Update: Sydney Central!

Sydney Central has been updated!

Note: Links will take you to a Shockwave program, which contains music.

Saturday in the park

It doesn't get much better than a perfect spring Saturday at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. Shooting good pictures here is like shooting them in the butterfly conservatory at the National History museum -- that is, too easy. Everything just looks amazing. It was clear, crisp, with the sun warm enough to make you want to take off your jacket -- followed by a cool breeze that made you want to put it back on again.



Of course, the downside to a perfect spring Saturday at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens -- particularly this Saturday -- is that every other fool in the world was on hand for Sakura Matsuri, or the annual Cherry Blossom festival. That meant a 20 minute wait to get inside, unless you a) knew about the side entrance and b) got there before every other fool in the world was lining up there.



My wise friend Scott and his companions smartly got there two minutes before noon, which meant they got in free, and without a line to boot. They wanted to check out the Taiko drumming, which began at noon and ran for an hour; Scott said they had to endure political speeches from local hacks first. (Hacks was not his word.)

I couldn't make that. I was occupied elsewhere:



Yes, the sometimes-Hitchcock of our generation was reading a children's book he'd written. It was part of the Tribeca Film Festival -- the reading, not the purpose of the book -- and also ties into his upcoming film, The Lady in the Water. He was delightful, and fielded questions after the reading from a young future reporter who kept asking him about the story, and noted that the pool reminded her of their pool in the Catskills. Shyamalan (who I can't help but always want to call Shamalamadingdong, in the nicest possible way) was very genial about the whole thing. He read from a copy of the book in his lap, but it was a copy that had no binding and I couldn't help but fear that someone had ordered an intern to rip up a copy of the book in order to facilitate the turning of pages. I'd like to think that wasn't the case.

The story is interesting, about a creature who lives under peoples' pools and inspires the ones who see her to do great things (but who is of course hunted by Something Awful In the Bushes) but I do feel Shamalama undercut himself by deciding to call the creature a Narf.

But you can't win them all. The man remains cool: His name is Night. How righteous is that?

But back to the park. Seeing Night meant I missed pancakes for breakfast, plus getting in early and free, but it also meant no drums, which in my opinion was worth the sacrifice. Scott and I roamed the park taking pictures (he also took some very nice ones of me I'm looking forward to seeing) and dodging the approximately 1.3 million others doing pretty much the same thing.



One thing I love about the pictures that come out of Botanic excursions is -- fresh wallpaper for the computer. Talk about reductionist. In any case, I'm going to try and put some of that up on Flickr in case someone wandering through wants to grab the shots. I have the hardest time finding wallpaper I want to use on my computer.

A lovely day out, complete with waterfall.

One small step for mankind

My mom's husband Larry is a great guy. Originally from Oklahoma, worked in Leavenworth Prison, did a lot of gov't contracting work, a shit-kickin' good old boy who also happens to enjoy watching musicals with mom. (We knew that was a good sign.)

He also voted for Bush. Twice.

Today, Mom let me know he has renounced the Shrub.

"You only have to hit me four or five times in the head before I get it," he said.

Hallelujah! I now have personal knowledge of the slipping opinion polls.

Welcome back to sanity, Larry. We missed ya.

My new pet

Ciara will just have to learn to live with him.

adopt your own virtual pet!

Seder? I hardly know her

Happy Passover to all! (And an Easter, if that's your thing, too.)

Gave my niece Sydney a bag of 10 plagues this year. She's 2. I'm that kind of aunt. They were:

1. Blood (a small tube of faux red blood that turns invisible).
Result: Never opened, kept far away from her. "That never works," Craig warned.

2. Frogs (a plastic frog attached to a tube and squeeze end; it jumped when you squeezed).
Result: Best toy of all. Sydney squealed.

3. Lice (plastic bug).
Result: Placed into ice bucket.

4. Wild Beasts (a leopard mask whose nose fell right off).
Result: Sydney cried when I put it on.

5. Pestilence (or, affliction of the livestock; this was a small squeezable cow with gooey eyes; when you squeezed the cow more goo came out of the eyes. Particularly nauseating and wonderful).
Result: Much squeezing, much icking.

6. Boils (a green rubber sticky hand that you threw up against the wall and it stuck; also had a long green string coming out of the wrist end).
Result: Tossed up on wall, forgotten much of the night.
Later result: Removed, leaving faint handprint on wall, attached to my sister-in-law's nose while she fake-sneezed.

7. Hail (two white balls larger than ping-pong ones).
Result: Ignored.

8. Locusts (plastic grasshopper).
Result: Added to ice bucket.
Later result: "Can I have more ice?" Mom asked. Ice bucket opened. "The ice bucket is full of plagues."

