The Daily Adventures of Mercat

You guys.

You guys.


I am going to COSI tomorrow.

I am going to COSI: Adventure tomorrow.


TOMORROW.

I don't know the last time I went; it's been a while. A loooooong while. But this is the thing that started it all; the reason I even know that Indiana Jones exists, the reason I want to be an Imagineer. It's been sooooo long and I've wanted to go so badly, but it's only open for special occasions, and I haven't been able to go with Girl Scouts because I was in Hawaii in '08 and I think I was in Wyoming last year.

I am only upset about one thing--I haven't been able to crack the maze code. And I haven't done any research or work on it this year either, WHICH I SHOULD HAVE, because I found a post from July of last summer from a girl who is totally obsessed with it (haha, no, it's not me) and KNEW HOW TO READ THE LANGUAGE. If I had found this earlier I would maybe have made more progress! I joined the forum and have been trying to message her, BUT I HAVE TO HAVE MY ACCOUNT APPROVED BY AN ADMIN GRRR and also she doesn't have an email posted. =(

Anyway, it confirms a few things about this code:
1) It's read right-to-left. Whether that "Cymon" sample was is something else... but I might have cracked it by now if I had found this earlier. Anyway, when I was little (omg, last time I was there, Jesus Christ. Probably 13.) one of the workers saw me trying to copy down the code and told me it was read backwards, but I never really confirmed it at all and found it suspicious.
2) It's based on a tic-tac-toe code, which I FINALLY figured out probably only last year when I moved stuff and found my old "spy code" book, noticed the Cymon journal in Adventure has two tic-tac-toe games, and went ~DUH~.
3) It has phonetic characters. I guess this, sort of, based on the fact that I got more than 26 characters when I tried to write them all down to find a pattern. Now the problem is... determining what those phonetic characters are.

GOD I wish I could find some more clues on this. It's going to break my heart if I can't crack it and I have to wait another year. =/

Anyway, LINKSPAM:

Harrison Ford joins Cowboys and Aliens! Fuck yeah this movie is gonna be awesome.


OH MY GOD, YES. YES YES YES. THIS WOULD BE FUCKING SPECTACULAR AND YOU GODDAMNED KNOW IT. I doubt it will happen but FUCK. YESSSSSS PLEASSSSEEEE.



Hahahaha. This is me and my dad to a T.


Also, this is fabulous:

Tron vs. Saul Bass from Hexagonall on Vimeo.

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.

So someone took credit for exploiting Amazon features, but the story doesn't match up. Just so we're keeping up with the story. =)

I posted about the NOM/2M4M failure earlier, right? Well, being so observant, they failed to register http://www.2m4m.org/ which is now a good site. =) You can also follow their twitter or LJ comm, if you're interested. And make sure to pass it on to anyone in NJ.

For smwance, really bad Star Trek puns.

OKAY SO THAT STORY I PROMISED.

So the other night we went out to Casa del Waffle, it was me, Kevin, Mark, and Alicia. Not too late, but we ended up waiting around moving a desk and waiting for Alicia to show up, talking about stuff like Mark's ridiculous Blackberry+Facebook addiction. So Alicia shows up and we eat (well, more like inhale the food) and I manage to forget I didn't really eat dinner so I order eggs and toast which apparently comes with hashbrowns, which Mark claims. So she brings the eggs and toast and hashbrowns and our checks and we realize our waitress, Sierra, was the same Sierra from whom Sofa stole a nametag. So by this point we're already rather giddy and trying not to disturb the rest of Waffle House too much (why does that always happen when we go to a Waffle House? We're a funny bunch, I guess) and Mark pulls up Sofa's facebook on his phone and we ask Sierra if she remembers him, and she does, so she's having fun picking on us, too, and we're all laughing pretty hard. So we're all mostly finished and Mark goes to scrape the hashbrowns onto his plate and manages to scrape some into his lap instead. Cue more riotous laughter, of course. I think at that point the Gorman family shows up after Easter vigil mass and Tim is making fun of us saying he is pretending not to know us. So we have been hanging out for a good while now, and we ate so fast that we're just probably pising off the waitress with how long we've been sitting there (and she actually remembered Mark because he came there the night before--that probably was part of setting our mood, I'm sure), and in the midst of all our laughter Alicia manages to spill water all over the table. So we're laughing our asses off trying to clean up the water with napkins and Sierra is mocking us from behind the counter and the Gormans are behind us laughing as well and by this point we're just ridiculously goofy. We decide after a while it's time to leave before Kevin and I get our turns at being failures, though I manage to fuck up my check out because I have gift certificates (look, I didn't know they subtracted them before ringing you up!) and we search the jukebox for Mambo #5 to no avail. (Sorry Franzie-- Waffle House no longer has this song available. I'm 99% sure it's your fault.) Soooooooooo we decide to go home before we fail so hard we get kicked out, and some people were maybe going to come over to Kevin's house, and Mark calls dibs on Alicia's car so I decide to ride with Kevin so things aren't awkward. (Hey, shove it, I'm an engineer, I think that way.) So we're going back down by Frank's Fruit Farm and passing over 675 when Kevin decides that he's going to show me this awesome thing he does where he speeds up to 50 and puts the van in neutral and coasts up and down about three hills back into town. And outside Shellabarger Park... he gets pulled over by the cops. 52 in a 35 zone, $130 ticket, points on his record which might affect his CDL-job. I text Alicia and Mark, and we fucking lol'd our asses off.

