icouldfly

It's been some time since I posted and it is because I have been so busy lately. I did get the day off school today due to the tropical storm which threatened South Florida. I had a lovely day hunkering down...laying out by the pool, meeting friends for lunch - this is the storm that isn't; in fact, my fan is creating more wind heh. Which isn't to say there haven't been signs of it. The surf is up baby! The waves have been around 10-12' and I've been out there for the past three days :) Some superb rides and it should still be riled up for the next few days so I know what I will be doing this weekend :) My name is definitely not Charlie! I will not, however, be surfing with this friend of ours.

This guy must have done something really bad in a past life because his karma is for shit. He got rear-ended in his new tricked-out Grand Cherokee and the thing was totalled. He checks out ok in the hospital and two days later, Tuesday, goes surfing and gets bitten by a shark! They are trying to save his big toe, but no news on that yet. Poor guy :( We all know it happens and he isn't the first person we know who has been attacked by a shark, but it's just part of the deal if you want to surf. We had to tell mom because she knows the guy's mom, and she is less than thrilled about us being out surfing this week, but really, what can she do? It's much easier being the kid than the parent :)

What else...hmmm....Oh right, Stephen Colbert has been denied a place on the Carolina ballot. Oh geez, what a shocker. All the hipsters are calling foul and being all morose, but what's wrong with this picture? He is a character on a tv show - you might as well campaign for Hannah Montana, retards! I wish assholes would stop trying to wrap their publicity stunts in respectability by preying on the mindlessness that pervades this country. The fact that millions of Americans are having problems separating fact from fiction, as evidenced by the numbers signing on to support Colbert's bid, does not bode well for the future of this great land. If we will vote for a fictional character, who has never so much as been involved in a campaign to put a speed bump on his street, as President, then we really and truly will get the leadership we deserve.

Don't you think our reputation on the world stage is poor enough already?

Here's a fun thing to play around with, if you're bored at 3am and feeling voyeuristic.

Most Sony digital cameras start saving photos with the following name "DSC00001.JPG" and a lot of people take these photos and upload them to the web, where the all-knowing, all-seeing Google later catalogs all of them. So by clicking on this NSFW link you can see the first photo taken by someone with their new camera or newly formatted card for some cameras. This is what it looks like when thousands of Sony cameras lose their photo-virginity.

Bonus fun, IMG_0001.JPG is the equivalent for Canon cameras, so this will work too

There are all kinds of images to be uncovered, including the requisite amount of amateur porn, but many are rather sweet and occasionally exciting:



There are lots of funny ones:



Some are shocking, like the first pics someone took on Sep 11 in NYC but whatever they are, they are a peek into the often unaware psyche.

Oh, and in the interests of journalistic integrity or something along those lines - *cough*exhibitionism*cough*, here is my virgin shot:

I caught the preview for the movie, 'Lars and the Real Girl', and as I watched, it struck me, quite forcefully, that I need a man. Or, at least I WANT a man. I've got that little itch, the throbby one at the heart of my core which only really gets sated for a few hours after the fact, then comes roaring back with its insistent beat. If any of you have seen Easy Money and remember how Rodney Dangerfield's daughter finally took to sex in the end and how her sex-crazed husband had to hide from her insatiable demands; well, I could probably make Ron Jeremy beg for mercy. And I haven't had any for awhile.

I don't mean to paint too graphic a picture here, but I decided that I need to find a man. Oh, I know, there are lots of guys out there more than willing to volunteer, but it isn't as easy as taking an ad out on Craigslist. Contrary to what my first paragraph would suggest, I'm not promiscuous, and the kind of man I want is not readily available.

In the movie preview, Lars is a socially awkward man who orders a life-sized mannequin and lugs her around everywhere pretending she is real. Naturally, the doll is gorgeous and hot, and is presumably anatomically correct, plus there are all kinds of opportunities for jokes about the perfect girl who never talks and doesnt want equal attention under the covers. All in all, I suspect the movie is going to rank up there with Freddie Got Fingered, but still, it got me thinking about the perfect man. Or rather, perfect for me.

First, looks. I absolutely go for the dark-haired, light-eyed, paler complexioned man such as is commonly found in Ireland. If he has an Irish accent too...well, I might have to steal him from someone actually if he is taken. If he has the soul of a poet, and that penetrating gaze that sees all the way through me and lights my own soul on fire...well, then he can pretty much have my soul. I hate 'roid freaks but a nice body with some muscles is necessary. I love arms and a certain, secret muscle in them that will make me lower myself to the ground. A confident smile, a secret, knowing, crooked, sexy smile can make me do the same. He needs to be very smart, very romantic, very strong, and very accomplished, along with the other attributes. For that and other reasons, I am into older men, but this actually makes things much more difficult.

