All Your Base Are Belong To Me!

So you know how you can google your own name, and then see how many hits you get? If I google my name, I get maybe 3 hits on the first page, and that's all. When Max googles his name, the entire first page is all him. Then I wondered what would happen if I googled my pseudonym, Ellemar. I use it for EVERYTHING. Every username for every website or forum or what-have-you I've joined in the last 3 or 4 years. So I gave it a go(ogle). Hahaha, fuck, that was terrible. Please, find it in your hearts to forgive me.

Anyways, I googled 'Ellemar'. And while there weren't entire pages devoted to my good name, I did manage to infiltrate pages as far back as page 46! There was an old Livejournal account (yes, I was one of those people), Photobucket account, Cracked account, forum posts, video comments, and (more importantly) this blog! But all the way back on page 24. Ultimate sadness.

You know what this means?

I am everywhere! I am so deeply woven into the very fabric of the Internet, I am in it's very farthest reaches. I don't know how I find the pictures, posts, comics, forums that I do, but I DO find them. Every time I send him something, he asks "Man, how did you find this?" Most of the time I don't remember.

And you know what I wish? That that could be my job. Max said "media researcher". Can someone actually be that? A media researcher? If so, sign me the fuck up. I know, it sounds like a trap, like the video game testing job. You think it'd be a sweet job, sitting around all day, playing video games and getting paid for it. But really, you have to play hours and hours of games that you don't get to pick. You could be playing Dora the Explorer video games, and every time you find some kind of glitch, you've got to write a report about it, and then start playing the same game again. And again. Media researcher does sound like it could turn out the same. But can you ever really get bored of the Internet?

This is a bit of a ramble, I realize, but I've just noticed that it's 3 am, and I am so fucking hot because of this laptop on my legs. I drank all my orange juice, and now it's time for bed.

This Is Not Just A Cry For Attention

Christ, who was that emo? "My life is starting to feel pretty terrible." Haha, what loser hijacked my blog?

Anyway, what I am, chopped fucking liver? Why do I have no comments on these entries?
Read something you liked? COMMENT.
Read something you hated? COMMENT.
Read something and got an idea from it? ESPECIALLY COMMENT.

That's what this is about. It wasn't supposed to be just me sitting in front of a computer and talking and talking and talking. I wanted to stir something from deep within you. I wanted to make you hate me or love me, or whatever else you FEEL like.

I know there's like, maybe two people who read this regularly. But what are you guys, robots? I want all your questions and answers. Give me your arguments, for fuck's sake! I want to be flooded with your memories, stories and thoughts! Make me feel real here, make yourselves heard!

COMMENT!

Space Capsules

Listening to Radiolab again. I know, I know what you're thinking. "Enough about Radiolab already!" No, there will never be enough. I am not going to stop talking about Radiolab until somebody finally listens to some, and comments on here about it.

Anyway. I'm listening to Radiolab, and they're talking about a space mission (Voyager? I'm not too sure, I was doing other stuff while I was listening and not paying attention). On this mission, they compiled a record (clearly this was a long time ago) of music and sounds from all over the world, and then shot it into space, as a sort of 'Space Capsule'. Maybe, somewhere millions of light years away, some aliens will find it, and be able to listen to it, and learn a little about life on Earth.

Seems silly, I know. And naive. Like, even if aliens did find it, how would they listen to it? But then they asked "If you could send some kind of compilation of what life on Earth is like, what would you send?"

I've been thinking about it for the last hour. What so perfectly represents our lives here on our blue planet? Obviously, I would include some music in my Space Capsule. But what? It's so hard to pick just one thing. Some music that I love? If so, I would include Kaki King. I haven't met too many people who've heard of her, but she makes some amazing music. This is one of my personal favourites.




But what else? Famous speeches, my favourite sounds (the wind at night, the rumble of thunder), the general sounds of life (talking, laughing, crying, yelling). But what if you could include more than sounds? What about smells?
Some of my favourite smells are rain on warm pavement, ink from a ballpoint pen, my dog's fur, Max's clothes, Famous Foods.
Taste? Curry, magnolia petals, chocolate, pomegranate, rapini, crème brûlée.
Visuals? Some of my favourite movies (Lady in the Water being one of them), perfect clouds, birthday cake, my bed at the end of a long day, your Caller ID when it's someone you really like talking to.
What if you could put the sensation of touch in this Space Capsule? The pages of a book, the smooth clicking of the keys of my laptop, Max's beard (yes, for real), new leaves, silk...