HENCE my post about being the last to die, and all I did (I think) was nearly hit three deer on the way home. (I came really close but thankfully my sister's car has really good brakes.) Unless you consider me the first failure in that I forgot I didn't eat dinner and had to make two orders, maybe, I dunno.

But I don't trust Easter anymore.



(And we're lucky we didn't hang out at Kevin's until Tim showed up with beer or Westy and Domer and Fish something because I have no doubt we would have managed to pull off some amazing failure.)

I Put in Five Miles at the Office
( article )

GOD, IT'S ABOUT FUCKING TIME

I've been looking for something similar for aaaaages, and I was considering just engineering my own tv/compy hookup for the treadmill we already have. I still think we can get some battery-charging or something out of it, too. WASTED ENERGYYYYYY


The RCA Dome gets deflated September 24

Boo :C I will still call Lucas Oil the Dome, I don't care!


I like Bosch, but this is pretty cool. A guy is repainting classics without living figures. It's sort of creepy, too.


So you know that awesome uke song I linked the other day? Well I found the original song, which interstingly enough is not from a musical. I am ABSOLUTELY NOT linking the original because the girl's voice is SO FUCKING ANNOYING (you can find it if you're that curious), I am not kidding. But here's a pretty good cover, minus the totally ridiculous dancing, and plus an AWESOME SCORE. As annoying as I'm finding the original song at the moment, I cannot help but think it would make an AWESOME drum corps show.





Hilarious history. You should read it.

And I know watching this will make you smile, AT LEAST once.

So, I kind of amaze myself sometimes. You'd think with the number of times I've watched the Indiana Jones movies I wouldn't keep having these "nurrrr" moments.

(Like, about a year ago I watched Temple of Doom, and, even though in the back of my head I knew he didn't have his gun throughout the whole movie, it just struck me that it was because Willie dropped it out of the car in the first chase scene.)

Anyway, so David came over to join me in the marathon (...and then left after one) and we watched Last Crusade. Which, really, I love the humor of that one. But, for the first time, I caught a few lines I haven't before.

For example, when he's in Donovan's house, and he mentions his dad. He says that he's the medieval professor, a line I never really paid attention to before... but he continues by saying his dad is the professor of medival history that all the students hope they don't get. LOL.

Okay and after the Joneses are caught in Castle Brunwald and tied up, Donovan (IIRC) tells Elsa to take the journal to the Reich Museum in Berlin. My brain went "Rijksmuseum? Why would they take it to an art museum in the Netherlands?" And then I realized he said "reich" as in "The Third Reich" or whatever it is.


For the longest time, I thought the hotel scene was "I love Venice" and not "ah, Venice", too. I think it's just one of those "they're not quite enunciating so you hear something close" type situations. However, much like the Rjikesmuseum above, it is often hilarious and not sensical like this.

Also, self reminder: the postsecret dream. I'll post about it later, it was pretty hilarious.

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


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

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

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

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

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

This is so cute. And very clever.

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

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

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

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

The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals. Hilarious.

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

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

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

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

ADORABLE BABY POLAR BEAR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Spielberg and Lucas talk, cue me more panicking.

