Ronon is Conan and Star-ving

The wild storms seem to have taken a break for a few days. Today we had some sunshine and looking out the window now I see clear, pale blue skies. The change is welcome, though so is the coming rain, which will help alleviate our drought.

I don't have much to say at the moment, and since I've gotten used to inundating my posts with multimedia, I'll share this really embarrassing picture of Teyla from last year's Christmas party:

A bum bum

My sister's computer caught a virus so nasty that it wouldn't even let us get into Windows. Luckily, my dad's a computer whiz and, after working on it for nearly two days, has managed to get rid of some of the virus. So be warned! If he gets it up and running, the first thing I'm doing is putting all her pictures on my external harddrive then backing them up on DVDs... and, hopefully, salvaging our Sims. We spend way too much time with them... But apparently this jerk Russian virus has infected tens of thousands all over the world. It starts by pretending to be an anti-virus program and giving you a message. Don't click and get the hell away if you can, before it downloads itself. Malwarebyte's anti-malware is a good freeware program that helps get rid of these buggers.

Oh. And Clara bit me the other day. The light goes out in the beginning of the video because I was trying to encourage her to squeak so I could have it on record.

Mean Little Pig!

Now for some real news...

Stargate Atlantis star Jason Momoa has been cast as Conan in the new Conan the Barbarian film, which will stick closer to the original Conan stories than the one the governor of California was in before I was born. I for one, am very excited. While I'll admit to having, on several occasions, gotten so sick of Ronon's facial expressions and idiot behavior that I often screamed "Go die already!" at the TV (and on one occasion, tried to tear his picture off my wall) I've been able to keep that rage from reaching the actor who portrays him... I think. Anyway, congratulations, Mr. Momoa! And no, this has nothing to do with our fan films being featured on the front page of his website (bottom right). :)

And he beat out Kellan Lutz of Twilight, too. I actually have no idea who Mr. Lutz is, but he was in Twilight. So SGA won over Twilight. Kinda. So SGA is better. Kinda.

And speaking of Stargate actors moving on to new and better things... a while back I started wondering what ever happened to Corin Nemec (other than when he dressed in drag in Toby Keith's "Beer for my Horses" music video) who played Jonas Quinn, so I Googled his name and discovered the webseries Star-ving.


This show is hilarious, irreverent, and allegedly demented. I didn't quite notice the dementedness at first, but that's probably because I'm so demented that I don't notice demented things. My favorite episode is the second one, Gilbert's Kid. The lines on this show are hilarious. While I love how crazy things are in every episode, my one complaint is that there's so much going on, it detracts from the comedic genius of the dialogue. Note: You can watch the episodes with the swearing cut out on YouTube.

For not having much to say, this sure is a long post! I'm shutting up now.

Wait, almost. Would anyone be interested in reading an excerpt from my book?

ladybozi: You know it, babe! Thanks for the amazing compliment.

Hammy: Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts -- it's great to hear from you! While I don't read tons of YA lit, I've greatly enjoyed His Dark Materials, Harry Potter, and am even reading the Inheritance Trilogy. The book I wrote is also YA, so like you, I am greatly discouraged to see stories of so little substance, like Twilight, getting so much attention, when there are so many more stories that have gravity and encourage the broadening of young minds, rather than encouraging obsessive, controlling relationships and the damsel in distress disorder. Please, comment more often! :)

the other Amanda: LOL yes, we deserved that round of applause. I'm glad you liked the art. We were laughing so hard as we drew that I'm surprised we managed to finish each drawing.

Mackenzie's Momma: Totally creepy! And while your comment about if your favorite actor was in the next Twilight running about in a tight shirt you still wouldn't see it in the theater made me laugh... I have to admit... if Johnny Depp were in Twilight, I would see it. Because you know he'd be taking the piss at every opportunity, and only half the audience would know it. I know, you must read my posts about the weather and be like "Um... so? Why are you whining?"

Tracie: Bless your heart -- yes, we're all safe and well, thank you! As for Twilight -- we all have our guilty pleasures. And if my book ever gets published, you're perfectly welcome to read it and point and laugh and write essays about how it's so much worse than Twilight. ;)

Hail and Twilight

Our little mountain towns only seem to make the news for natural disasters. Last year it was for fires, this year it's for flooding. The county decided against clearing out logjams from rivers since they provide habitat for coho salmon. As a result, at least 50 homes near the river flooded and were evacuated.

Everything is going well at our place, though, with the barn only having flooded once. But the night before last was another story. Alex and I went down to the barn to feed the horses. We keep our ewe barricaded in one of our horse stalls when the weather gets bad, because her pen doesn't have much cover. Our ewe, Sheepy, often busts out into the main stall during the day, but we have to shut her up again at night otherwise she'll go into Mickey's stall and eat all his food. As Alex was chasing Sheepy back into her stall, hail began pounding the roof of the barn, spooking Mickey. He bolted out of his stall and took off into the darkness.

