Decade Wrap-Up, 2000-2009

Posted in Literature, Movies, Personal on December 30, 2009 by doomcookie

The top 10’s are things produced from 2000-2009, not things I simply experienced in that time. And also are all in no particular order.

    Top 10 Movies

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Amelie
Lord of the Rings
Kill Bill
WALL-E
The Royal Tenenbaums
Shaun of the Dead
Requiem for a Dream
The Dark Knight
Pan’s Labyrinth

    Top 10 Albums

Beirut – Gulag Orkestar
Beirut – The Flying Cup Club
DeVotchKa – How it Ends
Flogging Molly – Swagger
Flogging Molly – Drunken Lullabies
Johnny Cash – American IV – The Man Comes Around
Apocalyptica – Reflections
Therion – Gothic Kabbalah
Nightwish – Once
Lady Gaga – The Fame

    Top 10 Books

George RR Martin – A Storm of Swords
Tom Robbins – Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates
Patricia McKillip – Od Magic
Chuck Palahniuk – Rant
Patrick Rothfus – The Name of the Wind
China Mieville – Perdido Street Station
Neil Gaiman – American Gods
Dave Eggers – A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Mark Z. Danielewski – House of Leaves
Michael Chabon – The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay

    Top 10 Video Games

Left4Dead
Team Fortress 2
Dark Age of Camelot
Dragon Age
Animal Crossing DS
Portal
Rock Band II
Grand Theft Auto III
Little Big Planet
Final Fantasy 12

    Travels

2004 – Europe backpacking – England, Spain, Italy, France, The Netherlands, a brief stop in Germany
2005 – Big Island of Hawaii
2005 – Belize
2005 – Europe school tour – England, Ireland, Scotland, The Czech Republic (not school, just seeking the beauty of Prague)
2006 – Thailand
2007 – Costa Rica
2008 – Vegas Fan Faire
2009 – Vegas Fan Faire
2009 – Maui, Hawaii

    Jobs

Actor – Conflict Management Elementary School touring play
Assistant director/Acting teacher – The Barn Theatre summer camp
ESL tutor/Librarian – La Jolla Elementary
Delivery Driver/Shift Manager – Pizza Hut
Camp counselor/Art teacher – YMCA daycamp
Prep cook/cashier – Croutons
Cook/cashier – Che Cafe
After school program counselor/summer camp counselor – Torrey Pines Elementary
Game Designer/Editor – Sigil Games
Game Designer – SOE San Diego
Game Designer – Ohai
Game Designer – Trion World Network, Redwood City

    Places Lived

Deming
San Diego – La Jolla, Clairemont, University City, Solana Beach, Cardiff by the Sea, Tierra Santa
Bay Area – San Mateo, Foster City

Cooking with Morgan: Garlic Chili Scallops

Posted in Recipe with tags , , , on December 14, 2009 by doomcookie
    Garlic Chili Scallops

1-2 Tbls olive oil
3 green onions
2 cloves garlic
1 cup water
6 large scallops
Small crown brocolli
1/3 a head of cauliflower
1 cup mixed marinated artichokes and mushrooms
Salt
Pepper
Lemon Pepper
Lemon juice
1 tsp – 1 Tbls Chili Garlic Sauce Huy Fong

1. Cut the garlic fine and chop up the green onions. Put the garlic and olive oil in a pan and shortly thereafter the water and the green onion.

2. Chop up the broccoli and the cauliflower. Add them and cook for a few minutes.

3. Add the scallops, mushrooms, and artichokes. Salt, pepper, and lemon pepper to taste (a few dashes apiece). Dash with a couple of good sprays of lemon juice.

4. Add the chili garlic sauce. Obviously this is where your spice tolerance comes in. I have a very high tolerance, added about a tablespoon, and could feel the heat but I could have handled more. Cook until the scallops are cooked all the way through.

Giving Thanks

Posted in Family, Personal with tags , , , on November 26, 2009 by doomcookie

I try to live most days like today, taking note of and never failing to appreciate that which makes life beautiful and wonderful, but it never hurts to do it again — nor to share those thoughts with others.

The first thanks must always go to the people in my life. My beautiful family. I am very proud to be a Lockhart, and am so thankful that we all love and appreciate one another — and get along. So many families look on holidays as an obligation, but I have only ever looked forward to every opportunity to share in joy and wisdom and laughter with everyone. I hope that ever forward our troubles might only be stumbling blocks from which to grow and learn and nothing that would cause a schism that could not be crossed. But we are all good people, and I trust this will be the case. Thank you, my dear family.

Next, to my friends. So many of you are like family to me. I am not who I am only because of my own efforts. It has been a process of growth and not only have you stood as examples of who I could and wanted to be, but also given me the opportunities and support to do so. It is within a cocoon of your love that I have become the person I have always wanted to be. For the laughter, the joy, the fun, the adventure, the hard times, the good times, the insights, the heartfelt tears, thank you my friends.

This year I have been reflecting a lot on my growth as a person, and so I have to say one of the things I am most thankful for is perspective. For many years, I didn’t have it, and so every obstacle felt as if it were indicative of some greater conspiracy or trend of life to fail. Now I take troubles as something to overcome, knowing they will be over and that joy will not only return but need not vanish at all; because all of those beautiful things that are there on a daily basis do not go away just because there is a cloud in the sky. These things are immutable, and I don’t let my vision be clouded to that anymore. The point is always to keep going, and to keep finding those things.

I am thankful for all the opportunities of this past year. It has been a bit of a roller coaster, but one that has been infinitely satisfying. I have learned an incredible amount, and met amazing people, and discovered abilities I never thought that I had, and I look forward to where things are going from here.

I am thankful for good health. Who knows how many more years I’ll be able to go answering, “None” when the doctor asks me what prescription medication I am taking, but every time that happens it reminds me how lucky I am with my textbook test results.

And lastly, I am thankful for the fro-yo trend that has swept the nation. Gotta love self serve frozen yogurt with berries and mochi!

There is food to be cooked and wine to be drunk and laughter to share, so I am going to cut this off now.

Happy Holidays to everyone. I hope we spend at least a little time together in their course, but if we don’t, you’re in my thoughts and heart always.

<3 = ∞

Cooking with Morgan: Couscous Salad

Posted in Recipe with tags , , , , , , , on November 2, 2009 by doomcookie

My on going culinary adventure continues. Tonight I decided to mess with couscous and veggies.

    Ingredients

Couscous, cooked and then cooled (1 cup dry, which is a couple of cups once cooked)
Two medium vine ripened tomatoes
1 14 oz jar of marinated Caramia artichoke hearts (save the marinade)
1 8 oz container of fresh buffalo mozzarella
1 8 oz container of marinated mushrooms
About four sprigs of parsley
1 1/2 cups fresh baby spinach
1 can chick peas (I used about 3/4 of the can)
Salt
Pepper

    Steps

1. Cook the couscous with butter (I used nature balance instead) and water. Cool with cold water.
2. Cup up the tomatoes into about 1/3 inch cubes. Cut the artichokes in half. Cut any larger mushrooms in half. Chop the parsley fine. Cut the mozzarella into cubes about the same size as the tomatoes.
3. Mix all of the ingredients from step 2 together, mix in the spinach & chick peas. Mix in couscous. Pour half the marinade from the artichokes in. Add salt and pepper to taste and mix together. I gave it about four good dashes of salt and two of pepper.
4. Let all of this marinade together in the fridge as long as you can stand to.
5. ????
6. Profit (and by profit I mean nom in the tummy).

Mad Men Fun

Posted in Fashion, TV with tags , , , , on September 21, 2009 by doomcookie

The results of my mad men antiquing this weekend.


Jimmy Chu beaded cardigan. Probably circa ~1960. It was marked down because of “small stains” I have yet to be able to find.


Completely faux but fun turquoise bracelet and necklace set.



Pandora dress. Not sure of the date on this one.
My favorite but most expensive buy was the brooch and earring set. Simply said “stone”, so not sure what it was.
The bracelet is a piece my grandma gave me. Worth way more than the rest of that stuff. In fact, I’m afraid to find out how much, or I might never wear it.

I was trying to find hair jewelry, but it looks like I’ll have to wait until when I have more money to get some from etsy, as no places did. I settled for some cute clips from Longs to finish off the outfit I put together for my brother’s show in Seattle on Saturday night, as pictured above.

Haiku

Posted in Writing with tags , on July 27, 2009 by doomcookie

Where is home if not
Where I long to rest my head
Uncertain of why

Zen and the Art of Driving Like a Maniac

Posted in Personal on July 16, 2009 by doomcookie

The other day I witnessed something beautiful.
The flow of traffic was, as it often is in the Bay Area, frustrating me to no end, because despite plenty of clear road ahead, people were driving a max speed of 65 mph, even in the far left lane. Anyone who has seen me in my car knows I’ve got a devil in me — or is it an angel? — that pushes me to, without apologies, drive like a bat out of Hell. So you can imagine how I must have felt the great manacles of mediocre driving were weighing down on my wrists. The whole thing showed no signs of clearing anytime soon, and I felt my spirit slowly crumble, ready to give up hope. When, all of the sudden, out of the blue, the car in front of me began to speed up significantly. I perked up and pressed the gas pedal down excitedly, climbing to 80 miles per hour, then 85, and then a car passed me going even faster, and then another. So once again, I gunned the engine, climbing to 90, and then even faster.
At this point, there were at least a half a dozen or so hearty souls all driving this speed, moving in a perfect configuration of speed and sound through the golden hills alongside the 580. We moved as a pack, daring other drivers to get in our way, and thumbing our noses at any potential highway patrol because there is no way some lone lawman could take us all, no matter what size his six shooters. The open sky before us, the asphalt below us, and nothing and no one holding us down.
It was, as most true beauty, ephemeral, as soon enough we were once again tangled in gridlock, trapped within a configuration of other cars that allowed for no such flights. But for those ten or so miles, we were free men, and we were one.

Wedding Ceremony

Posted in Events, Personal with tags , , , on May 26, 2009 by doomcookie

The following is the ceremony that I wrote & performed this past Sunday for my very dear friends David and Adrienne. It’s the second wedding I’ve officiated, and I was honored and pleased to once again be asked to unite two friends and write the words that would bind them. Even if it continually perplexes me why anyone would trust me to tell anyone anything about love and marriage!

[March]
[Greeting]
We’ve come here today to celebrate the joining of Adrienne Dorig and David Leland. They’ve chosen to hold their wedding outdoors within a spread of all Nature has to offer. Alongside trees that may outlive our great grandchildren, and near flowers that will only bloom for a season, we can meditate on the way in which life, in all of its cycles, is ephemeral, and yet somehow constant – connected. Love is what reminds humans most fiercely of that connection, because it is in our capacity to love with we find eternity, touching into an emotion deeper, and more powerful, that we could have ever thought possible. Barriers drop, edges blur, and you find yourself forgetting where you end, and your other begins.
As light to dark, day to night, all things have an equal but opposite and together they are complete. So do two people find one another and in coming together, find the half of themselves that, prior, they might never have known they were missing. Of course, this is only the foundation, though a beautiful and rich foundation it is. Today, David and Adrienne have come together to recognize the union that has already long since happened between their hearts, and from there, to affirm their commitment to everything involved in a shared fate – the joys and burdens alike. Together, they will grow beyond limits, and they will laugh at foibles, and they will learn from mistakes, and when they fall, they will get back up together; recognizing always that though they are two people with two minds and two hearts, they are a matching set, and will ever strive to work in tandem.
They have asked all of you here today to see them off on this journey, and to share with them the incomparable moment where it began, because it is true that though they are a pair, this pair is nested within a vast network of friends and of family. We are no greater a product than the sum of those who have touched us, helped us, guided us, and supported us, and so it isn’t simply two wonderful people who are joined in this marriage, but also the families who nurtured them so that they could become quite so wonderful; two families, now come together as one. Thank you for sharing this day, this moment, and for your continued love and support as they go forward.
I will now invite Carl Sachs, a good friend of the bride and groom, to step forward and read Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116.
[Reading]

[Declarations of Love]

[Joint Vows]

[Exchange of Rings]
As an unbroken circle, rings are a symbol of undying love. May they serve as a reminder of this day on which you pledged endless love to one another.

[Sand Ceremony]
Next, Adrienne and David have decided to invite their mothers forward to participate in the Sand Ceremony with them. At its essence, this ceremony is about unity. We begin here with a single empty glass, a vessel, and two others that are full. Each piece of sand represents the multitude of moments, thoughts, decisions, plans, and feelings that have all come to shape our bride and groom. As the sand is poured from these two and into a common vessel, mingling and merging, so are they joined, their paths entwined and paved with common purpose and shared experience. As their mothers delivered them into their original vessels – screaming and crying – it is appropriate that they unite them here as well – though hopefully with less screaming and crying. Diana and Thelma would you do your children the honor of stepping forward?

[Pronunciation]
Love, understanding, and respect, these are the seeds of a happy marriage, and like any seeds, they must be cared for and nurtured so they do not wither. Today you have made a commitment to give these seeds what they need: to communicate, to forgive, to cherish, to laugh, and to learn, today and always, for the rest of your lives. Do so, and live with no regret. It is my very great honor to pronounce you David and Adrienne, man and wife, woman and husband, matching set. David, you may kiss the bride.

[Breaking of the Glass]
Finally, the ceremonial breaking of the glass.