In all likelihood, there is nobody out there who would be finding this Space Capsule, but if there was, what would you send into space that would epitomize our life here on Earth?

The Oscars and An Original Screenplay

I never really had a problem with George Clooney before, but now I just think he's a pissy little bitch. Tonight, I am watching the Oscars, and every time they've showed him, he just has this smarmy look on his face. And what, they aren't allowed to say anything bad about him? Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin open the Oscars by making fun of everybody, but not Clooney? As they came to him, he was giving them this "I could buy you guys 3 times over". Dude, fuck you, George Clooney.

And so far, they've mentioned two movies I've never even heard of before! Scratch that, make it three. Crazy Heart, Paris 36 and The Secret of Kells! I would really love to see The Secret of Kells, it's an animated film that looks totally cool. I love animated movies. I don't care if they're for little kids, they always have the best stories.

Tina Fey and Robert Downey Jr., some of my favourite actors, are announcing the results for best screenplay. Downey Jr. said the funniest thing, that movies were "a collaboration of handsome, gifted people and sickly mole-people."

Oh dear, I'd forgotten that John Hughes had died (1950-2009). You know, he made some of the greatest movies, and those movies were the only good thing to come out of the 80s.

To interrupt my Oscar viewing, here's my original screenplay, starring my little brother Peter, in "Being A Dumb Cunt".

BEING A DUMB CUNT
by Lisa Recchia

DAD knocks on the door. He and PETER have plans to do something with a car, I don't know, some kind of MALE BONDING RITUAL.
DAD: Are you ready?
PETER: Yeah, hold on.

I walk over, joking.
ME: Can you believe this guy brought the XBOX over, but forgot my favourite game?
DAD: (sounding confused) You brought the XBOX to mum's?

PETER gets quiet and walks away. Apparently, this was some kind of secret.

RACHEL: Yeah, and a TV. How did you not know?
DAD: Peter?

PETER acts like a rude bitch and walks away to watch what's on TV. DAD is offended and hurt, and leaves.

RACHEL: What the hell! Get your shoes on!
PETER: I don't have any shoes here!
ME: You don't have any shoes here? What are you talking about, you must have worn a pair of shoes here.

PETER mutters something horrible, I'm sure, and stomps upstairs like a BABY. He comes downstairs and starts to put on a pair of shoes. DAD has already left.

RACHEL: Dude, Dad left already.
PETER: FUCK! (slams one of his shoes into the wall)
ME: Quiet, mum's sleeping!
RACHEL: Do you want me to call him?
PETER: ...Yeah. Yeah, call him.

RACHEL calls DAD. PETER puts on his shoes so slowly, like omg, I've never even seen anyone put their shoes on this slowly. On the TV, BEN STILLER is dressed like a creature from AVATAR, providing plenty of distraction for any 14 year old.

RACHEL: Okay, Dad's turning around. Get a jacket on, I told him you were ready.
PETER: I don't have a jacket!
ME: What are you talking about?
RACHEL: Just wear this. It's Lisa's, but it's a boys hoodie.
PETER: Fuck that! I have one upstairs.
ME: What the fuck is going on.

PETER stomps upstairs, while RACHEL and I are saying things such as...
RACHEL: What the fuck is wrong with him.
ME: I hate this family.

Stomping down the stairs, PETER returns wearing a hoodie that looks almost exactly like the one he didn't want to wear.

RACHEL: Dude, why are you walking so slow? Goddamnit, Dad's waiting for you!
ME: Peter, you're being rude.
PETER: Shut the fuck up, my leg hurts!
RACHEL: Buddy, Dad is going to leave again.
PETER: FUCK YOU.

PETER slams his elbow into the door and leaves. I am left with the feeling that I never want to see him again.
Man, why haven't I gotten an Oscar?

I don't know what's wrong with my lately. Everyone is getting on my nerves, and I just feel angry and fucked up all the time. I'm starting to get irritated with people I thought I would never get mad at, and I don't want to get mad at. And it's leaving me with all these crazy questions: What am I doing? Am I being petty? Is this just pms? Or am I finally losing it? Was this just something that was always coming, this insanity. It runs in the family. My great-great-great grandfather hacked his wife to death with an axe. I have one aunt that is pretty much insane. Was it only a matter of time before it happened to me too?

Sigh.

Okay, since I'm pretty sure nobody reads this, I'll tell you what's bothering me. My period is over 2 weeks late. On the 3rd, I took a pregnancy test. Negative. On the 5th, I took the other one. Negative. But still, nothing. The chances of my actually being pregnant are low, but it's this nagging paranoia that's haunting me.

