Today’s Mantra

Courtesy of Douglas Cootey at The Splintered Mind:

I simply cannot accept a future where I am as miserable then as I am today.

My New Favorite Site

Kate has pointed me to a site of hers that has quickly become my favorite. No nonsense, exactly what if says on the cover, and easy to navigate— Boobies on Toast.
——-

Too True

I’m re-reading 1984, and this quote really struck me:

Perhaps a lunatic is simply a minority of one.
——-

I’ve been Zeldmaned

Got an IM from John today that I don’t think I’ll forget anytime soon, pointing me to this photo on Flickr. Margaritas all around!
——-

Thinking Out Loud…

I’ve been thinking about making some changes to this site, and I thought I’d do some thinking out loud here to clarify my thoughts and get some opinions if you care to share any. I think I’m going to be retiring the Meters. I know Steve will be bummed about that, but I haven’t been keeping up with them. I think the reason why I haven’t kept them up to date is that they are just too negative. I don’t really want to remember how many ASAPs I get. And there is no physical way to keep up with the No-Time meter. It would be up to a few hundred thousand by now, and I really would rather not dwell on that. It is also not good for me— I don’t really need to be creating more reasons to be down. So, I’m thinking of replacing the meters with my latest post on Jangly Ganglia. I kind of like the thought of swapping out the negative for the positive there. I also want to change the Elsewhere section. I have decided lately that I hate link blogs. Most of them keep rehashing the same stuff, and I end up hearing about the same post about 50 times. I subscribe to the original. I don’t need to be notified about it repeatedly from every corner of the web. The notion of adding to that noise isn’t really appealing to me, so I have been neglecting that section. I am thinking of turning it into a “Notes” section, a place where I can write a small post about something I find interesting. It may be a post on another site, a quote from a book I’m reading, a small piece of wackiness that happened that day, etc. I don’t really have a place for that— I feel like I need to write long articles in the 3 sections I have now. A place for a short quip would feel good. I’ll have to come up with a good drink name for that section— feel free to leave suggestions in the comments. Brian just suggested “J?gerBombs”, but that reminds me a bit too much of a couple of unfortunate nights in college… I am also thinking of recoding the site. I don’t want to change the layout, because I still dig it, but it is just too damn slow. I am going to look at ways to get the page weight down; I have found a couple of scripts that may help. I also may just have to get my dad to switch to Firefox or IE7 so I can use transparent pngs and not have to rely on the big images I use now. Plus, I want the animals back! The code I have now requires a lot of work to make a new animal theme, which is why there are only 2. The other critters are sitting on my hard drive threatening a rebellion if I don’t get them up here soon. Well, enough rambling.

I Heart Humboldt

So, this video from the Jay Leno show is making the rounds: 16 MB Windows Media file or 4.4 MB Real Video. One of my husband’s colleagues sent it to him, thinking it was hilarious. I watched it, and I am caught between being horrified and not really caring about it. On one hand, it typifies all the stereotypes that the University is trying to overcome. Years worth of recruiting effort could be ruined by that video. And most of it is just not true. It is not legal to smoke pot here, and I hardly ever see anyone smoking in public. Yes, there is pot here. But there is not more pot there than there was in Kalamazoo, Michigan or Seattle, Washington, or any other college town that I have lived in. And that guy that ate the dirt? He was from the other team. He was not from here. Not to say that there aren’t lots of wacky people here. In fact, that’s part of why I love living here. I love it that there’s a guy that plays softball in the field next to my house wearing jeans and suspenders and a trucker hat, looking like he just got off the tractor. And I love it that on my drive home I go by fields filled with horses, cows, alpacas, llamas, and the occasional camel. I love it that folks make biodiesel and live off the grid, right down the road from the folks who spend Saturday nights at the race track in Eureka. But I love this wackiness because of the way that it mixes with the intelligence and earnestness that is here. There are great people doing great things, at the university and in the community. You don’t see that in the video. There is also a beauty here that is striking. They don’t show that from the stadium where the Crabs play you can see both the ocean and the mountains. My house is both in the middle of the redwood forest and right behind a stable that boards a bunch of horses. I can be at the beach or up a mountain in 10 minutes. But then I think, I really don’t want other people to find out about all the good stuff and come here to ruin my little corner of the world. So Jay Leno can make fun of us as much as he wants. The part that does bother me, though, is that we are working hard at HSU to battle some of these stereotypes that just aren’t true. The pot is a big one, but so is the issue of multiculturalism. It’s true that there aren’t many black folks here, and that we are in one of the least diverse parts of California. The U is working hard on this issue and has been for years. We actually have a pretty robust Native American Studies program and a fair amount of Native American students from what I understand. I don’t know. I guess everyplace has it’s stereotypes to overcome— I have preconceived notions about lots of places that I’m sure aren’t remotely true. But it’s not part of my job to market those places. And we are too small and have worked to hard to have some stupid comedian put together a rambling clip about how freaky we are. How do other schools overcome these kinds of obstacles in their marketing?