The Daily Adventures of Mercat

Because I'm on break, dammit. You can find it here.

Day 1: Ten Things You Wanted/Want to Be When You're Older

1. Indiana Jones
2. Indiana Jones
3. Indiana Jones
4. Indiana Jones
5. Indiana Jones
6. Indiana Jones
7. Indiana Jones
8. Indiana Jones
9. Indiana Jones
10. Indiana Jones


...Wait. I don't think that counts as a real list. (It should, though.)

1. When I was younger I used to say I would be a different thing every day of the week. This involved ballet, figure skating, possibly being a fireman (can't quite remember), and definitely "historical bridge repainter". Because covered bridges get defaced a lot =/

2. An architect... sort of. I've always designed strange places in my mind, like a Radio Flyer fort (my sense of scale was horrible when I was little), a tree fort, several more tree forts, etc. And now that I'm older it's lots of strange things like zombie defenses and hidden rooms and things like that. Not to mention I legitimately am interested in sustainable design but I also really, really want to design things like theme parks or movie sets. IMAGINEERING FUCK YEAH.

3. A detective/spy. Always liked that piecing clues together, don't think I'll ever give that up.

4. A Total Badass

No, seriously, there's a reason I like action movies.

5. A pirate. Part of this involves dressing up (textural layers, lots of jewelry, awesome boots and fantastical hats), part of this involves me loving the island life. And Jimmy Buffett songs.

6. A bartender. Or possibly, a restaurant owner. How sweet would it be to own a tiki bar restaurant?! The answer: very. Because it would be like a theme park but also food and drinks. And tiki mugs. And I could serve delicious Hawaiian foods. om nom imu pork

7. A musician. I already miss playing my trumpet and we already know I miss drum corps. Who knows where this will go, I like my uke, maybe I'll get better at piano again, maybe I'll find some new instruments. I'd take up accordion. Maybe I'll just get more involved in dance, if I enjoy this tap class next semester. (Not really "musician", but still musical performance, so idgaf.)

8. The Proud Owner of a Personal Library. No seriously, I love books. I'm going to have a fucking fabulous library some day. FABULOUS.

9. A cat owner :3

10. Indiana Jones. This is a perfectly legitimate response.

I was actually rather productive today, despite my alarm deciding not to go off on time. I started my grad school applications, which is a daunting task, particularly since I have no idea who I'm going to ask for recommendations. My boss I guess? I just don't have any particular comraderie with any of my professors. =/ By which I mean, I actively dislike a significant portion of my department, and the others I am apathetic towards. Anyway.

I also paid some bills, started the FE Exam application process, and tried to fix OneNote (still no luck--Windows' "help forms" are practically worthless considering in four days I've had one response that actually provided me with zero answers, only more confusion). Tomorrow I'm going to work on stuff for my portfolio, which is also intimidating since I'm not actually an art major, and I therefore don't have much to pull from. (Man, what if you were just an engineer with no arts background? What at all would you put in a portfolio?)

Dad and Laura went out to get a Christmas tree, which I didn't help put up at all, though I'm not terribly upset about that. At the moment I'm feeling more "busy" than "Christmasy", although turning on Christmas music won't get me riled up now about how it isn't even Thanksgiving.

I kind of do want to go out shopping, though. Every few weeks I feel the need for crass commercialization. I think it's kind of a "getting out of the house" thing combined with a "need to buy groceries" and "looking for visual stimulation/inspiration" type thing. The curse of being artistically inclined, sometimes, I swear.

Anyway, prompt time, before I go do something entertaining this evening.

My probably number one example for "any place I would like to visit one day" is the Angkor Wat in Cambodia. However, also on my list are visit Australia and all the National Parks, although "go everywhere" is pretty much the rest of my list, to be honest.

I'm thinking for next year, in order to keep up the "daily posting" but with something more substantial than a prompt, I might start doing Hardy Boys read-alongs. I haven't nearly read as many detective/spy/mystery novels since college/discovering the internet in high school/etc., and I kind of miss the genre as a whole. Plus, Hardy Boys books are really easy to page through. I think I can conquer one in about three hours total. Plus, it's been ages since I read the whole collection anyway, it'd be good to recall some of the plots.

I'm actually liking this daily challenge thing. Some days I'm a little busy to catch it in time, but for the most part, I'm actually making daily posts. :D SUCCESSFUL POSTING IS SUCCESSFUL.

Today's! My favorite subject to study... Man, I don't know. I love learning. I don't always love lectures, or homework, but I love the sense of accomplishment from understanding something, and the perspective you gain from it. I love love love reading. In case you couldn't tell from the fact that I probably spend a minimum of $50 every time I hit the bookstore... which is like once a month. And the fact that I spend sooooo much time online reading blogs. I LOVE INFORMATION. I think it's all one of the reasons I chose engineering--not just so I could get paid more for doing technical stuff (which I'm actually starting to think I might hate, as a job)-- but so I could have that background and understanding. Math and engineering and physics can be challenging, but once you understand it it's kind of amazing, the way you can see patterns. However, I'm not good at learning from proofs or methodologies; I sort of work from multiple examples, working my way through them to understand the subtle differences. This poses a problem wherein most engineering professors don't like to do tons upon tons of examples, I don't have the time to be in their office hours all day long, and the textbooks aren't much better (they usually just have one or two examples).

