Trifling Ideas

Complete with snackbar!

2008-06-05T19:26:00.000-07:00

Tip of the halo to PZ.

Alright, already...

2008-05-07T15:41:00.000-07:00

So, I'm playing in a game of Scion, (a tabletop RPG in which the players portray the children of various gods from various mythologies) and for laughs, I ripped off Rich Berlew's brilliant webcomic, the Order of the Stick. (Click images to enlarge).

It started with the need to illustrate the mysterious cause of an explosion:

After that, a title page ensued:

From left to right, they are: Toni, daughter of Ptah; Sabina, daughter of Ares; Violet, daughter of Baron Samedi; Ray, son of Raijin and Mick, son of Poseidon. Oh, and Mick's faithful companion Daxter.

Most recently, and perhaps best of all, was the explanation of Poseidon's potency:

St00pd Numb3rs and other random things.

2008-05-06T20:48:00.001-07:00

So, here I am watching Numb3rs, and frickin' Larry busts out with Pascal's Wager. If you're not familiar with it, here's a nice example:

Really? That's your argument? *facepalm*

I shoulda expected it from him, metaphysical monk-loving wackjob that he is.

It's just annoying:

1) P's W assumes a single deity, and ignores the fact that there are a multitude of often opposing religions.

2) P's W assumes that god (or whatever) is too retarded to detect cynical insincerity.

3) P's W forgets that you do loose things, albeit to varying degrees, in any given religion. Time, logic, rationality, self determination, free will, a sense of personal freedom... and much, much more.

Damn it, if you're gonna make an argument, at least make a new one. Fail.

Yes... expecting originality from the t.v... I know. Silly me.

No, but really...

The boss is on vacation this week, so I'm super tired. Finally have a day off tomorrow, which I will use to rest and shoot things, maybe actually explore Liberty City.

Also, coming up next month, the bestest birthday outing evar: a great new exhibit is opening at the Exploratorium on my birthday! Win.

Iron Underwear and Inoperable Shrapnel

2008-05-01T22:51:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: I have not read any of the Iron Man comics. I just saw the movie. Once. I'm bound to get some things wrong.

Well, I saw the movie Iron Man, and all in all, it was good. I saw it with friends and I liked it.

So:

Start with one immensely spoiled, emotionally undeveloped man-child. Torture him for a couple of months and make him rely on his own know-how to escape. Cook at 450 degrees for fourty-five minutes... oh, wait, that last bit is for my frozen pizza. Anyhow, presto-chango, insta-super-hero.

Oh, and there's shrapnel in his heart, or near his heart. Or something. The fellow who explains it isn't very clear. Something about the itsy-bitsy bits of metal worming their way into in important organs i.e. Tony Stark's heart. So, instead of removing said pieces of metal, some guy, we'll call him Bob-o, constructs an elaborate electro-magnet hooked up to a car battery to keep the killer metal shards from going further into his chest. Now, I may be wrong, but it seems to be that if you just, I dunno, used a stronger magnet, you could just suck all that nasty killer junk right out. And yeah, that would have some problems too, but I doubt it would be more invasive than, oh, I don't know... a giant metal-lined cylindrical cavity carved into the man's chest.

So, now having been on the receiving end of his own weapons, Stark decides to reconsider the whole Merchant of Death job. He runs up against some trouble selling the new peace-sort-of-liking image to the rest of Stark Industries. While being pushed out of the company's daily business, Stark goes to make an unexpected appearance at a Disney-Benefit-for-Orphaned-Firefighting-Puppies (or something) and finally notices that his assistant, Pepper Potts is female... Finally paying attention to her, because she has her hair down and is wearing a backless dress. Obviously, a female can't be an interesting person unless she is also scantily clad.

Despite these things, I really enjoied the movie. It was visually interesting, the CG integrating (to my untrained eye at least) almost seamlessly with the real-life acting. The timing, comedic and otherwise was so good as to seem almost lyrical and it wasn't cut short, which is often a problem with good movies... they end to soon. I enjoyed every minute of it, really, (save for the bits I missed due to my tiny bladder). And I recommend staying through the credits. Really.

