Argh!

Oh, good grief.

I have apparently been crap at actually checking for unpublished comments lately. My humble apologies to everyone who has commented lately whose comments haven't shown up! Y'all are whitelisted now, and should be able to comment without my approval (provided you keep using the same email addresses, anyway).

So embarrassing. Sorry, y'all!

File under: Site Stuff
Posted at 02:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Hi, Mike!

OK, so I'm reading through Mike Birbiglia's old Secret Public Journal entries, and I found this one in which he says: "I don’t even Google myself anymore; I get “Google alerts.” Which means the Google Robot emails you when you’ve been mentioned on a blog or a website."

That kind of made me go, whoa! What if Mike has totally seen the times I blogged about him here? That would be awesome! Because I adore Mike. He and Gabriel Iglesias are my co-favorite comedians of all time (they are both too incredibly awesome to favor one over the other). He probably hasn't checked me out on account of he is probably blogged about all the time because he tours and is on Comedy Central and stuff, but hey, let a fangirl have her fantasies, okay?

So: Mike, if you're reading this, Hi! You are awesome!

And, if you're not Mike, hi anyway. And if you don't know who Mike is, I linked a couple of his bits from this entry, or you can get his special, "What I Should Have Said Was Nothing," from Netflix. Check him out.

File under: Geekiness
Posted at 04:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Firefox 3!

Well, I was a good little Mozilla fan and downloaded the new Firefox today. Apparently they're going for a record number of downloads, so everybody upgrade their Firefox!

I'm not entirely sure I like the new look, frankly, but I've always been a little resistant to change.

File under: Geekiness
Posted at 01:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

RIP Stan Winston

Hollywood has lost an FX titan. Stan Winston, a genius of special effects, is dead.

I am really saddened. I know his shop will probably endure and the folks he's worked with will continue to produce beautiful effects, but to lose the man at the heart of it all is so sad. He created effects for some of my favorite films over the years, and just kept getting better.

He will be missed.

What is remembered, lives.

File under: Movies
Posted at 03:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

I Made This!

We here at Youhaas Global take our fake music very seriously.

How seriously, you ask?

So seriously that we have seven fake guitars, and will be acquiring an eighth with the purchase of Guitar Hero: Aerosmith in a few short weeks.

So seriously that I made guitar hangers for our fake guitars this weekend so they wouldn't just be piled up by the TV.

Yeah, you read that right.

Continued...

File under: Geekiness
Posted at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

Misogyny

Naamah proposes that women complain loudly about misogyny more often. I think she is onto something.

And the sad part? I don't think to mention this shit when it happens, because it is fucking background noise. It is so endemic in this culture that when it happens to me, I do not perceive it as exceptional, even though I absolutely do perceive it as threatening. For fuck's sake, I don't even remember where the above incident with the wedding ring asshole even occurred because it has blended in.

That is, now that I think on it, fucking appalling.

Now, I'm pretty lucky -- I live and work in an area known for its tolerance (SF Bay Area) and while I work in tech, which is heavily gender-polarized, the company I'm at is made up nearly entirely of awesome people. And I mostly hang with nerdy types, who may be nervous around women but generally aren't actively horrible. I also have what I've seen termed the "fuck off bubble" going on (as opposed to the "hump me gene" some unlucky gals have). I don't get hit on much, and when I do, it isn't by pushy assholes. I think I radiate "I will kick you in the balls if you fuck with me" so hard that they leave me alone.

This doesn't mean I don't get the occasional bout of assholery directed at me, just that it happens really rarely. At least, I think it does. I'm going to try to pay more attention and see if I spot anything to report on. I'd like to encourage my readers who have blogs of their own to report on misogyny in action in their lives as well. I think Naamah makes a good point -- that shit shouldn't be background noise. We should be calling folks out for it.

My classic example of misogyny in action in my life is the issue I had with PE in middle school. We were coed all year except for one section, when boys were to do wrestling and girls were to do aerobics. I hated aerobics and thought wrestling sounded like more fun, so I asked the teacher, "what if a girl wants to do wrestling?" he said, "Oh, you don't want to do that." And I, in my little middle-school head, said Oh, it's on, asshole, and got my Mom involved. Long story short, I took wrestling (with my buddy Jenny as my wrestling partner so the boys wouldn't be tempted to grope me during class). It was pretty fun. Admittedly this was in the early nineties and I imagine things are different at that middle school now, but still. The situation was fucked up. I can see separating the genders for contact sports like wrestling, but the boys-wrestling/girls-aerobics dichotomy is bullshit.

File under: Feminism
Posted at 03:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

Dethklok Show = BRUTAL

So, I'm a fan of Metalocalypse. I saw the Dethklok show in Berkeley and had a great time, so when I heard Dethklok would be playing the Fillmore in SF, I had to go. Right? Right.

So last Thursday, I get all dressed up (ok, jeans, muscle-t, and docs dressed up, but still), get my shit together, and drive to the city. I find parking (eventually), meet my buds BreakManX Cody and Megs, and we go inside. The Fillmore has a full bar, so we all get drinks (which would prove to be a mistake) and find a good spot up near the stage.

