The Daily Adventures of Mercat

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

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

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

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

So bandicoots are fucking adorable.

Poor hedgehog with no spines. :C

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

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

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

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

New rainbow jellyfish! Cool beans.

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

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

I weird myself out sometimes.

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

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

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

Rolcats! That is, Russian lolcats.

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

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

Retooled youtube mashups: fucking amazing.

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

Irrational Geographic, a photojourney through Mardis Gras.

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

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

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

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

Man, it already feels like Spring Break. That is awesome. The only thing I really, really need to do right now is figure out registration stuff and write up one assignment and I will be good. a lot of people have said they feel like it's a Friday today, plus like half of the people don't show up for classes and a lot of the teachers have cancelled because they have some convention or something to go to this week. The library is closed, so there's no one but staff hanging out there.

Ceramics is coming along pretty good, my "plate" made it through with only one small crack, easily fixed with glaze, and even if it breaks in the kiln it will be fixable. I kind of wish I could finish the bird bath right now, though. Grr. Anyway, one effect I was going for didn't really work so I think I'll have to play with it a little, and I'm hoping it will turn out good. And then the raku piece won't be fired until after break, so all in all I have a grand total of zero pieces finished for this grading, haha.

Oh, I almost completely forgot about that petal cup... I wonder if it made it through?

Today I think I am just going to roll up in a ball and die. I am crampy despite attempts to up my iron and potassium levels, exhausted and muscle-sore from surfing (I would like to not use my shoulders all day thankyouverymuch), and the back of my legs hurts a lot from the sunburn from Saturday still. Also my face is kind of red and I think I may have burnt my lips? They don't hurt at all but they look kind of swollen and red at the edges, as if I had been licking them and they got chapped. It's weird. Plus I had a headache since last night (a very heavy and squinty one), so I drank some caffiene (which is supposed to aggravate cramps), but hey, I am a little more awake and my headache is gone. Unfortunately they didn't have plain tea so diet coke with lime is okay but lots of empty calories and I'm not really a coke person so boo. (Run-on much?)

Otherwise, I wrote up a list of the books I got from the free section of the library:
--The Madonna in Art, 1897; really neat cover with stamped lilies and gilt, neat illustrations.
--Legends of the Madonna, 1872; the most amazing cover with gilt stamping and gilt edges on the paper, unfortunately falling apart in my hands. =(
--Christ in the Ancient World, 1933; very small and cute, notes on the inside from 1935.
--Representative Short Stories, 1924; stamped cover w/ floral pattern, notes from 1927, illustrated.
--Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints, 1923; stamped and printed cover illustration, illustrated, original copyright 1878.
--The Serpent and the Satellite, 1953; interesting book about symbols in religious history.
--Levitation, 1928; stamped gilt cover, sounds like it would be a somewhat historically funny read.
--The Syrian Christ, 1924; stamped gilt cover, orig. copyright 1916
--St. Augustine, 1933
--Journal of Tyerman and Bennet, Vols. 1 & 2, 1832; illustrated publication of original journals from 1821 to 1829 (that's three years difference... wow)
--Gilbert and Sullivan Songbook, not terribly old, my guess 60's-80's? Two-tone ink. Just picked it up for kicks.
--Fairy Tales, Brothers Grimm, 1966
--Magic House of Numbers, 1957; math tricks for learning/teaching/fun
--Digging for History: Archeology discoveries throughout the world, 1945 to 1959, 1960
--Bermudiana, 1936

Oh hells yes. I dunno, I really appreciate being able to hold something and just sort of feel the gaping history or importance of it, especially if it's something small. And I know, these books are probably not worth much to collectors or anything, but I don't care, it's all about the history for me. Being able to hold something in my hands, in the case of the oldest books, that is one hundred and seventy-five years old. And back then it was three-years-old information, so "brand new". Utterly...wow.