I mean it.

Book meme of doom...

2008-04-26T22:25:00.000-07:00

So it's going around: "the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users." So what I've read is in bold, what I've started, but never finished is in italics:

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury tales
The Historian: a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New world
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible: a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States: 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake: a novel
Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics: a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

--

In other news, I've got some new things up on Zazzle! Go look.

And while we're on the subject of cats...

2008-02-27T09:31:00.000-08:00

An interesting thing happened last week, as our new six month old kitty began to aclimate herself to our home.

Of all her toys, her favorite is a poofy bunch of feathers on a line and stick; she loves chasing it and when she does finally catch is, she likes to carry it around the house before returning it to you for more play. On one such occation, she happened to walk by the window while holding the feather-toy. Lo and behold, a scrub jay appeared in our yard! Amazing! Enthralled, she crouched in the window, toy still dangling from her mouth, while the jay hopped about our yard. Finally he left and Tara aparently lost interest. Or so it seemed. We went back to playing, but the next time she caught the toy, she made a b-line to the window and stared intently out. She repeated this behavior several times, twitching her tail and holding herself as if at any moment, that jay would appear, called once again by her talismen of Bird Summoning. That's right! Within a matter of moments, my cat had developed a superstition!

Now, I know this sort of thing has been observed in pigeons, but it's interesting to see it yourself.

She kept up this ritual for several days. Now, though, she has given up on her talismin, either forgetting it, or realizing in her little kitty brain that the birds will come whether or not she prompts them with her lucky charm. This, then, demonstrated two things:

1) Cats can develop unfounded superstitions.

2) My cat is smarter than 83.1 % of Americans, because upon failure of her unfounded belief, she promptly gave it up.

No Evidence

2008-02-15T17:18:00.000-08:00

And while we're on the subject of Lolcats:

moar humorous pics

Felis silvestris catus

2008-02-15T14:22:00.000-08:00

Too braindead to say clever things now. Maybe because...

My new cat ate my brains!

Meet Tara (pronounced 'Terra'). This classy kitty enjoys carrying her feather toys around the house, riding on shoulders, and trying to nurse on fuzzy blankets. Also, cruizin' in her sandcrawler.

Actual posts will occur soon...

It's Still Alive...

2008-01-22T19:21:00.000-08:00

(Cloverfield spoilers)

So, I saw Cloverfield the other day, and I am pleased to announce that it was really damn cool. I was worried that the hand-cam style would be jarring, but instead I found it an intersting technique to put the viewer right there with the characters, not really knowing what's going on, not quite being able to see certain things. One thing that's left unanswered is what, exactly, the monster is. Don't get me wrong, they show the whole thing, but the origin is an unknown. Despite the "thing falling in the ocean" that can be seen, I'm of the opinion that it's not an alien. Looking at the viral stuff, it looks like the falling thing was probably the Tagruato satelite.

My theroy is that the Cloverfield monster is actually a giant mutant fish, of all things. Some sort of deep sea dragonfish, like a viperfish, to be more exact. It's mostly the face that makes me think of that: the air-sacks on the side of the thing's head seem to resemble modified gills. Plus, the beady forward-facing eyes along with it's massive teeth.... yeah. That could also be the origin of it having six limbs rather than four.

In any case, the movie was cool. The viral marketing is fun, and J.J. Abrams is still really creative. Plus, in movie form, his ideas don't have time to peter out like his T.V. series seem to do.

So, yes, please do see it. Much with the cool.

WWWWOOOAAAAHHHHMMM!!

2008-01-04T20:11:00.000-08:00

That was the sound that woke me up at around 5 in the morning, accompanied by an astonishingly bright red-magenta light shining through my window, despite the fact that my blinds were closed. The sound repeated itself twice more, the light white the second time and back to magenta-red the third. Alien? Ball lightening? The Invisible Pink Unicorn's Holy visitation?