[Conclusion]
Ladies and gentleman, allow me to present to you Mr. and Mrs. Leland

Bradley Horror Interviewed

Posted in Technology with tags , on April 28, 2009 by doomcookie

An internet interview of my brother, Brad, on behalf of his band the Black Eyes & Neckties.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/577673

It is really funny, because my brother is not the geek in the family, by any stretch. He’s no geek at all. So he is talking to a video blogger who is trying to quiz him on how “geeky” he is by testing his knowledge of internet resources for bands, a quiz Brad manages to undermine pretty immediately. Also, when the guy asks him what he would do to save the dying music scene, Brad, without any hesitation, blames internet downloading and the fact that people who claim to love bands will now just go out and download without taking the effort to come and support. He isn’t only condemning free downloading here, but any downloading at all. He has told me stories of selling only a handful of albums at a show (which the band actually makes a decent amount of money from) but then seeing on their iTunes records that dozens of people went home and downloaded the album (which they see all but nothing from). So, basically his solution is that he wishes he could be making music 30 years ago. It was amusing. I can’t claim I wasn’t a pretty terrible music downloader as a teenager, but I can at least hope to say I never downloaded anything from a band that needed to have a day job because they weren’t making enough from their music to live (if not live in excess).

The question is, how do you save the music scene without going back 30 years? Grants? Sponsorships? Soundtracks? How can the internet be used to both spread information but support the burgeoning performer? All good questions. I’ll admit, the implications to the music scene are not something I think about, as I tend to think more about my own trades, writing and video games, but they are all being affected by it. I think most people still find it difficult to read on a computer, but the proliferation of kindles and other such eBooks are going to make that problem hit writers more as well. And increased abilities to pirate has made it hit game companies for as well. Outraged fans ruined the game Spore over the DRM, and while it was definitely a limit taken to the extreme and not something I would say I supported, the game companies have to do something to stay in business. I think it’s fair to say, though, that musicians have been hit the hardest thus far by our increasingly downloaded culture.

I have and do continue to believe that the information age is a good thing, and that mass access to media is a good thing, but how can people continue to make art when it becomes increasingly difficult to make any kind of living doing it? I’m sure a purer artiste than I would say that shouldn’t matter, but anyone who has worked a full time job and tried to come home and have the energy to do their art and doesn’t have a chemical imbalance that makes them revel in being a martyr will tell you, it’s hard, and not preferred. And while not everyone wants to “sell out” (though plenty are more than happy), I think most people will agree that anything that enables you to spend more time doing what you love, and less time doing something you don’t love so you can still eat, sleep under a roof, and buy materials (whether that be pen & ink, a guitar & amp,  paint brushes and canvases, or a laptop computer) is a good thing. Maybe it doesn’t mean you make millions, maybe it means you only have to work half-time instead of full time, and maybe you’ve made that much reviled step to commercial art, but at least that’s that much more of your life doing what you know you were born into this world to do and less time wasted.

It’s a difficult question. I know there are a lot of websites out there meant specifically to promote indie musicians, but I’m not a musician, so I’m not sure what the strings attached there are. You can’t truly blame anyone for not wanting to buy physical copies of CDs when they are only going to then going to just rip it anyway to add to their iPod, and it’s much more ecologically sound if we do move toward less plastic waste, but there needs to be some way for that to be profitable for bands. They can sell music by way of their website, sure, but most people are too lazy not to use a central location for their music buying needs (and who can blame them, or actually “us”, as I certainly am not less lazy than that). An idea I have toyed with in response to this problem would be, in essence, a non-profit iTunes. That is, the prices would be roughly the same, and so the bands would see money from it, but the service itself would not be for profit, and so the cut would only be as much as they need to keep staff and servers going. Hopefully if this service were able to receive an endowment, it would need to pull even less from the artists, but it could probably be pulled off with or without the generosity of some wealthy benefactor who loves music (I’m looking at you, Paul Allen). I would imagine that in order to keep this service from getting too overwhelmed, you would probably have to put a distribution limit on the bands who are able to be involved. Once you reach a certain level of success, you can make money despite the cuts of the labels and the major distributors. So, no one wants to see Nickelback taking up the server space and staff time so Chad Korger could add an additional wing to his mansion. I’m not sure what implications that would have in a long term sense, because it is more than conceivable that a band could start small on this service and make it big in the course of their time there. Are they kicked out? “You’re too cool to hang out with us anymore.” I’m not sure. It would be something to consider further than this rambling blog entry has considered it. But I think that something like this needs to be considered.

