Felicia Day

Yay, the new theme is up and running, thank you Edgar, the protector God of the Flog forums and a savior when it comes to confusing glitches in Wordpress themes! I’ve been drooling over this theme, inspired by Smashing Magazine and designed by Design Disease, for a while, but there was a glitch in the sidebar that Sir Edgar came in and fixed for us all to enjoy.

Of course, now that I downloaded more widgets, I have a mighty task ahead of me in getting the Now Reading widget to work. It’s showing up on the sidebar fine, but when you click on the library it’s an utter disaster. So, I’ll be banging my head against that for a while. Just don’t click on it and your eyes won’t be assaulted. I’ll let you know when it’s safe.

On another note, my push to get organized is being helped mightily by the cutest, bestest thing I’ve bought since my Prius: To-Do lists by Knock Knock. These have to be the YUMMIEST pads I’ve ever seen. I mean, I do this anyway with the post-its I stick everywhere all the time to keep my brain together, but this has….little check boxes :O Check out the other pads too, the Hour by Hour one would be valuable for me, to show me how much of my life I waste on a daily basis

I haven’t had time to go picket, although when I drive by the picket sites I honk the crap out of my horn. I’m definitely going by today, but I wanted to show everyone this video put together to explain why the strike is happening. I think it’s a great explanation and if you could link it places that you think would be interested, I’d appreciate it!

Well, I finally found a skin I loved for the blog here and it isn’t working.  Sigh.  For some reason the proper colors on the left sidebar don’t show up, even though the code looks like it should work.  I installed it on another abandonded wordpress installation I have, and it totally works, so it’s weird and frustrating and I WANT TO BE ABLE TO USE WIDGETS!

Deep breathing.

I realized last week during a not so stellar improv show performance, that I need to do more non-acting things.  When I first started doing improv, I was just out of college, and had a lot of non-Hollywood experiences to draw on.  I think it made my sub conscience more varied and diverse, and a better variety of things would pop to mind when I was on stage.  I’ve been acting professionally almost 8 years now, and I feel like I’m in a bit of a rut with the improv, because my daily tasks are narrower in their scope than they were when I was studying 8 different subjects a semester (I wasn’t exactly good about adhering to the recommended plan ).  So, I decided to sit down and list the things that I would like to start learning, to broaden my life :

• Wordpress theme programming
• Kung Fu (Non-contact because I’m wussy)
• Chinese and/or another exotic language
• Final Cut (to be able to edit movies of my cats)
• Novel Writing
• History of Myth/Folklore
• A Poetry Class, preferably the Romantics
• Lockpicking
• Yo-Yo (Mahalo Daily inspired)
• Art History/Chinese Brush Painting/Watercolor
• Sushi Preparation
• Folk Dancing
• Trapeze
• Firearms (My Dad was always trying to get me to go in Texas, damn!)
• Sewing (especially pants for some reason)
• Hair cutting

Ok, well, that’s a long list.  I need to pick 2 things for now until the end of the year to experiment with. Good thing is, some of these things are not available in class form per-se, and others require too much work/equipment to actually start.   Does anyone else have a desire to learn something weird?   Maybe I can inspire a few people to join me in a “learn something out of the ordinary” November

So, my boyfriend is a writer, and he cannot legally work right now. It’s kind of frightening really. Anyone familiar with Hollywood knows that writers, although the most important part of the creation process, are usually treated like poop. Especially in features, they are considered disposable, and they will cycle through writers like Paris Hilton cycles through hair extensions on a script. Worst analogy ever, that’s why I’m not in the guild

I really think that this strike is important now, because as we internet folk know, the time for digital downloading/viewing is now, and for them to not establish a cut of that during this negotiation could financially ruin the regular writer down the line when people are ordering TV shows like Pay Per View over the internet, or when the TV is actually their internet browser. For every DVD sold, studios and producers make 97% profit from them. The rest is production costs, and THEN paying the actors/directors/writers their tiny share. It’s time now for creative people to protect their share of profit in the evolving marketplace. Actors may go on strike in June, but if the writers can negotiate a settlement, that could pave the way for actors to not have to.

Anyway, I’m going to go support my friends on the picket line this week, I’ll be sure to take a picture. I am conflicted about releasing Guild episodes during the strike, but really, the sooner the studios realize that people can do things WITHOUT them taking all the profit, maybe they’ll start to be afraid of the artist, and not the other way around. I hope lots of Guild members make web videos and they become hugely popular and make those suits quake in their boots. Anarchists arise!