The Daily Adventures of Mercat

LJ just ate my whole post.

Dammit.


I was already Not Giving enough Fucks to care, so, sorry. I was working on a nice little almost-carefree and certainly fucksgiven-free* not-exactly-a rant about the stereotypical genderized joke commentary and some strange assumptions and possibly dive into a little of the mysterious dark world of omg me and relationships** but I currently don't have the desire to retype it (no fucks given currently), so. I don't even have the energy to let this paragraph trawl off (that's like trail off, right?) in an ellipsis because there is far too much implied subtlety in an ellipsis and I am not implying anything right now. There is not enough depth in my stream of consciousness, I am that much in not-giving-a-fuck-mode. (I'll probably explain tomorrow.) Critical depth has not been reached. (Ha, hydraulics joke.)

Au contraire, the material may still be ripe for publishing tomorrow, as I try to scrape together a traditional Thanksgiving post because I am really not feeling it this year. I am just... out of food references.

Also let it be known that my cat's breath smells like asshole and I can smell it from 3 feet away. This could be an issue.

*Is that like Thanksgiving? New thing: it is. Happy Fucksgiven! I imagine this is because of the similarity to "turducken" as well.

**Accidentally typed relationshops. I don't know what that is but it sounds like something that exists in a hilarious alternate-reality version of Diagon Alley. [EDIT: It also might be like photoshops. Still hilarious.]



Problem: I think I am a better (read: funnier) writer when I am tired/out-of-it. I think this is because I just stream-of-consciousness better. I don't know how to control this letting-go-ness though.

I am a graduate (assuming I didn't fail my grad-level tech elective, that was awful). I have no idea what I'm doing except for this summer, lots of projects and trips and relaxation planned because this year was a bitch.

I miss UD already, although I do not miss engineering.

I can't recall if I posted already, but Friday was a crazy day. We did TOSRV backwards, sort of, so we rode Sunday's part (up from Portsmouth to C-bus) on Friday to be able to go to graduation Sunday. I got 2.5 hours of sleep because I turned in my last take-home exam at 2:30 am Friday, and I did the whole ride both days (on the tandem with dad), somehow. Anyway we got two flats Friday morning but when we were getting into Chillicothe we saw a kitten on the side of the road that had been hit. It was maybe eight weeks old and its right arm had been snapped in two and was hanging on by some skin, and it was trying to crawl away. It was so, so, so sad. We took an extra plastic bag we had and picked it up and tried to look up an animal hospital on my phone, but we couldn't get anything, and, of course, we were on our bikes anyway. So we rode into town with me holding the tiny kitten in the bag in my hands on the back of the tandem and we took it into the sheriff. He called the dog warden but the dog warden wouldn't take it. My mom and I were in the lobby with him and he just looked at us and said, "I don't know what to do." My mom and I, I'm sure, were thinking, "are you for real? You're THE LOCAL AUTHORITY, you are local and we are from out of town and you don't have any ideas?" So we asked if he knew anyone who would or could take it and he asked around and found a lady in the office who called a vet's office who said they would take it. I felt so bad for it but I had high hopes because he was barely bleeding and he would sit curled up in my hands (which I made sure were not putting stress on his broken arm, not that that stopped him from trying to use it) and look up energetically whenever something caught his attention. We named him Lieutenant Dan because he was obviously going to need an amputation and we talked about adopting him.

However we just called and although he was doing okay earlier, he died in surgery Friday because of the massive trauma. The vet said he was probably either hit by a car or was hiding in an engine and was injured that way. :'C

Hopefully he had a calm, relaxed death and was feeling better with fluids and such (they gave him an IV and I'm assuming put him under for surgery). Most likely better than wandering on the side of the highway to die in pain or be eaten by a wild animal, but still sad. :C

On the lighter side of things, I thought it was a little funny that when we saw it both my mom and my first thoughts were "don't let it bite/scratch you, it might have rabies!" which was why I was looking for something to pick it up with. The reason being that a few years ago there was a story in a bunch of medical journals about a bunch of people who got rabies from a kitten that was being passed around at a softball tournament. =( And also my worries about bats, although bats apparently have rabies less commonly than thought. Not that that means you should treat them as if they don't, because if they do, and you get bitten or scratched or get fluids in your eye or a cut or something, you are basically screwed. If you think an animal with rabies has infected you, you can get a shot, but if you don't catch it until the onset of symptoms... Only one person has survived that. Ever. A 6-year-old girl with probably a lucky immune system and lucky circumstances.

But I digress... R.I.P. Lieutenant Dan, the cutest little pegleg kitten ever.

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.

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!

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.

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).

A review of Avatar that pretty much sums up my feelings on the subject. The more I read about it, the less and less interesting it gets. =/ Meh.

I love Bill Nighy:



I, for one, am all for it. I also need to find more films with Nighy as he's been underused in everything I've seen him in (as Slartibartfast, Davy Jones the pirate, and Shaun's stepdad in Shaun of the Dead).

How to store and organize cats. Rather adorable, yes?

I didn't even know that people still didn't know what an address bar is, except maybe grandmas and grandpas and the like. I just... bwaaaaaaaaaa?



