A whole lot of babbling.

Been busy.
Last week I spent a number of days in Toronto. At first it was sort of fun and reminded me that yea, lots of people live really close to each other, but then the long hours got to me, the lack of sleep got to me and having people in my face all the time got to me. It wouldn’t have been so bad but I missed all the rocks, trees and nature that normally surrounds me where I live now. (All the nature somehow calms me down.)

The good part of the trip was that I got to see some family members face-to-face. I even attended a holiday gathering where we traded sarcastic comments, had some food and swore in front of their kids. Gotta love family! I also got a big bag of clothes, compliments of my favourite establishment “My sister-in-law’s closet.” Not only does this save me hours of useless shopping (and complaining) but a ton of money that I can now spend on cool things like dinosaurs, music and pens. Oh, and I guess presents for people I like since the holidays are coming up soon.

LAUGH.
I’ve been catching re-runs of “Whoose line is it anyway?” and laughing my ass off. What a great show that was, I demand it return and a hundred more episodes are made. Also, the Futurama movie “Benders Big Score” was AWESOME. I loved it. Unless you’re a fan of the show you won’t like it, but everyone should love the show because it’s funny and clever. (And nerdy, let’s not forget nerdy.) Laughing is good for us all so whatever makes you laugh, you should do that more. Go on. GO ON.

I don’t do holiday cards.
Now that my mailbox is getting filled, I have remembered all about holiday cards. To be honest, I just don’t understand the obsession with cards. I find most of them completely useless and a waste of time. Unless there is a life update of some sort (a newsletter perhaps), some family photos or something, then really – I would rather someone take the few bucks they spent on the card and the stamp, and just go have a cup of coffee, donate it somewhere or something. I’d rather that they derived some sort of enjoyment out of spending that money, instead of sending me something that gets a signature and then I throw out.

Yes, some people derive a great source of enjoyment out of these things, but normally they fill the card with writing instead of just signing their names. So you’re thinking of me, thank you, but send me an email or give me a call. That way I can respond to you in a useful way and we both feel good after the exchange. Your signature and a card doesn’t allow me to respond, doesn’t relay anything new to me and then adds to the waste disposal/recycling process, which makes me feel bad. If you simply MUST send me a card then send me an e-card. (After I’ve read it, I don’t feel bad clicking delete.)

I’m not being rude, I’m just trying to minimize the amount of stuff I toss out, and the amount of money people spend on stuff I toss out. If you want to send me something, send me a photo of yourself, your family, your pets, your house, where you live or whatever because that is what means something to me. If you want to thank me for something, just tell me, I don’t need a trophy card to mount on my fireplace!

To anyone I know that feels angry/sad they didn’t get a card from me, please, don’t take it personally. To anyone that sent me one and feels bad now, or angry, then I’m ordering you not to. I do appreciate the thought, and in the future you can save yourself the cash. (Hell, spend it on something you will enjoy throwing at me if that makes you feel better.)

I love you podcasts.
It’s finally happened, I’ve been sucked into the world of podcasts. I’ve spent hours downloading and listening to all sorts of podcasts via iTunes. NASA has a few great videocasts, and there are tons of other science and space podcasts which inform me what’s going on around the world, and what humans are seeing out in the universe around us. I’ve downloaded a few German lessons, classes for writers, discussions of strange phenomena and all sorts of wonderfully informative things. The best part is that they are free. All I have to do is click on them and the knowledge is mine. It could be yours too, for FREE! Load up itunes and click on podcasts, then browse around.

What time-period do you wish you lived in?
There was some silly online quiz thing asking this and people were posting some really silly things. Think about it! Only within the last couple hundred or so years (give or take 50 years) have we discovered things that make our everyday lives safer and better.

