The Daily Adventures of Mercat

Also my dad's cousin opened up her luggage and found a gecko/anole/something inside. So now we're going to buy crickets to feed it.

Quick post for the prompt before midnight (I'm actually writing essays right now):

I have two boy cats, Spats (black with white belly and toes and whiskers) and Jack (a light orange). Previously we had Tippy (black and white with a white tail tip) and Topaz/Fuzzy (brown longhair). (All our cats were shelter cats.) I had a betta named Captain Nemo freshman year, until I left for drum corps and my mom killed him. (This may have been partly my fault as I was kind of slacking on changing his water, and bettas make A LOT of bad-smelling ammonia-filled fecal matter. [Is urine fecal matter? idk.]) I am a cat person at heart so I definitely will have cats in the future. (Currently I give Tinkerbell, the cat that lives behind the engineering building, all my kitty-pets that I don't get to give Jack and Spats on a daily basis.) I like animals in general and used to want a chameleon, so I definitely forsee myself having a variety of pets. Maybe ferrets? A parrot? A goldfish, Nessie. Lots of adorable animals.

Alot is cute. Actually, a lot of today's post is going to be cute.

An adorable painting otter!



Indiana Bones and the Temple of Groom! Adorable.

WW3 reimagined propaganda posters. Love them.

DUDE SOME GUY BUILT A JARVIS. AND HE'S OPEN-SOURCING IT. I'MMA GONNA GIT ME ONE BRB

Oh-ho, Six Hugh Jackman period films that can be watched as Wolverine prequels. YES. Except don't go get that version of Oklahoma, it's horrible. Aunt Eller is the only one who doesn't have a horrible American accent. It's painful.

So this is kind of crazy. It's kind of awesome, because it's like HEY LOOK ALIENS TAUGHT US EVERYTHING WAIT I TOTALLY GOT YOU DIDN'T I? It's called a coincidence. A CRAZY coincidence, and an awesome one.

Well, this is... interesting... (astrid087 that one's for you... sort of.)

Beard trustworthiness scale, although they're forgetting a lot of important ones, like the fact that Charlie Chaplin isn't evil and Groucho has a rather famous 'stache, too.

7500 online shoppers unwittingly sold their souls! AWESOME. :D

Everybody's got a baby kangaroo! Right?



Well, you know... I want one now... :3


Looking at this image and watching Ghostbusters at the same time is creepy. If you imagine that cloud is an ever-growing cloud of Gozerian power and escaped ghosties, it's a little unsettling. Then again, as awesome as Ghostbusters is, since I've been playing the game it's become legitimately creepy. D: In a good way, though, it just makes the movie even more awesome. And I really hope they do make a third one now and that it's superb. Also, I never really noticed how amazing the soundtrack is before playing the game.

Speaking of soundtracks, Rocky & Bullwinkle has a great soundtrack but as a story suffers from being a product of the late 90's. Or early 00's. Anyway, it's more than a little bad, not to mention the animation of the cartoon... painful. Egh. However, it kind of serves to remind me how awesome the George of the Jungle movie is, that one is truly great.

The internet/home computer, as imagined in 1969:



Awesomesauce.

Can you imagine how you would feel if you were that officer? Shit.

Oh shit it's the 15th anniversary of the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland! Sometimes it's so completely surreal that this ride is so young. Sadly, I don't think they'll bring out any really awesome new souvenirs until next year (which will be the 30th anniversary of Raiders).

Actually, just yesterday my mom and I were talking about how shocking it is to think that the "anti-vaccine" thing has only been around TEN YEARS. You'd think it's the kind of anti-intellectual argument that was maybe around pre-internet, say, from the 80's, but no, it's from like 2000. That's just crazy to me. (Thankfully, that douche got unpublished and there was only ONE paper ever published in the first place. I think they maybe even revoked his license to practice? Or tried to? Anyway, yeah, douchery.)


And finally, a literary crossover containing two of the most famous and renowned authors who ever penned the written word-- I present to you, "Green Eggs and Hamlet".

