what may or may not be hard reality

From Health Canada's page on Genetic Engineering, glossary:

"Genetically Modified: An organism, such as a plant, animal or bacterium, is considered genetically modified if its genetic material has been altered through any method, including conventional breeding. A "GMO" is a genetically modified organism."

(It should be noted that for example Wikipedia has a very different definition of "GMO", which specifies that 'genetic engineering' has to have been used and does not include "conventional breeding".)

Now, I'm assuming (hoping!) that Health Canada is trying to be easily accessible and easy to understand or whatever, but this is just dumb. "If its genetic material has been altered through any method." Bah. I'd like someone to show me ANYTHING that they can prove is not a "GMO" according to their definition. Every single living organism on this planet has had its genetic material altered! If we hadn't, we would all be identical single-cell DNA-strands on the bottom of the ocean!

So let's assume that maybe they mean 'altered by humans through any method' - but it's still dumb! It would include basically every crop, vegetable, fruit, and livestock EVER, except whatever people eat who still live as hunter/gatherers - and you bet whatever they eat has been genetically altered too, just not by humans, but by other animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, viruses, whatever.

These are the basics: DNA is the same in all living organisms. It consists of 4 different bases, that combine A-T, C-G, which can be reorganized in any which order. But it will never be anything else than those 4 bases, regardless of whether humans or Nature does the reorganizing. Sure, we can genetically engineer all kinds of toxins and scary stuff. But so can Nature! What about that little super-poisonous frog? Or the botulinum bacteria for that matter, which produces the toxin they use to make botox - 1kg of the toxin is enough to kill the entire human population on earth.

Genetic engineering is one thing. Genetic altering is another, but similar in many ways, and happens all the time. Regardless of which is it, it's not automatically dangerous. Get your facts straight, internets. We don't need to be perpetuating non-scientific stuff like this and unnecessarily scare people. *sigh*

Oh, and I had something else on my mind that's been bothering me this last week. Eddie McClintock did an interview promoting season 3 of Warehouse 13 recently and he said three things in it that bothers me.

Is Myka coming back? He says 'they don't tell us these things'. But considering they've been shooting for what, over a month now, doesn't that mean they're well into a 13-ep season by now? So then what, she's definitely not in the first... 5 episodes? That's half a season (that I won't be watching).

Then he goes on to refer to the new guy as 'her replacement'. Which, whatever, just rubs me the wrong way.

But the worst thing of all, he says "I trust the network." Which scares me more than anything. Because I don't trust SyFy with... you know, my half-dead cactus. I don't have a long past with SyFy, but I do know they pretty much ruined Sanctuary. Killing Ashley ruined the one main thing that set that show apart. The mother-daughter relationship made this show infinitely different and special from all the other shows I watched. Then they killed her, and now it's Amanda Tapping being hot and running around in leather, and it's a good fun show, but the heart of it died for me when they killed Ashley and I don't really have an emotional connection to it anymore. And I didn't even like Ashley that much! (Also, wasn't SciFi the network that cancelled Farscape??)

Now, I realized I might be petty and sensitive and over-reacting. I really really never wanted to be that fan that was too emotionally blinded to handle the big picture, but that's where I keep ending up. And isn't that what they want? They want us to be emotionally invested in their shows? What for? So they can screw us over? Damien Kindler was so smug on one of the commentaries, he talked about how he was so glad they killed Ashley because now the characters on the show are actually in real peril, as opposed to just fake peril. And maybe I'm not their target audience, then, because I don't like real peril. There's plenty of real peril in real life, I don't need it from my entertainment, and that means I'm gonna detach emotionally from the show so I don't get hurt again. Ilene Chaiken-level mind-fuckery.

I like peril, both physical and emotional and whatever, I love a well-excecuted dangerous action sequence that makes my heart race, and I love a good emotional torture storyline, but the heart of it I wanna wonder *how* they're gonna get out of stuff, not *if* - and if someone is leaving I wanna know about it well ahead so I have time to prepare. If I'm gonna endure a seriously long hiatus and be excited about the upcoming season, I want some kind of reassurance that it's gonna be worth it. Warehouse 13 had turned into my favourite current show, and Myka is my favourite character. Without her I won't watch the show. Easy as that. And a lot of people just seem completely relaxed and certain that she's coming back. But the fact that that's the cliffhanger they're playing up for the new season is just enough to make me doubt it, and I can't love a show that I don't trust. And now I'm working really hard to distance myself enough that I won't be hurt if she ends up not coming back.

