11:08 am - Gustav
Good luck, New Orleans.
My pal editrix Abby Ehmann always knows where the good party is. (Often she is the one throwing it.) A few years back, the Blue Blood crew exhibited at the late lamented BondCon event in Las Vegas. (BondCon was purchased by the fine folks at Kink, so hopefully they will relaunch it.) The BondCon show was held overlapping the same time as the Adult Entertainment Expo, which Forrest Black and I have occasionally attended over the years to do press coverage on happenings in the adult video world. Immediately prior to these two shows was the Internext show, which SpookyCash sent us to. (SpookyCash is far and away the leading affiliate program in its niche and facilitates people with popular sites being able to make some dough promoting naughty sites from Blue Blood and friends.) Barack Obama's campaign has reacted strongly to this ad, produced by The American Issues Project which criticizes Obama for his association and statements concerning admitted Weather Underground bomber William Ayers.
Now we all know that Obama is sensitive to being "Swift Boated", but these guys really touched a nerve with the ad because the Obama campaign recently threatened prosecution with a letter to the Justice Department. Failing that, Obama's campaign is now going after them for having violated election laws.
What is striking in this story is that a US Senator, who is running for office, is trying to intimidate fellow US citizens for exercising their right to free speech during a political campaign. That's really sweet. You can be sure that if a Republican resorted to this tactic, he'd be branded a fascist, but not Obama... the golden boy gets a pass.
Here's what the guys at Right Wing News have to say about the matter.
And here's the original statement at www.americanissuesproject.org...
"Having failed in its attempts to get our legal, factual and fully-supported ad off the air, Barack Obama's campaign now wants to put our donors in prison for exercising their right to free speech. These over-the-top bullying tactics are reminiscent of the kind of censorship one would see in a Stalinist dictatorship, with the only difference being that those guys generally had to wait until they were in power to throw people who disagreed with them into jail."
Here's a good link at www.politico.com...
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensm
( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )
Last night was weird. I was all buzzed and speedy, ALL NIGHT, though I'd had no more caffeine than usual (ok I've gotten up to 3-4 cups some days). I think this means i need to go off it for a while. On the bright side, i was awake to hear some really thrilling and ghostly coyote howls in the distance, sometime in the predawn hours.
This evening, damn good aerials practice. user is a natural and looks like picking up roll-ups in record time- AND talked me through kicking up to a wall-handstand by myself for the first time since i was about 12!! Logan brought a young cousin who is scary good as a rank beginner, and I got to chat with ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
mesatchornug about staff construction. Good times.
Perhaps tonight sleep will work out...
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sleepy
How long do you think it should take to prepare a five pound Boston Butt? If you’re a Red Sox fan, the answer might be “as long as it takes to pull on a clean pair of boxers”. But if you’ve got an Orion Stainless Steel Convection Outdoor Cooker, the answer is three hours and thirty minutes.
You see, the Orion Stainless Steel Convection Outdoor Cooker uses an innovative two-step process of convection and steam to cook your dish of choice fully and quickly. A twenty pound turkey in a little more than two hours. A three pound salmon filet in just thirty minutes. A bag of pizza rolls in… well, that isn’t on the list, but it would probably take about three or four minutes. More or less. We’re kinda estimating, you know.
The Orion Stainless Steel Convection Outdoor Cooker is the answer to the ultimate question of outdoor cooking: “How can I do as little as possible on this vacation and still be able to eat non-stop?” If you can add charcoal, light a match, and sit down, you can handle the Orion. If you can’t, maybe it’s better you starve. We’re sorry, but we’ve got to think of the species as a whole.
With your Orion Stainless Steel Convection Outdoor Cooker you’ll be getting three rib hangers, three cooking grates, and poultry stand with lifting handle that can hold a 24 pound turkey. Clean up is easy (unless some idiot tried to make pizza rolls) and it’s easy to add wood for that extra smokey taste. And if you want to make a marinade, you can do that too!
Pretend you had a choice to make. Would you rather die screaming while being mauled by a tiger that was eating you raw or slowly drift away on a pillow of steam, knowing you were being lovingly prepared to bring joy to others in a stadium parking lot? Easy answer, right? So why not give your food the same respect? Treat it to an Orion Stainless Steel Convection Outdoor Cooker.
Warranty: 3 Year Orion
Features:
In the box:
Tools Needed:
I've been trying to phone my Longest Friend for five hours and all I can reach is a hostile child and an off-the-hook signal. Not good.