Okay, it was just a power breaker or transformer of some sort arcing as a storm-blown tree fell into it. Lightening? I wondered. But what would make that noise? Fireworks, asked Aaron. It was the roommate that pegged it... he'd seen it before.

I reflected how this sort of thing could easily spark a more vivid and uneducated imagination, though. If it had coupled with, say, sleep paralysis, (something I experience in the warmer months) I can easily see it being a truly terrifying experience.

The thing is I'm certain that, once conscious, I'd never jump to the conclusion that it was aliens, or any other pseudo-scientific weird-ass phenomenon. Why? Well, something like that is just as likely in my mind as, say, leprechauns.

Which leads me to wonder why? How is it I am able to make a rational guess until I can learn the answer, while other people are immediately inclined to interpret things in extraordinarily unrealistic ways?

I don't know.

And maybe there's my answer. I'm okay with 'I don't know.' Admitting a lack of knowledge is more honest than any half-brained assertion, no matter how hopeful.

Alright, enough with my rainy-day musings. Good night.

Belated Happy New Year

2008-01-03T11:27:00.000-08:00

So, I haven't posted for some time, because... *drumroll*

...I moved! I love, love, love my new place. It's huge, two stories and has a DISHWASHER! W00t!

So that's why I haven't posted. Sorry. I resolve to to better this year, Honest!

The Truth about Santa

2007-12-09T22:39:00.000-08:00

(tip of the santa-hat to PZ Myers)

I can haz rest now?

2007-12-08T09:33:00.000-08:00

I'm moving! Yay! But no time to post. Boss Lady is out of town so I get to run the store. Whee. Working 8 days in a row is good times. Yeah. And packing. And our stupid landlord wants to show the apartment WHILE WE'RE STILL IN IT.

Stupid retail holiday and crap. This about says it all: (don't play in a public area)

Suck it, Jesus!

2007-11-29T20:31:00.000-08:00

Just a quick blurb tonight. I was never a big watcher of Kathy Griffin until she pissed off the Catholic League during her Emmy speech. Her new special on Bravo recaps the event and is quite funny. Here's a commercial:

500

2007-11-28T10:43:00.000-08:00

Aparently, I'm the 500th person to join the Atheist blogroll! Wooooo! Praises be unto FSM, IPU and Father Squidmas! Now this means that I actually have to post more than twice a month if I can help it. No more slacking off. Honest.

And now, without further ado:

What I Don't Understand About the Birth of the Zombie Son of Sky Wizard

2007-11-08T20:05:00.000-08:00

or

Letter to a Christian Shopper

(Apologies to Sam Harris.)

All of the canned Christmas music at the mall got me thinking, and I realized that there's a bit of your mythos that I don't understand (aside from all the other things like woman-hating, injustice, and ritual cannibalism). So, here's the scenario as I understand it:

An invisible wizard in the sky creates the world and aardvarks and people and jam. He is omnipotent and omniscient and supposedly benevolent, yet he decides to plant a forbidden apple tree on Man's front lawn. Man eats an apple, and Sky Wizard gets pissed and evicts him. Man goes on to live in other places, but every man who dies goes to H-E-double-hockey-sticks eternal torture. Sky Wizard, even though he's purportedly omniscient, somehow didn't see this coming. "Sorry," he says. "I'd really like to help, but my omnipotent hands are tied."

Fast forward to the dawn of the common era.

Sky Wizard finally decides he'd like to correct his monumental blunder. And while he's omnipotent, and could presumably snap his celestial fingers, he figures he'd rather add in some more torture and suffering. (Since he's omniscient, he's already a big Mel Gibson fan). So he has magical-not-sex with some poor young woman and gets her pregnant, and she doesn't even have the decency to name the baby Emanuel. Bummer for the prophets, but easier to fit on a bumper sticker. So the sole purpose of this kid is to suffer a whole lot, die, then beat up Satan (who, by the way, Sky Wizard also created and presumably never had free will, so can be assumed to be an extension of Sky Wizard) and then come back to life after being corpsified for a couple of days. So the boy grows up, and gets tortured, and tortured and killed all to do what Sky Wizard could have done by wiggling his magical nose, what with him being omnipotent and all.

