Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

*sigh* I had only a few things as priorities yesterday:

1. Make sure I was rested enough to go to rehearsal
2. Visit anniemal
3. Copy the memorial service videotape
4. Pay two bills

For the past few hours I've been too tired and sleepy to do much else, but unable to get comfortable enough to sleep.

I am frustrated.

In more interesting (or at least less-whiny; probably not actually more interesting) news, I dreamt of my father, and of three songs yesterday morning. (Yeah, a dream post; but it's got songs and a question in addition to blathering on about my nocturnal neural misfirings.) In my dream, my father was healthy, and we took a long walk together and chatted as we walked. We walked from Washington to Baltimore and then continued north to suddenly find ourselves in New York (but the NYC scenes didn't match any reality I know as well as the DC and Baltimore ones did). Part of the time it seemed like it was supposed to be today but somehow felt more like the 1970s or 1980s -- not quite now -- and he was pointing out to me places he remembered and how they had changed. Other parts of the dream felt more like time travel to the times he remembered. It was mostly a rather pleasant dream, except that the way race was regarded in the 1940s and 1950s scenes bothered me: while I was hearing and seeing things suitable to those times and recognizing them as ordinary for the period, I couldn't help comparing them to current policies and attitudes and finding them terribly offensive; which means that even in the scenes that seemed to take place in those decades I was aware of "home" being 2004, which is, I suppose, why it felt like time-travel.

(I would, of course, like to think that I would have been just as offended if I had lived then. But can I really say that? I seriously doubt it. We are, not entirely, but to a degree that cannot be completely ignored, a product of our environment. Perhaps I would have risen above the prevailing attitudes of the day, and perhaps not, but probably not as far above those days' attitudes as my being born later allowed.)

Along the way there were songs; one that my father recalled and sang to me, and two others that we heard playing in different places. One involved a pirate with a wooden eye that fell into the harbour, and whenever the pirate set out on a voyage, the eye left behind would cry. It had a sort of Vaudeville or maybe Tin Pan Alley feel to it, melodically. I woke up wondering, along with what had been about to happen at the end of the thing we were waiting in line for, whether that song actually existed outside of my dream. Ring any bells for anyone?

Now that I think of it, I find it rather odd that my dream included the historical racial detais. That's not something I'd expect to think of unless specifically reminded of it.

And finally, ( the clique statistics meme )

"The look on a persons face when they realize that they are in fact Daffy Duck is just priceless." -- i_descend, 2004-01-24

Most of y'all probably ought to have seen this already, but if as many of you as I think are like me and forget to check the LiveJournal status page when LJ starts acting odd, then you might have missed the nice poke the admins took at script-kiddies' egos. (silmaril had to point it out to me this morning.)

While I'd prefer that they reserved "hacker" for the creative programming enthusiasts in the hacker subculture as described in The Jargon File (aka The New Hacker's Dictionary) and used "cracker" for the folks who break in where they're not supposed to be, I must admit I'm sufficiently pleased with the analogy they used to cut them some slack this time.

At 5:27 am GMT on Wednesday, June 30th, A LiveJournal admin writes:

Many users are experiencing difficulty accessing the site right now, due to a flood of malicious traffic. Please note: it's not "hackers" taking us down. If hackers were people who hotwired cars to steal them, these people are just punks slashing tires with shiny knives they didn't even make. We're working with a number of people to get this stopped, including the FBI. We're very sorry for the inconvenience.