The End of Summer

This has to be one of the best decorations I've ever seen! A thing of beauty...

Now that school has started, the dog days of summer are so sorely missed. Here are some of the highlights from August:

1. Life as Longinus: The Mysterious Stranger

Longinus is back with an all-new adventure! Queen Diana doesn't like his cooking so she hires a passerby to be her new cook with... interesting consequences. Check out these stills!

The new chef

Connie and Batilda, the chick

In-between takes it's all fun... and not in-between!

Connie never was good at looking the proper direction...

A cast photo. Look at Connie. Is that not horrifying?

And in case you missed it, here's the movie:

Part 1



Part 2



Part 3

Enjoy!

2. Driveway Day

Sometime in April or May my sister and I were walking on the driveway when I had an epiphany and said "You know, we don't really appreciate our driveway much." And thus Driveway Day was born. Last summer we had a party to celebrate Crevasses, George Lucas and Bear Grilles, and this summer it was the many wonders of the driveway. Check out some of the decorations and festivities!

Things started off with the ceremonial kiwi roll, where the kiwi was forced to roll all the way down the driveway.

I don't know who the people are in the picture but it looked something like this

The kiwi itself

This was followed by several other events such as:

The Limbo
The Batman and The Joker Chase
Laying in the Land
Smelling Your Armpit then Describing it to the Others
Eating a Tasty
Violently Cracking an Egg, Running About Like a Savage, Then Sprinting off Randomly
Being Blessed By The Communist by Him Rubbing on You Then Blowing at his Butthole
Calling Orlando Bloom

Even Legolas was excited!

The banner

Need I say more?

Michael Jackson isn't allowed

Self-explanatory

A pretty good likeness

George wishes he were invited!

The Limbo, Calling Orlando, and Blowing on the Commie's Butthole



Our tasties. Mine on the... tilted top is The Joker, then I believe the surprised one is Daniel Radcliffe

Alex's Alfred



Waiting for the Communist's blessing

The Driveway in all its glory!

Here's one of the clips of the festivities: The Violent Egg Ceremony

Alas... now with school in full swing again, I have limited time for fun activities. Like the dolt that I am, I volunteered to be the first one to do a big project/presentation, thinking that it would be like pulling off a bandaid -- best to to it as quick as possible. I did it on Richard Henry Dana, Jr. and also signed up to bring a snack on the same day, so I brought pita chips, spinach dip, grapes and brownies... and napkins. So at break, before my presentation, I tried to seem smart. "In prelude to my presentation about a sailor," I said, "you should know that we get the phrase 'three square meals a day' because on ships, plates were square and made of wood. We're going to be replicating that today with our snack by eating it on square napkins." As an afterthought I added, "actually, it's because I forgot to bring plates." I was scolded by my professor -- apparently she'd believed me up until that point!

Though it did feel like summer again today when there was another fire very nearby and planes were bombing over and circling like mad. Someone's house burned up. :( My Legolas senses tell me that this will be an early autumn... the trees are all already fully turning, even the ones that get sprinkler water. I hope that means rains soon, and many more in the spring!

But yes, I miss the days of no homework, where we had time to sit around and do things like this:

Easy Payments

And this:

Bush, McCain and Obama's Sleepover

I guess I'll stop there, but there certainly are more. Horrifying as that knowledge may be. You should see some of the clips from years past when we were into Harry Potter...

Mo -- Wow, you were raised by a nanny till you were seven? And yes, SGA's cancellation is still hard to accept. :( But Moe Jacuzzi has no plans of quitting his series any time soon, at least. ;) And yes, let's hope for LOTS of SGA movies! :D How's school going?

Tracie -- Hey, thanks for the tips and the links! And believe it or not... I still have the headache. Of course, I'm thinking "brain tumor" but here's to hoping it's just differed pain from sinus pressure from allergies. In fact, I'd welcome that if that's the case and not something serious! Isn't Teyla adorable? :) She's a purebred Australian Shepherd and her coloring is called a blue muerle. :)

Killing Atlantis Made Me Sick

Well, now that the initial shock has worn off, I'm actually pretty excited for the Atlantis movies. In the movie format, there'll be more time to focus on character interactions rather than just plot. Hopefully they'll be just as good as the show, if not better!

Teyla the Toot is wary of Friday nights without Atlantis

I think this Stargate news has affected my health... a few days ago, when the decision to axe Atlantis was apparently being made, I started to feel sick. It progressed painfully swollen lymphnodes in my neck and extreme irritation in my... head. I had a perpetual headache and all day yesterday would get shooting pains from the back of my skull whenever I touched the right side of my nose (or whenever I breathed). Talk about bizarre! This morning I woke up without the nose-sensitive shooting pains but with a lingering general "tightness" in my head and phantom sinus pains. Hopefully this is just a retarded virus that I'll kick ASAP.

Eating some yogurt that she probably shouldn't've had!

For a while, when the base of my skull was hurting, I was worried about Meningitis, trying to convince myself that I was too old to get it. Common sense tells me that you're never too old if you're exposed! And that's the sad part -- I've been a troll as much as possible lately and haven't gone out, so unless I picked up something babysitting, I don't know how I caught this bugger. Here's to hoping I'm even better tomorrow!

