Month: September 2010

Bearded Lady Reunited with Long-Lost Son

On By Michel McDonaldIn AmplifyLeave a comment

I didn’t amplify the entire article because it is too long but go to the AOL News page to read the rest….

http://www.aolnews.com/weird-news/article/bearded-lady-vivian-wheeler-finds-her-son-after-33-years/19631453

I am posting this because I have seen her in Bakersfield. When I was riding the bus every day to the Gym over in Green Acres (no joke) I saw her just about every day on the bus. I overheard her talking about writing a book or being in a book about her life as a side show in the carnivals about being the bearded lady.

One night we (Darrin and myself) were having dinner at Hometown Buffet and they sat us at this table that was right next to another table where they sat Vivian and another man in a wheelchair. It wasn’t a booth next to their booth, it was 2 tables pushed together so it was as if we were all 4 in the same party but we were each at our respective tables. Whenever they seat us at those tables we’re pretty much quiet during our meal.

Even though we were basically sharing a meal with them, we treated it as if we were at our own table so there was no need for idle chit chat or introductions. Although I’ve wanted to meet her, I refrained out of fear that she would think that I’m only talking to her because of her beard so I basically just left it alone. Does that make sense or does that make me sound like a snob? LOL I don’t mean it to, I just mean that I was respecting her privacy.

I think her story is amazing and I wish her all the best with her newly found son.

Amplify’d from www.aolnews.com

Bearded Lady Reunites With Long-Lost Son

(Sept. 16) — Every adopted child wonders who his biological mother is. Movie star? Rock star? Maybe a big-shot CEO? For Richard Lorenc, she turned out to be the last thing he ever imagined: a sideshow bearded lady.

The 33-year-old Kansas man had always been curious about his birth parents, but with a wife and two young daughters, he was busy making a life of his own. After a recent back injury led to multiple medical exams and many questions about his family medical history, he decided it was time to start digging.

His search began this past spring, when he filed a request with the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services to find his biological parents.

Courtesy of Richard Lorenc After 33 years, Richard Lorenc has reunited with his biological mother, a bearded woman named Vivian Wheeler, in Bakersfield, Calif.

Six weeks later he received a letter from the department saying it had the identity of his mother: Vivian Wheeler, now 62.

It also informed him that both his mother and his maternal grandmother had hypertrichosis, known as werewolf syndrome. Each had facial hair, even as children. The letter further stated that his mother was born a hermaphrodite, with both male and female reproductive organs.

Wheeler’s facial fuzz had appeared at birth with an inch and a half of light hair covering her cheeks and chin. She says her mother wanted a daughter, and doctors were instructed to remove the male parts.

Wheeler claimed her father was humiliated by his bearded little girl, but it didn’t prevent him from capitalizing on her condition. She began working in sideshows at an early age, earning money to send home to her family.

See more at www.aolnews.com

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/aos7

Vancouver, WA Woman Admits to Throwing Acid on Herself

On By Michel McDonaldIn Amplify, NewsLeave a comment

While eating dinner tonight we had Nancy Grace on the tv who was talking about this Vancouver, Washington woman who was the first victim of acid being thrown in her face in front of a Starbucks. But, the twist is, she admitted to police that she did it to herself.

I’m just shocked that any person would do this to themselves. I mean, she has disfigured herself for the rest of her life and for what? For 15 minutes of fame? To show how religious she is? Seriously?

I can think of better ways to get 15 minutes of fame or for showing how passionate you are about your religion. I mean look at her before image, she was gorgeous. She could have gotten famous in another way you know? Now look at her, she’s a ghoul now. She will never be the same ever again.

So now she’s famous for being stupid and she will likely serve 1 year in prison for her selfishness. Good luck with all that…

Amplify’d from theportlander.com

Vancouver, WA Woman Admits to Throwing Acid on Herself

Police have reported today that a Vancouver, WA woman claiming to have been attacked by someone throwing acid in her face is lying and the event was a hoax.

Bethany Storro claimed that on September 2nd, 2010, a stranger walked up to her in a parking lot and threw a cup of acid at her face. She did not know the alleged attacker but helped police create a sketch of the suspect. Storro suffered damage to her face but now has confessed that she in fact threw the acid on herself. The once tragic story made world-wide headlines and even prompted a copy-cat attack in Arizona.

We are still learning the details of why she may have perpetrated this hoax but one theory is that she wanted a platform to share her Christian faith. During a hospital press conference after the incident, she made multiple references to her faith and Jesus Christ.

The Portlander will update this story as more information becomes available.

