Feeling better...

Huntur went to an Easter Egg Hunt today and showed up at the store with her loot, a collection of brightly colored plastic Easter eggs with various nifty items inside. It just happened to turn out that Galina received a package from her sister Alla yesterday, also containing Easter eggs. Wooden ones, from Russia. So, of course, after we groped our way through her treasure, Huntur and I started to go through the box from "grandaunt" Alla. We had a grand time.

I left soon after and went home to start working, but could not get my mind on the business at hand... sort of an extension of yesterday's funk. I took a nap, hoping it would help, but it didn't really.

I began to wonder why I was procrastinating, and really couldn't put my finger on it. It's certainly not burnout. I should have been looking forward to doing this assignment, since I knew it has some chunks that appear to largely repeat stuff I've done before for the same client.

Anyway, I actually got started on the job about 6 hours ago, and took a half hour off in the middle somewhere to take Sasha for "le petit tour." The weather was not as warm as it was yesterday, but certainly not anywhere near as cold as it was a few days ago. The wind blew steadily in my face as I walked down Carino towards Meadows Drive, and it made me think (for the umpteenth time) about the feasibility of installing a wind powered electric generator on our property, since that wind seems to blow pretty steadily.

Anyway, I'm done for the day (24 pages done, 32 pages left). I've pretty much finished with the repetitive part of the assignment, so I'll be lucky to get as much done tomorrow, but we'll see. I also have Monday (and, if I need it, part of Tuesday) to get the job done.

On the other hand, I can't really dawdle, as (a) I have a doctor's appointment in Durango on Tuesday, and (b) there are two items in the queue after this document.

* * *One of the interesting things about having a network in the house is the ability to have multiple machines run things as Web servers, etc. A while back, I moved my PHProjekt files from onegin to evdokia, but couldn't get the thing configured to run correctly. Yesterday, in the middle of my funk, I fixed that.

I installed Twiki on evdokia a while back, too, but apparently, the setup I got from the Red Hat install is slightly different from what the Twiki installation notes expect, so my first attempt didn't work so well. My second attempt to install the software worked better (in that I got the proper welcome screen to come up), but I still feel like a klutz using the application, which nonetheless appears promising.

Anyway... I'm babbling, and it really is time to go do something else.

Cheers...

On the idea of "self-censorship"...

I lied about going away and doing something else. I did a little surfing before putting up the computer and ran across the following:

"The prison in question was inspected by my team in Jan. 1998. It appeared to be a prison for children - toddlers up to pre-adolescents - whose only crime was to be the offspring of those who have spoken out politically against the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was a horrific scene. Actually I'm not going to describe what I saw there because what I saw was so horrible that it can be used by those who would want to promote war with Iraq, and right now I'm waging peace."
- Scott Ritter, Time Magazine

This reminded me of a note I made a long time ago in a paper journal, about a comment made by photographer Annie Leibovitz, who has taken a number of well-known photos, such as the one of a naked John Lennon coiled around Yoko, and of a naked and seven-months pregnant Demi Moore.

What prompted me to write about it in my journal was my reaction to her statement, to the effect that, in discussing a shoot with Roseann Barr, the latter's decision not to wallow in mud was "self-censorship" that was "more heinous than that imposed by governments and institutions" (as written in my journal on 20 July 1991).

The reason I made the note was that I vehemently disagreed. A decision to not wallow in mud was not self-censorship. Nor is a decision to not shout down a speaker with whom one disagrees, along with about a zillion other acts.

On the other hand, what Scott Ritter is talking about is true self-censorship, in my opinion, and it is just as heinous as any that could be imposed by a government. Hell, the CNN news executive who went on record with revelations of how his network did not cover the news in Iraq at least could point to specific individuals his organization was trying to protect (although I think CNN was probably more interested in retaining its reputation as a world-class news organization and in maintaining its "presence" in Iraq).

What's Ritter's excuse, other than his pathetic line about "waging peace"? (I cannot help but imagine him in the analogous role of a mob mouthpiece, who talks on and on about working for "a legitimate businessman.")

And with that, I'm really outta here.

Cheers...