enough with the look into my soul and see the darkness and vulnerability within business. just so you know, i can do funny too. on those days when i am beyond the tree hugging stamp your feet with joy to feel at one with the universe bollocks. right about the time when the onslaught of woe is me i can’t deal with this life of mine occurs. definitely a split second after any declarations of sassiness about how hot i am or would be if only you could see my knickers and what not. because underneath it all. lies goofy old me. who trips over my feet on the regular. quite often can be found saying horrendously embarrassing things in front of awfully important people. and for all the gob in the world is actually rather grateful that thoughts are not broadcast simultaneously to conversations.

Lucia with her brand new Christmas hat on…

The Disney on Ice performance troupe is set to thrill Shanghai with their new show “Disneyland Adventure” in the new year. Running from January 20-25 at Shanghai International Gymnastics Center, the show will feature an array of Disney’s most famous characters.

Mickey, Minnie, Donald Duck, Pluto and Goofy will all be present, alongside new characters The Incredibles – seen for the first time on ice. There will also be Pirates of the Caribbean, Stitch the Bulldog and Toy Story-themed performances.

The 10 lavish performances by professional skaters will recreate scenes performed at the original Disneyland Park in California.

 POSTED BY KIM — I love The New York Times. I started reading it back in my journalism school days and have kept up with it into my new Plant Life.  I’m not a business person — I actively avoid any articles that are going to make me think about math, the economy, healthcare, etc. — but that leaves many other great articles that are interesting and well-written.

For example, this one in yesterday’s on-line edition: Sorry Vegans: Brussel Sprouts Like to Live, Too. 

What?!

In short, reporter Natalie Angier says that although many vegetarians and vegans don’t eat meat for moral, ethical, or emotional reasons, you can’t quite rule out the very real science about plants: they, too, are organisms that work very hard to live, reacting to danger in ways that an animal would.  As Angier says, “Just because we humans can’t hear them doesn’t mean plants don’t howl.”

‘ “Plants are not static or silly,’ said Monika Hilker of the Institute of Biology at the Free University of Berlin. ‘They respond to tactile cues, they recognize different wavelengths of light, they listen to chemical signals, they can even talk’ through chemical signals. Touch, sight, hearing, speech. ‘These are sensory modalities and abilities we normally think of as only being in animals,’ Dr. Hilker said.”

This leads me to the fruitarians.  These are people who only eat raw fruits or vegetables, and many will only eat fruits that have not been picked — that is, fruit that falls naturally to the ground, or vegetables that are no longer actively growing.

But enough about that.  I just had a pumpkin muffie at Panera. 

Mmmm…pumpkin muffie….

Merry Christmas everyone!

i’d like to introduce you (again) to:

The Steinmeier International Family Christmas Leisure Ensemble.

http://www.jonsteinmeier.com/christmas/05.htm

Merry Christmas indeed.

it’s Jesus Christ’s birthday, you should dress up.

photos by Steven Vail (www.stevenvailphotography.com)

j



Ever since we started working on Sauroposeidon, Rich Cifelli and I dreamed of seeing the reconstructed neck on display. That vision has come to fruition.

The Oklahoma Museum of Natural History opened a totally new building in 2000. Coincidentally, the opening ceremony for the new digs was held the same week that the paper naming Sauroposeidon came out in JVP. The exhibits in the new building were pretty cool right out of the gate, but the exhibit people have not been idle, and if you haven’t been there in a year or three you will find many things that you have not seen before.

My favorite upgrade is the new orientation gallery, which introduces museum visitors to the functions of the museum and the kinds of work that go on in the research wing, including most of the traditional -ologies. The reconstructed neck and head of Sauroposeidon hang from the ceiling, spanning most of the length of the gallery and extending out into the museum’s great hall.

The beast was reconstructed by Research Casting International. I got to visit their workshop in Ontario, Canada, a little over a year ago to see how things were coming along. The people there were extremely serious about getting things right (how refreshing!). We spent quite a while talking about how Sauroposeidon was different from Giraffatitan (RCI remounted the Humbolt dinos) and sketching out what the missing bits might have looked like, especially the skull.

Of course we don’t have any skull material from Sauroposeidon, but we do have skulls and partial skulls from several other basal titanosauriforms. Together with one of the people working on the Sauroposeidon project, I filled up a couple of pieces of paper with sketches showing what a slender mid-Cretaceous brachiosaur might have looked like. In particular, and in keeping with the gracility of the cervical vertebrae, we narrowed the skull a bit to get rid of the dreaded Giraffatitan Toilet-Bowl Head.

