Questions From Tumblr

Have you ever not went to sleep and stayed up all the next day?


Yes, and I don’t recommend it. On my Senior Trip we went to D.C, and due to loud roommates who were also smokers (although to give them credit, they tried to smoke outside the room until the weather got bad) I didn’t actually sleep for three straight days. I decided not to sleep on the bus ride back, reasoning that once I fell asleep I wouldn’t be able to be awakened for some time, and towards the end of the journey I started hallucinating. Luckily I was picked up from school and brought home, rather than having to drive myself, and I slept for seventeen straight hours.

Do you remember your hallucinations? I always wondered what sleep deprivation would make a person actually see.

Actually yes, and pretty vividly! ^_^ Street signs turned into abstract walking people when I wasn’t looking directly at them, and in an empty lot I saw a giant, floating head of Kevin Bacon. I remember turning around to ask a friend sitting behind me if there had been a giant floating head in the parking lot, and he answered in the negative, so I said, “Oh, good, ” and turned back around and sat down again. He was kind enough not to ask for an explanation until sometime the next week :)

Two-Sentence Movie Reviews

The Spirit (2008)

Okay, we went in hoping to like it, but this was just a trainwreck- insanely repetitive and dull dialogue (listen for each new idea to be explained to you three times over) endless padding instead of plot, childish insults instead of actual speech, the loosest plot imaginable, irritating soliloquies (Hamlet has less soliloquies than this film) and asides to the audience that are jarring and fall flat, cardboard cutouts instead of characters, scenes that are flat-out ridiculous and not in an endearing way, and lots and lots of instances where the actors were obviously given no real idea of what would be happening behind them on the green screen. Visually, it makes one wish it were Sin City instead; the effects are far less well-handled and obviously done on the cheap, and intellectually- well, there isn't anything to crow about there, either.

So far today has been fun but busy; after the chat with the siblings-in-law, we volunteered to babysit our niece so her Mama and Papa could get some time to go see the new Sherlock Holmes film and have a nice afternoon in peace. We took her with us to the barn, where she got to say hi to several horses and many nice people, watch Fiona eat her lunch and then be groomed and tacked up, and she sat with the Doc and watched me ride for a while. It was less exciting then she hoped, since I was only doing a walk-trot ride (Fi had just had her lunch, after all) but she got to help brush her afterwards and feed her treats, so that seems to have made up for it. Fi, for her part, was wondrously kind to the small human- I’m not entirely sure she’s ever seen one before, to be honest- and nuzzled her and sniffed her at every opportunity, and even tolerated her belly being brushed without batting an eye (the moment before she had been brushing her leg- that’s what I get for turning away for a second, I guess :) Fi was also great about being ridden, despite it having been a while since her last ride; she did a little bit of unsolicited trotting away from the block, then she kept staring at the arena doors, which were banging in the wind (!) but she relaxed and began to work in less than ten minutes, and we got some nice forward work done. All this on a very cold and windy day. I am so very lucky to have Fi in my life; I find her more an more amazing each time I work with her.

In The Name Of Love

"When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness....

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone....

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together....
And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

- Dr. M.L.King, "I Have A Dream" (excerpted)

How To Prep, Cook, and Eat Field-Dressed Trout - A Tutorial

Done for my Tumblr famblr, as a couple of them expressed interest in learning how this works. Photobucket in its infinite wisdom has posted all of these in reverse order; just start at the bottom and work your way back up for best results. Enjoy!

Dag has made us an amazing new prop for the HL shoots; I'm not going to give it away here, but it will be featuring soon (soon being a relative term) and there will be much rejoicing.

(It's not the suit. The suit is going to take me a couple of months of hard work, and that's just an estimate.)

So Fi’s lost a shoe again, which means no riding until the farrier can fix it. It’s not really her fault; she came due over Christmas and in all the confusion of the holiday I didn’t get around to making her an appointment, and she’s just gone eight weeks so it’s not surprising that she’s lost one. She isn’t gimpy on it, which is is nice, and I rode her a little Friday to show her off to my work supervisor, but only walk and a little trot. I don’t want to repeat the performance, though, since I don’t want to court an abscess. Abscesses aren’t fatal or even damaging long-term, but they do hurt and cause temporary lameness so I’d like to spare her that if I can.

So as much as I enjoy Rage Comics, I am sick to death of this "Friend Zone" crap. Guess what? No one is entitled to anyone else's interest- romantic, sexual, or otherwise. If you hang around someone going through the motions of friendship (and it is going through the motions, or else you wouldn't be complaining about being in this mythical zone) for someone who has clearly shown they're not interested in you, that other person is not the one at fault. You and your childish sense of entitlement are. All of us in life will want someone who doesn't want us back. This is part of the human condition. No one is to blame, and by claiming this "friend zone" excuse you are clearly trying to lay the nonexistent blame on someone else. If you are hanging around perpetuating a false friendship and acquiring a false sense of what is "due" to you for your actions you are 1) acting like a child and 2) wasting your time and that of the other person. Sometimes people are not into you- it is as simple as that. No one is forcing you to stay. Act like an adult; move on with your life and find someone who is interested.

That last post was my 1000th post. Amazing.