Gorey was right they are going bonkers! 

 

Raglan Film Festival

Still raining, raining, raining! fortunately yesterday, as it rained and rained, mudpie was able to attend the tiny machinima festival awards (The Otters).  ten machinima were screened as over 50 tinies cheered, commented, nommed, a few biggies attended too. 

here are links to 2 of the best, one of which has a brief glimpse of mudpie singing wootmas carols, and the other is by my good friend enjah and lucy was playing piano in one scene but i think maybe it ended up on the editing floor :-(  

or is that lucy at the second tavern?
anyway, here you have some of the best of tiny machinima

Silent Film Found in French Village 

and a documentary  Merry Wootmas

to see some more go here Raglan Shire Film Festival 2011

France was punished on Thursday for not taking proper care of its hamsters.

According to a New York Times article :

The Court of Justice in Luxembourg, the European Union’s highest court, ruled Thursday that France had failed to protect the Great Hamster of Alsace, sometimes known as the European hamster, the last wild hamster species in Western Europe. If France does not adjust its agricultural and urbanization policies sufficiently to protect it, the court said, the government will be subject to fines of as much as $24.6 million. 

mudpie is quite worried
lucy cheers her up, helping her build a new house & then they roast marshmallow.

 

good fences

between my back fence and the river is a narrow strip with a house,
a house right close by my fence, and a road.
the road is called Back Street.
that's not its name, it's just what it is called.


the house is ugly -- really. sometimes worse than others.
i've fantasized about buying it to tear down.
but it is a good house, it has sheltered a variety of people,
all related in some way, as people around here are.
you have to be careful what you say.
"who her? she's my cousin!"

when we first moved here, it was occupied by a man
and his high-school age daughter.
nice girl.
he had killed his wife -- caught her in bed with another man
shot her dead.
went to prison.
came out and raised his daughter.
the neighbors told us we were supposed to keep an eye on him
not good if he was drinking.
my hubby talked to him sometimes over the fence
said he seemed like a nice man.
he gave us some horseradish plants.

eventually daughter grew up and they moved out.
some other people lived there, dogs and kids and motorcycles.
then the old woman who owned the house came to live there
once after a big storm she called us to say part of our roof was gone.
we didn't know, but she could see it from her window.
we were very appreciative.
but still, when her visitor (son? grandson?) 's pit bull got into our yard
and chased john into his car
we called the police.

a young woman with 2 young kids,
one was the beautiful one of indeterminate gender,
lived there for awhile.
SJ ran into her when his band was playing at a bowling alley
and during the break he wandered into the next room
where some heavy duty exotic dancing was onstage.
it was our neighbor.
she recognized him and came over to his table after her act
he said they had a nice chat. she was a nice person.

last year m. moved in to care for his mom
who had been failing, as they say.
he was a retired man, happily living in florida,
but had to give it up to care for her.
not enjoying winter, tho he was born and raised here.
the Very Rich Man (see earlier post) has been trying to buy the house for a few years.
it is certainly a blight on the picturesque village he wants us to become.
the old lady and her son m. refused to sell.
it was her home.  who wants to move when you are old sick and dying?

now that she is gone, died in April, m. says they are after him again.
"they just don't know how to talk to new englanders" he says
and becomes more resistant.
i see him now as i sit on my back porch.
whatever he lost those years in florida has come back
with a vengeance.
like a true vermonter, he is digging, planting, making a garden.
he wants to fix the house up to be nice
like it was when he was young and his grandparents lived here.
getting him out is going to take something
that goes deep down into the roots.

ruth and the ticklewhiskers

we didn't know ruth at all when we knocked on her door.

the vet said she had kittens, and we were looking for a kitten..

he said her landlord told her some of her cats had to go.

she had 26 or was it 32?

her house was small, run-down, unmowed,

yard full of dandelions,

and ruth herself, when she came to the door looked run-down and unmowed.

she was sweet looking and slight -- boney slight -- like my aunt emma

but unlike emma she had a warmth and friendliness that lit up her face,

weathered more than aged.

she welcomed us and took us to meet her cats.

inside they were everywhere.

i tried not to look at her scratched up legs,

imagining it must be from the cats,

but was probably from berry-picking.

all sorts of cats came over to greet her when we sat down outside.

she greeted each by name, and they responded.

we looked at some kittens, all adorable,

trying to decide,

and then out came a tiny long haired white kitten with big blue eyes.

well, of course, that was the one!  Our Kitten!