Idk why but I've been tab-hoarding for weeks. As a result, running roughly 220 tabs was causing firefox to crash constantly. So, here is several days worth of tab writeups, which might mean whatever I wrote sounds a few days old. That would be because it is, but it's probably not too important.

( LOTS of articles )

( a second set, many more articles )

...I read a lot.

Well, not technically today, considering I've survived for half an hour past DOOMSDAY, or what shall henceforth be known as The Most Debaucherous Easter Ever. But before we get to the story, I have news items! YOU WILL READ THEM FIRST and like it

#amazonfail. Basically, Amazon started taking LGBT/feminist/general sexuality books off of their rankings because they were being labeled as "adult material". Despite the fact that anti-homosexual books were still being ranked (therefore not labeled as "adult" because of Amazon's ranking system), as are hardcore porn and "normal" sex-related stuff.

Hiding a book about gays and the military, but not American Psycho? I'm pretty sure that's fucking adult material.

BULLLLLLLLLLLLLLSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIITTTT Also, now, Amazon Rank. I particularly like that last sentence.

Here are some more links including the twitter to-do and a semi-complete listing of books that were taken off the listing.

You know, the fact that they censored Stephen Fry's biography (autobio? I dunno) reminds me of that whole scene from V for Vendetta so perfectly, it's disgusting. Goddamnit censorship pisses me off. I am SO GLAD I live in the US. That crap that Britain's been pulling recently with all the anti-terrorism-become-paranoid-and-turn-in-your-neighbors shit? Godfuckingdamnit.


On a less serious note, I had to look up "LGBTQQI" to see what it meant, and I found out there are a lot of letters you could be adding on the end there. Also cool that LGBT is considered more feminist-friendly. ALSO, GLBT is just really like a gay BLT.

Some Amazon alternatives:

www.powells.com
www.chapters.indigo.ca
www.booksamillion.com
www.foyles.co.uk
www.bookdepository.co.uk
www.waterstones.com
www.play.com

Also, SIGN THE PETITION against Amazon's new "adult policy".



An interesting "other side" article about the pirates.

Rainbow finches are in a bad sitch. This makes me really sad.

Uh, so, that story is going to have to wait because I'm exhausted. Sorry. =(

Back to cleaning up links because I have way too many tabs open, and that doesn't even include all the interesting stuff I have sitting in my Google reader.

Fighting litter one kid at a time. Good idea, hopefully it actually teaches some good lessons. =)

Derringer Cycles; someone needs to buy me one of these. Or all of them.

New explosion creates new island in the Pacific, near Tonga. That is a sweetass picture.

So bandicoots are fucking adorable.

Poor hedgehog with no spines. :C

First Lady starts garden at the White House, can I just say I am extremely excited about this? I hope it helps support another branch of a sustainable living trend.

A really good video on the Ex-Gay movement. I think the best thing is that after 30 years of creating and participating in the Exodus ex-gay movement, the creators had no successes and APOLOGIZED PUBLICLY for it. GO THEM. True scientists who did not bend the facts to their will.

The most beautiful wave shots ever. Truly beautiful. I'm pretty sure #4 is Waimeia Bay on Oahu. (I remember that tower.)

A very fascinating photo-journal of North Korea. I may have already posted this, but no matter, it is really cool.

New rainbow jellyfish! Cool beans.

Mountain Dew and Pepsi will have a throwback (with omg sugar). Hooray! I am interested to try it.

WOAH HOLY SHIT HARRISON FORD JUST SHOWED UP MY TV IN A WILDLIFE TRAFFICKING AD. That was unexpected, lol. It was like "oh cool some random dude is talking about extinction, going back to blogging nowWAITAMINUTE I KNOW THAT VOICE"

I weird myself out sometimes.

Selling Girl Scout cookies online: I'm actually against it. The troops get money from each box sold and if you're taking over some other troop's market by making it available online, that is rather unfair. Especially if you're one of those obsessive sellers who sells hundreds (or thousands) of cookies. I could never understand those girls. Do they have issues or something? Anyway.

