Pumpkin seeds, the epitome of terror

Last night, Dale carved pumpkins while I tried to gather seeds from them for roasting. First time I tried separating pumpkin seeds from orange slop. I got a good amount but didn't get through them all. Then I fell asleep at my desk and when I opened my eyes, I saw a pumpkin seed stuck to my arm. I almost jumped out of my skin: GAHHHH!!! GET IT OFF ME GET IT OFF ME!! NO MORE SEEEEEEDS!!!! (I think I had nightmares about seeds)

Carnage

Thought she could hide on the ceiling. Hah! Killed her dead with my 100% Authentic Nerf .357 pump-action pistol at a 2-3 foot range. Nifty, huh? I also tagged a male but only crippled him. Still looking for 'im, the li'l buggers done and gone run off on me with only five legs.

Nose wins again...

So I got out my breakfast stuffs and saw the yogurt. Hmmm... I could have jam or something in that, I thought. I see the cherry spread and a grin spreads across my face. I open the jar and peek in. No mold or other unsavories. I take a quick sniff just to make sure it smells like cherry spread. Satisfied, I pull it away from my face. Wait. NOT satisified. I peek back in, still not seeing anything. I sniff again, tentatively. Nope, nothing there... No, wait a second. Mold. I swear it. I look more carefully, still not seeing it. No mold. It is not there. But I am still smelling it, a faint whiff, very distinct. It has to be in here, I think, recalling very few instances where my nose was wrong. The spread is old, anyway, so it was a bit surprising it .asted so long... It has to be in here, maybe so minute that - then I spotted it: this dark, mysterious, greyish fuzzy slime clinging decisively to the side of the jar, just at the bottom of the jar's lip, where you would really have to be looking for it to have seen it. It sticks its tongue out at me and multiplies. I.e., then I realized its little family of spores had congregated around that edge, having little parties in my absence.

Nose wins again. The parties have been pigged.

~w

Windows 95?!

I just spent the last 2+ hours getting Windows 95 into a VM on my macbook pro so I can play Pod Racer.

Why?  Because I'm totally nuts.

So now I've got 16 bit colour and a bunch of startup things that aren't working.  Yay!!!!!  SVGA, though!!  Snazzy, huh?  And I got a floppy drive!!  (Virtual one anyway)  It's really brought back a lot of [cough cough frustrating] memories, that's for sure.  Nostalgia... nothing like it.

What I /ought/ to do is dump photography altogether and just start building virtual machines all over this thing's hard drive.  THAT would be cool.  Probably take up less space that way...

Cheers!

~w

spaghetti sauce!

Dale's spaghetti sauce took a wrong turn and grew mold during the time between last spaghetti night and tonight's spaghetti night.

I asked if we had tomato paste in the house, and we had one small can left. I proceeded to whip up my own version of sauce with a quick reference from the internets. Turns out we were missed several other components, but we had oregano, basil, parsley, and some frozen corn and peppers. I dumped it all in and added some ground coriander, a bit of water, a little olive oil, and a bit of italian seasoning. A quick taste revealed a very acidic sauce, so I dumped in a wee bit of sugar to balance it out.

While I liked my version, I typically don't like spaghetti sauce. So I was surprised that I was able to whip something up on a whim like that. Dale seemed to like it OK, so I did something right! But leave it to me to make something I don't even want to eat...

:)

~w

Not totally tone deaf (or something)

My friend, Jen, posted on facebook this link, saying she's recently reacquired the album and had forgotten how much she had liked it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DQxFG2hlGs&feature=share

I took a listen and immediately thought a) a guy sang the beginning and b) the higher pitched woman sounded a LOT like Kate Bush.  I listened a few more times, and realized the "guy" was actually a deep-voiced woman.  I almost thought it was Annie Lennox, but not quite.  So I finally looked up this Happy Rhodes business for myself, wondering if the woman was the /same/ woman throughout the whole song... and if so, it's gotta be one heck of a range she's got.

