Catching up

I am spending this weekend catching up on the more mundane, but necessary, chores that need to be done to keep us moving at the pace we've been setting. The last few weeks and months have been hectic. Between shooting on "Polaris" in Maryland, The Phase II episode "Origins" in Ticonderoga NY, "Sci-Fi Science" in Manhattan, going to our son's wedding in Buffalo and all our regularly scheduled madness Gina and I both need to regroup and put things in order around here.On the plus side, all of that stuff has been going really well. Gina's acting career seems to  be on track and moving into the next level. My episodes on Sci - Fi Science start airing September 1. Although I shot for all the episodes this coming season don't expect to see me in every one, but you should be able to catch me in a few at least.
Speaking of that the final two episodes will be shot August 6th. If anyone wants to dress up and join my away team let me know. This is the last chance for this season and if you can make it you will get to meet the venerable Dr. Kaku. They shoot at about 2:00PM at Capsule Studios in NYC.
I'm making real progress on my personal "Ripped in 2010" initiative to get in even better shape. Between careful dieting, the trips to the gym and swimming three times a day I'm making some real progress. I've been too busy to get in enough running and sword work but even so I'm stretching and keeping limber while steadily increasing definition so it's all good.
Here are some pictures from or recent adventures.

My Run

With a little help from my friend Lainey I have been able to make a pretty good estimate of the distance I've been running and it comes out to about .83 miles. I must admit I thought it was closer to a mile but I don't really mind. I can just loop in a a little more as I go and it's very scenic. Between my diet, this run, swimming two to four times a day and my employer paid gym membership I should be able to enhance and maintain my overall condition pretty well.
Those are tennis courts on the left and two baseball diamonds.

My Vegan Banana Brownie Recipe

As some of you know, now that the kitchen is nearly done, I have started experimenting with cooking and recipes to try and improve my overall diet. Here is an example of a Brownie recipe I've put together that I believe is pretty good. Made without butter, white sugar, eggs, or dairy products these still taste great.

Ingredients:
1 cup Vanilla Soy Milk
1 Banana
1/2 cup Light brown sugar
1/2 cup Dark light brown sugar
1/3 cup Unsweetened Cocoa powder
1/2 cup Whole Wheat flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
4 oz chopped Walnuts

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
Lightly grease with vegetable oil an 8 inch square pan.
Blend Soy Milk and Banana
In a large mixing bowl combine 1/3 cup cocoa, Sugars, 1/2 cup flour, salt, and baking powder.
Mix in Soy/banana mix
Spread batter into prepared pan.
Gently place Walnuts over the top until well covered.
Bake in preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes.
(Cook until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.)
Allow to cool for 15 minutes
Remove from pan and enjoy

Apogee - Jethro Tull

Just because I like it:

Sailing round the true-blue sphere---

Is it too late to bale out of here? 

Well, there has to be some better way

To turn back the night,

Spin on to yesterday.

The old man and his crew---

After all these years,

It's apogee.

Pilot training and remorse---

Spirit friends fly too,

At apogee.

Apogee --- solar bright.

Apogee --- through the night.

Apogee --- over ground.

Don't think I'll be coming down.

Screened for a stable mate

With nerves of ice we flew,

At apogee.

No creativity allowed

To pass through stainless veins of steel,

At apogee.

Apogee --- put the kettle on.

Tight-lipped --- soldier on.

High point --- communicate.

Don't forget to urinate.

So glad they put this window in.

How to explain, how to begin? 

See! Tennyson and Wordsworth there

Waiting for me in the cold, thin air.

Beware a host of unearthly daffodils

Drifting golden, turned up loud.

Tell the boys back home,

I'm gonna get some.

The wrong stuff's loose in here ---

I'm climbing up the walls,

At apogee.

So hoist the skull and bones ---

Death and glory's free,

At apogee.

A stranger wind, a solar breeze ---

I'm walking out upon the starry seas.

See pyramids, see standing stones ---

Pink cotton undies and blue telephones.

Goodbye, cruel world that was my home ---

There's a cleaner space out there to roam.

