December 22, 2001
They're Off

one more day of dashing around and then mike and i will be out of here. we are experiencing mild trauma over leaving moose at daycare for ten whole days. for the three years that he has been part of our family we have always kind of tried to go on trips seperately so that he could be home with one of us. what that really means (since i am traveling so often) is that mikey gets left home a lot. so this time, we are sucking it up and sending the dog off to board while we holiday together like normal people. he stays at karen's all the time, and he will be playing with his same mates during the days, its just the sleeping over in a strange bed at night that's got us upset. will he forget us?

of course, just before we leave something frightening has to happen on an international flight. can i tell you how much i love the headline: "explosive shoes suspected?" don't worry, mom-it's jon michael who's flying to paris, not me. i'll be fine.

Posted by ash at 07:16 PM

December 19, 2001
I Won't Be Home For Christmas

It's Christmas time, again
It's time to be nice to the people you can't stand all year
I'm growing tired of all this Christmas cheer
You people scare me
Blink 182

i, too, am exhausted from this holiday, whatever it is. hollow, politically correct seasonal sentiment piped through every speaker, displayed in every window, mailed to every box. i bought all my gifts online, happily forwent the experience of mall shopping, but i wonder if i will ever fully embrace the experience enough to have the gifts shipped directly to the recipient. there is something about buying a gift for someone else and never actually *seeing* it that i cannot deal with. nope, i had them all shipped to my home to be opened, wrapped, and re-shipped on to their final destination. maybe i am old fashioned.

and hey, speaking of old-fashioned, my brother just forwarded me this link to an old-fashioned matchmaking service, only with a decidedly darker twist.

Posted by ash at 01:56 PM

December 13, 2001
Work

things i use at work:
you are where you live (finding PRIZM using US zip codes)
PRIZM descriptions
APB Crime Check (gives crime rating by US zip code)
Mapquest driving direction and distance calculator

Posted by ash at 04:39 PM

December 12, 2001
Senseless Killing

This Just In! mike called to tell me there's been a recent senseless act of mayhem at our favorite neighborhood combination KFC/Taco Bell. well, the service there has always been shit, but this time it's all gone too far. one psycho employee told four other employees that he had a gun, and offered to "show it to them" after work. this didn't seem unusual (or scary) to any of them, so out to the *WOODED AREA* they all head. STRANGELY, psycho employee with a gun *turns the gun* on the other employees. could anybody have seen this one coming?

Posted by ash at 06:32 PM

Holidays

last night my office had its annual holiday event. really that's enough said about that, as i am not certain who from my office community may read this blog.

tonight mike and i are heading out to the Y-100 Feastival to see lit, nickelback, sum 41, and blink 182. and for some weird reason, bush is playing with these bands. it's like one of those "which one doesn't belong?" puzzles. maybe they just have an overwhelming concern for the hungry people of philadelphia, but somehow i doubt it.

tomorrow evening, mcsweeney's is having a reading at the library here with neal pollack, lydia davis, and david byrne. they are calling it an extravaganza, but that seems to overstate the event slightly. don't hate me. i suppose that is what dave eggers is good at.

Posted by ash at 06:17 PM

December 09, 2001
Unamerican

oh, dear, john ashcroft. the new yorker agrees with me. it's that fucking liberal left! we'll be the death of you. by god, we will.

home again last night and watched two movies - out for life as a house, which was slightly overwrought but good, then fell asleep on the couch watching high fidelity, which was my first time to see it all the way through. had only seen chunks before. if this household had a top five film actors of all time list, john cusack would absolutely be in the upper half of it. we also saw him in the theater last week in serendipity and it was worth $8. if any movie is.

i hate christmas. i desperately need a new datebook, but i hate looking at them in catalogs without being able to feel the leather or see if they slide into my satchel easily. the only really comprehensive daytimer store in the area is in the king of prussia mall, which will be overrun with thousands of shoppers each day until christmas - and the longer i wait the more frenzied they are becoming. i just can't bear it, i can't go. but the longer i wait with no datebook extending past december 31st, the more appointments i have scribbled on scraps of paper and stuck between pages of the old year and the more disorganised i become. ugh. now *THAT* is unamerican.

