BOY DID I GET AN ANSWER

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TITLE: PICKUP LINES

We were on the road today, I got my second injection of Eylea.  There has actually been some improvement, so Dr. Bradley (tall, dark and blurry) is fairly optimistic. 

While driving around I was thinking about a Face Book post I had seen a few days ago.  The poster had written that if a cowboy ever bought a vehicle that had the self driving computer, that eventually it would leave him.  I immediately thought of a few jokes. 

But as it was I came up with a song.  Here for my brother, Phil, is PICKUP LINES.  It needs a tune and probably put the refrain where you wanna. 

Pickup Lines. 
My girl friend said to get a truck and it came all complete.
It had computer science set to follow every street. 

We had a good relationship but something just went wrong.
That truck took off and left me and my jaw hung down too long.

I wished I had that upgrade to interrupt the ride.
I'll hafta trade my pocket book for dignity and pride.

I might have to hire a kid to write a tricky hack. 
Might take some fancy coding that will bring the darn thing back.

REFRAIN: 
Come back little pick up, you know you was adored.
Come back little pick up, you was all I could afford. 

Project Runway

Tonight's show was pretty darn good.  

The challenge was men's wear fabric and each designer make a piece for the modern woman.  Winning designers look would be made available on JCPenny.com.  Woot!

They were put in teams of two.  The twins wound up with each other and away they went. 

I liked the different looks and as usual the judges completely mystified me by their choices of what was the losing look.  The winner was Margarita.  I think you can go to the web site and see the dress.  It was very cute and kicky.

After some excruciating discussion the twins were told they were the losers but the judges could not tell who did what.  So they immediately began a one hour challenge using provided back stage to make a new luck.  TO BE CONTINUED ACKKKKKK!!

REVIEWING A MOVIE BLINDLY SORT OF..

Today I caught a promo for a movie out of the corner of my eye.  Didn't catch the name but it involved a black man and a white woman who survive a plane crash way up top of a snow covered mountain.

Ok then, having said that, let me say this.  When I worked in Dillingham, Alaska one of the required orientation classes was to take a survival class.  The man who taught the class had lived in Alaska many decades and knew his stuff. 

One of the sections was how to survive after a plane crash.  General rule, always carry a couple large garbage bags neatly folded up and in your pockets.  These can be used as a tarp or put on the legs to shelter from rain or snow, damn good tip.

One little item also came up. We were shown the black box.  It ain't black, it is red, rectangular, weighs about five pounds.  It begins to send out a signal if opened or after impact and will continue to signal for three months or so. The usual instruction is to stay with the plane. 

However in the movies case the crash was on top of the mountain.  And from the view of the hole out of the tail end is how they exited the aircraft.  Now then, the black box in small aircraft is located in the tail.  Yay, So now our survivors have to try to find the black box and IF they find it, they must carry it next to their body because if it freezes the signal will stop.  Search and Rescue has a better chance to find you if the black box does not freeze. 

Several years ago, when I worked in Barrow.  One of the physicians was on rotation to go to Wainwright, it was easily reachable by snowmobile.  He took off in a bit of a blizzard. The blizzard got much worse.  He had a locator with him and triggered at a small camp.  Unfortunately he kept moving around. 

Search and Rescue could not take off until the blizzard died down.  The signal stopped at one point it was clear that the locator had frozen.  Search and Rescue went to look and could not find him.  They searched for several days.  He was never found.  His snowmobile washed up on the beach the next summer.  

Bookity, bookity boo

More plotting for book.  There is a segment in the book where Junie McKenzie, Dennis and her daughter stop in their covered wagon at the entrance to the neighbor's farm, who are Mormons.  I will have the hostage attempt to explain the Mormon religion.  Joseph Smith was born about 1830 or so.  He had a vision and the angel Moroni dictated to him the bible of The Latter Day Saints on gold sheets.  This bible includes most of the Christian Bible.  She will tell them that Mormons can undergo a ceremony where they are baptized in the name of living or dead people.  This makes them Mormon and they go to Mormon heaven.  Pretty sure the Taliban will not like this, maybe they let off a few rounds of fire into the air. They may approve of his 50 or so wives. 

