Hey, I'm not stupid!

Or lazy or ditzy or willfully disobedient or not trying hard enough. Yes, I do believe I have a learning disability: dyscalculia. It's the math-related version of dyslexia, defined by Merriam-Webster as "impairment of mathematical ability due to an organic condition of the brain." (I like that definition. "Organic condition of the brain." Thank you.) Here's a symptom list that fits me to an almost frightening degree. It's one of those personal Newton-under-the-apple-tree moments: "Suddenly everything makes sense!"



Can't write about it much now, since I'm at work and my lunch break's almost over (and I haven't even taken a bite of my lunch), but it's gotten me thinking a lot, and feeling a lot of different emotions, and I'll try to write more later.

Hey, I'm not unattractive!

I've lost quite a bit of weight (25 pounds since January 1st, last time I checked), and have been dressing more...interestingly (i.e., not trying to hide everything from my ribcage to my knees), and today I wore one of my more...interesting tops (close-fitting and pretty low-cut), and I got a "Hi, gorgeous" and a wolf whistle on the way to work, and turned at least one head on the way to lunch. Blah blah objectification blah blah being shallow blah blah men are pigs shut up. It's just nice to get some evidence that, hey, I'm not unattractive.



(Nothing like being a depressed, anemic, overweight teenager to make you feel like pond scum for the rest of your life. My weight's fluctuated wildly with every medication I've taken; I gained forty pounds on Lithium, and was so miserable I told my psychiatrist, "I hate myself more on this medication than I did when I was untreated." Zoloft took off about thirty pounds, mania took off fifteen more, recovering from mania and a variety of bipolar-treating drugs put on fifty, Ritalin took off ten....so at various points I've been more or less unattractive, and at some points even pretty darn hot, but I've never really internalized the idea.)



But anyway. I'm not unattractive. Go me.

When nature messes with man's messing with nature

I really, really hate small dogs (especially those belonging to my neighbor), and I cannot say I am unsatisfied by this: a hawk used to kill rats mistook a rat-dog for a rat. (Okay, it was a Chihuahua. And it survived. And the hawk-based rat-killing program has been called off. But it's still satisfying.)



I spent most of my early adolescence being passionately interested in hawks and falcons and falconry. It's a darn good thing the Delaware falconry laws prevented people under 14 from getting licenses, or I'd have been nagging my parents for a backyard mews and my very own large predatory bird every day between fifth and eighth grades. (My friends just wanted ponies...)

Headline of the day

On Fark.com:

Gore will not run in 2004. To summarize so far, Gore - No ; Schwarzenegger - Yes ; Jerry Springer - No ; Gary Coleman - Yes ; Larry Flynt - Yes ; California Voters - Oh Shit

Overengineered product of the day

Now really: who needs a mouse pad with a built-in calculator, digital clock, FM radio, and headphones? If you've got a computer—which presumably you do, if you're using a mouse pad—you've got a calculator and a clock; if you have Web access, you have a radio; if you have an electronics store within walking or driving distance, you can get headphones. If you don't have Web access, you can get an FM radio pretty easily and inexpensively too. And, more to the point, what good is a single product that has that many disparate properties? One of them's going to break faster than the others, and probably they'll never all work correctly at the same time. The radio's going to lose reception, the calculator batteries will die, the LED display will fade out, your mouse hand will hit the keys, the mouse cord and the headphone cords will get tangled...



It's pretty much a floor wax that acts like a dessert topping. The cost of doing several things at once is usually not doing any of them particularly well.



Oh well; people like gadgets, or the idea of gadgets; the idea of saving time and energy is very appealing. But it usually just winds up being a headache that doesn't save much of anything.

Glowing mice

In the "still no cure for cancer" department: scientists have created fluorescent mice. I guess there's no way for me to get them as pets.

On TV, barring act of God

Oh Lord, excuse me while I vomit. NBC is still going ahead with the Jessica Lynch movie—despite minor details like, oh, no one knowing exactly what happened—and Britney Spears is in talks for her own talk show. (The report says she wouldn't necessarily be the host, but "might make an occasional appearance." So it's not as bad as I thought at first. Still...who the heck wants to hear what she has to say about anything?) Well, at least the plans for an O.J. Simpson reality show have been squashed.