I am officially AFK for 40 days

Yes, my little nerdlings, as of right now, I will be officially AFK for 40 Days. This is in observance of the Lenten season, of course. Those of you who are regular readers to my blog know that I did this last year, and I thought I'd repeat it this year. Not only will I be AFK from my blog, but also from Facebook. Know that I will be thinking of you all, and I will be praying for you. And I hope you will do the same for me. I will be checking my e-mail on a semi-regular basis just in case I am in need of being contacted, so here is my e-mail: bustyherochick@yahoo.com So take care, my friends! See you in 40 days! :-)

I'll be gone for 40 days starting next week

Hello, all.

As I did last year, I'll be taking a break from both my blog and FB.  I'll be gone from Wednesday February 13 (Ash Wednesday, of course) to April 2.  Easter comes early this year, on March 31, so some of you are wondering why I am coming back on a Tuesday instead.  I'm about to get to that.  :-)

As before, I'm taking a break from writing to take care of some real life projects that need my attention.  However, don't think that I won't be thinking of you guys, or that I won't be thinking about what to do next.  In fact, I can't wait anymore, so let's get into what I will be working on while I'm away for 40 days.  Last time when I came back, I began by uploading my first expansion of BSC; that is, BSC 2.0.  This time around, I'll be working on my first patch!

It's going to be called BSC 2.1: World Heroic of AndiCraft, or WHoA for short.  Since patches on WoW normally boot up on Tuesdays, I thought I'd go ahead and boot up my own patch on the same day.  ^.^

Yeah, I'm such a nerd.  :-)

So what is WHoA going to be about?  That's still being worked out, and it's currently in the WHoA public test realms (which means that me and the boss are still talking about it  LOL)  However, let me give a little preview!

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(Narrator): You were there.  

You were there, when Andromeda started up her blog, and worked her way through the growing pains of posting on a regular basis.

You were there, when Andromeda moved on to Facebook, and opened up a new, alien world of personal communication with her readers never before attempted by a comic superhero.

You were there, when Andromeda had her first expansion, BSC 2.0, in which her blog and FB presences grew and matured, and brought a slew of pin-up artworks by many talented artists.  

But soon, comes a new adventure.  A new chapter; a world of exciting interaction and discussion and dialogue.

(Text)

* Choose your faction! Red-State Horde or Blue-State Alliance

* Noob starting area for those who wish to learn how to engage in discussions and dialogue, but were afraid to learn!

* New "Issues of the Day" Battlegrounds!

* New dungeons and raids of more in-depth discussions!

* New phat lootz, awesome gear, and achievements for jobs well done!

(Narrator):  

For all the challenges she has faced, and all the discussions she has had, Andromeda's journey has only begun.

(Text)

World Heroic of AndiCraft

Coming 4/2/2013

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Excited yet?  :-) 

I'll probably be posting once more on my blog before I go on my sabbatical. 

"Come to the Dork Side" t-shirts!

Thanks to a special FB friend and to the boss who whipped these up in a hurry, I now have my "Dork Side" meme made into a t-shirt!  Check this out!

Women's "Come to the Dork Side" t-shirt

Men's "Come to the Dork Side" t-shirt

If you buy this, send me a pic of you wearing it and I'll post it to my blog!

Democrats' "diversity": It's a trap!

On my FB wall, I had brought up this thread from the Twitchy website.  Oh, if only my Democrat-supporting friends had only asked me - I would have told them that all the promises that were made by the Dems during the election would be paid by the rest of us; and not by those evil rich people!  Wait!  I did tell them!  Over and over!  But of course, they didn't listen! 

Well, it's time to bring it up again; even if it's to say "I told you so!"  :-)

There's two things that I'm going to bring up here, and that's the Democrats' usual lines about their being the party of "the little people", and their being the party of "diversity". 
For one, they call us - they call you - "little people".  How does that make you feel; that your party thinks of you as "little people"?  That means that they can do without you when they don't need your vote.  You're someone to walk over when they don't have to care about you, which is every other time that's not an election season.  Do you like your party taking such dismissive attitudes towards you?

And consider this: Why do they call you "little people", unless that means that they think of themselves as "above you"?  Or to put it another way,

"Above"

you

"little people."

Your party thinks you're a bug.  No wait - bugs are actually cared about by the Democratic party - it's why the EPA is always out to stop various private sector ventures - to save some bug or owl or snail darter.  Oh, if only the Democratic Party cared as much about you as they do their little spotted owl or snail darter!

But no, you're less than a bug.  You're someone to use and abuse because they know that you feel that you have no choice.  You stick with the Dems because you think that the GOP is no alternative.  Do you like your party thinking of you that way - taking you for granted, and thinking that we should be grateful for whatever crumbs that they do throw our way? 

"No, wait!" you are probably thinking.  "That can't be right!  "They're the party of diversity!  They care about us because they serve our various interests!"  Let's break down the Democratic idea of "diversity".  Trust me, it ain't gonna be pretty.

The reason that the Democrats pull this "diversity" line at you is not to give a voice to a group that normally wouldn't be heard from.  Instead it's to divide you; it's to compartmentalize you into smaller and smaller groups.  Not only that, you're also being made to focus on your own little interests instead of looking at the big picture.  You walk willingly into their little schemes because of the trail of bread crumbs they lay down that leads you there.

For example, they can take the very large group of women and break them down to white women, Hispanic women, and so forth.  Then they're broken down further as straight Hispanic women and gay Hispanic women.  Then they're broken down even more to gay Hispanic women, bisexual Hispanic women, transgender Hispanic women, and so forth. Then they're broken down more to gay Hispanic women who were abused as children.  So you see, the groups get smaller and smaller and increasingly specialized.  Soon they get you down to tiny little groups so that you feel like you're special and that you are finally being heard from by party bigwigs.  Unfortunately, what's happening instead is that you're being herded and divided.  You're being made to live in tiny little groups, but you don't even see it.

The Dems want you to live in these tiny insular, compact, and compartmentalized little groups - or what they call "communities" to make it sound better - so that you will stay focused on the little picture.  Why?  So that you will be so busy fighting each other over your little interests that you won't see how they are using you for their own interests, and thus you won't stand united against them.  In other words, the Dems want a "Disunited States" so that you are easier to control. It's a tactic familiarly known as "Divide and Conquer".

If you all are united together, then you're harder to control.  But if you're caught up in your own little agendas and your own little causes, then they'll keep you entertained so that you think you're accomplishing something for your little causes, while you're actually serving their interests by not banding together to stand united against their manipulation.  

Can you see this now?  Can you see how the Dems sell you a faulty bill of goods by disguising it as being for your own good?  Can you see now the sales pitch that they've been giving you all this time so that you won't see what they're doing right in front of your eyes?  Can you see now that you're being played?  Maybe you need one more example. 

Consider how the Tea Party is treated verses the Occupy groups.  The Tea Party is considered the enemy by the Dems because they are an actual threat to the ways that the Dems have done things.  If the "little people" wake up to how they've been used all this time, then the Dems' de facto empire soon collapses much like the old Soviet Union did (and yes, I did make that comparison for a reason).  The Tea Party is a grassroots movement that, were the Dems true to their beliefs about being a "party of the little people" in the true sense of the phrase, then they'd welcome this uprising of the regular citizens.  Ignore the usual criticisms of members of the Tea Party being a bunch of moronic lowbrow inbreeders.  That's a desperate tactic to discredit a movement that has had legs for over two years now.  Do your own research and find out for yourself.

Contrast the Tea Party with the Occupy movement.  Occupiers are more the Dems' speed, because they are even more conditioned to follow the Democratic party line than your average American.  They are, in other words, a group of fanatical loyalists who buy the "divide and conquer" diversity strategy hook, line, and sinker.  Because of that, they'll never be a threat to the Dem power structure.  Occupy is a movement with no order, no direction, and most importantly, no moral code to guide it - in other words, a perfect organization for the Dems to manipulate to their own interests.

