the wandering radish

mood: aggravated

The American economy is a mess. Again. Unemployment in America is at crippingly high levels. Again. The prices of oil-based fuel are skyrocketing, and showing no signs of slowing down. Again.

The cries of the American people are being ignored. Again.

Juxtapose all that with the big, 'spectacular' wedding for Jenna Bush, daughter of the current U.S. President. So many distractions,...

All while the ecology of the whole world is collapsing around our ears.

But, no, the sky isn't falling.

It's dying.

mood: amused

Oh, this makes me laugh *so* hard!! Ricky Gervais is a pure and unadulterated genius! A genius, I tell you:

If creationists really, really believe in the bible’s explanation of life, the universe and everything, don’t they ever worry that that their God might get a wee bit miffed at all the damage they are doing to His world?

Rather like Mom and Dad taking off for a holiday and saying, “No parties", only to come home to all the boorish evidence of all your friends' teen-aged debaucheries. [face it kiddies, pissing in your own salad bar is just stupid]

Being fashioned after their God, by His own hands, carries great expectations from you on His part and big responsibilities on the part of humans.  [Oh, well, so much for that.]

If creationists really, really believe that their God made all humans [all of 'em, not just the white men] in His image -- and I suspect that goes into the metaphorical, as well -- isn't it past time that they start living up to their own hype?

Just wondering.

mood: content

After transferring all my manuscript files from Word to Scrivener, I spent hours [and hours] creating folders and sub-folders, cataloguing all my research, and doing S-and-D on all the space-eating duplicates, thus triggering a mild OCD episode while making certain I wasn't deleting any files that I gotta keep --

At long last, I have a search-able hierarchy wherein I'm able to find what I need when I need it. Monk would be proud of me -- it's so tidy it almost hurts.

Everything's so much easier that it feels, well, downright decadent. Who knew that writing fiction could be so hedonistic? I'm actually getting afterglows, here.

I've been playing -- yes, playing -- with the outliner feature, and, I gotta say, well, WOW. Now, if only I could teach Scrivener to peel grapes,....

Once again, I’m pondering the ‘makeover’ motif, why it consistently has such great appeal for the masses,...

One of the best-loved tales worldwide is Cinderella. It’s the iconic makeover story, validating and elevating the object-character all the way to becoming royalty. It’s the template for the thousands of makeover stories that have since followed and wallowed in its wake.

The makeover story is not at all like the ‘Ugly Duckling’ scenario, where it’s just a matter of time before the object-character finally comes into being -- via the prophecy of genetics -- through no efforts on the part of the object-character, other than riding out the tough times until those superior genes finally kick in.

Nope, in addition to riding out the tough times -- without the safety net of promising genetics, or the family’s socio-economic rank -- the ‘Cinderella’ has to work hard for that transformation.

There are risks of and penalties for failure. There are adversaries at cross-purposes with the goals of the object-character. And there are no guarantees for success, or happiness, or love -- damn near everything is at stake.

The new status has to be earned.

My thoughts on it are these -- on a deeper level it isn’t nearly as much about changing the object-character’s physical appearance as it is about changing the object-character’s self-perception. More, it’s about owning how you appear, and taking up the reins to determine how you present yourself to others, and then taking responsibility for how they will perceive you. If you don’t like how they perceive you, you have the power to change that.

Ultimately, this is what the makeover story says to me:
How can you expect your life to change -- if you won’t change?

Nothing ventured is nothing gained.

mood: ecstatic

MacBook Leopard is sleek, deco-moderne sleek. Sleek in form, sleek in appearance, sleek in function. Neither white nor beige but shining eggshell in colour, it's smooth and cool like polished marble beneath my eager palms and fingers.

When opened, the famous apple-with-a-bite-taken-from-it glows soft and pale on the lid, like a night-light to keep me from stumbling or futzing about in the dark. The Bitten Apple logo reminds me of Eve who sought to appease her hunger for knowledge and understanding. And I so grok that -- how can anyone be expected to choose ignorance over enlightenment?

Until this Elegant Machine found me, I'd worked only with PC's. The IBM Thinkpad T40 served me,... well? Yes, it served me very well, as well as it could with only 512 megs of memory. Compared to the MacBook , that was like taking a tricycle down a goat path. The MacBook Leopard -- with a full gig of memory that's vital for holding a massive multi-book work-in-progress manuscript [and all its research] -- is more like taking to the skies in the Gossamer Condor. I'm still doing all the pedalling, but it's no longer such a labour.

The Mac Leopard is slim and stealthy and powerful and fast. It's beautifully close to being a Golden Rectangle.

This laptop is solid. There is no flimsiness to this thing. It's quiet and quick, and the battery holds a charge for over six hours -- that easily covers the time to make a transcontinental flight, or the drive from Portland down to Ashland. It has features that make scripting and research so much easier and better organized, and quicker to retrieve.

The real beauty of the MacBook? It's user-friendly without being dumbed-down or condescending. It doesn't try to tell me that this or that is what I really need or want -- and then insist on giving me what it wants instead of what I want -- as though I couldn't be trusted to make that decision for myself. That, and all the best software is written for Macs, and sometimes only for Macs.

While no longer a MacVirgin, I am far from debauched. Experience, knowledge, and wisdom always demand their prices [just ask Eve or Prometheus], and that price this time for me was daring to just try out a Mac -- I ignored my trepidations and I'm glad of it. I have an appreciation now for the boastful claim: Once you go Mac, you never go back.

The training wheels are off. I no longer need them, and they were only slowing me down, anyway. Now, I have wings.