Taking a bus from Downsview to York University, one notices that this area is very low density. It is strange that they are building a subway through here.
Yes, build it and they will come. Early on, Toronto's streetcar lines were extended into farmfields and medium-density streetcar suburbs grew around them. But that was after the core was well-served. We need a downtown, inner suburb network first. Hopefully, Transit City will be just that.
It is unfortunate that we stopped building subways in the 80s and 90s. Had we continued, the Downsview/Vaughan extension would make a lot of sense. But, as things stand, it is merely a white elephant from which the funding cannot be legally withdrawn..
If you're wondering who's responsible for the recent catastrophic rise in Honey Nut Cheerios prices I have to advise you that it's pretty much my father's doing. He didn't intend it, of course, it's just one of those things which happens in our family with alarming reliability. You see, one of the supermarkets around here -- not the one we usually go to, but one that my mother likes for its cold cuts and its built-in Starbucks -- was trying to have a sale on boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios. My father likes the cereal since it's just sweet enough without falling into the category of candy cereals, and my mother doesn't care about it.
My father also believes that I like it, although I don't actually eat breakfast cereal except when I'm desperately hungry for a snack and we haven't got anything like potato chips or corn chips or such. It's not that I don't like the taste; it's just that I don't feel any less hungry after I've eaten a bowl of cereal. So my choices are to eat a useless breakfast or else to keep eating until about two-thirds of the box is gone, at which point I may not feel any less hungry but the force of reason prohibits my eating any more. I have a similar problem with eating eggs, except when they're in the form of egg salad sandwiches.
Anyway, the store was having a sale in which they meant to sell four boxes for seven dollars. The cashier, unfortunately, looked at my father's food purchase and rang up his four boxes of Cheerios at seven dollars each. While he didn't notice this initially he did realize the whole purchase was considerably over his estimated cost. He stopped and told the cashier that no, he did not buy $28 worth of Cheerios, and the cashier explained she was just ringing it up by what the scanner said. He went to the Customer Service desk, where explaining the problem went catastrophically bad. They wanted him to understand that it was four boxes for seven dollars, and he wanted them to understand he wasn't paying seven dollars each for four boxes.
The result: my father did not pay $28 for an awful lot of Honey Nut Cheerios to augment the two and a half boxes already in the pantry. He did spend about three times as long as he was actually interested in talking about this with Customer Service since they wouldn't let him go when he decided he wanted to be done with this more than get his $21 overcharge back. The pint box of Haagen-Dasz melted less than you might have guessed for the time spent on this. And we had enough Honey Nut Cheerios to feed me for days.
Trivia: In 1913 Lord Northcliffe and the London Daily Mail offered £10,000 for the first non-stop aerial crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, in either direction, with takeoff and landing somewhere in the United States, Canada, or Newfoundland on one side, and the British Isles on the other. source: Famous First Flights That Changed History: Sixteen Dramatic Adventures, Lowell Thomas, Lowell Thomas Jr.
Currently Reading: How The States Got Their Shapes, Mark Stein. OK, this book has great intentions. But it's also badly flawed in that many of the details of state borders were decided by the quirks of the people involved in drawing a line here and not there. But Stein writes very little about the personalities of those involved, so that vague impersonal forces are responsible for South Carolina having that shape (which makes some sense when you get each edge explained), or for giving us two nearly but not identical Dakotas, or for making Maryland so thoroughly a failure in all its border disputes. Granted, some of the people involved are hard to track down any information about, but that makes it more refreshing when Stein does include the personal touch, like about why Idaho is so tiny up top or why there is a Delaware.
Erica is as healthy as any cat her age can be. Full blood workup normal. Vet thinks I did a good job on Jamie's hock cyst. Have procured ear ointment for either James or Mom.
Mom is happily on the North Rim, living wild. I keep looking at Leviathan in new ways.
( You are about to view content that may only be appropriate for adults. )
( You are about to view content that may only be appropriate for adults. )
Ok, now that really seems ridiculous to make a happy post about, but the cat urinating is indeed of note. It's possible her kidney is back to working. I left her in her cat bed with her friend Qhat. She lapped a bit of water on her own, but was not interested in food. She had nibbled a few bites earlier today at the vet's.
So, while she is nowhere near out of the woods, and she may have organ damage that is too bad to repair, she was standing, definitely responding to touch and vocally demanding petting when it stopped.
