful towards me, whether i consciously know it or not. and i think we have to agree we both had a completely two different views on what's clean, what to expect from each other (or in my case, not to expect at all). so i think this isn't going to work out

she agreed very sweetly and honestly. see, she's not a biatch. she was just mad that i was like whatever. i guess i'd be mad too if i'm trying to fix something and she was like "whatever."

so the conclusion is this: i'll draw up a new amended roommate agreement which exclude:

1. her obligation to find a roommate for sublet (she is leaving earlier for her internship than she though, so she was apparently stressed about that point in the agreement but didn't bring it up to me)
2. her being here for minimum of 6 months
3. but keeping the 45 day notice for each side.

then she really opened up about how it's not me, really, but it's new york city. commuting is getting to her and she just wants her own space, cleanliness and all, all in a bundle. she wants her own things, etc. i said, hey, look at the bright side: you saved some bucks by living here. so she was happy about that.

we're all set now. i'm glad i approached her. i'm thankful for god!

today's a good day. i'm completely finished with getting new teeth. these $7,500-per-teeth better last me my life time. it feels strange: it feels heavier on that side when i was missing the two teeth. now i'm "whole" in the mouth again. i can actually start to chew.

even though i still owe like $4K on these, i'm happy to now chew on the left side after 13 months of a "hiatus."

i kind of woke up grumbling cuz of you-know-who, but now, i'm back to "thank GOD i have teeth!" mode.

hehehehehehe

tonight's sermon was on the parable of Matthew 20:1-16:

The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard 1"For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. 2He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard. 3"About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. 4He told them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.' 5So they went. "He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing. 6About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, 'Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?' 7" 'Because no one has hired us,' they answered. "He said to them, 'You also go and work in my vineyard.' 8"When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, 'Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.' 9"The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. 10So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. 11When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. 12'These men who were hired last worked only one hour,' they said, 'and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.' 13"But he answered one of them, 'Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? 14Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?' 16"So the last will be first, and the first will be last."

as pastor justin was saying, this one is a hard one to swallow. at the face value, it sounds like jesus is telling us to just "suck it up" and don't question...and perhaps don't complain either. and what's with that mysterious last verse?

but alas, it's not about us but it's about the GRACE we're living in, with, cuz of, etc. here are 3 points:

1. god is saying he is fair: don't focus on the "injustification" of workers who worked harder but got the same pay, but focus on the workers who he "recruited" last but was paid the same;

2. god is a persuing god: he is constantly and tirelessly "recruiting"

3. god is generous: this has nothing to do with who DESERVES or what doesn't. it is HIS will and HIS generosity.

i was thinking about my current roomie situation. i am being judgemental, i cannot just stand why she is like that. but she is like that...because god has also given her a life, whatever that's worth and that's NOT MY CALL to judge (e.g. "why does god even give her a good school life? all that scholarship? why is she here to bother me?" etc.). i should be just thankful that god has granted me

a) a non-druggie roomie
b) a CLEAN roomie
c) a relatively QUIET roomie
d) one who pays on-time roomie
etc.

there's much to be thankful for. i should be grateful for HIS WILL that he has brought me to the arms of him again after a long period before, that i am at a good church, being fed, etc.

boy do i ever need the reminder! it's really hard for me to do that because whenever i deal with my roommate, i completely forget.

oy vey, GRACE POR FAVOR! heheheh

roommate saga continues:

last night, i asked her, when are you going to replace the broken blinds?

