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I recently tried to cancel my Myspace account, because it is causing “personal drama”. It’s an incredibly difficult process these days. You have to confirm twice that you want to cancel, and write why. Then, you have to receive an e-mail and click on a link in that to confirm once more that you really want to cancel. I can sort of understand the high security, people get really excited about their Myspace, and it would suck to lose your whole thing by accidentally clicking the wrong button. BUT…I never received the little e-mail! I’ve tried to cancel three times within the last couple weeks. Finally, completely frustrated, I sent this e-mail to support (another long, convoluted process):

I have tried to delete my account 3 times, and I am not
getting the confirmation message to my e-mail. It is very
important that I have my account deleted immediately. I know
there is nothing wrong with my e-mail, because I am
receiving other messages, including updates on my account
(birthday reminders, etc). I have checked my spam folder
and all other places, there is no cancellation e-mail from
myspace. Please help! You can also e-mail
<alternative e-mail>if you can’t get through to me.

At this point, I did expect a real person to review my request and do something about it. Little did I know, Myspace is controlled completely by little robots, who sent me this message:

To enable the birthday feature, log into your account and click on “Account Settings”.  Choose “Privacy” and look for “Birthday”.  Check the “Show My Birthday to my Friends” box and submit your change by clicking on the “Save All Changes* button.

If you’re wondering how to get the cool little balloons that appear under your profile picture when your birthday is near, don’t worry about it, we take care of that for you.  You won’t be able to activate that feature.

Profile updates could take up to 24 hours to register.  If this does not address your issue completely, please press “Reply” and provide any additional information you feel is relevant. Please do not alter the subject as it will be considered a new inquiry.

For the most up to date messages about MySpace, subscribe to the MySpace Help blog! You get updates almost every day! Go here to subscribe. www.myspace.com/myspacehelp

Hmm… what’s going on here? I did notice that when I went to the contact form it had a big warning – THIS MESSAGE DOES NOT GO TO TOM! Maybe I should just send him a message through his profile and he’ll take care of it.

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Whale Rider

Whale Rider is a lovely little movie about a rural Maori town in New Zealand and their search for a leader. It’s about the struggle for a little girl to be accepted, about the struggle between tradition and modern ideas, fulfilling your dreams, and about love within a family and within a community. It introduces a superb actress, Keisha Castle-Hughes, who later acted in The Nativity Story (as Mary), Star Wars II, Revenge of the Sith (as Queen Apailana),  Hey, Hey, It’s Esther Blueberger, (to be released this year and The Vitner’s Luck (in production).

Based on the book by Witi Ihimaera, Whale Rider starts with the birth of Paikea (Pai for short), a little girl named after the traditional Maori ancestor and hero who rode on the back of a whale from Hawaiki to New Zealand. At her birth, her mother and twin brother die. Her father, distraught over the loss of his wife, leaves Pai with her grandparents. Her grandfather, has trouble accepting Pai. He was expecting a first born son to carry on their line of male chiefs. This is his life-long dream, and Pai’s father has suffered for it as well. No one seems to live up to her grandfather’s high expectations, least of all Pai, because she is a girl and automatically disqualified from being a leader. Still, he loves her dearly, as does everyone in the community.

When she is about 11 years old, her father returns to New Zealand with news that he has a pregnant girlfriend in Germany and asks Pai to come live with him. She almost does, but can’t bear to live her grandfather and her home. She goes back to find that he has pretty much disowned her. He starts a traditional training school for the firstborn sons in the community to choose a new chief. Pai tries to join in, but is ostracized, so she secretly listens in and learns some fight training from her uncle. Grandfather’s school ends up being a failure, and he is once again disillusioned. He blames the result on Paikea, whom he caught fighting on the boys’ school grounds (a taboo which he believes will bring a curse). Because of this, he ignores and practically disowns Paikea and she goes to live with her uncle.

Following this are the most moving scenes of the movie: Paikea’s award-winning speech in honor of her grandfather, and the beached whale scene in which Pai proves her destiny and brings her dream to life.