The completed neck and head were already mounted in the OMNH when I visited last Christmas, but the gallery wasn’t open yet so all I got–and all I could pass on to you–was this teaser. The new orientation gallery opened in the middle of this spring, so Sauroposeidon has been hanging out there for a while. This is just the first chance I’ve gotten to go see my baby.

What a fine present. Merry Christmas from the SV-POW!sketeers!

Update from Mike

Here is my Christmas card to you all.

Happy Christmas from Mike Taylor and brachiosauridae incertae sedis BMNH R5937, "The Archbishop", coalesced dorsal vertebrae 8-9 (in right lateral view, like you need me to tell you that). Image in part copyright (C) the Natural History Museum, but it's the season of goodwill so they probably won't sue you even if you send copies to all your friends.

Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy embark on a great adventure when they find a magical book in the loft. As they turn the pages, they will discover Snow White, Cinderella… With real Disney’s songs and characters. From December 18th to January 3rd in the Palacio Municipal de Congresos.

I added the ability to rate blog posts, mostly because I made myself laugh playing with the custom text.

Will be making an effort to not start sentences with simple future active verbs.

Need a custom theme, I think.

Now please vote:

You’re welcome.

Nanook of the North. Watch out where the huskies go, and don’t you eat that yellow snow…

A few months ago, I bought around fifteen fishes for my marble-base aquarium. They all died within a few days, except for one:  a suckermouth catfish.  He looked so down and alone in the big tank all by himself so Dad moved him to my mother’s old rice cooker and placed him beside the stove, near the kitchen door so he could catch some sunlight. I didn’t tell Dad that janitor fishes are nocturnal and he’ll just spend the whole time hiding behind the huge shell in the cooker.

So far, he’s been there for seven months and has pretty much established himself as the third member of the household. I haven’t named him yet so I decided to give him a name instead of just calling him “fish”. Here are the options:

1. Braveheart (Mel Gibson. ‘Nuff said.)
2. William Butler Yeats (He wishes for the cloths of heaven)
3. Benigno Aquino, Jr. (I’m a big fan of Ninoy.)
4. Justin Timberlake (Where is he these days? Is he hiding?)
5. Vincent Van Gogh (Maybe not. My fish isn’t angsty.)

I finally settled on Pablo Neruda. He’s not on the list. But the moment I yelled “Pablo!” I swear I saw that tail twitch.

from Pooch Cafe
click pic for larger image

~*~*~

Chris doesn’t have any idea what to send me for Christmas. He finally asked me and I told him what I wanted.

C: A shirt??
Me: Your shirt. Something you’ve worn several times before, not something new.
C: Do you want anything else aside from TimTams and a shirt?
Me: Why don’t you ask your sister for advice? (lol)

We talked about other things and then I showed him the gift-wrapped book I was going to bring to the Christmas lottery with my girlfriends (It’s Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist and Hannah got it). And that’s when it finally hit him.

C: You’re a reader! Why don’t I give you books?!
Me: ^___^
C: Send me a list of books you want and I’ll pick three.
Me: *emails him a long list of Jordan, Gaiman, Pratchett and Fforde books I couldn’t find in KSA*
Me: If it’s Jordan, you have to get only Jordan since WoT is a series. But if you decide on the others, you can mix it up.

A day later…

C: I bought you all 5 of the books you listed from that author.
Me: Jordan?
C: Yes.
Me: EEEEeeeeeeeeEEEE!

I can’t wait for my present. ^___^ Now I need tips for Chris’ Christmas present. Haha.

And I finally got to see and speak to Robert. Luv ya Rob! And thanks to Wen for urging me to read Jordan in the first place.

Two years ago, I beat Kingdom Hearts II during Christmas break. It took me nearly thirty hours to hit and punch and magic my way through every world to defeat every boss on the the beginner level I’d selected in the very beginning.

I’m back, baby. And this time I’m playing on standard level.