Roommie: why should i replace something i didn't break?
me: but you broke it?
R: no i didn't. i told you that's how i found it
m: what??? you said you broke it
R: no i DIDN'T. i SAID, it was on the floor when i got home, all shattered and it fell to the garbage can.
m: you did NOT tell me that part
R: I DID
m: okay well i didn't hear you on that one
R: I TOLD YOU
m: okay then. you didn't broke it. it broke by itself
R: well, it DID, because i didn't do anything to it, so obviously you lived here for so long, it just fell apart
m: okay. sorry to have misunderstood you
R: (no sound, nothing)

then this morning, i was putting away my tupperware on my tupperware drawer and it's not there. instead it's HER stuff, so i say to her

m: what happened to my tupperware drawer?
R: oh, i moved it up above the stove because i needed a drawer
m: well, i'd appreciate it if you can tell me BEFORE you move my stuff
R: yeah

then suddenly out of nowhere she goes

R: by the way, the bathroom is gross with all your hair
m: excuse me? i cleaned out all the hair from the drain
R: no you didn't. it's all over the wall.

so i go to the bathroom and there's NO HAIR ANYWHERE

m: where's the hair?
R: well, it WAS there
m: so did you clean it off then?
R: (no comment, nothing)

what the heck? talk about wanting to "get back" at me asking her stuff. what the heck. only like a little kid would do that. sheesh!

so re: blind, i'll have my landlord fix it...i don't doubt i would've remembered what she would've told me about just a plain BROKEN blinds. but she didn't. she's really bad at communication!

tonight's sermon was delivered by richard bewes of all soul's church in london. i've often heard of this place, now that i go to an anglican church. it's like supposedly the mother church of anglican faith. har har. i'd love to go check it out when i'm in london.

tonight's title was "The In-Between Times of Life." here are my scribbles from the sermon:

Philippians 4:11 is has the keyword "Content" as in:

11I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. 12I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13I can do everything through him who gives me strength.
(NIV)

The word Content in Greek is Autarkeia, which is based on a secular greek word (from the Stoics).

Main Entry: au·tar·ky Pronunciation: 'o-"tär-kEFunction: nounEtymology: German Autarkie, from Greek autarkeia, from autarkEs self-sufficient, from aut- + arkein to defend, suffice -- more at ARK1 : SELF-SUFFICIENCY, INDEPENDENCE; specifically : national economic self-sufficiency and independence2 : a policy of establishing a self-sufficient and independent national economy

interesting huh?

so basically that means no aid of any kind, full of self-sufficiency and competency.

what does that have to do with Christianity? see verse 13: I can do everything through him who gives me strength. meaning...

we're living in the world of In Between times...between the 1st coming and the 2nd coming. instead of waiting and waiting for (the bus, subway, promotion, meeting a hubby/wifey, vacation time, etc.) various things that take up our time and mind from, concentrate on learning to live within the Christian framework, of living in the grace, having all that we need (2 Cor 9:8, being satisfied in that.

few key phrases which caught me tonight:

• develop the stamina of patience
• it's a slow process
• a waiting period forms our lives

i don't know if i made any sense, but i really wanted to write all this down.

just found out that the flute i bid $250 for for the star trek auction...- it was estimated $8,000 to $12,000-...sold for $48,000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

are people crazy???!?!? it's not even a REAL flute. it's a PROP!!!!!!!!!!!!!

wow, and you guys thought i was crazy to bid $250. man...

from today's CNN:

Harvard committee recommends returning religion to curriculum
BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- Harvard University, founded 370 years ago to train Puritan ministers, should again require all undergraduates to study religion, along with U.S. history and ethics, a faculty committee is recommending.
The surprisingly bold recommendations come after years of rancorous internal debate over what courses should be required of all Harvard students. The current core curriculum has been criticized for focusing on narrow academic questions rather than real-world issues students would likely confront beyond the wrought-iron gates of Harvard Square.
The report calls for Harvard to require students to take a course in "reason and faith," which could include classes on topics such as religion and democracy, Charles Darwin or a current course called "Why Americans Love God and Europeans Don't."
"Harvard is no longer an institution with a religious mission, but religion is a fact that Harvard's graduates will confront in their lives," the report says, noting 94 percent of incoming students report discussing religion and 71 percent attend services.
"As academics in a university we don't have to confront religion if we're not religious, but in the world, they will have to," Alison Simmons, a philosophy professor who co-chaired the committee, said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
The report, which has been circulated to faculty and whose contents were first reported Wednesday by The Harvard Crimson student paper, also says Harvard students also "need to have an understanding of American history, American institutions, and American values," calling for a requirement to study the United States in a comparative context with other countries.
The recommendations are the latest chapter in a lengthy, tumultuous saga over revamping the university's core curriculum, which dates to the 1970s. Former President Lawrence Summers made reform a priority in 2001, but the work of several committees bogged down and initial recommendations were criticized as weak. Summers resigned earlier this year, forced out by faculty anger at his handling of a range of matters, including the curriculum review.
Harvard's core has shied away from the "Great Books" approach to general education, focusing on "approaches to knowledge" rather than "bodies of knowledge." But the report notes few Harvard students plan to become academics, while more than half plan to attend business, law or medical school. The new recommendations are clearly geared toward rounding out the liberal arts education of those students.
In addition to ethics, "reason and faith" and the "United States and the World," students would be required to do coursework in two other areas: science and technology, and "Cultural Traditions and Cultural Change."
The recommendations also include making writing and analytical reasoning part of the general requirements, and retaining foreign language work.
The recommendations, by a six-member faculty panel, offer only general guidelines about the kinds of classes that would count. The draft may be revised and would be adopted only after passing a vote by Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
The State University of New York and George Mason University have adopted general education requirements that include mandatory American history.
In the Ivy League, Columbia University has a significant core curriculum with courses that include material on religion, and Dartmouth currently requires a course in the analysis of religion, though that will change next year, according to its Web site. But Harvard would be the only school in that group requiring students to take courses in both religion and U.S. history.
Public colleges in Colorado, along with Ohio University and Arizona State, are among the other universities currently reviewing general education requirements, said Anne Neal, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a generally conservative academic group that has urged universities to toughen general education requirements.
"From the looks of this new proposal, it is extremely good news," Neal said. "It appears Harvard has rejected the 'anything goes' distribution requirements in place at so many colleges in favor of a more structured, rigorous and cohesive core curriculum."
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

so God must've took pity on me since i didn't get mad or annoyed or anything last night. this was the convo after i came in:

Roommie: so did you notice all the cleaning i've done?
Me: yes, you've cleaned according to the schedule
R: no, not just that, but i cleaned everything
M: great, thanks
R: i pulled out the oven and
M: WHAT?!?!?! you PULLED OUT THE OVEN? that's really dangerous!
R: i KNOW it's dangerous but i HAD to do it. i found all this oil dripped & dust bunnies so i scrubbed everything
M: okay, thanks
R: i also cleaned the toaster, the microwave, under the microwave and behind
M: good
R: are you going to clean the fridge?
M: why?
R: there's some spilled korean-food looking thing there under the drawers. see? (shows me under one of the vegetable drawers - which is completely hidden)
M: okay i'll clean that next time i'm suppose to clean the kitchen
R: what about under the sink in the bathroom? the cabinet?
M: what's wrong with it?
R: well, it smells like someone threw up in there
M: i dont' smell anything. it's just all the cleaning supplies in there
R: i think you should clean it
M: maybe

i think she's either really bored or really suffering badly from OCD. i do not live in a pigsty!!! but instead of getting mad and dismissive, i looked into her eyes and responded clearly and just let her know it's not at all serious, all these cleaning priorities.

okay, went to an awesome concert last night. it was really a blast!!! wowowowowow...of course, now i'm tired :)

okay but then, i come home, and there were these broken blinds on my dining chair. i was like, what the...you'd think she'd at least THROW them out! so i asked her what it's doing there and she gave me such an attitude! "well, i wanted you to SEE it" so i said "why would i need to see the broken blinds? i believe you. please throw them out" and then left her. sheesh!

okay, so i've drooled for about 1 hr today at christie's. it was the star trek auction viewing date!!!!!!!!!!!! and it was good that i went in the middle of the day: not many peeps looking. granted there were so many nerds (overheard a convo that said "remember that romulan destroyed this phaser and then..."), but also surprisingly lots of women! i don't mean obese klingon clad women. very attractive, young people! yes also saw lots of zit-faced teenaged boys (probably cut school). interesting mix! i was however, very glad not to have worn my star trek earrings. i would have looked uber-geekette!

