out of the blue

So, I haven't said much this month. You probably don't know what's going on with me, unless of course you happen to talk to me every once in a while, or even if you're lucky enough to have done things with me. Hmmm….

Last weekend, I went with Cami, Paul, Rusty and my dad to meet up with Becky and Aaron in the Columbia Gorge. There, in the 110 degree heat (which was dryer and therefore more comfortable than Beaverton's 106 degree heat) we waited for the day to cool and shift into night for some star-gazing. Luckily we had a handy source of coolness nearby in the form of a gigantic river which was nice and swimmable. So we spent a good deal of time in the water, and also a good deal of time under the only two trees in the area.

When night came, we looked through my dad's telescope at galaxies and nebulae and fun stuff like that, and for the rest of the time laid on blankets down near the water. Around 2 o' clock, we crammed all six of us into Rusty's tent (my dad slept in the camper), and most people slept. I say most because I happen to not sleep well in circumstances I'm not used to. If we had spent a few nights out there, I would have gotten used to it by the end, but as it was I ended up staying awake until 7, when I finally got about two hours of sleep. The next day we packed up after breakfast and some swimming, and went home.

My family went on a trip the day after that, to Fort Stevens, where I read most of the time. I did manage to get some good pictures that I'll upload eventually. It wasn't nearly as interesting as the star party. The nicest thing about it was the temperature: I was able to wear a jacket in the late mornings and be entirely comfortable.

The most exciting single thing that has happened in the past month was the Crosby Stills Nash and Young concert that my family went to. I'll have to make a separate post about that, though.

Finally, Sarah is back in town. That, overall, is more exciting than CSNY, but less notable. She'll be coming with us on our camping trip to the Olympic Peninsula and Victoria, British Columbia. The Olympic Mountains are one of the places that I've wanted to explore for a long time, from the Hoh Rainforest on the coast (one of the only temperate rainforests in the world) to the high mountains around Hurricane Ridge. And Victoria has a lot of style, even without mentioning Murchie's, a wonderful tea company.

There, that should satisfy your smurf-curiosity for a while.

Okay, I was curious.

Take this quiz and find out how girly you are. (GUYS TOO) Put x's beside each thing that's true. Each x that you put is one percent. Have fun!!

[ ] My fingernails/toenails are almost always done
[ ] During the summer the only shoes I wear are flip flops
[ ] My favorite toys as a child were barbies
[ ] My favorite colour is pink or purple
[ ] I did Gymnastics.
[ ] I love skirts.
[ ] Hollister is one of my favorite places to shop
[ ] Tight jeans are the only jeans I'll wear.
[x] I love chocolate
[ ] I've never had a real job.

RUNNING TOTAL: 1

[ ] My hair is almost always straightened
[ ] I have at least 8 myspace pictures
[ ] I usually go shopping once a week
[ ] I love to hang out at the mall with friends
[ ] I have a real diamond ring or diamond necklace or earrings.
[ ] I've gone to a tanning salon.
[ ] I've gone to the beach to tan.
[ ] I have at least 10 pairs of shoes.
[ ] I watch either the OC or Laguna Beach.
[ ] I change my icon weekly.
[ ] I wear a shower cap.

RUNNING TOTAL: 1

[ ] I shop at Hot Topic.
[ ] My cell phone might as well become a part of me.
[ ] I wear mascara everyday
[ ] I've been or am on a diet.
[ ] Bathing suits are adorable.
[ ] I don't know the difference between a sheep and a goat.
[ ] Big sunglasses are hott.
[ ] I have gotten my nails done before.
[ ] MTV is one of my favorite channels.

RUNNING TOTAL: 1

[ ] All I want to do at sleepovers is talk about boys!
[x] I love to have girls do my hair. (why else would you want long hair?)
[x] I give and receive hugs from all my friends
[ ] I hate bugs.
[ ] Carnivals are so fun!
[ ] Summer is THE best season.
[ ] My swimsuit has 2 pieces
[ ] I'm waiting for my knight in shining armor.
[ ] Musicians are so hot.
[ ] You write me a poem and tell me I'm beautiful and I'm all yours.