This brings me to the FML moments I experienced this week. (If you’re not familiar the site I advise you to click that link I just typed and educate yourself on the hilarity that occurs in the lives of others.)
I re-borrowed the game from my boyfriend on Sunday but was not able to play it because I got home too late that night to even think about setting up our old PS2 that night. I went to bed, instead.
The next day, all I thought about was Kingdom Hearts. My fingers were itching to pick up a controller all day and start playing with Hayner, Pence and Olette by my side one minute and then Donald Duck and Goofy the next.
My Kingdom Hearts-obsessed friend drove me home on Monday and helped me set up my PS2 and hook it up to our giant TV in the Family Room. I turned on the TV, turned on the game console and then picked up a controller, eager to begin playing as Roxas. I looked down and realized that the controller I was holding was one that went into the first Play Station ever released; not our PS2.
After several frantic text messages were sent to my brothers and a quick search around my house was conducted, I admit defeat and we hopped in her car to go up to her house and retrieve a controller.
The spare one we brought back to my house didn’t work, but luckily she had brought one of her good ones. We played for three hours (well, I played and she sat in my fuzzy purple chair and watched) and then hopped back in her car to go to play rehearsal. She took the controller home with her that night.
I was left with useless PS1 controllers and a game I desperately wanted to continue.
For the next couple days, I didn’t play. Finally, my boyfriend came through and gave me one of his controllers.
That night, I rushed through my homework, excitedly set up the console in my room, then got out of the shower and hurried so I could play the game until midnight.
I turned on the TV and the PS2, but the video wasn’t displayed on the screen. Confused, I plugged the little colored things into the TV more securely, then tried again. I must have tried 5 times before I decided that my 4-year-old TV was crap. I texted my brother, asked him where his old little TV was, then headed out into the snow to go to my dad’s garage and retrieve it. I located it, knocked over a bag of cans and got caught on a lawn mower which I pulled out into his driveway with me and then had to push back in.
I got inside, made sure the TV worked, then went upstairs and set it up in my room and plugged everything in.
Once again, everything worked but the video. I unplugged everything and tried several times, but nothing worked. I decided to try it on my TV one more time before I tossed it into a spare room. It was then that I noticed something.
The cable that has the little colored things that hook up into the TV wasn’t fully plugged into the PS2. I pushed it in further and BAM!
It took me over half an hour, the exchanging of TVs and several text messages to figure out that all I had to do this whole time was reach over to the PS2 and push the cable in further from my comfy perch in my purple chair.

FML

Well, I’m friends with Tristan Jones on Facebook, and he’s a pretty neat (Australian) guy.  For a reminder, he has written for Tales of the TMNT (although, issue #64 was his last), and is lining up some new projects.

Well, last week I posted a status update about Sabretooth (my cat) sitting in my lap or something.  5 minutes later, Tristan posted this as his status:

Check out the ensuing conversation:

2 people like this.

Elliott Sawyer

There’s a giant rock garden in Bend Oregon in the states. Some guy named Peterson spent 50 years collecting rocks and building it.

December 13 at 1:35am · Delete

Tristan Jones

It’s mine now!

December 13 at 1:38am

Amanda Ray

Take an Aussie flag with ya too Tristan

December 13 at 1:39am

Elliott Sawyer

Give me a heads up, though. I live right by it, and it would be nice to at least watch you conquer it with no resistance.

December 13 at 1:41am · Delete

Tristan Jones

It’s fuckin’ ON! I’ma go get Battlecat and dominate Oregon’s Bend!

Oh, he’s so goofy and Australian.

Does dressing your pets up like humans constitute abuse? I actually just think it is SUPER cute! This is from a clients home today funny ha?

Roy Disney, the son and nephew of The Walt Disney Co. founders, died today at the age of 79 after a long bout with stomach cancer.

From the Associated Press:

Although he generally stayed out of the spotlight, Roy Disney didn’t hesitate to lead a successful campaign in 1984 to oust Walt Disney’s son-in-law after concluding he was leading the company in the wrong direction.

Nearly 20 years later, he launched another successful shareholders revolt, this time against Michael Eisner, the man he’d helped bring in after the previous ouster.

Disney, born in 1930, had practically grown up with the company. His uncle Walt Disney and his father, Roy O. Disney, had co-founded the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio seven years before, later renaming it The Walt Disney Co.

Two years before he was born, the company gave birth to its iconic cartoon character, Mickey Mouse. While Walt was the company’s creative genius, his brother was the one in charge of the company’s finances.

From CNN:

Roy Edward Disney, the nephew of Walt Disney, died Wednesday after a yearlong battle with stomach cancer, according to a Walt Disney Co. spokesman.

Disney “played a key role in the revitalization of the Walt Disney Co. and Disney’s animation legacy,” the company said.

He died in a Newport Beach, California, hospital at the age of 79.

His father — Roy O. Disney — co-founded the Disney entertainment business with Walt Disney in 1923.

Roy E. Disney’s 56-year association with the company culminated in 2003 when he stepped down as vice chairman of Disney’s board and chairman of the Disney Studio’s Animation Department. He kept the title director emeritus and consultant in recent years, the company said.

“As head of Disney Animation, Disney helped to guide the studio to a new golden age of animation with an unprecedented string of artistic and box office successes that included ‘The Little Mermaid,’ ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ ‘Aladdin’ and ‘The Lion King,’ ” the company said.

