#i have tons of pepper lore in my head and i never know what people might want to know about her

[butters-flower-mom]

what is pepper's relationship with the m4?

Because Pepper's so shy and has a hard time making friends she tends to not interact much with anyone besides Butters. For the most part, she's like a background character to the main four boys: just kinda there filling in a seat in the classroom.

The one she interacts with most is Cartman simply because he's the one Butters unfortunately hangs out with most. Pepper has some complex feelings about Cartman. She hates him for how he treats people, especially Butters (and she doesn't even know half of what he's done to Butters in the past), but she also feels sorry for him. She believes he's so mean because deep down he's lonely and can't admit it. She also knows there's something good in him because once she lost Baxter and Cartman found and returned him to her, though he intended to pull a "finders, keepers" before seeing how upset she was. Having had some very close stuffed animal friends himself, he actually felt guilty for keeping Baxter and gave him back. Pepper is also very jealous of Cartman because of all the time Butters spends with him. He often pulls Butters away, saying Pepper can't join in what they're doing because it's "bros only". Cartman knows Pepper is jealous and uses it to his advantage, telling Butters to ignore her when she tries to tell him what Cartman wants him to do might get him hurt or in trouble because she's supposedly only saying that because she's jealous of all the fun they're gonna have without her. Because Pepper is a lot more forgiving then Cartman, Butters tends to side with him.

Pepper, unfortunately, started out not having a good opinion of Kyle. Butters parroted a lot of nasty things about Kyle to her that Cartman told him which lead to Pepper being afraid of Kyle. The two of them got paired up for a school project that involved them needing to work together after school and Pepper was terrified to be alone in the same room as him. Kyle assumed it was just because she's so shy and tried his best to be as gentle and patient with her as he could, knowing she'd much rather be working with Butters and that he'd admittedly much rather be working with Stan. As Pepper was forced to work with him so neither would fail the assignment, she started seeing Kyle was nothing like what Butters said about him and now she's not really sure how she's supposed to feel about him.

I haven't really thought up interactions between Pepper and Stan or Kenny. If Pepper ever were to interact with Kenny, I think she'd get along with him. Kenny's pretty quiet and laid back which would help Pepper feel at ease around him. She wouldn't like any sexual jokes or remarks he'd make, but he'd stop making them around her if he knew they were making her uncomfortable. I think she'd probably get along best with Kenny out of the main four if I could ever think of a reason for them to interact.

As for Stan, all Pepper really knows about him is he's Kyle's best friend and Wendy's boyfriend. She's heard Wendy both gush about him like he's the best thing ever and rant about him like he's absolutely horrible so Pepper isn't sure what to make of him.

[whole-dip]

Haunted Mansion

Okay so let's see if I can pull this off. I wanted to do a big analysis/breakdown of a Disney ride to help people better appreciate the art of themed entertainment, as well as help people see a little bit of what my experience is like as I'm riding. I figured I'd go with a fairly popular one, one that a lot of people have experienced, so I chose The Haunted Mansion. I'm gonna be doing the Orlando version because that's the one I've been on.

Okay so we begin in Liberty Square. You're standing in front of the front gate. You see the mansion up upon the hill, the path towards it winds through the front garden/graveyard to the entrance. The sign, at eye level, ominously tells you what's inside. There's a couple different things going on here. First and foremost, you're seeing a spooky mansion up on a hill. Classic example of forced perspective, building something so that when you look at it the proportions give the illusion of a different size. If you think about it, everything you do on the ride could never fit in the building you see before you, but the forced perspective is enough in your mind for you to accept it. As you walk through the line the perspective will slowly shift to make it all make sense to you. The more important thing here is that the mansion looms over everything in Liberty Square. You can see it from almost every part of the land, and that makes it fearsome. That makes kids say either "That big scary house is staring me down and I don't want to go" or "I'm gonna go in that big scary house and conquer whatever is inside" It's a big centerpiece of which the entire rest of the land is built around, the focal point.