You Tube Stuff

When I watch my Facebook feed on my Kindle, I get a variety of clips.  Last night I watched several clips about Islam.  There was clip of ladies dressing appropriately in Hijab.  Some ladies were in a mall showing anyone how to wear the scarves.  It was very pretty.  There were several clips of Haj and some clips of people talking about the beauty of Islam.  They believe that God is alone.  That certainly eliminates the Holy Trinity.  And Jesus is recognized as a prophet.  Jihad should translate as struggle, not religious war.  There was one very nifty film of a wide group of people swabbing the ground around the Kaba, then a long row of riding vacuums.  There was a clip of golf carts carrying bodies, I assume to a funeral.  After all a million or more people come to Haj and a small percentage die while on Haj.  So over all the whole thing was quite beautiful and very beautiful.  I am only sad about a couple of things.  Muslims do not seem to sing or dance.  There are probably reasons for that but I think a choir of men singing an Islamic hymn would be nifty.  Also the dancing thing, I know that probably violates all sorts of modesty laws but to lose ballet, The Alvin Aayley Dance troup.  I dunno.  

More on my book or not....

I was thinking that I would add a scifi bit where in she is "wearing" nanobots that make a sort of shield.  Her last sentence will be "Hit me."  Or maybe I will let her infect the Taliban and watch them try to shoot, stab, inflict all sorts of mayhem unsuccessfully.  Heh heh.

Semi Obsessed

I find myself in nearly the same state of mind as yesterday.  Once again I spent most of the night mentally composing an e-mail to S.M. Sterling asking his advice regarding quoting his book in my (er) book.  I allowed that chances of completion were extremely low to vanishing.  So far the contact form is showing the circle of death, so the chances of that going through would seem to be slim to none.

I also returned to the hostage situation and envision the prisoner drawing maps of places where the story happens.  Having to explain place names such as Boise and the French fur trappers exclaiming "les bois!".  I have to explain about Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce tribe.  I would have to explain the Palouse.

I would have to explain Junie McKenzie's Percheron horses Cagnie and Lacy and the cop show they were named for, then have to explain women police officers to the Taliban. Erk. I would have to explain the feudal system

I can see there will many interruptions.  Oy. I don't think I will post this on FB, too rambling and in my head.

day dreaming about a book I wished I had written

Had great idea last night.  I lay awake thinking about it until about 4 this morning.  Suppose you found yourself captive in Afghanistan by hostiles and somehow, with a friendly translator,  bargained yourself into telling stories nightly Scheherazade style.  Only the story you chose to relate was to tell a favorite book of yours for instance Dies The Fire by S.M. Stirling. 

I lay there thinking how would narrate the book as a series of short stories. I wondered how to pronounce Hakke palle, which is the Finnish war cry. that means, Kill them all!!! er roughly.  I figured the topic would be very appealing to the Taliban. Mike Havel tells young Eric some of the Finnish saga's sung in the equivalent of sweat lodges that are extremely funny. Pretty sure Taliban appreciates tales about flashy knives.

I have already thought of a couple reasons why this might not work. Do or should I get author's permission to quote extensively, would I commit plagiarism somehow?  I dunno. 

I know of one author who has written a series called "American Hostages"  All about women CIA analysts, CIA agents and a very specially skilled CIA assassin who are stationed in Afghanistan when it gets overrun and they are carted off individually to their fates. 

The third book hasn't been written yet but I sure would like to see the CIA assassin try achieving peace amongst her captors with stories from her favorite book.  A movie would be good.  For that I would have to win about five lotteries in a row.  Sigh.

It is official

I cannot follow directions.  And I am going to blame it partially on the very small font at the various sites I visited today on behalf of my husband.  It was time to freeze HIS credit report. 

What? Sure Honey, I can help walk you through the process.  Oh, you want ME to do it while you watch......sigh. 

I got into trouble almost immediately because one of the sites kept freezing and I got the little circle of death or outright nuthin'.  First of all I typed Expedia into Google and oopsie, try Exquifax.  Put in all the information and that one worked very well. 

Went to Transunion that so confounded me yesterday, today everything went well also.

Next we went to Experian and I got into trouble immediately and floundered around trying to even FIND things.  Turns out there are different menus to choose from and each site calls their credit freeze something else. 

Before we were finished I got confused and was going to go to the next site and husband said, "No dear, we already did them".
"You sure?"
"Yes".
"Thank you, God." Sob.

As a dire warning one of the pull down menus on Google had credit freeze all three credit unions. Husband thinks it was a phishing site. But it was so tempting and if true REALLY pisses me off.