Now I know one of your common arguments is somehow that "humanity needed to see it done like that." Yeah, that worked out really well: over a millennium of rampant anti-semitism, oppression and, well, those crusades were just super-nifty. And don't try playing the "free will" card. If Sky Wizard is omniscient, he'd have seen it seen it coming. (Except that then he's have missed out on Mel). So after needlessly torturing and killing his son, Sky Wizard resets the rules: now you can be as bad as you want as long as you like Jesus and feel sorry about whatever it was you did sometime before you die, and if you're good, but don't like Jesus, you get to be tortured eternally anyway. Sky Wizard sees this as an improvement.

And you celebrate the beginning of this torture cycle with obnoxious music and lying to children.

No, I won't wish you a merry Christmas.

Zazzle

2007-10-28T13:33:00.000-07:00

Put up a couple of new things on my Zazzle page. A couple of Portal shirts and some photos that I posted here earlier. Lookie:

make custom gifts at Zazzle

Past Life = Aboriginal Watchmaking Bookworm!

2007-10-26T16:05:00.000-07:00

PZ got it from Bronze Dog who got it from Randi. Now I have to play with the silly woo-woo machine.

Your past life diagnosis:
I don't know how you feel about it, but you were female in your last earthly incarnation.You were born somewhere in the territory of modern West Australia around the year 1325. Your profession was that of a jeweler or watch-maker.

Hm, an aboriginal watchmaker. I must have made them out of kangaroo bones, crocodile teeth and shiny pebbles! Of Course!

Your brief psychological profile in your past life: Inquisitive, inventive,
you liked to get to the very bottom of things and to rummage in books.
Talent for drama, natural born actor.

Primitive aboriginal books. Made out of pressed koala ears!

The lesson that your last past life brought to your present incarnation:
There is an invisible connection between the material and the spiritual
world. Your lesson is to search, find and use this magical bridge.
Do you remember now?

Mmmm, yes, and it will take me to Imaginationland where I get to meet Popeye, Glinda, Jesus and Morpheus! W00t!

Sad, tired, typing

2007-10-19T21:47:00.000-07:00

Haven't written anything for a bit. Not much in the mood now, either.

Boss broke her foot, so I had to run the store for three weeks. I'm tired.

My dog died. He lived with my mom since I moved out, but he was always my puppy. He was old, and had diabetes and kidney issues, and today they had him euthanized.

I'm a sad Jen.

Pictures from Work (please don't fire me!)

2007-09-25T13:43:00.000-07:00

My boss's baby and my boss's other baby's baby. (below and above)

Vivi (above) and Thanhthanh (below) posing in the store.

More Lovely Bodega

2007-09-25T13:31:00.000-07:00

Lovely Bodega

2007-09-25T13:23:00.001-07:00

Pictures of Things in my Backyard

2007-09-25T13:15:00.001-07:00

Survivor: Nutcase

2007-09-20T21:14:00.000-07:00

I want to gouge my eye out with a chopstick.

For lack of anything else on the TV, I'm watching Survivor: China. In the beginning of the episode, the soon-to-be castaways are greeted at a temple and are asked to participate in a non-worship ceremony of welcoming. One of these mammals is a "christian radio host" and halfway through, she walks out, all miffed and upset. Quoth the deluded mammal: "You know, I'm not a religious person, but I have a relationship with Jesus Christ."

Holy mother of fucking ouch.

Pardon me while I lapse into a coma.

Yarr, it be talk like a pirate day

2007-09-19T22:55:00.000-07:00

Aye, it do indeed be talk like a pirate day. I wore me best pirate-themed getup, but yar, there were no others to enjoy the festivities with me. The mall were dead as a doornail, and not-a-one were doin' his part to decrease global warming. Scallywags.

