2005.10.03
AFGHANISTAN: "Everyone here wears long beards that suit them well, but it must be tough when they're drinking milk."harvested by Nick B
EQUITORIAL GUINEA: "It's called that because it's right on the equator. If it were under the highway, it'd be Interstate Guinea."
UGANDA: "There's a bird on the flag, but its inhabitants are human. It's not a country of birds or anything."
ETHIOPIA: "A nation famous for coffee and marathon runners. Maybe the coffee makes you run really fast."
MOZAMBIQUE: "The flag of this country has a gun, a hoe and a book. It must have gone through hard times."
THE PHILLIPINES: "A country comprised of over 7,000 islands. It must be hard to find names for them all."
PAKISTAN: "There's a city here called Harappa. But there aren't any rapping dogs."
Seasons of the Moment
Fairly high up on the list of "simple self-built tools that have made my life slightly better" is that retrospect page that shows me the kisrael.com and Palm-journal entries for this day, reaching as far back as 1997 for the Palm stuff, with consistent coverage since kisrael's start at the end of 2000.
One thing it demonstrates is that there's...well, maybe not nothing new under the sun, but less than I would have imagined. It makes sense that stuff like birthday parties recur, but there's other stuff as well, like how Nick B. has been a guru leading to katamari for a while, or (and this was the larger surprise) I described myself as self-medicating with video games two years ago, something I've recently agen taken up, though currently I'm plowing through games I've been putting off rather than just going back to old favorites.
I guess I'm not surprised about the games-as-self-medication thing happening this time of the year. Specifically, the two-years-ago thing was a form of self-soothing as my marriage was falling apart, but historically this is far and away the karmically worst time of year, from the general sense of nature having to hunker down for the ice and the snow to it being the time of year my dad and at least half of my grandparents passed away.
I dunno. I guess I have this hope that maybe moving some place with less distinct seasons would somehow help get me out of this cycle. Dylan loves San Diego...and their football team did lay down the smack on our Patriots yesterday. (Not that football is such a big relocation determinent, but still.)