It looks just like you, Percy.

I hardly ever sit down intending to find a previously undiscovered yet interesting webcomic. They tend to somehow find me, almost. In the midst of all the possible moving weirdness and such recently, I've actually stumbled over several lovely examples.

What does it take for me to adore and read all the archives of a webcomic? I was thinking about this lately. My top reads vary wildly, but there are some things that hold true for all of them.

1. Interesting art. You don't have to be Michelangelo, but if the look of something bores me to tears in the obligatory ten or so strips I afford every comic, it's going to have to be a no. It can be as simple as Patches or as complex as Lowbright. If you have skill, it shows. Here are some sub-points under the "art" heading.
--For god's sake, don't--DON'T try to cop Akira Toriyama. I don't even like it when Toriyama does it, much less you. Sloppily drawn, spikey haired, wanna-be anime pointy faced protagonists will not even garner 10 pages worth of attention.
--This is not to say that manga-style comics will be discarded out of hand. There are some very skillfully done series I do love in that style. I can appreciate it done right.
--If you're not able to consistently draw recognizable characters, you're not ready to make a web comic. If I have to guess who's speaking, or who someone is from panel to panel, I get cranky and end up just clicking over to Boing-Boing or somewhere.

2. This may be classified partially under art, but I realllly appreciate good character design. Part of that is the look of a character, but also included is that person's (or thingy's) actual character and personality. Again, consistency is a good thing. I may roll my eyes at what your character just did, but if it makes sense within their motivations and mindset, and the story is worthwhile, I'm generally okay with that. Not to say you have to have some sort of static yahoo--It's also interesting to see characters grow or change, and when it's done well (a difficult thing), I applaud it.

3. The obvious points are important, like setting and story. I've had exposure to a lot of webcomics in my day. I also have good pattern recognition (not in the technical/Gibson sense, but in the "I recognize and associate visual stuff fairly well, even over long periods of time" way.), so if you're ripping off another webcomic, you're not going to get much love from me. Unless you do it SO better than the original.
More subpoints:
-- The web is flooded with comics about snarky, hip, twenty-something pals living in an apartment, talking about relationships, and then drinking too much and seeing silly things. Unless you think you can somehow do it better than Questionable Content, (I DOUBT IT) do yourself a favor and try something else.
-- A comic that someone earnestly tries to turn into a forum for political or other causes usually makes me yawn. I have a "Not Agaaaain" alert that goes off when I am within 50 paces of someone who's taking themselves or their comic too seriously. Sure, make a few political jokes here and there. Point out some social issues now and then. But don't harp on it. Please don't make long, inescapable rants about it. Please?
-- Is there an interesting story or clever writing in there? That's how I know I've stumbled over something worthwhile. I mean to read 10 or so, and suddenly find I'm at the end of the archive and it's however much later. It doesn't have to be epic and grand. It doesn't even have to be a "story" per say. Hecks--some of my favorites have no words sometimes. But whether visual or via words, the writer's saying something I have to be intrigued or entertained by to bother.

4. You may be as silly as you want, with my blessing. If the art and characters are interesting, and the writing is clever, you can get away with a multitude of things.

That time again...

Well, it's happening already; The neighbors are beginning the annual month-long Fourth of July celebration, which means we can sit on the balcony and get free fireworks displays. *claps like a second grader* Last night it was the neighbors across the street from our house, which meant that when we had our nightly hang-out time on the porch (on the back of the house), all we got were flashes and the sound of the fireworks going off. Ah well. It was interesting, at least.

Things have been even more insane than usual around here, with a couple possible moves in the works with new jobs for the Boy. It was busy enough with the idea of one possiblility. Now there are two. We've been frantically fencing phone calls, emails, packages and paperwork, and researching like crazy, and the Boy has been attending various interviews along the chain.

Strangely, if it happens, I'd actually be okay with the idea of moving. I would miss my friends dreadfully, but it would force me to be more intentional in emailing and calling. Neither possible destination is more than a day's drive from where we are now, so that's a comforting thought.

Then again, we might just stay right here. I'm honestly, actually, shockingly...okay with any of the above. It could be an adventure either way.

The Cause

Alert! Achtung! Are there any of you planning to go to Cornerstone Music Festival this year who haven't gotten your ticket yet? If so, you should consider buying your tickets online. When you are purchasing, enter "street team member" code: 37k610. This will help Sandy from Germany to be able to go.

She stumbled over a couple of my Cornerstone photos on Flickr, and sent me an email about how she's trying to raise enough points to get into the festival. She's never been to C-stone before, and she's already dropping mega-cash on the plane ticket, so it would be a nice favor if you know anyone who's going to buy tickets to get her the final points toward her pass.

It doesn't cost you anything extra--just a couple seconds of your time.

There's more info on Sandy on her MySpace page, here..

Score!

One of our Memorial weekend activities consisted of the Boy and I going on down to Micro Center, which is a massive orgy of nerdery and computer parts... I mean, a large computer/tech store.

Before that, we gorged ourselves on excellent sushi (oh glory!)at Nobana, an offshoot of the wonderful Noble Fish.

Back to the tech stuff. I flag rather quickly at places like that. Not that I don't love technology... It's just that it's a big place, I do not speak the language fluently, the Boy flits from place to place exclaiming and examining things, and I eventually just trail behind him in a bit of a daze. Not necessarily a bad thing. I usually end up going over and gawking at things in the Apple section.

In any case, this time when we left, I had a super-cool tablet! I've been using Painter IX to make art--so much cleaner and cheaper than busting out the oil paint and canvas. The smell of linseed oil is a happy memory from my childhood, but it's nice not to have to deal with dirty rags and paint water. Sooo, I've been having fun with the fact that it's pressure sensitive, so you can sketch in varied darknesses of pencil strokes, depending on how hard you press while you're drawing on the tablet. Hooray tablet!

Hooray also for the freaking out-of-the-blue baby freaking grand piano the Boy has finagled for me!! We're giving our current one to one of his coworkers, and then we'll have room for it. Don't get me wrong--I'm fond of my current piano, but even tuned, it's got that plinky, metallic sound common in consoles. It's hard for me to love listening to it. I grew up with a full upright that had a rich, round sound to it, and that's what I desperately miss sometimes. But no more!!

Hooray for unexpected good things!

My Head A Splode

Here you go: CUTENESS

Only watch if you have the fortitude to handle the head-exploding cuteness of an adorable singing three year old.

Small Stories: There are babies, and there are babies

On my way into Target the other day, I passed a girl leaving in tears. I had the typical wash of concern, but she was on her way so quickly there was nothing I could do but I continue with my business. This sounds odd, but I wouldn't have really thought about her again if I hadn't swung by the restroom before leaving.

I pushed open the door and spent an awkward couple moments navigating around a mother and her multiple tiny people in their various strollers and shopping carts in order to get to the only open stall. She was trying to keep everyone under control, and though the kids didn't seem bratty, persay, they were FULL of energy, and the desire to crawl beneath stall doors. The mother wrangled them fairly successfully, fortunately.

Then, as I was leaving my stall, I noticed, in the wastebasket, the box for a pregnancy test. Even if I hadn't seen the girl crying, and even if the flock of babies weren't outside, I think it would have made an impression. Somehow I don't get the sense that someone buys a pregnancy test and takes it immediately, alone in a Target bathroom, if everything is okay. It makes me sad.

Maybe I'm making connections that don't exist. Maybe the crying girl was upset about the impending Britney/K-Fed breakup. Yes. I can pretend a hopeful girl took the test and was thrilled with the result, or that a worried woman took it and was relieved by what it said.

Wow....just...wow.

According to Fark, this is what happens when a frustrated novelist writes for the police blotter.

I'm not going to write a commentary on the article in question because it would all just come out too...mean.

Tenses! Spelling! Punctuation! Usage! Grammar!

Sorry. That just popped out.

Small Stories: Moth-er

When I worked in the mail room at my school, we sometimes got odd things through the mail slot. Gum wrappers, a frisbee, etc.

A little before Mother's day one spring, I heard the plop of something dropping through the "outgoing" slot and a while later went over to sort whatever had just arrived. Strangely, it was a little white envelope that lacked an address, return, or stamp. All it said, written carefully in marker in the middle of the front, was "Moth er."

Inside was a home-made card, complete with glued construction paper and stickers. "Mother!" it said, "You are the best mother. Happy mother day." Following were a collection of X's and O's.

