cybergeisha

There is an enormous bullfrog sitting behind my car and he WILL NOT MOVE. This big fat amphibian needs to know that if he wants to NOT get run over, I’m not afraid (as every other girl in the house is) to pick his ass up and put him in the yard. Thinks he can get away with taking up the driveway. I think not, buddy.

Introduction

Readers, fans, random passers-by…. I would like to welcome you to cybergeisha.net’s world première episode of NEWS OF THE WEIRD - weird things I’ve found on the Internet lately. It could be a website, a product, a news story, even a photo or a quote. But above all else, it’s weird, and I’ve got plenty to say about it.

Here, we have our first offering,.

The Crustastun – World’s first Humane Electronic Crustacean Stunner

A revolutionary system For the first time ever a humane, simple and effective way to stun and kill shellfish prior to cooking.

It goes on to explain why they developed this product, further into the website. Let’s take a look, shall we?

To many, present methods of killing (chopping, drowning in freshwater, boiling, frying & basting - alive) are barbaric and the recommended methods (cooling in ice-slurry or spiking the several nerve centres) unproven, difficult and impractical. The Crustastun applies an instant current which anaesthatises the Crab, Lobster or other shellfish within a fraction of a second and kills within seconds.

First of all… If you bought fresh live lobster… You have *GASP* to kill it yourself. You’re setting out to do the age old act ingrained in our DNA — slaughtering something for food. That’s not pretty. I understand that.

But I can’t understand all of this wibbling about “how much pain they can feel” or “what gives them the least pain.” Why? Why focus on this? They will not suffer any more than if they’d been eaten (ALIVE) by another animal. Let’s keep that perspective for a second. Given the choice between “Body Torn Limb from Limb As I’m Eaten Alive” and “Head Chopped Off” and “Boiled Alive” I’d take “head chopped off” or “immediately immersed in boiling water” any day.

The question isn’t, to me, what the lobsters feel or think. It’s what we project onto the lobsters. What WE find horrifying, inhumane, humiliating, mean and wrong, from the perspective of whether we would want to endure it. That’s how we figure out how HUMANE it is.

applies the humane slaughter principles currently applied to higher food animals such as cows, sheep and pigs to shellfish, […]

Higher food creatures. That brings up a really good point. How good ARE our “standards” for “higher” creatures? Pretty good in general. Know why? You don’t usually slaughter a pig, cow, or sheep at your home. Lobsters, fish, shellfish and the like are small enough to be slaughtered at home. So do they need to be held to meat-packing “Standards?”

It’s just a lobster, people.

What was that? You, in the audience. Oh, I see. No, no, it’s a good question. No, I do not eat lobster. It’s not because I think it’s inhumane or too expensive or too messy or anything… I just don’t like them. I don’t like the meat of crustaceans/arthropods so I don’t eat it. It is that simple — no moral high ground here.

The way I see it, they are bugs. Big, ocean-dwelling, arthropods that crawl around in the sea mud. Some people could make the argument that “well, you kill spiders and stomp cockroaches (a very close relative of the lobster), and a lobster is pretty much a bug, too, so…..”

I think it’s more than that. I don’t even know that it’s about “how much pain” a lobster can handle or being “humane.” It seems like it’s more about how much projected pain WE perceive the lobster as going through. How sorry we feel for the lobster through empathy - would you want to be in a tank with your hands tied together, bored, with nothing to do but wait for someone to come and buy you? No. That would be inhumane. But….

————   N E W S   F L A S H ! ! !   ————

LOBSTERS ARE NOT HUMAN

It’s true. As I mentioned before… crustaceans/arthropods are not human and I’m not sure why we keep trying to say that they need to be humanely killed — I view all of the listed methods of lobster slaughtering to be acceptible for what is being achieved.

Maybe we should start “putting down” cows, sheep, and pigs before we kill them, similar to how we do with our pets, rather than inhumanly driving them into a Meat Machine where they will be killed by robots and dismantled ad come out the other side as a side of bacon.

Or maybe as a whole, people should just get over it!

Do we NEED a device SOLELY MADE to “humanely” electrocute lobsters?