On the Subject of gods (an anti-theistic rant with some naughty words)

2007-09-18T20:01:00.000-07:00

Recently, in a conversation with my mother, she assured me that she really, truly believes/has faith in her religion "Orthodox" Christianity. I made dismissive remarks, but I rarely feel like I can accurately express myself on the spot. So here goes.

First off, the name is a dead giveaway that these people (albeit like almost every other religious group) believes themselves to be the ONLY right-thinking group there is. Period.

They believe in the Abrahamic god and identify him as a trinity. Three gods for the price of one, I guess. They of course have had (and in some places such as Serbia/Kosovo, continue to have) violent conflict with the Catholics of which the main issue is over just exactly how these three personalities interact. There are of course other socio-political tensions, but that's not what I'm on about at the moment.

As far as I can tell, the "orthodox" christian church teaches that the bible is more or less true. This, of course, is silly in its own right, since this collection of primitive stories, among other things, insists that the earth is flat and held up on four pillars (1 Chr 16:30, Ps 93:1, Ps 96:10, 1 Sam 2:8, Job 9:6).

Of course, the Old Testament is rife with all sorts of evils, oftener than not perpetrated by the god character himself. This sick, meglomanical, vindictive character is certainly no sort of deity I'd ever worship. Even in the extremely, EXTREMELY, infinitely unlikely event that he did exist, there would be no way I would ever revere or worship such a evil and cruel figure as that.

But point out the evils of the OT all you like, and you're likely to get a comment to the tune of "Oh, that doesn't count. When Jesus was born, he fulfills some such and brought about a new covenant. All that other stuff doesn't count." Why read the OT at all then, if it doesn't count any more? What, the good stuff still counts, but you get to pretend the bad stuff never happened. Like god's prolonged fucking with Job, or Abraham's attempted murder or god drowning everything because he didn't like how his stuff turned out, even the fluffiest of kittens and koalas and little adorable bumbling hedgehogs (but not the things that could swim, due to a Divine loophole...), or the "just and righteous" Lot offering to kick out his daughters to be gang-raped by an angry mob, or killing everyone in Sodom and Gomorrah- even women and children and babies, or turning Lot's poor wife into a pillar of salt(!) because she looked back at the ruination of her home behind her, or all the innocent Egyptian children (especially since this god "hardened Pharaoh's heart" i.e. usurped his free will, so he could go on with all the killing), et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But no, they say this god-son-of-himself gets them free taksies backsies, so there, neener neener.

Okay...:

This Jesus fellow says that looking at a woman and feeling lust is committing adultery and that if your eyes commits offence, that you should pluck it out. He says that he comes to turn families against themselves. He threatens punishment of cities that he says "shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city." (And you remember what he did to them). He says that he speaks in parables in order to confuse people so they will go to Hell. He also says that nonbelievers will go to Hell, no ifs, ands or buts. (John 3:36, and that means me). Not to mention the ritual cannibalism (that the Orthodox and Catholics believe is REAL. Foolish [trust me, it tastes like wine-soaked bread, not blood soaked long pork], but ICK!) Also, in the NT: Homosexuals must die, murmurers are destroyed, people who "know not god" will be destroyed in fire. He totally approves of the flood and says things to come will be worse. Not to mention the loads of passages of being washed by his blood.

And, of course with all the others, Jesus doesn't care about women. (And don't go saying "it was a different time" Treating people as chattel is wrong. One would think that an omniscient being would be a little more, well, enlightened.) He says to leave your wife and family and you'll receive a heavenly reward, he also says his pa will make it awfully hard on pregnant and nursing women in the end days. And males are born holy, but not females. Oh, and "the natural use" of a woman is a sex object for men. (I should mention that females are not allowed in the alter area of the Orthodox church, lest they defile it with their woman-ness. Seriously. If you don't have a penis and testicles and a y-chromosome, you're impure and unworthy? Fuckers.) It's no secret, Paul reeeeeally hates women. From him we have that it is better not to touch women, but to avoid fornication, every man oughta have a wife. We're also supposed to be silent and obedient, he says. Husbands are supposed to be the head of the wife. Wives are supposed to submit. We're supposed to dress modestly, and not braid our hair, or wear gold or pearls. In the end, says the New Testament, "silly women" who are "ever learning" will be "led away with diver's lusts" (whatever that means). Peter says that Lot (remember him? He offered his daughters to be raped by a mob and later impregnated them himself) was a "righteous man."