Some kind little person took the time to hand make a card for their mom. The same little person folded the edges so it would fit into an envelope, sealed it, and walked all the way to the college to put it in the mail slot. Surely, in the same way that letters to Santa are delivered, the postman would know to give the little gift to "Moth er. "

The little person probably waited for Mother to get her card, and wondered why it didn't arrive. I hope they weren't too sad when they realized it wasn't coming.

Blind people audio books

We've been poking at audio books, and have stumbled over several that we can only conclude must have been recorded for the blind. The bland gentleman reads the copyright, the dedications, the back cover--everything. And then there was this little aside:

"The maps printed in this book will not be included in this recording."

Does that seem strange? Are maps ever included in audio recordings?

"Um, there's an island kind of shaped like...well, I want to say a..shoe? A boot maybe? It's right next to the big compass, and uh... it's got some little drawings of trees and that seems to be a bird...? A mountain, maybe?"

Small Stories: Fortune Cookies

I was in Chicago for a photography class, and a couple friends and I were wandering around to find a place for lunch. We decided to head for the Chinese buffet nearby. As we passed a homeless woman, she asked if we had any spare change for food, and since we only had debit cards, someone asked, "Why don't you just come to lunch with us?" She was surprised, but accepted.

I was a little uncomfortable at lunch, for which I still feel guilty. Rhonda, the homeless woman, talked a little about her past. She was in her forties--she'd been on the street for five years or so. She had two kids somewhere. She looked down at her plate and paused. "But I wasn't much of a mother to them." She said she felt like being homeless was a hole that you just can't reach high enough to get a handhold to climb out of. She'd stopped trying to climb out.

We didn't say much about our comparatively cushy college lives. The bill arrived, with requisite fortune cookies, and we all took turns laughing about our "mysterious strangers" and lucky numbers.

Then Rhonda slowly read her fortune, which said," It's not too late to change the path you've taken."

Everyone was quiet for a little while.

Sora, Donald, Goofy!

I'm playing Kingdom Hearts II for the PS2....and sweet mother of mercy! Can anyone address the three main characters in any other way than reciting their names in an unnatural chant? When I see three friends, I don't exclaim, "Bill, Fred, Maximillion!" in the same way I'd say, "Schlemiel, schlimazel, Hasenpfeffer Incorporated!" Instead, I say "Hey, guys!" or "Avast, ye landlubbers!"

Well, I can feel it coming on.... I suppose this is going to be a game review. As mothers always say, "If you can't say anything nice, make something up, and then go ahead and rage about the bad stuff."

First of all, disclaimer: this is my personal opinon. You shouldn't let it rock your world.
_______________________

So... nice things.... niiiice things.....um.... Actually there are several. First, second and third would be Tron, Tron and TRON. I've always loved the film. The environment and music were great, and getting to actually control a light cycle was tres awesome. I bet that blind, warm and fuzzy nostalgia is how the designers wish I felt about every world in the game.

More positives: Well, the game is pretty. That's unarguable. Special attacks yield blossoming fireworks and colorful flashes. The character design (Disney and Square both) is fun to look at, although there were a few similar characters that could have been Sephiroth's love-children. There are also some interesting things you can do with "forms." ie: Your character can transform temporarily for higher stats, and is able to use two swords at once, which is a worthy addition. Limit breaks are also employable. Finally, it's (almost) always entertaining to see Final Fantasy characters, though it's a little weird to hear Cloud seriously mutter the word, "Goofy." Another thing I thought was fun was Timeless River, the black and white world of "Steamboat Willie," where even current characters took on the 1928 Disney animation look. The rest of the enjoyable aspects were mostly things that were established and carried over from the first game. (theme music, etc.) Oh, and one last thing: I always love a moogle.

The bad: If this tells you anything, at this point, I'm playing the game out of sheer stubbornness. The worlds may be pretty, but so far, they're uninteresting, straightforward and flat. They're tiny. No secrets or mysteries--nothing to collect. At least in the first game, one had the entertaining challenge of finding little balconies and ledges with treats on them, or leaping and gliding to interesting places. I've been looking. Believe me. I just don't see those sorts of places in this game. This far in, I can't see suddenly discovering there's a whole new world (pardon the pun) on the rooftops above Agrabah.

One massive annoyance is the simple existence of Atlantica. How does this make sense: "The universe is in peril! Only we can save it!...What? You want us to sing and dance in your ridiculous undersea musical extravaganza and waste countless precious hours we could be using to save the world?? .....Sure!!" I loathed Atlantica in the first game. Why would I like it now, when there is absolutely no reasonable explanation for me being there?

I hear that unless you complete every one of the thousand or so semi-impossible nit-picky missions Jiminy records in his journal, you don't get the "special ending." Just...screw you, Jiminy.
I don't need a special ending that badly. That's what YouTube is for.

I can have a passable good time by only poking around at the things I'm interested in--fighting matches, completing smaller missions, finding special "gummi" pieces for ship building, etc. But this doesn't further the story at all. To keep things interesting, the Boy and I, giggling like middle schoolers, designed a giant spaceship shaped like something I couldn't show my mother. The Penny Arcade guys would be proud.

Update: I actually finished the game tonight. The last hour or so was about as enjoyable as the eternal screech of nails on a chalkboard. Maybe I'm just an old-fashion kind of girl, but when I beat a boss, I prefer to have them stay beaten, not morph into some larger, uglier version of themselves and declare that we're going to throw down again. (somehow that's sort of *more* okay in Final Fantasy. Not completely okay, but less aggravating.) More button mashing, more inexplicable retarded pseudo-philosophy about "light and dark," more stale Disney platitudes about friendship and hearts... The Boy will bear witness to the fact that I carefully ran through my entire vocabulary list of cusses several times to make sure I had not skipped any.

"Why?" you may ask. Why would I bother finishing it? Because I'm stubborn and dumb, that's why. I kept hoping that something earth-shatteringly cool would happen. It did not.

Kingdom Hearts II gets 5 stars out of 10. Because I'm generous that way.

Unfortunately, there are people out there who would (and probably will) send hate-mail declaring, "OMG!!!1 your a moran its the awesomest game EVAR!!1!! FU!" Just as an FYI - Don't bother. I'll delete your comment. You can vent over at IGN or somewhere. Move along, now.

Small Stories: Deer at the Door

A few years ago, my brother-in-law was working on someone's house in a woodsy area across the road from a large, gated property with tall hedges. As he was standing in the driveway, a bizarre-looking deer came jogging out of the trees. (As a side note, Michigan deer are tall, sleek, and slender, and that particular "deery" color of brown.) This one was practiacally white, tiny and stunted looking, and decidedly fuzzy.

The guys stopped what they were doing to watch the grizzled little deer as it trotted along. As if the sighting of a peculiar deer weren't enough, it made a beeline for the large gates at the property across the road. It marched up and down for a few seconds, obviously wanting to get in. Then the gates slowly opened. The deer briskly waltzed inside, and the gates closed again behind it.

We learned later that the property was owned by an eccentric European collector of different breeds of deer, but I don't think that makes the story any less bizarre or entertaining.

Oh--and...

Thanks a bundle to those of you who submitted names for the little felt creature. Jane suggested a mixture that incorporated Anna's cute suggestion as well: I shall call them Feltsies. Individually, they'll have their own little names, but as a species (?) they are Feltsies. Thank you to both Anna and Jane! Thanks! Thanks!!

Question: Does anyone know the likelihood that Nintendo would sue me for sewing and selling a spoils bag like the one in Zelda: Windwaker? I sewed one a few years ago, and gave it away. I'm thinking now that someone might have paid for something like that. Hmmm.

Ninjas+Pirates: The Eternal Clash

I have discovered another webcomic worthy of note. Prepare yourself for

The Adventures of Dr. McNinja!

He's not just a ninja--he's a doctor.

The art is fun, but the writing is what makes me snicker uncontrollably. That's something that not many online comics are capable of. Many of them are humorous, yes--but this one has a dry, sharp wit that's relentless. The character of Dr. McNinja is all at once stealthy, bumbling and full of melodrama.

Dr. McNinja: Okay...Dinosaur in my office. How could that be? The door should have been locked.

(Pause)

Dr. McNinja: Oh! They are extinct! Dinosaurs are extinct! Dinosaur can't be in the office (his eyes narrow) because it should be extinct.

It reminds me of the comics drawn by that really smart but goof-off kid who used to sit behind you in algebra. 'Nuff said.

Contest alert!

This little guy is the result of a sewing machine test from the other day, and I thought it was fun, despite the half finished seams and randomly mismatched thread. I'm thinking I might make some proper varieties for Etsy, but then there's the issue of what to call them. Anyone have any ideas?

