Aw Bloody Hell!

This article from Wired has my blood a-boilin'. Charter is partnering with a company that will monitor the web surfing habits of Charter broadband customers and provide that information to advertisers. There is an opt-out mechanism from Charter and the other company, but according to the Wired article, it doesn't actually work so good.

Guess who has Charter broadband?

Congress is looking into it. Maybe Congress will do what they did to Bell Telephone many moons ago when they forced the company to break up due to anti-trust concerns. Uh-huh. And maybe President Bush will stop thinking he don't need no stinkin' Constitution. ROFL!

Well, crap. Stupid cable company. But where I live my only other choice for internet is dial-up! I feel a panic attack coming on.

Princess Poo

Saw this blurb on Archeology News (via the New Zealand Herald):

The exhibition centrepiece is a bronze statue of the princess-priestess Takushit, dating to around 670BC. Standing 70cm high and wearing a gown covered in hieroglyphs, the statue was found south of Alexandria in 1880.

I seriously thought the Princess-Priestess' name was "Tacoshit". I really need to get new glasses.

Guess we can log this one under "Egyptian names the Stargate SG-1 scriptwriters chose not to use for a Goa'uld System Lord, but which O'Neill would've had a field day with".

Daniel: "The Goa'uld representative is Takushit, she was an Ancient Egyptian Princess-Priestess... What?"
O'Neill: "Princess-Priestess Taco-shit"?

Redecorated Again

We are The Queen and may do as We please! We have redecorated Our blog because We can and because We grew weary of the previous design, which We found hard on Our Royal eyes. God save The Queen's Royal eyes! (And get H.R.H. some Royal glasses!)

PS: We had another disturbing dream last night which We do not recall but which, alas, has messed with Our day. Meh.

My Dreams Pwnz Me

Have you ever had a dream that just sort of owns you for the whole day, sometimes longer? I mean, the atmosphere of the dream lingers, and you just keep feeling the way you did in the dream for the whole day after. Naturally, this never happens with happy funtime dreams. No, it's always the creepy, disconcerting...wrong words...ummmm....disturbing--that's the word--disturbing dreams that overstay their welcome. What makes it worse for me are two things:

1. I dream in all five senses and full color. If there's food in my dream, I can smell it, taste it, feel its texture on my tongue...everything. I know what some of you might be thinking: "Hey, Kath, that's pretty cool if it's one of those erotic dreams!" Depends. My "erotic" dreams (rare as they are) aren't always of the "that was so cool!" variety. Oftentimes they're a bit disturbing, ranging from old boyfriends who are just going through the motions but are mostly utterly disinterested, while I'm desperately trying to keep their attention...to, well, let's just say "the worst" and leave it at that. So, unlike most people, I don't really like having those kinds of dreams.

2. I'm prone to nightmares. It's been this way since I was a little kid, possibly since I was a baby. I've always had nightmares and night terrors (inexplicable, all-consuming terror that wakes me in the middle of the night and doesn't go away for hours). My nightmares are sometimes just a pervasive feeling of fear, even if the events in the dream aren't scary. Sometimes the events in the dream are scary. Sometimes they're just disturbing. Like the dream in which I was having lunch with my mom at this little burger joint that she and I have only eaten at once in reality, then my late sister shows up with a friend, and when I tell her we all thought she'd been dead these past four years, she tells me she's just been in hiding and now she thinks she'll go have "a real child" (she's the mother of my niece, Rachel, on whom she utterly doted in life). While she's talking to me, her skin is getting darker--putrefying, as I imagine it's been doing for these past four years in the coffin--right before my very eyes. In the dream, I'm getting more and more disturbed by this, and when I wake...well, this was one of those dreams that messed me up for a couple of days. That's a lie. It still bothers me, weeks later.

Last night was a #2 kind of dream. Actually, there were several dreams, but they all referenced each other, as if they were all part of one dream. The part that stuck with me, mainly due to my fear of heights, was the one in which I climbed to the top of the Golden Gate Bridge with the aid of a hair I'd pulled from my head, a hair that expanded to whatever length I needed and was strong as steel, yet flexible. I'm sure the military would love to have ropes made of that stuff. Anyway, while I was climbing, I was mentally comparing that bridge to the Brooklyn Bridge. You know, one's made of metal and the other brick. I could picture both vividly in my mind in the dream, even though in real life I've never seen either bridge in person. I've been to New York, but only Manhattan and Long Island. I've never been to San Francisco. Anyway, after I got to the top, I had to show someone else how to use the hair to get up there, too. Then I found that I was too scared to get back down, although I found myself wondering what would happen if I jumped into the sea. Apparently, in the dream I was some kind of super hero...yet this was a delusion. I decided not to jump but was still too scared to climb back down, so I was stuck.

