Пожалуйста, стрелять людей, преследуя нас.

(That would be, according to Google Language Tools "We are Americans. Please shoot the people chasing us")

Just saw Stargate: Continuum, and it was quite nice (and included the above line. I'm sure Daniel translated it better)! I like the split-screen interrogation scene, Ba'al's toy, and the object lesson in just how hazardous the kawoosh can be to curious innocent bystanders.

My only big complaints were that the mid-wormhole effects seemed to be more like those for zipping around the Pegasus Galaxy than zipping around our own, and that the writers were (in my mind) wasting time with a nice one-off story when they could be wrapping up the Ori arc (which is the whole reason for these Stargate films, you know...because Sci-Fi pulled the plug before they could wrap up the Ori arc). Although upon reflection, it does conclude the subtle arc of one of the reoccurring antagonists, so I guess it's not entirely wasting air-time. In theory, though, they could have wrapped up that subtle arc and concluded the Ori arc in one season (which is probably what they had initially planned, until Step-Dad SciFi decided to re-write the will).

If you haven't seen it yet, karjack, you'll be glad to know that although Daniel doesn't get enough air-time, he's quite charmingly pissy all through it. Much the same goes for Vala, surreality.

I've been haunted by the ghost of my gallbladder!!

So, about 20 minutes ago, I noticed an odd discomfort in my abdomen. Not off to any side, not all that low nor high, but just around about in my diaphragm area. Just like.. (drumroll) ..what'd precede the mystery pains!

It built up over ten minutes, then started to fade (during which time I popped one of my leftover Vicodin, then put on my shoes and shaved, just in case I was going to be paying an unexpected visit to medical folks). Thinking, "Ooookay, that was weird", I popped outside for a smoke, and before I even got 1/3 of the way through the cigarette, the pain worked back up again. Putting out the cigarette and going inside to sit down and check my blood-pressure and pulse (normal, by the way. 130 over like.. 68 or so, w/ 59 bpm), it started to fade again by the time the blood-pressure gauge was finished gauging.

I am going to be -so- peeved if the source of the Mystery Pain has been some sphincter of Oddi disfunction affair, all this time!

PS: Anyone in Southern California catch this in the skies, scant minutes ago?

PPS: The bottled A&W Rootbeer Float stuff is pretty good.

PPPS: For those fans of Stargate, and/or Twin Peaks, and/or X-Files, who didn't know? Don Davis (bald round military officer with a mid-southern accent, who headed the Stargate program, got the space-transmissions about the owls, and was Scully's dad) died of a heart attack the other day. I'm always disturbed by mention of folks dying of a "massive heart attack in the morning" -- do they mean after the person got up, or do they mean they were awoken by it?

PPPPS: I'd like to see a macro of Star Wars' Admiral Akbar with the text, "What? It's probably nothing; Don't worry about it."

So! One of the cooks (David) came trotting downstairs in a tizzy, asking me if "that girl" had blond dreadlocks. I said, with no small blend of confusion and annoyance, "Yes?" to which he said, she might be upstairs.

I go upstairs and.. yep! It's Priscilla. She saw the ad in the paper and stopped by.

Ok! It seems she hasn't heard of Robyn Hitchcock, Jesca Hoop, or Michael Penn. But she -has- heard of Billy Bragg and felt that Mr.Hitchcock's work with Mr.Bragg and various folks from REM was a glowing enough endorsement to want me to copy some Hitchcock for her, she -has- heard of Tom Waits, so that was a glowing enough endorsement for Ms.Hoop, and my vague description of Mr.Penn's recent works struck her as quite promising.

So yes! Seems I'll be making a mix for her at some point in the near future, and then leaving it here at work for when she next randomly stops by. That, or I can place another ad to let her know when the mix is ready -- she/we didn't really arrange how she'd get the mix from me, but she seemed quite charmed by the notion.

She also kept giving me this odd look, like she didn't know what to make of me, but found it all terribly amusing. Hmm. It was very much like the look you see on the faces of folks who are doing a documentary about monkeys, and the monkey suddenly decides to climb up onto the monkey wrangler's head -- the wrangler wasn't expecting the monkey to do that, but the wrangler doesn't particularly mind, either. When I said the next ad in The Edge would have had "the om symbol" as its accompanying picture, asked if she knew what I meant by that, and started to sketch it out in the air, she gave the same confused/annoyed look that I gave David, earlier in this story (In a, "Yes. I know. Who doesn't know what that is?" way).

