Fast Fiction

Poor Evangaline Lilly. She made a bad decision somewhere along the way. Or at least that’s what I’m guessing. Now she’s a big star on the ABC series Lost.

I know that it happens to actors all the time. They’re struggling, thinking that the big break is never gonna come along and then an opportunity comes along for something, either softcore porn or some sort of infomercial/advertising.

I suspect that’s how Evangaline is now the spokesperson for something called LiveLinks. Or maybe she has been for quite a while and I never noticed. What a coup for LiveLinks (which seems to have Single Life as a registered trademark!).

I was watching Kids in the Hall last night on Comedy Central and there was a commercial with her in it, sandwiched in between some sort of advert for a DVD for Girls Gone Wild Olympics and the David Chappelle show. Sure enough, the website for the chat line has her heavily featured.

A few months ago I was reading some list somewhere of the best movies you’ve never seen. On it was a film called “The Awful Truth” starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. I ordered it up on Netflix and watched it last night.

I’m sorry. I’m not sure what’s so fabulous about this film.

I think there is a kernel of something wonderful in there, but either the writing or the directing leave something to be desired.

The story is of a couple who divorce. He lies to her about something that could be improper in his behavior but when she’s caught in something that appears to be improper (she comes home after being out all night with another man and a story of being stranded with car trouble). The couple fights and then decides to get divorced. They go through the proceedings and fight over custody of their delightful dog.

Okay, this is where I have to say that this is probably the first movie to ever portray the love and friendship of a dog accurately ... it’s a great dog.

The wife gets the dog and the husband gets visitation. The wife moves in with her aunt and starts dating a fellow from across the hallway. Of course the husband finds out and is terribly unhappy about this and does his best to destroy the relationship. The same happens when he starts dating. The final event takes place when he starts seriously dating a wonderful girl and on the night that the divorce is to be final, the new girlfriend calls and finds the soon-to-be-ex in his apartment. He lies and says that it’s his sister. The girlfriend says bring her along to dinner, he says no. He shows up and later the ex shows up with all sorts of weird stories that shock the family and girlfriend.

The husband goes to drive the ex home (still pretending she’s his sister) and she gets them pulled over by the cops, then gets him tested for driving drunk, crashes the car (they’re not in it) and then takes him back to her aunt’s cabin where they realize, while staying in adjoining rooms that they’re meant to be together.

Sigh.

I don’t know if I’ve done it justice or not.

It’s a nice idea, and the cast is fab, but there’s some sort of spark or pep missing to the whole thing. It’s no “Lady Eve.”

The news is just bad. I wasn’t happy about the seal culling in Canada, and this news isn’t much better:

Virginia to Shoot Gulls Nesting on Highway - too many gulls on the highway are causing accidents so the solution is to kill the gulls.

Wildlife Officials to Kill 4,000 Cormorants - Cormorants are thought to be behind a decrease in the number of walleye in Leech Lake. So they’re going to kill 4,000 of them to see if the fishery will rebound. I’ve seen lots of coromorants, they lovely birds to watch and very graceful under water. I wouldn’t call them “voracious, predatory birds.” So much for dispassionate reporters.

There’s also a contract out on about 500 cormorants on the western side of Lake Erie.

The trouble seems to be that we don’t remember there being so many cormorants in the Great Lakes area because we killed them off so long ago with habitat incursions and DDT.

The DDT problem has brought a host of other conservation/restoration issues here in Southern California. The loss of Bald Eagles on the Channel Islands meant that there was no top predator. Even though there is still plenty of residual DDT floating around (literally) in SoCal, the effort is underway to re-establish the Bald Eagles. But the struggle doesn’t end there, in some areas the Golden Eagle has taken the Bald’s place, especially on Santa Cruz island, where domestic pigs were released scores of years ago and have now become prey to the Golden Eagle. Not only have the pigs destroyed the native flora, but now the top predator on the island, the Island Fox is severely threatened because the Golden Eagles find Island Fox kits so damn tasty.

