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being able to listen to NPR all day at work with a cute little walkman is interesting and informative but is also starting to make me feel overdosed on news. and then i get all worked up about things and want to write bits about them but by the time i get home i'm all tired.

this evening ira glass of "this american life" noted that we haven't yet settled on a name for what happened on 9/11, and/or events subsequent. everyone is calling it something different. perhaps part of the problem is we're not sure whether it's over yet. (it isn't.) perhaps 9/11 specifically will just become "the world trade center", like "oklahoma city" became a name for an event as well as a geographical location. although there was also the pentagon and pennsylvania. but then it gets too long to say and we're back where we started. ...stewart already talked about this, didn't he.

traveling tomorrow. the road goes ever on.

Like anyone else, I have a few hot-button issues. Wilderness preservation and environmental protection is one area. Freedom of speech and freedom to read is another. I understand that everyone is a bit on edge right now (see below). But this is a bit much, don't you think?

22 October 2001: values.

I'm going to be in New York City for Halloween. I'm going to the Greenwich Village parade with my dad's Nikon, my spiffy new mutant-sized pro flash, and my Ektachrome Pro VS film from the photo store refrigerator. I will be wearing new hip clothes, and a shiny new brown satchel across my shoulder. I will take many pictures, some of them bad, some of them good, a few of them great. (do or do not, there is no try.) I will not get blown up in the airport (to/from). I will not get blown up on the airplane (to/from). I will not get gassed, infected or blown up in the (subway/Times Square/Empire State Building/Statue of Liberty/Metropolitan Museum of Art/place i am staying). I will joyfully and safely breathe the crisp air of the autumn in New York. I will not be a victim of a terrorist attack on the pagan parade. I will not be mugged by a mean person who does not realize how little money I really have -- if wishes to travel and photograph were pennies, I could start power plants with the copper, and charge exorbitant rates, and force everyone to adopt solar power and windmills just to get away from me, which unbeknownst to them was my secret nefarious intention all along, hahahahaha. No bad things will happen to my brother either (substitute "bus trip" or "train trip" where applicable). Life is chaos, but I have as good a chance as anyone to duck through the safe holes. Worry is futile. It will be fun. Mantra: memorize. Repeat as necessary. Worry is futile. It will be fun. Worry is futile. It will be fun. Worry is futile ...

aw c'mon! I was waiting for the payoff where the stone creatures watch them leave. I will be happier if there does turn out to have been a secret conversation between them and T'Pol that becomes a plot point in a later episode. But I'm suspecting it won't.

On the other hand, I think what I'm liking a lot about Enterprise so far is the nuts-and-bolts basics of exploring around. Pictures! Of course people would take pictures! I'm all over that. So Occam's Razor would dictate that the stone creatures were indeed entirely hallucinatory. I guess I'm ok with that after all.

I dunno about next week though. From the look of that promo, I think the realism pendulum is about to swing in the other direction. Not that having the captain and ... Reed? ... pilot the rescue shuttle down is particularly realistic. Surely there's someone out of the other eighty people on the ship that can drive shuttles! -- but such are the demands of television, and thus star trek tradition.

ok, i am a complete buffy convert now, after all of two episodes. spike better get himself a happy ending, or at least a worthy ending, when all is finally done, or i shall be quite sad. mmm... witty, handsome, british. straightforward: says it like it is, with the occasional caring crack in the cynical shell. what's a little vampirism?

still thinking. and watching and listening. (nbc is calling it "america strikes back" ...) i dreamt last night of going up and down many many curving staircases from floor to floor inside a tall building, never reaching my destination. i can't remember what my destination was.

If you saw the first "Enterprise," or maybe even if you didn't, read this immediately.

Now that the shock of the music was less fresh, I must say I like the "Enterprise" opening credits' visuals just fine. I was almost able to ignore the music while focusing on them.

I liked this ep too. What would Star Trek be without unsubtle metaphorical subplots? Not that there's anything wrong with that. And isn't it amazing how much you can add to the suspense when you have to get your crew back via shuttle instead of just beaming them. I wonder if they'll ever start using the transporter for more than emergency measures.

I think the key to why I'm liking this series so much (aside from the infamous detox gel... where were the space spores this trip? darn) is that their galactic inexperience makes it so much easier to identify with them. And worry about them, to a point, though of course it's a bit early in the series for anyone major to get killed off just yet. Characters must be developed first, though they're doing a pretty good job already. Most of the worry is about how much damage (physical and/or political) they'll create in their blundering around, and whether they'll hurt themselves too badly. these kids today.

I like Spike. Bleah, how many seasons do I need to catch up on, then? I'm sure there are many websites happy to tell me.

I have been asked about the significance of the purple tricycle. The photo to the right (yes, that's me) is the only good color photo of it I've been able to find, though I also saw a rather nice black and white one which I may run sometime. Sadly, the original item itself was long ago donated to the Salvation Army store a few blocks away so that there would be more room in the garage to store boxes of old school papers and caches of boy scout supplies. I am bitter as much at myself as at my mom, because I was around at the time and could have kept it, somewhere, if I'd put any true effort into its defense. Ah, the foolish carelessness of adolescence.

I don't know exactly which Christmas it arrived, but I know it was a Christmas present because one of my earliest memories is standing with my mom, looking through some kind of window at tricycles, and my mom saying, "If Santa were to bring you one of those tricycles, which color would you want: pink, blue, or purple?"

Probably I remember this because of the rush of excitement I felt at that moment: Mama had opened the magic channel to Santa by mentioning his name, and now he was listening to us and might actually bring me one of those beautiful objects. "Purple," I said, without hesitation. I don't know why. I just liked the purple one best. And sure enough, on Christmas morning, there it was in front of the fireplace, sitting on the white shag rug.

It was my first vehicle. I can't have been older than four, and was probably three. It had a little plastic basket on the front, and multicolored tassels streaming from the ends of the handlebars. When my little brother was old enough, he could stand on the rung between the back wheels, hold onto my shoulders, and I could drive both of us around (though not at top speed). Later we got other wheeled playthings, notably a green tractor and his noisy yellow Big Wheel, but even then I would still tool around on the good ol' trike, until I was just too big to ride it.

In this picture we're at the "new" house (the house we grew up in), so I'm at least five, maybe six or seven; my knees are approaching the handlebars. I see that even children did not escape odd wardrobes in the seventies, especially children subject to a mother with a nostalgia for the saddle shoes of her own school days. Youthful ignorance = bliss.

After I outgrew the trike, and moved on to the pink bicycle (also now gone), I didn't think about it much until recently, when I started trying to figure out a good, simple, memorable domain name. An object, perhaps. Something that a person could visualize. And one day, I remembered the purple tricycle. After remembering, I wanted the original back. Time machine! Where's my time machine, to jump back and either shake some spirit into my apathetic teen self, or just go and buy it from the Salvation Army store!

Sadly, impossible. Lost, as are other dear people and places and things, it is gone; we shall not meet again in this world (namarie!). But, in memory of my first vehicle, I gave this new one its name.

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