The Daily Adventures of Mercat

I was up until 5:30 last night working on an art project. YAY. I'm glad I got a good part of it finished (despite the fact she's probably not going to grade them) because I can put it in my portfolio. Which is actually looking pretty threadbare.

Final prompt of the month: honestly, I'm too tired/lazy to upload and post a picture right now. So... deal with it. =)

I'm considering doing a daily challenge for December since I don't have any Hardy Boys books on me, although I don't really have time this week anyway, but I'm considering doing a daily doodle or something.

Oh, as I discovered last night, my solution to getting bored in the art classroom is either to be so-tired-my-brain-is-barely-functioning or, revelation: put on crime shows while I draw. Crime shows are perfect because the exposition is usually explicit so that clueless people understand what's going on in the "science" side of it, whereas comedies/dramas rely a lot on slapstick humor or conveying emotions through body language. (Family Guy is particularly frustrating in this department.) Now if only House were on more often, I could catch up on all the seasons I haven't seen! Or Bones, that's not on much either. I've seen pretty much every episode of NCIS that USA has to air, and I've seen a lot of CSI, so I have to try to find not-NCIS-not-CSI most of the time. Which leaves Law & Order, CSI:NY (BUT NEVER MIAMI), and Psych and Bones on the rarer occasions they're on. Also I discovered Leverage, which is pretty good.

(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!

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".

Well, I've got about five pounds of links to post. Yeah, I'm sorry... I've had a month worth of craziness. Tests, then camp, then midterms, then more midterms and projects, and finally when it was supposed to settle down last week? Grandpa had a heart attack Monday. They had to induce a coma by lowering his body temp to minimize brain damage. So we were stressed out all week not knowing how he was doing, how much damage there was... Either brain-wise or system-wise since his muscles are already so weak from his broken back (years ago). Well, he's alert and doing better now, although he seems a bit disoriented sometimes. We're hoping it's just from being in the ICU all week, half under coma, sleeping on-and-off all day long, but who knows, there could be some brain damage. =/ Even more than that, we have to hope some physical therapy can bring back what little strength he had before in his arms and hands, which was practically nothing. He has his sense of humor, though, which is a good sign, but it's a little sad because Grandma, of course, never listens well enough to realize he's joking, and sometimes he's just confused, and it sounds funny to mom and dad and grandma, and it just seems so depressing to me. I don't know... The whole situation is depressing. Even though, at the moment, I'm just damn glad he's still with us.

Anyway, so nothing like that to say WELCOME TO SPRING BREAK, huh? Yeah, plus camp this weekend and I-don't-have-a-fucking-clue with steel and the test coming up and just fffffuuuuuucccckkk. Anyway. Damn.

A real-life American example of what happens when you cut all your taxes. THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER. Why? Because I've read a lot of articles about batshit insane tea-partiers and Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck in the past few weeks. And here is A CITABLE, SOLID EXAMPLE of why these anti-taxers can go fuck themselves. You know, after all that logical argument about roads and signs and parks and water and electricity and government and, you know, all that stuff you come across on a minute-by-minute basis.

GOLD.

I'm also watching Jon Stewart, at the moment, rip Glenn Beck a new one. So you may have heard, Fox came out with a panicked article last week saying DON'T SEND YOUR KIDS TO COLLEGE IT TURNS THEM INTO LIBRULS! And Beck and all those crazies have jumped on the Sarah-Palin-crazy-conservative-anti-intellectual bandwagon, and, no surprise to anyone here, Beck does not have a degree. Anyway, so Beck gave this speech apparently and said "you know where I learned all that [history]? the public library" and JUST OH MY GOD. ARE PEOPLE REALLY THIS DENSE APPARENTLY WHAT THE FUCK.


I really dislike arguing politics but I wouldn't even consider this politics. This is just straight up idiocy. And like other sentiments I've seen echoed, I hope this crazy scheme actually works. I hope they convince all the crazy people to vote for them to get Sarah Palin as Republican candidate for the presidency and everyone suddenly just goes WOAH. WOAHWOAHWOAHWOAHWOAH, WHAT THE FUCK. And then people start thinking. Because that is what is important.

Also, depressing, some kid on FML whose parents saw that Fox story and decided not to pay for his/her college. Poor kid, jesus shit. =/

Hand-carved wooden skateboards! I particularly like the stingray, though I feel like this is a skateboard you must be very, very careful with. However I would totally buy one if I owned a surf bar or something, hang that shit from the ceiling!

NOOOOOOOOOO first confirmed cases of White Nose Syndrome in Tennessee bats. :C I hope they figure this shit out, and fast, all the poor batties!

I love Beatonna, and this is completely true.

Blackbeard in Pirates 4! I can't wait for this shit, NO LIE. Everyone's freaking out because OMG WHY MORE JACK SPARROW WRRYYYYY and really? The answer is simple. Because he's a great character. And they somehow managed to rip a lot of the fun and adventure (and treasure) out of the first one and leave it in the dirt somewhere. And that's why I liked Pirates in the first place, dammit.

Not to mention I can't wait to see all the North Carolinians get their panties in a twist about something. Or even better, they won't, and it will be awesome, because North Carolina is pretty sweet, despite the fact that want to think they own the Wright Brothers. STEP OFF BITCHES, DAYTON FOREVER.

=)

Tree Lobsters is amazing. I love their comic about the Mayan calendar, I want to reference it every time that gets brought up somewhere. (Almost lectured a bunch of my civil classmates about it, but I don't feel like coming off as bitchy to people I never really talk to because I'm way too damn introverted.)

And despite all the craziness and ugliness in the world, things like this happen, and people are pretty okay.

This is very true.

Learn to be lucky. I had a comment but I forgoted it.

Holy crap! Coconut water is a substitute for human plasma, that is, it can be used for intravenous hydration in emergency situations. SCIENCE IS CRAZY. BIOLOGY IS CRAZY. Also I think this could be a good survival skill.

This is so sad, and I think it is a good example of what's so wrong with our government right now. =(

Some part of me has always wanted a chameleon, but I would take this instead of a real one. (I know real chameleons require lots of work and like most amphibians and lizards can spread disease really easily. This little dude is just awesome.)

Chuck Lorre rips Glenn Beck a new one, and that atheist is an asshole, just saying. I know a cultural figure of speech when I see one, shit son.

I find this sort of thing very interesting and very encouraging. Why, you may ask? Well, because everyone I know wants to get the fuck out of Dayton, and I've never really understood it. I mean, yes, we are supposedly the fifth most dying city in the U.S., but we're not in the top 20 saddest and I don't think it's horrible. Maybe needs a little bit more diversity or things of interest, but it's kind of my new little dream (and I do mean new, this is an end-of-2009 maybe even just beginning-of-2010 thing) to give Dayton its own big to-do. Ideally it would be some sort of Disney World-esque thing but I don't think that's feasible with Dayton winters. So either a huge cooperative hackerspace-type thing, maybe a sort of open-source college? Which would be awesome, or something just straight up weird, like House on the Rock. Anyway. Dayton is home for me, and yes, even though I want to get out and see the world, I think it will always be what I consider Home home.

Also, I want to go to Cairo just for the sake of American Gods, heh. That book is so good.

This was a big deal last week or the week before, but you know what? Nothing new around here, our lovely local parking nazis (the school, not the local polics, mind you-- campus parking services) have ticketed their own vehicles in our use before. Hooookaaaaay.

Harrison Ford as James Bond:



Yeh, idk, I think Bond is a bit too smarmy-put-together for Ford to play him, maybe not smarmy, but, you know, smart-looking. As in, always in a suit, very British. Ford's more down-to-earth-American-cowboy, if you will.

...Not to mention there's the whole sort of inside joke where Bond is Indiana Jones' father, WHAT KIND OF TEMPORAL RECURSION WOULD WE GET OURSELVES INTO WITH THIS MESS?! The world would go mad, MAD I TELL YOU


In terms of thematic ipod cases, this page has a nice steampunkish one at the top, as well as, if you scroll down, a lovely aluminum one that I would have to use any time I felt like I needed to be onboard an Empire starship or the Enterprise. Fabulous, no? Quite.

An A-to-Z guide for recycling, though it's actually an article so not really searchable--not to mention, I'm sure it's missing lots of odd things as a result.

Alright. So I have always thought that Shakespeare is rather a king of insults, along with Mark Twain. As such I have decided I need to expand my vocabulary of demeaning words, as I am trying to stop using words such as "gay" and "retarded" as well. Needless to say, I will not stop cursing like a sailor and plan to keep on using "fuck" and "shit" as much as I damn well please. =) And I am a big fan of "pretentious ass". At any rate, I need to expand my vocabulary in order to be anywhere near as damning as The Shakesmeister or The Twainz. Today's vocabulary word: "pillock". Good old-timey sound, yes? Excellent.


