The Bug Girl Blog

Al I wanted was sensitive toothpaste without artificial ingredients like sodium saccharin. I could not find the mint flavored sensitive tooth Tom’s of Maine, so I tried this new one with black currant flavor. It has some kind of licorice root that made my mouth feel like pins and needles. I tried to suffer it, because I had bought it, but then I noticed fruit flies were hovering around my tooth brush. Apparently they love the fruit flavors. I gave up and threw it away. Why can’t Whole Foods just stock the regular mint toothpaste? Nobody wants the weird one, and so that is all they have. I looked at the label, and it says causes month irrational. Why do they market such a horrible product?

I was eating them all along. I knew California Tomatoes are safe. I was buying them, but then they got kind of funny tasting. No one else was buying them. It was not tomatoes that had salmonella. It was more likely some kind of chili they put in salsa.

An article in the San Francisco Chronicle states that sales of Guinness Stout are slipping due to the pressures of time and the failing economy. The Irish now have less leisure time to spend in the pubs. Pubs in Ireland are also closing at an alarming rate. Guinness Stout now sells more beer in Nigeria then in Ireland. The link to the article fails to work, but you can search for it on SF Gate, on July 13, 2008.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/07/13/MN9511OCRI.DTL

Mucca Pazza Marching Band

Photos of the event are on Flickr on the right hand side of this post. The crafts were much too expensive for my budget. I can’t say they were as expensive as a more traditional crafts fair, but I am on a very limited budget, so I did not buy anything. I did some interesting crafts that gave me new ideas for sewing.

I did a Google image search and so many wrong things came out, that I was like, I should just me able to mark these images as wrong. There should be a little book to check wrong when you search for a blue flower and you get a cat, then you can check that wrong. I tried the Google Image Label, and they showed like five photos, and all were vaguely photos of young people, one was almost porn, and they want me to label these images. Then it said, you can’t use the label girl, if it’s girl, you have to think of other labels beyond. What a waste, if it’s already labeled girl and it’s a girl, why is necessary to give it other labels? If it’s a blue flower then move on. I have no interest in labeling those images presented to me. What’s the deal with that? When so many wrong images are showing up, more the half of the results are of the wrong item. I want only to fix that, not to relabel a bunch of porn images for Google. Try it, it only takes a minute, and leave a comment if you agree or disagree.

The rest of the Bay Area is suffering in a heat wave, but in San Francisco it has been very pleasant temperature wise, but the air quality is terrible. I have a weather blog on the Weather Underground

http://english.wunderground.com/blog/Buggirlx/show.html

http://www.tnr.com/booksarts/story.html?id=49eb53ed-afbc-4aae-bf17-6ffc44f40a48

I found this interesting analysis of the popular blog “Stuff White People” like on Word Press.

I have applied a new theme that only shows expects of the posts. The problem is you can not get to the next page of the blog, but I am working on fixing that. Updated My entire word press blog became a blank page, and I had to change to a different lay out.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gFJIDFx4LzK1pGKWT0NpWgkN-6mQD91N0VDO1

If you ever watched a you tube video, it says which ones and when, but I don’t understand what this has to do with the lawsuit. It’s clear there are tons of copyright violations on you tube, and all Google needs to do is just go in and delete them. It’s so simple. The whole thing is so really stupid. I am disturbed by our lack of privacy. Because a few people upload copyright videos everyone loses privacy. It seems to me this is just come grand conspiracy to make people lose privacy, and some farfetched excuse for a way to do it. I don’t understand what our user data has to do with anything about this lawsuit. They can count anonymous statics. It seems more like Mr. Jones would have bought a DVD of Get Smart, but instead he watched it on you tube. But, maybe Mr. Jones has no money left after paying for food and gas, and he would have never bought a stupid dvd. So how can having the user data mean anything in terms of the law suit?

The Biography channel has a Pee Wee Herman Biography, and it is not called Paul Ruebens. I watched it last night, and I so bored by all the time the spend on his work in improv theatre. Then they skipped over his role in Cheech and Chong’s Nice Dreams, and when straight to the movie and the show. I ended up fast forwarding the improv part, and falling asleep before the end, so I don’t even know what he is doing now. I think the problem was he did not want to be interviewed, and they were too lazy to do enough research, and they had all these boring people from the improve theatre talking about him, and they kept showing the same photos over and over, because they did not even have any footage of the stuff.

When I looked online I found this.

“A renewal of interest in the Pee-wee character prompted production on Pee-wee’s Playhouse: The Movie, which is set to be released in 2009.”

 

Not only does Starbucks have too many stores, but no one mentioned how the quality of the coffee went down in the last three years. I used to buy those black apron special coffee beans, that were really expensive. Then I was buying them, and they were all so terrible, that I stopped buying them. I found I could get this great coffee bean at Target. It’s called Archer Farms, I can’t remember, and you can not find it on the Target website or buy it online. It cost like 8.95 when the Starbucks special ones costed more like 15 dollars. They have the lower prices also, but they are so awful, each time I buy the beans, I had to compost them. I also trying to reduce my caffeine intake. Anyway, the Archer Farms coffee from Traget is much fresher then the Starbucks Coffee. I was disappointed enough time with those Starbucks beans to really put me off. I don’t buy coffee at Starbucks anymore either, I only drink it at home. I do actually buy things there. I buy the coffee mugs that say “San Francisco” on them. Those are the only mugs I like. I have like 8 of them.
I still believe in Starbucks Coffee Grounds for composting, but now they won’t give the drip coffee grounds only the Espresso, and I have a hard time getting those. Some Starbucks refuse to give them. I only buy things for the Star Bucks that will give coffee grounds. The worst Starbucks is in Westlake, Daly City. They won’t give coffee grounds and they are super rude, the manager, I believe is a real jerk who forbids any giving of coffee grounds. I told them sure go ahead and destroy the Planet. The espresso grounds are all hard, and there is so much less of them, that they run out constantly. It’s so hard to get coffee grounds at Starbucks now a days, that I would be willing to pay for them, if they would change their attitude, and not be rude. Because they are only giving free, the corporate model dictates that if it won’t generate profit, they down prioritize it.
I was very disappointed with how Whole Foods Compost when downhill, and now they have changed the bag to say, it includes what they call “forest products”. This is saw dust and some kind of chipped wood that is too big to breakdown. I also found lumps of clay. I broke them down and added them anyway, and now I am seeing some benefit. I have 100 sand soil. I live in San Francisco on filled in land. Without compost, I could not even have a garden. The lack of clay means many plants tend to blow over and get uprooted by wind. I think roses like some clay. I am wondering if anyone ever considers the addition of clay to a sandy soil? I know it would take years to see any major benefit. Since the whole foods compost is so variable, I might try some again to get the clay. I only wish they would stop with the wood chips. Those are very annoying. The first bag was great, they used only the spoiled over priced fruits and vegetables that they have to discard because no one can afford the prices, and cardboard for browns. I had found the Holy Grail of composting.