I like history, but I've found that challenging, too. I was fascinated by ancient history when I was really young-- Native American, Egyptian, Greek, Hawaiian (I remember checking lots of books on those topics out in gradeschool)--but I found learning American history out of a textbook difficult because our textbooks were written really poorly. This continued into high school where I already didn't have a great sense of world history, but I gleaned a little bit here and there except European History with the best history teacher I've ever had. He told events like stories, and would sort of reenact them with the help of his "time machine" (his closet), which often contained props like Napoleon's really cheap bendy plastic sword. He would often stop his storytelling at the MOST EXCITING PARTS, glance at his watch and tell us, "oh, looks like we're out of time!" There was one day, I believe, he was "out of time" with 20 or 30 minutes left in class. SO RIDICULOUS. But to this day I still remember the whole crazy story of Rasputin's death and the Russian royal family's deaths. And why everyone thought Rasputin really was a holy man (from either heaven or hell) by withstanding poison and being shot only to drown. (I think. He might have also survived drowning and then died of hypothermia or something...? Okay, wikipedia tells me he did die from drowning, but what I was forgetting was that he was beaten and secured before being thrown in the river, but then broke free of these bonds to then drown.) ANYWAY.

College history is a lot better, because we had a "World-War-II-In-One-Lecture-Using-Only-Battlefront-Maps-of-Europe" day, which gives just the kind of summary on the war that our crappy textbooks lacked that is kind of like a five-sentence-outline version of the politics of the time and let me start placing events within that timeline. Honestly, whoever wrote the textbooks we used in gradeschool and highschool needs to reevaluate their methods. The problem is, they told history like a bunch of individual stories, which makes it very difficult for someone with no overarching view to tie them together. There were basically no ways for me to string everything together into one timeline, at least, not well. BUT. Strangely, I got another good "summary" of globalization through Hawaiian and Pacific history, strangely enough--because it's essentially watching undiscovered lands mature into modern countries in less than two centuries. A century and a half, even. Not to mention, the Pacific was a significant part of WWII, which is a good education on the Japanese side of things rather than the standard Nazi/European focus.

I also like art, because it gives more relationships for history, and understanding the context of famous art pieces makes them a lot more meaningful. Although I now find Warhol annoying. I understand his intent but him, personally... he seemed kind of pretentious in his videos when we studied him. Like the forefather of Hipsters. (For srs.) Also, art history also makes you more prone to getting into discussions about the meaning and value of art (see: trivia night two weeks ago, haha!).

(For the record the argument was whether or not modern art is worthless. My position is that modern art is much more meaningful than other art because it is completely expressive at it is freed from the necessitation of replicating life exactly--that is, the invention of the camera and video, etc. allows for much more "creation" in art. The opposition was saying that this is pointless because you aren't simply looking at something, the art is in the emotion or the context, which isn't the art itself. SO. LET IT NOT BE SAID MY ART HISTORY MINOR WAS EVER COMPLETELY WORTHLESS.)

So! What have I covered so far? Math, physics, engineering, history, art... Music? Music is my-life-outside-of-design. I could do it as a career if it were the right thing. I miss marching and I don't know what I'm going to do without anymore marching band... ever. Although I am taking tap next semester, so, currently, dance is my closest-approximation-replacement. And tap is percussive, so it's closer than, say, ballet, which I can't watch anymore BECAUSE THE DANCERS DON'T MOVE NECESSARILY WITH THE MUSIC /rant

Okay. Am I missing anything else? Oh! English (and languages). I love grammar, and spelling, although that is something my gradeschool also taught poorly that I picked up in high school better. One, because I was learning a new language as well, so there was a focus on grammar, and two, because we learned to diagram, which is also a focus on grammar, and it's basically all like one big puzzle. Now if only I could do better with strange verb conjugations! OH, SUBJUNCTIVE/PRETERITE/IMPERFECT/ETC TENSES. (I also miss learning languages.)

Uh... earth sciences? I guess that's what's left? Also fascinating. I love nature. I find psychology fascinating. Astronomy is SO COOL. It probably helps that my parents are doctors, so my sister and I got a lot of weird biology talk (and a lot of big words) and a pretty good grasp on some areas of science when we were young. BUT, my gradeschool had a completely awful science teacher for 6th/7th/8th grades (shared teacher), so that wasn't great either. Although our books were at least better, more diagrams, more straightforward, so I could at least self-educate to some degree. Now, another topic for another day, our lack of good science communication is evident in science fairs in gradeschool and highschool, because my version of "original experiments" were never quite on par with what they wanted. I still don't understand what they wanted. Because it wasn't a demonstration of a principle, but my ideas were more often too strange to be taken seriously, it seemed.

My science fair projects throughout the years: whether people could actually tell the difference between cola brands, whether kids carried too much in their backpacks, whether cat saliva prevented germ growth (e-coli or streptococcus? or both? can't remember], whether edible fauna (a.k.a. pansies) contains vitamin C, and whether fake or real wine corks do a better job of preventing germ spoiling of wine. I'm missing seventh grade's project... I don't recall at all, really. At any rate, these projects were all off the wall because everything else I had come up with would have "been done before" (meaning my teacher didn't really want me to do that specific project, although they never really gave much advice as to what exactly I could do to improve it) so my methods were always slightly bizarre, and my data was never quite clean enough, and other than the science geniuses who managed to do amazing things (these are the people who make it to international science fairs, I mean) A LOT OF PEOPLE BULLSHITTED THEIR DATA. And got better grades because of it, because their presentations were easier when they didn't have to answer difficult questions about their data's subtleties. So basically despite the fact that "the data you get doesn't have an effect on your final grade", meaning, let science do it's job and don't force a proof of your hypothesis, I generally got fucked over by being honest. Yes, I'm still bitter about this. WHY? Because ethics are important to me. Because human treachery starts early. Because I get punished for being honest. Because my generation clearly doesn't have a problem with cheating and lying to get themselves out of a challenge. FUCK IT ALL I'M SO GODDAMN BITTER ABOUT THIS SHIT.

