Smile at This News

I read this on the World Wide Words Newsletter:

Smile, please: Wednesday 19 September was the 25th anniversary of the invention of the smiley character in online communications, also known as the emoticon. The :-) symbol, necessarily created from standard ASCII keyboard characters, was invented on 19 September 1982 by Scott E Fahlman in a post on a bulletin board at Carnegie Mellon University. It formed part of a thread on the way humorous remarks could be tagged to avoid misunderstandings. His message was brief, though a trifle ungrammatical: “I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers: :-) Read it sideways.” Scott Fahlman is these days Research Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.

Well, I think I will mark my calendar for future observances. Does anyone know who invented LOL? And can I call that day "Black Tuesday" or whatever day of the week that occurred??

I survived the football game, though Lee got an injury from stomping on the stands too hard. Still no apology from Intolerant Woman. But she spoke to me. I was politely distant. And our team won, without the wonderful Aaron Williams. Neither team played exactly "well," however. I never saw so many spectacular fumbles and interceptions.

We're off to watch Beccano bang on a cymbal shortly! Back to Belton High School! Which reminds me. I always get sort of nervous being near military bases, like, dang, if they start bombing, I am near a major target. My mind does work in odd ways at times.

Update, the World

Texas Sage at Dawn
Originally uploaded by sunasak

In updates, no word from the band director last night, so I guess we really aren't wanted on the bus. Oh well, that is sad, but we can now leave early if we want and won't have to swelter at any point.

UPDATE to Update: OK, the band director just called and apologized and said all my points were reasonable and right. They are going to work on handling things differently, and we are welcome on the bus. (That will depend on if I feel like going, but I will try.) I think the deal is that I will wait to see exactly how well the parent who instigated the campaign against Lee on the bus grovels. Because I am most displeased with her behavior. She apparently asked about people bringing casual boyfriends on the bus, and when the director said no to that (thinking she was referring to something else entirely), she interpreted it as the legal guardian issue and immediately had my friend email me that Lee was not welcome. Hmph, wouldn't even direct her intolerance at me personally. The band director is a nice man. But there sure are some communication issues among the parents.

Back to the story...

Lee has some good job prospects, and almost had a shot at doing my old job at ALE, but he hadn't been gone long enough. Think good thoughts next week when he interviews for jobs with benefits!

Jeff's mother's health is slowly improving. And we saw him last night at Artz playing with old friends Danny Santos, Steve Brooks and Gerry Burns. The latest incarnation of Bluegrass Vatos, I guess. Beccano and Lee seemed to enjoy it a lot. I mainly enjoyed the updates on Steve and Danny, whom I hadn't talked to in a while. The band wasn't so hot (I missed Jeff's harmonies and guitar on Danny's songs).

The kids are going to go over to Singing Partner Bill and Carolyn's tomorrow to help Bill work on his New Fence Project (they built a huge road where the edge of his yard USED to be, long story). Tuba Boy is still earning points from the text message fiasco. Beccano just likes to smash rocks and get money. I am glad it's a home football game tonight so they will not get home too late.

The World

I have been thinking a lot about how there is so much hate, intolerance and sadness in the world. Having a wee bit of intolerance aimed my way didn't help, but I am also thinking about people in other places.

On NPR this week they had an audio diary of a young dentist in Iraq. I am glad they did this, because hearing a real person's voice makes things far away seem a lot more real and immediate. To hear his happiness when his team won a soccer championship, his fear when he talked about how people in his profession are targets, his ambivalence at perhaps leaving for safety but then losing contact with his family and friends...and then his tears and sadness when his best friend is kidnapped, tortured and beheaded...this really helps you remember that the VAST majority of people in all the war-torn, conflict-filled places are just folks like yourself. They just got born in the wrong place at the wrong time.

How can people treat each other the way the Iraqi factions do? The Palestinians and Israelis? The Pakistani factions? US gangs? (The list goes on...) I think it all boils down to fear. I really and truly believe that many, if not most, of the people doing the kidnapping, shooting, raping, bombing and all that do it from fear. They fear that if they don't hurt others, they'll get hurt. If they don't follow orders, the people in charge will come after their own families and friends. If they question authority, they won't get a chance to ask another question, ever.

I know we will probably never get to the Peaceful World Suna Envisions, just like a candidate with my political beliefs would never get elected. There is good and bad out there and always will be. But I sure wish there were some way that just the people wanting the power and the glory (the ambitious??--see Friday's feast) would be the one involved in conflicts. The ones putting their lives and agendas on the line. So that people who want to live and get along with their neighbors, even those with different beliefs, could just live their lives, raise their families and live without fear.

A lot of the time I am feeling sad for people who are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I never forget that not much at all differentiates them from me. Not much at all.

Enjoy the photo of the plant in front of our house, taken at dawn this morning.

Nice Family Weekend

High School Football--Band Perspective
Originally uploaded by sunasak

You can see what we did Friday night--what thousands of Texas families did: traveled somewhere to see their children participate in the great Texas high school football ritual. Beccano and I rode an unairconditioned school bus to Temple, over an hour away (takes even longer in a bus convoy). Tuba Boy was on a better bus, while Lee got a ride up, but suffered with me on the bus home.

