“Medley: Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In” by The 5th Dimension from the album Forrest Gump (1969, 4:49).
Keith Olbermann to Bush
I avoided saying much of anything yesterday, preferring to spend a quiet day wandering the local zoo with Prairie, rather than participating in either a maudlin celebration memorial of the 9/11 attacks or yet another caustic condemnation of the Bush regime and their conduct in the last five years. For us, it was the perfect way to spend the day: gorgeous weather that was neither too hot nor too cool, the animals were nice and active, and the zoo wasn’t very crowded at all.
Today I’ve been working on uploading the rest of the photos from the zoo, sending them up in small batches, and bouncing around the ‘net while photos upload. I checked out Apple‘s new announcements (the ‘Cover Flow‘ eyecandy in iTunes 7 is slick, and the newer, smaller iPod Shuffle is incredible), started a silly little group on Flickr called the Googly Eyes Project, and other random oddments.
While skimming over my LiveJournal Friends Page, sirriamnis led me to this ‘Special Comment’ by Keith Olbermann. It’s one of the few things I’ve found worth using YouTube‘s embed feature for — this is good. For the bandwidth challenged, the transcript is under the jump (courtesy of Crooks and Liars).
Me and a Cockatiel
Spent a very nice day at the Woodland Park Zoo today. I’ve got the photos sorted out and almost ready to upload, but there’s still a few I want to tweak a bit before sending them up. That’ll come tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ve uploaded four taken today of either Prairie or me. Consider it something of a ‘teaser’. Here’s the other three…
“True Love” by Original Cast from the album De-Lovely (2004, 2:09).
BSG Webisodes have started!
Scifi.com has started posting the new short ‘webisodes’ leading up to the Battlestar Galactica season three premiere! Looks like there will be ten of them, and at about five minutes each, that’s enough for one full episode once they’re all taken together. Of course, they take place between seasons two and three, so if you haven’t seen season two yet, they’ll be chock-full of spoilers. Beware!
“Cabin Fever” by Muppet Treasure Island from the album Muppet Treasure Island (1996, 2:18).
Of Mountain Vistas and Hospital Dramas
The trip to Mt. Rainier was wonderful. Really cloudy the first two days, to the point where we couldn’t even see the mountain, but we got to spend the days hiking and exploring some of the trails. We even had some close encounters with lots of chipmunks and Stellar Jays, a few deer, and two Hoary Marmots (the whoriest marmots in the entire park, you should have seen the brazen way they winked at us). The weather cleared up on Thursday morning, so we were able to get some views of the mountain before we had to head back up to Seattle.
Here’s all the photos from the weekend.
Over the past couple days, Xebeth‘s been going through another round of treatments. It’s been intense and rather frightening at times, but, true to form, she’s still putting up a fight — matter of fact, for this girl, merely knocking on death’s door wasn’t enough. She had to knock, push the door open, and take a look around the other side for a few minutes before finally deciding that it wasn’t quite time to step through just yet and turn back around.
Personally, I think she’s just getting a little lonely in that big ol’ hospital bed, and is determined to give the rest of us heart attacks so we can all be lined up in a row on either side of her to keep her company.
Things are improving now, thankfully. She’s got her family and close friends around her there, and as much mojo as Prairie and I can send from Seattle heading her way. Between that and the girl having a stubborn streak a mile wide, we’ll be keeping her around for as long as we can — and relishing every last little moment of it.
Gum Wall, Post Alley, Seattle
“Backdraft” by Apoptygma Berzerk (4:18).
Camping
Two happier items:
- I got my financial aid! I’ve been approved for just under two grand per quarter, for a total of close to six grand for fall, winter, and spring quarters. Even better, it’s primarily grant money, with the balance being work-study — none of it is in loans! It’ll mean putting in some hours at another part-time job to make up the work-study requirements, but that’s a small price to pay for getting through this year of school loan-free.
-
As I’ve got the next two and a half days off (it would have been three, but there’s a training session with the local Nikon representative on Thursday afternoon), Prairie and I have decided to run away to go camping at Mt. Ranier. We’ve got a small mountain of camping equipment in the living room ready to load into the car, and will be heading out tomorrow morning, to return Thursday midday sometime so I can go to the training session.
“Ev’rybody Wants To Be A Cat (The Aristocrats, 1970)” by English, Liz/Harris, Phil/Ravenscroft, Thurl/Scatman Crothers from the album Classic Disney Vol. 5 (1970, 2:03).
It’s Not Time To Go Yet
Pieces of an e-mail exchange…
Was wondering if you could do me a favor in your spare time (ha-ha)? … What I would like to know is — what are your views on what happens when you die? I really don’t have any firm beliefs…but I really love to hear what other people think.
