Ridiculous News Values

Headlines from the front page of the Sacramento Bee this a.m.

• Detainees win appeal - Top court's reversal sets stage for a fight over Guantanamo
• iPhone answers the call to be hip
• July 4th holiday is a dud for some - Wednesday respite can leave employers struggling all weel
• Tahoe agency is focus of fury - Residents say they weren't allowed to clear trees, brush
• Barring surprise deluge, L.A. to record driest rain season

Buried on page 12 and cocooned by a Lamps Plus, Becks Furniture, and D&L Furniture Ad:

• Police in London find, defuse bombs in 2 cars

What kind of ridiculous news values are these?

Terrorists try to bomb one of the largest and most important cities in the world, the capital city of your closest ally, and the Sacramento Bee thinks that a new toy, an annual holiday, and rainfall totals are more appropriate for the front page.

Ok, so the Bee isn't exactly the bastion of quality journalism - this isn't new news to me - but it just irks. News media in this country is either provincial, sensationalist, celebrity-obsessed, and targeted at the lowest common denominator OR (in the case of what are considered to be the more serious broadsheets) it's long-winded, boring, puffed-up with a sense of it's own importance, and generally unreadable.

I miss the news values of my home. I learn more about the world in 30 minutes of BBC news than I do in 365 days of watching the drivel that appears in newspapers and on tv out here. The only exception here is NPR radio which is the one thing that keeps me sane.

And with that, I'm done.

Worth more dead or alive?

Interesting find on a website: Cadaver Calculator.

Description of said tool:
So you've bitten the big one and instead of pushing up daisies your loved ones decided it would be best to sell your body to science. This survey will tell you approximately how much money they'd get for it. Cadaver values are primarily based on overall health and the level of interest your corpse holds to the medical research industry.

After answering 20 questions about my lifestyle....

$4140.00The Cadaver Calculator - Find out how much your body is worth

My blog rating

Thanks to The Gerli Life for the suggestion.

I'm pretty disappointed that my blog is not more risque.

It said I got G because of the word "pooped" somewhere on my site. Is there anything more family friendly that G people?

Leave my country alone

Yep, that's pretty much my message to whichever group of lunatics tried to bomb my home today.

When things like this happen, my immediate reaction is to fly back to the UK and proceed to do all the things the terrorists are trying to make us afraid to do: ride on the tube, get on a bus, go to a nightclub, hang out at the top of the highest skyscraper.... I just want to be like "Screw you! You don't scare me."

I'm a doting Aunty

Isn't she adorable? Just absoutely scrumdiddlyumptious!?

By popular demand...

Ok, well, by E's demand...

Hubbie

Mum

The improved SouthPark Me

Okay, so I liked where the last one was going but it just didn't seem 100% me... not goofy enough... so, I reinvented myself.

Yes, I really enjoyed this nifty game; I'm a geek.

Was my honeymoon only 3 days long?

Noooooooo. So why haven't I posted more than 3 days of travlogues on here you ask?

Time... where do all you fellow bloggers find all this freakin' time to write and post?

It's 8:30pm and I'm pooped. Creative, literary Brit is mentally a-snoozin'

I'll get to it I promise. Or maybe you'll care less but I'll look forward to reading it in years to come... so maybe I care less that you care less.

Ok, I'm toasty and talking jibberish.

Night night.

Jumping on the blogwagon

In keeping with my fellow blogettes, I've "Southparked" myself. What do you think?

Notice the cool SLR camera (which I have in my dreams), the small boobies (which unfortunately I have in reality), the Pina Colada (which I have whenever I feel like it), and the kicky little green hat (I got one of those too!)

Yes, in my mind I'm permanently on vacation...

Southpark yourself here http://www.sp-studio.de/

Welcome Brooke!

The last of the 4 pregnant women at our wedding gave birth today. Brooke Easter, daughter of our best man Eric and his wife Rachel, weighed-in at 8lbs 15ozs and 21 inches! Yikes, those newborn clothes won't fit for too long!