Posted by ash at 12:53 PM

December 07, 2001
We are the Terrorists

attorney general john ashcroft says those who criticize the government's new anti-terrorism measures and question the constitutionality of its actions only serve to help terrorists. is it me, or does he not grasp the very rudimentary concepts of democracy and freedom of speech? and if he really thinks he can safely use the phrase "phantoms of lost liberties" i would suggest that he go back and re-read the language of the USA PATRIOT Act yet again.

hey, john ashcroft, i am criticising you. i think you are a bad attorney general, and i think you should be removed from office. call me unamerican, unpatriotic, a terrorist, whatever you want. just because you say it doesn't make it true.

Posted by ash at 04:04 PM

December 06, 2001
Harlequin

edinboro. sorry, it's because i am living in pennsylvania. it's not *such* an uncommon variation, though. even for scotland.

and speaking of amazon. i was gutted to hear news of sir peter blake's murder. christ, how hideous. i'm sure fraser will have something to say about his trip to america's cup 2000. and to think we have been dreaming of the peaceful life of a ship's crew. the apolitical lawlessness of international waters. pirates on rubber dingheys! who knew?

yesterday was a big day for murders, marike de klerk was also found stabbed and strangled in her cape town apartment. now that one i could have predicted. doesn't SA have the highest murder rate on earth or something? ok, i am talking out of line, i didn't look that up. but i remember some traveler telling me how impressed he was, upon seeing someone being struck by a car and quickly removed by an ambulance. where he was from, in south africa, he said that there were so many bodies that they were lucky if someone was kind enough to move it to the side of a road and pile it up until the authorities could be bothered to come for it. but then, maybe he was just trying to downsell, as travelers sometimes do.

no surprise here - john phillip walker's parents say "he's a really good boy". i was actually surprised to see a letter printed in the 6 dec usa today titled "go easy on the confused kid" - WHAT? "clearly he was an erratic godseeker...not a terrorist or a traitor" and the best part of all: "I wonder if he was influenced by politically correct teachers routinely bashing Western civilization as the root of all evil." yes, of course. i bet that was it. this letter came from ron ruggieri in warwick, rhode island. unfortunately, ron didn't leave an email address. so you can't criticize the united states *or* spoiled rich children who go to the middle east to play dangerous games but then lack the courage of their conviction.

Seamaster Log 186 | Tues 4th Dec 2001
The dawn is always welcome, although with the seasons now rapidly changing the clear fine days are becoming less-- more frequent clouds and high haze foretelling the not-too-distant arrival of the wet season.

Posted by ash at 07:00 PM

December 04, 2001
Brain Warp

My mother makes scrapbooks. not scrapbooks like you or i might make, but creative memories scrapbooks, which are another thing altogether. their slogo* is "preserving the past, enriching the present, and inspiring hope for the future," if that gives any insight into how they view their place in the big picture.

my family gives my mom a bit of a hard time about the scrapbooking. maybe it's because she can't pass a michael's without screeching to a halt, or because she has turned my brother's old bedroom into a paste-up shop to rival any small-town newspaper's - complete with filing cabinets filled to brimming with multiple copies of every school photo, report card, lock of hair (enclosed in acid-free baggy), and arrest report ever to pass through our home. but still she perseveres.

a couple of years ago she presented my brother and i with amazing scrapbooks for christmas. the books were filled with everything from the actual birth announcements she sent out to celebrate us onward, and she continues to update them anytime anything important or otherwise happens in our family's history. i tried to document *one trip* the way mom scrapbooks every day of life and it took months.

so you will understand the panic i felt when, upon arrival into philadelphia, i eventually began to settle in and unpack and did not find the scrapbook. it took a while - for i am not the best packer. also, it had not been the most organised move. i'd packed up haphazardly in march, left the boxes sitting in my apartment in maine, headed off to new zealand, and left it up to my roommate (thanks again, mike) to eventually move them, several months later, down to philadelphia. when i finally returned and unpacked a box or two at a time as i tried to decide if i was staying or moving on... well, i wasn't thinking about the scrapbook at first. in fact, it took about three months to realise that i had unpacked almost every box and never seen it. BUT THEN, oh, then i panicked. i opened the few remaining boxes. you see, i thought i knew just where it was, and when it wasn't there, i was scared. and it wasn't anywhere. i looked in every box. mike, any other boxes not yet opened? nope, none. i looked in my cedar chest, all the way to the bottom. surely i had decided to store it there. nope. in with all my photographs? not there. stored and wrapped with all my framed photos. non. thought i recalled carefully sliding in between sweaters to protect it...no, no, fuck! where?where? for months, i have woken in the night, crying, where could it be? how could i lose this gift? this precious thing that my mother saved memories from my first twenty-five years to give to me?

