One of our favorite local restaurants to take visitors to is the Hula Hut. Created by the Chuy's people, Hula Hut is a Tex-Mex/Micronesian fusion restaurant, serving such delicacies as the Polynesian Pescado Pu Pu Platter and other tasty, tasty crimes against nature.

It's on Lake Austin next to Tom Miller Dam, and when the weather permits, you can eat on a pier. There's a separate pier for boats to tie up at and it's necessarily casual, which fits the themes nicely.

This being Austin, Grackles are everywhere. At the Hula Hut, they like to wait near the pierside tables and bars and hope that someone will feed them chips.

Watching the grackles led to seeing the turtles swimming in the water. Looking for the turtles led to seeing the catfish, then three catfish, all very big (24"?). Looking for more catfish led to seeing a gar.

The moral of this story is "look at stuff, you never know what you'll see."

Champions Online. Champions. Online. Doctor Destroyer. Foxbat. Millennium City.

Developed by the CoH/CoV studio, published by Atari, and PC only!

I'm saved! rickjthree is doomed. Jones, maybe you can sell them your San Angelo IP...
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Apparently it's not Renee-smee like some demented cross between ms zewiliger and Peter Pan's mr. Smee. It's renn-esme. And I can't make too much fun of Franklin Richards Sparklypoo-Cullen, because my niece is a Fan...

Man, Thats one Impressive storm!

Servers should reboot once the lights are on...

ETA: aaaaand we're back.

Sephora is a place that Ginger shops, mostly despite the catalogs. I used to think of them as "the place for people who can't tell eye makeup from clown paint."

I think they've finally seen that this isn't enough in this economy. Now, I think they're trying to be "the place for people who would use a BeDazzler™ on their eyebrows".

Hopefully, they'll find their target audience, and stop sending me disturbing catalogs.

My father is the Chancellor of the North Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church, which is not something I will ever be for many, many reasons. As he describes that, this means he is "the bishop's lawyer". Southern Methodist University in Dallas is both affiliated with the church and the home of a major Methodist Seminary, the Perkins School of Theology.

A member of the SMU Perkins staff sued the Bishop in Church Court over his decision to allow SMU to go forward with hosting the George W. Bush Presidential Library and the policy institute "inspired by the principles of George W. Bush's administration."

"The university and the church’s South Central Jurisdictional Conference, which owns the school and elects its trustees, contended the presidential library is an honor that will serve as a resource for historical research, dialogue and public programs."¹

Whatever you think of Bush and his administration's principles or Methodists or the economic advantages to Dallas or any moral stain that adheres to SMU or if you think it's going to be a resource or a tool, or any misgivings you might have regarding the details of the deal, the case she brought was that the Bishop should block the lease because it subsidized a particular political point of view.

It was a pretty weak case, and it was demolished by the Chancellor. “We do not see this case as a vote for or against former President Bush or his policies, but a simple matter of church law,” said my father, the Chancellor.

I think SMU is making a mistake. I don't think, for instance, the various Bush Library organizations will deal substantively with Bush regime torture. But I can't help but think it's their own choice to lie down with dogs and get up dirty.

Aunt Jane was was a chrono-novitiate with the Sisters of Temporal Correction, based in what used to be China around the first half of the 28th century. Dad never told us any of that, much less where he was from. Eventually I forgave him, although I don't think Mike ever did. I remember Aunt Jane as a sweet little old nun when I was a kid. We never knew about the ruler, not in the 1970s. We thought she was Catholic, and it turns out she might not have been human.

Her letters to Dad were preserved, and there's a book about her order's campaign, Havoc in Hunan that he wrote. She had it published in her time. I was toying with using her adventures as the subject of my second novel, but late one night she showed up at my front door, splattered with someone else's blood and carrying a twelve-pack of St. Christopher's Pale Ale and looking all of eighteen years old. "Let me show you something, kid, before you talk to your agent." That's why I teach high school history today. The future isn't safe for me.

You should go to Brittingham's Irish Pub to see a dual bill of Seven Nations and Brother.

We won't be there, but you should.

As immlass mentioned in her report, the important thing to mention here is "and everyone is OK." Now that that's clear, we'll continue in order.

For those who don't know, Ginger has been competing in the National Karaoke League's South Austin Division this spring. NKL is just getting started, but they certainly have a fun idea and I hope it takes off. It's nice to get some structure and lots of positive feedback around karaoke. It's also been something Ginger has enjoyed a great deal.

