January 5th is Guantanamo Bay Lock-Up Day!

OK, so I was irked that one of my junk filters was letting in those blank emails (no subject, no body, no sender). I went in and adjusted the X-Spam-Flag rule and happily went on my merry way. Or should I say "obliviously"....

Today I'm wondering "wow... I'm not getting much mail...." Uh oh....

Seems I must have clicked the drop-down box and not noticed it so instead of:
If X-Spam-Flag contains "YES" -> Move to Junk -> Delete
I had
If X-Spam-Flag does not contain "YES"-> Move to Junk -> Delete

So, to make a long explanation shorter: If you have emailed me or replied to a comment I probably haven't seen it. So don't think I'm ignoring you! Please! =D

Once again my friend Gina has the best links. :)
This is a great article.

Excerpt: The hard part for many of us may be reining in our “secret society” fantasy and not looking down our noses at the straights. We can still feel superior to the frumpy heteros on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, but we also have to be OK with the fact that for many of us, life resembles Friends, Everwood, or even Average Joe more than it does Queer as Folk.

I finally put up a Katie Galaxy comic on the site.
Been a long time comin'. Enjoy. :)

On a sad note, all my old Katie stuff has been lost in the move.
Trust me, no one's more sad about that than I am...
So any Katie that goes up on the site will be brand-spankin' new.

Tonight we saw Peter Pan.

Oh the very cleverness of it. 8D I may need a break here and there as this review goes along as I'll likely take a few raptured moments to recall some of the film. So, in case I trail off in my own little bliss, let me get this out; Go see this movie now. The happiness it will put into you cannot be left out another day. Don't waste a day more without it. Really!

The movie plays very close to J.M. Barrie's original (my inner juvenile says that sometimes it may have even been verbatim, although my inner juvenile didn't learn the word verbatim until the 7th grade so it probably used another word) and is firmly fixed where it should be, on Wendy. God I don't know where to go from here! My review foo has been KO'd!

Rachel Hurd-Wood, as Wendy, is a beautiful girl who is still determinedly a girl inside but one can see the woman waiting to bloom forth. And the chemistry between her and Peter is just wonderful. Jeremy Sumpter, as Peter, is... well he is Peter. For now and for ever he will be Peter in my mind. And this is no mean feat as Cathy Rigby has been my mind's eye Pan since I saw her in a production at the Charlotte Coliseum when I was a wee lass (I also fell in love with her and wanted to marry her. As you can imagine I wasn't fond of the idea that this could not be.) where she flew and giddied and made me want to go to Neverland. But now Cathy must step aside. Jeremy Sumpter is Peter Pan.

Mr. Darling and Captain Hook are two equally perfect characters. So immense kudos to Jason Isaacs as he plays them both! While this has been the tradition in stage productions, it's still quite something as you'll find yourself forgetting it's so during the film. He really wanted this role and, by god, he deserved it.

I must also note that the rest of the cast (including Lynn Redgrave, Olivia Williams, Richard Briers and many more) was superbly cast and were wonderful in their roles. This is the movie I wish I had made. If I were director P.J. Hogan I could die happily knowing I'd left this incredibly wonderful film behind.

The cinematogaphy was big as all out doors, even when it clearly was not. By that I mean it was expansive and grand. And the design of the look... breath-taking. Maxfield Parrish fans, whom I count myself among, will be thrilled to see the Parrish-like clouds and skies and the waterfalls which I'm certain were the inspiration. Oh my... and the ship. And the clouds. Oh my. Oh the cleverness of it all.

I really can't do much more to review this film. I'm in love with every aspect of it and when I have it and 'Pirates of the Caribbean' on DVD I will be a very happy girl indeed. Two brilliant movies with pirates. What more could a piratey girl like me want?

Now, go see Peter Pan!

From Molly Ivins' syndicated column:
"Mercury is a neurotoxin that damages the brains and nervous systems of fetuses and young children and probably affects adults as well. It is one of the suspected, though not proven, causes of recent increases in autism, Parkinson's and Alzheimers. It is known to cause learning and attention disabilities and mental retardation.

Eight percent of American women of childbearing age already have mercury in their blood above the Environmental Protection Agency's 'safe level.' "

The article, "Let if flow, let it flow", then goes on to explain how the Bush administration has just made it easier for more mercury to be released into our world and how they've effectively repealed the regulations which would have reduced these poisons to much more manageable levels (By up to 90% by 2007. Now we have to wait until 2018 just to get to 70% reduction.) and kept them in check, in the meantime.