But I also don't want artists to pander to their fans. I swear I don't. I believe in creating art for art's sake! But then it gets tricky, because shows like these are exist because they have fans, and they want fans, and they want their fans to be emotionally invested. *sigh* And I guess I'm just not the right fan for it... which makes me sad, because adventure and sci-fi and whatever are the kinds of shows I like. I guess what I really need to do is just stop watching any shows that are still on the air, and wait until I can read a full synopsis and buy the DVDs.

Frell. I guess at the root of it I'm just over-sensitive. And I guess TPTB is rubbing their hands saying they've succeeded, because controversy is good, and whatever. And I feel a little bit pathetic that I let it get to me like this. *sigh* I'll just be over here, watching Farscape. At least they won't let me down, I know how the series ends.

So apparently all this 'connect with facebook and twitter, pingbacks, destroy your privacy, etc' stuff happened while I was gone this week. Bah. I've been trying to get caught up, but any good links with more info would be appreciated. FB I hate while twitter I'm very fond of, but I don't really want my stuff posted to either one... and uh, please don't?

I'm on both facebook and twitter, but neither is because of any preference of mine. There are people on facebook (cousins) and twitter (celebs) that I wish to be kept up to date on, and therefore I'm involving myself with these sites. But DAMN I hate them so much. For pretty much one reason: THE COMPLETE LACK OF A USER-FRIENDLY ARCHIVE! There I am, three months back on facebook, having clicked that bloody link at the bottom at least a dozen times, and then I click 'expand' on one of the comment boxes, but instead of expanding it sends me to a new page because there are too many comments to expand. And then when I go back to the overview site, I'm back to present day, and I have to go back and click 'view older posts' a dozen times again to get back to where I was. And twitter is very similar. Some stuff opens in a new window, and some opens in the same, and I never remember when to ctrl-click and when I can just click. ARGH! If anyone knows of a good manageable way to handle these sites, please do let me know.

I <3 LJ so much. Why isn't everyone else on LJ too?

(Having said that, I know I haven't been around LJ much lately... there's this lady named Chely who has sort of distracted me... perhaps I should make some Chely posts...)

One of my biggest pev peeves is 'don't shoot the messenger' in various different applications of the proverb. I just came back from one of those 'You can change your life right now!' type of lectures (to which I'm basically benevolently inclined - I just try to avoid them at all costs - I attended this one purely as a social favour), and the dude was mostly funny, etc etc, but the one thing that really bugged me, and still bugs me, is the 'don't shoot the messenger' thing.

I have a relatively high tolerance for politically incorrect humour, though with some exceptions, and this one is clearly one of them. It's not ok to ridicule people for doing their job. You may think their job is dumb, you may think it's unnecessary, you may be convinced it's BS through and through, the person doing the job may even be aware of it. But if they still have to perform the tasks, it's not ok to ridicule them for carrying out their job according to the rules.

He was making fun of security guards at the airports, and everyone was laughing, and my completely unamused thoughts were along the lines of 'you're the idiot who makes the lines to the security check go on forever because you talk back at the guys who are just doing their jobs'. Take it up with their bosses, or the airlines, or whoever makes the rules, but don't make out the people standing there doing their jobs to be brainless anal-retentive morons just because they're doing their job. Grrrrrr. Not ok. Not funny.

Hero of the Day:

TeraCopy

And it doesn't look much for the world. A simple little copying program. And I'm not much for having added program for every single function just to spite Windows. There are a lot of things Windows performs perfectly adequately for my needs. However, copying is NOT one of them. And I've made the mistake of searching for backup programs, which keep offering me online backup, and automatic crap whatever that I don't need. What I need is a simple "no to all" button, that is mysteriously omitted from the replace? box.