And then of course there is the bad acid trip that is Revelations. Seriously. This is the work or drugs, a deranged mind, or both.

So that's what the Bible has to say. What about the specific teachings of the Orthodox church? Well, for starters it says that all souls will be reunites with their resurrected bodies. It doesn't allow for cremation. I guess if you were cremated or died in a fire, or if you were eaten by bears, no body for you. On the flip-side, it has a nicer version of Hell, being simply a metaphor for the inability to comprehend god's glory or some such. Let me be the first to say fine with me: I have better things to do than contemplate how durn kewl the insecure, vindictive, evil man-god is.

Of course, it almost goes without saying, I don't believe any of it and I see no reason why I should.

I could go on, but it's late and I'm sleepy. I'll post pics from my trip to Santa Cruz within the next couple of days.

-A silly, ever-learning woman

Brother Brigstocke's Traveling Secular Salvation Show

2007-09-16T10:49:00.000-07:00

This is good stuff. Seriously... okay, this is a stand-up comedian, so with wit and sarcasm as well, but If you don't understand what it means that I'm an atheist, (or if you think you do understand, Mom, Dad,) this might help clue you in.

Start with this:

And then follow up with this:

Last Night, Tomorrow, and the Next Two Days

2007-09-15T21:33:00.000-07:00

Saw Lewis Black last night at the LBC (a.k.a Wells Fargo Center for the Arts) on his Red, White and Screwed tour. It was fuckin' awesome. I laughed so hard I thought I might pee. If you don't know who Black is, here's a clip:

Tomorrow, Scion.

Monday, we're going to drive down to Santa Cruz for a romantic two-day getaway in the woods.

Gonatus onyx

2007-09-08T22:26:00.000-07:00

Freakin' beautiful.

Good part's about two minutes in.

For more information, check out Pharyngula.

August Post

2007-08-31T18:48:00.000-07:00

'Cause I can't bear to leave the blog blank for a month. Let's see, I should say something.

I'm sad there's no Dr Who this week. I likes me the Time Lordy goodness.

I'm watcing Stargate SG1.

I'm hungry. I'm thinking: pizza.

Vacation

2007-07-17T18:53:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back from my vacation to Philadelpha/New York/DC and I had a fabulous time! We flew out Monday and setteled in. Tuesday rolled around and we were up pright and early to the historic distrect to see Independance Hall, the Liberty Bell and the Mint. All were crouded, but emensly enjoyable. The humidity was oppressive, but indoor areas were all thankfully air conditioned. My bag was searched more times than I care to count, but it was great nonetheless. I'll post pictures here when I have time to convert the file type.

Tuesday evening we drove up to brooklyn via the mindlessly boring Jersey Turnpike. For your informaton, when someone says "underground music scene" they really mean it. Underneath Union Hall was a little bar and not much more than a nook with benches along the walls. Nevertheless, the performances by the Petersons and Jonathan Coulton were wonderfully fun and humerous. Coulton even hopped in on one of the Peterson's songs, a cover of Take On Me.

Fabulous.

Happy Independance Day. :)

2007-07-03T22:47:00.001-07:00

Ah, yes, hooray for exploding goodies. As Apu said, "celebrate the birth of your country by blowing up a small part of it."

And hooray for waxing patriotic. I could go on and on, but never so eloquently as so many others before me. And that's usually not enough to stop me, but I'm enjoying my freedom to be lazy, so there.