My kitties need to learn how to do that ASAP. Except they just expect you to turn on the sink, put noms in their bowl, or give up your cereal milk for them. Not nearly as multitaskable.

Woah, research on reversing the effects of aging. That kind of stuff is crazy!

Ohmigod. OHMIGOD. Elemental emission spectrum scarves. SOMEONE BUY ME ONE, HOLY SHIT THEY ARE AWESOME. I would wear it more than my physics scarf, even! It's a bit more subtle and colorful than my energy/displacement/pi scarf. <3


More later, maybe. Like the real goings-on in my life, not just a million internet links. =/

OMG OHIO YAAAAY I'm so proud. This goes out to everyone who says we suck as a state. SCREW YOU.

Jones soda is making D&D flavors... I'm posting this only because I know there are some D&D fans and some Jones soda fans out there. Personally, I can't do Jones soda, the holiday flavors killed it for me (it's the aftertaste). Also, I'm glad to see gamers are getting their foot in the door with advertisers, like the WoW and Halo Mountain Dews. Okay Mountain Dew, you know what's next? Indy V, I want to see some fucking DELICIOUS marketing. Enough with that Dr. Pepper bullshit

Oh, and did I say Indy V? I think I did.

(Also, Jones soda has a perfect in, but I hate it so please don't. I'M BEGGING YOU, PEPSI, DO THIS FOR ME)

Also? It's about damn time someone made an INDIANA JONES PUZZLE GAME, goddamn. I want to buy it but sadly I don't think games transfer from phone to phone...? also, nerd moment, that article number is 1135 goddamn i'm a huge nerd

I'm actually surprised this didn't happen sooner, and that it wasn't a youtube mashup, but a real piece of music.

This man can draw perfect circles. It is ridiculous.

I always knew Abercrombie & Fitch was a pretentious pile of overpriced bullshit, but I didn't realize they actively discriminate. Yeah, glad I never shopped there, and now I never will. Ugh.

Fur Elise arranged for owls, loons, cats, and a wood stork:



Scanning dead salmon in fMRI machine highlights use of red herrings. I admit, this title immediately caught my attention; salmon was a joke at Troop this summer, and it's also become a (different and completely unrelated) joke here in PoD's trumpet section; also, ever since Katy introduced me to the Planetarium Puzzle I've always been drawn to anything regarding red herrings, maybe simply because I'd never heard the term used before. I have no idea why I am so obsessed with the concept, but I am. Anyway, it's a good article.

An interesting article on cursive and print. Another topic I've become fascinated with ever since I found out cursive was no longer being taught in schools. It came as kind of a shock to me, because, well, we're going to end up with people who can't read it. Not that it's too difficult, but I imagine for some it could be, especially with letters like the old style Q, or Z. See, I don't even remember anymore because they (who is they?) changed it when I got to second grade, so we relearned some letters. Anyway, I mean, I can understand that so many people type now that it rarely matters. I mean, fuck, pretty much all my teachers refuse to accept handwritten assignments. But I am inherently drawn to fonts (I don't know why, I just am--I sketch fonts when I'm bored, for god's sake, random words that pop into my head just because I want to make them look interesting) and it makes me sad that an alternative sort of alphabet could disappear. Anyway, just some thoughts there, nothing really pressing.

Depp unsure about Pirates 4, which would be a bummer considerig the first movie is so much better than the second two.

So, I decided to start chewing gum. This was at first a challenge because Juicy Fruit, ever since they changed their recipe or something a few years ago, it tastes terrible. Although I DID finally find sugarless Juicy Fruit in the US--it comes in those 60 piece BigEPaks. So despite that I'm a little bit of a chomper and I get tired of chewing it pretty fast, this is the plus list I'm trying to focus on: I don't bite my nails as much, it prevents me from eating as much snack food, and it burns some calories. BUT Orbit peppermint is pretty good (I don't think it's sugarless though?) and Trident bubblegum is pretty good, too.

ALSO since Pittsburgh sucked so much this weekend, all I did was pick up a halloween snowglobe. I wonder how long it will last. HOWEVER, it is awesome.

Holy crap I feel like it's been ages since I've posted. That may simply be the fact that I have 123 tabs open because I've been too lazy to post in the past few days. (I think the guy that's on Craig Ferguson right now was the guy who voiced the turtle in Swan Princess.) Soooo I need to do a tab dump. I think part of my problem is that I've been trying to keep up better with my gmail and my google reader, but it's a LOT to read... Plus I don't have much space to be saving stuff on my hard drive, so I'm trying to figure out how to rearrage everything so it all works.

I did figure out I can keep some stuff on my netbook (which actually has more memory than my lappy, go figure--I didn't realize that the lappy only had 80GB) and keep a text document of the stats on the info that I need instead of lugging all the files around on a flash drive. So that will open up some space...

I'm not sure what to do with everything else. The problem is that the netbook is good for surfing because carrying around this thing is a pain, but for actual work I like to use this one. And I'm running out of room. Maybe if I succumb to desk use I can just use the backup hard drive? I hate having to hook up external drives though. Bleh.