That messed up my entire day today. I found I couldn't do anything I'd planned to do. Instead, I watched the stuff I'd recorded off Cartoon Network last night, trying to lighten up my mood. It didn't work. So tonight, I dug into my Stargate SG-1 boxed set (all 10 seasons worth of boxed set) and watched two episodes I hadn't seen all of before. The one where Daniel Jackson gets sent back by the Ancients and the episode right after it in which Jonas Quinn goes home. (My therapist, while a fan of SG-1, didn't like Michael Shanks as Daniel Jackson. I think Michael Shanks is nice to look at, especially after he started working out and got all muscular and stuff. And discovered hair products. But I digress.)

So here I am, an hour past my bedtime, worrying that I'll have more freaky dreams that will mess with my Monday. And as we all know, Mondays suck anyway, without any help from outside forces. My other worry is that I won't sleep at all, or not enough. This is another problem that's been with me since childhood: I don't sleep right. I never have. And having nightmares at least 80% of the time doesn't exactly help.

Well, I better sign off and have a go at sleeping. If I have nightmares that wake me up, at least I have a good book to read: "The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Wind" by Fuyumi Ono. It's the second in the series, which Tokyo Pop has been translating from the Japanese. There's an anime of it out, too, which I really enjoyed. I loved the first book, so I bought the second.

On that note, I just finished reading "Kamikaze Girls" by Novala Takemoto (a guy who claims to be straight...and a Lolita. Huh?) If you loved the movie, read the book, which is published in English by Viz Media. If you haven't seen the move, do. Absolutely do.

Maybe tonight I'll dream I'm in Harajuku, all dressed up as a Gothic Lolita and having oodles of Yen to spend on fun Japanese goodies. (What am I saying? I'd look totally stupid in those clothes! That would be a nightmare!)

Curse You Mahjong Titans!

I am addicted to Mahjong Titans. It's a matching game that came with Windoze Vista Small Business Edition. I can't stop playing this game! It's addictive, and using the design shown at left, cute beyond all reason! I call it Hyper Cute-Cute Mode. That particular design is aimed at kids, I suppose, but it reminds me of something the Japanese might come up with. TEH CUTE!

There's also traditional Mahjong tile design, large print tiles (for teh old folks), and primary color tiles. I lurve the pastel colored super cute tiles, though! KAWAI!

The games are one of the good things about Vista. There's Chess Titans, which always kicks my ass. Solitaire, Spider Solitaire, Mine Sweeper, and Free Cell each got a makeover. And Hearts is in there, too. However, I'm disappointed in the choices of card decks. In the old version of solitaire, you had a dozen (or was it just 10?) decks to choose from. In the Vista version, you only get three. And only one of them is pretty! No fair! I wonder if I can download other decks? I mean from a site one can actually trust. I want pretty card decks!

I can't wait to road test Purble Palace on Rachel. It's definitely geared toward a younger age group than hers, but even I get a kick out of it, so it might amuse her for a bit. If only because it's so damned CUTE! I made cakes. I made lots of cakes. Lots of impossible-colored cakes. I don't even think Chef Duff of Charm City Cakes would use these colors on a cake. Or maybe he would...

So I'm off to play Mahjong Titans! No...wait...I have new software to play with: Serif Font Manager! I am inordinately in love with fonts. I even rented the movie "Helvetica" and loved it. It's a documentary about the history of one of the most ubiquitous fonts in the world...and it was soooooo cool!

But I digress.

It's Like I Have Faeries...

I fought with the wireless installation for my new printer for an hour to no avail. I rebooted my laptop, only to have it tell me my wireless connection had "limited access". Disgusted, I unplugged the router, waited a few seconds, then plugged it back in. Then I retried the installation of the printer.

It worked like a charm. I have no idea why. (Not complaining, though...)

I guess I have Wireless Faeries. Who knew?

New Blog Template

Got bored, redecorated my blog.