Ok donchep, in a few minutes, I'm going to go see the Cotto vs. Margarito boxing match.
This one is going to be hard, because Margarito is bigger, and has longer arms, but Cotto is much faster, so I predict Cotto will win by dicision. Did you have a prediction?
Does anyone else love boxing and have a prediction?
In related news: I've been thinking a lot this week about pop culture portrayals of criminal insanity vs. the fact that most people with severe mental illnesses are far more likely to be the victims of violent crimes than to commit them.
Yesterday I did a new sketch for the official mrcaex image, watered the plants on my grandmother's grave, and ont he way posted a book I should have sent off a month or so ago, picked up some essentials (condensed milk for my grandfather, peanut puff snacks for my mother, and a book for myself) and took some reference pictures of horses and cats.
I also archived nearly a month's worth of photos, and added some slightly older images I wanted to use as samples for commissions to my website.
Today I sorted some paper stuff, inked said mrcaex image, coloured one of the adoption images I had in the works, did a tiny format colour test for the image for Eliza (which is OK'd now), and finished the Trading Post enough to make it public. Anybody fancy buying a commission, or an aubergine dragon, or a weird chicken?
My roomate and I were sitting on the backpoarch and talking about Obama, again. We both really like him. We have our doubts, chiefly that whole lack of experience thing, but are willing to forgive because it is just plain exciting.
In the conversation I realized why it (partially) is so exciting. The President is the last first. Meaning the first back astronaut, the first black baseball player, the first black whatever; or at the least the last “first black” that matters much, You know what I mean, by matter I mean first black Supreme Court judge, first black senator, first CEO, first black Chair of the Fed (oh, wait that one is left), first black golfer, first black heard of U.N.
Except for President.
It’s the last first and I get to see it. I never really realized I wanted to see the first anything that mattered, but now that I am, I am excited.
And by weekend off I mean I'm not doing a show. I've packed up Renea and sent her off to California, who is having everything go wrong, but the Red HOts show went well and she said everyone was super nice and great to work with. It's just the plane, car rental company, and hotel that's being a pain in the ass. Today she'll be selling at her booth and performing tonight at Midnight Mass and fly back tomorrow.
My easy peasy weekend, outside of frantic phone calls making sure everything works, has been pretty swell. Last night we did nothing. It was awesome. Got up at 8am and got ready for my photoshoot with thedamenoir at 10am. It was short adn sweet, I was back home by noon. Awesomesause! I'm going to do laundry and when weaponx_x_x gets home we'll decide what to do from there.
Tomorrow I'm teaching burlesque business and promotions from 1-3pm over at Relapse. I think we may go see Batman after that. I think we're the only people who haven't seen it yet.
Monday will be back to the grind with working two full time jobs, but I'm really enjoying this slow down this weekend. I am way too happy about doing laundry and organizing the house!
Wow, have you seen that John McCain tv ad - the one where he says "...and who do we have to blame for these $4 and $5 gas prices? Obama Obama." That's the worst presidential tv commercial I can recall seeing. It's just so stupid. I would be embarrassed to vote for McCain after seeing that commercial. Well I already would be embarrassed obviously, but sheesh, that's just desperate and pathetic, and hopefully it will backfire on him. I admit Obama has done a few sneaky and questionable things, but nothing like that.
Last night, we went to The Lock for owlfish's birthday dinner: it was very good, particularly for the price. I had pigeon with beetroot risotto to start and then Mike and I had A Huge Pile Of Steak (steak knives provided, but I didn't bother using mine), which was lovely although on the medium-to-well side, rather than the rare-to-medium we ordered.
We decided, when we realised that two hours had flown by, not to stay for pudding, so we headed back to the car. I had a cunning plan, you see.
When we were at the Eden Project, we bought a tub of cinnammon and clove boiled sweets. On Wednesday, we had four left, and ate one each on the way to the funeral; Mike had one on the way back, but I saved mine, and now thought that it would make a very good replacement pudding.
I voiced this plan to Mike, who went "Er, ah, when I was driving here...."