Oh, and it seems the bindi (AKA: dot on her forehead) is a regular accessory of hers since she even had it on today. She didn't have the white affair on that she had before (BLAST! Forgot to ask her about those shoe things!!), and instead had some foofy pants that resemble a blue skirt of mine.


SEE EARLIER: Pretty & Witty & Gay

So I finally got around to using the Gmail based Chat G-Talk thing this evening for the first time. Upon wishing I could combine it in with my Miranda IM system, I found that I -could-! Woo hoo! Unfortunately, it works off of Jabber and as far as I can tell, Miranda IM can only support one Jabber-based IM system at one time, and it's currently using the LiveJournal based LJ-Talk affair.

This poll's for those of you who use the LiveJournal Chat system and/or the Google Mail Chat System (or both), to help me decide which I'd get more mileage out of:


Poll #1209393 Jabber-Based IM?
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Which Jabber-Based IM Systems do you tend to use?

So just now, when I was standing on the back porch, I was wondering if some glitter or something had washed down the hill and had ended up in the occasional strip of gravel that ends up around our house due to living at the bottom of a hill (isn't there a term for that? The gravel left behind as a glacier passes by? Tairn or something? Anyway, moving on...) since there were these little occasional flashes of light going on.

It took me a few moments to realize that it was actually standard M1-A1 road grit gravel, but the slight breeze was drifting the leaves of the trees above the gravel around a bit, thus leading to the occasional bit of sunlight reaching the ground and reflecting off the flat-faced stones. The end result was a bit like when you've flashes of light coming off of the surface of a lake (to quote Jane Siberry, "I see the lake beyond the trees, flashing in ones and twos and threes")

Before anyone out there in TV Land gets to wondering, "Great, Will. And this moment of Zen contemplation is brought to us by what? Taking too much Vicodin?", it was/is actually quite nice looking. Enough so that it got me to thinking about replicating it.

Imagine one of those odd little desk-top mini Zen Rock Garden affairs, but with dark-colored and polyhedral stones (instead of the standard light-colored and rounded stones). There'd be a light source up above it, shaded so the light was never shining right in your eyes. Just under the light source, quite a bit above the stones, there would be some template moving about (or maybe multiple templates moving about in different cycles?), allowing beams of light to shine down onto the stones below, prompting this little mini disco-ball effect. Could probably even make the motion of the template(s) run off the heat of the light itself, like those shadow-casting things you see around kids' lamps in odd films, or like the horizontal windmill chime affair I had around the house as a child (you'd light the four candles below, the rising air would turn the horizontal windmill, the vanes of the windmill had little metal bars hanging off of them, and the bars would *ding* against two suspended bells as they went around).

So it turns out that one can post "Happy Ads" that even have pictures for free in the Maine Edge.

And so, it goes.

Next time around, I'm going with that "Om symbol" thing for the picture.

SEE EARLIER: Desperately Seeking Susan

EDIT TO ADD: Hmm. And apparently, Maine Edge decided to run last week's one two weeks in a row. Hopefully they shan't do it again, since that'll mean there'll be two of them at the same time, next week.

For those familiar with the new 4th Edition of D&D, what would you suggest as a quick write-up summary-blurb for its new system, comparable to this write-up summary-blurb for d20?

It's to fill the current void in an RPG listing Wiki whoosit.

For those wondering what organ removal surgery looks like, a week post-op?

Picture-attempt with close-up setting: Bam!

Picture-attempt with normal setting: Boom!

ANTI-WARNING: They're not internal gory pictures. They're external "Will's abdomen with some tape here and there" pictures.

Note that those two odd little pokey bits above the base-of-the-sternum one and off to one side of the navel one were apparently part of the procedure. I'm guessing there was some stabby little tripod affair that lined the robo-scope up with the hole, thus making it look like I somehow have abdominal acne (or like they jabbed me with a pin a few times). There's also the stylish iodine stains, since I've been doing my best to not accidentally scrub off the SteriStrip bandages (one is apparently supposed to let them linger until they come off on their own), and the fashionable torso-stubble since they had to shave me from sternum to hip.

Disclaimer: Large sections of this post may have been sampled from an earlier comment to Miss "Wound Girl" stststutter.

So for those out there who have had, or know folks who have had, this laparoscopic surgery, where they had to inflate one, leading to bubbles floating about in one's abdominal and chestal cavities -- what do you -do- about the bubbles? I've had one lodge itself in the front of my right shoulder and.. yow! I mean, it feels just like what you'd expect a bubble caught in between the bone and muscle to feel like; Kind of like a knuckle that needs to be cracked, or like indigestion (but in your chest).