Sorry to give this a turn for the sad for a moment, but I really don't tend to trust a lot of people my age, and this shit is why. (On the other side, I trust them more on the technical side than I trust myself because, unless I feel I can do something perfectly, I feel very unsure of myself and second-guess myself to no end.) Same kind of shit even happened on retreats! One of my many disillusionments with faith--all the people who act like their religiosity made them so much better than everyone else, when they couldn't even set aside their phones and cd players and everything else for our week of poverty. (To the point that there were prank calls and a string of tampons and pads let down from our room to the guys' quarters. Complete bullshit for a whole week.)

ANYWAY I LOVE LEARNING BUT DON'T TRUST PEOPLE MY AGE. They are not above buying their way out of things. =/

I kind of want to do an anonymous study of gradeschoolers and see how many bullshit their data now. Ugh.

(This is why I've started to think I don't really want kids--I look at adorable babies and toddlers and think, "some day you are going to be an asshole.")

I may or may not be a horrible person.

BUT I LOVE LEARNING :D

Oh, I guess, in terms of "favorite subject", specifically, I guess I could say marching. Because drum corps is my life, and I don't know what I'm going to do without being able to do it any more. (Teaching is definitely not the same and I don't necessarily have the desire to be a music teacher. Although I could do visual, but it's still not the same as competitive marching.)

Hey, so you know Jason Segel's Muppets movie he's been working on? (astrid087, you're going to want to see this) Jack Black, Paul Rudd, and Lady Gaga may be involved. I WILL BE THERE IN THREE SECONDS PLEASETHANKYOU

Science cheerleaders!

A good comic with a certain movie poster in the background.

Dick van Dyke saved by porpoises, although I have no idea of the date of said incident and I find that... strange.

New Winnie the Pooh movie next year! (Nothing says classic Winnie the Pooh like pop music.) Well I know what I'm doing next summer. Also, Craig Ferguson and John Cleese are in it! OHMYGOD.


Check out this crazy owl:



I find this comic both hilarious and depressing. And fascinating.



OH HEY INDY EXHIBITION. Here's an article on the exhibition. Official website. Post with the tour poster. Unsurprisingly, it's just a conceptual design copy of the classic Temple of Doom poster, however, I am really loving the detail of the walls-covered-in-hieroglyphics. (It reminds me of that damn Egyptian cat mystery puzzle I still haven't finished after... uh... ten years.) (can you tell I'm sick of ripoffs of the ToD poster? I'd honestly love to see the Indy franchise get some other colors besides BROWN TONES. Same problem as steampunk, goddamn. THE JUNGLE EXISTS YOU KNOW. IT'S VERY GREEN. I DO BELIEVE INDY HAS VISITED JUNGLES IN AT LEAST THREE OF THE MOVIES AND IN LC THERE'S STILL A CHASE THROUGH THE GERMAN FOREST-SIDE. [IDK, WHAT IS THE "COUNTRYSIDE" EQUIVALENT OF "FOREST"?]) CAPSRAGE IN CASE YOU COULDN'T TELL I'M A LITTLE BIT OBSESSED. (Also-also, the proportions on that poster are a little...off... those legs/hips look cartoonishly unrealistic. Or the pose does. Or something.)


ANYWAY who wants to road trip to Montreal?!



Prompts time! Initials of my crushes: don't really have any at the moment. But that is also a completely different discussion.

I do not wear glasses. But when my eyes are old enough to need them, I will rock some fashionable ones, that's for sure. Or maybe get LASIK, since I've heard they don't have to cut your cornea anymore. But, sadly, I will probably never be able to wear contacts. My eyes are just too sensitive for me to be putting things in them. I really wanted to get some all-black or all-white or cat/snake-eye contacts for my halloween costume this year, but instead I ended up drawing pupils on my eyelids, which worked okay, but I'm not totally satisfied with how my makeup ended up. It bled A LOT.

Scientists used high-speed video to determine how cats actually drink. I had always been taught (read?) that cats curled their tongues under, which someone had discovered way-back-when with a hi-speed camera. So apparently that was "not quite", though. Rather than curl their tongues under to scoop, they curl them under to "pull" a column of fluid towards their own mouth, which they then catch and swallow.

Science is fascinating!

(The title has nothing to do with anything except that I just took a practice GRE and "gremlins" was the first word to pop into my head starting with "gre-".)

Forgive me for just nearly missing the daily-post--deadline by a few minutes, because I just finished a GRE practice test. How sad is it that engineering has made me excited to take a standardized test?! I work well within boundaries and certain expectations, or no boundaries at all, apparently. I don't know how well I am cut out for slightly-open-ended design work. Which is not good, because that is pretty much anything engineering is. I mean, there are the laws of physics, and the laws of the land, but the problem is that the former is very mathematically complicated and the latter is just very convoluted and you only come to know it really through exposure and experience. Neither of which I really have. And not to mention, mayhaps my brain just doesn't work that way, because I never seem to know where to find the equations/set-up I need for engineering projects. Which makes working in groups good for me because then the other people are good at starting the project, and I'm good at checking things and thinking (maybe a little too far) outside the box.