but secretly, i thought i knew.

when we lived in maine, downstairs from us lived a man who didn't get along with a girl who lived upstairs from us. somehow we got in the middle of this strange psychotic love triangle. or more of a boxy shape it was, really. we tried to remain neutral but knew we had failed the day he began to unscrew the lightbulbs leading down our basement steps and on "our side" of the basement laundry room. we couldn't complain, though, as he was close friends with the landlord and was essentially the property manager. you can see where i am going, right? i knew, in my heart, that somehow my scrapbook had been left behind in my old apartment, and that psycho had found it once i moved. my waking thought was always of him leafing through it with a sadistic laugh, defacing my most treasured things. i was so conviced that this was the true demise of my scrapbook that i would not even consider any other possibility. there were no boxes left unopened in the house - there was nothing else.

tonight mike was looking for some old tax forms and found a box marked "papers" in the bottom of his closet. opened it and found not papers but my scrapbook. I feel such a rush of pleasure, almost giddy enough to drive the hour home to look at it. Also in the box was my electronic game "brain warp," the only other thing i have looked for obsessively since the move. maybe i've not as disorganised as i thought.

*a "slogo" is what you may call a slogan, only when ashley confuses it with a logo. alternately called "logan." once was a source of great mirth, has now entered household lexicon.

Posted by ash at 11:06 PM

December 02, 2001
Making History

have just been reminded what a fabulous book is making history by stephen fry (alex has linked to it, go there), originally left in my house by fraser last summer and read in one long weekend. i finished it one evening in the bath, a bath where i had to refill the water so many times that the water ran cold and i ended up sitting with my knees under my chin, shivering but unwilling to stop before i had finished. now, of course, remembering and reading what alex has written i have to go find the damn thing. and after i've just gotten twenty new books for my birthday.

speaking of making history, fraser doesn't know it yet, but we're giving in to peer pressure and redesigning our site. was beginning to feel stodgy being the only ones leaving up the original first and best. here's a bit of trivia: we started blogging at exactly the same time and as of now, fraser's file is three times as big as mine. i'm not judging, just noting.

Posted by ash at 11:00 PM

December 01, 2001
fraser has put up his

fraser has put up his flash "Link and Think" button to honor a day without blogs and here i have been bashing away all day. my apologies. i didn't really respect the silence on this side of the page. i am only around for a day or so, gotta say something while i've got the chance.

Posted by ash at 11:25 PM

in recognizance of World AIDS

in recognizance of World AIDS Day, read some testing stories on fray.com, and then suck up your courage and get tested yourself, if you haven't been.

three times i have asked three different primary care physicians for an HIV test and three times have gotten "why do you need one? you aren't in a high risk group" attitude about it. patiently i have explained three times that partners view their own sexual history through rose colored glasses, condoms break, and that (surprise!) patients aren't always truthful to their doctors about whether or not they use drugs - so under no circumstances should any physician *ever* discourage anyone from taking an HIV test.

did i need to make it so hard on myself? no. i know that i could have gone to a clinic and had a friendly face who would have treated me with respect. but i knew that my doctors couldn't scare me. and i thought that maybe standing up for my rights might make it easier for someone else somewhere down the road.

which reminds me: what to do about these salvation army santas? Is it a church, or is it a business? if it is a church, then certainly, they may discriminate against homosexuals all they would like. but then, step away from the $300 million in tax, please, and i will walk by your bellringing sad sacks without a guilty thought in the world, just as easily i sleep in on sunday mornings. if, however, the salvation army is a business, shouldn't they have to adhere to the same business practices as other businesses do? like non-discrimination? until it's clear, they'll not get my hard-earned dollars - in fact, i rather like this idea.

i guess it just reminds me that anytime there is an injustice i have a choice to let it go or to make an effort. each time i witness ignorance i can smile and be embarrassed or i can swallow it and educate someone. on lots of days i decide people aren't worth the effort. on those days that just makes me part of the problem, then.

do something:
email the salvation army
drop queer dollars in SA kettles

Posted by ash at 11:39 AM