-Refrigeration – this allows us to eat a great number of foods, to buy them in bulk, to ship them around the world and make it so we don’t have to grow and eat everything right away. (This also cuts down on how many times we head to the grocery store.) That frees up a lot of our time.
-Electricity – we can stay up to all hours of the night without relying on fire. This gives us a lot more of our days to be productive. We can live in houses almost anywhere and survive with our electricity. (It keeps our sorry asses a comfy temperature.)
-Computers – we can connect with others all over the planet and can access information within seconds. Knowledge is power and now that more of us are sharing information, perhaps we’ll all start to get a bit smarter. (What we need now is to start teaching people how to determine if information they are reading is plausible/true/biased/correct/useful or not.)
-Birth control – I don’t think the world fully appreciates just how important this is. It’s made it so women can decide (to a point) when and IF they wish to have children, and help to curb the growing population crisis.
-Women are getting treated better - Don’t forget that women were bred with and tossed away if they didn’t produce the “right” offspring. We’ve been oppressed longer than anything else on this planet. From being slave labour in our own homes, being bought/sold as animals, to being kept out of schools/workplaces and generally treated horribly, women have only recently been able to vote, decide what they want to do with their lives and whom they want to spend them with. (We can even wear pants now!)
-Medicine – Now that we understand germs aren’t caused by evil thoughts or angry gods, we can do a bit more to prevent and fight off illnesses. Okay, we’re starting to cross that line into over-medication and plastering our homes with chemicals, but overall we’ve increased our lifetimes with medicines and sanitary practices.
-Society – It wasn’t SO long ago that speaking against the world being flat or saying it was older than a few thousand years was punishable by death by a bunch of mythical-being loving people. I for one am very thankful I live in a place and time where I can decide for myself what I believe and say without having some jerks in long white robes torture and kill me over it in the name of their god.

Let’s face it; over time humans are slowly getting smarter. The people in the past believed in and did all sorts of bizarre things, and I’m sure that hundreds of years from now (if humans make it) they will be amused at all the strange things we do and believe in. (How anyone can think that somehow people who wrote things in the past had it ALL CORRECT is beyond me!) We’re human and we’re supposed to evaluate and improve upon what came before, not hit repeat and shut off our brains. We’re supposed to ADAPT and EVOLVE! And we still are, even if it’s so slowly that no one seems to notice. So my answer is that I’m glad to be alive NOW, and hopefully the future is an even better time to live in when it comes around. Anyone who wants to live in the past isn’t thinking straight!

Some man kills his daughter because she didn’t dress religiously.
You’re just messed up if somehow following words written by dead people is more important than another human – especially if YOUR OWN CHILD. How does it make sense in their mind at all that their god/goddess would be for them treating others like that? People can believe whatever nonsnense they want, but it should never be okay to have this happen to anyone. I hope that man lives a long life so he’s got plenty of time to suffer in his own living hell. Maybe this incident will get people to realize that life is too precious to spend it abusing other people over things that ultimately don’t matter, when the real point is to try and be a decent human.
What we think, say and do defines if we’re a good person or not, not what religion we follow.

I think that’s enough babbling from me for today.

Insane ghost fiction from Antarctica.

INSANEtalk.com
Yep, like many others on the planet, I've got a completely pointless forum. You're invited to join, but beware, strange characters lure there - sometimes. We argue about the usual things that people online argue about (Star Wars, the refusal of some to spell things correctly, what type of cheese is best etc.). There is also the usual name-calling, but we all seem to like the abuse.
You can COMMENT on things you see HERE on THERE.

Speaking of verbal abuse...
Unlike a lot of people, I still read newsgroups. Lately a lot of them have been spammed by some guy who posts these long journal entries of sorts where he outlines how he has been verbally abused each day. He states that he's truly unwell, and has accepted that he is insane. He then goes on to detail how a TV show is laughing at HIM personally, a commercial is mocking his medical ailments, and how people whisper in the street about him using normal everyday conversation. Then he somehow links all this to some secret government agency, of course, and insists that it is THEY who are doing this to him and have been for years. At one point he even claims that "they sent someone to simulate an act in front of my window, which was captured on film."

I can't even begin to do justice to this, and though you might think I'm a cruel person for finding this amusing, I beg to differ. Anyone truly that insane wouldn't be coherent enough to write a single paragraph, much less post to newsgroups, so I'm convinced of the genius of this bizarre newsgroup-fiction. That's right, it's pure FICTION. What I'd like to suggest is that this guy not waste his time on spamming the newsgroups, but to publish a book of all of them together. I for one would love to read it, as I would find it to be great entertainment. Fiction can be fun.

Good morning, ghosts.
Starting this week, I'm working part-time in another location other than in front of my own computer in my own livingroom. (Which is where I've been working for about a year now.) It sure is nice to get the hell out of the house and work with someone cool on stuff that I don't mind working on. The place I now work at apparently has ghosts but so far they have remained silent and unnoticed in my presence.