Read more at theportlander.com

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/an62

Pawn of Prophecy by David Eddings

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

At Christmas time in 2005 I was visiting my Aunt Louise in Texas and I had brought a Buffy the Vampire Slayer novel with me to read. I didn’t think I would need to bring any more than the one book because I was visiting family but I brought it so that at night when they had all gone to bed I would have something to read before I went to bed and I made it a point to try to read at least 1 or 2 chapters before going to bed.

Unfortunately people don’t get why I would want to read a Buffy novel. I’m a huge fan of the show and even though the show is gone forever from our tv’s, the books add more episodes that the show didn’t think to write so it’s like I’m getting more of the show by reading the books.

First I have to tell you that they have a HUGE book collection. They have what appears to be a library in their house. Half of the room that I slept in was bookshelves that made that half of the room look a library. There were bookshelves facing each other with books on either side of them just like a library. Although you couldn’t see over the books but rather the bookshelves were back to back then bookshelves along the walls.

Ok so he suggested to me that if I liked the vampire and supernatural (in general) type of books then I would love these David Eddings books. He pulls one out on a smaller shelf by the door which is Pawn of Prophecy and hands it to me. Then he pulls out another and another and yet another. He’s stacking them in my arms and I’m just overwhelmed at that point.

I’m like whoa doggy, I can’t read all these books lol. Let me look at the first one tonight before I go to bed and I’ll make a decision tomorrow lol.

That night I read the prologue which was so difficult to understand. I keep telling people that I have things going against me so I try to stick with easy books like BUFFY! but they just don’t believe me.

My Aunt asked me in the morning what I thought (as if I had read the entire book the night before) and I said well I read the prologue and it was a bit confusing and difficult to read. She asked if I remember what I read and I said yes sort of and she asked me to tell her what I learned lol. Uh hello… learning disability here lol. But I did retain SOME of the prologue to give her an answer which I don’t quite know how I did. I don’t even remember what I said but she believed that I did indeed read the prologue.

I told them that I don’t want to borrow all whatever amount of books there are because number 1 it’s too much to stuff into my suitcase and number 2 I doubt that I’m going to read them all right away and I can’t promise I will even try. I wrote the titles down though so that when I came home I could buy some.

That January 2006 when I got my monthly check I did buy volume 1 and 2 of the Belgariad with the first 3 books in the first volume and the last 2 in the 2nd volume. I tried reading the prologue again and I did read the first chapter but it was so damn difficult for me to read. Also the books were so heavy that I just couldn’t do it.

4 1/2 years later and I’m giving it another go. Today I read the prologue for the third time and I gotta tell ya, it’s the same confusion every time. I read the first 2 chapters and then had to quit to give my brain a rest. I did have to look up a few words in the dictionary but I can deal with that.

I am going to try to keep with it as much as I possibly can because these are books that I am interested in. I’m not reading them because I’m being forced into it but rather because they are my type of books. They kind of remind me of the lord of the rings in a way but their own story. Which by the way THE hardest books ever are the lord of the friggin rings. Oh man those books… so hard.

I have dyslexia, learning disability, ADD and not to mention the fact that I didn’t go to college and didn’t really start reading books until 2005 so give me a break with these big words ok? LOL

Well, I am 2 chapters in (3 with prologue) and I am looking forward to reading more in the morning.

Michelle Obama: I Love French Fries – Via Politico

On By Michel McDonaldIn Exercise, Food, PoliticalLeave a comment

For once I am in complete agreement with an Obama. Michelle Obama was at the National Restaurant Association’s fall board meeting where she was telling the restaurant industry to step up to the plate (the dinner plate?) and stop serving junk to our children and adults. Instead of serving fries with that, offer something healthier like carrots or apples. I actually agree with her. But it has to be something that the customer wants to order.

Side note, McDonald’s does offer apples for their kids meals as an alternative to fries. They also offer milk as an alternative to soda. They have for years.

You can’t turn “Fish N Chips” into “Fish N Apples Chips” or “Fish N Carrot Chips” although that does sound good. The last time we went to Long John Silvers their fish was so horrible, it made my stomach so heavy, I was on the crapper with cramps the rest of the day. The fries were the only thing that didn’t make me feel like crap, it was the fish. I think they need to clean their oil.

She also suggested to switch white pasta with wheat pasta but how about this, how about Wacky Mac? Wacky Mac pasta is made out of vegetables. Why not go all the way and suggest they make their pasta out of vegetables? That would make much more sense than just wheat.