I've said many times that I'm the child of Marxists, so I know the Dems' plans close up, because I grew up with them.  I've also seen how those among the traditional constituency of the Democratic voting base are treated if they try to do things other than what the Dems have planned out for them.  There's no leniency, nor deviation from the way things are done.  You either accept it, or you will be demolished in a number of ways.  You don't have to be beaten or killed for your life to be ruined.  Think about that.

So you are not "empowered" by the Dems, you are their tool for their own agendas.  The sooner you open your eyes to that, the sooner you'll see why you all need to stand together.  Stop being a tool.  Stop being a fool.  Stand up, and stand united. If enough of us pull together, we can truly be a "United" States again.

Next time I'll bring up how the GOP manipulates its party base as well, and pretty much for the same reasons as the Democrats.  All the more reason that the rest of us need to remember what being an American really means.

Piranha Warcraft Achievements

Over the Christmas break, I was talking to friends about the legend that piranhas can eat up a whole cow in seconds.  I don't know how true it is, but it did make me wonder if the little piranhas ever had achievements like in World of Warcraft of how fast they eat up a cow?

I can see them pugging in the Piranha Trade Chat for - well, mouths - to gobble up a cow that is unfortunate enough to wander into one of their rivers.  I would also imagine that piranhas are all pretty much melee dps - no ranged dps, tanking or healing piranhas, in other words.  That alone, would save tons of time, because there would be no need for gear checks, because all they need is what they already have: a mouth filled with vicious teeth!

Well, I supposed they would need at least a mouth filled with vicious teeth, because a toothless piranha is pretty much useless to the group.  Can you see a cow being gummed to death?  Neither can I. 

Anyway, there would be only one achievement that I would think that would be worth anything for a raid group of piranhas:  The NomNomNominator.  In fact, I even created below the achievement that they would get:

Once they get the achievement, I would think that this would give that piranha raid group some pretty serious bragging rights among their peers.  See?  Even piranhas can be nerds!

Sandy Hook Elementary: "Where was God?"

The Sandy Hook Elementary mass murders shocked and saddened me like nearly everyone else in the country.  It also exposed once again some of the ugly sides of our society.

For one, it bared the media's obsessive-compulsive need to report first, rather than report accurately.  There's simply no excuse for this failure; especially the colossal failures in those first few hours.  Is it no wonder that many Americans distrust the media nowadays?

For another, the predictable bunch of ideological opportunists seized  upon this tragedy to once again harp on their beliefs about gun control.  I will say here that yes, I do agree that there should be discussions about gun control and how easy or difficult it should be to obtain firearms.  However, there is the matter that the ones who speak loudest about the need for more gun control are curiously silent when it comes to our own government's failure of its own "gun control".  In order for these gun control supporters to have a decent level of credibility, they should be as outspoken about the failure of Fast and Furious as they are about the need for gun control in the private sector.

Then there's the matter of the NRA's silence once the shooting began.  The NRA often paints themselves as victims of aggressive propagandizing from their opponents, but then go silent during news events that involve mass killings.  The NRA could be adding to the discussion on gun control and how to keep firearms out of the hands of mass murderers such as what we saw last week, or at the Aurora, Colorado movie theater earlier in the year.  Their silence, as the saying goes, is deafening.  I'm not on either "side" of the gun control debate, and I won't get into my personal views on the issue right now.

Another ugly side that was exposed last week was our country's failure to locate, contain, and aid the mentally ill.  While there are different reasons as to why this occurs, there are at least two main ones: a lack of funding, and because certain people on the left are more concerned about the "rights" of the mentally ill than the safety of the society that must accommodate them if they're not institutionalized.  I know people on the left that are influenced by the reports of very real abuses inflicted upon the patients in mental institutions, but the solution isn't to set these people free, it's to reform the kind of aid and assistance that they're given.  Leftists must understand that the mental institution portrayed in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is not representative of how all mental institutions are run.

But the main thing that I think is exposed in tragedies like this is when people bring up questions such as "Where was God?"  Both believers and deniers of God ask this question, but they're asking the wrong question.  First, let's ask why these people ask this question in the first place.

