On a new theme. So far I’m about 40% done with the Photoshop mock up. So it’ll be up sometime… around Christmas maybe? I can’t seem to get away from these gray color swatches with little splashes of pink. Meh. Guess it’s me?

Andy Carvin has declared tomorrow Stop Cyberbullying Day. The recent drama over on Kathy Sierra’s blog has quite a few of the A List blog community finally taking a unified public stance against Cyberbullying. Finally. It’s tragic that it had to come to light the way it has, with a woman afraid to leave her own home or travel to be a part of a community that should offer only support and friendship. But I think that many bloggers have fallen prey to little egos and anonymous cowards for long enough.

I’ll be writing more tomorrow to support this event but I wanted to give you all a head’s up so that if you want to you can join in. I really hope that some of you are willing to finally step up and speak out for once. Not because you’ve been attacked, but because you want to do what you’ve known all along is the “right thing to do”.

So, I get an email saying that Rosie O’Donnell has updater her flickr photostream and when I look it’s a camera phone shot and her phone has included her PHONE NUMBER. On her flickr. By the time I saw it, (maybe 30 seconds after the email came in) it had been viewed a few hundred times. Doh!

She’s removed the info so I blurred the number out of the screen capture but I wonder how many phone calls she’s gotten from that 10 minute flub.

Brian Lehrer of WNYC had a segment onhis show this morning discussing The N Word that I found interesting. For the sake of this blog post, I’m going to USE the ACTUAL word’s. The N Word is nigger, the B Word is Bitch, Queer is Queer, etc.

Here’s the back story: A city councilman in Queens submitted a “symbolic moratorium” bill on the banning of the word “nigger”. According to him, he want’s people to stop USING the word, but to continue to TALK about the word. He says that they use the word incorrectly and not he way it was historically meant to be used: “to hate and subjugate people”. He states that when people use the words that were hate driven as a term of endearment or expression it shows they are not understanding or respectful of their history and are unaware of the emotional impact it has on people around them.

When I was first listening to this and was thinking about blogging about it I was kind of upset that SUCH a big deal is made out of this ONE WORD when people commonly throw around words like bitc, or queer… and the list goes on and on but for the sake of this blog post I’ll focus on these three. I agree that originally the word was born of hate and misunderstanding and ignorance and in THAT time, to use it was wrong. But so were the other words I mentioned. You speak of a time when black people could not vote, or own land, and were enslaved to do the work of a master and guess what! There was a time when WOMEN could not vote, or own land, and who’s sole purpose was to serve a master (husband, kids, etc). And NOW, TODAY, AT THIS MOMENT, we will not let two people who love eachother, who want to vow their lives to the other, to do so because they share the same anatomical organs used to reproduce and urinate. Now, the difference between not letting two people get married and lynching and mob killings is big and I acknowledge that. Those things are wrong. The ACT was wrong. Inexcusable, really. But we are living in a different time and place now and we’ve evolved and changed and now african americam people have the same rights and privelages as every other American (unless, of course, you are gay).

And I realize now what made me upset. This guys is spending FAR too much time (and tax payer money) on a word that has a HISTORICALLY negative context. Any of these three words can be used to demean somebody, but they ALL have alternate meanings now also. I’d think the fact that the word has evolved into something more than a derogatory slur would MEAN something. The people that once let the word make them feel fear and shame have turned it into something they can “own”. Women call their friends bitches all the time and what they mean by that is YOU ARE FIERCE, GIRL!! WORK IT!! And queer? Not only has the gay community embraced the term but Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is a massive success! These words can still be used to try to harm somebody but by taking the word and changing the meaning and OWNING IT, they’ve taken some of the power away from those that use it in a negative context. And the more they make the word into something they own, the more the power will continue to dwindle until there is no negative power left in the word.

It’s time to leave the past and evolve. TEACH the past, KNOW the past, LEARN FROM the past, but GET OUT OF the past. Spend time at press conferences problem solving and planning the FUTURE for the very youth you seem so concerned about instead of dwelling on something has already grown past the point of no return. In short, quite your whining and focus on POSITIVE things you can do for your community, instead of trying to hold on to the negative.