I presume it isn't an actual risk, but I just realized that I haven't turned up any advice on what to -do- about them. Other than wince a lot, of course.

PS: It's really annoying just how much stuff around the house is kept below knee-level.

So yep, that thing, that place; going to bed (which probably won't match going to sleep) at midnight after Venture Brothers, getting up around 8 Am, getting there tomorrow at 9:15 Am or so, surgery at 11:15 Am, and (hopefully) getting released between 3 and 6 hours later (or so I can estimate). I brought a cheat-sheet for LiveJournal posts via cell-phone, so I should be able to do one up as soon as I'm with it enough to ask my aunt or uncle (or boss, who'll be my taxi tomorrow) if I can borrow their phone.

The other day, Nurse Nicky finally got the EKG readings from my ER visit on April 18th. Seems she's surprised that it wasn't forwarded to either my general physician or the EMMC surgical center, nor noted on my ER discharge papers, since it shows oddness that tends to indicate something screwy with the left ventricle (that's the large bottom part on the left; last stop before it leads to the rest of the body). Mind, she's a cardiological nurse, so she -knows- her EKG reading -- it's not great, but it's not bad enough to really say that I have "a condition", it's not bad enough to probably present a mid-surgical risk, it's most likely (due to my good diet, it first showing up as recently as February, and all) just a side-effect of the gallbladder oddness, so it'll go away not long after the gallbladder goes away.

Needless to say, the information that it actually indicated a part of my heart and not just the theorized "infection near my heart" isn't doing wonders for my blood-pressure or pulse-rate. Nothing for bonus tension like news like that.

So yep, her guess is that my only concern "should" be post-surgical infection, but that's an awfully slim risk (NOTE: this didn't stop that one pal of mine getting landed in an infection-induced coma after her gastric bypass, nor another pal returning to the ER a month after getting her hernia treated).

Scene: Laura and I, proofreading the Red Martini drink-list

Laura: I don't like how the description for the Dirty Martini says that it's made with olive brine. I mean, that just sounds nasty.
Will: Eh, hrm. I'm not sure there's another term for brine, except for 'salt water'. Emulsion? No..
Laura: Let's just change it to olive juice.
Will: Olive juice? It's not olive juice! I mean, if I let some oranges hang out in a bucket of water for a while, then gave you a glass of that water, telling you it's orange juice, I think you'll be gravely disappointed.
Laura: Yes, but brine sounds nasty. And I don't think anyone will nitpick if it says "juice".
Will: I know I'd certainly nitpick it! I'm not going to lie just so it sounds nice. If you want it to say "juice", you can go downstairs and edit the menu, since I morally refuse to.

Cut to the next work-day. The menu still says 'brine'

Will: Here's an idea. Water. Olive water. I think that fits my criterion of being not a lie, and your criterion of not sounding nasty.
Laura: I still want it to say olive juice.


Note that neither Laura nor I actually work for the Red Martini, and there are at least two folks over our heads who are more in-charge when it comes to the Red Martini menu. As such, it's not like either Laura nor I can really pull rank on each other (although we can certainly jump rank and try to bend Paul's will towards our differing opinions).

What say you, good people? What seems best to go on the menu?

Poll #1198962 Olive what?
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

The stuff olives are floating in when you get them, jarred?

Just got a call from EMMC; seems I shan't be having standard laparoscopic surgery.

Instead, I'll be having the robotic assisted laparoscopy!! Ok, normal laparoscopy, they stab you a few times and then poke around with fondue forks and things through the tiny holes (after inflating you with a bicycle pump so they've room to work). If you grab a pencil and pretend you're doing it to yourself, you can imagine how there'd be some fiddling around to shove the liver out of the way and all, to worm in to the common bile duct, et cetera.

With the da Vinci robo-laparoscopic system, they send in a small waldo robotic-arm affair that does all the wiggling, bending, and worming once it's inside of you, instead of folks having to try to work with static tools. Compare it to picking a lock the standard way, versus picking a lock with a robotic worm.

Cool!

Read More: http://www.davincisurgery.com/surgery/index.aspx

Earlier Years: http://www.thestrangerdreams.com/gfak.htm

Too much espresso, too many shrimp, too much lychee (AKA: litchi) sorbet. It's not like any of this is prompting gallbladdery pain; I just ate too much.