Next, you start walking in the line. You're in the graveyard. Funny tombs surround you, and as of a few years ago there are now interactive graves. This is referred to as Scene One. It puts you in the mood, it starts setting the tone. We see a mix of darkness from the graves, but upon further inspection we see that it's all quite funny. This is the tone the rest of the ride will have, spooky whole, funny close up. There's also interactive elements, a ghostly eulogist, a musical crypt, a moving bookcase. This is part of Disney's more recent initiative of having interactive elements in ride queues. This one is one of the more popular examples of good implementation. All of the interactive elements are fairly minimal, main reason being that you need to be moving, not playing with toys.

Now, the doors are opened by a maid/butler and you're welcomed into the foyer. The portrait of the ghost host slowly turns to a skeleton as the voice welcomes you in. The doors close behind you. This is first and foremost, more scene setting. You're being told where you are, what you're doing, how it's gonna happen, etc. It's giving context. But also, you're being corralled unto a group, being more active, and feeling like you're not in line any more, even though you are. You're then welcomed to the stretching room. In Disneyland this serves an actual purpose as an elevator, here it's just for fun. Again, driving home that theme of spooky but fun.

Finally, you enter the load area where you'll be getting on your doom buggy. The doom buggy is an example of what's called an omnimover. The original idea for the ride was that you'd walk through it but the problem was that no one would want to keep moving. The omnimover was developed to allow guests to slowly move through a ride, be turned 360 degrees, but still be in a vehicle controlled by the attraction so that ride times weren't affected.

You quickly move through a small stairwell and then you're on to the hallway with paintings. Your buggy turns and faces you to the paintings, lightning flashing behind you as you hear thunder and the somewhat ominous paintings flash more viciously for just a moment. This scene really captures what the Haunted Mansion is all about. There's a couple of technical effects that are being used, somewhat sparingly if you think about it, to create the sense of "did those paintings just change, or was it my imagination?" that permeates the ride. Here, it's simple UV light being flashed on an otherwise normal paintings. Note the ghost ship, a reference to the original theme of the ride that would have focused more on a nautical home.

Next, the marble busts in the library. Personally, I've always found this room to be a tad boring. The busts are merely concave carvings that look as though they're following you, a common illusion. What's cool though is that this is the "worst" it gets, which is still pretty cool. The ghost host really lays it on thick with the puns here which normally I'd like but here it gets to be maybe a bit too much.

After that we see a piano, seeming to play itself, but a ghostly shadow below playing it on the floor. I think this is incredible because if you think about it for like, two seconds you know exactly how to do this, but it's just so perfectly done that to me I lose myself. I have to remind myself to look for the technical details when I'm riding because if not I'll forget and just see a ghost playing piano. That mastery over simple and straightforward illusions is one of the things that makes Haunted Mansion so perfect.

The infinite stairwell. This room has been changed a ton of times, and it might change again one day. I like that this room helps add to the impending madness of the ride that the story is supposed to be about. A lot of people forget that the Haunted Mansions is supposed to be the story of you questioning if the ghosts are real or if you're just crazy. I think a lot of the story on this ride isn't perfectly done, but this room filled with impossible architecture really helps sell it.

Now, the endless hallway, with a floating candelabra at the end. This room features a ghostly chill that I don't think really works honestly. I never got the sense of that going on, rather it just felt like a weirdly cold spot. The endless hallway is fantastic though, and a scene I think about often. It's such a sparse room if you think about it, but it works so well. It's one of the show scenes that I actually don't really know how they did it.

The opening coffin is the closest thing we've seen to an audio animatronic (AA) that we've seen thus far, and it's great. The way the green light glows from inside, the roughness of the hatch as it's being pushed open, fantastic. I've always loved it, especially as a smaller scene.

Next, another hallway, this time with less effects. We see the sinister purple and black wallpaper that's classic, such a small detail that's commonly known now, but I wonder what it was like for people to slowly notices the menacing eyes in before the internet. The portraits are fun, but repeat a bit too often for me. We end with a monstrous clock, striking thirteen, and the shadow of a massive hand passing over it. To me, this strikes the perfect balance of silly and spooky. Sure, it may be frankly ridiculous, but it's still completely menacing and out to get you.

Now, an incredible scene. Madame Leota's seance. Everyone's doom buggy slowly turns so that we're always in the a big circle, just like any other seance calling forth ghosts. You can look to the other buggies and see them, but of course Leota steals the show. She's a projection on top of the face inside the ball, giving here a ghoulish look, and if you pay attention, the instruments she calls out are floating around the room. I really love the sound design here, as she calls each instrument there's a pause, then a slow but deliberate response. This scene could've easily been far more over top and loud but there's a restraint here that could only come from the history of imagineering that came before it.

The ballroom. Maybe the most iconic scene, or at least one of them, this room is perhaps the most technically complex on the ride. We see the ghostly forms slowly appear before us, all doing their own thing. It's very much a party with some interacting with each other, some on their own. This is pepper's ghost, an old parlor trick commonly used with live actor but here it's done with AA figures. If you notice, you're at a very particular height, not low to the ground, but not on the roof. That's because you're actually about halfway up the room, with ghost AAs above you and below you. Because o the pepper's ghost effect all the figures you see are also on your side of the room, but cleverly the reflections appear as ghosts before you. Pretty cool, huh?

We move to the attic, the domain of the bride, Constance. We see the wedding portraits as the men slowly lose their heads, each one has Constance gaining another pearl necklace. At the end of the room is Constance herself, hatchet in hand. Theme park rides were pretty much invented by film people so they often are developed using film language. Something that has to be accounted for is getting the audience to look where you want them to. If you think about it, this ride is set up kinda like a tracking shot. Slowly you enter the room, meandering through it and ultimately ending on a focal point, in this case, the bride. Scenes like this, with so much cinematic quality while still not being a movie, this is what got me to fall in love with theme parks.

We now begin our descent into the cemetery outside. While many talk about the lore here, that of Constance allegedly killing you and throwing you out the window, there's a far more practical reason for this. At this point, you're on the second floor but you need to be on the first floor. The only way to do that is to lean you backwards for your descent, otherwise you'd be super uncomfortable. The lore is a really good example of adapting story to the physical necessity of the ride.

We're now full in the swingin' wake at the cemetery. The music is fully playing, the ghosts are all out fully having a party, and we're truly surrounded on all sides by show. Our eyes dart around seeing so much and it's sensory overload in the best way. There isn't much to say here in terms of design principles, it is what it is, an all out party. Something I love is the jumping heads behind some of the tombstones. They almost scold you for trying to look too closely, a fun little jump.

Finally, we see the hitchhiking ghosts as a sort of last gag, the projection of the ghosts in our own buggy as a last Wow! and then Constance once more on a mantle as a last scare. A perfect little bow on each aspect of the ride. We unload and exit through a spooky, but well lit, hallway and back outside. The exit quickly pulls us out of the spooky darkness and back into the level of the theming in Liberty Square we had before we entered the queue.

So there you have it, a full breakdown of Haunted Mansion. While I could go on and on about little secrets and the development history and whatnot, I wanted to just do an analysis of what it's like to ride it. All the trivia comes after that initial ride through that leaves you breathless and full of joy.

[captaingardening100-blog]

The Guide to Organic Gardening Pest and Problem Control

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The Guide to Organic Gardening Pest and Problem Control

The first rule for organic gardening pest and problem, control is to relax about most pest control issues. You’ll see holes in leaves and chunks missing here and there because that’s how nature works. If you want to see butterflies you have to allow the not-as-pretty caterpillars to eat your plants because those caterpillars turn into flitting beauties. If you want fireflies, don’t sweat the slugs too much because slugs are a food source for fireflies. It’s only when I see major damage I begin worrying and looking for controls.

You will find a ton of stuff about controlling deer but the only thing that works everywhere is a deer-fence. That’s it. Oh, and dogs. Please understand deer psychology. This gorgeous woodland creature survives by being cautious, running quickly and performing “tall buildings with a single bound” kind of jumping.

What scares them is novelty.

So when they first smell soap, they’re cautious and will avoid the area if possible but if the soap fragrance continues, they’ll get used to it and ignore it. The first time they see flashing cd’s in a tree, they’ll be cautious, but repeated exposure to them will remove that caution. Here’s a summary article about deer deterrents in the home garden. There is no one-size-fits-all cure other than fencing. If you constantly change your control method, you might avoid a great deal of damage. The second thing you will read is that this plant, or that plant isn’t eaten by deer. Deer dislike some plants and prefer not to eat them. But here’s the kicker. What they don’t eat in your garden, they consider delicacies in mine. Deer turn out to have different tastes in different parts of the country. Who knew? So find a local list, or find multiple lists and compare them to discover which plants are common to many lists. And the third thing are sprays you can make yourself or purchase. I use several over the course of a season (novelty again) to preserve young tree seedlings. The thing I will tell you is there’s a world of difference between a normal deer and a ravenous deer. Hungry deer eat anything up to and including daffodils (which are bitter and poisonous) and yew (the same). A hungry deer isn’t fussy and will strip down any plant within reach eating things they’d normally never eat. So yes,

Fencing is the only answer.

Dogs On Your Lawn

Fencing stops dogs from defecating on your lawn but if Fido does something and you find it within a few minutes, you can turn a hose on the area to wash down the Nitrogen into the soil away from the grass roots. After a few minutes though, it’s a waste of time. Again, there are sprays you can use to deter some dogs but others love the smells. I had one who loved the scent of a test product and would roll in it (yes, a Labrador Retriever.)

Are a problem in that fences don’t work but a simple gizmo called a “Scarecrow” works wonders. This is a motion-sensor controlled water sprinkler which will put a 10-second burst of water out when the sensor is tripped. Cats dislike being sprayed, so this is your answer.

Electric fences for corn patches work as do strong latches on garbage cans. These are big (an adult male can weigh 30-pounds) creatures and you don’t want to corner one. You can use a Hav-A-Heart trap to capture and control them using peanut butter or recently opened/used tuna cans with fish residue as bait. Note moving an animal to another neighborhood usually means condemning that animal to a slow death.

Beer and comfortable chairs seem to do the trick here. I can’t begin to tell you how many stories I’ve heard of husbands who just want to “prune” that rose with their new chainsaw or run the lawn mower over the burdock that turns out to be rhubarb.

There is no control and there is no spray that works I’m afraid when a better half of the male persuasion takes it into his head to “help” in the garden. You’re on your own. But do try beer and an offer to watch the game (any game!)

Small animal control

Human urine dumped down their burrows works nicely as a deterrent. Over the years, I’ve moved many groundhogs out of my various gardens using this technique. It’s far easier than shooting, trapping etc and works just as well. I’ll leave it to your imagination how you accomplish this but understand the groundhog likely leaves because: 1.) the smell is noxious in his lair and 2.) he can’t smell predators outside his burrow when his borrow is already fragrant with one. I found one application is usually enough except for some big, city creatures who seem to require several.

This small tree-rodent is a problem in two distinct ways. The first is when it decides to dig up and move your recently planted fall bulbs. A squirrel has several clues for finding and storing food.

The solution to that is to simply and excessively water the newly planted area to turn it into a mud puddle. This does two things: it removes the scent of the bulb/food and it removes all traces of recent digging activity as the soil settles. Understand that with specialized intelligence, the squirrel can’t see the disturbed soil, can’t smell the “food” and it doesn’t like to walk in mud in any case. Problem solved. The second and more vexing issue is when you have flowers that are “just about” to bloom and the buds suddenly disappear. Or worse, find them lying on the ground just nipped off and discarded.

Squirrels may be persistent but they are not smart when it comes to food. Here’s how you control them in fruit You can spray the buds or douse them with black pepper but sooner or later you’ll forget. (And no, contrary to Internet lore, it doesn’t make them go blind) The answer, as unlikely and unpopular as this is going to be, is to feed the squirrels. Food will cost a lot less than your flowers and you will enjoy your garden.

