Wolverine

I saw the new Wolverine movie today.

Spoiler warning.

The opening scene freaked me the hell out. Why? Because just a month ago, I was standing in that exact same spot where that bomb went off. The moment I realized they were in World War II, I immediately thought about the bombs. And then when I realized a bomb was coming, I immediately thought Nagasaki. And sure enough...
A constant stream of unformed swear words was going through my head.
After visiting the bomb museum and the epicenter... yeah.

The moment the movie started, I went into Fern mode. In other words, imagining myself as my shapeshifting alter ego, ready to go beat up bad guys. Usually I don't get Fern involved in other movies until I've seen them. But since I'm already attached to a bunch of the X-Men, it happened immediately. After all, X-Men was where Fern started.
And every time the bad guys attacked, I was thinking, "Stop shooting at them! I'm gonna fly in there and Imma keeeeel youuuu!"
Yeah, I'm very protective of the characters I'm attached to. I'm ready to jump in the screen and attack the bad guys.
Heheh... if only.
(I am sure I'm going to be very protective of Mewtwo when this new Pokemon movie comes out. Both that, and angry at the ugly new form they gave him. Don't mess with Mewtwo!)

Jean freaked me out. Because that's not the Jean I know. That person seems more like the Dark Phoenix. So I kept wanting her to go away. Bring the old Jean back! TT^TT This one's not reeeaal!

Then I started having fun.
Because Wolverine flew from Canada to Tokyo, just like IIII diiid~
And then the scene where they're eating dinner, Mariko says "Itadakimas." Which, if you don't know, basically means, "thank you for the food."
And Wolverine obviously thinks, "Oh. I guess I'm supposed to say that." And he says, "Itaki mouse."
I started laughing, trying not to be too loud because no one else in the theater was laughing.
And then Wolverine left his chopsticks sticking straight up out of the rice... twice in a row! Which I found hilarious because it was something I brought up with Ellen several times while we were in Japan.
Again, trying to stifle my laughter. It's probably only funny to people who knew this stuff before they saw the movie.
And when I saw him in a kimono, I started laughing again.

I've seen many train-top battles, but this one was on a Shinkansen! I got to ride the Shinkansen! Talk about a high-speed battle! Wahahah!

I was getting a kick out of the mix of X-Men and Japan. I'm still excited about my Japan trip, so I got really excited about everything I recognized. As if you can't tell.
And I got really excited when they went down to Nagasaki. I had no idea they'd be there, and I got very attached to Nagasaki while I was there.

Itaki mouse!

Final Movie Weekend Update

All the movie event stuff was wrapped up yesterday. Well... not much really happened relating to the movie.
I played with the girls some more, and met up with a couple of the girls from Family Camp. And I said goodbye to Easton.

And I passed the 100 page mark in editing my story. Finally.
Phew.
Though the further I get editing, the longer the story becomes. Since there's so much stuff I had to add.
And even after this edit, I'll have to rewrite almost all of the character interactions again. Since there's so many characters, it's hard to balance them all at the same time. But at least I'm getting a ton of other stuff sorted out.

Movie Release

So, I'm still a day behind on reporting this stuff. XP
Yesterday was the first public release of the movie Finding Happiness. There were so many people that they needed to use all three theaters.
They trimmed the film down some more, which made the movie better.
Although now only my shoulder appears in the movie. And there might be a shot with my headless body. Heheh.
Oh well. It was still fun to be there as an extra. And mom still shows up in a couple scenes.
I'm still interested to know what people think who don't really know about Ananda. I'm guessing that almost all of the audience was Ananda people. And I wonder if all the stuff we were laughing at would make a different audience laugh that much.
It's still fun being in a movie theater and seeing so many people I know on the screen. ^-^

Later in the day, there was a garden party at the Crystal Hermitage. All the film people were there, as well as Yogananda's great grand nephew. A bunch of people rented old-timey costumes, to replicate the garden party scene from the film. And the great grand nephew dressed up as Yogananda.
It was really funny to see David and a bunch of other people I knew in those fancy old style suits and dresses.

There were a couple other speeches after dinner. About getting the movie out to the public, and such. The cat came back as the choir was singing and walked across the stage behind all the singers. Heheh. That is an awesome cat.

