...someone wrote this interesting article about why sparkly vampires would actually make at least vague, heavily-suspension-of-disbelief-flavoured, evolutionary sense.

I hate to admit it, but this actually makes me kind of curious to know more about how vampires are thought to work in Twilight. 

You see, the thing is, I also wrote a story with vampires who are insectine-based. 

Naturally, mine are way scarier and more awesome, if I do say so myself:  

They have the gross insect mouth-parts happening, for instance.  They also appear as demonic insect beings on the astral plane: see here and here.  Light makes them hiss like cockroaches.

I doubt Twilight "tries" in the same way as this to "make" the vampires insectine, but still, the whole notion has caught my interest.

Of course, having brought that up, now I'm just picturing Grand Inquisitor Treacheris slaughtering various Twilight characters ("Sissy Mormons!  I'll show you real religion!"), but there you go.

While I'm on this, shameless plug: if you haven't read my novel, links to all the entries that make it up can be found here.  If you do want to read it (not that I expect that, as I know it's long and entails a lot of myspace-journal-reading in its current, first-draft-satisfactory-but-not-final-version state) maybe do it in the order that pages lists, or there might be spoilers in the vampire-related links above.  Similarly, because of how journaling normally works, if you try to read the story by going to characters' myspace pages, you'll just end up reading it in reverse chronological order, which is why I have the one page in the link I just gave that puts all the excerpts in the correct order.

Since this came up at tea the other day, here's the "BP Oilspill = DOOOOOMM!!" article. 

To quote the person I got this from: "I don't at all believe this is what is happening, but man would it ever make for a great plot for a disaster movie."

In unrelated news, the other day Boing Boing posted this periodic table of swearing.  It doesn't reflect actual elements, which puts it somewhat behind my appreciation for some other periodic-table-like-images I've seen (I saw posters awhile back of fruit and vegetable ones where the abbreviations were actually right, and I kinda wanted them for my kitchen) but it's organized on its own somewhat amusing principles, so that makes up for it.

In any case, I think #97 (Icc) is LOL-hilarious and needs to be used far more often.

Random thing #1: A short rant

I find it super annoying in my recent online research that, when I try to look up differences between Protestant and Catholic doctrine, the main sort of thing that I find is evangelical Protestants hating on Catholicism because oh noes, they are suggesting that you have to actually get off your lazy, worthless, underachieving ass and DO SOMETHING instead of waiting for Jesus to do it all for you!  Boo hoo!!

I really hate people who, instead of just admitting that they suck at life and they need to hand it all over to a supernatural being in order to deal with it properly - which is fine if that's what they need - go over and beyond that to act as if everybody else also sucks at life and thus needs said supernatural being to do it all for them.  Sure, everybody makes mistakes, but some peoples' are more serious than others and I really think it would do more good to just admit that and work harder on yourself than waste energy going around insisting that everybody sucks equally and that therefore you don't have to feel bad about yourself (and therefore don't need to try to improve... or better yet, can't improve without outside help - as if that isn't a self-fulfilling prophecy waiting to happen.)

Random thing #2: DJing tomorrow

I'd really appreciate it if the whole "my DJing apparently causes it to rain" nonsense didn't manifest tomorrow.  I get the impression the forecast is looking better than the last few times, but still.

Incidentally, for those who haven't heard: the guest DJ from January's Chimera, DJ Metalmaester (a.k.a. Slava), is again making an appearance.  Please come out and support him... and, for that matter, socialize with me while I'm out of the booth.

Random thing #3: FINISH HIM!!!!!!

I'm not generally one for prayer, strangely enough , but if I were to ask my "dark lord" for some random self-indulgent wish-granting, at the moment I'd say: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE ensure that this gets made into a proper full-length movie:

Yes, it's true, I always sucked at the games, but seriously: this looks so completely evil and plus, OMG, Scorpion is my favourite character!  WAY cooler than Liu Kang!!  Plus I love movies in which the main character is also the bad guy, or at least one of the bad guys!!!

There's a very interesting interview with the director here.  If you're a fan of the series, I strongly recommend checking it out.  And, while you're at it, keeping your fingers crossed.

