Script for Charlotte's Web 2 Preview

A good friend of mine from high school, Dave, wrote this "comment" in response to my last post. It was too funny not to post, so here it is... enjoy!

Finally, someone else who has seen Charlotte's Web 2: Ariel's Revenge. Vindication. I am not crazy. I was starting to think that I had dreamed all of that.

Voice over for preview:
Two years after the "teerriiffiicccc" "radiant" "humble" "some pig" incidents. Fame has driven Farmer Zuckerman to madness. He wanders around the farm with his once proud blue ribbon stapled to his collar like a necktie repeating "He's some pig... he's some pig." The farm has wasted away--the animals have struggled alone for survival, fighting and eating each other. Only Wilbur and Jeffery the gosling remain.

Zuckerman lives alone--his wife left him to take her "buttermilk bath" idea on "Invent America".

Lervey the farm hand committed suicide when he realized that his name was Lervey. and that he was a farm hand.

In these dark times, Mother Earth and Father Time have come together and formed a new and deadly offspring: mermaids. And Ducks. Which were already around.

Now, gangs of merducks roam in packs in the wasted cities of Nebraska picking off sick children and pigs that can read. When Ariel, the mermaid and Ferdinand, the duck from babe (that is how he always introduces himself) hear that there is a pig in a town up north who was in the paper a few years back, they decide to take action. And this time...Charlotte isn't around to save the day.

Some pig? Some dead pig.

Quips

Avril jumps around the kitchen, saying "Boing, boing"... "Mommy, I'm a pig!"

"Pigs don't jump Avril."

"Yes they do, they jump like this." (demonstrating a jump reminiscent of Wilbur from Charlotte's Web)

"Is that how Wilbur jumps?"

"Yeah!"

"He's SOME PIG, isn't he Avril? He's TERRIFIC!"

"No he's not. He's dead!"

"....What?"

"The duck and the mermaid killed him!"

"..."

my word

I've decided to choose a word to focus my life on this year. I'm inspired by {A}, whose word for 2008 is {vitality}. I'm having a hard time not stealing her word, because it is really quite perfect. However, I did decide on a different word for myself- somewhat of a synonym, but encompasses so many meanings that I need to focus on.

So, my word for 2008 is

{live}

live [liv] verb, living:

1) to direct or regulate one's life
2) to experience or enjoy life to the fullest
3) to practice, represent, or exhibit in one's life: to live one's philosophy

live [lahyv] adjective,

1) full of life, energy or activity
2) having resilience or bounce
3) being in play, as a football or baseball
4) vivid or bright

This is how I want to live my life this year- that being the key phrase: to live my life. I want my life to be an active thing, a time for growing and learning and progressing. I want vibrance. I want to enjoy life. I want to live my principles. I have so many theories and soapboxes, but upon that closer examination, do I truly live the things I believe? The heroes I hold on their pedestals: would they be honored by my actions or disappointed?

I'm so tired of being tired. I want so much to attain what every true yogi does: to live in the present moment. I live so much in my mind that it seems life just slides by and at the end of the day, I can't really account for my time. I want to be accountable. I want to know where I spend my energy. I want to be able to show what my priorities are through the way I spend my day and organize my life. I want to organize this life I've been given- to live it!

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.
-Benjamin Franklin

Tagged...

Ok, so I got tagged clear back in November... (thanks Crystal!)... so here's me finally sharing what there is to share. Supposedly this is the "10 things you don't know about me" tag. Hopefully, I can come up with 10. I talk too much to too many people for you not to know that many things about me!

1) I got a 5 on my AP English exam and I love myself for it. I was the only one in my class and I like to take full bragging rights on that. I love to write, I love to read and at one time I thought I would be a writer. I think I'm coming full circle on that one since I crave it so much!

2) I've always had a thing for redheads. I can't really explain it. Clearly it didn't take all the way, there's not a redhead in my family, in-laws or not. But redheads are hot.

3) I have a passion for philosophy and theology. I love studying them and thinking and discussing. Of course, I'm also very opinionated, so I usually think that my opinion is right. But I like to think I'm logical, too, so if you were to debate me on a point that I consider open, I could reconsider. But there are some beliefs that I hold as absolute truth so strongly that will never be budged.

4) I hate chores. Not that very many people like them. But I absolutely loathe cleaning my house. I also loathe having a dirty house. So I guess I have to clean it. I really don't mind vacuuming, though...

5) I have nurtured a secret desire to be an actress slash model for ages. Mostly because I really like to play dress up and takes pictures (hence the faery hobby). No, seriously.

6) I played the lead female role in my high school musical, "Oliver!" Yes, that's right, I played Nancy. And I did a good job. But you'll have to take my word for it, because if I show you the tape, you'll just laugh. Yes, that was the one night that I completely goofed my lines. Twice. And not just a little slip-up. I honestly sat there, completely blank for like 15 seconds. That's a loooooong time.

