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The original URL was http://www.omnigroup.com/People/cirocco/dizney, but Archive.org returns a 302 redirect to Omni's current company bios rather than a copy of The Gen-X Guide to Disneyland. The old files are still on my hard drive, but this outdated guide has vanished to the larger world unless you can concoct another method for unearthing it.
I remember thinking at the time that the Z in the URL would somehow protect me from Disney's legal department (whom I always pictured as a phalanx of suited attorneys wearing mouse ears.)
Nice to be remembered in any event. Thanks for getting in touch. -
Occasionally I do. I have a Livejournal where I write once in a great while. I found that I didn't really like the reaction it garnered me. Women online are subject to a degree of negativity that makes me uncomfortable. (I collected examples for a while in my Tumblr account, then found curating this collection was wearing on me.) The Kathy Sierra case it an extreme example of this; a more recent instance would be when women who spoke out against Penny Arcade's "Dickwolves" strip were anonymously hounded and threatened. I get tired of weighing my words. I get tired of being hated.
It seems generally agreed upon that "bitch" is the worst thing that one can call a woman, and yet it also seems to be the first word everyone reaches for when a woman does anything that fails to entirely please them. Imagine if it were perfectly ordinary for people of color to be subject to racist slurs every time they dared to speak publicly. That's what it's like. -
I think when you encounter a trio of men debating the pros and cons of depilating their pubic hair together, it's presuming a lot to imagine that there is a "female partner" anywhere in the picture.
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Not since the ninth grade. It was as humiliating as anything and everything is in the ninth grade, where even wearing the incorrect length and/or color of sock is cause for ridicule and ostracism.
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What do I look like to you, an attorney?
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Huzzah! I recently ran across "An Open Letter to a Compulsive Atonal Whistler" in McSweeney's (http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/openletters/29whistlers.html). It made me miss your old Whyever posts, but I didn't want to lean on you to start writing again. When you have four small children underfoot and a full-time job, I can hardly expect you to regale us with tales of bagels and weird coworkers. And now I head over to Slightly Awed, and behold: tales of weird coworkers. I'm waiting to hear about the bagels with bated breath.
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Not anymore. To quote "The Dud Avocado" by Elaine Dundy: "What's the use of remembering anything? If it was unpleasant it was unpleasant and if it was pleasant it's over."
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Being strange is not bad unless it repels other people. Your strangeness is not a repellent one; it's not like you're a Scientologist or insistent on showing everyone your experimental body piercings. All geniuses, for example, are freaks -- I mean, who would be so weird as to paint a melting clock, or invent a car that runs on a network of linked cell-phone batteries? Yet the world needed the people who did these very things. Someday we'll have a Space Elevator because some kook figures out how to make it work.
I would subscribe to that blog in a heartbeat, incidentally. Out of curiosity, I Googled the name, and the only result is an article on newspaper microfilm in a 2006 issue of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. I still find myself interested in Mr. Singh's thoughts. -
I don't know. Yes. Yes. No.
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I read recently that telling children they have innate abilities in an area causes them to reduce the effort they put into that area. A child who is told she is a good writer, for example, will pay less attention in English class because she arrogantly believes herself to need less instruction than her peers. I would try track down the article in which I read this, but it is too much effort to do so.
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I have difficulty parsing puns often. I have a rather embarrassing memory of reading the comics page years ago, and finally noticing that "Baby Blues" was a pun on eye color. (I had been mentally pronouncing it "BAY-be blues" rather than "baby BLUES," putting the acCENT on the wrong sylLABle.) I ran my eyes over the other comic pages and noticed all SORTS of puns that had previously escaped me: The Lockhorns! Hi and Lois!
Slow on the uptake. -
Don't teach them to bat at or bite your hands or feet. What's cute now will be painful when they are twelve pounds of meat and fur apiece. When you play with them, use toys.
When training them to enjoy being held, always release them as soon as they start to squirm. If a cat knows it can get loose at any time it pleases, it will relax in your arms. It's only when they feel trapped that they lash out.
The premium food at your vet's may be pricier, but fewer additives in their chow means smaller and less pungent feces. It's a worthwhile investment that makes the least pleasant aspect of cat ownership marginally less unpleasant.
When you're home during the day, wake them up when you catch them napping. Cats' natural schedule is nocturnal, but you can force diurnal habits if you work at it.
The best discipline tool is a can of compressed air, the type used for dusting electronics. I've never understood how anyone disciplines with a squirtgun. My home is full of books and lamps and silk pillows etc. that can't safely get wet. The sharp hiss of compressed air will make any cat stop what it's doing immediately, and won't dribble fluid onto your possessions. -
Send it in as many parts as you need, marked [1/3], [2/3], etc. It's always possible to game the system. Always.
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From 1999 through 2005, we didn't speak at all. My grandmother's funeral reunited us. We needed the time apart. I've grown to understand him more through the years. Our sense of humor is a lot alike, and I know mine is hard to moderate. I say things that are meant to be funny and they come out mean-spirited. My primary childhood memories of my father are of him teasing me and laughing at my hurt feelings.
He wasn't a good father -- after he divorced my mother when I was thirteen he virtually never called again. My brother and I got one letter, exactly one, in the years between then and my high-school graduation, and we used to argue over which of us got to keep it in their desk. After he remarried we would receive annual birthday checks signed by his new wife. He is now on his third marriage, and I adore this stepmother. Even if the marriage is not unto death, I am keeping her.
I don't think my paternal grandfather did the work of showing Dad what a man should be. It's hard to hold his negligence against him. At least it isn't the disappointed cruelty my mother dishes out. -
New albums by old favorites: "Homeland" by Laurie Anderson, "Sad Man Happy Man" by Mike Doughty.
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I didn't intend to, although I see I haven't responded to one for three months. I'll clear this inbox out today and tomorrow.
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I'm not crazy about bands with misspelled names, e.g. Paramore and Epiffannie. Exception: The Beatles.
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Of course. There's no way they'd let me pick up my own tab. The most interesting thing about this hypothetical is: Why am I treating myself to a sushi dinner when I can barely make rent?
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Are you the guy who noted "And yet you worship James Cameron" when I said that fiction was not my chosen medium? I didn't reply to your question because it was snidely phrased and based on false premises. I don't "worship" any living person. Cameron is a film director, and even if we count his oeuvre under the umbrella of "fiction," why is it remarkable that one would choose not to work in a field that one appreciates consuming? Must all lovers of cake become pastry chefs? My admiration of J. Paul Getty does not compel me to build museums, either.
I have been playing a lot of Bananagrams lately, now that you mention it. -
I generally don't patronize Starbucks, although not out of any personal/corporate animosity. I need coffee to wake up in the morning, but later in the day I can take or leave it. Andl I don't pay several dollars for beverages that do not contain alcohol.
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