On Sophie Lancaster:

I guess I’ve been thinking about looks because last week someone asked me to post this YouTube short about Sophie, the girl beaten to death in 2009 for looking different.

This animated film is less than four minutes long and was made for schools and other social groups to show and talk about with young people. It is to get kids to think before acting out on others just because they look different.



They are looking for as many hits as they can get and support also if you are so inclined to help them spread the word of tolerance.

As always you can click on the YouTube logo in the corner of the screen to go to YouTube to watch this and/or get the Embeding info for your blog. (If you have never posted a video from YouTube before, click on the Embed button under the video and simply copy and paste the info from the box into your blog. Done!)

So, if you have a blog please post this video there. If not, just take the time to watch it through and maybe tell your friends about it. Violence in this film is at a minimum. (Caution, you may want tissues with you before you start watching.)

Here is a link to the making of this film for those that want more back ground info.

If the video is cut off on the side the link for it is here.

On ‘Sim’ulated Frustration:

I am no longer upset about Mountain Man’s accident. I’m on to other things.

I have been fighting with my Sims 3 game.

I finally got the second installment of Sims 3. Thinking that they had two years to debug it and that I’d be fine putting it into my computer.

Tis’ to laugh, my friends!

World Adventures is an adventure in computer crashes.

It actually worked better before I put the patches into it and changed things on my computer to except it.

No other game causes me so much trouble.

EA Games is a money sucking corporate farce of a company.

No game should be on the market for so long and not have been fixed better then this. They have just gone ahead and created more installments. Five more to be correct.

I thank the powers that be, and my frugalness, that I got it on sale.

The premise is a good one: travel to China, France, and/or Egypt and hunt through caves and tombs for treasure and hidden objects while watching out for traps. This is done with a mini side game aspect.

The games are interactive and fun. Watch out for mummies who can put a deadly curse on your Sim. Sleep in a tomb. Collect riches beyond your wildest dreams.

Levels of play that grow and need more of your attention and time to complete. I was loving it. And there are things only available, to buy or learn, in the country of origin.

It was the only reason I was willing to jump through the hoops EA Games set before me.

But seeing the screen go black and my computer tell me that once more it had shut down to save itself from animation has become too much for me.

I’m tired of having to pull the game out and start from scratch again and again.

I give up! Hands in the air! I’ll never buy another EA Game in my live time. For myself or my family.

My love of the Sims games has been broken. Along with all of EA’s Promises! And I have been a die hard fan from the first day of Sims, but back then it was Maxis.

EA Games is not a responsible Video Game maker. And if money is their bottom line. They’ll not get another dime from me!

On Main Stream Goth:

I just saw a video on ‘How to Dress Goth.’ This was not on a Goth blog for other Goths. It was on American Consumer News.

Showing you how to buy new clothing and give them a Goth flare.

No thrift store finds. No ‘Do it yourself.’ No buying from Goth shops.

I struggled about adding the link. Did I really want to add to their hit totals and make them feel that they were in the right.

Goth is about being different not main stream.

Yes, it is nice to find more Goth stuff around, but at such a point that everyone is doing it? I think not.

I’ll still be true to myself and make a lot of my clothing, revamp thrift store finds, and/or doing without.

The day I start to buy my Goth wear at the local department store I’ll know that true Goth is dead.

Edit:

Hi Readers,

I too have bought some of my Goth wear in a department store. I meant not buying it 'only' in a department store.

Thanks for letting me clear that up.

Hugs, Lady Euphoria

On Having Options In Life:

Here I am up on my soap box again. I haven’t been here in a while and I have to say that I’ve missed it.

The phrase “I don’t have a life.” makes me ill.

You do have a life. You are breathing, talking, (some of you) blogging, moving individual who it seems is unhappy with the state of your social life.

You have options in this, you know.

You can get out and meet others. Volunteer. Be seen. Join groups or clubs. Help out other organizations. Protest the things you don’t like. Be where other people are. (Few of you are bed ridden and so sickly that they can’t be with other people at times.)

But you do have a life. It is what you make of it.

True. The person you want to mate up with may not be interested in you.

You may be something of a joke because of your choice of dress or other things not as fixable about yourself, but there are people out there that do see beyond skin deep.

This is a matter of self worth here. People for ages have made something of themselves out of nothing. Mostly by learning to be happy with what they are and if not, changing it.

