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!

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).

Well, I've got about five pounds of links to post. Yeah, I'm sorry... I've had a month worth of craziness. Tests, then camp, then midterms, then more midterms and projects, and finally when it was supposed to settle down last week? Grandpa had a heart attack Monday. They had to induce a coma by lowering his body temp to minimize brain damage. So we were stressed out all week not knowing how he was doing, how much damage there was... Either brain-wise or system-wise since his muscles are already so weak from his broken back (years ago). Well, he's alert and doing better now, although he seems a bit disoriented sometimes. We're hoping it's just from being in the ICU all week, half under coma, sleeping on-and-off all day long, but who knows, there could be some brain damage. =/ Even more than that, we have to hope some physical therapy can bring back what little strength he had before in his arms and hands, which was practically nothing. He has his sense of humor, though, which is a good sign, but it's a little sad because Grandma, of course, never listens well enough to realize he's joking, and sometimes he's just confused, and it sounds funny to mom and dad and grandma, and it just seems so depressing to me. I don't know... The whole situation is depressing. Even though, at the moment, I'm just damn glad he's still with us.

Anyway, so nothing like that to say WELCOME TO SPRING BREAK, huh? Yeah, plus camp this weekend and I-don't-have-a-fucking-clue with steel and the test coming up and just fffffuuuuuucccckkk. Anyway. Damn.

A real-life American example of what happens when you cut all your taxes. THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER. Why? Because I've read a lot of articles about batshit insane tea-partiers and Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck in the past few weeks. And here is A CITABLE, SOLID EXAMPLE of why these anti-taxers can go fuck themselves. You know, after all that logical argument about roads and signs and parks and water and electricity and government and, you know, all that stuff you come across on a minute-by-minute basis.

GOLD.

I'm also watching Jon Stewart, at the moment, rip Glenn Beck a new one. So you may have heard, Fox came out with a panicked article last week saying DON'T SEND YOUR KIDS TO COLLEGE IT TURNS THEM INTO LIBRULS! And Beck and all those crazies have jumped on the Sarah-Palin-crazy-conservative-anti-intellectual bandwagon, and, no surprise to anyone here, Beck does not have a degree. Anyway, so Beck gave this speech apparently and said "you know where I learned all that [history]? the public library" and JUST OH MY GOD. ARE PEOPLE REALLY THIS DENSE APPARENTLY WHAT THE FUCK.


I really dislike arguing politics but I wouldn't even consider this politics. This is just straight up idiocy. And like other sentiments I've seen echoed, I hope this crazy scheme actually works. I hope they convince all the crazy people to vote for them to get Sarah Palin as Republican candidate for the presidency and everyone suddenly just goes WOAH. WOAHWOAHWOAHWOAHWOAH, WHAT THE FUCK. And then people start thinking. Because that is what is important.

Also, depressing, some kid on FML whose parents saw that Fox story and decided not to pay for his/her college. Poor kid, jesus shit. =/

Hand-carved wooden skateboards! I particularly like the stingray, though I feel like this is a skateboard you must be very, very careful with. However I would totally buy one if I owned a surf bar or something, hang that shit from the ceiling!

NOOOOOOOOOO first confirmed cases of White Nose Syndrome in Tennessee bats. :C I hope they figure this shit out, and fast, all the poor batties!

I love Beatonna, and this is completely true.

Blackbeard in Pirates 4! I can't wait for this shit, NO LIE. Everyone's freaking out because OMG WHY MORE JACK SPARROW WRRYYYYY and really? The answer is simple. Because he's a great character. And they somehow managed to rip a lot of the fun and adventure (and treasure) out of the first one and leave it in the dirt somewhere. And that's why I liked Pirates in the first place, dammit.

Not to mention I can't wait to see all the North Carolinians get their panties in a twist about something. Or even better, they won't, and it will be awesome, because North Carolina is pretty sweet, despite the fact that want to think they own the Wright Brothers. STEP OFF BITCHES, DAYTON FOREVER.