ANYWAY!

Took my dog out so she could throw up (she didn't, stupid bugger, and it's freezing outside), and now I'm going to have a roast chicken dinner, complete with stuffing and roasted carrots, at 8:30 at night. My life (besides the chicken) is starting to feel pretty terrible.

Decoys and Waiting For Summer

Watching a movie on the Space Channel, and I thought it was The Ring, but turns out it's "Decoys"(???). You can tell if a horror movie is going to be crappy, based on what music they open it with. The sign of a bad movie is having some unknown punk band playing. I don't know the logic behind this, but it is true.

So far, we're on a college campus, and the boy from Lassie is the protagonist, Luke. Hanging out in a laundromat, he is accosted by some sexy cousins. One is flaunting her mad rolls of change for the washer, and the other is sucking on one of this horrible lollipops and telling us she has an 'oral fixation'. Har har har.

My brother accurately predicts that these cousins are some kind of fucked up monsters. They seem to be about to reveal themselves, and... there seem to be tentacles coming out of holes in their sternums. And they take turns spraying these tentacles with... liquid nitrogen? Truly, I am in for a hilarious time tonight. Haha, you know who else is in this? The sidekick to Toby from The Listener.

WHOA WHOA WHOA. What just happened? Lassie Boy was going to have sex with a Tentacle Alien so he could expose her tentacle-ness on a hidden camera that he and the girl who's really in love with him planted, and when her sicko tentacles come out and knock a candle over, and then she freaks out when she catches on fire and turns onto a total monster rip-off of Sil from Species before running away. Huh. And the movie is not even over yet.

Oh, and what a crazy twist ending. The cute girl who'd had a crush on Lassie Boy for years is actually a Tentacle Alien too! That was actually really surprising, and made pretty much zero sense with the rest of the movie. Good game, Decoys, but no win for you guys.

Today was such a beautiful day again, and it just makes me want summer all the more. I've never actually looked forward to summer before. I've eagerly awaited spring, and anticipated fall, and wanted winter, but I'm actually excited about summer! It's been so grey for awhile, I want some sun. I'm going to plan lot's of fun outdoorsy things to do.

And that's all I've got for tonight, sadly. I'm strangely exhausted today, and I think my Annual Cold is going to happen soon. I normally only get sick once a year, and it's always around this time. I hope I can fight it this year, because I need more hours for work! Get money, get paid, beetches.

Ethics

Just watching Chef At Home, and the guy is poaching a piece of salmon in olive oil, with lemon zest and rosemary. You can poach things in oil?! That is one thing I totally have to try one time.

Adding on to yesterday, another point to my List of Things to Improve the Quality of My Life... well, goddamn it. I was at work a few hours ago, and thinking about it, and I was trying to remember it so I could come home and write it down. Oh well.

And there was totally something else I was talking about...

Ah, yes. Radiolab. Listening to another show the other day called "(So-Called) Life", and my mind was blown by the stories that they told.

So there's this woman. In 1995, she is told that if she does not get a new kidney immediately, she will die. So, they take some of her blood, and test her husband and her sons. A few days later she gets a not so positive phone call, saying that there is something going on that the doctors have never seen before.

She is not the mother of her sons. They tested it, and her DNA doesn't match up. She tells them that's impossible. She remembers giving birth to them, and: her husband is definitely the father.

So they try and think of possible answers, and the doctor says "Well, we only tested your blood. Let's collect some more samples of DNA from other places." So they take saliva samples, hair samples, tissue samples, anything they can think of. And by doing this, they discover that she has two sets of DNA.

You see, this woman was a twin. Her egg and her twin sisters egg were floating around in the womb, when they kind of just bumped into each other. And fused. But instead of growing up with a weird lump on her body, and then having doctors cut into it one day to discover that it was her own twin joined to her body, they simply became one person. Essentially, she is two people in one body. Because her DNA has been split. Like, the woman's blood is her own DNA, but other things like her kidneys and her eggs are her twin sisters. Essentially, this woman is a plural, not a singular being.

I could not believe my fucking ears at the end of this story. Turns out that this woman is a chimera, one of the coolest sounding genetic disorders ever. Also, if she and her twin sister had not fused together within 4 days of being conceived, they would have been siamese twins.

From this awesome story they went on to talk about genes, and where do you draw the line between human and animal? Their either are, or going to be, cows that produce human blood instead of their own cow blood. "Why the hell would anyone do that?!" you may ask. I suppose for blood transfusions. We get the blood normally used for blood transfusions when people donate their own blood. This way, there's no need for that. You simply go to the Blood-Cow Farm, request a couple packs of Type-Whatever blood, and bingo. Hundreds and thousands of lives are saved.