So... menial desk job or very creative in-charge job for me, I guess. Strange. ANYWAY. Onto the prompt.

My favorite meme of the moment... I don't think I currently have one. Being gone all summer I kind of missed Double Rainbow and Hide Ya Kids and I don't really... "get".... either. Although I think I saw Antoine Dodson a while back but never saw the Bed Intruder Song? I don't know.

Does Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear count as a meme? Because it was probably more that than real political activism (or anything) and I kind of liked that (despite people being bitchy for it). However, it's not quite as wild as Anonymous' protests, so idk.

I guess I don't have a favorite meme right now, so I hope something comes along soon. In the meantime, I'm always a sucker for EFG and since the 5th of November was just a few days ago, let's say that. Even though it was nothing to do with anything, legitimately.

MOVING ON. I was thinking about password access, which led me to think about where you keep that kind of information so that it's safe with you but easily found by others in the case that you were to die. Which led me to think about wills, and the fact that while my mom has every once in a while talked about what she wants (donated organs iirc) and my dad has mentioned his wants (a big party), they don't really know my beliefs in terms of my... lack of faiths... (BUT NOT LACK OF MORALS... byuh) ANYWAY. I don't need any kind of fancy burial, I'll be dead. I've kind of always been about pragmatism, and even when I was really young (early gradeschool) I remember considering the pros and cons of cremation. So this is my current set of considerations: (And let's not call me morbid here, because I honestly approach a lot of what most people would consider "morbid" as just purely interesting. Death is the natural extension of life. Morbid for me is a whole other level. Perhaps I disdain that word... I'm more of a naturalist than a goth? And science is nature, so. )

1. If there's any hint of foul play just preserve as much as possible. Not that I expect this to happen but being slightly paranoid from reading too many detective novels and watching too many crime shows, if there was any hint of foul play I hope there's a really good twist! Which probably means exhuming the body at least once. (...Maaaaaaybe that's morbid. BUT SO ARE CRIME SHOWS)

2. If not, donate any usable body parts to organ donor programs and/or to science. Basically get as much practical use out of it as possible.

3. Bury any remains in a manner as natural as possible because it seems pretty pointless to be dumping lockboxes filled with chemicals into the ground just to sit there and be preserved for... ever.

3b. Plus this ensures that I will never be Undead. (Zombie, vampire, etc.)

4. Possibly do something awesome with the remains such as:
a) use the bones for something awesome such as art, Yorrick's skull in a production of Hamlet, a modern reliquary, et cetera,
b) include them in a treasure hunt/puzzle or as a geocache (WITH ONLY AWESOME TREASURE INSIDE. If I am to be a buried treasure, I fully expect it to be a goddamn bitchin' one.)
c)...et cetera. Basically I think skeletons and eyes are pretty cool things from a design aspect and have many interesting and beautiful (if slightly morbid) options. (BUT I'M OKAY WITH THE SLIGHT MORBIDITY HERE. AT THIS POINT THE MORBIDITY BECOMES MORE WUNDERKAMMER-CURIOUS THAN NATURALIST-CURIOUS BUT IT'S STILL AWESOME.)

5. A really cool headstone. Some classic-and-slightly-creepy design, with a totally clever and awesome epitaph. Like the headstones at the Haunted Mansion, with their Victorian-Gothic-slightly-disquieting style and the totally awesome epitaphs (at least out front--I've never studied the epitaphs inside the ride).

OKAY TOTALLY DONE WITH MY MORBID MOMENT NOW, for those of you who may not like that sort of thing... er... sorry for the lack of warning... =/

At any rate. I have a rant but I don't really want to rant about it right now. Let's just say, between people going back on my Halloween party invite, and being whiny about the party, and my friend failing to do the one thing I asked him to do for the senior show (i.e. leave an appropriate mid-movement moment for the dead-bug), which I told him a month ahead of time when we were planning it as a group, but do people just blow me off when I make comments a few months in advance? BECAUSE I HAVE ACTUALLY THOUGHT THESE THINGS THROUGH, and I mean them. If I change my thoughts, I WILL ALSO BRING THAT TO YOUR ATTENTION.

Do I just... scream "IGNORE ME" or something? (Heh.)

Yeah. Anyway.




...Also I went to trivia tonight for the first time in a good while and I wore by awesome retro-rainbow Star Wars shirt that I bought from Target's boy section last year. The usual awesome trivia guy wasn't there, and the girl taking his place was not as fun. Plus, a lot of the questions were wrong tonight. "A one-note instrument made popular at the world soccer games this summer"? Vuvuzela, except that like all other objects with a natural frequency, if you halve, double, or otherwise multiply that frequency you will get other notes. Octaves, for simplicity, or perhaps... partials... if the instrument is more complicated. Say, like a trumpet. Speaking of trumpets, "a cornet most resembles this musical instrument". Maybe a cornet? It's actually a legit instrument.

And then Pat, being his normal uppity Classics-major self, called out the trivia girl on the question "what famous temple site on the Acropolis?" by screaming "Which temple do you want?! There are at least nine different ones!"

However I also learned that the F22 Raptor can go supersonic without having to use its afterburners which is called "supercruising". Also, the evil wizard on Smurfs is Gargamel and the cat is Azrale. (NO IDEA if I spelled those right, also don't care much.) And the compact disk was invented in 1965 (we guessed floppy disk).