=)

Tree Lobsters is amazing. I love their comic about the Mayan calendar, I want to reference it every time that gets brought up somewhere. (Almost lectured a bunch of my civil classmates about it, but I don't feel like coming off as bitchy to people I never really talk to because I'm way too damn introverted.)

And despite all the craziness and ugliness in the world, things like this happen, and people are pretty okay.

This is very true.

Learn to be lucky. I had a comment but I forgoted it.

Holy crap! Coconut water is a substitute for human plasma, that is, it can be used for intravenous hydration in emergency situations. SCIENCE IS CRAZY. BIOLOGY IS CRAZY. Also I think this could be a good survival skill.

This is so sad, and I think it is a good example of what's so wrong with our government right now. =(

Some part of me has always wanted a chameleon, but I would take this instead of a real one. (I know real chameleons require lots of work and like most amphibians and lizards can spread disease really easily. This little dude is just awesome.)

Chuck Lorre rips Glenn Beck a new one, and that atheist is an asshole, just saying. I know a cultural figure of speech when I see one, shit son.

I find this sort of thing very interesting and very encouraging. Why, you may ask? Well, because everyone I know wants to get the fuck out of Dayton, and I've never really understood it. I mean, yes, we are supposedly the fifth most dying city in the U.S., but we're not in the top 20 saddest and I don't think it's horrible. Maybe needs a little bit more diversity or things of interest, but it's kind of my new little dream (and I do mean new, this is an end-of-2009 maybe even just beginning-of-2010 thing) to give Dayton its own big to-do. Ideally it would be some sort of Disney World-esque thing but I don't think that's feasible with Dayton winters. So either a huge cooperative hackerspace-type thing, maybe a sort of open-source college? Which would be awesome, or something just straight up weird, like House on the Rock. Anyway. Dayton is home for me, and yes, even though I want to get out and see the world, I think it will always be what I consider Home home.

Also, I want to go to Cairo just for the sake of American Gods, heh. That book is so good.

This was a big deal last week or the week before, but you know what? Nothing new around here, our lovely local parking nazis (the school, not the local polics, mind you-- campus parking services) have ticketed their own vehicles in our use before. Hooookaaaaay.

Harrison Ford as James Bond:



Yeh, idk, I think Bond is a bit too smarmy-put-together for Ford to play him, maybe not smarmy, but, you know, smart-looking. As in, always in a suit, very British. Ford's more down-to-earth-American-cowboy, if you will.

...Not to mention there's the whole sort of inside joke where Bond is Indiana Jones' father, WHAT KIND OF TEMPORAL RECURSION WOULD WE GET OURSELVES INTO WITH THIS MESS?! The world would go mad, MAD I TELL YOU


In terms of thematic ipod cases, this page has a nice steampunkish one at the top, as well as, if you scroll down, a lovely aluminum one that I would have to use any time I felt like I needed to be onboard an Empire starship or the Enterprise. Fabulous, no? Quite.

An A-to-Z guide for recycling, though it's actually an article so not really searchable--not to mention, I'm sure it's missing lots of odd things as a result.

Alright. So I have always thought that Shakespeare is rather a king of insults, along with Mark Twain. As such I have decided I need to expand my vocabulary of demeaning words, as I am trying to stop using words such as "gay" and "retarded" as well. Needless to say, I will not stop cursing like a sailor and plan to keep on using "fuck" and "shit" as much as I damn well please. =) And I am a big fan of "pretentious ass". At any rate, I need to expand my vocabulary in order to be anywhere near as damning as The Shakesmeister or The Twainz. Today's vocabulary word: "pillock". Good old-timey sound, yes? Excellent.