But mostly I want to say, don’t let other peoples yard sticks knock you off your perfectly good road in life. Be the best you can be and be proud of it. Not a, ‘wish I had that’ to distraction kind of a person.

Look around at the good things in your life and put on a smile. You do have a life, and I like you for that.

On Bad Fushigi:

I have been doing Contact Juggling regularly for two months now. And I just have to say before anyone else falls pray to the commercials Don’t Go Out and Buy One Of These Fushigi Balls. The commercial is false advertising.

There is no magic ball that can make you a Contact Juggler overnight. There is no ball that floats in air. These are tricks that take a long time to learn.

If you don’t believe me you can read the fine print on their advertising. Oh no, they just say that the people doing the tricks are professionals. And don’t explain their lies.

Well, you can just go to Contact Juggling .Org to check things out in their forum section listed under ‘Community’ on the left column.

Yes, you can do some tricks from the start, but you don’t have to buy an inferior made ball like the Fushigi ball to do this. There are more then enough free tutorials on the web to teach you these tricks and more using everything from an orange to a glitter ball.

And it takes many month, and for some tricks years, to perfect them. Much more time to be good enough to have a number of tricks to perform.

The Fushigi ball is not a good quality product from those that have bought one and the tutorial video is lacking. Many people are going to free web sites and YouTube to learn what the Fushigi video doesn’t teach, so why bother. For the same twenty dollars you can get the real thing, a clear acrylic ball, at a better quality.

And added to the lies are those who believe them and then turn around and mock the jugglers, who have taken years of their lives to learn this trade, and do not give them their do.

Jobs have been lost do to the Fushigi false advertising. Jugglers get paid by their skill and this commercials lies about a magic floating ball and the ease at which it is learned, this has hurt contact juggling to the core.

If you are thinking about buying one for yourself or someone else, please do your homework first and get a good product and backing from an organization that cares.

On Eyes of the Beholder or Looker?:

I got my new eye glasses today. They are nice and stylish. Silver and black. But they do not fill the bill for me.

I like my glass to be more function then fashion. I like larger, not huge mind you, lenses so I can move my eyeballs to the thing I want to look at and not have to whip my head around all day.

Have you noticed that everyone with glasses are movement challenged now? They make herky-jerky head movements to see the things around them. The smaller frames have everyone with their noses in the air, so they can see what is in front of them.

Sorry, but I don’t want to look up your nose or have you look up mine.

The alternative is looking over the glasses and seeing you all blurry and out of focus. If I’m interested in talking with you, I’d like to see who I am talking to. But apparently I’m not supposed to see the expression on your face unless I show you my nose hairs or worse.

Before you say, ‘Try the web.’ I can’t get what I want at my eye doctors. And can’t afford another program. So I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place.

And I have the added trouble of having a small head. I wear kid sized glasses. Have you looked at the selection of frames on the kids rack? I’m a grown woman and you can’t make me wear tiny princess’s on shocking pink my frames.

This also adds to the smallness of the lenses I have to wear. My new glasses may be fashionable and trying to make me look all cool and hip…

But I feel like I’m getting a crook in my neck, and that the people around me think I’m stuck up or just clumsy. Because I’m either with my nose in the air to see clearly or looking over the frames at the world in a blur.

And don’t get me started at the amount of lenses area I get to look out of with my small glasses being bifocals.

I may get used to living with my new glasses, but I don’t have to like them. And if that makes me fussy so be it. I just want to see without whipping myself in the face with my ponytail every time I move.

On Blog Cleaning:

I don’t know about you, but I’m a blog follower link person. By that I mean that I check out the listed blog links of the people I follow.

I pick a blogger every few days and check out all the links in their follow list. I’ve found some wonderful people through these links. But, I have to say, that dead links irritate me.

I try to keep up with my links. If a blogger hasn’t blogged in more than three months, I check on them. If there is no reply or activity by six months, I drop them from the list.

If they move their blog, I try to keep things updated.

I feel cheated finding blog links that are a year or more out dated. And the no longer available label just makes me mad.

People move on, get busy, and sometimes even die. I get that. And I get that we all have things to do.

But holding on to a link no longer active is just poor blog maintenance. And lets face it, you can do what you like with you own living space. But when you invite others in, you should take the time to straighten up a bit every now and again.

