Klyfix's Journal Thingy

Might be funny
See the vid here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWT07iRvI9M

Found the link here:
http://www.threepanelsoul.com/view.php?date=2009-04-01 (below the comic)

Helps of course if one has at least some Cthulhu Mythos lore.

Controlling the Dream While Crazy)
I was looking through past installments of the web comic "El Goonish Shive" and came across a couple ( http://www.egscomics.com/?date=2004-08-09) that involved lucid dreaming. The cartoonist in commentary on the strip observed that while he was fascinated by the concept he'd never quite pulled it off. And I got reminded of something from my hospital stay.

For the first few weeks or so when I was in the hospital I was in, uhh, an interesting mental state. And I had very vivid but totally nuts dreams. In one of those there was some kind of almost cult that thought that some sort of treatment made one healthier but actually was ultimately fatal. It was somehow contagious. For unknown reasons I was working to stop it, and after that I was thinking that the whole scenario made no sense so I made it so it didn't happen.

But here's the thing. I'm not sure knew I was in a dream. I think I thought this was reality.

That probably wouldn't count as a lucid dream as such, would it?

Oh, another thing that the cartoonist noted is that when he realizes he's in a dream he usually tries to fly but can't do it. I've pretty much always been able to fly if I thought to do so in dreams. What about you guys?

Eat a Clone Burger?
Saw a bit on Nightline about the issues raised in a documentary film called Food Inc.. One of the noted issues was meat from cloned animals and the lack of regulations that it has to be labeled as clone meat.

Now, near as I can tell meat from a clone shouldn't be any more dangerous than meat from the original animal, and in any event you clone a superior bull so as to have more stud bulls (well, kinda; calves are generally produced by artificial insemination ya know...) so as to get superior calves. Meat from a clone would seem to need to be expensive since the process is at this time is expensive; meat from Son of Clone not so much.

But we wonder.....

Would you folk knowingly eat Clone Beef? If not, why not?

Not a Fine Whine
Kind of in a mood today. Part of me wanted to post a dreary whine about how because of my illness it is difficult for me to do some things that I used to with seemingly no effort.

Thing is of course that there not a lot of point to complaining about stuff that we have to deal with but can't eliminate, and hosts of people have lots worse problems than I have. Given time and effort I'll likely be back to more or less normal, but it is annoying that I really can't go any distance on my own and can't really even climb stairs. Eh, what can ya do....

Silly thing: I was recalling an old ad for a certain oat cereal and came up with the lyric "Feeling moody, just had my dreary O's, feeling moody...."

Yes, there are reasons I don't make my living as a comedian or writer. :)

Anime to Live Action?
For the heck of it I looked on YouTube for "Ask DNA" from the "Cowboy Bebop" movie. And in the comments I saw somebody noting that Fox is developing a live-action movie of Cowboy Bebop, with the downside being that Keanu Reeves was set to play Spike, They observed that "That man better get flexible and learn to show some emotions and martial arts FAST."

When I poked about I saw that Srephen Spielberg got the rights for a live action version of "Ghost in the Shell" and a company was going for an "Akira" live action film. And there are other anime/manga inspired films in the possible works.

On the one hand I like to see my tastes kind of vindicated. On the other hand, well, sometimes animation is the best way to tell a story and it doesn't necessarily to live action. On the third hand one could argue that 21st Century SF and Fantasy movies (and TV shows for that matter) are half or more animation of a sort anyway.

Thoughts on this stuff?

Minor Amusement
Last week when I was experiencing the Joy of Chemo I mentioned something about how in a Dunkin' Donuts in the hospital the price of a bagel with cream cheese indicated that the cream cheese was more expensive than the bagel. I was then told that there were some bagels left over after some kind of meeting and also some cake from some occasion. Thus I found myself with two bagels and cream cheese, and cake.

As it happened they had more bagels so they gave me a couple to take home. The thing of amusement was that they put them in a plastic bag with a "biohaazrd" warning on it.

Hmm, okay, maybe you had to be there. :)

Eye Exams
I was in a local place getting an eye exam. I'd lost my glasses in the hospital and in any event was way past due for new glasses.

And there was something of a problem. The doctor could not quite get a fix on what my prescription should be; my eyes weren't cooperating or something, apparently due to tiredness or fatigue (I'd think maybe related to the chemotherapy). We're going to go for another try on another day.

Is this something that happens much, that there is a difficulty with the examination?

Just wondering....

Current Mood: curious

Onion Soup
Possibly an odd posting, but oh well....

Way back when, my exposure to onion soup was via the Lipton French Onion Soup mix. But it was never used to make soup as such. It was to make chip dip and mixed with margarine for a bread spread: as I recall even the package acknowledged that it was primarily used to make chip dip.

Go forward to the recent past.

I was getting chemotherapy for the cancer and as it happened it was around lunch time. I got a light lunch with a roast beef sandwich, chips, and onion soup. Was not sure what to make of it, but the soup was actually good and was good to dip chips in. We had onion soup a couple of times at the rehab but without the chips alas.

I was doing chemo again this last Thursday and we again had the light lunch of a roast beef sandwich (well, half a sandwich), chips, and onion soup. this time the soup had a lot of onions and a slice of bread soaking in it. It was good, actually.

Note that I never had onion soup as soup on its own before my recent hospital adventures; always thought it would not be good. I'm now wondering who all actually likes onion soup.

Okay, not a profound topic.... :)

Drug Price Logic?
One wonders about things, and this time it's the logic behind what the insurance pays on non-generic prescription drugs.

Here's the deal. One of my drugs costs something like $450 + and the cost to me was around $70 for thirty days worth of pills. Another was somewhat over $200 with the cost to me being around $100 for two pills.

We see here that the insurance company does not have a set percentage that they pay for non-generic drugs. We wonder why this is.

Turns out that the first drug, while not having a generic form, does something that a generic drug does and my doctor gave me a presciption for that generic which the insurance company will likely pay a much higher percentage (the amount I have to pay for a generic is comparatively trivial from what I've seen so far).

The insane cost off the drugs is perhaps another issue but the drug companies use the money for Good and Holy Purposes, rifgt? :)

Prehistoric?
During my hospital and rehab stays (for the cancer; I'm much better now) I watched a fair amount of stuff on the History Channel. And a whole lot of the time they noted assorted creatures and events as being "prehistoric."

Well, yeah. Most of the exxiistance of humanity and of the world was "prehistoric"; for goodness sake we've only had "recorded history" for maybe 5000 years or so. I'm not sure that referring to creatures and events tens of thousands or millions of years ago as "prehistoric" is the best description much of the time even if it's not an inaccurate one. There should be another term to use.....

"Eldrich"? Nah, only if something is a Cthulu-ish Horror.
"Ancient"? Hmm, but historical stuff can easily be ancient.
Maybe "prehuman" but that might not quite work.
How about "Primordial"? I kinda like that, but somehow I'm thinking there would be a problem.

Oh well; I fuss about silly things. :)

"Im not quite dead yet"

Some of you may have noticied that I've not posted anything in some time. Well...

For most of the time since my last post I just didn't have much to say or some such thing. But in the last few months I could say that it was because i had cancer.

Mind you, it's a very cureable cancer and I'm making really good progress. I should make a full recovery, more or less. Still, it is a lot unnerving. On the plus side, it mait so I finally lost a lot of weight, but I'd not recommend the "Get cancer and nearly die diet." :)

Hopefully I'll soon be posting more exciting drival as I have in the past.

Joys of weather
So, anybody else kinda sick of the Winter from Hell?

Cold, blowing, snow
Usually on New Year's Eve I take a look-see at the outdoor First Night (Boston) stuff; the Grand Procession (parade), the early fireworks, and the ice sculptures and art stuff. The amount of looking depends on how tired I am and how cold it is.

Well, this year it is really, really cold and I don't have adequate winter clothing (I don't shop for clothing items very well). Plus we had more snow and I'm stuck with having to shovel at least part of the driveway behind my building or face possible flooding due to a very poor job of paving a few yeas back. I might have watched the Procession anyway as it starts when we normally get out of work but we got out before 2:00 today and it was just too unpleasant to hang out for over three hours.

And I see a fairly miserable assortment of stuff on TV. Oh well.....

I've had more than enough winter; I'm ready for spring now.

Well that was different
I've been wandering around YouTube for nostalgia's sake or something and I up and decided to look for something I'd heard years ago on the South Dakota School of Mines college radio station (one of those that broadcasts at really low wattage). The only thing I could remember was in I think the chorus was "quark, strangeness, and charm."

So I plug that into YouTube and immediately get a song by that name from the band Hawkwind which occasionally had some collaboration with the SF writer Michael Moorcock. It's, umm, weird. Don't know for sure if it is the song I heard back in Rapid City over twenty years ago, or if the version I heard was a cover by another band.

Fun with snow
Due to circumstances way beyond my control, I'm forced to shovel snow to make sure that when it all melts it goes away from me as opposed to flooding me. And of course with this big snowstorm hitting New England, well, oh joy.

Dang, there was a whole lot of snow! I did the shoveling in several separate runs so as to not have to shovel a lot, but it was still quite a bit every time. Kinda didn't expect that.

This last time I went out folk from a neighboring building got out a couple of snow blowers to clear the alley that leads to us. I recalled how a few years ago other neighbors shoveled the whole alley out with shovels; their landlord wouldn't do squat to make it so they could get their cars out. One of the fun things about renting is while a landlord is legally required to clear the sidewalks in front of the building they don't have to do anything in the back; thus those neighbors and I have to take care of this stuff ourselves.

So, any other Boston area folk with better written stories that mine?

Best New TV Show (If Any)?
See this here.

Talking Points Memo is primarily a political site, but it seems that all the liberal sites I read regularly have some commentary on TV and movies occasionally. And it appears that Josh Marshall likes the American version of Life On Mars.

As it happens, I think it's the best of the new shows I've seen, for all that I missed a couple of episodes and like the Mad Scientist Walter on Fringe. It might help that while unilike Marshall I'd heard of the BBC show I've never actually seen it and thus am not compelled to make comparisons. I basically agree with with Josh Marshall says so I see little need to add save for noting that the show keeps the Fantastic Element I want in most of my TV shows intact.

So, anybody have an opinion? Or do you think something else is better? Note that I'm limited to broadcast TV as I have no cable, so you folk probably have all seen stuff I've not seen.

The Joy of Futility, or Something
So I get up this morning and I see on the news that here in Boston we've had three manhole fires/explosions down around the Theater District. Apparently some NStar cable had a surge or whatever. This was messing up traffic down there. Okay, fine, I thought; I work a bit aways from there. Then later they say that the outbound service on the T for the Arlington and Copley stations was down. Again, no biggie; I come inbound. But I should have guessed from that that more was going on.

I got on a trolley with relative quickness, had no real problems coming in, but I noticed that the Arlington Station was actually dark at the platforms. The rest of the station was half-lit and other electrical devices weren't functioning. When we got out, I saw that there were police cars and T vehicles all about. And, the various buildings were quite dark.

When I got to where I work at Really Big Company You'd All Recognize they were dark also. I was informed that I could go home as apparently nobody had any idea when the power would come on and we couldn't very well work in the dark and without our computers. And we went home. They'd dug up portable generators so we had enough light to get around on the platform. I was half-amused that at Copley Station the announcer said essentially to find a T person to help you get out of the dark station.

It would have been kind of nice if the news program would have said that essentially half of Back Bay (from the Theater District to Copley at least) was without power. But what can ya do....

Hey!
So, anybody else nearly kill themselves with their slow cooker this weekend?

Prez can't haz no Blackberry?
I see in the Globe that the reason OBama has to give up his Blackberry is that the President isn't allowed to send Blackberry messages for National Security reasons.

I know there is surely a good reason really, but I'm picturing someone afraid that President Obama will text something like "OMG! That Putin is such a meanie!"

Semi-Obscure trivia in a odd place
On the show Life, there is a brief note in a discussion of Simba vs. Kimba as Lion names. Detective Crews (that's how it's spelled, really) observes 'Kimba was first."

Now, that refers to the fact that Kimba the White Lion was around in the sixties, while Simba of The Lion King only goes back to 1994. One wonders how obscure this is to the general public; granted that I've never seen "Kimba" on TV or otherwise so I don't know the actual common experience factor. Is this obscure like it seems to me, or does everybody know this?

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