Interestingly, another take on slurs and curses that I've thought about I took environmental philosophy wherein my professor pointed out that a majority demeaning terms today are feminine in nature
(bitch, slut, whore, cock-sucker, pussy, vag, etc.), so I try to take that into account. However, people use "dick" to mean, basically, the same thing as "asshole", which is gender-neutral, not to mention that for the longest time I didn't know what "douchebag" meant, so, in my brain, "douche" and "douchebag" are both masculine insults on par with "dick". That is, "stop being an ass". However, as much fun the imagery of "ass-hat" is, it is just not fun to say, at all. And most of the fun of cursing is in the saying, I will not lie. Since most of the time I don't mean it sincerely anyhow...



Oddly, my main complaint is not that they confuse cricket with baseball, but rather that they butcher the joke by using "who" once where "whom" should go.

Also I may mention that I slaughtered Uncle Steve the other night in grammatic structure and it was awesome. If there is one thing I am good at in this family, it is, surprisingly, that I could diagram any sentence to you whatsoever, and you will like it, dammit!



Eeeeeeeeeeeeeexcellent.


Well, I'll cut myself off for now, that's a good chunk of links. Not to mention I've probably managed to insult everyone at least once with all the crap I've had sitting around for weeks waiting to get posted, heh.

(Well, fuckyou, lj app, you deleted my entry. Let's try this again.) So in addition to what I wrote earlier, I forgot to mention that those two Carroll kids died so everyone's feeling the Young Death morbidity right now, Mandi is essentially getting kicked out of school for the semester, the last month seems to have really desired to up the level of drama, and I guess with all the economy talk and engineering talk and graduation talk I've just been worried I won't be able to find a job I'm actually interested in. (It's kinda been like this since I looked at Disney's site; they encourage competing in a competition but I wouldn't want to give them my ideas "for free" essentially, and even though I have a head up for the internship with being an engineer... I can imagine the competition is pretty stiff.) =/ BUT, Anna came out of surgery pretty well, they put small catheters in her artery and vein (or something) to medicate the clot to try to break it up, and if it's not broken up today they're going to go in and try to remove it manually. So... idk. It's not good, but it could definitely be worse, I feel. Trivia was good. The No-Clue Nazis didn't win, and we tried our best and did not win (nor did we lose, unfortunately, but we only kind of threw the game). They played Billy Joel so I felt successful in being able to name the 70's artist. Not a complete waste, haha. I think I wrote something else here before the internet ate it. Idk. Then we went to Lara's and watched Return of the Jedi, good times. Also I'm completely obsessed with my new ipod. There are wireless networks everywhere and it's AWESOME~

Ugh, the one thing I hate about two-week winter break is NOT HAVING ENOUGH TIME TO GET THINGS DONE.

Today I actually got the desk and two bookshelves that I've been wanting for my room. This may actually lead to me getting the whole damn thing organized. Amazingly.

Also, trivia tonight was awesome. Question on Jelly Roll Morton, I was the only person in the whole place who knew it. TAKE THAT. Also, had a headache so I drank a lot of Mountain Dew and rather unusually it made me EXTREMELY HYPER. Kevin and Lara tried to calm me down with a long island iced tea (which does not taste like iced tea I have been LIED TO all these years) and I did not feel it at all. Crazy.

Then we watched The Hangover and it is amazing. AMAZING.

And tomorrow I have to clean my room and do Christmas cards and buy a new laptop (I think I'm going to get a Sony VAIO) and then Thursday go out and buy party supplies. Busy times.

Heeeeey, look! Trivia from the Wizard of Oz movie. Did you know that the "hanged munchkin" story is just an urban legend, but that the coat used for the Wizard (well, the Kansas-wizard, Professor Marvel) once belonged to Baum? That's pretty cool. Also, I don't understand how anyone ever thought that bird was a hanged person... It just looks like a frigging bird stretching its wings. A large bird, yes, but nothing an emu couldn't handle. Also I forgot that the Witch was burned with her trap door escape... Sounds familiar? Maybe witches are vulnerable to trap doors?

