Wednesday, March 31, 2004

My, my, my. I found a little essay-post that explores the act of self-censoring. "Eventually, always being the protagonist starts to feel like the lie it is."

That is one way to look at it. And I am sure that those of us who portray ourselves on the web are guilty of that to a certain extent ( and truthfully, there are some who are way beyond "certain extent"); but I have tended to look at some of this from a different perspective.

Sometimes we self-censor as an act of kindness.... for others. Sounds like denial doesn't it? or rationalization... or prevarication....? I don't think so. When first on the web, I made a website. A personal one. It began with an extreme sort of positive censoring. I felt I had some positive things to share, but being a normally negative person, with very dark things going on in my mind, I felt that I had learned that those things were unwelcome and unhelpful for many others. They needed the lovely, not my poor attempts and flailings. Not unreal lovely, just free from my inner doubtings and strugglings. Except for my rants and blogs in the opinion section it stays in that form. Others needed the good I had found, the useful that I had learned, not my strugglings in getting there with all the distractions of those details. Then I would be in danger of becoming that pretentious protagonist, for sure.

Some censorship is, rather, an appreciation of the fine and the rare. Based in the scripture from the book of Phillipians. It is the motivation to aspire and inspire, rather than to wallow.

ALthough wallowing is something I do quite well, vis a vis this blog.

Well, the essay was interesting to me. I am presently too depressed to further explore. Everything goes surface for me when I feel like this. Like trying to stay afloat when so much inside is pulling me under. Grasping the lifesaver float. I need some of that "whatsoever is lovely", myself, right now.

"what a pretty life you have". No. not pretty here either, but a bit too complex to properly assess in a blogpost.

Thursday, March 25, 2004

Well, well, well. Upsaid has done the force your hand sort of thing. Buy or we terminate you.

So it is on to putting together a new blog for the opinions part of my online life. The only problem will be a format that fits in the frame on my website. I chose tblog despite the fact that it won't fit. I also had a live journal experiment. I must choose again.

Oh the choices.

Anyway, here are the urls- not that I will be able to do a quick job of moving everything and changing all the pointers that soon. I am being lackadaisical about the web lately. I am reading more, and have been slightly better about my daily obligations stuff. Plus it is getting nice outside. And since I don't make any money being online, it seems a shame to tether myself unnecessarily to the computer. Right?

I will have more interesting fodder- though less often if I actually live my life and report things rather than create from my interior. Although that might get interesting it would probably be in a morbid sort of way.... sort of like it has been this last winter. Who needs a fifty year old Goth?

Here are the urls:
truegrit...migrated
ilona_intended

Friday, March 19, 2004

A Name Game


If you call me firefornow, you know me from when I raised hell on the Delphi forums-to do battle,(ahem, of course)
If you call me Ilona, you could be most anyone I have met in some way.
If you call me Mom, you could be one of any ten people.
If you call me Honey, you are the lady at the grocery store.
If you call me Mrs. [husband's last name], you are one of my kids friends .
If you call me stupid, you are going to find me up in your face, with a scary smile on my face.
If you call me Ilona-Balogna, you were one of those bully kids on my elementary school lot- I might have fought you.
If you call me lady, you really don't know me at all.

===============
Upsaid is down for basic accounts like mine for an undetermined amount of time. Server overload, I guess. So here I am with unusual amounts of activity for this blog. But I keep most of my religious and political opinions off this blog. It seems important to separate the streams of tone. Although I am no purist. Too bad, really. If I could keep things more serious and focused I might not have been a half bad writer with some meaningful things to say.

But I go haywire every once in awhile and I act silly or get angry and uppity. Ruins the mood. Distracts people. I have already given up on Xanga. It had no direction. And three blogs are hard to keep up as it is.

==============odd funny stuff I found

Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the reader who doesn't get it.

Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

Intaxication: Euphoria at receiving a tax refund, which lasts until you realise it was your money to start with.

~from The Washington Posts Style Invitational

via this site where you can check out this "weird art".
Open Brackets has perfectly wonderful French words to use!
cagoterie: zealous, bigoted devotion; fla-fla: self-consciously pretentious, à la keeping up with the Jones’s, and suivez-moi-jeune-homme: (literally: follow-me-young-mans) the ribbons on women’s bonnets.


Aren't those wonderful? For those who love things about languages, check out Gail Armstrong's site. But be forewrned that if you use any of these above referenced words.... it is possible that no one will understand what you are talking about. So which is it? As the culture goes -so goes the language or the reverse? Armstrong doesn't say, but discusses bygone and obsolescent words.

And say it is not true: Gobbledegook is going the way of the Dodo bird. Noooooooo.

Sunday, March 07, 2004

I watched a number of movies this week. As usual, lately, I didn't sleep very much. Not sure what that will end up doing to me in the long run...but for the short run, I find I am very easily distracted ( losing my place more than usual) and I blogged excessively in the truegrit blog.

Then I felt ashamed.

I do that.

Anyway, the movies I saw were "Radio", "School of Rock", and that last Dylan one. I have to remember, ..."Masked and Anonymous" ? I think that was it.

No, silly, I never pick the movies.

My husband and my family have a far greater appetite for Hollywood entertainment, so they are always picking the movies; but here's the rub, t'is I that stays awake and watches... or previews for the kids, or whatever.

That translates into the de facto of watching too much _stuff_.
I bet it isn't healthy for my mind.

Anyway, Liked Radio and cried. Cuba is great, and the story was uplifting.
Liked "School of Rock". Liked it alot, but know I must resolve how I view the moral inconsistancies in it. I mean, the reality of letting someone highjack your kids from school and teach major life lessons in rebellion.... na-no. But the offset of the movie was that there were some real lessons in the fact that kids are people, and Black relayed a real respectfulness sans obsequiousness in how adults should relate to kids. And how everyone has a gift and ought to be part of the grand program. Plus, it was funny. Black is just plain funny, th ewild and crazy guy.