Why do I get the feeling this'd get me a zero on the Pity-o-Meter?

Object Poems

They're just like the name implies. I'm quite fond of the Feather and Leaf Poem and the Rose Object Poem.

How's this for carpeing the old diem?

SEE EARLIER: I Guess I'll Take the Papers and Go Home

1) Woke up just before my 1 o' clock alarm, feeling a bit dizzy, as if I woke up slightly drunk, sleep-drugged, sick, or thick in a dream. Heading downstairs, I soon noticed that I was unusually shivery for it being 68-70 degrees, and with two shirts on. When the shivering got to the point where both my pectoral muscles would contract at the same time (leading to it looking like I was pantomiming pulling a shopping cart towards myself), I figured it was about time to lie down on the sofa with my feet elevated and a wool blanket. Started to pass after an hour or so, followed by the "case of the vapors" that have been the signature of gallbladder ooginess, so no big whoop. Just thought I'd cite it here for the record.

2) While cached out on the sofa, NPR was playing various speeches of Senator Kennedy. One was from the 1980 campaign, when he was striving to be the Democratic Candidate (didn't get it, it went to the potential re-election of Carter, instead, which actually ended up as Reagan's first term in office) and was harshing on the Republican Candidate (IE: Reagan). Although 1980 is recognized as being pre-Alzheimer's for Reagan, it seems he was still a little off, if one believes the quote Kennedy attributed to him, "Over 80% of the current air pollution has come from the plants and trees" Yeah, not hard to believe that this was the spearhead of the current administration.

3) See Doctor Who potential author rumor here. Woo hoo! From the same site, Nancy Kress sounds like she's been penning some interesting works.

Pointed look towards moominmolly, atomic_roses, and liatarded

As mentioned by rikgarrett:

On February 8th of this year Polaroid Corporation announced that they will cease to produce the instant film that many of us have become so attached to.

To celebrate the wonder of Polaroid film and bid it farewell, we are asking for contributions for a Polaroid-only show set to take place on August 15th at the Country Club gallery in Chicago, Illinois.

The goal is to have a show full of a wide variety of images showing the versatility of this disappearing medium. Therefore the theme is open. Help us show the wide range of subjects captured on Polaroid brand instant film.

WE NEED YOUR SUBMISSIONS OF POLAROID INSTANT FILM PHOTOGRAPHS!

Please see our website for guidelines and more information: http://PolaroidShow.com

They even have a MySpace page, if you swing that way: http://www.myspace.com/polaroidshow

Aw, jeez! Seems Mike Gravel dropped out of the presidential campaign.

Looks like I now have to settle with a lesser evil, like most every election year. I was actually looking forward to this time around; Gravel might not have been the best candidate, but he seemed like he'd cause the least problems and the most fun.

Some may say I've gone nuts. I like to think that my lingering fear of something worse than gallstones (and the chance of pulling an Andy Warhol) has pretty much convinced me to stop playing the Cyrano DeBergerac card, even if it's just letting someone know about Robyn Hitchcock, Aimee Mann, Michael Penn, and Jesca Hoop.

Vis:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Priscilla of Rockland/Rockport
The evening of Wed 21st, someone with blond dreadlocks, named "Priscilla",
came in the New Moon (in Bangor). Should she return, there is some
(potentially new) music to be set aside for her to borrow.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------


Now running in the slightly Bohemian (relative to Maine publications, it's actually awfully Bohemian, unless there's some paper out of Blue Hill that I'm missing) Maine Edge, which is like a really low-budget version of Westword.

There's also an envelope by the phone, up in the bar, with a "If this person shows up, give her this" note on the outside and a "Have you heard of these four musicians? If any is a 'no'-answer, let someone here know and we'll try to get a sampler-mix to you" note on the inside.

For those wondering why I said Rockport/Rockland? Seems there's both a Rockport and Rockland, in Maine. No Rockville though, so folks are safe from me singing REM songs every time I mention her.

SEE EARLIER: What Girl, Where?

Just got back from Surgical Endoscopy of Maine!

It seems the likelihood of gallstones returning in someone who was gallstoney is high enough (even if they don't fit any gallstoner profile) that it'd be a bit silly to go with just going in and removing the gallstones, or trying some sort've stone-dissolving elixir. Seems the sonic-screwdriver method doesn't really exist as folks had hinted at, since it's actually used for zapping a stone that's stuck mid-duct. And this leaves the singular option (other than ignoring them) of gallbladder removal.