Now, before you start laughing and commenting that there are a million older men who would deathmatch in order to sleep with a teenaged girl who isn't too hard on the eyes, the operative word here is "teenaged". The sort of man I am interested in is keenly aware of the laws regarding such dalliances and is rarely to be enticed into flaunting them. The fact that I am discreet and precocious, mentally and physically, helps alleviate the problem but by no means eliminates it.

Even if I were to find a man satisfying the requirements, he will have generally been snapped up by another women, another OLDER woman, by now, and she isn't about to let him go. I don't steal, or borrow, other women's men, and I wouldn't want a man who would let me anyway, (note exception for sexy Irish men, above).

In keeping with the movie theme, here is a partial list of some actor/music men who make that little throb grow stronger:

Clive Owen
Viggo Mortensen (only as Aragorn)
Terrence Howard
Ben Gibbard
George Clooney (he might be a greedy lover though so he's just a maybe)
Tobey Maguire
Mel Gibson (before he turned into an asshole and I bet he's greedy too so, you know what...he's off the list)
Sean Connery (as Bond only)
David Caruso (as Horatio on CSI Miami and yes I know Im a freak ;)
Denzel Washington
Edward Norton
Bono
Julian Casablancas
Tommy Lee Jones (only in The Fugitive)
Hugh Jackman
Brad Pitt (well, duh, he's just beautiful and so is Angie...in fact, I'd consider...cummon, you've imagined it too ;)

Anyway, it isn't easy finding someone to fill such demanding shoes, and I can see why Lars might have been inclined to buy a shell and mentally imbue it with all those attributes he found most enticing. Then again maybe I, like Lars, should just relax a bit, and open myself up to someone who is a little bit outside the box. After all, I don't live the rest of my life inside it.

So, who is on your 'lists', and to make it interesting, tell me whether you know any of them personally and if so, the status of your chase. As for me, there is someone, or more acurately, there was someone, (though not on my list above). I blew it with him, but sometimes, he steals into my dreams; and when he does, every sense explodes into life and I am new again. It's no wonder I dig photographers - they can peel me like an orange and I like what they uncover.

The end of a crazy week, sportsfans! I am about ready to drop and I guess I've been unconsciously communicating this, because we are all going to New York for three days - joy! We're staying at The Plaza so we will spend lots of time across the street in Central Park, see two plays, have lunch at Tavern On The Green, dinner at 21 Club, and a whole lot more fun, fun, fun!

I will check in on your worlds when I return, but meanwhile, stay out of trouble and have a blast this weekend!

Meanwhile, for those of you with cars, here's your handy dandy little guide to hacking your friendly neighborhood Laserwash 4000 carwash, as commonly found at BP stations and others near you ;)

Ciao Ciao bellas :)

I've been very busy all week - loads of school work and activities. I won't be going out this weekend except for a few brief breaks to exercise. The next two weeks are going to be brutal because I have midterm tests and major assignments due in every class, including my electives. The Miami Invitational College Fair is in two weeks and all the deans and recruiters from all the top schools will be there. I need to have a 4.0 GPA to talk to them about, because the unis I am interested in only take the best students. Especially when they consider a Florida (or Texas) applicant because the school systems in these two states are not viewed favorably by the top universities. So, even though my school is ranked very highly and 100% of our students get accepted to college, I have to stand out more than someone from another state does. So, no parties and shopping and boys for me :( Oh, the drama and selfish worries of a teenager in America...I've been stateside too long and it's time to travel again!

I was going to write this post about Italy, a country I am missing so SO much, and compare life there to life here. Italy might be my favorite place and I want to live there, at least for a couple of years. But how do I describe the land, the people, the living history, the sense of being part of something so ancient and enduring and bigger than you? Where life is lived more slowly and everything is about reverence for family, friends, food, wine, hours and hours spent over meals and talking, talking, laughing, loving.

Where elderly parents and aunts and uncles and cousins are never put in a home, they are recognized as jewels with much to teach the younger generation and are cared for and loved their whole lives. Where brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins are close and gather regularly to feast and talk and laugh and tighten the bonds.

Where you can never be overdressed or care too much about your appearance - fashion is a part of daily life and it is taken seriously by the population, even the most lowly-paid worker, (we Americans simply have no fashion sense as a whole and wear clothes you couldn't even find in Italy). It's a place where food is art and treated as such. They eat healthy food, grown locally and prepared with care, and avoid the processed, corn/wheat/sugar intensive foods that we ingest in alarming amounts, and they walk everywhere and take siestas. There is no obesity epidemic like we have here.