I was eating string cheese and she was hopeful

School starts on Monday and I am not looking forward to it in the least. The worst part is, as my sister keeps reminding me, "What are you doing? You don't even have to go to school -- you're done! You chose to go to grad school!" I always forget that I already have a degree. But hey, I've been going to school since I was 2 1/2 - 3 and don't know how to stop! I also have arrested development. I still live at home and... I don't want a "real" job!

If that isn't the cutest little yogurt-covered dog, I don't know what is!

And in case anyone's wondering, I'm still planning on contributing to the SGA fandom after the last episode airs, and my sister and I will certainly be doing more fan films! I hope you're all coping well.

Mackenzie's Momma - I definitely hear ya. And I think I also have the curse! Except instead of killing TV shows, I killed characters. I liked this asshole on ER and he got booted shortly after, then my best friend and I loved Jonas on SG-1 and he disappeared, too! I guess I shouldn't say that Teyla is probably my favorite on Atlantis... but that's only by a fraction. I love the whole team. Maybe that's why it got canceled -- your curse and mine combined?

Tracie - Thanks for the recommendation, and sorry to have been the bearer of bad news! I have heard nothing but good things about Eureka and it's nice to have it recommended by another Stargate fan. One of the main reasons I said I didn't intend to watch it is because I only seem to have so much time for TV, and getting into a new show takes some effort! But now I'll make more of an effort if I happen to get the TV when it's on. ;)

Let's Let the Clown Out of the Box

"What doesn't kill you makes you... stranger."

The sad news about Stargate Atlantis being canceled has pissed me off so much that I've come out of my blogging lurkdom... if you call not blogging for nearly a month "lurkdom." My sister and I have oft commented that we'd like to hire The Joker of The Dark Knight (one of the best movies ever made, by the way, and I'm not just saying that because I love Batman and Heath Ledger has re-defined talent) to blow up all the schools in the country (with no one in them, of course) so that we wouldn't have to go back. Well, know I'm adding the Sci Fi Channel to the list.

"Hi."

Yes, I understand that Atlantis gets more expensive to produce each year, but c'mon, what the hell are they gonna spend the freed up money on? The Saturday night movies that take every remotely threatening animal and turn them into one of the most spectacularly terrible "monster movies"? I seriously saw one advertised that was a colored-pencil drawn mammoth running amok on a street as the narrator said "An alien-possessed mammoth wreaks havoc..." It wasn't enough for it to be a rampaging mammoth, was it? It had to also be possessed by an alien.

Now I'm just going to unfairly rant because I refuse to watch anything on the Sci Fi Channel other than Atlantis. And even Atlantis has gotten painful because of the f*&%ing ads that scroll across the screen every five minutes. Is it just me or do ads like that make the rest of you loathe the show being advertised?

Bruce Wayne looks comfortable. He can pay for his own private TV shows.

I have never watched Eureka and don't intend to. Battlestar Gallactica was a soap opera full of unnecessarily scantily-clad women, from the bits and pieces I've seen. And everything else non-Stargate on that channel is shit. No, shit's shit. Or shit's shit's shit. Take your pick. I lean towards the latter.

I am, of course, very happy that the show will continue in at least one DVD movie, and am glad that it's leaving while still going strong, but I'm still insulted. I mean, it's my favorite show! Those characters are my friends! How dare some middle-aged white people (probably guys) decide to take that away from me?!

I may be a bit self-centered at the moment but I'm entitled. Seriously, I am. And so are you, if you live in the US. Do you know what a TV station is? Do you know how they work? I didn't used to and when I found out, I got pissed (I know - I'm a very angry poster today).

The airwaves and the frequencies TV channels broadcast upon belong to us, the PEOPLE. How come we aren't taught that in elementary school? TV channels purchase a license as a right to broadcast upon a specific channel. This license is granted under the condition that the channel serve the interests of the people - it's viewers. This founding principle of television has been all-but lost. I watch very few shows these days because, for the most part, TV has become so constipated with crap that it's impossible to get any sort of quality out of a program, not even a fart's worth. So I choose not to watch. But wait a minute - those are my airwaves that these stations are squeezing their crap through! I shouldn't be not watching, I should be complaining.

Alfred agrees with me. Or maybe he's just having a senior moment.

Did you know that every citizen has the right to walk into a TV channel's HQ and ask to see the public file? The public file is a record of all mail from viewers. Did you know that if you do walk into a TV channel's HQ and ask to view the public file you'll more than likely be questioned rigorously and nervously watched for the duration of your viewing? Next to no one ever does this so when someone does, employees immediately assume imminent doom or auditing of some sort. Wouldn't it be great if a pack of us showed up at the Sci Fi offices in NYC and demanded to see the public file? Granted, we'd have to keep the rabble-rousers in check to keep them from going Satedan and commandeering the building like AIM did to many BIA buildings in the 70's, but still.