Teyla was with us but was too afraid to go out into the hail, but just in case, we locked her into the barn while we tried to lure our wild old man horse back into his stall. He was quite the sight -- a dark, galloping shape through the torrent of white -- the roar of the hail was like a crashing wave. Every time he trotted close to the barn he'd hear the pounding on the roof and bolt again. Alex eventually got a bridle around him and led him back inside. His eyes were wide and his fur was cold, to the say the least!

We aren't used to hail like that -- it looked like it had snowed.





Another storm approached the next day, looming its bruised belly over the mountains.


By that evening, it was so cloudy/foggy that we couldn't even see the mountain range across from us!


Being cooped up inside is starting to get to me. When it's not pouring rain I run (the other day I was jogging, noticed that it was hailing on the other side of the arena, thought that was funny, then belatedly realized it was headed my way and bolted under the trees as I was pelted... laughing the whole time) and we manage to hike. But sometimes we do silly things to amuse ourselves.

For example, we call all of our relatives on their birthdays and sing "Happy Birthday" to them. Teyla always gets excited and joins in with howls and barks. We tried to get her to do it on her own by singing a song from Littlefoot about being happy that I recently used to make a funny Jonas Quinn (from Stargate SG-1) music video:

That didn't do the trick, but "Happy Birthday" did.

We also amused ourselves by making a Harry Potter parody (spoilers for the 6th book).

Harry Potter and the Secret of All Secrets

In other news, we finally saw Twilight. Because it was on TV, we paid no money to see it, and it pays to know thine enemy. I expected rage, disbelief, shock, unintentional comedy, etc. in my reaction since I can't even stomach a paragraph of the books. Instead, while there was lots of laughter from the unintentional comedy, I am left without the rage. At times I get depressed thinking "THIS is what half the population is obsessed with? How do they all not eat their own shit?" but my reaction to the film was different. I'm not even convinced I saw it. I mean, I know I watched the movie, but I didn't really see much of anything. There wasn't much to hate because there wasn't much there, period. The vaguest of plots, the lack of chemistry, the monotone voice overs... I feel like I saw someone's notes on what they'd like to write about/make a movie about. I am stunned that this was the final product.

Our discussions of what makes Edward looks so strange, however, were quite fruitful. I finally concluded that he looks like a Picasso painting -- all of his features tilt at a different angle. Thus inspired, my sister and I set out trying to capture the spirit of Twilight through some art. Here it is.

Edward, by Kellie Rice

Jacob, Edward, and Bella, by Alex Rice

Bella, by Kellie Rice

Edward, by Kellie Rice

Edward and Bella, by Alex Rice. This Edward is so realistic, it gives me shivers.

Eragon, by Kellie Rice

Bell and Jacob the "Indian" by Kellie Rice

Anonymous: Yeah no yeah no yeah. No. Yeah.

the other Amanda: School was actually canceled because there was no power, and there were a lot of trees down which meant kids couldn't get to school, anyway. It doesn't often get canceled for those reasons, but when it does, no one much complains! ;)

The Beginning of the Pineapple?

It's the start of El Niño, at least. Rain, rain, rain! And... tornadoes???

Believe it or not, one touched down in Southern California a few days ago, throwing boats out of the water and flipping cars, and initial radar results show that one at least formed, if not touched down, just south of us. Yesterday as I ran up to my neighbor's house (since we live in a somewhat rural area, our "neighbor" means the house up the hill) to visit with my dad's warning that there could be a tornado in the next 15 minutes making me glance warily about.

While we never (thankfully) saw a tornado, there were some big thunder storms that passed through. Though we live in the mountains, we're still only 500 feet above sea level, so we're not used to thunderstorms that rattle the windows. As you can see by the video, we're not too used to thunder at all!

In the midst of it all, Clara the Pig was unfazed.

Today things have calmed down to a steady downpour that the birds seem to be enjoying.

More storms are sure to come! Alex doesn't mind. School was canceled twice in a row, giving her a 5-day weekend right before finals!

Tracie -- Very good point! I'm glad our nation is full of people with differing opinions, but I do wish some of the more conservative people would see that half of what they're fighting against/upholding are social customs, not something sacred. For example, pink being for girls and blue being for boys. The inability to stop and think, "why are things this way?" aggravates me to no end.

Thank you, MLK

Mr. King, if you could see the fruits of your labors. May we all live in glorious honor of his spirit of unity.

I now turn this post over to Mr. Brad Paisley.

