This is actually wrong, and not just silly wrong

SO I was bumming around the internet, avoiding working, (yes! I am working, for pay and once, for a facial) and I found this photo of the Sedan Crater. I have a rule that all the photography I put on the blog is mine, but this isn't. Since I haven't been to the Nevada Nuclear Test Site.

This is wrong. Making explosives that make craters you can see from outer space AND that are radioactive is immoral. Why would anyone want to do this? What moral compass do they have? Reading the articles that came out on the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident, I was amazed that anyone would want to continue to build new nuclear power plants. A week later the L.A. Times had an article about how nuclear waste site designers have to figure out warning signs that will last 100,000 years and be legible in languages that haven't even been invented yet.

Think about that. Warning signs for the ages in languages we haven't imagined yet.

Meanwhile the bobos in washington have continued to fuck up the world, squandering all good will towards the U.S. by invading a country that didn't do anything and now they don't have enough manpower or friends to stop nuclear proliferation, which, I hasten to mention, will actually increase the probability of dead people coming your way.

I originally wrote "Bonobos in Washington" but those monkeys would be doing a better job than the ID10ts currently there.

Orchid

Here's an orchid that I've adopted and almost killed, but it is apparently happy and blooming now.

Just Plain Wrong

apologies in advance. I don't have a picture, I didn't take my camera.

That said, it is just plain WRONG to wear your renaissance faire costume to the World Con Sci Fi convention. WRONG. Luckily there weren't a lot of people wearing Star Trek outfits, because most people at the Sci Fi convention were spherically challenged, and those outfits don't like an ounce of blubber, but still, at least a few pointy ears would be in keeping with the theme of the conference you spent money to attend. I hate to say this, but good old Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of York ain't in outerspace.

So I went to visit my cousin, who has been going to the sci fi convention since 1955, since it was in So Cal, this year and we had lunch and strolled the convention site.

There are many things that you don't really get to do as a grown-up, wear capes, make loud noises for no apparent reason, dress in costumes. Being a grown up is rather boring, so I'm all for a little fantasy dress up. In fact, speaking of loud noises I started tap dancing at one point because it's fun to make loud noises with your feet. Put me in a top hat and noisy shoes and I'm happy as a clam. But I do think ye merrye ye olde englunde is not sci-fi. Give me a Klingon, an Alien, Sigourney Weaver; but don't give me stale ale. If you know what I mean.

Anyway, there is a heavy duty component of FANTASY lumped into the fantasy - Sci-Fi world and so many people wear wizard costumes and purple velvet capes. You can buy handmade cape clasps in the shape of dragons and feather masks and such, lots of leather boots of all sorts - black shiny stiff storm trooper boots, soft brown leather elf boots. A rather popular, but to me totally bewildering, accessory was the tail. The first time I saw someone wearing a tail I thought, "Very few people's asses can take that kind of scrutiny. Yours for example. I wouldn't draw attention to it." Then I noticed it was a common trait, as it were. But wouldn't you think that people would be using something other than raccoon tails? First we have Elizabeth in Space, and now she's joined by DANIEL BOONE! Metaphors are getting mixed with a cement truck at the sci fi con! If I was going to wear a tail I think I would pick a dragon tail. Yet I did not see a single dragon tail being sported as I walked about. And did you notice? There was nary a tail at the Emmys last night. Someone better contact some Hollywood sylist types, I want to see Angelina in a tail. She's probably half dragon anyway.

So after lunch, we went up to the break out session on Restoration Dance. This is not THE EMPIRE being restored, but rather the secret Jane Austen sci-fi sect, who had gathered to do a little promenading around the conference room at the Hilton. Mr Bennett, Lizzie Bennett, Mrs. Bennett, Wharf, random Elizabethans, a few hobbits and some wizards were all there. I was reminded of going to the gay two stepping bar in Austin and watching the texan cowboy queers dance the two step together. Very fun to watch two guys in cowboy boots and hats waltz clog about the dance floor. Similarly, vary fun to watch a Klingon reach out a hand to touch the gloved fingers of Lizzie Bennett, who is wondering "Where the hell is DARCY?"