RUNNING TOTAL: 3
[ ] I am self-conscious.
[ ] I cry often.
[ ] My car smells like vanilla or cherry.
[x] My dishes get washed more than once a week. (even when I have to do them myself)
[ ] I don't do sports.
[ ] I HATE to run.
[ ] I squeal when I am surprised or angry.
[ ] I eat dried fruit as a snack.
[ ] I love romance novels.
[ ] Drew Barrymore is so cute.

TOTAL: 4

[ ] I dance a lot.
[ ] usually spend an hour or over to get ready to leave my house.
[ ] I only have like 5 billion hair products.
[ ] I love to get dressed up.
[ ] Every part of my outfit needs to match.
[ ] I talk on the phone at least once a day to my friends.
[ ] I would love to have a photo shoot.
[ ] I apply lip stuff 50 times a day.
[ ] I wish I were a model.

RUNNING TOTAL: 4

[ ] I wish I could meet Paris Hilton.
[ ] I have been something that was semi.
[ ] I own Uggs.
[ ] Hip Hop is the best music.
[ ] I pop my collar.
[ ] I like to be the center of attention.
[ ] Guys with Mohawks are crazy.
[ ] Horses are beautiful.
[ ] I'd rather not pay attention in school.
[ ] Cats are adorable. (Well, I have to say they're awesome. I wouldn't call them adorable

TOTAL: 4

[ ] I write my own music.
[X] I would love to visit Hawaii. (Already have, of course)
[ ] Valentine's Day is so cute!
[ ] White is better than black.
[ ] I wouldn't be caught dead in all black.
[ ] My closet is STOCK FULL of clothes.
[ ] Hate the grunge look.
[ ] I love to read magazines.

RUNNING TOTAL: 5

[ ] I love to gossip.
[ ] I had Lisa Frank folders/posters/notebooks as a kid.
[ ] I love Celine Dion.
[ ] My bubble baths are 1-2hrs long.
[ ] My wedding only needs a groom because it's already planned.
[ ] My friends and I are in a strict group.
[x] I like little kids.
[ ] Diet drinks are the best.
[ ] I'm all about being vegetarian.
[ ] I refuse to eat at McDonalds.

RUNNING TOTAL: 6

[ ] I check my myspace everyday.
[X] I love life!
[ ] I have a lot of jewelry!
[ ] My screen name(s) have x's in them.
[ ] One of my myspace names has/had <3's in them.
[x] I would never want to be the opposite sex. (I don't want to be attracted to guys… and then there's periods and childbirth.)
[ ] It isn't what he/she said, it's the way he/she said it.
[ ] I have more than 3 pillows on my bed.

TOTAL: 8

Don't think I missed anything.

Somewhere around 7:00 Pacific time:

me: Sarah!
me: Donde estas?
me: *sigh*
me: No Sarah…
me: Where has she gone?
me: Did the shrimp take her as she dozed at her keyboard?
me: Are fellow researches embarking on a new project, that of seeing how long she can survive without internet?
me: Did her brain implode when trying with all her might to summon flying llamas to entertain her in the far-off void of Puerto Rico?
me: Did she wander too deeply into a book, and now can't find her way out of the intricate world of shrimp-studying research papers?
me: Or perhaps she simply got carried away by a chariot of fire, and when her disciple saw her carried off thus she shouted out "My Sarah, my Sarah, the chariot of Science, and the propulsion system thereof!"
me: When will I next see my darling Sarah? Will it be after she fights off the Emperor of all Shrimp-kind and crawls her way back to the research station? Will it be after the researches realize that she can withstand their tortures indefinitely, and that her designs of retribution are indeed potent? Or will she return after her bosom scientist-friend performs some arcane ritual to restore her brain and her body to their former glory? Might I need wait till the book itself decomposes and the terms of shrimp-anatomy themselves fall into illegibility? Or will I not see the lovely Sarah until I finally mount that final obstacle and enter the gates of Heaven….