Finding Happiness Pre-Release

So, yesterday we came back up to the Ananda Village because today was the public release of the Finding Happiness movie. The one Mom and I were extras in.
But I'll write about that later. I want to start with last night.
So, there's a bunch of people up here for the movie, including the main people that were involved in the filming, like the director and other crew, as well as David and the actress Elizabeth Rohm. All of them were going to do talk after dinner about the film.
After dinner, I went outside and started playing with David's daughter, Katelyn, ad a couple other girls. One of them was from the village, and the other ended up being Elizabeth Rohm's daughter, Easton.
I teased Katelyn by pretending to hang her shoe in a tree, and then Easton asked me to hang her shoes in the tree to. XD Except when she wanted them back, I couldn't get them back on her because the shoelaces were these ribbons that kept snagging on the shoe. So, her mom, Elizabeth, came over and got them back on, and I laughed about my own inability to put them on her. And then I discovered that I'd been sitting in turkey poop during all of that. So, Elizabeth Rohm probably thinks I'm a bit... odd (Which is true, I guess. Being weird is more fun).
And then through all of that, I was thinking stupid things like "Whoa, I'm actually talking to her!" Heheh. I'm so dumb sometimes.
I managed to help her coax the girls to eat some diner too.

The speeches after dinner were fun too. It was cool to hear the stories of the people involved. And then this random cat walked down the aisle and across the stage. She went over and rubbed against one of the film crew, sat there for a minute, and then walked away. Yaay for randomness!

Energy Plot 4 - Solar and Wind

On to renewable energies, finally.
So renewable energies are good. We need to use them, if we hope to continue to have energy in the future. So far, we're not doing a very good job. We do have some renewable energies floating around, but it's only a tine fraction of our total energy use (I blame the fossil fuel companies that have all the money and influence).
Even so, no renewable energy is perfect.

Solar is one of the most popular renewable energies. And why not? The sun is the source of almost all energy on earth (except geothermal). It's also responsible in some way for most of our other energy sources. So gathering that energy directly from solar panels should be great.
And it is pretty great. The efficiency of solar panels has been improving amazingly, and solar panels can easily pay for themselves a few times over during their lifetimes.
But solar panels aren't the best option in every place. For example, my house is shaded by huge trees for most of the day. So, we could use solar panels, but they wouldn't be as efficient at our house as they would be on a different block. And some parts of the world just don't get as much sunshine. Some solar panels do work even if they're not hit by direct sunlight, but not as effectively.
And obviously, solar panels aren't gonna work very well at night. Although peak energy use is during the day, so solar can contribute to filling some of that need. Solar energy can be stored too, but some storage methods are better than others. For example, batteries have toxic chemicals in them. I've heard that magnets are a good way to store solar energy.
Also, there are dangerous and nonrenewable chemicals in solar panels. But the effects of these could be very tiny if solar panels are recycled after they stop working. Not everything can be reused, but much of it can.
Another great way to make use of solar energy is by solar hot water. For this, you put tanks of water on your roof, and the water is heated by the sun. You have hot water whenever you need it. And if you have a swimming pool, it can be heated enough to feel like a bath. This saves a lot of energy and water that are usually needed to heat up water for your showers.

Wind energy is another good one. Like solar, a windmill will easily pay for itself before too long, and wind probably won't run out in any foreseeable future.
And while wind mills can take a lot of space (some are absolutely massive) they can also be set up on the oceans.
But wind energy is only really effective in certain areas. AKA areas that get good wind. And there's lots of areas that have good wind. But the areas with good wind aren't necessarily areas with high population and energy use that need extra power.
And plenty of people think windmills are big and ugly and don't want them mucking up the landscapes of ocean views (I think they're much more attractive than a lot of buildings).
Small windmills are also a major hazard to birds. The faster-spinning propellers can smash up a bird pretty good, and raptors especially seem to be in danger of this (Cats actually cause at least a hundred times more bird deaths, but those are small birds - not large birds). The larger, slower wind turbines aren't as much of a problem, and there are ways to deter birds from wind farms.
Windmills can also contain nonrenewable resources.

Energy Plot 3 - Natural Gas and Nuclear

I'll cover two nonrenewable energies in this post, just so this topic doesn't take forever.