Other fun things I've been meaning to post about! Yesterday surfing, we had trouble starting a fire because it was so windy, and out of all of us I was the only scout there and I got to show off my skills (sort of--I just gave some advice because they guys were having too much fun "being guys" and being in charge of the fire/coals/grilling). BUT, I did regret leaving my purse in the car (because of my wallet and phone); my pocket knife was in there, too. Could have shown off my engineering skills... A guy came down the beach asking if anyone had paper or anything to burn with. I was only half paying attention but I did finally listen enough to catch on that he was asking if anyone had a bong or anything, which was hilarious since a lot of the people there actually do smoke fairly regularly, but didn't have anything with them. He decided we would all try to MacGuyver something (esp. involving an aluminum can if he could find one). I think it goes to show...something... that my first thoughts were: "I wish I knew how a bong worked" and "Damn, I left my pocketknife up in the car." So, yeah. Then he came back and asked the four of us sleeping on the beach if "we burned" and I said no, so he had me give him a handshake-sort-of-thing and was all "good for you, good for you". (I dunno, what do you call it when you grab their hand but your hand is facing upward rather than down... like... a bro-handshake or something?) Anyway it was hilarious and I can honestly say that's the first tome I've ever had someone ask me if I did drugs slash wanted to. Hehe. (You think it would have happened previously in Yellow Springs somehow...lol)

I've been seeing more mongoose (mongeese? mongoosen?) on campus. They are hilariously adorable when they run.

I read a sad article the other day that bats are disappearing, and it could relate to bees disappearance; it could be all the cell signals and stuff are messing them up. That makes me soooo sad. I freaking love bats. I am especially sad that it's Little Brown Bats disappearing in New York, and possibly spreading, because that's the main bats you see at Mammoth Cave. POOR BATTIES

Bailey made an interesting point in Pacific Hist today about air raid sirens, but this is kind of anecdotal in relation to what we actually talked about. When you hear an air raid siren, he pointed out, the first thing you think is "it must be the first Monday" or whatever, not "we're having a Tsunami/natural disaster" or "we're getting nuked". My first thought is always: "TORNADO SIREN?", demonstrating, once again, that Xenia is a panicked little town of failure in that regard. (Carroll made me hate all the Xenians paranoid of tornadoes--THEY ARE NOT THAT COMMON, PEOPLE! A thunderstorm does not 100% a tornado make, so please STFU thankyouverymuch. I always want to say, "stop crying, it's just some FREAKING RAIN". Argh. I really can't express my frustration with Xenians in this regard.)

So, I'm learning that technical classes are uninteresting because they are boring. I really enjoy reading articles in science magazines and stuff because they actually relate the science to application to make it interesting. Case in point? Ceramics today. We were talking about all the chemicals that go into ceramics and glazes and firing (silica, alumina, feldspar, copper, iron, magnesium, calcium [a lot of which are oxides]) and he was trying to explain how iron, which is common in most stoneware, can have so many colors. It's all different ratios, but for example, copper red-green will give you green if you use it alone, but if you base white under it, the reaction will give you red; if you need an explanation: Statue of Liberty is copper, was red, is now green. Yes? Moving on. He was trying to express how iron is so varied, because you can have reds, yellows, and browns. The example he used is blood, and that it is red, but will turn brown, and if you repeatedly wash out a stain will leave yellow behind. We also discussed how it is blue when unoxidized, and he didn't have an example, but we told him about how blood is blue if it is not carrying oxygen (aka has already passed to your lungs and is carrying out CO₂, which I think I learned in like third grade... yay "health class" rather than "science class"). And the coolest thing? Why shrimp, lobsters, mussels, and other related things have blue blood: their blood uses copper to oxidize rather than iron. HOW COOL IS THAT. (It also made me wonder if this accounts for pink flamingos' color, since they get it from eating shrimps, and whether the same sort of thing applies to "scarlet" ibises [versus regular old white ibises].) See? This kind of thing makes me go yaaaaay chemistry! whereas last semester it was definitely I cannot fucking wait to be done with this class.

( Oh, damn, this got kind of long, lol )

Yes, that was rather long winded, but it's a lot of thoughts flying through my brain, and pretty consistently, too.

Bailey mentioned there's a movie or something coming out about... Queen Liliuokalani? that people are getting upset about because the title is "The Barbarian Princess". The creators are saying, hey, we know it's one of her nicknames, and we like her, hence the movie showing in her in good light, but the critics are saying, yes, but it's an ironic nickname to point out that though she was Hawaiian she wasn't barbaric. Which, to be fair, I think they have a point; there are a lot of idiots/ignorants in the world (hey, I used to be one of them, no thanks to you St. Brigid), but at the same time, there has to be something said for the use of irony and poeticism and things in art. (Otherwise, what's left? Surprisingly, this is coming out of the mouth of such a literalist. I hate analyzing stories for symbolism and all that shit it's "supposed" to mean; I'll draw my own conclusions. And yes, I used to be a rather literal reader. [Thanks again, St. Brigid!]) Plus, I now have such a ridiculously sarcastic/cynical tone (thanks to Mr. Soucek and Laura, interestingly enogh), that since a blog is my preferred manner of keeping track of everything, it's going to be difficult in the future to tell my tone. (Hence why I am an advocate of emoticons on the internet--we have no face or voice, so it's like a little face to express a little hint of the intended emotion. And then the only problem is something else I like to think about--learned context. I sometimes think that certain word patterns have certain effects on what I'm reading/writing because of the context I learned them in or the way I heard them, and I doubt these apply for other people. Which makes communication all the more difficult, now, doesn't it?)

In History of Furniture the other day, Walter (oh, Takeda... he's such a grumpy old character, like a sort of rude version of Mr. Hemmert who likes to talk a bit more) decided he would teach us the most necessary French phrase: "Talk to my arse, I have a headache." Which because I didn't take French I didn't quite catch all the words, spellings, but as far as I got down was "Parle a mon cule, ma tete (which has an accent grave on the first "e", right?) --somethingImissed--". Haha. If one of you Francophiles would kindly correct me, I am always up for linguistics...

Honestly I'm sort of jealous of my cousin. He's doing an yearlong exchange program in Argentina, so we found out he not only gets to be fluent in Argentinian Spanish, but he's learning French, too. And here I am in Hawaii, deprived of being allowed to learn Hawaiian, when classes here are such a joke I could have soooo easily caught up... *tears* (Note to self, you need to email/chat with the professor to see if there are courses online or something!)

By the way, are any of you out there lingust...i...philes? (Linguists? Er... how do you say "lover of languages"?) I have been thinking I should start trying to write a paragraph a day in Spanish to practice (ack, I am so out of it! Haven't studied for over a year) and throwing in other stuff every once in a while, maybe Polish or Hawaiian or whatever. And does anyone know if there are places online where you can learn a language and actually learn it, not memorize phrases? Danke...

See? I picked up lots of little turns of phrase in other languages from my parents. Like "c'est la gruyiere" from my dad, who speaks Franglais with my uncle [they both took French at Carroll], and so I know lots of butchered French like that. But I mean, I throw "bitte" and "danke" around all the time, which I picked up from my mom, and there's always "gesundheit" and "nastrovia" [sp?] and "garagekey!" [butchered intentionally by my family, but then I do not know the real spelling, either] and many many other things. Plus lots of little linguistic jokes from high school, like the elephant poem the French kids have to learn Freshman year. So probably the most French I can put together is not terribly impressive: "L'elefante se douche, douche, douche, l'elefante se mouche, mouche, mouche" and I don't even know the spelling, that's my best gues. (And "merde!" [thank you Franzie]) Although it was fun to learn about trompe l'oeil (pretend that o/e is mushed together, I'm lazy yanno?) in history of furniture when it was the name of the CD by Malajube (French Canadian band so I can only guess at like 40% of their lyrics... Oh! "Autobus!" That must mean bus! nurr nurr) that I got for Christmas.

Um, yeah. I am soooo just rambling. I need to grab dinner before the cafe (pretend there's an accent, I always spell it with one, just like I write facade with that curly under the c, I just don't know the keystrokes) so I'm posting this and I'll be back to edit it in like... um... a half an hour.

bee ar bee, el oh el

(By the by, when I'm reading things like that I hear "brb" and "lol" phonetically by letter, but "rofl" is phonetically by word and "wtf" and "omg" come out as the phrases "whatthefuck" and "oh my god", respectively. Anyone else want to throw in their two cents on literary quirks?)

( [EDIT] kk back--oh shit, I wrote a lot, so I'm cutting the rest )

[EDIT2] Just kidding, wanted to throw this out there, too. I think the island on the banner of this blog is an east-facing view of Chinaman's hat. If not, it's really fucking close to being it.

So I was required for my engineering workshop to take a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test. It's actually pretty cool. (here's the basic test: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm ...the real thing is like 3000 questions or something. Crazy.) Anyway, I just wanted to kind of self-reflect on my breakdown, which is INFJ.

( cut so I don't kill your friends page... )



IN OTHER NEWS... I am excited for fall! It is probably my favorite season, what with being able to wear warmy comfy clothes or shorts if you so desire. Cool but not freezing. Plus Halloween... I love Halloween. Dressing up is always tons of fun. I'm already looking at costumes. =^n.n^= And I've also been in a very Christmasy and Thanksgivingy mood due to this fall happiness.