The process of saving the Island Fox is complex and they’re approaching it from all sides ... reintroducing Bald Eagles to displace Golden Eagles, killing the non-native pigs and building protected breeding pens for the foxes. Hopefully the combination will help to return Santa Cruz Island to a better balance.

Aw, I’m flattered. One of my most typetive posts ever on blogging.la was just listed as a Best Of for the metroblogs.

Whee!

I don’t often share personal details on my blog. But that’s not really the point of this story:

It was about two weeks ago, after some rather inept weeding in my yard, I noticed a little blister on my palm. After hung around for a couple of days I decided that there was a pricker or thorn at the heart of the blister so I dug around in there with a needle and found nothing, so I washed my hands and thought nothing more of it.

Two days later, not only was the initial blister back, but suddenly it was bigger (about the size of a pea) and had two other, smaller friends.

This was not normal blister behavior. Either you get a blister from abrasion or from getting into something that you’re allergic to.

A week went by and they got bigger. I kept it clean, washed them often with very hot water and soap then either wiped them with an alcohol swab or slathered them in neosporin. It didn’t seem to help so I finally gave in on Friday and went to the doctor.

I stumped him.

He looked at them and we talked about all the things they could possibly be. They didn’t seem to be an infection because they weren’t red (just clear fluid filled blisters), my temp was normal and my glands weren’t swollen. If they were poison oak they either would have subsided by now or burst and probably would have itched more and of course would be red. Chiggers aren’t found often in Los Angeles, and if you do get them they like to burrow into the softer areas like between the fingers, not the callouses on the palms. If they were boils or cysts they would originate deeper in the skin ... if they were shingles they’d be painful. We could rule out all the causes within the realm of normal possibility.

So the doctor sent me away with a prescription for Keflex (cephlaxin) and to call him on Monday if it wasn’t better. The only thing he could do is treat me for what was the most likely cause, which was some sort of infection.

And I’ll be damned if they’re not better.

I’m still curious how I ended up with some sort of infection that didn’t behave like an infection or if it’s not, it’s just going away on its own, coincidental to the antibiotics. Whatever it is, I’m going to finish the rest of this foul smelling Keflex.

I mean, I like feeling unique and special; but when it comes to medical matters, I’d like things to be rather by the book. I want my heart in my chest and my kidneys to be found on either side in my abdomen, my small intestines small and my large intestines large and my brain in my skull. And if I have something wrong with me and I go to the doctor, I want him to know what it is and know that they have a verified treatment for it.

Unfortunately it really doesn’t work that way. Luckily flesh is rather resiliant, self-healing stuff.

Most of you who read know me. You know that I’m not necessarily a luddite, but I am a girl of simple needs.

Unfortunately I’ve been afflicted by gadget lust this past week.

I’m obsessed with a camera. No, not a fancy Nikon or anything, just the next model up from my Sony DSC-V1, which is this Sony DSC-V3.

They’ve fixed some of my major grievances with the DSC-V1 with the new model. There’s virtually no shutter lag now - so you just point and click and it comes out focused. A lot of the shots that I get, especially of dolphins are pure luck. Well, more a demonstration of the scattershot approach.

It also has a RAW mode, which means no degradation of image quality and a larger LCD display (though I really don’t have complaints about the display).

Longer battery life and 7 megapixels, which means 30% more detail. Same carl zeiss lens. A burst mode of eight frames instead of three.

Anyway, it’s captured me. I don’t need it. Instead I’m ordering another battery and pledging to carry my iPod with me on longer trips in order to suck the photos off my memory sticks. Of course I’ll also keep my eye on eBay for a cheap one, too.

I’m a little confused about this blogebrity thing. I’ve seen it linked at the best places (tony pierce & sean bonner), but I think they’re just as confused as I am about what the hell it is.