Pretty minor surgery, I might not even spend the night in the hospital, no big whoop.

The hinky part though? 11 AM, June 9th. Yes, June. Ninth. Not even three weeks away. That's the part that's setting my stomach a'flutter.

Create Your Custom Message

PS: And a big sarcastic, "WHY THANK YOU FOR REMINDING ME!" to Ms. Melissa Chaykin, who reminded me of how Andy Warhol died.

Memo to Me (and anyone in Bangor who happens to spot and/or know this person)

Description: Young blonde woman, with her hair in dreadlocks and a white bindi (not the bangle/bauble kind, but just a white dot up on her forehead) type thing going on. Also had some odd affair going on with her legs -- although her dress (also white) went down to her knees, she had some sort of knee-to-ankle spats (also also white) with buckles down the back, that weren't part of her (also also also white) shoes.

Temperament: She asked if I'd seen "Across the Universe" to which I said no, before I was distracted by a co-worker (Paul would be said co-worker. He asked "Wasn't that a Beatles song?", to which I sang the opening lines in a cartoony Liverpudlian accent in my form of an extended and implied "yes". This prompted her to sing it to herself sans Liverpudlian accent for the next few minutes as I was walking off). An hour later, I dropped off a note (since she was away from her spot at the bar) asking if she was wondering just for the sake of wondering, or if she had planned to either make a reference to it or to suggest it. When I was next in her neck of the restaurant, she said that she was mainly just suggesting it, and handed back my note. She'd written on the note (in case she didn't see me again) that she was just suggesting it and apparently she wrote the note in a pen she'd brought with her, since we don't have all that many pens bearing purple ink with silver sparklies in the ink.

Name: Priscilla

PS UPDATE: Apparently she lives or shall work soon in Rockland, Maine. At one point, she had work as an artist's model.

Memo to Me (and anyone who cares):

Thursday 22nd 3:15 pm - Meeting to talk with Dr. Devereaux at Surgical Endoscopy of Maine (885 Union St, Ste 205)

Some point between now and then (probably Monday or Tuesday) -- Bebopping up to St.Joseph's to get some bloodwork done (which they'll then forward to Doctor D.) to see if my whole gallbladder/pancreas/liver complex is in good humors or not (there's a little pun there, but I don't expect anyone to get it, or to admit to getting it). Odds are it's hunky dory, since I haven't really shown any failing bile-system symptoms.

Alas, Doctor D's assistant had no real guess as to if the night-time bile-purge the gallbladder does has any correlation to the amount of fat eaten during the preceding day. I've been wondering about that lately, since my stones have only been thrown during the night-time purge and not following eating cake, cheese, or pork. As such, I've been wondering if I can just go back to eating like a normal person, since obviously this nigh-fatless diet didn't prevent the throwing of stones. Looks like I'll have to ask the good doctor, himself.

PS: Finally got word back from the State of Maine concerning their "MaineCare" program (which picks up where Medicare leaves off); I was correct in guessing I made too much to qualify! Want to know just how much "too much"? (...drumroll...) $1/day. Fortunately, both St.Joe's and EMMC have policies to pick up where MaineCare leaves off that'll cover me quite tidily (Note to Non-American Folks: Yes, it's as absurd as it sounds). About the only bill that might not be is the Maine Spectrum Group's bills for the ultrasound, X-Rays, etc.. since they seem to bill separately from EMMC and St.Joe's, so I'd guess they have different policies?

PPS: I've a pal else-state who just (like just) underwent fairly emergency-like surgery for a hernia. Her description of it, post-surgery, over the phone? "It feels like they sawed me in half". Thankfully, I'll just get spindled under a half-dozen times (and have my abdominal cavity inflated), at worst.

PPPS: Here's a charming web-log, covering most anything one ever wanted to chat with someone else about, concerning gallbladders and the common maladies thereof.

Quick little bit before I go to sleep.

I'm not sure if I can really get behind the idea that "the author is dead" when it comes to authorial intent. I mean, let's say I write some particularly pithy essay or slick bit of poem or prose. You're functionally illiterate, but you like what I wrote since the shapes look pretty on the page.

Obviously, one can not say that you're wrong about the aesthetics of my work, but still...it's not like I wrote them down since I wanted to use up the last bit of ink in a pen before I threw it away; there's a level there that you're kind of missing, that I hoped folks would care about in the future. It's not so much incorrect to view my work in a different light than I intended (like say, how the funny shapes look), but I'd still say there's some validity to my original point.