The Disquieting Damozel

"Snooping Bosses"--TIME Magazine, week of Sept.11, 2006.

  EMPLOYER SPYING. RE:  TIME MAGAZINE ARTICLE, "SNOOPING BOSSES" by Kristina Dell and Lisa Takeuchi Cullen at 62-64 (Sept.11 2006 issue).   

Most of my friends get quite worked up about the Bush Administration's domestic spying.  I'm much more worked up to find out from this week's Time Magazine---which, come on, you can't get more mainstream media than Time, yeah?---about the scope of employer scrutiny of employees both on the job and off.

I mean, it's one thing for the government to get all up in your private business in the interests, allegedly of "national security."  At least they have what some citizens consider a compelling reason.  I'm not comfortable with the idea, mind you, because I am all about individual privacy and the right of citizens to be secure in their homes, but I have always been secretly certain that the government keeps tabs on people it wants to keep tabs on and that there's not a lot private citizens or even the Congress can do to stop them so long as they're able to conceal the fact from citizens.  I don't mean I think it's okay; I just have always thought that it's how things work. 

Your Health Care Provider Secretly Hates You: The Unbearable Hostility of Hospital Waiting Rooms

[first published in "The Flatland Oracles," my previous blog 07.18.2006]

Yesterday was not a good day for journaling.  At 8 AM Nick had to have a certain medical procedure, inconvenient and uncomfortable, but unserious, so naturally I had to go with him.   The procedure ended up taking the whole of the morning---a whole morning of me sitting in the waiting room in a chair that managed to be both unpleasantly straight and oddly unsupportive of the lumbar spine.  Mine was out, so it was torture.  Plus I was a little worried; when a family member undergoes a procedure, one always is, a little.

Do the designers of hospitals have a brief to make waiting rooms as unpleasant as possible for those waiting?  The waiting room where I had to sit for two hours this morning was positively plush compared to the ER waiting room of the same hospital, where I had to wait much, much longer (and I was the person who was ill).

[first published in "The Flatland Oracles," my previous blog 07.18.2006]

Yesterday was not a good day for journaling.  At 8 AM Nick had to have a certain medical procedure, inconvenient and uncomfortable, but unserious, so naturally I had to go with him.   The procedure ended up taking the whole of the morning---a whole morning of me sitting in the waiting room in a chair that managed to be both unpleasantly straight and oddly unsupportive of the lumbar spine.  Mine was out, so it was torture.  Plus I was a little worried; when a family member undergoes a procedure, one always is, a little.

Do the designers of hospitals have a brief to make waiting rooms as unpleasant as possible for those waiting?  The waiting room where I had to sit for two hours this morning was positively plush compared to the ER waiting room of the same hospital, where I had to wait much, much longer (and I was the person who was ill).

Homeless Bloggers: What It's Like

[previously published at The Flatland Oracles on 07.15.2005]

At Blogger Buzz I came across a posting that linked to this article at Wired News--"Laptops Give Hope to the Homeless"---explaining how homeless people can use blogging to re-connect with the world.  There's also an excellent article at Salon.com about homeless blogger Kevin Barbieux. 

Homelessness is a subject that causes me extreme anxiety if I stop to think about it.  One of my dear friends is intensively involved in working with the homeless.  Joe is a person of extraordinary grace, and also tact, who has no trouble looking another human being in the eye, without regard to the person's status.  I am certain that he would address a homeless person, an A-list celebrity, the President, the prime minister of England, the Nobel prize laureate, and God with exactly the same equanimity.  He is one of those people who can look suffering and humiliation in the eye, which is something that I have decided I must teach myself to do.

[previously published at The Flatland Oracles on 07.15.2005]

At Blogger Buzz I came across a posting that linked to this article at Wired News--"Laptops Give Hope to the Homeless"---explaining how homeless people can use blogging to re-connect with the world.  There's also an excellent article at Salon.com about homeless blogger Kevin Barbieux. 

Homelessness is a subject that causes me extreme anxiety if I stop to think about it.  One of my dear friends is intensively involved in working with the homeless.  Joe is a person of extraordinary grace, and also tact, who has no trouble looking another human being in the eye, without regard to the person's status.  I am certain that he would address a homeless person, an A-list celebrity, the President, the prime minister of England, the Nobel prize laureate, and God with exactly the same equanimity.  He is one of those people who can look suffering and humiliation in the eye, which is something that I have decided I must teach myself to do.

To Those Searching for Employment in the Too Much Information Age, A Warning

[first published at The Flatland Oracles, my previous blog, on 06.12.2006]

MySpace partners with Simply Hired. MySpace and Simply Hired have launched MySpace Careers, a job listings site geared toward the MySpace demographic. [CNET News.com]

This announcement pairs up nicely with yesterday's headline from the New York Times:  For Some, Online Persona Undermines a Resume. Kids today, eh?  They have at their fingertips a whole world of ways to get themselves in trouble that couldn't have been imagined by their parents (many of whom know much less than their children about all the ways available for them literally and figuratively to show their arses).

[first published at The Flatland Oracles, my previous blog, on 06.12.2006]

MySpace partners with Simply Hired. MySpace and Simply Hired have launched MySpace Careers, a job listings site geared toward the MySpace demographic. [CNET News.com]

This announcement pairs up nicely with yesterday's headline from the New York Times:  For Some, Online Persona Undermines a Resume. Kids today, eh?  They have at their fingertips a whole world of ways to get themselves in trouble that couldn't have been imagined by their parents (many of whom know much less than their children about all the ways available for them literally and figuratively to show their arses).

The Heroic Medical Professionals of New Orleans---and then there's Dr. Zed. Paging Dr. Zed!

It's impossible to overstate how much I admire the medical people who are there on the scene.  Their role in lessening the death toll and giving some people whose plights would otherwise be hopeless a fighting chance cannot be overstated. 

Which made my friend Jane's experience yesterday all the more difficult for me to process.  Jane was recently diagnosed with a certain chronic but non-life-threatening neurological disorder.  To control it, she must take medication (probably for the rest of her life) that affects her concentration and, to a certain extent, her short-term memory.  She's been most depressed.  As an epileptic myself, I understand the depression. 

Chaotic Simplicity---Matisse & My Mom.

After talking at length to a clerk from the local Quaker meeting, I started thinking about what it means to live a simple life.  Can you have simplicity with a lot of colors in it?  My favorite painters are Matisse and Kandinsky.  I need color in my house, but not much else. 

            One of my favorite books by the astonishing A.S. Byatt, one of my favorite writers in life, is the set of three short stories called The Matisse Stories.  All three stories involve fairly mundane events in the lives of women---the first, for example, is about a middle-aged woman who gets a haircut she loathes and ends up more or less laying the whole shop to waste; and can't we all identify with that?---but at the center of each story is one of Matisse's paintings. 

The False Nostalgia Syndrome (07.02.2005)

[first published in "The Flatland Oracles", my previous blog]

 It’s not déjà vu. Nor is it a ‘remembrance of things past’---or at least not any part of my past.

I think it must be part of ordinary human experience, since most people I’ve asked about it say that they’ve experienced it or something similar. People I know, like my friend Santee, who believe in past lives---a point on which I simply have no opinion---can easily explain it as the remembrance of things past in a past life.

 It’s not déjà vu. Nor is it a ‘remembrance of things past’---or at least not any part of my past.

I think it must be part of ordinary human experience, since most people I’ve asked about it say that they’ve experienced it or something similar. People I know, like my friend Santee, who believe in past lives---a point on which I simply have no opinion---can easily explain it as the remembrance of things past in a past life.