It's about living with all of your senses, all of the time and being filled with intense passion and joy and kindness toward others. It's not a disposable society that ignores and is ignorant of history and has to continually reinvent itself in some desperate and impossible quest for bigger, better, faster, stronger. Italy isn't a society that has become alarmingly dependent upon pills nor does a quarter of its population suffer from depression and other mental illness.

It's something that is a part of all the Mediterranean countries and it isn't anything like America. We are the poorer for it.

I love my country, but I feel we are lost in some tragic way and we need to stop being so insular and start looking and learning from others. Because they have learned a thing or two in the past thousands of years about how to live and what really matters while doing so.

Yeah, stuff the GPA, it's time for me to fly away :)

That's right, sportsfans, it's a holy day in the geek calendar; and like my fellow zealots, I've been preparing to meet the Prophet Of Truth for awhile. Everything from stealing furtive hours clearing my schedule of unfinished games to sitting crosslegged in the dark honing my Spartan laser/Bubble grenade switch speed via battle visualization. Wax on, wax off philosophy at its finest.

Of course, a soldier needs to be as physically strong and reactive as possible to avoid being Cortana bait, because even though she is a great character and I personally admire her, sharing some of the same tough, no-prisoners, no-compromise, kick-ass aspects as I do, I am betting she turns traitor and I am going to own her bad ass if she does:) Fit though I undoubtedly am, I've got to be world-class if I want to emerge bloody but triumphant at the lan parties that will no doubt populate the landscape in the weeks and months to come. Anyway, I have been clocking a lot of time with my Wii, doing a lot of boxing and tennis, and virtually ignoring my X360 as a result.

And then, it decided to ignore me right back.

Yes, you guessed it fellow gamers - my Xbox failed. The very same console that is the ONLY console to run Halo 3. Failed. Kaput. No gaming for you!

Yes, my brothers have one EACH, and no, I haven't a hope in hell of logging any time on either of them for the next, oh...let's be optimistic here...50 years or until Halo 4 gets released.

They did let me look at it.

It's fantastic.

The repair guys said my xbox will be ready in perhaps another week and said not to phone. They would be sending calls straight to voicemail due to ever-increasing amounts of frantic calls from Halo 3 'freaks', desperate to get their boxes back. I sighed and agreed to be patient but as I hung up the phone, I swear I heard in the background the sound of Halo's protagonist, Master Chief, exhorting his troops to , 'Finish this fight'!

I spent about 5 hours surfing today** and I have that lovely drowsy, rubbery, mellow, beach, sun and sand thing going on :) Surfing is one of my favorite things to do so I am a happy, happy girl today :) We finished things off with a few games of beach volleyball, then came back here, fell into our pool, showered, and now our friends have gone back home for awhile until we meet up later. I think we are going to go to a beach party we heard about and soon, I am going to help my dad shuck a whole bunch of oysters and make some yummy mussels and my famous asparagus salad for dinner - just a great day! I hope you are all having as wonderful a weekend as I am...*smile*

**

It's Friday, and I had two major tests and two major papers due today. I feel a bit dazed and in need of a laugh or two. This weekend, I am going to go surfing with my brothers and some friends and I hope you all have as fun a weekend as I plan to have. Since most of my FL is comprised of gamers,


Enjoy...*smile*

I have two older brothers who are twins and they are insane. If they were born with any fear or even any self-preservation genes, they long ago beat them out of each other. They are fairly smart individuals, but their relationship has always been a very physical, bordering-on-violent, game of one-upmanship. With their ruthless quest for bigger, faster, higher, and more dangerous athletic pursuits, coupled with their undeniable charm and incredible leadership abilities, they have often been able to convince me to attempt things against my better judgement. They are also a major factor in my need to overachieve - it's not easy keeping up with them, (click on the image and you can read the full text on the sign - it's a fantastic run btw :)



Being twins, they present an united front and they steamroll over any voices of dissent, so when I heard a lot of banging and pounding coming from the garage, I paid no attention. Ditto when I heard various bangs, crashes, and thumps. I wandered down to the garage only when the circular saw started up.

Me: What are you doing?
T1: Building a skateboard ramp
Me: Where're the cars going to park?
T2: We're building it over them
Me: Mon and dad are gonna be unthrilled
T2: We can handle mom and dad
T1: Pass that piece of plywood

In the end, their ambition was quelled by impatience and incompetence, so they ended up not building their extravagant balcony-ramp over the cars. I wandered back down when I heard the first board hit the wood, and had to admit they had come up with a pretty cool, if half-assed, little setup anyway.



