Shades of Grae

Star Wars boys are starting to torque me off

2010-11-24T21:53:00.000-08:00

Okay, when you're a girl and a fan of Sci-Fi, or any geek pursuit at all for that matter, you just need to get used to the fact that you're going to be spending a lot of time in a boys world. It doesn't matter what big box store you go to, the geek toys are in the "boys" section. The Star Wars t-shirts are in the "boys" clothing department, or $30 when boys shirts are $10 to $20. Almost everything collectible is going to be marketed towards boys/men. I've spent over 40 years on this planet and I understand how this works, and I was VERY happy to see so many people jumping on the support band wagon for Katie, a little girl that was bullied at school for having a Star Wars water bottle. Bonnie Burton wrote a wonderful blog post about it. Thousands of people, men and women, wrote comments and tweets and e-mails to show their support, that Star Wars was for EVERYBODY! YAY! They even made a Facebook event, to show Star Wars and Geek pride, on Dec 10.
So here I was, feeling pretty chuffed that maybe the world is actually becoming a better place, if even only in a small way. And then... I got an e-mail from the official Star Wars Shop. It proudly announced that for Black Friday I wouldn't only receive 25% off all items in-stock, but I would also (while supplies last) be sent a FREE Princess "Peek-a-Boo" pen!

It's a pen with a photo of Princess Leia from A New Hope, but when you tilt it, her dress slips off revealing her dressed in only the slave outfit from Return of the Jedi. Ummm. Yeah. Thanks. K, see... Star Wars? I love you. I do. But if you can't understand that not everybody that loves you is an immature 13 year old BOY, I just don't know how much more of this crap I can take. You need to understand that the objectification of women like this makes you just as guilty as the boys that told Katie that girls can't like Star Wars. I mean, like I said before, way up at the top of this post, I understand that as many girls are involved in geekdom, girls are still going to be treated as second class citizens. I don't like that, but I do understand that's the way it's going to continue to be for quite a while. But the first time I saw a pen like that was my first trip to Las Vegas. Now, sure, the girls in those pens wore a lot less than Leia does in yours, but still. Do you really think it's appropriate to be giving this away as a free extra? Please, PLEASE show a little more respect and maturity and maybe offer free stickers or some other cheap freebie?
I wasn't offended with the costume being used in the movie because it showed just how big of a slimey pile or worm ridden filth Jabba really was. As a pen, it completely disrespects Leia as a character, what she stood for, and undermines the entire concept of "Star Wars is for everyone".

Hell on Earth

2009-01-18T04:12:00.000-08:00

Click here to see Queen Rania on YouTube

A Christmas Star... wars...

2008-12-09T10:15:00.000-08:00

We're all fartin' rainbows now

2008-11-11T19:39:00.000-08:00

Of course you already know of the historic event that happened last tuesday. Yes, CNN used a hologram! No. No they didn't. It was a trick. No actual holograms were used in the broadcast. None. At all. Total lie. And this from a news organization.
Obviously being lied to by the "news" isn't historic or, ironically, new. The true historic event was the election of a black man to the office of the President of the United States. Because of which, the world is now a wonderful beautiful place with unicorns and fairies and everybody loves everybody and we're all going to get along all so fantastically because it's just MAGIC!
No. No we won't. Ever. At least not until Jesus returns and knocks this disc from the elephants back and the Great A'Tuin stops to look back and wonder what the hell is going on will we ever come together to make things work. And then it will be really, truly too late. Not even your luggage will save you then.
Those that lean to the right politically have not suddenly seen the error of their ways. Living in a very blue end of a red state, and having family members in completely red states, I have heard nothing positive about this election. People are either not talking at all, or telling extremely horrible jokes. My Niece, while trying to impress her father, said, "They call it the WHITEhouse for a reason, right dad?"
Now, more than any other time in our lives, we must be diligent. We must be strong. We must focus and make no misstep. Getting a minority in the Whitehouse was historic and a difficult task, but nowhere near as difficult as the next four years and beyond will be. There is no time for celebration. Only work.

11/11

2008-11-11T05:56:00.001-08:00

Gummi Bear Anatomy

2008-10-14T00:54:00.000-07:00

Stumbling across the internet today I found this:

You can get it at www.gelaskins.com for $15.00 U.S., which makes protective skins for iphones, ipods and laptops. They have a lot of other interesting designs, but I love the idea that a gummi bear would have a skeletal system and internal organs.

Wiccan Fish

2008-10-12T18:14:00.000-07:00

Elvira for President

2008-10-07T06:57:00.000-07:00

I love Tina Fey

2008-09-29T19:10:00.001-07:00

As much as I don't want Gov Palin to be a 72year McCains heartbeat away from being the president, I really would miss seeing Tina Fey play her.

777 point drop

2008-09-29T17:33:00.000-07:00

Hey... Remember when George Bush wanted to privatize social security and have people invest in the stock market? Hmmm..... I wonder if it really makes any difference now anyway.

Mr Potato Head

2008-09-17T01:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, the man that dared to say the fundamentals of our economy were strong on one of the worst days on wall street in history, has been credited with creating the Blackberry. That's right, that same man that can not operate a computer, and has no idea how to send an e-mail, some how created the most popular hand held electronic communication device in North America.
Check the link:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080916/ap_on_el_pr/mccain_blackberry

Okay, I'm going to try really hard to not talk politics anymore, but it's very difficult not to when they are just that stupid.

Sexism in Politics

2008-09-16T03:21:00.001-07:00

The witch is dead. Long live the witch.

2008-09-13T22:17:00.000-07:00

Usually the mood at work is pretty stressfull because our supervisor
over reacts and freaks out, yelling and swearing and throwing things
around. Last night she yelled at the wrong person. They got into it
for a while, both women ended up crying and our supervisor was sent
home. For a week. Maybe never to return.

Possible President Palin Pregnancy

2008-09-01T23:05:00.000-07:00

I really don't like to talk politics here, but this isn't about politics, it's about what I find interesting or funny. And I find this both interesting and funny.
Sarah Palin, little miss conservative republican substitute for Hilary to sway the female voters, has a 17 year old pregnant daughter! With strong rumors that her youngest son, Trig, is actually her daughters son, not hers! Can't wait for McCain to win, then die cuz he's so friggin' old, then have a woman who's only been the governor of Alaska for less than two years, and before that the mayor of a city with the population of 9000, with a unwed pregnant teenage daughter and a son that's possibly actually her grandson, to become the president. Yay!
Okay, you absolutely must know that I really don't give a crap about any of this. I just think it's hilarious that it's all happening in the so called religious conservative right wing camp.
I was actually a little disappointed that the McCain didn't choose Joe Lieberman to run as his VP, but only because then I could make a muppet joke about them... *cough* Statler and Waldorf *cough*

I'm so glad I don't want to be president and have my past thrown in my face. Wouldn't it be horrible if all job interviews were as intensely public as this?

Muppet Election

2008-08-23T06:48:00.000-07:00

Up until now I really just wanted the whole election over. So what's different now? Obama has announced his running mate! He's chosen to run with Senator Joe Biden. I am so happy about this that I have to run out and get a bumper sticker! Why? I'll tell you why! A bumper sticker for these two would say "Obama Biden 08"!! Now, there isn't a single person my age, or any muppet fan, that will be able to say "Obama Biden" without then saying, "Do do, duh do do!"
For those that don't have a clue what I'm talking about, look at this YouTube video and where ever he says "Mahna Mahna", say "Obama Biden" instead. I think I'll have to find a t-shirt for them as well!

Fighting Lions

2008-08-10T12:18:00.000-07:00

My parents are here to visit for the weekend. For those of you keeping score, this makes three times in the last six months. I love my parents and everything, but three times in six months? While the previous generations visits can be cause for stress, it is the next generation that saves me from it.

Last night before work I was reading the Yahoo Odd News and one of the headlines caught my attention enough that I read it aloud, "Mexican woman fights off attacking lion with machette".

People started saying things to the effect that that is indeed odd because lions don't live in Mexico, and other blah blah blah idiocy that could have been resolved by them simply letting me actually read the rest of the article, when from behind me comes a still small voice of absolute comic genius! It was little Nicholas, and he asked me quiet enough that only I could hear, "Where did the lion find a machette?"

Rule 1: Don't cross the streams!

2008-08-03T08:25:00.000-07:00

Okay, as far as I understand things, Vivendi Games was merged into Activision, which recently announced the list of games it was going to publish. The new Ghostbusters game wasn't on that list and somebody wrote a news article/blog post about it. That was picked up by a bunch of other "reporters" who then echoed it around the internet until the reverb could give you a headache.
Later, a spokesperson for the game, from Activision, said that the game is "NOT cancelled."
Pesimists still figured there was so much news of it being cancelled that surely it will not see the light of day.
Only thing is... check out the games site.
Now, it might just be me, but the logo for the distributer in the top left corner seems to be Activision. Why oh WHY would Activision go to the time and trouble of putting up a website for a Vivendi game that it's not going to publish??
If it really is cancelled, I will indeed be sad, but a more important issue for me is how can we trust the news on the internet? I mean, there are bloggers that want to be thought of as serious journalists, but the percieved need to have the news first seems to outweigh the need to have the news be correct! Simply reading a story that another blogger writes in a fit to be first, then echoing the details of the story without doing any of your own research is NOT good journalism. It's thought that if you read/hear something from more than one source, it has a better chance of being true. This is sadly not the case. Just because more details are difficult or even impossible to obtain about a story, doesn't mean you should just retell the same story! It was told already! If you simply want to point the story out to somebody, go ahead and do that. Publish a post with a link to the original post. Don't retell what the original post already said unless you have more information. Personal bloggers can blog about whatever crap they want, but those that would have us believe them to be credible news sources need to act like credible news sources. Verify the facts from those involved, NOT from other blogs!

Batman Arrested?

2008-07-22T23:38:00.000-07:00

This hit the news yesterday but instead of linking to the skanky entertainment magazine type websites, I'll link to an actual news site, the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jul/23/ukcrime.actionandadventure

Okay, let me say this nice and slow. Batman wasn't arrested. Batman is a fictitious character. Christian Bale, an actor, was arrested. He went in to the station voluntarily, gave his account of what happened and left without any charge being made against him by the police.
Now sure, it's ironic when somebody who is supposed to fight crime for a living ends up committing a crime. When somebody who acts like they fight crime in a movie, what is that? Ironic? Not exactly. Mr. Bale was also in The Prestige, where he fought the Wolverine and they both did magic tricks. It's ridiculous to carry an actors previous role into another movie they are in, and it's just as ridiculous to carry the actors role over into his actual life.