""oh " said ruth -- were we not supposed to see that one?

"well " said ruth, possibly thinking of her landlord.

"you can't take that one -- unless you take her brother too."

out came the brother - bigger, short-haired, white, blue-eyed.

well ok then, i will get a kitten as well.  we'll take two.

and so we ended up with silky white ticklewhiskers

and sunny jim ticklewhiskers!

a year or so later ruth stopped in to see them.

she looked at grown-up sunny jim and said

"he is the spitting image of his grandmother lulabelle!! "

tea room gets tweeted - also Henrietta Lacks book

while researching info on Salazar's lands for the upcoming event in june, i stumbled across a tweet Sal sent about my tea room!
so here is a picture:

click to enlarge

oh and yes that is Lucy, who is a woman of color lately, perhaps because i am reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
highly recommended!  an amazing book!  be sure to read it if you haven't already.

left behind

barney: it's really dark in here. i hope the tall ones let us out soon.
hank:  it's your fault - you hit the door and made it snap shut.
barney: i'm getting hungry.
hank: i don't think they'll let us out.
barney: yes they will!
hank: i think they went on a trip like they did one time. only for longer.
barney: no they didn't!
hank: they're going to be gone a long long time. they probably left lots of food out for us.
barney: i'm hungry.
hank: but we can't get to it because YOU got us shut up in the bathroom and we can't get out!
barney: it's not my fault! you were jumping too! are we gonna die?
hank: one of us is.
barney: which one? me?
hank: with no food and water you'll die first 'cause i'm fatter and i can live longer.  then i'll eat you.
barney:waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
-- OH THERE YOU ARE!  DID YOU TWO SHUT YOURSELVES UP IN THE BATHROOM AGAIN?  YOU SILLY CATS!

what to do with bin laden

my computer shut itself off

it had some important update thing going on for itself.

meanwhile, i'd left an unsaved note to myself

with a long poemy sort of thing 

asking have you found your inner bin laden

and that it's important to do so

but then what --

don't want to kill off part of yourself!

bin laden's a smart energetic dude

if you find where yours is hiding

best plan is to turn all that energy

to something beneficial!

anyway, i didn't say it just right

and it was too long anyway

and now it's gone.

but i like the idea.

you know -- bin laden lives on

in each of us.

but most of us don't know him.

he hides out in a cave or mansion

and ambushes us from time to time

and we say omg how could i do/say 

something like that!

mr & mrs phoebe get a new nest

mrs phoebe thinks they'd best be heading north to grab a good nest site.

mr phoebe says nah, nah, no hurry!

last year's nest was in good shape! we'll just fix up that nest.

piece of seedcake!

little did he know
last year's nest -- on top of the light fixture on my back porch -- is gone.
i did appreciate them eating up all the GIANT BARN SPIDERS we used to have BRRRRR!!!!
but not from atop our light fixture!

when the weather felt just like it does
just before we hear FEE-be!  FEE-be!
i cleaned away that old nest
and wrapped screening around that light.

all night i worried
those birds will come home to....no place to live!
so i built them a little platform!

and HOORAY!  when they came back

well she gave him a hard time for a week or so

but then, she relented, and in no time at all 

had a nest on that little platform!

here's how to build one http://www.50birds.com/MPOpenPlatform.htm

april 23 easter in ogunquit

we look at each other and at the falling snow
should we go?

the crocuses vanished!

the car slides on the road even before we are out of the village.
we drive on eastward slowly! cautiously!
finally -- behind a salt and sand truck
slow but not slippery.
into new hampshire it is 33 degrees --
a slippery road temperature -- and snowing.
it lets up for a bit, but then before concord
even deeper snow. on we go.

finally it is 35 and a freezing rain.
gradually, gradually, the land is lower
the trees shorter, the ground flatter
"i smell the ocean" says john.

the bridge, the state of maine,
its motto "maine --cold, but damp"
the hotel, a good dinner.

next morning winter's fist unclenches
its open hand offers bright sunshine!

long rolling waves, the marginal way,
children in easter clothes go barefoot on the beach

coats are shucked in surprise!
a perfect day!  are we really in maine?
more fishy meals consumed
we sit with the coatless many --
where did they all come from?? --

click to enlarge!

in late afternoon sun watching the ocean

  and the next morning
in bitter wind and icy rain.
we start for home.
and along maine's shore road,
forsythia has bloomed!

mjane & lucy

it's nice that my alts get along. here mjane and lucy discuss a table and chairs lucy wants to borrow for her new cafe. mjane is happy to help out!

fire drill

when the smoke alarm earsplittingly clangs 

there's not much chance of finding cats.

they be gone!

when the fire engine pulls up to the house

and the firemen stomp in

clanking and clumping in their monstery gear and gadgetry

you'll never find a cat however hard you look.

and should you spy one under the bed

you'll never get it out and boxed.

i'm thinking of having fire drills for the cats.

put some of their very very favorite treat

in the cat carrier

which we'll keep open by the door

then turn on the fire alarm.

or maybe turn on the alarm first,

then turn it off and put treats in the carrier?

what do you think?

then if it sounds for real

will they run to the carrier?

Oh and you are probably wondering, but no, i'm sorry to say i didn't think of it until too late, to ask the firemen "would you like something to read?"

in defense of northern spring on April sixth

a friend in maryland emails:
Sympathy to you both......my lilacs are blooming and the purple martins have returned with nesting materials in their carpetbags.....82 degrees yesterday

my maine friend responds:
Ah, but talk to us in July or August, when WE'RE at 82 degrees 

and i am seized with inspiration and my love for the north and my annoyance with those who think we are somehow held here against our will and are to be pitied, and i emal back:

or talk to us now!
when snowflakes are falling
and the white hills with their bare black trees
backdrop for the fields, white with brown showing
and vernal pools form where soon
frogs will thaw - riotously desperately fatally mating
yelling their heads off about it

and talk to us now
while the streams crash and thunder
as boulders moved by the roaring waters
are fueled by the melting ice
that crashes into the bridges sending the river over the land
and the birds maddened in their homecoming excitement
trill and call raucously all day
in the misty air of the hot sun on the cold snow

i've learned to love a wilder spring
not the generous ripening sort
from my southern childhood
all perfume and soft breezes
now i love the crazed dance
of a crooked crone and her consort
staving off death
dancing wild and desperate
clamouring for life
drinking the cold maple sap
straight from the bucket

That'll tell 'em

  

catching up with my second life!

i have gotten better at remembering to take snapshots in Second Life but then forget to post them here! so this is catch-up time (i don't really spend all my time in SL).
there was carnival back in feb or march - serious business in some of the roman sims!

too bad i don't speak italian, but i could dance anyway!

while searching for a carnival costume, i found this - i wanted to be snoopy, but for obvious reasons, i had to be lucy!

a friend and i explored the Unfairgrounds fair - a fund-raiser for cancer or something- it was pretty good but could have been lots better!  i think people created a scene of their worst nightmare! but mostly lacked good ghastly endings.

my favorite - click to enlarge!

and i have become a groupie going to live performances by Bubbac and the Bubbettes, who does a mean Elvis show...great voice and guitar and believe me he knows all the songs!  apparently he is an Elvis performer in 'real life' too.

the bubbettes are not usually so overdressed for SL :-)

almost famous

a mystery picture appears in the alumni magazine - a girl on a skateboard. barefoot, madras jacket, flying down a campus sidewalk.

the magazine asks "If you know who this girl is please let us know."

the grainy black & white picture is from the 60s, like 1964 or 1966.

who knew from skateboards! 

someone knew.

someone's surfer brother had made it from rollerskate wheels.

sister brought it to college and mostly just rolled up and down the long halls.

sister's pretty blond barefoot friend tries it outside on a gorgeous day 

on a looong sidewalked hill - a smile of delight on her face, hair lifted by the breeze -

someone took a picture!

years later the picture turns up!

now the secret identity is revealed.

girl becomes famous - the girl on the skateboard!
eventually a book is written, a stage play, then a musical, then...hollywood!

at the oscars, many years later,  the actress strides across the stage to accept her award.

an overdressed crone in the audience lifts herself up by her walker and yells 

(this is the sister yelling - see paragraph 3)

"IT WAS MY FUCKING SKATEBOARD!"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

hold still for just a minute will you?

winter battles spring
regrets snivel, hopes dance
why do i live here

                           ~mudpie

what leaving already?

