So, I've been poking at Google Wave and it's...interesting. Confusing, but interesting. Originally, they gave me eight invites and I used up about four. Well, I just signed in and they gave me 21 new ones! D: So I'm inviting a few of you at random. And if you want to give it a poke, lemme know your gmail address in the screened comments.

Mwa ha ha ha! I have the power!

So, I love my Firefox Add ons. I LOVE Ad block. Add Bookmark here is awesome. My lj add ons are awesome and there's just a whole bunch of them that I can't imagine browsing without. I used to have Greasemonkey, but then it just stopped working for me. I dunno why. It just broke. And I'd tried intermittently to get it to work without luck. So I hadn't had it for a while. I found a reason to get it again today!

Briefly shifting gears, I don't like Twitter. In fact, I almost kind of hate it. Yes yes, I have a Twitter. But if you look at my Twitters, I'm sure about half of them are about how I do not like or forget I have a freaking Twitter. In fact these days, I spend more time on Twitter blocking serial adders than anything. Twitter is awash with inane little comments and one sided conversations. That drives me nuts. Ugh! And what's worse is that now they want you to crosspost yoru twitters everywhere. Hey, crosspost to myspace! To Facebook! To Livejournal!

NO! No I say! Spare us the horror of twitters! If I wanted to read those little crunchy bites of nothing, I'd read twitter. I don't, so I certainly don't want to see a whole slew of them bundled up and tossed onto Livejournal. Lately, it's been driving me NUTS! Yeah, I can scroll past, but it still drives me nuts as I do so! It's my friendlist. I want to hear about my friends (just not their twitters) and it seems stupid that I'd have to remove or filter them to not hear that particular part.

Enter Greasemonky! I have found a Greasemonkey script that blocks out Loudtwitter posts on LJ. *does a dance of victory* Take that Twitter! You can fine it Over Here. You still see the post itself, just not the whole list of tweets, so you don't have to ignore your friend, you just don't have to hear their tweeting XD And since I have greasemonkey, I poked around at some other scripts and found a nifty Killfile script so you can hide or block the comments of certain people on lj or various other blogging sites. Very handy for ignoring idiots and trolls. There's an lj comment unfolder script drifting around. I don't have to worry about that with a paid account, but changing accounts makes me miss the features, so using that script is also handy if you don't fork over money to lj. It can also work on other lj clones like journalfen.

Anyway, now that I have successfully slain Twitter on my LJ, I am going to take a victory nap. It's like a victory dance, but better! In closing, I'd apologize to all my twittering friends except that....I'm not sorry! I love you, just not your tweets.

Oh, and in related news, I found some chick on twitter who decided that my name was awesome and wanted to be For-Chan Fabulous. *smirky eyeroll* Whatever.

In my America's Test Kitchen Newsletter, they had a really tasty sounding recipe for a New York Crumb Cake and I wanted to make it, but I don't have buttermilk and I can't be arsed to go out and get it. =P But I ended up on a recipe for something else and the name just boggled me. Blueberry Boy Bait. *blinks* It had a cutesy little story attached:

In 1954, a 15-year-old girl won second prize in the junior division of a Pillsbury baking contest with a moist and tender blueberry cake that was named after the effect it had on teenage boys--one bite and they were hooked. Topped with cinnamon-sugar and loaded with blueberries, it straddled the divide between coffee cake and dessert cake.

Ok, sounds tasty and I have all the ingredients, so I made it.

( Blueberry Boy Bait )

So the answer the the question that I'm sure you're all asking, "Will Blueberry Boy Bait bring all the boys to the yard?" is disappointingly "No." It's lacking too many things that would make it truly enjoyable. Right now it's just palatable as far as I'm concerned. I'm not looking forward to polishing this thing off. =/

Because we all know that I am omnipotent, I present you with this message from lyiint about y!gallery:

There was a mix-up with the server company, which has been sorted out, but since we were down anyway, we decided to do an upgrade rather than shut down at another time.

Y!Gallery should be back online, bigger and better within the next 24-48 hours. ^^

The message was posted a little past midnight central time, so do your mental math.

Wondering where the heck y!Gallery went? This got posted in one of the comms I'm on by the mod Ldesu:

The server is offline at the moment and this is likely to be the case for a couple of days. I'm told this is because poor Sianne very unfortunately got her wallet stolen (in church!) and had to cancel cards just as the next server payment became due *headdesk* Lord!

But, please do not panic - your submissions are safe - and the gallery will return as soon as the bank has re-issued cards, etc.

So see you guys around there again soon <3

Hart a.k.a. Ldesu

I was wondering what the heck happened. Well now we know!

Last month, I posted about United Airlines breaking Guitars. Well, three songs were promised and I checked tonight and the next one is up! In fact, I was the first view on it :D It's wracked up over a hundred since then. But anyway, here it is:



I can't decide which one I like better. They're both amusing. I'm leaning towards this one though.

I was poking around on CNN.com and stumbled across this article, The four grossest kid health problems. Well, it doesn't lie! It's gross! Sure it comes from Parenting magazine, but it comes off as Four More Reasons You Shouldn't Breed! *shudders* Don't worry. I won't. x_x

Wow, another embedded video. I couldn't help it though! You need to see this!



More info from the band on the situation is here. And unsurprisingly, once the song hit the airlines did a massive backpedal which the singer talks about in this video response. Well United, that's what you get for fucking around with people. And there's still two more songs to come. HA HA!

Wow...where did those hours go? Fucking internet always stealing time from me! This time I got caught up in the 100 Most Iconic Internet Videos. I'm actually happy to say that I'd not seen about half of them...but now I have seen all of them. Whoops! Ok, not all of them, I did skip a few. Potter Puppet Pals was number 55! :D

Anyway, this one was the most striking. A man stuck in an elevator for 41 hours. Yes, 41 freaking hours! There's a story about it here, beware though, it's also very heavy with general information about elevators. Fascinating, but heavy. There's just something so haunting about watching the guy pace around and curl up on the floor. The piano music just seems to drive it home.

Thanks to the lovely Jo-Jo, I'm now the somewhat befuddled owner of a Dreamwidth account! I'm somewhat befuddled because suddenly I have to set up a layout and decide which 6 of my hundreds of icons to use. I don't even have my hundred plus icon spots filled up on LJ, despite making hundreds and hundreds of icons. So right now I just put up some Niku and cookie ones for the time being. As long as I'm fiddling around with a Dreamwidth layout, I should probably consider changing my LJ one too. I love the Nyankos, but I think it's time for a change. I'm tired of the pinkness. Some blue would be nice. Anyway, if all goes as planned, this should crosspost to LJ. That's nifty, though I don't expect to post here much. I already have an insanejournal and honestly I forget it exists. Oops! But Dreamwidth is supposed to be hot stuff for fandom. If nothing else, as I told Jo-Jo, I'm squatting on my name so you can't take it! Neener neener! XD

Obviously, I have been very lax in my writing lately. So very lax. I was thinking of doing another drabble on demand thing but it's the Fourth of July, so I'm gonna do something crazy! Instead of mere hundred word drabbles, I'm gonna do FOUR hundred word drabbles D: I know! So crazy right? XD

I didn't fill my ten person queue last time, so I won't bother having a cut off point this time around. All seekers will get 400 words of whatever. Your job is to give me a fandom/specific characters and a prompt, such as "pancake syrup" or "lip gloss". You get the point right? You're not limited to slash/yaoi. I will also give you het or yuri cause I'm flexible like that, though it won't be posted here. It can come from any fandom that I'm in or movie I've seen....obviously you don't know all that that entails, but just ask and I'll yay or nay.

You can look at the last round of drabbles over here. Now, hit me with some prompts!

You guys look like you could use some Niku cuteness. :D

Wow...Micheal Jackson died! We knew Farrah Fawcett was on her way out from cancer, but Micheal Jackson is a shock! He just up and died! And with all those sold out concerts in London coming up. I'm sensing a massive display of mourning coming on. Hopefully the man finds some peace in death, because he obviously didn't have much in life.

Go vote people, if only to keep the damn trolls from getting elected. It almost doesn't matter who you vote for as long as you vote against the trolls, Jameth and Daphny. You can see their platform posts here. So far, the serious candidates seem to be out front, but it's probably only a matter of time before the trolls rally a sock puppet army.

So, for anyone who hasn't already figured it out with all my very "subtle" links in my posts, today's posts were all about the Zombie apocalypse in accordance with Blog Like It's The End of the World Day! Rather than actually fighting off zombies, I tried for a little more of a realistic approach. Living on the edge of the boonies, I hardly think that zombies are just going to pop up in my neighborhood and crave brains. But if everything went into lock down.... I also included actual bits of my day in some of the posts. We really did have some spotty power issues. And then there was the voice post... I figure if I'm running from a Zombie Apocalypse, I can't do it from my computer, so it needed to be a voice post to close things off. I considered using some dramatic music or screaming as I was eaten by a zombie! But I want to live! So we escaped and I made a voicepost and I sound like I'm five! Ugh. Whatever. Hope you had as much fun as I did!

Cookie out!

Fuck! Some dumbass teenagers in the neighborhood got shitfaced drunk and took out their stupid fucking golf cart to drive around the neighborhood. The idiotic driver crashed into the house for sale across the street. They only ran into the white picket fence surrounding it, but I screamed. It was loud and I was already on edge. Andrew and I were getting ready to sneak down to the bridge on foot to check it out, but now the neighborhood is a hive of activity. It looks like there will be no ambulances out to pick up the morons. They mostly have cuts and bruises. I'm sure someone in this snooty neighborhood is a doctor. The lady that lives behind us is, but she's on vacation in India. Whatever, those little snots deserved it, but now Andrew and I are still stuck here waiting. Mom and Sam already evacuated and they're waiting for us in Beaumont. We can be there in a couple of hours. We just need to get out of this damn neighborhood.

We've had brown outs and power flickers all day. Our cell phones aren't getting signals, but Mom managed to call us on the land line. She's out at Sam's and they've been asked to evacuate. Apparently I-10 is not closed around Lafayette. You can only head away from the city where they are. The bridges in town have all been put up so you can't cross the river. Not like any cars are allowed on the road, but that's weird. From our house, you can usually hear the constant traffic going over the grills of the drawbridge, but now it's silent. It's made even creepier by the absence of birds. Even the cicadas aren't doing their usual annoying buzz. It's hot and humid and gross, but none of their buzzing. Every once in a while you hear some dogs barking or howling or a few neighbors grouping together, but other than that, a very unnatural silence.

Mom and Sam tried to drive down here but there's a road block just before Tel Jean Road, so they weren't able to get down. With the power being so unreliable, a lot of people in the neighborhood are actually barbecuing. You can smell it out there in addition to the weird smogginess, there's grill smoke everywhere. It's a nasty mess. Regardless, Andrew and I have begun to pack up our cars with some clothes and other essentials. We're hoping that we get evacuated soon as well. Of course, we don't know what the fuck we're evacuating from, but I'd feel much better being on the road heading for Texas than sitting around here in the dark, wondering. If nobody comes to evacuate us, I'm seriously considering going over the condemned bridge. Just past this end of Tel Jean, there's a bridge over the river. If you go over it, you can get out to Sam's house. It was damaged in the flooding a few hurricanes ago and has since been deemed unsafe. It's still standing, but I guess unsteady. I'm wondering if we can drive down there, clear whatever barriers they have on it and pump it as we go over the bridge. Once over the bridge, we should be able to blend in with the rest of the evacuating traffic and meet up with Mom and Sam.

I'm hoping that there's just a few sand barrels or something easily moved out of the way. I never go down towards the bridge. There's a road block that detours you down Tel Jean anyway. If we do that, it's best to wait till it's darker. Then we can drive down the street with our headlights off and be a hell of a lot less noticeable. Not that there's many people to notice, other than the neighbors. There's been the occasional police cruiser through the neighborhood, usually using the loud speaker to tell people to return to their homes and remain calm. Yeah right, as if! Once they drive off, everyone's back out there chattering like a group of angry chipmunks. And I don't blame them!

This is so weird. The quiet, the color of the sky, the smog, the patchy electricity, the lack of information. Talking to other people is the only thing that keeps you sane. Sitting around and stewing in the situation is what drives you mad, leads to all that crazy stuff. It's only been a few hours and you can tell people are jumpy and edgy. Even though people are talking, some of them will look at you funny and you kind of wonder what the fuck is on their mind to stare at you that way. After the first time or two, I just stopped going out there with them and continued to put stuff in the car.

Andrew got his new computer in the car. We've got clothes, food, dog food, some family photos. I stole the box of cash from mom's room. Money is a great motivator. If we can't make it over the bridge, maybe we can pay off the road block with a couple hundred bucks. At this point, we're just playing the waiting game. I'm waiting till the last minute to put my computer in the car. It's one of the few things keeping me relatively calm right now. Having music helps. Having cake helps. Not being alone is a big help. But even then, there's a lot of time to speculate on what's going on. Is it really escaped prisoners? A gas leak? A freaking terrorist attack? Hell, maybe it's the damn apocalypse! There's no way of knowing.

The local news sites still have generic "Stay in your home" notices and the national news has nothing. They seem to be going about their day as usual talking about the elections in Iran and Six Flags filing for Bankruptcy. I wonder if it's because of the Jazzland/Six Flags New Orleans disaster left by Hurricane Katrina. They were just asking for trouble when they built that up out of the swamps. Into the swamps it will return since no one's touched it since. Ironically, they have a 20 year lease on the place or something. I've seen some pictures from people who have managed to get in and look around. I love those abandoned places pictures. I sort of feel like I'm getting an up close and personal taste with that now. Sure, the neighborhood isn't abandoned by any means, but it has that sort of atmosphere of something not quite right.

Ugh. I'm so tired. My body is achey. I just stretched and now my back is throbbing with pain. Ow. Not cool. Shoulda slept more, but the dogs needed to pee. And yes, it's still green out there, but more hazy now. It's sunny, green, and hazy, like there's a bit of ground fog. That makes me nervous. Green sky or no, the sun is out and hot, so it would burn off any real fog, so this is something else. Understandably, I spent as little time as possible out there. I'm beginning to think that maybe there was some sort of chemical leak. Aren't we supposed to evacuate for this? And now they've done the opposite and we're in some sort of lockdown.

The power just flickered, so I suppose I'll cut my rambling short and shut down the computer before it can go out on me.