But now, what if it did? Let's get dorky:
1. If he was really the Dark Knight, he would have no sister and his mother would have died in a backstreet mugging that happened right before his eyes. Therefore, they wouldn't have been able to allege assault yesterday. Cuz they would either be dead or never existed in the first place.

2. If he was really the Dark Knight, he wouldn't be a good cop, he would be the guy that beats the crap out of somebody. Batman is a vigilante, not some boy scout *cough cough, superman, cough cough*. Holding him up to some sort of light is just stupid. He's not running around in the day hanging up wanted posters, he's the Dark Knight for hells sake!

3. Okay, at this point I've started to lose interest in my own post but didn't want to leave it with only 2 points. So if you have additional points, feel free to comment! Even if you don't, feel free to comment anyway. Like, say you're from Montreal, or the U.K, or anywhere else for that matter, and you look at my blog fairly regularly but don't comment, don't be shy! Introduce yourself and say hello!

Worldwide Weekend of Women

2008-07-14T22:18:00.000-07:00

Yahoo news has a feature called "Most recomended photos". This past weekend worth of photos are almost entirely about women from around the world, and shows how this world is no where near as small as we sometimes think it is. Here's the top 7.
All photos are between July 11th and 14th.

What level are you on?

2008-06-04T08:27:00.001-07:00

Like the penguins said,

2008-04-07T06:59:00.000-07:00

Grand Coulee Dam!!

Hoth Adventure!

2008-03-31T05:47:00.000-07:00

My eight year old son has a zillion little stubby Star Wars toys and he decided to write one of his stories down. He showed it to me and asked if he could make it into a little comic. I showed him the tools we had and helped him a little with a few of the fiddly bits, but for the absolute most part, this is all his! He used photoshop, bryce and comic life. (Click on the image for full size...)

Easter iPods

2008-03-23T16:20:00.000-07:00

Return to Dark Castle

2008-03-14T19:24:00.000-07:00

Many more years ago than I care to admit to, I played Dark Castle at my friends house on his old Mac Plus. Now, finally, we can Return to Dark Castle! Follow the link to either download a demo or purchase the full game.
Don't have a Mac? Well you can still visit their site and see just what you're missing, and have one more reason you need to switch. =)

Pac Man Jacket

2008-03-08T13:13:00.000-08:00

Here's some photos from a jacket I got way back in December. I got it because I thought it was cool, obviously, which makes me a dork, obviously. =) Something I found interesting though, is that when I wear it around town, I get positive comments from people of ALL ages. Old people recognize it and say how "neat" it is. Little kids at my sons school recognize it and say how cool it is. Actually they yelled really loud how cool they thought it was. You can have all your fancy dancy graphics and your blu-ray discs and all the other bleeding edge tech, but it seems you'll never be able to match the love given to the little yellow 8-bit dot and his (and her) 4 little coloured buddies.

note: that's not me in the photos, they are from the Hot Topic, where I got the jacket.

intellectual property

2008-03-04T09:36:00.000-08:00

“Over protecting intellectual property is as harmful as under protecting it. Culture is impossible without a rich public domain. Nothing today, likely nothing since we tamed fire, is genuinely new. Culture, like science and technology, grows by accretion, each new creator building on the works of those who came before. Over protection stifles the very creative forces it’s supposed to nurture.”

- Judge Alex Kozinski, Dissenting in the White v. Samsung Elec. Am., Inc., 989 F.2d 1512 (9th Cir. 1993) ruling.

Tabbed browsing in Firefox on iPod Touch

2008-02-26T21:03:00.000-08:00

So you've seen the iPod touch. And you've probably seen it hacked and all the cool programs you can run on it. Well here's Firefox running on an unhacked iPod Touch.

Okay, okay, it's not really running on the iPod, it's running on my MacBook. I'm just using a web based VNC to see my MacBook's screen. Pretty awesome. Something else that I thought was cool, is that I can use my iPod touch to take a photo with the camera on my MacBook, all without the people around the MacBook knowing they just got their photo taken. Pretty sneaky. =)

Bionic Commando

2008-02-24T04:31:00.000-08:00

Anybody else out there play this game back on the NES?
I was living in southern Alberta in Canada when the NES cost $99 in the U.S. for the action set. That gave you the console, the light gun and the combo cartridge of Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt. My mom was going down across the line to the nearest large city (not huge by any stretch of the imagination), Great Falls, Montana. I really don't remember if I either couldn't go for some reason, or just didn't want to, but I gave her the money and asked her to bring me back the NES action pack as well as another game. I had no clue what game I wanted, just told her to bring me back some action type game. When they got back later that day (yes, it was day trip close), she showed me what additional game I had gotten. Bionic Commando. At the time I had never heard of it and had no clue what to think. I just put it off to the side and gave my attention to Mario and Duck Hunt for the first while. When I finally decided to try out Bionic Commando I thought it was the coolest game I had ever seen up until then. And now they have updated it. You can play co-op with another bionic, as well as new weapons, not to mention the visual make-over. Announced for the PC, PS3 as well as the XBOX 360.
Check out the trailer:

it's going to be a dark night...

2008-01-19T03:13:00.000-08:00

Some men aren't looking for anything logical. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or nogotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

trailers here...

In the early morning hours before...

2008-01-15T06:20:00.001-08:00

Well it's been almost a week since my birthday. Last year I was upset that my wife waited until the last minute and then went to the grocery store and got me some chocolate bars and a can of cashews. This year I wish I had gotten that much. One of the things that saved the day last year was Steve's keynote address announcing the iPhone and giving more information about the AppleTV. Nothing like a good old fashioned reality distortion field to cure what ails you!

This year I got nothing at all from her and have had to wait a freaking week for the SteveNote!

It's 3 hours before the show starts and on one hand I'm excited about it. From an overall point of view it's always nice to see really great tech from the company you love, but... I dunno... maybe the events of the last couple weeks in my own life have got me too depressed to be too excited about anything at all. Pre-excited anyways. If true, video rentals through iTunes or AppleTV would be really really nice. Especially if they're HD. I dunno though. The rumors about an ultra thin MacBook don't get me too terribly excited, at least not without the help of Steve and his distortion field. I mean... I dunno. I think a larger tablet-ish ipod touch type of internet device... That could be cool... Okay, make a 7 to 10 inch iPod touch that can connect to a 3G speed service from a cell phone company that only charges $20 for unlimited service (basically what iPhone service costs, minus voice), and THEN I would get pretty excited. Unless of course it cost way too much. Otherwise, I suppose an affordable ultra portable MacBook that I could use a phone (like a blackberry) as a bluetooth modem, then THAT would be okay too... I dunno though... You never know what the keynote will give. If it gives me nothing... I suppose that's okay, because even though I'm putting my trust in it to pull me out of this gloominess, I do have a Plan B....

I've had an eye on this for a little while now...

only 200 miles more... again... and always...

2007-12-29T06:45:00.000-08:00

They say that I am crazy,
my life wasting on this road,
that time will find my dreams,
scattered dead and cold...

But I heard there is a light,
drawing me to reach an end,
and when I reach there, I'll turn back,
and you and I can begin again...

I've got 200 more miles of rain, asphalt and light,
before I sleep,
But there'll be no warm sheets or welcoming arms,
to fall into tonight...

I've got 200 more miles of pain, asphalt and blood,
before I sleep,
But I wouldn't trade all your golden tomorrows,
for one hour of this night...

Knight Industries 3000

2007-12-25T23:16:00.000-08:00

Love it, hate it, or completely indifferent about it, it makes little difference, NBC will be showing a new Knight Rider movie in February. I, being a child of the 80's, and a lover of tech, absolutely went wild over Knight Rider back when it originally aired. When it became available on iTunes, I bought the first episode, watched it, and realized that quite honestly, sometimes you just can't go home again. Knight Rider was a horrible, horrible show, but back when I only had 3 channels, the nearest video rental place was 25 miles away, and I was an impressionable 12 year old, it looked fantastic.
Well now the powers that be at NBC have decided that since the new Bionic Woman is doing so great, they've decided to do it again with Knight Rider. Only, there's a problem. The last model year for Trans Am was 2002 (so says wikipedia).
So what to do, what to do...
When it comes to cars, the question of which is the best has as many answers as there are people asked. I, however large my doubts about the television show, do think they made a nice choice for the new KITT.
The Ford Mustang Shelby GT500KR

If you would like to read more about this, including a feature comparison chart of 1982 vs 2007 KITT, or you just can't help but watch a car wreck as you drive past, you can check out an article over on the Popular Mechanics site.
Will the new show suck? Probably.
Will I watch it simply because I like the car? Probably, cuz, I'm a whore that way.

Santa?

2007-12-19T06:23:00.000-08:00

I don't usually actually lol at lolcats but this was an exception, maybe i'm too tired...

from icanhascheezburger.com

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-18T07:32:00.000-08:00

While you're out and about, rushing around, stressing over the holidays, consider this:

Happy Anniversary!

2007-12-16T08:11:00.000-08:00

Today, December 16, 2007, marks the 234th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.

The story is known all around the world and is said to have inspired many other activists and reform leaders. When Mahatma Gandhi met with the British viceroy in 1930 after the Indian salt protest campaign, Gandhi took some duty-free salt from his shawl and said, with a smile, that the salt was "to remind us of the famous Boston Tea Party."
Do you know who was involved in the Tea Party? A lot of people think it was the colonial settlers and businessmen against the British Government. Well, yes, and no. Ya know those bastards in the latest two Pirates of the Caribbean movies? The East India Trading Company? What do you suppose they were trading? Spices, sure... but on December 16, 1773, the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and The Beaver were sitting in the Boston harbor, carrying tea belonging to the East India Trading Company. Then, later that day, they weren't carrying it anymore. The harbor had it.

Now, you might be asking yourself, "What does Emily care about the Boston Tea Party or the American Revolution? Isn't she a Canadian?"
Well let me tell you. I was born and raised in Canada under Canadian law and a British constitution (until 1982). But I do not consider myself British, nor Canadian, except in describing my cultural background. I serve no man. I am FREE. And that, no matter where you are from, or where you live, or where you call home, makes you an American. I believe fervently in the words of the great Benjamin Franklin, as he wrote in Poor Richard's Almanack, "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor liberty to purchase power". Which some have refined and paraphrased into various forms such as "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Security, deserve neither Liberty nor Security." America is not a land. It is not a place that can be surrounded by a fence and patrolled by those that think they are the only ones worth it's freedoms. America is a conditional space surrounding the hearts and minds of all that consider themselves to be free. It is a pirate ship. And under that definition I am proud to call myself an American. Unfortunately, the political truth is far from the philosophical one, and sadly, the United States of America finds itself in a very sorry state of affairs indeed. Perhaps it's time for another revolution, or would you prefer instead to give our government, and corporations that find it's favour, the powers necessary to control us. While the "Pirates OTC" movies were fictional, they were based in fact, and unless we want our freedoms taken from us for good, and hanged for simply being free, we can do only one thing...

