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[This is an archive of my home page notes from 2002, in reverse order by date.]

December 2002

Thanks to friends in Oklahoma, Australia, Oregon, and Finland, I have received unexpected gifts: books and texts I'd been wanting for a long time. (In the case of the Jacques Ellul book, decades!) I am (almost) speechless with gratitude.

In the present time of tension I am even more grateful for all the gifts given to all of us, beginning with each breath we breathe in and out.

I'm moving my home this month, but hope to be in touch with everyone early in the New Year. In the meantime, I wish you a December full of light!

4 October 2002

I spent the anniversary of Sputnik, aka Betsy's Birthday, demonstrating my opposition to a U.S. attack on Iraq. That I think my country's current so-called foreign "policy" does not make us or the world safer, is not news. Today's demonstration was a wonderful mix of people from all across the political spectrum. As often happens when a street party swirls together out of genuine concern (and the fact that GWB was in town), there were lots of good signs, many of them homemade, and I couldn't help jotting down the best ones:

Regime Change Begins At Home With Free Elections
Our grief is not a cry 4 war
Act Like It's A Globe, Not An Empire
There is no way to peace; peace is the way
I Didn't Vote For You, I Sure As Hell Won't Die For Ya
HELLO SNIPERS
War Is God's Method Of Teaching Americans Geography
Americans Only Change Regimes In Washington
The King Is A Fink
(a King George hung in effigy - evoking the Rev War)
Even lesbians don't like this kind of bush
It's Diplomacy, Stupid
Apathy Is Not An Option
Don't Kill My Dad
No Unilateral Action
Not In Our Name

Thanks to all the people who do a lot more protesting than I do, who inspire me to try to do more. No War For Oil has summed it up for me, for years. I always wish I'd done as I wished during the Gulf War, and put that up in Christmas lights in my window. Can't wait to get my own place so I can do all kinds of installation and performance art...

Probably the funnest ever sign I've ever marched behind, was in a pro-choice demonstration, quite a few years ago now. It was a crisp handmade sign that said in black marker, "Historians of 20th Century Astrophysics For Choice," to which someone had added in pencil, "+ ONE GRAPHIC DESIGNER." This sign perfectly sums up the way we can and must bring our whole selves to whatever activism we're engaged in, and the fact that that's actually a good thing.

Youngiee Quennell (see previous item) has had a beautiful baby! Many happy returns to Betsy, one of my dearest long-time friends, as well as to Erica, my very newest friend (birthday tomorrow).

May 2002 (WisCon)

Murmur of Water: one take on classical hypertext, plus science fiction (or is it?).

Thank you to Youngiee Quennell for making it so beautiful.

April 2002

Public beta: check out the sig-o-matic and let me know what you think!

January 2002

My body is changing, rapidly. The true reasons: drastic surgery and equally drastic lifestyle changes. But when I'm in no mood for the question WHY, I tend to answer sarcastically...

The resurgence of the Great Game has ruined my appetite.

I've seen that movie so often that I'm becoming a wraith.

It's the Cybertext Yearbook Diet: you chew each bite 576 different ways.

...and then sometimes I'm asked to explain what I just said. In order of, ah, gravity...

The Great Game is a sobriquet originally given to a struggle between the British and Russian Empires for influence in Central Asia. As a fan of Kipling (all aspects except his pervasive racism...and that backwards swastika) I am sad to find his stories of the earlier Great Game so relevant: When every one is dead the Great Game is finished. Not before.

If you worry that you're not getting enough sides of the news, Rob Landry recommends:

Dawn (Pakistan)
Al-Ahram (Egypt - weekly summaries)
The Times of India

Actually there is no official Cybertext Yearbook diet. I nevertheless recommend the series of compilations edited by Raine Koskimaa and Markku Eskelinen and published by the Research Centre for Contemporary Culture, University of Jyväskylä, Finland. In the U.S., the easiest way to get a Yearbook is to order one from Eastgate Systems. The editors' provocative introduction to the 2000 volume explains why there are at least 576 functional possibilities of texts...

In regard to that movie, only Sir Ian has a really useful web site - hours of material! - so the rest of the fans I "know" on the 'net fall into one or more of these groups: (a) renting The Ice Storm, The Faculty, and maybe even Flipper; (b) renting G I Jane, The Prophecy, A Perfect Murder, and several dozen more; (c) trying to watch the Sharpe episodes in the right order (I'm in this group at the moment); (d) due to lack of movies to rent, spending all day typing Orlando Bloom's name into IMDB, making him #1 for January; (e) worrying that the multi-talented Cassieclaire will get worn out writing Very Secret Diary parodies, but not enough to stop reading them; (f) having no idea what I'm talking about.

In other news, I will resume travelling later this year, when my sabbatical is over: see you then!

Sir Ian McKellen, quoted in The Advocate:

When you come out, you change--utterly. You are for the first time yourself. And what has an actor got to use onstage but himself? That's all I've got: my experience, my imagination, my body. In coming out, your sexuality is now freed--it's not disguised. It doesn't surprise me that people tell me that I'm an actor with more range than I had before.

This page last updated December 2002.
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