It’s seems like a nice idea, but it cost 359 dollars and that’s before you buy any books. I think they should give them out free since you have to use their format. I assume it’s a special file type. There are e books on pdf or you can have books on word format. You can get some kind of reader to read them, but they are not so high profile. I am really sick of the way, Amazon is pushing this product every time you go the amazon page. I normally go often. If they are so hot, they should be not pushing it so much. Eventually people will wake up and see the light and they won’t buy them any more, so I guess they have to sell as many as possible that this outrageous almost 400 price tag. I guess it’s one of those things you pay a lot to show it off to your friends, expect they will thinking you got ripped off. I guess the Kindle more for the country club set. Who don’t care at all about money, and have to have the latest gadget. The Kindle will go in their closets and soon be forgotten.  I just found it only it only holds 200 titles. What at least with an ipod or a zune you can have like 30,000 songs. It has a tiny memory.  If I had that, I would want that several thousand books on there, so it could be a decent library.

I have only seen two episodes of the tv show Swingtown, but I saw Pyrex bowls in each one. There is an orange one, but I don’t recognize the color. I don’t know if they made them for the show or painted them. The orange is too orange. It looks great, but I have only been able to find this ugly brunt orange. The red, yellow, blue, blue green, pink, are all real colored used. I like the show Swingtown. It feel much more authentic due to the use of the colors they filmed in, then that 70’s show. I don’t like that 70’s show, I used to watch it, but it fell apart after the first season. I have no idea why that show is popular. I also saw a sweep shot of a kitchen with more Pyrex bowls and maybe even like a coffee cup. Why did they stop making the colored Pyrex. The clear glass Pyrex sucks. It’s only for baking, and I found it’s not even that great for baking. It has no use. The colored can go in the microwave. This makes them more useful then ever, and now we have microwaves and no Pyrex. I am wondering why the song Swingtown is not used as an opening theme.

I deleted photobucket a few months ago, because it was too much work to delete all my photos. The only thing photobucket has value is to make little picture html comments on my space. I wanted to do a mass deletion, and each photo has to be hand deleted, with a confirmation. I was going to sign up for a quick account and now I can’t. I don’t know what happened, but I never got a registration confirmation, and they are trying to sell you some kind of cell phone game and charge it to your cell. So, I “accidentally” gave them the wrong cell phone number, so they can’t change anything to my phone. I thought maybe I had gone to a fake website, so I used the wikiapedia link, and got to another fake website saying this is not photobucket’s fault or anything, but the url was totally wrong. It hardly seems worth all the bother to put these photos in people’s comments, but some people expect that you will do that, so you kind of have to do it, to be nice. I have been getting my with just heart felt notes to people. It would be nice if Flickr could do it, but it’s can’t, moreover all the little html comments are just little one finds online, like art deco prints.  There is this whole thing you can’t use them with premission. They have so called free graphics websites, but they have to advertise the website. I am going to double post this to My Space.

We have the worse Modern Art Museum here in San Francisco, compared to the Los Angeles Modern Art Museum or the New York Modern Art Museum. I think whomever is in charge of picking the exhibits has bad taste. I have never seen anything good there, expect for the Lewis Carroll photographs. I would like to see Henri Rousseau, but instead they now have Frida Kahlo, yet again. I am sure I have seen at least two exhibits of all her work in the bay area? She is an interesting artist, but why have her again and again? What about some variety? The only painting by Frida Kahlo I would like to see is The Wounded Table, but that one was lost, so how many more times can I muster up interest in seeing the same paintings over and over?

The San Francisco Modern Art Museum also brought us the boring Andy Warhol, and the hideous Yoyo Ono. There is so much more happening in modern art, but it only goes on to New York or LA, and nothing good ever comes here. I don’t have the travel budget to go off to New York, just to see some soul enriching art. This makes the lack of meaningful content at the San Francisco, even more irksome. In 1985 they moved to a new building, but that is the also the point in which the artist direction completely downhill. I can’t actually remember much about the old building, but they had Jackson Pollack, whom I also dislike. I would like to see more surrealism. Seeing really good modern art is out of the reach of the average income family.

I don’t under why UC Berkeley needs to build a sports stadium on the Hayward fault where the Oak trees have been planted. They are not native oaks, but I think they should not build there, anyway. I question the worthiness of what they want to build. A sports arena is hardly necessary for the process of education. The whole reason for the existences of the UC system is for education, and not for sports. There are already plenty of places to play CAL games. So, I think the tree sitters are right. All UC Berkeley is doing is tarnishing their reputation by carrying on with a three ring circus this morning. If UC Berkeley were to make a magnanimous gesture to spare the trees instead of behaving like a cartoon villain, the goal of education would be better severed. They have some kind of spokesman for the University giving on site press conferences, and screaming, “We are right, we won, the judge ruled in our favor.” I would be really embarrassed to attend or to have attended in the past such a school. My mother attended UC Berkeley. Where is the compassion for the tree sitters?

Updated July 4, 2008

Some of the tree sitters had to leave and became ill due to UC cutting supply lines, and given them only three food bars to eat each day. I don’t think anyone can say that the University is being compassionate at this point, but apparently some people feel Cal Athletics really need to work out at a top notch training facility so they can win against Stanford in the Big Game. Go Bears. This is another example of the decline of Western Civilization, human rights, and putting money before anything else.

I wish they would not have categories. It’s annoying to have to put the post in a category, and if you don’t it will be uncategorized. I never should have started doing it. It’s too much work to go back and remove all the categories now.

http://earth.google.com/

It’s pretty confusing, but I uploaded one of my beach photos. I would like to take a photo of the Park Merced House, I lived in as a child. I don’t know if that is acceptable, but a house with no one in the photos is part of the street, and of course, I was thinking a street view if I can get it all in my lens. Park Merced is privately owned. I don’t know, but anyone can go there, and take a photos. I noticed other photos of Park Merced there already, but one was altered with photoshop. It looked attractive, but that’s not a realistic view of the world.

I figured out how to find the address for my Christmas party again. I had it saved anyway, in my files, but I might be working any way this year and can’t go. At least all the locations I had saved were not deleted. Yahoo maps deleted all my addresses at some point, a few years ago. It’s a pain to enter them all again.

I decided when I die, I will become a ghost haunting my old house. Because I have so many dreams about it, clearly, I am doomed to hang out there in the after life, looking for my father. This is joke, by the way.

I blame vista for the fact, I lost many photos and data video files.  As I had to wipe out my system so often due to vista, each time I would reinstall the files I lost more of them. It did not help, that I tired to use 64 bit vista. 64 bit is totally not worth it. It could be like one second faster, but you have so many problems and nothing is supported. I wish I could build my own computer, but I am not very handy with tiny screws and things. Then I would run Linux operating system. Apple is also filled with problems. So many of my friends are unhappy with apple computer. What is the solution for a trouble free system, that you can just buy ready made? I am good with computer, but I don’t have enough skills to build them or program them.

