journal Archive

True Confessions and a Bottle of Rum Rock Me Like a Hurricane

by Amelia G : November 6th, 2008

I have a confession to make. You probably know I’m opposed to piracy. I’m especially opposed to the kind of modern large scale digital piracy which makes it pretty much impossible to make a living as a midlist band. The internet is great for giving nowhere bands a shot and it rules for creating record-breaking manufactured pop and blanketing the world with it. But it is a polarizing medium and, in the faint spotlight of the computer monitor glow, midlist bands have either rocketed to wild success or more frequently withered on the vine.

But nobody is perfect and I have committed piracy on two occasions. Ironically, the first was when The West Wing had a special episode with a fictional candidate political debate and I missed it. It was going to be at least a year before the debate came out on DVD or Instant Play on Netflix, there was no download option either on the official site or Amazon Unbox, and I wanted to watch the following episode. Technically, I was not the one who downloaded it off a torrent site, but I did knowingly receive stolen property.

The second time was when the Axl Rose project Chinese Democracy was leaked. I missed it the first time Antiquiet posted it, but I listened to it one of the times it was repeatedly re-posted in the Antiquiet comments. I could say that maybe there was some kind of justification in my head because I liked the writing style on Antiquiet. But really I took it for the same reason most people steal — I wanted it and there was not another way to get it.

I was terribly disappointed in what I heard. Appetite for Destruction changed my life and . . .

( Read more )

About Last Night

by Amelia G : November 5th, 2008

By next week at the latest, I plan to stop compulsively watching political news for a while and get back to morbid and funny vampire and angst television, fall movies, non-political social commentary, entertaining misbehavior, music and hot naked counterculture. This week, however, even South Park is still hyped up about politics and the election. South Park tonight featured adults partying drunk in the street with beer kegs and Stan and Kyle calling in a noise complaint to the cops. The expressions on the two kids’ faces and the appalling soundtrack the grown-ups select is priceless.

It featured a kinda dumb riff on Oceans 13. After fast-forwarding through parts of Oceans 12 before determining it to be unwatchable, even at high speed, I passed on the movie they were spoofing, which left some entertainment value out for me there. South Park’s emergency room scene was amusing, with suicidal McCain supporters and Obama supporters who partied too hard.

I think having both the presidential election the USA just had and the referendums we just had, the country is at least either a little hyper-adrenalized or a little hung-over. I’m really hoping that, when California finishes tallying up all the provisional ballots and suchlike, the moronic Prop 8 will somehow not have passed. In general, the results of the referendums are all a little surprising. It appears that pro-life/anti-abortion measures all failed. It appears that anti-gay measure all succeeded, including referendums on both marriage and adoption. I’m sure kids bouncing from foster home to foster home are thrilled that they won’t be getting taken in by any loving families which are not 100% traditional. Or not. Additionally, marijuana got a lot more legal in a number of states. And Washington appears to . . .

( Read more )

• 12:29 Cooking trout, butternut squash, and espresso. Today seems much more delightful than yesterday. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter for the Tweets of Amelia G from Blue Blood

• 19:11 @ChadSavage Stephen Root is so rocking True Blood! #
• 19:13 You are legally entitled to a free credit report from every bureau. You don’t have to give Experian any bonus data for freecreditreport.com #
• 19:15 @audaciaray I have a @blueblood acct, but I just tweet here. Hope people who care what I ate for breakfast care what I wrote too. #
• 19:17 @corachaos I think referendums are the most important because they are on such specific issues. Cali did fail with Prop 8, but . . . #
• 19:24 Everyone on parts of internet I frequent sure seems indignant, pissy & poor reading comp today for how celebratory they were last night WTF? #
• 20:35 @viviane212 I guess that would explain it. I wish I’d been in NYC last night. #
• 23:05 @malixe That does seem to be a plausible theory. Made it really hard to get anything done today though. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter for the Tweets of Amelia G from Blue Blood

Sometimes you take a swig out of life and you get smooth smooth tequila and sometimes you get the worm.

(Image Courtesy of Blue Blood)

• 16:49 Did You Vote Today and Read Those Referendums? tinyurl.com/5k6ksk #
• 16:50 I Voted, Handling Registration Issues & Free Gifts tinyurl.com/6xaok7 #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter for the Tweets of Amelia G from Blue Blood

I Voted, Handling Registration Issues & Free Gifts

by Amelia G : November 4th, 2008

So I just got back from voting. I went to the polling place where I voted in the primaries and I wasn’t on the roster. They gave me a provisional ballot, but I find those things alarming. They also gave me a slip of paper with a list of phone numbers to call to find out what was up with my voter registration. I thought that perhaps my polling place had been changed to my work address from my home address or something like that. Basically, I did not want to submit a provisional ballot, if I could drive across town to another polling place and do a normal one.

The poll workers told me that I did not need to call because my vote would absolutely, definitely, no-question be counted. I called the registrar election day number anyway. A nice woman named Karen went over everything and told me that actually she couldn’t find me in the voter rolls. She gave me a more official State of California Registrar of Voters number to call and told me I should definitely call next week to get it all straight, but that it was doubtful I’d get through calling today.

I was literally shaking at the idea that my vote might not count, so I was going to be sitting in front of the polling place, with one eye on my ballot inside and the other on my finger hitting redial on my Blackberry, until I got through. There was no cell phone reception inside the polling place and it is illegal to remove the ballot from the polling location. Happily, the voice prompts and wait time for the California number were user-friendly and pretty prompt, given that it is election day . . .