Yo ho, all together, hoist the colours high!

Heave ho, thieves and beggars, never shall we die!

Or to again paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, We can all hang out together, or we will surely hang separately.

the dress

2007-12-12T04:27:00.000-08:00

Rabbit ears?

2007-12-08T07:11:00.000-08:00

If you live in the United States and get your television for free over the air using rabbit ear or other type of antenna, you need to read this:
http://www.ntia.doc.gov/dtvcoupon/consumer.html
Starting January 1, 2008 (that's in a few weeks, boys and girls!) the U.S. government will give you up to 2 coupons good for $40 off the purchase price of a digital to analog signal converter. Plainly, the government is making the tv networks broadcast in a different frequency range, so they're changing their signals over to digital and you're going to need a converter box for your old tv to pick these up. If you use satellite or cable this won't (at least shouldn't) affect you.
If you don't feel like reading all that on the government website, the AP has a video that explains it all:
http://video.ap.org/v/Default.aspx?g=9c7231f6-ec8d-46fc-92c6-80d634f17c7b&partner=en-ap
Yeah, yeah, it's a long unwieldily one, quit complaining and just click on it and get educated. =)

Post Op Emily

2007-11-21T12:06:00.000-08:00

That's right, as of 11:20am Pacific time Emily the Grae is officially post op. The last few weeks have been very emotional. I've been to three different doctors, one of them twice. One of them a complete idiot and the last one that actually performed the surgery was an absolute cutie pie angel. Unfortunately, the surgery for which I'm post op of was dental surgery and not srs.
*sigh* oh well, maybe next time. As for today, I'm eating pudding and pasta and all manner of soft foods on the other side of my mouth. He apologized that I wouldn't be able to have Thanksgiving dinner, and I told him not to worry about it because I'm Canadian and we celebrate Thanksgiving in October. You know, as God intended. =) Today, however, is my 15th wedding anniversary and the whole surgery thing has put a slight damper on the day. She told me if I take her to a buffet at another time it would make up for it, and I can't say no to that!

writers strike

2007-11-19T22:16:00.000-08:00

I'd write a boat load about this and never be able to say it as well as this video from the Daily Show writers.

Guy Fawkes

2007-11-05T16:31:00.000-08:00

Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot...

Halloween 07

2007-11-01T05:10:00.001-07:00

Fedora:

iPod:

Linux installed on iPod:

I included a battery powered speaker and my actual iPod hidden inside and played music as we went Trick or Treating. =)

People would look at me and wonder how I was doing it, where was the music coming from?
One kid even asked me why the time progress bar wasn't moving. Uh, cuz it's made of paper dude!
It absolutely amazed me how many people I impressed with a stupid little cardboard box that I only spent an hour or so on. Even the cop that was patrolling the area stopped his car to check me out. ;)
For more Halloween 07 photos check out my flickr stream:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emilygrae/

and here's a little video my son took of my other son playing with my iPod costume:

Perfectionism

2007-10-31T00:01:00.000-07:00

As Major Thot said to Marion in Raiders of the Lost Ark, "Now, what shall we talk about?"
Looking at the local tv news there seems to be plenty to talk about. There was another shooting in downtown Spokane. And there's another republican, Richard Curtis, known for making anti-gay laws who admitted to having sex with a man while he was dressed in womens lingerie and then claimed he gave the other man money only for gas and not for the sex and the other man was blackmailing him (yeah I always make sure my extortionist has gas money). And there's the apparent outbreak of MRSA, the latest virus that the news is determined to freak us all out about. Or maybe you'd like to hear about the latest rounds of fairly large earthquakes to hit the north western United States.
Ya know what, while I could talk at length about any of those stories, all of them are a little too, I dunno... heavy? I mean, I need a news item that I can get behind. One that I can give my total and complete support!
How about "High School Cheerleader Trampled"? DING DING! We have a winner!!
On October 27, the Auburn (south of Seattle) Trojans homecoming princess decided during halftime that the banner they were holding just wasn't as perfect as it could be. So she ran out to fix it. Alas, so did the Trojans. She ended up okay, it seems she had practice being crashed into. Earlier that week, she also totaled her car.
Watch:

Christopher McCandless

2007-10-23T03:24:00.000-07:00

Today I feel impressed to talk about Christopher McCandless, or more to the point, how I was almost him. I'm not going to go over any of the details of his adventure, if you want to learn more of it check out the Wikipedia entry on him or read the book "Into the wild" by Jon Krakauer or watch the movie of the same name. Basically, if you don't know, after graduating from university he donated all his savings, $24,000, to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska, where he died of starvation out in the wild. Why?
Some say he went to live. Some say he went there to die. A map would have been easy for him to obtain before he went and yet he didn't take one. A lot of people in Alaska get angry when talking about him, saying he's no hero, just an idiot that didn't have to die. He was only 20 miles from the highway. Why did he die there then? Only he knows for certain his real reasons for doing what he did in the way he did them, but there is a very real "call of of the wild" that young people feel. Some of them take a year off of college and travel Europe to find their roots, or to just take a break before returning to the "real world" for the rest of their lives, or whatever. Some of them never go back.
I really think that the prospect of getting married, buying a house, having kids, or working 9 to 5 for the rest of ones life, or in other words "growing up", can put such an intolerable strain on a persons psyche that they crack a little under the pressure. Depending on how cracked they get, this can be something that is impossible to recover from. If they are lucky they go to Europe for the summer, or to the States if they're from Europe, or to anywhere else that they might have an emotional attachment to. Sometimes though it is more severe of a break from their norm. Some start to question the basis of their society entirely and may denounce their religion, their form of government, or even their family. Not all of them go to Alaska. Some of leave society but just don't go anywhere.
Not everyone that does this is doing it because they cracked under societies pressure though. Some of us hit young adulthood and start to question society and it's motives because it just doesn't make sense to us. We see the injustices of the world and refuse to sit back and let them happen. Some of us are lucky and make a difference to the world. Others, like me, aren't as lucky and wake up one day with the realization that for all of our efforts the only thing we've accomplished is to exhaust ourselves.
It was when I was very young when I started to try to make a difference. To get people to take better care of our planet, to care about others, to be more spiritual and less materialistic. Could I have done more? Probably, but I could have done a hell of a lot less too.
When I was close to graduating from high school I started thinking about what I was going to do with the rest of my life. Part of me had thoughts of moving away, losing touch with my family and getting a sex change. I knew if I were to have SRS my family would shun me so I would need to be far away from them to do it with any dignity at all. Another part of me wanted to move to Africa, or New Zealand, or even back to the UK where my ancestors where from. If I had been braver I might have done any one of those things. I wasn't though, and I didn't. I got a job and got married and had kids. But I never got over what some are now calling the "McCandless phenomena". While I fully understand and accept and absolutely love the responsibilities that I have for my wife and children, I feel no ties or obligation to society in general. Even today I talk to my wife about moving to the Yukon, if not Alaska. I'm paying off my debts so I owe as little as possible to anybody. I pay cash only as much as I can. That hurts my credit rating but I'm not certain that I care. I don't wear a watch because when I do wear one it feels like it's growing roots into my wrist, becoming a part of me, controlling not merely my actions but when I do them. I only have a cell phone to call my wife. It's pay as you go with no contract. My family and a few select friends can get a hold of me on it, but go ahead and ask one of them and they'll tell you that I almost never answer the phone, they must text message me if they really wanna talk.
I do find it a bit weird to wrap my head around though, that I'm sooo connected to the world with the internet all over the house, and yet it's mostly a one way connection. The world only comes into my space when I choose it. I live among you, hiding in plain site. On and of the planet, but not of or part of the world. I'm no hermit by any means, but I despise this system, this existence, this zoo, whatever you call it. Look up my username on google and you find it across the internet. But look for my real name, and you'll find I don't exist. And I like that.

Harold Vader

2007-10-15T02:14:00.000-07:00

My kids are Star Wars geeks (not quite sure where they got that from) and being inspired by Chad Vader and having recently inheriting my old camera, they came up with Harold Vader: Teenage Sith.
The video quality is a bit off. The reason I got a new camera in the first place was because the old one decided it didn't want to accept cassettes anymore, and would only record on a SD card. I gave it to my oldest son thinking he would make little films, but nothing this ambitious.

hmmpf...

2007-10-11T15:59:00.000-07:00

Select only ONE?? While I might not exactly be two genders, I'm at least one and a half!

Talk Like A Pirate Day

2007-09-19T06:19:00.000-07:00

September 19 is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Make certain that ye speak so, ya scurvy scum!
Need help do ye? Well thanks be to Monica, for she be on the ball this morning, the saucy wench, and has given up a link providing the clues to the day! How to talk like a pirate
If ye still need more, get yer ass to the wikipedia!

Google moon

2007-09-12T06:24:00.000-07:00

Google maps are great right?! They're everywhere, on my mac, on cell phones, on the new ipod touch, on my palm tx, on my sony psp! Everywhere you can use a browser you can explore our planet!
This morning I was showing my son that they also have versions for Mars as well as the Moon. Then on accident I found something. I centered on the the marker for the Apollo 11 landing, and zoomed in. Then zoomed in some more. Pretty much what I expected so far. On Google maps I can zoom in far enough to see the old van we used to have when they took the last sat pics of my house, and I figured maybe, not likely, but maybe I could zoom in to see the old lunar lander. Obviously not the part of it they took off in, but the piece they left behind. Well you can't. If you zoom in on the moon as far as you can, you see something quite different, CHEESE! Don't believe me? Try it!
http://www.google.com/moon/

500 years of women portrayed in art

2007-09-11T02:35:00.000-07:00

What the hell is wrong with me? Don't answer that...

