The Daily Adventures of Mercat

(The title has nothing to do with anything except that I just took a practice GRE and "gremlins" was the first word to pop into my head starting with "gre-".)

Forgive me for just nearly missing the daily-post--deadline by a few minutes, because I just finished a GRE practice test. How sad is it that engineering has made me excited to take a standardized test?! I work well within boundaries and certain expectations, or no boundaries at all, apparently. I don't know how well I am cut out for slightly-open-ended design work. Which is not good, because that is pretty much anything engineering is. I mean, there are the laws of physics, and the laws of the land, but the problem is that the former is very mathematically complicated and the latter is just very convoluted and you only come to know it really through exposure and experience. Neither of which I really have. And not to mention, mayhaps my brain just doesn't work that way, because I never seem to know where to find the equations/set-up I need for engineering projects. Which makes working in groups good for me because then the other people are good at starting the project, and I'm good at checking things and thinking (maybe a little too far) outside the box.

So... menial desk job or very creative in-charge job for me, I guess. Strange. ANYWAY. Onto the prompt.

My favorite meme of the moment... I don't think I currently have one. Being gone all summer I kind of missed Double Rainbow and Hide Ya Kids and I don't really... "get".... either. Although I think I saw Antoine Dodson a while back but never saw the Bed Intruder Song? I don't know.

Does Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear count as a meme? Because it was probably more that than real political activism (or anything) and I kind of liked that (despite people being bitchy for it). However, it's not quite as wild as Anonymous' protests, so idk.

I guess I don't have a favorite meme right now, so I hope something comes along soon. In the meantime, I'm always a sucker for EFG and since the 5th of November was just a few days ago, let's say that. Even though it was nothing to do with anything, legitimately.

MOVING ON. I was thinking about password access, which led me to think about where you keep that kind of information so that it's safe with you but easily found by others in the case that you were to die. Which led me to think about wills, and the fact that while my mom has every once in a while talked about what she wants (donated organs iirc) and my dad has mentioned his wants (a big party), they don't really know my beliefs in terms of my... lack of faiths... (BUT NOT LACK OF MORALS... byuh) ANYWAY. I don't need any kind of fancy burial, I'll be dead. I've kind of always been about pragmatism, and even when I was really young (early gradeschool) I remember considering the pros and cons of cremation. So this is my current set of considerations: (And let's not call me morbid here, because I honestly approach a lot of what most people would consider "morbid" as just purely interesting. Death is the natural extension of life. Morbid for me is a whole other level. Perhaps I disdain that word... I'm more of a naturalist than a goth? And science is nature, so. )

1. If there's any hint of foul play just preserve as much as possible. Not that I expect this to happen but being slightly paranoid from reading too many detective novels and watching too many crime shows, if there was any hint of foul play I hope there's a really good twist! Which probably means exhuming the body at least once. (...Maaaaaaybe that's morbid. BUT SO ARE CRIME SHOWS)

2. If not, donate any usable body parts to organ donor programs and/or to science. Basically get as much practical use out of it as possible.

3. Bury any remains in a manner as natural as possible because it seems pretty pointless to be dumping lockboxes filled with chemicals into the ground just to sit there and be preserved for... ever.

3b. Plus this ensures that I will never be Undead. (Zombie, vampire, etc.)

4. Possibly do something awesome with the remains such as:
a) use the bones for something awesome such as art, Yorrick's skull in a production of Hamlet, a modern reliquary, et cetera,
b) include them in a treasure hunt/puzzle or as a geocache (WITH ONLY AWESOME TREASURE INSIDE. If I am to be a buried treasure, I fully expect it to be a goddamn bitchin' one.)
c)...et cetera. Basically I think skeletons and eyes are pretty cool things from a design aspect and have many interesting and beautiful (if slightly morbid) options. (BUT I'M OKAY WITH THE SLIGHT MORBIDITY HERE. AT THIS POINT THE MORBIDITY BECOMES MORE WUNDERKAMMER-CURIOUS THAN NATURALIST-CURIOUS BUT IT'S STILL AWESOME.)

5. A really cool headstone. Some classic-and-slightly-creepy design, with a totally clever and awesome epitaph. Like the headstones at the Haunted Mansion, with their Victorian-Gothic-slightly-disquieting style and the totally awesome epitaphs (at least out front--I've never studied the epitaphs inside the ride).

