Too funny not to share!

The idea that drinking eight glasses of water a day is good for your health has been dismissed as a myth.

Scientists say there is no evidence drinking large amounts of water is beneficial for the average healthy person, and do not even know how this widely held belief came about.

I can tell you exactly when the idea that everyone needed to drink 8 glasses of water a day started. It started when they started selling water in little 8 oz plastic bottles. Shortly after that started, everyone was made to believe, whether they are thirsty or not, they needed to have water on them all the time and be constantly consuming it.

Don’t believe me? Lewis Black agrees with my theory. Watch this video of him ranting about water, and be prepared to laugh your butt off.

Warning: Mr. Black does curse. If you are offended by adult language, you should get over it or not watch the video. It is so worth it though. Really funny stuff!

I uploaded the video Lin took yesterday. The quality is a little lower than I’d like. I had some problems getting the movie compressed enough to upload to YouTube, and then YouTube compressed it even more. Ugh. But, oh well, it’s good enough, I guess.

Here’s the latest news about it:

Investigators are trying to determine what caused multiple explosions and a fire at a warehouse in Williamson County this afternoon.

Neighbors living near the 300 block of New Hope and 183 say they heard 2 explosions at a business.

The fire spread to neighboring offices and warehouses before the Cedar Park Fire Department used foam to put out the fire.

Many of those neighboring offices suffered smoke and water damage.

No one was hurt.

Rather than just use loose catnip and a few treats to convince the cats that whatever evil scheme they were planning was a bad idea, I went ahead and made two new little crocheted toys for them … and stuffed them with the best catnip I have.

Myu was less than impressed, as she always is when it comes to catnip. The really funny thing is that while I was getting the camera ready to take photos and videos, I left the new toys up on the kitchen worktable, a place that is impossible for either cat to get onto without making some noise (or so I thought), and somehow, in the few minutes it took for me to get the camera, Myu got one of the toys off that table … silently. Of course once she had it, she didn’t really want to play with it.

Ronin, on the other hand, started going insane as soon as he saw me pull out the wool, the needle, and the catnip container. There’s only one thing he likes better than new toys and that’s new toys containing high quality kitty drugs. I’m pretty sure I should feel lucky to still have all the fingers on my hand after taking this photo.

Since Ronin was having so much fun playing in the living room, and it’s almost impossible to take photos of a fast-moving cat, I decided to grab some video (even though the lighting was weird), so there are now three short video bits over at YouTube of Ronin enjoying the new toys: Cat on Catnip 1, 2 and 3. Myu has a brief walk-on role in the first one, but these are really nothing but Ronin.

My plan to placate the monsters with toys and drugs must have worked, at least temporarily. Instead of following me around and staring at me, they are now passed out peacefully. Success!

Enigmas
by Pablo Neruda

You’ve asked me what the lobster is weaving there with his golden feet?
I reply, the ocean knows this.
You say, what is the ascidia waiting for in its transparent bell?
What is it waiting for?
I tell you it is waiting for time, like you.
You ask me whom the Macrocystis alga hugs in its arms?
Study, study it, at a certain hour, in a certain sea I know.
You question me about the wicked tusk of the narwhal,
and I reply by describing how the sea unicorn with the harpoon in it dies.
You enquire about the kingfisher’s feathers,
which tremble in the pure springs of the southern tides?
Or you’ve found in the cards a new question touching on
the crystal architecture of the sea anemone,
and you’ll deal that to me now?
You want to understand the electric nature of the ocean spines?
The armored stalactite that breaks as it walks?
The hook of the angler fish, the music stretched out in the deep places like a thread in the water?

I want to tell you the ocean knows this, that life in its jewel boxes
is endless as the sand, impossible to count, pure,
and among the blood-colored grapes time has made the petal
hard and shiny, made the jellyfish full of light
and untied its knot, letting its musical threads fall
from a horn of plenty made of infinite mother-of-pearl.

I am nothing but the empty net which has gone on ahead
of human eyes, dead in those darknesses,
of fingers accustomed to the triangle, longitudes
on the timid globe of an orange.

I walked around as you do, investigating
the endless star,
and in my net, during the night, I woke up naked,
the only thing caught, a fish trapped inside the wind.

I am sorry this has taken me so long to get posted. I am soooo slow at doing transcripts, I have been seriously short on time, and I did agonize a bit about whether or not to post it. I mean, this is a person in my social circle and a friend of Lin’s. But then I decided that what’s on national morning news is totally fair game, and it isn’t like she has ever really been my friend anyway. There’s some negative history between us, so I think I am allowed to point, laugh and be catty.

