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Daily Email Newsletter - Funniest Video of the Day
You have to watch it all the way through. Funny guy.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Funky Winkerbean
I haven’t read Funky Winkerbean in forever and ever. It seems to me it used to be about… Funky Winkerbean. But the folks over at Comic Curmudgeon have been calling it Funky Cancerbean, and other silly names, and thereafter I sometimes tuned in, only to find one of the characters died of cancer after long and dramatic suffering, and now day after day the husband of Lisa the cancer victim has been laying on a couch talking through his reaction in flashback.
The funny thing about this is, the only people who use the couch in therapy are traditional psychoanalysts, which are horribly expensive and not covered by insurance, and are a dying breed. You might find them on the east coast, and I have heard of one in L.A. over here on the west coast, but you don’t just find them everywhere in the country. Also, in a few strips the analyst is sitting alongside the couch, and traditionally he would be sitting out of the client’s line of sight. ALSO - psychoanalysis done traditionally takes years. You don’t just go until you’re done. The goals are different. A grief group, I could buy into, but the couch thing? not so much.
The public view of therapy is a skewed and incorrect one. This is one of those things that only perpetuates the notion that psychotherapy involves couches and shrinks with a pen and paper to take down what you’re saying.
Yes, this is therapy geekiness - but I’m a big geek. What do you expect?
Performance anxiety. I hate second guessing. It doesn’t matter how much I edit or polish, there’s always the five stages of post- posting stress.
Stage 1: perfect! (hits publish button)
Stage 2, half an hour later: I bet I forgot something. Did I forget something?
Stage 3: geeeeze, what was I thinking?
Stage 4: ARG, why did I post?
Stage 5: Oh, forget it. On to the next fic.
Federal ID plan raises privacy concerns - CNN.com
I tried to raise the alarm about RealID, but alas, the bill passed.
I wonder if I’m in a state that passed some of that legislation to ban it?
Your Score: Longcat
55% Affectionate, 43% Excitable, 35% Hungry
Protector of truth.
Slayer of darkness.
Loooooong.
Longcat may seem like just a regular lengthy cat, but he is, in fact, looong. For proof, observe the longpic.
It is prophesized that Longcat and his archnemesis Tacgnol will battle for supremacy on Caturday. The outcome will change the face of the world, and indeed the very fabric of lolcatdom, forever.
Be grateful that the test has chosen you, and only you, to have this title.
To see all possible results, checka dis.
| Link: The Which Lolcat Are You? Test written by GumOtaku on OkCupid, home of the The Dating Persona Test |
Hillary Clinton’s Tentative Dip Into New Neckline Territory - washingtonpost.com
Hillary is a woman WITH BREASTS!
Why is this even NEWS!?!? Good grief, are the news people all bored or something?
A crossover made in Voldemort’s lair, surely.
If you don’t remember Welcome Back Kotter it loses a little of the funny, but:
The obligatory “SiCKO” review at Pandagon
I watched Sicko and got what I expected. Though I think Moore has, in this movie, finally hit on something that really strikes a chord - not all of us has guns, but who doesn’t weep over random medical bills that eat up the rent money? Because something as stupid-simple as a bad reaction to a vaccination or a bladder infection can chew up half a paycheck, if you’re not carrying enough insurance. And it’s getting harder and harder to do that.
I linked to a thread at Pandagon, not because of the post itself but because of the pyrotechnics in the comments - libertarians (self professed, anyway; like some conservatives, they seem conveniently blind to the real-life consequences of their theoretical ideal world in action) and liberals and those of unknown political leaning, duking it out with each other, and the odd Canadian or citizen of some other country putting in their two cents worth.
To me the one comment that mentions unhitching employment from healthcare hits a really big nail on the head. How many people are trapped in an endless cycle of “I want to work but I can’t get healthy enough?” I knew a nice lady of about 50 who looked older, who was flat broke; she was from Mexico, but a US citizen. Her husband had been violent and she divorced but it left her penniless. She worked for a while and was quite proud of it, but at some point diabetes and asthma came to visit and never left. When I met her she was living with a friend, getting a bit of help from the local gov’ment but not enough to do more than contribute to rent and buy groceries at the dollar store. She had applied for SSI to get MediCal and been turned down. They told her she could work. What job could she do, with failing eyesight, swollen legs, and difficulty breathing when the temps climbed? Her hands didn’t quite work right so she couldn’t type. She wasn’t the most brilliant or skilled, but you know, if she’d had access to decent treatment, she probably could have done something with the rest of her life, and she was more than willing to do that.
How many workers would there be in this country, starting businesses or taking jobs that are tough to fill consistently, if they had decent healthcare? Who knows?
There are other points made in the movie and the Pandagon thread, but having worked with folks of little or no means, I have to wonder what they would be doing with proper care. Schizophrenics on medications can function. Diabetics and people with conditions that could be resolved (or mostly so) with proper medication/treatment could function well enough to take jobs. The system we have does a poor job at getting these folks well - and it has no reason to really help them, either, as it relies on trapping these poor people to perpetuate itself. Well people would have jobs and private insurance. Then again, a major health crisis would end with unemployment and re-entry into the system, so….
I’m still pondering it all, with no real concrete opinion, and I wonder if Sicko will trigger some grassroots reaction, but I know the power of a very large system to perpetuate itself in homeostasis. So. We’ll see.
SpeakerToManagers - The Star Trek Cycle
Because I like this too.