I HAZ A STOOPID

I recently finished reading and reviewing a book at Amazon for one of my favorite authors.  She writes about shifters and this book was all about a Jaguar millionaire and he fated mate who is an architect.  I enjoyed the book very much but I noticed a technical error regarding the girls nephew.  In particular his birth certificate as I have had extensive experience with BC's and how painstaking the state is regarding accuracy etc. 

I promptly left a review for the author explaining my finding.  She replied that I must have two stories confused as there was no birth certificate mentioned in her story.  WHAT!?   That cannot be true.  I decided to reread the book just to find out at what page exactly this all happened.  I was about half way through the book when it occurred to me to ask, where was the boy?  Soon?  I began to doubt my smug conviction that I was correct. 

So I opened another book by another author that had a world about wolf shifters and sure enough there was the whole damn birth certificate drama. 

Well crap!  Now I must apologize to the orginal author and try to charm her.  So I wrote an apology and told her that I really had hoped that her story with the BC was true and that we had somehow through the overuse of the internet opened a hole to an alternate universe.  I was then going to ask her if Trump had gotten elected and if North Korea had nuclear weapons and if not could I come live in her universe?  O bother.

OMG the great credit freeze chase!!!

All righty then.  I was prompted to do the credit freeze thing.  Here is what happened, it only took a couple hours but I am near exhaustion. 

1) Marched through the steps for Equifax the one that started all this crap and surprisingly every thing went swimmingly and I was prompted to print the confirmation number letter.  I fired up the printer which takes FOREVER to click, pop, grind and process until ready to print.  Hey, not so fast there, printer cartridges are depleted, change them or no printing.  Ugh, dug out the box, read directions, pried open printer, dug out old cartridges, fumbled other cartridges into printer, close door.  Printer resumes processing, grinding, popping and much of a muchness. Eventually printer flashed that the cartridges had previously been used and were depleted, please replace THOSE cartridges.  Shit and shinola!  So I went to Amazon and ordered new cartridges!!!! and wrote down the damn confirmation number from Equifax.  Then I turned off the printer. I didn't feel like Googling the hack for extending the printer cartridge lift for one. last. print...

2) Experian experience went well.  Put in info. Presto chango, they charged me 10 bucks.  Wheee! 

3) Transunion.  What a nightmare!!! First of all I had to select user name and password. Simple huh?  Nope, you get caught up in adding a number to the password and the user name cannot be used in the password.  Then I put my credit card in, the same one used for Experian and there was a problem.  What!?  I called credit card company and finally got a real person to speak to and they checked it and said the expiration date was different and she would change it to match my card and my card had been charged 20 bucks.  Uh thanks.  So back to Experian. I finally found the customer service number that WASN'T  A FAX NUMBER and got a very extensive menu.  I had to be very patient to listen to WHICH FECKING NUMBER to push to REFUSE the goddamn survey!!!  I was about to go to the nuclear number 0 option but I heard something that chirped that something had been placed on my account.  I am not precisely sure what that something is but at this point I shall let the fortunes go their delightful way. 

I can only hope that the criminals have to go through the equivalent of this to hack the crap that they want. May they live in interesting times. I am also a more than a little pissed that suddenly Experian and Transunion are raking in 150 million times their 10 and 20 bucks because of Equifax.  Bastards!!!

PROJECT RUNWAY

Last night's theme was for the designers to make dresses either good or bad, a modern interpretation of Descendants 2, daughters of Snow White and Malificence.  Last weeks winner got to choose who got which theme.  They had a budget of 300 dollars and two days to get 'er done.  Off to Mood for fabric.  Thank you Swatch!! And another twist the models were the customers and they got to choose which designer they wanted.  The twins went last, boo hoo. At judging there were six outfits left, highest and lowest scores. 
The three high scores included one of the size 22 models, lovely Black girl who rocked a gold and black lace thing with perfect cleavage and sassiness.  Larger Black ladies generally have better body confidence as it is a cultural thang and she rocked the runway.  If I had been her designer I would have asked her to stomp the runway, toss her head and give a finger wag at the turn.  Yeah, girl.  One designer chose a tightly textured maroon fabric made into snazzy tight pants, a jacket with peplum, long sleeves.  The cuffs were black and looked like melted vinyl records.  The front lapels were a nice flat black in a sort of controlled petal design.  The winning design was by the Zen guy with a girlfriend.  The models really like him.  Anyway his dress was very modern and forward thinking.  The top was a white crop top, long sleeves, long cuff with nicely manufactured wide flat ribbons with demure colored trim.  The body of the dress was a largish print of very subdued lines.  There was a slightly shaped cut to mid thigh in the front and the arm holes were cut to show what Heidi called peek-a-boob.  Very cute. The losing looks were the twin with hair.  She designed a very simple outfit with shorts and a gauze opaque skirt.  She was in.  Gah.  The loser was a 23 year old kid who wore dresses and long blond hair.  He had previously designed safe stuff and he designed to go all out and designed something with lots of strips of cloth strung up and down the dress, many seams were not finished, it was a hot mess.  He over designed and ran into a time management issue.  He was sent to clean out his station. Loved the show.