Just a few months ago I finally went and bought myself one of those extra harddrives, where I keep all my large files. But I still have some 25 GB of My Documents that I use frequently and that interact with the Internet, meaning that a lot of files there are constantly added into the 350+ different folders. And then when I wanna back this up, I either have to "replace all" on the little USB drive, which takes a loooooooong time, and is annoying just on principle, or I have to say 'no' for every single file that already exists. And that's some 40 000 files. However, today, instead of ripping my hair out, I just for the heck of it ran a google search for "no to all", and up popped this little program. And it WORKS (so far. I've had it for the last 45 minutes). It has a "no to all" button. So while it still takes a good 20 minutes or so, it's nowhere NEAR the head-meet-wall pain of Window's way.

Thank you, TeraCopy!

The danger of writing for a fandom where most of the fic sucks is that you get caught in their stupidity. All these things that I cringe at and rant about when I read, I find myself writing, because it somehow fits the vocabulary and style I have come to associate with fandom. Like somehow everything else being crap justifies me not even trying to write something I can stand for instead of something that passes for ok because it's no worse than everything else. Blerg.

Birds of Prey: "Some music may differ from original broadcast." - Meaning that awesome fightscene at the series finale that previously happened to tATu's "all the things she said" now takes place to some inane indistinguishable techno beat...

Witchblade: "Features an all-new soundtrack selected by the executive producer." - Meaning... well, not much, it'd had been so long since I watched the show I didn't really notice a difference.

Remington Steele: apparently someone forgot the disclaimer, or the sound-editor didn't read the script...
Laura: "Whooo-ooo-ooo-aaaa, Giiiiirls just wanna haaa-aave fuuu-uh-nnnn!!"
Simultaneous radio: "Hey mister, look in my eyes, tell me what do you see? I believe in myself, cause I know..."

Did casting directors think TV audiences were stupid in the 80s, or did they simply think that at a time when most households didn't even have a VCR, much less TiVos or DVD-sets, that no-one would remember actors from one season to the next? So far I've noticed three actors who've played prominent different, yet so similar, characters, on Remington Steele in the first two seasons. And I know this still happens all the time, but this is three times with prominent characters in just the first two seasons, but you at least get the sense that they try to avoid making it completely obvious these days. Space it out with a few seasons between, or at least make them look a bit different or play significantly different characters.

( Lynne Randall )

( Cassandra Harris )

( J.D. Cannon )

Other things I dislike about the 80/90s:
Now, this is going to sound terribly naïve, but it's not like I'm not aware of times having been different 20 years ago, it's just not something I spend a lot of time thinking about. Every once in a while it takes me by surprise that times being different as late as 20 years ago is not just something portrayed on TV for our entertainment, it was the real life experience of women living then (and I lived then as well, but I was a quite young child and didn't so much pay attention to gender roles in society).

Take a show like Remington Steele; a woman invents a male boss to be taken seriously, and then does all the work herself but presents it in his name. Like the producers have said in the commentaries, you couldn't do a show like that today. As a women, I would be horribly offended if someone made a show like that today. But this is set in the 80s, with an air of glamorous 50s, and times were different then, and while the show itself never treats Laura as any less capable than Steele (its saving grace, definitely), she runs into a lot of characters along the way who do. But in some part of my mind I've sort of chalked that up to television, and preferred not to think about the fact that life only 20 years ago was a lot like that for a lot of women.

A point I've had driven home to me lately. I've spent quite a bit of time this past week watching old interviews and talk show appearances with Stephanie Zimbalist, from the 80s and early 90s, and while the things they talk about haven't changed much, the way they talk about them and their relevance to women in particular is sort of creeping me out.

One that stands out is a panel-interview on Marilu, Stephanie and two other actresses, and they very seriously discuss how to balance being a wife and an actress, because don't the husbands get jealous when they cavort around on screen with hunky Hollywood men? Which is a question that might still be asked today, but the way it is asked in 1992 (or whenever this takes place) is as a question that it is something that makes it double difficult for *women* in the acting profession. Stephanie, not being married, opts out of the discussion and talks about her puppy, but the other two women very seriously talk about how important it is to be married to a man who is strong enough in himself not to have his ego be threatened. And this is very pointedly treated like an issue that is only relevant for *actresses*, not actors in general. So not only does the stereotypical man in society feel that he is more important than his significant lady, the stereotypical woman in society perpetuates this image quite well on her own (female talk show host, 3 female guests, and 98% women in the audience who found this topic really interesting).