The Baby Bottle List: The Younger, Less Morbid, Sister to the Bucket List

Posted in Personal with tags , , , on March 30, 2009 by doomcookie

Toward the end of a long night of conversation with a friend over citrus mint hookah, he begins laughing at me. “What?” I ask, pausing and blinking at him through the smoke. He’s stopped me just as I have begun to explain to him my goal to “travel to every continent before I am thirty.”
“You have said that a lot tonight, ‘before I am thirty’? What happens at thirty? Your life comes to an end.” He teases me goodnaturedly.
I pause and consider the question. “I suppose it’s not actually thirty. It’s before I settle down and have children, because, well…They make life a lot more complicated.”
“Oh they sure do!” He laughs knowingly; a father himself to seven-year-old girl.
“Perhaps I need a different way to say it,” I muse. “Perhaps there is a better term.” We consider the challenge. I pause to suck in a long breath from the hookah, exhaling gently to let the smoke tickle against my nostrils. And then it comes, in a jerk of the brain. “A baby bottle list,” I say with a laugh. “I’ll call it my baby bottle list.”
“Perfect!”
The term “bucket list” was, as far as anyone can tell, either completely created by or popularized by the film of the same name. In it, the character portrayed by Morgan Freeman has a “bucket list”, describing a list of things he will do before he “kicks the bucket”, and his life comes to an end. To say that life “comes to an end” with child birth is a great insult to the institutions of parenthood, but to claim that it is not forever changed, and in many ways limited, would be naive. For all that the duties of parenthood have begun to be split more and more between husband and wife, there is no denying that this rings particularly true for a woman, if for no other reason than that the structures of our society enable it. Maternity leave is considerably heftier than paternity leave, more women’s bathrooms have baby changing stations than men’s, and no matter how feminist one’s mother might have been, chances are most girls demanded a baby doll, or two, and put a diaper, or five, on them. We’re kind of trained for it.
By no means take this to mean men cannot have a baby bottle list. I fully encourage it, but from my own personal experience as a woman, I feel an acute pressure to get done all the things I want to do that might be too expensive, time consuming, or risky once I have a brood either waddling right at my heels or peeking out the window and waiting eagerly for me to get home. If the book The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine is to be believed, my body will likely be flooded with so much oxytocin at the sight of my offspring that I will be too high on hormones to even care about whether I publish a novel, travel the world, or complete a marathon. It’s the biological imperative to reproduce at work, and our body’s are finely tuned to make certain we see it through. This is not to say there are not cases of women up and leaving their families, but these are generally cases of mixed complex physiological and psychological factors. Most women are in it for the long haul, no matter what their children put them through in the meantime, nor what they have to sacrifice for them.
I don’t have this list written anywhere. It might be fun to do so and tack it to my wall and feel a sense of accomplishment every time I scratch one off, but despite my preponderance for putting my thoughts into writing, I have never been much of a literal list person – shopping lists, Christmas lists, to-do lists, not my style. However, it’s there regardless, buried in my consciousness, manifesting in saving my pennies for plane tickets, gradually run longer and longer in the morning, delirious scrutinize my manuscripts, and a dozen other behaviors that crop up with an undeniable fervor. No doubt if you are still unattached and unsettled, you probably have one too, no matter how consciously or subconsciously you are aware of it. If you’ve never thought about it, consider it. What things do you really want to do in your life? And how many of those are most achievable right now? How many of those are probably not at all achievable later?
If more than just one or two come up, and if your biological clock has kicked in so that you have found yourself picturing a baby in a sling across your chest in the middle of the mall during a routine holiday shopping trip with so much detail that you could later tell someone how they smelled… it might be time to start making a serious plan. If this requires making a physical list, and color coordinating a set of star stickers you award yourself every time you make a step toward completion, do it. But don’t fool yourself into thinking you’ll somehow manage to hop on a motorcycle and drive along the grand canyon with a tot clinging to your waist, nor that you’ll necessarily be able to put in enough hours at the office to get climb to the exact position you want when there’s bedtime stories to be told over hot cocoa and ginger snaps at home. You may not want it, and they definitely won’t want it, and chances are it won’t happen. But there’s no time like the present. You will never be as young as you are right now – literally. You’re now two seconds older than when you read that sentence. Think about that. Old doesn’t mean dead, but but it sure can progressively feel that way.
So get out there. Make a baby bottle list. If you’re already elbow deep your own pile of babies, make one anyway and work as best you can at getting its contents accomplished before life passes by quickly and this once innocent collection of to-dos morphs a bucket list, whose contents you race against the Reaper to see completed.