Whew, atheists make up roughly 15% of the US population. That's nothing to scoff at. I'm just compeltely surprised by how high that number is, and I'm sure reading the article gives you an idea as to why that is.

How to survive falling through ice. I probably love survival guides too much.

Rolcats! That is, Russian lolcats.

This guy wants to retool government media, and he seems to have his shit together. We need people who know what the fuck is going on in the world of technology.

Mac OS 7 on an iPhone! I miss MacPaint :C

Retooled youtube mashups: fucking amazing.

I love visual tricks; I'm still trying to figure out what optical illusion was used here.

Irrational Geographic, a photojourney through Mardis Gras.

I love this shirt more than I should. Threadless really does have so very clever tees every so often.

Zec Efron as Prince Philip: the fuck? Sorry but that shot is just... weird. And I really hate Vanessa Hudgens. The only reason I don't hate Zefron is because he actually showed some talent outside shitty Kenny Ortega HSM crap with Hairspray and stuff. Although apparently he's not doing Footloose because he doesn't want to get typecast? Which is too bad, I guess, but hopefully they find someone else that can make musicals popular to Hollywood again. (As for the audience, particularly if you look at Disney fans, I think you'll see musicals never went out of style.)

Nite Owl I saves the Waynes? Can I just say I fucking loved that movie? Mostly for little detail reasons like this.

Okay, that's like 40 tabs, I think that's enough for now. Even though I still have 79 open to clean up...

OH MY GOD I GOT A ONE ON MY PLAYING AUDITION! :D I don't know how that happened. But I am really excited. So January 2-4 I am headed off to Wyoming, where I still have to do a marching audition, but which I am not at all worried about. Marching, I love. Marching, I can do. (Their vis staff was not able to get to the camp, so we were done early and everything. It was lovely.)

Oh my god, I miss drum corps so much. I can't wait for next summer. Just need to do more pre-conditioning this time around, and I'll be good. Arm strength, ability to run... Especially since everydays in June will be a mile high and cold. Breathing block will be miserable. And it sounds like Troopers is big on running laps.

But I'm glas I made the choice I did... It was interesting to hear the guys at the camp talk about how vets would go off to the "good" corps for a year or so and then age out back where they had family. Basically, the impression I got from my audition at Phantom was right... They are mostly interested in winning, not in who you are. Apparently one of their friends was the center snare for Phantom--center snare--and the staff didn't know his name until several days into everydays. That's ridiculous. And not to say every winning corps is there, but it just makes me feel better about not going to Crown. I think it's insulting to get money out of camps for so long and waste my time, not to mention... that. So much a different type of family, it's not even funny.

As for my computer, UDit is completely useless. Every time I email them about a message I am getting (no matter how minor) their general response is a lame question about retrieving data I already gave them, and "if that doesn't help then bring it in". So once again, they proved completely useless and with several hours of programs that didn't work, I finally found the solution through Google (I ran the fake program name as well as the "trojan" name). Oh, I don't know if I got that far in explaining before--it turned out to be an adware file that only looks like a windows security message telling you that you have a trojan (mine was Trojan.Zlob.G, but the file itself was merman.exe) and recommends you download a removal program (Program Defender 2009). This is fake safety software that "runs" a diagnostic to find the issue and fails partway through, prompting you to upgrade. So then the hackers get your money. And the multitude of anti-spyware programs I now have downloaded got rid of the fake security program, but to get rid of the adware (the fake windows messages) you have to start your computer in safe mode, go to Applications, find the "Google" folder and delete the two fake files in it. (I was worried at first, but there's nothing else there--it's not actually a Google folder.) So, once again, UDit is a failure and I fixed my own computer simply with Google-fu.

And now, lots and lots of linkspam because I've been a terrible, terrible tab user lately. And no lj-cut because I am CRUEL.

I rather love this Neil Gaiman poster. And speaking of zombies, I just watched 28 Days Later, which is a pretty good movie but feels... incomplete, somehow. But it did remind me of watching Sean of the Dead, which I somehow connected to that from the fact that I finally got my Phi Rho paddle, and I thought it looked like a cricket bat, and Christine and I somehow determined we are going to play cricket with my paddle and bouncyballs. Yesss. I miss Nookball a lot, haha.