And women are still treated as less important in society, but I'd like to think it's getting better. The 'how does your spouse feel about this' question is still being asked, but from what talk show interviews I've seen it is treated as an 'actor' question, asked of both male and female actors. And a lot of other things. I think I'm gonna go read some feminist rants by Sarah Warn to wash my brain out.

In honor of the spring equinox I decided that winter was over and cracked my bedroom window open just a tad yesterday, and will, barring a severe late-spring cold snap, not close it until the fall equinox. The air was a little chilly when I woke up this morning, we still get close to freezing degrees at night, but the windows face east so it gets warm quickly as soon as the sun rises, and accompanying the chilled air was the sound of birds singing outside, which made it well worth it. How I've missed not-winter.

Argh!, though. OpenOffice ate one of my fics! The last time I had it open was a few days ago, and I had to turn the computer off the non-correct way (I have some trouble with stand-by mode, sometimes it gets stuck half-way, never goes to stand-by, but I can't bring it back either, and so I have to press the Key of Doom for 3 seconds and power off). And since I know this occasionally happens, I never point it to stand-by without making sure all my documents are saved first. And this happened, and then the next time I turned the computer on it asked me if I wanted to restore the documents that had been open, and knowing that I'd saved them I said no. And yesterday, a few days later, the entire document is missing from the computer. How can it do that??? The other two documents I had open were where they were supposed to be, and were just fine. I had a back up, but it was a couple of weeks old, and I'm missing a bunch of editing, and two scenes. Grrr.

New random 'of the Day:' category:
Random Screen Cap of the Day (click to enlarge):



Caption that one, people.

Now, I'm a fan of paying attention to details. And one of the things I started looking at is what wrist one wears a watch on, and now it's just one of those things I notice. What I've also noticed is that twice in a short time, two crime shows has used certain circumstantial evidence to determine if a person is right- or left-handed. CSI: Miami (the episode was older, but I first saw it recently) got an arrest-warrant for a woman based on the correlation between the knife-wounds having been made by a left-handed person, and her wearing her watch on the right arm. SVU just off the cuff deemed an apparent suicide to be murder based on the victim holding the gun in his right hand, but his cell-phone was clipped onto his belt on the left side, therefore he couldn't have done it himself.

However, having paid attention to this, I've come to the conclusion that there is no conclusive pattern. And I know cop shows make fantastical leaps in logic all the time, but this being something I have paid attention to, it annoys me. (And considering how often I can pick at things that I do know about or pay attention to, I can only imagine what goes on with the stuff I'm not familiar with...)

I'm right-handed, and I've always worn my cell phone on my left side. I wear my watch on my left arm, as do the majority of left-handed people I know. Crime shows, these things are not conclusive. I have a friend who writes with her right and uses the knife with her left. I have another friend who writes with his left, but does everything else, including shoot and cut, with his right. Crime shows, stop acting like you've discovered some great way do discern how people do stuff based on their watch or their cell phone.

And if we look to Hollywood, sure, there are a bunch of left-handed people who wear their watches on the right, Christina Cox, Angie Harmon, Jason Bateman. But there's also a bunch of left-handed people who still wear their watches on the left, Cameron Daddo, Angelina Jolie, Stephanie Zimbalist, Tina Fey, CSI: Miami's own Jonathan Togo. And also, there are right-handed actors who still wear their watches on the right, SVU's own Stephanie March, Teri Hatcher (or at least she used to, she seems to have switched around 2003), Lane Smith, Robert Patrick, Françoise Yip (not confirmed, but I think I have glimpsed her there in the background both with the watch and writing). Not conclusive, crime shows!

[Poll #1367717]

Pet Peeve of the Day:

I read a lot of lesbian romance novels. Like, a *lot*. Lesbian romance and crime/mystery novels make up 97% of everything I read (and I read a lot). And I like action. I like a good action movie, I like an exciting mystery novel filled with action, and I like a good romance novel set against a backdrop of action and mystery. I like stuff that features agents, cops, procedurals, private investigators, Xena, all that stuff. However, I'm starting to get a little tired of that plot twist that inevitably arrives 3/4ths into the book where one or both parties are placed in mortal danger (kidnappings, car accidents, train wrecks, crazy exes, terrorists, assassins, robbers, etc, etc) forcing one or both of them to instantly realize that they cannot live without each other. But I'm getting to the point where it's starting to feel almost a little like a cop-out. Like for *once* can I have a couple where they're actually forced to *talk* about it, and work through all their issues and mental blocks and all that crap to arrive at the conclusion that they love each other and can't live without each other.