“Hi, everybody! Finian Xavier was born at 1:37, the way we wanted him to be born - and actually at high speed, great velocity in fact - fifteen minutes of pushing, and he came very, very, VERY fast when he came. He is 8 pounds, 10 ounces, and 20 inches long. Breastfeeding is off to an excellent start - he's eating like a horse, it's amazing, we are highly impressed! I had some tearing, but I'm okay, and I'll tell y'all the whole birth story, y'know, another time. We're exhausted, 'cause we got up at 6:30 this morning, and it's now 3:30 in the morning, so we're three hours away from 24 hours awake. He's a beautiful baby boy! He's got everything he's supposed to have. he appears to have hazel eyes; the hair is still too dark to tell anything, but it's probably going to be blonde - but who knows... eyebrows are blonde. Annnnd... that's it. Talk to you later!”
After the "Creating the Right Cocktail Menu" panel, Lis went to a "Designing Smarter Bars" panel, which interested her from a user interface design perspective (among the takeaway messages she got: people fuck up architecture in pretty much every way that people fuck up computer programs, and for most of the same reasons -- and you don't have to get to a very high level of abstraction before the solutions start looking real similar, too). I didn't go to a panel, instead electing to go to a tasting that Plymouth Gin was holding. See, they're bringing a new product in the the United States in the next couple months: Plymouth Sloe Gin.
I'm cribbing this description from SOMEONE else at Tales, and I can't remember whom. It could have been one of the presenters at the tasting . . . "In the United States, sloe gin is a bottle you only find in dive bars -- and it's usually the scariest thing there. It's covered in dust somewhere in the back, and it tastes entirely artificial and like cough medicine only worse."
One step up from that, but still unbearably vile, is the stuff that the presenter's grandmother makes. She takes the cheapest gin in plastic gallon bottles that she can get from the supermarket, soaks sloe berries in it, and adds tons of sugar.
Then there's the stuff we had at the tasting.
I mentioned, on this blog sometime, what it was like when I first had the marasca sour cherries in syrup that Luxardo makes, didn't I? You know, the REAL Maraschino cherries?
It was the same experience, only more so. "Oh. NOW I see what the entirely artificial gross thing was attempting to be like, and entirely failing to do."
Imagine sloe gin. Except good.
Yeah, you can't do it, can you? I suspect that even you Brits will have trouble with this one, since most of you probably have the same kind of sloe gin that the presenter's grandmother makes.
For you, just know that the stuff in the States is even worse than that.
[22:36] goddamnbathead: Gunlord, Ill give you a scooby snack if you kick red in the nuts [22:36] TGMagus: so you can type !radio and see what Radioserv is playing or about to play again. [22:36] redrum: i'll give you 2 scooby snacks if you make out with jorge [22:36] TGMagus: so now both !radio and !linkradio work. Niceness galore. [22:36] goddamnbathead: Damn, go red [22:36] * TGMagus hides. [22:36] TGMagus: :p [22:36] * redrum points [22:36] TGMagus: Ohnoes! [22:37] TGMagus: O_o;;; [22:37] goddamnbathead: Dryhump, -6 sta [22:37] * redrum barks and points [22:37] * Gunlord kicks red in the nuts [22:37] redrum: x_. [22:37] TGMagus: HAHAHAHAAAAA!
After the "Researching Drink Recipes and Collecting Books" panel was over, and Lis and I chatted with the panelists for a bit, we grabbed food -- I forget where -- and then went off to our next panels. I was a little late for mine; I don't remember why. Lis went to the "How to Get Your City, Bar, Recipe, or Bartender More Media Coverage" panel, which she can write about if she wants -- but the takeaway message was, "Journalists are even lazier and farther behind in their deadlines than you are. If you can hand them most of a story all nicely packaged and tied up in a bow -- with photos -- they'll be your best friend. They NEED an extra twelve column inches by yesterday, and if you can give it to them with very little work on their part, they'll take it. Of course, you need a STORY -- and stories are about PEOPLE. People are interested in people. So write them a story about people that their readers will be interested in, and give it to them, and bingo."
There's more to it than that, of course, but that's a lot of it, and it's something all of you can use, too. I mean, is there anyone reading this who DOESN'T need occasional publicity? Oh, probably, but, let's fact it -- most of you are writers, photographers, academics, musicians, jewelers, sculptors, chefs, cartoonists, actors, jugglers, singers, clowns, dancers, brewers, essayists, religious celebrants, graphics designers, some combination of the above, all of the above, or have some other profession or hobby that would be advanced by getting some sort of press notice in some sort of press.
Me, I went to "How to Create the Right Cocktail Menu for your Bar or Restaurant." Which was also fascinating. ( Read more... )
Oh, by the way I am on facebook. I don't really understand why people like it. It seems to be filled with uselessness. Does this mean I am just an old man?
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