I miss Sarah

Hey Big Chris, you remember how I don't like friends-only entries because they aren't accessible from a feedreader? I just discovered a way that they are. The rss link I've been using is the one that comes up when you enter "http://theazureshadow.livejournal.com/rss" into the address bar. It redirects to this url: http://theazureshadow.livejournal.com/data/rss.

Right now, I'm using Linux, because I finally got wireless working (by switching to a different device, and upgrading to Ubuntu 6.06). So I'm using a different feedreader, which means that I have to update the feeds. So, I searched online for a opml file generator for LiveJournal friends, and found one here. The only problem I have with it is that it names the feeds based on the thing people call their journal, not based on their screen name. But that was easy enough to go through and change everything.

Anyway, back to what I was talking about. This generates feeds based not on the link that I knew about, but this one instead: http://theazureshadow.livejournal.com/data/rss?auth=digest. Now this file is a password-protected one, and only your friends can see it when they enter their username and password. And, in Liferea (the Linux feedreader I'm using), it allows access to the friends-only feeds. I suspect that most major syndication programs support this sort of protection.

I hope that's useful for someone.

On a related note, Ubuntu 6.06 is very nice. I've got sound, networking (stealing files from other computers), internet, etc. My Wacom tablet worked right when I plugged it in. I still have a few things to configure, but it's proving easier than I worried it might be. I wish I didn't have to install Windows still, because that will likely screw up a lot of the hard work I've been doing. I'd actually be just about satisfied with just Linux, if it weren't for the unfortunate problem of lack of Photoshop and Painter.

I'm having an enjoyable time in Spokane right now. And Everett was good, too, thank you Soren and Nathan. Tonight we went to a concert, one of the few I've ever been to. The main band was Gosling, and they were quite excellent. I really like the energy in live music. It's a completely different experience from listening to music on the computer. I think I'll have to do this again sometime. More later.

And the second art offering piece. Aya's request of an arrogant and fat cat. I hope I managed to pull off the subject well, because I'm not so used to painting living things. It's difficult. But I used a bunch of references to give me some direction, so it should be okay. I like cats. Maybe now I'll be able to draw them better in the future.

(See a larger version by following the link.)

DRAWING REQUESTS PROGRESS

• Andrea Crow – doodle of "The Cat and the Fiddle"
• Jenny Sullins – a pretty sunflower, or a swallow midflight, with the right colors
• Cami Wendlandt – a lighthouse shining over the ocean at night
• Sarah Redd – a flying purple llama
• Ann Foreyt – draw anything, but at the park (view)
• Soren Laulainen – something Fugue-related, or Rock Lake
• Paul Moore – a forest-dwelling ascetic being given an ice cream cone
• Aya – a picture of a very fat cat looking arrogant (view)
• Lila – something cute
• Laila – a Rusty

Here is the first completed doodle for the art offering. I drew this at a park near my house. The flower is on the shore of a pond, and I wasn't able to sit and draw it because of no good way to sit, so I would go take glances at it every once in a while and then go back to the log to draw. I wasn't happy with the lights and darks when I was done, so I painted over the drawing. You can still most of the original pencil work. I hope you enjoy it, Ann!

(This is a thumbnail showing only a part of the image. The whole drawing can be seen by following the link.)

I still have a lot of drawings/paintings left to do.