Something short and cute oughta do it, but I'm drawing a blank.

Submissions are welcome--I will profusely publicly thank whoever submits the winner!

In honor of that little guy:

I bought some plain white baby onesies when I got home from visiting Teeny Will and family at the hospital, I made this:
As I told my sister, "It's cute! It's a robot! It's cute-bot!" I'm thinking I will make more cute-bot items for selling on Etsy. Incidentally, that is a link to my little shop. I don't have an awful lot in it at this point, but I figured it's better to stick something in there than wait forever until I feel like I have enough stock. If you have any requests or suggestions, just let me know!

It's a...boy?!

Strangely, after several months of being told she was having a girl, my sister had a baby boy this morning. All is well.

William Edward Nightingale, 7 pounds 7 ounces.

Status: cute

The Department of Labor

It is currently 1:15 AM, and my sister has just called to say she's at the hospital in labor. Freakin'-finally. She sounded exhausted, but at least she gets to evict Tiny after all this time.

Just wanted to pass the word to those of you wondering what's been going on.

Small Stories: Dance of the Tenacious Shingles

I tend to anthropomorphize things. Here is an example:

There is a little leaded glass window in an alcove next to the desk in my study. Some time ago, while gazing distractedly through it, I noticed that a small line of shingles on the roof of the house across the street had come loose and were a little cockeyed. The next morning when I sat at my computer, I glanced out to find that they had slid a little further.

Day by day, I watched as they edged slowly down the roof, sometimes mere centimeters at a time. It eventually became a game. Before I looked out, I'd try to guess where they'd be, and whether they would have fallen. After about a week, the shingles had crept all the way to the very edge of the roof. The next day it rained, and when I looked out, they were dangling by a corner from the gutter. Through the next week of wind and rain they clung there, and I kept glancing over, expecting any second to see them flop wetly to the porch below. One day when I looked out, they were gone. I checked the surrounding area, but didn't see them, and I assumed they'd been found and thrown out.

But the next day, someone had stuck them right back where they started, on the roof. How strange. Since there was nothing to hold them there, they did their little dance once again, but this time when they fell, they never came back.

Mayhaps and Mishaps

It's May, and I'm entirely thrilled that I put in the effort of planting about 15 million bulbs last fall, because several of them have actually come up, and are making things beautiful around here. We've done the requisite lawn seeding and fertilizing that proves we're grown-up homeowners (though...what does that make us all the years we didn't seed or fertilize?) and the lawn is feebly attempting to comply.

It's been a good Spring. Things are growing, I've been creating little things via sewing machine, crocheting, felting, etc. (which always makes me happy), and I've reconnected with several dear folk from my past over the last little while.

But about that "spring cleaning" thing... er. I guess so.

A Little Real-Life Story

I love "little real-life stories." They're tiny little things, sometimes practically just a scene, but they say a lot about people, and about life.

One of my favorite ones from a sister is this: She was walking around the block, and as she rounded the corner, she saw a little boy untangling himself from his bicycle, where he'd just fallen. He looked determined not to cry, and sort of embarassed as he was standing up, but once on his feet, he hopped on his little bike and rode away quickly.

I like that one. It's just the ending of a story, but it's a nice little scene. What made the boy crash his bike? We'll never know. What we do know is that he was embarassed but brave. And that's all we need to know.

Once, before my cell phone, I was lost at night on the way to a friend's new place. I was kind of in the middle of a wintery nowhere, but there was a little gas station with a pay phone, so I pulled in. There was a guy huddled up the phone, stamping his feet to keep warm. As I got out of the car, he shouted into the phone, "Dammit Janice--it's VALENTINE'S DAY!" slammed it down and drove off. As I reached the phone, it rang. It was Janice. I had to tell her Dave drove off. And then I realized Dave was right. I'd forgotten--It was Valentine's Day.

So many little things going on in that one.

The reason I thought of little real life stories is that the Boy called a few minutes ago becasue he needed to tell me one he'd just seen: He was walking through the emergency room at his hospital, and some paramedics came rushing in with a guy on a gurney--obviously writhing in pain and roaring, "My left nut!! My left nuuut!!" The nurse at the desk looked up and primly inquired, "Now what do we have here?" One of the paramedics looked back and seriously said, "It's his left nut, Ma'am."

Come on! Do little real stories get any better than that?

And good luck with your... um... nut, Buddy. Seriously.

Misanthropy in 3...2...1

I've said before how I enjoy the idea of "freecycle" where people offer extra/unwanted items at no cost, and people can request items they need. I still enjoy the idea of it. But the fact that people are involved makes it quite the crapshoot.

Bear with me:
I recently pruned my massive lilac bush, and have an abundance of cuttings and branches that could easily be grown into lots of bushes by someone with a semi-green thumb. In fact, years ago, one of my younger brothers stuck a lilac stick into the ground, and it's still growing there.

I decided that since plants can be expensive, I could kill two birds with one stone by offering the cuttings on freecycle to 1. give someone a chance to have a nice lilacky (?) yard and 2. get the darn things out of my way. I made sure in my listing there could be no POSSIBLE way one could misinterpret what I was offering: three big bundles of lilac branches.

I cut my huge lilac bush back a lot this spring, and have three
big bundles of branches and cuttings to give away. Lilacs can be
rooted pretty easily, so in a couple years, you'd have a whole
backyard of lilacs if you wanted.

The branches are beginning to bud even on their own, but I can't
guarantee that every single branch is still alive. I checked several, and
those were still flexible and green inside, though.

Just trying to cover all the bases here. Simple, right?

1 moron + "Simple, right?" = Not simple. Not right.

I follow the "first come, first served" approach, so when I got an email from a woman who lives in the same city as I do, I gave her the address of my house at 39 Blankity blank street, which is off of Such-n-such, down from this main road in this city. My first clue something was amiss should have been when I got an email back that said (and I'm cutting and pasting straight, here people):

Hey Steph. What is the pusical address, I don't know pontiac very well.

Pus-ical address? Ewwww. As opposed to a scab-ical address? Or maybe it's pronounced like "musical?" Ah well. I emailed her back and let her know my pusical address (again) and becasue she seemed sort of unobservant, I let her know I had bundled up the branches and put them at the side of the house by the driveway for her.

No problem. Her husband will pick them up.

Today I got an email complaining that when her husband arrived, instead of lilac BUSHES, it was just branches! What the..? Can she even make a branch grow? Huff! She's going to check the WEB. ( the all caps was her thing.)

I'm such a misleading conniving bitch trying to trick other people into taking away my useless yard waste, dontcha know?

First of all, if they can't be rooted, why the heck would I be offering them?? And secondly, did I NOT specifically write about that in the posting? Was I confusing and unclear? So I checked back through every email from the posting on, and these are the word usage stats--

"branches": 4
"cuttings": 3
"bundles": 2
"bushes"or "plants": 0 ...as in not any.

RROOARR!
__________________

In other news, the next door neighbors have cleaned up their trash heap of a yard, and now their daylilies are growing, and their house looks quite pretty.

NOT rroaarr! Something nice!!

Square One

It's been a while since I've written. With the exception of this blog and work, I've done almost nothing in terms of writing for a few years now. I'm not sure why I stopped journaling with a pen into a paper book. I'm not sure why I stopped writing fiction and poems on a regular basis.

It's also been a long time since I've worked on music or songwriting--more creative things I abandoned for no good reason. So weird to think that there was a time in college where almost every spare moment was spent recording or songwriting or spilling ennui into the pages of some unsuspecting journal. I occasionally dig out recordings from that era and it's like listening to someone else sing words I don't remember making up. Fortunately, a good friend got things rolling in the music field again, and this week we got together to work on some songs. I took some time this week to go through my stack of old journals and poetry and find things that are worth reworking or using as ideas.

They say that one must write 1,000 pages before anything worthwhile comes out of your pen. I believe it. Heck--make that 2 or 3,000...10,000 pages. And it's not exactly like riding a bike, this. I haven't song-written in a while, and it shows. It's going to take some awkward maneuvering and major rewriting to get back to a point where I have anything worthwhile on paper. I have managed to carefully eke out a couple things this week that I'm not embarassed to sing.

That's a pretty darn good start. Things are looking up.

Electro-sketch

I've been entertained by a couple online doodling places recently. One of them I can't remember the name of, but it basically was a site where the premise was that you sketched something, and then were rewarded by seeing an animation of the process of someone else's drawing. I think watching some random stranger's drawing actually emerge was the most interesting part. Apart from the obligatory huge wang from a thirteen year-old, the site had some interesting impromptu art.

