Wednesday, March 29, 2017

A Few Things

Turkish artist Huseyin Sahin creates beautiful, surreal scenes using photographs.

I just discovered Factinate this morning. As always, be skeptical of any "facts" you read on the Internet but this does look interesting and I noticed that they did get at least one thing right that often misleads people, about life expectancy in ancient times and how it's skewed by the higher number of infant and maternal deaths.

Black and WTF is a Tumblr devoted to odd old black and white photos.

I made this raspberry sour cream pie. I halved the recipe to make only one pie.I wouldn't say it was the best pie I've ever tasted but it was yummy and I will be making again sometime.

Book Quote

From Revelation Space by Alastair Reynolds:

And though he did eventually return, his doubters had in a sense been right, because a large portion of his sanity had not come back with him.

Thanks to my son for sharing that with me. I have read the book but it was several years ago. ("Several" being something like 10 maybe)

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

Just Some Birds

Newest Vice

Prepared food industry, I hate you. You keep on coming out with irresistible stuff. And by the way, Mother Nature... I don't hate you because you do some really awesome work but let's be honest, you are a cruel bitch sometimes. Like, the way you make stuff that's bad for us taste so good. But back to the prepared foods industry and this evil temptation.

I know... almonds are healthy, right, so this isn't that bad? That's what they want us to think. They don't want us to read the required Nutrition Facts part of the label and see that it has 14 grams of fat and 13 grams of carbohydrates per unrealistically small serving.

So far we've tried it on whole wheat bagels and on graham crackers. The jar is almost empty. I'm going to try to resist the temptation to buy more. For a while.

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

New Old TV Episodes

In 1995 we moved from Virginia to Oklahoma. (This is closer to where we were originally from) The first season of Star Trek: Voyager had just finished. And, if I remember correctly, we were in the middle of the second season of Babylon 5. We found, to our intense disappointment, that in the Tulsa area both of these shows were on a weak channel that you can't get with an antenna unless you live practically next door to the broadcast station. It would be several more years before we got cable and then later, DirectTV.

So there are six entire seasons of ST:V that we have not seen. (Not to mention several seasons of B5*) Until now. BBC America recently started showing reruns of it on Monday night and I'm enjoying catching up. So far they have been showing episodes from the later seasons, mostly 1998, 1999 or around that. When the show first premiered I found it a bit disappointing. It was okay but just not... I don't know... not Star Trek enough. But I'm liking these later episodes a lot more. I am missing one of my favorite characters from the first season, Kes. I even named a cat after her.

Seven of Nine is annoying but I think I'm starting to hate her a bit less. I don't think I'll ever name a cat after her though. I can see why most guys like her so much. (You know, I really don't mind the token eye candy but it would be nice if we gals could see some too. At least in the original we occasionally got to see Captain Kirk without a shirt.)

But what I really wanted to talk about is the theme music. This is my favorite of all the Star Trek openings, both the music and the visuals.

There is also an extended version.

And then there's this:

(* No we can't stream it on Netflix or Hulu. Real high speed Internet is not available out here in the boonies.)

Tuesday, March 7, 2017

Cute Weirdness... or Weird Cuteness

I did try to think of something clever to say about this but, honestly, I don't think it needs anything from me.

Monday, March 6, 2017

Random Linkage

Clouds - This guy says we should spend more time talking about clouds. It does seem like a better topic for conversation than most I have been hearing lately.

Spiritual Perception - A beautiful surreal art Tumblr. Beautiful! I am so in love with this site!

Kawaii Monster Cafe - Not very monstrous. A colorful and fun Japanese cafe.

Ambiguous Abbreviations - Or perhaps one could say, unfortunate.

Food Carving - Artist plays with food

Ted Wilson Reviews the World - A hilarious review of butter.

Russian Fairy Tale Portraits - Beautiful portrait photography.

Real photographs that look like paintings

Village of Flowers - A Polish village with flowers painted on everything. Wonderful!

The Turban Trick - an interesting bit of history

Ambient Geek Sleep Aids - Background noise from science fiction movies and TV shows

Miniature Environments by Song Kang - Fascinating sculptures

Friday, March 3, 2017

Book Quote

From Helliconia Summer by Brian W. Aldiss:

Hate cheers you up, makes you forget guilt.

Thursday, March 2, 2017

Wednesday, March 1, 2017

This 'n' That

I came across a word that I don't remember seeing before even though it is an old word, probably considered outdated which would be why I hadn't noticed it before. (And it does seem sort of odd that I had never seen it so maybe I had and just forgot about it?) The word is botheration. This seems like a useful word. The way it's used in the book I'm reading, Helliconia Summer, it's an understatement. All kinds of big, really bad events are just botheration. With all the hyperbole we have in the world today I think more understatement would be healthy.

Here is a list that I actually, totally agree with: Top 20 Things No Woman Should Wear After 30. No, really. You have to go read it. I'll admit though, I might be tempted by the cursed amulet. Or maybe I'm trying hard to find something on the list that I would wear, just to be contrary.

I thought of an idea for a Criminal Minds episode. Disturbed blogger who never gets any comments hunts down lurkers and tortures and murders them after forcing them to comment on every single post on his (or her) blog. No, no! Not me! I would never do that. I wouldn't know how to find you anyway. But it would make a good creepy story, wouldn't it?

Fake fur in a spring fashion show seems a bit odd. Well, that's not the only odd thing about this collection but my inner child wants to pet these clothes and maybe even wear them. At home, alone, where no one can see me.

A nice post about body image. You know, body image is sort of important to me but not important enough to ever make me want to wear long sleeves in the summer. But then, I live in Oklahoma, not New York.

There are several books in this list, How to Escape in 9 Books, that I might want to read. It's not often that you see a general list of books that starts with a science fiction novel so I was immediately encouraged.

Finally, here's another one of those cool Animusic videos, because I simply can't resist.