9. Darkness (a small pair of sunglasses).
Result: Sydney broke in 1.5 seconds, but SIL reattached and she put them on and did a Stevie Wonder imitation.
Later result: Tears when they kept breaking.

10. Slaying of the firstborn (a puzzle indicating a dead kid).
Result: Never removed from plastic, put away as more morbid than the others.

All in all, a good seder.

This is where I came from, and this is where I'm going

So I'm standing in line at the bank this morning to cash -- er, deposit responsibly -- my tax refund check. I've got my wheelie cart bag because I'm off to Austin on Wednesday night and I'm a little too organized for my own good, but I'm taking it into work a day early. And I'm wearing my backpack, carrying my deposit slip.

A middle-aged guy with silver hair interrupts me. "You must really love your job!""

I look down, he's pointing at my bag. "Em, no, this is for a trip. I'm going on a trip."

So we end up talking about Austin and how hot it is, the general nonsense you're likely to share with a stranger on a bank line.

A few minutes later on the subway, I'm kind of amused by the incident. In many ways we may still be back in the stone age, but I like that I'm living in a New York where it's assumed that a woman is lugging her work around before any other options are floated.

*******

Unrelated: I've taken to staying up far past my bedtime recently. Mostly it's just not wanting the day to be over so soon. But a lot of the time I'm left checking email once more, playing a doofy game, or writing a last-minute chapter in The Novel That Never Ends. But sometimes I end up stream-of-conscious Googling, which is not quite the same as a regular Google search. Free-forming the Google is just basically having a random thought in your head and being able to (for the most part) resolve it in .45 seconds. That's what often keeps me up at night, because the brain keeps moving on and wanting to know things like "Whatever happend to the Verlaines?" and "What is that nut tightener thing called you attach to a ratchet?" and so forth.

And so, I get to bed around midnight, despite my best efforts. By the way, the lead singer from the Verlaines is now Dr. Graeme Downes, and he teaches in New Zealand. His former bassist is bitter about publishing rights.

And it's called a socket.

*********

Also unrelated: A blog worth checking out -- Past Deadline -- because it's done by my bud Ray! Hey, Ray!

Still Rolling With This One: Vomitous Refuse Edition

This pretty much says it all.

From William Rivers Pitt:

George W. Bush and his people lied with their bare faces hanging out about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
They lied about connections between al Qaeda and the Iraqi government, lied about Iraqi connections to September 11, and further lied about the threat to America posed by Iraq.
They made a decision to invade that had nothing to do with those weapons, and even conspired with their British counterparts to goad Hussein into a war regardless of whether the weapons were there or not.
They used September 11 against the American people to frighten them into a fearfully subservient acceptance of the invasion.
They bypassed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in order to spy illegally on thousands of American citizens.
They leaked classified intelligence information in order to destroy a political foe, and in the process annihilated an intelligence network run by Valerie Plame. That network, it should be noted, was dedicated to tracking any person, nation or group that would deliver weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.
Every time they broke the law, their cronies in Congress manipulated those laws to make the actions taken legal.
Tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead. Tens of thousands more have been maimed. Millions live with the wretched deprivations caused by this war. The new Shia-dominated government wants no part of American involvement in this, and their so-called armed forces are in truth death squads masquerading as police and soldiers.
2,345 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq, with 17 of those deaths coming in the first six days of April alone. Tens of thousands more have been grievously wounded; nearly two thirds of all injuries suffered by American soldiers in Iraq are brain injuries, and amount to permanent debilitation.
We will be generations digging out from under the vomitous refuse left behind by this administration. From this day forward, any politician who claims that censure is not appropriate and impeachment is a waste of time should have their head examined by a whole team of medical experts. Bush and his people have committed treason, and did so for the lowest of reasons: personal gain and political protection.

And now it begins

This is hardly a place for breaking news, but since we have CNN on in the office I just have to throw up my snarky joy somewhere:

According to documents presented in court, Cheney's former aide Libby has revealed that Shrub authorized the outing of Valerie Plame, a CIA agent at the time, as an agent, which endangered her life (and her husband), and is clearly a criminal act.

The impeachment ball was already getting started; if this doesn't get him out of office, I don't see that anything else will.

I'm not actually "happy," only positive that this vindicates the vitriol I've had for the moron ever since he stole office.

More when people start actively reporting it. The spin on Fox should be interesting.

UPDATE: People are reporting it.

Spring Hits the Heights

And so, Ciara and I hit the streets on Sunday afternoon, under the warm April sun. JH is quite sweet when the weather turns.

More photos over at Flickr; hope I did this right.