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





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

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.

oh dear god I'm so sore. I suppose I'm kind of a masochist in that I love the soreness that comes after a good workout or adventure or whatnot, but it's usually muscle soreness I'm talking about.

Riding TOSRV straight up without any practice beforehand (like I've done the past few years...) is a bad idea. Mm, crotchrot. Hey, you try riding 105 miles a day for two days without having done anything beforehand. Even gel saddles suck then, let me tell you. The last ten miles into Columbus on Sunday give you the damn right to sing the My Butt Hurts song.

Oh right, where was I? Muscle soreness... my butt hurts... Oh yes, did I mention my butt hurts? HA god damn. It's muscle soreness, and my back hurts, but it's not the normal kind of muscle soreness. It's not work-out soreness, it's impact soreness.

Here's some advice: when you jump off a big rock that's higher than your average high dive, try to break the fall with your feet. Really. I tried to do a cannonball-esque maneuver so I wouldn't slap the water, but I just managed to break the water with my butt/back. Twice.

AHAHAHA moving hurts today. Sitting hurts today. This is hilarious.

So, nobody got sleep Saturday night because everyone was really excited about the shark diving. I was excited over Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, and excited for shark diving, and had had a huge Mountain Dew (Baja Blast mix*! yummmm but I really need to learn not to drink those at movies because about an hour and a half in I have to PEEEEEE. You think after sitting through both Pirates 2 and 3 [which are like three effing hours] like that I would have learned my lesson, but noooooo), and we had to be ready to go at 6:30.

Um, so, today I was half asleep all day and every minute has been either "whahmmm? So... tired..." or "HAHA dear god my baaaack" so yeah. It's been a rather hilariously enjoyable day. I'm either a minor masochist or small things entertain me sooo much that I'm just entertained by the irony of it all.

I guess part of it is that dull pain doesn't really bother me much. I just... never bother to take Tylenol unless it's a sharp pain or something.

I'm totally rambling, aren't I. Ah, well, such is today. I have been half asleep and therefore don't really have anything I want to say at the moment.

I am watching Lost season 1, though. I don't think it's really my kind of show, but it's not bad by any means. I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHAT THE DAMN MONSTER THING IS

*Mountain Dew plus Baja Blast mixed together. A DELICIOUS TOXIC GREEN. Only available at Taco Bell. =(


72 days until Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull! Today's trivia: NEEEEEW PHOTOOOOO

aaaand that's about all my brain can handle for today.

I was debating using the title "damn, my ass hurts" but this one is more fun.

On second thought, that's debatable. by the way cliff jumping makes you SORE

I AM SO SAD THAT I DO NOT HAVE AN UNDERWATER CAMERA. I must wait for peekchures! However, I do have le teasers: (I like to call these "perspective" photos. You will see why.)

[EDIT] cut for your convenience( well shit. These photos are rather larger than I expected. )

Okay, so, did everyone in Ohio decide it would be a good night to get roaring drunk or something? I mean, I don't really have a huge problem with it (other than a certain scenario which I'm not really free to discuss, but I'm sure if you contact any student you know at a certain high school I attended you'll be able to find out), but... I dunno, is there something in the water? Lol. (Yeah, alcohol... Hey, you all know the polish word for water is about one letter away from "vodka" anyhow, right? Yay being Polish!)

Anyway, today Lauren and I took a historical tour of Chinatown. It was AMAZING. Chinatown in Honolulu is nothing like Chinatown in SF, and from what the guide said, nothing like the Chinatown in NY either. Chinatown here is basically where non-whites came together and lived.

Oh, by the way, our tour guide is a major native Hawaiian historian (he was of... Chinese descent, I think?), and also Don Ho's cousin. EFFING AWESOME.

So... yeah. American history was never my thing, right? Fuck it, history wasn't my thing. I'm not good on "what are the implications of xxx on yyy in regard to zzz?" because to I never know exactly what they mean. I can extrapolate pretty much any answer from questions like that, so I am a failure. =( BUT! Hawaiian history amazes me. I don't know, maybe it's because I started paying attention to years for costuming and my Indiana Jones obsession, or maybe for Art History. But I'll tell you one thing; Hawaiian History is fucking amazing. It's like watching the whole history of the world get wrapped up in about 150 years. It's fucking nuts, and I love it. You don't realize it until you study it, because there's very few signs and things, but the whole world was focused on the Pacific, and Hawaii was so important to that, and everything leading up to WWI and WWII is absolutely amazing in relation to Hawaii. I love it. It's such a thrill. If you come to Honolulu, go to Chinatown and take the tour. Crazy.

