Month: July 2006

Crankypantsing

Is It Plugged In?

Shelly

Remember when I said that installing hardware or software is either a cake walk or a nightmare? And that installing my new DVD burner had, surprisingly, gone very smoothly? Yeah. Well. I thought I’d burn some new music for the car, and found that I had no sound. Now, this was not surprising, as Windows jettisons my sound card drivers at the smallest provocation. So, I reinstalled the drivers, but still no sound. I uninstalled the sound card, then reinstalled it, and still no sound. I physically pulled the card, restarted the computer, uninstalled the drivers and all related software, shut down, replaced the sound card, restarted, reinstalled the drivers and software, shut down, restarted, and still no sound. Gah! I got on-line and downloaded new drivers from the manufacturer, went through the whole song and dance again, and was rewarded with a whole lotta silence. At this point, two hours had passed and I was ready to start throwing things. It suddenly occurred to me, though, that I had neglected the cardinal rule of b0rkened computers. I checked and, somehow, my speakers had come unplugged from my computer.

Kill me now.

Meta, Photography

Sunlight and Fog

Shelly

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood. The folks at weather.com are a bunch of liars, apparently. I woke up to bright sun sparkling on a heavy dew, with a veil of fog skirting the southern edge of the valley. It was hot already, though, so I decided to get my butt in gear and run my errands early. Not that it helped much, because by 8am the heat and humidity were already oppressive.

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Sunlight and Fog

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Southern Ridge at Sunset

As I drove home from work on Friday, the sky was overcast and there were intermittent sprinkles of rain. The cloud cover thinned as evening approached, and I was hopeful that we’d be treated to a beautiful sunset. As it turned out, the western sky didn’t produce much of interest, but the clouds above and the southern horizon glowed a lovely shade of pink.

Technical note: My web host is in the process of physically migrating to new servers. I’m scheduled for migration on the 17th, which means they could begin as early as midnight Sunday. The move will involve everything, including e-mail. I’ve had a look at the helpdesk boards and there are quite a few folks who have been experiencing migration issues. Coppermine, which I use for my image gallery, seems to be making a particular pain in the arse of itself. So, if there are outages or other problems, they will hopefully be temporary. If not, I’ll try to get them resolved as quickly as possible. In the meantime, please think lots of happy, painless migration thoughts for me.

Uncategorized

May

Shelly

Instant Review: May

May has always been just a little weird. Born with a lazy eye, she grew up wearing a corrective eye patch. The other kids didn’t like her, so her mother–a doll maker–gave her a special doll and told her that, if she didn’t have any friends, she should make her own. When she grew up, that’s just what May did.

As independent horror films go, this is one of the better ones. The acting is good, the story is unique, the writing is smart and funny, and the characters are well developed. And, Angela Bettis, as May, is perfectly mesmerizing and disturbing.

Art, Ladybusiness

Shrine

Shelly

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Shrine
ink jet print on vellum, luna moth wings, chicken vertebrae, cicada shells, and pigmented beeswax adhered to board

The writing under the photograph is from Letters to Esther, taken from a letter written by Richard Glendening. It contains a highly romantic passage likening the innate goodness of women to that of angels. Men, conversely, are of a baser nature. It might have been a nice theory in 1920, but it holds women to an impossible standard while selling men short.

Pets, Photography

Thursday DogBlogging

Shelly

Harriet spent last night’s storm crashed out on the couch. She was lying on top of her sleeping bag, which I’d just washed. It, in turn, was on top of several folded blankets. At one point, she attempted to re-enact a scene from The Princess and the Pea. Or, perhaps, Bitch of the Hill? It was quite fun to watch her trying to get comfortable on top of the mound of bedding. Just when she’d get everything scrunched to perfection, she’d try to lie down and would be foiled by the slick surface of the sleeping bag. After several attempts, she finally gave up and crammed herself between me and the blankets.

You can see, I think, that she is not much bothered by storms.

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Did you know that dogs have eyelashes? I don’t mean the whiskers above their eyes, I mean actual lashes. Miss Brown’s are not long and glamorous, but they’re fairly easy to discern.

Photography

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Shelly

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It’s storming. It’s been raining on and off and on and off and on and off for days, and according to weather.com, it’s supposed to continue in the same pattern for the foreseeable future. Ugh. There are even some rumbles and flashes of lightning, but nothing consistent enough or far enough away–I’m not stupid enough to go stand outside in the lightning!–to motivate me to try to get a photo. Instead, I’d rather just grumble about the bloody weather.