Also, I totally watched about a quarter of the Dark Side of the Moon/Wizard of Oz sync-up and it is indeed creepy.

WOAH I just went upstairs to talk to Candice about Conficker and my head is totally pounding. How did I carry a heavy box up a steep hill after giving blood and yet simply going upstairs four hours after giving blood today is enough to do that? Weird. *Hoo.*

Um, someone buy me one of these?


OHHH GOOOOD STAR TREK AD I can't wait to take my little. She is so awesome =)

Oh man, someone said that the Indy game release date got pushed back to June 2. That blows. Now I definitely have to wait until I get back to play it.

Um, someone buy me this too? Mucho coolo.

Dramatic readings about atheism directly from fundamentalist message boards. Funniest thing I saw all day.

Global hacker ring exposed. This is... very scary. I find it incredibly disturbing that cameras can be turned on remotely like that.

Okay, that's probably good for now. I have a shit-ton of stuff to post buuuuut I don't care right now.

Give me your best random factoid;

today's is: Only humans and armadillos can get leprosy.









...If you feel cheated somehow: Hemingway collected polydactyl cats.

Yeah, so, an ear infection would definitely be causing the pain I get every time I yawn. That makes sense. Now for it to go away...

Unfortunately I wonder if this is my fault for not finishing the penicillin for my sinus infection; if so, I feel really bad because I feel like there might have been room for it to build up a resistance? I sure hope not. Anyway, this just proves that sinus infections suck ass. I was sick from pretty much halfway through November until now. How it went, and how it usually goes is, pain first (I had two or so weeks of painful headaches/mini-migraines, and wanting to drink lots of caffiene so they'd go away), then the sinus pressure goes away and I got the "sick" part of it, aka the coughing, hacking, wheezing, running nose, et cetera. Well, the coughing is mostly gone (yay inhaler--with counter) and my nose is still running like a madman. And my ears were a bit sensitive to pressure changes on the flights last weekend, but I assumed it was just because my nasal cavity was all blocked up... Which I'm guessing, no, it was just aggravating the sinus infection that spread to my ear. FANtastic. Though whether the infection was just dogged on by the flights and the weather out in Wyoming, I don't know, but I sure as hell know now that my ear is unadjusted and popping every time I yawn and it HURTS LIKE FUCK.

You know, I think the last time I got an ear infection was second grade or so. Huh. (Laura used to get them all the time in grade school, and I used to get strep throat all the time. Then one year, we both randomly got the other around the same time. Weird.)

Well, now that I'm done with that, OH MY GOD MY DAD BOUGHT A PICCOLO TRUMPET :D Seriously, I am excited. I do not even have a reason to play it (until Christmas mass next year, possibly). But I mean--A PIC! Damn I am excited.

I have some links but currently I am not in the mood to post them. Fmeh.

Oh, the good news as well is that I will probably be doing some trivia games on Tuesdays when we don't have Girl Scouts, because exec board got moved to Wednesday--so feel free to hit me up with all the useless trivia you can muster. (Or just your favorites, doesn't matter much to me.)

[EDIT] Added title. I need to remember to do that more often. I used to be in a fairly good habit of it and suddenly, somehow, I've fallen out of it. I figure I can add that to my list of resolutions along with "sleep in less often". Particularly since I have no 8 ams anymore. (YAY) Oh, and the title refers to the last time I had tons of sinus pain and had to flew, which was on the way back from Spain. I pretty much got no sleep because my ears were KILLING ME. But I think that was just a sinus infection and not an ear infection, as I don't remember having all these ear problems, just a cold.

Well, I am a happy camper, for sure. Generally I have just been in a good mood (I think because of hanging out with people and also seeing Indy IV again, and then Serenity, and then trivia night tonight), but I am sure part of it has to do with the 3 3/4" Indiana Jones Hasbro figures. Those things are freakin' addictive! ...I think I have twelve now. I definitely did not anticipate that, and there are more I want to get. Yaaaaay! (Weirdness, though?: the ark does not open, at least as far as I can figure...)