I think the reason I never did well in American history is that they never really give you a base understanding to go from... they just kind of jump right in with the details and assume you can extrapolate the consequences. Not so. With Hawaiian history you're getting the base understanding of the world in order to understand Hawaii, and that in turn actually helps you understand what was going on in Europe and the rest of the world. I mean it, Hawaiian history is amazing.

At the same time, most people to study Hawaii aren't natives; so Hawaiian history seems particularly misunderstood as far as I've seen. Both my Hawaiian and Pacific Globalization history classes are taught by Bailey, who is a riot and one of the first native Hawaiians to get a certain level of degree (doctorate... maybe?) from UH. And the guy today is Hawaiian, too, although big Chinese background, so we got yet another cultural perspective.

And you know what? I think Hawaiian history is ridiculously overlooked. I think that studying Hawaiian and Pacific history would really help people understand the globalization of the rest of the world, I mean by a ridiculous amount. And did you know that's it's still under contention, even today, whether Hawaii was taken rightfully by the US government and whether it should still be a kingdom? Crazy. Maybe I'll talk about Hawaiian history more later, it's just... God. Beautiful. Amazing. Ridiculous. I don't know. It's like the whole world came together and exploded. To go from the stone age to modern practically overnight, and to see your culture destroyed in the process. God. It's really unfortunate that history isn't more advertised everywhere, that it's such a toursity place, because DAMN it's beautiful.

So! The actual tour itself. He started out with a background of Hawaiian history and Chinatown, and did you know that the father of Communism in China was Christian? LAUGH RIOT. tangent: the word "laugh" looks really weird atm. Anyway he was raised here and brought the idea to China, so, yeah. Other highlights of the tour:

--seeing all the different food types in the open market, showing how Chinatown really isn't a normal Chinatown: Malaysian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Philipino and about a million other different types of food. Also, one of my comfort-boundary stretchers for the day. I dunno, there's something about being one of only a few non-natives being led around (though not terribly obviously) by a tour guide that just makes it so easy for me to get paranoid that I'm being hated as a tourist. I think this is different in mainland US and Europe than it is in Hawaii; for example, learning about different history classes, I don't think native Hawaiians who haven't been to the mainland understand how there's still a difference between the southern and the northern US that you have to look out for sometimes. Being in Spain I was completely scared that we, as tourists, were going to get picked on and stuff (I mean it was totally obvious we were wearing gym shoes, righto?), but nothing really happened (other than a little trouble with gypsies and pickpockets on different occasions) but I obviously stopped being nervous enough to yell "HEY, GRUPO" in a really bad American accent (not even "¡Oye, grupo!") across the street in... Granada, was it? Anyway. I sufficiently put myself outside my comfort zone today. (BUT! Did find a really authentic place to get sushi, should ai figure out how to eat it without looking like a fool. SOMEBODY FILLZ ME IN, PLZ)
--the fruit vendors... DAMN. What a lovely smell. I realized that I have not yet had a virgin piña colada yet since I got here. I must rectify this!
--Hotel Street: where all the GIs came for entertainment. Clubs, burlesques, "hotels". I LOVE IT. The only thing left is "Club Hubba Hubba" (everything else is stores), but from the looks of it, the only thing left is the neon on the sign. =/ Even the paint behind the sign is chipping and rusting, and the building is overgrown and boarded up. But... that could just be that it's a club, so they need it dark inside and inside it's clean and neet. (Anyway, lol burlesque.)
--Fish market! Wow. FISH SMELL OVERLOAD. Guh. Apparently Chinese/Japanese consider it somewhat of a sin to cook tuna, as they eat it raw. Their big appetizers are sushi, sashimi, and dum sim. And... I can't remember the term, but it's raw fish and seaweed and herbs all mixed together to eat. It kind of looks like salsa. (Wikipedia... why is there an ENTIRE CHUNK IN SPANISH in the middle of the English article on Japanese cuisine? I mean, I can read it, but... wut?) OH, it's called poke and it's actually a Hawaiian dish, but it's obviously got a lot of Japanese influence. (It's raw fish, c'mon.) My brain totally went "LOLPOKÉMON" when he pointed it out.
--more fish market! Kona crabs. Never heard of them before, but they're kind of weird looking. Also? Could have bought fish heads. LAWL. (Will admit: had the fish head song running through my head.)
--Fernandez Marín! Yay Spainiards. Kind of owned the Hawaiian harbor and dictated non-natives on the island while he was alive. Pretty cool shit. (Chinatown: utterly international. told you)
--SECRET BURIAL GROUNDS: After the US government burned down Chinatown (PLAGUE PANIC!) and it was rebuilt and they had to dig up the earth for concrete footwork, they found lots of bodies of plague victims. They buried all the bones together in a few secret green areas in Chinatown, but the gov't doesn't treat them that well. (Seriously. One's next to a dumpster in a locked alley.) Marín's remains were dug up when they built Marín tower, and the government gave them to his family in a gunnysack. Oh America, why do we have to be so insensitive? Anyway, they convinced the government that they wanted his remains here because he was happy here, and they put his bones in one of the burial grounds (if you can call it that) right on the edge of Chinatown right on the waterfront. (Seriously... it looks like one of those hotel building planters. That's the "greenspace" where Marín is buried. And there's no kind of historical markers or anything... The more I learn about Hawaiian history the more I think the US is trying to hide the fact they kind of took over illegally. LOL.
--Philipinos didn't get malaria during WWII while Chinese and Hawaiians and Japanese and Americans did! Guess why? Bitter melon! High in quinine. So, if you ever are afraid of getting malaria? BITTER MELON.
--First Catholic Church in Hawaii! Funded by Marín. Damn cool.
--more comfort zone stretching: "bubble tea" smoothie. What it is is this kind of big tapioca balls in a smoothie... they're interesting. I think in the right thing they'd be good, but kiwi was disgusting, and since I had a not-enough-sleep type of sore throat, the bubbles felt kind of phlegmy. I mean, I know they're tapioca or taro or whatever and they're kind of doughy, but... ew. Kiwi+phlegm=nasteh.
--watermelon used to be a huge import. Did you know they used to make watermelon alcohol? I'm not really surprised, I mean people kind of make it out of anything that will ferment. Just LOL. (My dad wondered last time we were here if they ever made taro alcohol? I don't know, I've never heard anything about it. I think taro might be too expensive.)