Interestingly, another take on slurs and curses that I've thought about I took environmental philosophy wherein my professor pointed out that a majority demeaning terms today are feminine in nature
(bitch, slut, whore, cock-sucker, pussy, vag, etc.), so I try to take that into account. However, people use "dick" to mean, basically, the same thing as "asshole", which is gender-neutral, not to mention that for the longest time I didn't know what "douchebag" meant, so, in my brain, "douche" and "douchebag" are both masculine insults on par with "dick". That is, "stop being an ass". However, as much fun the imagery of "ass-hat" is, it is just not fun to say, at all. And most of the fun of cursing is in the saying, I will not lie. Since most of the time I don't mean it sincerely anyhow...



Oddly, my main complaint is not that they confuse cricket with baseball, but rather that they butcher the joke by using "who" once where "whom" should go.

Also I may mention that I slaughtered Uncle Steve the other night in grammatic structure and it was awesome. If there is one thing I am good at in this family, it is, surprisingly, that I could diagram any sentence to you whatsoever, and you will like it, dammit!



Eeeeeeeeeeeeeexcellent.


Well, I'll cut myself off for now, that's a good chunk of links. Not to mention I've probably managed to insult everyone at least once with all the crap I've had sitting around for weeks waiting to get posted, heh.

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.

I caught up on some of the stuff I missed (but far from all of it) over the summer, so guess what that means? LINKSPAM!

Last survivor of Titanic dies. Rather sad. (And yes, I realize nearly all this news is old for you people who've been in real life this summer.)

Speaking of deaths, the day we all heard Michael Jackson died, none of us believed it because of the Bob Barker effect. Same thing when the tally kept rolling in... Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon, (and then after our next block) OMG Billy Mays! No one believed that last one, though by then the Michael Jackson one had been verified by several sources.

I can only imagine what a massive clusterfuck the internet (and ONTD, in particular) must have been that day.

However, I was in California doing breathing tubes (I think that was the last time we got them--when Scott got there) and snowcones. Bleh. And we had a terrible rehearsal run and the staff was pissed and we did laundry and got screwed over on our WalMart run. But I digress.

More Tomb Raider! Hey, as long as we're putting out adventure films, I'm happy. I loved the Angelina Jolie ones, ESPECIALLY the first one, so you'll get no complaints from me. Only one I would is that they even considered conotinuing through Mummy III after Rachel Weisz dropped out. (And I think, sadly, the same thing is going to be said about Iron Man I, which is a shame considering how utterly awesome Iron Man was.)

This photo has a very Firefly feel about it, and with I would answer the titular question with a veritable "yes".

...I don't think I used "titular" right. Meh.

YAY more Series of Unfortunate Events but some DAMN GOOD POINTS ABOUT FUCKING SEQUELS, HOLLYWOOD. goddamnit

Kenneth Branagh is directing Thor?! I am so. there.

Disney to squeeze more money out of Winnie the Pooh. I was actually bitching to my sister about this the other day and ended up twittering about it, so I'm glad I stumbled upon a relevant article.

Look, here's the thing. You know people who flip out when DC/Marvel get new writers or completely reboot or just continue to mess with different canons? That is how I have been feeling about Disney's treatment of Winnie the Pooh as of the past few years. One, that fucking heffalump movie. SPOILER, but the whole point of the heffalumps and woozles is that THEY DON'T EXIST. Baby Pooh? (And Tigger and Piglet and everyone) Okay, I can see that, messing with styles is cool to keep things interesting. Otherwise I wouldn't have that fucking rad purple stylized Winnie the Pooh bag.

And then I saw the new tv show. A mystery show. In 3D to make it even more painful (though you all know I love mysteries, so that's not where I find fault.) So I'm looking at a playset or a commercial or something and what do I see? The human character is a GIRL.

Look, I'm all for equal treatment and shit like that but this is kind of a definitive matter. YOU KNOW, CHRISTOPHER ROBIN, THE BOY WHO KIND OF FUCKING NAMED THOSE DAMN STUFFED ANIMALS?! God damn. Disney is really pissing me off lately.

P.S., anyone know what happened to the Disney award this year? We were really hoping to get it and wipe that smile off everyone else's faces, and then it didn't happen.

=/

Tim Curry in an Alice & Wonderland thing? Yes, please. Already there.

Pirates 4 seems to be on the move. To which I say, HOORAY! I loved 2 and 3, but I must say, they were several lacking in the buried/cursed/whatever'd department.

Remember what I said about Iron Man? Yeeeeeeaaaaaahhhhh...

That is some sexy cover art, and yes I mean the art nouveau.

Patrick Stewart on the new Star Trek, and holy crap it needs to come out on dvd YESTERDAY. I didn't see a single movie all summer I was gone and that was SO. FUCKING. GOOD.