Instead, watch this. This is my kind of patriotism:

Point and Click

2007-06-29T13:51:00.000-07:00

So last month we went to Bodega Bay for no reason in particular. It was beautiful and the weather was perfect. Windy, but warm. We had lunch at the Sandpiper, a nice little restaraunt looking out accross the harbor that we eat at whenever we're in the area. After that, we drove around the bay and up to Bodega Head. The wind at the top of the head was a force to be reckoned with, but as we made our way down the arguably perilous dirt path to the beach, it subsided somewhat, giving way to a more comfortable breeze. To my delight, the beach was strewn with tiny blue jellyfish. These by-the-wind sailors, Velella velella, are usually found on the open sea, but were aparently blown to shore by high winds. Littered in a line of glimmering blue, they were quite lovely, if somewhat morbid in thier dead-ness.

In other news, we finally got the tickets for our East Coast vacation and for the Blue Man Group's Off Broadway show, "Tubes." Hooray!

Stupid Frickin' Politics....

2007-06-27T10:54:00.001-07:00

So, since I don't have my head burried entirely in sand, I've heard a growing buzz as of late concerning one mister Ron Paul.

He's a different sort of candidate, at least somewhat. He's got strong statements... very Libertarian-y. He definately stands out of the horde of rich white Republicans. He's also a rich white guy, but he knows how to use this series of tubes to his advantage.

So I finally decided to look him up online and see where he's going with all of this. His website lists these as his key issues.

Debt and Taxes (lower taxes=good)
This is pretty standard Republican fare, as far as I know. Sounds fine to me. I like money.

Border Security and Immigration Reform (giant fence=good)
I don't know... Obviously imigration laws need some working on. It depends on exactly how it's done. I don't know about the fence thing. Hm.

American Independance and Sovreginty (UN=bad)
I don't know what I ought to, probably, about the politics surrounding the United Nations. I'll reserve any opinions on this until I've learned more.

Privace and Personal Liberty (Spying on citizens without a warrent=bad)
No argument there. Sounds fine. And if you're gonna do it, don't get caught. ;)

War and Forign Policy (War in Iraq=bad)
Hm.

Property Rights and Eminent Domain (Kicking people out of thier house=bad)
I like not being kicked out of my house too.

Life and Liberty (Abortions=bad/State's call)
His answer on this seems pretty sound. He's taken a strongly anti-abortion personal stance, but at the same time distinctly says it is the pervue of the State, not Federal goverment.

Here's what he doesn't tell you on his website. It frightens me, a little. I'll be the first to say that it's a private company's private call what if any religion they acknowledge with thier greetings/merchandise/whatever on thier private property. So long at they'll hire anyone without reguard to religion/race/whatever, what do I care? I can shop there, or not. And this is America, so I can bitch about it all I want. But the moment the government allows the Ten Commandments to be paid for and displayed by my tax dollars... well, it's just not acceptable. I'm truely frightened when I think on the fact that the President's Daddy doesn't consider me (despite the fact that I was born here and some of my ancestors date back to the Mayflower or the Ice Age's land bridge) to be a real American.

Shudder.

So, Ron Paul: so close, and yet so far.

When, oh, when will I have a candidate that supports Freedom From Imaginary Friends?

Yo Ho Ho...

2007-05-30T10:57:00.000-07:00

...and a bottle of rum, or something.

So I saw Pirates last night. Three hours of rolicking adventure on the high sea, sword fighting and licking of strange objects. Three hours.

It starts with a hanging. A half dosen pirates and associates at a time, while the fellow presiding over the affair reads rights that have been repealed. Thanks, Disney, for that lame sort political commentary, but it didn't jive with the rest of the film. And I realize that they are trying to set up the pirates as the protagonists. I do. But really, I don't care how many singing children they hang, I can't bring myself to feel sorry for pirates as a whole. All geeky refrences aside, a pirate is a person who steals money and goods from honest hardworking people. The government it working to stop them? Good! Stoping criminals is their friggin' job.

That being said I continued to sympathise with Swan and Turner as that main protagonists. The movie continued along the themes of betrayel, vengance and becoming that which you revile. Everyone has double-crossed everyone else by this point, and interaction is laced with mistrust. If only pirates were better at communication.