2007-09-10T10:09:00.001-07:00

Does anybody else go on iTunes or where ever and buy more than one version of the same song??? I don't just mean studio and acoustic, but other artists with very different takes on it? I didn't really start to do this until iTunes was invented so I blame Steve. It's way to easy to type in the name of a song and be presented with extremely different versions of the same damn song. For one of the advertisements of LA Ink, the background music is "Dancing with Myself" performed by Novelle Vogue. I liked it and went to iTunes to find it. WELL. I also got the Generation X version which sounds at least Billie Idol-ish, AND the Laura Bell version which is kinduva... um... country?? kinda sorta?? It has fiddles anyway... LOL
ANYWAYS..........
Today I was looking on YouTube for "Hey There Delilah" by the Plain White T's, and the little daemons that control the internet showed me THIS......

um... maybe I could be convinced to buy an iPhone

2007-08-14T02:44:00.000-07:00

Okay, it's been just over a month since the iPhone has been available to the general public, and during that time I've watched the homebrew community perform it's magic. A lot of the work being done (or so it seems) is to crack the phone wide open so a person wouldn't need to deal with at&t, and could use any carrier they chose. I really don't care to much about that aspect of it. In my personal and humble view, all cell carriers are simply different sides of the same dice, so until Google gets it's hand on the 700MHz spectrum from the FCC and gives us all free access to the internet, I'm not going to worry too much over which one of them gets my business.
Mr Jobs broke my heart a little when he said at the last developer conference that (at the moment) any outside application development for the iPhone would need to be through Safari with java and ajax. Needing to do that, with the double whammy of no Flash, really turned me cold. Ya see, Steve's excuse for no support for directly writing programs for the iPhone was that it would make the phone insecure. Two reasons I don't believe that was the actual reason.
First: Locks only deter honest people. Anybody that wanted to do something nasty with an insecure iPhone would sooner or later be able to.

Second: An iPhone that runs Skype over a free wi-fi (like in down town Spokane, or apparently a lot of San Francisco) doesn't need a carrier. The insecurity Apple is referring to isn't MY security, but making certain that they and at&t are still needed after the initial purchase. Can't make a profit off me if I don't need an active account with them.

So then, what the heck could have happened to make me stop saying "no" and instead saying "maybe"?
In the last month, hackers with their own reasons, have cracked the iPhone open just enough of homebrewers to be able to do some very fun things. Some are more fun than others. iFuntastic is an app for intel macs that lets you change the appearance of the main page. Move the built in applications icons around, change the little at&t icon to whatever you want, that sort of thing. Then there's the fact that through Safari, meaning no hacks involved at all, you can run SKYPE on your iPhone. ( http://skypeforiphone.com ).
BUT, what has really turned my head, is a natively running NES emulator.

When you first run the program you select the game to play from a list of your games (roms), then after it starts up, you use the on screen controls to er... control the game! Too cool!
Sure, it's not the same as the tactile feedback you get from an actual controller, but being somebody that plays ms. pacman on my iPod, i think this would be way better.
If you wanna see it in action go to youtube and search for iphone nes. There's quite a few of them up there, quite cool indeed. For more info: http://code.google.com/p/iphonenes/
Another thing I didn't like about the iPhone that homebrewers have fixed is the inibility to access the file system. Now you can though. So it's great! =)
Now, does this mean I'm going to ditch the idea of getting the wonderful Helio Ocean? Nope. It just makes it less of a sure thing. If developers can get their apps running natively on the iPhone as they should have been able to do all along, it just might be worth it's expense. $500 for a phone? Not a chance. $500 for what a handheld mac? Maybe. The iPhone hasn't won my heart entirely, but it is pulling on it...

Why I'm not getting an iPhone part 3

2007-08-08T11:12:00.000-07:00

Apple just announced for immediate sale the third reason I'm not getting an iPhone. While I'm still planning on getting the Helio Ocean, all of electronic goodness budget is going towards a new 20inch aluminum enclosed iMac. I have the older 17inch one and it still works fine, but one of my sons keeps bothering me about getting him a pc so he can play windows games. He and my wife and my youngest son are using my older not-intel eMac. So, I figure if I get the new 20 inch for me, and hand down my perfectly good 17inch iMac which dual boots into windows xp, then everybodys happy!
Anyways, I went to CompUSA this morning to look at the macs they have, to see if I should save up longer and get the 24, or if the 20 inch one was good enough. The way I figure, a 20 inch with my additional 17inch viewsonic is WAY lots of screen real estate. While I was there, an older lady came up with a salesman. He did his best to lie, errr, talk her into getting the 20inch they were selling but she told him she didn't want to spend that much. So he told her a bunch of lies about how the 17inch didn't have this or that, which I knew it did. She stuck to her guns though. I really don't like getting involved with other people at computer stores because it never ends well. So today I didn't say anything. I stood by and watched. And got angry. And then I got Angry. And then I got ANGRY. But I didn't say anything and I feel horrible that I didn't. The older woman turned out to be a school teacher, and she ended up paying CompUSA $1139 for the 17inch iMac. He lied to her when she asked if she could get it cheaper online, "No, we're already giving you 5% off and you can't beat that." LIE. Apple has a special educational online store for teachers and students. But here's the real kicker, if she went to that educational store, for only $10 more, that is, $1149 with free shipping, in 3 to 5 days she could have had a brand new aluminum 20 inch iMac with twice the hard drive. *SIGH*
The 17inch iMac she got is a perfectly wonderful iMac with lots of life in it really. I know, I have that exact one now. It will give her years of service and she'll enjoy and be very happy with it. At least she'll be happy if she never finds out that she could have had the brand new model instead of the 2 year old model for virtually the same price.
I mean, sure, people buy a mac and then a month later Apple comes out with a faster/better looking/tastier version and that person goes on some forum and bitches about it and a lot of the time I reply to that post with how stupid they are for not doing their own research, but that's not what happened today. Today an older lady trusted a salesman in CompUSA and got lied to multiple times. I went and got my wife and told her we needed to get the hell out of there. When we got in the jeep she asked me why I was in such a hurry so I told her I was feeling sick to my stomach. I told her what was going on and she asked why i didn't get in the way and help the lady. I told my wife that I wanted to get between the older lady and the salesman and tell him that if he didn't stop his lies I would personally kick him in the nuts, but I was so upset that it would have come out as "Mmg Gkku kikk NUTS!" WHAMM! and that would have been bad. So anyway, here's a few rules that I follow about buying a new Mac.
1. Go to CompUSA to check it out in person, but only because the Apple store in Seattle is too far away.
2. NEVER talk to the guys in red shirts (or the white shirt and tie some of them have changed to)
3. Only LOOK. You're only there to see them in person, not purchase anything more expensive than a keyboard/mouse combo.
4. NEVER buy a Mac at CompUSA, ALWAYS buy it at the Apple store (online or otherwise) instead.
and the new rule I just added:
5. NEVER go to CompUSA the day after Apple announces new Macs. CompUSA will not have them, and you will just get upset watching them try to rip off people with their old stock.

Why I'm not getting an iPhone. Part 2

2007-07-30T08:35:00.001-07:00

For what I want and for what I need, the Helio Ocean is wonderful! Expandable memory, interchangeable battery, IM (aim/ichat, yahoo, msn), email (gmail, yahoo, etc.), AND not only does it have google maps, but it has gps so it can show you where you are in relation to where you wanna be. And STEREO bluetooth. Yep, the iPhone doesn't have stereo bluetooth, can you believe that? an iPod with bluetooth that isn't stereo?? Wtf? And oh, with full html browsing, the Helio Ocean connects at 3G speed. No crummy EDGE. Whoo Hoo!
You can read more about it at www.helio.com

Astonished

2007-07-27T07:15:00.000-07:00

At work last night a friend of mine asked if I had heard the latest thing being said about me going around. I had not, so she told it to me. First though, let me tell you if you don't know. At work I wear blue jeans and t-shirts. Sometimes it's a pink t-shirt, sometimes it has skulls and other ghastly things, sometimes it's the ghosts from pac-man but it's almost always a slightly larger t-shirt than my size. I also wear my hair in pigtails, heavy black eyeliner and mascara and usually a bandana worn over my hair to prevent it from accumulating too much paper dust. It's work, not a beauty pageant.
K, back to what my friend told me. There seems to have been a girl from another section that saw me and asked somebody from our section... are you ready for this? "Why does that girl dress like a boy?" Oh My Freaking Gosh! I couldn't believe it. I asked my friend to repeat it a few times to verify. Yep. Apparently there are people out there that upon seeing me don't see a boy dress as a girl, but a girl dressed as a boy. How oh HOW could this have happened??? I'll need to start wearing more girlish t-shirts now! =)

Apple announces new colour schemes for iPhones

2007-07-23T08:28:00.000-07:00

For those of you that read the title and asked, "Really??", the answer is, "No, not really."
Actually I got that photo from the always amazing ColorWare who are now (obviously) willing to paint your iPhone and all you have to do is pay them $150 (more if you want the logo, frame, button, headphones or dock painted as well)!! Or you can buy one straight from them after you visit their site and play with their customization page! That's what I did. Visited their page, not bought one. $150 is a little much for an already expensive little gadget, but smeg..... It certainly makes a drool worthy bit of techno that little bit more drool worthy.

Walking WIth Dinosaurs

2007-07-22T05:40:00.000-07:00

As far as I can tell from the "Tour" list of cities on their site, Walking With Dinosaurs is only going to be shown in 13 cities in the entire North America. And fortunately, Spokane was one of them. I have no idea how in the heck we were chosen to be one of them, but I'm most certainly happy that we were!

In case you don't know, Walking With Dinosaurs was a production for the BBC. Mixing computer generated images with live action it gave the movie Jurassic Park a run for it's money.
The stage production is just as much a mixture of art and science as the program that inspired it, and watching live sized realistic puppet-ish dinosaurs walking around with a human host "archaeologist" is quite amazing. The host not only tells the story but gives a good reference of how big these beasts truly were compared to our pathetic little selves. Being "puppets" (I'm not sure exactly what to call them, but some puppetry was involved), they aren't quite as able to show as graphic a tale as the computer generated ones, but these were in your face, not behind a tv screen, so it was still as impressive, just in it's own way.
My three boys (7 to 13) all loved it, as did I and my wife. Check out the link to their site above, then click on "tours" to see if they're coming to a city near you. As I said at the beginning, we were VERY lucky to have them stop here to show us their wonderful artistic science show!

If I were on the Simpsons

2007-07-17T04:01:00.000-07:00

If you are at all interested in the Simpsons then you already know about their impending movie. But did you know how cool it's website is? Joanna posted her Simpson avatar the other day and following her I'm posting mine.

Make one of yourself and your loved ones here!