It was taking too long to write it down on paper, and then transcribe it yet again onto the computer, so I used my camera to record it as a movie. That allowed me to sit at the computer with a nice pause button and a spell checking word processor, which made it go much more quickly. Doing so also means I could compress it and upload it to Youtube, which means, being that it is totally copyrighted material that I do not own may mean it gets deleted soon. Therefore, I also uploaded it to my server as well (7.5 mb mov). The quality isn’t the greatest, but it’s not bad. You can certainly see it and hear it (better then I thought it would turn out). If you want to watch it, please use the YouTube link for as long as it lasts to save me some bandwidth.

Behind the cut, the transcript, associated commentary, and for the truly lazy surfer, the embedded YouTube video.
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Ok, this video by animator Simon Tofield is so funny, I have to embed it right in the post, because you really, really have to watch it.

Afternoon News Part I and Part II are now up on YouTube for your entertainment. I had so much trouble getting this vlog done, edited and uploaded! Well, at least it filled up some time that would have been spent moping around in the kitchen whining to the cats about broken appliances.

I promise to sit down and type a post at some point. I don’t really have anything to talk or whine about other than the same things I have been talking and whining about for the last week (i.e. the oven), so it seemed like a good time to try doing some videos. It’s quite addicting!

Embedded videos behind the cut for the lazy surfer.
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While organizing some folders of photographs, I found a stash of forgotten kitten videos. I uploaded one of Ronin and Myu when they were still tiny little things (from last October) to YouTube this morning.

Video behind the cut or watch it at YouTube.
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My afternoon video post is up at YouTube. The quality isn’t great, because the lighting was bad. But, it’s there all the same.

Behind the cut I have it embedded for people not wanting to go to YouTube to watch it.
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I completely forgot to mention I uploaded a twenty second video testing the fractal animation abilities of my new software. Not that my animation is all that, but the method for animating the fractals is way cool!

Embedded video behind the cut!
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It was a long, long weekend. I am still far too brain dead and tired to report on it. As soon as the coffee is ready and Lin is out of bed and moving around, I’m going back to bed a while. I need some more beauty sleep.

In the meantime, you can watch a 3 3/4 minute drive through downtown Johnson City, Texas I posted to Youtube. Hardly award winning video (I so need a digital video camera), but for those who don’t know the area I live in and basically call home, it might give you some idea if my rural roots.

Later I shall relate the high points of the weekend, like the Five Home Depot Day and the Angry Red Hornets … and others. Yeah, looooong weekend.

Embedded video behind the cut!
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Some silliness to announce:

Just Orb celebrates 7 years of internet existence (and a nice fat 11 or so years of web site having babbling goodness). Woo hoo! It doesn’t feel like it has been that long, but it has! I was going to do a new site design to celebrate, but … no time, no energy, no motivation, the usual, blah blah blah. Besides, I like the one I have up now just fine anyway, which is an excellent excuse to not come up with a new design, right?

Also, my two furry monsters turn one year old today! I bought them some new toys this morning, and I managed to get a fairly decent photo of each of them this afternoon.

Additionally, I took a quick little one minute video of them too and posted it to YouTube. Well, I say “them” … but Myu runs out of view moments after she noticed the camera. Poor shy little thing. Ronin has no problems being cute for the camera though.

And on a side note, since I remembered, Happy Birthday to Lele too! Hope you have a good one!

Embedded video behind the cut!
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In between being a total lazy slug on the couch and watching movies while being a total lazy slug on the couch, I started playing around with Vue’s animation abilities. Behind the cut, or at this YouTube link, you can see my first 15 seconds of animated glory.

Ummm … don’t expect too much. I’m pretty pleased with it though. Wouldn’t give it an Oscar, but considering how quickly it rendered, how small the file size ended up being, and how mostly easy I think the system is going to be to use (not that I have read the manual on it yet), I can see some possibilities.

Anyway, behind the cut … an embedded YouTube video called Wave Sample 1.
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Nothing to talk about but kittens seeing as I’m still feeling poorly and the new babies and sleeping are the only things I have been busy with.

