THE Royal Wedding

I, like so many others, was sucked into the the mania of the British Monarchy's big celebration today. I rose at 5 am to watch the whole affair, and I'm really glad I did. There aren't many opportunities these days to watch a historical event play out in real time. And rarely are historical events so romantic and fanciful.

I really did enjoy watching everything happen live. I love weddings, even a complete, highfalutin strangers'.

But it wasn't all sugar and spice I suppose. I do have a handful of negative comments:

1. Would it have killed the queen to wear a crown? It seems like she's always wearing that same ol' wide brimmed hat all the time. For once, she had a fancy event to really flaunt that pomp.

2. Princess Beatrice looked fuckin' crazy. How could she have looked in the mirror and thought: :yes, this looks great!"

3. It really, really bugged me how much the trashy correspondents insisted on referring to Diana's Funeral. It's one thing to mention, you know, how proud the prince's mother might have been today. But to spend so much time talking about the funeral, and how William looked at the funeral, was crude.

4. Maybe I just have a case of extreme, incurable cynicism, but I couldn't help but see Phillipa Middleton and Harry in the coaches with all those kids and think "human sheilds". I blame the post 911 world!

5. When Jersusalem started playing, it was really hard to avoid thinking about this, but maybe that's just me!

The whole spectacle was very wonderful though. I enjoyed it all. All the fashion speculation made me think back to the marital fashions of other historical women you could/would have been queen.

 Mary Queen of Scots, at her wedding (bonus points if you can pick out who is who!)

Queen Victoria, the woman who initiated the tradition of wearing white.

 Young Queen Elizabeth

 The famous, tragic, Princess Diana

And today...

Many times during the event it was declared by commentators that "THE MONARCHY IS BACK!"

As if it hasn't always been ruling, but I do get the point. Today presented a younger, fresher face of the British Monarchy, which made it look current and exciting, rather than moth-eaten and ineffective. GOOD JOB!

It was lovely though, quite the spectacle, and I loved it.

My hero

Bernie Sanders is the last sincere, intelligent, and passionate statesman. I don't understand how so many people can hold an opposing viewpoint. He's an independent all-star.



I do believe I'll buy this book!

Benchmarks

Spring is here y'all. Proofs:

1. Ample Daffodils in the yard.

2. We cooked dinner out tonight on the grill.

 

We had steaks and aspargus. Our complementary beer was the good as always Allagash Dubble.

 

3.New spring slip-on shoes.

I decided to get some sweet Tom's as my shoe of choice. For those who aren't in the know, Toms is a shoe company that donates a pair of shoes to a child in need for every pair that is purchased. They're definitely wooing the "vote with your dollar" crowd. Along with my penchant craft beer, daily ponderings of literary tattoos and my burgeoning love of anime, these shoes make my transformation into an insufferable hipster functionally complete.

So far, I really like them! They're very comfortable and extremely breathable, so it's not gross to wear them as they are intended (ie: no socks!). I like how they're the most basic looking shoe you can imagine, which means you can dress them up or down. They are a lovely replacement for my poor ol' naturalizer flats that died over the winter.

Let's hope for a continuation of this sunny, 70 degree weather!

Gardner MA = The Future?

Over the past few months, I've gone back to my semi-hometown of Gardner MA for various family celebrations. Once to see my brother in a play, the other to see my brother-in-law exhibit his prints in an art show. Both events took place at Mount Wachusett Community College. While many things are exactly the same in this town of my childhood, There's a big difference in the landscape by the college.

. They just built two big wind turbines on the campus, which produce enough energy to power the facility!



They're really awesome (like-awe inducing kind of awesome) and kind of intimidating when you first go over the hill and see them in motion. They're huge on the landscape. You can see how they dwarf that smaller crane in the picture.

I also think they're beautiful and super important. Every time I see them I get so excited, they're a symbol of forward thinking and environmental consciousness. It's amazing that Gardner has them!