I wrote this for Amazon, but there are so many reviews of the Devil Wears Prada who would have time to read over 1,000 reviews? The Devil wears Prada is the story of a young woman named Andrea fresh out of college who wants to write for the New Yorker. She takes a job at a fashion magazine called Runway, based on the Magazine Vogue, in hopes of working for the New Yorker, but she knows nothing about fashion. The author, Lauren Weisberger, actually worked for the editor of Vogue herself, and this is why the book is so interesting, but the cartoon-like characters lack depth. The editor/ boss character is a wicked queen to the protagonist’s Snow White. The parts about Andrea’s love life were uninteresting and flat. By making Andrea completely anti fashion and a junk food junkie, the author seeks to make her likable to what she perceives as the average run of the mill person. But, the book is filled with so many fashion label names; I know the author is not ignorant of fashion. It would be impossible for Andrea to illustrate all these fashion details in her first person narrative. I am sure many fashion fans liked the book for this reason. I wondered how much of the Miranda character was part of Lauren Weisberger’s own personality, instead of the protagonist, whom she seems nothing like.

Miranda Priestly is a very vain and shallow person, but I almost felt sorry for her, when she was stuck in the rain. I did not Andrea’s big emotional outburst at the end was cathartic. If Andrea had gone this far, she should have stuck it out to the end. The of the lame soap opera plot twist “someone’s in a coma”, destroyed what would have been a four star review and brought the book down to three stars. I expected Miranda Priestly to give Andrea the time off, after praising her is the limo, so the ending came out of left field. Miranda is portrayed as a shockingly wasteful person, throwing out many untouched meals each day, and ordering complete wardrobes of clothes and discarding them. Because Miranda never slept and ate all a lot without gaining weight, I also wondered if it would revealed that she had sold her soul to the devil. I looked her up Anna Wintour on Wikipedia, and I noted that she was in bed by 10:15 each night and ate a strict Atkins Diet. She did look like a size zero in the photos. I thought she looked like Mrs. Howell on Gilligan’s Island, but much worse and older. When Anna Wintour took over Vogue in the mid 80’s, she made the magazine much less accessible. That was when I stopping saving photos from Vogue. I was taking a sewing class, and I was instructed to make a book of fashion photos I liked. I kept up the books a few years afterwards, but when the fashions became boring I quit cutting out photos or bothering to buy any fashion magazines. Under Anna Wintour’s guidance Vogue would become a magazine for a high powered business woman with no time to shop.

The Devil Wears Prada was kind of enjoyable to pass the time, but the ending was a big disappointment. There is much room out there in the world for untalented writers who would never make it into the New Yorker, considering the success of this book. I have heard a TV show is also in the works based on The Devil Wears Prada.

I wanted to get the episode 97 for the story about David Stone a who disappeared in the desert while looking for the beast. But, that one was not even released. There were two other good ones. One was about an Indian girl who killed her boyfriend, and the other was about a girl who drove off and was lost in the woods. Not that I would buy each of them, but I should pirated them off the tivo, since they won’t even bother to release them. Maybe they can do it on tivo unboxed, one could select just the segments they liked, however, tivo unboxed is not subtitled, so it is still totally unsuitable. I think the deaf community should bring a civil suit against amazon for denying access to the hearing lose community. If they can put a million wheel chair ramps every where, that no one ever uses, then they can subtitle unboxed. If I ever saw anyone using a wheel chair ramp van accessable parking space, I would blog about that, but I am sure I never will. Those thing are huge, and the big gaint wheel chair restrooms that you can live in, are everywhere and yet something as easy as some damn subtitles, which is also deny access to the non English speaking who also deserve access is not even addressed. Anyone knows if you are learning another language, subtitles are very helpful. Even if they are in English, they can write down the word and look it up if they want.

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00.n138.a09.html

sorry if the above link fails to work, as it does right now, I have reposted only because the link fails to work, if this is problem, I will remove the repost.

Ritalin’s Role In Drug Abuse Uncertain

When did Joe Vegas start down the road to methamphetamine addiction and a full-on decade of despair?

Now entering his fourth week at the Passages drug and alcohol treatment program, Vegas has tried to pinpoint where he went wrong, and this is what he believes: He was lost at age 7, when his mother first gave him a Ritalin pill.

This news was received by Peggy Vegas, Joe’s mother - who has suffered his addiction, his failed recoveries, his arrests - like a kick in the stomach.

“My God, what did we do?” she said.

The fear of causing an addiction haunts doctors and parents who are seeking the best treatment for a child with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Scientists have discovered a link between ADHD and drug abuse, but they still aren’t clear about how Ritalin - and other commonly prescribed stimulant treatments - fits into the picture.

A study appearing in the August 1999 issue of “Pediatrics” has offered a clue.

Researchers studied 75 teen-age boys ( plus control groups ) with ADHD and found that those given Ritalin or other stimulants as children were far less likely to abuse drugs.  With stimulant treatment, the risk fell by 85 percent.

Studies are needed to confirm the results, but it appears that stimulants such as Ritalin protect kids from later drug abuse, according to the researchers.  Critics contend the study was too small and imperfect to yield reliable results.

In Joe Vegas’ mind, there’s no question.  The study’s wrong.  Ritalin leads to drug abuse.

“Ritalin and speed are the same thing whether people want to admit it or not,” said Vegas, 28.  “Take five or six or eight Ritalin, or do a hit of speed, it’s the same thing.  ( On Ritalin ), I’m as wired as I am off a hit of methamphetamine.”

Vegas was the second youngest of four children.  His father, Charles, was a foreman at a federal paint shop.  Peggy was a stay-at-home mom.

From the beginning, Joe was a handful.  “He just bounces off the wall,” Peggy Vegas said.  “He never gets tired.  He’s very quick-thinking.

“School was a nightmare for him because he couldn’t stay still.”

Joe remembers, as a child, doing anything to get attention in the classroom.  He’d crack jokes.  He’d jump out of his seat and run out of the classroom - generally driving his teachers nuts.  “I always thought ( the teachers ) hated me,” he said.

At home, the story was similar.  If his parents told him to do something, he wouldn’t - or else he’d resist for hours - and the sensation was always the same.  “Everybody was mad at me.  I was a bad kid.  That’s what I thought.”

By the sixth grade, he couldn’t manage at school.  Peggy decided to teach him herself, which meant standing over him every second while he did his work.  It also meant continuing to give him a dose of Ritalin to improve his focus.  Even then: “Mom was mad at me like the teacher was,” he said.

At middle-school age, his friends began taking speed, he said.  One of the kids pointed out that he was lucky; with Ritalin, he had a legal supply.  The family had a large stock of Ritalin, so Vegas could take handfuls without being detected.