DRAWING REQUESTS PROGRESS

• Andrea Crow – doodle of "The Cat and the Fiddle"
• Jenny Sullins – a pretty sunflower, or a swallow midflight, with the right colors
• Cami Wendlandt – a lighthouse shining over the ocean at night
• Sarah Redd – a flying purple llama
• Ann Foreyt – draw anything, but at the park (view)
• Soren Laulainen – something Fugue-related, or Rock Lake
• Paul Moore – a forest-dwelling ascetic being given an ice cream cone
• Aya – a picture of a very fat cat looking arrogant
• Lila – something cute
• Laila – a Rusty

I'm sorry, Gregory A. Douglas, but this is very nearly the worst piece of writing I've ever stumbled upon. Your book isn't quite up to the standards of The Eye of Argon, but it's certainly in the vicinity. If your premise isn't bad enough ("It was an ordinary Cape Cod town — until the huge mutants began to leave their nest…"), then perhaps the acknowledgements make up for it: "Thanks are due to novelist Eli Cantor for suggesting that an island could be as terrorized by an invasion of mutant insects as by killer sharks off its beaches."

Fortunately, "Any resemblance to place, incident, or characters living or dead, is unintended and purely coincidental." Otherwise, I might have to desert this reality in chagrin at its amazingly bad plot.

The prose is amazing. Here's my favorite excerpt: "The vermin were squealing with agony as they sprang into the night air. Their writhing bodies were as bizarre as their gyrations and screaking; they were covered not with fur, but with what seemed to be shells, scintillating in the moonlight. The pinpricks of fire on their rodent bodies flashed crazily over the dump with a metallic sheen until there was a quick change to the crimson of blood. The rats were cloaked in sequins of death; a nightmare scene out of an animal hell."

"Routine poisons normally controlled the noxious creatures everyone knew and tacitly accepted as living in the dump. Warfarins held the inevitable rat population in check, and the cockroach broods were standardly contained by pyrethrum and sodium fluoride. Since the prevailing southwest winds carried the stench conveniently out to sea, it was easy for the dump–out of sight and smell of Yarkie's homes–to remain out of mind.

"Thus, no one marked, suspected, or theorized about the slithering mass of preternatural life seething through the stinking intercises. No one considered or remarked that conditions were ideal for breeding in geometric multiplication. For cockroaches, particularly, the ever-enlarging dump was a great progenitive womb–warm, fetid, moist, with food so cornucopianly plentiful that everything crawling, creeping, and scurrying through the foulness could gorge to satiation."

Ahhhhh. "Sequins of death"; "cornucopianly plentiful"; "breeding in geometric multiplication." The perfect example of a bad writer armed with the twin folly of a dictionary and thesaurus. The best 25 cents my mother ever spent.

My advice to you, Mr. Douglas? Practice using the small words first. Then maybe we'll let you at some of the less ornery three-syllablers.

• Soren and Nathan are in Everett (and without internet)
• Aaron will shortly be in Spokane again
• With Becky
• Sarah is on a research project in Puerto Rico
• Cami is in Hawaii (well, she'll be there shortly; not sure when exactly she arrives)
• Rusty lives 30 miles away
• Paul is in Fairfax, Virginia

Life is hiding from me my closest friends, one by one. Eventually, they'll all be gone, and it'll begin to work on my acquaintances, until I'm left dealing only with strangers.

I'm glad Jenny and Elana and Paul are still in town.

Sorry if I missed anyone.

Jon Carroll printed part of an e-mail from one of his readers in his column today, and I thought it was a good way to put things. As you may know, many of the more "dangerous" (useful) chemicals are becoming difficult for people interested in science to acquire, because the government is afraid that they might be used in terrorist activities or meth labs or something.

"It may be illegal to run a high school chemistry lab, but it's your God-given and Constitutionally Guaranteed right to buy handguns and ammunition, which are designed to kill people. In fact, in many states you can purchase packages of gunpowder, in case you want to pack your own shotgun shells, without even the minor protections that you have to deal with on guns.

"Instead of science class, we'll just issue each student a Glock and send them outside to play. It's gotta be safer, 'cause they'll be ready to defend themselves if the terrorists turn up."

Some of the strongest arguments against this trend claim that this will stifle science. They ask us to remember just how many famous scientists were drawn to science in the beginning because of the interesting bangs and smells you can create with a simple chemistry set. Read Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood, and you'll see what I mean.