Who benefits? No surprise. The utilities industry. Who loses? You, me, our children, our grandchildren. Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, anyone within the fallout zone, you will suffer and so will your children. No matter what your feelings about Bush, you should not stand for this. Tell people. Write people. Post it on your blogs or web pages. Make a noise. (Thanks to my friend Gina for the link)

Read the full story here. Please.

Molly also explains, in another article, why she thinks Bush just doesn't get it. The Uncompassionate Conservative .

It's been raining since early this morning. Rain is sometimes bad here in the Lucky Sweltering Country, but it was totally icky sticky yeasterday so hopefully this will cool things off. [and yes, that misspelling was intentional] This is where today's title comes from, too. The weather reminds me of home. Anywhoey! This is the view from Teq's webcam (Christmastreecam will resume in the evening I suppose. hehe)

Thanks to all of you email birthday wishers. I had a great birthday and if I haven't written back to say 'thanks', I should by day's end. :)

From my diary for the 9th - ...it was a nice night. My wifey, her brother and his girlfriend took me out for dinner at our new favourite Thai place (Aruno Thai, on the Kingsway in Miranda if anyone wonders). We had a beautiful dinner and got complimentary wine and I got free dessert. (And I would like to reiterate that the waitress with the impressively large watch is adorably cute.)

We then headed up the road to the 'Hairy Canary' cafe in Gymea. Gymea has night life after 6pm (it was after 9, our end of the street was dead, the Gymea end was kickin). I am jealous. You're still stuck on 'Hairy Canary', aren't you. ;) hehe Teq and I had mugacchinos and D & C had lattes and shared some sinful decadence in the form of a "deep fried Mars bar" which is exactly what the name says plus ice cream.

Need to call my folks back as they called while I was at work on the 10th (it was still the 9th where they were heh). In other news, looks like we're gonna have the $ to do a dinner cruise in the harbour for our anniversary due to an unexpected but very welcomed bonus the wifey's getting. :) Wee!

Happiest of holidays, y'all. :)

So... IE doesn't properly support PNG transparency!!! IE, the most used browser on the freaking planet! It looks like _every_ other browser in production does except the one made by a company with more money than many small nations. Why??? Why?!?!? All this time any of you using Windows have been thinking "wow, that looks stupid" when seeing images with big white backgrounds around them. You haven't been seeing this.

God. So now I have to go fix every page with a PNG on it. Shite...

So we have one side arguing that gay 'marriage' will somehow destroy the 'institution of marriage' while offering no evidence, except hysterical and ill-informed bluster, why the gay families, many with children, already living in our society have not already done so. Nor in Canada, the Netherlands, etc. They go on about how bad this would be. It will destroy destroy destroy. And their only explanations as to how involve religion. I believe we've already covered separation of Church and State ad nauseum so I'll move on.

On the other side we have NCR explaining how these same people (gays and lesbians in committed relationships) are an important part of their workforce and they need to entice them just like any other worker. Hopefully this sort of testimony will open people's eyes that our so-called 'agenda' is just about living life at a decent level of respect and equity of treatment. Maybe it's started to already. We work, we pay taxes, we send out kids to school, we go to PTA, we buy soccer candy and school raffle tickets. We're not perverts and pedophiles (heterosexuals, actually, are the greatest offenders). We're just people who want to live life without being treated like outcasts. That's what we want people to see.

You take a look at these two sides and decide who's being unreasonable and reactionary. It should be fairly simple to work out. Meanwhile, we'll go on living our second-class lives fighting until the religious camp can be quieted enough to hear the voices of reason. And yes, I'm certain it's all about religion, nothing else. The religious left doesn't want us in their 'club'. They can't stomach the idea of gays and lesbians being on equal footing with them in any way. If you'd like to help out, we'd love to hear add your voice to ours at HRC and, for personal reasons, at the LGIRTF.

Thanks to Gina for pointing me to the Ohio links. And, for fuck's sake, will someone give Alexander Mooney a fucking history lesson about the founding of America and the people who did it?

How MIT follows fashion to India and doesn't ask for directions along the way

In the interest of filling up space in this post, I present you with A Link To My Wife's Webcam Which Looks Out Our Balcony Onto The Kingsway. It updates every 30 minutes and yes we know it's grainy. It's a cheap cam, get off our backs, man. ;)