So far so good, right?

Continued...

File under: Geekiness
Posted at 10:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

The Attractive Power of the Asshole

or, Why Do I Dig Tony Stark When In Real Life I'd Probably Want To Kick Him In the Balls?

I have a thing for assholes, apparently. Tony Stark is only the latest instantiation of this. I'm also a fan of Bernard from Black Books, and he's an utter wanker. I adore the titular character of House, and he's an asshole. There are others.

I watch them in action and cheer for them, admire them, gasp approvingly at their audacity. In real life? I'd hate them. They're disrespectful, hateful, bitter people. They treat those around them very badly, often in direct proportion to how important those people are to them.

But, but, but: they're all brilliant. They're all damaged. And, which is probably the best thing, they are equal-opportunity assholes.

I've seen a lot of whinging about Tony being a misogynist asshole, but if you actually pay attention to Iron Man, he's an asshole to everyone. It's not misogyny, it's misanthropy -- and it's rooted in his own issues. As Rhodey puts it, "you don't respect yourself, so I know you don't respect me." Oh, sure, Tony's a jerk. He has loads of every sort of privilege in the world. But calling him a misogynist misses the big picture: he's an egalitarian douchebag. He's so douchey that it transcends the realm of the aggravating and becomes charming again (at least, if you're me).

I think part of the reason I enjoy characters like Tony and Bernard and House is that I admire them. I have a great deal of misanthropy going on in my head (nobody's as bitter as a disappointed optimist, after all, especially one who used to be a substitute teacher), and some days it would be thoroughly enjoyable to give in entirely and just go the full-on-snarktastic-asshole route. I just don't quite have the chutzpah. But they do. So I live vicariously through them and admire them and fangirl over them, and hope that it gets the misanthropy out of my system.

On the bright side, if it doesn't, if it's just cultivating my misanthropy, maybe one of these days I'll break down and become a snarktastic asshole. And then I'll get fangirls of my own, right? So that's not all bad.

File under:
Posted at 01:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (0)

I am... an Iron Man fangirl

Well, it's official.

I'm an Iron Man fangirl.

The first time I saw the movie (for my review), I loved it. I was a trifle bored in the early bits, because it's paced like a drama and I had managed to get in an action movie mindset (courtesy of Tony nearly getting blown up in the opening sequence). But once Tony had become Iron Man, I was stoked enough to ignore how freakin' long it seemed to take to get there.

Then I saw it again with some coworkers, and I was blown away. The bits I had thought of as slow were suddenly full of nuance. This is a superhero movie with actual character development, wtf? I saw it again with my Mom for Mothers Day, and (as anybody who follows my Twitter or Facebook status knows) saw it twice over this last weekend. That brings me to a total of five viewings. And I want to see it again.

Oh, yeah, I've got it bad.

There's just so much detail in the film, it's amazing. Every time I go, I catch something new. My latest discovery was that the news crawls we see on TVs in the background are actually pertinent. That blew my mind. Jon Favreau is an awesome director, and I really, really hope that the other two Iron Man movies he wants to make get greenlit.

It's also put me on a Paul Bettany kick -- he voices Jarvis, the sentient (and rather sarcastic) computer system that runs Tony's house and helps Tony build and use his armor. You may remember him from films like Firewall, Master and Commander, and The DaVinci Code (which is a horrible movie, good grief). He was also the marvellous Chaucer in the delightfully fluffy "A Knight's Tale." Yay.

So. Anybody want to go see "Iron Man" with me? I promise not to mutter the dialog along with the characters... at least not too loudly.

File under: Geekiness
Posted at 01:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Happy Anniversary to Us!

So, Antwon and I had our first anniversary on 5/12. Woo hoo! We decided to buy ourselves a new TV for an anniversary present. After much research and info-gathering, we decided on a 50" plasma from Costco (big brand name only, not Vizio or anything). It turned out to be quite an ordeal to get it - it almost didn't fit in the truck, for one thing:

But we got it home and managed to get it all set up and everything. WOO HOO! Behold, the old setup and the new:

I gotta say, the XBox graphics are ASTONISHINGLY AWESOME on it. Also, it is probably too big for our apartment, but we don't expect to live here forever so we bought a TV the right size for when we get a house. Woo.

File under: Pure Ego!
Posted at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Yay!

Gay people can get married in California! Yay! Our state supremes said it's unconstitutional to deny gay couples the civil rights of marriage. WOO HOO!

But don't get too relieved -- there's an amendment to the state constitution on the ballot which would limit marriage to het couples. WEAK.

Though, as Mark Morford points out, the court that made the ruling is hardly a hippy-dippy bastion of liberalism:

it was one thing for an uppity and slick San Francisco mayor to try and make a name for himself and enter the gay history books by allowing all those happy gay people to stand in the rain back in 2004 and get married in City Hall, only to have it all annuled by the courts.