Making Light: Abi Sutherland, on Catz
Why I continue to lurk in Making Light’s comment threads. OMG. NO WAI! LOTR be Lolcatterized!
LiveLeak.com - Flying Humanoids Filmed Over Mexican Skies
questions I asked as the video plays:
Why would you ask an astronomer and not a video tech expert of some sort?
Why does the witch move like a balloon? Is it under power or being pushed by the wind? It looks like a balloon to me. No movement up, down or any change of direction.
Wonder if the X Files folks got royalties for the use of their theme music?
YouTube - Oingo Boingo on the Gong Show
Ah, the 70’s.
I particularly enjoyed the rocket man and the dragon.
His Dark Materials: Golden Compass
Do not click if you don’t have broadband/dsl - otherwise, yay! His Dark Materials! Lyra looks like a little Lizbee! It has Daniel Craig! Squee!
YouTube - Stop, Look and Listen (1967)
LOL, the skid marks. It’s a Warner Bros cartoon without Roadrunner & Wile Coyote.
When you just have to do something mindless for a while, try this game
I love the headline. The actual incident is an eye-roller. If you saw it on tv, you’d scoff at the implausibility, but truth is truly stranger than.
… are fifty kinds of awesome. I helped a friend install XP via Boot Camp and Parallels. I like both ways, it’s kinda fun to see the whole display spin about and turn into Windows as it has never been before - it runs! Fast! It doesn’t access hardware directly in Parallels, there are issues with USB drives and with cd based copy protection, but if you’re attempting to be compatible with work as my friend is, that’s about the least painless way to do it. It’ll even share a wireless internet connection with OS X so you can run update and patch XP until it’s sorta okay.
Me, I’d dual-boot Linux and learn it, in preparation for the eventual popularization of OS X. The mundanes will no doubt end up with Vista and be mightily stymied by the copy protection that will cripple your PC. Peter Gutmann wrote an analysis of Vista’s true cost that has been blogged and re-blogged, but outlines some of the issues at stake. To quote: In July 2006, Cory Doctorow published an analysis of the anti-competitive nature of Apple’s iTunes copy-restriction system that looked at the benefits of restrictive DRM for the company that controls it. The only reason I can imagine why Microsoft would put its programmers, device vendors, third-party developers, and ultimately its customers, through this much pain is because once this copy protection is entrenched, Microsoft will completely own the distribution channel. In the same way that Apple has managed to acquire a monopolistic lock-in on their music distribution channel (an example being the Motorola ROKR fiasco, which was so crippled by restrictions that a Fortune magazine senior editor reviewed it as the STNKER), so Microsoft will totally control the premium-content distribution channel. In fact examples of this Windows content lock-in are already becoming apparent as people move to Vista and find that their legally-purchased content won’t play any more under Vista (the example given in the link is particularly scary because the content actually includes a self-destruct after which it won’t play any more, so not only do you need to re-purchase your content when you switch from XP to Vista, but you also need to re-purchase it periodically when it expires. In addition since the media rights can’t be backed up, if you experience a disk crash you get another opportunity to re-purchase the content all over again. This is by design: as Jack Valenti, former head of the MPAA, put it, “If you buy a DVD you have a copy. If you want a backup copy you buy another one”). It’s obvious why this type of business model makes the pain of pushing content protection onto consumers so worthwhile for Microsoft since it practically constitutes a license to print money.
Vista itself is reported to require you to re-purchase it, should you ever have a need of installing it more than the 2-3 times they allow. You will never own Vista. You will lease it until your hard drive crashes, until spyware and viriii cripple you and make it more financially feasible to start over with a wiped drive, until some piece of software wrecks up the OS and you end up reinstalling. And then you will lease it again. This is actually nothing new. It’s just now they’re really coding the OS to enforce it strictly. No more calling M$ to beg them to let you have an ungodly-long string of numbers to re-activate XP.
If you read nothing else of Gutmann’s piece, scroll down and read the final comments, and the quotes from people buying thousands of dollars of equipment that won’t work as advertised.
My next computer will be a Macbook, if I can ever find a reason to give up on my Powerbook. You?
How to install Linux on a dead badger
Any script kiddie can install Red Hat on a toaster, but it takes real skill to install into a dead badger.
Edible squid-flavored postcards ::: Pink Tentacle
In other news - an unforeseen fringe benefit of being a therapist: get out of jury duty free card. A peer (therapist from a different department, therefore not a coworker) was telling us today that he was called in and nearly picked for a jury on a famous (locally, anyway) murder case. The minute he said he was a therapist he was dismissed. I’m not sure if this is because we’re too soft on criminals or what, but me, I tend to side with ‘personal responsibility’ and not so much with ‘it’s his mother’s fault for beating him with a wire hanger.’
Snakes on a Plane, Shrimp on a Treadmill, next it will be Slugs on a Stairmaster…
I am gone for two days. Convenient explanation for the lack of blog presence = lack of actual presence in the proximity of a computer.
Nude wet meat soil bandit caught | Metro.co.uk
And from the headline, you would expect… a guy stealing nude wet meat and maybe soil?
No. But it’s still pretty doggone weird.
Amazon.com: Torpedo Juice: A Novel
Either I have read too much fanfic, or that title sounds too much like an offbeat metaphor. The cover art does not help matters.
I figured the guy would have something with squid, looking at the other titles with his name on, but alas.
