A place for me to work stuff out and to post things that interest me.
Most of us can, if we choose,
make this world either a palace or a prison.
~Lord Avebury
I choose a palace.
~TKF
Do not let your fire go out,
spark by irreplaceable spark,
in the hopeless swamps of the approximate,
the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all.
Do not let the hero in your soul perish,
in lonely frustration for the life you deserved,
but have never been able to reach.
Check your road and the nature of your battle.
The world you desired can be won.
It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.
~Ayn Rand
The democratic society's mythology of equality with its
attendant erasure of difference is an impossibility
in an actual, lived sense.
Therefore, according to this view, this
imaginary erasure cannot achieve an
actual democracy, because a sense of
community can only come with the recognition of difference.
~Slavoj Zizek, as paraphrased by Catherine M. Soussloff
Links!
A brand new link! Check it out!
deviantART
I thought the place was very cool. Oh, and all you Alias fans, you can find a very nice wallpaper there--
or rather, here--and a gorgeous Evanescence one, too!
Watcher's Diary
Slayage; The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies
Convert just about anything
Comes in really handy when you want to convert fahrenheit to celcius and vice versa!
Links to 100s of free calculators online
Everything from your due date to how much a house payment would be to a regular calculator
Reference Guide to Chicago Manual of Style
Dictionary, Encyclopedia, Atlas & Almanac
Quotation Search Engine
Complete HTML True Color Chart
Epicurious Recipes
Inn Recipes; Recipes for all Occasions
JobStar-Resumes & Cover Letters Advice
Overstock.com: Up to 80% off most items
Ediblenature.com
Things My Girlfriend & I Have Argued About
(Trust me--you'll be laughing outloud!)
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Beyond the Invisible
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The tale of the world is like a tree.
...
Sturdily rooted in the past, the tale's branches spread out through the days that come. The many stories that make up its substance
unfold from bud to leaf to dry memory and back again, event connecting event like the threadwork of a spider's web, so that each creature of the world plays its part, understanding only aspects of the overall narrative, and perceiving, each with its particular talents, only glimpses
of the Great Mystery that underlies it all.
~Charles de Lint, Moonheart
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Saturday, July 03, 2004
Dialing In From Lake Wales
Geographically-speaking, coming to central Florida from Tallahassee is like entering a whole other state. Tallahassee has the look and feel of a movie set in Georgia or the Carolinas, with its canopy drives (roads where the trees meet overhead, creating a green tunnel) and Spanish moss hanging from the trees. Yet it doesn't have the same look as further south, either, with the expanses of swamps (the Everglades--ever popular in movies that want to set the "Florida" mood) or the colorful, tropical, rich look of Miami/Palm Beach.
In contrast, Lake Wales and the other small towns around here in "Central Florida" have that dusty, "used" look. For one thing, it's very flat and there's none of the green lushness that one who doesn't actually live here tends to associate with the "South". The only trees are the miles of orange groves, which emit a sharp, almost bitter, tang when they're ripe with fruit. There are also palm trees, but they're mostly planted here as decorative touches--I don't think I've ever seen one that looks like it grew wild. There really isn't much grass because the soil is mostly sand. It actually looks more like where I lived in New Mexico (Alamogordo, in the Tularosa Basin, between the Sacremento and the San Andreas mountain ranges.), with more lizards, less scorpions and road runners, and no tumbleweeds, dust devils, or cacti. Plenty of nasty insects willing to attack you for simply being there, though, just like New Mexico. I'm fairly certain that fire ants are the State animal here.
One thing I always wonder when we drive down here, passing subdivisions with signs stating that the houses start at $150,000--who the hell lives down here that can afford that and what do they do? There aren't any signs of industry. Signs for lawyers hang outside of converted houses and each town has identical strip malls with Publix and Winn Dixie grocery stores and the ever-present SuperWalmarts. There are always tiny souvenier shops selling fruit and cheap tshirts; kitchsy shot glasses/keyrings/plastic do-dads with "Florida" printed on them in hot pink and/or poison-green; plastic alligators and flamingos; boiled peanuts (a scary food that is apparently quite popular here)--basically anything you could want to take home and throw in a junk drawer or box to prove that you have indeed been here. They don't seem the sort of places that would generate the income to afford the expensive, "just-off-the-golf-course" houses you see. More likely, the employees of these places are the ones that inhabit the ubiquitous mobile home parks that dot the landscape. So I ask again, who is snapping up those expensive houses that apparently sell as fast as they can be constructed?
There is little to do here--either for a living or for recreation, unless you want to drop ridiculous amounts of money at one of the tourist meccas in Orlando or Tampa. DisneyWorld, Universal Studios, SeaWorld, Busch Gardens. These are the big draws, but there are a multitude of smaller, lesser-known places that try to carve their own little piece out of the tourist industry pie. When we come here, I do enjoy talking with the relatives and such. I don't enjoy the one tv, set either to game shows (if the mother-in-law has control of the remote) or sports (if the father-in-law has control). The computer connection is dialup and I'm tying up the only phone line whenever I'm online, so I feel guilty about it. Also, you pretty much have to smoke in self-protection because everyone here does so endlessly, creating a fog the likes seen only in Cheech & Chong movies. If you don't smoke, too, you'll find yourself addicted due to second-hand smoke by the time you leave.
Observations
- Visiting is nice--sleeping in your own bed is better. More to the point, having to always get dressed and undressed in a bathroom the size of a shoebox because there are too many people around and you might get walked in on at any time if you were to try to dress in the bedroom sucks. I don't particularly like how I look naked, but I like being able to be naked without wondering who might pop their head in.
- Dial-up sucks.
- Ferg is being much better behaved this time around than he was last year, but we haven't seen his cousin, Denny, yet. Denny is a big kid and not a bad guy, but he seems to be a bad influence on Ferg, bringing the inner-asshole to the surface. Normally, Ferg treats me pretty well in front of his parents until he gets around his cousin. Last 4th of July weekend, he was so bad that his own dad said something to him about how he was talking to me in front of everyone.
- Allen came with us and he and Ferg are getting along better than ever. Kudos to both of them for trying harder, but my stomach is clenched, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
- I spent most of last night and most of today sleeping. I didn't do it on purpose--I simply couldn't keep my eyes open. Last week, especially yesterday, was exhausting and I guess it caught up with me. (That might be why I think he's been better to me--I haven't been awake to pick on.)
10:16 PM
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bravenet.com