so i put a bid in for this item. the estimate at the viewing said between $800-1200 but i put in for $250, MAX bid. i DOUBT i'll get it, but you never know...

roommate saga continues...

i come back from houston, visiting my beautiful nephew, and all i see is the moon shining through the kitchen. usually, that's nice, but what the heck happened to one of the blinds??

so tonight:

act 1: i come back from work and say "what happened to the blind?" she says "oh, it must've been old. i just TOUCHED it and it fell down. it WAS old, just crumbled." then i was like, nothing ever happened to that before.

act 2: i come back out of my room after changing, then she points out "my dad had to re-enforce that blind (on the window adjacent to the fallen-blind-window) when he was here in august, because he said that was about to fall." i said "i didn't know anything about that. why didn't he tell *ME*?" she goes "i dunno. but he said it looked like falling that's why." i said "it didn't look anything at all like it was falling."

act 3: after coming out of the bathroom, i said "well, it'll have to be replaced." her response: silence.

UGH!

okay so i need patience, patience and patience.

this beautiful morning started off well. i've gotten as much of sleep as i possibly could (7 hours) - given my late night last night - and everything was going smoothly. i was listening to my radio (only because my roomie was up & about) and i had gone into my room for about 20 seconds to get something. next thing i know, radio is silent and my roomie's room is blaring out horribly loud rock music.

those of you who know me...i love ROCK, rock rock. but what is this all about? didn't say anything about "oh your radio is too loud" - but just TURNED IT OFF??

so since my last post, more things have been going on re: roomie: she stopped taking mail out of the mailbox - that is, she only takes out her portion. she of course never did any dishes of mine, including maybe ONE cup or ONE spoon that's in the sink. no, she washes all her stuff and sees one item of mine, and then voila, leaves IT there. i used to shrug it off, but now, i return the favor to her.

ARGH!

i need LOTS AND LOTS of patience.

Note: i ask her "why did you turn off my radio?" because she was obviously blasting the music to ignore me.

4.5 more months...counting...

i thought google somehow found out that it was my b-day today. but alas, no, it's googles 8th birthday! hmmm...

Wednesday, September 27th The 270th day of 2006. There are 95 days left in the year.Go to a previous date.

On this date in:
1779
John Adams was named to negotiate the Revolutionary War's peace terms with Britain.
1825
The first locomotive to haul a passenger train was operated by George Stephenson in England.
1928
The United States said it was recognizing the Nationalist Chinese government.
1939
Warsaw, Poland, surrendered after weeks of resistance to invading forces from Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II.
1942
Glenn Miller and his Orchestra performed together for the last time, at the Central Theater in Passaic, N.J., prior to Miller's entry into the Army.
1954
''Tonight!'' hosted by Steve Allen, made its debut on NBC-TV.
1959
A typhoon battered the main Japanese island of Honshu, killing nearly 5,000 people.
1990
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the Supreme Court nomination of David H. Souter.
1991
The Senate Judiciary Committee deadlocked, 7-7, on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court.
1994
More than 350 Republican congressional candidates signed the ''Contract with America,'' a 10-point platform they pledged to enact if voters sent a GOP majority to the U.S. House.
1995
The government unveiled its redesigned $100 bill.
1996
The Taliban, a band of former seminary students, drove the government of Afghani President Burhanuddin Rabbani out of Kabul, captured the capital and executed former leader Najibullah.
1998
Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder was elected chancellor of Germany, ending 16 years of conservative rule.
1998
Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals hit his record-setting 69th and 70th home runs during the last game of the season.
1999
Tiger Stadium closed after 87 years as home of baseball's Detroit Tigers.
2001
An armed man went on a shooting rampage in the local parliament in Zug, Switzerland, killing 14 people before taking his own life.
2001
President George W. Bush announced plans to bolster airline security in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
2004
NBC announced that ''Tonight Show'' host Jay Leno would be succeeded by ''Late Night'' host Conan O'Brien in 2009.
2005
Army reservist Lynndie England was sentenced to three years behind bars for her role in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