It felt good, he said.  “A lot of times my mind is full of a million thoughts,” he said.  “When I did Ritalin or speed, I felt like I was a leveled out human being.  I could function.”

But by age 15, Vegas was out of control.  He was so reckless, his mother wondered if he would see adulthood.  She stuck with him through his high school studies, helping him earn a home-school diploma from the Garden Way Christian Academy.

Still, at age 18, he said he began “cooking” meth.  In an essay, this is how he described it:

“I was a super cool, popular, trustable, lovable ( guy ) ever so quickly learning to be a con, rip off, worthless, paranoid, semi psychotic, super unpredictable guy.  It all happened so quick, and I loved it.”

He applied for and got more than 100 jobs, he said, but he hasn’t kept many of them for more than a shift.

He has been in and out of jail on drug possession, theft and forgery charges, he said.

Recently, he noticed a 60-year-old man in lock-up who couldn’t wait to get out to use again.  He wondered if that would be his future.  “I thought, `Man, I’m a loser.’ “

His marriage didn’t last a year, but it produced a daughter, now 6, whom Vegas is not able to see because he hasn’t been interested in treatment, until recently.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a real relationship with anybody,” he said.  “I’ve burned all of my bridges.  I’m ashamed of the things I’ve done to my folks.”

Without Ritalin, he said, his life might have taken a different turn.  “I’d like to dream and say I’d be a wonderful, upstanding member of the community, but I don’t know.  We’ll find out where I go from here.”

---

Please look at the above link, and if you want to post a comment please go ahead. The pro Ritalin argument states that if the child does not get Ritalin he will fall behind in his learning. He may end up with a low paying job or no job. One the other hand just a normal person can end up with a low paying job. All parents want to think their child is smart or genius level, but sometimes it is just not the case. The child may end up like this man in the above story regardless of Ritalin or not. It’s impossible to tell if Ritalin is good or bad for children. Clearly each case must be considered on an individual level. Not everyone can get a high paying job, that is called competition. People don’t want to work low paying jobs, they fall into crime, things get worse, they abuse drugs. Everyone naturally wants to be in the best possible position employment wise. Is it worth it to take a chance and give Ritalin in hopes of better grades in school? Each parent of an ADD child must make that decision.

Californication is a Showtime series, I was watching on demand. I only got one month of Showtime so I would see Weeds with subtitles. But, inspite of having David Duchovny I just didn’t like it. Some of the scenes are visibly interesting. Showtime wants a hit like Deadwood, but just having swearing in the soundtrack is not enough to make it a good show. At the end, I was telling her myself, she should not marry Hank who was clearly a total waste of a human being, and just marrying her again would not change that. People so rarely changed after age 40. I did enjoy Evan Handler as the agent more the David Duchovny. I don’t know why it should be that way. I don’t think David Duchovny was well cast. He’s a great actor, he should do something better. He is just not cut out to play a bum. Ideally one should feel sorry for him, and hate the Bill character, but it was just a soap opera plot with nude women thrown in to the make the men watch.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/evan-handler

Evan Handler actually has a blog. He plays the agent, and is the only likeable character in the whole series.

I used to think books were outdated. You can get the data on file and print it, when you want, but now, have you seen the cost of Kinko’s copies? I don’t even own a printer, they cost too much, and then the ink costs too much, and even if you get a laser printer, the ink still costs like 80, even if you can print a lot from that.

You can find good prices on books on eBay, much better then book stores are even used book stores, that won’t take trade any more. I think the problem is there is a kind of glut of undesirable books, printed to the access on very cheap paper. But, the problem is you still have to limit yourself to a small number of owned book do the space involved in storing them. I used to buy thing like plant guides before the internet, but now I can look up any plant, and I don’t need them, but I can’t even get any money for them, only trade with cash, that is not a good idea, when I am not supposed to be spending any money at all for the next few months. I have credit card debt.

I could get an Amazon reader thing, the Kindle, 359 dollars, but that is just outrageous. Libraries should offer rental in an electronic format. We could be so much more saving of resources, and stop the huge waste of a trillion Stephen King Novels read once and then discarded. Buy a bunch of cheap books on cheap paper, read them stick them on the shelf, later you hurt your back trying to get rid of them, hoping someone will please just take them away. That’s what we used to do before the internet. I can find more about any given subject on Wikipedia faster and for free, then having to buy several biographies filled with padding to make them long enough to be called a book. That was how we have to write our research papers in the old days. Go to the damn library, check out a bunch of books from 1956 that were all dusty and yellow, skim read them to find the facts, and write the damn college paper. It was just so stupid and pointless, and they only make you write a paper to prove you are smart enough to do that, and can have your degree.

I still believe in Green Eggs in Ham, and a few other children’s classics. It helps them learn to read if they watch the words as you read to them. They can learn like a sponge without any effort this way. But, after a certain age it will become harder for them. I think the best age to learn to read is as soon as they can sit up, as long as there is no pressure, and the reading is effortless on their part. If you start to pressure them to learn to read and sound out words, it will slow them down. That’s why I am a really good and fast reader. I read way above most people’s level, but I don’t always pay careful attention. I skim read things. The reason older texts are writing in a very complex style, was people had more time before the electronic age, and they wanted to be challenged by reading something as complicated as possible. In the same way fashion becomes more extreme over time. Bored with normal dressing, people invented all kind of complicated fashions, like the hoop skirt, and the hat with fruit and birds.

I used to have a modem connected to tivo, and I got all of season two of weeds, that way, but I don’t like it. It does not have subtitles, so this time I just bought one month of showtime and it’s all on demand. After I joined the amazon tivo thing, they sent me all this spam for free music, but all the music is stuff you don’t want to hear, like bands of the 90’s trying to get a break, and they shows you get for free are like the worse reruns. I was going to get Burn Notice for free, but Burn Notice is not free. Hopefully, they killed the girl friend character, by now. What I could get for free was an awful rerun of the Larry Sanders Show the one about Hank Hitler. So, each time I log into amazon, I am reminded that I bought Hank Hitler and I can’t delete that. Amazon really needs to fix that. The only thing you can remove for your recommendation are stuff you review or stuff you buy, but not stuff you get for free. It claims I liked the Hank Hilter and suggest more similar stuff, this is a nightmare.

Thing actually got fixed because I blogged about them. For example I order a stupid cable on ebay, and the seller did not send it for three weeks, but I could not leave bad feedback, because they would leave me bad feedback. Now, they can’t leave you bad feedback anymore. I not thinking it was just me, who blogged about it, but maybe a lot of other people complained. So, now that’s fixed. I mostly get sheet music on ebay now.

The router was a pain in the ass, and I got nothing good for free. I can’t see any advantage to having the router connected to the tivo. So, now I just have the phone line set up again. If I had known it was so awful, I never would have invested in the set up. If you get rid of your land line, I can see some benefit to the router, otherwise there is no benefit.

http://www.videoaidedinstruction.com/1701.html

The link above is to the website to buy the DVD basic math from Video Aided Instructions.

