The Daily Adventures of Mercat

I've been thinking about a lot of things lately. This may be partly due to psych 101; much like philosophy courses, I end up having a great deal to think about that impacts my normal everyday already large-topic-encompassing thought process. As such, this post is all over the places and contains both shallow and ponderous (omg, "pond"erous, get it? pun not intended, but fully enjoyed by this mercat) artifacts.

I freaking love crazy fan theories. I've read a few great ones lately, that Fight Club is grown up Calvin & Hobbes, Pokemon is a coma dream Ash is having to deal with his issues, Ferris Beuller is all in Cameron's head, it goes on. Some of them are crazy-awesome but completely unncessary (like these), others more legit (the r2d2 theory, which sort of retcons the plot holes added by the new trilogy). ANYWAY, I was directed to this fantabulous page of crazy fan theories about Iron Man. My personal favorites are:

1) The quantum moustache theory

Tony's facial hair exists in a state of quantum entanglement
This theory is an attempt to reconcile how Tony can appear in separate comics with either the modern goatee or the retro 'stache. In a similar situation to Schrodinger's Cat, Tony simultaneously has a goatee and a mustache until the artist "observes" him.

* Screw the laws of physics, I have money!

2) The Tesla theory

Tony Stark is a clone of Nikola Tesla.
Minus the madness, of course.

The man builds an arc reactor (in a cave with a box of scraps no less), plugs it into his chest, builds the iron man suit and hunts down the people who got access to his weapons without him knowing about it and you're trying to tell me he's not crazy?

3) Rhody's recasting

Rhody is going to get severely injured between films and require skin grafts
The recovery process will result in Rhodes getting thinner and his skin getting darker.

4) The Iron Man theory

Tony Stark is really Iron Man.
I've got it! Iron Man is supposedly an employee of Stark Enterprises but no evidence of this has ever been really seen - he's never seen following Stark even though he's supposed to be Stark's bodyguard, and on the rare occasions they are seen in the same room, Iron Man never speaks, so it could easily be anyone wearing the same armour. Stark has numerous times supposedly fired Iron Man but it doesn't stop Iron Man from appearing even though he should be out of funding and Stark always welcomes him back with open arms in the end. What more evidence do you need?

* Dude, where have you been? He claimed so in that one meet the press thing the military did about Iron Man.
* No, that press thing was just a stint to throw us off it was just like that time Harvey Dent said he was the Batman but he wasn't! But maybe you're on to something with the jerkass billionaire playboy idea... Hmm. Have we ever seen Bruce Wayne and Iron Man together?

o And Peter Parker can never get photos of Superman! It's all so clear.

+ Yes, of course... BRUCE WAYNE IS TONY STARK!
+ Obviously, they agreed to a corporate merger. It was cemented by Stark and Wayne by using the Dragon Ball Z fusion earrings. Ladies and Gentlemen: Toby Stayne!

5) All of Stan Lee's characters are the same guy (just plain epic)

6) ALL OF THE CROSSOVER THEORIES

Seriously, this page, just for entertainment's sake, I love it. The pure hilarity of it is impressive.

(Also, just ran over to the Indy page to see what the deal was, of course, it's not so nearly entertainment so much as people trying to pretend ToD and KotCS didn't happen. ACCEPT THEM AND MOVE ON WITH YOUR LIFE. It's on these occasions I am sad that the Indy fans are relatively a good deal older or a good deal younger than me...)

(Additionally, wtf, "the skull was magnetic, the gold could actually be real magnetic material"?! YOU FAIL AT SCIENCE. CRYSTAL =/= MAGNETIC.)

These sort of things make me wonder how many movie viewers actually incorrectly explain plot holes, as some people clearly to not understand logic and some to not understand science. BUT I DIGRESS, I am so far afield from anything relevant to this post idek.

Let's go where I was originally going, teenage rebellion. I don't know why it came up, but I was thinking about it yesterday and I have concluded that perhaps, despite my "goody-two-shoes" image (ha), there may exist a natural rebellion in every teenager, and perhaps I was just lucky enough to be able to funnel this energy into more useful outlets. Pats for Hats, holding grudges against certain asshats, and feminism. How did I realize this? I realized, when speaking metaphorically that sexism is THE button to press to make me go off--I realized that I (rather comparatively) flip out whenever sexism is the issue at hand. Regardless of how big or small the issue may be. And I really have no reason for feeling that passionately--well, actually, that may not be true, now that I put it to paper (or blog as the case may be). Perhaps my paranoia (well, constant worry over unnecessary things) against all sorts of things to go wrong causes me to feel oppressed by my environments and that's why I flip out with feminism? To try to regain confidence for the oppressed? I don't know, it's a legitimate theory.