Also-also I cleaned my room today. Go me!

HA, day two of the prompts and I already missed it. Fair enough, though, I worked my ass off on homework and studying for a test. Anyway, yesterday's and today's prompts:

I have my ears pierced twice on each side, but that's it. I don't even wear earrings much now that I don't wear uniforms every day. I don't have any tattoos, and I'm rather up in the air about it. I think tattoos can be very beautiful, and I know exactly what I'd get first if I sat down to get one (sabers). However, I know there are other things in my life I value as much and I'd want to plan out the whole tattoo a lot more, plus I hear they're rather addictive, and on both fronts I don't really want to be covered in tattoos. Furthermore, I am super sensitive to pain sometimes and I don't think I'd last long during the sitting. Also, if I end up working for Disney, they would all have to be hidden away and the only place I can think of is my back. Which is apparently a more painful place, too. Anyway. So that's my stance on tatoos. (I don't mind designing them for other people, though.) (Also-also, I think smaller gauges look really nice if you wear some of those gorgeous gauges. But the bigger ones usually gross me out a little...)

My favorite television program... hmm. I was a big fan of Pushing Daisies while it was on. Currently I mostly watch Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Venture Brothers, and Chuck. I used to watch a TON of Diagnosis Murder back in the day, and I'll pretty much watch any crime drama (although I haven't been able to get into the new Hawaii Five-0). I think I'm more of a movie person overall. (Also, I just got some Doctor Who dvds from astrid087 and dancecat89 just informed me that the Jackie Chan Adventures are on Netflix. So, there's that...)


Okay, I'm sick of this copycat writing. Bleh. And I feel like FDR was a poor choice? Because TR is more of a cultural meme.

...However, I will watch this, probably. :D

Happy belated Halloween, everyone! You'd think with it being my favorite holiday and everything, that I would have a fantastic holiday post ready, but alas, I do not. I am too overwhelmed with school right now, and grad applications, and the fact that one of my friends has decided to be a drama queen and start stirring the shit. So. I will get some pics up of my costume eventually, but possibly not until I get some pro photos taken for my portfolio.

Oooof course I can't seem to celebrate a big Halloween without things going awry, so. I don't know, I'm so tired of all this shit, I need something different to come my way. Bleh.

In defense of free material boosting your sales, an interesting article on Monty Python's sales after posting videos on youtube. SALES INCREASED 23,000 PERCENT. TWENTY-THREE THOUSAND. (This guy had his comic posted to 4chan and it got him some good sales, too.)

Bomb squad diffuses box full of kittens. BEST BOMB EVER.

Anyway. Not doing NaNoWriMo, because, I think, I am not cut out to be a writer. I can write with other people, but I think I'm more of a 3d-design person. I try to write stories but they come out rather derivative. HOWEVER, I am going to do this 30 day challenge instead:

My middle name is Margaret. It is my mom's middle name and her mother's oldest sister, who died when she was only 20ish. I don't use it very much, because I rather like Diane. So, I don't really love or hate it. I considered taking Ursula as my confirmation name in 8th grade though so that my initials would be D.U.M.B. (Yet another example of why I was a strange kid.)

Also... I'm kind of ready for Christmas. Kind of. It got freezing this week, and I determined that I am of the opinion that the months of November and October should be switched. Something about Thanksgiving just seems like it should come before Halloween--it's about harvesting and all that, and the colors are so much warmer than Halloween; so it's odd that it comes first, almost.

THIS IS A LARGE POST, I AM WARNING YOU.

HOLY SHIT I SUCK AT POSTING. This thing has been sitting on my desktop for a month and a half, christ, shame on me. Anyway. I'm trying to make better habits for myself... Some are getting better (I keep a real schedule on my ipod! I'm under 100 firefox tabs consistently!) and some not (I don't check my calendar, I forget things, I haven't organized many piles of files on my new computer... from a year ago...)

Shia says Indy V will be crazy. idk what to think. I'm excited but hesitant at the same time? Eeengh. Like I said after Indy IV, I mean, at least they can't do that one anymore. (Also, I told you so. Also-also, I am kind of sick of hearing about your stereotypical MacGuffins: the spear of Longinus, Noah's Ark, all that stuff.) GO TO HAWAII, PLEEEEASE

But, uuuuhhh, if Spielberg pitched a script, I'm guessing this is happening. So... yay?

...I'm depressed that that last sentence has a question mark attached to it. :(

HOLY SHIT YOU KNOW WHAT'S DEPRESSING?! WHY ON EARTH IS THIS A MOVIE. WHO ON EARTH THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA. SHANE VAN DYKE WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU ATTACHED TO THIS, YOU WERE AWESOME ON DIAGNOSIS MURDER AND NOW YOU ARE VERY NOT-AWESOME. AUGH.





Um...yes.

Also--ADORABLE KITTANZ:




While we're doing videos, this time-lapse-experiment-turned-art-video is absolutely fantastic:

ANTS in my scanner > a five years time-lapse! from françois vautier on Vimeo.

I hope this is just some lawyers having fun, and were not actually hired over legitimate offense.

I didn't even know they had finished the script for this, shit. Three months away was apparently a COMPLETE NEWS ISOLATION, much moreso than usual. (Nobody famous died.)

This movie looks awesome! That hat looks awful. (Short crown + extra-wide brim = grossnasty.)