OKAY TOTALLY DONE WITH MY MORBID MOMENT NOW, for those of you who may not like that sort of thing... er... sorry for the lack of warning... =/

At any rate. I have a rant but I don't really want to rant about it right now. Let's just say, between people going back on my Halloween party invite, and being whiny about the party, and my friend failing to do the one thing I asked him to do for the senior show (i.e. leave an appropriate mid-movement moment for the dead-bug), which I told him a month ahead of time when we were planning it as a group, but do people just blow me off when I make comments a few months in advance? BECAUSE I HAVE ACTUALLY THOUGHT THESE THINGS THROUGH, and I mean them. If I change my thoughts, I WILL ALSO BRING THAT TO YOUR ATTENTION.

Do I just... scream "IGNORE ME" or something? (Heh.)

Yeah. Anyway.




...Also I went to trivia tonight for the first time in a good while and I wore by awesome retro-rainbow Star Wars shirt that I bought from Target's boy section last year. The usual awesome trivia guy wasn't there, and the girl taking his place was not as fun. Plus, a lot of the questions were wrong tonight. "A one-note instrument made popular at the world soccer games this summer"? Vuvuzela, except that like all other objects with a natural frequency, if you halve, double, or otherwise multiply that frequency you will get other notes. Octaves, for simplicity, or perhaps... partials... if the instrument is more complicated. Say, like a trumpet. Speaking of trumpets, "a cornet most resembles this musical instrument". Maybe a cornet? It's actually a legit instrument.

And then Pat, being his normal uppity Classics-major self, called out the trivia girl on the question "what famous temple site on the Acropolis?" by screaming "Which temple do you want?! There are at least nine different ones!"

However I also learned that the F22 Raptor can go supersonic without having to use its afterburners which is called "supercruising". Also, the evil wizard on Smurfs is Gargamel and the cat is Azrale. (NO IDEA if I spelled those right, also don't care much.) And the compact disk was invented in 1965 (we guessed floppy disk).

Also-also I cleaned my room today. Go me!

HA, day two of the prompts and I already missed it. Fair enough, though, I worked my ass off on homework and studying for a test. Anyway, yesterday's and today's prompts:

I have my ears pierced twice on each side, but that's it. I don't even wear earrings much now that I don't wear uniforms every day. I don't have any tattoos, and I'm rather up in the air about it. I think tattoos can be very beautiful, and I know exactly what I'd get first if I sat down to get one (sabers). However, I know there are other things in my life I value as much and I'd want to plan out the whole tattoo a lot more, plus I hear they're rather addictive, and on both fronts I don't really want to be covered in tattoos. Furthermore, I am super sensitive to pain sometimes and I don't think I'd last long during the sitting. Also, if I end up working for Disney, they would all have to be hidden away and the only place I can think of is my back. Which is apparently a more painful place, too. Anyway. So that's my stance on tatoos. (I don't mind designing them for other people, though.) (Also-also, I think smaller gauges look really nice if you wear some of those gorgeous gauges. But the bigger ones usually gross me out a little...)

My favorite television program... hmm. I was a big fan of Pushing Daisies while it was on. Currently I mostly watch Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Venture Brothers, and Chuck. I used to watch a TON of Diagnosis Murder back in the day, and I'll pretty much watch any crime drama (although I haven't been able to get into the new Hawaii Five-0). I think I'm more of a movie person overall. (Also, I just got some Doctor Who dvds from astrid087 and dancecat89 just informed me that the Jackie Chan Adventures are on Netflix. So, there's that...)


Okay, I'm sick of this copycat writing. Bleh. And I feel like FDR was a poor choice? Because TR is more of a cultural meme.

...However, I will watch this, probably. :D

THIS IS A LARGE POST, I AM WARNING YOU.

HOLY SHIT I SUCK AT POSTING. This thing has been sitting on my desktop for a month and a half, christ, shame on me. Anyway. I'm trying to make better habits for myself... Some are getting better (I keep a real schedule on my ipod! I'm under 100 firefox tabs consistently!) and some not (I don't check my calendar, I forget things, I haven't organized many piles of files on my new computer... from a year ago...)

Shia says Indy V will be crazy. idk what to think. I'm excited but hesitant at the same time? Eeengh. Like I said after Indy IV, I mean, at least they can't do that one anymore. (Also, I told you so. Also-also, I am kind of sick of hearing about your stereotypical MacGuffins: the spear of Longinus, Noah's Ark, all that stuff.) GO TO HAWAII, PLEEEEASE

But, uuuuhhh, if Spielberg pitched a script, I'm guessing this is happening. So... yay?