Something about this is definitely oxymoronic. How many crackheads can hold a job?

Found through Worst of the Web!.

It will come as no surprise to regular readers to know that I have dipped my toes into the murky waters of journalism in the past. When there are adventures to be financed, what better way of so doing than by simply recounting events for Fleet Street?

In this capacity, while covering the filming of Myra Breckinridge for the Daily Clarion, I found myself conducting a fascinating interview. I was approached by a diminutive gentleman who claimed to have “the scoop of the century” for me. I won’t identify the gentleman in question, but suffice it to say that he is rather well-known in Hollywood.

The source, who wishes to remain anonymous.

We met in a dingy bar downtown, and my source, whom I shall simply call “DD” for now, asked me to take a seat.

“That mouse,” he said, settling into an armchair. “That fuckin’ mouse had a mean streak a mile long.”

 “Which mouse?” I asked.

“How many mice are there callin’ the shots in Hollywood? Mickey Mouse, that mouse.”

“I see,” I said, at once realising the potential this story had.

“Yeah, that guy. That… fuckin’ guy.” DD chuckled. “Listen, you know how he’s supposed to be all, like, wholesome and shit?”

“I do,” I replied.

“You think he got to the top of the pile by bein’ sweet, playin’ the straight man to me and Goofy? Bullshit! I mean, Christ, who do you know who actually likes Mickey Mouse cartoons?” I confessed to having difficulty recalling any such person. “Exactly!” boomed DD. “Nobody likes him because he’s fuckin’ boring! The only reason he’s on top is because he fights dirty. You ever hear of Horace Horsecollar?”

“Remind me.”

Horace Horsecollar

“Okay, Horace appears in a load of cartoons in the Thirties and Forties. Then suddenly, bam! Vanishes off the face of the Disney lot. You wanna know why?”

“Yes please.”

“Well, turns out he was gonna get a whole series of cartoon shorts. I saw the scripts, they were goddamn hilarious. Man, those’d been made, it’d be Horace’s head on the Disneyland signs. And Mickey knew that too. Unfortunately for Horace, he’d taken somewhat of an interest in left-wing politics back in the Thirties. Now, in the Thirties that was fine. But late Forties, early Fifties? Big no-no. So what does Mickey do? He goes up to Disney, he says, ‘Hey, Walt, I think Horace is a Commie.’ For all Disney liked to think he was in charge, that damn mouse had him whipped. So he sends a letter to Horace tellin’ him the project’s scrapped.

“Horace didn’t take it too well. I mean, who would? He’d not been gettin’ so much work recently and he thought the shorts were his ticket to the top. He hit the bottle pretty bad. Died in… ’68 I think it was. Poor schmuck.”

“Indeed.”

“And Goofy, well… I mean, you couldn’t meet a nicer guy. I mean, he was real sweet, and his stuff was funny as hell. I mean, he wrote most of his own material, and he wasn’t afraid to improvise neither. And if you had an idea, he’d always take it on board. I don’t use the word ‘genius’ often, but Goofy’s one of ’em. Problem is, he likes to please everyone. He’s real timid. I reckon that’s why he’s so funny, you know? To make people like him.”

“Did Mickey take advantage of that?” I asked.

DD flicked some ash off his cigar. “Did he ever! Okay, first he tried to get him kicked out altogether, like he did with Horace. Spread some rumours that he was queer.”

“Did it work?”

“Not really. That might play in Washington, but this was Hollywood. You kick one guy out for wranglin’ ass, you got to kick them all out. They’d already got rid of all the Reds, once you got rid of the fags as well, all you’d have left in Hollywood is John Wayne and Ronald Reagan. And a coupla queers here and there wasn’t a big deal even then. Not that anyone believed it about Goofy, o’course, but he wasn’t gonna confront Mickey about it. Too damn nice.”

“And Goofy continued to work.”

“Hell yeah. He was worth too much to Disney to be sacked. But Mickey had other ways of gettin’ at him. You know Pluto?”

“The dog?”

“No, the planet. Yes, the fucking dog. Now, you ever wonder why you got Goofy, who wears clothes and votes and stuff, and you got Pluto, who Mickey drags around on a lead? Two dogs, wildly different intelligence levels? That ever strike you as weird?”

“Sometimes.”

“Well, think about that in our terms. Basically, Pluto was the cartoon character equivalent of a retard. Mickey used to show up with him just to try to get a rise out of Goofy. He’d be all, like, ‘Oh, hey, Goofy, my dog’s pissin’ up against a fire hydrant, do all your people do that?’ and ‘Hey, Goofy, my dog’s humpin’ the mailman’s leg, is that what you get off on?’”