But, I love chaperoning the kids, and I love sitting with the band and enjoying the pageantry and fun. The sousaphone section made the lovely "Go Mavz" (that's teen talk for "Mavericks") out of water bottles, and we let it stay until the end, when they very kindly cleaned it up and put it all in garbage bags, without being asked to. It was Beccano's first game as a band member, and you can see that he was having a blast, though not working on his posture.

And we won against a team we were predicted to lose badly to, even after 5 interceptions in the first period. My favorite player, a very enthusiastic and fast kid named Aaron Williams, ended up playing on defense, offense and special teams (he took over as QB for a while) until a late hit on his amazing touchdown run hurt him. After that he "only" played defense. Both teams actually played with impressive energy, especially since it was pretty darned hot. Neither team ever gave up, and they mostly had really good sportsmanship. So, we had a lot of fun.

I must say our band was better, even though our show is a bit weird. Nightmares is an odd theme for a marching presentation.

The boys cheerfully helped Lee move more stuff out of his old house on Saturday, leaving me lots of fun yarn store time.

Sunday we survived singing a rather atonal round, livened up by recorder solos, then had a family photo taken for the church directory and a rehearsal for Tuba Boy, who is playing (duh) tuba in some patriotic medley later this month. I'll share a photo of that later.

Lee worked his buns off straightening up the garage and organizing all the stuff he's brought in, though we did a bit of football watching in the evenings. Our house is eventually going to be really nice, if we can just fit everything in.

Keep your fingers crossed for Lee's job possibilities, please. We hope to hear stuff this week. And I hope it is good stuff.

Football Faux Pas?

I am the first to admit I don't have any strong college football fanaticism. I attended the University of Florida AND the University of Illinois, yet on college day I had no orange and blue clothing I could wear (those were the colors of both schools).

But I did feel sorta bad last night when we were watching Florida State University, supposedly the arch rivals of the Flahda Gatahs (as my grandmother would have said). They said something like, "What a tough break for the scarlet and gold," and I looked up. WOOPS. I painted the whole media room in FSU colors. Well, I guess my mother, who was very proud of her one semester at FSU, would have been proud. And certainly I will not be repainting in orange and blue any day soon!!

I Have an Opinion

I often read CNN's website while I am eating lunch. Sometimes that is not a good idea, like today, when I got pretty sick of what I was reading. It was this article here, about that horrid Football man who killed all those dogs and such. In this article, some brilliant rep for the NAACP actually said the following ignorant things:

"'In some instances, I believe [Mr. Football] has received more negative press than if he would've killed a human being,' [Mr. NAACP] said. 'The way he is being persecuted, he wouldn't have been persecuted that much had he killed somebody.'

"[Mr. NAACP] said he believes [Mr. Football] will cut a deal rather than roll the dice on a trial and take a chance on being found guilty, but 'whatever he's done wrongly, he needs to pay for it.'

[Mr. NAACP] also said he didn't understand the uproar over dogfighting, when hunting deer and other animals is perfectly acceptable."

Well, if ignorance is bliss, Mr. NAACP must be a really happy fellow.

First, killing just for the fun you get from torture is nasty. Killing anything just to watch it die a painful death shows there is something deeply wrong with you. And you know I think killing people is bad. But, bad enough to train an animal to do something against its nature, bad enough to torture the animals when they are alive, but then to torture them to death? That is completely sick. And, Mr. NAACP, people DO differentiate between things that were accidents and brutally torturous murderers of humans, too.

And let me count the ways in which torturing dogs to death differs from hunting a deer:

1. Hunters do their utmost to quickly kill animals and not let them suffer. They don't douse them with gasoline and laugh as they die.

2. Hunting originated as a way to feed families. Humans are omnivorous, and to eat meat, something must die. But there is more than one way to do that. Many, if not most, hunters give the animals they shoot to the needy or eat them themselves. I doubt Mr. Football man ate any dead pit bulls. But, I guess he could have. He seems inhuman enough.

3. Deer are prey animals. They were put here to be food for something. Domestic dogs were put here to be companions to humans and help them (herding, protecting, keeping warm).

4. When you are hunting, the animals have a chance to escape--a "sporting" chance. They aren't tied up and brutally killed (yeah yeah, there are some counterexamples to this--I am not for that kind of hunting--well, actually, I am not big on hunting, period, but I don't think it's on par with dog torture).

I could go on, but am sick to my stomach. And when the sports dudes on Monday Night Football went on and on about how the gambling was worse than the dog fighting, they lost all my respect, too. Gambling at least just hurts people who gamble. (Note, I don't gamble, at all, either.) I hope Mr. NAACP never hears the end of it for what he said. And I fantasize that Mr. Football gets sentenced to the job in his high security prison of scooping the guard dogs' poop. With the dogs loose and HIM chained up. Sigh, but I wouldn't do that to a fellow human being, because I am not cruel and vindictive. Lucky Mr. Football.

This is the kind of stuff I try to dwell on so I don't worry about Lee all day. How'm I doin'?