Particularly in relation to this article I just read, that the objectification of women by men DIRECTLY AFFECTS THEIR SELF-CONFIDENCE. Perhaps what I believe to be my greater social awareness is to blame for what I call my "paranoia"? Maybe I will just start calling it "avid awareness" or some bullshit term because I feel like paranoia is unfair (not to mention unfounded. I'm somewhat clinically curious, though). ANYWAY.

(...My theory also explains why, I think, my family thinks I am bat-shit for thinking Twilight is bat-shit. Because I react that way, and I expect others to be as offended about feminism and stalkers and pedophilia BUT MAYBE THAT'S JUST ME.)

No, I definitely still think that shit is horrifying

Again on the topic of feminism, the anti-rape condom. I have mixed feelings about this. One, well, it is good to have a tool to fight in this war? I don't know. But (two) it really bothers me that this puts the responsibility in the hands of the victim. I mean, I don't want to have to shove that thing up my vag just to maim a rapist in the event that may happen. I mean, what, do you wear this every time you go out? Every day? All day, all the time? (And technically, by the mechanics of it, is it really a condom? Idk, it's more like... a diaphragm trap. Except it's not a diaphragm either, I know I know, so... what is it?

...Well let's just say I'm resisting the urge to post Ackbar in here.) Anyway. I feel like this is a measure for the desperate only, and otherwise has some rather dire implications. BUT that is society and welcome to it =/

I am learning to play Hey Soul Sister on my uke; the chords are difficult both in that they hurt (gotta learn that stretch and that muscle memory) and that I don't know how to hold my uke properly to change chords rapidly. THIS IS A PROBLEM. No thanks to my uke teacher, of course, because I remember asking her and she never really had anything to say because she didn't have any sort of formal teaching. Awesomesauce.

Melissa taught me a new word today: revagulous. This may just take over for recockulous in terms of outlandishness and entertainment value. (See, I told you, I can appreciate bodily function jokes on the same level of my brain that is in psychology-mode. IT'S CRAZY, I know.)

(...Literally?)

CLUB OBI-WAN let's goooooo

Handwriting is History?! Let me answer that with an emphatic NO. What if all our computers were to die? And I'm guessing it teaches kids good small-motor-skills. Oh and then there's the part where typing special characters and equations is still a huge fucking pain in the ass. But this dude is a journalist so I'm sure he has no idea that trying to write out Taylor Series expansions is SO EASY WITH TABLETS, amirite? Oh wait, almost none of the engineers use their laptops to take notes. Too much a novelty, still.

This shirt is ugly as sin but I love the pun.

Random thing: I was just looking at passiveaggressivenotes.com and saw a "flowers to go: if your name is bitch, come in and get your free flowers" post. It reminded me that, I think, the night before I left for Spain, I was coming home from Regal 20 and met my parents for dinner at Marion's or ice cream at Friendly's or something (actually, I think it was a Thursday and I was coming home from my Thursday night science lecture), and I passed the flower place over by the gas station, and it had that promotion but it said "Diane" that day. =) Good times. Wow, random memory, huh?

A somewhat worrisome facebook article. They keep everything. HOLY SHIT. Also, it pisses me off that though they have all this old data, I can't recover my statuses and Twitter only keeeps 1,000 tweets. I lost all my first tweets :( And I had some good stuff I wanted to come back to, as well...

(Also, Facebook Beacon! Done via a 1x1 GIF bug. That is sly. And douchey. And I'm starting to hate facebook more and more.)

A history of the ampersand! Completely fascinating.

And on the topic of typography and characters, an English-language sarcasm mark. Only I find it ugly and I think if you are blatantly told something is sarcasm you are missing a critical level of enjoyment and understanding of sarcasm. In addition, if you miss written sarcasm you may want to re-evaluate whether you are truly understanding the writer. (Although the use for indicating sarcasm in subtitles is useful.) (And... it costs $2 to buy and use? Yeah... not gonna catch on, buds.)

Nightmare snowmen! As featured in Calvin and Hobbes. Fantastic work. Art.

Let's see, today we got up early because we're on east coast time, and we went out to Rocky Mountain National Park to see if we could hike, but we couldn't because the snow was about three feet deep, maybe more, so we built a snowman and had a snowball fight. And also made the two feet of snow on the roof of the little shelter fall off like mini-avalanches. That was fun.