Other news: the thing I was trying to come up with the other night about Indy IV; it was Marion's shoes. The first time I saw the movie I was all "is she wearing Aldens?! Oh hell yeah" but then upon this last viewing, I realized if you look at her ( major spoiler ) shoes... they are no doubt familiar? Cuteness abounds. (Or geekness. We're not sure yet. The data is inconclusive.)

What else what else what else.

Oh, so I have a comm, mercat_inc, that I set up initially as an art journal. If you have it friended, you might want to unfriend it, because I decided that if I do end up getting my webcomic up and running, I think I'm going to have a separate comm, and also I finally have a FANTASTIC use for mercat_inc. Unfortunately it's just to annotate my collection of ideas and projects and resources, and keep them organized and systemized... So something no one else would be interested (and anyway, I'd rather keep my "ideas" sort of private for now). [EDIT: Ignore all this, nobody had the community friended anyway, lol.]

OH MAN, weird dream last night. I don't remember the whole thing, only the end, where my parents drove up next to the garage (which was double-doored and built into a hill, a.k.a. not really our house) in the light-bluish-periwinkleish Honda Civic I saw yesterday. Only it had giant matching antlers on the back. And then, as I looked at it, I realized the antlers also looked like wings, and the front and back were extended and sculpted (and painted to match) and to the sides of the front driver/passenger area was a matching statue of liberty and masthead. CRAZY. So I asked my parents if they'd bought it for me, and they said yes, and I named it the Jackalope, because of the antlers. It was very Foys-ish, but weirder and awesomer. So now I really want a blue car, especially if it's that color. Still debating whether to keep it the parrotheadmobile, or make it more Indy-themed, or buy a small set of mounted antlers for the dash and name it the jackalope. This is, of course, after I even get a new car. So yeah, awesome car dream (oh, and then in the dream we pulled the statues and antler-wings off to make it more driveable).

Things I found out today: Walmart now has two (that I've seen) Indiana Jones birthday cards, no longer the Father's Day card. They're "limited time only" so I'm debating whether that means be a dork and just buy them, or wait and see if they don't disappear before my birthday... and hope I get them. Oh geez! What is a geek to do...? I have the feeling I'll just buy them, because I'm definitely going back to that Walmart by the mall, it has the 3 3/4" scale vehicles which I haven't seen at the other Walmart! Oh geez. Our house room is going to be soooo dorky next year... =)

Ooh, ooh, tonight was trivia night again! SO FUN. Amazingly, though we usually fail on sports questions and I am the least sports-oriented of all on our team, I was still able to answer the first two for us: Don King (which I knew from the Simpsons where Homer becomes a boxer) and polo (the only sport where you are forced to play right-handed, for safety's sake). (I remember reading that on some trivia challenge, and that people also submitted then [and now] cricket and jai-alai. No real idea, but I'd think you could play cricket [Krikkit...?] left-handed, and I honestly have no clue whatsoever about jai-alai.)

Also, the final question was a song/artist: "My Ding-a-ling" which I knew as soon as I heard the crowd cheer (yep... I'm a dork.) and then proceeded to guess "I swear it's some artist like Chuck Berry", so Lara wrote down Chuck Berry and we got the points. XD This sort of stuff is why trivia night is the bomb! (Also, Dudley Do-Right was a TV show theme tonight, and Raider's March was a movie theme, though I think everyone got Raider's March. [who knows, I may have been the only person to get it in the first second, though, lol.])