Current Birthdays
Gwyneth Paltrow turns 34 years old today.
87
Charles Percy Former U.S. senator, R-Ill.
86
Jayne Meadows Actress
84
Arthur Penn Movie director
77
Sada Thompson Actress
73
Kathleen Nolan Actress
72
Wilford Brimley Actor
72
Claude Jarman Jr. Actor
70
Don Cornelius Producer (''Soul Train'')
63
Randy Bachman Rock singer, musician (Bachman-Turner Overdrive)
59
Liz Torres Actress (''Gilmore Girls'')
58
A Martinez Actor
57
Mike Schmidt Baseball hall-of-famer
56
Cary-Hiroyuki Tagaw Actor
59
Meat Loaf Rock singer
53
Greg HamR ock musician (Men at Work)
48
Shaun Cassidy Singer
42
Stephan Jenkins Rock singer (Third Eye Blind)
38
Patrick Muldoon Actor
36
Mark Calderon Singer (Color Me Badd)
35
Amanda Detmer Actress
33
Clara Park SeaPea
29
Patrick Bourque Country musician (Emerson Drive)
28
Brad Arnold Rock singer (3 Doors Down)
22
Avril Lavigne Rock singer

Samuel Adams 9/27/1722 - 10/2/1803 American revolutionary leader

so, in response (not that it's required) to EE CUMMINGS, here's my fav poem by the grisly Mr. Poe:

We only part to meet again
Tho mighty boundless waves may sever
Remembrance oft shall bring thee near
And I will with thee go forever
And oft at mignight's silent hour
When brilliant planets shall guide the ocean
Thy name shall rise to heaven's highest star
And mingle with my soul's devotion

From DaySpring cards...

The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever. ISAIAH 40:8 NIV

How important is it to write out our thoughts and feelings? I'm so glad God decided to put His thoughts and feelings into the written word! I love to know that He thinks about us constantly and carries us in the palm of His hand. I'm thrilled to learn about His character and read about the experiences others have had in His presence. Words have power--and we have the privilege of preserving them in our journals every day.

When we take time to record memories, journal our prayers, and write down our thoughts, we truly give ourselves a gift to be opened over and over again. We can recall times of laughter, be encouraged by God's faithfulness in difficult situations, and feel a sense of comfort by expressing and managing the emotions He's given to us. It feels good to revisit the joys and even the struggles in our lives, because God is working in us and building our trust through every circumstance. We never outgrow His gentle and wise instruction. We never graduate from the learning process.

As another school year begins, we might all use it as a little nudge to begin an "essay" on the days God gives us on earth. No due dates, no grading scales, simply an opportunity to appreciate the gift of the written word--and a chance to allow God to encourage our hearts and remind us of His unconditional love and continued faithfulness. Our journals can become one of our favorite reads...and perhaps one of our greatest teachers.

Bonnie Jensen
Senior Writer - DaySpring Cards

so that's what i'm doing here! well! ha haaaaaaa

look at this mr. little mischievous!

this is REALLY frightening. while i understand the need to educate the little ones, i think this is too much. this is why the word "evangelical christians" scare people!!!! when you tell people that you're christian, this is what they think of. ugh.

September 22, 2006
MOVIE REVIEW | 'JESUS CAMP'
Children’s Boot Camp for the Culture Wars
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
“Extreme liberals who look at this should be quaking in their boots,” declares Pastor Becky Fischer with jovial satisfaction in the riveting documentary “Jesus Camp.” Ms. Fischer, an evangelical Christian, helps run Kids on Fire, a summer camp in Devils Lake, N.D., that grooms children to be soldiers in “God’s army.”