There was still the problem of where the cars were going to go.



We sat on the ramp after a couple of hours of skating, and watched my dad pull in, stop, stare, then switch off his car and walk toward us. He took in the scene, gazed at my brothers, then spoke.

"Your mother's going to kill you".

The twins smiled beatifically and pointed at a picture of my dad** affixed to the wall. The words, 'Dad's Ramp', were spraypainted beneath. Dad's face creased into a huge smile and he reached for one of the boards.

"Sweet! Don't worry about your mother, guys, I'll handle her".

**The picture of my dad on the wall:

I live in someone else's house. It's a beautiful house on the water with a swimming pool and lots of trees and nice things and enough personal space that I can avoid my brothers when I want. However nice it is, it's still my parents' place, and it reflects their style, lives, and experiences. In less than two years, I will be leaving their house, and will get my first chance to imprint myself on my own place. I expect that place will be an institutional-grade dorm room in a university residence, undoubtedly be no more than half the size of my current bedroom, and not technically belong to me, but I will be allowed free reign to express my own style and personality. My mom can't walk in, see the graffiti from the party last night covering the walls...



...and order me to have it removed by sundown or there will be a showdown I have no hope of winning, (the allusion is apt - mom is the sheriff in this house).

When I think about the kind of place I'd like to have, it's pretty easy to envision the kind of warm, richly-textured, inviting, casually elegant rooms that suit my personality and the things I like to collect and have around me. It's harder to envision the packaging. So much is going to depend on where I take up residence. I'd like to live in a forest in the middle of a huge, glorious city with a good surfing beach, surrounded by trees and my own natural waterfall with a deep-water swimming hole at the bottom and a secret cave behind the cascade and some great snowboarding within an hour or two. In this nirvana, I'd have a house that was a part of its surroundings, an intrinsic part that not only didn't detract from the natural beauty around, but became it. A house as timeless and ageless and achingly beautiful and soulful as the land itself. A house that I could gain wisdom from.



"...I think that you can hear the waterfall when you look at the design. At least it is there, and he lives intimately with the thing he loves." Frank Lloyd Wright, on Falling Water, his masterpiece.

Ned Kahn's work is a, 'harnessed manifestation of turbulent natural phenomena. Many of his pieces involve variations on simple arrays of suspended plates that flutter in the wind, making visible the currents of air that surround us...materials that are traditionally considered solid but exhibit unique emergent properties in granular form, prompting some scientists to describe granularity as a fifth state of matter'.

My chem teacher turned me onto this guy's art, and it's just the ticket for someone like me who finds great peace and joy in watching sand erode on a beach. It is easy to tell he is a Buddhist. Zen and The Art of Art.

Ran across a mildly interesting tool that apparently calculates the worth of your blog.  The grand total for moi?  Zero point zero zero.  Yep, I'm worthless in blogland :)  I don't have any friends here yet, so I used a few random people on a couple of communities I peruse and it was just as I suspected - everyone is more worthy than me...*big grin*  here is a sampling:

Random girlgeek - $1,693.62
Random guy hoping to score with a girlgeek - $1,412.36
That chick obsessed with Stargate Atlantis looking for someone to beta read her fanfic - $3,812.09
That furtive-looking guy who only makes lewd comments re: his joystick - $2,668.14

In case anyone actually reads this and is interested in seeing their own (inter)net  worth, you can check out: 

http://www.business-opportunities.biz/projects/how-much-is-your-blog-worth/

Speaking of Google...did you know they had a public policy blog whereby they espouse their Candyland vision for government, policy and politics?  Yeah, neither did I.  This week, our alien overlords take aim at Australia where I think they are aiming to give the vote to those wascally wombats.  Better the enemy you know, people!

http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/


I'm off to see The Brave One.  Balls of Fury was sold out.  

Arianna Huffington, I am not and I'm never going to playfully prognosticate* with Jon or Stephen or go head-to-head with Bill, (Maher, that is, not Clinton who, I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest, gets enough head already or O'Reilly who is very happily living with his Insane Clown Posse in the persons of Coulter, Hannity, Imus et al, on the wrong side of my personal tracks). I'm no pundit, politically, socially or otherwise, but I have views, grievances, commendations, arguments, and comments on a whole lot of things and people, including myself.  I'm going to air them here along with a dose of the banal, because sometimes life is just that boring :)

Ok, this will do for a start - I'll be back later.

*partial list of playful prognosticators and their wacky wisdom