"Welcome to the Future"

Tracie -- The funny thing is that I don't consider myself a Liberal, but that's probably because I live in such a liberal area that I see my views paling in comparison to some! Thank you. :)

Fail

The Associated Press reports today that

Burial sites are next to king, suggesting laborers were paid and not slaves

Yeah, um, actually, everyone with an education has known this for twenty years. Even I knew that as a kid. In fact, I got in arguments with my Jewish friends about it. They wanted credit for their ancestors having built the pyramids. It's upsetting how many people read articles like this and go "ZOMG not uh! That evidence is made up! Ze Bible doesn't lie!!!" No, it doesn't lie. You know why? Because it's a sodding book. Like the one I wrote this summer. And for the record, my book is Fiction, so it's full of lies. As a writer, I'm a liar by trade. All writers are. Including those who scrawled down fables in Hebrew thousands of years ago, then decided some of their stories sucked because they showed that women are human beings and aren't all virgins and whores, so they hid those scrolls in caves in the Dead Sea...

Anyway, since this is a complaining post, I'd like to share this film preview:

Leap Year

First off, since when can a woman not propose to her boyfriend any day of the week? Second off... that montage of quaint "Irish" folk going "just kiss the girl!" and participating in all of their Irishy shenanigans? Let's just say that when I first saw the preview, I stared in shock. Like, disturbed shock. Like, "Oh no you didn't," shock. But yes, they did.

Films like this are the equivalent to a story with the plot of "A cute little redhead is upset that her boyfriend gave her diamond earrings, but hears a myth that if she goes and lives down South with a black family, she'll gain the magical powers to be able to propose to him. *cue montage of Minstrelsy antics by blackface actors.*"

For those who will argue that the Irish have not been treated with the same racial prejudice as African Americans, you're right. In many ways, they've been treated worse. In the 1700s the Irish were considered to be below the blacks of America, and were not considered white. They were called "Niggers inside out." Since a slave could be insured, people hired the Irish for jobs where they were likely to die.

For the past 800 + years, the Irish have been victim to systematic, institutionalized cultural genocide by the English. The Irish Catholic was treated as a race, and for much of history, was denied nearly every basic human right. The iron-fisted grip the English have had on the Irish was so effective that the country has yet to achieve total independence.

Historical rant aside, Leap Year appears to be an insulting caricature of a people who have been shat on for hundreds of years. And now, once again, Hollywood is the one doing the shitting.

To be fair, I haven't seen the film. The preview made me cringe so much that I felt compelled to write something publicly about it.

Okay, sailing pictures to come soon!

Mackenzie's Momma -- ...I am overwhelmed merely by your description of everything on your shoulders. Holy crap. I have no idea how you do it, woman! You're amazing. An inspiration!

Hmm

So I kinda suck at being a blogger. Like, a lot. I'm a lazy ass. But to be fair, I have been keeping myself busy. I'll try to blog more often to force myself to work on my non-fiction skills. Hopefully I'll post about a recent maritime adventure soon... But in the meantime, here's a bit of what's been keeping me occupied lately.

There was a big fire nearby in August. This was a good day (there's supposed to be another mountain behind that big pine) but the heavy layer of smoke for over a week prevented me from going outside much. Not having health insurance makes getting inhalers and all that crap more difficult. So since I couldn't be romping about, I applied myself to other tasks...

One night, I had a dream that was the end of a Gothic fairy tale. It so moved me that I set out to write the beginning of the story. I never intended for it to turn into a novel, much less my MFA thesis, but the winds of poesy billowed my sails. Within just under three weeks, I had a 92,000, 304 page novel under my belt.

It's a Young Adult adventure/fantasy story called Sing Moonlight. Here it is photographed with The Three Musketeers on top for scale. I'm currently querying literary agents in my attempt to get it published. Lately the characters have been teasing me in my dreams, and a sequel won't be far off!

The book has been approved by my thesis director and I'll get comments from my second and third readers soon. So far, the responses have been wonderful and very positive from both teens and veterans of the genre alike, so I'm cautiously hopeful about Sing Moonlight finding a place on a shelf near you!

I also ate ice cream.

Went on lots of hikes.

Gazed at the night sky.

Played with the neighbors' new puppies, Sammy and Oreo.

Was attacked by bats.

Was in the July/August issue of Script Magazine.

Started painting again. Ironically enough, this is what I painted on my birthday.

Got caught dancing to Mama Mia!

Ate Christmas cookies. On New Year's Eve. Yep -- no "lose weight!" resolutions for me.

Spying on Chee Chee in his new bed that my sister and I got him for Christmas. He is now referred to as "The Sultan." And that's Froggy on the left, dipping her toes into his water bucket so that she can lick the water off.

Tracie (aka Moody) -- That's great! Oh, what fun. We recently started re-watching season 6. :)
Anonymous -- I can't tell if you're serious or not, given that you left your comment on a 3-sentence post, LOL!

Happy New Year!

A nervous Toot with her rawhide Christmas card that she never ate.

Uh, hmm. Hi.

Bye!