*climbs off soap box*

Disclaimer: This is my opinion. You might disagree with it and if so, I encourage you to speak up and let me hear your side because I know that I can always learn more by hearing what you think and feel. But! Please do so calmly and respectfully.

No really! The other layout that I talked about in September… it actually EXISTS! While Cassidy was gone for a week I worked on it a lot. Coding it from the ground up turned out to be a little more time consuming than I had imagined (and there was that month or two that I didn’t work on it AT ALL) but now that it’s starting to finally all come together I’m really liking it. Ben even likes it. That’s saying a lot because he generally he thinks they are ‘okay’. This one he’s managed to come up with more than one adjective for. And none of them were ’suck’ or ‘really?’ or ‘nice’.

I’ve added quite a bit of new content. Some of this is because I’ve found cool new apps while playing with the 8525. My only complaint about the phone so far is that it’s POP mail sucks. A lot. Gmail has a nice little java app that you can run locally but it doesn’t allow you to attach files. I liked being able to email pictures to my flickr account with the Sidekick2 but the POP on the 8252 has MAJOR lag. Like a four hours of lag. I know the image files are quite a bit larger but yeesh. Four hours? I’m an instant gratification kinda girl. I want it to happen NOW!

So I came across a cool little program called ShoZu that uploads pictures via a pretty simple “one click feature”. Not only to flickr but to pretty much any moblog service out there. You can also upload video’s directly to YouTube which is kinda neat and I plan to start abusing that soon. One of the best features though is that you can upload photos in a blog post to wordpress like you see in the post below.

Another nifty little thing I discovered is Twitter. Twitter is kind of like a moblog minus the vanity shots. heh You send text messages to it via IM, SMS or on the web of what you are currently doing. Anybody who’s added you to their list also gets the IM or SMS and vice versa. So, how is this cool? Well, I’ve added a little script in the sidebar of the new layout titled “currently” that shows you what I’ve said and how long ago I said it. So basically, I can let all you readers know exactly what I’m doing at all times. So… you can totally stalk me. And… I can totally rub Maui in your face.

What?! Rub Maui in your face?! Yeah! Because I really want to have the site live by tomorrow night. It hurts my finger bones to type that but I honestly plan on having it live before I leave so I can take advantage of some of the cool new features like Twitter and ShoZu while we are away. And adding it to this theme seems just a little too lazy and EASY and NOT GOING TO CAUSE A PSYCHOTIC MELTDOWN for me. I’m all about the psycho.

I know what this is going to cause. It means that my Friday night will be spent running around the house like a psychotic obsessive retard cleaning and packing everything we own into way too many suitcases. Then Ben will spend two hours taking all the dinner plates and bottles of Windex OUT of those suitcases while trying to convince me they ALREADY HAVE those things in Maui.

But really this is a distraction I need. I can’t sleep at night and I’m getting more done at work then a superhuman because I’m in hyperdrive mode and cant’s stop moving. So if it wasn’t working on the site I’d be spending my time doing something REALLY useless to pass the time. Like counting the tiles in the kitchen. Or obsessively brushing the cats. Or cleaning baseboards with a toothbrush and bleaching the refrigerator. I guess that last one isn’t such a BAD thing but I have a reputation to uphold and “clean” is not one of them.

How did I not know about this site till now?! I love t-shirts. I LIVE in them. 80% of my closet is screen print tee’s in various shades of color and a many different degrees of humor. From my favorite Star Wars tee with the a big Empire logo to my ‘I’m Blogging This’ tee, I just love them all. I’m extatic that they are making such a big comeback because it means when I wear my ‘video games make me do bad things’ tee out I don’t get QUITE as many disapproving looks from parents. (But every time I do I’m SO TEMPTED to tell them that CASSIDY is the one that gave it to me for Christmas. hehe)

So on the way to work today I heard about Threadless Tee’s and I want them ALL! What makes these so great is that all of them are designed by members of the threadless community. Members can submit as many designs as they like and they are added to a voting que. The rest of the memebers on the site then get to vote on them and the big wigs look at the top 300 designs every couple of weeks and pick a top 10 to print. If your design gets choosen you get $2000 and people all over the country sporting your artwork!

I spent my entire lunch break voting on shirts. heh Ones like this that I’d TOTALLY WEAR so you should go vote on it.

They don’t have a wishlist feature but that’s only because they print a limited number of shirts so they sell out pretty quick. But at $10** a pop, there’s really no reason not to buy them as you come across the one’s you like. One’s I plan to buy very very soon:

Bleeding Heart:
(this one is aligned down the left side of the shirt, duh!)

Caged:

Dark Side of the Garden:

And there are SO MANY MORE. Must resist the cuteness. MUST! RESIST!!

**Edit - Looking now, the $10 price is a holiday sale. I think they go up to $20 once it’s over… So get them now while they are cheap!! :mrgreen:\
**Edit #2 - No this is not a paid post. I can’t stand blog advertisements like Paid Per Post and the such (won’t even link the site here). I ACTUALLY heard about this on the radio on the way to work and researched it and thought it was so cool that I’d blog about it. Sheesh!
**Edit #3 - Funny. Today Heather of dooce.com has on the MEAT IS MURDER. Tasty, tasty Murder. shirt in her daily picture. DOOCE! So that means the site’s coolness factor just went up by about 17,000 points. How come nobody was sharing this t-shirt love with ME?!?!

I have decided to participate in Pink For October, a breast cancer awareness campaign. From the site:

Now the challenge is to convince as many sites as possible to promote National Breast Cancer Awareness month (let’s make that International) and raise money for breast cancer research.

Feel free to contact me if you are interested in helping with this event. But even if you don’t have time to dedicate, consider redesigning your site for the month of October — Go Pink!

The more people the better, so if you are willing and/or able, pinkify your site too and let them know you are participating!

I really thought long and hard about what to do when it came to ranting about work and having a “private” place to blog. A lot of people suggested LJ but there are a few reasons I don’t want to use LJ. One being that I really don’t LIKE LJ and the only reason I have an account is to comment, read other blogs. The other is because I don’t want to call attention to other blogs. That’s vague. But the people will know what I mean if it applies to them.

I recently started seeing people handing out and asking for Vox accounts so I decided to check it out. But instead of asking for one, I just applied directly through the site and figured if I got an email, then it was meant to be.

So my accout is all set up as well as one for Cassidy and just starting out, I can see why it’s become so polular so fast. Unlike other networking sites like MySpace, you can’t go all out with customization. Some people see that as a drawback but I see it as an absolute plus. No blinkies, no horrid music accosting you when you check out a profile, you don’t have to get up and find something to do while the page loads, no lime green text on lemon yellow blinking backgrounds that cause your eyes to spontaneously combust into little balls of firey pain… Really, I could go on and on and on.

It has other cool features like the ability to import pictures directly from your flickr account using a little app.

anyway, check it out. Everybody’s doing it. Don’t be left out! In an attempt to help your coolness factor rise, I have five invites to hand out. So, if you want one, let me know!

I’m not dead. I’ve been swamped at work. Cassidy has had a lot of homework. Ben and I have been kinda wrapped up in a “project” that some of you already know about and others will soon. Friday possibly. Saturday for sure.

Since I feel kinda bad for slacking on the posting but I don’t really have anything fantastic or even worth reading to say I’m just going to link bomb you instead:

Go visit this site that Tracy found. The Best Buy and Cell Phone Symphony stunts are especially funny.

Then go visit Jason’s flickr. He has the camera that I dream of at night and has uploaded some of his shots. Every one of them is fantastic.

So, May 1st was a busy day. It was the three year mark from the end of “major combat” in Iraq. 140 American Troops died during “major combat”. 2266 have died since. (Source). I’m not going to get into my views on the war right now except to say that I’m proud of our troops, but not of this war. And I look forward to the day that that number stops increasing.

It was also The Day Without Immigrants. I think that it should have been called An Extra Day Off For Illegal Immigrants That Didn’t Seem To Do Much Good.

Basically, May 1st was a day for the rest of the World to point and laugh at America.

And in that spirit, I thought you might all want to laugh along with them. (I had to look all over for a site that still had that video up!)

P.S. - I *heart* Stephen Colbert.

I certainly don’t like to perpetuate the stereotype, but this really is the best blond joke ever.

I am doing this because I love Kristen.

Look at the following list and:
1) Bold what is true about you.
2) Italicize what you wish was true about you.
3) Add one true thing about you to the end of the list.
4) Tag five LJ friends!

You Have Been Tagged : I’m ending the chain. I will probably burn in hell but there are just some risks you have to take.

* I miss somebody right now.
* I don’t watch much TV these days.
* I own lots of books.
* I wear glasses or contact lenses.
* I love to play video games.
* I’ve tried marijuana. *Dad, totally I didn’t inhale.*
* I’ve watched porn movies. *An you can disown me now*
* I have been the psycho-ex in a past relationship.
* I believe honesty is usually always the best policy.
* I curse sometimes frequently.
* I have changed a lot mentally over the last year.
* I carry my knife/razor everywhere with me.
* I have broken someone’s bones.
* I have a secret that I am ashamed to reveal.
* I hate the rain.
* I’m paranoid at times.
* I would get plastic surgery if it were 100% safe, free of cost, and scar-free.
* I need/want money right now.
* I love sushi.
* I talk really, really fast.
* I have fresh breath in the morning.
* I have long hair.
* I have lost money in Las Vegas.
* I have at least one sibling.
* I was born in a country outside of the U.S.
* I have worn fake hair/fingernails/eyelashes in the past.
* I couldn’t survive without Caller I.D.
* I like the way that I look. sometimes. on a good makeup day
* I have lied to a good friend in the last 6 months.
* I am usually pessimistic.
* I have a lot of mood swings.
* I think prostitution should be legalized.
* I slept with a roommate.
* I have a hidden talent.
* I’m always hyper no matter how much sugar I have.
* I have a lot of friends.
* I am currently single.
* I have pecked someone of the same sex. i wish
* I enjoy talking on the phone.
* I practically live in sweatpants or PJ pants.
* I love to shop and/or window shop.
* I’m obsessed with my Xanga or Livejournal.
* I don’t hate anyone. I dislike them.
* I’m a pretty good dancer.
* I’m completely embarrassed to be seen with my mother.
* I have a cell phone. SIDKEKICK2 4 LIFE!!
* I believe in God.
* I have passed out drunk in the past 6 months.
* I’ve rejected someone before.
* I currently like /love someone.
* I have no idea what I want to do for the rest of my life.
* I want to have children in the future.
* I have changed a diaper before.
* I’ve called the cops on a friend before.
* I’m not allergic to anything.
* I have a lot to learn.
* I have been with someone at least 10 years older or younger.
* I am shy around the opposite sex.
* I’m online 24/7, even as an away message.
* I have at least 5 away messages saved.
* I have tried alcohol or drugs before.
* I have made a move on a friend’s significant other or crush in the past.
* I own the “South Park” movie.
* I have avoided assignments at work/school to be on Xanga or Livejournal.
* I have used my sexuality to advance my career.
* Halloween is awesome because you get free candy.
* I have dated a close friend’s ex. *Only after getting her permission but she still hates me for it.*
* I am happy at this moment.
* I’m obsessed with guys.
* Democrat
* Conservative Republican
* I am punk rockish.
* I go for older guys/girls, not younger.
* I study for tests most of the time.
* I tie my shoelaces differently from anyone I’ve ever met.
* I can work on a car.
* I love my job.
* I am comfortable with who I am right now.