Starting with natural gas.
Natural gas is actually a lot cleaner to burn than oil or coal. And it's often found right near wells of oil, where they're drilling already.
The problem is, it's much less profitable for drillers to mine the gas, so they usually just end up burning it off, which is a waste of an energy source, and a completely unnecessary source of pollution.
Like the other fossil fuels we've discussed so far, a lot of the easy deposits have been mined already. So now we're down to very destructive means of mining - like fraking. Fraking takes high-pressured water mixed with chemicals and sand and blasts it underground to break apart the rock. That lets the gas free so it can be gathered. But this is terrible for the water system, because it pollutes the groundwater with chemicals and gas. In some places, people's tap water can actually catch on fire because of the contamination of gas.

Nuclear
Actually, in the direct forming of energy, no real pollution is produced by this process.
If only it were that simple.
Nuclear energy comes from messing with atoms. And these atoms are fairly rare and hard to find. They need to be mined and there's not really any way to make more of it, just like fossil fuels (though nuclear isn't a fossil fuel). Mining these elements is just as destructive and polluting as mining anything else.
And of course, there's always the terror of a nuclear meltdown.
No matter how safe they make the power plant, there will always be a risk. You can't eliminate every factor that could cause problems (like what happened in Japan). So, for obvious reasons, no one wants a nuclear power plant anywhere near where they live.
Another massive problems is nuclear waste. While the actual production of nuclear energy is pretty clean, after the reactions are done, we're left with dangerous nuclear waste. This nasty stuff can last for hundreds and, yes, thousands of years. As far as we are all concerned, that stuff will never go away. So, they try to store it in out of the way tanks. But will those tanks really last thousands of years? Eventually they'll leak, and that waste could easily leach into the ground water. And if the containers are buried underground, these leaks won't be easily noticed.


After this, we go onto the pros and cons of renewable energy.

Midway

Last night I passed the mid-way in editing Katani's story (no, it still doesn't have a real name).
I probably shouldn't feel so accomplished because I should have passed this point long ago. XP
So, back to work.
Stupid title. Why can't I find you?

Energy Plot 2 - Coal

Okay, on to part 2 of the energy summaries. We're still on nonrenewable energies, and this one is about coal.
In America, coal is the main thing that powers our power plants. Like oil, it was created by long-gone organic material. And like oil, it contains a lot of energy.
There are different qualities of coal, and since we can't make more, we can only get so much coal before it's no longer worth mining. Especially since most of the best-quality coal has been mined already. What's left is harder to access, doesn't contain as much good energy, and is much much messier when it's burned.
Coal is the main source of air pollution. It spews greenhouse gases and nasty chemicals into the air. It's also the source of acid rain.
Hundreds of years ago, people had coal available to burn for fuel, instead of burnign wood. But they often chose not to burn it because it made the air nasty.
Mining coal can be incredibly destructive. Mountain-top coal mining is some of the worst. Entire mountain ranges can be completely leveled, leaving giant, lifeless piles of gravel. Dirt and toxic chemicals wash down the streams, getting into people's drinking water and seeping into the ground water.
It's bad stuff.
There's more coal still underground than there is oil, so we could potentially continue to mine it for many more decades, depending on how fast we tear it out of the earth. As far as I know, we can't run cars off of coal. Unless coal goes to power electricity to run electric vehicles. Which brings me to another point. Electric vehicles may not actually be more environmentally friendly. If that electricity is generated from coal, then it creating even more air pollution than if you were using a normal gas car.

Energy Plot 1 - Oil

I bet you've forgotten about this.
I wrote it last year, and had to dig back to find it. I should continue with those posts.
But they're all so looong. TT^TT
This one will probably be really long too.
And its a pretty controversial one.
Energy.
There's a lot going on about energy right now, with the debate of renewable energies against fossil fuels. So, lets discuss some of this. Because every alternative, whether fossil fuel or renewable, has its pros and cons.
To save myself from writing a ten-page long post, I think I'll break this one up by sections, and then tie everything together once I've finished that. And I'll try not to hit every detail, but stick to the more important stuff. Otherwise this would be incredibly long and boring. hopefully it's not too boring already...
I should probably look up more facts... but my notes are somewhere under the house, and I don't feel like digging them up. I probably will at some point, and come back to add more details. Though some of them might be obsolete by then. Hmm.