( The Battle Royale in detail... )

Oh, and my pictures are on Flikr...

"Why is a watermelon trapped between those monstrous pressure plates deep within the Institute's Critical Stress Laboratory?" Team Banzai botanical agronomists have been for years hard at work on the problem of hunger in Third World countries under constant revolutionary turmoil. A nonpolitical, humanitarian effort, their goal has been to find ways to feed starving peoples in remote areas where traditional food delivery systems prove woefully inadequate. Often, the only way to get the nourishment into the bellies of the needy is to hit and run, avoiding all petty ideological side-taking. What you see in the Critical Stress Lab is a revolutionary watermelon capable of withstanding impact pressures of 300,000 pounds per square inch! Sweet, juicy and vitamin-packed, this remarkable fruit can be dropped from the bomb bays of low-flying aircraft into the backyards of disenfranchised villagers in the remotest backwaters of this angry planet. Just another Team Banzai effort to cut through all the unnecessary crap around us and help people help themselves. Look for high-impact, low cholesterol eggs next... and sooner than you think, shatter-proof whole-wheat taco shells.

--faq

Rumor has is they're working on Phase 2 of the watermelon project, which involves putting a whole chicken into the watermelon so that they can provide a protein source...

This page belongs to an amusingly deranged pet groomer. An award winning amusingly deranged pet groomer. An amusingly deranged pet groomer who has won awards for her deranged acts against poodlekind.

http://www.pinkcoyote.net/creativegrooming.html

It's just bizarre. She has a dozen other creations on the same page--poddle-snail, poodle-shark, poodle-camel, poodle-peacock, poodle-ninja-turtle, etc.

While it is true that I find the images disturbing, it may be more disturbing that my first thought was "I can use this for a role-playing encounter!"

I'm still waiting for bad poodle-horsemonkey, though.

For those who don't follow the LJ community rpg_statements, Ginger has just posted what may be the most succinct summary of role playing in Roger Zelazny's Amber evar.

Also, follow rpg_statements. It's often funny.

So, my 13 year old niece has friended me on Facebook. That's pretty cool. And sorta scary.

I haven't censored myself online and, having thought about it I don't intend to. If she's old enough to be on Facebook, she's old enough to find my stuff. I've been pretty tame on Facebook, anyway. She hasn't found LiveJournal (that I know of), thus the post here. OTOH, Google exists. OTOOH, I'd be willing to explain anything she found, so there you go. Hope I never linked to any of the nasty shock sites.

So, yaye, she's starting to be her own person. Very cool.

Here's my question for the collective wisdom of LJ: How would you or have you dealt with the next generation of your family getting on-line?

I was reading a FoaF comment on Facebook: "My mood matches the weather: bitter and cold and I want to stay inside."

Me (not to him, wouldn't be nice): "Ditto. Sunny and 60s, with better the rest of the week. The days are getting longer and brighter, but I realize everyone doesn't live in the same place I do..."

I'm so glad I didn't turn out like a bunch of my HS classmates did.

• 12:12 all cookies gone by noon...
• 13:01 Official from CorpComm:"Do not use any logo in your email sig, just plain text." Wow, when did they become internet curmudgeons? Also, yay!
• 14:08 Coho and Trout bots can pogue mahone: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheGreatHatsby
  $optout if you get an unexpected IM from a fish...

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I finally figured out what is going on with random IMs from strangers who thought I'd started a conversation with them. They all have handles that look like [Adjective][Fishname], generally something like ObstreperousCoho or HeavyTrout.

Apparently, there's a bot that matches the user-name of recent feeds from sites like twitter or LJ or DeviantArt with AIM screen names. Then it hooks two of these together and sends each of them a message like "Hey..." The sender is obfuscated (as are some other words), and the conversation is presumably recorded for amusement and/or social experimentation.

It does not amuse me. reply with $optout and eventually they'll say they won't bother you again.

• 16:47 Can be left on the break room table: cupcakes, cookies, carrots and cokes. Cannot be left on the break room table: vats of ice cream.

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• 09:06 looking at "The Profile Picture of Dorian Grey"...

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• 01:39 Finnish Heavy Metal Disco Cover. tinyurl.com/yr9gw8 Better Than Vampires Are Alive, because it's a cover of Boney M

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