Now, it's not that it's not good. It's not that it's not exciting. It's not that I don't like it. I do like it. I like excitement and danger and brave and noble women who try to make the world a better place and who place themselves in harm's way because they believe in their cause, and I like it when they're forced to set aside whatever personal issues they have because the situation is dire and there's no room for it right now. And lots of writers write this really really well, and I enjoy it thoroughly, most of the time.

But like the one I'm reading right now, and I don't wanna tell you which one it is, because it's a good book, and it's not this book's fault in any way, it's an accumulated feeling, but it has competent professionals who value other people and the greater good over themselves, and our two heroines have huge elephant-sized honking pasts that have built fortresses with guards and cannons and moats and marksmen around their hearts, and they've been drawn to each other over the course of the book, and they've gotten closer and then been pulled apart several times, both by other people and their own demons, all according to good romance novel fashion, and now with about 1/5th of the book left there has been this huge catastrophe, and one of them is missing, and they're about to become painfully aware of how much they love each other, and all the walls and all the past will just be gone, like that, because the disaster came and stripped it all away. And you know, that's not a bad plot-twist. It's exciting and full of action and assorted heroics.

But, just once in a while, I would like my brave noble women to have to pull the fortresses apart by themselves. No outside forces aiding abetting them (I don't mind a lot of action and mystery, but the two can co-exist), just my brave noble women forced to rip the walls down, stone by stone, with their bare hands, and the reader getting to follow along in the process. Is it too much to ask?

Disclaimer: if you're a writer and you've written this plot twist at some point, and you happen across this, this does not mean I do not enjoy these books. I do! Lots! I've written it myself, as well! I just... once! With their bare hands!

I don't get why everyone is so crazy over Mozilla Firefox. I'm currently using it out of necessity because Internet Explorer is just plain sucky, and Opera currently hates me. I love Opera. I love everything about it except for one thing. It eats CPU. Every half-hour or so I gotta shut it down and re-start because it's eaten all my CPU and all my allocated internal memory whatever it's called. If not for that tiny teeny little detail Opera is awesome, it loads faster than anything else, doesn't re-load when you hit [back], has that nifty speed dial thing, and never gives me grief about having 20 tabs at once saved from one session to the next. So now I'm stuck with Mozilla. Which takes just as long to hit [back] as it does to load a new page, and has the most annoying habit of forgetting my settings and erasing my browser history, which is unforgivable, and the colours are ugly. I do like the new feature in Firefox3 when you type in just about anything in the address field and it gives you the most relevant matches from your browser history, be they beginning of URL, or mid, or from the page title itself. And it would have been even more awesome if *it could remember my browser history*. Bah. I'm so dependant on my tabs and my browser history it's ridiculous. I never bother with bookmarks because I'm used to Opera where I had speed dial, and then everything else important was in my tabs. Remembering tabs is everything. I had a bunch of LJ post from the last day I was gonna comment on, a few articles I was gonna re-read, and a fic I hadn't finished. Which wouldn't have been a big problem if I'd had my browser history from the last 24 hours, but I DON'T. Argh! Are there any good obscure browsers out there that anyone can recommend me?

In other news, I dug up Christina's scene from Million Dollar Baby, where she gets her ass whupped by Hilary Swank. I know Hilary Swank is the lead, and it's supposed to be about her winning, and so on and so forth, but I'm all Grrrr... Git yer hands off mah woman, Oscar Winner... Of course, then Lucia Rijker showed up and beat up on Hilary Swank, and I was pleasantly assuaged by memories of her and Helena having a fine old time in that cell of theirs... Yum.

I have to say, I'm quite proud of Kanal 5. We've had EuroPride in Stockholm this past week, and while this particular gay, while proud, has never felt any particular desire to attend pride (too many people in one place - I can stand the 25 000 orienteers, because the only thing they do is sit around mellowly, discuss the day's race, eat organic food, and go to bed early) and thus hasn't paid much attention to it, I did, however, pay attention to PrideWeek on Kanal 5.