I've been poking at Mai'Nada Comics today. Basically the same idea, but you don't have to draw anything to watch other people's sketches, and you are allowed to rate pieces. (mwahaha!) I notice that some of the things I think are really interesting and beautiful are not rated very highly. Hmm. I choose to believe it's because everyone else wants a crappy manga-type scrawl of a girl with big hooters, or a comic revolving around the word"poop."

Spring Cleaning

Well, I just spent a chunk of time organizing maybe a quarter of my quadrillion bookmarks, and in celebration of that, I added a few things to the links section. Over there -->
You will find that there are several sections now, including (but not limited to):

• Some of the many blogs I enjoy stopping in at regularly. Some of these people are friends in real life, some of them I know virtually, and a few I just read anonymously.
  

• Craft and art links. These are places I go to get ideas and inspiration, and sometimes just to stare at other peoples' amazing stuff. I stuck my Flickr link in there because it's sometimes sort of crafty, and there are links on it to a lot of really interesting people's photos. Flickr is a great place to browse around, and a nice community to be a part of.

• I added some of a gazillion comics I have bookmarked. These are some of the ones I check most often. I will probably add others in the future, or perhaps add a Dead Comics section. There are some really worthy comics out there that have either finished their storylines, or been abandoned (poor things). They still deserve a read.
  

• The music links I am going to try to rotate on a semi-sorta-occasionally regular basis. I've added some more general links, and also a few links to some friends and aquaintences who make lovely sounds that ought to be heard.

• The various and sundry section is mostly composed of nerrrrrrdy links that also happen to be very interesting and entertaining. Many of them are blog-style sites (updated daily or weekly) so should you enjoy them, you must check back again and again! Hmm. I just noticed that Exploding Dog is in this section, and it probably ought to be with comics, but I'm blatently going to leave it there for now.

----------------

Boy is playing a Star Wars game on his computer, which means that it sounds as though there's a lightsaber fight going on right behind me. There is grunting and exclaiming, and the occasional Rodian voice yelling, "Doba mei E'kusha!" Whatever, Greedo. Whatever.

Hear ye, hear ye!

It's always a joy to discover a witty, interesting writer, and it's even more of a joy when the subject of that person's work is one dear my own heart: The dimensional bubble that surrounds Meijer, somehow rendering it a bizarre wonderland of strange sightings and experiences. For those of you non-Michigan dwellers, Meijer is a massive one-stop shopping "groceries to car parts" extravaganza the size of a city block. Seriously.

Imagine my joy when I stumbled across a blog entitled The Meijer Chronicles , composed of nothing but stories of wacky Meijer experiences! Traci's writing is hilarious and her stories make me snicker wickedly and nod knowingly. A visit to her site (linked above) is recommended.

This of course made me think of my own Meijer adventures, of which I offer this list:

• I was once at Meijer late at night, when the overhead PA came on, and a business-like man's voice announced, "Attention Meijer guests--I am not wearing any pants."

• When I was in college, a friend and I got locked out of our dorm in the middle of the night, so she and I catnapped in the back of the beanbag chair shelf in the housewares department until morning. I guess that makes me an accessory to Meijer weirdness.
  

• Once, in a Meijer bathroom, I found a cashier girl crying, and realized she was hemorrhaging. I ran to tell a brain-dead Mejier associate that one of her co-workers needed an ambulance, but she just stared at me, so I had to find a manager to make the call. Then I waited with the girl, helping her calm her breathing down, while her ineffectual coworkers fluttered annoyingly about until the ambulance arrived and whisked her away. Then I bought some wasabi.

• Once I overheard some teens talking conspiratorially about stealing a live lobster. I think their sheer stupidity made my brain stop, and I just sort of froze, contemplating their idiocy. When they noticed me and registered the look that must have been on my face, they scuttled away.

• Meijer occasionally announces via computer voice overhead, "Attention Meijer guests, there is no waiting in lane...twenty...one (or whatever lucky number)." Someone from my school once hijacked the PA to announce, "Attention Meijer guests, there is an orgy in lane...sixty...nine." Classy!

• I mustn't forget to mention my lights-out Meijer adventure.

Ah, the joys of Meijer.

I succeeded in holding!

I love that when the Japanese make a robot, they make it not only functional, but cute.

Get a load of Ri-Man, the only robot designed specifically "for holding up a human." There are video clips on the page that are pretty interesting.

In some ways, I always assume that we're further along in robotics than we actually are, thanks in part Hollywood, no doubt. When it's big news that a robot can carry over 100 pounds over rough terrain and not fall down, I'm a little surprised. But couldn't those droids on Tatooine...? Oh wait. Star Wars.

It may not seem like a huge accomplishment for a robot to pick up a doll, but it took years of time and effort. Way to go, robot makers! Just don't let them become sentient and crush our skulls! Yay!

Once Upon a Time

When the Boy was very young, they lived in a trailer park. Blanket statements aside, the Boy's family would have stood out a bit anywhere they lived, I'm sure. Understandably, people thought they were a bit strange. His father was into history, politics, and classical music, and his mother wrote poetry and sewed beautiful things. One neighbor told her everyone found it weird that she talked to the Boy while walking him in his stroller. "He can't even talk yet. What's the point?"

One day, a neighbor's wife knocked on the door and the Boy's father answered. The woman was all splendor in a muu-muu and curlers. "Jamie (her son) here?" she asked.

"No," the Boy's father replied. "Sorry."

"How 'bout yer son?" She asked.

"He's not here either."

"What about yer wife?"

"Sorry--she's running errands."

The woman glanced this way and that, then leaned forward, toying with a curler seductively.

The Boy's father was nonplussed.

Then she announced in a foxy voice,"And now... I'm gonna seduce ya."

"No you're not," he responded. And shut the door in her face.

_________________________

That story always makes me laugh. Perfect pick-up line.

One lumpy baby hat.

I've let Em know that if I can't manage to get it right before the baby's born, she's just going to have to have a baby with a weirdly shaped head.

Now to make a hat with ears. Everything's cuter with ears.

In Which My Nerdy Dreams Come True.

I've always been enamoured with stories that involve setting with so much character its almost alive--particularly deep, dark, hitherto unexplored and ancient buildings.

I wanted to be an archeologist when I was little. Maybe that's it. I love browsing around the Urban Exploration Ring to see what crumbling beauty of a building someone's found and photographed. I stumbled onto the ring while I was researching the vast and mysterious network of tunnels and catacombs under Paris.

Up until this point, the closest I'd found a few books which I love (among other reasons) for that mystery/exploration aspect: Garth Nix's Lirael contains an ancient library with levels and sublevels that go below where people remember anyone ever having been, and ultimately, Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast Castle is practically a character in the trilogy, with its unending corridors and turrets.

My favorite scene is in the first book, when Steerpike crosses the roofs. He escapes out a window, and edges his way onto the vast field of turrets and rooftops. It's days before he finds a way down again. Some of the things he sees:

• From a distant wall, a massive tree has grown horizontally out and up. Tiny figures of people can be seen taking their tea on its trunk.
• Far below, in a valley where several roofs meet, rainwater has collected into a pool. A white horse is swimming in it.
• At an open shutter, he meets an old poet, living in a room in an abandoned part of the castle.

Gormenghast is not magical, persay, but the trilogy is often lumped with fantasy books because it's filled with mysterious and bizzare charcters.

Which I just love.

Fare Thee Well, Eskimo-Disco Slippers

For Christmas, I was given an insanely fluffy pair of boot-slippers, which have essentially have merged with my feet since that point. Around the sole and rim are billows of white fake fur, which also composes the inside of the boot. My favorite part: The laces were long enough to wrap around a boot twice, and at their ends had sumptuous white puffs, the size of a golf ball. Those who know me will understand why ours was a secret love. I'm not a fluffy, lavender kind of girl.

Well, I still love and wear the boots, but the cats have taken away most of the Eskimo-disco appeal by carefully snipping off the white puffs with their teeth, one by one, and then bounding about the house with them, shaking and batting them endlessly. There was one left last night, but this morning I popped on the boots, and then noticed Boo sneaking up the stairs with the last lone lorn puff dangling from his mouth. When I tried to catch him, he flounced away with it.

Enjoy your new toys, Boo and Nihao!

Activate!

Come on, everyone! It's a neato thing that will go completely extinct unless we help! Gocco is a sweet little compact and efficient setup for screen printing that was wildly popular in Japan in the 1970s. As home computers and printers became more popular, the gocco fervor gradually declined to the point that production stopped.