Speaking of procrastination (heh), I recently joined a new (to me, definitely not new in general) social networking site, Gaia.

I got on it mainly because I thought it might have some use for promoting an all-ages event that I'm putting together.  (I'm still tinkering with the websites, but I'll make the official announcement soon, probably tomorrow / later today.)  It turned out to be useless for that particular endeavour, but on the other hand, has proved more entertaining on all other fronts than I'd expected.

Something I really, really like about Gaia is that it is explicitly alter-ego-oriented, i.e. everybody has a cartoon avatar that they can dress in whatever imaginative/over-the-top/etc. way they want.  (Click here to see mine)  Furthermore and more importantly, in the course of signing up, the site never once ever asked me for my "real name." 

That is something I hate about Facebook, and I hate also that Myspace tried to copy Facebook on that front.  When I was growing up (said the fogey ), we were constantly told not to put real life info on the Internet that people can use to steal your identity, figure out when you're not home, embarrass you in your workplace, etc. 

I'm really unclear on what caused everyone to throw their brain out the window in the last few years as far as this goes. 

Especially when said info is primarily being used to:

1. Turn you into a marketing demographic, i.e. a passive receiver for "targeted" ads, spam and whatnot; and/or
   


2. Enable people who you were doing fine without being in your life to find you again, so that they can have something to click on (because clicking on things = deep social interaction! /sarcasm), someone to brag to about how they are "winning the game of life" with their white picket fence bullshit, or some reassurance that they didn't make you hate them with their highschool jackassery when actually, they did. 

But I won't bore you with listing things I hate about FB.  Especially because doing that seems to often prompt defensive people to in turn bore me with explanations of how I would like FB if only I turned off 20 different features and settings, because my lack of interest is so obviously invalid and must be argued with instead of accepted and left alone. /sarcasm  If you like FB, because you found long-lost-so-and-so or whatever, that's fine, I just would like to be left alone with regard to it myself. 

Hence why I'm eternally grateful to the Chimera and Pandaemonium Facebook mods for enabling me to stay out of it.

But anyway. 

Yeah, it's true that there are fewer people on Gaia, and that a lot of them are way younger than me.  But amongst the things I like are:

Since many of you regularly blog about TV shows I don't watch, I'm going to blog about a comic that most of you probably don't read:

A few thoughts re: Freak Angels:

1. I've come to the conclusion in the last 2-3 issues that Sirrka is a dumb bitch.  "I'm all mad that my boyfriend who I argue with all the time doesn't share my peace and love ideals, so I'm going to express my annoyance that he shot the total douchebag character in the head by... slapping him???"  Uh yeah, let's protest violence with violence - awesome! /sarcasm  Though I do find it interesting how this reflex really illustrates to me the truth of the Satanic tenet that "peace and love" is not exactly natural human behavior...
   


2. Sure, Jack is also an idiot for staying with some openly-super-promiscuous chick and then being annoyed that she's a slut (Sirrka), but at least he looks right now to be leaving the relationship. 
   


3. I know they all have super psychic powers, but I wish the douchebag hadn't survived getting shot in the head.  The other jerk character (Mark, or as I mentally refer to him, "creepy domineering guy who looks like Jesus on heroin") seems much more interesting, and I'd rather see more of him and less of the douchebag (Luke).

Don't let the ranting suggest that I don't like the comic though.  Just because I don't like some characters doesn't mean that I don't, nonetheless, see how the character conflicts are integral to the plot, which I do consistently enjoy.

I heard it was Ada Lovelace day today, and that reminded me of this anecdote:

My supervisor: "It's sad how little people know about women in science.  Like Madame Curie for instance."

Me: "Huh... no doubt, but I reckon that, for some reason, many people in my social circle are more aware than the general public of Madame Curie's role in discovering radioactivity."

(Link goes to a live performance - I could have seen that tour too, if it hadn't been for the timing of some assignments while I was still at Lancaster in 2003.)