RE:

2007-07-16T06:26:00.001-07:00

(Email Blogging Test)This is a test of mobile blogging by emailing it in from my phone.
---FORWARDED---

Why I'm not getting an iPhone

2007-07-11T07:58:00.001-07:00

That's right, I'm not going to get an iPhone. At least until I get one.
Right now, what the iPhone does is really cool, BUT, there's no way to expand it's memory capability, change it's battery easily, have access to it's file system and a host of other little but important to me things.
The phone I'm currently using is a crappy pay as you go phone from T-Mobile. I can't say anything bad about it really, it does exactly what it says it can do. Problem is, that's really not much. I can make phone calls and send sms messages and that is all.
Do I NEED one with a camera? No. Do I NEED one that can go online and show me wonderful things like Google maps? Not as such. But there are times I'm someplace and would like to know what restaurants are around, or where the nearest gas station is. Or how about this, if I have web access I can be out shopping and see a piece of shiny techno that I want, and I can look it up online right on my phone to see a review or more information about it. And I can check my mail and post to my blog from it. Basically it's almost the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy, and it would be very very cool to have an iPhone. But I'm probably not going to get one. There are lots of other phones that can do that stuff. Not as easily or wonderfully or glossy but it also doesn't cost $500.
Now, if I happen to obtain $500 that I don't need for something else and I haven't already found a phone/carrier that I like then sure, I might get one.
So okay, okay, I'm gonna get an iPhone. Just not today. Maybe when they come out with the iPhone nano... hmmm....

Utah trip

2007-06-25T22:41:00.000-07:00

My wife and I took our kids to northern Utah this last week. Why? Because it was forcast to be 100+ degrees F and sunny! Now what kinduva gothgirl would I be if I had let that opportunity slip? A HAPPY ONE! That's what!
Okay, now that I've got the "heat and sunlight is bad" outburst out of my system, here's the pics:
To get there from the Spokane area, we decided to go east on I-90 till it joined with I-15 and go south from there. Because Idaho is kinda sorta L shaped, we go from Washington into Idaho, Idaho into Montana, then south back into Idaho again and then finally into Utah.

I think this is still in Idaho:

This is someplace in Montana:

And this is back into Idaho:

And finally, Utah:

After a good nights sleep after all that driving, we went to the Thanksgiving Point Musuem of Ancient Life

Comparison between modern Great White (left) and prehistoric Megalodon (right)

Hey! Don't you love Army of Darkness?! Isn't your favourite part when the Deadites have to fight the undead mammoth?! Yeah, that's my favourite part too!

If you were making a fake rock for a paleontology display, would you make one look like a wanger?? Yeah, I probably would too.

There was this guy, right, and his name was Monte L. Bean. That's right, he was Mr. Bean. Anyways, he was some kinduva game hunter or something and donated a lot of money to the BYU so they would make a museum and name it after him. There's a lot of dead animals in there, and it's completely free and on a hot day it makes a nice quiet place to sit while you let the kids take the camera and take some photos. The thing is, when I told them we were going there, my 9 year old got visibly upset! I asked him what was wrong and he threw is arms in the air and proclaimed, "It's a BEAN museum!" Apparently the idea of spending an hour or two looking at legumes didn't appeal to him.

Our last day there we went to a small town for their Strawberry Days! Whoo Hoo!
I didn't feel like getting up early enough to hurry to go sit in the sun to watch a parade full of people I don't know. Instead we went at our own pace, drove up a street blocked by the cops and parked in some guys shady driveway to watch the last half of it.
The only reason I knew about the town in the first place, my parents used to
take my brothers and sisters and I to the Purple Turtle for milkshakes.

Fill in the blank: "Home of the free because of the ____"
You would think it would be "because of the brave" but I'm pretty sure it said "because of the thrifty republicans like us that will let you look at the tub of candy on the back of our float but not throw any of it out to you."

and to end, girls on top!

I dunno, I've seen cowgirls my entire life. Most of that life in Alberta, and I tell ya, cowgirls don't look like that. Those are NOT cowgirls. Those are Rodeo Queens. Cowgirls wear t-shirts and their boots and jeans are dirty. Rodeo Queens are girly girls that just like to be astride something with a wanger the size of their arm.
At least, that's what I've heard about them... *ahem*

ANYWAY, despite the heat, sunlight and resultant heat/sunstroke, the trip was a lot of fun. The ride home was pretty okay with no really bad weather or anything. Just a lot of wind. I'm glad to be back in Washington state with todays temp only getting up to 81degrees F. Not quite the 60 I prefer, but hey, it is the end of June for hecks sake!

Priorities

2007-06-13T06:36:00.000-07:00

While reading the science news on Yahoo! News this morning, I came across an absolutely lovely bit of wonderment. Jessica Gresko, a writer for the Associated Press reports, "An aging weather satellite crucial to accurate predictions on the intensity and path of hurricanes could fail at any moment and plans to launch a replacement have been pushed back seven years to 2016."
Hey, isn't that great?! It could fail at any moment, and we won't have a replacement for at least nine years. So if you live anywhere that a hurricane has ever hit, ever might hit or has ever even thought fancifully of hitting, the next nine years are going to be damned interesting.
Read the entire article here: news.yahoo.com
Back in January/07, David Leonhardt reported for the New York Times that the war in Iraq is costing us $1.2 Trillion. Trillion. With a "t". TRILLION.
Why are we spending that much money? Whether you believe them or not, they say it's to protect American lives. If that truly be the case, why in all of Gods green acres is it such a hardship to hand over a paltry $400 million to potentially protect the lives of the entire eastern seaboard? Without that satellite, writes Ms. Gresko, "the accuracy of 2 day forecasts could suffer by 10 percent, and 3 day forecasts by 16 percent, which could translate into miles of coastline and the difference between a city being evacuated or not."
Every single last damn time the government fails us I feel that it can't get any worse, and then it does.

They have the power to rebuild her better than she was before...

2007-06-08T03:47:00.000-07:00

A while ago, i dunno, a week or so, I saw an ad for the new Bionic Woman tv show. It was like a 15 second thing that really showed nothing. I thought hey, that could be cool if they don't screw it up. When I was a little boy (yes, I've known since then), I wanted to be the Bionic Woman. I also wanted to be Wonder Woman and a host of other fictional super heroines, but my point here is that I didn't want to be the Six Million Dollar Man, I wanted to be the Bionic Woman. I dunno why. I mean, sure she had bionic strength and bionic hearing and bionic bouncy hair, but her life was still pretty much not her own. The original version of the Bionic Woman (1976-1978), while not the worlds most perfect drama, was certainly not the tacky on purpose show that Linda Carters Wonder Woman was.

This new version seems to hold to that. I've just now seen the clips at NBC ( Click here! ) and it looks pretty damned good. Unlike the original there is no bionic boyfriend, and besides the strength and ear, she also has a bionic eye. More over, she has family problems and a lot of other dramatic elements to her story that I believe (and HOPE!) that this will make the show into one that I'll want to watch! I personally can't stand the "reality" crap that's been shoved at us, and at this point I really really don't mind them remaking the old classics as long as they remake them better than it was before. Better, stronger, faster. And maybe even kinda believable! SciFi done right, dammit!

At World's End

2007-05-28T08:15:00.000-07:00

Okay, let me makes one thing perfectly clear. I love Pirates of the Caribbean. If you don't like it, you probably aren't going to like any of them, but I could be wrong.
I personally don't like when critics say that they don't like it. It seems they just don't get the concept. If you go to rottentomatoes.com you see that the critics either LOVE it or they just really don't. So here's what you need to remember. The entire movie is based on a ride at an amusement park. And as such, it's a damned good time! Ya see, I don't go to the movie theatre to watch dramas, suspense, documentaries or anything even pretending to be educational or mind expanding. I pay way too much for my television programming so I can get my educational, mind expanding shows there. The action of not only watching a movie, but especially going to the theatre to watch it, is about escape. This is the kind of movie where it is obvious that it couldn't actually happen in real life. If i wanted real life I'd go outside. I didn't pay my money to go do what I can do for free. I want to be not only entertained, but I want to be shown a new world of wonder that can't be seen anywhere else. The third installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise delivers that to excess.
It is my own personal perfect summer popcorn movie. I remember going to live melodramas where you were encouraged to cheer the hero and boo and hiss and throw popcorn at the villain. POTC3 is exactly that. Anybody going to this movie expecting anything different just hasn't been paying attention. Go see this movie. Don't just go though, loosen up, dress up all piratey, buy some popcorn but smuggle your drinks in and HAVE A GOOD TIME DAMMIT! Life is already way too real. Enjoy times like this when you can. Life is way too short to walk around with a stick up your butt.

National Leader Idol

2007-04-23T03:52:00.000-07:00

K, here it is, watch 'em and vote for your favourite

First up, British Prime Minister, Tony Blair

Second, U.S. President George W. Bush
WARNING: Contains graphic imagery of war and it's effects.
But then, can you think of imagery or war that's not graphic?

Earth Day

2007-04-22T00:24:00.000-07:00

What can I possibly say to top Amy Poehler,
"April 22 is Earth Day, so SUCK IT NEPTUNE!"

Eddie Izzard

2007-04-18T00:30:00.000-07:00

My night off, I was about to put a dvd in and sit down to a lovely bowl of soup when Jay Leno announces his next guest. The absolutely most funny transvestite is going to be on and I almost missed it. So I sit and wait and out he comes and Jay, being the idiot he is, spends virtually the entire interview talking with Eddie about how to say things like aluminum! What a complete waste of time and talent. *sigh*

Walking With Dinosaurs, LIVE!

2007-04-14T08:48:00.000-07:00

The BBC made a tv series years ago called "Walking With Dinosaurs". Using computer graphics, they crafted a nature show about animals that have been extinct for millions of years. Over here it aired on the Discovery Channel, and spawned quite a few other series like it. Now, well, a while ago, they have made a live action version using puppets.
Actually I'm not sure that the word puppet puts the proper scale to it, seeing that they are pretty much life size. The show has toured Australia already for 10 sold out weeks, and now they are coming to North America. The first two venues are Tacoma, and SPOKANE!!! I really want to see this, so this is going to be our Christmas in July of sorts, being that the kids have to really behave to go! We found quite a few videos of it on YouTube, from people that saw the show in Australia. Everybody here is really excited about it, but there is one problem. Nobody wants to wait until July to see it!
http://www.dinosaurlive.com

R2-Video2

2007-04-10T22:41:00.000-07:00

So, who wants to be the first to give me $2500? Hmm? Anybody? Fine, I'll tell you what it's for. Ya see, there's a pretty much perfect 1/2 scale R2 I wanna get. It's not just a pretty decoration to place in the corner for me to dust every day, oh no! It's a frikkin entertainment center! Features include (deep breath) : projects video (2 meters diagonally) from built in dvd/cd player, video iPod using built in dock, vga in port, rca and s-video in ports; it has a memory card reader, a usb connection, integrated speakers, headphone jack, audio/video out ports, optical audio out, fm wireless transmission, plays R2 sounds and his lights flash! (well it would, wouldn't it!), and it's remote control looks like the Millennium Falcon. And oh yeah, with that control you can make R2 run around your house. It has sensors on it so it doesn't take a swandive down the stairs or bonk into anything. And if you wanna just lie in bed and watch stuff on the ceiling, go ahead! He reclines and projects the video straight up. So if you really wanna geek out, you can use R2 to watch all 6 videos of the star wars saga to celebrate it's 30th anniversary! Check it out at www.nikkor2d2.com and check out a video of it at www.gametrailers.com

R2-Post2

2007-04-02T21:38:00.000-07:00

Seeing that I work for the Postal Service and love Star Wars, you would think that I would have some insider knowledge on where they were going to put these little suckers, but nope, I had to find him all on my own. What's funny though is that I didn't go scouring the countryside for it, I found it accidentally. I took my family to the zoo in Portland and there he was, sitting peacefully right outside the zoo's gates. My brother is dieing to see one! hee hee!