A mountainous woman of indefatigable good cheer, Ms. Fischer makes no bones about her expectation that the growing evangelical movement in the United States will one day end the constitutional ban separating church and state. And as the movie explores her highly effective methods of mobilizing God’s army, that expectation seems reasonable.

Ms. Fischer understands full well that the indoctrination of children when they are most impressionable (under 13 and preferably between 7 and 9) with evangelical dogma is the key to the movement’s future growth, and she compares Kids on Fire to militant Palestinian training camps in the Middle East that instill an aggressive Islamist fundamentalism. The term war, as in culture war, is repeatedly invoked to describe the fighting spirit of a movement already embraced by 30 million Americans, mostly in the heartland.

At Kids on Fire we see children in camouflage and face paint practicing war dances with wooden swords and making straight-armed salutes to a soundtrack of Christian heavy metal. We see them weeping and speaking in tongues as they are seized by the Holy Spirit. And we see them in Washington at an anti-abortion demonstration.

Filmed during the Senate confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., the movie visits a church at which the congregation prays in front of a life-size cardboard cutout of President Bush. Justice Alito’s eventual approval is hailed as another step forward in the movement’s eventual goal of outlawing abortion, the No. 1 issue on its agenda.

“Jesus Camp” is the second film by the documentary team of Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady to explore the molding of young minds. The first, “The Boys of Baraka,” followed a group of “at-risk” African-American boys from a decaying Baltimore middle school to an austere wilderness school in rural Kenya. Removed from a toxic urban environment, they flourish, until tribal conflict in the region forces the school to suspend operation.

The majority of the children in “Jesus Camp” are home-schooled by evangelical parents who teach them creationism and dismiss science. Handsome 12-year-old Levi, who wears his hair in a mullet, is being groomed as a future evangelical preacher. Already exuding star quality, he strides through a group of children, waving his arms and mouthing dogma about how his generation is so important.

Pretty 10-year-old Tory speaks earnestly of dancing “for God” and not “for the flesh.” Nine-year-old Rachael is already an evangelical recruiter who fearlessly approaches adult strangers.

Ms. Fischer speaks of “dead churches” (traditional Protestant churches in which the congregations sit passively and listen to a sermon) and declares these are places that Jesus doesn’t visit. In evangelical churches where people jump, shout, weep and speak in tongues, she contends, the spirit is present.

The great unanswered question is what will happen to these poised, attractive children when their hormones kick in and they venture beyond their sheltered home and church environments.

“Jesus Camp” includes one articulate and alarmed dissenting voice: Mike Papantonio, a talk show personality for Air America. A self-professed Christian of the dead church variety, he engages in a pointed but friendly debate with Ms. Fischer when she calls in to his show. But the only moment of real tension occurs during a side trip to a megachurch in Colorado Springs where the preacher Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals (and a Bush friend), turns to address the camera in a tone of suspicion and hostility. It is the movie’s only glimpse of the evangelical movement’s ugly, vindictive side.

“Jesus Camp” doesn’t pretend to be a comprehensive survey of the charismatic-evangelical phenomenon. It offers no history or sociology and only scattered statistics about its growth. It analyzes the political agenda only glancingly, centering on abortion but not on homosexuality or other items. Because it focuses on the education of children, Ms. Fischer speaks of the evils of Harry Potter. But there is no analysis of Biblical teaching nor mention of “end times” or the rapture.

Who would deny that the movement’s surging vitality is partly a response to the steady coarsening of mass culture, in which the dominant values are commercial and the worldview is Darwinian in its amorality? Spread globally by television, the least-common-denominator brand of “secular humanism” — the evangelicals’ perceived enemy — is indeed repugnant.

It wasn’t so long ago that another puritanical youth army, Mao Zedong’s Red Guards, turned the world’s most populous country inside out. Nowadays the possibility of a right-wing Christian American version of what happened in China no longer seems entirely far-fetched.

“Jesus Camp” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Its frank discussion of politics and religion could upset.