( Read more )

Get your ballot! Street Address: Zip Code: Your address is confidential. From the League of Women Voters of California

If you live in a state other than California, New York, Ohio, or Pennsylvania, key in just your zip code or state postal code and it will return information about election information for your state. If you live in California, New York, Ohio, or Pennsylvania, use the Smart Voter form above. Zip code:

I know Blue Blood members are from all over the world, so this won’t apply to everyone. But, if you are an American, it is your patriotic and civic responsibility to vote. Please don’t forget. With the current state of the American economy, how you vote for both candidates and issues will impact you directly. This is not an election where you can just think one vote does not matter or assume that the outcome will only impact strangers in foreign lands. Whether you will be able to take care of yourself personally is on the line.

This year, in addition to the much bally-hooed presidential race, there are many really important referendums on many state ballots. In California, the fight over Prop 8 has been a more expensive campaign than any other campaign in 2008, except for the presidential race. This includes senate seats and everything. Proposition 8 is “Shall the California Constitution be changed to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry providing that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California?” Personally, I tend to be opposed to just about anything which includes anything about changing the Constitution of either the USA or California. I do not believe the government should be involved in defining the spiritual aspects of civil unions, so I think, as far as the government is concerned, all legally-binding romantic partnerships should be civil unions. Whether specific couples are a particular combination of genders or religions should be none of the state’s business. Nonetheless, one has to vote on the referendum one is offered.

Please read your local referendums carefully. Sometimes, it may be obvious to you what your position is on a hot-button issue like abortion or animal cruelty, but you need to parse out whether that means you want to vote NO or YES. If, like me, you fervently support the right of same-sex couples to marry, for example, then you need to vote NO on Prop 8.

You can confidentially type your street address and zip code into the box at the right to find out what is on your local ballot. The League of Women Voters have provided a site which lists off what is on each ballot. By looking at this site, and also reviewing more sites with information on issues important to you, you can determine how you wish to vote before you arrive at the polls today. Most polls are open from 7am to 8pm in your local time zone’s time. Don’t forget about daylight savings time having happened over the weekend. You can find your voting location via a link off your ballot page on the Smart Voter site provided by the League of Women Voters. For states not listed on the Smart Voter site, Vote Smart has a lot of state referendums listed on their useful ballot measures page too.

• 15:40 At WaMu or whatever bank. People must expect apocalypse. Line insane. #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter for the Tweets of Amelia G from Blue Blood

Don’t make me get Primeval on your ass!

by Amelia G : November 2nd, 2008

Primeval is more science fiction thriller fare from BBC America. The real stars of the show are the creatures created for it, particularly Rex, the adorable flying lizard thingie-ma-bob. The series comes from the fine folks who created Walking with Dinosaurs. Walking with Dinosaurs was a documentary about prehistoric animals which presented the film more like something you’d see in a modern nature film, rather than like a history show. Walking with Dinosaurs won a whole passel of awards, including a bunch of Emmies (Emmys?), mostly of course for the impressive visual effects. Walking with Dinosaurs is now touring the USA as a live show with giant in-person dinosaurs and I’m really bummed I missed it when it came through Los Angeles. On Primeval, it is also fun to watch the behind the scenes bits about how they do the effects with a combination of animatronics, cg, and really cutting edge new technology.

With Primeval, the FX team brings their considerable talents to a show with more of a storyline presentation. When first we meet our heroes, biology history Professor Nick Cutter played by Douglas Henshall, and his pretty boy badass hunter assistant Steven played by James Murray, are going about their academic lives, although Nick is haunted by his dead wife Helen and her research into oddities, including a fish, thought prehistorically extinct, which appeared in a modern body of water. Turns out Helen is not so dead after all. She is ably played by Juliet Aubrey and has just spent the past eight years time-traveling without a lot of concern for her husband’s feelings. But, after all that time, she felt like getting laid by someone who understood what was so cool about time travel, from a research . . .

( Read more )

True Blood

by Amelia G : October 27th, 2008

Given the huge ad campaign HBO’s True Blood ran just about everywhere, including this site, you have probably heard that there is a new vampire show of some sort on cable television. I actually had planned to do a feature article about the brilliant ad campaign for the show, but it was one of those times when pesky life gets in the way of writing. True Blood had some damn sexy billboards, posters, and bus adverts and, of course, banners on targeted sites like Blue Blood, and some sort of sweepstakes. The show takes place in a world where vampires have “come out of the coffin” and are looking for equal rights, opposed by the expected fundamentalists, and assisted by a mysterious Japanese company which has produced a synthetic blood substitute called Tru Blood. We’ve actually still got some great background videos explaining the setting of True Blood which I’ll see about posting after the hectic rush of Halloween is past.

But the really cool thing about True Blood is that the storylines are character-driven, the themes are righteous, the sex is in-your-face varied, and the lighting and cinematography are really beautiful. The series was developed by Alan Ball, award-winning writer of American Beauty and creator of Six Feet Under, based on the Charlaine Harris Southern Vampire Mysteries. The sort of focus character is the telepathic Sookie Stackhouse played by a perky yet strong Anna Paquin, the Oscar-winner best known to dorkdom for her recurring role as Rogue in the X-Men movies. Her character would probably come across as more feisty if not for her balls-to-the-wall best friend Tara Thornton, played by powerful newcomer Rutina Wesley. I don’t know where they found Rutina Wesley, but I love everything from . . .

( Read more )

• 16:58 Ya know how drunk drivers have to breathe into a machine b4 driving? I should have to prove to my keyboard I’ve had an iced latte b4 posting #

Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter for the Tweets of Amelia G from Blue Blood