http://www.mattbors.com/2009/07/please-shoot-me.html

I made the mistake of turning on CNN tonight. Larry King was giving Joe Jackson free air time to spout all sorts of bizarre shit, such as claiming he never really beat Michael and the urgent need for Congress to open an investigation into MJ’s death. I agree. Let’s table health care reform for a while.

That segment was followed by King interviewing some woman who knows Debbie Rowe about Michael Jackson’s sex life. A decrepit old man on his eighth or ninth wife was interviewing an unknown plastic surgery victim about her second-hand knowledge of Michael Jackson’s sex life.

Then it was on to “AC 360.” The first segment was about Michael Jackson. I could only think of August Pollak’s latest cartoon on Cronkite.

John King was hosting “AC 360″ and said you could log on to their website to find out why his eye was puffy. I’m not kidding.

Found tonight in the local Free section. Unlike Peter, someone doesn't want to sell, but instead wants to give away Jesus.


~*~THE LORDS SUPPER~*~ (JEFFERSON CITY)

I HAVE A THREE PIECE PICTURE OF THE LORDS SUPPER TO GIVE SOMEONE. I DO NOT BELIVE IN SELLING JESUS!!! SO COME PICK HIM UP SORRY CANNOT MEET UNLESS REAL CLOSE TO JEFFERSON CITY!! SORRY

The blog's funny, it's just a month old, it's not mine, but you can get the feed at awesomebadlyric

Alyssa, one of the baristas at Chocolopolis, can't believe that I'll be 35 this year.

And follows that up with "Wow, you really are old!"

Not a bad note to end the day on :)

Made this one over the weekend; it passed the character recognition test, as (much to my delight) the 4 year old birthday boy squealed "OPTIMUS PRIME CAKE!!!! Chocolate cake with buttercream and BC transfers.

Is it just me, or does chocolate cake seem to be more crumbly than white? Anyone got a good recipe for a moist dense chocolate cake that stands up to carving?



( couple_more )

http://www.slowpokecomics.com/2009/07/road-trip-pics.html

It’s hard to narrow them down, but I thought I’d share some of the more entertaining signs and roadside attractions from our cross-country drive last month:

Final cover and verbage for BONESHAKER. Liz sent me this today and I did a little dance, right here in my chair. That’s what it’ll look like, front to back, folks. I am genuinely awed by how cool this book is turning out.

Check-ups at Elliot Bay. This morning, Spain the Cat went in for her (approximately) annual check-up. She was declared to be in such damn fine health that the vet won’t even classify her as a “senior” for another year.* However, she is succumbing a bit to the ol’ “middle-aged butt-sprawl.” Her weight has crept up by 3/4 of a pound in the last 3 years and now she’s almost a twelve-pound armload. Low-cal kibble, here we come.

Steam-powered snowplow engines. YouTube link submitted by a reader. Fast-forward to 1:29 in that video if you think I’ve been kidding about chopping up zombies with a train’s snowplow.

Here’s today’s progress on the alternate-history battlefield adventure about a widowed nurse from a Confederate hospital aboard a west-bound train pulled by a Union war engine — now with military intrigue, steampunk Texas rangers, undead political separatists, murderous plots, bushwhackers, bandits, sabotage, and epic scenes of mayhem:

Project: Dreadnought
New Words: 4100 (awesome!)
Present Total Word Count: 131,739 words
Goal: 140,000 words

Things Accomplished in Real Life: Took kitty to the vet (much to her righteous indignation); came home to day-job work and housework; stopped for lunch; wrote like hell.

Things Accomplished in Fiction: Oh, such zombie-killing shall I give you! In other news, I have officially finished (Draft Zero of) the Big Action Climax. I feel relief … until I remember that I still have to wind all this stuff down. I think the guestimate of 140,000 words might actually turn out to be roughly correct. We shall see.

Reason for Stopping: Am exhausted. Need food. Maybe a drink.

---

* She’s about nine or ten years old.

[Crossposted to/from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]

How do you guys/your doctors feel about caffeine?

About 4 years ago, a doctor I trusted (he was on the fibro "good doctors list") told me right off the bat on our first visit that I needed to quit caffeine 100%, forever. Since then I have never really had coffee again, though I have occasional sodas and tea.