Aaaaaand pretty much the only other thing we've done all day is watch the Star Wars marathon on Spike. WOO

So they want the guy who wrote Pooh's Heffalump Movie to write the Wanted sequel. First of all, it can't be that good. Second of all, HE EFFING RUINED HEFFALUMPS. THEY AREN'T SUPPOSED TO BE ANYTHING. So that guy can diaf as far as I'm concerned.

Uh, no more tuna by 2012? I'm fucked. I live on that stuff.

Al Capone's prison cell, holy crap.

A new fake name game, this time your NPR name. For the life of me I have no idea what the name of the smallest foreign town I've been to would be. Poland was TEN YEARS AGO HOLY SHIT.

Hahaha, wow. I just watched today's episode of South Park ("The China Probrem")... just wow. Definitely hilarious, definitely also ridiculously creepy. Though I must admit at their clever use of the horror music from the final scenes of Raiders. Also I put most of the blame on Lucas in this case... And I don't feel like the refrigerator scene was out of place. But we've already discussed that here.

BUT ANYWAY... DVD bonus features! I'm thinking I'm gonna have to go with Best Buy (as much as I hate them and their customer no-service), if it's not too expensive. Is it sad I attached more to the thrones as an artifact than the skull? I say no. Also I need to place my toy orders for the 3 3/4" ones... Can you do more than one? *MUST HAVE THIRTEEEEEEEEN*!

So, yeah, next Tuesday... should I go to the later field trip so I can go to Best Buy in the morning? I'm thinking yes except that I don't know what time it opens.

(But that's okay because it's a little unfortunate that I'm not really worried about them selling out of anything... and now we're back to South Park.)


...Yeeeeeeeeeeeeah...

I need to make a post tomorrow about today. It was in general a good day and an awesome evening, for the most part. =) And now it's 4 am and I have plans for tomorrow...

EPIC DAY TODAY.

So everyone's sitting at home doing homework and stuff, waiting for chapter to roll around. The wind was ridiculous and definitely keeping us entertained. I had to go get the pool off the fence for Baujan Field, and Brittany noticed all our neighbors across the street pointing and realized we had siding coming off. From Adela's room you could see St. Joe's losing shingles off the roof. At one point the gusts were so strong I thought they were going to blow the window-mounted AC right into the house. D:

So security is coming around telling everyone to stay inside (of course EVERYONE across the street from us is outside on their porches for hours; wtf?!), and sending out warnings through the system (so the house got five calls, one for each of us) and chapter gets cancelled. So we all go back to watching TV and gettin' shit done, and of course we're all busy and sort of worried about our workload etc. etc. Well, then the internet goes down and everyone goes fuck, well, what am I supposed to do now? So we all kind of do chores until the internet comes back.

BUT, the power goes out across campus. For us it flicks back on in I'd say less than half a second, and we continue to do homework and stuff. Word slowly travels across the ghetto and the rest of campus that the north side of Stonemill (us) is the only part of the Ghetto (and actually the Dark Side, too, but I don't know about the houses by Frericks) with power. The dorms don't have power, and the upper floors (like five and above in Marycrest) don't have water, either, because of pressure.

Eventually a whole bunch of girls (some Phi Rho, some pledging, some just engineers) come over to take showers and do homework, and as it's nearing ten or so Brittany comes downstairs super-excited and puts a Britney Spears song on the CD player, puts the speaker up to the window and BLASTS it. She decided she was going to wreak revenge upon our neighbors across the street for all their Thursday/Friday/Saturday late-night music, and eventually we find some good music and I burn a mix CD and stuff.

So then Candice gets word that the PMA house (in the middle of the Ghetto, mind you, sans power) is having a greenlight. (They have an old stoplight upstairs; when it's green, it's party time.) So of course we have to go over there, and the guys are there , and as we leave our house we notice the UD Police pull up right behind us. Well, we get over to the PMA house and they're actually partying and drinking and stuff. There are a few glowbracelets and the greenlight is actually the team lights from a green-team Nerf gun, and they are powering their music off the battery for the pep band bass guitar. So of course it is awesome and at this point everyone is getting sort of slap-happy and more people are getting word and actually coming to the greenlight. Candice and I figure since we have homework and worry that Brittany might have freaked out from the police that we should go back to our house. (After all, we were having a party, too!)

So as we get back to Stonemill we can tell we're no longer blasting music, but the house down the street has Christmas lights up. One porch and one tree with colored lights, and then the tree also has a blinking giant white star. We realize Danny and Mike and some of the other guys from that house are the ones who put some of it up, so we go down there and talk to them for a bit and then steal some of their lights for our house. Well, we get back to our house and Brittany and Christine were already having thoughts of Christmas lights and pull out the house's lights. Which is an entire shopping bag full of stuff. So we put the music back on and shove an extension cord through the window AC's opening and proceed to spend the next hour or so hanging up lights, taking photos, waving to passing cars, and talking to people on the street. A few guys (5th year MBAs, don't know their names) from our side of Stonemill come down to see what's going on after we're taking out bizillionth photo with my tripod. They had heard that since we are on the grid with the campus, which is all on a generator (or, I'm guessing, several) that all these houses with the lights were trying to suck power to get classes cancelled. I can't speak for the other houses but we tell them that we're just trying to give the Ghetto some light and make people smile. And seriously, by this time, the lights are ridiculous. We have colored lights up one pole and around the top; white lights on the bushes in front; colored light tubes down the railing and around the front of the bushes; and pulsing white and blue icicles hanging from the other handrails. At this point we had a few people drive by and call us assholes :C I think because they were jealous we had power. But some people are staying the night (of course after we'd spent half a retaliation-induced-dance party and Christmas-lights time doing homework) sleeping on our couches and stuff, and some guys were supposed to come sleep over on the couches in the basement (they haven't showed up yet), but who knows. Tomorrow is another day, we'll see how that goes, too.

Oh, and the cops didn't even come up to the house and yell at us, Brittany turned the music down as soon as they pulled up apparently. =P

And after all the fun, I walk inside to see Brittany had taken a whiteboard marker and written on the wall tiles in the kitchen "Diane's Schedule" with a hole and arrows (because getting my schedule up is low on my priorities list right now) and I fix it to read "Diane's Schedule: Hopewalk and/or PoD" and Brittany and I decide (well, first of all, that we need to wash the tiles because when I got a wet paper towel to wipe away her schedule hole, there was a distinct white area and dirt line) that we are going to memorialize Phi Rho House Fun on the walls with the whiteboard markers. So she writes up "cops called" and "no power" and "christmas lights" with "9/14" on there and I add "AAHHH SPRINKLES" from Candice and this year is going to be awesome.




I'm kind of sad, though, the winds knocked over an old tree at home. =C It seems like all the older trees are having to go for one reason or another... Falling down, having to get cut down so they don't fall on the house, having to get cut down so they don't uproot the foundation, rotting, getting struck by lightning... =/ Or in this case blown WAAAAY over. It's just weird because when you come home after the old trees come down, it feels like there is a big hole in the sky. And of course, you can't just quickly grow a tree to fill it in... Yeah, this kind of thing breaks my heart, same kind of thing as having to move...

Really, I don't think there is anything like seeing a really exciting movie on the big screen. =) Mom and Dad (and Laura and Savannah) finally went out to see Indy IV with me last night, and yay they liked it! Which I was hoping they would because they definitely didn't have the same expectations I did. Of course they didn't like the gophers starting at the rocket sled and the Tarzan!Mutt or the spaceship portal, but then again, there weren't that many who did. So yay! They didn't hate it.

Also then Laura's scholarship got upgraded to a full ride! They even emailed her a month ago but yahoo is stupid and deleted her email. So she's happy she doesn't have to work a million hours at three jobs now. All in all it's been gooooood.

You know why I like Pushing Daisies? Well, a lot of reasons. But can you say retro detective story? I kind of raised myself on the Hardy Boys. So, yeah.

I'm rewatching all the episodes (though only 9 so far...) for fun, and I keep forgetting how fun they are. Someone in an interview mentioned that it's successful/good because it's kind of removed from time or place, so when they carry it over to Japan it's easily viewable for the viewers as perhaps taking place in Japan, you know? I'm not really sure where I see it in my head. Something like 1950's-inspired New York, maybe? But when New York was cleaner, obviously. Um, anyway.

I am totally referring to the refrigerator as a cheesebox from now on.

Good quotes:
"Bitch, I was in proximity!" --Emerson (S1 Ep1)
"When you get all Jabberwocky in my minute it's hard ot follow up."--Emerson (S1 Ep2)

I love Emerson. So much snarky love

oh god I need to get to bed I have to get up at six tomorrow but nooo I'm watching PD

"The fun part's counting my money in the bubble bath."--Emerson...again (S1 Ep2)

Olive: What's the poop?
Emerson: Poop?
Olive: Poop. Scoop. Skinny. The haps. The dealio. The 411. PI lingo.
Emerson: Rhubarb.
Olive: What's what mean?
Emerson: PI secret code for get me a damn slice of rhubarb. (S1 Ep2)

*Olive tears up and Digby starts licking her face*
Narrator: While Olive considered how much she loved Digby for paying attention to her when the piemaker would not, and Digby considered how much he liked salt (S1 Ep2)

AUGH there's so much awesome in these scripts I can't quote it all. Damn. must...restrict...quotations...