I greet them in the morning and chat at them randomly throughout the day, so perhaps they will warm up to me and start telling me secrets such as winning lottery numbers and the meaning of life (if other than 42). Seeing as they're supposed to be human ghosts, the odds are they will not know any secret information like that, so maybe they'll just lead me to find some hidden photos from the past or an old book or something fun like that. Do I really believe in ghosts? No, not really. If they find me some photos or something then I might.

Antarctica is art.
Today I saw a piece of art that, if I had the money to do so, would LOVE to have in my office at home. It was a framed map of Antarctica with a charcoal drawing of what was probably James Cook's voyage over-layed on top. The map was a 1997 version, done by National Geographic and featured some interesting information about the frozen continent. It was great but I can't currently afford it. Maybe YOU should send me some money so I can.

Commercials can cram it.

Tell your doctor?!?!
It keeps saying on these stupid drug commercials to tell your doctor if you have any blah blah diseases, complications etc. Uh, shouldn't your doctor KNOW that anyway? How do you have a doctor that doesn't know that you have some sort of disease and still be your doctor? Even your first visit to a new doctor includes them having a copy of your health file, which would list any health problems you have or have had. So why the hell would you need to tell your doctor this?! And what kind of doctor would just nod and say sure, take any old drug you want, what did you say the name of it was again? Damn, doesn't anyone do their job properly anymore?

Snow!
It's officially winter. Yesterday I got to go shovel the driveway, which is always a rude awakening that yes, winter is here and will be here for another three months. The gloves are on, the hats are pulled tight to the head and the jackets are all zipped up. There is no denying the cold and no hiding from it. Hello winter!

Bratz and bullshit "for girls".
I wish the commercials for these bratz bullshit would DIE a horrible screaming death. Their stupid bloated lips, their scrawny legs, obsession with make-up for ten year olds and impossibly short skirts are nothing I'd ever buy for anyone, much less a little girl who is trying to develop a decent sense of self. (What a sad day when even Barbie looks more realistic.)And don't even get me started on those bullshit girl gifts that are designed to somehow make doing chores fun. Doing laundry isn't fun no matter how colourful your damn laundry machine is, and why do only girls get to be pelted with this pure nonsense? They deserve toys that are FUN, not teaching them to be make-up drenched idiots, not teaching them to do chores and not training them how to be housewives. Where are the FUN, non-sexist toys for girls?!
(There has been discussion about this on INSANETALK.com)

A whole lot of nothing.

What to do with all this cat litter.
Each year I scoop out and throw away a lot of cat shit and cat litter. There must be something useful I can do with stuff.

Here are some things that I came up with:
Melt it down so I can pour it onto people/things I don’t like.
Fill small packets with the shit, light it on fire and throw it at people/things I don’t like.
Mold the used litter into elaborate castles and structures on my front lawn, call it folk art and then charge people to come and look at it.
Hurl it all into the highway near my house and laugh as trucks run it over.
Mail it to random people I find in the phone book.
Use it on my driveway this winter instead of sand.
String all the shit together and put it on people’s xmas trees while they’re asleep.
Send it all to Santa at the north pole.
Dig a hole in someone’s lawn and bury it all.
Put it in a plastic container with some food dye and give it to people as gifts, telling them it’s “sand art”.
Put it in empty candy wrappers, close them up and then hand the candy out to kids at Halloween.
Mail it all to New Orleans, they need more land there and litter is absorbent.
Stick it to my roof because it sort of looks like shingles.
Make giant beanbag furniture with litter and some cheesy faux-leather material.
Put eyes and a mouth on the pieces of shit and sell them as Mr. Hankey the Xmas Poo figures.

Dressed to kill.
Over the weekend I attended an event where I had to dress up. Luckily it was a themed event that allowed me to wear my boots, my skull knee-high socks and conceal a cap-gun. It was weird to be all dressed up, but it was otherwise a fun time. No, I didn’t put caps in the gun; I didn’t want people to piss their good pants/nylons.

Fall down drunk.
I have never gotten fall down drunk. I think this is a very good thing, as I don’t enjoy having issues with gravity. Gravity and I normally have a wonderful friendship where it stops me from flying off into space where I’d suffocate and die, and I don’t try to do things that make it pull me face-first into the ground.