If it’s a place to dish where you see bloggers in real life, I’ll have to say that bloggers are about as interesting as TV anchors. Unless we can catch photos of Sean Bonner in a kilt and uggs.

I know some folks like to debate what a blog is. And I tend to be liberal with the definition.

But I’d like to point out something that’s not a blog. The Huffington Post is not a blog. It’s not a blog because it’s not interactive. There is nowhere to respond to posts except on your own blog. There are places to respond on the news bits they post, but there’s nowhere to post a comment to one of the “blog” entries.

Further, there’s no forum. I mean, if you’re not going to let people interact right there, a forum is a pretty fair way to do it. That’s what the NY Times does, and that’s a newspaper.

Anyway, I gave it a looksee and was a bit frustrated by it right away. The Newswire feature is nice, but I’m not sure they understand the way a blog works, if you correct something, you should note it in the post.

As an example, when they first launched, I saw a headline something like “Wired News Investigated for Plagiarism” or something with the word plagiarism in the title. Now, I’d read a story about it the night before and as far as I could tell it was an investigation into making stuff up. Surely a transgression, but a completely different one than plagiarism. So I commented on this. They fixed it, but left no comment or text to indicate the correction. So there are comments there (including mine) that kinda make no sense.

Mostly I’d just like to see responses to posts ... or at least trackback folks so I can find what folks are saying in response. Maybe they’ll figure it out. Or, as it appears, maybe we’ll all get a chance to be a blogger for Arianna. She’s sure got a lot of them!

Here’s how heavily the mayoral election has been on my mind:

I forgot to vote this morning.

I like voting in the morning, mostly I got in the habit back in the day when the east coast media called elections before the polls were even closed in California.

I’m still leaning heavily towards writing in Eric Garcetti for mayor. He’s not even my councilman. We’ll see how I feel after work. I can’t possibly show up at a blogger event without voting. The big question is do I run home and get my camera to document my write-in or not?

Since Bush was able to convince us of the WMDs in Iraq, I think he believes that he’s going to be able to convince us that Social Security needs to be overhauled.

I wanted to believe that there was a greater good at stake in Iraq, after all, we were killing tens of thousands of people. And if it were all about money, then what sort of society are we? Honestly, if they want my money to NOT go to war, I’m willing to give it up more readily than to take my taxes and use them to kill people.

Here’s something I suspected, Social Security is not in trouble. And here’s someone who can argue it much better than I.

According to an article by law professor Richard L. Kaplan at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from the April issue of ElderLaw Report, “Factoring in the huge annual surpluses currently collected by Social Security, general taxpayer revenues would not be needed to fund Social Security benefits until 2052, or 47 years from now.”

I can’t help but marvel at the continued fight over teaching evolution. I think this image sums it all up, but here’s a synopsis:

Warning: Chemical Periodicity is a theory. The theory keeps changing. The theory is under dispute. Teach alternative theories to children!

I do wonder if the creationists would have us stop predicting the weather, drilling for oil, sending satellites into orbit and fighting birth defects.

Amy found me this morning taking the laundry down to the basement, and showed me this pair:

They were near their front door, and seemed to be there for quite a while. I put in the load of laundry and went back inside and got my camera and they were still going at it.

You might recall, loyal readers, that I found another (perhaps larger) one last year about this time in the front yard. I’ve gone back and done a little more searching and I’m quite sure it’s a White-Lined Sphynx Moth (Hyles lineata).

As usual, I was playing around with something without knowing what I was doing.

I’ve deleted about half of my flickr gallery. Grrr.

I was trying to delete my “sets” because I’m using the groups feature to do the same thing. Well, I didn’t just delete the sets, I deleted their contents.

I don’t suppose anyone cares, they were older photos, but it included all my good neon and dolphins.

I can simply re-upload them all again, but that pushes all my more recent photos off the front pages. Gah. Well, I bring these things upon myself. I can fix it. Not sure I want to, but I can.