Tomorrow we will know more when the blood results come in. For now, I am still watching and waiting.
I love to read Green Eggs and Ham - I do! I love it, Sam I am! It just has so much potential for theatrical scenery chewing. It makes me to giggle. And Robbie, too - he gets so delighted at the end, because HE loves eggs, and therefore it makes him happy that someone else has learned to enjoy them, too. (He's asked for hardboiled eggs for dinner for three days in a row now...)
And that "Whole World" book you got me, Jeannie? He loves that one, too, and so do I, but when we got to the last page yesterday, with the kids dancing around the globe, he pointed to the continents and said in a very worried tone, "Broken! Dinosaurs broke it!" Despite my reassurances, and attempt to explain continental drift in 2 1/2-year-old terms, he was firm in his belief that the continents were BROKEN, that this was the dinosaurs' fault, and that this was a Bad Thing. (I do remember, come to think of it, that "Walking With Dinosaurs" did talk about how the continents were once united, then split apart during the Dinosaur Age. I wonder if he got the idea that the dinosaurs made this happen?)
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amusedObama's Temple of the Gods...
http://rightwingnews.com/mt331/2008/0
http://www.transterrestrial.com/archive
Ideological conformity...
http://rightwingnews.com/mt331/2008/0
Democrats Speak Out!
When interviewed, Michael Dukakis couldn't name ONE specific accomplishment by Barack Obama. But John McCain has lost his integrity, that much he is sure of....
Governor Brian Schweitzer is just comically dishonest. The guy has no concept of energy or economics. "Oh we just wave the magic wand and suddenly we have an energy policy based on solar and wind turbines (but none of those evil nukes)." Painless... Hope... Change... Yes we can!
http://rightwingnews.com/mt331/2008/0
Joe Biden - The Luckiest Guy In Town...
http://rightwingnews.com/mt331/2008/0
But McCain is a Clone of George Bush...
Joe Biden gives a mediocre speech that tries to prop up Obama's paper thin record with exaggerations, tries to blame *all* of the nation's ills on George Bush... then misrepresents McCain's record and loads up the truck of failure and dumps it all on John McCain claiming that McCain would robotically repeat all of the same failures...
(Biden has conveniently omitted the successes in Iraq thanks to the "troop surge")
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/cvn_biden;_y
Populist hate-mongering crap all of it. Biden is such an oily liar.
The Obamessiah Descends!
Following Joe Biden's speech, Barack Obama makes a surprise appearance and the crowd goes wild. Sheep being led to the slaughter with pretty pictures of prosperity and plentiful jobs and restoring the American Dream and clean renewable energy and a smorgasbord of entitlements and limitless rice pudding!
And Barack Obama will accompish ALL of this and pay your heating bills too!
Hu-mans are so easily suckered, just show them pretty pictures and tell them pretty lies...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080828/ap_
Herewith, a fairly-terse list of Very Fun Things I have done or participated in since mid-May [1] this year ...
- I attended Be-All 2008 (one of only a handful of folks going MY direction down Trans Avenue to do so), and it was amazing. I hope to go again next year.
- I attended Duckon, a whole other collection of neat people and fun things to do.
- I marched in Chicago's Gay Pride Parade, which was fascinating and cool, but also tiring and weird. Our float had the best music in the parade, the traffic aides said. :->
- John surprised me with tickets to see Cirque du Soleil Kooza. Down in front. No, seriously, second ROW down in front. It was made of hot, buttered awesome, as every previous CduS show I've attended has been.
- John and I saw Wall-E in the theater and then had ice cream. It was good ice cream. The movie was pretty. The end credits are particularly pretty. I need a toy Eva, I think.
- I went to Worldcon in Denver. I met many nice people, ate a lot of good food, and exhausted myself. I have a Cunning Plan (of the Bullwinkle-esque 'It Just Might Work!' crackpot variety) to perchance get me to next year's in Montreal, but don't hold your breath yet.
- The in-laws took John and I to Wicked [2] for his birthday. It was made of thrill, though bits of it reminded me of some horribly triggery bits of my childhood (the scene in which the song 'Popular' occurs, for instance). I love that the choreography is plotful. I noticed where they changed it from the book, and decided I didn't particularly mind.
- since mid-May There is a significance to this vague date. No, I'm not telling you yet. Yes, I probably will at some point. Those of you I haven't told already, that is. You know who you are. :->
- Wicked Yes, I'm a bad, bad musical-theatre lover to have lived in the same town as a permanent production of this and never seen it till now, I know.