You want me to comment on Masked....? I would probably have to see it at least once more, probably twice. It covered too much in too veiled a manner to get quickly to the gist.

But it was sort of an annoying movie. So I would have to designate it as important enough to sit through a couple more times.

And this from someone who so loved Clockwork Orange that I viewed it countless times.

Although I will not now watch it again.

We have only so much life, People.

that is it...except I notice more and more blog burnout. Maybe like websites, it is suffering from popularity, which on the internet tends to disintegrate the community feel.

(ps: typos are the bane of my internet existance, my typos that is)

Wednesday, March 03, 2004

100 THINGS more than you really wanted to know......

1. I am complex
2. but sometimes I would rather be simple
3. I take too long to say something, a living run-on sentence.
4. I like color, especially saturated color
5. I gravitate towards purples, but like greens, too.
6, I say "I" too much and this exercise doesn't help.
7. Because I am an introvert, an extroverted introvert.
8. that is why I keep engaging you
- I sometimes talk to people in lines ( grocery store,etc)
9. Talked to a grocery clerk about his blue hair and fingernails, once;
found out his favorite color was green,
but he felt he looked better in blue.
10. I think people are surprising and interesting
11. But little actually surprises me.
12. I might be jaded.
13. I have many children. I don't have time to gossip.
14. I do, however use the computer as an intellectual escape.
15. I tell myself that lots of things are intellectual.
16. people call me stubborn
17. I call myself convinced.
18. usually, I don't like euphemisms
19. I sometimes make allowances.
20. I focus intensely
21. I have trouble with my eyes
22. Sometimes I bore easily ( yeh, it works both ways)
23. I love magnanimity
24. I value truth over most everything else
25. which makes me a little hard to take
26. which I don't always understand, but am resigned to
27. I think associative thinking is fun
28. I think figuring out peoples patterns of behavior is fun
29. my mind is always busy
30. that is not a good thing
.... it interferes with me being actually busy in RL
31. I value people more than things
32. but I have sometimes been confused about that
33. I love different cultures
34. I often study them
35. I like Middle Eastern music and belly dance
36. I like different cuisines
37. The weirdest food I tried was eel
38. I won't tell you what I thought of it
... I like a little suspense
39. but not much... I hate horror movies
40. I went to Europe once, unexpectedly, and I am grateful for that experience.
41. I am half Hungarian.
42. I got the idea that made me superior, but I have different ideas of what is good about me now.
43. I became a born again Christian when I was 21. Age of emancipation.
44. I retain my individuality and unusualness.
45. Sometimes to my chagrin.
46. When I was a teenager I studied how to be popular from books.
47. I found out it wasn't worth the effort
48. I study from books alot. That is how I learn.
49. I am quick to give something a try if it seems worthwhile.
50. I am too quick to dispose of ideas
51. I procrastinate
52. I diddle-daddle
53. I try to make myself do one thing useful or worthwhile everyday
54. I don't always succeed
55. I tend to be melancholic
56. My faith helped me quit smoking cigarettes
57. I don't have the scary temper I used to
58. I still have anger issues at times
59. Beautiful days in the garden make me happy
60. gardening is a major coping mechanism for me
61. plus I am good at it
62. I just don't have enough time for everything I like to do.
63. I am basically compassionate
64. but I have a tough exterior
66. I refuse to be intimidated
67. I have gotten in trouble because of that
68. More suspense. I tell people lots, but I have an inner reserve.
69. I look normal on the outside;)
70. I used to exercise, and have to start again.
71. I like to debate, but question its usefulness
72. I am intp in the Myers-Briggs- but you knew that from my sidebar.
73. I am not as sure about my conclusions as when I was young.
74. But I am dead-on sure about my faith in Christ Jesus.
No thanks to me, but lots of thanks to Him.
75. I love chocolate
76. Strawberries are a favorite, as are all berries.
I am just the berries, what can I say?
77. I am a very brunette kind of person.
I was always the Midwestern Library Girl
when it was the rage to be the California Surfer Girl.
78. I am glad about that now.
79. I drink way too much coffee. The real stuff only.
80. I am a real kind of person.
Cotton, food, wood, laughter, it doesn't matter so long as its real.
81. I have told you way too much already.
82. I am a dilletante
except in two areas my life forced otherwise: having children and gardening.
83. Forced in the sense of my choices.
I have always made my own choices
84. Not all good and not all happy, but that is my philosophy of how life is.
It also has good and happy.
85. I haven't wanted to be someone else since I was in Kindergarten.
I wanted to be that cute little blonde girl, then.
86. I have few heroes.
87. I do highly respect certain people.
88. I believe in the basic dignity of man
89. but sometimes I would like to shake some people.
90. I don't like for people to ditch in lines. Or tailgate.
91. I like comedies, and I cry easily when watching tearjerker movies.
92. I like most dogs and dislike most cats.
But their personalities make a difference.
93. I won't have animals in the house.
We are enough animals as it is. ( that was not a philosophically
definitive statement.heh.)
94. I am too serious and maddeningly didactic.
95. I studied the dictionary and World Book Encyclopedia on my lunchtimes in my youth.
Really.
96. I love love love Gypsy Flamenco dancing.
97. I am a down to earth Midwesterner in outlook.
98. I care little about what is thought about that.
99. I delight in wild birds. Except starlings.
Someone needs to bring back blackbird pie and market it through McDonalds.
100. I could probably go on for quite awhile now that I am on a roll.
People encourage me to their detriment.

for those who can't get enough
I wrote something for my webpage a couple years ago.
My Likes and Dislikes