It’s been pointed out that this faster fast fiction is lacking in new content.

I did read a few days ago that one of my favorite sites is seeking a sponsor. It’s the typing monkeys. They’re still banging out characters, but no one is watching what they’re doing. They stopped posting the recent records at 24 characters.

If anyone out there wants to help with one of the greatest experiments ever, they should look into sponsoring the Monkey Shakespeare Simulator.

I’ve decided to get rid of the Flickr daily zeitgeist and the Buzznet photos over on the left nav area. They were just slowing things down.

Now you can get in, get your regular fix and get out.

If you’re really interested in the photos, have a looksee either from the top listing of my other sites or the left nav listing of other blogs.

We’re efficient like that.

First of all, I have to state that I like McDonald’s. For certain things anyway. I know, some of my dear readers think that I’m a Prius-driving, vegetarian, whale-hugging econut. That’s not exactly true.

Sure, I like natural fibers and I drive an efficient car. I like to buy fair trade products. But I also like egg mcmuffins (no meat though).

I’ve also enjoyed thousands of cups of McDonald’s coffee over the years. I like their coffee. It’s a little weak, but it’s cheap and as long as you go during peak hours it’s always freshly brewed. I’m not a coffee snob. And I don’t drink “coffee drinks” (the occasional latte, but never flavored or whipped or anything).

Now McDonald’s is offering Premium Roast (in selected areas). And you know what? It’s good. No, really.

First, they’ve changed the cups. McDonald’s used to offer coffee in styro cups, which on top of being noisy always made things taste a little plasticky. They’ve gone to paper cups (and little protective sleeves for delicate fingers). They also abandoned the white plastic lids where you had to open them for sipping. They’ve gone to the standard black grown-up sippy-cup top.

Next, they put good coffee in. I don’t know what they’ve changed, but it’s definitely a stronger brew, with a good full taste to it, not too bitter or burnt. I’ve never really cared for Starbucks. It’s consistent to be sure, but has always tasted like brewed pencil shavings to me. This McDonalds brew tastes the like smell of coffee, which is what I always like. The smell of fresh brewed coffee and the taste to back it up.

My morning cup will still be the stuff I get from the cafe on the lot here, branded Mocha Kiss (Coffee to the Stars!), mostly because of the consistency and convenience. But this is a great plus to my weekly McMuffin (no meat). Not only that, but they’ve got a special going right now, free 12 oz cup with any breakfast sandwich. I usually get a value meal for $3.39 (and don’t eat the hash browns) because it’s cheaper than buying a cup of coffee and sandwich. Now I’m only spending $2.25 and getting EXACTLY what I want. Really, it is a good value.

Over on Flickr I noticed one of my “buddies” has a cool photo set from the production of a film.

Ever wonder how they get thousands of people in the stands as background for sports scene? Sometimes they don’t, they rent blow up dolls that they dress up and place in the seats. Then they put real people in strategic places to make it look like they’re real people.

Kinda cool, eh? Click on the photo to see 7-how-7’s whole gallery.

Flickr has delivered on their promise to do better for their users since they were purchased by Yahoo!.

It didn’t take long, they’ve upped the free account monthly throughput from 10 megs to 20 megs and the basic storage to 200 photos. All of my old photos that had fallen off my browse have returned.

If you’re interested in a pro account, they’ve dropped the price to $24.99 a year and doubled the monthly throughput to 2Gigs. I don’t think even I can do 2Gigs unless I upload them wihtout resizing.

I saw that they’ve found text from the Greeks that might fill in some of the gaps in the known works of Sophocles, Euripides and Hesiod.

I can’t wait!

Link.

I’m not sure this is a good move for consumers in the graphics/web field or not.

Adobe is poised to buy Macromedia.