Remembering.
While we remembered those who gave their lives for war on the 11th, let’s remember those who put their lives on the line to prevent it and to do what they felt was right.
So a special thanks to Stanislav Petrov and all other people like him. This guy should have been given an award, a parade and the thanks of all those who he saved by NOT blindly following orders/procedures. We’re human and need to remember that; machines can make war impersonal but we can’t forget the horrible reality of what these machines can do to other humans. We’re not just blips on a screen, some character in a video game or a number in a report. We’re all humans and can’t forget this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

I’ve hit rock bottom.
After spending most of last week working away at my new job, my place was starting to fill up with cat fur and dirty clothes. Today I went manic and cleaned everything. Have I truly become a crazy person who cleans for fun? What the hell? WHAT THE HELL?! What has happened to turn me into this domestic drone? Is it that I can put on my iPod stereo and rock out to tunes while I do my chores? Is it because it’s my own place and therefore isn’t as bad as cleaning my parents place? Maybe I’m just telling myself these things so I don’t have to admit that I’m doing this stuff. It’s not because I’m a chick though, don’t let that sexist bullshit creep into your brain, it is just stuff that has to be done and I’ve got some free time to do it. If you can live in your own filth, then that’s great for you but I don’t have to so I won’t.

Root beer is the new gingerale.
I’ve been on a root beer kick but then I noticed how much sugar was in it. There is a LOT of sugar in root beer. I’m trying to have some gingerale and a lot more juices mixed with extra water in an attempt to cut down on my sugar intake and increase my water intake. Root beer was the new gingerale but now both must be cut down. All my stalkers should take note of this and try to woo me with juices instead of gingerale and root beer.

Tired ramblings.

My job.
Today I did a lot of photo editing, as that is my new job. I work for a photographer, doing photo editing for weddings that she’s shot. It’s nice to be working again! I’m learning more about PhotoShop, and it gets me out of the house every so often. The best part is that I don’t have to actually GO to any of these weddings, just edit the photos. I know you’re all jealous of my job but try to contain it.

I’m a winner.
For anyone who doesn’t know, I won first place in a photography contest and got some cool prizes. I was surprised to win at all, and even more surprised at what photo won it. You can send me gifts of congratulations anytime. So now I'm a real winner. A REAL WINNER. Okay so it's not some huge thing that will have my parents crying with pride or anything, but it rocks that I won, my parents ARE proud and I think I am too.
The photo that won

Winter?!
This morning it actually snowed a bit, officially notifying everyone that yes, winter is on it’s way and it’s going to suck for a few months. There are rumours that it’s supposed to be up to 10 degrees next week, so that will give me time to pack away anything still outside that shouldn’t be. I don’t like the idea of being trapped in the house for the next few months, but the idea of leaving it every day is even worse. Maybe this year I’ll try to find some sort of winter sport to participate in other than hiding under blankets for warmth, or trying to paint every room in my house a different colour.

Wanted : A good sleep.
I was woken early this morning by a paw to my head and a meow in my ear telling me she was starving for food. I played dead until she grew weary and left the room but I didn’t sleep too much longer. I haven’t been sleeping so wonderfully lately and early morning pawings aren’t helping. I’ll just keep playing dead until she gets the idea and doesn’t bother, or until I’m actually dead, which will be a lesson to us both. What I really need is a full nights sleep where I wake up feeling rested. That’d be great.

Ice castles.
If our ancestors created grand castles made of ice during the ice age, we’d never know about it because they would all melt without leaving a trace of their existence. That sucks. I bet those castles were really big and wonderful. Then global warming came along and the ice age ended. I guess if we want to see something like that now, we can go to that Swedish ice hotel. Oh wait, why bother, I can go visit the one in Quebec, that’s much closer.

What would giant spiders do?

SO here I am.
I was trying to figure out how to set up a blog on TheInsaneDomain.com for me to use instead of my current "Nothing Really" section on the site. I complained about this to someone and they told me to try this place. So here I am, trying it out. Huzzah. Now to post this and then figure out how to change the colours and all that fun stuff called customization.

CAFFEINE.
Hello my name is JCP and I have a coffee addiction.
It’s not as bad as it used to be but still, I’m addicted.
At one point I was drinking up to almost two pots of coffee a day – MYSELF.