Let's start with oil.
Oil comes from decomposed organic material that's many tens of thousands of years old. Even older. And a while ago, it was very easy to come by. Some of it was right at ground level, and you could scoop it up with a bucket. After they used that up, they had to drill down to get at it. But as they extracted all of the easiest pools of oil, they had to go down deeper and deeper, drilling in remote locations like out in the ocean and in the middle of the arctic tundra.
Whenever they set up a new drilling area, it destroys a lot of the surrounding habitat. hence the debate about drilling up in the arctic refuges. A drilling area there would destroy the migration route of thousands of deer.
And there's always the possibility that the extracted oil will leak. This is especially a problem when they drill in oceans. There have been many instances where ships containing oil, or oil platforms have leaked and spilled thousands of gallons of oil into the oceans. This oil sits on the top of the water and washed up on shore. It clings to birds and mammals and anything that lives on or near the ocean. It destroys the water proofing of the animals, and they get hypothermia and die. Not to mention that oil isn't good to get in your mouth, eyes, nose, anything. There's no way to prevent these spills. There will always be human error, or some factor that you can't account for. Mining and transporting oil will never be risk free.
Oil also produces a lot of pollution when it's burned. Some of this is greenhouse gases, which contribute to climate change. But there are other air pollutants which hurt both people and the environment. There are a lot of kids with asthma now, especially in big cities where air pollution sits. Car exhaust can actually change the composition of nearby soild, making different plants grow there. More on air pollution later.
Plus oil won't last much longer. We've extracted almost all of the easily accessible stuff. And what remains is harder and more expensive to reach. At some point, it will take more energy to extract the oil than the oil will actually provide.
There's no way to make more oil. At least not in any timeline where humans as we know them will ever be able to use it.
Security is a major problem. Most of our oil comes from very unstable countries, that could be dangerous to us if we chose. And what if they decide to cut off our oil supply? What then?

Oil has its pros too.
It holds a lot of energy. In the millions of years that its been stewing down in the earth's crust, the energy has been compacted down, so that oil holds a lot more usable energy per volume than most other alternatives. Wouldn't that be great if it didn't pollute, and we had an unlimited supply?
Our infrastructure is built pretty much entirely for oil. Almost all of the cars (at least in America) still run off of gas, and there are gas stations everywhere. You don't see many biodiesel stations, or plug-in stations for electric cars. A lot of our goods are transported by truck, as opposed to train or ship, which are much more energy efficient. And we have pretty sucky train infrastructure, compared to somewhere like Japan.
Tthere are so many government subsidies for fossil fuels that gas is really cheap. Even with the steadily increasing gas prices (they're going back up again) we don't pay near the cost of extracting and refining oil. We don't pay for any of the environmental impacts either. At least not with money. We're paying in other ways, with air pollution and climate change and such. Too bad those subsidies aren't going to help renewable energies more.

I've been neglecting the "fact of the day" recently, but this whole post had a bunch of facty stuff in it. XD

Workin

Still recovering from poison oak. I managed to mostly keep the stuff from spreading. XP
And I just finished volunteering at another summer camp, so maybe now I'll feel like I have enough time to devote to one of my longer blog posts.
I'm debating with myself about possibly trying to get a job for a couple months. The smart thing to do would be to just apply and see how it goes from there. But that means I need to write a resume. Sighhh. It feels too much like homework.
But wouldn't it be nice to actually get paid for my work.... since I volunteer so much for free........

CoNtiNuiNg FaNfic

Ugh..... poison oak.
It's been so many years since I got it last, and it's a freaking pain. And this from only a handful of little spots on one arm. I'm trying to be really careful so that it doesn't spread any further.
What's the deal with poison oak anyway? How can something you touched days before continue to spread?

Complaining to the internet.

Anyway... I have a ton of blog post ideas. Mainly about an idea that I had a while ago that I started and never did anything else with (the environmental story ideas). But all of the posts are so long and thought-involving... and I'm lazy.
Maybe now that I've got my list out again, I'll start writing some more of them. When I'm less lazy (as if I'm ever less lazy). Although I have spent all day doing chores and straightening my room and finishing a new sewing project and other stuff. So I'm always busy. I just get lazy about certain things, like blog posts.
Today is one of those evenings where I seem to have trouble keeping on track when I write.
Oh well.

I originally wrote to say that I started my next fanfic, based on Unova. I've had ideas for it sitting around for a while, but I wanted to wait until I approached that part of the time line. Since I finished my last fanfic, I was finally able to start, with several weeks between during which I went to Japan and Family Camp and stuff.
So now I gotta finish the second chapter.
Heheh. I get to finally write all the scenes with Cara and N. I've been looking forward to writing some of these arguments. >:3
Oh, and I'm re-writing chapter 5 of my Midna fanfic too. Heheh. I'm only on chapter 5.