If I get shoddy with my blog maintenance, just let me know.

On Weight Gain is Not Fair:

Okay, I get that I’m not going to get the time I lost back.

But why do I have to put up with the extra pounds.

And Yes, not exercising for days on end while feeling like hell, eating only to get the nasty pills down, and spending time up-chucking mostly nothing. Because having a migraine can do that to you, make you sick from head to toes. Laying very still so as not to make your head worse. This apparently does lead to weight gain.

I’ve managed to gain five pounds thank you very much. It took me three and a half weeks to remove them and four days to get them back.

I am getting really tired of playing hard ball with the same few pounds of fat.

On again, off again, on again, off again.

I have some very pretty Gothic clothing in my closet dieing of boredom and the lack of seeing the dark of night.

I am not happy with this fat me. I work hard at removing five or ten pounds only to watch it pop back on my body the minute I stop being an exercise freak.

I watch what I eat. If I didn’t I’d be an extra hundred pounds heavier. I watch what I eat because I have a short term memory problem. If I eat, I must pay for it first by using my card system. So in this way I don’t eat two or three meals before I realize I don’t need to eat any more. There is no food missing that I ate and forgot about.

I’m a past menopausal woman who’s body just wants to stay at 200 pounds no matter how hard I fight it.

But fight it I must. For my heath I must.

I’m back to exer-biking, and stair stepping, and yoga-ing, and wii exer-gaming, and walking, and not having a life, or getting knitting done, or writing stories, or any of the other things I like to do that make my next breath worth taking.

Fair or not, I’m fight the fat that is trying to defeat me.

On Being on Facebook:

I was on Facebook for about 24 hours over the weekend. I just couldn’t stand it. I literally hated every minute of it. I felt like my back was exposed and a target was on it. It made me break out in hives. I had to deactivate the account and run away to hide until I stopped shaking.

I am not a social peacock. Peacock, yes. Social, no. Even with my blog I talk with the people that come to play in a one on one manor. And I guard my personal information.

I don’t like crowds. I don’t play well in groups. I sit with my back to the wall so no one can sneak up on me. Organized sports and team play makes me nervous because I‘ve been hit by friendly fire before. I have an uncomfortable need to not conform and that in itself leaves me vulnerable.

And the other thing about Facebook was the knowing of things about others I didn’t ask about. I didn’t like being barraged with nonsense information. I didn’t need a third party to tell me about the latest score someone got on a game that I know nothing or care nothing about. I don’t really care what groups someone just joined unless the subject came up in conversation. I felt like someone was watching over my shoulder all the time just waiting to tell the world of Facebook friends my latest move.

Then, in thinking I was going to find the interests or activities of people I do personally know, when I went to see their pages, what I got was an eye full of what some other people are about out there and I was appalled at a small contingent. (Hey there liar, your pants are on fire.)

It is not that I don’t care, but more because I do care about others, that I don’t want to look into other peoples personal lives. I don’t want to know about how the baby played with his poop. Or how some out there are so clueless to their own inadequacies. I don’t need to watch someone else’s train wreck I can do nothing about. I can’t watch knowing some have too many kids already and are spending their time playing games on Facebook instead of taking care of those kids. It just hurts me too much to see it.

Yes, I do have my own issues because I have been betrayed badly by others in my life. Why on earth would I like to stick my neck out there and let someone thoughtlessly do it again. I am guarded for my own very good reasons. I screen my comments on my blog for those reasons also.

For me, you must gain and earn my true friendship as some of you here have already done. But on Facebook there were too many people free to out me to the ones I don’t want to find me and possibly hurt me again. I won’t be going back.

On Black Hats Vs White Hats:

I watched a cartoon the other day. It was ‘Pearly.’ This cartoon is about two fairy cousins living in a garden called Jubilee Park. Pearly a bright eyed, white haired, sweetness and light, helpful fairy, and her cousin Safirah (or Mistress by her minions) is a squint eyed, black haired, mean and demanding, greedy fairy.

What caught my eye was Safirah’s clothing. Black and purple and spiders web. Things I myself like. I was hoping that it was not that old cliché of evil/black, good/white.

In this cartoon, Fairy magic is used to make the world a better place. Pearly uses her magic for everyone’s benefit and Safirah uses her magic for her own benefit and to try to make the downfall of Pearly.