I have a take a short math test in a few days, and I found this DVD at the library. I really liked it. I wanted to review it on amazon, but amazon does not have it. I would totally recommend this DVD. I had some good math teachers in high school and some bad ones. I had a good for the first semester of geometry, but then then switched me to a bad one, and my grade went from a A to a C. The right teacher can make all the difference.

Pimsleur and Rosetta Stone immersion language programs don’t work. I have used Pimsleur, and it is horribly boring. They repeat the same phrase over and over to kill time on the tapes, and save money. Rosetta Stone also provides no translation. That won’t work if you are starting from scratch. If you have studied before you may be able to use Rosetta Stone to build on what you know. But, you are going to waste a lot time trying to figure out what they are saying. It would much better if they include a translation manuscript, which you do not have to consult if you don’t wish to look at it.

This is just a bad as Fitness USA not including a scale in their gym. The theory was it’s not weight but the overall fitness that was important, but it also saved them some money, on not buying scales. Anyone can go to a gym with a scale and not use it, but I want a choice. At Fitness USA they want to measure you with tape measures, that worse than any scale, and then they create a stupid card with a goal. For women, they make it to lose inches everywhere, but the bust. The make that part bigger. It won’t work. Fitness USA is just awful gym, and I am sure it’s going out of business. It’s mostly empty now. I let my membership expire. The machines are from the dark ages.

There is no excuse for being so cheap when you consider the overall cost of the program. While children learn by immersion in the language, the adult brain learns differently. If it was the case, I would be know how to speak Japanese by now, in light of all the anime I watched in Japanese with subtitles. But, you could immerse yourself in a language, and still not learn it. The prices of Rosetta Stone is just hideously. I watched the demo and it’s one of those annoying things were you can’t go on until you get the answer right. Sure they can show a photo of a red apple, and have the text and the sound. That is all a waste of time baby stuff. However, the all time worse language program is Living Language. They have not updated themselves since the 50’s. The sound is so older with so much hiss. I guess they are too poor to create new dialogues. How long can they sell the same old junk, that was on those old LP when I was a kid?

They never talk about lung cancer, because it is so fatal, that they can’t do very much for it. They talk about only the cancers with high cure rates. The tobacco companies don’t want people to know just how bad lung cancer is and how fast spreading, and how you can give it to the people you love when you smoke around them. Virginia Slims markets cigarettes to make women lose weight. It’s amazing how much weight cancer makes you lose. Camel targets children with cartoon camels and other ads after that also appeal to children. Once a young person starting smoking, they will probably never be able to quits, so they must addict the young, to stay profitable. Only very rarely does someone over 30 start smoking.

I just saw a documentary that said Black Sabbath started metal, but Ozzy is only hard rock to me.  Rob Halford was the first one to come up with the metal look. The sound of Black Sabbath could be consider some kind of dark metal which is seen as a subgroup of metal.  Judas Priest was the first to combine the look and the sound. It’s not just the look, but the sound was more correctly metal. I think Black Sabbath did some good songs, but I don’t think they invented metal. They invited death metal before death metal was supposed to be around, but not metal.

I would put a link, but I can’t find on without some many ads, but Southwest is considered the top airline with customer satisfaction. The worse is United. I have two airline horror stories, one with United and one with Hawaiian airlines. What is ironic, I hardly ever fly and I never flew after 911. United process my ticket and baggage, but the agent stole my ticket on the sold out flight and sold it to someone else. My bag was checked, but they would not let me fly. When I complained that I had bought the ticket well in advance, they threaten to call security to make me leave the airport. I had to cancel the entire vacation. Hawaiian airlines only has one plane. It broke, they made us wait all day, then took us to hotel at 11am, but they only let us sleep for  a few hours, they called us at 3am and made us go back to the airport, but then they made us wait for many more hours at the airport. We did not get on the plane until well in the afternoon of the next day, and we missed a day that was paid for and the night at the hotel, and this was my honeymoon. I will never forgive Hawaiian airline for ruined what should have been the happiest trip of my entire life. I hate them ever more then I hated United. Inspite of fact, United employees are thieves. And if United wished to take this up with me, they can contact me. I always had a good flight when I took Southwest Airlines.

I saw these new generation of swim suits. It turns out that if you cover up more you swim faster, and they are even water proof, but you can’t buy them at all, and if you can find them they cost like 300 dollars. I hope everyone wears them soon enough, at the pool. At the beach is different, but if you just lap swimming you want to go fast. These make you faster so people set world records for speed in them.

Thomas Dolby is not really worth very much, in my opinion. Sure he had some really great music in the 80’s, but I assume he lost it all to drugs, considering all the drug references in his songs. I went to his Wikipedia, and it’s all the puffy piece about how he is like still doing music, expect no one cares, including a huge pointless list of famous people he did songs with. It’s like the whole article was written by his PR firm. The references quoted do not even exist. I would bother to change it or to attempt to alert people to change it, but it just too much bother to do anything with Wikipedia unless it’s some kind of huge lie. Thomas Dolby is so obscure even haters are too lazy too bother to hate on him. And I just hate that song Airhead. Before he calls other people phony, he should look at himself. It also sucked in a musical sense. The first two albums were good, and he should credit for that.

M audio is not vista compatible. I heard that it was not, but I bought the keyboard at a very low price at Best Buy. It worked for one month, then came the vista service pack and then it did not work at all. I had to sell it on Craig’s at a lose. Maudio also had a delay between hit the key and hearing it. This is called latency. It was really bad, so it was not good for practice, but the price was so low, that I was willing to live with the delay. Then I had to spend much more just to get a Yamaha stand alone, so I would not have to deal with the Vista nightmare. Photoshop Elements is reported to not be Vista compatible either, so I can’t get that. I know that if they say, it’s not then there is no point in testing it out. It has a healing brush and the price is reasonable, but I am not getting it, until they make it Vista working.  I don’t know why they made Vista so badly. Maybe the developers were mentally impaired? Just don’t buy expensive software for music editing. It won’t work. Get a Mac if you want to edit music or video, and use pc for text or other office applications. If you want to work in an office you will need to use a PC.

I don’t know who to blame, the makers of the software or Vista. Here are some more things you can’t use with Vista, like Nero and video editing programs. Even with a update and a fix Nero won’t work at all. I am so sick of buying defective software, that I hardly ever do it anymore. Vista has a built in movie making program called Movie Maker. But, it won’t allow for a tight edit. You have to play the video and press cut to edit, but you can’t see it, so you can press it at the wrong time. It’s a huge mess. I hate video editing. But, it good they have movie maker since other video editing programs won’t work with Vista.