My friends, I do not think we need this. It’s just… well, it’s unnecessary, and it makes us seem like we’re a bunch of wussies.

How to use English Punctuation Correctly

With the dawn of the Internet, the birth of Internet slang, and the growing age of SMS, many individuals are forgetting the fundamental aspects of English punctuation. Would you like to write a great paper for one of your classes? Maybe you need to submit a polished, impeccable proposal to your boss? If so, it will help to know proper usage of punctuation. Consider this article a crash course in English punctuation, and read on.

How to use Apostrophes

Do not use apostrophes or quotation marks for emphasis. For example, take a billboard that says: Joe Schmo, the “best” realtor in town! It makes the word “best” appear sarcastic and untrue, rather than emphasized.

Good God, if people would only read these two articles, and nothing else… The Internet would be a better place. I’m sort of a grammar nazi, and abuse of apostrophes, quotation marks, and other punctuational errors sort of break my brain.

Besides, if you don’t pay attention to the article, you risk ending up on the “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks or on Apostrophe Abuse. This is your warning, heed it well!

How to Use There, Their and They’re

The English language is full of problems like the one presented by there, their and they’re. Most native English speakers pronounce these words the same way; therefore, it is difficult for some to judge in which situation to use which spelling. Each spelling means a very different thing; if you’d like to learn the difference, read on!

I often worry about the state of the English language. There’s a trend, obviously, towards typing as we speak, as the self on the Internet has become a second version of the physical self. We don’t see the contractions, punctuation marks, pauses, and other such written things as we speak, so once we start using text as a speech medium, of course it’s less and less common to see properly written things.

Good? Bad? I don’t like it but I don’t know whether it will get better. This isn’t a problem of education, or “where are the parents.” It’s deeper than that.

So, rather unexpectedly, I have moved back to Seattle. I’ve been back since Saturday night.

I know this is pretty sudden and some of my friends are probably going to be rather surprised and possibly alarmed.

Life in San Francisco started unravelling VERY fast. In February, I lost my job. Then, I was EXTREMELY ill for the entire month of March. I found out on April 1 that I had to move out of my apartment by April 30, and I decided that faced with having to find a job and a new place to live in less than a month, that it was time to pack it up and move back to Seattle.

I miss all my friends down there, and I hope I will be back sooner rather than later, hopefully at some point back to stay. But right now, moving back to my hometown and taking a break while I regroup and get my life back together is what’s most important to me.

The hardest thing was making the decision to move without getting to say goodbye to most of my friends down there, without getting to go to Death Guild one last time, without getting to do any of the stuff I wanted to do before I left. But, it was better that I left once I had made the decision to leave, rather than hang around.

Erik came down on Thursday, April 3, and we rented a moving van, helped my friend Kurt move a desk, and rested up to do the Big Move the next morning. On Friday, April 4, we packed the van up, cleaned my room, stopped for a bite to eat and hit the road. By that evening we were at the California/Oregon border (in Yreka), where we stopped for the night. We made it to my mom and dad’s house by 21:00 on Saturday night and unpacked a bunch of my stuff on Sunday. We finished unloading the rest of my stuff Monday and returned the truck.

Living with my parents is taking some getting used to, that’s for sure. Their house is beautiful and comfortable, I don’t have to pay rent and I dont’ have to worry about IMMEDIATELY GETTING A JOB, so that’s good. But giving up the independence I’ve had the last 8 years has been a tough transition. I live out in the middle of nowhere (seriously - pizza hut doesn’t deliver all the way out here!) but I have my car.

At least I’ve been able to get some of my decorative items out of boxes and put them up to make my space a little bit more “my own.” I am happy with how my dresser has shaped up with all my postcards on it. The lamp (on which I’ve hung the goggles I wore at Burning Man and several necklaces) and dresser are both antiques and I have had both of them since I was young. All in all my space here is pretty nice. It’s clean and quiet and I have room to spread out a bit.

Other than cleaning and decorating, I’ve been trying to keep myself happy and amused. I’ve been doing a lot of laundry. I’ve also been making efforts to eat better.

The best thing I can do right now is focus on myself and get my life back in order. So that’s what I’m doing. Even if “focus on myself” means “go out on the front porch and blow soap bubbles for 20 minutes.”