7) I have a really good French accent. Or so I've been told. When I say that, I mean that I speak French accurately, not that I can speak English with a French accent. When I do that, I just sound silly.

8) I kind of wish I'd been a cheerleader or a soccer player in high school. Or both. I think I could have been good.

9) I love to karaoke. I want to be in a band (I kind of was for a while, but it was more of a joke than anything. I can only play like 4 chords on the guitar. And I certainly can't sing and play at the same time. And do two people constitute a band? Our name was Aphrodite at any rate.) or be a lounge singer. It sounds sexy.

10) I love playing RPG games. My favorite ever was Baldur's Gate on the Gamecube. I'm terrible at shooter games or anything where you have to aim or walk in a straight line, but let me create a character and go do some quests and I'm your girl.

And now, since I don't know who hasn't been tagged, I'm tagging YOU- but only if you haven't been tagged yet.

Derek's Birthday

So it was Derek's birthday on Monday- the man is back to a youthful three syllables at twenty-eight years old. He was king of the world for a day- even though he was studying for a test Tuesday morning. He picked his meals for the day: German pancakes with apple pie filling for breakfast, banana bread and smoothies for lunch (I learned that it's highly advisable to use the black bananas. Otherwise... it's just weird. It turned out white and a little mushy and way too banana-flavored. 'Course, I think I may not have cooked it quite long enough. But still.), and "spider pizza" for dinner. (This one turned out even better than the one pictured, but since I didn't take a picture this time, this is what you get.) Then of course, the usual as far as cakes go: Dark Chocolate with chocolate pudding "frosting".

Well, ok, maybe picking your meals for the day doesn't really make you king for a day. But I did give him extra back and head scratches (he's a very itchy guy) and back rubs. As for gifts, it was somewhat anti-climactic. Thanks to my dad and Ethan and Amiee (youngest siblings), he got a little pre-birthday something (a cd about Joseph Smith by Truman Madsen and some delicious snacks. He also hoardes snacks.). Thanks to Zan he got a weird rose card- which he then opened to read, "Ok, honestly, who cares what the card looks like? Just take your cash and be glad I remembered." He loved it.

So what did I get him? Well, first of all, we gave him a bag of fun-sized Snickers, some dark chocolate Cadbury bars and some other gourmet dark chocolate squares. Then I followed this up with a world map. Which begs a background story. We once had a world map. A lovely world map. It was mounted on this styrofoam-type mounting stuff (yeah, no idea what, can you tell?) and it was wonderful. Well, last year I started playing around with antiquing altered books and other things and thought it would be a good idea to try that on the map. Well, shoe polish did NOT work on this stuff. I ruined probably a good quarter of the map with it. About a month ago I started trying to mask the damage and used a stain- which worked perfectly on everything I hadn't already ruined, but did nothing for the damaged portion. So it's already ruined. What can it hurt? I took a match to the corner.

Well, I guess it looks... alright. But mostly weird. Not like a cool display piece. More like a weird burnt map that would need explaining anytime anyone looked at it. So I got him a new one. Frankly, I like this one better anyway.

Finally, I got him a new Lord of the Rings sword. He already has Anduril, the sword of Aragorn, which he reforged from the shards of Narsil; as well as the sword of the Witchking. I got him Herugrim, the sword of King Theodrin. Unfortunately, the sword didn't arrive until today, so it missed the actual birthday. In any case, he opened his package today and loved the sword. Here he is, weilding his new toy:

Meanwhile... what do you think was happening to the packing peanuts?







They had a ball. And then we spent at least 1 1/2 hours cleaning up the mess. It was atrocious. But I did figure out that you can eliminate the annoying static cling by spraying them with water. Amazing.

How Not to Steal Photos

Since I've had a few questions from concerned readers, I've decided to post a little note on what I did wrong and how to avoid letting it happen to you.

Here's me posting: Hmmm... I'm writing a post about sleeping. I need a picture of someone sleeping. What about that pic of me a couple years ago? No, wait, that's on the other comp. I'm too lazy. Any pics of my kids sleeping? Other comp, too lazy. Der de der... I'll google it! Let's see, here's a cute baby... oh, wait this is a personal pic, I won't use that, that's creepy. What about this one, this one's cute (clicking on the image URL without viewing the host site). Oh, yeah, this is perfect. Since it's so much faster to hotlink than to download and then upload, I'll just do that.

Next morning: Let's see, here's my email, reading comment: "What's with the naked buns?!" WHAT? What naked buns?! There they are in all their glory with a nice little note for me: Don't Steal Pictures, Dumb***!