For believers of God, they'll ask "Where was God?" because their faith has been shaken by these kinds of tragedies.  This indicates a lack of understanding of the nature of God, and what he can and can't do.  God is not a genie, granting wishes left and right.  I use the example of a parent giving a child every single thing he or she wants to explain why God sometimes doesn't answer our prayers (or as it is sometimes said, "God answers all our prayers, but sometimes, the answer is 'no'").  If a parent gives their child everything they want, and when they want it, will that child grow up to be a mature and well-adjusted adult?  I hope you said "no". 

So if a human parent telling their child "no" once in awhile helps in their growth and maturity down the road, how much more does that apply to God, the "ultimate" parent? The point here is that a mature understanding of God will be that believing in God isn't going to shield us from the ugliness and evil that exists in our world.

If anything, believing in God will make you more aware of just how much ugliness and evil there is in the world.  But a mature understanding of the nature of God will help you to recognize the ugliness and evil in yourself, and from that, gain a strength in fighting our dark sides, because you can't fix what's broken in your soul if you aren't aware in the first place that it's broken.  So believers in God who ask "Where was God?" during such times demonstrate their lack of strength and faith.

For those who don't believe in God, when they ask "Where was God?", they aren't looking for an answer, because in their minds, they know the answer: He wasn't anywhere, because he doesn't exist.  So why then, would they ask "Where was God?"  In their case, it's a rhetorical question; they ask because it's a validation that he doesn't exist, for if God did exist and he's supposed to be kindly and wish us well, then why didn't he save those children from that murderer last week?  In a sense, it's a form of mockery - why otherwise bring up a deity that they don't believe exists?  It's basically an opportunistic seizing of the moment to promote their own views - which doesn't reflect very nicely of them.

Accepting that a loving God would allow tragedies like Sandy Hook Elementary was probably the toughest part of believing in God that I had to overcome. Why does God allow such evils to happen?  Indeed, why does he allow wars, such as WW1 and WW2?  Why does he allow pestilences such as the Black Plague, or the smallpox epidemic that decimated a great majority of the Native American population when the Spaniards came to the Western Hemisphere?  Those other questions will be for another discussion; for now, let's stick to Sandy Hook Elementary.

The murderer was able to take advantage of a perfect storm of failures on the part of 1.) how he obtained the guns, 2.) that he wasn't institutionalized much, much sooner, 3.) that the school's system of defense was insufficient, and so on.  Before I go on, let me say here that the blame for this mass murder belongs solely to the murderer himself.  You will notice that I haven't said his name yet - and I won't do so now.  He wanted his name out there, I will deny him that.

Getting back to my discussion, the question of "Where was God?" is not the right question.  The correct question is, "Where were we?"  Where were we, when we had the chance to spot him, and then to stop him?  Granted, even with better methods of spotting and stopping mass murderers, some will still slip through the cracks.  No system of stopping mass murderers is ever going to be perfect, but that should not stop us from trying, and we as sure as heck can do a lot better than we're doing now.  But first, we have to come to accept the following:

When we ask "Where was God?", it's to keep from asking, "Where were we?".  It's blame transference, in other words; God is a scapegoat for our failures.

But if we really, truly, want to do a much better job of stopping mass murderers, then we need to put the focus on where it belongs:  On us.  We owe it to future generations to have the courage to ask the right questions so that we put ourselves on the road to find the right answers.

Time for Madonna to rebel again - by aging gracefully

I came across this Before and After pic of Madonna yesterday, and to me, it demonstrates that it's time for a change for Madonna.

Ignore the piss-poor Photoshop disaster on the right, because it's very fake, and you can see how fake it is by comparing it to the pic to the left.  Had you dudes not seen the unretouched pic to the right, you wouldn't know that you were lusting after a woman who looks old enough to be your grandmother (and for some of you, she probably is old enough to be your grandmother!).

No, instead I'm going to concentrate on the picture on the left; of Madonna in all her wrinkled glory.  Now, when I say "wrinkled glory", I don't mean that in an insulting way, regardless of how I make that sound.  Instead, it's a compliment, as I'm about to explain below.