Now, Kanal 5 is a pretty regular network, 1 of the 5 main ones, it's not culture, they tend to pass on documentaries in favour of shockumentaries, and the usual blend of crappy reality TV and various American shows. However, during all of last week, every evening was filled with LGBTQ programming, viewers voted for their favourite episodes of gay-friendly dramas like Queer as folk (UK version), Brothers & Sisters, Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives and so on, and the winning episodes were shown the next day, there was a series of documentaries about LGBTQ people, and a number of movies. The only criticism I have is that the entire thing was about 80% gay male, but then again, when isn't media?

However, their website looked like a rainbow, they posted clips of the 10 Moments that wrote Gay TV-history (2 were lesbian, 1 trans, rest gay male - but it was written by someone who obviously knew they gay TV history, and there was even an AfterElton reference), and they kept running teasers about PrideWeek for several weeks ahead of time, and when it finally arrived, all their regular presenters sounded really genuinely into it. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but considering the way (American) TV keeps disappointing with the gay stuff, I didn't have too high hopes for this. I spend so much time on AfterEllen, sometimes I forget that this is not America. LGBTQ is a little bit easier here.

Anyway. Good on you, Kanal 5!! (eta: Aww, look how pleased Cagney looks... I love her. I should go watch some Cagney & Lacey...)

I just posted an insanely long comment on AfterEllen, in response to a post that widely generalized gay men and lesbians, about the importance of recognizing that stereotypes do exist while not treating people according to stereotypes (I should say I don't think the poster did anything wrong, except maybe assuming that people understood the meaning of the phrase 'in general'...). I just reckoned I'd put enough thought into it to warrant posting it here as well. (It's written somewhat defensively, being in favour of stereotypes didn't feel like the popular opinion on that particular thread, which isn't to say that I support stereotypes, I just think it's important to admit that they often exist for a reason.)

( ~1000 words, under here )

Mmmm, pizza for breakfast. Ham, pineapple, onion, and peanuts, with Bearnaise-sauce on top. Yum.

So, I ran a google search for 'sore throat' + 'wisdom teeth', and got a couple hits for dentistry sites saying that sure, if your wisdom teeth are acting up you can get a sore throat and fever and all kinds of things. And then all the rest were hits for random blogs where people were whining about 'OMG my wisdom teeth are killing me and on top of it they've give me a sore throat and fever, is that even possible??' So in light of recent discoveries; Ow ow ow ow. My wisdom teeth decided that this was the perfect week to grow, and OW. And on top of it they've given me a sore throat, and I feel slightly feverish. And I'm pretty sure it's related, because every time my wisdom teeth have as much as twitched in the last couple months, instant sore throat. However, this time they seem to mean business, which means I should probably call my dentist. But it's my week off, dammit. I don't wanna call my dentist. Why, wisdom teeth, why? I mean, my first two ones (upper jaw) just showed up one day and were like 'yo, dude, whazzup?' and didn't hurt one bit. Watch and learn, lower jaw wisdom teeth!

So instead I watched the Season Premiere of Nip/Tuck. Which, admittedly, is not a show I'm particularly into. I tried a few years ago when I learned that Jessalyn Gilsig was on it, and she's so very pretty, and yet I could not bring myself to watch it - too much with the guys that I don't care about. Mostly because I was utterly bored by it. However, Portia's gonna be on it this season, so really, I have to watch it. (I mean, the crappy movies I've sat through for her sake in the last month - I'll be blogging about those too, at some point.)

And I was kinda surprised that I didn't hate it. It was shiny, and occasionally amusing, and lots of silly. Daphne Zuniga was *gorgeous* (when I was 12 years old and not crushing on Heather Locklear or Marcia Cross she was my absolute favourite Melrose Place character ever). Pre-operation, that is. Stupid them. What people told me, but I didn't fully understand until I saw for myself, was how very very *gay* the show was. Wow. I spent a lot of time going 'omg they're totally gonna fuck like whoa right here on my teevee!' and then I was so disappointed when they didn't. But the touching, and the glances, and the talking, and the raising a kid together, so very gay. I have no idea which one is which of the two main dudes, but they should totally be sleeping together. Roma Maffia was adorable, but I knew that back from her Profiler days (I miss that show), and it's very cool that she's a lesbian. Looking forward to next week when Portia will be showing up!

eta: does anyone know where I might find Nip/Tuck manslash? Ehem.