It is all evil is easy to recognize. Black and rats and bats are bad. White and flowers and sparklies are good.

Thou the lessons that are being taught about being nice and helpful is better to be then greedy and mean.

The lesson of not judging a book by its cover or that bad things can come in pretty packages is lost. Isn’t that how child molesters catch kids? With candy and fun games or helplessness?

I like cartoons for the most part and prefer the ones that have a life lesson. But lessons of ‘You’ll know the bad guys when you see them.’ keeps kids away from good guys in black hats and playing with the bad guys dressed in the white ones.

A lot of Goths have heart’s of pure gold.

On ‘What Direction Next’ or ‘Hey I Was Using That‘:

I was taking these pictures of the eveing sky. Beautiful, but harmful in its way.















North















West















South















East

I was surrounded by stormy weather.

I came in and pulled them up on the computer to find that I could not use them as I usually did.

I did not give into the pressure to buy all the bells and whistles programs and extras when I bought this computer. It had free tryouts added to it in great numbers which for the most part I didn’t use. I stuck to Microsoft Word and the Windows functions, keeping to the lower grade features and making do. Everything seemed to be working out just fine.

I like what Microsoft Office had to offer, but didn’t have the funds at the time to up grade. I also didn’t feel the need to spend all that extra money for a few add-ons and functions I wasn’t used to using. I was happy…

I went to work on resizing my pictures for my blog only to find that I could not use the picture function in any way but to look at them on the computer screen. The automatic download I had gotten days before had changed my Windows picture files to be attached to One Note, a portion of Microsoft Office, that I can not use with out paying them for the up grade. All the printing functions are now ‘not’ available to me as they had been before.

I had to switch over to the cannon picture function that came with my camera, and I’m not as used to using, now I have to spend hours if not days recalculating how to make my pictures print out into stereograph picture all over again. I can no longer get three to a sheet, wasting card paper three to one to print them in the right size to work in the viewer.

What else will they take from me next. I paid for a working system and now I get take backs in the guise of helpful up grades to my system. They moved a free function to a pay for system and locked me and others out without batting an eye or warning so I could bypass it.

Yes, I feel surrounded by stormy weather. But not all of it is from the skies.

On Vista Frustration:

Finding myself with a Vista programmed computer I felt that some of the extras should, could, might be there to help me. Vista is equipped with Windows Speech Recognition software. This means I can get a mic and dictate to my computer and it will type for me. Whoo hoo! (Just think of the knitting a person could get done?)

Thinking that ‘nothing is perfect’ and that I would have to go back and correct some things, it would still be faster then retyping my crummy hand written notes, complete with food stains, while I was working. I went out and bought a microphone for my computer, thinking that I could dictate my stories to the computer as I cut up vegetables for the canner. That ’Is’ what it is supposed to do.

Silly Me!

After no less then seven (7) hours. I can now get it to spell out each word.

This is not straight forward s p e l l i n g. No!

I have to say, “Press ‘s’ press ‘p’ press ‘e‘ press ‘l’ press ‘l’ press ‘i’ press ‘n’ as in Nancy, press ‘g’” just to type the word ‘spelling.’ Then I get to say “space” before starting the next word. There is also adding capital letters and other punctuation.

This does not include the time it takes to undo all the places it thinks I want spread sheets and art work added or a new documents started in the middle of a word.

Yes, I ran through the tutorial ‘Three Times’ and the extra voice recognition programming too. And forget about the website. It just wants to sell you things that don’t work any better. No help at all.

In hopes that after it had heard my voice long enough it would then start typing for me I pressed on. (Pun intended.)

It took me one and a half hours to get a few lines typed the way I wanted it with tabs, capitals and punctuation in place. I am exhausted and frustrated and my voice is horse from all the repeating myself I‘m having to do. And if I have to read the words “What did you say?” one more time I will scream. At this rate I might have one blog written each month.

I want to see the guy who is laughing at the rest of us struggling along with this half baked program he felt was good enough. May he be struck with laryngitis and arthritic knuckles. Type that Microsoft!

On Fright or Fiction: (or Not Suitable for Children)

Once upon a time most all stories had a frightening element. They taught a lesson, frightened for the fun of it or just to keep the reader awake, they all had the element of fear. Peter got in trouble for not having a healthy fear of the Wolf.