This legendary craft-tacious goody is still useful and relevant for people doing home art prints, printing on fabric and handmade or otherwise non-printer ready paper, and a million other ideas that spring from the minds of the crafty. It's a shame to see it become relegated to Ebay and junk shops.

Like the LOMO (a keen but temporarily discontinued Russian camera), perhaps the company can be convinced to continue making goccos on a small-scale basis.

Let us cross our fingers and hope, 'cause I want one of these puppies. Bad.

Off to the Land of Maple Leaf...

When we were little, we thought that the special land where the trolly takes viewers in Mister Rogers Neighborhood was maybe somewhere in...Canada? It took a few years before we realized it was not the land of Maple Leaf, but the Land Of Make Believe.

Undoubtedly, one of my favorite parts of the program was the pan over the tiny model neighborhood at the ends of the show. I loved tiny replicas of things, and still do. I was reading about using photographs to create the illusion of small scale models, so I decided to try if for myself. The picture above is a photo of a real life street in Quebec, rendered teeny by the wonders of technology.

Stampity

Though not anywhere near as delicious as maple toffee, I've been poking at making some stamps to get used to the feel of things before I go all out and make some larger prints. I love this sort of thing, because I can suck at making the stuff, but as long as it's a simple form, the way the ink falls lends even crappy art some instant "cred."

As much as I'd like to claim that I carved these from hunk of rock or something, I'm going about this the wussy way - I bought a block of Speedy-cut, which is an eraser-like material that's really easy to deal with and keeps my wrists and hands from getting carpal tunnelly. Misterart.com has a good selection of printmaking supplies, and usually has some sort of sale going on.

Now to try to clean all these little rubber shavings off my desk and clothes, and off the cat (?!) and off the floor...

Mmm-Mmm.

It may look like poop, but I made maple toffeeeee. I love actual from-the-tree maple syrup, and this is made with all of 2 ingredients: maple syrup and a slice of butter to keep it from bubbling out of control when it's boiled. Just boil the stuff to 236 degrees F, take it off the heat and let it rest for a minute, then pour it into a cold dish, give it a couple hours to cool, then PULL it until it lightens up a bit with air. It's insane just how...pullable the stuff is. I was stretching it well above my head before folding it back down. What fun.

Citizens of the intraweb, unite!

If you get a chance, you should take a look at this petition against the fees AOL and Yahoo want to begin charging for "guaranteed safe delivery" of emails. Please sign it if you agree. Ask friends to sign it.

Boing Boing has an article today about the details of what these fees would mean. Not only would this be the first step toward an internet equivalent to a toll booth on every sidewalk, but it means that spammers will now be able to pay a small fee to ensure that you receive every single one of the penis enlargment emails they send.

Brrr.

Victory!

Update: the idiot neighbors removed all the trash piles and the garbage bin from their front yard today, and the street has also been quiet. Woot! I dare them to keep it up.

Isn't this a Raffi song?

There's nothing quite like a beluga whale blowing bubble rings to a little girl with her face against the aquarium glass. And for those of you who can't view the video:


There's another site about bubble rings here with some very pretty pictures and some video.

Evil. As in, "the fru-it of the dev-il."

I just talked to someone at the city's "Building and Sanitation" Dept, and was told that though it may take a while to happen, an inspector would come out and check things out, and issue citations etc. Mwaahahah!

Hopefully my complaint will be anonymous, because I don't want my house burned down.

Won't you be my ex-neighbor?

Gah. I loved our neighborhood until the a-holes next door moved in a couple months ago. We had a quiet, tidy little street, with friendly neighbors and pretty front gardens.

Then someone bought the house next door to ours, apparently did a bit of rennovating last fall, and since then there have been heaps of trash in their yard and down by the road, even after they officially moved in. Fine. If you're actually in the process of working on the house, that's understandable, but it's been FIVE MONTHS that this stuff has been out there.

Our town also has city-issued trash bins (which are great) that need to be kept out of the line-of-sight from the street. They've never brought their bin up from the curb. Ever. Ironically, last week, we received a city notice on our trash bin that we needed to take it in (got it the same day as the trash was collected.), and the neighbor got nothing. How could an inspector walk past huge heaps of trash and an obvious bin, and not notice? Makes my blood pressure rise.

If they were nice people, the trash would just be an annoyance, but they're not. I don't doubt that they're running some sort of illegal "business" there--cars are always roaring up to the house and leaving within a few minutes. Fine. Roar away. But don't park in my freaking driveway. How stupid do you have to be to think that's okay? I went over there the other day to ask them to move their car and the pissy asshat that came out to move his truck from where it was blocking me in-- pulled out of the driveway, drove up and down a couple times, and then parked ACROSS THE END OF MY DRIVEWAY. I had to go back over and ask them to move the car again. More bitching and moaning from them about having to walk a half a block. Screw you. I finally called the cops later when one of their car alarms had been going off for 2 hours and no one had bothered to see to it.

I miss my nice little neighborhood.

Manholes of Japan. The cuteness never ends.

Behold. They're freaking works of art.

Landscaping vs. Apartment Life

Now you can have both! No need to wish you had something growing to cultivate-- even if you haven't the space, there's always room for a petri garden. They're even stackable!

Actually, some of the...um....growths...are quite lovely. They look like pen and ink designs.
_____________

I've been ruthlessly freecycling things away lately. I have to say, I love the idea. The concept is thus: You need something. Someone else has what you need and doesn't want it any longer. They give it to you. And vice versa. Contact is made via the freecycle site and/or mailing list, on which you can post if you're offering or searching for something. The only stipulation is that it be no-strings-attached free. I can live with that. It's also nice to be able to give something you don't need to people who will use it. Makes me feel much better than throwing things out.

I've been making room around here by being a little harsh about what things we actually use and which things we just don't need to keep. It feels good to get a bit more space. The next step is to go through our gazillion books and weed out duplicates and ones that aren't worth re-reading. Then on to the forty quadrillion cds.

This is interesting: We have around three thousand cds (no joke) and we haven't bought a new one in god knows how long. It's been about a year. Not to say that we haven't bought music, it's just that it's all been in digital form. That lovely, space-saving form. I'm surprised at how utterly I don't care about having cover art and cases anymore. That all stopped when we hit critical mass on the shelves and had to resort to piling in cardboard boxes. Not only have I not bought a cd, but it's a rare occasion that I listen to one, even. In fact, it's gotten to the point where the idea of a cd is almost quaint.

Why should I bother with this physical thing that can only hold one album's worth of music, when I have a much smaller physical thing that can hold hours and hours of songs or audio books? Or better yet, I can just play them on the computer and not have to deal with any extra physical things. And even best yet, I can just stream music from Epitonic "Radio" or Pandora, and not even have to take up virtual space. It's the future! What's not to like? Digital media has also saved me countless hours of scanning shelves of cds I've never managed to put in order (though I'm sure I would subconsciously be SO much happier a person if they were alphabetized) in search of a particular disc. Go zeros and ones!

From the desk of...someone confused.

Remember the vacuous junior high cheerleader who had signed up for a MySpace page using my address? Well, prepare to be dazzled. It's clear now that there are currently multiple obtuse Stephs who have given away one of my email addresses as their own. A few years ago, I had received a few emails for some Steph graduating college on the East coast. Mostly it was her university hitting me up for donations (which I can understand puposely giving out the wrong email address for) and her mother, of all people (who OUGHT to have a correct address. Or not, depending on the mother.). Well, apparently she's moved to California and is on a job hunt, obliviously giving out the wrong email address again becasue today the junk mail filter almost caught this:

Steph,

Thank you again for coming in to meet with our team and for your time. We appreciate your interest in AppStream. Although your qualifications are impressive, we do not feel they are commensurate with our needs at this time. We will retain your resume for future consideration.

We wish you continued success in your career.

L--

L-- C, SPHR
Human Resources
AppStream , Inc.

Oh...OOPS, I guess. I'm so not sympathetic. It makes me wonder if I'm a real schmuck. I'm tempted to write HR back and let them know they made the right decision. Actually, my only choice is to let her try to follow up about the position and get the bad news in person....Which I really hope makes her realize that she's fallen prey again to whatever stupidity it is that makes people forget their own email addresses on multiple instances when it's important they get their contact info correct.

Don't you DARE Put Your Feet Up.

As much as I adore the idea of this high-tech coffee table from HP, it would die quickly in our house. Here at Casa McW, the point of coffee tables is to have someplace to put your feet, the mail, and various beverages. Out coffee table is never empty. I can imagine that the high tech version would just sigh and stop working the 500th time someone accidentally set a hot mug of coffee on it, or used it as a catch-all for some crafty project involving sawdust or little slivers of plastic (both have happened to ours).