Put my feet up on the moons of mars ---

Sit back, relax and count the stars.

Patrick tells it like it is on Teabaggers

1) The term "teabagger" was coined by teabaggers themselves. Here are some pictures demonstrating that:
http://brendancalling.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/teabag13.jpg
http://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/theoriginoftheteabag.jpg
http://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/teabagging4jeebus.jpg
http://www.sodblog.com/wp-content/uploads/philly.jpg

It was only when somebody tipped them off as to what the term meant that they suddenly declared the term to be a mocking epithet.

2) If the biggest racist you know of is Al Sharpton, then I recommend you go to some of these tea parties which you are defending so ardently. Pictures of Obama as a witch doctor, Obama as a chimpanzee, signs decrying his being a Muslim (which of course is false) who should go back to Kenya (where he wasn't born). Or maybe take a trip to Arizona after you hit a tanning salon and see how friendly they are to you.

3) The tea party movement is based around two notions, the first being that Americans are now taxed too much, most of it due to Obama. This is a lie. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, commonly called the stimulus, included $275 billion, billion with a B, in tax cuts. These cuts lowered taxes for over 90 percent of Americans.

4) The second notion is that the tea party movement wants smaller government. This is a lie so outrageous and so patently false that it still defies belief every time a teabagger (yes, that's what I'll call them) tries to tell it with a straight face. The teabaggers said nothing when Bush wiped out the Clinton surplus without cutting spending. The teabaggers said nothing when Bush pushed through Medicare Part D and No Child Left Behind, both huge and expensive expansions of the federal government (and ineffective, but that's another conversation). The teabaggers made not a peep over indefinite detentions without trial in Guantanamo, American citizens like Jose Padilla held in jail FOR YEARS, WITHOUT OUTSIDE CONTACT, WITHOUT BEING CHARGED!!! Didn't bother them. (Well Padilla was the wrong shade, really.) The teabaggers didn't give a damn about the TOTALLY ILLEGAL Terrorist Surveillance Program wherein Bush had the NSA spy on phone calls, email, and text messages of American citizens, without warrants of any kind. Not a peep. When BushCo proposed Operation TIPS (Terrorist Information and Prevention System), to get Americans to inform on one another like something out of East fucking Germany, when BushCo supported the massively intrusive project of social engineering known as the Federal Marriage Amendment, and when it passed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban to interfere with doctors and their patients, and when it decided to funnel taxpayer money to churches through the White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, when BushCo was found to be WATERBOARDING PEOPLE, a crime for which we HANGED German and Japanese officers after WWII...
The teabaggers. Said. Nothing.
NOTHING!
But.
But...
When a Democratic President acts to provide government health care, something that is accepted by the governments and peoples of every other industrialized nation on Earth as a responsibility for every society to provide, something that is part and parcel of any just and humane civilization, the teabaggers, who thought that George W. Bush was just the bee's knees for the first 7.5 years of his administration (if not his whole term), suddenly, suddenly, for the first time ever, and based solely on the intellectual merits of their arguments, and not at all on Barack Obama's presence inside their White House, suddenly decided that they were for small government. Well, keep in Medicare and Social Security and everything they like. But still: small government! Small enough to keep the "wrong sort of people" out in the cold.
They have no coherent intellectual argument other than an appeal to resentment and rage. The tea party movement is nothing more than pure and undiluted sore loserism. That's it. That's the beginning and end of their agenda: We lost. Not fair. Do over. I'm telling Mom.
Fuck the fucking teabaggers.

- Patrick
___________________________________

We here at Elysian Visions respectfully agree with every single syllable.
(Also we wish he would write more often.) 

Tractor Beam Version 1.0

Laser 'tractor beams' to tidy up space junk - tech - 29 April 2010 - New Scientist http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20627585.900-laser-tractor-beams-to-tidy-up-space-junk.html

A new thruster design could make it possible for dead satellites to be pushed, pulled and steered by lasers aboard other craft

- Not really a tractor beam as such but at least they're thinking along the right lines.