Got my left foot down on my accelerator, and my rear view mirror torn off, ‘cauze I’m not lookin’ back and that’s a fact

Today while I was driving I was thinking about how wrong this is. You should always have your right foot on the accelerator in this country, never the left, and you should always check your mirrors. Scanning is an essential safety measure while driving.

Well, then I realized the lyrics are actually:

Got *a lead* foot down on my accelerator

So that is a little better. The mirrors are still a problem.

This cat has spice eyes from Dune.

That photo has now been published in Fodor’s The Complete Guide to the National Parks of the West, 2nd Edition.

Way to go, Pickles!

Anne Rice’s cat… I follow her on Facebook.

Cat… cat… can’t remember his name.

Things I like

1. I can take 250 books with me on vacation. I can also buy a new one easily, while I am sitting in bed listening to the zombies groaning softly from beyond the barbed wire fence.

2. It will read books out loud in a charming robot voice. I like this, especially when I am painting outside.

3. A nice hardback is wonderful. But… a nice hardback costs $25 and to save money I tend to read mostly trade paperbacks anyway. For those, as well as the Classics, the book design runs towards fat, clumsy paperbacks with tiny print and ugly cover art. I do not find this very joyful. The book design is vastly superior on the Kindle at the same price point.

4. Free sample chapters. This prevents me from making impulse purchases of books I will never read. The only problem is that sometimes you will get the prologue instead. I know I am not the only person who has noticed that prologues are usually boring beyond belief and written in a completely different voice from the rest of the book. Anyway, getting a free sample prologue on my Kindle is usually the kiss of death, not just for buying that particular book, but for everything that author has ever written because I can’t just skip ahead and see if I like the real part of the book.

5. Entire free books. Aside from the Amish romances I download most of the freebies and have discovered several authors I really enjoy.

Things I don’t like

1. You can’t read during the tedious takeoff and landing of your flight.

2. I don’t think it makes sense for e-books to “go out of print.” I get really aggravated that I can only buy “Lincoln’s Dreams” if I live in England or that “Howl’s Moving Castle” has sold out and is no longer available as an e-book even though it was last Thursday.

3. There is no equivalent of a used bookstore for the Kindle; a place where you can download $2 e-books that have been previously read. I think there should be.

4. You could buy 20 books for the price of the e-reader itself; on the other hand, I have probably downloaded 50 free Amazon titles for my Kindle.

A Persian Tom.

I am a LACMA member. I drive all the way from San Diego which you know, on a weekend could take like 16 hours because it is almost 100 miles through LA traffic. I like the museum. They have a great collection. The french fries at their cafe are also very good.

But their social networking presence makes me want to scream and die. It started when they decided to tweet in the voice of Melendez, an 18th century Spanish still life painter, and made him sound as mature as a middle schooler. It continued through Cell Phone Stories, which spammed me with equally juvenile and unwanted narrative tweets… the latest is Rainn Wilson from The Office tweeting on the LACMA account… enough.

I don’t find it funny, I don’t find it to be a groundbreaking new form of experimental art, I find it annoying. I don’t even use Twitter for professional reasons. I use Twitter for entertainment.

From LACMA, I really just want to find out when the exhibits change or when something is happening at the museum I might make time for. Call me crusty, that’s fine, but I expect a certain level of professionalism from a major museum. LACMA’s use of Twitter makes me never want to go back, let alone spend $90 on a membership.

So in the name of art I unfollowed them. Hopefully when I am less irate I will feel like visiting them again.

Don Giovanni- no joke. That is really his name.

Oh, and WordPress hiccuped, so this didn’t get published on Tuesday. Instead, it has been “Pending Review” all week.

Sometimes they stay up all night, yelling and carrying on.

Loud Chick: WE ARE RUNNING OUT OF COCAINE!
Louder Chick: (RAUNCHY LAUGHTER)

Some mornings they get up at 5 and shout about what to have for breakfast.

Loud Chick: DO YOU WANT EGGS? OR CEREAL?? HOW ABOUT BREAKFAST BURRITOS??
Louder Chick: I CAN’T DECIDE SO I AM JUST GOING TO BANG PANS AROUND FOR 20 MINUTES AND THEN TURN ON ALL THE KITCHEN ELECTRICS. BUZZZZZZZ! I LOVE THE BLENDER!

But tonight I overheard this:

Loud Chick: BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH, ALLIE!!!!!
Louder Chick: I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!!!