the hijinks of molly & tara

WordPress has this new poll thing and I just had to try it out.

your choices:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

EXPLAIN your choice please. there are many interesting pros and cons and this is a very important decision.

-Molly

From the Jackson’s Lane Volunteer Front of House Staff & Ushers Info Booklet (and I do quote):

FIRE & EMERGENCY PROCEDURE INFORMATION

The word ‘fire’ is NEVER to be used when members of the public are within earshot. Code names for informing Duty Officers of difficulties are ‘Mr. Sands’ for fire or fire alarm, and ‘Mr. Jackson’ for a suspicious object or person, or any other occurrence requiring urgent attention.

I :heart: working in theatre.

-Tara

This is kind of amazing.

GM:  OK, the bugbear attacks you.  What do you do?

OBAMA: I send one of my 672 henchmen after it.

MCCAIN:  OK, seriously.  Why does he have so many henchmen?  I’m a level 72 ranger and he’s only a level 8 paladin.

OBAMA:  Well, if you’d bought the Grassroots Organizing and Oratory/Colgate Smile proficiencies you could min max it so that you…

MCCAIN: Why is he even IN this campaign? I thought this was supposed to be a high level party.

OBAMA: Well, maybe some people got tired of the grim and squinty “Matterhorn, son of Marathon” shtick you keep doing.  Dude, could you be any less original?

MCCAIN: Oh my god, I did not leave my left nut in a tiger cage in the Tomb of Horrors to spend my Friday nights mopping up after the new kid.

OBAMA: “My friends, I am a totally unoriginal grizzled character class stereotype.  I should lead the party because I have more testicular damage than that one.”

MCCAIN: Yeah, well, you pal around with dark elves.

OBAMA: OH NO YOU DIDN’T.

MCCAIN: Whatever, so’s your mom.

OBAMA: So’s your FACE.

MCCAIN: So’s your Mom’s face!

HILARY: WTF you guys.  Why am I playing the cleric?

Read the rest..

-Molly

Can I just say: I love a job interview where you’re asked to juggle. Looks like I might be working here soon! And volunteering as an usher here, too. Yay free dance/theater/circus performance viewings!

-Tara

Walking home this evening, I was attacking this question from just one angle, that of ‘transport.’ My thoughts went something like this:

What if, for a day, personal vehicles were outlawed in a major city? Buses, lorries/trucks, ambulances, vans, cyclists, motorcyclists, pedestrians, skateboarders, rollerbladers, unicyclists, and carpools would be allowed, but personal automobiles would have to stay home. People would flood public transport, leave for work an hour early just to get there, see each other’s faces as they passed…

Could be possible to narrow that list further? There are certain people, young children, elderly, disabled, etc. that wouldn’t be able to travel under their own power. You would still need buses, etc. with priority for those passengers so that they’d be able to get around. Getting rid of lorries is impossible: how else would we get necessary goods, food, medical supplies, etc? Cities, by condensing the distance needed to go to get resources, should mean less travel in general. But all those convenient resources still need to travel from their originating point to the city, which is perhaps more energy output in all. So staying local should be the solution, except that then if you can’t get everything you need locally, you still have to travel – or the goods do.

So certain vehicles are necessary evils of cities, in that case. But at least we could strip it down a certain amount, by encouraging cycling and people-powered methods of transport…

London is thinking about instituting a biker’s license, similar to a driver’s license, if the upward trend in cycle commuting continues. This is supposed to be a response to the concurrent upward trend in cyclist deaths and injuries. Yet there don’t seem to be any major plans to change the roads so that there are more separated bike lanes, signed bike paths, etc, to keep bikes away from the lorries, roundabouts, large intersections, and other hazards. This seems to be just another way to make the bikers responsible for their own victimization. I recently read an article which anecdotally found that car drivers percieved helmeted bikers as less fragile than unhelmeted bikers and therefore were less cautious driving around them, resulting in MORE accidents with HELMETED cyclists – which were still the cyclist’s fault, for wearing the helmet.

All in all, though, London seems to me the most green-conscious city I’ve been to (right now). There are recycling collection points in every neighborhood, many boroughs are expanding their initiatives to include compost of garden waste and kitchen scraps. There bins for paper and plastic bottle recycling next to trash bins on some corners and public-transport ads advocating cycling and walking. Half the flyers and free newspapers I read boast ‘printed on recycled paper,’ and local councils have freecycle-esque webpages for posting used stuff swaps. Re-use and recycling is high profile at the moment, but on a governmental and social scale, not just in the news. Heartening!

-Tara

Mol,

don’t know if this is a new trend, or what, but it’s well cool. two artists i’ve come across recently:

BLU (this person must be ridiculously dedicated – the film is MINUTES long! watch the whole thing, the art is vaguely disturbing, but really cool and sometimes really funny)

Robin Rhodes (he’s got an art gallery here, i wasn’t able to find the best representations of his work online – but he does chalk-motion pictures, etc. from a review of the gallery: “Robin’s work presents life as a game, with fantastical scenarios that ask the viewer to trust in their own imaginations to bridge the gaps. But these seemingly light hearted works often disguise a darker subtext, including issues of urban poverty, freedom and personal space and the commodification of youth cultures.” )

Totally want to try making a short along those lines, now. Wish I could draw better!

-Tara

I was thinking yesterday how I really miss photography. From the time I was 8 till I was 16 or 17, photography was my MAIN thing, but the past few years it’s really taken a back seat to graphic design and video. So I went out and took some lovely photos on the rail trail, which I have been meaning to do for ages. Enjoy! (You can click on them to see them full size.)

-Molly

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SO awesome. Also reminds me of the inflatable homeless shelters project…

Using ‘waste resources’ from urban environments… there is something so appealing in solving urban problems by matching them with urban excesses, yet it’s always a stop-gap solution, not one that fixes any long-term, structural problem.

-Tara

I promised recipes on this blog, so here’s a recipe!  The last few days I’ve had a lot of turbulent energy after work that I needed to channel into something.  So I made a few pumpkin pies, and last night I made pumpkin biscuits.  I had never made pie or biscuits before, but they both came out quite nice.  My only regret with the biscuits is I made them a little too thin.  While they have a good biscuity texture, they’re also rather moist, which is nice.

-Molly

Pumpkin Biscuits!

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I found this via Boing Boing. I think it’s brilliant.

Originally by Aden Renkai.

-Molly