My response:
The thing is…is that in many ways, I’m not sure what my views are. I know, it sounds like a cop-out, but it’s not (or, at least, it’s not meant to be). Having grown up in a very (if somewhat unconventional and non-sterotypical) Christian household, I suppose I should believe in some form of afterlife, be it Heaven, Hell, or some other nebulous non-corporeal nirvana — and, to a certain extent, I suppose I do (or at least want to, which isn’t at all the same thing). However, for whatever reason, unquestioning faith has never been one of my strong suits, and as there’s not exactly much in the way of evidence of anything post-mortem, there’s a large part of me that’s quite firmly convinced that this is all there is, and once it’s over, it’s over.
Hence, death tends to scare me. Or, rather, not so much death in general, or as a concept, or even when it relates to other people — but my death. I may not always have the greatest life in the world (while it’s been pretty good of late, I’ve certainly had my fair share of down times as well, along with everyone else), but the concept of not existing anymore, not being able to experience the highs as well as the lows, not being able to meet new and old friends, watch the world go by, capture pieces of it in pictures, find new songs to play over and over, and having everything I know of as me simply disappear…it gives me the willies. A little silly, I know (if nothing else, by definition, I wouldn’t be around to experience not being around, so obsessing and worrying over it doesn’t make much sense), but that’s where my brain gets stuck. I want to believe in something more than simply popping in and out of existence, but my stupid cynical brain can’t quite wrap itself around that. So I end up being not really in either one camp or the other, and instead just hoping that by the time I get close to dying myself, I’ll either have come to grips with one or the other, or that I’ll just be so blissfully senile that it won’t matter.
Cheery, huh?
On the bright side, it does explain — to a certain extent — why there’s no way that I could ever be suicidal, no matter how rough things get or how depressed I get. Firstly, there’s always something else coming along that’s usually going to be better than any rough patches I’m dealing with; secondly, there’s so much in the world I haven’t been able to see or experience yet, and I don’t want to miss out on that if I can help it; and thirdly, death is just to absolutely freaky for me to go there voluntarily.
So I don’t know. I kind of wish I could just go one way or the other, but I haven’t managed to do it yet. Most of the time I try not to think about it too much if I can avoid it. As with many things in life that I find unpleasant, I take the Scarlett O’Hara approach to managing unpleasant subjects. I’ll deal with them tomorrow.
Okay, not the best way to go. But…(shrug)…it’s where I am.
Anyone else?
So Very Predictable
If anyone else in the world were to stand in front of a few hundred thousand people and ask them to throw money at them — and not just a little money, but nothing smaller than a ten, fifties are preferred — they’d probably get very soundly beaten. If you happen to be named George Lucas, though, you can get away with it again and again and again…
Also today… a follow-up on something we’ve been telling you to expect for quite while now. 2007, as you may well be aware, is the 30th anniversary of the original Star Wars‘ debut in theaters. You’d have to be stupid not to know that Lucasfilm is going to have big DVD release plans with which to celebrate the anniversary, and we’ve been telling you that was the case for many months now. Indeed, during our last visit to the Ranch for the DVD release of Episode III, producer Rick McCallum confirmed that a box set of all six films was going to happen eventually, and animation director Rob Coleman even let it slip that the puppet Yoda from Episode I had already been replaced with a new CG Yoda to match Episodes II & III for the “future” release. T-Bone over at Star Wars Universe recently speculated about this box set, and we’ve been quietly checking in with our industry sources on it as well. Well, we’ve confirmed it: There IS a big, ultimate, 6-film Star Wars anniversary DVD box set planned for 2007. There will be more changes to the films, and there will be LOTS of new, never-before-seen special features – all the good stuff that was held back by Lucasfilm from the original Trilogy DVD release a few years ago. Think deleted scenes and more. We don’t know if good, genuinely-REMASTERED versions of the original theatrical editions of the films will be included or not (though how you could call the set “ultimate” without them, we don’t know). We don’t expect high-definition versions yet, as those formats are just too new. We don’t have ANY other details for you yet, so please don’t ask. But as you consider whether or not to purchase the “limited edition” DVDs due on 9/12… we thought you should know that more IS absolutely on the way next year. ‘Nuff said for now.
(via Scam City)
“Coin-Operated Boy” by The Dresden Dolls from the album The Dresden Dolls (2004, 4:46).
Battle in Seattle
This could be interesting (more so on the off chance that they actually film on location), if true:
Charlize Theron is attached to star in “Battle in Seattle”, reports Production Weekly. Theron’s boyfriend, Stuart Townsend, wrote the film and will be making his directorial debut.
Set in 1999, during the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, an eclectic group of demonstrators, including environmental activists, doctors, anarchists, attorneys, eco-terrorists and just plain folks, brings the city to a state of near-chaos, and chases the WTO straight out of town.
(via 
seattle)
“The Graveyard” by Webley, Jason from the album Counterpoint (2002, 6:38).