This may be the saddest PostSecret ever. Not the most depressing, but one I could never understand... That's a sort of compromise I could never make, and it must be terrible to be in fear of something that other people think is so great about life. Wow, that was a really concise version of what I think and probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense... Maybe I'll expand upon it more later. I don't know.

Harrison Ford doing J. J. Adams Comedy? I'd be up for that. He's really entertaining with dry humor.

Daniel Craig wants Moneypenny and Q in the next Bond movie. EXCELLENT. Craig should be my new best friend. I want Q back and I think they should keep John Cleese. He can do srsface just fine.

The interesting source of phrases such as "in the limelight". Cool beans.

FSM nativity, pirates included. I love it. (The displays of FSM lights are awesome, too.)

I am totally doing this in my room. Now just to find tables...

This freedom-of-religion article showed up on my friendslist somewhere. I've had that sitting around but today I randomly stumbled upon an article discussing it (and atheist messages) which I think is really interesting. Another article about atheism where I think the more interesting topics are unrelated--digital ghosts and older people's mentalities. My dad said he read an article about the testing of older folks, and that it's not the idea that "old people are grumpy" but rather, they lose the ability to censor themselves, so to speak. Which is interesting in contrast to the idea that they are like children.)

A really interesting article about the "anti-wedding" which I may have posted when I was talking about feminism. It has a lot of good points. Sorry about the awkward formatting, the link to the actual article was really messy.

Thylacines can open their jaws up to 120 degrees... That's so, so disturbing.

The octodress. Is it not amazing? As creepy and fucking disturbing as ocotpi are, they are really cool as a deocrative element. (However, when they decide to take over the planet, we are doomed.)

This is some pretty cool art with lamps and such in nature. Awesome.

I forgot about this Pushing Daisies soundtrack that was coming out! SO MANY SONGS, I LOVE IT

Pretty cool article about major movie studio logos. I forget what the original reason was that this was so fascinating... Some tidbit I can't remember at the moment.

Pretty cool old "music video" from 1928.

I like these alternative Christmas Tree ideas.

Someone commented on Betty Page's death calling her "spectacularly singular"... I don't know why, I really like that phrase. And it's true.

So tonight I went out to dinner with my parents and grandparents and my aunt and uncle, and we got to talking about Facebook and the fact that my dad has one to keep in touch with people, and then of course my grandparents being my grandparents we started arguing about the morality of employers checking the Facebook profiles of potential employees. Of course I just gave them my solution--lock your damn facebook. But it's interesting what some people might think about what's on your profile, and different points of view on that. And talking to some people, it's weird to have parents on facebook. I was just looking back at an older post from when dad joined, and I said "WHAT" like it's weird but I think moreso it was just unexpected. Laura apparently didn't friend him, but she, who knows, might have something to hide. (Partying, probably.) I don't necessarily want dad to see my excessive cursing or the fact that I'm no longer Catholic (not that he'd necessarily see "pastafarian" and "church of heathus christ of ledger-day saints" not as humor only), but you know what? Laura's cursed in front of him, he knows we watch shit-for-tv or movies sometimes, I don't care so much. I don't curse in front of him or my grandparents, that's good enough for me. But other people talked about having family finding out about photos on facebook that they didn't want their parents or others to see, and you know what? I don't really get it. If you're worried, make it private, friends-only. If you're concerned about your little brothers and sisters showing your parents... Here's a grand idea: don't do anything in your life you wouldn't be proud of. If you make mistakes, admit they were mistakes and move on, but if something is a concern to your image, don't do it! I don't understand why that's so hard for people... I mean, from peers to politicians, what's so difficult about making good decisions? About thinking things through... Honestly.

Oh my god there is a hilarious skit on Robot Chicken about the construction of the Raiders temple. IT IS AMAZING. Hopefully it will be up on youtube superfast.

OH MY GOD. THEY CAN TAKE IMAGES OUT OF YOUR BRAIN NOW. You have no idea how long I have been waiting for this sort of technology to get started... I want to record dreams like crazy.