Well, I can never actually go attend the conference, since I obviously don't have the wardrobe, but it was grand fun and if you're in Japan next year, you can stop in.

Face Time

Well I haven't written in a while, and I'm just going to blame the house guest who is staying with us, who is the most polite house guest on earth and who really isn't the reason why, but I'll just do that anyway. I won't blame the depression that only large quantities of bittersweet chocolate gellato could assuage, depression in the face of the continued rejection of job seeking.

Anyway, my next door neighbor is running this really great e-commerce site called face city shop and since I live next door I just sort of invited myself over and said, what face products should I use? Well Robin asked what I was using and ominously told me, "Those products are good, and EXPENSIVE, but they're not PROFESSIONAL." Well, dear me! I want to be CHEAP and PROFESSIONAL! Except of course, at work where I want to be employed, expensive and professional. Anyway it turns out Robin doesn't really believe in night creme or eye creme, which bummed me out because I was looking forward to the Ultimate Lift Eye Gel on the face city site. So I can't report on that. But I did get some TRUTH SERUM (watch out when you come over for tea cause I'll put a few drops in yours and see what happens) and some soothing creme and this stuff smells like those chewable orange vitamin pills from the 70s. So it's kind of weird to occasionally get a whiff of that orange smell as you talk to people about why they should hire you. Even though they are 10 years younger than you are and have never worked at a profitable company before and so you know they aren't going to hire you and you wonder why they bothered.

But my skin looks pretty good, but it's very potent stuff and I quickly realized that I was using too much and the vit c was irritating my dermatitis - except you couldn't see it. And so most of my redness and blotchiness is kind of gone. I will report back when I've finished the bottles off. But so far, it's pretty good stuff.

Technology

I had this really good rant going about how this administration proves that neo con theories are totally stupid and bankrupt and how they've fucked everything up by being delusional school marms pointing their fingers at the world and tsk tsking when countries won't BEHAVE!
It was really good, but it all vanished when I tried to spell check, so you just have to take my word for it. It was pithy and well written and if Condi Rice read it she would fall down in tears. Alas, my ability to save the world was ruined by technology. Or my failure to SAVE prior to spell checking.
So here is a photo of a plaque at the Santa Barbara City Hall honoring the original white women settlers who came there. I thought it was appropriate today since today is not only the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, but Henry Gates had an op-ed piece in the NYT about trying to find the descendants of the few free black patriots who fought in the American Revolutionary War so that they can join the Sons or Daughters of the Revolution. The DAR being the group that refused to allow the mezzo soprano Marian Anderson to sing in their hall because she was black. Most of the free black men who fought in the revolutionary war fought for the British, since they had abolished slavery back in Britain by then and they offered to manumit any slaves who fought for them. This was one of those anarchic things that tickled my fancy. Imagine the stuffed up snobby DAR and SAR meetings being suddenly packed with african americans. Hee heee!

The Hood: Flora

I am not one who likes "privacy plantings" as they are called. They are not pedestrian friendly. Or community friendly. They are the opposite of the front porch that makes neighborhoods neighborhoody. I mean a few discreet plantings are all well and good. I have placed a potted senna, a lovely bush\vine, in front of my living room window, but it is literally in front of my ground floor living room window. Every time the neighbors walked by on their way to the trash my dogs went crazy. This bush just affords a little more privacy and makes people not walk directly in front of my window. It doesn't wall off my entire house from the community.

Well this picture is of privacy plantings run amok. Yes - there's a house back there!!! Vines cover the entire house and all the fences. There was a sign up for a while, instructing the mailman to just "throw the mail over the hedge."

I love that - just throw the mail over the hedge. It's so devil may care. Throw caution and your Visa bill to the wind! Don't even bother to find the mailbox, we'll find the mail among the weeds. I wonder if there are mail rules governing how things need to be delivered. Like "A Post Officer Must Never Heave Mail." It sort of gives a new meaning to over the hedge.