Corner Gas_werewolves vs robots

2007-03-28T02:33:00.000-07:00

Small town Saskatchewan, corner gas station, interior (could just as well be exterior, but it's not, it's interior. So there =P )

Hank: I'm not saying robots would fight werewolves, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm just saying that if robots did fight werewolves, who'd win?"

Wanda: Fascinating. Done?

Hank: and werewolves have claws, robots can have claws. Ya know, in many ways, the werewolf is natures robot.

Wanda sighs: You're not done...

Brent: Well I think we can agree that when robots fight werewolves, we all win.

Wanda: Ya know Hank, maybe this isn't the right forum for your theories?

Brent: Yeah. You should maybe start a blog.

Wanda: I was gonna tell him to lie down on the highway and discuss it with speeding traffic, but a blog?

Hank: Yeah! A blog, it's short for weblog. Web because it's on the internet and log because ummmm...

Brent: They were originally printed on wood.

Hank: Right!

Wanda: Well then why waste this on us? When you can put it on the internet and have the whole world ignore it?

Hank: The whole world huh?

Brent: Yeah, you should go now. I mean, the world needs more Hank.

Hank gets a gleam in his eye and leaves determinedly.

Wanda laughs: Werewolves vs. robots! That's a whole new level of stupid!

Brent laughs: I know. Werewolves would trash robots.

Wanda: Are you crazy? Robots have lasers and rocket boots!

TMNT

2007-03-28T00:45:00.000-07:00

Went to see the new ninja turtle movie the other day. MUCH better than all the other ninja turtle movies combined. The story was pretty much a cartoon movie, nothing ground breaking or anything, but does one actually go to an animated movie looking for ground breaking story? NO, we go to see wonderful visuals. And on that, this movie is wonderful! Personally, I've started to look down on movies that use computer graphics to show off how realistic they can make computer graphics look, so I was pleased to see that the characters (human and otherwise) aren't designed to even pretend to be real. They live in an animated world and they love it. As it should be. BUT, while they most definately look and act like animated characters, they have a level of visual detail that is very realistic. Hit me a few times actually. One in particular was in a close up on Leonardo (blue mask, dual katana swords). It was in the rain, and as it the screen was filled with his eyes, you could see the water hitting, building up and running off his nose. Small detail, sure, but a detail that they would have killed to be able to do a few years ago. So, if you don't like ninja turtles, or animation, or understand (and therefore appreciate) the complexity actually involved in 3d animation, you're not going to enjoy this movie. But if you do, it is an absolute delight on all those levels.

patiently waiting for May

2007-03-12T18:35:00.000-07:00

At World's End

2007-03-12T18:02:00.000-07:00

Making Life Simple: resizing images

2007-02-19T02:33:00.000-08:00

Okay, at first, when your mother and sister and everybody else around that wasn't a geek got internet access, you thought to yourself, "It's about time these people got online! Now I can e-mail them and send them links to interesting things and photos of the kids and stuff so we call keep in touch!" But then... the sad realization. Your mother and sister and everybody else around you that wasn't a geek was now capable of e-mailing you and sending you links to what they thought were interesting things and photos of their kids and stuff they took with an 8megapixel camera the guy at bestbuy told them they needed.
While I like having my family e-mail me, I don't think I'm alone in saying that I can do without the forwarding of the security warnings of when Mars is going to be the size of the moon, or the ones that say if you forward them to 9 of your closest loved ones a Taco Bell dog will run across your screen, including the person that sent it to you in the first place, and if you don't they will know that you don't truly love them. What the hell kinduva cruel person are you? Who the hell doesn't want to see the Taco Bell dog run across their screen! Sheesh!
And I don't think I'm alone in saying that I can do without people sending me photos that for no reason at all are the native resolution they took them at. Sure, THEY might want it that big so it looks fantastic when they print it out, but I don't need a 2048 × 1536 photo of my niece helping put in a new septic tank. 320x240 is fine thanks. 640x480 at the most. THEN, if they send me something I really DO want the higher resolution of, I can e-mail them back and ASK them for it. As much as I'm a sucker for photos of family or even of people I don't even know at all, I don't want to wait 3 hours for my e-mail to download.

SO, what to do? Not much you can do about it other than try to explain to them that even though you don't know exactly how e-mail works, you're pretty sure that forwarding it isn't going to procure a Taco Bell dog. And you can try to tell them how to resize their photos. BUT. They're still going to send that crap to you to try to see that damn chihuahua, and ya know what, they don't have Photoshop. But ya really know what? You don't need Photoshop. Not for resizing photos for your e-mail anyway. K, this is a Mac alert, if you don't have a Mac, go to www.versiontracker.com and look for your own free solution, I only use windows in bootcamp to play games and while I'm sure it can do this, I don't need it to. As such, my non-photoshop resizing photos solutions are Mac only.

1. Photoshop.

Yes, I know I said you don't need photoshop, but if you have it anyway, you can go ahead and use it if you want a lot of control over the results. BUT, don't open the image and then do the whole menu-> image -> image size crap. Oh no. Especially if you don't want to alter your file, and need to create a new copy to alter first! Instead, open the image, and then use menu-> file ->save for web. This creates a new file for you and gives you all kinds of control over the resulting image, from format to image size to file compression. Loads of fun. Also expensive. If you NEED Photoshop, but not all the bells and whistles, go get a Wacom tablet. They're between $99 and $250 depending on the size you get, but you get a lot of free software, including Photoshop Elements 3. Not the most current version of Elements ( a lite version of photoshop) but it's plenty to start with, and you end up with a tablet!

2. Apple Mail.

If you use Mail, the e-mail client included in OS X(10.4 anyways), you simply add the photo as an attachment, then look at the bottom of the window where you'll find a menu that allows you to change the image size. This works, BUT it's only the unisex sizes of Small, Medium and Large. And doesn't allow you to compress them.
(see photo)

3. Automator.

One of my hero's, Nexy (hi Nexy!), blogged recently (Feb 7, 2007) about using Automator to resize your photos. She got it from MyMacBuzz. This makes you a nifty little finder plugin, so you can right click (control click) on a file which give you a contexual popup menu. Choose Automator, then Resize (or whatever you called it) and if you did it the way they said to, you get a little window asking the dimensions you want it resized to. Wonderful. Except, if you don't want to alter the original file, you need to alter their procedure a bit. Where they say in step 1, "An alert pops up warning you that you will lose your originals unless you add another action before Scale Images. Click Don’t Add."If you want automator to create a copy of your file instead of altering the original, go ahead and click "Add", then you can tell it where to put the copy, the desktop or the picture folder for example. While this is very quick and easy, it also doesn't compress the file, only changes it's resolution.

4. ImageWell

My favourite solution, ImageWell, is from XtraLean Software. First off, it's free. If you want a lot of fancy Xtra features, you can get those for an extra $14.95. Yep, 15 bucks. Now, it's not PhotoShop, but it's not pretending to be either. If all you want is a simple way to resize your photos, this is whatcha want. You run it, then go find a photo you want resized. You can use the finder and drag an image file onto it, or in ImageWell, you can click on the "More" button which gives you the option to open a file, paste an image that may be already on your clipboard, or (now this is cool), do the Nexy maneuver, Command (apple logo), shift, numeral 4. BUT, in ImageWell, you don't need to actually hit all of that, you just need to click on the button, either Grab Screen or Grab Screen Selection. The latter gives you the familar selection icon and loads your screen grab selection directly into Image Well. No need to go looking for the file. Clicking on Grab Screen makes ImageWell automatically get the hell out of the way before grabbing the screen. Then you hit the Image button and make your size AND/OR quality adjustments. Then you click on the "Send" button. SEND? Oh hell yeah, you can send your file to your iDisk, or over FTP, or to a folder of your chosing. Nifty!

Wait! You want to know what the image is going to look like before you actully save it? ImageWell can handle that. It even gives you very rudimentary editing capabilities. Not surprisingly, to do this you hit the "Edit" button. This opens up the editor, but if you don't want to do any changes, only check what it looks like, in the editor hit "Preview". Putting your mouse cursor over the top-left corner of your image gives you a popup control so you can change the size and quality and immediately see the results. The preview window has it's own Send button, so you don't need to go all the way back to the original ImageWell window to send it off. The time it took me to type this, or for you to read all of this, is about 8000% longer than the time it takes to actually do it, and I think probably made it sound a million% more complicated than it really is. Trust me, it's WAY easy.
So then, to review. If you have a Mac, and you need to resize an image to e-mail or put on your blog or whatever, get ImageWell for free. And if you need to a little more, batch resizing for example, pay $15 to the fine people and get the ImageWell Xtras. Go ahead and try the other ways if you like, except for PhotoShop they're all free.
If you have any other ideas or tips make sure you let me know!

I'm a Mac

2007-02-14T02:03:00.000-08:00

In case you have somehow missed it, I am, in deed, a Mac. ;)

substandard substation

2007-02-04T06:17:00.000-08:00

I've not been feeling my best lately, I think I caught Monica's nasty virus. Called in sick for two days which I'm hoping were the worst two. Last night was fun though. It started out with it's usual suckiness, and but got progressively better. Around 4:15am, the power went off at the plant. And it went off HARD. No back up generator or anything. After a moment the battery powered lights turned on, but there aren't many of them so it was still pretty dark in there. The supervisors thought it would be best if we all sat in the breakroom, so that's what we did. Wasn't allowed to leave until 5:30am when they finally figured out that it was the power co. and not the plant that had the problem. The power co. blew a substation near us so we weren't going to have power very quickly. Couldn't get anything out of the snack machines, well, legally anyway, so if it hadn't been for Summer playing text message tag with me I would have probably died of boredom! Thanks Summer! The power was still out when we left which was a little freaky, no lights on in the parking lot, but fortunately the prison next to us had power, so nobody in orange body suits were out running around in the snow.
The really sad news about this though is that I have to go to work two hours early tonight to make up for the lost "productivity". Joke's on them though, I haven't been productive at work for years! ;)

It's 2:00am, do you know where your local police force is?