You’ll only feed a few as they are quite territorial creatures and the “owners” of that feeder will defend it vigorously.

And once you see them playing around, fully-fed and only taking a nip of your garden here and there, you may find yourself enjoying their antics.

There are many home remedies for skunk “fragrances” but (thanks to an adventurous Labrador Retriever) I can tell you they are mostly ineffective. They’ll “cut” the smell a bit, reducing it below gag levels but you’ll want to go to the Vet and get one of the serious products if you want to deal with it promptly and completely. To make matters worse, there are no methods to keep a skunk out of your garden if it wants to be inside. They’re like small cats in that regard, agile and able to slip through cracks you can hardly see and/or climb over fences. Your best bet is to avoid having food sources available for them by enclosing compost bins with lids and having lockable garbage cans.

The only effective cure for rabbits is a tight fence that goes six to eight inches into the ground to prevent them from slipping through cracks or burrowing underneath. There are noxious sprays (for squirrels and deer) that also deter rabbits but in my experience, a rabbit has fewer taste buds than a deer and slightly more than a squirrel.

Use hardware cloth wire cages on your young trees or the bark will disappear quickly during the winter. I drive a stake into the ground and make a circle of the wire, bury the bottom in the soil so they can’t get under it and hold the circle to the stake with simple plastic slip-ties.

Moles And Voles

These are the pests that give most people the most amount of trouble and the remedy is an organic product containing iron. Slugs love to eat it and consume it voraciously; causing them to die of iron poisoning. And no, coffee grounds don’t work and here’s why And for goodness sake, don’t waste good beer on slugs! Seriously. You can control them naturally.

I know it seems easy to look at something creeping across the garden and whack it. Or take a look at your newly planted perennial with the lacy leaves courtesy of some unknown insect and decide to wipe out the entire insect family – good, bad or just visiting, they’re toast.

Specific Insects

Ants can be controlled with several different natural techniques but do understand these are nature’s cleanup crews and they seldom do any serious plant damage.

Aphids are the most numerous and most common pest I see in my gardens but I have some very simple and effective controls I use (don’t have to buy a thing!)

Bumblees are a gentle giant of an insect and I happen to love them for the work they do. Here’s how to attract them to your garden.

Green lacewings are superb garden predators and are to be encouraged in your garden.

Japanese beetles.  Here’s a research note about 100 years of Japanese beetles and some of the history of this pest in North America. Geraniums “stun” Japanese beetles and they tend to avoid this plant. Here’s the research and now you don’t have to believe what the Net will tell you.

Ladybugs are one of the most beloved of insects and this small beetle is one of the most voracious of helpful insects when it comes to reducing problems such as aphids.

Mosquitoes – you’ll read about coffee grounds controlling mosquitoes. Here’s the real research on this.

Red lily beetles have decimated more lilies in more perennial gardens than I’d even want to know about. Here are three organic gardening methods to control them.

Scales come in hard and soft body forms and normally aren’t a problem. But sometimes…

Mites: Here’s how to tell the difference between the good mites and the bad mites destroying your plants.

Whitefly can be a problem in both the garden and house. Here’s an organic method I learned about back in my nursery days that knocked infestations back 90% in a few days.

Here’s how to attract and keep butterflies in your garden. And let me be clear here – there’s an upside and downside but if you plan properly, you’ll get a ton more upside.

Specific Organic Disease Control Suggestions

Botrytis is the most common plant problem. This is Mother Nature’s first line of breaking plants down into compost.  We just don’t want her to do it when we want the plants to keep growing or blooming. You’ll see it as black spots on leaves (particularly peonies) or gray fuzz on flowers or fruit.

Powdery mildew shows up as a white powder on leaves but then turns them black or twists the growing stems of roses.

But take a deep breath.