Now I’m keen on both companies. I own Macromedia’s Contribute and Adobe’s suite of programs like Photoshop, an early version of InDesign and of course Acrobat. I’d sure like flash to be more closely integrated with photoshop, so maybe this is a good move. Or maybe not. I hope that prices for Macromedia products don’t go up. I’ve found them to be a bit more affordable thus far.

It’s only April but this is not a good year for marine mammals.

About 80 rough-toothed dolphins beached themselves in Florida, and though these are sometimes through natural causes like disease, this one seems suspiciously timed following naval sonar testing. Of the 80 that beached 26 were rescued and taken to the local Marine Mammal Conservancy. Of those 26, only 11 have survived.

Of course there’s been widespread coverage of the return of the baby seal hunt in Canada. Now check me on this, but when most wildlife experts talk about hunting they approve (or at least go along with) hunting the large “trophy” males. Same goes for fishing. No one says, “hey, we’ve got too many catfish, let’s start taking fry!” So how is it that this particular hunt to reduce the numbers of these seals is specifically aimed at the small ones? Because it’s about their pelts, plain and simple.

Japan is not only still whaling under the guise of scientific study, but today I saw this article that they’re planning on doubling the number of minke whales they take and adding two new species. Now I understand that the International Whaling Commission is just a formality. Japan doesn’t need to belong to it, they can just do whatever they want. And they’ve slowly been adding to their quotas. And threatening to abandon the IWC altogether and resume factory whaling. The added species would be Humback Whales and Fin Whales. Fin whales are the second largest whale species (just a smidge smaller than the Blue Whale) and of course Humbacks are the songbirds of the sea and commonly seen here in the Santa Barbara Channel (I’m going on a trip next month to see them in the summer feeding grounds).

On another note, go visit the IWC website. The splash page is great and shows the majesty of these great mammals and none of the slaughter. Of course when you go to a beef website it doesn’t show you the slaughterhouse either.

I started a new blog.

I was at a wedding over the weekend and someone asked me about my blog and I told them about fast fiction. We talked about my philosophy of goals and I said that I was on my way to writing a fifth novel this year, did the marathon, blah, blah. They asked what other goals I had.

I said I want to go to the ALL CANDY EXPO in Chicago someday. There are only three ways to get in. Be a candy manufacturer. Be a candy buyer (wholesale). Be a journalist.

The closest I’m going to get to that is journalist and at the moment I’ve decided to become THE candy blogger. That’s right. I’ve got a blog of candy.

Check it out. I’m still working on the template, but I’ve already got some solid content.

Yum!

So I reached my 100th photo on Flickr last week.

I didn’t realize it at first but then noticed that some of my most favorite (and most favorited) photos dropped off. Okay, it was only two of them, I haven’t uploaded anything since. I was debating what to do.

Here’s the thing. I have my own site and hosting (no, I’ve not moved this blog yet, but I will one these days). So I have no problem with file storage. I like the community and want to stay a part of it.

But I don’t want to lose the ability to find and share those photos. There are always new groups to share with. I didn’t even find the ultra cool squared circle until someone commented on one of my photos last week.

So I figured a couple of workarounds (I hesitate to call them hacks) for the 100 visible files and 3 set limit.

Flickr allows anyone to create a group. There are three different kinds of groups.

Private - only members can see it and the only way to become a member is to be invited.

Public invitation only - everyone can see it but only those invited and approved by the admin can join.

Public - anyone can see, everyone can join.

You can use these groups, specifically the private and public/invitation groups to create either an archive or additional sets. If you use the private function, only you can use it, but it’s still plenty handy. You can go into this group after you’ve shared files with it and access all the functions there, like sharing it with another group or adding new tags.

What I’ve done is created a group for myself (Pubic-invitation) and put my 10 oldest photos (so far) in there. I’ve taken a thumbnail of one of the photos and placed it in my profile on Flickr and linked to that group as my archive set.