Now that they are getting used to the house, their little personalities are really blooming. Grey is a terror. Not in a bad way, mine you. He’s a fully active kitten. When he’s awake, he is totally going at full steam. When he’s asleep, he’s really asleep … and he doesn’t sleep long at all before he’s recharged his battery and is ready to go again. Black is coming out of her shell, but her favorite activity seems to be laying around sleeping. This is going to work out great, because Lin wanted a cat that was active and would play a lot, and I wanted a cat that would lay around and be lazy with me. Looks like we both got our wish!

Both of them have now taken to licking fingers, toes or any other bare bit of exposed skin. It’s cute, but sometimes it gets annoying … like when I am trying to take a nap and they want to lick my fingers (or my face). I’ve been trying to catch them grooming each other on video, but they don’t seem to do it when I have the camera ready. I did catch a little video today, though it was a somewhat cloudy day and there wasn’t much light in the house even with the shades open and all the lights on, so it’s a little grainy and dark. Still, I thought it was worth sharing. You can see Kitten Attacks Quilt [Grey having a full-on temper tantrum because I blocked off his favorite hiding place] and Kitten Attacks Kitten [standard kitten play-fighting] at YouTube. I have embedded them behind the cut. When I am feeling better, I plan to spend a sunny day following them around with the actual video camera and filling up a whole tape to have transferred to DVD at Walgreens. The quality will be so much better. My digital camera needs a lot of light to get good video, and we just don’t have a lot of light in the house.

Seeing them in bright natural sunlight this afternoon, I noticed that Black isn’t really so black. She has tabby markings too in black and dark reddish brown. Really pretty. I’m wondering how her fur will change as she grows up. I can’t wait to see what they are going to look like as full grown cats, but that’s some of the fun of having kittens … watching them grow and change! We also experienced the first toenail clipping today. I got 5 1/2 of 8 paws done before we had to give up. Black was no problem at all. I did them when she was sleeping. Grey, on the other hand, was having none of it. He’s so feisty and squirmy, and those little nails are so small, I gave up. I’ll have to try again tonight after he’s worn himself out attacking his sister (and anything else that moves … or doesn’t). At least I got the majority of the sharp little points off.

Their favorite places currently are on the side table in the living room and inside my dressmaker’s form. Yes, they have claimed the dressmaker’s form. I don’t have anywhere else to put it, and it’s not like a) I ever use it or b) it’s in any kind of good shape anyway, so I’m thinking of making a fun-fur cover for it and just calling it a cat tree. They really love crawling in it and on it. I’ve been trying to get that on film, but once again I haven’t had the camera handy when they start up with it. I guess I’ll have to dangle my camera around my neck and have it with me at all times if I want to catch the good stuff.

Last night when I put them in the big box, they were none too pleased and persisted in making way too much noise. I let them out and slept on the couch so I could keep an ear on them. I think tonight I’ll let them spend the night free in the house and go to bed. So far they haven’t found a way to harm anything or kill themselves, so I am feeling pretty confident they can make it through the night without me being watchful. As ear-piercing as their little mews are, I’m sure I’d hear them through our wimpy bedroom door anyway if there was some sort of crisis. So far the only real crisis they have had is not being able to find each other which tends to get one or both started crying. It’s really precious the way they stick together. It’s also very useful. When I can’t find them, at least I only have to find one, because the other one is always hiding nearby. I’m so glad we got two, and so is Lin. As he said last night, “They are going to supply hours of entertainment, and we don’t even have to lift a finger.” It’s too true. Now at least when there isn’t anything on TV to watch, we have the Kitten Show to keep us laughing.

As far as how Lin and I are feeling: Lin feels a whole lot better, but I’m still feeling half crappy. Mostly my only complaint now is not being able to stay awake. I swear I am only awake for a few hours a day … almost as little time as the kittens are awake each day. All’s good though in that I have napping buddies now. It’s so nice having some warm and fuzzy cuddle action going on again.

I’m going to toddle off to the kitchen and thaw dinner. It’s SciFi Friday, so we’re having junk food. Tonight we opted for White Castle cheeseburgers. I can’t wait for Lin to get home so we can eat. I know I ate something for lunch, but I can’t even remember what it was. I was only half-awake when I ate, and then I fell asleep again right after. I’m hoping I’ll be able to stay awake long enough to watch all our usual shows. Man, this sleeping all the time is great in one way (it feels good to sleep), but I’m not getting much done around the house (not that I expected to with new kittens in the home). Here’s hoping I feel better this weekend. We have to go shopping for some kitten spoiling stuff. We’ve got climbers on our hands, and they need something to climb other than my dressmaker’s form.
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