Hm, I don't know if I mentioned it in my other post, but they accepted our Gold Award papers yet! I don't know if it's official until the stupid ceremony next year, though, but... whatever, I am happy. No more Elvis for me, though! Dear lord. Born January 9, 1935, died August 16th, 1977... I think that's right. See? I know too much. IF I KNOW HIS BIRTH AND DEATHDATES... yes, we were inundated with Elvis. Blech. Not that he was bad-- we were excited to start! Just not anymore. Not for a good long time.

=^n.n^= I am also in a very Aloha mood, but I think you knew that.

Well, today was a pretty great day. In band, we played 2 songs, one we played yesterday and part two (with 80 measures of rest until we play). Music theory, OH BOY, we learned how to make a scale and the first five sharps. World religions we are watching Baraka, which is a very cool movie. Spanish was pretty cool; we're learning about spanish artists, which really brought me back to all the stuff we say in Spain... it was awesome. Calc, no homework! Us Politics and government, I found out that even though I hate that class it is way too easy and I am the smartest kid in the class (I got the top score on the pretest... yay). Unfortunately, I am surrounded by folks who don't care... Anyway, the highlight of my day: Mr. Hemmert liked what I said about e. e. cummings' emphasis of poetic "energy" he wrote it in his notes... that makes me really proud, because Mr. Hemmert is awesome and all his top students that I have known are awesome people, too.
So, Gold Award review went well, we're basically approved to begin! I got back with only a few minutes left to practice, so it wasn't worth it to get my instrument out or anything. Laura and I went to Penn Station for dinner; I really don't like hot subs that much, of any kind. I listened to Newsies three times through today and I want to watch the movie tonight... I'm working on memorizing the words.

For some reason I was just reminded of the ska band that Chris and Domer want to start... Haha! Yeah... I love writing parodies... I have no idea where those last two thoughts came from, they just struck me. e. e. cummings is awesome! He is a genius, and I understand his poetry pretty well. =^n.n^= Lara and I traded backpacks today, haha, we're such nerds... I love the hallway crew!

All right, I guess I should get down to telling you about my trip, for those who waited so patiently.