Now I have two cups a day, maybe four or five cups in one day on the weekend. To an outside observer, it looks like I drink way more than that. The ugly truth is that usually I have a half-empty cup in front of me, the other half filled with barely lukewarm coffee. I will reheat my coffee numerous times throughout the day, but rarely seem to get to the bottom of it in one sitting. Thinking that this was somehow out of the addiction tag, I was rudely reminded that no, I’m fully addicted, after going for a full morning and afternoon without it. Only after the headache and crankiness escalated to the point that even my cat told me off, did I admit that caffeine was the source of the problem and gave into it. Sure enough, I felt much better after a cup of coffee. I was told recently that caffeine is a pain inhibitor, and that got me thinking about what else it does, seeing that I’m fully addicted to it and might want to know what it’s doing to me.

So here it is:
Caffeine - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine
Coffee - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee

Hardcore?
When my butler visited from the UK, he needed to find himself a pair of hiking boots. Thinking that maybe the local Zellers would have a pair, we headed to the local Huntsville mall. Mall? It’s maybe 15 to 20 stores, barely a real mall at all. There is a music store in there, which I have passed by a few times but never really paid too much attention to. I assumed that, being in a smaller town, it would be filled with all the pre-chewed crap that all music stores feel obliged to have; the top 30 or so, a mix of older music appealing to the aging population around me and random soundtracks.

To my complete surprise, their “metal” section was twice as large as those in any city mall music store I've been to, and they had several albums from a band that I had been told “must not exist” before. They had an empty slot for a band (Peeping Tom) that I had simply assumed wouldn’t be there at all, meaning that not only did they carry the album but had created a whole label for it on their shelves AND had sold out their copies. After the shock of all this wore off, I took another look around the store and realized that almost all the merchandise on the walls were for “heavier” bands. If these things are on the wall and in demand, then that means there is a whole world of hardcore here in northern Ontario that I was unaware of. I’ve not seen these people on the streets and have no idea where they are hiding out, but evidence of their existence is in the music store, hidden away in a mall that seems half dead all the time.

Would giant spiders care?
If giant spiders came from outer space and landed on our planet, would they care about us fancy monkeys and take mercy on us all? Probably not. To be honest, I wouldn't blame them. We’d probably just shoot at them instead of trying to reach a reasonable solution anyway. All hail the giant spiders from outer space.

Public service message.
A friend of mine posted something that made me think so I’m spamming you all with it.
“Here is the deal: we make money off of our recyling. We collect it, sort it and sell it to the highest bidder. Whoever that may be, takes it and doesnt' bury it, but rather makes it into products we buy. Have you ever been to a dollar store lately, where everything says it is made in China? If it is made of plastic then guess what? It is most likely made from our recyclables. The number one offender is plastic water bottles. I know, I know it is very controversial right now about the bottled water, but the reality is that we are paying the region to come and pick up air. Most bottles are not squished and take up so much room in the blue boxes the truck needs to dump at least once durring a route. If you don't want to drink tap water, you need to switch to the big ten letre bottles that are refillable and start filling your own plastic bottles. Basically what I learned is that everything that is plastic is petrolium based which comes from fossil fuels. This is a resouce that will run out of at somepoint. Please please please recylce and make better choices.”

C’est l’alloween.
This year I actually dressed up. I was a creepy skeleton. I think it freaked out most of the brats who came for candy, which really is the whole point. What shocked me was how stupid kids have gotten. Myself and a friend were sitting in plain sight at the bottom of the stairs, talking with big bowls of candy on our laps. Kids went to walk by us and up the stairs. It wasn’t just one or two kids, but at least five of them. What the hell were they thinking?! Are they so programmed to walk to the door that they block out all signals to their brains telling them that hey, the candy isn’t up there? Idiots. They’re lucky I gave them candy at all. I refused to give candy to those that were old enough that they should know to say “trick or treat” instead of just shoving their bags in my face. I made them say it and say it loudly, or they’d not get anything. Those are the RULES of Halloween. It’s not a tough concept to grasp. Saying thank you is a whole other lesson, but not a difficult one either. You’re ALL brats.

Peanut free chocolate treats?
Isn’t peanut free chocolate bars thrown in with all the very peanuty treats on Halloween? Are we supposed to sort out these treats from all the others now? Are kids supposed to tell us they want the special peanut free candy? Do their parents really risk the kids lives by having them eating any old bar from a stranger in the first place? I’m just wondering. Then again, who in their right mind lets their kids eat a giant bag of candy, even if it is just one or two a day over a few months. Yet there is no good alternative and if you DID give the brats something that was good for them, they’d whine and complain. Next year I will give out sugarless candies disguised as real candy and I bet no one would notice the difference. Even if they did, it’s not like they would know it was from me anyway by the time they got home.