I was so shocked to learn that nothing could be done about the Megan case. I was outraged, and I blogged about it. Now at least some minor thing can be done.  Lori Drew was preying on a child, and that should be illegal to do something like that. I am not saying like 20 years, but still that she was getting away Scot free was very upsetting.  She could get five years, but she probably won’t. I am really glad something could be done.

It’s so sad. I knew it was going to be terrible, and then I found out none of the students survived except one and they had to amputate his legs.

I am so not into rap music anymore. Mostly due to the horrible rap music on Sirius Radio which is the only channel I have. I can’t bear using TV to find rap. I am into metal again, but it kind of goes in phases. I tried to improve the rap on sirius by joining this thing where they email you songs to preview and vote on, but I can’t bear to hear stuff like Cling Cling getting paid over here by what’s here name Lim Kim. She should just sing, I’m a hooker, instead. I just can’t see any of the music to the point, I can’t even preview it to vote against it. What happened to rap that was catchy?

I just looked it up, and that song is by  Missy Elliott, but all female rappers sound like Lim Kim. It think it started with the song touch it. Then here is that song independent where they spell the word, rap music has been tuneless. So, I am not into it. I am not into something for the culture or what ever, I have to like the music.

There was a huge earth quake in China, and very little is on tv in fact cnn, and msn, are not even covering it.

Reaper is a new show on the CW. It’s new because I just found out about it. It has the demon theme similar to the show Buffy, but I just hate Buffy. Why do I like this show? Whereas Buffy was like the worst? Rey Wise plays the Devil. I recognized him at once from the killer father role on Twin Peaks. It’s much better then Buffy, but it’s still a little bit of a show for teenyboppers. I hope this show does not end up cancelled like Hidden Palms. That one that promoted a lot so I started watching it from the beginning. Hidden Palms had so much bad music. Constantly at any moment a song would break in. Reaper only had one bad song at the end, which is more then I can hope for these days. House used to have that problem, rather than have dialogue, they would throw in a 90’s song, and they expect the mindless audience to sit there, thinking oh, that’s my song, how profound. But, Reaper is free of these musical interruptions. I think the problem is they put 20’s somethings in charge of making the programs for the new target audience. Raised on 90’s music, which is not actually even music, they feel the need, to break into a 90’s ballad every five minutes. I never would have seen this show, but TiVo made a suggestion. I have only seen one episode, that means I have a lot of shows to catch up on.   You feel like you are almost back watching Twin Peaks again for a minute when Wise takes the screen. It might be our duty to support this show.

Before I had a cell phone to tell time, I used to have these cute little Swatch watches. But, now I go back to the Swatch Store, and I can’t get any batteries for the Swatches. They want me to buy all new Swatches, so they stopping making batteries for older models. So much for Timeless Collecting of Swatches.  All the new Swatches are ugly, and I don’t need a watch anymore. They came up with the thing called Club Swatch to soak up even more money from you.  Its club you pay them mega bucks to buy even more Swatches that you will someday throw away because eventually they won’t make batteries for them. You can use standard batteries, they take special Swatch Batteries. Swatch is blight to the environment. Now if I see anyone with a Swatch, I will tell them you are a fool. So, I have to find a way to recycle my old dead Swatches. They will go out of business, unless clueless Europeans are still buying them. I put this down to youthful foolish buying on my part.

Update: I should be more clear, when I go to the swatch store, at the stonestown gallery, I want batteries and new bands, and they started telling a few years ago, they are out of those batteries, and they have no bands for my watches. I got really pissed off. Why they won’t admit they stopped making them, because they only want people to buy new ones, is fairly clear, they lie. Throw out the old and get on with the new. Who cares about the landfill problem.

I found this learn German program for free from Deutsche Welle called Deutsch – Warum nicht. It’s not bad for a total beginner. What bothered me was the annoying sounding ghost called ex. I figured ex was the ghost of dead little girl because she is invisible, and speaks in this fake voice, like an older woman pretending to be a little girl. Finally, it is explained she is an invisible Elf, so I am like ok, it’s a elf, why is she named Ex? Like an ex wife, an ex little girl, I mean as in ex “gone”. Ex means something else in German, so ex is not a ghost, which dampens my enthusiasm for the program. Elves are boring. No offense to all your elf fans, who have the pointy ears and furry suits, but ghost are much more interesting.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/0,2142,2548,00.html

Here is another link for a German learning series with videos. My German Class Com. It is also mostly free. It is better for the intermediate student, so if you do all of the first program then you will be ready. It is a very simple video with a clear dialogue and German subtitles so you read it as you watch, which is very helpful, because you learn the written word and spoken at the same time.

http://mygermanclass.com/

On the Ides of April, Sunday the 13, come out to the Festival of the Mandolins. Where we can discuss your musical future.

I did not know even who he was, but I saw part of the video on TV tonight, and he sounded like a nice young man. It is very sad. His parents did not want him to enlist, but he did in a wave of patriotic fervor after 911. I ask you this if all the young men, just said, no we won’t go, then the war would have to end. But, once they get sucked it they get trapped. I also read another new yorker article about a lady who like to take more of those photos with the thumbs up. It is just so creepy, how can we claim to be the good guys? Isn’t the whole war beginning to resemble the TV show Lost? And that show is not even that good, maybe that’s why, they wanted to make it with the evil Ben, and all of that to make a statement, but even as a artistic statement it fails. The whole thing so pathetic.

I just remembered that Julie Nixon Eisenhower had a craft kit in the 70’s.  I looked Julie Nixon Eisenhower up on Wikipedia, and it did not mention her craft kit. I bought one, or rather I had my mom buy me one, and I don’t think I really ever did it. It got lost. So, I checked ebay and yes they have one there for you to buy. I bought one. There is one left, and I want someone else not me to update Wikipedia about that under things Julie Nixon Eisenhower did. I don’t like updating Wikipedia, because someone will give you shit for anything you try to add there, even if you are right, you have to waste time arguing the right or wrong merits of what you did. It would be good if someone else could mention that, otherwise, it looks like she didn’t do much but promote Nixon and write a few books about him. I think the craft stuff is really cool. I am looking to seeing the crafts kit in the mail. I remembered when I saw it, I was like sorry for her, because of Watergate, but it was still kind of cute in an odd sort of way.

April 4, 2006 There was once this woman who married a wealthy man. She became a house wife with no children, and she started to collect fashion dolls like I do. But, this was so long ago, that I had not even started getting Barbie’s until, she convinced me to buy some. I am glad I got those late 1980’s early 1900’s Barbie’s, because as we moved into the late 1900’s early 2000’s, the Barbies became uglier, with smaller eyes. The new body Barbie was much uglier. She had a house with a pool in nice area of the bay area. She began to collect not just Jems, but Barbies, more and more and more, in fact, they were all over the house. The house had no more room. She got new ones every day; she had liked a whole museum.  We did briefly keep in touch, I think she contacted me about a Sailormoon doll that was hard to find. They used to be a store in the avenues that sold used dolls, but it went out of business. Maybe I am confusing her story with another girl, who was in anime club, and only collected Sailormoons and that was later, but still more the 10 years ago. The other girl could read Japanese to read the comic books. These details tend to get lose; in fact, I look back and can remember less and less. I wonder if she is still collecting dolls. I never see them at events in Japantown anymore. http://jeminajam.blogspot.com/2005/01/this-is-story-of-singer-named-jem.html Here is a funny story told with dolls, The Misfits Put Jem in the Microwave. Now, I have not collected any new dolls since 2003. I just like the dolls I have right now. 