Let’s look at this in a more objective way. (yeah, I know it’s hard when your favorite plant just bit the dust). The first thing to understand is that the vast majority of insects are doing something very positive in your garden. It’s only a very few that are problems. And when you see something crawling over a newly eaten plant, you assume that’s the problem one. The odds are that insect is trying to find the guys who did the damage so it can eat them. Yeah, it’s a tough world out there if you’re a plant-destroying bug because the majority of other insects are trying to eat you.

Now here’s something you may not have known. Stressed plants tend to produce sugar in their leaves – that makes the leaves sweeter. Plant-eating insects love sugar (just like we do) so they attack those leaves first. Mother Nature has designed a system in which the plants indicate they’re sick and she sends in the insects to weaken them further so they can die quickly and be recycled (thus feeding the other plants with their composted leaves). Ever notice that there’s always one plant that’s getting eaten more than the others. There’s always one tomato that’s covered with aphids while the rest are unscathed? That’s because that plant is the weakest in the bunch and those signals have gone out – lunch!! The organic gardener understands this cycle and the first response is to improve the garden and soil health so that as many plants as possible will be healthy and live.

Plants Fight Back

I will bet that many of you don’t know that plants fight back against insects. As soon as many plants find themselves being eaten – they produce hormones in the leaves that make themselves “bitter” or less attractive/palatable to insects. It’s a natural protective response that plants have. When one plant in a group of similar plants is under attack and produces hormones, all the other similar plants in that area do the same thing (even though they’re not yet under attack!). There’s an airborne pheromone-sharing that moves from leaf to leaf and it two plants are close enough together, that pheromone is shared and the second plant produces the same hormones to make itself bitter even though it hasn’t been eaten yet.. (Kind of interesting to know that plants have some measure of communication skills)

Approximately 95% of all insects survive by eating the other 5%. Ladybug beetles are ferocious predators you’ll kill when you use generalized insecticides.

But I Want To Wipe Them Out

If you use a broad-spectrum killer then you wipe out the bad guys (or most of them), but you also wipe out the good guys trying to eat the bad guys.

And guess which population recovers faster? The good guys or the bad guys? If you said bad guys – you’d be right. There are more of them and they produce faster because they are the prey in the garden. They’re the food for many other insects so natural laws say they produce faster (the same reason there are more gazelles than lions). Think about it – when you spray a broad-spectrum insecticide the bad guys recover first and they’ll eat your garden with no other natural controls around to pick them off. You’ll have a population explosion of bad guys. How cool is that? Kill off all insects with a spray and you get more insect damage in the long run.

And the Solution Is

OK – gardeners who use organic methods believe several things. We want to identify the insects in our garden so we know we’re controlling the right insect (and not an innocent bystander). We control pests in our gardens. We don’t want plant leaves laced with insect damage. We don’t want vegetables wiped out by slugs and caterpillars. Contrary to the propaganda of chemical proponents, we don’t just let the insects have their way with our gardens.

But you can’t forget there’s a critical insect cycle going on in the organic garden. Here’s how to understand this natural insect cycle and encourage it.

But we use controls that have important characteristics.

Limited duration. Instead of lasting all season to wipe out everything in the garden, many organic controls only survive 24-36 hours in the garden. Sunlight and/or bacteria break them down very quickly. Limited exposure. Organic gardeners don’t spray indiscriminately. We spray to control specific pests on specific plants because we don’t want to wipe out the good guys with the bad guys. Mechanical controls. Organic gardens use mechanical controls such as horticultural glue traps, and hormone traps to attract and control pests. Patience. A misunderstood component of gardening, we know there will be damage and we develop a sense of what level of damage we can handle to keep our gardens healthy. We don’t panic at the first sign that slugs are in the garden. We start a trapping or control program but we understand that slugs feed birds and that attracting birds control many slugs. We don’t panic when we see aphids, we’ll wash them off plants with a strong jet of water so the beetles can eat them on the ground – instead of nuking the garden to kill aphids and beetles. We learn. Over time, we figure out what’s doing the damage and we decide how much or if we will control. We learn our insects and we figure out which are the good guys and which the bad.

Source

The Guide to Organic Gardening Pest and Problem Control