I sought to lose that cloud that�s blacking out the sun

2007-01-07 / 11:42 p.m.

I have nothing to say, but I�m going to update anyway. I think I need to do something other than television or video games after several days doing a lot of both. It's a shame that the inaugural entry of 2007 is totally unimportant.

Ben�s new CD is my favorite yet. The sound quality is much nicer, too.

I will keep harping about global warming. I just will. Everyone I know of in my readership is smart and capable and creative�maybe someone I know will engineer some brilliant energy saving solution and shut me up for a few minutes.

I went to the zoo with my mother on Saturday. I was relatively unimpressed with a lot of the animal habitats (some just made me plain old depressed), but the gorillas and pandas were a treat. Most of the pictures are bad because they�re taken from behind glass, but they�re up regardless. After the zoo, we spent a few hours in little five and had dinner at brewhouse. Little to report from there, save the purchase of some kickass earrings. I guess it was kind of a nice last-mini-hurrah before I have to start schooly/worky stuff again. My research professor already sent me a mess of stuff to do this week; tomorrow I will begin compiling a bunch of statistics that will probably be near impossible to find. yay.

Christmas was nice, New Year�s was OK. Now it�s 2007 and I�m a year older. I didn�t make any proper resolutions this year, but I�ve got some general ideas. Mostly spending less money and lessening my ecological footprint on the world. Also being happier. (vague enough for you?) I suppose I could toss in the perennial �eat better� and try to limit my idle snacking and beer consumption. My first act to fulfill the �spend less money� resolution was to forego purchasing this CD. I iTunse�d some of it (can that be a verb?) and I like it so far. I liked Soul Coughing when they were around, but it turns out that Mike Doughty alone is even better. Oh, I remember my other New Year�s Resolution: stop being boring. I seem to be gradually losing my charisma and wit (humor me, and go along with the assumption that I�ve had these virtues at some point). Do I have a slow leak in my charm reservoir?

Instead of resolutions, I've just got a lot of hopes for 2007. I'll be starting my first real, big-kid job; that comes with a set of related hopes all on its own. I'm in one of those phases where my brain is absorbed tracing out possible outcomes from various decisions, and this leads to lots of pining for the best case scenarios.

This is all for tonight. Stay tuned.

Wake up!

2006-12-30 / 10:01 a.m.

"Toronto--A giant ice shelf has snapped free from an island south of the North Pole, scientists say, citing climate change as a 'major' reason for the event....Warwick Vincent of Laval University, who studies Arctic conditions, traveled to the newly formed ice island and couldn't believe what he saw. 'This is a dramatic and disturbing event It shows that we are losing remarkable features of the Canadian North that have been in place for many thousands of years,' Vincent said Thursday. 'We are crossing climate thresholds, and these may signal the onset of accelerated climate change ahead.'...[Luke] Copland [head of the global ice lab at the University of Ottawa] said that the speed which climate change has affected the ice shelves has surprised scientists. 'Even 10 years ago scientists assumed that when global warming changes occur that it would happen gradually so what perhaps we expected these ice shelves just to melt away quite slowly.'"
--"Ancient ice shelf breaks loose" by Rob Gillies, AP

And, you know, it's not like I opened up the paper this morning and said, "Oh my gosh, here's an story you don't see everyday!" No. This kind of stuff is happening all the time. There is evidence of this trend everywhere, and you'll see it too if you just open your eyes. It's tucked into a corner of the paper at least once or twice a week.

Wake up.
This is not bad science
This is not a myth
This is not a natural progression.
We are causing this, and we're reaching the point of no return. Why can't anyone with influence muster up the conviction to do something about this? Anything about this? I swear that I will never contribute any money to any political candidate or campaign that does not have a meaningful dedication to finding some way to slow these changes down. The end.

and soon, all the chaos will be explained.

2006-12-28 / 11:46 p.m.

a veritable potpourri of short anecdotes and contemplations:

My car got bad again day �fore yesterday. Undriveable bad. I bit the bullet and took it to a mechanic and had it fixed (hopefully for good). Turned out the root of all evil was a clogged catalytic converter. Goodbye, $400.

Because my car was broken, I missed out on three separate opportunities to see out-of-town friends. All three sounded outlandishly fun, and I�m still stinging from the disappointment of missing calzones, barbeque, Wii, Smash bros., playgrounds, board games, beer, Hillary, Brian, Michelle, MikeB, Bruce, Kyle and Kristen. : (

I�m stuck on the snowpeak ruins, but refuse to cheat. A lady has her pride.

I got an insane amount of toys for Christmas. My family and friends give very fantastic gifts�especially my mother. The tradition of going overboard at Christmas continues, and I only hope that I can get mom all the crazy stuff she wants next Christmas. Mom actually bought me a beginner set of bongos, which I�ve wanted casually (in a silly way) for several years. I announced everything that happened Christmas morning with the help of percussion accompaniment. �Look, there�s the cat!� thum-pa-dump-dump-tap-tap-tap-tap-ba-dump-thump.

I feel guilty for getting so much stuff for Christmas.

Roger, your webpage used to be really good. What happened? Please start writing well again. Thanks!

