Wooo! If you like it, votey vote voterson!

I spent some time last night voting on other people’s shirts and there are some deadly rad designs out there. Makes me wanna BUY MORE SHIRTS. I suppose that’s the point.

I don’t know why.

These are Harvey Dents:

They are half peanut-butter with chocolate chips, and half chocolate with peanut-butter chips, and all TOTALLY INSANE-O.

(Note that the chocolate cookie recipe rises a little higher than the peanut butter recipe, leaving the cookies nice and disfigured)

My recipe: let me show you it.

If your oven is normal, preheat it to 350 F. Mine is not normal so I set the dial to 300 F.

Generally cookie-batter mixing means creaming the sugar and wet ingredients first, and then mixing in the rest of the ingredients until the batter begs for mercy. These mixes are no exception:

CHOCOLATE SIDE

A)
1 C butter, softened (AKA 2 sticks, or 1/2 lb.), softened
3/4 C sugar
2/3 C brown sugar, packed
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs

B)
2 1/4 C all-purpose flour
2/3 C cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt

C)
Peanut butter chips

Cream (A) in one bowl
Combine (B) in another
Add (B) to (A) gradually.
Add as much of (C) as you like.

Batter will be sticky. You may wish to refrigerate it while you make the peanut butter side.

PEANUT BUTTER SIDE

A)
1 C butter, softened (AKA 2 sticks, or 1/2 lb.), softened
1 C brown sugar, packed
1 C sugar
1 1/2 C creamy peanut butter
2 eggs

B)
2 1/2 C all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla

C)
Semi-sweet chocolate chips

- Mix (A)
- Add (B)
- Mix in as much of (C) as you like

Set batter aside. The peanut butter is so oily that it will be easy to work with even without refrigerating.

You will probably have more peanut butter batter than chocolate batter. That is OK.

Take about a tablespoon of each kind of batter and roll together into a ball. Place on cookie sheet with room to double in diameter.

Bake at 350 F for 8 – 10 min depending on how crispy you want them (I like them chewy, and thus pull them out of the oven right when they’re juuuuust firm around the edges.)

Let cool thoroughly and then FATTEN UP YOUR FRIENDS.

If you like it, give it a votely vote vote.

If you don’t, I will just try, try again.

I can only hope that it is this uncontrollably rad.

My sister is doctoring in Nicaragua this week, including in Managua and Esteli. She reports that everywhere there are paintings of Leonel Rugama, a poet, revolutionary, and soldier of the Sandinista National Liberation Front who was killed in 1970 at the age of 20.

My sister sends along one of his poems:

THE EARTH IS A SATELLITE OF THE MOON

The people of Acahualinca are less hungry than the children
of the people there.
The children of the people of Acahualinca, because of hunger,
are not born
they hunger to be born, only to die of hunger.
Blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the moon.

The paintings persist forty years after his death.

When I was a kid I remember hearing “Sandinista” on the nightly news and understanding from the context that they must be the bad guys. Now I get that things are often a lot more complicated than the nightly news allows.

Food for thought.

Don’t worry — I’ll be back to sharing funny cat videos in no time.

I switched because:

- My experience with Dr. Norma Salceda, The Culver City Ass-Poker, left a bad taste in my mouth about what doctors are in their system.

- I tried to upgrade my dental plan so I could pick my own dentist, and after eight phone calls to six different numbers, including multiple transfers and disconnections, and NO PROGRESS, I started to get the feeling that maybe Blue Shield was not the right health insurance choice for me and maybe I should pay attention to that feeling and not patiently wait to get ass-poked again.

Now, in order to sign up with Blue Shield, I had to sign up for their automated billing.

In order to cancel with Blue Shield, I must do this:

But this phone number doesn’t work.

So I wrote a letter.

June 18, 2010

Sincerely,
Victoria Hoke

Then I read the thing about how you have to cancel by phone ten days before the billing date in order to avoid being charged. I did not want to be charged.

June 21, 2010

Sincerely,
Victoria Hoke

I contacted the USAA, the company of the credit card with which I signed up for automatic billing. I like USAA. USAA is rad. Said they, “We are unable to block specific merchants from charging your account. However, if you are unable to resolve this with the merchant, please be advised that you can dispute the transaction online.” Cool.

On June 28 I got a letter from Blue Shield saying they were canceling my insurance effective July 1st.

Also on June 28, Blue Shield charged me for July.

Today I wrote this:

Blue Shield of California Life & Health Insurance
P.O. Box 272610
Chico, CA 95927-2610

Sincerely,
Victoria Hoke

Will update.

Try to watch this without giggling uncontrollably. I SUBMEET THAT YOU CANNOT.

Courtesy Jeremy, via io9

YES.