Whew, I think that's everything for now.

Interesting natural phenomenon yesterday! Vog. Which is, quite possibly, the most uninteresting word ever. However, vog is rather neat. Basically, the sky was cloudy and the city looked foggy all day, but apparently it was just stuff in the air floating over from the Big Island because of all the eruptions from the volcano. Very neat. =D


Today has been... frustrating. I won't say it was bad, because overall, it hasn't been. Just had a few things that kind of ruin the day a little. 1) Feeling tired and 2) dealing with hypocrites. Hypocrisy is like kryptonite for me. It can ruin anything very quickly, and make me very very frustrated. Grr.

Ah! Interstingly enough, I have starting switching up icons more and more. I think it helps that I have more than three, but I never thought I would pay attention enough. I suppose being excited with my Indy icons and my new Pooh icon is good enough reason as any. =^n.n^=

DAMMIT. I leave the Midwest for one semester and I miss the only earthquake in forever?! Dangit. I have kind of wanted to be in an earthquake ever since I saw that Bill Nye episode about them. I remember getting training in school, too, about how to hide under a table or stand in a door frame and to have a kit ready with water and batteries and such. (But of course, no one ever worried about it, because in Dayton the last big thing was a flood in 1913 and in Xenia, well, tornados.[tornadoes?])

Well, I finished up all my wetwork for ceramics. For my last graded piece I made a quetzalcoatl. Pretty freaking cool. It would have been really cool if I was in the mood to spend 2+ hours doing detail work, but after figuring out the eyes and the feathers (headdress-style), I really wasn't in the mood to carve a feather pattern over the whole piece and then figure out how to do a feathered tail. Sooo I went for simplification and I will add some detail with paint, most likely. And then hope the feathers don't break off when I try to ship it home. Augh.

So today is April 18th. Regal starts selling tickets three weeks before. I have NO IDEA who I'm going to see Indy IV with, and I am in a bit of a panic. I don't know if I should be, I mean I think Pat got Pirates 2/3 tickets about a week before with no problemos. AUUUUUUGH STRESS... Why do I have the ability to stress about the most mundane things? I mean, it's important to me, obviously, but I'm sure I will get there one way or the other. The real question is, who's going to be in line two hours early with me? I am not showing up slightly early this time, I demand seating perfection! I mean there's been a distinct lack of friends talking about Indy IV and I guess COW folks don't know because Regal hasn't released showtimes yet? I can't expect they wouldn't do a midnight showing, though. Not no way, not no how. STRESS STRESS STRESS

This is so cute. And very clever.

This xkcd showed up a few days ago. I love it. It's pretty close to a simulation of any meal with my family. A few hours in, either my dad or his brother will set up a pun with this much effort, and I'm pretty sure you might need to be in the family or at least around long enough to know where the train of thought came from so you have ANY idea whatsoever of the punchline. I loves me some puns.

Hmm, I know I was talking about doing an "LJ audit" sometime this year, and currently I've just been thinking about Spring Cleaning in general. Carly and Leigh and I had a whole discussion on it (sort of) yesterday, and I am just not the sort of person who gets rid of tons of stuff or is overtly organized. It's strange, though; IRL I am "messy" but organized mentally (and CLEAN, even if it doesn't look organized), but with email and computers and LJ tags and everything I like things to be a lot more organized. I REALLY need to go back through old emails. I really need to find a better way to arrange my folders (though I'm doing pretty good and keeping things filed for the moment). I need to clean up my LJ tags and go back and tag old entries and clean up my old entries. Hm! Maybe when I go back to work this summer they will still have me sitting around at the desk doing nothing all day, so I can just get all that done. Would be nice.