Well, fuck. The plot actually sounds good. Really good. I'm willing to eat that crow if I have to.






Oh hey, what's this? First off, no shit, sherlock. But otherwise,

FUCK YES.

I'll be sad if it's another biblical artifact unless it's out of Revelations, but hey, what was it I said after I saw IV?


At least he can't do the crystal skulls idea anymore. :D



Now, all I have to do is pray they go for the Hawaii or Easter Island or some polynesian (/melanesian/micronesian) angle and I will be happy.

Fuck, I'll even take Australia E];D





apologies if my language seems suddenly harsher. It is. That's drum corps, and that's me. <3

Yeah, to hell with all this snow. Even if it is melting on the ground... I have no will to go outside, and it kinda sucks because I can't even sleep in, my body is so hammered into the GET UP AT EIIIIIGGGHHHHT schedule. Dammit.

Buh, I haven't even got much done on my computer because I found a 232-page thread of stupid pictures. X| Sooo here are a bunch of links that are the result of that.

I can tell you one thing; Hitler may have had a terrible concept of what was structurally possible (seriously, man, have you heard of foundations), but he did have a fantastic concept of what is epic.

This site is hilarious; the guy depicts different emotions, from normal to incredibly specific and bizarre.

This comic is like the new Perry Bible Fellowship, except I am not exactly sure I understand this newest one so much.

How is this a real story?! It's not even recent enough to be an April Fool's joke.

A hilarious video from a third-year art student, showcasing all the awesome skills he learned in an animations art class. If you actually want a listenable loop of that, you can find one here. It's almost Popcorn.

Vader loves Christmas: a hilarious and clever edit if I do say so myself.

I was talking to one of y'all about 3d modeling or robots or some shit the other day, I know I was. And I couldn't come up with the term "uncanny valley", so there you go.

Holy shit Hawaiian yodeling. I've always wondered how close yodeling is to singing, even if only because I have no problem singing the Goatherd song from Sound of Music.

Voytek the soldier bear, fuck yeah Poland!

Also, a retro graphics archive. Mostly 50's-ish, I'd think, style-wise.

We were talking about unusual phobias the other day and I couldn't think of anything that made me want to vomit upon sight/hearing. But here we are in philosophy talking about a party last weekend in which a bunch of guys were having a guy-party and, in order to keep girls out, were throwing beer cans at them and yelling "women were objects". I don't know about you, but I felt the floor drop of out of my stomach when I heard that.


Sometimes I feel like even though my sister and I are so different socially, she's smarter than me. She probably got better grades than me in high school because she had the drive to need a full-ride scholarship somewhere else, while I was okay going to UD. (I've only just started to be concerned about grad school; I don't even have a plan of attack. I can't even decide sustainable engineering and design versus working for Disney--my heart is in both.) I'm okay with getting kicked out of the honors program--there were no benefits, I didn't get any money out of it, and it was too much stress. But sometimes I feel like Laura has more determination to do what she does, whereas I am a procrastinator and take interest in everything so much so that I can't focus on one thing. I'm looking at electives for classes right now and the structural ones (my focus) sound miserable, while biology, mechanics, philosophy, circuits, psychology... Those sound interesting.

Bleh, I don't know. I've started looking at open source learning (like MIT lectures posted online and stuff) for things like philosophy or things I will never encounter (quantum mechanics! ~ooooooh~), but even if I absorb that I will never get a degree for that. Is it something you can still bring up when discussing a resume? (Where is my accent grave?! 'My resoom'.)


I'm glad my philosophy teacher has so much ethical hope for our generation because sometimes, I really don't. People make such dumb decisions in their personal time that I find it hard to believe they'll make good ethical decisions in business.

Man, after three years the art department guy finally gets back to me! Got damn.

Sorry, this post is very disjointed. I half-wrote it in class earlier as I pick up thoughts from both philosophy and surfing the internet, and then I come back x hours later and add more disjointedness...

Meh.

I am now totally into Dog the Bounty Hunter because of how much I miss Hawaii. They had Hawaiian Night at all the dining services areas tonight but the only legit thing on the menu was huli huli chicken. Fuck that, I want me some kalua pork and rice and poi! I've been craving garlic shrimp from the Haleiwa shrimp trucks for like two months now. (If I were Elvis, I would have already taken one night to fly out there and get some of the damn stuff.) However, I did find a crock-pot recipe for kalua pork so ooohmmmygooood I'm actually tempted to put a little effort into cooking because it's so damn delicious.

I like all sorts of pulled pork, apparently. (But not ham.)

Damn, I did like jack shit besides cleaning out my inbox. Oh, productivity.

I think my personal motto should "be badass, daily". I was kind of in a depressive funk yesterday, not really sure why. It was a bunch of little, unimportant dramas that I think just kind of banded together and unleashed a wave of upset. Meh, I'm pretty much over it today. I think the perfect timing of Not-Troll is partly to blame =)

So last Friday during our meetings I found out that my little, Sarah, is a sci-fi geek as well. I don't know if I posted this already (I think I may have), but I just like to appreciate the closet-sci-fi-ness of some girls in Phi Rho. I try not to be too loud about my geek cred (except Indy and drum corps, duh), but sometimes I find myself doing geekily embarassing things despite it. Like yesterday I texted my sister because I know she loves Dali's elephants, and I saw a tattoo (here) of a Dali-styled AT-AT. So I appreciate it on a nerd level, and she and I both appreciate it on a fine art level. But it also reminds me of when we drove down to OBX last summer and Uncle Steve pointed at these utility frameworks (some shipping docks, or something, maybe?) in the distance, and he said they looked like those things from Star Wars, and I knew what he meant and said AT-ATs, and he was just like... yeah... sure, whatever. But then again, he is rather one of the more condescending people in our family and we, as a family, have a very strong we-will-mock-you-mercilessly dynamic. So.

ANYWAY, my point was, one, that I love my little, but furthermore she started geeking out about Weta Workshops and I didn't realize they did all of LotR, which I totally respect them for, and now I'm wondering how Sarah and Kimmie and I can start our own set/prop/costume company, because that is what we all want to do. I love my little so much! :D We are going to have a nerd-movie night (Dork Night?) and probably watch Star Wars and something else, maybe Firefly, I dunno, and make puppy chow. Yum.

Also, I want to take her to see Star Trek when it comes out because I doubt I could convince anyone else to go with me. LOL.

No school today. This is... amazing. I still have a lot to work on, but I least get a tiny break. It especially helps because last night I was freaking out because I couldn't get to any computer to finish my homework; I'd spent four hours in the lab and came home for dinner. Candice's computer died too (just last night), and Sarah was sick and already asleep and Brittany was using hers. So. I kind of had a meltdown about homework last night. (Just because it was one more thing on the pile, you know?)

Yeah, so. I've been in the lab for about three hours now, but that's okay, I'm getting things done and it's quiet. It's a bit odd in the sense that I'm pretty sure I'm the only person in the building currently... But I like it that way.

It's very bright outside with all the snow, and I definitely was kind of blinded when I walked inside. BUT this is the kind of snow to have, I'm telling you. A foot or so of it, very kickable, and still pretty warm outside, enough that it would be very nice to be outside. Now if only I didn't have so much to do, correct? Yes.

BUT, a bunch of linkspam that has piled up a bit with my computer woes. (Ah, poo. I am no longer the only one in here. Someone else just walked in.)

The immortal jellyfish... Quite cool, really. I'm not very afraid of them being our next overlords because I'm pretty sure it's going to be some octopodian thing and I will ~freak the fuck out~

An adorable Barney and Robin background. I am very sad I don't have my laptop right now because it would most definitely be the desktop...

The Henchman's Helper? I'm not exactly sure what's going on here but I am intrigued.

"Milky Way over Mauna Kea" which should be more accurately titled "Milky Way over Haleakala". Haleakala is the volcano in the foreground. (Still active, though it hasn't erupted in such a long time they thought it was dead. Or is dormant the right word? I think dormant means it's active but not currently erupting...) Anyway, you can see Mauna Kea (part of the Big Island) poking through in the backgroud. It's cool to think I've been at this view, roughly... Damn I miss Hawaii. Holy crap though, look at all that light pollution... That makes me so sad, really.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I would say that this would be the only way I'd read the book, but I suspect that as much as I dislike it, it's noewhere near as bad as Wuthering Heights. So. I will only say that you just have to be aware of where zombies are coming at you from... (Now there's a lovely ending-a-sentence-with-a-preposition, as dislegal as it is.)

Green grafitti. Very cool stuff.

Business currently hiring; I would work for Google...

Well, you have to face it, regardless: the Mayans were very skilled with figuring out their calendar. And regardless of the outcome, I will be having a party. By the way, anyone know when the LHC is supposed to come back on?

Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum. I want to go there. Mechanics such as these mystify me... Sorry for that unintentional alliteration. (Worse than punning, methinks...)

Ah, so, back to work for me... And back to that tiki blog I found. Good stuff, that.


By the way, is anyone else excited for the Pink Panther movie, or am I the only one? (Tee-eye-double-guh-er.)