And I'm not gonna lie, as I sat in the parking lot watching them, windows down, I did hear quite a few negative comments from passers by...be it about aesthetics or their mild noise pollution, or even their aforementioned imposingness. It's good that NIMBY people were overruled here, and this powerful symbol of progress stands. I'd like to think that I'd be IMBY if they proposed them in South Hadley!

Caturday XXXII- Have I mentioned before...

How much I LOVE Books of Adam? It's a great, auto-biographical illustrated blog by Adame Ellis. His so-called "poor stupid cat" is the subject matter of many of my favorite posts.

This story about his pet Lola's eccentricities introduced me to his work.

His artwork is awesome, and I love the way he tells a story.

 "Now, I'd assume running to be a pretty self-explanatory undertaking, but apparently it's more difficult for some to master. The guy started glancing my way with increasing worry on his face. He seemed to be taking cues from me, matching his machine's settings to mine, searching my face for reassurance, as if he expected me to be his Sherpa through the trials and tribulations of gymnasia."

This Lightening Storm, This Tidal Wave

This song by REM is a long standing favorite of mine, ever since Paul put it on a mix CD for me back in High School. Until today I had never seen the music video. It's amazing and cool. Who woulda thought 30 seconds of chaotic party footage would create the fiber for a 4 minute long music video. So Creative!




Personally, I like the bitch getting the drink thrown in her face best. But the guy catching on fire is cool too.

Car-nage

As many of you may already know, Paul and I had the good fortune to purchase a second car last week. It's a little sad to be ending the era of carpooling. For the last 3 years we spent pretty much every morning and afternoon together, and I'll miss that shared time. It will be really nice though to be able to just head straight home at the end of the day.

Anywho, our new pride and joy is a 2006 Ford Focus Wagon, in "Cloud 9 White" (gotta love cheesy auto maker paint names). I love that it's got more storage room than our Corolla. It will be awesome to be able to bring our bikes up to ME and ride to the beach.

I filled up the tank for the first time today and got a kind of strange surprise when  popped the gas cap:

 

How could they have known how unfortunate this alignment would seem 5 years in the future. It's been exactly one year since the Deep Water Horizon exploded . I can't help but feel like they regret the choice to put this on all their gas caps....can't take that back now!

Too Awesome

Paul and I just finished watching "Noein: To Your Other Self" (2005), and we really really loved it. It's a 24 episode anime series about time travel, quantum physics, and all sorts of amazing cool stuff. It's the first show I've seen that really gave me that feeling I'd get when I watched "Lost", in the best way possible.

It centers around a young girl named Haruka and the sudden discovery of an inter-dimensional traveler in her sleepy hometown. The story only gets stranger when she discovers the traveler is her good friend Yuu, from 15 years in the future.

It's a show that has just the right mix of emotional plot, action, science fiction, real science, and a sprinkling of comedy.



I would say it's a truly amazing piece of animated storytelling. It's streaming on Netflix and I recommend it to all!

Nerd-out!

Ah! Peter Jackson released a vlog (hopefully the first of many) of behind the scenes footage from the new Hobbit movie! I can already sense my regression into my 9th grade, hopelessly obsessed self taking root. Watch out, it won't be long before I'm getting elvish tattoos and that cosmetic surgery to make my ears pointy.



The last 2 minutes of this video are proof that Andy Serkis literally never takes off his motion capture suit. Evah.

New York State of Mind

Paul has been away at a text analytics conference in the Big Apple.  So I felt like it was an appropriate choice to watch "Muppets Take Manhattan" (1984) last night. It was super dated and pleasantly banal. You could tell that so much of the plot was driven by wanting to show off neat special effects, Like Scooter riding a bike and Piggy roller skating. Jim Henson uses the old Muppet standby plot line of somebody being lost and all their friends try to find them; just like in "Christmas Eve on Sesame Street" (1978), "Don't Eat the Pictures" (1983), and "Follow that Bird" (1985). Except, for once, it's Kermit the Frog that gets lost, and not Big Bird.