The film continues the tradition of gritty, filthy and vibrant tapestry of setting that we have come to expect of the franchise. It also follows in the earlier movie's footsteps of taking the previous film's antagonist and making him a sort of sympathetic character. That's right, Captain Cthulhu not only has a love intrest, but he has moved from big bad monster to a sort of oceanic Charon. Or maybe Naglfar. His beau is the spot-faced Tia Dalma also known as the (arguably powerful) goddess Calypso. She gets released from her human form and responds by growing to epic heights before creating a giant swirly to punish everyone involved.

Here's how I figure they got in a fight in the first place: D.J. is pissed because he knows Calypso cheated on him with Jack. He knows this because she gave him crabs which she in turn got from Sparrow. Think about it, really. Crabs were the main motif of the movie. That's why everyone's in such a bad mood: they're itchy.

All in all, I ejoyed the movie. All three hours of it.

Three friggin' hours.

Plague Ridden Vermin

2007-05-21T10:42:00.000-07:00

There's a rat on my balcony.

He's small and brown and keeps running back and forth. He used to come for the birdseed that fell from the feeders, but they're not stocked, there's no seed. He's just hanging out.

I might be more amused if it were a squirrel. Something about a bushy tail makes the whole thing more adorable. Nekkid tail, not so much.

Before anyone gets the wrong idea about my apartment complex, let me assuage your fears: my apartments are clean and lovely, near the foot of Fountaingrove hill area. It's a lovely, small complex with trees and a community vegitable garden and a creek that runs at the edge of the large yard. Most of the folks here have bird feeders and that's what the rats come for, scampering up the lush, green trees. Stupid rats.

I've got a sore throat.
Maybe it's the Plague.
Urk.

Blast from the Past

2007-05-15T18:04:00.000-07:00

Nothing makes you feel better than seeing former classmates that have all gone to hell.

Yeah, I'm mean. And a little bit hypocritical; I'm sure there are plenty of folks from the Ranch that are better off than I. Nevertheless, at least I can dress myself and hold a job, which is more than I can say for the two girls who walked into my workplace yesterday. They looked like every other overweight hoochie that haunts Rohnert Park. Too-tight clothes, too-short skirt, black hoodie, plucked eyebrows and lipstick that did not stay within the confines of her lips. I treated them respectfully, like any customer, and after a little bit one piped up "Didn't I go to school with you? You know, at Rancho?"

Yes, I replied, I attended that school for a year and a half, or so.

"Yeah, like, you were in Choir."

Yes, I was in choir. She even remembered my name.

I never had a good memory for faces out of context, but I had absolutely no memory of her. At all. I faked it, of course. That's what you do in situations like these.

Oh yeah! Right! At Rancho, yeah. Uh-huh.

It's weird. I guess I was memorable for some reason or another. Maybe 'cause I was the class nerd, or something. I've had people that I haven't seen since kindergarten (I swear it's true) walk up to me and know me by name. ("Remember me? From Mrs. Dale's class?")

But the point is this: I like being more successful than those kids who picked on me back in the day. So there.

Quoth the Richard

2007-05-12T22:14:00.000-07:00

And here's a use for the blog: quotes from Rick:

"You don't buy a lapdance for someone you don't love."

Lapdance: $50. Room: $20. Discreet going away present for a friend: $200. My roomate's tales of Slightly Unplesant Debauchery In The City: priceless.

Blogging Silliness

2007-05-11T14:53:00.000-07:00

I don't know why I made this blog.

I don't write that well. No one will ever read it.

I don't really read anyone's blog. Unless you're involved in a TV show I like to watch (Joe Mallozzi, David Hewlett, Will Wheaton...), I probably don't care. I used to read my friend's blogs on myspace, but the drama was remarkably soapy, and I guess I lost interest. I might check up on them now and then, but for the most part I'm pretty uninterested in the whole shebang. I will probably change my opinion. Most likely sooner rather than later if I keep up this blogging thing.

If nothing else, it's a good place to rant and rave and link to things that seem interesting. I oughn't be so pessimistic. This may be cool.

Well, that's it for the introductory blurb that no one will likely ever read.

Later.
Maybe.