it isn't like her
she's never done this before,
elizabeth taylor

                              ~mudpie

i'll be changing my hairstyle

at the reading,
the good poems were by poets
with weird hair
              
                         ~mudpie

what do you say to a dead man?

i fell in love with Warren Christopher yesterday

npr's website said he died
i knew the name. i clicked the link
i saw his picture
my heart burst with love
an old man 85
a good man
he tried - he worked so hard
he did so much
his heavy spirit clung to me
i held his spirit i didn't know what to say
it would not leave me
my heart was so full
i said what little i knew
or understood
of how to guide the dead
he would not let me go
i need to learn more
in case this happens again
i tried to send him off
to people who know how to help
in these situations
but the love between us was so strong
at last i remembered that today
i am going to a friend to work on a project
a friend who knows
who can guide the dead
or the living for that matter
my heart grew lighter then
and i wrote this

early spring call of the human

redwingzarback!
bright and sunny today - March 8 - and a fresh new layer of snow.
nothing is whiter than snow -- snow defines white!
yesterday morning, shoveling the walk,
the snow heavy, wet spring snow,
falling and falling even as i shoveled,
wishing i was not doing this,
but knowing anything else i might be doing
would be equally if not more meaningless,
like i'm not going to be discovering
a cure for cancer or anything like that...
i suddenly stopped.
could it be?
am i hearing that unmistakeable sound of spring?
yes it is - a red-winged blackbird song.
and now another.
not a flock mind you, but just the few crazies who risk all to be first arrived.
when their gamble pays off, they get the best land and the best mate months later when the girls drift in.
smiling, i call my hubby, using the spring call of the northern human "redwingzarback! redwingzarback!"
soon our call will be heard all over town,
in the store and the post-office,
on the steps of the library...
"redwingzarback!"

University of Western Australia

Arches in the Mist at UWA's Virtlantis

Blue Tsuki's installation Vessel which closes today.
"Before you is a concentric landform of unknown time and origin. It appears to bear witness to an ancient artifact in the sky known as the Vessel. Walk the circular labyrinth to the center where you will find teleports to the Vessel." 

they don't mention that the labrynth is more fun if you are riding your horse, and the Vessel above is way more fun if you are on your unicycle!

click to enlarge - see me on my horse?

wheeeeeeee!

a dream of pigs

i dreamt that some men in a couple of boats were pulled up in the shadows across the river to watch a huge white pig that had escaped as pigs so often do, swimming away from the near riverbank encampment of naked beautiful dark-haired women , one or more of whom would soon notice and be coming to chase it back to their compound.

no doubt this is a very obvious and common sort of dream...which can be interpreted to mean....ah would you like to guess?

Cutting for Stone

by Abraham Verghese.  a good read, as they say!
long and involving with the depth and breadth of the truth of human existence and emotion mostly found only in fiction.
complicated characters living as the best humans they can be considering where and when they live. ethiopia. which i didn't know when i started reading.
and coincidentally, friends of mine had just a month ago moved there from here.

Raglan Mardi Gras

one day lucy sez to osprey  "there should be fortune cookies in Second Life" and osprey grabs it and ran wid it!  

she made fortune cookies dat breaks open and gives you a fortune when you click's dem (fortunes made up by lucy and enjah and maybe more peeps ... dey so funny!) 

somma da fortunes only makes sense if you hangs out in second life.

den she went charging on an made fortune cookie avatars we wears so we is fortune cookies in ossem red sneakers, and we was in da Raglan Mardi Gras parade yestiddy - best second life parade i ever seen! 

it wuz Mysteries of da Orient so we fit right in behind a chinese takeout float! 
here some pics.  hunnerts of peeps wuz dere!

~ mudpie

dere we is lining up at start

 

dual alarm cats

one cat misty predawn grey
striped with wet deep brown bare trees
the beech still with their tan leaves
that hang on all winter to guide the deer
pats my face before cold sunrise
crawls in as i lift the blanket
to a warm ball against my tummy.

sunlight filtering thru blinds
the tiger cat comes stiped like
sunbeams thru dissolving mist
orange shadows cross white snow
a fire beneath glows brighteyed
pounce! on the purring lump
beneath the blanket
morning is here!