Outlook access to Hotmail accounts only for paid members?? I mean, I've been moving slowly over to gmail anyway for some time now, but still! (At least this is what MSN's help told me. I guess it was just a coincidence that this occurred at the same time I got an 'some new features have not been intalled properly' when I was installing IE7 and I assumed that's why I wasn't getting my mail.)

Anyway, just to let you know that I'll be discontinuing my hotmail accounts shortly (as soon as I can figure out all the places I've used them and can change it to my gmail accounts).

I just wanna give a shout-out to CutThroat Island, that I watched tonight. I'd seen it years ago, and remembered liking it (tho not really remembering plot, or anything like that), and then I saw it again tonight. I've been a fan of Geena Davis for a long time, Long Kiss Goodnight has always been a favourite, and while Madam President paled a little next to The West Wing, it was still awesome, whatwith Geena, and the female president thing!

Anyway, having listened to the extras on my new DVD, apparently CutThroat was the biggest pirate movie there ever had been back in '95 when it came out. And not only is the main hero!pirate a woman, the woman in question happens to be one of the most awesome female characters I've ever come across in film.

This movie has *every* opportunity to fall into the classic annoying male/female pattern that so many other movies with female leads succumb to, but it never does. Even with female action leads she's never really allowed to be cooler than her male love interest. When they're alone together she always has to display some weakness that the outer world isn't allowed to see, but that still proves that the love interest is the *man* in the relationship.

Not so with Morgan Adams. She sets out to avenge her father's death, and find the Treasure while she's at it, and in the process acquires a slave/love interest. And she's constantly one step ahead of him, never gives in to his demands, never appears fazed by whatever little tricks he's got up his sleeve.

Not once in the entire movie is he needed to console her, or save her, or reassure her, or whatever, because she's perfectly able to take care of herself. It's not that whimpy 'she can take care of herself because she has to, but it's so much better to have a man to do it for her', no, Morgan likes being on her own, trusting no-one but herself, but she also likes William, and is willing to have him in her life, provided he knows his place (something that annoying Mr First Lady had great troubles with). And William does know his place, even has the decency to need her to rescue him a few times, which is awesome.

And she wins all the staring contests. Now that's my kinda action heroine!

So, saffron is the most expensive spice on earth, because it's so difficult to gather. Or cultivate. Or whatever you call plucking the tiny crocus pistils, drying them, and then pulverizing them (or whatever it is you do with them). As a result, while saffron is yummy, it is not used all that often. A few types of bread, the occasional French fish soup, and a few nice spicy stews. (If anyone has delicious saffron recipes, let me know!)

Which brings us to another spice that used *everywhere* (at least when it comes to ice cream). According to an unverified source, true vanilla is the second most expensive spice on earth, after saffron. And yet things that are vanilla flavoured are considered plain, and vanilla is even used as an expression for all kinds of things that are plain or regular and bordering on boring. When did this happen? You'd think the second most expensive spice in the world would be somewhat exclusive and at least have a taste that when eating it is considered special. It's not. Vanilla may be a spice, but adding vanilla ice cream to any other ice cream is like adding water to a drink.

There's no such thing as plain ice cream. Plain ice cream is white and vanilla flavoured. Sure, it's synthetic and not true vanilla in most of the cases, but how come the world's second most expensive spice is referred to as 'plain' anything? Any kind of ice cream you have, and you can combine it with vanilla. You wouldn't use cinnamon, or saffron, for that matter, but sure, vanilla goes with everything, even as it has a rather distinctive taste. How comes? Sure, synthetic vanilla has been commercially available for about 100 years, (did you know that Coca Cola is the largest purchaser of true vanilla in the world, and that Madagascar's economic infrastructure collapsed when Coca Cola started using synthetic vanilla in their coke?) but it probably wasn't that cheap in the beginning.

My point, and I probably don't have one in the end, is that More Vanilla to the People! Really. Don't knock it just 'cause it's everywhere. Try tastin' the vanilla next time. It's a very nice spice all by its lonesome.