In Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan wrote “For the message of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern it introduces into human affairs.” While it is perhaps almost tautological to state that with the progressive development of instantaneous, global transmission media, including the so-called “Instant Message” (IM) media, a tremendous change in the pattern of human affairs has been introduced, eliminating the necessity of physical proximity for the development of communities, it remains, nevertheless, crucial to observe that while these new media may greatly alter many facets of human discourse, most chicks still don’t like poop stories.

My cousin’s husband turned 60 recently, and I am really sorry I missed the party because his sister, who is blind, stood up at one point and made a “family is like a basket, tightly-interwoven” speech and all the other guests were either making faces like “barf” and “gag me” or were being totally shocked at the rudness of the former, depending on which branch of the family tree they came from. The tension was finally broken when her other brother got her in a headlock and made her sit back down.

“Unfortunately, my stepfather found his comfort sniffing running shoes.”
[Thanks to Sheila for pointing me at this article.]

We haven’t been posting search requests lately, but, wow.

Let’s see. I have had a splitting headache for two days so far. Alpha left early in the morning to get a few hours of work in at her office before coming home to relieve me from caring for Gamma, who is still sick. I was hoping to sleep in, but one of the cats had digestive problems and that got me up. At least Gamma was able to get some extra sleep – she’s usually up at the crack of dawn. She’s feeling a lot better now, by the way, fever is down.

Now I am at the office, happily, hoping a colleague will be able to get my CD writer working.

Staying home with Gamma was okay, though, although she made me play Barbie with her, and she made me tell her several stories. She wanted circus stories, so she got one about the time I found the baby circus elephant when I was her age, and it was dirty so I took a bath with it and it made a big mess of the bathroom squirting water all over with its trunk. And then there was the time my parents engaged the circus monkeys to babysit, and they had a banana fight in the house and made a big mess, and I had to go around with our dachshund, which liked to eat bananas, and clean everything up before my parents came home.

And I also had to read her Bible stories. Many Bible stories. What is manna, anyway?

If I ever try to do anything to my PC by myself ever again, shoot me first.

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Gosh, the salesman at the computer store said this CD-R/RW drive would be easy to install…

Now what is this wire for?