2007-02-02T01:40:00.000-08:00

Something I miss from living in Canada is that if you were awake a 2:00am, which I am, you could still go out to Tim Hortons and get a fresh doughnut. or two. or twelve. Or if you were on a diet you could buy a box of Timbits, which are made of the doughnut holes which of course have no calories. A lot of people go all ga-ga over their coffee, but i don't care much for coffee. It's being able to go some place quiet and safe in the middle of the night that was nice for me... and as you can see in the photo, no where is safer than a Tim Hortons in the middle of the night!

Val, she's my gal!

2007-01-24T08:40:00.001-08:00

Just found this girl... she's fantastic, go to http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=valsartdiary and subscribe to her videos! She doesn't show you how to paint, but why she paints what she paints.

Army of Fun

2007-01-24T08:40:00.000-08:00

Thinking of joining the military? No, me neither...

MacWorld! Freakin' YEAH!

2007-01-10T05:00:00.000-08:00

The 9th of January is my birthday. I was going to go on and on about how wonderful it is when your wife goes out to buy your gift at the last possible minute, ends up at the grocery store, and returns with nothing but a couple candy bars, a can of cashews and that's all. But I've decided to not bring that up.
Instead, I've decided to talk today about the one guy that for the last (almost) decade now continues to give me a birthday gift that I absolutely love. Steve Jobs and the MacWorld Keynote. While I'm very excited about the new Apple TV set top box that streams media from your Mac/PC to your widescreen tv, I am ecstatic about the iPhone. After watching the live updates on the MacRumors site during the keynote, and especially after watching the keynote streaming over Quicktime, I've personally decided that while sure it's a phone, and sure it's an iPod, it does so much and has the potential to do so much more than was announced today, that it shouldn't be called the iPhone, but instead, the MacMicro. I mean, it uses OS X and everything, so why not? I'm not thrilled with their choice of providers, but... well, those types of things can be overcome. ;)
It's going to be nice to have all the features of a phone and my iPod combined into one device, and it's going to be wonderful to have a widescreen movie viewer, but for me, it's the complete actual non-wap internet access.
When i can go over to Seattle or wherever the hell I can get a signal, wi-fi or from cingular, I'll be able to look up Google maps, see where I am, get a map and directions to where ever the freaking hell I want to go. Sure my old phone kinda sorta almost did that, but this is actual google showing actual maps, where you can say "Hey Google, show me where I am, and then show me what restaurants are around, or the mall cuz I've never been in this city before, or whatever the hell else I might want or need to find, and then show me directions to it."
Or look up road conditions. Or look up the weather. Or check my yahoo or google mail, or any other possible web based or pop or imap mail I want to. Or look up any other possible web address that I could ever want to go to. For instance....
Where ever the hell I am, I can log into my blogger account, make a new post, take a photo with the 2 megapixel camera and upload that all to my blog from my phone. All while blogger thinks it's coming from my Mac or any other type of pc. If you've never tried to use what other phones try to tell you is the internet, you have no idea how wonderful this is. I have a PSP and a PalmTX that allows me to go kinda online but it's not as smooth as it should have been. I've had WAP phones that pretend to go online, allowing me to only go to stupid mobile web sites which, frankly, really really really really SUCK.
So, in case you haven't figured it out now, I'm really excited about the iPhone.
If you've only heard about it from the news or some place else, go see the keynote, right now!

Wolf Moon

2007-01-03T04:30:00.000-08:00

The farmers almanac has a wonderful page showing the exact times and dates of all the full moons of 2007. As well, they also have the names of those moons. If you didn't know, each full moon has a name, and January's moon is the Wolf moon, and happens this morning, Jan 3, at 8:57am EST.
Not only is Jan 3, 2007 the full Wolf moon, but it is also marks the arrival of the new Malandra!
I have only owned own laptop before, and she (well, her screen) died well before her time. Now, in the days before MacWorld on Jan 9 (my birthday!), I have thrown caution to the wind and bought a new Macbook. Usually, one would wait until after Macworld before making a purchase, however they just barely updated the specs on the Macbook and all the rumors are for other pieces of Apple loveliness to be announced, so I figured I was safe.
If you don't have a name for your Mac before it's arrival, it's named "Username's Computer". And it's hard drive is named "Macintosh Hard drive". I believe they name them this in an extreme effort to fill you with shame for not having a name all ready already. I usually try to name them something unique, describing what their purpose in life is instead of simply an identifier on the local network. I named my iMac "Lilly", which means "Belonging to the darkness". For the Macbook, I have chosen "Malandra", which in Portuguese is the feminine form of "mischief maker".
One might think that it would be easier to name a computer than a child or even a pet, but not for me. Not my Macs anyway. I do exhort a little effort in the naming of a windows based pc, but nowhere near as much as I do with my Macs. My pc's are machines that can be cannibalized to make or upgrade other pc's, but my Macs, well, to say they are like my children is a little much, but it's close.

Christmas Lights

2006-12-27T07:36:00.000-08:00

We usually drive around and look at the lights earlier in the season, but work really sucked my personal resources dry so we weren't able to get out until last night. It was rainy so the snow was very slushy but it was still good enough to get a few photos. Check out my flickr photos to see more.

More to the Story and Christmas Math

2006-12-15T08:04:00.000-08:00

Today at work (postal service in case you didn't know), there was a letter. It was a fairly non-descript letter, except that on the back there was a little paragraph. Sometimes people put impossible instructions on their mail, like "please hand cancel" or "Do not bend, photos enclosed", so I read the paragraph which turned out to be a little P.S. to whatever story was already told inside. Now people don't often do that, and even if they do, it's usually postcardish along the lines of "Say hi to Bob and Margaret" or whatever and you glance at it, process the letter and go about your business. But. BUT. This one was different. This one was VERY different. The little p.s. on the back of that letter said, and I'm paraphrasing here, "I don't like to smile very often because I don't have all of my teeth. I'll try to find a photo of me smiling for you." Whoa...
But it gets better! The handwritting looked girly so I looked at the return address to see if it was and yep, it was. I'm not going to tell you her name cuz it's none of your or my business really. At first I thought this poor girl had it bad, but then I saw where the letter was going and saw that her missing teeth were the least of her worries. It was addressed to a correctional institute. Ohhh boy. Can you say "Lifetime channel movie of the week"? I really hope things work out well for her.

Okay, here's a Christmas related math question (because I know you're dying for more math, right Monica?)

There are 12 candy canes, 15 chocolate kisses, 27 M&Ms and 7 walnuts in a bowl. You take 2 of the kisses and 1 of the candy canes. How many Christmas goodies do you have?

Christmas Games

2006-12-11T03:00:00.000-08:00

Okay, it's the time of year when everybody runs themselves ragged and stresses out and would probably be better off dead. So what better time to take a break and play a stupid little java game! And there's no better place to do that than miniclips.com. For Christmas related fun they have a special listing of wintery, Christmasy type games at http://www.miniclip.com/games/en/christmas.php
As with all things at miniclip.com, some of them are stupid, some of them are cool, depending entirely on your own personal tastes and wotknot. =) They have TONS of stuff to do there, not just Christmas, so i'm sure you'll find something to take your mind off your maxed out credit cards.

Lao Shu Ai Da Mi

2006-11-28T06:00:00.000-08:00

Of all the stats about my blog, the undisputed champion of why most people that don't even have half a clue who I am come here, it's a google search for the lyrics of the best song in the world. No, not "Tribute" by Tenacious D, but rather,
Lao Shu Ai Da Mi
aka Mouse Love Rice

When one day I hear your voice
I have some special feeling
Let me always think, I don't wanna forget you.
I remember every day,
You are always on my mind.
Even though I just can't think about you...

If one day in the future,
this love will become true.
I will never change my mind and will love you forever.
I don't care how fool it is,
I will let my dream come true.
I will tell you something I wanna let you know, I let you know...

CHORUS:

I love you, loving you, as the mouse loves the rice.
Even if every day has a storm, I will always by your side.
I miss you, missing you
I don't care how hard it is,
I just want you to be happy;
Everything, I do it for you

Okay, there you go, now load up iTunes, start up Lao Shu Ai Da Mi, and read along in English! Whoo Hoo! btw, i got the translation here...

mad world

2006-11-27T05:19:00.000-08:00

Finding it hard to distquish the point of being here, the purpose of the long run, with the immediate rush to instant gratification...

all around me are familiar faces,
worn out places, worn out faces...
bright and early for the daily races,
going nowhere, going nowhere...

I mean, especially with all the overtime i've been getting lately, all i seem to do is work, eat, sleep, you know, basic needs crap... then I over correct that and spend way too much time and/or money on things that don't really matter at all. I look at where I'm trying to go, and where I seem to actually be going, and I think I'm heading in the right direction but it's a stumble instead of a stride...

their tears are filling up their glasses,
no expression, no expression...
hide my head I wanna drown my sorrow,
no tomorrow, no tomorrow...

I buy video games for relaxation and software and hardware to do something spectacularly creative and then end up not playing the games, and rarely using the software and almost never using the hardware anywhere near it's, or my, potential...

and i find it kinda funny,
i find it kinda sad,
the dreams in which i'm dying
are the best i've ever had...

I know what I am able to do now, I know what I have done in the past, not only making do with what I've got, but using almost nothing to kick ass, but lately... i keep saying that, "lately"... but... one day you wake up and you're almost 40 and you've done almost nothing with any of your ideas... you look through the files on your computer and you see a photo you edited here, a video you composited there, but percentage wise, compared to what you SHOULD have done... you've done absolutely nothing...

i find it hard to tell you,
i find it hard to take,
when people run in circles
it's a very very...
mad world...

rhetorical quiz

2006-11-23T08:57:00.000-08:00

This is our crappy remote control. It actually works fine, it's just a plain jane little rc. Now, if you were sitting on my couch with that remote, the television is displaying the dvd player, or the xbox, or whatever, and you wanted to watch cable you would press the "tv/vcr" button right under the "9" button. If that didn't work, what would you try next?

