11 March 2004

I've been having difficulty with some of my writing lately. Specifically, I've been having trouble with pronouns. I've been sticking the wrong ones on people. I know that "She shook his head" is an entirely different sentence from "She shook her head." And yet my brain supplies the former when the latter is meant, and when I notice and sigh and correct it, the brain tries to tell me that people are people, anyway. Which is true but not useful. Like so many things in this world.

Ah well. I got some clothes yesterday. Very few clothes. Clothes! YARG! It was so horrible. There was not one garment in all of Dayton's (okay, Marshall Field's) that I wanted to put on my body. Not one. They were all either bland or hideous or both. What idiot decided on ice cream pastels for spring? I hate ice cream pastels. They're the only palette I hate more than regular pastels. "We're wimpy, yet we also manage obnoxious!" Bleh. Bleh!

Also, I refuse to look like a cast-off extra from "Flashdance." Also, the last thing, the very very last thing in the world I need is a cream-and-black jungle-print tank top designed for women with B-cups or below. It was good for a larf, and I know the sales clerk was trying to be helpful, but oh. My land. Also, asymmetry in shirts is not my favorite thing in the first place, but when it exists (in the only pleasantly-colored shirt in the store, harumph), it needs to be obvious. Having one cap sleeve and one short sleeve is not enough difference. Also, did I mention sherbet pastels? Yarg!

So I got two long-sleeved shirts on sale for wearing under ski sweaters next winter, and I got a black dress. My best black dress is seven years old, and it's going to go any minute. A femmey girl needs a black dress. Well, I have one; but one needs one for summer and one for winter. That's my theory. And it's a good thing that's my theory, because the other theories involved red (and I already own too much red!) or sherbet orange/lemon/lime/strawberry.

Ohhhhh my. So the sports page said, "Bertuzzi apologizes." And I turned to the article and am even angrier than I was before. What The Little Bastard said was, "Steve, I just want to apologize for what happened out there. I had no intention of hurting you. I feel awful for what transpired." Ohhhhhh no. Oh, no no no; I call bullshit. "What happened"? "What transpired"? Try, "What I did." They didn't run into each other while they were both looking somewhere else. He skated up to Moore and deliberately punched him in the neck, which is not what you do when you have no intentions of hurting someone. When I have no intentions of hurting people, I pat their shoulders or make them soup or even just stay the heck away from them. I do not punch their necks and then slam their faces into ice.

He followed it by saying, "To the fans of hockey and the fans of Vancouver, for the kids that watch this game, I'm truly sorry. I don't play the game that way. I'm not a mean-spirited person, and I'm sorry for what happened." He doesn't play the game that way? Assuming he has memory blackouts, has he ever watched a tape of himself playing? This is exactly how he plays. Everyone knows it. The guys who are saying they're sure he didn't mean it are, in my opinion, most likely scared he will get to play hockey again at some point and will come after them if they say he's a psycho and a menace. (I was upset that he was only suspended for the rest of the season and postseason, until I saw that things are not definite after that. We'll see, but as Timprov said last night, "I don't even want this guy playing a pickup game." Yeah.)

And again with the depersonalized "what happened." What happened is that he deliberately skated up and attacked another person. That's what happened. A meteor did not fall from the heavens. A fan did not throw something on the ice at an inopportune moment, causing Bertuzzi to trip and hit Moore's neck. This transpired because he did it deliberately and with clear premeditation.

"I'm sorry that happened" is for when you miscommunicate, and you think you've agreed to one thing when someone else thinks they've agreed to another, and really it's no one's fault. That kind of situation. "I'm sorry I did that" is for deliberate actions. Never, ever mistake one for the other. And don't give the one you don't mean.

Ah well. I finished Lost Burgundy with a bit of a twinge to be done. The Wild Machines tell Ash, "Little warrior, you do not want to see the Miracle Wars." Oh, but I do. I do I do I do. And if she wanted to write that alternate future to that world, oh, I would read it so fast your head would spin. I would press my nose to the glass at Uncle Hugo's until they opened on the day they were supposed to get it in. But at least I have Rats and Gargoyles with which to comfort myself when I have gone too long without a Mary Gentle fix. Now I'm reading Laurel Winter's Growing Wings, which I picked up thinking it exists in a Firebird edition and therefore might be worth reading. I'm not far enough into it to say, but looking at the list of names in the acknowledgements, I said, "I didn't know she was a Minnesotan!" And sure enough, the back flap says she lives in Rochester. Don't know if that'll signify or if the book will be a-Minnesotan.

I've taken the car in for an oil change, wheeee, the thrills. To work, to work, to work.