[two beers and a bath in, at this point...]
Tonight's lesson was not a total success, nor a total disaster, but it contained elements of both :)
The biggest thing I learned, I suppose, is that Stjarni won't always listen to you, but will try to take care of you, where Ljufur will usually listen to you, but may not always do the right thing.
I ran away from the circus^Wwork early, and had time to grab food on the way up and eat it at leisure when I got up to Ponderaia. Stjarni, Ljufur, and paddockmates must have gotten their hay just before I arrived, because they worked on it a good half hour, till lyonesse and elf arrived, and then some. This time to rest and relax was good for me; I got to play with Rosie the barn cat while waiting. She's a curious one-- she loves attention (and scenting anything and everything along the way), but she's always paying attention to the world around her; she finds it hard to just relax and curl up in someone's lap.
While waiting, we did some ground exercises with bridle and reins. elf (what's his LJ username, lyonesse? I'll put him on the filter) and I traded off being horse and rider and were both reminded of a few things.
Eventually, elf and I went to rescue the two horses from their hay. They were mostly good-natured about it. We gave them an abbreviated, icelandic-style grooming (so Vicka called it, or something like), consisting of combing their faces and saddle areas, and a brush down with the hard brush.
lyonesse set up a square of cones/poles, and set us to riding around them. Pretty much right off, I was having trouble with Stjarni not listening to my reins. As I've seen before, he would usually be OK while walking away from the barn, but upon reaching the far side of the ring, he would often decide that he wanted to be by the barn or Vicka. So I wasn't able to do a whole lot for very long. She then had me do an exercise of walk-turn-walk-stop-praise, which he was a little better about, but still not very cooperative. Eventually, lyonesse decided we should try tolting. Stjarni was mostly happy to follow Ljufur, but not all that enthused about tolting for me. So she had elf and I swap horses. Ljufur was pretty friendly to me, and more willing to walk on command than I've seen some other nights. So off a-toltin' we went, but I was having a little trouble sending the right tolty messages to Ljufur, and his transition into and out of the tolt was often bouncy and rough. So at one point I asked him to tolt as we were rounding a corner, and he did so rather bouncily, and I lost my balance, and fell off backwards to the outside. I landed hard on my butt, and let off a good bit of invective because it HURT. Fortunately, no serious damage was done; my neck felt a little strained for a while, and my right gluteus is well tenderized, and I'm a bit rashed on my elbow-- this will all be fine tomorrow or maybe the next day. [It's now Wednesday, my butt still hurts, but it's still just sore muscle, so it'll still go away soon enough.]
Vicka says that I had pulled up my legs and knees, and no wonder I rolled off; I think partly I'd been reacting to riding Mr. Squishee by putting more weight on my pelvis and less on my legs. I don't remember that at all, I just remember the bouncing and the falling, and mostly, the landing. (lyonesse, when you said you don't remember your falls, do you mean you don't remember how you *started* getting off the horse, or how you finished at ground level?) Plus, I may have been doing the pelvis wiggle for tolting but not paying attention to where my feet ended up.
She got me right back on Ljufur, though I was still a little achy; once I got up there, I started thinking about the trouble I've been having with Stjarni and the there-but-for-the-grace-of-deity-go-I nature of a fall and why am I doing this anyway, and this was not exactly...cheering. This went away in a bit, but the thoughts are still bouncing around in the cave that is my skull. So we finished off with a little tolt, and that was that for the evening.
Somewhere in this evening, we switched Stjarni to a rope bridle, and he was much calmer and better behaved with it on; I could ride it with a much lighter touch in general, and when I needed to really pull his head away from something, I felt more comfortable doing it.
lyonesse, is it possible that there is something particularly different about the way you and I hold the reins that causes Stjarni discomfort or annoyance? There does seem to be some note of discomfort or something like it in the way he reacts to my riding, that I barely see if at all with the rope bridle.
[a night passes]
I've had the thought that Stjarni is, well, Germanic about riding-- you will do it the right way, or not at all. Ljufur is much more relaxed about it; he's more willing to follow a vague signal, and carry on through whatever.
Going through building blocks/centered riding again, and what you do to stay on top of things, might be worth a little review.
This lesson's good points were about being able to ride both Stjarni and Ljufur with rope bridles and have it all mostly work, and the better start I got by being early and fed.
And with that, I'm out of thoughts for tonight...