And why not suggest to offer baked fish and chicken as an alternative to fried in all restaurants? I use the George Foreman grill to make my boneless skinless chicken so I think that should be an alternative too.

The issue though is you cannot expect customers to ONLY eat the healthy alternative. If you tell them they must request fries then they WILL request fries all the time. You aren’t going to force someone into eating healthy, that’s the reason they are going out because they don’t want to eat healthy.

I am not a vegetarian but lately I have been eating only vegetarian foods like Garden Burgers in place of chicken or any meat for that matter. And only eating salads or steamed veggies so I am certainly switching my attitude towards eating habits but that’s me.

Since I am diabetic I have had to take a serious look at the foods that I eat so I lower not only my blood sugar but also my cholesterol. I haven’t been going to fast food places or any restaurant for that matter. It’s not fast food places, it’s the restaurant industry as a whole that needs to change. I do agree with her 100% about that.

And by the way, the fish at fish n chips has more calories than the “chips” so if you are going to take the fries away you might as well take the fish away too because they are worse than the fries.

In the LA Times Blog there is another post about this but that post is so long, it would take forever for me to pick every little thing out to talk about so I’ll just give you that link:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/09/michelle-obama-obesity-restaurant-menus.html – Link broken

There are a couple of things I’d like to say about that one.

Quote:

“She, of course, has her own personal chef brought in from Chicago and took full parental responsibility for guiding her daughters’ diets because parents are crucial habit-formers and role models, even in food choices.”

This is what I’m always talking about. It’s not the restaurants who need to make sure your kids eat right, it’s you, the parent and if Michelle Obama is hiring a personal chef who knows what the right foods are to feed children then that’s what she has to do to make sure her kids eat right. It’s the parents responsibility to make sure you eat right, not the businesses. They are in business to feed people what taste good, not what tastes healthy.

There are businesses that are in business to feed us healthy foods and if you should want to eat out and eat healthy then go there instead.

Quote:

“She said she understood that healthy meals sell less, which is not a good thing for any business. But she said the problem of obesity is so great, it must be addressed urgently by all means.”

YES! That is what I’ve been saying is wrong. It’s not just restaurants that are giving us unhealthy foods for less but also the grocery store. It’s cheaper to eat junk and it’s way more expensive to eat healthy. Why is that? I think it’s backwards. I think they need to reward you for eating healthy by selling the healthy foods for less money and penalize you for eating unhealthy by charging you more money.

Also, why is it that the diabetic foods are so expensive? They aren’t helping my cause by making me pay up the wazoo to keep my blood sugar down. Also the vegetarian foods are so expensive.

There was one more thing. I think it was in the LA Times blog post saying restaurants aren’t offering nutritional information for their guests. They certainly are! You can go to the website of any major restaurant and they have the nutrition information right in their website. Most of the time in PDF format. Some also have it posted on a bulletin board or they have pamphlets with all that information. So that is wrong, they do offer that.

Amplify’d from www.politico.com

Michelle Obama admitted Monday that she’s a “lover” of french fries and confessed that her daughters enjoy mac and cheese. But at the National Restaurant Association’s fall board meeting, she asked restaurateurs to rethink the way they offer food in their eateries and implored them to provide more nutritious choices to both adults and kids.

Since Americans eat a third of their meals in restaurants, Obama asked the restaurateurs to add more healthful choices to their menus and provide customers with more information about what they’re eating.

“What I do know is that in the restaurant industry, creativity is your lifeblood,” Obama said at the Hyatt Regency before a packed crowd that included assistant White House chef Sam Kass. “It’s what sets you apart from the competition, and it keeps customers coming back for more. And today I am asking you to use that creativity to rethink the food you offer, especially dishes aimed at young people, and to help us make the healthier choice the easier choice.”

Obama told the professional foodies that she would like to see them use that creativity with children’s menus as well.

“I’m not asking any of you to make drastic changes to every single one of your recipes or to totally change the way you do business,” Obama said. “But what I am asking is that you consider reformulating your menu in pragmatic and incremental ways to create healthier versions of the foods that we all love.”

Obama suggested substituting wheat pasta for white pasta or cutting the amounts of butter and cream in recipes.

“Or you could make healthy sides like apple slices or carrots the default choice in a menu and make fries something customers have to request — which would hurt me deeply,” the first lady said to laughter. “I’m a fry lover.”

Read more at www.politico.com

Haunted By Your Soul by Marguerite Labbe

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books, eBook, Gay, NookLeave a comment

I just finished the book Haunted by Your Soul today which is the sequel to My Heart is Within You by Marguerite Labbe.

The first book is about this ancient vampire named Kristair who is looking for a vessel. He finds Jacob at a football game and stalks him for months before getting the courage to meet him. Although Jacob knew what game was being played and he played along wanting Kristair just as much.

At the end of My Heart is Within You, Kristair dies. In this sequel he has ascended but that doesn’t stop him from wanting to be with Jacob. He finds a way to be with him even though he is a ghost.

These 2 novels have been my very first gay novels that I have ever read and I just loved them. They were heavy on the sex scenes in both books (yes, a spirit and a human found a way lol) and I was just fine with it.

What’s funny is that the author is a married woman with a son. You would never think that a straight married woman would have those gay sexual thoughts in her head but there you have it.  I was aroused by a straight woman.  Be lucky because that is the first and last time you will ever hear me say that.

What drew me to these books out of the hundreds or thousands of gay e-books out there was one word.  Vampire.  My main search was Vampire because I’ve always wanted to read a gay vampire story and this was perfect.

The way Mrs. Labbe writes her version of vampires was perfect for me.  I love vampires and what makes me love them is that every writer adds something new to the vampire mythology which keeps me on my toes because I never know what new rule will apply.  In her vision, ancient vampires have some special powers like walking through walls and mental telepathy despite the distance, magic heart, memory and soul transplants.  You name it, this vampire can do it.  It also gives younglings the ability to do their own tricks like disappear completely from view.

I won’t reveal to anyone how this one ends, you’ll have to see for yourself.  I will be buying the final book in the trilogy the first week of October and reading it towards the end of the first week once I’ve finished reading the 2nd Sookie Stackhouse novel.

The final book is called Our Sacred Balance which from what I understand, Kristair is now human.  No longer a vampire he has no way of defending himself since he doesn’t have the super powers he had in the first novel and all the power he had given to Jacob is all but gone.  The vampires are after these two helpless humans.  I can’t wait to find out what happens in the conclusion of that story.  For some odd reason I wish that it wasn’t the last of their story.  I wish it wasn’t a trilogy at all.

Nook Study

On By Michel McDonaldIn eBook, NookLeave a comment

A friend called me asking about how my Nook works because her son is doing an online college course and is required to buy textbooks but wanted to find out if there were a cheaper alternative. He only gets so much with his grant that he can only afford to pay so much for a textbook.

He had hoped that if he bought a Barnes & Noble Nook that his eTextbooks would be cheaper but I did some research for him while on the phone and found that they do sell textbooks new or used or you can rent them but in actual book format. Not e-book format for the Nook.

Although, they do have a new thing called Nook Study that is a program for your PC or Mac that you download/install and you can buy eTextbooks for 50% less than the actual textbook.

I was looking at the features that they offer such as being able to highlight in many different colors, leaving an asterisk and typing notes as well as bookmarking. Very similar to the actual Nook (although the Nook doesn’t have a color highlight choice or asterisk’s). Many other features like highlighting a word to look it up on Wikipedia, Google, dictionary etc. Printing pages, copying text to your homework, importing notes and many others.

I told him that if he wanted to buy a Nook for reading books that’s fine but don’t waste your money if your purpose is for textbooks because it doesn’t work. With his grant he was able to buy a laptop for taking tests on their website and whatever else they require of him to do there so he can just use that laptop to install Nook Study.

I wish that they had all this technology when I was a kid. It would’ve been a heck of a lot easier for me, who am I kidding, I probably still would’ve ended up the same because of my dyslexia, A.D.D. and learning disability. But who knows, maybe it might have been different. I guess I will never know. Maybe in the next life…

Haven’t Been Blogging Much Lately

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books, eBook, Nook, PSPLeave a comment

I don’t know why I haven’t been blogging much at all lately.  Ever since I got my Nook I have been reading constantly, even more than I used to read when all I had were just books.

But, the novelty will wear off soon I’m sure and I will go back to the way things were and feel as though the Nook is just another thing in my life instead of the only thing in my life.

When I first bought my PSP it was the same way.  I was constantly playing video games.  I couldn’t care less about anything else going on around me lol.

Anyway, I do have many books that I’m planning to read, when I say many I mean over 100 but I’m pretty sure that I will have to take days off here and there because of how horrible my eyes are.  The more I read, the worse my eyes get.  Or… I wonder if the more I read, the more my eyes will get accustomed to reading?  I hope the latter.

(Poll) How long does it take you to read a book?

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books, eBook, Nook, PollLeave a comment

I love to read but I have 3 issues with it that cause me to read slower than the average reader. 1) Dyslexia 2) ADD and 3) Learning disorder. Because of those 3 disadvantages it can take me up to a week to read 1 novel. I wonder without those issues, how long does a normal person read a 250-300 page novel.

QuestionsView Results

If you can’t see this poll, please visit http://www.sodahead.com/fun/how-long-does-it-take-you-to-read-a-book/question-1219071/

eBook Conversion and Creation Made Simple

On By Michel McDonaldIn Books, eBook, NookLeave a comment

I have been wracking my brain trying to figure out how to fix the James Potter fan books for my Nook. The James Potter Series of fan books by Norman Lippert based on the J.K. Rowling Harry Potter series are only downloadable in PDF format from the website.

So what needs fixed? If I try to read a PDF file on my Nook, it turns whatever page that has an image into an image itself making it unreadable.

How can I fix this that will be less work for me? That has been the question on my mind for days and I finally figured it out tonight.

First I used Calibre to convert the PDF file to ePub file for Nook. Then I went into Sigil, I opened the ePub file that Calibre created.

Here is the tricky part that I didn’t understand at first. What I had to do was find the Prologue page, highlight the word Prologue then made it Header 2 and same with all the chapters. That will help the e-book reader find where the chapters are to create a table of contents.

The first letter of the first paragraph of the Prologue page and every chapter thereafter is missing. Why? Because in the PDF file that letter is bigger than all the rest so when Calibre converted the PDF file to ePub it lost those letters.  I had to figure out what the letter was then type it in.

Page numbers are all over the entire document which means I had to click Edit then Find and type in the first number (1) and find it then I could either replace it with nothing or when it found the number I could click it and delete it manually. Then 2, then 3, etc. Sometimes the number would be mixed in a paragraph and the rest of the paragraph was down on the next line so I had to bring it up.

Yes, it’s a huge pain in my rear but I really want to read these books.

There are a lot of .xhtml files so what I’ve done is when there is a new chapter I click the Sigil logo which is the create chapter button which basically creates a new .xhtml page. The previous page that I had just edited all the numbers out of is now its own chapter in its own file so I renamed that file to Prologue.xhtml. This makes it easier for me to go back to each chapter if I need to edit them further.

This is a painstaking process and it has taken me a couple of hours just to do 10 chapters and I have several more chapters to do tomorrow but I am willing to put in the work to get this done because I really want to read these books. It’s just too bad that the author of these great fan based novels didn’t think to create a file for every persons needs for e-book readers. .ePub is the most common e-book file there is, much easier than a PDF file. I mean seriously, who wants to stare into their LCD screen for hours reading an e-book?

I seriously hope that these books are worth the effort I’m putting into them.

Another thing about editing an e-book is that I didn’t know how to create a chapter that didn’t start with the word “Chapter”, I thought it HAD to have the word Chapter but apparently it doesn’t because these chapters don’t. Also the Prologue page isn’t called Chapter and now it shows up in the table of contents in the Nook for PC program.

So, I have a ton of work ahead of me tomorrow to get the rest of the first James Potter novel converted to .ePub so that I can read it.

This also helps me with my own e-book that I am writing. I wasn’t sure how to create the chapters and now that I have this new information I can do it without any issue and actually I think I might just write the darn thing in Sigil instead of using MS Word. I think it will make it so much easier to write.

I can also now write my Cookbook with diabetic recipes from the SparkPeople website that I can store in my Nook so when I need to find a recipe I can find it easily. What will make it easier is being able to make a chapter named “Entrée’s”, “Sandwiches”, “Salads” etc. instead of Chapter 1…

Thanks Sigil for making my life so much easier.

New iPod Touch

On By Michel McDonaldIn Gadgets, MusicLeave a comment

When I was 11 years old I got my first walk-man which played audio cassettes (and sometimes ate them). That was in 1981. In 1989 when I was 19 years old I bought my first CD player walk-man. It was big and bulkier than the cassette version but it was pretty darn cool and I was paranoid to let anyone see it for fear of it being snatched.

In the late 90′s I remember seeing the first mp3 player, I think it was the Rio(?).  It only stored a few cd’s which to me is bogus for the price but whatever. Then the iPod came out and that was pretty darn cool.

In 2005 I got the Dell DJ but I wish that I had gotten an iPod instead.

What a long way we have come that we now have an mp3 player that not only plays music but also video games, records HD video, views websites and now has a new thing called FaceTime which allows you to have a live video streaming phone call with someone. And it’s not even an iPhone either, it’s an iPod, a music player. The walk-man of the 21st century if you will.

Amazing!  What will they come up with next?