But it is quite another when a powerhouse seven-member Supreme Court -- six of whom are moderate Repubicans -- of the largest and most potent state in the union says, hey, you know what? It appears we've had it wrong all along. It appears there is actually nothing the slightest bit wrong or unlawful or even dangerous about allowing people of the same gender to buy overpriced formalwear and drink way too much champagne and dance to crappy '80s power ballads in the Chardonnay Room of a low-rent winery up in Napa, and call it a wedding.

Who can argue with that? Hell, to this very day, cultural conservatives still have no idea exactly why they hate gay marriage. There is still zero articulation. There is a complete lack of fact or understanding and I have yet to meet a single person of any political stripe who can adequately explain exactly why gay marriage is so dangerous, or who's threatened, or how. Same as it ever was? Yes. Only now, their misunderstanding feels quite a bit less dangerous, and far more pathetic.

But regardless, we need to trounce that amendment at the polls this fall. If you aren't already registered to vote, go register and mark your calendar to vote!!

If you are registered, be sure to vote in November! Sure, California pretty much always goes Dem in the presidential race, but when it comes to the state measures, every single vote matters. There are enough right-wingers out in the central valley and down in Orange County to give us liberals a run for our money.

Vote early, vote often!

I'm somewhat blithely assuming all my readers are in favor of gay marriage. If you're not and you're a reader here, um, you are really weird. Please comment so I can marvel at your weirdness more directly. Thanks!

File under: Political Schtuff
Posted at 03:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

GHIII

This guy is spot on about how freaking impossible GHIII is at the higher levels. Also, very very funny. Kudos to Rich for the link!

File under: Geekiness
Posted at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Iron Man Rules! Also, review up.

My review, which I tried to keep my fangirlishness out of. I think I mostly succeeded.

I've been squeeing about it in increasing amounts since seeing it over the weekend - in true fangirl fashion, the more I think about the movie the more I like it, and the more I like it, the more enthusiastic I am about Tony Stark, who is a fantastically awesome character. Hot, flawed, funny, and smart as all hell. What's not to like?

It's nice to know that some things never change. I may be 30, married, and to all outward appearances a responsible adult, but I can still be turned to a squealing teenager by a fun movie.

NOTE: Somehow this got saved as "unpublished" instead of "published" and so didn't appear on my blog. Sigh. I am lame.

File under: Geekiness
Posted at 03:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

I am not a Doctor, but... Plastic is Evil

Last year, I came down with a headache that just would not go away. It wasn't agonizing, but it was around a 4 or 5 on the 0-10 pain scale (with 10 being the worst possible pain ever). But it was unrelenting. Nothing took the edge off except Vicodin. I had it for a month and a half before a friend suggested I try getting my hormone levels tested. It turned out my estrogen levels were unusually high and my progesterone levels unusually low, producing a nasty condition called estrogen dominance. I started treatment, which included a variety of supplements and a regimen of progesterone replacement pills.

It's better (the headache is gone, for one thing) but my hormones are still out of whack. My nutritionist ordered me to cut out all sources of estrogen or estrogen-mimicking chemicals (which I like to call pseudoestrogens, though I don't think they have such a catchy name in the medical community). This meant filtering my water and, much more difficult, removing plastic from as much of my food service as possible. No more plastic or polycarbonate water bottles, no putting hot food (or heating food) in plastic containers, etc. I was a bit surprised -- plastic contained pseudoestrogens?

Continued...

File under: I am not a ____, but...
Posted at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

To Tweet, Or Not To Tweet, That Is The Question

Via Earthdog, I read this piece on GapingVoid.com about why the author has quit Twitter. It gave me some food for thought. The conclusions of said thought are:

The folks who are talking about how useless Twitter is seem to be missing the point. A lot of them are the kind of Twitterer I try not to be: one who compulsively updates any time they change from their previous status, and one who reads the updates of every single person who has friended them or whom they've friended. Folks in the comments talked like Twitter took up hours out of their days.

I believe those people are Doing It Wrong.

I only receive by text message the updates of the cream-of-the-crop: folks who are very close to me or whose posts I find very interesting (or those who post less than once a day on average). I only read via RSS the updates of folks I like or find interesting. High post frequency usually results in my dropping a person from those whose updates I get on my phone, and a low post interestingness usually results in my dropping a person from my Twitter feed altogether (I may keep them on my Following list so I can check in occasionally, but I won't read their updates regularly).

I try only to post when I am (a) doing something interesting or (b) have an interesting observation to make. I do not always succeed (as you can see by my recent Tweet, "Running errands," heh), but I do try to post fewer than three times a day.

Twitter takes up maybe, MAYBE, 15 minutes of my day, if you include the time it takes to feel my phone vibrate, retrieve my phone, open my phone, read the message, and delete the message. I like Twitter, because it's interesting to me what my interesting friends/family/acquaintances are doing. I like when Earthdog tweets a question and I have an answer. It's a fun, quick way to communicate.

I genuinely believe the folks who think Twitter is evil and a waste of time are doing it wrong. Like a lot of things on the web, it can be a really useful and fun tool ... or it can be turned into a time sink. The trick is not to turn it into a time sink.

File under: Geekiness
Posted at 04:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)