Though I’m not sure they’d get it. Unless of course they are totally trekkies too, in which case they’ll love it.
Potter’s “Prince” Set for Thanksgiving ‘08 - Yahoo! News
I’m confused. The first line of the article is “Muggles have something to be thankful for next year.”
In reference to a movie coming out in 2008? Is Dr. Who going to drive us all to the premier next Thanksgiving?
The Baby Name Wizard: NameVoyager (via Neil Gaiman’s blog)
I was popular in the 60’s and 70’s, but not so much anymore.
And I see no one names kids Helga or Dudley anymore, unless they’re writing a book. Heh.
In 14 trades, a guy manages to get a house just trading item for item for item.
Starting with a paper clip.
If only I were that good at networking.
deviantART: LineTo experimental by ~Volcanic-Penguin
Move your mouse around. Click on the little dials at the bottom. Have a ball.
Or, possibly, a pad of blank restraining order forms.
ETA: Okay, direct linking doesn’t work. Click “latest ads” and pick Happy Morning.
You may have seen this article a long time ago. I didn’t even know it existed, nor did I know Dirk Benedict had a website.
Here’s the thing: I’ve been watching both series. The lovable rogue of old came off to me as flirtatious all right, but you know, a cage match between him and the new Starbuck? He’d probably lose. He’d try to flirt with her, or totally misjudge her cause she’s a girl. In an actual military setting, Starbuck the lovable rogue would have washed out before the cylons ever arrived thanks to his habit of manipulating situations so he could break the rules. So would Apollo, who, in the 1978 series, rushed off willy-nilly and disobeyed orders on a weekly basis, getting himself and others into dangerous situations and out of contact with Galactica.
The women 1978-Starbuck flirted with were petty and one-sided, responding to their emotional urges in pretty much the same way a toddler would. In other scenes they are presented as being level-headed and professional. The characters had multiple personalities, depending on how the show’s writers and/or production crew wanted the plot to unfold, and the characters were sacrificed to their whimsy. It happened all the time in television and it still does. But, I have a lot of problems with that sort of writing. The main difference between the two series is that one is not character-centered, and the other follows a logical progression of incident-reaction-character growth/change, in which the writers have an idea of the main events and how characters will behave, and write the characters consistently. I’ll let you guess which is which.
Example: My initial reaction to a female Starbuck was disbelief. Then I watched, and saw that by comparison, female-Starbuck is actually more macho than male-Starbuck. She out-plays, out-bullies, and out-flies most of the guys. Which is not to say the guys are pansies - Helo, Apollo, Racetrack and others are fit, toned, athletic soldiers with attitudes, and certainly approach problems with the respect for discipline and chain of command that one would expect — except when Apollo goes against his father because Adama is moving against the president. Starbuck the girl is believable because her history, revealed to us not as her explaining it to someone but in bits and pieces, usually through others forcing her to reveal it - also consistent with her character. She is a tough, determined, and also somewhat broken person who is doing the best she can. We can hurt for her because we, or most of us, have known someone who was abused, know people who are compensating for deep personal hurts, know people who are their own worst enemy with flawed personalities. She’s the same character over and over, but she grows slowly, learns from mistakes, and we feel as though we know her because we see this happening. Whereas the old Starbuck was the same from episode one til episode last. You don’t need more than one episode to know he’s a lovable rogue with a charming smile and a hedonistic bent. He’s loyal to his friends, not afraid to leap into a fight, loves to fly. To an extent this is also true of new Starbuck - but she is not a lovable rogue. She’s a stubborn woman who’s gone into the military and loves to fly, but her willingness to leap into a fight may very well be tied to a deeper, unexpressed death wish. She’s complicated. She’s human, not a paper doll hero.
And then there’s Apollo, who firmly believes that the colonies’ best interests are served by preserving the government, which supercedes the need for him to follow orders. In other words, he disobeys orders because he believes he has a moral imperative to do so. Not because he wants to spare his fellow soldiers, out-macho anyone, or any of the other reasons old-Apollo had whenever he turbo’d off alone into space on some wild ride into danger. This is a character-driven plot choice. Apollo believes in a democratic government and will even buck the military to preserve it when the military shows signs of moving against it.
This isn’t to say that I don’t care for the older version; I loved the 1978 series, and I loved the characters. But I was also a kid then. I watch the episodes today and wince, and wish that the writers had done better. I don’t care about the special effects so much as I do about the characters. When Athena throws a hissy about Starbuck seeing Cassiopia, I wince. When Cassie shrugs off Starbuck’s wanton ways, I wince. These aren’t the adults I’m hoping to see now, years later, looking back at shows I watched in my formative years. These are high school kids playacting relationship dynamics. And while it’s certainly common for adults to act like kids - check out any divorce in progress for an example of regression - I’d hope that even if they were inept with relationships, even if they had emotional problems, they would behave differently. Part of maturity is learning to react with a balanced perspective - not ignoring emotional reactions but treating emotions as one of several factors that should influence decision making. Most of the characters in the old series are working out of the id, except for Adama, who is a fine example of the ego at work.