Emerson, forcing Ned to rekill the crash test dummy: "If I wanted to mingle with a bunch of geeks wearing leotards, I would have stayed in art school." (S1 Ep2)

*to Ned* "What, you love secrets. You want to marry secrets and have little half-secret half-human babies." --Chuck (S1 Ep2)

"I pretty much bake pies and wake the dead. I live a very sheltered life." --Ned (S1 Ep2)


"The Dandylion car is the culmination of my life's work! It's a flowerpowered phenomenon born of a thousand sleepless nights, intense ritalin abuse, and a long sublimated interest in botany." --Mark Chase (S1 Ep2)

I also love that all the actors in this show are just this side of over-the-top ridiculous. Hee hee hee.

sooo adorabllllle



[EDIT] How did I not have a snark/sarcasm tag before this?!

I'm going shark diving on Sunday ;D

managed to make my mom nervous from 3000 miles away

So, not only is mercat a Spanish, and possibly Italian and Latin word, there is also a Scottish use of it called the Mercat Cross which is basically a pillar-ish thing that marked where the market was held in town. Read more! lol

And it appears to be an okay but crappy-looking bar in New York.

And an artists' production company...

WOAH, I'm 58th on Google. I've jumped a lot, but maybe because I'm posting more often and writing the word "mercat" more? 'Tis a possibility. (HAHAHA, my cached page is SO fucked up formatting-wise. Practically useless...)

Damn, my instructables username came up 68th! Thaaaat's kind of scary.

This mercat painting that kind of ticks me off because it reminds me too much of another artists' work, who did it first; (this is the other artist, but it's her other cats that it reminds me of)

a cute necklace I kind of want now;

an antique bookery;

Elfwood art; (somehow I've never seen that before)

AND MY FAVORITE PAGE ON THE INTERWEBS. I'm 90% sure I have that posted in my profile, along with Jess' art of THE Mercat, me. Haha, I'm a weirdo.

You know what this calls for? I think I need a logo of a mercat (catfish-ish style) on a big pillar. I think I would totally win, hands down.

Yes, this is a contest. I am the Mercat so I am the winnar.

Saw I am Legend yesterday. (Warning! Spoilers ahead.) Um. Yeah. So, I heard from everyone that it was really scary, and that they all came out being paranoid about those mutated-vampiric-humans jumping out at them. No. You know what? I feel ripped off. That ending was crap. Actually, everyone I went with thought the ending was crap. First of all, if these vampires can't break through that glass, why didn't he put that on his house instead of steel doors? And yeah, the blasts outside may have blown the ones on the windows, but the vampires busted right through the ones to the lab, and then clearly got stopped by the enclosure. Also, WHERE DID THE BUTTERFLY THING COME FROM? That came out of nowhere. Bwuh. AND THEN! There was room in the coal chute. What he should have done was put in the girl who was being cured with them. OR, you know, thrown the grenade and hopped in. If he put the girl in they would have had more than enough blood to find a cure as well as did they not have to refrigerate the sample or whatever?! Ugh. However, if I were the writers I would have had him throw the blood sample (which is what I thought he was going to do at first) and have them go crazy over it and eat it and have it cure them, and then not break through the glass. But whatever. =/

What I really want to know is, who looked at Bob Marley music and said, "Damn, this would make a sweet vampire movie."

Though I do laud them on their use of not having any music. It was quite effective.

But... Planes to bomb the bridges? And then how did Anna and her son get there? Whatever. They really could have done better with that movie.

Damn, also it's been TEN YEARS since Austin Powers first came out. Which I was kind of surprised, but then I thought about it and it makes sense. I only remember the rumors about Austin Powers III and then remembering it came out theatres (though I don't think I went to see it).

Eh, important things to talk about today, no?

Soooo... twelfth day of Christmas, right?

On the twelfth day of Christmas, the LJ gave to me--SierraMist Holiday Hawk,



a cute music video,
a funny movie parody,
a Bit of Fry and Laurie,
Aqua/Indy techno,
bearded singing nuns,
tiny kittens miaowing,
CHRISTMASYYYY MIIICHAEEEEL CRAWFOOOOOORD
Chicago and some children,
Straight No Chaser singing,
God Rest Ye lights a-blinking,
and a "happy holidays" so merry!

So Merry Christmas! =)

So Johnny and Pat and I went sledding yesterday, which was fun, except that the snow wasn't good for it, even though it looked like it would be. And then they both tackled me twice so today my head has been utterly killing me. =/ I can't turn it at all. Oooooow...