Four octaves, to be exact, with influences of Kate Bush and the occasional glimpse of Annie Lennox.  See /this/ link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Rhodes

So apparently my ears ARE good after all, considering I only listened in passing.  Methinks that my family's musical abilities are simply a bit dormant in me and needed to be woken up by my self-instructed musical studies over the years, or, more likely, the intense listening to details in songs I loved combined with the brief studies in high school.  I may not have a good singing voice but I /do/ have /some/ sort of an ear for music these days.  Heck, I must have had it even several years back, given that I surprised my musician friend, Rob, when I picked out an augmented fifth from a Beach Boys song I'd never heard before.  I remember listening to the song with him at work and I was like, "Whoa, hold on.  That sounded like an augmented fifth.  Can you back that up a second?"  He did, already staring at me funny, and so I'm like, "Wow, I've never heard that in a song before, only heard /of/ those things.  That is what that was, wasn't it?  Or was it?  Why are you looking at me like that?"  (And I keep thinking I don't have an auditory memory ... I'd learned about augmented fifths in a high school music theory class and cannot tell you now what, exactly, they are... only that I recognized it when I heard it.  Talk about /selective/ memory!)

Detecting things in sound is still a mystery to me, though... like, seeing things in 2D form makes total sense to me, but hearing subtleties in music or speech or even something as simple as a bird chirping can completely overwhelm me with disbelief.  Sometimes I wonder if I experience sound a little bit like a deaf child would once they got over the shock of sound after an operation to give them their hearing.  It's got to be wondrous in many ways, even if spooky and unfamiliar.

Oh!!  That reminds me!!  I dreamt a poem this morning.  It's kinda silly, but it arose while I dreamt of the situation around it... the dream was that I opened a car door and saw the mirror move with it.  I had the notion that I was dizzy, and there was a hill right there, going down, a nice, grassy hill.  I "heard" the poem float through my mind at that instant, and it kept going through my head as I woke up, so I jotted it down.  It goes thusly.  I've named it "The Tumbling Dream" since it pertains and I did not "hear" the name otherwise.  I figure it doesn't care if it's named or not, or needed me to do it.

I opened my car door

The mirror moved fast

I tried holding my balance

But it didn't last

So I fell down the hill

Where I came to lay still

~w

Egads, this keeps going and going and...

Talon is working overtime today.  In addition to sorting through a gazillion pictures, I've also been opening and closing Outlook in its Unified state (Windows 7 in the background in a VM, but you only see Outlook).  AND I updated my website, psychomuse.com.  AND I've been scanning images into iPhoto.  AND I'm listening to iTunes.  AND I'm surfing the net.  AND I opened Scrivener for a while.  Talon has been up and running for 15 days.  The only reason it's not 30 is because I try to reboot him every two weeks or so, and then do a clone, just to make sure any bugs are cleared out.

I did have to log out of Windows and log back in earlier, though... Outlook decided it didn't want to play nice.  And iWeb crashed once.  In fact, it was when I opened Outlook...

~w

New treat

I just discovered that I like a form of corn meal mush with lentil soup.

Go figure.  I take corn meal, mix with water, and boil in a small fry pan with a glob of butter until it turns into a very very creamy gloppy pile of yum.  Then I dump it in a bowl and pour some lentil soup next to it, so they sort of touch.  Usually I don't like my foods touching unless they were made that way on purpose, but this is quite yummy.

:)

Photography

I have come to somehow frown upon my own abilities as a photographer.  I think it's the camera.  Not that the camera cannot do most of what I want to do.  It's about my experience actually taking the photos.  I see the shot, I take it, and then I review it.  The LCD on the camera never does the photo justice, so I often think I need to take another.  This leads to great frustration and I have to remind myself it's probably much better than it looks on the LCD.  Then I get things home and I'm often pleasantly surprised, but by then, I've already subtly thought to myself that I have no idea what I'm doing.  So then I start believing that, even when I see shots that are otherwise very very good.  I find myself going, "Wow, that camera takes beautiful people shots" instead of "Wow, I can't believe I can make the camera do that."  I feel like my abilities are nothing compared to what the camera's are, and I'm somehow doing things wrong constantly and the camera is the one doing the good stuff.  Let alone that I'm the one that frames things, which is a very large portion of making something look good.  Timing is mine, too, and often, so is the exposure, aperture, and shutter speed.  I control ISO tightly, too, because otherwise the camera thinks less light means higher ISO, and for me, that usually makes the process suck worse than a slight blur or having to hold still longer.  No matter, I /do/ know that while I have an extremely good portraiture lens, it is simply NOT made to take detailed macro shots and that right there drives me insane even though I know better.  I need to find myself a macro lens that is OK with taking general shots as well as macros.  I miss that aspect of my photography greatly.  Eventually I should look into lighting, too, but I rather like the lack of planning I usually experience during snapshots on the road and the like.  And lighting is not as portable.  I like a light load.  One reason I miss Obsidian.  That little PowerShot may have had some power issues like the rest of the line, but the quality was stunning.  I knew that camera inside and out, knew its limits, knew how to get around most of them, knew my own limits with it, and had many filters to play with.  I miss all that sometimes.  Dale assures me, however, that if I were to take pictures with Obsidian again, I'd likely find the limitations frustrating in no time.  I guess the truth is, I'm never satisfied with technology because not one single piece of tech can possibly meet all of my whims.  At least, not yet!

~w

Happy Birthday Peter Cetera

On this day in 1944, a wonderful singer, songwriter, bassist, and all around musician, Peter Cetera, was born.

Happy Birthday, Peter!

~w

poem: Angry Birds

Title's up for consideration still, but it was the first thing that came to me.  You'll note this may have elements of rap in it.  If so, it's likely because I was listening to Eminem as I wrote it.  Damned inspiration... it comes from some interesting sources.

ANGRY BIRDS

2011090401 - c2011 WLC

I watch the rain drops dancing on my head

Memories go back to when I'd wanted to be dead

When like a phoenix I had risen from the ashes

Ready to be what I wanted regardless of the asses

Back when all my friends said I should like rap

And all I could think about was Chicago not "back that ass up"

Peter and Richard were my inspiration

Even during all the hazardous times of declaration

When momma told me I should just quit

I fought against her life because I didn't wanna live it

Anymore, I'd had enough of people looking down on me

I'd had enough of living in destitution and poverty

My momma said when I grew up I could do

What I wanted but when I grew up she controlled me too

And then she left me here all on my own

And I wasn't strong enough to go

But for the first time I was truly by myself

And for the first time I was free to go through hell

I waded through the waters and got my heartbeat skipping

It got broken, it got shattered, but I was finally living

My life.  Then she was right there begging

All the while telling me how evil I was being

Imperfection's not so bad when you're living on your own

After all, I could do whatever I wanted, I was grown

Up, and I wanted to be happy

With what I was and what I was was friggin' snappy

I got some decent counselling and 'fore I knew, I knew

Someone really special I could spend my life with, too

I had come to know myself and all my imperfections

I had learned to worry for myself and all my aspirations

Go figure, now I'm here and at times don't even care

Sometimes I just sit back, and wonder why I'm breathing air

But she came, and she tried to take my thunder

I sat back relaxing, so lost was I in wonder

You stupid bitch, you don't even understand

What constitutes a friendship, so I took a stand

How surprised you acted when I went and slapped your face

Without any words and without a hand, you got a taste

Of my opinions towards your sorry ass

And I thought that I had won over that sassy lass

In a swirling moment we all found out the truth

And I found out on that day why I had always hated youth

Yet I overcame it all again despite my aching heart

My anger, like a cancer, exploded, but still we're not apart

Over time I've healed again but sometimes it comes right back

To where the floods come and meet where the roads'll crack

With the rivers rising all around us we sit here in shocked horror

Worlds destroyed beyond belief but people work together

To rebuild all that that has been broken.  I love to watch

The teamwork's like a crab hanging onto some rich girl's crotch

Holding onto threads of gold as if it were a privilege

But don't you understand?  It's like we're on the edge

Looking down upon the valleys and diving into pools

Of sparkling waters from Heaven instead of pools of a dog's drool

We have the means to make it, we have the shield to keep the demons out

We can live it up, eat chowder, while everybody screams and shouts the words out loud

Life sucks and it's so hard to live, oh my god, how can anybody take it all

Fuck this shit, I'll kick her ass, and then you and I should go hit the mall

No fucking way, I'd rather sit here drinking tea and being me

I like the silence in my ears when I'm sitting here just learning to be

She may have won some places in my heart but she won't ever win

Over my hatred because hating her won't get me anything

'Cept a bruised ego and a hardened blackened heart

Then we might as well have been discreetly torn apart

Now before my fingers find themselves typing any louder

Let's go get us some of that finger-lickin' chowder