Another me-with-new-baby phot to add to the album. The last 12 months has just been CRAAAAAZY.

Let's recap:

Adah Rose Ting - my niece - October 7, 2006

Evani Paul - 2/28/07

Hudson West Prior - 3/13/07

The last is a friend of Hubbie's who had a little baby girl called Isabella last week... that visit is in the works.

Whew! So many babies, so little time!

Take me out to the baaaaaallgame

Take me out with the crowd....

(sing along now)

Buy me some peanuts and crackerjacks

I don't care if I get really fat...

Oh wait... that's not the line!

Yes, that is a large hot-dog and it was all mine. 1lb of pure beef, it's called the "Dinger Dog" and it's the easiest way to get a Brit to a baseball game. Haha!

Seriously, going to a Sacramento Rivercats game is one of the nicer things to do on a summer's evening in Sac. The stadium is new and clean, the location can't be beat, and the food is wonderful... oh yes, and there's baseball too!

Here's the view from the Rivercats stadium, looking out toward downtown Sacramento. Not too shabby!

So, ten guesses what I did last night!

What are they thinking?

Heard on NPR this morning while working out: control your tv, your computer, or even your car with just your thoughts!

Sounds amazing and clearly the possibilities for disabled patients are exciting but it got me thinking (pah!)...

Have these people been inside my brain?

I can barely keep my mind on something for longer than a nano-second; can you imagine this brain controling a car? How on earth do you stay so focused on where you want the car to go that your forego all other thoughts that may interrupt your driving?

• Oooooh, sushi, I haven't had a King roll in a while.... (smashes through sushi-restaurant storefront and comes to stop at sushi-bar. "Edamame while you wait maam?")
• That's a nice color Lexus, some day I'm gonna buy myself a... (careens into said Lexus, gets insurance bill large enough to buy a new Lexus for self)
• Krispy Kreme has hot donuts!? If I wasn't late for work I'd... (involuntarily pulls into the KK drive-thru and is thus forced to order 12 orginal glazed)

... you get the picture.

Travel is fatal to prejudice

So said Mark Twain, and how right he turned out to be.

I've been meaning to blog about this for a couple of weeks.

Hubbie and I got engrossed in a PBS special right after we returned from vacation: "The Journey of Man." The documentary followed a geneticist, Spencer Wells, who has devoted his life and career to studying DNA and using blood markers to trace where human beings originated from and what path they took in populating the world. After years and years of analyzing millions of DNA samples, PBS follows him on a journey out of the lab and into the world to fill in some of the gaps of his research; a journey which takes him to the far flung corners of the world, from desert to arctic.

Flying in the face of many religions, Spencer's final grass-roots research leads him to conclude that we all are descendants from a man who lived in Africa 60,000 years ago.

Wow, Hubbie and I were absolutely blown away. This man has scientific DNA evidence that we all the children of one black man.

You can't get much more fatal to prejudice than that.

If you missed this special I would HIGHLY recommend purchasing the PBS DVD or going on to Amazon.com to find Spencer's book. You can also read a synoposis here on National Geographic's website.

Some amazing, mind-blowing stuff.

Whodathunkit?

Sacramento is actually a "destination". Yep, surprised the heck out of me also.

National Geographic Traveler featured our fine capital city this month in their column "48 hours in *insert city name here* "

Click here to read the article, if of course you care. (The print version was a bit more enlightening.)

While I'm feeling pretty "cool" for living in an up-and-coming NGT-worthy "destination" I'm also in the middle of trying to figure out where to go on vacation with my folks in December for our annual New Year blow-out and am incredibly IRKED at the number of flights I need to take to get ANYWHERE worth going in the world from here.

In my eyes, Sacramento won't "arrive" until it has a real International airport (not just one that goes to Canada) and starts offering flights to London and Paris. Sigh... might be a long wait, huh?

This just in

A photo from Stephanie, a lady we vacationed with in Belize.

Honeymoon Day 3: Part 2

Better late than never!