"I'm not insensitive to your bingos" - Thelma.
Has anyone figured out, to, say +/- 10M people, what the smallest number of citizen votes a candidate needs[*] to get in the up coming US presidential election to get elected? That is, what with how the electoral college works in both theory and reality, and based on reasonable and recent estimates of numbers of registered voters, and imagining the ultimate edge case?
[* Continuing to presume that votes count and are counted and that the answer isn't "One Diebold hacker" or "Five supreme court justices".]
This isn't actually useful to anything. I'm just idly curious. It occurred to me in a discussion where someone said, "Well, you can vote for whomever you want". The natural response to that is, "Sure, you can write in whomever you like, but if you can't get N million of your best friends to also write him in..." and it occurred to me to wonder just what N was, realizing it couldn't be as simple as ($numberOfUSRegisteredVoters / 2) + 1
(It's amazing how many interesting yet otherwise utterly useless questions are raised by the quest for the perfect witty come-back.)
My Telus phone has gone mysteriously missing, and I am rather unenthused about the lower end options at the Telus store.
Does anyone have a spare old phone lying around? Or advice for finding an inexpensive new phone?
Thanks beforehand.:-)
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Good: Jedi seems to have mostly learned that he is not allowed to get up onto the kitchen island in order to eat my bagels.
Bad: he has figured out that, if he reaches up and pulls at the bagel, it isn't on the island any more.
Just as my party was giving me a reason to be proud of being a Democrat by officially nominating the first African-American to head up a major-party ticket, it gave me a reason to be ashamed of being one. An ABC News producer was arrested today by Denver police for doing his job: take pictures of people who've given hefty chunks of cash to the Democratic Party. (ABCNews.com feed) Did party leadership lean on the city to do stuff like this to any pressie they caught making a nuisance of him/herself? Seems a fair question.
I don't know which is worse, the arrest of a journalist for trying to air the truth or the courting of elites with special privileges while speakers from the floor whale on "the rich" and laud the party as a friend of the working class. If this happened in St. Paul next week, I wouldn't be a bit surprised; this is the sort of thing any Dem or liberal knows to expect from the GOP. But our party is supposed to be better than this. This gives the GOP "truth squad" camped near the convention—not to mention Rush Limbaugh and his ilk—a prime opportunity to call Dem party leaders hypocrites...and be right.
Memo to Rep. Nancy Pelosi: Madame Speaker, this is emphatically not the way to convince Main Street America that you care more about them than about Wall Street...or that they should vote Obama/Biden this fall.
ADDENDUM, Wed. 10:14 PM: In answer to requests for details, here is a FireDogLake.com summation of the story, with links to further information. I am by no means suggesting that the producer was being monitored live by party leaders, but I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that somebody ordered an excessive clampdown with an eye toward "managing" news coverage.
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angry4th Letter has been doing this thing where people make lists of 50 things they love about comics. I figured I'd do mine:
( cut for length. )
[Happy birthday to _lackey_, and belated birthday to laurion!]
Madeleine Albright just touched on a point that's been bugging me for a couple of days now. Okay, let's talk about it.
It started with The Email Thing. You know, the dumb mini-flap about the fact that McCain doesn't know how to use email. When that first broke, I stuck it in the back of my mind and asked myself whether it mattered in the slightest. My initial reaction was that it didn't -- but as time has moved on, I've found myself more and more bothered by it.
Let's be clear, the mere fact that McCain doesn't email is irrelevant. Indeed, there are perfectly plausible reasons why he might not: in particular, it's certainly possible that the little-discussed problems with his arms make it impractical for him to use a keyboard. But there's another reason, which is the most plausible and the one that *does* bother me: he never wanted to learn how.
This is often dismissed as, "oh, he's just old, and old people don't do this kind of high tech". To this, I call bullshit. My parents are nearly his age, and don't have this supposed limitation. Heck, my mother was an avowed technophobe for much of her adult life, but is now a total blogophile and I'm going to be installing Skype in her apartment sometime soon. And I'm sorry, but we're not talking about today's cutting-edge obscure technology: we're talking about stuff that has been mainstream for decades, that is mature and generally easy to use. In general, folks who have access to email these days and don't know how are just plain scared to invest the ego in learning.
Now for an ordinary person, that's understandable, and I don't hold it against them. A little fear of the new and different is natural, and we all have our blind spots. But I *do* expect more from a Presidential candidate. In particular, I damned well expect someone who is not only not afraid to learn, but who is downright eager to do so.