Comparative Weather Studies

In which the author discusses the weather in San Francisco vs. Seattle

I grew up, as many of my readers know, in Seattle, WA. I lived there for 25 years, until I moved to San Francisco, CA. When I mention that I am a native of Seattle, without fail, the first thing about which most people inquire is the rain. The common misconception is that Seattle is the target of a constant deluge of near-biblical proportions. Not so. It is overcast, cloudy, and rains quite a bit, but you generally can get by without an umbrella, as long as your coat or sweatshirt has a hood.

Seattle has nothing on the weather we’ve had here in the Bay Area today. When I woke up, the wind was howling and it was raining so hard I couldn’t see across the street. The patio furniture we had on our roof was, somewhat amusingly, mangled and twisted all over the sidewalk outside our front door - four stories below the roof. I’ve never seen rain like that before. It was pouring down huge, heavy droplets and felt like I was in a cold, wet, uncomfortable shower wearing all my clothes and carrying bags.

Travel, Rain and Irony

Or, a funny thing happened on the way to the airport…

Ironically, I was out in the weather because I am on my way to Seattle for the weekend. When I got off the subway in downtown San Francisco to take the rent money to my roommate, there was a cascade of water pouring down the steps as I walked up to the street level. As I waited to cross Market street, someone drove by and sloshed what seemed like a tidal wave onto me, soaking me from the waist down. Fantastic.

Rent paid, I went back down to the subway to catch the BART to Oakland International Airport. MUNI service, I found out, had been stopped through downtown because of the weather. The BART line I was going to take directly to the airport was also stopped. Thankfully, they were letting through a different line, so I took that one and transferred in downtown Oakland to a line that WOULD get me to the airport.

Waiting for the Flight To Come

Live from Oakland, it’s Friday Night!

While waiting at the airport in Oakland, my friend Ian text-messaged me and asked me if I was alright - apparently the news is covering the storm down here and saying there have been hurricane force winds! I’d believe it. The weather is off the frickin’ hook, that’s for sure. The weather in Oakland seems to be tamer than the weather in San Francisco - it’s a little rainy but the airport seemed to be functioning as usual.

Ian told me that there is a mandatory evacuation order in place for Orange County and that wind speeds are topping 75 miles per hour - incredible that I have to rely on a friend in Seattle for information on what’s happening RIGHT OUTSIDE MY WINDOW. I can’t get over how funny that is, actually - we really are living in an information age! I saw a sliver of the blue sky out over the bay, though, so I was pretty sure my flight would be able to leave.

I was standing by for a flight at 4:40 and ticketed for the flight at 5:30. It actually sort of surprised me - they let me right through security, no questions asked and no problems given. This is a bit surprising because I have a lot of electronics parts, metal, glass and other stuff in my hair extensions right now. Tele-destruction hair!

Hometown Advantage

For once, the weather sucks less in Seattle than in San Francisco!

For a moment, I wondered if I’d make it out of California. However, I got on the earlier flight and even though the flight took off half an hour late, I arrived in Seattle at 19:30 - earlier than the flight I’d been scheduled for. Erik was there a few minutes later, but holy crap, the weather here is great! Far better than the weather in San Francisco - clear and a little windy, but not raining at all - not even coat-wearing weather.

Tomorrow, I get to chill out and possibly meet up with my friend Lindsey (who is offering to teach me to knit), hang out at Dragonfire Imports (my family’s antique shop, where Erik is the shop manager) and make last minute preparations for the Information society show on Sunday night. Many of Erik’s siblings and both of his parents are considering going to the show - and my mom wants to come, too. Incredible! I don’t know how I feel about my mom going to a electronic music show - but it’s sure a trip thinking that my suburbanite, lexus-driving, shops-at-nordstrom mom wants to go see InSoc. I hope she likes the show!

More information about the concert is available on the Information Society website or by clicking the image above, which also has information about the Philadelphia, San Francisco and Austin performances. The show is at at 8PM on Sunday, 6 January 2008 at El Corazon in downtown Seattle. Tickets are available at TicketsWest.