One of the more bizarre scenes involves Miss Piggy working a makeup counter in a high end department store with Joan Rivers, appearing in a cameo role. It's terrifyingly manic and makes very little sense.



There's also this strange scene where Piggy fantasizes about being a baby, singing a love song. This scene is what led to us having Muppet Babies.Also, Baby Miss Piggy sings about wanting to make babies.



Overall though it's a sweet, old fashioned movie about the Muppets trying to make it in show biz. It really kind of shows this simpler time. Becoming famous is much different now.

Fake Music

Heh, do you guys remember this song? It came out in 1998, and I remember it being a kinda sappy middle school dance favorite. I also vaguely remember thinking "Gee, that Kid Rock is actually a pretty good singer!"



Only now, after the power of T-pain has totally saturated every inch of our musical world, did I notice the painful and comically bad amounts of autotuning in play here. Weird!

Unbelievable

Nick Pitera is the amazing "one-man-disney-movie". You will not believe he's doing all these voices.

The production quality of the video is A+#1 too - I love the interaction between the frames.

Caturday XXXI - Pet-owner-observational-humor

Cat vs. Human is a great slice of life sort of comic by Yasmine Surovec. She owns many cats and a dog, and provides a viewpoint on pet ownership that isn't sugar coated. Even though she's a self professed crazy cat lady, she's completely honest about the fact that kitties will fukkin rip your face off if they get the chance.

Enjoy one of her comics, complete with dinosaury goodness:

Real Music

I heard this song on the radio recently, and it was so refreshing. So much of pop music now is just so overproduced, and this is like the antidote. You don't usually hear a person singing with this sort  of power and sincerity in your average radio hit anymore. Heck, it's actually just nice to hear something without autotune for once!



Good Job!

Smelly

I'm not really one for perfume. And in fact, my workplace has a "fragrance free" policy that would prevent me from wearing any anyways.

However, I would consider spraying some of this on myself: Tetley has made a new tea scented perfume. Since this is my typical morning fare already, the smell could pass unnoticed on the cube farm.

Check out the sexy packaging:

This fine lady is Tina, one of the "Tea Folk".

These cartoon people were used to promote tea in England in the 70's-90's. Putting her on the bottle is apparently quite retro and tongue-in-cheek
 
.

And that, my friends, is one weird slogan.

Clones!?!?!

So baseball season is underway. I can tell because Paul is obsessively checking his yahoo fantasy account. Also because we've upgraded our cable from the most-basic-possible-that-we-only-get-cuz-internet-is-more-expensive-on-it's-own package to whatever-the-cheapest-thing-with-NESN-is package.

Another awkward heralding of baseballs season is seeing Dennis Eckersley all over the place. It really creeps me out to see him, because he looks eerily similar to my dad:

Every time he comes on TV, it totally blows my mind. 

We watched all three games against the Rangers this weekend and were super disappointed by our poor Red Sox. I guess being let down is part of the legacy of being a Boston fan, and there were a few outstanding moments (Big Papi's home runs and Ellsbury overall). But it wasn't exactly a triumphant beginning. Also, I was super aggravated to see George W. sitting in the front row on opening day, carefree as could be. BAH.

SCALIA!

I don't have much to add to the discussion on changing technology and the constitution, but I do really like the idea that Scalia is like a time-traveling kool-aid man.

Bird Ally

One of the thing I like to do when we go up to Wells ME is visit the Rachel Carson Bird Sanctuary. It's got really nice walking trails that wind through the woods and lead you out to stunning vistas of the ocean.



Rachel Carson is a pretty important lady, a friend to the birds. She was the first to question the environmental costs of pesticides, and helped bring the environmental movement into consciousness in the 1960's.

Today, as gigantic agra-business sell us food made with secret proprietary chemicals, and factory farms overburden the land, it seems like a strong voice like hers could really be helpful. Nowadays though, I think poor Rachel Carson would have to be a big-breasted movie star or an eccentric billionaire to get anybody to listen to her.

Gif-splosion

April Fools- Futball style.


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