And I find myself profoundly suspicious of McCain on this point. The email thing in and of itself is minor, but if it signals a broader trend it's not. And look at what he says and does. His approaches to conflict, in particular, are profoundly rooted in classic 20th-century thinking. He seems to keep reacting as if our current conflicts were still World War II, or the Cold War, missing the fact that the dynamic has changed greatly, requiring considerable subtlety and attention to detail. His style is old-fashioned, and that appeals to many people. I can understand that, and I value the good bits of those old policies. But we have to recognize that not every old-fashioned policy is necessarily good and right today.
This election keeps coming back to Experience, and I won't deny that that matters. But it does not matter as *much* as the ability to learn on the job, in a world that is changing ever-faster. It's clear to me from the past year that Obama is a quick study, constantly learning and refining his thinking. I am not nearly as sanguine that McCain is learning much of anything any more. The only things he seems to have changed boil down to giving in to his handlers and the right wing, pretty much across the board.
Don't take this as me being sure about any of this -- I know the man only through the filter of the media, and that's a hazy lens. But I'm quite nervous about what I'm seeing, in one of the most important characteristics that a President must possess...
Many happy returns to egoldberg and (a day late) davidkevin!
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amused( You are about to view content that may only be appropriate for adults. )
Though it's not really so fancy graphically, this is a personal milestone for me. Besides, you should have seen the old issues, they were REALLY plain.
First issue of our newsletter, CompuTopics, in electronic format:
http://www.dcacm.org/archives/CompuTopi
We had to acquire Acrobat Standard to make the hyperlinks convert properly from Word, but other than that, the only nailbiter was whether or not the GWU students would give us the location information for the two events.
As I am going to use the same format for future issues, this should be easier from now.
By the way, we are using CompuTopics instead of Computopics because the first issue in February 1960 had it that way. Also, not only were there apparently no issues from 1997 onwards, there was a numbering error, as the 1997 issue claimed to be Volume 42, which was mathematically impossible since it had been 37 years since the first volume. So we went with Volume 49 as if there hadn't been a hiatus.
Via themis1
1. Comment on this post.
2. I will give you a letter.
3. Think of 5 fictional characters and post their names and your comments on these characters in your LJ.
She gave me an L.
And strangely enough, the first person who springs to mind is Francis Crawford, Earl of Lymond--even though I got bogged down in the second book when he didn't turn out to be the fake Irishman I was thinking he was, and I never managed to get back in. A Lord Peter Wimsey for his time, only far more so, I found his dialogue so crammed with allusions to things I'd never read as to be practically unintelligible, and that kind of detracted from following the plots.
Combing the bookshelves in the California Suite I come up with:
Lazarus Long. Like most of Heinlein's smart old guys, he gives me the impression of having gone back in time and rearranged the circumstances of his life so as to justify him having the opinions he already had. I'm fifty-three and I haven't arrived at a coherent world-view yet, whereas he seems to have been born with his and never found a single reason to question it. Don't like him.
John Leeming. Now him I like. Banged up in an alien POW camp during an interstellar war, he takes a lump of wood and a length of wire and scares his captors' high command into letting him go, and possibly ending the war. Of course, these days he wouldn't have time in between getting waterboarded or whatever the alien equivalent is, but the story ("Next Of Kin" by Eric Frank Russell, for new readers) was written in a gentler epoch which I miss very much.
Captain William Laurence. The sidekick to the hero in Naomi Novik's Hornblower-meets-Dragonflight "Temeraire" series. Unfortunately, I can't think of much to say about him. The books are enjoyable, but only the dragons tend to stick in the mind. Which is sad.
And finally, because I'm getting desperate, Londo Mollari from Babylon 5. When I first saw him and that hair, I was not optimistic about the series in general--he looked like a refugee from a less good Lost In Space episode. Just goes to show how wrong you can be. By the end--well. Best not, in case Debbie's reading.
And there we are.
Just when I thought the fundies couldn't sink any lower I found this in my local paper! An altar call at a funeral?!? I don't know why I'm surprised, IME, fundies will stop at nothing to see people make a "decision for Christ", even take advantage of people who are in shock and grieving for friends and family members. Come to think of it, the pastor at my parent's church was just that sort. I'm sure, he would've had an altar call at Dad's funeral it he thought he could get away with it. The utter callousness of this just sickens me, a decent person would NOT do this to someone who's grieving.