God, I can't believe I've been back two weeks and I'm only up to posting end of Day 3. Sorry folks. It took me all weekend to write this one and then all day to remember I still needed to post it!

Honeymoon Day 3: Part 2

In which Brit Traveler and Hubbie find Sacramentans selling seashells on the beach in Hopkins.

Enjoy, and feel free to post comments here vs. in Travelpod.

WOW

This is so utterly amazing, it brought me to tears.

This is clip from "Britain's Got Talent" (America's Got Talent is the spin-off from this) shows a cell-phone salesman from Wales, coming out to audition for the show to Nessun Dorma.

How amazing to think that this man's AMAZING talent has gone undiscovered for so many years and that he could have any element of doubt about his own capabilities.

Truly one of the great moments of TV.

Honeymoon Day 3: Part 1

In which the honeymooners swim with barracudas and sting rays then get stung by mini jellyfish. Click here to read more...

Feel free to post any comments here... no need to sign-up on Travelpod.

Enjoy!

Don't give up on me!

Hi all,

Sorry I haven't exactly been speedy with my honeymoon posts; it's just taking me some time to type everything up. And then, as I'm writing, I remember something else and the entry becomes longer. I'm trying to fit writing and posting inbetween working and living so bear with me!

Stay tuned... day 3 coming up...

Honeymoon Day 2: Journal Entry

Click here to read it now, or click on the TravelPod link to the right at any time.

And please, all comments are welcome. I haven't had any from any of you, so if you're reading, please let me know. If nobody has the time to read, that's ok, but I might not take the time to type-up and post my journal online if nobody's interested.

Thanks all!

Honeymoon Journal, entry #2...

Click here to read it now or click on the dot on the map to the right at any time.

P.S. If you tried to email me from Flickr, the email it sends info to is one I do not check. Sorry!

Honeymoon photos now online

Honeymoon_07 240
Originally uploaded by britvixen99

Check out the Flickr badge to the right for photos from our honeymoon.

I'll continue to add my longer journals over the course of the next week or so on TravelPod.

View my travelogue

Slowly but surely I will be taking my journal notes from my vacation and posting them on my Travel Blog. I will not post all photos there as this will be mainly a narrative, this I'll do in Flickr. So, you'll have some options:

Not interested in the down-and-dirty details? Just look at the pics on Flickr when they're up
Want the inside scoop day-by-day? Check my Travel Blog.

To reach and subscribe to my Travel Blog, just click the TravelPod image to the right or bookmark http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog/travelvixen/belize-2007/tpod.html

Thanks for reading!

Where in the world was Britrant and Hubbie?

ON HONEYMOON IN BELIZE!

We have so many great stories to tell that I'm going to wait to post all our pictures until I have time to narrate them properly. I post a link here when everything is ready for viewing. Here is just a teaser:

• Being asked if we were brother and sister at Belize immigration.
• Flying in a 14-seater aircraft with seatbelts that didn't work.
• Horseback riding with three gay guys, who decided we were all going to be characters from "Bonanza" (Joss was "Little Joe").
• Getting rained on (and I'm talking downpour) while hiking in the rainforest.
• Taking a dip under a fresh water waterfall in said same rainforest.
• Meeting a couple from Citrus Heights (just down the road from us) with a gift shop in the local town.
• Wine tasting with 16 gay divers all wanting "in" Joss' pants.
• Almost getting divorced during a canoeing expedition.
• Being hung-over on a hot and sweaty 2.5 hour bus ride inland to Mayan ruins, and still climbing to the top of the 2nd highest Mayan temple in Belize.
• Snorkeling with barracudas, sting-rays, and being stung by mini jelly-fish called PICA PICA.
• Being eaten alive by all manner of bugs including mosquitos, yellow flies, noseeums, and sand fleas despite applying 98% deet all over our bodies several times a day.
• Surviving 9 whole days without a telephone, internet, or a TV!!!!!!

We couldn't have had a better time. I can't wait to fill in the gaps!

Until later...