This movie is about fulfilling your dreams, and it fulfills many real-life dreams in the process. Keisha was an 11 year old New Zealand school girl who dreamed of acting but thought it could never be. She was discovered by the same movie caster who found Anna Paquin, another child prodigy in acting. Her performance is incredibly realistic, and she has gone on to act in several other films. The writers and the real New Zealand town the movie was filmed in worked together to create a beautiful piece of art that rings true and brings a beautiful story to life.

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My husband caught a beautiful trout a few nights ago. It was full of roe (that’s fish eggs, also known as caviar). I’ve had commercial caviar before, you eat it on crackers with champagne. And I’ve had catfish, bluegill and bass roe before. They are in a little membrane, and you bread and fry them with your fish. Quite tasty. But these were something different. Slightly large, a beautiful orange color, they just looked really fancy. I wanted to do something nice with them, and didn’t want to destroy them. But I wasn’t sure. So they sat in the fridge for a few days.

Finally I asked my hubby, “Honey, how should I cook that trout roe?” He said, “Well, just fry it up with some butter and a little salt or soy sauce.” I followed his suggestion, and got the most luxurious recipe I have ever tasted (this makes fine Russian caviar taste like crap!)

Trout or salmon roe from one fish

½ Tbs. Butter

1 tsp. Soy sauce or tamari, or to taste

Crackers, toast, pita, rice cake, etc. (optional)

Yaki Nori (sushi wrap) toasted seaweed (optional)

Melt the butter in a skillet over medium low heat. Allow it to brown a little bit (but not burn). Add the eggs and cook through (they’ll turn a little cloudy, not clear anymore). Add soy or tamari.

The butter and eggs kind of caramelize. The texture is creamy, with a slight chewiness. Man, I want some again (so hubby has gone back to the lake. )

Hope you guys enjoy this. Let me know how it turned out.

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This is a neat little book that I read almost in one day. I found a lot of myself in it. Some of you may think that this statement is odd. After all, it’s about a British girl growing up in a small town under a severely religious, perhaps deranged family, to find out that she is a lesbian.

Well, I’m not British, or lesbian, but I did grow up in a small town, had almost delusional parents, and my whole life was extremely religious. I was raised with a strict sense of right and wrong, and a very narrow view of the world. God was very real to me. Later developments in my life caused me to doubt God, or at least the God I had known. I no longer believe that the world is so simple. There is a lot of gray, not so much black and white.

In the end, the main character returns to her home town and even to the home she grew up in. Her mother has changed, amazingly, not in her religious beliefs, but in her personal hang-ups. At the same time, Jeanette, the main character, has not really changed at all. She wants to believe, and she wants to love women. She has yet to find a way to have both together.

This is a neat experimental story. It’s a good story about growing up religious but being different. This book is for all who grew up in a small town and didn’t fit in, and for those who want to know what it’s like.

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There are hundred of ice cream flavors on the market. And many of them taste very good. Unfortunately, most ice cream is full of fake stuff… high fructose corn syrup, artificial flavors, preservatives, etc. Yuck.

I have found a great alternative. No, not some fancy expensive alternative. Just Breyer’s Natural Vanilla. It’s all ingredients that I understand (cream, milk, sugar, etc.) and a delicious vanilla bean flavor. You know there is real vanilla bean in it, because you can see the little flecks.

Now, vanilla is good (it gets a bad rap for being “plain”, but vanilla is a complex flavor of its own), but sometimes it gets old. So, I dress it up. Some things are somewhat obvious: fresh or frozen strawberries, blueberries, or raspberries, chopped nuts, whipped cream. You may not have thought about it, but egg nog and other cream liqueur like Bailey’s Irish Cream tastes wonderful over ice cream (just a little bit, for flavor). I’m not crazy about chocolate (I know, it’s crazy, but I just don’t like chocolate that much!) but my son and husband love it. So I often top the ice cream with shaved chocolate. Just take a potato peeler and your favorite chocolate (white, dark, or milk, and any flavor combination) and pretend that the chocolate bar is a carrot. You don’t need very much to add a lot of flavor and pizazz to ice cream. This is especially good with raspberries.