* I have more than just my ears pierced. *My bellybutton ring still goes half way through. HA!*
* I walk barefoot wherever I can.
* I have jumped off a bridge.
* I love sea turtles.
* I spend ridiculous larger than necessary amounts of money on makeup.
* I plan on achieving a major goal/dream.
* I am proficient on a musical instrument.
* I hate office jobs.
* I love sci-fi movies.
* I went to college out of state.
* I am adopted.
* I am a pyro.
* I have thrown up from crying too much.
* I have been intentionally hurt by people that I loved.
* I fall for the worst people and have been hurt every time.
* I adore bright colors.
* I usually like covers better than originals.
* I hate chain theme restaurants like Applebees and TGIFridays.
* I can pick up things with my toes.
* I can’t whistle.
* I have ridden/owned a horse.
* I still have every journal I’ve ever written in.
* I’ve often thought that I was born in the wrong century.
* I try to forget things by drowning them out with loads of distractions.
* I wear a toe ring.
* I have a tattoo.
* I can’t stand at LEAST one person that I work with.
* I am a caffeine junkie.
* I am completely tree-huggy spiritual, and I’m not ashamed at all.
* If I knew I would get away with it, I would commit at least one murder.
* I cosplayed or know what cosplaying is.
* I have been to over 15 conventions.
* I will collect anything, and the more nonsensical, the better.
* I enjoy a nice glass of wine with dinner.
* I’m an artist.
* I am ambidexterous.
* I sleep with so many stuffed animals, I can hardly fit on my bed.
* If it weren’t for having to see other people naked, I’d live in a nudist colony.
* I have terrible teeth.
* I hate my toes.
* I did this Meme even though I wasn’t tagged by the person who took it before me.
* I have more friends on the internet than in real life.
* I have lived in either three different states or countries.
* I am extremely flexible.
* I love hugs more than kisses.
* I want to own my own business.
* I smoke.
* I spend way too much time on the computer than on anything else.
* Nobody has ever said I’m normal.
* Sad movies, games, fics and the like can cause a trickle of tear every now and then.
* I am proficient in the use of many types firearms and combat weapons.
* I like the way women look in stylized men’s suits.
* I don’t like it when people are unpleased or seem unpleased with me.
* I have been described as a dreamer or likely to have my head up in the clouds.
* I have played strip poker with someone else before.
* I have had emotional problems for which I have sought professional help.
* I believe in ghosts and the paranormal.
* I can’t stand being alone.
* I have at least one obsession at any given time.
* I weigh myself, pee/poo, and then weigh myself again.
* I consistently spend way too much money on obsessions-of-the-moment.
* I’m a judgmental asshole.
* I’m a HUGE drama-queen.
* I have traveled on more than one continent.
* I sometimes wish my father would just disappear.
* I need people to tell me I’m good at something in order to feel that I am.
* I am
* I could speak more than one language.
* I can fall asleep even if the whole room is as noisy as it can be.
* I would rather read than watch TV.
* I like reading fact more than fiction.
* I have pulled an all-nighter on an assignment I was given a month to do.
* I have no piercings.
* I have spent the night in a train station or other public place.
* I have been so upset over my physical gender that I cried.
* I once spent Christmas completely alone because there was a miscommunication on which parent was supposed to have me that night.
* I’ve been married and am now divorced.
* There have been times when I have wondered “Why was I born?” and may/may not have cried over it.
* I like most animals better than most people.
* I own a collection of retro games consoles.
* I procrastinate more than anyone I know.
* I am a survival-horror addict.
* I plan on moving atleast 100 miles away from my current home in the next year.
* I love singing Broadway
* I have so many pets that when I tell people how many I have, they are stunned.
* I would love to meet some of my Xanga or LiveJournal friends in person
* I love wearing high heels
* I think the people that have written some of the above lines either don’t speak english or posess all the intelligence of a groundhog. A retarded groundhog.
* I believe chocolate cures EVERYTHING.