Finally: there is going to be a fandom-based fundraiser which is being run over at livelongnmarry in support of equal marriage rights. I think it's really cool. I'm wondering if I should offer up an ambigram commission? I mean, it's something I enjoy doing, and though I'm no professional, I've had two friends say they want tattoos of the work. (One of them is newer, though, and not posted. I haven't posted a lot of the newer stuff, which I think is a bit cleaner.) The only thing that makes me worry is that tattoo art gets ripped off a lot, it seems, and I think any other uses of the work might end up in some sort of crediting-copyrights-something fiasco? I dunno. Maybe I'm too paranoid. But I really do love the challenge of ambigrams, and I think it's a viable skill for me to offer up for this. Something simple that I will actually get done. I'd really appreciate any thoughts on this.

Well I was going to hit up Burger King for dinner again, but I ended up meeting Pat and Lara and Katy (and Lara's brother and a few of his friends) for trivia night at The Pub at the Greene. I'm still not sure I like the Greene. Outdoor malls feel very awkward to me, in the middle of rural Ohio. Like they should be more integrated into the blocks of a city, but they aren't... they're surrounded by parking and farms.

Anyway.

Trivia night was... meh. We did pretty well, but it dragged on and on and on and the questions weren't too challenging. They failed at directions on a few different occasions, which just made it frustrating more than anything. We also couldn't hear the music played for the music round... way to go, there. However, I was killing myself for not remembering that Blondie did "Tide is High". I knew it was the other artist on mom's Pat Benetar twofer CD, but I couldn't remember who! (So we just wrote down Pat Benetar.) Of course this means I will never ever forget it again. I felt proud to know that Alice Cooper did School's Out, though.

Challenging question we had no idea about: What American woman won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1915? Of course everyone's first guess was "Madame Curie!" and Lara turned to Steven and said "No, she was French" and I got to represent and say "no, she was Polish" WOO

Can't remember what the answer was, it was the founding mother of service work, or something... someone we've never heard of before.

Another good one: Put in order these bears by their creation, oldest to youngest: Winnie the Pooh, Yogi, Smokey, and Teddy. We debated for a long time whether Winnie or Teddy was older (Lara and I both knew Pooh was older though, not Disney Pooh originally) and eventually decided that Teddy named from Roosevelt probably made Winnie a popularity. (I made that phrase up just now, "a popularity". Means "a possibility for popularity" is what I was going for?) Didn't think at all on Smokey (1944) or Yogi (1958) which we then of course screwed up.

Aaaaaanyway. So The Pub's food is okay, great if you want Pub-style food. Good but nothing special. They have a Guiness Brownie desert which was amazing only because I love warm brownies with vanilla ice cream. DELICIOUS. So apparently Lara and Pat decided to drop the Pub from their trivia rounds and find someplace else, and in the meantime Katy and I "made the team" =P and we will all be going to Cadillac Jack's tomorrow for a trivia night that is much more well-paced and interesting, or so Lara and Pat claim.

And then cleaning cleaning cleaning and packing packing packing and I think I may have to skip work on Thursday in order to get some serious cleaning done. I have a new shelving unit to install in the back of my closet (I ran out of bookspace! I have a full tall bookshelf and a short one already in my room, but they're full...) and SO many clothes to go through. I definitely need to get rid of old. I've been trying to buy nicer-looking clothes in the past year so I have some nice in-between-dressy type stuff, like "interview/work" type clothes (even though I can wear jeans and a t-shirt to work at UDRI). If I could get away with jeans and a t-shirt all the time, I would, but since I started trying to care a little more about appearances I've actually started caring. Like days where I would usually just "whatever" I actually feel the urge to put effort into what I'm wearing. (That being said, I did walk into Target yesterday in my workout shorts and a striped tank top that I didn't realize was semi-seethrough. CLASS ACT RIGHT THERE)

...Also, incidentally this evening I looked like I could have worked at Hollister; I am wearing the only two Hollister items I own (minus the men's shirt I bought at the thrift store), khakis and my "Seriously, WTF" shirt. (And I was wearing Billabong sandals, and would have been wearing my chucks had they not been slain by tar, either which fit the bill.)

And now I am home and the cats are going a bit stir crazy, poor things. =P