Recently after reading a headline that said that people who drink coffee live longer (or something like that), I started rethinking the caffeine thing. The doctor's reasoning for telling me to quit it was that, as a diuretic, it might make fibro worse if it's secondary to something like Sjogren's Syndrome or some other dryness-type problem.

Looking back, I thought... was I any less healthy when I drank coffee? Not really. Then a couple of days ago, I had a strong cup of tea and felt pretty good afterward. It made me wonder... what do you guys think of coffee/strong caffeine in general? And have your doctors also given similar edicts not to consume it?

Ninety degrees even in the shade. The kind of weather that makes even breathing a chore for a pale mushroom PNW girl like me. If not for the air-conditioning unit I bought–was it last summer? Or so?–I would so be laying under a sprinkler right now and cursing the weather gods.

The blogging has been falling off my radar lately, mostly because of Personal Stuff. My method of coping is to work like hell. Unfortunately, when I get the decks clear and I’ve worked my way through the pile of OMG DEAL NOW I have on my virtual desk…then my body says, “Remember you told us as soon as you were done with X we’d get some time? OK, you’re done with X. HERE I AM.” Mmmh, fun.

Before I go any further, I should issue a few disclaimers. I am not a mental health professional, nor do I play one on TV. I offer the following out of my experience, YMMV, and I am not diagnosing or pointing fingers. I just want to say this and get it out there.

I’m seeing a couple of my acquaintances, online and otherwise, deal with malignant narcissists. I’m hearing a lot of, “I thought I was prepared, but I feel stupid now because they insinuated themselves into my life…”

I want to say this right now. Malignant narcissists etc., or even borderline malignant narcissists, have made a study of getting what they want from people. They work on that like the rest of us work on our social skills, careers, and hobbies put together. Of course they’re good at it–they practice their whole lives. Falling prey to someone like that isn’t something to be ashamed of or to feel unreasonably stupid over. They practice until they get good, and are constantly refining their crafts the way cheetahs have constantly refined short-burst running.

I am betting, my friend, that neither of us could outrun a cheetah (without some help from an internal combustion engine or something.) That doesn’t make us stupid. It means we’ve spent our energy on other things.

I don’t think a lot of people who have this sort of thing enter their lives realize that they’ve been conned by masters. Lots of victims or people whose lives intersect briefly with malignant narcissists feel like they should have seen it, known how to react, done something else. What they don’t realize is that they were up against someone who had practiced and practiced and practiced, in one way or another, every single day FOR YEARS. When you’re a normal person, you don’t feel so bad about being beaten by an Olympic athlete, do you? Of course not. They’ve practiced for years to get where they are.

Malignant narcissists have practiced every single ever-loving day. I’ve seen them hone their skills to get what they want, up close. I’ve witnessed it. If all that energy was put toward another activity, like curing cancer or picking up litter, the world would be a much better place.

But that doesn’t happen. We’re stuck with what we’ve got here. Don’t make that other person’s victory complete by bemoaning how stupid you think you were and letting them win a battle going on inside your own skull. Don’t give them that real estate. They don’t deserve it. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, learn from it, and go on.

It is the best revenge.

That is all.

Posted from A Fire of Reason. You can also comment there.

Had to throw this cake together for a friend of mines friend. Didn't have alot of time. And my cake store that I usually go to is closed on a sunday.

Chocolate Cake homemade buttercream frosting. Piping gel for the water. Which we call the GEGE Nile. Pyramid made out of vanilla wafflers. Sand make out of crushed vanilla wafflers cookies.

Not the best picture took it on my phone.

I realize that I have nothing but raves for each issue of Herb Companion, but if you subscribed, you'd understand. It's not enough that the Web site remembered National Ice Cream Day yesterday with recipes for rose and lavender ice cream. No, it's because the Czarina is looking for more recipes for Buddha's Hand citron, and we're definitely going to have to try the Citrus Almond-Basil Cake with a big dollop of Cthulhufruit peel. I swear, Halloween can't come soon enough this year.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1589

A few years ago, before my wife was released from the hospital after hip replacement surgery, her leg began swelling up and she had great pain and discomfort. Quickly she was sent back to surgery to have a previously undetected bleeder repaired. The highly respected surgeon obviously missed it. Next day a huge bouquet of roses appeared in her hospital room, sent by that very doctor. And then, perhaps coincidentally, he retired from practice within the next few weeks. I don’t recall now whether he actually said he was sorry for his error, but the roses gave us every indication that he was. It was a malpractice suit waiting to happen.