This was written in April, 2006, but the date got wiped out by the stupid word program, so now I can’t see the original date.  I considered going to the anime contest at Japan town, but it was pretty bad weather. It was lightly raining and cold. I went instead to the library, and got some books, and my cell phone died completely. I have to take to be repaired tomorrow, or replaced. I had this xm portable radio you could use like a TiVo and record up to six hours of music, which is good because the songs are XM are so awful, you need to mine six hours worth to find enough music for one hour. I don’t have xm anymore, but they are merging with Sirius now, and Dr. Dean Edell is on XM, so I am hoping that he will come to Sirius if they merger, and they will keep the Bone yard. Oh, but I did get so sick of that thing they played between songs, here you are grooving out to the metal, and suddenly they scream “Bone Me” and it ruins your mood. I have become addicted to listening to this XM Station called the Boneyard, which is like a combination of hair bands and heavy mental, but not all the songs are old from the 80’s. They also played Robert Plant, In the Mood, which is good, but that song kind of like lounge music, and not even rock or metal, so how can it fit in? They kind of surprise you with the line up. I set the radio to tape the Boneyard over night and the next morning I check out all the songs, I recorded.  The problem with the rap station XM called Raw is it is so awful, that I could tape 6 hours, and not get even one good song on there. Sirius has much better rap, but I can’t tape that or listen when I am not in the car. So, instead I am going to go Heavy Metal, because I was not into it when I was a teenager. I had some friends, and I was like, how can you like that stuff?  Now it I like some of the songs, maybe 40 percent, and the other 60, I just skip over.  I think I am going to start dressing like a heavy metal rocker, because I missed out on my chance to do that when I was younger. I was too busy with my father dying and all. I already got a some t-shirts, but I am thinking of putting together at least one outfit. I already have the big hair. Well, at least you can’t say, it my teenage rebellion at age 40. But, no awful Tattoos please. 

Karaoke Party, a Game to improve your singing Originally posted March 5, 2008 On Saturday Night I was at a friend’s party, and we played a game for Play Station or X Box.  There are two singers a girl and a boy, and each person takes either lead or back up vocals. You see the words as you sing, and you see how long to hold each word before the next words comes up. There are levels of judging. I don’t have a video game consul yet, but you can really improve your ability if you practice the songs, then when you are in bar, you can pick a song that you already practiced. Some people said, they got a real improvement from this game in their singing ability. Well, at this time as gone by and I still don’t a game like this, but you know I would too busy to play it, unless I had friends over.

After looking at my saved blogs from 2007, I decided only two were worth keeping, and I am now working my way backwards to 2006, and so on.  I will continue to work backwards. The reason people get stuff on a blog site, and can’t leave it is because they don’t save the posts on their computers. They can’t quit the site, because it’s too much work to save all the blogs. I am smarter than that. Some of them will just be for my memories and some are worth posting again.
Bad Movie Night, at the Dark Room was really great last Night. We saw White Comanche, in which William Shanter plays dual roles as himself and his twin brother. Geek Boy was very funny. He knew all the Star Trek reference jokes that we all found hysterical.  In the movie, Shanter plays a good Indiana who wants to get along with white people (that makes him good) and his twin brother a “bad” Indiana who wants only to drink, rape women, and rise up against the white men. In retrospect this was the best of all the bad movies, I have seen at Bad Movie night over the years. 

You have to log in, you have to solve a caption, and then it won’t even post for me, at all. I am sorry to anyone who has an eblogger, the google blog. If you give me a comment, I can not return the favor, but if you have a word press blog, I can give you a comment on your blog. I like to be friendly. I used to use that blog for just having a story, I did not want comments, then I started using it as a blog, because stopped liking live journal. I had to make it private because of pesty people and strawmen people. The whole point of blogging is to be public. But, word press blog is great, no spam, no drama, and it’s free, and run by some nice people. I have deleted both my live journal and my Google Blog and now I only use Word Press.

 I don’t know how to save this article. It’s clearly going nowhere, but maybe it could help someone else with a computer problem, and it may do someone some good.

 

The new copyright protected DVDs won’t play at all. They are so copyrighted that one can’t even use them. Popular titles include Pirates of the Caribbean.

 

 It was pointed out on Digg, which I just joined, that this makes people download all the more. If you illegally download a Sony Movie at least it is going to play, if you pay money for a DVD it won’t play.

 

  If you go to Digg your can read about all the Sony DVDs that are defective. The older Sony DVDs contained spyware, but now they don’t contain any spyware, they just won’t play. The spy ware destroyed people’s computers. I think my recent computer problems were caused by Nero 7. Nero 7 generated a file that looked like spyware. It had no name but a very long number with letters. I then found out it was part of Nero, and it was on the storage drive. It may have been spyware.  I stupidly bought Nero 7, without knowing that windows vista can burn a DVD or cd without any extra software needed. XP cannot do that. You have to buy a separate DVD cod burning program. It’s hard to burn the DVDs with vista. You need to select an option to make the DVD that cannot be erased. The default makes a DVD that can be erased, but won’t actually play either. You may not be able to access your data at all, when your computer crashes, and you need a back up. Finding the option when to start to burn the DVD to change from the default is hard because the option is hidden. You have to find a small arrow and click to open a menu to see it. Windows wants you to burn the DVD in a format that you can’t use. Why it’s just more stupid vista stuff. The speech recognition program is another example. I had to wipe out my computer and use the restore disc. I am not getting any satisfaction from that program, and activating the speech recognition program creates problems with vista. It may or may not. I don’t like to type, but I still don’t use that program any more. I have a good microphone. It was also a Sony. It is a cordless mic, I used for the bug girl show, and it’s still a good mic, but Sony has changed. I used to be a Sony person, and now I have evolved.

 

My newer Sony Camera had an inferior lens. The price was reasonable, but I did not really like the photos. Then just a few days ago, I lost it at Stern Grove Dog Park, when I was taking photos of my dogs. My dogs are very hard to photography. They won’t sit still. I got out my older 2001 Sony Camera. It is so much better. It won’t take motion well, the newer one was supposed to take motion, and failed. This one at least takes a good photo if they subject is sitting still. I have a Sony TV, they used to be good, but I can only assume that those have gone down the tubes also. I am boycotting Sony. My first camera was a good camera, but things have gone downhill for Sony, they are making them cheaper and cheaper. Sony has mostly big budget type of movie and DVDs anyway. I don’t care for big movies, like Speed for example.