Just another reason I so glad I'm out of the baptist church!
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irateI've got six speakers (technics and other brands, all about 15 - 18 inches high, faux wood finish) out on the curb at 24 stickney ave, somerville. Also a stereo receiver (which may or may not work) in a box.
Free for the taking between now (wednesday) and tomorrow (thursday) around 9am, when the trash guys show up.
Not much going on right now. The weather has gotten a lot cooler (we hit 73 today) and I want it warmer!
S
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You may or may not be aware, but Alec Adams -- part of Tricky Pixie, heir to the musical legacy of Heather Alexander -- is currently in danger of losing his ranch. This would be sad. Luckily, Alex has a lot of friends and fans. This is very happy. Some of those friends and fans are incredible artists in their own right, who are trying to help raise money for the cause. And this is awesome.
Why do I bring this up? Because Vixy and Tony (aka, 'two of my favorite collaborators') and Mia of chimera_fancies (aka, 'the lady who makes the pendants that I keep writing all those damn songs about') have joined forces to bring you a special, one-of-a-kind charity auction. Namely:
A signed copy of Vixy and Tony's own Thirteen along with a custom Thirteen-inspired pendant.
The album is amazing. The pendant is gorgeous. The pimping is done.
And now we may rinse.
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bouncyAnswer: 21 October 2008
Question: When is misseli appearing on the game show Jeopardy!?
I've been very closed-mouthed about excitement in my life. I can now reveal the secret:misseli was chosen to appear on the game show Jeopardy!
I'm incredibly proud of her. She gets to show her broad and deep knowledge to all of the United States.
Her first broadcast will be show #5547 on 21 October 2008. It's a date that's also important to me, because... it's also my 38th birthday.
For obvious reasons, I may not say how well she did or how many shows she won (until after all of her shows are complete.) But, you can join her celebration...
We're throwing a party!
Where: Our house, at 8102 Merion Drive, Newark CA 94560.
When: 21 October 2008, starting at 6:00pm, watch the game at 7:00pm, and talk about the game, politics, computers, or anything else until about 10:00pm.
Who: Anyone who wants to congratulate Eli!
What: Your presence is far more important than any presents.
We'll provide food and drinks, but we welcome additions.
*bounce*bounce*bounce*
As the song says, "Life is unfair!"
It is SO unfair that I saw this eBay listing too late to bid on the SNAKE BROOCH.
But I *did* get a Cthulu octopus necklace. Sterling silver, it claims to be.
RESOLVED: I must not handle stress by surfing eBay. This has replaced handling stress by eating peanut butter crackers and/or "dietetic" snacks that weren't helping me lose weight. But still, it isn't gonna work long-term.
Short-term, it's a blast.
Look at THIS.
Brings back memories of the old Sun Rexall Drugs and the five-and-ten (that was what we had before Dollar stores.)
Who wouldn't want THESE?
Must . . . not . . . update . . . search . . . page
Expect me to be offline from tomorrow through late Monday or Tuesday. I might check email at some point (or not, given that cattitude new, small computer is not behaving), but almost certainly won't be looking at LJ or other web sites. Mom, roadnotes, adrian_turtle, if you urgently need us, Cattitude will be taking his cell phone with him. [I won't be taking mine, as the network it's on is US-only.]
Vet's is unattended from 7pm to 7am so leaving her there was not an option. I called my friends at Blue Ridge in Purcellville to find out what they thought of this whole situation, and the choices got even more muddy and grey than they were before. A lot depends on the blood values but the blood values won't be available until tomorrow. We have no idea how badly the organs have been damaged by the renal failure. We have no idea whether the stroke really messed her up neurologically. We have no idea whether the pneumonia is curable or not.
I was fully prepared to rush her to Purcellville and leave her there overnight for heroic measures, but frankly, until we know or have a good idea what kind of damage she's already suffered, we could be making things worse, or letting her die with strangers in a hospital rather than at home with her family.
Since I am unable to get a straight answer from Oreo, we brought her home and she is currently laying on Recalcitrant Child and being held and petted. She is responding to being petted, and even stood up to stretch. She even ate a tiny bit. All of these are good things.
If she's still with us tomorrow, we can see whether or not the other organs are in ok shape, then we can make the decision whether to continue on this way or let her go.
All of this was so sudden....
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anxiousYAY! We just got a call from the doctor (I finally paged him) and he called the radiology department (who hadn't sent anything to him or called him)--and they say the films look exactly like they did in March, so go ahead and take the steroids! She was so stunned that she hung up then . . . and then asked me what I thought that meant.