Oh dear

Regarding the 24 hour coverage of the hurricanes; I detect the faint tinge of exhaustion amongst the reporters.  I have heard MSNBC say "Thanks for that sporty report".  Uh okaaaaay.
Sure the coverage has been hypnotic but big bad Irma certainly took her damn time getting to the USA for gawds sakes.  Topical islands wiped out, where did all those folks go?  Where?  And just as Irma poops out to tropical storm over Orlando, here comes Jose.  Uh huh.  The right people did their job right and the citizens followed orders for the most part, and that is a good thing.  The insurance folk and Trump are happy, the hurricane whores are not.
Take heart there is still a couple months left in the season. We still have to see the results of land fall Irma during the day, so we can gawk at the wreckage.  I sincerely pray bam, bam, bam hurricanes do not become a habit.  Thanky.

Lets talk about music

I grew up in a baby boomer household.  The kind of music we heard on the radio was very old school country music such as The Letter Edged in Black and Old Shep, genuine tear jerkers.  The other music was Glenn Miller big band type of stuff.  I learned how to dance at sock hops at noon in the gym at school and Glenn Miller featured highly. 

TV music was mostly The Hit Parade, the regular singers had to figure out how to produce the current hit in a different way each week.  They sang "This Old Man" and other popular songs from movies we didn't see until well into our adulthood.  Of course we watched The Lawrence Welk show and learned how to dance the polka.  I remember one particular live show where a lady from the audience danced so energetically with Lawrence Welk that her wig bounced off.  Pretty sure that would have gone viral if the internet had existed in the 60's.

Elvis Presley did not feature much in our household.  Mom deemed his music too provocative.  I didn't care each way.  I watched the Beatles debut on The Ed Sullivan show and could only hear teenaged screaming and I only knew their early music from top 40 radio stations. 

The next three or four decades blurred together.  I like driving music because I loved driving.  When I lived and worked in California it was nothing to hop in anyone's car to drive to the San Francisco airport just to watch the jets land and ride on the walkways.  Oy!

I learned what little I know about classical music courtesy of Carla.  She mentioned how much she liked Handel's Water Music.  I bought the album, the tape,the CD and enjoyed it in various reincarnations over the years.  Opera was a different kettle of fish. I grew to love Nessun Dorma and other bits and pieces.  An entire opera?  Um please pass the hard stuff.  Burp.

Sister Ellen always enthused about American Idol and I never got into that.  Later on I began watching The Voice.  I really liked the blind auditions and learned to love songs I had never heard of.  I even Googled the original songs and found that in some instances I enjoyed the second hand version even better. 

As a miscellaneous category and in no particular order I have come to enjoy the following modern pieces; Say Something, Listen, Gravity, I'm a Creep, Hallelujah, Defying Gravity, Alabaster Box, Fix Me Jesus and The Four Seasons.  And I love just about any version of Tennessee Whiskey. 

I have noted on various international versions of The Voice there are a few songs that will guarantee a four chair turn; It's a Man's World, Natural Woman, Highway to Hell, Who's Loving You.  Yeppers that does turn the chairs. 

I accidentally discovered Hailey Reinhart on Google.  She was on American Idol when she was 18 and got to the semi finals.  Her voice has improved so much over the intervening years.  She does a terrific set in All About the Bass. 

So having exposed my vast ignorance I shall go catch up on morning news and when I get bored I will watch Britain's Got Talent on my Kindle.  Happy Labor Day!!!