Can't help noticing as I throw out some old soup that we have a thriving ragweed patch. This particular currently two story high plant is goldenrod, well ahead of its usual growing season with all this rain. Goldenrod pollen is sticky and doesn't float around well like ragweed, so I feel no ill will toward it. Nearly everything beneath and around it is ragweed.
~tech issue, stupid crap phone, when it can push the pic thru I'll put it here, because that is one impressive goldenrod stalk~
Here we go, finally. Seriously, two stories tall. I should be looking down on it from my 2nd story deck, you can see I'm eye to eye with it.
And it looks like we'll be bleaching the deck sometime in future.
I don't care if pollen.com says our pollen count as been super low most of the week, I'm having to get my zyrtec down first crack of dawn before I ever even open doors or windows because pollen is being dragged in from the rain on our shoes, then dries out and puffs back up into the air as we walk around. Pollen is measured in microns, you can't see it coming in wet. Stripping at the door is well and good, but it's not stopping incoming. The thick orchard grass in the field across from my house hasn't been mowed once this year, and every single day almost as soon as the rain stops, a yellowish film shows up on everything outside. I think the overabundance of grass pollen is working its way through the wood siding on our house, into every crack and crevice, and whooshing in our doors with us every time we walk in and out. Even if I hold that down to a minimum, I still have to carry groceries in from the car. I stick to the chat and wooden deck, but the bottoms of my shoes still drag it in because it's just on. everything.
I'm not sure how cloud cover and air saturation slow down radio wireless signals, but between sneezing and waiting for stuff to load, I'm getting a little cranky.
On a side note about something that didn't make me cranky at all because it actually made me laugh, just putting it out there that someone else's entire youtube channel that's been around awhile disappearing in 2 weeks flat after I posted a single vid, and only noticing because someone keeps tracking back to that post, which incidentally very few people have seen because it's such a boring post, kinda hints that things might be getting personal again.
If I knew the person doing this owned Lexx, I would be 100% behind it. I strongly believe in supporting original content sales. I have never hijacked a show, and in fact own two full sets of Lexx from the Salter Street warehouse, plus three original CDs. What I do on the internet helps sell Lexx. People let me know all the time they found Lexx and bought it somewhere. Remember the old days? Used to be virtually impossible to get the full series at a reasonable price, now it's easy.
However, I also strongly believe in supporting fans. Someone's youtube account being ripped down for illegal uploading doesn't hurt me. I'm not the one who loaded those up. I'm used to fanvids disappearing because that happens all the time- youtube safeguards content, fans cry in the night, that happens. That's also why I don't make my own fanvids. There are some big content creators out there who have said they don't mind fans using their content, and in fact say it's flattering that they do. Many big content creators put stuff out for free left and right, because they know it's good for sales. So an entire youtube channel disappearing after I embed a single youtube on a post that has less than 40 hits on it (some of my posts on some blogs have over 10,000), and then watching someone track back to that post from ages ago for no reason whatsoever unless it has something to do with checking on whether that vid stopped working, well, you know, feels kind of personal.
You only hurt the fans doing that. You only hurt Lexx sales. If the Lexx creators were worried about their content, they never would've sold it off. If the owners of distribution rights were worried about it, they'd be patrolling youtube like crazy, and they're NOT. So it's kind of interesting that happened.
A person asked me this week why I don't fill posts up with Lexx cosplay and other cool stuff. I figure if fans want their stuff out there, they'll put it out there. I've seen some awesome Lexx cosplay on the internet from around the world, including South America, which surprises many North Americans when I tell them that. People are still out there whining about Lexx being hard to find, why is there no merch, why don't the actors go to cons, etc. Fans who've been around since the beginning and watched the fandom eat itself whisper that a book about the fandom would be more awesome than a Lexx reboot. (Seriously, a list of fans have privately said this to me, not knowing others have said it, as well.) I agree, but I'm not the one who's going to write it. Y'all hitch up your own socks and go write the drama stuff. I'm busy. Personally, I think it would make for great reality TV, but there's no way I wanna be in the middle of that kind of silliness. Maybe that's exactly why key figures don't run the con routes, who knows.
Fandoms abound. If we want to see more Lexx pride out there, we need to let fans be fans. We need to show fans it's worth buying the complete Lexx series and let go of the raids.
A few years ago I said we're in a golden age of entertainment and fandom that won't last much longer. Copyright issues about cosplaying have come up in very serious discussion, and the only reason it hasn't been pursued is because there is still so much money changing hands on convention floors. Cosplayers are like free advertising, and everyone knows it. Fans love seeing cosplay. But one of these days, that's going to change. One of these days it won't just be illegal uploading and fanvids that get targeted. It'll be entire fandoms. It'll become original content ONLY. And if Lexx fans are taking the time and putting effort into wiping out original Lexx content, without even the distributor being the legalistic antagonist (as far as I can tell), then what we've got is a fandom crippling itself, which is actually pretty ridiculous when that fandom is already so close to nonexistence (compared to some other cult fandoms) that it's like pulling teeth trying to find fans.
There are bigger fish to fry out there.
US: More than 21M people affected by government hack- "The Obama administration said that hackers stole Social Security numbers from more people than previously thought in a recent data breach."
Since I believe our entire grid will probably go down from a hack, a dirty nuke, or a massive X flare from the sun, and since I've already deleted all my own Lexx stuff in the past before I started over, I'm already used to the idea that all my Lexx stuff could disappear, never to be accessed again. Since I pay actual money for my sites out of my own pocket, and since I've had to literally rebuild after server moves, there's just not a lot any more that rattles me. So I disappear, so what. I was only hurting the fandom when I deleted my own content. That's right, I've already done more damage to myself than anyone else could ever do to me, and I hurt other fans doing it. I'm the first one to admit I'll regret that the rest of my life. People trusted me, and I blew it. I deleted content we can never get back. So Lexx disappears somewhere, so what. You're only hurting the fandom.
Come out and be cool with the big kids. And before this blows up into any kind of big deal somewhere, 1- I'm never naming names again because that's childish, 2- so few people will actually read this that makes it even more ridiculous, and 3- a few of the people that do read this actually have some real klout you might not be aware of. If my Lexx stuff ever goes poof and I'm not the one who did it, I won't be able to unripple that pond, and I might hafta hold a few people back who don't realize this is all just part of the fun and games. I'm done brawling like a noob in a Trek forum over tech that doesn't even exist yet.
That being said, I once again encourage Lexx fans to rip off what you can of what I've already got up just in case, because that's what saved some of my content when I Lexxploded. Again, that really touched me to see some of my stuff had been rescued, and what can I say- I love fans.