"It's good, of course! No spots or whatnot. Your lungs aren't perfect, and you still have COPD and asthma and thus some damage, but hey, they look okay!"
She just fell over with relief. Then she wanted me to start counting out those pills. She takes four pills twice a day today and tomorrow. That's a LOT of prednisone. But I told her, "First I'm gonna announce to my LJ posse. They are thinking of you!"
"Thank them for me!"
*whew*
Now, if she just gets to FEELING better. These infections are beasts. . . .
(And I just won an eBay auction for a replacement battery charger for our digital camera. Found this morning that the battery was zonked and the charger was nowhere to be found. Hope it's just the battery and not the camera! But anyhow, maybe I can actually take some photos again now. Not of ME, naturally. Maybe for a "Canyon Creek Daily Photo" blog.)
Thank you all!!
(Even the ones who are only now hearing about it. Thanks for reading.)
this moving from one room to the *next* has turned out to be such a freaking bear that if, in some distance time, some person says, "I love you, will you marry me?" my response is going to be, "Depends, can we live in my bedroom?"
my sympathies go out to all of you doing Much Bigger Moves this week.
well i was going for a 20-25 mile hilly bike ride, but what i got was 15 miles and a special bonus washing machine.
Trashpick from the Curb Goddess, of course. Looks to be a newer model than our somewhat broken one, and a front-loader, and only needs minor repairs. P came and got it in the box.
Mission writeup: beautiful late summer day, everything green and leafy, yellow sun glowing thru the trees. And that lmost-too-sensual feel of alternating warmth in the sunny patches and moist, cool air in the shade.
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happyso, I get the kids going this morning to go pick blueberries, as the season is nearly over. In fact, if it hadn't been for all that rain it would have been over last week,but some were still going. as we're finishing up there I get a phone call from farmer George that I can come and take as many seconds tomatoes as i want,and pick even more. I drop the blues at my house and go with Adira for toms. We acquire and pick approx. 120+# of super ripe farm tomatoes,many of them heritage ones. it's hot out in that field.
get home, gotta get hair cut and shopping done
Come home to sort and prep all those tomatoes. black parts cut out,anything icky,thrown into bags in the freezer. 40#+ were just dandy and will be prepped tomorrow for salsa making on Friday.
I still have to sort and clean the blues, get all those little stems off, etc....I can do that while watching TV tonight at least
An hour and forty-five minutes until I can go home. *sigh* I want to be knitting my socks. I want to be reading (I'm reading Victory of Eagles and meep! the trouble Lawrence and Temeraire are in!).
*checks clock*
An hour and thirty-six minutes now. *sigh*
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busyhm, since I seem to have knitted the past couple rows without errors (after cleaning up rather more botches than I thought I’d had that were just propagating unfixed), time to think about doing something real.
In other news, my anxiety feels like it’s ratcheting up again. Straight from a “down” to an “up”. *sigh*
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anxious Del Martin just died.
One of those minor personal heroes who I always just enjoyed the presence of in the world.
She looked pretty fragile at her (second) wedding celebration, some 72 days ago, so as I say, not a surprise. But nonetheless a moment in time.
(And I didn't at all know about her work for and with battered women. I just knew about Daughters of Bilitis and her work to get homosexuality off the list of mental disorders, and a few other things. Quite a lady.)
Memorial gifts in her memory, thank you Mactavish, can be sent to the No on 8 campaign. That's the campaign to help defeat the ballot referendum which'd repeal the marriage rights of gay citizens.
No change. None of we were expecting one really. I'm going to get her at the vet's this evening and bringing her home to likely die this evening. If she's still with us in the morning, I'll bring her back for more fluids. The vet has nobody there overnight so she would be unattended, which is why she's coming home tonight. We'll make her as comfortable as possible.
sadAnish "I put a giant bean in Chicago" Kapoor has a show at the ICA, which is going away on 7 September (a week from Sunday!). My crew will be going on the evening of Thursday 4 September, at which time it is free for the LAST TIME EVER.
Anyone who is in town (I'm looking at you, vvalkyri) should come out. We will gaze at art, reflect and be reflected upon, dine, drink, and affect novel affectations. SOs, IOs, Os of QS, all welcome.
Poll #1249215
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All
How many people are you bringing?
Would you like to be the guy in Chicago whose job is to polish the bean?
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