I was thinking about Nana last night, because I'd read a really sad poem about death, and then I saw this posted by ursulav: "Generally when we mourn people, I think we mourn for the chunk of our own lives that's gone." And I really do think that's true. Death has always been my real big one-and-only fear, and not in the "I'm afraid!" sense but the I-really-want-to-do-everything-there-is-to-do sense. =/ It just makes me sad is all. (Quick, I'm getting existential again)

So, I've been a member of this comm for a while, but it does appear that for the last few years I have forgotten International Fort Day again. I would say I have the desire to build a fort now because we have these PERFECT pieces of furniture for it, but they're REALLY gross and I saw some bugs hiding down there in the dark and it needs to be cleaned badly. No way am I fort-hiding under there until it's clean.

The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals. Hilarious.

Speaking of meals, there was nothing particularly good down at the caf tonight. I got pizza (which turned out to be terrible), and then got some stuffing because I wanted a side. So I had pizza, oranges, stuffing, and chocolate chip cookies. Let me tell you, don't ever eat those things in one meal. They do not go together at all.

There was going to be another Hitchhiker's game! Now, I haven't ever seen the first one, but just from that snippet it sounds like it would have been awesome. =( I miss Douglas Adams.

Dangit. I am definitely getting addicted to icons too quickly now. I am looking up Marx Brothers icons, and I do have a good stored pile of ones I would use. This is dangerous!

Finally, some cool pirate pants! (See the two at the bottom.) Why do pirate costumers always insist on black, white, or red as your only color options, though? How lame is that? This is why I thrifted my pirate outfit. And it came out rather well minus me losing that purple scarf. =( (It's really difficult to find scarves that work for pirate outfits. In general they're too modern or flowery.)

ADORABLE BABY POLAR BEAR

Aw, the last of Disney's Nine Old Men has died. The end of an era, for sure. =(

HEY, so there's a new volume for the Chronicles of Chrestomanci! While this makes me incredibly happy, I have only one thing to say; why is there a unicorn on the cover? Or rather, not so much why is there a unicorn, but why is it so prominent? The cat theme was good, and yes, there are cats, but they don't really fit with the theme of the other two. I'm also glad to see that it doesn't appear to have the Pinhoe Egg and the other Chrestomanci story in there. YAY DIANA WYNNE JONES

Okay! It looks like I'm finally to the Indy part of "cleaning up my tabs". 33 days! YAAAAAY

Entertainment mag preview! With some new pics. Cate looks like a badass. Okay, so that's the first time I've seen "aliens" mentioned in a print source. PLEASE BE RUMORS...

Ugha warriors? That's new to me. RESEARCH TIEM

(Man, I really hope you guys aren't going for spoiler-free. I'm trying to keep myself away from any MAJOR plot spoilers, but with the way Spielberg's been keeping it, I doubt there will be any until maybe a few days before. And in that case I don't think I'm going to be looking at Indy stuff much. I have no desire to have IJ4 ruined for me like HP6 was.)

...I think this is the first article I've seen that talks to Karen Allen. (Was she in the Vanity Fair article? I know the Marion/Mutt pic was.) Weird.

AUGH MORE GOOD/BAD ALIENS REFERENCES The wait just might kill me. Really

Okay, okay, aliens "got bumped aside" for the crystal skulls? Hopefully, yes. I'm just HOPING that Area 51 is like the Chachapoyan Temple for Raiders. Gets the plot started, but that's it. (I don't know, though, both Raiders and Crusade brought Indy back to the school before the main story, and there's obviously a big scene with Spalko at this Area 51, does he go back to the school before or after?!) I get myself worked up too easily. Breathe in, breathe out. (I mean I can always deny them like Ep1/2/3, right? Right?!)

Haha, a good part about Spielberg not wanting people to get any of the script out. I do not blame him, and in fact I thank him. But why is the alien angle bothering me so much right now?!

OH HAY PHOTO IS THAT SUM QUICKSAND? (Oh god the internet is ruining my ability to talk without resorting to memespeak. KILL ME)

More Spielberg and Lucas talk, cue me more panicking.

Another new photo. RESOLUTION IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO TELL IF IT'S AN ALIEN





Man you can tell where my thoughts are on this issue, no?! I am too good at worrying.

This makes me really really sad.

Sign a petition here, or sign the petition with over 2 million signatures (in Spanish) here.

This makes me angry.