We had no intention to sue him and we didn’t, but of course he couldn’t have known that. We were actually pleased that he acknowledged his error (indirectly at least). Contrary to the belief of some surgeons, he was as subject to error-making as any other human being.

These days it looks like saying you’re sorry seems to be catching on in the medical world (see here). According to this article, it not only makes everyone feel better, but saying you’re sorry also actually cuts down on medical malpractice suits. I'd guess that being honest is one way to deal with the current debates about cutting medical costs. As many politicians are learning these days, things get much worse when you try to cover up your mistakes.

apparently whatever surge knocked out the fuse to my reference monitors also killed the UPS that was feeding the server and the external drive power. i was ignoring the broken UPS while i had data issues.

now it turns out the RAID server is dead too. i can take a different cord to a different outlet and the switch to the power supply is still not kicking it on.

fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.

if there were any backups for the dead drive, they're on the dead RAID. and i'm about ready to put everything computer related into a trash compactor, try to pretend i've never had anything to do with the stupid things.

fuckfuckfucketyfuck.

so that's one UPS, one set of Blue Sky reference monitors, one 250gb external drive, and one linux fileserver with a terrbyte RAID all knocked out of commission by one hell of a twitch. the first time i have anything sitting on a UPS fail, and I lose just about everything. good thing the mixer and macbook were on their own ups/circuit.

strangely 1) 15" LCD, 1) 8-port ethernet hub, and 1) small oscillating fan all survived while sitting on the same UPS. the hub and fan are even still drawing power from the dead UPS, which i guess fails down to power-strip mode.

I'm surprised that I'm the only one who noticed: I'm the last person who's going to downplay the anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing, but nobody noticed that today is also the third-of-a-century mark since the first successful soft landing on Mars. The earliest moon landing I remember was Apollo 17 (and for some reason, I seem to remember watching footage of it on Christmas Day 1972, shortly after my youngest brother Martin was born), but I remember exactly what I did the day of the Viking 1 landing and the night before. Mars wasn't the place I was led to believe it was in the early Seventies, but I'm not complaining in the slightest.

Sew Much Comfort provides adaptive clothing free of charge to support the unique needs of our injured service members from all branches of the military and national guard. The need for adaptive clothing continues to grow as American military members are injured serving their country. Each week, many wounded military members arrive in the States from Germany for extensive medical treatment for bullet and shrapnel wounds, burns, head and limb injuries and amputations, while tens of thousands are still in the recovery process. These medical conditions require large fixator, prosthetics and casts that are too bulky to fit under ordinary clothing or underwear. Sew Much Comfort is the only organization providing adaptive clothing in large volumes to attempt to meet those special needs.

http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?storyid=6841&rss

One of our readers, Tommy, highlighted that the developers of Wireshark have released a bug fi ...(more)...

(mostly gremlingirl and colleagues but anyone who can help welcome)

trying to look into that unrecognized external drive. I've put it into my windows vista media machine, it sees a maxtor drive, but is not giving me a drive letter, and vista does not see a filesystem type.

i installed PC Inspector, and it sees the maxtor drive, but is not finding any logical volumes in order to do its scan and recovery. everything else i've tried wants a drive letter before it will do anything.

i'm tired of wasting my time downloading useless crap.

what are my options?

I will tell you more after I get home.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270428503297&ssPageName=ADME:X:RTQ:US:1123

It all started here. 4th Image is of Elian Gonzales. I sent a note via ebay letting them know.
I wantd to see more of the PC and figured it was an error - no. It was an invitation apparently to open a Monologue with me ...


Welcome to Amerikkka as we said in the 60's. Do you want to sue e on behalf of Reuters or would you like to support democracy in the Real World or might you be interested in a really NICE Sony? I use this model daily and find it far faster and reliable than my THREE QUAD CORE...two HP and one Sony all which have the suck big-time Vista. If it is the latter, look no further. I have the best deal on Ebay and support the REAL ACTUAL CONCEPT and PRACTICE of democracy, even if and when our elected leaders refuse. I lived across the street from where Elian and his father were forcibly reunited in Washington DC. I will never forget the disgrace to our nation and our flag and our way of life as performed by the Clinton administration. Wake Up Amerikkka!


DEAR FUCKING GOD I just wanted to see the damn COMPUTER PORTS.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/motherjones/main/~3/7_viObqTbCY/brodner-cartoon-du-jour-most-trusted-guy-america

Walter Cronkite's 92 years spanned most of the important events of the 20th century. In fact that was the name of a program he hosted (as though the century were "brought to you" by Cronkite). And it sort of was. From World War II to Reagan he was on the scene to so great an extent that he would seem to blend in and become part of the story. He covered the Kennedy assassination, his image indelibly ingrained as a part of the history of that day and weekend. The space program, where we all expected him to go up one day. Vietnam, when he, after observing the war and traveling overseas several times, finally came to understand the nightmarish stupidity of the war, and then in a highly moral and political move, publicly denounced it. This was, to me, a very high level of courage that we seldom see in places of power.

Here's my encounter with him; two years ago in Austin, doing a story for Texas Monthly. Extremely hard of hearing, he needed an assistant to repeat everything to him. He seemed to me to be fully in charge of himself...and had a killer handshake. He was a guest at a Texas arts celebration. Later I saw him in the well of the Senate, as painted here, being honored by the entire body. And none more overwhelmed by his presence than a hard-right talk-show host/state senator, Dan Patrick. Walter Cronkite's achievements crossed all lines. He was the most trusted guy in America. And who knows; maybe he really did blast off at last. That's an obit cartoon idea for somebody.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/motherjones/main/~3/9i2iTYiF42g/borrowed-time

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

"Being an historian, I am jotting down these notes out of habit; but what I saw and experienced two days ago I am sure no one else as civilized as I am will ever see. I am writing for those who shall come a long time from now."

So began "The Prophecy," a mock futuristic fantasy set after some great Cold War cataclysm, which several members of my high school graduating class collaborated on back in 1962. It was, of course, for our yearbook and made fun of the class, A to Z. It was also a classic document of the moment, written by representatives of the first generation of "teenagers" who, crouching under their school desks as the sirens of an atomic-attack drill howled outside, imagined that no one in their world might make it.

"First of all, let me introduce myself," "I" continued. "I am Thomas M. Engelhardt, world renowned historian of the late twentieth century, should that mean anything to whoever reads this account. After the great invasion, I was maintaining a peaceful, contented existence in the private shelter I had built, and was completing the ninth and final volume of my masterpiece, The Influence of the Civil War on Mexican Art of the Twentieth Century..."

This is the Monday Morning Video, eleventh in a series of videos intended to help you get your work week off to a better start, although today its a bit late in the afternoon as I was ill-enough this morning to need to keep to bed.

And on this Day of Days, this 40th anniversary of the greatest engineering achievement in human history, did anyone really think I would post anything but this:

(music and lyrics by the amazing Leslie Fish, vocal by the incomparable Julia Ecklar, jecklar)



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXteSV8rBwY

I would also have posted "A Toast for Unknown Heroes", but to my surprise there isn't a video made from it that I could find, not just on YouTube, but apparently anywhere.

Finally, I want to include a shout-out to Vu Trong Tu (please forgive me for lacking the diacritical marks), thuvt on YouTube, who has created most of the remarkable videos to which I've linked this week, posting them from, to my absolute astonishment, Hanoi, Vietnam.

Evidence for Why Twilight Should Become an Overnight Cult Classic. Written with much more wit and style than my little rambling post earlier, by the lovely and talented Elizabeth Donald. Who, for the record, actually writes vampire romance novels. Good ones.

Remember a couple of weeks ago, when I was chuckling about the newsfeed malarkey about Indian defense forces using Capsicum pepper extract for crowd control? Well, it's good to know that Wired noted the same exact holes in the story's logic. Best of all, this article notes that a fat lot of good this might do to really determined antagonists, as US Marine Corps recruits are expected to be tough enough to keep fighting after catching a face full of pepper gas. (Hmmm...I always wondered if the little bottle of Tabasco sauce in MREs was intended as spice or as a way to build up immunity. Considering some of the peppers I eat on a regular basis, some of these qualify as chemical weapons in their own right.)

http://mcmillan.livejournal.com/341146.html

I just finished coloring a new batch of comics. I had exceptional fun with them, because they include a tapir, monkeys, and Bunnista with bolt cutters. They’ll be posted 8/10-8/14. I love drawing animals!

Derrick Jensen’s children’s book, which will be published by Flashpoint/PM Press, now has a title: “Mischief in the Forest: A Yarn Yarn.” I’m going to draw the illustrations. I need to finish the cover design by the end of this month so it can be put into the catalog. I’m also designing the cover for another book of his, a compilation of interviews called “Conquest and Repression: Interviews Against Empire.” I’ll need to find some crumbling stone and ancient barred windows to photograph for that one. Hmmm.

I wish the days were longer so I could do all the things I want to do! My brain is bursting with ideas for more projects. I make notes to keep track of them, so that someday when I’m bored (I’m never bored, but it could conceivably happen), I’ll remember to do them then.

I was talking with a friend about ideas for t-shirts. Here’s one that made us laugh:
“Girls make passes at boys who cut greenhouse gasses.”

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2009/07/20/new-spam-blocking-software/

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/?p=8240

There’s been a change in how we’re blocking spam — In an attempt to address the “false positives” problem, I’ve switched “Alas” from Akismet to Spam Karma. Hopefully it will now be possible for people to post links in their comments!

As always, if you run into problems or think a comment has been spam-blocked, please contact us right away so we can rescue your comment. Also, I believe Spam Karma has a “whitelist” option, so if regular commenters find their comments being blocked we’ll be able to fix that. (I hope).

(Image from stgermh).

It's taken an insane amount of time to dig through tens of thousands of pieces of artwork, but the cut has been made. I have a directory of 800 some odd images, so now I start culling out the best of the best for the CD.

I've finally made up my mind on this CD release for computer wallpaper. The CD will contain 365 pieces of artwork. You'll have a new wallpaper image for every day for a full year. I think that'll be cool.

It'll be done in HTML. You load the CD, click the index.html file (or if you've go autostart enabled, it'll pop the browser up) then browse through the gallery, clicking a thumbnail will load a page with the full image, then just right click to set as your background image, just like it was online. I think that'll be the easiest way to do this, and make it compatible with as many computers as possible.

Time to go outside and stare at something distant for a while, I've been staring at this screen for days on end any my eyeballs and neck hurt.

A diver attaches a sensor to a Nomura's jellyfish off the coast of northern Japan in October 2005.

Normally we swim quickly away from normal jellyfish - not directly towards the tentacle business end of a giant jelly fish to attach a sensor.
My brain hurts at the thought of attaching anything to a jelly fish...
Story here about giant jellyfish invading Japan if you're interested. Me, it's all about the picture.


Damned busy today at work.

http://www.mattbors.com/2009/07/banning-movies-ach-ya-or-nish-nish.html

The “Ministry of Culture and Tourism” in Ukraine has banned the movie Brüno. They cite “homosexual perversion” and say it “may harm the moral education of citizens.”

CatieCat, writing at the popular feminist blog Shakesville, is torn. CC says government bureaucrats banning this film “does seem like rather a good thing” but this case is “a mixed bag” because the reasoning given for state censorship is not progressive enough.

One fewer countries running this crapfest is good. Doing so because it has the temerity to depict gay acts and male genitalia, rather than because it endangers the lives of your gay citizens, considerably less good.

I’ve gotten a laugh from all my progressive friends who think Brüno will somehow set the gay rights movement back 30 years, but this is taking the fear to whole new level. The movie isn’t exactly Milk, but I don’t think it was intended to be. A question for CatieCat: Given that Brüno “endangers the lives of gay citizens,” would you ideally outlaw screenings in the United States?