Anyway, my point is, no matter how much we're taught that we don't have a voice in our entertainment, we do. So complain. Bitch. Moan. Fling feces. Sign petitions. Write to the people in charge at Sci Fi. They're required by law to listen to you, so please, let your voice be heard!

By the sounds of it this decision was made quite a while ago and no amount of fan complaints will change the outcome (especially since MGM has this lame contract that won't let them seek out another channel to produce the show), but let them know that they've, you know, pissed you off so much that you're willing to get off your fat American (or Canadian) ass, hunt them down, and complain.

If only more people would get mobilized for political reasons... but that's another issue.

Um... yeah. The wig idea died before it even began.

Switching the subject, I apologize for the lack in posts lately. I've been lazy. But I have several pictures saved and ready for posting so I'll attempt regularity again soon!

And by the way of business, I have two retractions: 1. The fires that I previously stated were started by an arsonist were not. That was a false radio report. Allegedly they were caused by hot stuff coming out of car mufflers. 2. Pete isn't the pie-stealer in O Brother, Where Art Thou? but rather Delmar is. My apologies, Pete!

Okay, so I don't really want to switch the subject. What I want to do is dress up as The Joker and waltz into the Sci Fi office and lecture them all about how "un-diagonal" they all are and not snap out of character no matter how much they ask me who I am. A Joker with boobs - how disturbing would that be? About as shocking as discovering a role for a female lead that had enough character and dignity for me to actually be jealous of the actress who got the part. Erm... I'll save that rant for later.

The Joker was an Atlantis fan

For now, I leave you with this video - what I'd like to do to the person(s) who decided to axe Atlantis. Just replace Bruce Wayne with one of the Sci Fi Channel tards and you get the picture.

Batman and The Joker

Mo - Dang, hopefully your province won't have another fire for a long time. Ours have definitely calmed down - it's so nice to have clean air and a non-blood-red sun!

And Tracie - If you come back and read this, thank you so much!

George Bush's Vault 2

We set out around 5pm with the proclaimed goal of "going to George Bush's house." Yet even at that late afternoon hour, it was still swelteringly hot and humid out, so we only wore bikini tops... a choice we would partially regret!

We traveled along a hiking path we've trod many a time in the past, and were delighted to see that even though we've had no rain, the scorched earth was already regenerating!

Ferns!

The ground

New life

Even this "dead bush" shows signs of revival!

I love this shot

More ferns

And the unharmed forest looked as beautiful as ever. We call this section Lothlórien.

The Golden Wood

It was then time to step off of the beaten path and follow a deer trail, that immediately had three dark signs. The first was a large fallen tree that blocked the path (and would be a perfect spot for a rattler).


The second was a skull.


The third was... Snape's potion bottle, which meant he was out there somewhere...


We passed through some very pretty groves.



...From then on it was rather torturous, bending and contorting to avoid poison oak, getting our backs torn open from branches, until, just when we were about to give up, I noticed a cable.


A few steps further, and I could see a eucalyptus tree. Native to Australia, these trees are obviously planted by humans when seen in California, so I knew we were close.


Still, seeing the looming structure through the brush was just as horrifying as if it were unexpected.


As we approached we noticed that... unfortunately as we'd suspected... it wasn't a vault at all, but rather a series of tanks. To make all of our cuts stinging with sweat burn even more was the discovery that there was a nice cleared road leading up to it on the other side.


The very old tanks:






George Bush, we weren't impressed.


I knocked on a few and they sounded empty... maybe propane?

The trek home was even more harrowing as we climbed over the ridge to return along a different path... a path that not only sliced up our backs once more, but also cut our legs in so many criss-crossing patterns that it looks like scrape latticework. Along the top of the ridge I found a mountain lion track on the sandstone.


And discvered that the fire retardant that they dropped to put out the blaze killed all the leaves it dropped on, creating more fire fuel. Um... right. My only guess is that it suffocated the manzanita leaves, killing them, but doesn't have that affect on other plants, or else why would they be using it if it creates future fire hazards?




Much of the way back was on the slippery crest of the mountain with steep drops on either side. Spooky! We finally made it back to familiar territory -- the burnt mountainside.

New bushes!

All in all, the trip was about three hours. And there were no WMDs! Actually, come to think of it, we should've expected as much from George Bush...

Here's something neat. We call this tree the Ghost Eye Tree and due to some sort of optical illusion, as you walk along the flat path the tree will suddenly go from being straight up and down to being crooked!

George Bush's Vault

This is just a quick post to warn you all that I may not return.

Remember that fire we had here two months ago? A woman we know said that the only reason they put it out so quickly was because George Bush has a vault in the mountain. A vault. George Bush. I assumed she'd gone off the deep end, as we often do with our friends, when suddenly I remembered that, while hiking on a parallel mountain, I in fact had seen a tank/vault thing in the mountainside before.

I'm writing this to let you know that this afternoon, my sister and I are going out to investigate. Maybe it's really the SGC. Maybe it's WMDs. Maybe it's his cheese collection. Either way, there's a chance that there are armed guards like at Area 51 and that we'll be shot on sight! If I don't blog again tonight or tomorrow... assume the worst.