Waaaaaaaaaaaaaluuuuuuuuuuuu

[valis2]

Practicing my whale song there.

Home for 1.5 hours...of course, checking the flist.

Get thee gone from my friends list, fanficrants! Thou art driving me crazy and taking up much space on my fpage. Yeah. So bye.

I just had a major "Wuh!" moment...saw a pic of a good friend on her LJ...she's lost weight and gone blonde!

Today's show was decent...just busy enough to get through without being bored...just slow enough so that I could write a piece for the new quirkyhpshorts challenge...will be putting it up after I revise it a little, hopefully I'll have time to upload it Sunday night. Headache galore, saw the lovely family, had a horrid dinner at PF Chang's (I really dislike that restaurant), and will be zooming back to the hotel in another half hour so that I can try to sleep. Hopefully the people in the room above me will not desire a shower at 2 am like they did this morning. It sounded like a waterfall had suddenly exploded in my room.

No one shouted anything about catsup at me today. I'm rather depressed about that.

Comments

[mariannelee.livejournal.com]

MY FAMILY IS PUTTING CATSUP ON THE PERFECTLY GOOD MEATLOAF THAT I SLAVED OVER FOR THEM!!!!

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the shouty catsup reference! It made my day!!

[eloisasnape.livejournal.com]

catsup!!

Sorry. Someone was going to do it. It might as well be me.

[morricone1900.livejournal.com]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=799&item=7147027579&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW#ebayphotohosting

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Yes...no one can shout catsup like you can, dear!

[privatemaladict.livejournal.com]

Now that I think about it - what the hell is catsup, anyway? Is it like ketchup?

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Hee! One and the same, yes. I was always taught that "catsup" was the proper spelling but ketchup is now in the dictionary too!

[bell-witch.livejournal.com]

Bummer about dropping fanficrants. There are a lot of them, I know. I'm finding it a very amusing community. Of course, I don't know most of the fandom rants, so I can avoid those. The general rants work best for me.

Don't know what PF Chang's is. Apparently, that's a good thing.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

fanficrants is amusing, and by dropping it I'm losing out on a lot of kerfluffle, but the problem is I'm only home sporadically for the next month or two, and I don't want to wade through those, but I do want to wade through the other comms on my list. So it's buh-bye, though I'm certain I'll stop in and check it out again.

PF Chang's is one of those pretend-upscale restaurants...kind of in between truly "fancy" and Denny's. It's very casual, the food is decent...I just keep ordering things that aren't yummy, I guess.

[morricone1900.livejournal.com]

there was a story on NPR this morning about somebody named Neely and his alternative version of HP called "Wizard People, Dear Reader." I guess he's gotten in trouble with Warner Brothers over having done a live version with a screening of the picture with his own narration replacing the actual audio. This is probably old news for someone like you. ;)

But it made me think of you because it discussed how the publishing of fan fiction of HP would be considered an liability to Rowling and WB because it's in their best interests to keep the product scarce in order for people to really want to see/read the newest material from Rowling and the film producers. The NPR report kind of implied that the "powers-that-be" had nothing against all the fan fiction, or even Neely's parody, as long as it didn't become a new, published derivative work whose presence in the income-generating mainstream and thereby competing with the official material. The Neely situation was even more complicated though, because he charged no admission for his screening+plus+live+commentary, but since he clearly was doing a public performance of a new work which does not use the 35mm print of the HP film in the way the creators intended (and did not ask permission), that some kind of objectionable legal gray area was entered -- i.e.: he hadn't violated anything legally when he was just privately selling the CDs of his narration that you could sync up to your video of HP.

Anyway, perhaps you (and everyone who posts on your threads!) know all about all of this already, but just in case...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4582190

[valis2.livejournal.com]

Fanfiction is such a grey area legally. Some authors (like Anne Rice) famously "ban" fanfiction. I've heard many different explanations, such as the fan could sue the author...I'm not certain of the actual laws involved now. Anyway, haven't heard of this story...sounds interesting. I'll check it out when I have a bit of extra time.

[superbunny3000.livejournal.com]

FRENCH FRIES!




go nicely wit da catsup.

[morricone1900.livejournal.com]

"Under Reagan, ketchup became a vegetable. That's always been my favorite. Reagan's cutbacks in the federal school lunch program elicited criticism that there was no longer funding to provide a "balanced diet" to schoolchildren, including fresh vegetables. Reagan argued that ketchup is a vegetable because it is red and comes from tomatoes. The "liberal" media yucked it up about that one for few days and then forgot about it as soon as the next outrage got their attention. "
-H Scott Prosterman

and I'm not sure who wrote this one, but even more amusing:
---------------------------------
"And we thought ketchup as a vegetable was dumb? Well, America's diet has just gotten dumber:

WASHINGTON — Anyone trying to add more fresh fruits and vegetables to their diet may have just gotten an unlikely assist from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Based on a little-noticed change to obscure federal rules, the USDA now defines frozen French fries as "fresh vegetables."

A federal judge in Texas last week endorsed the USDA's decision in a court case.

U.S. District Judge Richard Schell said the term "fresh vegetables" was ambiguous.

...(and, of course, the kicker:)

The USDA quietly changed the regulations last year at the behest of the French fry industry, which has spent decades pushing for a revision to the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act.

The Frozen Potato Products Institute appealed to the USDA in 2000 to change its definition of fresh produce under PACA to include batter-coated, frozen French fries, arguing that rolling potato slices in a starch coating, frying them and freezing them is the equivalent of waxing a cucumber or sweetening a strawberry.


Does this mean all those school districts that have been trying to up the percentage of fresh fruits and veggies in their lunches are off the hook now? (Does this ruling have ramifications to the student-lunch program in general?) Heck -- put some ketchup on those fries, and we'll have a veritable cornucopia of fresh veggie goodness, right? The Bush ag department is carrying on the work of the Reagan budget department -- way to go!

That lobbyists actually shape our government nutrition programs -- from the food pyramid on down (why do you think we should "moderate" instead of "minimize" our salt and sugar intake?) -- is not surprising, but appalling nonetheless. Lobbyists and politicians control everything, science be damned (and, sadly, it's not unique to this notoriously anti-science administration).

I agree with the lawyer: "I find it pretty outrageous, really," said [Tim] Elliott, who argued that the Batter-Coating Rule is so vague that chocolate-covered cherries, packed in a candy box, would qualify as fresh fruit.

"This is something that only lawyers could do," Elliott said, pointing to a stack of legal documents debating the French fry change. "There must be 100 pages there about something you could summarize in one paragraph: Batter-coated French fries are not fresh vegetables."

I don't see how "fresh vegetables" is ambigious in the least. Go to the grocery store. See the piles of vegetables in the produce section? Those are fresh. See the bags in the freezer? Those are frozen, and hence not fresh. A frozen banana dipped in chocolate and nuts, while yummy, is not fresh fruit to anyone, except perhaps this bozo judge.

This isn't even a case for lawyers -- this is a case for kindergarteners. Show any five-year-old a carrot, a tomato, a cucumber and a bag of Ore-Ida crinkle cuts, and, even with the cuts to school health and nutrition programs, I bet she'll quickly notice that one of these things is not like the others."

-----------------------------

[morricone1900.livejournal.com]

*waves at laura in a different venue*

[aramintasnape.livejournal.com]

CATSUP! CATSUP! CATSUP!

Can you hear meeeeeeeee.....???

;)

[valis2.livejournal.com]

I like peanut butter!!