“I take  it Goofy was upset?”

“Oh hell yeah. Give ’im a coupla drinks and he’ll tell you about it.”

“Did Mickey ever try anything with you?”

“Nah. Well, he did, once. Came into my trailer one time, no invite or nothing, starts drinkin’ my bourbon, sittin’ on my chair, says he wants to talk to me. I told him to fuck off. He says I’m makin’ a big mistake, tells me he’s a bad enemy to have.”

“What did you do then?”

“I knocked him flat on his ass and threw him out. Physically threw him. He didn’t fuck with me after that.”

“Weren’t you scared of the consequences?”

“Hell no. I did a shitload of propaganda films in World War II, so he couldn’t call me a Commie. And I ain’t queer either. And Mickey might be the big star, but people actually come and see my cartoons. Even Disney wasn’t gonna sack me.”

“I’m curious as to why he was in so few cartoons after the 1940s.”

“Because he was so fuckin’ dull, that’s why. Okay, lesson you need to learn if you’re gonna stay at the top in showbiz. You need critics. You need a person there to say, ‘No, that’s a stupid idea’ or ‘No, you should do it like this.’ Mickey wouldn’t have that. If a writer or a director asked him to do something he didn’t want to, they’d be fired before they finished their sentence.

“Thing is, though, Mickey had this fixation on bein’ the hero. And he thought the way to be the hero was to never be seen to do anything negative ever. He couldn’t be shown as bein’ mean or angry or playin’ tricks or nothin’. Got to the point where you couldn’t do anything with him. Me an’ Goofy got all the good gags. Mickey complained, but whenever anyone said, ‘Oh hey, maybe you should try being less nice,’ he wouldn’t listen.

“Anyway, eventually he decides he’s had enough and pretty much quits acting. Sticks on the business side of things.”

“Not the most pleasant of fellows, all in all.”

“You’re tellin’ me, man.”

“Do you think there was any particular reason why he was so unpleasant?”

“Probably because he was fuckin’ his sister.” I expressed surprise. “Oh, come on,” said DD. “They look exactly the same, they’re dating but they’re not married even after, like, seventy years, and they have the same last name. I thought everyone knew that.”

“I didn’t.”

“Christ.”

“What about you and Daisy, though?”

 “Duck is her stage name. Real name’s Simierski.”

“But you look rather alike.”

“What, you sayin’ all ducks look the same to you? Gimme a break.”

I decided at this stage that I had all I needed and wrapped the interview up there and then. I was due to send it off to the Clarion when I head a knock on my hotel room door. I opened up and was surprised to see three anthropomorphic dogs in cloth caps and masks who warned me that if I published, the consequences would be “not very nice.” The following day, I discovered that my car had been vandalised. Had Mickey heard about the interview? Maybe the Disney Corporation had stepped in themselves. All I know is that I was subject over the following weeks to a campaign of intimidation by a variety of cartoon animals until I agreed not to run the story. And I kept to my word. Until now. Maybe I’m putting myself in peril by publishing this, or maybe Mickey has long since forgotten. I don’t particularly care either way – hang the consequences, the truth must out.

If you have any more dirt on Mickey, email edwinbannister@hotmail.com.

As Liz Henry sat in the library and worked not-so-frantically on a paper due at precisely 10 am (that’s in less than an hour), she was suddenly distracted by the sight of an ant on the arm of her chair.

Perhaps they lived under the windowsill that was a few inches away. Perhaps it had come for the crumbs of Liz’s illicit Chocolate-Chocolate-Chip Muffin that she had finished only minutes before. Perhaps this is why food is prohibited in the library. But nevertheless, it was there, waving its tiny antenna about and looking as confused as something a fraction of an inch long can. Liz watched it for a few moments, then calmly reached over and crushed it with a chubby and disturbingly double-jointed forefinger. It was keeping her from not working on her paper.

But in another minute, it was back. Or rather, one of its innumerable siblings was back, looking just as confused as the one before it. The Forefinger of Death shortly got rid of that one as well. After all, we can’t have distractions when we’re earnestly trying to work out the implications of colonialism in Guatemalan literature.

Unbeknownst to Liz, however, these were only the advance scouts, and shortly she would be engulfed by a small horde the likes of which she had never seen in the library. As of this writing, the death toll was ten, and they were still coming, implacable and potentially deadly. But someone has to do the dangerous work.

A James Bond-style photograph of our pensive, good-looking heroine would be appropriate here. But unfortunately I have to appeal to the Muse of Bullshit Writing right now in order to accomplish my long-term goal of getting a non-failing grade in this class. Maybe later.

P.S. – Ack, there’s an ant on my computer now!