Mr. Benedict says that the newer version is female-driven. In a cast with equal numbers of females and males? The original had two regular female members, a revolving door of short-timers, and Serena gets killed in the first couple of episodes for the sin of marrying Apollo. (This is often called the Bonanza effect, wherein love interests of the main characters die because the guys need to be free to receive the adoration of the hoards of female fans.) Athena and Cassiopia (and later Sheba) have supporting roles. Athena sits on the bridge and announces things, even though we’re told she’s a pilot and a warrior. Cassie is a nurse, though originally a hooker. Sheba is one of the pilots - and why are all the new recruits female when they get around to recruiting? Just because there are females on the show does not make it female-centric; giving females names and speaking roles only evens out the playing field. Having a lot of women on the screen but having only two or three with speaking parts, then showing them being over-emotional and wishy-washy, does nothing for me. I am not a badge-carrying, all-caps FEMINIST who sees injustice in every instance of a female character in a supporting role; I merely appreciate well-rounded, realistic characters of all genders. So I’d have to say the newer BSG wins on that front, in that whether dealing with male or female, I can believe that the characters are people, rather than trying to ignore irritating bits while enjoying the good. The show is human-centric.
And ‘enjoy’ isn’t necessarily right. ‘Appreciate’ is more like it. New BSG is rather more like the HBO series, in that it doesn’t idealize. But I never really believed, in the old series, that the characters were really suffering so much - Apollo mentioned his dead wife a number of times but only when the plot demanded, and while he and Starbuck were always racing off to spare each other whatever consequences going on the long patrol would cause them (”you just got married, I’ll go”). There were no real consequences for them. Starbuck took the patrol, crashed, went through a lot of whatever, but always came back in the end with no real price paid for taking the mission instead of Apollo. Heroes in 70s tv were predictable that way: 1) no consequences for breaking rules or disobeying orders (unless it was a cop show, then the chief would chew them out and then do nothing) 2) no marriage/long-term romance 3) no permanent disability or injury with consequences that last longer than one episode. New BSG chops those rules up and spits them out. Heroes are injured and on crutches, and struggle with recovery. They die. They stay on Caprica to send a scientist back to the fleet, because they believe said scientist is more useful to the common good, then suffer through hunger, radiation poisoning, and long runs through wilderness to escape the enemy. No, it’s not very enjoyable to watch. But life is like that. You struggle. Maybe not with cylons, but with work schedules and sick kids and idiot bosses who make you stay long hours. And if there’s one thing that keeps a human being sane, it’s knowing that we’re not alone in struggling, and spacemen fighting robots is only given effective emotional connection for us when the struggle is in terms we understand. There’s a lot riding on every shot of a viper’s laser, but the more visceral, less CGI shots of Starbuck in a hospital bed hating life, of Helo in the rain panting and limping - they connect us so when the viper does fire it has more impact. The viper fights are more visceral in the new series because we aren’t shown stock footage of the same four maneuvers over and over again; we see the pilots in the cockpits, sweating and swearing, collisions and palpable fear, and interspersed shots of how vast space is and how distant the Galactica, how nukes strike panic into them. I never get that space is vast in the old series. I don’t buy into the idea that the cylons are that much of a threat - we only see three of them at a time. No wonder the fleet can hold the cylons at bay with one squadron - yeah, there was red and blue squadron, but why do we never see them all? We see two or three vipers. The limits of budget, yes. But.
It’s not the special effects that do it. Are we more interested in the Matrix or in BSG 2003? Which one connects us with the characters more? Matrix is pretty and neat and waaaaay cool special effects - and one-dimensional, when held up to a show that allows us to feel with the characters. One of the things that jars me (today) out of old BSG is that the props/special effects department tries too hard. Women in spandex, plastic props, irritating and difficult names for everything (resorting to scientific names for some animals and fake time unit names based on metrics really throws me for a loop), and all that reconstituted myth couched in Lorne Green’s lugubrious delivery — too much. New BSG shows a civilization not much different than our own. Alien, but familiar. It works very well. Adama wears glasses, as do several others. The clothes aren’t wild polyester and foil attempts at futuristic. Not having CGI doesn’t have to be a drawback.
I suppose the upshot of what I’m trying to say is that re-imagined isn’t un-imagined, as Mr. Benedict insists. Different isn’t worse, or better, it’s simply different. I can suppose there might be others who believe the first version was superior — in presenting idealistic and one-sided characters, yes. In character development and presentation, no. The original Star Trek had more primitive special effects and some pretty hammy acting, and yet I can watch the most wince-worthy of Trek episodes and be less annoyed than I was by The Gun on Ice Planet Zero or The Lost Patrol because the plot had some sense to it. Sure, someone stealing Spock’s brain to run their air conditioning was a hare-brained excuse for sticking a widget on Nimoy’s head, dressing a few women up in fur bikinis, and letting McCoy and Spock crack wise, but at least they made a passing attempt at science, and the characters were consistent. At least we weren’t expected to believe a single star system had 12 life-sustaining planets, that every asteriod and moon has a breathable atmosphere despite total absence of plants or some artificial means of creating one, or that a random prisoner on a forgotten planet will draw maps to Earth on his cell wall to be discovered by a pilot who just happens to be thrown in the same cell and remember the pictographs accurately enough to correct a drawing of the Earth system rendered by a small child.
There’s a thing called ’suspension of disbelief.’ Mine was a lot more durable when I was a kid, apparently. It certainly withstood crap like that much better before I had a clearer understanding of science and statistical probability.
Britney Spears Stumbles, Nearly Drops Baby - Yahoo! News
Other possible headlines we’ll never see:
Woman Swerves on Freeway, Nearly Hits Barrier While Driving With Four Children in Car
Drunken Man Almost Hits Two Telephone Poles, Fourteen Cars, Fire Hydrant, Dog Walker with Schnauzer, Poodle and Dalmatian (plus An Assortment of Mutts), and One Child - But He Made It Home Okay
Woman Trips On Stairs While Wearing Heels and Nearly Falls on Child
Of course, they reported because IT’S BRITNEY OMG! and while I don’t care much for the ditzy tartlet, it bothers me that she isn’t afforded the luxury of being human. Because things ALMOST happen all the time - I see them everywhere. I’ve had more near misses on the road than I’ve had accidents, and seen more of them as well. I’ve seen more near-tragedies with kids lately because I’ve had more exposure to them - the clinic shares a building with a medical office, a dentist, and a charter school. It happens. So reporters go away and come back when something really is news, and not ALMOST news.
Treat women as if they are potential baby machines?
So clinicians must find a “way to do this and not scare women”
How about “not piss them off with butting in where they are not needed?” I don’t know a single responsible woman who while “pre-conception” did not go out of her way to study up and seek help.
I’ll tell you what a plan helpfully initiated by clinicians for me would entail. Nice tall boldface words — NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. I’LL ASK FOR HELP WHEN I NEED IT. BUZZ OFF.
Let’s infantilize the whole female population, shall we? “You can’t take care of your health yourself, we’ll do it for you.”
It’s a RPG, it’s fanfic, it’s… an alternate universe. It’s also looking for people who enjoy playing the parts.
I suppose there have been AUs wherein the Dominion war was lost, and yes indeed, I have read fantastic ones. My thought was to write in a universe where not only was the war lost, Earth was destroyed — and because it’s the hub of the Federation, the whole Alpha Quadrant tumbles into chaos. The Dominion may or may not be interested in complete conquest of every little world; it may simply have been eliminating the competition, and now is taking its time in working toward complete domination. The various member worlds may also be in danger from opportunists. What world might step up to attempt reunification? What worlds might try to reinvent the Federation in their own, less comprehensive ways? Who gets together? Who isolates and tries to hide? And what about the starships and starbases, now on their own in the galaxy, not unlike Voyager, whose crew doesn’t even know about the fall of the Federation yet? How long will it be before the resources of Starfleet are claimed by various factions by whatever means, to be sold back to Starfleet vessels - or the highest bidder?
Anyone interested? Adventurous Starfleet officers, Cardassians, Klingons, Vulcans, Founders, and interested parties may come tell their story, collaborate with others as you wish, and terminate your subplot as you see fit — exit with an honorable character death, or hand off to a new recruit.
http://desolation.zakhad.com
Will it work? I don’t know. The initial setup: The Defiant was destroyed en route, before Odo reached the Founder and stopped the war. Sisko is gone. Kira is somewhere on Cardassia, status unknown. Somehow, life has to go on in the galaxy….
mcgriddlefanfic - Community Info
(via BoingBoing)
Some news makes you want to go postal at Pandagon
I lurk at Pandagon, liberal feminist blog extraordinaire, and the numbers in the post drove home to me just how we are NEVER going to see low gas prices again.
Someone recently forwarded one of those “hey, let’s all boycott Exxon and Mobil to get them to drop prices” emails. While I am completely aware that I am ignorant of the process by which prices are determined, I’m really doubting that this would work, and said so to my friend — for one thing, gas stations set pricing as low as they can without taking a loss, because it’s not the station owners that do it. And the small single owner stations are just as high as the big boys. And you know they’ll never go down again; all the murmurings over peak oil and so forth may or may not be valid, I don’t know, I don’t have a giant dipstick to go test it myself — but things aren’t ever going to go back to the days of fifty cents per gallon. They’re not going back to two bucks a gallon. And the reasons have a lot to do with the supply chain and every link in it wanting as much as they can get out of the deal now, because like the professional football player, it’s a short term business. They’re on the way out and it’s only a matter of a few years. Already, lots of people around my town are unable to drive a car. I can predict a push to better and more efficient public transportation. Our city buses are already driven by something other than gasoline.
Overheard in New York: The Voice of the City You’ll go in with a straight face and roll out on LOLlerskates.
I had two out of four scheduled clients show up today. One was an assessment for a schizophrenic. One is never really aware of the intolerance of our society until confronted with the mentally ill. Schizophrenics frequently have little insight into their own difficulties and can’t articulate what’s going on with them, and this one was so isolated by people who treat her like she’s crazy that I could tell I was the first person in a long while who actually listened to her talk. She cried for a while, and the rest of the time she was angry, repeating over and over that she wanted a job, wanted help, and no one would help her. To which I replied, what kind of help do you need? I can see why some people make a career out of helping people like this - sometimes in a budget-crunched system all you can give is compassion, and sometimes that’s the difference between scraping by and jumping off an overpass.
In other news, tomorrow the clinic is closed due to one of those holidays the government offices take off, but the rest of the world doesn’t. I’m going in to train my replacement at Job. Hopefully, the gal will be quick on the uptake.
Really, I just want to sleep. Yesterday I had to cancel an appointment due to a migraine, which plagued me all day, until I got home, hurled lunch, and crashed for four hours straight, which meant I couldn’t really sleep last night. I kept waking up to find the Roommate’s tabby asleep in awkward spots, like between my feet, on my hip, or tucked up against my abdomen with her head in my armpit. I had this long, now-vague half-waking dream, in which I re-imagined every story in the C&C series - sort of the series I would have written if I started it today. Quite different, and some of it stuck with me after I woke up this morning. I was groggy most of the morning even though I had my requisite double-strength coffee. Today, I fear, I was not quite on my game. So I got home this afternoon feeling quite inadequate and with the first vibe of short-timer’s disease - I know that I will not be hired at the clinic, and it’s April this Saturday, which means seven weeks left in the semester, which means…. I need to find a friggin’ job in my field of choice.
I think I need yoga now.
If you remember watching Jaws when it came out and screaming, it’s all the more effective. Move drinks and edibles from the area before viewing.
This is so much why I ran like a mad bunny from M$ (aside from the whole crashing, useless help menu, give them money AND upgrade all the hardware every other year thing….)
Consumers with Forced Debit Card Reissues Step Forward - Consumerist
If the fact that his new ATM card was sitting outside his front door is any indication of how concerned the banks are about your debit card security… Start hoarding shiny metal objects and colored beads.
Yet another reason to keep shopping at costco.
This happened to me recently, though. I wonder if it was that Office Depot stop?
I can’t wait for pictures of the first Ferengi.
I’m thinking Romulan ala TNG era would be neat - twould be like having rain gutters. The weather’s been pretty wet lately.
Dark Portrait of a ‘Painter of Light’ - Los Angeles Times
I laughed, I rolled my eyes, and I linked. Seema, this one’s for you.
My mom collects Kinkade kitsch. If she finds out about this I’ll bet she never mentions him again. Yet Another Someone Who Turns Out to be Human and Quotes Scripture For His Own Purpose.
Codpiece!
I like Metaquotes. Where else can you find riffs on everyday life that include Chai and Star Trek and Vin Diesel all in the same post? (Vin Diesel would have to guest star as the representative of his own species. Something big and violent, perhaps resembling a triceratops.)
Anyway, I visit a couple times a week, and often one of the regulars posts using the icon with Snape weaving back and forth against a flashing background of color. It’s hypnotic. I got to the bottom of the page and realized that I had started to weave and bob just like the Snape in the icon. And at the bottom of the page, there was another Snape icon in which he whirls around — again, mesmerized. At this point I realized that perhaps I should go to bed, because I don’t feel very well and obviously the bacteria have reached my cerebellum and reduced me to a head-bobbing vegetable.
Either that, or Alan Rickman has Teh Awwsome Power of Hypnosis!
In this Boing Boing post we are shown how to make scrambled eggs suspended on boiling water to avoid a stuck-on mess while using nonstick pans, because people are shifting away from using Teflon due to recent reports of toxicity.
We parrot owning people who bother to research the intricacies of owning birds know already that Teflon is bad stuff — we’re warned repeatedly in parrot forums and bird books that if you leave a Teflon pan on the stove and it overheats, any birdies in the house will be dooooooomed, because they can’t take toxicity the way we humans can. Well, I’ve always been of the opinion that we should learn from the old canary in a coal mine trick — if it’s bad for the bird, it’s bad for me. Teflon flakes off into the food as the pan ages, too. And who’s to say the pan isn’t giving off the toxic gas in smaller amounts even when it’s not overheated? I use stainless steel.
I also don’t tend to use a lot of cleaning sprays around the house. On hard surfaces I use Bon Ami, the non abrasive powder cleaner, and in the bathroom I usually use plain ol’ bleach in the toilet and ventilate very well. Around the stove I use some of the usual suspects, like 409 and oven cleaner, but the pets are removed from the area during the worst of it, as am I, and I open all the windows. And the oven cleaning has been unnecessary in this apartment, because we put an aluminum pan in the bottom to catch “stuff.”
Only bad things can happen when Jackson makes a movie from a marginally-treacly novel about a dead girl talking about her murder and the aftermath. The supernatural elements of the novel were what nearly killed it for me — I could have suspended disbelief if Sebold had simply let the girl narrate the story without the framing device, but she felt she had to explain how the girl was managing to tell a story after she’s dead. I really could have done without the love-in by proxy (which only makes sense if/when you do get to that point in the text, and therefore I consider a non spoilery spoiler). I do not want to see that scene, nor any of the other heavenly realm scenes, rendered by Peter Jackson. No doubt Andy Serkis in a special suit will star in some CGI role as an angel, or possibly as the heaven-dwelling little girl?
No. No, no, no.
Tangentially, if you have not read “Lucky” by Alice Sebold, it’s a better read. Autobiographical and tough to get through because of it, but to me, it had more emotional integrity.
Man Held in Bar Attack Dies After Shootout
This story of a kid who shot up a gay bar and rabbited from police, got in a shootout, and now is dead. It’s been all over the news. People all over blogdom/LJ comment on it — I’ve been cruising through friendslists and noting the reactions.
I can understand a certain amount of anger, horror, etc. because the kid was all up into the Nazi-ness and so forth, and any 18 year old going out of control and shooting people is just Not Good. What I’m seeing in addition to the anger is harsh judgement of the parents — I wonder, at what point do kids become separate entities? Because I seem to recall being not-much-into-hanging-with-the-’rents somewhere around preteen age, 12-14, and doing my own thing and reading what I wanted to read from the library, and thinking my own thoughts, which were very different from the things my parents seemed to be thinking. Excoriating parents up one side and down the other for a teen’s misbehavior isn’t my natural reaction — I feel bad for the parents, who probably stressed and tore their hair out over this kid. If your kid got a tattoo of a swastika wouldn’t you worry? Without real proof of parental indifference, I won’t go to the Bad Place of Parental Damnation.
How much control do you think you’d have over a teenager? If your kid hung up a Nazi propaganda poster, and you said ‘take it down’ and the kid threatened to run away from home and live in the street — what do you value more? The kid’s physical well being, for which you are legally and morally responsible until he’s 18, or not having that poster on your wall?
There are elements of the story that do puzzle me — the kid had a relationship with a 33 year old woman? Most articles say nothing about his family. This was all I came up with (I admit I’m not spending lots of time googling about this) — I quote:
Mr. Robida lived in New Bedford in a three-story white house on County Street with lace curtains in the second-story window. His father left when he was young, Ms. Silva said. His mother was ill throughout his childhood with heart problems and diabetes. Roughly a year ago, doctors amputated her leg, friends said.
Mr. Robida’s only sibling is a 13-year-old sister, Morgan.
Mr. Robida attended New Bedford High School and Dartmouth High School but never finished, according to school records. He dropped out of Dartmouth High in December 2003, eventually attending night school without earning a degree, according to school records.
After leaving school, friends recalled he briefly sorted clothes at the Salvation Army in New Bedford and then worked construction with his father.
In his spare time, he and fellow Insane Clown Posse [band with violent lyrics] fans met at one another’s houses. They played video games, watched television and “chilled.” The friends said Mr. Robida didn’t have a girlfriend and that he smoked marijuana, but nothing stronger.
When police searched Mr. Robida’s house on County Street following the shooting, they found Nazi regalia and anti-Semitic writing on his bedroom walls, according to a police affidavit. Friends said he also wore a fake swastika tattoo on his thumb, but quickly said they’d never heard him express disdain or hatred for anyone.
“He did have Nazi flags in his room, but that doesn’t mean he was a bad person,” Ms. Silva said.
Other friends called it a phase, paraphernalia Mr. Robida was drawn to without any real thought or malice.
So what’s the real story? We don’t know. It doesn’t sound like he had a lot to do with his parents. They make it sound like he’s got his own house, or is renting a room apart from his parents. His mom’s disabled. He has some contact with his dad but who knows how much or the quality of it. Another kid from a broken home, learning to fend for himself.
If you want to blame someone, Blogdom, I think you need to consider that the kid thought for himself and did for himself, and there’s really no one to blame but him, ultimately. The parents probably feel enough self recrimination without your help. What do you expect a single mom with heart problems to do? They’re human. They’re probably like a lot of parents whose kids don’t go on shooting rampages. Bottom line, NONE OF US knows enough about the situation to judge, so what’s with the finger-pointing?
I’ve seen the icons, the jokes, the quotes - now here’s the summary. Yep. It’s snakes, on a plane. Deadly snakes. And the names… bet the actress playing “iPod girl” looks forward to having this credit on her resume. And I wondered, what’s with the actors with no role next to them? are they understudies or something, or sharing a role with someone?
The alternate titles sound saner than the real one. Of course, there have been B movies named “Flight XXX” before…. So they needed something different, to make it plain that this is no B movie! It’s about SNAKES. On a PLANE.
Oy.
This Luann strip, like the last few before it, pisses me off.
Greg Evans has embarked on a series of strips wherein Dad instructs his son Brad in the ways of men and women, and with each stereotype presented I just get mad. I know men who remember birthdays — they’re the ones who come across as actually caring about the people they send the card/flowers to. I know men who have social skills, too. They’re generally ones with good jobs, rational wives, sane parents and well mannered kids. This stuff doesn’t come out of a vacuum; manners and social skills and all-around thoughtfulness are learned behaviors, and the converse aren’t genetically heritable traits. If you expect little boys to become little stereotypes, guess what you’ll have?
DUH.
I think I’ll go back to ignoring that particular strip.
CNN.com - Mouthy parrot ‘reveals sex secret’ - Jan 17, 2006
I used to have an African Grey who repeated the day’s domestic violence incident as perpetrated by my neighbors, just as he heard it - muffled and indistinct, but recognizable. This is so totally like a Grey. I miss my bird.
Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief, I have come to realize, applies to other experiences in one’s life. Jobs, for example.
Denial - “It’s a pretty good place to work. My last employer didn’t offer [perk], and I get a review and maybe a raise in three months.”
Anger - “I don’t believe he just told me off! How dare he suggest that I don’t deserve a review! It’s been four months!”
Bargaining - “Look. Give me the review and I’ll work an extra hour on Wednesdays and Thursdays. It’s a good place to work, let’s just do this and everything will be fine.”
Depression - “I’m never going to get that review. This job isn’t going anywhere. I can’t afford to just quit…. This is so not fair. But what can I do?”
Acceptance - “You know, it’s been like this all along - the manager’s stubborn and opinionated, the assistant manager’s bitter, and the shift manager appears to hate women regardless of what they do. It’s just the way it is. I’ll keep working until I accumulate enough experience to jump to the next job - a better job.”
Couples Counseling with Kelly Kellogg
I found this while searching for possible internship positions.