I don't know how many of you already read Boing Boing, so I apologize if this post is boring because you've seen all this already.  There's been a good haul in the last few days, so I just wanted to share some of that:

• Leather fetish steampunk masks (somebody on Boing Boing seems to like steampunk as it comes up fairly often);
  


• Photos of ruined hotels (I was amused to see that there's a Calgary landmark in here);
  


• Liquid glass that sounds pretty cool; may not turn out to do all the things it says it does but if it does even some of them that sounds pretty awesome;
  


• Vintage car pictures that are pretty amazingly real-looking for being diecast models with baking soda on them (really big photo gallery if you follow the link to the actual photo site);
  


• Star Wars themed sneakers;
  


• Online game that makes solving real world problems like world hunger, disaster relief, etc. sound like the most awesome Mission:Impossible / Matrix / Invisibles / etc. operation ever. 
  I haven't got an account on this thing so I haven't checked it out in detail, but I am under the impression (rightly or not) that it is at least in part aimed at trying to get people to really do stuff in real life also.  Something about mentorships and scholarships for people who do well at the game is the main thing that gives me this impression.
  


• Timothy Leary interview in prison from the 70's
  


• Wade Davis interviewed about Voodoo in Haiti and Pat Robertson's idiocy - links also to two TED talks (one from 2003, one from 2010) he did that are super interesting. 
  I think Davis really does a lot re: putting across the message that people shouldn't assume that those with "lower" technology or "more backward" religious beliefs or whatever have nothing to offer humanity and "deserve" to fade out of existence; if you don't look at any of the other links, I highly recommend at least checking out these videos.  Maybe I'm getting sentimental in my "old age" but personally I get a sense of awe at the adaptability of humanity from the things this guy talks about.  Moreover, there's a story in the 2003 video about an amazingly resourceful Inuit elder that is pretty amusing...
  
  (An aside: I really don't think the movie "The Serpent and the Rainbow" is as bad as many people make it out to be.  It did not portray all of Voodoo as "oooh, look what the scary black people are doing," and all of the actually fucked-up "evil" Voodoo stuff in it that I remember was done by the Tonton Macout - who were, in real life, the secret police guys and thus actually pretty horrible to people.)

I do find that Boing Boing's LJ feed tends to swamp the old F-list a bit, but a lot of people don't post as much as they used to, so that works out ok for me.  Sometimes it talks disproportionately a lot about things I'm not that interested in (as per a previous rant) but I find on the other hand that it lives up to its alleged focus on "wonderful things."  Comments are often stupid of course, but that seems to be true of every media blogsite ever.

If anyone has seen Avatar yet, I'm just curious whether you think this is a good plot summary of it or not.

Just wondering because my interest in seeing it in the theatre is somewhat less if it's basically a movie I've already seen. 

I mean, don't get me wrong, cool special effects are great and all, but time is at a bit of a premium for me this semester, and that doesn't favor activities like movie-watching in which Z and I aren't actually in conversation with one another.  So I'm just looking for information to help me prioritize.

I've just completed what was possibly the most painless Windows XP reload ever.  i.e. Service Pack 2 worked properly on the first try, all the drivers installed ok on the first try, and so on.

The only problem I've had is this:

Upon trying to re-install Thunderbird, when I go to their website to get the installer, the link seems to alternate between being broken and sending me a file (whose server has thus far alternated between .nl, .jp and numerous other international locations) that my anti-virus software claims is infected with "Trojan Downloader.Banload.ASQL" or something like that.  This is rather surprising to me given that this is, as far as I can figure out, the real Mozilla site on which this is occurring.

I'm actually not sure I want to stick with Thunderbird anyway though.  I just know I'd rather not use the default Microsoft product.  Anyone have any favorite free e-mail clients out there other than various forms of webmail?

In other related news, I installed Digsby, so if you are on a chat network other than msn (e.g. yahoo, AIM, whatever) that you use often, please let me know and I'll look into adding you.

I've been meaning to switch my sleeping schedule over to earlier hours, but that isn't working so well at the moment.  So here is some random educational whatnot to share with you all:

First of all, an experiment with ants:

Second, some cool-looking virus stuff:

Oh, and a note to those who may have noticed certain past patterns in my blogging: the ant thing is just because I stumbled across it and found it interesting/funny, not because I've had any recent evidence of continued lurking from certain parties.