The Daily Adventures of Mercat

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

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

1) The quantum moustache theory

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

* Screw the laws of physics, I have money!

2) The Tesla theory

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

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

3) Rhody's recasting

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

4) The Iron Man theory

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

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

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

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

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

6) ALL OF THE CROSSOVER THEORIES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No, I definitely still think that shit is horrifying

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

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

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

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

(...Literally?)

CLUB OBI-WAN let's goooooo

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

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

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

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

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

A history of the ampersand! Completely fascinating.

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

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

Check it out, those three weird silence points in the film? Totally intentional. And completely annoying to boot. I don't think it happened the other night when I saw it at the Greene...? (So just a Regal thing? Seems pretty pointless to me.)

Seven things that thankfully didn't happen in KotCS. ( SPOILER )

Hmm... totally taking car recommendations if you have any. Speedy isn't my thing but neither is boring. (Found a gorgeous blue PT Cruiser, but methinks it has more miles on it than mom and dad would like to invest in.)

The six most badass stunts ever pulled in the name of science. Yeah, pretty much, though #3 is disgusting disgusting disgusting. (Also, check out how small the rockets are on that rocketsled.)



Desk jobs will be the death of me. (I accidentally just typed dearth. Freudian slip? Or maybe just the fact that THIS KEYBOARD SUCKS)

Dearth Vader lol?

Serious postings and discussion later. Guuuuuh.

I'm not gonna Raichu a love song...?

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.