A> press the "tv" button above the number "1" and then try "tv/vcr" again.
B> press the "tv/vcr" button repeatedly in vain.
C> in a whiney voice, call out for Emily to come fix the tv.
D> Try B and then when that doesn't work, try C.

Hint: It's A! If you don't wanna try A, go ahead and do B all day, just do NOT do C!

Aargghhh!

remembrance

2006-10-29T19:56:00.000-08:00

“Seeking to forget makes exile all the longer; the secret of redemption lies in remembrance.”

Naked Truth

2006-10-21T08:47:00.000-07:00

If you went to the link I left yesterday for the Dixie Chicks you may have noticed in the top right corner there was a photo and link to a new documentary coming out about the last three years of their lives, after they dared to have a negative opinion about the president. I can't wait to see it.
Now, wanna see something interesting?
Check out the poster for the documentary shown in the U.S.(top) and the (almost) same poster used in Canada (bottom). Interesting huh?

U.S. Version

Canadian (and presumably world) Version

Not ready

2006-10-20T18:04:00.000-07:00

"Forgive", sounds good
"Forget", I'm not sure I could
They say time heals everything
But I'm still waiting

I'm through with doubt
There's nothing left for me to figure out
I've paid a price
And I'll keep paying

I'm not ready to make nice
I'm not ready to back down
I'm still mad as hell and
I don't have time to go round and round and round
It's too late to make it right
I probably wouldn't if I could
'Cause I'm mad as hell
Can't bring myself to do what it is you think I should

I know you said
Can't you just get over it
It turned my whole world around
And... I kind of like it

blatently borrowed from the dixie chicks.

Self perception

2006-10-17T05:41:00.000-07:00

The woman that I feel I really am, what does she look like? The perceptions we have of who we are, how visual are they? One of the ways I used to look at being trans was, "Do I feel like a woman in jeans and a t-shirt, or only in a skirt?" This isn't even an issue for me anymore. Yes, I feel like a woman in jeans and a t-shirt. I feel like a woman when I'm all sweaty and sore after working 11 hours. I feel like a woman when I wear my big leather jacket and I didn't have time to shower or even shave. but. and I mean BUT! Do I feel like a woman when I don't wear eyeliner? Well, okay, yes, BUT!!! Why does something as stupid as eyeliner make me feel more like a woman? I'm thinking it's probably because it's the way the media and therefore society (or is it the otherway around) makes us feel. Even my wife doesn't like going to freakin' walmart without a little makeup. Dove started a campaign quite a while ago, to promote beauty through self-esteem first, and Joanna posted a video produced by them showing the extensive process (stylists, make-up artists, photoshop) that a woman goes through for an advertising campaign. It starts with a woman getting her hair and make-up done, then her photo taken, then that photo extensively photoshopped and those results on a billboard with two young girls walking by looking up at it. I think it's so interesting that I'm going to embed it here as well.

Star Wars Lego

2006-10-08T07:16:00.000-07:00

No, I don't mean Lego Star Wars, I mean freakin' near life size Han frozen in carbonite! Where the hell did he get that many dark grey lego pieces?
And in case you're wondering, yes, the deeper level (such as it was) of my last post is indeed an anomaly and while my personal life will continue to be riddled with the shotgun blast that is despair, my blog, being an extension of my pysche, will continue to appear on the surface as mostly fluff. Last post, Gwen wanted me to explain what I was talking about with specifics and I'm like... um, no thanks. You're not gonna get it outta me that easily Gwen! Let me just say that any of you doom and gloomers out there, waiting for the apocalypse, sorry, you missed it. What we are living in now is it's aftermath. Enjoy! Go out and get a supersized (even if they don't call it that anymore, you can still get it) big mac, coke and fries. Don't worry about international corporations destroying the planet, it's already gone dammit! The world is destroyed, the matrix has crashed, our dead bodies still connected to it physically suspended in the hairgel goop that makes our cocoons, our undead minds still fed fleeting images of pseudality from the continuously looping short circuit that refuses to allow the computers to reboot us...
To you is it movement, or is it action? Is it contact or just reaction?
And you, revolution, or just resistance? Is it living, or just existance?

It's not easy being grae

2006-10-04T07:15:00.000-07:00

While ol' Kermit would try to tell you it's not easy being green, it's easier than being different. Blending into the background is something I need to make an effort to accomplish. It's not because I'm super gorgeous or talented or anything positive, cuz i'm not. It's because I'm too different from everybody else. While it's sometimes difficult to remain different for my own sake, and yet still be unnoticed by the average townsfolk, there is a real physical danger and not just a threat from the perpetually-ready-to-form-a-lynch-mob holier-than-thou's. Anyone that is, or has ever been different than the status quo in anyway whatsoever, will know this is true.

"When you are different from the mainstream, they will try to either convert or destroy you. The very best that we can hope for is to be prepared when they come for us. To do nothing and let them destroy you (or convert you to their ways, which can be the same thing), is suicide. To destroy them as pre-emptively 'defending yourself' is murder. When they come for me I will be ready, and send as many of the bastards to hell as I possibly can."
-nNovembre

To be different can be difficult, and can even be hazardous to your health, but to not think for yourself and allow others, even mob-rule, to make your decisions for you destroys your soul, and you are nothing more than a member of the hive, and your name will be "3,743,561,902 of ~6,000,000,000".
Personally I'd rather be known by my true name, Emily the Grae.

She loves rock and roll

2006-09-22T06:36:00.000-07:00

Today is the birthday of one of the most influential people in my life. No, not one of my parents. No, not one of my siblings. No, not a church or community leader, or even a teacher (though I was lucky enough to have a couple of those). Through my impressionable and confusing teenage years she taught me how to stand when I didn't think I could even kneel. She taught me that being different should be celebrated, by at least myself if not by anybody else. She taught me to hold fast to my values, even if they might not be what most people value. She didn't just teach me these things, she lead by example. And in doing this, she kicks much ass. =)
I don't really care if you think we're strange, we ain't gonna change!
Happy Birthday Joan!

damn dirty apes!

2006-09-20T05:41:00.000-07:00

Who wants to play dress up?

2006-09-19T04:21:00.000-07:00

Bored, so I finally checked out yahoo's the 9, and number eight was Meez.com. Kinda fun for a little while, as far as dress up dolls go.

preventative maintenance

2006-09-11T05:57:00.000-07:00

Ya know what happens when you work over 10 hours a day (sometimes 12), six days a week? You spontanously combust. Yep. It's a fact. So to prevent that, I took saturday off and went out with a couple friends. We had WAY lots of fun! I met them at their house and got changed to go out. We decided we would black out, so I took a few things and had T help me decide what I should wear. I ended up wearing a long black skirt with over the knee black and grey striped socks, with a black t-shirt with a push-up bra thing going, and topped the whole thing off with my huge leather jacket and big chunk heeled shoes. I had on more eyeliner than should be allowed ever, but went pretty light on everything else. First we went to this kinda uppity snooty type place so that only lasted one drink. Oh, by the way, I don't drink. Ever. Like Bela Lugosi said, "I never drink... wine." So I had pepsi and water all night. When I told people at work about the evening I skip the snooty bar and go straight to Raw, a sushi bar. That was... well it was. I can take or leave sushi really, but the whole experience and atmosphere of the place made it more than the food. They did have a really good curry chicken stew.
Next up we walked down to a fan-smegging-tastic place called Ellas Supper Club. That was really cool. It is a nice enough place that it could be snooty if it wanted to, but it's so relaxed and charming that even I felt comfortable there. The food was really good and so was the live three piece jazz band. Not to mention the black and white movies they project onto the wall of the building across the street. If you ever go, get the cheesecake. =)
After that we walked around downtown a bit, then met up with another girl from work and her sister and her sisters boyfriend at an alternative dance club. Boys dancing with boys, boys with girls, girls with girls, and trans with undecided. I only got hit on three times. When a girl at work asked me "Why only three times?" I responded, "We got there late." ;) It was a lot of fun. I don't dance, but T made me dance with her a little and that was pretty damn fun. I'd take my wife if she wouldn't get freaked out about it. *sigh* oh well. After the club closed we hung around on the street corner for a bit, said goodbye to J and her crew and then headed for home. It was an absolutely fantastic time that I wish I could do more often!

Join me, it is the only way...

2006-08-17T09:37:00.000-07:00

Okay I've fallen for the darkside... Wait, I was already on the darkside. Let me restate that. Okay, I've fallen for the even darkerside! Yep, I have finally been sucked into the world that is Second Life. My first day there I did pretty much nothing but learn the very very very basic commands. Day two I went over to Siobhans SL place, which is fantastic, and not only was she was there but a gracious hostess and showed me around the place, then we sat and chatted a bit. Fantastic! Day three I went on a wee bit of walkabout and found:

This is the gallery at Siobhans. The works on the wall, and others you can't see, are for sale. :)

Now what gothish girl wouldn't feel right at home in a dark castle? Well... me for one. It looks cool, but I prefer something a little smaller. I say that now anyway...

This is almost my flavour. While I am glad to see the snow, I prefer endless fields of it, not mountains and trees. I love the full moon though. And hey, check out the wings. Why the heck do I have such a thing for wings? The feathered ones are cool, but I wouldn't say no to some leathery bat/dragon type!

I have a few more pics on flickr if you wanna check them out!

or are you?

2006-08-10T02:39:00.000-07:00

Would you know if you were one, or would you need them to tell you?

So neener neener!

2006-08-06T05:37:00.000-07:00

Incase you don't know, or don't remember, or don't care, I work for the U.S. Postal Service. And it's a real picnic, just, no sandwiches... damn...
Last night I was told by a supervisor (not my supervisor though) that I shouldn't be allowed to wear the t-shirt that I was wearing because the graphic was too provocative. Well, I looked down at my shirt, looked back at him, laughed and said, "Well it's pretty damned funny then that the the character on my shirt is also featured on her very own currently issued DAMN POSTAGE STAMP!"
Now, everybody looks. Some people smile and give thumbs up. Some people drool. But nobody tells me I shouldn't wear it.
I'm sure you're wondering what slutty image could have possibly found itself on any item of my clothing.

Here's the stamp...

Here's the shirt...

btw, if you wanna purchase either that sheet of stamps or the t-shirt, click on the image. Or for the stamps you can also try your luck at the actual post office. Hurry though, cuz they've been out since July 20th, and i've seen very very few of them which means people (me included) are buying them just to keep and not use.

TMNT

2006-07-31T16:15:00.000-07:00

In theatres March 30, 2007 Can't wait!