Nonetheless, it would be ever-so-keen to be able to gather around to play games or look at a map, watch a movie or just browse the web, etc. I just know that it would end up awkwardly tilted on its side because the "looking down from above" thing may be very Star Trek, but it's not at all practical.

Makers (and Muad'Dibs)

Recently I've spent more time making things and thinking about making things. It's nice to be planning and making little drawings again, even if it's about silly little things like LED throwies, or puppets for my niece. I think when we have a kid that it would be fun to make a bunch of white throwies and mount some light sheet metal so they can have little stars at night, and make constellations. It's been interesting looking through places like Make or Instructables for ideas and jumping off points.

I really really need space to organize my collected "stuff to make other things from." I have things like yellowed crackly pages from old novels, copper wire, mason jars, wire brads, glass beads, plywood scraps, old postcards and black and white photos I collect from flea markets, various stones, paints, fabric scraps, yarn, fishing line etc, ad infinitum. Not to mention the quadrillion pairs of needle nosed pliers and implements and soldering irons. It's scattered in little caches around the house at this point - a box of stuff here, a bag can fit there - What I really need is a big cabinet with lots of drawers. Many many little drawers. I'm positive there's something Freudian about my obsessive need to organize things out into drawers.

The Boy might be a little miffed that I've been snickering about him. He's at his desk, I'm at mine (as often we are in the evenings). There was a long period of silence, then a few minutes ago suddenly, in a flat, robotic voice, he said, "Help." And then he said it again. And again. Of course I turned to see what he could possibly need help with that would require such a weird way of expressing it, and I realized that he wasn't talking to me. He was apparently conversing with his new smart phone, because once it was up and running, it asked him, "What would you like help with?" Out loud. In a phone lady-voice. Crazy. "Call Mom," he told it. "Mom at home, or Mom's cell?" it asked.

In any case, the "help... help... help," bit had me laughing, because it reminded me of a story about one of my sisters. When she was about 3 or 4 years old, she got stuck crawling under the couch or something, and called to my mom for help. Mom, seeing that she wasn't in immediate danger, let her know she'd be there in a second. My sister still squirmed and continued to call for Mom until it fell into a rhythmic, "Help!....Help!....Help!" Eventually she became resigned and the urgent note in her voice turned into a flat robotic tone, and Mom heard her little voice repeat, "Help...this is a recording...Help." If it were me, it would have taken a couple minutes for me to stop laughing and assist her.

The boy has just informed me that his Smarty McCellphonepants will not only play MP3s, but he can simply say, "Play Godspeed You Black Emperor," (or whatever) and it will. Or if it's on random, he can ask, "What song is this?" It also plays movies and such, and does the whole camera/video thing (even has a flash). It's easy to see why he's enamoured with it. It's basically a little computer he can take everywhere. Boy + computer = loooove.

I proudly informed him that my phone can not only make calls, but it can receive them as well.

Oh, The Places I've Been... (in red)

create your own visited country map

That may look slightly impressive, but it's more than a little misleading. I mean, it looks as though I've tromped up through the entire Canadian North and tooled around Russia from Siberia to Ukraine. Which I haven't. I have been (at least briefly) to

• United States. I tend to visit the US permanently.
• Canada. Ah, the country of my birth.
  
• Mexico (long enough to realize that Reynosa is a pretty dusty place)
  
• England
  
• Scotland
• Wales
• France
• Germany
• Italy
• Begium
• Switzerland
• Netherlands
• Luxemborg (just long enough to look at a couple WWII graveyards. It took about 30 minutes to drive across the entire country.
• Vatican City (do most people count this as another country? I know technically it has its own money and postage, etc, but come on...)
• Russia
• Austria

That's it for now, and probably for quite awhile. Travelling doesn't appear to be in the cards for me at this point, which is fine.

HOWEVER, one thing that does appear to be in the cards (as it were) is a rennovated kitchen. I am making a concerted effort to not squeal like a small, thrilled child and do little impromptu dances. However, I am VERY excited, and am hoping like h311 it works out. More later if it does actually work out.

Tom vs. Oprah Smashup!

I'm not usually one to even pretend that the silly, silly lives of celebrities have any bearing on reality whatsoever, but I'm deriving much amusement from Tom Cruise this past year. The timeline goes something like this:

1. Tom and Katie hook up. (Why Katie, why?)
2. Tom goes batshit, declares himself a psychology expert and accuses various people of being "glib." (This is a performance of the script of the interview word for word.)
3. Tom goes on Oprah in the now famous couch jumping interview.
4. Clever nerds transform the video into one of Tom killing Oprah with his mind. It works quite well.
5. More insanity from Tom (ha...microphones that squirt water. ha...)
6. Oprah has James Frey back on her show to scold him after finding out his "biography" is fiction
7. Fark.com posts rumor of a Tom/Katie breakup. Farkers post amusing comments regarding it.
8. Tom Cruise has hissy fit and stomps feet. Shouts, "Glib! Glib!"
9. Clever nerds make a smashup video for Best Week Ever with pieces of Oprah's show from the jump the couch episode and the James Frey reprimand. The world smirks and waits for Tom to react.

WHAM! FLASH MOB!

Guess what tomorrow is!! No... Well, it is Valentine's day and all that mushy tripe, but what I'm excited for is the 419 virtual flash mob. Yay!..? That didn't make any sense whatsoever, so allow me to explain:

Artists against 419 is sick and tired of scammers hijacking auctions and taking advantage of people in order to weasle money out of them. Scammers regularly set up fake bank websites to convince their victims of one thing or another ending in them scuttling away with cash. These fake banks are sometimes really funny pieces of work, and they're generally not set up to support more than a few visitors at a time.

The flash mob is one day where hundreds of indignant law-abiding internet users organize to visit fake bank sites in order to bring them down, and hopefully acrue nice fat bandwidth bills for the scammer. Mwahaha!

Pop in at the AA419 site tomorrow and click away while chuckling quietly to yourself. It's so satisfying to see the results of your handiwork, as links go dead. Go ahead--feel indignant! Do it!

Sweet Fancy Moses!

This may be passe' to those of you who read cuteoverload.com, but consider the following:

Ragingly adorable, is it not? I had thought the amount of head exploding cuteness imbued in this flying squirrel from Samurai Champloo was a figment of the imagination, but NO!

Great googly moogly! Nature did it first!

The squirrel in the link above is native only to Japan, which does a lot to explain why the Japanese are so adept at creating things that make me reel from the effects of cuteness overexposure.

Speaking of Japan, my new favorite Flickr photgrapher hails from there. Here is a link to his photo sets, which are full of beautiful images taken with a very expensive digital SLR that I lust after. See in particular his most recent sets, and don't forget the wonders of the "jumping cats" set! His apartment is so clean and mod. Hey jealousy.

House of Fog and...Fog.

Just to clarify - the picture below is our foggy neighborhood from our house. No housefires, though that would have been exciting. Or...maybe not. The people across from us have a very yellowy light on their garage.

I do have some pictures of a real live housefire I saw. I'll post them if I can find them.

Yesterday was a shitty, shitty day.

Fact #1. When your fifteen minute checkup turns into your doctor sending you to get an emergency CT scan, it's not a rollicking fun time.

Fact #2. Hospitals can't even get the simplest of foods (like a turkey sandwich) right. Everything tastes like its been rolled carefully in sand and stale flour.

Fact #3. Having a CT done on your head feels like going in a time machine. You have to have your eyes closed, but all that whirring and flashing through a giant ring makes you feel like you should be disembarking at the signing of the Declaration of Independance or the unveiling of the first moon colony.

I should have the results today or tomorrow. Though I have been thinking about it, I'm not terribly worried. Thankfully, I haven't keeled over, which I assume is a good sign.

Burnin' Down the House!

Welcome to my foggy, post-apocalyptic neighborhood.

I used the Surrealist's Ebay Feedback Generator to make the critical decision on what I should leave for my most recent purchase. We bought a 1 MB iPod Shuffle, and they originally sent us a 512MB, so I thought I'd experiment with a little over the top negative feedback. Here is what was generated:

Item detestable. Beastly packaging. Immensely slow dispatch.
Notably horrid quality! Cursed packaging. Sluggish delivery.
Daunting quality. Uncomely packaging. Ever so dire delivery.
The item was detestable! Foul packaging. Abhorrent delivery.
Item abhorrent! Very, very slow dispatch. Heinous packaging.
Item sickening. Loathsome packaging. Delivery was repellent.
Rotten quality! Packaging was vile. Delivery was detestable.
Item is of heinous quality! Haglike packaging. Slow to send.
Item is of eerie quality! Slow to send. Frightful packaging.
The item was icky and lurid. Cursed packaging. Late to send.