And I can't put my games on my netbook because they're on CDs and I don't know if I can get my hands on an external CD drive. And I don't want to put my music on the netbook (though it would be handy) because the speakers are pretty shitty. Unless I can find some small (tiny) speakers to lug around with it? And then I'd put the musc on there in an instant. And I would still need an external CD drive.

So what I'm working with is an 80GB tablet, a 80GB+60GB netbook, a 2GB flash drive, a 16GB flash drive, a crappy old iPod nano, and a 250GB external hard drive. I will get a system working here. (It would really help if I could get a resolution on my netbook that didn't involve scrolling but did involve smaller icons and shit. Fucking asus... Excited about playing around with Linux, eventually.)

SO. LINKSPAM OF A MASSIVE NATURE.

Panhandling cat; I feel kind of sad for it. I am just a bleeding heart for street kitties... And I'm amazed it puts up with sitting there all day. (And I really want to adopt KL Kitty aka Tinkerbell.)

So you know that fugly 70's building in North Korea that's a huge abandoned concrete monstrosity (that apparently has no steel structure which I find hard to believe and has warped)? Apparently they are paying an Egyptian company to fix it up--don't know if it's just externally--but yeah. In following up on this I've learned more about North Korea than I've ever known and it is a truly creepy place. Start with this BBC photoset, and then here is a huge phototour. So crazy... They really keep all the "bad" stuff hidden out of sight, and it looks like a creepy, empty, badly-concreteized, highly stylized city. Although I guess most of this is Pyongyang... Still. And someone somewhere posted a lightpollution shot of all of North Korea and its surrounding countries, and NK is like a fucking black hole. Damn. I feel like you could film some crazy shit there if you trusted the place enough... like good Zombie films or something. I think it would feel way too abandoned like that if you did live there, though.

French, Spanish, and German translations for bizarre travelers' phrases. I particularly like "There's a corpse on the bed, please change the sheets". I'm also wondering how many of these innuendos translate to bizarre stuff... Like the silicon ones, maybe? Like maybe the German one is referring to silicon the element, and it just makes no fucking sense. These are the kind of things about languages that I love.

So did you know New Zealand is not technically on the same continent as Australia? It's part of Zealandia. How fucking cool is that? And can we please have more than seven continents? That'd be bitchin'.

5 ways common sense lies to you every day. Some of these, folks, we call logical fallacies. hurr durr

Brain decline begins at age 27?! Fuck.

A model with fake legs, and how they give her "superpowers". She's awesome.

Ricky Gervais and Elmo? That's some funny shit right there. (Is Elmo technically a muppet?! That's how I tagged it but I'm second-guessing myself.)

VERIZON customers: be careful about this. They're apparently sending out some shady paperwork you have to go through the effor of declining so that they're not sending companies info about where you take your vacations or what stuff you're doing online or whatever.

You know, with all these massive amounts of links I'm getting daily now, maybe I should just start a more news-blog styled secondary blog where I can just link these all through one at a time. Jesus Christ to I have a pile here... Bleh. (I am hating to imagine what I will come home to after a summer of tour; it was bad enough last time, but I can't imagine now with all my lovely google subscriptions and shiny things.)

Um... Why don't we stop here for now? I have to check my email and then sleep.

tabs tabs tabs. Know what that means? LINKSPAAAAAAAAM

Google cut a deal with Life or something, and now there are tons of cool old photos searchable on Google. So cool.

Know how I mentioned diamonds are like a big red "RANT BUTTON" for me? Here's a really good primer, 10 Facts You Should Know About Diamonds.

So there's this thing called the Moscow Millionaire Fair. Basically, if you're filthy rich, you go to buy expensive shit and get ripped off by businesses. From the BBC's coverage, I love this quote: "A gold baby's dummy is on offer. Fashion writer Alexander Vassiliev says taste among the new rich is unsophisticated. "I don't think there is any elegance," he says." So basically... They're spending to show they're rich, with no discretion. Aren't we a great world, folks? It's like million-dollar trailer-trash. However, it did result in the wickedst supervillain chair of all time. I mean, seriously, folks, that is how you dominate a room. Oh no you don't, you're not getting anywhere within a ten-foot radius of me, fuckers

Ten Incredibly Dangerous Doctors. Creeeeeeepyyyyyyyy.

EMILY STRANGE RIPPED OFF NATE THE GREAT. DAMN, people. DAMN. Fucking unoriginal douchebags. I love those cats... And now I hate them, no matter how coercively adorable they may be.

Cat Haiku. I particularly love these:

oh, I scratched the couch
does that upset you? you mad?
you had me neutered

(That sounds like it came from Family Guy.)

yes, I have nine lives
and I’m spending one with you
thank me with tuna

from high on my perch
I rule over all below
also, I’m stuck

when I sneeze, it’s cute
when I barf up grass, you’re mad
make up your damn mind

Dude, some guy's Creative Commons picture got put in Iron Man. SAH-WEET

ALSO THEY'RE BRINGING BACK TDK FOR JANUARY

FUCK YEAH, IMAX