 

 The economy is falling apart and in these desperate times for our country that has money to spend on HBO or a Sony DVDs, that won’t play? In the past, I used to spend so much money on stupid things, I didn’t really need, but it’s time to change. Who knows if we are going into a great depression and things like art and music will become things of the past? Another dark age, in which music and art are our only savior, and yet, they are unnecessary for survival. As we can only afford food and gas, or even not that those things, how can we do art and music?

 

Updated July 4 2008. I bought a Fuji camera,  and each time I buy something I make a point not to choice Sony.

  

I found some “new” metal bands, I had never heard because I was not buying metal cds at that time. Only now, they are out of print. The first band was Manilla Road. The cd I liked was Crystal Logic. I just go to Wikipedia and type in something like death metal or power metal, and I find a list of bands. I track them down, and find ones I like. It takes a long time. I don’t like most metal bands. In fact, I like only a handful, so I need to find more. I do like the big ones, you know like Ozzy, but I like to hear new music sometimes. So, I read the reviews on Amazon about Manilla Road and someone compares them to Cirith Ungol. I look up the band, I find the whole cd King of the dead is sampled on Amazon. I want the cd, but it’s out of print, I have to think it over. I looked up the dead milkmen, a punk band, on wikipedia, I find reviews and I look on Amazon, and boy they suck, but Punk Rock Girl was a good song. It reminds me of the whole trend for making things more like folk, and adding more of a human touch, and also like those groups, that I don’t like Flight of the Concourse, or what that band is, which I just hate, but I love Punk Rock Girl. I find out the bassist committed suicide in 2004. It was pills. I never know what I like. I like some music in every genera, it’s just finding the songs I like that takes time. Or take rap, you can find artists listed. If someone likes them, that person will upload some information, and then I look them up and see if I like them. Many musical groups, that can’t get airplay, can use these other means to be found by people. It’s a very cool concept.

I could delete my whole blog on eblogger, because I saved my posts as doc files. I am going to repost some of the best ones here, but of course, the dates will be wrong. I have not figured out how to change the data option yet. I really like this word press blog. It’s drama free, not like Live Journal which is falling apart as we speak.

Well, I took a look at 2007, and I find most of the blogs are not worth reposting. I seldom think of anything really brillant to say, that is worth having online. But, I am reposting a few of them, and attempting to update those blogs.

When I was sick last year,  kaiser decided I had  asthma. I told them no I did not. I told them  asthma is something that children get when they want to get of doing something. They pretend to have an an  asthma attack. I said no one in their 40 suddenly gets  asthma. They wanted me to take Singulair, and I said, no, I would not fill the it, because I have allergies and not  asthma. I take Zyrtec for my allergies, and benadryl, and I could tell Singular had not histamine blockers. Now, I am vindicated. I did not have  asthma, and if I had taken Singulair, I could have killed myself. Once again, my medical back ground defeats the doctors at Kaiser. Of course my general doctor agreed with me. It was the allergy specialists who thought I had  asthma. They won’t let me have the shots, but at least I was saved from death. I did not start out knowing a lot about medical matters, but I took classes in high school, and I read research. I have a strong back ground, but I could not handle math at all. I could have gone into medicine, clearly I am smarter then the allergy doctors at Kaiser.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/03/080303fa_fact_trillin

I don’t have a lot time to blog today, but I read this article in the New Yorker, and I also heard it on Lynn Samuels. I have to say, two wrong don’t make a right. The father went outside his house and shot the white boy who was threatening his son. It was a very stupid thing to do. First of all the whole reason for the murder was based a my space prank, and also the white boys were all drunk. If the black father had called 911, and waiting for the boys to come in the house. It could have shot them and not been blamed. But, because he went outside the house to confront them it is a murder trail. I feel he should not get a long sentence. He was a peace loving man who just snapped.

http://www.brainready.com/blog/no_more_milk_in_your_tea_he.html

I was looking around on itunes. I downloaded itunes and it seems to be working ok, now with vista. I did not buy any songs, but I downloaded a  number of podcasts to learn foreign lanuages. I am mostly interested in learning German, Italian, and Japanese, but I also would like to learn some Chinese.

So, I was looking around itunes and I found some brainfitness podcasts for free, and I found this post on why milk in tea cancels the health benefits. I don’t think there is any real science to support this claim. I think the website is sponsored by a tea maker. I gave them a piece of my mind in a comment.

This would be a good one of Dr. Dean Edell to address, but I don’t know how email him with a suggestion. I think he would get too much email, and so you can’t do that. I would call in, but I never do that. It’s absolute torture to appear live on radio.

I don’t have time to research this claim myself, but I thought I would pass the link along. I know the brainfitness program is elitist and out of reach for the common person. So, a free brainfitness is worth something. On the other hand, the people who buy the brain fitness program are supporting the company that does research into these questions. First and foremost, how to we prevent Alzheimer’s? Therefore, I still encourage anyone with the means to buy the software to do so. But, if you are down to your last dime, I would not suggest it.

http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20070611/milk-wont-milk-tea-benefits

updated. I was right it is not true, there are so many foolish people who believe anything they read on the web. They give up milk, they think they feel better, they think they are being “more Asian” and everything Asian is better, automatically, because they have no science back ground or ability to use reason. It really sucks that certain websites are feeding into these hysterical claims. If you want to be healthy just stop eating junk food, pizza, and fast food.

   

This was once Bug Girl’s list of Sundance Movies, but now due to other choices in indie film channels, it is now the general list of independent films. If are very worried about spoilers don’t read the list, but I rewrote to try to keep some of the spoilers or endings out out it.

 

Rating system is one to five stars

 

However nothing gets one or two stars, or else it probably would not even make the list.

 

Who is Bernard Tapie? An American woman falls in love with a French Actor and goes to France to meet him, and makes this documentary to honor him, but instead she makes him look like a fool.

Four Stars.

 

This Charming Man (Danish comedy 30 mins)  A man falls in love with a woman who hates him, so he pretends to be someone else. Five Stars

 

Revolution 99 A man believes messages are being sent to him from a perfume commercial, similar to Calvin Klein’s Obsession Commercials.

Five Stars

 

Bartleby (Melville remake) Five Stars, but very depressing

 

 Bread and Tulips in Italian a love story. Four Stars

 

Won’t anybody Listen rock documentary like This is Spinal Tap but real, Four Stars, it drags on too long with footage of the band (which I dislike).  AI can see why they did not become famous. If you like the music, you will probably enjoy the movie.

 

Lost Book Found (mood piece about New York), a man finds a book of the writing of an insane person, and becomes unbalanced from reading it and makes this film, about the book. Five Stars.