The packaging was uncomely and haglike! I demand a refund!

Silly rabbit - when will you ever learn?

Clearly it won't be anytime soon! Those of you who read my blog from the beginning may remember a certain post where I vowed never to own fish again. Well, three years later and whaddya know? Actually, I can still feel self-righteous about that one. I don't technically own fish...yet. But I do own fish food, and have a little tank humming away here in the study.

Não ocupado!

I have finally found something to do with the stones and shells I've collected from some of the places I've been. Instead of being piled in a mug on the mantle, I've dumped them into the tank. My future fish will certainly appreciate that they're swimming over some shells from Hilton Head, some little stones from Brighton beach in England, a flat rock from Dachau, a skipping stone from Point Pelee, and some beach glass from Galveston. A weird little collection that, when put all together, represents the life of someone I maybe don't know.

Glad Day

I found out today that for the second time, I'm going to lose a pen pal. This might not initally sound like something I should be ecstatic about, but trust me--I am!

For the past 5 months, I've been exchanging letters with a little girl named Nastia in an orphanage in Odessa, Ukraine. She's earnest and sweet, and has been utterly dejected since her best friend was adopted by a family in the US a couple months ago. Weeell, today I found out (from the friend who lives in Odessa and translates my letters) that, though Nastia doesn't know it yet, a family is trying to adopt her. Not just any family, but one that is close friends with the one who adopted her best friend! Whoo! Double plus! So pray, cross your fingers, light a candle, or whatever it is you do in hopes that there won't be any problems with the adoption.

Last year my pen pal was a 13 year old boy named Dima. He'd been the parent to his three younger siblings on the street before they were put into the orphanage. He was so terrified that someone might adopt one of the other siblings, and they'd never see each other again. His dream was that they'd all be adopted together. Who'd adopt 4 siblings, ranging in age from 5 to 13? Against all odds, (and probably some common sense, but does it matter?) a couple in Maryland did just that. Crazy! I got to chat with their adoptive mom before hand, which was nice. I still get letters and pictures. The kids actually look healthy now, and so darn happy.

I'm so glad people are adopting older kids--the ones who are ready to give up hope that anyone would want them or love them. I have two little brothers from the same orphanage as Nastia and Dima. They've been in the family over a year now, and it feels like they've always been there.

But it still kills me that they say things like, "You know what's cool about living with Mom and Dad? They just give me food. I don't even have to pay for it." An eleven year old shouldn't have to think like that.

You must whip it. Whip it real good.

Many thanks to the folk at Worth1000.com.

Scam, scam and more scam!

Scam with eggs, fried scam.... uh, spam.

Really though, what's on the brain is "scam" rather than Scientifically Produced Animal Matter.

Every one of us has, at some time or another, been approached via email by a Nigerian prince / politician's wife/ Lagos cabinet member who is in "dire need of your help, dear friend!!" to shuttle several million dollars out of the country and into our personal bank account. Phew. Nothin' smells quite like a 419 scam (so named because of the Nigerian law pertaining to how it's not allowed.).

All that to say... I have highly entertained by the turn of events over the past few years that has led to people working to waste scammers' time by stringing them along to waste their time, often with hilarious results.

There are several websites dedicated to "scam baiting," as well as the satisfying practice of virtually flash-mobbing the fake bank websites scammers use and bringing them down. I realize this is something that could result in some jail time, were it being done to legal regular-joe websites, but the fact that people are getting together to crash websites used to commit crimes... it warms the old heart a bit. It's like some sort of vigilante justice, and it's poetic, in a way. Many countries do little to stop internet scams, and it's nice to know someone is paying attention, and pissed off.

Artists against 419 and Scam-o-rama are intersting sites to bumble around in for awhile. If you're feeling particularly ruthless, you can browse through the galleries on 419 Eater.
Those people are crazy pissed at scammers. They've compiled hundreds of photos they've convinced the scammers to send them in the process of pretending to be a rich little old lady who's hesitant to send money to someone she's never seen...and who inexplicably requests that the scammer be holding a sign that says something as classy as "Ben Dover" or "Phil MacCrackin." Or something much, much less classy.

As entertaining as wasting scammers' time can be, I'm not sure when it comes to the hundreds of photos of people balancing fish on their heads, holding signs that declare various potentially embarassing things, etc. Some of them are rather hilarious, but sometimes it gets to the point where it feels as though it's more about humiliating someone than stopping a potential crime. I don't know if that makes any sense. Maybe I'm overly sensitive, or being too "righteous" about it all. It's just that these people have no idea they're being humiliated. They carefully hand lettered the sign that says "Ima peta file" and put on a nice outfit, stood in front of an ugly backdrop, took their picture, and sent it to someone in a far off country.

I guess the part I need to remember is that they sent the picture, hoping they could lie well enough to convince that person to fall for their scam, sign over their nest egg, and potentially ruin their life.

Annnnd.... BAM! You thought you were safe!

Thank you Cuteoverload, thank you.

Tomorrow we will spend the evening rocking and shredding and rocking some more, as we will be packing up our Guitar Hero and taking it over to see friends who also own it, and then dueling with them in a rad fashion. Because A: we are dorks and B: it is so darn much addictive, stupid fun. For pete's sake--in order to activate your rock bonus points mid-song, you must whip the guitar heavenward in that ageless metal salute. Like so:

Disclaimer: by posting this picture, the author of this blog does not endorse or advocate Van Halen or its music. Shredding in the privacy of one's own home is much different than the above "I just rocked my way out of prison" type of look. And Van Halen makes the author want to hide under the bed and listen to Belle and Sebastian and Sufjan Stevens the rest of the day.

Jung-jung!

That would be the sound of the beginning of Law and Order, rather than, you know...Carl Jung-jung. I've been hearing more of that sound lately, as the Boy has developed a man-crush on Vincent D'Onofrio from watching Law and Order CI. The other day we were hanging out on the couch watching an episode, and realized that they were following it up with another. The boy was gleeful. When it was announced that there would be yet another episode following this one, the Boy clapped his hands like an excited fourth grader and exclaimed, "I LOVE this day!"

Har!

The crocheting is going...well, I suppose. My right hand feels like the hand of an old, old woman, though. I need some kind of special-ed big soft grip I can put on the crochet hook so I don't cramp my hand after a while. I've found a couple patterns I'm happy with too, which is nice, since I generally think of crocheting involving those lacy old lady circles. The two I like are simple, geometric, and clean as crocheting goes. None of that frou-frou "set glamour shots of your grandkids on me" doily crap.

When I have made enough of these, I plan to take over the world.
Or attach them all together to make a blanket.

Sew What?

Incidentally, I haven't yet made anything of consequence on the rocking sewing machine because of that annoying need for fabric to make things out of. I did make some quick curtains out of some...uh, other curtains, and I sewed an experimental fat little robot who turned out looking floppy and dejected.

Cheer up, fuzzbot!

Xanga-roo

I started a Xanga blog in order to comment on the paternal unit's blog. We don't see eye to eye on everything, but I'm glad he's writing and becoming involved in an (albeit small) online community.
I don't expect to be writing much over there at all, but I do like the ability to be able to easily post a currently reading/listening/watching link with a little picture. It's something I'd like Blogger to do. I'm always interested in people's recommendations. And it forces me to be interesting.

Oh No. My Head A Splode.

I have just had multiple aneurysms and head explodings while looking at this page of extreme and intense cuteness. Seriously. Prepare yourselves. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Oo! Don't forget to look at the cuteness categories--the links on the upper left side.

Oh, and happy belated Christmas and a Jolly New Year to everyone who celebrates that sort of thing, since it's my thing too. I now have a rockingly awesome sewing machine (no snickering!) and I will be making fun things and hopefully will post a picture or two.

*Sigh*

I have decided that because it's Christmas and all that, I probably won't be doing anything calculatedly hilarious and mean to annoying-girl's MySpace site. I think she may have lied about her age anyway--she looks way too young to be 20, and I don't want to break the hearts of mere children.

(The young call her the Soul Crusher, for she ruthlessly mocks their choice of music, awful grammar, and puctuation. )

The Good Old Days

This nice gentleman is glad the surgery to remove his third arm went so well.