We left very early in the morning after loading the bus at St. Brigid school. I was running on two hours of sleep (for only the second time in my life) because I stayed up the night before trying to burn a mix CD but mostly finishing the fifth book in the Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy that I borrowed from Pat. (I was successful!) I can't remember where we satyed the first night, but we did stay in Colorado Springs along the way. We stayed 3 or 4 days in Moab; it was crazy setting up our tents in the sandstorm, without a lot of topsoil for the tent stakes to grab. One great thing about camping out west: you really don't have to worry about water leaking in the tent through inner contact, even when it's pouring. Not that it poured anywhere on our trip. Anyway, every night we set up tents (except for the last one) it was storming of some sort. It reminded me of the time Pat called me a "rain goddess" (read So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish), and I laughed about it. In Moab we went rafting, which was awesome. We went to Arches National Park, where we went to Double Arch, (where part of Indiana Jones 3 was filmed- the beginning part) and Rae and I climbed up into the second arch and looked out at the park. BEAUTIFUL. STUNNING. WOW. We laughed at everyone else since we were the only two to see that view. (Sample: straight drop about 20 or 30 feet to a desert, high wall up to the left, more arch wall around to the right, blue sky, a few white clouds, desert and rocks stretching out onto the horizon, more arch wall on the right side of the horizon, and the rockies on the left side. GORGEOUS. (Oh, by the way, driving a school bus in the Rockies- since our max speed is only 55 anyway, we were only doing about 20 in the rockies, and we had to stop every half hour or so to let the engine cool down. We stopped once to load up on water for the radiator in our camping containers and buy a case (yes, a CASE) of antifreeze (I think?).) Anyway, we left Moab. On the way we went through Tuba City, where my dad stopped the bus, Jess and I ran across the highway, and my mom took a picture of us in front of the Tuba City sign. Don't worry, there's not much traffic on western highways like that one. So we finally get to the Grand Canyon, we set up tents while it's raining. It was nice, a little sprinkle, we were staying in a group campground, the whole camp is in a pine forest (pinyon pines. Let me tell you from Spain experience- pinyon nuts in ice cream are DELICIOUS.). It was beautiful. So we hopped on their bus lines and went out to the South Rim visitors center (we never went to the North Rim). Those brown squirrels are VICIOUS! One tried to steal a guy's hot dog while it was less than ONE INCH from his thigh! We saw a TON of ravens, and they woke us up WAY too early in the morning. Those are big birds! Speaking of big birds- we saw A TON of California Condors. Those birds are SO COOL! Anyway... the next day we went on a three mile hike out to a point. It was a nice pace because they let us walk back at our own pace. In all, we took three hours, so it wasn't too fast. That night we went to a ranger talk after watching the sunset from the rim. The talk was about park stories, but before hand the ranger was answering people's questions. This little kid must have been fed questions, because he asked, "If there aren't any cavemen, where are the cowboys and indians?" and "Are the vicious bunnies and squirrels in the canyon?" The second one made us crack up like NO OTHER. So, my dad had played a Dr. Demento CD on the bus earlier, which has one song, "the Bus stop." It's not really a song, just people saying funny sounding words. Everyone thought it was hilarious, which it is. We were reciting it all over. 13 girls doing that is hilarious. Even the parents joined in sometimes. We did it that night before the presentation. It was too dark to see, but I'm pretty sure we got weird looks when we all, loudly, said, "NO, THE ESKIMOS!" By the end of the trip, however, "ma-ca-day-mee-ah!" and "bulbous bouffant!" were VERY annoying.
AAAAANYWAY. The day after that (I think...) we went on a 12 mile hike. Not all of us, only those who wanted to. It was me, my mom, my dad, Jess, and Rae. We had to get up at 3:30 or so in order to start the hike at 4:30 so it wouldn't get too hot. We hiked bright angel trail, which goes 3000 vertical feet down, and six miles out, to a point called Plateau Point where you can see a lot of the Colorado River in the canyon (another 2000 vertical feet down). There are stops with water every 1.5 miles, and at 4.5 down there is a green camp area where we stopped and ate lunch on the way back. My dad and I played frisbee out on plateau point. The hike was awesome (though hard). We saw a little mouse while we were waiting for the bus in the morning, and we named it CoJack. We saw squirrels, ravens, california condors, millipedes, lizard, bigger lizards, and ALL sorts of other animals. Mountain goats, too. We finished up at about 2:30, so we took about 10 hours. Not bad! One thing about the Grand Canyon; you can't see it's big until you've hiked it, let me tell you.
The next day we were only a little sore, which was kind of surprising. As we packed up (slowly and sorely) I saw an Abert squirrel (kind of like a Kaibab, but those are only on the North rim). OH- two days before we saw mule deer next to our camp, and a coyote that had woken some people up during the night walked right through our camp! Poor little thing was awfully skinny.
On the way home, we had bus trouble; it was going slow. My dad thought it wasn't firing all its pistons, or something. Anyway, so we would start out at 55, but by the end of the day we'd be going 40 or 30. We stayed in Albuquerque, 10 or so of us under a tarp, the rest outside, instead of tents. It was very nice. Dry, no bugs. We played Weird Al's "Albuquerque."
Laura and her friends, a day or two later, were played a game where they would see who could hold water in their mouth the longest. Her friend made her laugh, she choked, and pucked. We stopped for 20 minutes or so while we cleaned the bus. Rae and I could only laugh at the people who wanted to puke at the smell, and we both had the same thought: if they want to puke at the smell, just imagine what would happen when they have their babies puking on their shoulders! Haha. Anyway... we stayed two days in Oklahoma City, where we saw the bombing memorial. That, my friends, is a tear-jerker. No one told me it was a National Memorial until after we left, so I didn't get a stamp for my "passport" booklet. Oh well, I'll probably be back some day. We planned to go to Oklahoma City's Six Flags park, but it turned out it was some small lame park they picked up that would be closed all day since it rained, and only had 21 rides total. We ended up going to a mall (and a lame one at that, although it was the "new" one... but there was a newer mall somewhere). Rae, Jess, and my parents and I saw Hitchhiker's Guide again at a dollar theater. It was still good, for the third time, heh heh. The next day we drove, and got pulled over going 30 or so in a 60 zone in Missouri. Gah. We had to get off the highway, and get service. We ended up staying in the suite rooms of a Motel 6 because we weren't going anywhere else that night due to the bus acting up. We had a Jacuzzi IN OUR ROOM! I didn't get in, but after 2 weeks of camping, a long shower felt good. We got up early again and got home on time. The whole trip rocked!

~~~

Ok, practice yesterday, my first marching practice of the year. WOW! The freshman can march really well! Hopefully they will continue to march well when we add music to the mix. My back and arms are kind of sore, of course, because my arms are weaklings. But anyway, I love this year's show. I haven't decided yet if I want to try for the solo or not.

Anyway, that's all for now, folks! =^n.n^=