While you know that the counselor’s name is Kelly Kellogg… you don’t know where she is, what she does, how she practices (phone therapy? internet? clinic?), or who she is. No links to organizations, no bio, no description of the clinic, no clue as to her methodology, no hint of anything useful. You know only that she owns this domain name, she likes to quote from Tom Robbins, and she’s really busy. It’s as useful as badgerbadgerbadger.com but less fun.
Why bother with a host for a static page that says nothing of any use? You can keep a domain name reserved for less money.
I’m done scratching my head now. Mushroom! Mushroom!
Like, woah.
I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this commercial, but it’s beautiful. Bandwidth necessary.
Bring your own bleach, that is. Have it ready…
Now bleach out the visions of EWWWW, and join me in the Squirmy Squirm Eek Dance.
PERCEVAL PRESS - Frequently Asked Questions
Viggo has a small publishing company. He also writes poetry, and has had some bit parts in fairly minor movies… you might remember the one with the ring in it? He also takes pictures and records music.
I heart Viggo. He dreams it, he does it.
Apple - Trailers - X-MEN 3 Announcement Teaser - Large
Jean! Jean! Jean! She’s mean! (At least, that sure looks like her, on the right, in the scene with Magneto’s Mutant Army marching forth…)
And there’s Beast, and the dude with the wings… this looks good.
Would it help if I told you it was a retelling of Serenity?
Good fun. Love shirtless!Mal. “Holy crap, it’s a teenage girl wielding some battleaxes! We better call backup!” Snrt.
Pirate Monkey’s comic version of HP Meets Mary Sue
I laughed. I cried. I clicked through it again.
Turkey Dinner George W. Bush Doll, Talking Political Dolls at old-fashioned-values.com
The item number strikes me as quite descriptive, actually.
I looked around on the site, but I can’t find where you order the pins to stick in it. Dang.
To go along with Seema’s turkey-throwing car dealership, here’s a list of things to not do with your turkey. Strangely, tossing it out of a helicopter isn’t there.
When did Mariah move from “screechy flat chested little dog whistle” to “diva”?
I remember liking her okay until I listened to a whole album of hers, and every song ended with a trip up two octaves. I remember seeing a video and wondering why she was even trying to dance. Guess she’s come a long way from that newbie singer who married a guy three times her age.
Just added this food blog to my link collection. can’t wait to try some of the recipes! I’m horrible at cooking but I follow directions well enough.
Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi: What’s Hurting the Middle Class
American society is changing. This article suggests it’s not the way everyone else is thinking.
Panasonic Toughbook eLite Executive Notebook
Looks sorta like a Powerbook, don’t it?
It’s missing a DVD writer, OS X, a decent video card, and it’s way more expensive than a 12″ Powerbook, slightly more expensive than a 15″. This may have driven the recent drop in Powerbook pricing, come to think of it. And that CD drive flap looks like something that either does damage or takes it, too easily. I also prefer something other than Panasonic, and Windows XP, and advertising that doesn’t try to pretend there’s sex appeal in laptops, or football playing chicks with boob jobs anyway.
There was a copy of this in the nurse’s office when I went to get a flu shot last week. I grinned, right before wincing and saying ‘ow.’
If you use this 2.4 gHz Wireless Video Monitor Online at drugstore.com, whoever you’re watching is probably watching the watcher. It works up to 300 feet away, with a clear line of sight.
So, I could turn my head and get the full benefit without spending nearly $200? Unless you want to hear the other person’s whispered threats/insults for setting up a camera in their office, in which case, it’s worth every penny so you’ll know what you already knew, that a boss who uses one of these is uncool. I had a boss who fantasized about buying cameras to watch the employees — I told my supervisor I intended to quit the instant one was installed, or possibly to take up marathon nose-picking and butt-scratching, with the occasional foray into mooning and napping. Or, perhaps, the camera would happen to be just mysteriously covered with a towel, or the lens besmirched with a smiley face in sharpie marker. Because nothing irritates me more than a boss who leans over my shoulder breathing down my neck — unless of course it’s a boss who is willing to spend thousands of dollars on a system to spy on me while I tried to file things in the totally inadequate and neglected filing system, or type reports on the cludgy spyware-ridden computer.
Gee. I sound bitter, eh?
… is in the sidebar at my blog, here.
Amazon.com: Books: Harvey & Eck
I followed a google ad from a blog - I think I need to stop following google ads.
Can’t quite figure out what the most disturbing part of the cover is — the teeny tiny waist, the tattoo that I thought at first was a fetus, then a rooster in pain, then realized was a smiling moon with a hat — I think — or the way she appears to be … um… taking advantage of the motorcycle. Or maybe that bald stripe down the back of her head. Or maybe the plot.
Oh, ‘eck. It’s just disturbing.
Microsoft: Office 12 to Anticipate Needs - Yahoo! News
One of the reasons I scream, you scream, we all scream at Office products is the nosy assistant that pops up to interfere with a drabble, with a cheery “It looks like you’re trying to write a letter. Would you like me to help?” And M$ thinks MORE automation is the way to go.
I’ll be here, waiting for the headlines detailing how many users gave up and bought OS X or Linux/Unix based systems after they blew their Windows system through the wall with a shotgun. Or turned Luddite.
Kirk and Spock Go Icefishing, also known as If My Aunt From Minnesota Wrote Star Trek on my page, has been read aloud by Jungle Kitty in the authentic Minnesotan accent, and posted to her site.
Statement on Federal Emergency Assistance for Louisiana
The red areas are the parishes listed in the official statement linked above.
Note the difference.