My mother had a children’s book from her childhood I got to see once. It was full of lessons Like Johnny Suck-A-Thumb, he came in the night with his giant scissors to cut the thumbs off of children that sucked their thumbs at an age too old to do such a thing. The picture was of a ugly gristled old man with scissors the size of hedge clippers jumping around in triumph, holding a child’s thumb in his other hand presumably for his supper.

In the days before Disney got a hold of fairy tales: brownies hurt people and did mischief, ogres killed and maimed, good guys made mistakes and good people died. Cinderella was a gory story of people willing to mutilate themselves to try to win the prize deserving or not. All the sisters cut off large chunks of their feet to get into the slipper and the blood trailing behind them was the give away. And by the way the fairy god mother was a talking bird. (Go ahead and get an original translation of Tales of the Brother‘s Grimm.)

Hans Christian Anderson wasn’t much better but considered the Disney of his day because his stories weren’t so gruesome. But since when did stories have to have nice sweet characters and have sunshine and roses endings. (Ann Rice and Steven King aside.)

The point of all this is a family member (an aspiring children’s book writer) is afraid I’m going to hell because I write stories about ghosts, witches, death and suicide. Pardon, but have you read your bible lately? They’re all in there. Religious beliefs are a personal thing in my way of thinking. And you can believe what you like I’m not a spiritual leader. But I do think Disney went to hell for telling lies to children and left them unprepared for a real world of child molesters and madmen.

Fear has it’s place in our lives and helps keep us out of trouble. We need it or the afore mentioned authors wouldn’t be so wildly popular. A lack of it in our youth maybe? But rest assured, I’m not trying to be the next big thing in horror on the book store shelves. (Nice if it happened though.) Did you forget how you raised me? I just don’t believe in sugar coating the world in pink fluffy frosting and pretending everything is all right or will soon be for all time. All rainbows and unicorns get tiring after a while and too much sugar rots the teeth. Fear is just a tool to an end. I don’t discount it because it doesn’t come in a box with a pink ribbon on top. Or doesn’t it sometimes?

On Getting Older and Grandma Addams:

We agree that I am old, an elder, a dinosaur. But every once in a while I get sideswiped by this fact.

Yesterday I was getting ready to go to my cancer group meeting and I was I bit surprised. I was doing up my hair and right there at my temples where once only a few strands of gray salted my brown hair was streaks of the stuff. And before you say ‘Get thee off to thy Stylist.’ I am allergic to hair dye. I have no tattoos. Allergic. Not even henna ones. Very allergic.

Add to this that a new woman joined my cancer group and thought that I was her age and she was 11 years older then me.

Do I like the new look? Yes. Was I not waiting for this day when I could do the bride of Frankenstein look without a wig? Yes. So what is the fuss? This is not a choice any longer. Now I am looking my age and apparently more.

Do I throw in the towel and go Crone? I like Grandma Addams as well as the others. I did the Uncle Fester thing when I was in cancer treatments, fat, bald and dark circles around my eyes. (Look Ma no makeup.) But sometimes I still want to be Morticia with an occasional Wednesday thrown in for fun. Now in the mirror I see something quite different. And this look says the fun is over.

Yes, Grandma Addams does know how to have her fun. And I do to. But one does like to have options. My options seem to be dwindling.

Getting older also has an element of the uncomfortable otherwise known as disappearance. The ‘you’ that you have become comfortable with seeing in the mirror is replaced with someone unfamiliar. One day you have the best ‘you’ looking out at you and in no time at all it’s gone. You feel like you are disappearing.

I’m not heading for the botox. I’m not going under the knife. No lifts or tucks. I’m not even getting a new wig. I have chosen to adapt to this metamorphosis of mine. If that is the cards I’m dealt, Grandma Addams here I come. But I’m gonna’ walk. Flying into the face of it is too hard so I’m telling everyone that my broom is in the shop.

Pass the baking powder. I gotta’ hide some wrinkles.

On Computers and Heat:

Sorry for the late posting today. While typing my blog in the heat of my un-air-conditioned house. We hit 92 degrees inside the house and my computer stopped working. I of course lost the content of said blog and after cooling the system down I had to start over.

Although on occasion I have written a blog the day before, I am not in the habit of having them all lined up and ready to go. So having lost the train of thought I was in before the computer stopped working you will get a rant from me instead.

First off I hate Vista. This needs to top my list. I will not bore you with the innumerable ways that I dislike this system all you need know is that I do.

Second I hate all computers that eat pages of my writing or even chapters and loose them in the abyss of time and space.

Third If I can stand the heat, and know that I’m not good in this department, why does my computer zap out on me even when I give it the best fans in the house to help it along.

Fourth Sims. (This is a two parter) Why can’t they put out a quality product. And why does my Vista stop me from playing said game every time I finally get the new patch so I can load the newest extension or add on pack that I waited until the patch was out before cracking open the seal on the box.

Enough for now. I’m going to soak my head in a tub of cool water. See you tomorrow when I will post before the heat of the day. Have a nice one.

On Safety and the Good Old Days:

Okay, I am one of the first ones to admit that we are living in a toxic world. But I had high hopes. I was a young mother in the seventies. Pollution was turning around. They took the lead out of paint and I saw a rosy future through my glasses.

I grew up just outside of New York City on the Jersey side of the river. (The river with all the dead fish in it, back then before they cleaned it up.) Soon after I had my first child we moved to Pennsylvania. We could see the smog cloud over the city from the top of the Pocono mountains every time we went home for a visit back in the day. Some things have improved I have to tell you.

But my big complaint today is nail polish. Once upon a time you put on a coat of nail polish and it stayed and stayed. Now it seems to come off when I wash my hands. It chips and peels off at the drop of a hat.

Yes, yes. Hurrah, hurrah. Fewer bad chemicals on our fingers. But still I long for the old days. Nail polish that wore like iron. That I didn’t spend hours applying in multiple coats only to look down within an hour to find a chip in it.

I’ve tried them all over the last year or so. None are as good as the old poison stuff. I’m spoiled by bad products that worked for me. I’d give up painting them tomorrow if my nails weren’t ruined by the chemo. But I now need the protection of the polish on my nails.

So here is my dilemma. Do I find, buy and use the bad stuff and worry about cancer coming back or do I spend endless hours each week on crummy looking nails?

Where are the breakthroughs in modern science these days? Not in the nail polish isle at the local store at any rate.

On Cancer Treatment Commercials:

I am so tired of the commercials about drugs and treatment plans that are suppose to give you your life back while going through cancer treatments. A) They only work for some people. B) They don’t work for all types of cancer treatments and C) And this is the biggest one here. People really believe these commercials and expect so much more from you then you can possibly give.

It belittles what cancer patents are indeed going through. ‘Take a pill, a shot, a magic bean and all will be well again, just like before.’ Well I’m here to tell you that just ain’t so. You are profoundly changed by cancer on so many levels. Both in physical and emotional ways. I personally will never be the same as I was before the cancer treatments. And cancer treatments were not the worst thing I’ve ever had to live through in my life. So all things being relative, I feel I know of what I speak. And don’t get me wrong here, I was a middlin' case here.

My cancer was not found early, for it had spread some before it was found, and not a bad case either because it had a slower growing rate and it was dealt with, no more has been found since then. But I have been living with the scars. Scars to my body, scars to my emotions and scars to my very soul.

And if I have to look upon yet another happy face telling me go here and do this and cancer will be a snap I‘ll just scream. Even my oncologist admitted that if he let anyone know just how bad it can be, and still is for those of us that have been through it, no one would ever start treatments.

My memory is shot. I have physical troubles and scaring. My brain functions differently now. I must always look for signs of the cancer coming back. I am stuck in a death thought cycle. (Not that I think of death all the time but things remind me of how close I came to death with the cancer treatments.)

You do know that chemo is killing not just the cancer but you too. And that they only pull you back from the poisoning death they are putting you through, when they think they have killed enough of the cancer. And you then get to survive with what they have left of you to go on with, don’t you?

If you are lucky you get to heal and repair your body for the next year or two or more as your hair grows back and you push yourself through the days thinking ‘How come it isn’t easier then this? They got the cancer and the treatments are over, so where is my life? Why isn’t my life and energy back? Why am I not ecstatically happy about life now?’ And yes I will admit it. ‘Where are the parades for me and what I just went through?’ Oh no, we just get blank stares from faces that say, ‘Those commercials make it look so easy, so what is your problem?’