Oh, SPAM, you're so funny

Also available in Turkey! (The flavor, not the country.)

At work, we have a Gallery of Disturbing Meats, which was started by a fine man and former co-worker named Matthew. Matthew has moved on, and the meats have followed us to two new offices in the meantime. One might be given to wonder whether he deliberately left us with a pile of aging meats, but it's best not to think about the Gallery too much. The pigs feet don't like it.

The Gallery had its first new addition in a long time today: a SPAM Single. Clearly, the folks in charge of marketing SPAM have gone utterly insane. Below is some text directly from the back of the package.

"Isn't this the most easy and convenient SPAM ever? SPAM Singles are already cooked! This might just blow your mind. For your own safety, stop thinking about how easy SPAM Singles will make your life. It's time to enjoy. Take another bite and throw your head back and think wonderful thoughts of faraway places while you chew. Like a magical SPAM castle in the sky, and what a delicious and convenient visit you'd have."

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Let there be dancing

At a little after 8:00pm, when the polls closed on the West Coast, a graphic floated up onto the TV screen we were gathered around. "President-Elect Barack Obama," it said. Then it went away.

"Did anybody see that?" I asked the other ladies of my knitting group. "Are they calling it already?"

Nobody else had seen, but then it happened again. It was a smaller image this time, and it flashed up for maybe three seconds before disappearing again. I smiled, imagining a very excitable graphics monkey at the news studio with his or her hand hovering over the buttons that made the "We're officially calling it for Obama" graphic appear on the screen.

When the announcers finally caught up with the graphics department and did officially call the election for Obama, there were many cheers from my fellow knitters. One woman, who I think is somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 years old, decided that there should be dancing in the streets. "I have waited my whole life to dance in the streets," she declared.

And so it was that when history was made, four of us, ages 33 to 60ish, ran out into the street and jumped around a little. Just for a minute or so, but damn it felt good.

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Sewage plant too good for Bush?

For those of you in San Fransicso, how are you voting on Proposition R?

For those of you who aren't, how would you vote?

If passed, Proposition R would rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant to the George W Bush Sewage Plant. Proponents of the measure say that it is a fitting tribute to our outgoing president. Opponents say that it is unfair to this award-winning waste treatment facility to give it such a negative connotation. I'm not sure how I would vote... I just think it's funny.

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Happy election day

I always think it's funny when I see old people wearing "Vote, Fucker" t-shirts. Are those popular in other areas of the country?

At any rate, I think it's wonderful that so many people have been engaged and involved in this election. It's a shame that nearly half of us are backing the losing candidate -- how strange that our nation is so closely split down the middle, that so many people feel so intensely that their side is right. In some ways, I think we are overly simplistic in our views. We almost get into a comic book "good vs. evil" mindset with our political views. On the left, the Republicans represent greed, corruption, and the undermining of civil liberties. To the right, the Democrats represent the erosion of families, gigantic government, and wanton immorality.

Of course, this is a generalization -- not all Republicans and Democrats feel that way about the opposite side, but this is the way the story gets told in the media. It's guns vs. gays, Socialism vs. Caplitalism, the right to choose vs. murdering babies, Puritans vs. atheists, Budweiser vs. fine wine.

At least 80% of us agree that Bush is a disaster. That's encouraging. I hope all of you who are eligible have voted or are about to, and may the best man win.

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Writing scenes

Since NaNoWriMo started yesterday and I half-heartedly signed up, I decided to do some writing today. I haven't actually accomplished that goal, but I did find an article on how to write scenes. As a lover of algorithms, I found this approach to writing scenes to be kind of exciting.

Not only that, but the way the article was written made me realize a few things about the way I've been blogging over the past couple of years. I never started blogging to tell you how much I drank last night (1.5 beers) or what chores I am neglecting (vacuuming (I think the cat hair is growing cat hair at this point)). In other words, I did not start blogging to record the events of my life. I did not start blogging to jump on a bandwagon of self-publishing. And please don't think I'm dissing on you if this is your approach -- we're talking about me here, not you.

No, my path to blogging went like this: needed website to show off coding skills -> registered nerdygirl.com -> got complaints that flash intro was annoying and I never put anything new on the site -> added penguin joke -> got lots of laughs -> started getting complaints again -> decided to write mini-updates on daily-ish basis. Not to brag about my awesome internet cred or anything, but I didn't even hear the word "blog" until after I'd already started writing updates. To be fair, the word had been around for nearly a year at that point. This guy named Peter coined the phrase in May of 1999.

Anyhow, what I liked about blogging was the ability to write short, pithy things that other people reacted to. Lately, I've found blogging to be more difficult for several reasons. Sometimes, I'm annoyed by my internal editor. Sometimes, I try to write in such a way that nobody can possibly find anything I say objectionable and generally end up deleting the whole post. Sometimes I'm too busy or tired or lame or I feel I should wait to post a story until I've taken a photo to go with it.

So this is just a note to say that I don't know if I'll get better at it, but I do know now what's missing. What's missing is the playfulness, the sense of fun that blogging used to hold for me. Certainly, the less I blog, the fewer people read, and therefore the comments are not as exciting so the cycle breaks down. This blog definitely had a heyday and I'm not sure that it will get back to that level of excitement again. But I am happy to understand what changed and I felt compelled to share it with the few of you who have read this far.

That is all for the moment. I'm going to write a scene now, using this new writing method I just discovered. It's going to be terrible, but in a really vibrant, action packed, and delicious way. Words, if put together with the proper care and attention, are yummy like cherries.

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