Bruce Willis from wreckandsalvage on Vimeo.

Beware of catchiness!

Kissing fun goodbye since 1999

One might suggest that M. Night Shyamalan is not experienced with action or heavy green-screen. I think Shyamalan had a BLOOD GRUDGE against his editor, and felt so much seething hideous death-hate that he was willing to scuttle a hundred-million-dollar movie based on a beloved property THAT ALREADY EXISTS IN CINEMATIC FORM. Why else would the following occur?

- No establishing shots (BAM! You’re in tent in a village you’ve never seen before!)

- No transition shots (BAM! Prince Zuko’s unconscious in the woods! BAM! He’s standing next to his uncle on a ship! Then to fill in the gap that A SINGLE SHOT OF PRINCE ZUKO WALKING would have helped, his uncle has to ask something like, “Where have you been the last four days? Are you the weird dude in a blue suit who showed up over the last four days? No? Okay, I’ll take your word for it. I wasn’t really interested anyway, because I’m getting a foot massage.”)

And it burns, burns, burns…

- Almost all action scenes handled in a fluid master. You know what fluid masters are great for? NOT ACTION SCENES.

- An entire two-minute dialogue scene (between Sokka and the northern water tribe princess) handled in a way-too-close two-shot. No cutting. Then go to another scene. Then come back to Sokka and the princess and they’re still in the same two-shot. HELP WE ARE STUCK IN THE TWO-SHOT!

- Another two-minute scene handled with TWO shots (Whoa! Hold your horses, Kubrick!) — a way-too-close two-shot of Katara and Sokka and a REALLY WAY TOO FRICKIN CLOSE-UP of Aang. Like, from his eyebrows to his lips. I have never seen a shot like that in a Hollywood movie before. Maybe Shyamalan was trying to convey the nuanced emotion of Aang explaining “we should save more villages and stuff, and I bring this up because the audience will never see us actually doing the thing I am describing.” The editor seems to know how unbearable the freaky-close-up is to watch because he cuts to Katara and Sokka listening silently and just stays. And stays. The editor should not have murdered M. Night’s entire family or whatever he did to make M. Night SO FRICKIN MAD at him, that’s all I know.

And there’s more.

- The voice-over. Oh, God, the voice-over. The movie starts with a text crawl that then IS READ ALOUD to you. EVERY EPISODE of the show starts with the same short montage getting you up to speed. You don’t even have to storyboard it! IT’S ALREADY DONE.

But if I didn’t have voice-over I’d hardly be in the movie at all

- There’s a scene where Aang and Katara are practicing their water-bending tai chi moves by a creek. You’re supposed to get that Aang is not as good as Katara. However, THERE IS NO WATER BENT. It’s like this shot just never made it to the effects artists! I didn’t have a problem with the 3/4 of the movie that weren’t in 3D, but COME ON SHYAMALAN YOU DIDN’T EVEN WATCH THE FINAL CUT.

- Much has been rightly made of white actors being cast to depict characters of color. But when the white Sokka and Katara return to their tribe — where EVERYONE LOOKS INUIT except for them, you realize that only Sokka, Katara and their grandma are white, and these are also the only speaking parts in the tribe, and your chin falls on your chest. Whitewashing is one thing. Making WHITENESS A REQUIREMENT FOR BEING ALLOWED TO SPEAK is another. And that thing is SUPER RACIST.

- The “Last Airbender” cartoon is funny. Funny a lot. Like, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, season two. There are three attempts at funny in this movie. One is botched because the coverage is wrong (Katara screws up a water-bend and accidentally entraps Sokka in ice, and instead of cutting to reveal this we just paaaaaaan on over. Furthermore Sokka’s actor has apparently been informed not to squirm or try to escape [as his character would naturally do] because, I dunno, the digital ice around him would be harder to animate?). Another is Aang showing personality, which might be a useful thing to put in the first act instead of IN A FLASHBACK IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CLIMAX. The third I don’t remember, but I’m pretty sure there was one. I guess. Somewhere.

Check out my capacity for joy!

Some nice things to say:

- The kids were good at the physical stuff. They were able to sell the bending movements, even if no one could sell lines like “we need to show them we believe our beliefs as strongly as they believe theirs!”

- Aasif Mandvi was pretty good, even when asked to stand on a ship, stare into space, and read lines like, “Say, Prince Zuko’s uncle Iroh, I sure am sorry various members of your family died hideously at intervals I will now describe to you.” He made it work, chewed a little scenery, had a little fun. I envision M. Night pulling him aside over the whole shoot being like, “Aasif, take this seriously. Less fun. I need less fun from you.” And him being like, “Sure, Night, whatever you say,” and then having fun anyway.

There’s more but I think I’m done for now.

Aaaaaaand spent enough.