Somewhere in the Middle East, there is a mouse with a tiny, functioning human kidney.

Scientists want to do experiments where they inject human brain cells into the brains of mice. Again, why? Just for laughs, maybe. But they have said that they would stop the experiment if the mice started to show any human signs development, like improved memory or problem-solving abilities, they would end it.

I don't know how I feel about experimenting and manipulating the genetic structure of animals like this. On one side, saving lives is awesome. But the way we go about saving lives is sometimes questionable.

Now, I have no problem with using the organs from a person in a vegetative state, so long as they are definitely not coming back. If they have written down "Yes, I would like my organs to be donated after my body is no longer of use to me", right on. Now, if they haven't written their express desire for their organs to be used, I have no problem with using those organs anyway. If you have to appeal to the family. Hopefully that person would have been a decent enough person in life that they would understand and have no problem with it. But when you start to use animals for this purpose, I get a little uneasy.
Maybe it's because they are just animals, and they would have no concept of what we were doing to them. Now, born into it, they might not know any better, but that makes it even sadder. They believe that their entire existence is devoted to producing blood and have people taking it from them. But is that any crueler than killing them for food?

See, now I've confused myself. In a way it is, but that may just be because it is something unnatural. Now, we've been killing and eating animals for eons. But when you start to do something like change the genetic structure of a being, things get a little tricky.
I can't decide if I'm for it or against it. What does make an animal human? What if it's insides are all human, but it's outside is all animal? They do say that's it's not what's on the outside that counts, but what's on the inside. Is an animal considered human when it speaks? Loves? Laughs? Does it's molecular structure count towards humanity? If we bleed the same blood, is a cow and myself related?

I'll leave you with that to ponder.

PS. For dinner (a very late dinner, because I had a nap from 5:30 to 8) I sauteed some mushrooms, onion, kalamata olives and pine nuts, and tossed it in with some plain spaghetti with a little olive oil. I tried an experiment where I tossed in three chili peppers with the boiling pasta to see if it would make the pasta spicy. Unsuccessful. Next time, I will make little cuts in the peppers, so the spiciness can leak out. Despite that, it was freaking delicious.

Bored, Bored and Bored

I feel like I'm stuck in this horrible, boring rut.

I'm not in school, I'm not really doing Guiding anymore, I am in no sports, and social gatherings give me anxiety attacks.

What's a reject to do?

Start improving her life, that's what!

I made a list in my journal (an actual, numbered list. The term 'dork' is applicable here) of all the things I want to do to make my life less bland, and perhaps more meaningful (???).

1. Read more books.

I used to read ALL THE TIME, and now I never do, which is stupid, because I have loads more time than I used to. To remedy this, I'm going to go to the Burnaby Public Library and get a library card, and try to spend a lot of time there.

2. Ride my bike.

Riding a bike is much nicer than busing everywhere, and it's such good exercise. I remember a time when I rode my bike everywhere. I miss it. But! My dad got me a cool new bike! It was made in France, and it's pink! Needs a little work, but it will be in working order soon.

3. Exercise.

Self-explanatory. I need to lose some weight before the summer.

4. Savings account and an RRSP

I am going to go to the bank on Saturday, make an appointment with them, and get myself a goddamn savings account. This is ridiculous, I'm an adult. I want to move the fuck out, but I keep spending all my money. Also, I need an RRSP so I can be super rich when I'm an old lady.

5. Volunteer?!

Yeah, I know right? Me, volunteering? But I am suddenly feeling the need to help people. Maybe it was seeing all those images from Haiti and Chile. I actually considered dropping everything and just volunteering for relief work in Chile. Maybe I'll do something a little closer to home. I would love to help out in a Women's Shelter. I don't really know what that entails, but I would like to do it. Geez, where is all this humanity coming from?

What I'm trying to say is, I feel like my life has no meaning. I work, I sit at home, I (sometimes) get to see Max. But I want to do more. I almost miss being in school, and I'm thinking about taking one class in the summer to get the old noggin' working again. Karina said her Philosophy class was really great, and I bet I could get into some great arguments in there. And, I've really been wanting to take Italian, and apparently Capilano offers it. Now, I was thinking about going to Capilano for post secondary schooling anyway, so this offers some incentive.

Well, food for thought. That is all, just the musings of a bored girl today.