World: 1, Overly-Sensitive-Feminist: 0
I stood out on Abercrombie Street this morning waiting for my lift to work and bracing myself for the inevitable harrassment. You see, I wore my black skirt and boots today. They’re not salacious at all, but for some reason the sight of my bare knees seems to draw the troglodytes from their caves like flies to honey. Mentally I’d already armored myself and my middle finger was poised and ready to flip at the slightest hint of a honk or wolf whistle. I scanned the oncoming traffic trying to guess from which direction the harrasser would arrive. I debated which stinging insult would best put the smack down. There was only one problem… No one bothered me! I stood there for four traffic light changes and I didn’t get a single leer. I started to get antsy. When you mentally prepare yourself for battle, you inevitably start itchin’ for a fight. At last! My ears detected the tell-tale sounds of some Neanderthal making dog-barking noises at me. “How low can you get?” I thought as I whipped around the confront the idiot… and found myself face-to-face with a big happy golden retriever on the back of a truck. *cringe*

Survivor was extremely satisfying. In fact, my voice is still a little hoarse from that magic moment when I saw “Johnny Fairplay” scrawled as only Crazy Lil can. She probably would have stood a better chance against him but I can respect her decision not to reward his behavior. And kudos to the women for finally getting their sh*t together! It’s about time. (Early in the penultimate episode I remarked to the Snook: “I sure hope you don’t have a problem with gay folks, because if these women fail to team up and vote out Burton I’m getting a sex change.”) The reunion show was mostly downhill after Sandra’s victory, I have to say. Since when does Jeff have such a big crush on “Savage”? Osten shouldn’t have even been allowed to attend. Does anyone else find Skinny Ryan sorta cute, in a nerdish way? Yeah, just me then.

This review of blogging tools got me thinking about the Movable-Typeification of the “blogiverse”. (I can’t believe I just used that word.) Don’t get me wrong; MT sounds great and some of my favorite blogs use it. In fact, a *lot* of them use it. I find that vaguely discomfiting somehow. I think it’s because most of them look sorta the same (I mean, in that they have the same set of components) and there are certain features that are only accessible to other MT users (like TrackBack). I feel the same way about LiveJournal, to be honest. It annoys me to have to post as “anonymous” on my friends’ LiveJournal sites. I don’t think that everybody has to program their own CMS; I just resent companies’ attempts to turn blogs into walled-off communities. It’s good for everybody to be a little different, isn’t it?

I tried making a mental list of all the blogs I know that don’t use one of the popular systems and I couldn’t come up with many. There’s me, Jeff, Jann, Martin, Tracey (well, she uses Greymatter, but that’s pretty rare these days)… Can you think of any more? Out of curiosity, if you don’t use one of the popular systems, why not? If you do, what do you like about it? Does the ease of set-up make up for slight loss of freedom? To be honest, this is just me going, “Hmm, everybody else is using MT. What do they know that I don’t know? Should I accept the inevitable and move, or should I bother writing the crap myself?”

Go 7396!
Just checked in with Amy, who’s coming up on Mile 18 as we speak. She’s going a lot of walking but she’s hanging in there and she sounded pretty upbeat. You can track her live results here (search on “Amy Howard”). Go Sis! I’m just in awe right now.

Update: SHE DID IT! Final time was just over seven hours. Thank you so much to everybody that supported her and donated to the cause.

Step by Step Guide to Voting by Absentee Ballot. Very handy bookmark for us expatriate types.

Friday Five:

1. Do you enjoy the cold weather and snow for the holidays?
I’m going to have to agree with Kristen here and rant about how “hemispherist” this question is. Folks, the majority of people in the world never have a white Christmas. Nobody in the southern hemisphere does (unless they live on top of a mountain). Nobody on the equator does. Hell, a good portion of the northern hemisphere never gets cold enough. So stop ramming it down our damn throats! That said, I personally wish I could have a white Christmas, not because it’s “traditional” or anything, but because that’s what I remember growing up. I miss sledding with Amy and Antny.

2. What is your ideal holiday celebration? How, where, with whom would you celebrate to make things perfect?
This is another one of those questions that stings for someone with loved ones on more than one continent. Ideally it would be my family and the Snook’s and all of our friends together… but it’s never gonna happen. Best not to dwell.

3. Do you do have any holiday traditions?
The day after Thanksgiving, we would always hit Michael’s craft store to pick up plaster ornaments and paints. Then back at the house we’d eat leftovers, paint the ornaments, and put up the Christmas tree. Mocking my brother’s artistic attempts was always a highlight. There’d probably be some sledding (if we had snow). As Christmas neared, it was inevitable that Amy and Antny – or as I like to call them, the Christmas Sneaks – would try to convince Mom and Dad that we should open our gifts Christmas Eve instead of morning. I was the traditional holdout. Sometimes they won; sometimes they didn’t.

4. Do you do anything to help the needy?
Not nearly enough. The bitter cold of London was always a sharp reminder that there were people out suffering in it. Here in Sydney it’s easier to sail through the day without noticing. I should make more of an effort.

5. What one gift would you like for yourself?
A really nice new digital camera, maybe even an SLR. That’d be cool.

Last night I convinced the Snook to come to an advance screening of Lost in Translation with me. He was reluctant at first. (I think he was a little worried it was going to be a girly movie.) Within five minutes he was loving it just as much as I knew he would. The opening shots of Tokyo are just mesmerizing. I just kept thinking, “It looks like a William Gibson novel!” The Snook said he was mentally comparing everything to anime films. We laughed when we recognized some of the more bewildering video games from the George Street arcade in Sydney. He squeezed my hand when a giant EPSON billboard floated past. We laughed at Bill Murray’s fish-out-of-water routine. It was all very amusing.

Then it changed. It changed for me when Bob Harris agreed to go out with Charlotte’s friends. It was at once unbelievable – that a fifty-year-old guy would go out with these young people – and totally understandable, because it was the first “real” thing this guy’d done in a long time. By that point, I realized I actually cared about the characters. I kept worrying that they’d show Bob standing in the corner by himself. I was worried that Charlotte would be embarrassed by him. Instead they sang karaoke and danced and talked to strangers and had a great time. They became friends. So then I was hooked. I wanted them to get together – because neither of them seemed to have anything else – but I also wanted them to resist that cliché. In the end I was totally satisfied with the resolution. I agree with Ebert that the words they exchange at the end of the film are none of our business. When two actors create characters so real, sometimes you have to grant them their privacy.

I noticed the other day that Stairs has his iChat name listed on his site. Nobody else I know has it and I haven’t been able to try out the Voice Chat yet. This morning I found him online and was able to have a quick chat. It worked perfectly! That same two-minute call to the UK would’ve probably cost me $5 on the telephone. Now if only I could convince my family to all get Macs… You know, in the long run it would probably actually be cheaper, considering how much I spend on my Telstra bill.

Absolut Vanilia + Diet Coke = Everything I Dreamed It Would Be.