...I'm depressed that that last sentence has a question mark attached to it. :(

HOLY SHIT YOU KNOW WHAT'S DEPRESSING?! WHY ON EARTH IS THIS A MOVIE. WHO ON EARTH THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA. SHANE VAN DYKE WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU ATTACHED TO THIS, YOU WERE AWESOME ON DIAGNOSIS MURDER AND NOW YOU ARE VERY NOT-AWESOME. AUGH.





Um...yes.

Also--ADORABLE KITTANZ:




While we're doing videos, this time-lapse-experiment-turned-art-video is absolutely fantastic:

ANTS in my scanner > a five years time-lapse! from françois vautier on Vimeo.

I hope this is just some lawyers having fun, and were not actually hired over legitimate offense.

I didn't even know they had finished the script for this, shit. Three months away was apparently a COMPLETE NEWS ISOLATION, much moreso than usual. (Nobody famous died.)

This movie looks awesome! That hat looks awful. (Short crown + extra-wide brim = grossnasty.)

Ghostbusters/AC/DC mashup:




Lady Gaga kidnaps Comissioner Gordon. Guys, I was about to say "I want to live in that world", and then, you know, I remembered that Lady Gaga is a real person and kicks major ass.

A good essay on Iron Man 2, which I am still excited about. The awesome thing about disappearing from the world for three months to memorize a metric assload of numbers until you've lost 15 pounds is that, when you get back, all the movies you just watched in theatres (and loved) are about to come out on dvd. Fuck. Yeah.

Some awesome shots from the filming of Star Wars.

So, "mad science", you say?!



That is the kind of awesome shit I'd like to do with my life. (I must say, though, that the closest I've ever come was destroying an antique rusted oven with a sledgehammer. Also fun, except for the part where the paint chips were popping off the bent metal everywhere...)

WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT HOLY CRAPCAKES. NIGHTMARES. NIGHTMARES BEYOND BELIEF.

Jesus, it's about time! They better make these. Not that I'm planning to buy any, but, yeah...

Oh, James Cameron. I thought I couldn't hate Avatar any more, but I was wrong. You think you're God's gift to cinematography when really it sounds like you're just a rich bully. I kind of want to go see Pirahna 3D, even if I hate it, just to fucking spite you. Goddamn.

BUT THE GOOD NEWS? Rick Moranis may come out of retirement for Ghostbusters 3. HELL. FUCKING. YES. As long as this shit is better than the game (a bit repetitive story-wise, in relation to the movies). Also, I thought we were already clear that Oscar is Venkman's? There's some banter toward the beginning of the second one that that is what I took away from it.

OH HEY THERE BLACKBEARD. Why the fuck don't you have cannon fuses in your beard?! Jesus, the man should look MUCH more epic than that. For god's sake his body circled his ship seven times before sinking after he was beheaded! (Fuck yeah pirate lore.)

Chewie: not nearly as adorable as Winnie. But still hilariously adorable.

Here! Have a picture of Viggo the Carpathian.

Okay, now, look. I am all about crazy costumes but I don't even know what's going on here.



So adorable.

If the world is making you feel weary (although I don't see how that's possible after all those adorable kitties), I prescribe this.

Next video: An apparently sanctioned-by-Lucas video about the dumping of Jabba's cargo. With a creepy animation of Han Solo. (BUT I SAW THAT RAIDERS REFERENCE. I SAW IT.)

...Definitely thought it was going to be something like River Tam in the box though, the shape was eerily similar.

Heheheh kitty parkour.

HOLY SHITBALLS this woman has completely missed the point of feminism. Oh my god this article is rage-inducing. OH. MY. GOD.

Good news, videogamers! Playing video games enhances decision-making skills. That is, it enhances your ability to make choices faster.


Oh! An antibiotic-resistant superbug. Awesome. This may be our downfall. However, if you're worried about the apocalypse, I just thought you'd like to know that science seems sometimes straight-up fictional. I know a lot of zombie movies/novels/etc. lately have been leaning on diseases like ebola, mad cow disease, or other things to explain the basis for the disease. So here's a crazy fact: mad cow disease causes cattle's eyes to glow. WTF.