Such a Pretty Dummy

Many people in Chihuahua, Mexico believe that the mannequin in a bridal shop window is actually the embalmed daughter of the former owner. The hubub started when the realistic dummy was first put into the window in 1930. I suppose people were used to seeing simple headless shop window dummies, perhaps? In any case, the owner finally had to make a statement through the local law that the dummy was just a dummy, and please stop these harassing calls accusing her of embalming her daughter. Curious, I looked up more pictures on "La Pascualita," and was vaguely disappointed. Then I saw this picture of her hand, and was a little weirded out.


I'm glad they don't make mannequins that realistic anymore.

Fine

Here it is, in all its glory. I'm still having a bit of a hard time not believing this is one of my clever friends playing a pretty hilarious joke on me. No? Feh, it's still hilarious.

I notice there have been some updates to her profile. How do you manage to go to middle school if you're allegedly born in 1985? Ohhhh... By having a fantastically delicate and miniscule brain?

Must...Be...Nice... Remember Christmas-time.

The misanthrope in me is being tempted to do something pretty funny, but kind of mean. But…more funny than mean. I swear. Well, okay…it would really only be funny to me and give me some satisfaction, which means I have no excuse for doing it.

Back story: Soon after I got my Comcast email address 3 years ago, I began getting the occasional email from vapid, semi-illiterate teens in Pennsylvania somewhere. I quickly figured out that some girl had been inadvertently giving out my email address, rather than her own. Oops. Not a mistake I’d probably make, but these things happen. I began replying to the emails, (gently) letting them know they have the wrong address, and they need to let “their Steph” know she has to figure out what her actual address is and stop giving out mine. Now, you’d think that if a friend told you she sent an email about her secret crush to a complete stranger because you provided her with the wrong address… that, mortified, you’d make sure your return address was set correctly, and that it didn’t happen again.

But noooo. Not only did various emails from friends, parents, and school groups increase, but she began signing up for retarded mailing lists about tanning, etc. (like, oh my gawd!)

I began to get frustrated, and reply a little more sharply to people, in hopes that they’d get the message across to this idiot. Some boy wrote multiple times about “how good last nite was,” “and how he couldn’t wait 2 look into ur eyyes again,” and when I was done laughing, I was ticked off. Why couldn’t an intelligent person with interesting friends make this mistake? (rhetorical question)

This time I poked through the headers of her attached previous email and found her actual email address. I wrote her a letter that was gentler, in retrospect, than I should have been. She responded, not with an apology, but with an “OMG! I need emails from paul can u send them to me or tell me what he said. Make me a list of emails I missd.”

Right. Now I’m your message service? I responded that I wasn’t going to be forwarding emails, and if she was interested in what people had to say, she would correct her address with them so SHE would get them, not me. Gradually, the influx of lost emails began to subside, and I trained my email to junk the mailing list messages so I don’t have to deal with them.

And then… the other day, I received an email from MySpace, letting me know that some schumck wanted to added as “one of my friends.” I was mildly confused, since, as far as I could remember, I has not signed up for anything with MySpace, which appears to be *the* place for weirdoes and teens to flirt with each other. No offense to anyone literate who has a MySpace site.

In any case, I went over to the main site and poked at the login just in case I has signed up way back when and forgotten. Nope. None of my standard passwords worked, so I clicked “I forgot my password” and they sent it, no questions asked, to…my Comcast email. More confusion for a moment as my brain slowly clicked into gear. I know I probably never signed up at MySpace, but I know for SURE that I never had “areyougay1” as my password for anything. (a light goes on in my head) oh, I see.

And this is where my temptation to do evil came in: I went to the “other” Steph’s ridiculous MySpace site, and of course, with her login and password, I can alter her site and profile. Ooo, the temptation! Here is a quote from her veritable literary work of a profile:

Okayy..well um I have a boyfriend named Dominic.We have been together for 1 month.I love him soooooo much!:)I am on a cheerleading team called the American Flyerz.Yeahh we are thee bestt teamm.We mostly get FIRST PLACE!..I have AIM and a Livejournal and obvisily a myspace.Um Yeah I love to tan.Im really dark.I love to jump on the trampoline.I can do like front flips and backflips.Well I love to listen to music and to watch T.V....Well i love my friends.There swweeeeet.Well i can be really stupid and a blonde at times.Im really outgoing and I love to have fun and just be with my friends..I really hate school.But yeah...I love to do my makeup and use lipgloss.Yeah well i love the Andy Milliknockis Show..Hahah its soooooo funny!!!!!!..Yeah well I have dark brown hair with red highlights and I have brown eyes.Yeah well um I love my hair.I jsut got it permentaly straighted and I have side bangs.Yeahhh welll...i wear Abercrombie and alll them kind of clothes.So yeahh.

I kid you not. I have not changed a letter. There is also a priceless photo of her and some friend pouting for the camera. She’s freaking 20 years old. Am I wrong to think one should be just slightly beyond this at 20?

Anyway, I am sitting on my hands like a good person, and not logging on and adding a bit about her being a bimbo or making fun of her grammatical inadequacies.

I am a good person. I am a good person. (Repeat until the urge to be mean goes away.)

My Special Best Friend

The other day I pulled up to a light and noticed a scruffy looking guy at the far corner of a building on the opposite side of the intersection. He was clearly in a heated discussion with whoever was around the corner, because he was gesticulating angrily and waving his finger. A couple times he whirled to go, and almost left the conversation entirely, but he turned back with a final word or two as the light changed.

As my car rolled by, I was curious as to what type of person he was debating, but when the corner came into view, all I saw was a large window he was stading in front of. "Is he arguing with someone inside?" I wondered stupidly.

...Until I pulled level and realized that in the plate glass was a full length reflection of the guy, as he picked the argument with himself back up where it had left off.

I hope he and his friend have someplace warm to sleep, and something to eat.

Jolly Old St. Nick

This gallery of children hating their visits with Father Christmas himself made me say things like, "Oh, poor baby! (tee heeehee.)" Am I awful that pictures of crying children make me giggle? Actually, I don't think I can be that bad. I got really mad and threw a remote once when a "funniest video" program showed a genuinely terrified 4 year old being chased around and around the car by a huge angry turkey. The parents thought it was so hilarious that they didn't bother opening the car door until the poor kid had almost shrieked himself hoarse. Stupid freaking "parents." It still makes me angry to think about it. That kid will need years of therapy.

In any case... these kids generally seem more pissed off than terrified, which makes it...uh, okay to laugh? Mall Santas must have to deal with so many uncooperative tots.

I'm not exactly Santa-crazy, but I think that J.R.R. Tolkien's book of Letters from Father Christmas that he wrote each year to his children is really sweet and magical.

Getting all Christmassy and Stuff

It is a rare thing indeed that I get this close to Christmas without the house being suffused in lights and wintery goodness and a carol playing in my heart.

Uh, but somehow I managed it this year. And I'm not even working retail.

It's not that I don't want the Christmas spirit--Lord knows it's my very favorite time of year. It's just been so busy and yahddah yaddah excuses...

I was expecting to see most of my family, and it turns out they won't be here after all, so I'm having to reset my "stuff I'm looking forward to" meter. However...last Christmas was really wonderful--family wasn't in town, so it was quiet and low-key, and we hung out with some friends that we love. I can look forward to that. For sure.

Incidentally,

it was surgery on the spot for my dad, who apparently was having multiple little heart attacks to demonstrate to the doctors that he needed an angioplasty NOW. He's doing well--came home a day after surgery, which is a bit spooky, but the doctors said he'll be just fine. He sounds as though he's in much better spirits. Wa-phew...

Role Reversal

It's funny just how much I worry about my parents now. When you're little they can do anything and know everything, and now that I'm an adult, I'm sometimes horrified at how helpless and uninformed they can be. I find myself being protective and anxious about them, the same way they probably were of me.

When I found out my dad's heart condition had worsened suddenlywhile on a business trip, I found myself worrying that Mom would meet him at the airport to drag him off to a prayer meeting rather than the hospital. Thankfully though, she seems to be handling it pretty realistically, and is even taking charge by calling Northwest and forcing them (though it was "against policy") to tell her if Dad safely boarded the plane from Chicago to come home and be treated. Go Mom. I need to remember that although her resources are not the ones I would use, she can be resourceful. She has to be, after having birthed 6 babies and adopted 2. Which..uh..again, is NOT something I would choose.

Dad, though resourceful, ignores pain, and tends to forget things, which drives me to distraction. Apparently, Mom will call tonight once they see his doctor and find out whether he has to have surgery on the spot or what-have-you. I hate the fact that they're half a country away.