My thought process: What kind of a creep replaces innocent baby pictures with soft porn? Ok, that was embarrassing and I certainly hope all my readers didn't have to see that and think I'm a perv. I'll apologize to them, I don't even know how that got there. Maybe it's an automatic thing someone has hooked up. Stupid assumption.

Later that day: Mean comment (thanks for apologizing by the way, Jen), warning comment. Me: What in the world is going on? I better check this site. So I do my search over again and find the site. Oh! It's a personal picture! This was posted by another mother! And now all of her readers think I'm a creepy moron. My stat counter shows more than half of my hits are directed from her pages. Her blog is very freaked out and as she put it, she reacted like a Momma Bear. Her readers are commenting like crazy about how horrible this whole thing is and how creepy and worthless the thief (me) is. Naturally, I feel like a little pile of crap and comment on her posts apologizing profusely for my mistake. Then I locate her email and personally apologize. She had actually already written me (it was sent to my other email) to accept my apology and was very cool about the whole thing. I'd give her some link-love right here if I knew she wanted it from me, but unless I hear differently I'm going to go the safe route and give her anonymity.

So, let's evaluate. What were my mistakes? How do you avoid them?

1) If possible, use your own pictures, even if you have to get your lazy butt off the couch and get them off your desktop.

2) Always check the host site- is this a personal or corporate picture? In any case, make sure that it is ok with the owner.

3) Don't upload image URLs without asking permission or at LEAST giving credit. The owner of the image URL has the control of the image- which can be changed to a naked butt or something else. It also gives them a heads up of the pictures you are using.

4) Don't assume the wrong thing and exacerbate the problem by not realizing and apologizing for your mistake immediately! Get to the bottom of it before posting anything else.

5) DO use images from a free image site, such as istockphoto.com, FreeFoto.com, or stock.xchng

Finally, from the other side of the coin: How to avoid getting your site content googled and used:
If you're using Blogger, go to Settings--> Basic and answer the first two questions "No". (Don't add your blog to the listings and don't allow search engines to find it.) Your blog will still be available to anyone, but unless they know your URL or have a direct link, it will be a lot harder to find your site or any of its content.

And thank you, Robyn, for your kind words. They were truly needed.

The Negotiator

"Here's the deal Mom. Either you can help me eat my dinner, or you can read me a story or you can get me ready for bed. Those are your choices, Mom, I'm sorry."

Pet Peeves

You know what I really hate? Light bulbs. No, seriously, I just replaced 4 of them- and now I can think of at least 6 more that I know of that burned out. What am I doing wrong? Am I just making a mistake in having too many light bulbs? It seems like I'm spending waaaay too much money on new bulbs.

I Get It

Thanks to a couple of lurkers, I now know that I am an "idiot" for posting a googled image. Thank you so kindly for insulting me on my blog. I just want you to know that I get it. Thank you for reiterating what that picture so clearly told me. One comment was a well-earned warning, one was just downright rude.

So let this be a warning to anyone else out there who made the mistake I did in assuming you can use google images on your blog-

1) You can get creepy pictures up replacing a picture owned by someone else,
2) You can get fined thousands of dollars for using an unlicensed picture,
3) You can get called names by people who already knew this.

Further, the fact that I had lurkers commenting also turned me onto the fact that I have more people reading this blog than I realized. Just that knowledge alone will make me "straighten up and fly right". So my apologies for my "idiocy".

EDIT: I want to add that I do feel entirely stupid and creepy and sick inside for posting a personal picture belonging to someone else. It was only supposed to illustrate a funny story. I'm profusely sorry for my mistake. Trust me, it won't happen again.

Beauty and the Beast

Avril and I were singing the opening song of Beauty and the Beast this morning. We're both looking kind of ratty, I'm in my robe, major bedhead, no shower, my glasses, no makeup.

In the middle of the song Avril, "Mommy, you look kind of like the Beast!"

What would YOU do?

Suppose one morning you get up and go to your yoga class like usual. Class goes normally and although your teacher seems a little bit out of it, overall, nothing is really different. You work through some challenging balance sequences, then through some deep stretches and finish with the favorite pose: savasana, or corpse pose. As you lie there, you suddenly realize the time has stretched a little longer than usual, but then your teacher instructs you to turn onto your side in the fetal position like usual. You lie there, relaxed, enjoying the feel of it, the quietness. Suddenly, it comes to your attention that you've been lying there an abnormally long time. You look up at your teacher- and she's asleep!

What do you do?

Option 1) Wake her up and finish class on time.

Option 2) Wait and hope she wakes up on her own.

Option 3) Finish as you normally would without disturbing her and leave class quietly so she can continue her obviously needed slumber.

My class chose Option 3. My boss came in 15 minutes after class was supposed to end and woke me up- at which point I just started laughing. I still can't believe I fell asleep while teaching!