Rechargeable cars are less hurtful to the environment than gas, even if charged using "dirty fuel". And it's crazy, if it could charge using renewable sources--solar, wind, etc.--it's FORTY PERCENT cleaner than a gas-using car. Holy shit. Why is the world so resistant to changing how we use our resources? :(

(Answer: laziness, greed, but it still pisses me the fuck off.)

I read an article the other day about how an old solar panel from the White House was rediscovered, and some students, led by Bill McKibben, took it to the White House to see if they would take it back as a symbol of good faith and an attempt to move conservation forward in the eye of current US politics. Some of the statistics were incredibly impressive--like the fact that seed sales increased by 30% the year Michelle Obama was promoting her White House garden. But the kids were taken into a "war room" and basically told no. The whole thing made me so sad, particularly because I remember McKibben speaking to my freshman class on his book we all read, and because we were stuck in a hot, sweaty gym with a rather heavy book (as in, the material, not the book itself), he kind of got ignored by most people. And trying to sort out the fifty interested students in a room of 1000 or however many it was is not really a simple task. Anyway. The whole thing just makes me depressed for the state of our politics. I don't understand why people want to spend so much money on stuff and on keeping things the way they are instead of helping people who need help, helping the WORLD that needs help. I don't know. Maybe that's my bias of too many years of marianist catholic education speaking. I'm too hopeful, I suppose.


Cats drawn as Marvel characters! Adorable. And hilarious. Particularly Spidey and the Sandman.

OKgo's new video to encourage the adoption of shelter pets. Amazing as usual.

Surprise! Facebook is fucking with you again. And this is why I keep all my info private except to people I know.

NEWSIES IS GOING TO BROADWAY, hilariousyesfantasticyesssss.

If superheros were hipsters. I particularly like PBRman. Also I feel like Spiderman isn't that far from Tobey McGuire Spiderman because DEAR LORD DO I HATE HIM. (Also, LOL at Aquaman--Northwesterners are a silly people. I learned that this summer.)

Mysterious civilization hidden in the Amazon--I think this is the same thing (SPOILER ALERT!) Lost City of Z talks about. BUT NOBODY KNOWS. It's fascinating.

Carnivorous plants dwndling across US; I wonder if this might have anything to do with all the bugkiller sprays we use? (No idea, just a thought.)

Shark attack survivors team up to save sharks.

ATHLETE'S FOOT MEDICATION COULD CURE WHITE NOSE SYNDROME! Finally, a hint of good news on that front.

Bug people are crazy. So are geologists.

Some foreign memes for you. I particularly like Makmende, for some reason. I suppose it's like Chuck Norris, but cooler, because Chuck Norris has kind of turned out to be a douche. (Clint Eastwood = cooler than Chuck Norris.)

A really good article about building the mosque. It sums up my feelings on the subject pretty well.

Where can you find Ned and Chuck, Henry Jones (Sr.), and (old school!) Zaphod Beeblebrox? Cons, of course. (Those PD outfits are fantastic, though, seriously.)

Interesting bit of Raiders trivia.

Oh my god, remember the ad for Iron Man 2 where Pepper smooches Tony's helmet, and it wasn't in the movie, and everybody got upset? I present to you--THE ALTERNATE OPENING:



(Fan. fucking. tastic. Why did they not do this one, now?)

And another fantastic short.


Star Wars yoga, absolutely hilarious. And rather clever.

Obscure Taco Bell trivia! A.k.a. the random shit I will bring up in conversation that may eventually lead to me singing the Gordita Anthem. This, in fact, happened this week despite me finding the article months ago, although it did not lead to Gordita-anthemizing, which is a shame.

Here is a fantastic interview with Patrick Stewart, and within it is a fantastically creepy tidbit of their interpretation of Macbeth, ( which I am cutting for the rare case of spoilers )

Is that not fantastically Halloween-y in the best manner? It absolutely is.

First of all, this article is rather old. Second, I doubt it is more than tongue-in-cheek coincidence, and three, Hex of the Hydra sounds godawful. Like the books series.

OH MY GOD. So I was watching the new Sherlock Holmes (not for the first time), but I also decided to watch the bonus material. Apparently they decided Jude Law was more of the ladies' man than RDJ, so they took to calling him Hotson on set.

omg. Hotson.

I can't even. It's hilarious. Anythus.


Much like Rule 34 of the internets, I surmise there must be a similar rule about blogs and personal interests. If you have thought of it, someone, somewhere, has already posted about it online. There is a cool blog called Strange Maps that posts, well, non-generic maps. This particular post has some interesting material on worldviews. It's rather fascinating, but my main point of this whole thing is that the Bulgarians think Poles are all sexy fembots.

I. Don't. Even. Know.






What I do know is that I need to post things more often because I have AT LEAST this many more links piled up in my Google Reader waiting for me to take action. And FIVE MORE old posts on my desktop from before I left this summer! Luckily those posts actually have some real content, like some book reviews.

So, real stuff now, we went to the Yellow Springs Street Festival today. I got an awesome monster shirt, a necklace for my medusa costume, and a beaverfelt antique collapsible tophat! The sad part is I got home and realized the tophat is too small :( BUT I refuse to get rid of it for the time being. I also walked RIGHT PAST Dave Chappelle without even noticing at first, who was saying that the street fair was "like Yellow Springs normally, but gayer". Which... I don't know what that means? Because it's almost the opposite. All the out-of-town people come to visit for the day, so the percentage of hippies is decreased by at least some...

Also my sister finally found the CORRECT version of the Taco Bell Gordita Anthem (thank you, 1998) and I downloaded it for the sake of posterity. POSTERITY I TELL YOU.



(begins at 1:40ish if it doesn't play correctly.)

[EDIT] If I had been paying attention or had any creative/organizational method of linkspamming (Captain Obvious Hint: I don't) I would have posted the Ghostbusters/Rick Moranis thing followed by the carnivorous plants thing followed by the Newsies thing. Points to you if you know how those three are related.

Alas, I did not, and I also need to post this in the case I missed posting it before:



Also-also, tomorrow is 42 DAY as in, the date is binary for 42 (101010), and it happens only once every hundred years, and tomorrow we are getting together to watch the Hitchhiker's Guide movie, probably have a Vogon poetry reading, and get our brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick. Coincidentally that is the name of my ipod and there will be no citruses anywhere near my electronics, thankyouverymuch. (I've taken to naming my electronic devices after science fiction things, or other related items; this new lappy is HELPeR486.)

Also-also-also, I am very afraid for this Pan-galactic Gargleblaster recipe, which is, essentially, take Everclear, cut with liquors:

...er, scratch that. I may be looking at the wrong recipe. Anyway, there's a lot of alcohol, plus a little bit of mixers, add olive, et voila.

If I weren't so convinced I'll be smashed rather quickly, I'd throw in a gin & tonic to boot. Maybe I'll pour one out for my gpa who seemed delighted about the affair but clearly can't make it (and probably shouldn't be consuming high levels of alcohols).

MY GENERATION IS DOOMED


DOOMED I TELL YOU






I wail on behalf of Bela and Lon and all the others whose awesomeness I knew about in roughly fifth grade thanks to the United States Postal Service and their awesome hidden image Classic Movie Monsters Series.


BTW, I still have never bought the special viewfinder to see the hidden images on those stamps nor the Mars Rover one which is a badass stamp may I add

The Ring was actually pretty good. It's more of a psychological thriller, which is what I prefer, like Hitchcock films. Because, I know, you're supposed to be afraid that the girl is going to come after you because you just watched the movie, but whatever. Honestly the only really scary part was that she came out of the TV at the end, a lot of the rest of the movie was just kind of weird. But I'm okay with that, because I can tell you Saw is not my kind of movie (and I haven't even seen it), and this is the sort of thing I'm okay with. I don't think I'd like Freddie Kreuger or any of that sort of stuff, though, because there's no, I dunno, trigger or whatever. You wouldn't have any control over the situation.

Um, plus, I don't really get it. Why is she killing people? Her dad didn't want her, but why the hell did the mother kill her? And she hated the horses because they kept her up at night, but what was happening to the horses? And what was with the freaking tree? Maybe it's because I'm partially deaf (I dunno if that's true technically, but indoor percussion had to have destroyed some of my hearing), but... the story doesn't really make sense. (Plus, I'm such a story ruiner and logician and stuff, couldn't you just find two people who wanted to die, copy the tape for them, destroy the original [like the main character did] and then destroy the copy after they'd watched it? Mm, logic.)

So I guess if you know any "horror" films that wouldn't leave me disgusted, petrified, or paranoid afterward, I guess feel free to recommend them.


Hmm, this is not good, the arm I fell on this morning is starting to hurt, and it's sort of where I broke it back in 1996. Auugh.

Fuck, and I don't have any Tylenol.