You can do the same by creating groups where you share in specific set oriented photos and then doing the same thumbnail linking in your profile. May as well create thumbnails for your basic offered sets and it’ll look seamless.

I’m sure someone else has thought of this before, but I was pretty proud of myself and wanted to share it with everyone else.

No, not the cars.

These newly described and named beetles are Slime-Mold Beetles. The entymologists at Cornell decided to give them peppy names. Names honoring such folks as President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

I wish their rationale was tongue-in-cheek:

“The decision to name three slime-mold beetles after Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, however, didn’t have anything to do with physical features, says Quentin Wheeler, a professor of entomology and of plant biology at Cornell for 24 years until last October, but to pay homage to the U.S. leaders. “We admire these leaders as fellow citizens who have the courage of their convictions and are willing to do the very difficult and unpopular work of living up to principles of freedom and democracy rather than accepting the expedient or popular,” says Wheeler, who named the beetles and wrote the recently published monograph describing the new slime-mold beetle species while a professor at Cornell.”

Intended or not, there are now species of beetles out there bearing these fellows’ names eating the scum of the earth.

Found via Science Blog.

I had a strange dream on Monday night.

I don’t usually mention them here, but I figure this one is odd enough.

First, I was in some industrial area, and we were watching the Sun. There was a strange eclipse (though not full). Then, as we were looking up in the sky we saw a jetliner that was flying low and was on fire. The fire was coming from the cockpit and a lot of the back end of the fuselage was missing, like it was a convertible or something.

The plane was obviously in distress, but was coming in for a landing to the train yard below us (I think we were up on a wide rail trestle). It would be a bumpy landing, but I guess they could put their front wheel down in the middle of the tracks.

The alarm went off, so I don’t know if the plane made it down or if anyone else on the plane made it.

I know where the plane stuff came from, as Crispin had just left on a red-eye to Pittsburgh that night. What I didn’t know at the time was the upcoming hybrid eclipse tomorrow. I hope none of this means anything, that it’s just regular old stuff being worked through by my subconscious brain.

Crispin told me this story was bloggable.

On Tuesday night I got home and the power was out. After about an hour of sitting around, I decided to make some dinner. No biggie, we’ve got a gas stove.

I took the flashlight and looked through the pantry and found some chicken soup with wild rice. I then went to the stove and got a pot and searched all the drawers for a can opener. I couldn’t find it. No, I found one, but that one is an electric can opener.

I later abandoned the soup idea and made some macaroni and cheese from an easy to open box (though I used scissors to open the cheezy packet).

After the lights came on a bit later I went to do the dishes and was dismayed to see that the can of soup HAD A PULL TOP!

I had dreams of adding a tally on the left nav area of my sightings for the year, but I never got around to it.

I’d say I saw about 20 whales this year. No real good up-close looks though. But I guess that will keep me coming back. There was a good article in the LA Times today about gray whales and the threats to their birthing lagoons in Baja. Click on the flash photo gallery - it’s pretty amazing.

Voyager II - January 30th out of Redondo Beach - lots of dolphins (my best shots of the year).

Whale Watch, um, no Dolphin Watch - my first trip of the year on January 17th. We saw bottlenose dolphins. YaY!

Long Beach Sportfishing - Saturday - February 3 (trip was on the 5th) this post features my only real shot of a gray whale I got this year.

The Seldom Seen Side of Catalina - I already cross-posted this. The trip was on March 12th and was awesome.

The best part of the year absolutely was the dolphins. If they could just take out boats and go looking for dolphins year-round, I’d do that.

The Redondo Sportfishing group is going to keep running their whale-watch daily until April 3rd and then they switch to a last weekend of the 9th & 10th. So I might not be done yet! There might be a whale out there ready to show his face and flukes to me in the next few weeks.

I can’t remember how many times I’ve been whale watching this year. That’s the coolest part, I think. It’s a habit now.

Not much to report, no dolphins. A zig-zagging whale. Lots of wind and choppy water.