Ghostbusters/AC/DC mashup:




Lady Gaga kidnaps Comissioner Gordon. Guys, I was about to say "I want to live in that world", and then, you know, I remembered that Lady Gaga is a real person and kicks major ass.

A good essay on Iron Man 2, which I am still excited about. The awesome thing about disappearing from the world for three months to memorize a metric assload of numbers until you've lost 15 pounds is that, when you get back, all the movies you just watched in theatres (and loved) are about to come out on dvd. Fuck. Yeah.

Some awesome shots from the filming of Star Wars.

So, "mad science", you say?!



That is the kind of awesome shit I'd like to do with my life. (I must say, though, that the closest I've ever come was destroying an antique rusted oven with a sledgehammer. Also fun, except for the part where the paint chips were popping off the bent metal everywhere...)

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT HOLY CRAPCAKES. NIGHTMARES. NIGHTMARES BEYOND BELIEF.

Jesus, it's about time! They better make these. Not that I'm planning to buy any, but, yeah...

Oh, James Cameron. I thought I couldn't hate Avatar any more, but I was wrong. You think you're God's gift to cinematography when really it sounds like you're just a rich bully. I kind of want to go see Pirahna 3D, even if I hate it, just to fucking spite you. Goddamn.

BUT THE GOOD NEWS? Rick Moranis may come out of retirement for Ghostbusters 3. HELL. FUCKING. YES. As long as this shit is better than the game (a bit repetitive story-wise, in relation to the movies). Also, I thought we were already clear that Oscar is Venkman's? There's some banter toward the beginning of the second one that that is what I took away from it.

OH HEY THERE BLACKBEARD. Why the fuck don't you have cannon fuses in your beard?! Jesus, the man should look MUCH more epic than that. For god's sake his body circled his ship seven times before sinking after he was beheaded! (Fuck yeah pirate lore.)

Chewie: not nearly as adorable as Winnie. But still hilariously adorable.

Here! Have a picture of Viggo the Carpathian.

Okay, now, look. I am all about crazy costumes but I don't even know what's going on here.



So adorable.

If the world is making you feel weary (although I don't see how that's possible after all those adorable kitties), I prescribe this.

Next video: An apparently sanctioned-by-Lucas video about the dumping of Jabba's cargo. With a creepy animation of Han Solo. (BUT I SAW THAT RAIDERS REFERENCE. I SAW IT.)

...Definitely thought it was going to be something like River Tam in the box though, the shape was eerily similar.

Heheheh kitty parkour.

HOLY SHITBALLS this woman has completely missed the point of feminism. Oh my god this article is rage-inducing. OH. MY. GOD.

Good news, videogamers! Playing video games enhances decision-making skills. That is, it enhances your ability to make choices faster.


Oh! An antibiotic-resistant superbug. Awesome. This may be our downfall. However, if you're worried about the apocalypse, I just thought you'd like to know that science seems sometimes straight-up fictional. I know a lot of zombie movies/novels/etc. lately have been leaning on diseases like ebola, mad cow disease, or other things to explain the basis for the disease. So here's a crazy fact: mad cow disease causes cattle's eyes to glow. WTF.

Rechargeable cars are less hurtful to the environment than gas, even if charged using "dirty fuel". And it's crazy, if it could charge using renewable sources--solar, wind, etc.--it's FORTY PERCENT cleaner than a gas-using car. Holy shit. Why is the world so resistant to changing how we use our resources? :(

(Answer: laziness, greed, but it still pisses me the fuck off.)

I read an article the other day about how an old solar panel from the White House was rediscovered, and some students, led by Bill McKibben, took it to the White House to see if they would take it back as a symbol of good faith and an attempt to move conservation forward in the eye of current US politics. Some of the statistics were incredibly impressive--like the fact that seed sales increased by 30% the year Michelle Obama was promoting her White House garden. But the kids were taken into a "war room" and basically told no. The whole thing made me so sad, particularly because I remember McKibben speaking to my freshman class on his book we all read, and because we were stuck in a hot, sweaty gym with a rather heavy book (as in, the material, not the book itself), he kind of got ignored by most people. And trying to sort out the fifty interested students in a room of 1000 or however many it was is not really a simple task. Anyway. The whole thing just makes me depressed for the state of our politics. I don't understand why people want to spend so much money on stuff and on keeping things the way they are instead of helping people who need help, helping the WORLD that needs help. I don't know. Maybe that's my bias of too many years of marianist catholic education speaking. I'm too hopeful, I suppose.


Cats drawn as Marvel characters! Adorable. And hilarious. Particularly Spidey and the Sandman.

OKgo's new video to encourage the adoption of shelter pets. Amazing as usual.

Surprise! Facebook is fucking with you again. And this is why I keep all my info private except to people I know.

NEWSIES IS GOING TO BROADWAY, hilariousyesfantasticyesssss.

If superheros were hipsters. I particularly like PBRman. Also I feel like Spiderman isn't that far from Tobey McGuire Spiderman because DEAR LORD DO I HATE HIM. (Also, LOL at Aquaman--Northwesterners are a silly people. I learned that this summer.)

Mysterious civilization hidden in the Amazon--I think this is the same thing (SPOILER ALERT!) Lost City of Z talks about. BUT NOBODY KNOWS. It's fascinating.

Carnivorous plants dwndling across US; I wonder if this might have anything to do with all the bugkiller sprays we use? (No idea, just a thought.)

Shark attack survivors team up to save sharks.

ATHLETE'S FOOT MEDICATION COULD CURE WHITE NOSE SYNDROME! Finally, a hint of good news on that front.

Bug people are crazy. So are geologists.

Some foreign memes for you. I particularly like Makmende, for some reason. I suppose it's like Chuck Norris, but cooler, because Chuck Norris has kind of turned out to be a douche. (Clint Eastwood = cooler than Chuck Norris.)

A really good article about building the mosque. It sums up my feelings on the subject pretty well.

Where can you find Ned and Chuck, Henry Jones (Sr.), and (old school!) Zaphod Beeblebrox? Cons, of course. (Those PD outfits are fantastic, though, seriously.)

Interesting bit of Raiders trivia.

Oh my god, remember the ad for Iron Man 2 where Pepper smooches Tony's helmet, and it wasn't in the movie, and everybody got upset? I present to you--THE ALTERNATE OPENING:



(Fan. fucking. tastic. Why did they not do this one, now?)

And another fantastic short.


Star Wars yoga, absolutely hilarious. And rather clever.

Obscure Taco Bell trivia! A.k.a. the random shit I will bring up in conversation that may eventually lead to me singing the Gordita Anthem. This, in fact, happened this week despite me finding the article months ago, although it did not lead to Gordita-anthemizing, which is a shame.

Here is a fantastic interview with Patrick Stewart, and within it is a fantastically creepy tidbit of their interpretation of Macbeth, ( which I am cutting for the rare case of spoilers )

Is that not fantastically Halloween-y in the best manner? It absolutely is.

First of all, this article is rather old. Second, I doubt it is more than tongue-in-cheek coincidence, and three, Hex of the Hydra sounds godawful. Like the books series.

OH MY GOD. So I was watching the new Sherlock Holmes (not for the first time), but I also decided to watch the bonus material. Apparently they decided Jude Law was more of the ladies' man than RDJ, so they took to calling him Hotson on set.

omg. Hotson.

I can't even. It's hilarious. Anythus.


Much like Rule 34 of the internets, I surmise there must be a similar rule about blogs and personal interests. If you have thought of it, someone, somewhere, has already posted about it online. There is a cool blog called Strange Maps that posts, well, non-generic maps. This particular post has some interesting material on worldviews. It's rather fascinating, but my main point of this whole thing is that the Bulgarians think Poles are all sexy fembots.

I. Don't. Even. Know.






What I do know is that I need to post things more often because I have AT LEAST this many more links piled up in my Google Reader waiting for me to take action. And FIVE MORE old posts on my desktop from before I left this summer! Luckily those posts actually have some real content, like some book reviews.

So, real stuff now, we went to the Yellow Springs Street Festival today. I got an awesome monster shirt, a necklace for my medusa costume, and a beaverfelt antique collapsible tophat! The sad part is I got home and realized the tophat is too small :( BUT I refuse to get rid of it for the time being. I also walked RIGHT PAST Dave Chappelle without even noticing at first, who was saying that the street fair was "like Yellow Springs normally, but gayer". Which... I don't know what that means? Because it's almost the opposite. All the out-of-town people come to visit for the day, so the percentage of hippies is decreased by at least some...

Also my sister finally found the CORRECT version of the Taco Bell Gordita Anthem (thank you, 1998) and I downloaded it for the sake of posterity. POSTERITY I TELL YOU.



(begins at 1:40ish if it doesn't play correctly.)

[EDIT] If I had been paying attention or had any creative/organizational method of linkspamming (Captain Obvious Hint: I don't) I would have posted the Ghostbusters/Rick Moranis thing followed by the carnivorous plants thing followed by the Newsies thing. Points to you if you know how those three are related.

Alas, I did not, and I also need to post this in the case I missed posting it before:



Also-also, tomorrow is 42 DAY as in, the date is binary for 42 (101010), and it happens only once every hundred years, and tomorrow we are getting together to watch the Hitchhiker's Guide movie, probably have a Vogon poetry reading, and get our brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick. Coincidentally that is the name of my ipod and there will be no citruses anywhere near my electronics, thankyouverymuch. (I've taken to naming my electronic devices after science fiction things, or other related items; this new lappy is HELPeR486.)

Also-also-also, I am very afraid for this Pan-galactic Gargleblaster recipe, which is, essentially, take Everclear, cut with liquors:

...er, scratch that. I may be looking at the wrong recipe. Anyway, there's a lot of alcohol, plus a little bit of mixers, add olive, et voila.

If I weren't so convinced I'll be smashed rather quickly, I'd throw in a gin & tonic to boot. Maybe I'll pour one out for my gpa who seemed delighted about the affair but clearly can't make it (and probably shouldn't be consuming high levels of alcohols).

OH MY GOD, I am such an open source science nerd. I mean, science is so expensive and in some instances there is just so much data to be processed (or unavailable due to number of researchers) that stuff like SETI and folding@home and that Mars or moon game or whatever it was that NASA came out with that I totally forget right now just makes me happy inside. Anyway. Jellywatch, a "social networking" open source method for collecting jellyfish data. (Well, any "unusual marine life".)

ISN'T THAT FUCKING AWESOME, you bet your damn ass it is.

Oh god, Viacom, wtf. I don't even know.