First, let me say that Madonna is said to take excellent care of herself.  Eats right and exercises intensely to keep herself in the shape that she is for her performances.  Mega kudos to her, and I mean that sincerely.  As women age, it gets harder and harder to maintain their body's shape and tone, and Madonna is one of the better examples of celebrities who don't let their "party" lifestyles consume them.

However, even the best lifestyle habits can't prevent the onset of aging, and it shows on the pic above.  While Madonna does what she can to help maintain herself in top physical form, the kind of lifestyle she leads takes its toll.  In other words, partying wears on a body!

On top of that, consider over the years, all the chemicals that she's put in her hair to changes its color back and forth.  There is also all the chemicals from the make-up she's put on over that same time span, and other chemicals that are used to take the make-up off.  Add to this the exposure to sun, smoke, and other unhealthy pollutants in the air that's she's been exposed to all these decades during her concerts, and you have the skin to reflect 3+ decades of wear and tear.

During her long career, Madonna has sought to be a trend-setter, a risk taker, and to challenge the ideas and impressions of womanhood in our society.  In that, she deserves credit for the kinds of good changes in beliefs and attitudes about women that she's helped bring about.

However, there's an annoying personality flaw of hers that she hasn't been able to shake in all this time: she knows of no other way to be "daring" than to dress provocatively.  Dressing provocatively and striking poses that would make little old ladies faint is one thing when she did this while in her 20's; still doing these same things while in her 50's - and looking all of her 50+ years - is another matter entirely.  There is such a thing as aging gracefully!

Take the picture above.  In one respect, I can admire the picture because it shows how her skin reflects the years.  I've discussed before on my blog about women and body image issues, and how they can often be paralyzing for some women.  Guys don't understand how much body image is tied to a woman's sense of self-worth.  Yes, to you guys, it sounds like women are too vain for their own good, and I could go on and on about the origins of these body image issues, but that would take another blog post just to cover some of the basics! 

Instead, I want to bring up body image issues as it applies to Madonna, and the potential good that she could do for society.  As I said, Madonna has made a career out of challenging the norm and dressing provocatively.  Now, however, the dressing provocatively needs to stop, because the woman is in her mid-50's!

Look again at the pic above, and you see that the shot is with her legs spread apart!  You can bet that the pic was heavily Photoshopped because otherwise, men weren't going to be turned on by a wrinkled woman spreading her legs.  They even Photoshopped out the wrinkles in her legs!  And while older women of the past might have been shocked by the young Madonna because she was posing in "unladylike" poses, now older women are shocked because she's an old woman herself carrying on like she's still in her 20s.

While I think the dressing provocatively needs to stop, there is something else Madonna could do to still be the trend-setter and risk-taker that she so desperately wants to recapture:  She could challenge the norm, but in a different way.  Like my post title says above, she needs to age gracefully.  She wants to be daring?  Then go with a new look that will challenge the way women look at themselves.

For instance, let her hair get back to its natural color.  If it's going gray, then let it.  And ease up a lot on the make-up.  Or even better, stop using it altogether.  Right there that will be a challenge and a risk.  The real challenge here, though, will be for her to learn how to dress in such a way that will be flattering for her new look.  She could help society - and women in particular - by accepting aging as a natural process that we all will eventually go through.

But the main thing is, she can dress in a style that flattering for her new look, but who said that it still can't be sexy?  Can one be middle-aged and still sexy?  That's my challenge to Madonna to find out.

Madonna, stop spreading your legs like you're 20 years old.  Stop looking like you still need to "put out" to get people's attention.  You already have it!  Instead, show the wear and tear that your body has gone through, and be proud of them as your battle scars of life.  Wear those wrinkles with pride.  Show that you no longer have to justify your existence by looking hot - you've done all that. 

Show that you're now at a stage in your life that you've fought life's battles, and have come out having not just survived, but thrived.  Women already put themselves through enough misery over their looks while they're young - why extend that into their middle age?

Be old and proud, Madonna.  Show the world that it's okay to age, as only you can.