Open Letters - September 19, 2005

Dear Today,

You and I are so over. I don't mean that in a cute, "Himillsy's trying to write a clever letter to a manmade occurrence" way. I really do hate you, for the following reasons:

1. The debt collection agency that called me today and convinced me for a heart-stopping hour that I owed $4,000, payable this afternoon.
2. The university that neglected to process my consolidation paperwork, thus inducing a phone call from above debt collection agency.
3. Caffeine, and lack thereof.
4. Husband does not charge phone. This is a gripe we will likely revisit on other days.
5. The nonexistence of a birth control that is effective, safe, and has few side effects. This weekend, I gave up the crying jags and nightly vomiting to give charting a try. My colleague and good buddy just ran sobbing out of the office looking for a chart of her own. Science has had 50 years to perfect the Pill and all we get are variations on the same hormones?
6. Tori Spelling's divorce. No one ever thinks about the fans.
7. The implementation of TimesSelect, the most pompous, elitist move by a pompous, elitist institution this side of the Patriot Act. The New York Times is charging its readers for access to certain columnists. Which means that Nicholas Kristof's one-man-crying-in-the-wilderness op-eds on global poverty and social injustice, subjects no one ever cared about until TV told them to, will be ignored by the very people that were finally about to read them.

Actually, TimesSelect offers some tantalizing experiments with copyright infringement. It would be illegal and unethical for a blogger to purchase a subscription and post the columns on a blog for The People (trust me, I checked). But it wouldn't be illegal to post excerpts with full citation. So if anyone would like to make a lil Stick It To the Times blogring with me, I'd be delighted.

Anyway, Monday, I'm off to your visit your corporate underwriter for some much needed coffee.

Love,
Himillsy