Mars - another excuse for human curiosity

why does the japanese astronaut selection process involve origami?

who ate the onions experiment?

what happens if you don't bathe or change clothes for 2 weeks?

how much will NASA pay you to stay in bed for 3 months? 

what happens to your bones then?

so how do old ladies benefit from space research? (get it?)

how do dolphins have sex under water?

is that why they don't let male dolphins in the swim-with-the-dolphins pool?

what is astronaut chow?

what concoction best simulates human shit for test purposes?

what tests are those??

what percent of people can light their farts?

why is drinking Orange County's water kind of like being an astronaut?

did you ever think that sustainability engineering and human spaceflight engineering are just different sides of the same technology?

PACKING FOR MARS by Mary Roach - a book by a science writer who walks the fine line between making fun of and seeing what is funny about space exploration and the research that is part of it!

i loved this book, and had a new view of the value of it all... all the research spills out into everyday life. her last paragraph is surely thought provoking - to summarize, any money saved from not funding space exploration would not go to any of the things you feel it should be used for anyway!  you know that!  so why not play and learn.

oh just read it, you'll laugh out loud at sentences like "The zero gravity fart has been a popular orbital pursuit, especially on all male flights."

some bad guy has a car like mine

a DRUG dealer! or maybe a TERRORIST!  -- somewhere around here i am SURE there is one with a car JUST LIKE MINE.
  you would NOT THINK they would drive a BORING looking vehicle like a blue subaru IMPREZA station wagon.
(granted it does GO like ANYTHING!)
why else would the cops KEEP STOPPING ME? 
ok i WAS speeding, but not enough to be given a TICKET apparently.
i just got a WARNING. and then--
ok i went through -- i DID go through a red light when that cop was BEHIND me,
but i had never BEEN in that town before, and i DIDN'T EVEN SEE IT! 
and HE didn't give me a ticket EITHER, so it must happen ALL THE TIME THERE.
and then YESTERDAY i was stopped because my INSPECTION STICKER is over a MONTH out of date.
i forgot! and i can't SEE it because of the rear-view mirror HIDES it.
and yet...who NOTICES things like that UNLESS --
they are already checking out your car looking for an excuse to STOP you?
no ticket again.
you SEE?
they just want to look in the BACK...
see if i have bombs or bodies.

we were meant to fly!!

should second life be a copy of a first life? for most, it is.
most choose to be humans, have houses, cars, horses, dogs, even kitchens and bathrooms! crazy!
why walk when you could fly?
live in a house when you can live in a bubble, a mushroom, underwater, or on mars?
look human when you could invent a life form for yourself?
or - ah - live in the sky!  YES!  people DO like this.
we happily take naturally to flying and off-the-ground life.
here's a snapshot of the sky high above Dunvegan, a sim where i hang out sometimes, with all the hang-outs and homes people have put high above their land.

(people's sky places! click to enlarge)

Blue Lagoon

yesterday i installed phoenix standard on my old laptop. 

right away mudpie went to raglan to test it out, and ended up at a kind of charades game.

the contestant had to create clues from prims (simple 3D shapes) --

clues to the words or phrase the rest had to guess.

mudpie didn't know how the game worked exactly,

but got all caught up and correctly guessed one!

wow she won 25 lindens!

but then - uhoh - turns out she had to be the next one up!

how the heck do you create prims using phoenix? omg.

i did figure that out, and her words were "blue lagoon."

after a few false starts i managed to make a flat oval

and fill it with BLUE. 

then i decided to add water texture.

then i found a fish in mudpie's inventory and added that.

the fish swam round and round - and someone guessed "blue lagoon"!!

what i hadn't noticed was that the moderator, awenbunny, had

been hollering at mudpie in chat "you can't use textures!"

and then with the fish, she completely lost it!

that was totally against the rules!

luckily it was raglan, home of the fun-loving tinies,

so everyone laughed and laughed.

awenbunny said she laughed so hard her dimples hurt!

snow body

knock knock!

who's there?

Snow Body

Snow Body who?

's nobody gettin' to YOUR front door!

my front door -- good thing we haz back doors too!

after i opened the windows and shoveled awhile to keep them from breaking, i went off on my snowshoes.  wheeeee!

i was the first one out after the 15 or so inches of snow....ugh it was hard going!

painting the magic

"i hate to tell you this...but..."
this is what carpenters say to you when you get home from work.
that is, they do if your house is a little cape built in the 1800s.
i've been hearing it for years.
pull off a wall, some clapboard, some flooring, and it's -- uh-oh!!
one of our first carpenters was a young guy i'll call bob, mostly because that's his name.
carpenters here are like new york waitresses ...they are really something else.
bob was an artist.
we named our bathroom after him. 
i wish we had gotten him to sign it!
not long ago i went to his house on an open studio tour, and -- whoa!  $1000 and up?
wonder what our bathroom is worth now!
i love his paintings.  take a look!
i love them because he paints the things i love; 

and he knows how to capture the radiant magical energy of the world's display.

phoenix creates butterfly cat-woman

the viewer phoenix has been good on my w7 64 bit lappy, so based on new info, i decided to get all my old viewers off, and then download the phoenix 818 SSE2 viewer.
it worked beautifully! looks so good, and so far not crashy and stuff rezzes!  here's a picture...(it dint make me a better photographer)

HOWEVER i must have deleted a cache or failed to create a separate cache or SOMETHING!  because....
when i logged into my old 32 bit lappy on SL, i got a little of my current fairy look, plus a little of my new year's eve tiny tiger look all jumbled together!  what a hoot!

chilblains?

for years i've heard people discuss painful finger cracks they get in winter, and what to do about them.
i never experienced it until this week, when suddenly my right thumb got one!
first stop - google!
is it chilblains?
is it really?
wow!
didn't i read that word in some musty book we had to read in 6th grade about dreary new england depressives?
wow, cool!
immediately i begin a series of experimental treatments.
honey?
may help but too slow and kind of messy.
my plan was to go on from honey to try yogurt, vinegar, and super glue, holding back on cortisone cream as a last desperate measure.
unfortunately i lost interest and just went with a thick layer of johnson's first aid cream (disclosure - i have some shares of j&j) and using my left hand for everything.
using my left hand is an endlessly fascinating hobby i developed the year my shoulder was frozen.
it's more fun than curing chilblains.
i love seeing what it can and can't do.
oddly, my wii bowling scores as a lefty are about the same as righty.
all in all, i feel extremely lucky in life to be so easily amused!

barney and hank a few weeks later

we did wonder for awhile if Hank would kill Barney!

we hoped they would become pals.

i think it has finally happened!

they fight like brothers, and play like friends.

it is still a circus!
a ruckus!
the cat-town races!

a keystone cats show!

but now it's a fun one.

auspicious coincidence or loss of entropy?

i wanted a joke-a-day calendar
but border's in mid-january had none.
so i have a metropolitan museum of art
page-a-day calendar.
i love it!
on my birthday i was amazed
to turn the page and reveal
a tibetan buddhist painting
tanka style
of Onpo Lama Rinpoche (1251 - 1296)
in his indian incarnation as
Jnanatapa
surrounded by
the progenitors and abbots
of Taklung Monastery.

how did they know?

jack frost paints our windows

 the responsible thing would be to replace all the big old loose windows in this 1850s house with smaller tighter windows. but we get so little light in the winter!  and when it's clear and -24 F (-31 C) at night, and the sun rises bright and low, our morning glows with crystals and feathers thanks to jack frost!  at least we don't have ice on the inside of the windows, like we did in one place we lived!

now at noon it's up to 50 on our glassed in porch, from the sun!  (the predicted high today is 4.

silence of the yams

clocks hum, cats ticking,
refrigerator purrs --
the snow makes no sound
                                
                                              ~mudpie

the monster is gone, but things are still bad!

the only vacancy in shanghai seemed to have 3 dead bodies stored in it.

so much for my whim to move back to the beautiful steelhead sims!

(click to enlarge)

things had not been this bad when i had my shelter open there.

a little research, and i discovered more than i wanted to know and concluded that i'd stick to higgins and raglan a while longer!

here is the latest from Dr. Beck 

driving route 1

i always think it should be fun to take road trips in second life, along the public highways.  but vehicles are difficult to control, and the scenery went by too fast to rez, so i didn't see much!
today i noticed a car in my lost and found, so i rezzed it, and decided to take it for a spin on rte 1.
driving seems much smoother now!  even getting a bit of the scenery and buildings as i tooled along!  sim crossings didn't crash me either.
the only problem was finding a place to stop!  i drove on and on -- no spot where i could park and resume my journey next time i logged in.  if i stop just anywhere, i have to go back to the beginning to rez my car.
finally i found a parking/rezing stop!  like finding a rest area on a real life highway!  yippee! 
however, i must say, it could win a prize for most boring spot in second life!

click for total boring effect - car was freebie from burning life or man or whatever it was

stranger than second life

Poorly Dressed

A Visit from the Goon Squad

by Jennifer Egan


another book i actually finished!  it started out as interesting enough to keep me coming back to it, although not compelling.  when the pages turned sideways i got really annoyed, then intrigued once i caught on to where it was going, then i skipped the graphs entirely.


but the LAST CHAPTER could have been standalone. i was totally hooked at the end. loved it.


(the last chapter has to do with a rock concert come-back by a long forgotten musician -- the music biz is a recurring theme throughout the book.)

harnessing the mind!

great news in medicine!

tiny mention in NYT science section a few weeks ago.

this could change lots of things.

doctors have discovered

that if they TELL THE TRUTH

then in certain illnesses, such as I.B.S.,

they give the patient a placebo, and

they say something like

"this is an inert substance, like a sugar pill,

that has been found to produce significant improvement

in I.B.S. symptoms through mind-body

self-healing processes"

the patients given the sugar-pills

in a bottle marked "PLACEBO"

reported significantly better pain relief

and reduction in severity of other symptoms

than those who got nothing.

not just a little better!

"The magnitude of effect here is very large."

said Dr Ted J Kaptchuck a researcher at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

think of it!

trigger the mind-body self-healing process

by giving a pill!

Winter's Bone

a beautiful movie on many levels.

kinship, clan, crystal meth and above all, What Is.

the young heroine stays the path

avoids the pitfalls

goes through the trials

she does not have a scar on her forehead

well actually maybe she does by the end!

all in the stark color-richness of

children's book paintings.

if only Howard Frank Mosher's books

could have been movified so well.

if you thought the beans of egypt maine was

a depressing book, instead of a book about

real people and their lives, skip this movie!

i don't live in the ozarks, 

yet i know these people -

some of them are my neighbors.

the kitten formerly known as buster

update on buster the kitten. his name is now barney.
it was the name i wanted to begin with, after furdinand was rejected,
but i have a friend named barney
and also a wonderful book about a dead cat
"the tenth good thing about barney."
try as i might to call him buster, i kept calling him barney.
it's a time-honored method i have of naming cats.
think up a bunch of names for them and wait to see what sticks.
5 reminded me that i used to have goldfish named barney.
guess i like the name!
oh - the fish were not each named barney.
they were collectively named barney.
they were barney.

hankzilla vs buster brown

back on dec 12 i wrote this verse about kitten hank.
he turned out to be a born killer and we have the scars to prove it.

the hankosaurus never sleeps
onto your bed hankzilla leaps.
pouncing upon them as they doze...
his midnight snack - not toast, but TOES

on jan 4 we brought in buster
and they took to each other like a cock fight

here they are becoming frenemies

and after that i had to put the camera down and rescue buster!

we are fattening up buster and putting him in training - he looks like he'll grow up to be bigger than hank, but he's a lover not a fighter.

Nixon Under the Bodhi Tree

over the last year or so i have failed to continue to read so many books!

i start them and then realize i just don't care.

this is one of the few that i read cover to cover and loved.

it's short stories, a collection of  "Buddhist fiction."

i'm not always clear on what the Buddhist part is, but i liked all but maybe two.

alot!

the beginnings caught me, and held me to the ends!

i've bought a copy to keep.

theory of relativity

i've always loved the buddhist teaching tale

about the guy who was so enlightened 

that shit and gold were the same to him.
my sister glimpsed enlightenment 

last week when florida went arctic.

she and her dog went out 

for their evening exercise walk 

on the darkest coldest night.
not in the habit of thinking 'keep warm,'  

she forgot her gloves. 

it wasn't very long before

she realized her hands were freezing 

even in her pocket!
and then she had a happy thought

(picture the lightbulb going on above her head)
..."oh boy, soon i will have a nice warm plastic bag of dog shit in my pocket to warm my hands!"

happy 2011 W00T !!

raglan has the best new year's eve party from 1 pm SLT (same as california time) to 1 am SLT with dj's and live performers taking turns.

here's a picture of mudpie dancing at some time in the evening, giving you a look at her mohawk. 

it's hard to tell a girl hamster from a boy hamster, and even mudpie found it confusing sometimes. she's hoping the long hair and the dress might make her more girly.