Updated Milgram's torture experiment used on French television. Just actually learned about this in Psych, it kinda makes me feel justified in not trusting people. Kind of. Anyway, the data is disturbing as shit, not to mention the effect to which peer pressure plays an effect. I mean, we already know (sadly, this is also in the news) that peer pressure drives people to horrible options like drugs and suicide and all sorts of other bad decisions (fashion standards vary reader by reader), but the fact that people are willing to torture other people to the possible point of death is just crazy. You know you'd like to think you'd be different but how do you know? The best I can offer is that I'd be more particular about the questions I'd ask and the objectives of the testing, but I have the advantage of a pretty decent higher science education and I think way too much so with studies I'm always trying to figure out what they're after. One because I'm curious and two so I can more accurately answer the questions in the method I think is accurate. Anyway. Roles can be intimidating (official, peers, et cetera) and this test, if nothing else, is sure as hell proof. Questioning authority can be a good thing.

I'm sorry, but all those pictures of "trees" and "dust particles" and things on Mars creep me the fuck out because they look like horrible skin diseases. Can't you just imagine parasites under that skin with some necrotic tissue (the gray areas)? Yeah... fukken GROSS.

Hard to believe at one point I wanted to be a veterinarian, jesus christ.

Well, many days late to Ada Lovelace Day, but here is a lovely article about Cindy Cohn, a woman involved with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I admire people who can argue technical knowledge to people with nontechnical education, mostly because my engineering professors are not those people. And let's face it, I have more of an artistic mind than an analytical one (though I'm thankful I can handle the analysis at all, if I were graduating as a straight-up architect right now I'd be SO FUCKED in the job market).

Oh god, Ottowa, really? It's time like these I'm thankful for the bill of rights which encouraged such lovely things as freedom of the press and the like. Because, you know, photography is dangerous.

This is completely fascinating but it makes me wonder if some people have greater sensitivity to mid-scale pitches than others. When I listen to songs (pop, musicals, doesn't matter, anything really) I could swear I hear semi-glisses and mid-tones that other people don't bother singing when they're humming a tune or doing karaoke or something. And I'm talking about people who were in the musicals or are in band. (Although not always, sometimes it's just a matter of people simplifying sheet music too much so that it follows the composition and not the recording most people are familiar with, ohmygod I am looking at you crazy lady that wanted us to sing our graduation tune LITERALLY. So oversimplified, fuuuccckkkk)

Internet censorship harms schools! Is it really any surprise that any type of censorship is harmful anymore? People NEED to be educated (and if the situation necessitates it, punished for willfully breaking rules). That is the only way that people will grow. Well, experientially, not biologically, obviously.

Isn't this the plot for that Julia Roberts movie? Honestly I think this just shows the creativity of the writers (in their willingness to present it, I mean, not necessarily "originality", as it clearly is an existant problem) as well as kind of not ceasing to prove that we need more basic technology education. Most of what I know I've picked up from the internet and I read a shit-ton more (read: spend more time on the internet) than most people I know. And I am apparently "very good with computers". (Which actually means I know how to Google For Diagnoses. [Diagnosises?]) Which is bullshit, I really don't know much about their operation. Anyway. My point is, if you have sensitive information, don't trust technology. At this point criminals should realize that "older" technology is probably almost safer at this point because some of the technology or applied knowledge to trace certain things like that is rather obscure in most people's minds these days or is just completely without people's realm of experience. Crazy, huh? (And before you wonder why I think of things like this, it's definitely because I read too many detective novels as a kid. You have to think like a thief to catch a thief.)

Oh man, number seven makes me laugh. I remember reading about that (though the social implications were probably beyond my understanding at that point) and at the moment it makes me glad that people were willing to write in and tell the other folks they're full of crap (ignoring the fact that it was a prank, of course).

Did I mention that I bought awesome spectator shoes yesterday? Because I totally did.

We also went on a bike ride, and the extreme wind (due to onsetting rain) fantastically fucked up my knee again. It seems to be healing faster, though, so... here's to hoping? I'd like to actually ride all of TOSRV this year and fuck youuuu Laura for wanting to sag part of it because I DON'T WANT TO SAG AT ALL.


TESLA DRUNK HISTORY, fuck yes. Looking at Drunk History's youtube channel it appears that there are other videos with Zooey Deschanel and such that were supposed to show up on HBO in February? And I haven't heard anything about them since which makes me sad. =(

Also, totally loling over Crispin Glover as Edison. Hahaha, fucking slick-ass bastard.

Speaking of slick bastards, check out Copenhagen over here. Sweet, no? Hell yeah.

This video is hypnotic and creepy at the same time. I'll just leave that there.

So I've been sort of cleaning up/sorting old files and I came across old post material, whereupon I hypothesized that Robert Frost was secretly a Vogon. And more recently I put forth that Bruce Wayne is secretly Billy Joel.

And when I think about it, I go back to all the freakish doubles I know; Johnny, Jacob, Jingleheimerschmidt just kidding, my old physics prof that was Neil Sedaka's good twin, ET CETERA.

This is some crazy shit!

Apparently I am highly skilled at recognizing facial similarities but fuck all at remembering people's names, which, I believe, is because I know so many people and not only do I know them but I associate with them on a regular basis.

Anyforth.


I tried to find that old Robert Frost entry and HOLY SHIT, I think it is time to lock some of my old entries! The writing is rather appalling and AS OF TODAY (I have not gone to bed I still consider it the thirtieth, mind you!) I have written five full years' worth of livejournal entries.

Happy fifth LJ birthday, me! :D







I hinted so hard to my mom once about that last cake. I never got it. lol



At least I can say this, I am very in tune with my writing voice, now. =) Now to just find my sketching style... =/



Also I think it is time to clean out my old tags, for fuck's sake... and retag old entries.