One of my favorite flavors to add to ice cream is juice concentrate. It may sound weird, but it adds a great kick. A spoon or two of 100% juice orange juice, berry punch, or lemonade concentrate over vanilla ice cream adds a great flavor, but is just juice, with no extra sugar or artificial junk. It’s about as healthy as ice cream can get.

Do you have a natural ice cream topping to add? Comment here.

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I subscribe to a lot of newsletters, but my favorite is the “Funny Columns” from self-described “writer Melvin Durai, who was born in India, raised in Zambia and brainwashed in America”. He apparently now lives in Canada (go Canada!), and most of his columns have a sarcastic political message, often about the ever-increasing lack of liberty in our beautiful United States. His material is always funny, and usually right on track with the way I see the world.

(Hmm…I’m trying out new WordPress plug-ins. I have no idea why the foregoing text is another color…oh well)

If you’re counting down the days until George W. Bush is required to leave the White House, or if you have ever been insulted while traveling internationally, this column is definitely for you. Check it out at http://www.MelvinDurai.com

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I started watching this movie, expecting a documentary from BBC or the Discovery Channel about sleep and dreams. It was definitely not that, but something much better. A Michel Gondry film. The director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, many of Bjork’s music videos, and several other amazing works, Gondry is known for thought-provoking story-lines, experimental special effects, and overall fascinating films.

The story is about a young man, Stephane, who is talented and eccentric, but plagued by waking dreams, and by not knowing if he’s dreaming or experiencing reality. He falls in love with his neighbor, Stephanie, but has trouble (more trouble than usual for a man, that is) expressing his feelings towards her.

The movie is a surreal romantic comedy. The visual effects are just amazing, and the characters are artistic and appealing.

Watch this movie if you like Michel Gondry, if you enjoyed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (the going back and forth from dream to reality is reminiscent of the memory scenes in Eternal Sunshine), or if you enjoy surrealism and art films. If you like a clear cut ending, you may not enjoy the story-line, but I think everyone would enjoy the special effects.

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I absolutely love to see Jim Carey in a serious role. I think that Kate Winslet is beautiful. Charlie Kaufman (screenwriter for Adaptation and Being John Malkovich among others) is brilliant. And I think that Michel Gondry is an absolute genius. It also has Elijah Wood and Kirsten Dunst stoned in her underwear (jumping on the bed). Thus, to me, Eternal Sunshine is the perfect movie.

I was amazed to have some people tell me that they didn’t understand Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. That is was stupid, and didn’t make sense. I pity these people, because they have missed a great work of art.

The story-line (which I’ll admit is sometimes hard to follow, but not that bad) is that Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet) meet and fall in love. Then, due to various relationship problems, and Clementine’s tendency to make rash decisions, she goes to a company called Lacuna to have her memories of Joel erased. What people seem to not really get is that Joel later has his memory erased as well. The mixed up, crazy, dream-like sequences and jumbled order of events is part of this memory erasure.

The neat thing is that in the end, after they have erased each other from their lives, they still have a burning desire to return to the place where they met. They come together again, with no knowledge of having met before.

It’s a tearjerker, but also a thinker. It brings up questions: would I want to completely erase a person from my life and memory? Would there be any last moments of regret? Would we find each other again in the end? Is there such a thing as fate and are coincidences more than just that?

I think everyone should see this movie. Please, if you have not seen it, buy it, rent it, borrow it from a friend. Try to watch and understand. If you don’t get it, oh well. But you had the chance.

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If you stretch your meat with pasta, potatoes, veggies, etc. you can buy expensive cuts of meat and fish with relatively little cost. Most Americans (and people in other developed countries) eat too much meat anyway, and need more fruits and vegetables in their diet to stay healthy.

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To make onions easy to deal with (and take advantage of sales, especially on specialty onions like vidalias), chop several onions at once, then freeze for later use. Do the same with carrots, broccoli, and other like veggies.

Filed under: PTR reviews, Uncategorized | No Comments »