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Instant Review: Black Books

I just got the first season of Black Books from Netflix. I haven’t laughed that hard in a long, long time. I nearly made myself sick. And, I’m not sure why. I suspect that others might not find it quite so riotous as I did. I think it just catered to my weird sense of humor, in all the right ways. Whatever the reason, I found it to be deeply, deeply funny from start to finish.

And, now, I’m going to get off the computer, because it’s starting to get a little nasty outside. I think maybe I should burn hecatombs to the weather gods, so the electricity won’t go out again. Eeep!

Crankypantsing

Pet Care for Assholes

Shelly

I mentioned previously the moderator of an art group I used to belong to, and all sorts of weirdness surrounded her management of the group–and not just from my POV, either. I’ve since heard some ridiculous stories about her from other folks.

So, anyway, someone in another group posted a link to her LJ, so I thought I’d go see if she was as assy as I remembered.

Aaaand… I walked in on a discussion of her dog’s anal glands, how they were requiring increasingly frequent expressing, and how she was unsatisfied with the way the vet’s staff was handling the problem. M’kaythen! There were several replies, with most of the advice being of the “put a diaper on him” variety. Poor dog. So I left a neutral comment asking whether or not the vet had discussed the issue with her, in terms of possible causes and treatment plans. I said that the dog could have an infection, or worse, and that he may need meds or even the removal of the glands. I was completely ignored. Again, poor dog! You can’t just leave something like that. The dog is in fucking *pain*, asshole. Not only that, but I cannot imagine what it must smell like in her house. But anyway…

So, I checked back, and she did finally take the dog to a new vet. He had an infection (duh!), and is now on meds. On the one hand, I’m glad she got help for her dog, but on the other, I just want to smack her. I just don’t get how people who profess to care about their pets can be so uncaring about them. I could understand it if she was poor, and couldn’t afford vet care, but she’s not. She’s just clueless and lacking in basic empathy.

Actually, it’s the last part that gets me. From the tone of her posts, it’s clear that her major concern is the smell and the inconvenience of her dog EAGing all over her furniture. She never once indicates that she’s even considered that her dog might be experiencing any discomfort. The thing is, there are brazillions of folks like her, and I bet all of them think they’re good, conscientious pet owners. And not a one of them has an empathetic bone in their bodies.

She also mentions switching vets, because she’s unhappy with their service and bookkeeping. She doesn’t know if the shots she paid for were administered. I know there are vets out there who prefer to do shots in a back room, without the owner present, but I sure as fucking hell would not patronize one. No way is a vet, or a tech, taking my dog out of my sight for an vaccinations.

On the bright side, this time she mentioned her “laundry lady” without inserting “Korean” at the beginning.

Crankypantsing

Edited for Content

Shelly

A federal judge has ruled that it is illegal for 3rd parties to edit films for content. Companies like CleanFlix are now prohibited from selling or renting films from which they have removed sex, violence, profanity, or any other potentially offensive material. Existing sanitized discs and video tapes must be turned over to the studios for destruction.

Sayeth the judge: “What is protected are the creator’s rights to protect its creation in the form in which it was created.”

Amen.

What to do if you are offended by cursing, sex, etc.? Do a little research before buying or renting movies. You wouldn’t go to a theater and expect a film to be edited to your liking. Why should DVDs be any different? If you don’t want to see sex and violence, don’t watch movies containing sex and violence. Easy peasy.

Ironically, I came across a blog post by someone who had just watched The Libertine. They were disturbed by the story, which surprised me. What, exactly, did they expect from a movie about John Wilmot? The mind wobbles.

Art

Shrine (reworked, in progress)

Shelly

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I was really unhappy with this one, but it was out of sight and out of mind. I pulled it out earlier this evening, thinking that I might see if removing the old, bone “wings” and replacing them with a set of luna moth wings would help. How to attach them, though? Acrylic medium was out, because it would damage the delicate powder coating of the wings. I decided to see what beeswax would do. I hoped, because it could be poured onto the surface without using a brush, that it would protect the wings. It seems to have worked pretty well.

If all goes well, there will be a frieze of cicada shells running along the bottom. Like the luna moth wings, though, I need to figure out how to attach them. They’re light-weight and fragile, so they’re difficult to manipulate.

Bonus: the house smells like beeswax, which is divine.