Timelies all!

Wow, a lot has gone on among the Buffistas in the time I was away.

Portland was great, and I wish I could have spent more time there. Although, considering how much I spent at Powell's, it's probably for the best that I came home when I did. It was nice meeting you, Cass. Sorry you had a migraine and couldn't do dinner with us.

RageGirl is home and took a nice long hot shower, which has cranked her down to irked.

Chicken cooking.

I'm going to sarameg's for dinner.

I don't know. Her irk gives me pause.

It was half a freaking HUGE chicken breast, in a ginger soy marinate. I have another half left. Some broccoli too.

Irk means I no longer want to stab people. Hit them, sure. But I'll use a nerf bat.

NOW on PBS is talking to Anna Devere Smith. I'd love to see one of her performances.

Interesting thought from her, that she attributed to Cornell West: “Optimism and hope are different. Optimism tends to be based on the notion that there’s enough evidence to allow us to think things are going to be better. . . . Whereas hope looks at the evidence and says it doesn’t look good at all, but we’re going to go beyond the evidence to create new possibilities.”

Interesting. I wouldn't say that hope creates new possibilities--if I did, I'd hope. Considers unsupported possibilities--that I agree with for sure.

I'm not reading it as tightly as you, so I can equate new with unsupported in terms of imagination. Basically, going beyond what the evidence allows for.

It's not really a comparison (hope vs optimism) I've looked at before. But it does resonate. I tend towards pessimism, but hang on like a pollyana. I can't really live any other way.

I'm rarely optimistic, and almost never hopeful. It's served me well.

Oh, how the hell would I know? I know that cynics are more often right, and optimists more often happy--I resent having to choose between the two.

Cool 3 year time lapse of a woman's face.

While I'm there:

• Hooked on a Feeling
• Secret Agent Man
• Jump In My Car

• California Girls

I know that cynics are more often right, and optimists more often happy--I resent having to choose between the two.

Heh. I toss all that judgement off to the side. I'm just wired the way I am, even as I bristle that something other than my own will could control something like that. I'm going to be thinking "it's all going to work out, sara" even as I see the bus heading my way and simultaneously assuming I'm gonna die. And since dead=wormfood and I'm not particularly suicidal, I'm going to count those as contradictory. I've poked at it, and it just doesn't budge. I'm not as introspective as I once was, so I guess that could be subject to change. In any case, maybe it allows me to be both right and happy? Relatively speaking.