Lauren and I might bike around the island, it wouldn't be too long of a ride. A good, slow, day ride to get some miles on my butt for TOSRV.

Okay, I think that's everything for now.

81 days until Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull! Today's trivia: I am convinced that Adventure Express at PKI was supposed to be an Indiana Jones ride before that was a Paramount park. (Was it?) I don't know, totally a guess, but they did play the music there the last time I was there. There was a rumor about four or five years back that they were going to put in an actual Indiana Jones ride. I AM SO SAD THAT PKI IS CEDAR POINT NOW. D= I hope they renew the Paramount licenses...? I mean, the Tomb Raider ride will kind of be dumb now, and I love that ride. =( Bets on whether Congo Falls goes back to being called Amazon Falls? AND WHO'S EXCTIED FOR FIREHAWK hell yeah. (You all probably rode it last summer while I was gone, I know. But I never got to ride King Cobra before it got taken out [I WAS TOO SHORT DAMMIT], and I really want to ride a standup coaster.)

...Lol. Crappy fact today. I don't care, I think the fact that I actually posted lots of realiztic historical information makes up for that. Fine, here's a TWOFOR! Hawaii + Indiana Jones: Indy IV filmed some on the coast of the Big Island. I think close to Kona maybe...?

HOW CAN IT BE MARCH ALREADY, DAMN.

Oh, I remembered another one of my "weird word" uses. I like to say "awesome possum" and "neato burrito" a lot. Haha.

( I also wiki'd Mad Anthony Wayne a little for you! )

SUMMARY: Wayne negotiated the Greenville Treaty that put the Ohio into the union. rock on

Ooh, also fell asleep watching Kiss Me, Kate today. (I didn't get enough sleep last night.) Pretty good musical, yay Cole Porter! And yay Shakespeare. But FUCK a play within a play within a play. AAAAAH gotdamn.

woooooo

[EDIT] I WANT A CHANTILLY CAT

And I totally stole this from somebody, it's hilarious: