What's your Rock Star Name?

Davin is Chad Sonic-De'ath
Anya is Davina Sonic-De'ath
Maya is Drew Sonic-De'ath
Sage is Celine Sonic-De'ath
Tiernan is Claude Sonic-De'ath

Via Pop Culture Junk Mail

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  I knew I couldn't be the only person to hold this opinion of sandboxes! Shudder.

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  I donated platelets and plasma today. As you can tell from this handy chart given the fact the my blood type is A+, these are the preferred donations for me.

I'd never done this before, and it was a pretty neat process. Instead of just a needle hooked to a bag, which I'm used to from whole blood donation, you're set up with a huge machine for 1-2 hours. The machine takes blood from you, spins it, keeps what it wants and gives the rest back in very short intervals of maybe a minute or less. You almost can't tell whether it's drawing or returning, but there's a computer screen that tells you everything that's going on if you're interested. I had kind of pictured it as a process where they took a bunch of blood off to a back room somewhere, sorted it out, and then brought some back, but it's all going on at the same time.

Benefits: You feel good about what you're doing, because you really are potentially making the difference between life or death for someone. You get to watch TV in peace for however long it takes. Everyone is really nice to you. :-) They even gave me a scarf! Since they give back all of your red blood cells, you don't feel "low" afterwards like you do with whole blood donation.

Drawbacks: The needle looked to be about the same gauge as the nozzle of a gas pump, although I must say it wasn't a bad stick at all. Once you're hooked up, you're stuck, ie no potty breaks! The anti-coagulant binds with the calcium in your blood so you feel sort of tingly and odd after a while. They give you TUMS to counteract this, so it's really not too bad. The worst part was the lack of potty breaks, you forget how often you pee when you're home all day...

So, if you're interested, make an appointment, empty out your bladder, and head down to one of these donation centers. And then empty out your bladder again at the last minute, trust me on this one!

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  I can't remember what I was searching around for a while back when I found this article describing a Black Panther wedding from 1969. (It was from the Black Panther Newspaper Collection if you want to find more articles like it.) I saved it because it pulled at my brain and I wanted to come back to it.

I find myself wondering a few things as I read this. Are these two still alive? Still married? Do they still hold these ideals? Do the children, who are older now than I am, remember singing, "We want a pork chop, off the pig," after their free breakfast that morning?

I am always fascinated by the internal workings of social movements, whether I agree with them or not (or even if I'm rather ignorant about them, like the Black Panthers). I wish there had been a picture accompanying the article, so we could see what it meant to look "radiantly revolutionary." I can't seem to find a picture of the uniform, but according to this it consisted of "...black berets, creased black slacks, black leather jackets, starched powder-blue shirts, black ties or a black silk scarf tucked in around the neck, and shined black shoes."

Anyway, that's all I know about that subject, I just thought it was interesting...



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  with the right blend of goofy and twisted, but this will do the trick. Hee hee!

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  in 30 seconds, in bunnies. Why not?

They have some other bunnified movies here, too. I'm curious to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Pulp Fiction when they come out.

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  I wonder if they have this anywhere near here. It sounds like it'd be fun to try, like it would either be really, really good, or truly hurl-inspiring.

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  This is getting turned into a political mess, when in reality I think a very insidious picture is being missed. If schools make a point of cracking down on this behavior for a week, doesn't that essentially mean the administration gives its tacit approval to bullying for the rest of the year?

Don't you think there'd be a huge outcry if the governor declared "No Sexual Assault Week" or "No Lynching of Minorities Week"? Sure there would, because people would be out in force demanding that these things should be focused on all of the time. But, when the same thing occurs in the schools, granted on a lesser scale (or is it?), the schools are applauded for actually doing something, ANYTHING about the problem. Don't get me wrong, raising awareness is a good thing. But so is taking concrete steps to correct the problem and protect the children placed in their care, and unfortunately that is woefully lacking in these days when the memory of Columbine is fading.



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  to learn to do this...

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  16.7 Pounds!

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  "adding insult to injury."

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I just love the name. I can't help it.

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  if you don't claim over $1 million on your income taxes, especially if you earned it by being the first Survivor. There might be a few undiscovered tribes in third world countries who haven't heard of this guy, but everyone else knows he won the money.

Duh.

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  How does someone shoot a nail into his own head and not know it?

Apparently it's rather common, as the hospital has seen another case like this, and I'd blogged another case like this in December where a guy went 4 years with a nail in his head. It was from an accident, though.

But, I still don't know how you shoot a nail from a nail gun into the roof of your mouth without feeling it? Maybe the nails are very fast? Still, it seems like you'd notice something though. But, there are an awful lot of nail gun accidents, if you don't believe me just go google it some time. Watch out, even some people's family sites have pictures.

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  It's 54 below zero today in Embarrass, Minnesota.

Quote: The cold at Embarrass didn't stop the regular customers from getting their morning coffee at Four Corners, a cafe and gas station. "Everybody left their cars running," waitress Trish Roggenbuck said. "It was pretty much breathtaking when you walked outside."

See, I would have stayed home. Because, if any of these folk's boss knew they were there today, they've totally blown any sort of pretense of calling in with car troubles any other day. Their boss will just say, "Your car worked when it was 54 below, you get your sorry butt in here!" and that's the end of that!

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  Someone should tell Boba Fett about this job.

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  Like every day on our OS.

This is really nice, though, and amazingly creative! Wow!

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  is closing down.

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  Honestly, they make this seem so ironic, but really how far can you go in this country and NOT find a McDonald's? The only thing that would have been even less ironic would have been if this guy's kid had been born outside a coffee shop....

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  Maybe we can hook up the creator of this with the woman from here because something tells me they'd have a lot to talk about...

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  This is a neat article written by a woman who frequents the same simple living forums I do. It's time to start thinking about spring cleaning, and hopefully this will help!

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  Pepsi-Cola Holiday Spice found its way into our home as a result of my inabilty to turn down the double whammy of a newfangled gimmick that was deeply discounted. (Ok, since we don't get any commercial television, it's new to me. For all I know you all have been drinking and mocking it for months now.)

The packaging says, "Celebrate the season with family, friends and new Pepsi Holiday Spice. It's a festive blend of holiday spices and great tasting Pepsi. But it's only around through the season, so this is one gift you'll want to open early. And often!" The bit about being a blend of holiday spices and cola kind of made me nervous, but I figured they'd surely spend a huge wad on taste testing it and I had little to fear.

When we cracked it open I was disturbed to note that it was an misbegotten reddish-brown in color, but I put my anxieties aside and decided to try to let that go and try to just enjoy my belated Holiday Spice experience. Like any good mom, I first passed the cup to my children who are happily willing to suck down anything that boasts a large quantity of caffeine and high fructose corn syrup. I knew we were in trouble when the first three reviews were, and I quote, "MMM, gingerbread!" "Cinnamon sugar!" and "It's like a cookie!" The toddler merely said, "mmm hmmm" in a puzzled way, and passed it on to his father.

The girls were right, it's startlingly like drinking a ginger snap, or consuming a snickerdoodle that makes you burp. It was not at all pleasant, and the only conclusion I can reach is that the folks in the review I linked to above must be on the payroll of the Pepsi-Cola company because they didn't give this product negative stars. Between the six of us, including the sugar addicted members of the family, we couldn't finish the one 12 ounce can...it was truly that bad.

So, I think I'm sticking to water for a while.

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  To David Bowie and Elvis Presley! They are 58 years old and DEAD, respectively. Unless you believe that Elvis is alive, in which case he'd be 70.

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  This site was shared with my by Stefanie, one of my homeschooling moms. It's a series of 14 before and after pictures of different areas affected by the recent tsunami. Very scary, and yet so interesting!

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  The Spoon Theory popped up on my migraine forums, and I just thought it was really neat. It's written by a person who has lupus, but can really apply to anyone with an "invisible" disease, and in fact is posted at a website called But You Don't Look Sick.

Although it applies to a lesser extent to migraine folks, I really felt some truth in the idea of "budgeting spoons" to get through the day, especially for those weird prodrome and postdrome days where I'm not really in pain but I am just not right, either. And I can see how this idea could help people with other issues. I just had to share this one!

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  They're having a hard time selling Frank Lloyd Wright designed homes.

I would love to have a home that was so unique and had such a neat history. But, I have to be honest, I'd just fill it with junk from the second hand store and scatter toys everywhere and Frank Lloyd Wright would roll over in his grave. So, maybe it's for the best that I live in my cookie cutter suburban subdivision...

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  ...but I can't help myself. It's stuck in my head now and I can't stop thinking about it. You may want to avert your eyes if you're not a girl, or if you're a very proper girl, even.

It's not that I'm squeamish, I'm just really stuck on the particulars. How EXACTLY did she do this. I mean, I've accidentally "dyed" plently of things this way, but nothing quite this large. Also, what possessed her to do this?

Just in case you're wondering, all of my tie dyes are pure-dee FAKE!!!!!

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  Wilberforce is a band that consists mainly of my friend Mark from England. I met him a million years ago on the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder while he was traveling through America on the Greyhound Bus (poor poor man!)

He had been playing hackey sack with some students earlier in the day, and I was just hanging out there, as I did a lot then (it was free and in walking distance of my place, which meant a lot at the time). He asked me what the name was of the game he'd been playing so he could put it in a postcard to a friend, and we struck up a conversation. I ended up taking him home to the apartment I shared with Davin where he stayed with us for a few days. He's been back to America a couple of times since then, and stayed with Davin and I each time he came through the area.

Here's the link to the new song, do enjoy!

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  He's been one of my favorite columnists for a long time. Here is his sign off column so you can read it if you'd like. I hope he enjoys his time off.

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  I'm back from my trip and my mom has got me started on a new craft, Crocheting with Grocery Bags! She showed me a disk from Kitty Creek Studios, a company where the owner makes and sells recycled items. Some of them are really neat, as you can see from her site! She makes her ideas available in the hopes of saving grocery bags from the landfill.

If you crochet and would like to do this yourself, here are some easy instructions on how to process the bags into "yarn" and a quick search of the net will give you patterns.

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