I�ve been listening to my music a lot since I got an iPod for Chistmas. (thanks, mom. sorry you can�t ever retire because you buy me so much stuff). Anyway, I remembered that old meme where you make a soundtrack to your life, naming songs for the breakup scene, the sex scene, the opening credits, etc. I started doing it mentally, and I�ve consistently run into the problem of being affected by other movie soundtracks. For example, when I think of �sad, mental breakdown song,� I can�t stop thinking of Luke Wilson attempting suicide to �Needle in the Hay.� I�m pretty sure that song is going to be typecast as the crazy mental breakdown song in my mind forever.

I feel like my sleep schedule will never be right again.

Everyone should watch the first season of Veronica Mars. It�s very good. Please don�t tell Roger how it ends, he�s only on episode 14

Regarding the nuttiness of my comment code: somehow, the problem arises between pasting it into a word file and pasting it here. If I copy it directly from the page source, it's fine. If I copy it from a notepad file I've saved to the Word file, and then to this text field, it comes up crackerdog. This never used to happen.

A Survival Guide for America's [wealthy, white] Families!

2006-12-28 / 11:00 p.m.

Duurrrr, it�s been a long time since I�ve updated, guys. Huh huh. Post-finals, my agenda for unwinding didn�t include much thought or writing, but lots and lots of video games and sleeping. Now that my brain is thoroughly liquefied from the overexposure to Nintendo (and recently a smidge of katamari, via playstation), I�m ready to start getting back to real life.

I thought I�d re-enter the glorious world of my low-readership blog with a super-fun book review! This week, I read The O�Reilly Factor For Kids(!!) by Bill O�Reilly. Thanks to EK for this super appropriate choice of Christmas gifts. I�ve thumbed through this tome in bookstores before, and often chuckled at the absurdity of Bill O�Reilly writing in a way aimed at relating to today�s youth (scoff). It�s really weird, because he�s trying SO HARD to sound cool, it reads like an after school special. �An after school special with IM abbreviations used liberally? LOL. He uses IM terms that I�ve never even heard. Sadly, IMNSHO Bill fails to find a voice that can successfully reach the kids today: CMIIW, but this approach is SSINF. Thank cows it includes a glossary of IM terms.

Honestly though, when reading through it I was surprised to find that most of his advice to the kids was pretty reasonable, and not even over-conservative. Yes, it�s fraught with gender stereotypes. Yes, his advice isn�t really applicable to any kid that didn�t grow up middle class or greater. And yes, if you followed all his advice you�d be a total fucking goober. But really, I wasn�t as shocked as I thought I�d be. He doesn�t even say pre-marital sex is bad! Rather, he advises that sex is best with sincere affection and knowing someone well. He cautions against being overly superficial when choosing your luvahs, and he stresses that you shouldn�t brag about your conquests. Otherwise, he doesn�t �tell you to avoid sex, because in the end you will do what you want anyway.� I was surprised to read that. I mean, fuck, that�s pretty close to advice I�d give my own (hypothetical) kids about sex. Other than sex, most of the rest of his advice is dry toast uncontroversial: be responsible with money, choose your friends wisely, don�t fight with your �rents (I swear he uses ��rents� somewhere in the text) yadda, yadda, yadda�
THAT SAID, there are some gems to this little guidebook. The best are the excerpts from letters from kids to him included at the beginning of each chapter. I�ll share a few of these with you:

Leslie in Missouri writes: �TV has to have a bunch of bad words and naked people on all the time, like that is entertaining? Robin Williams is entertaining! I�m only 14 years old and feeling like they are messing up my future�If I have them [children], how can I protect them from all the sex and bad stuff on TV?�

I�d send Leslie a copy of The Birdcage (neither entertaining, nor free of bad words) and tell her to never procreate. ever.

Anonymous writes, �Nowadays you have to have a boyfriend and be going all the way with him! Then on top of that, you have to do drugs, drink, and smoke!�

Anonymous, if you can do all those things at once, you could be a star.

Logan from Indiana write, �The biggest problem kids I know have nowadays is that my rents [parents] along with all my friends� families keep their TVs turned to Fox News Channel 24/7�This has been going on for 26 months. What�s weird is that, if a TV�s on some other channel besides Fox, I can�t get to sleep. Is this normal or what?

I�ll go all the way with my boyfriend, drink, smoke and do drugs if Bill O�Reilly himself didn�t make this letter up. If this actually is a real letter from Logan, that kid is fucked up. Please god, don�t let him run for Senate.

That�s it for this week�s book review! TTYL!

going nowhere like me

2006-12-17 / 10:18 p.m.

I just spent the last 45 minutes searching for my jumpdrive, where the half-written entry was stored. Now that I�ve found it, I�m not in the mood to finish what I started. It�s a little sentimental, and I�m just not feelin� it now. What I am feelin� is the sensation of having had a little too much $2 red wine from Trader Joe�s and the shame of having spent 3+ hours in front of the television. Seriously, how am I 24 years old? What kind of 24 year old spends 3 hours of a Sunday playing Gamecube when there�s so much other stuff to be done. �Not that I really regret it though�Twilight Princess is highly, highly entertaining. I�m going to refrain from saying much more at the risk of sounding like a completely unlovable geek. But, wow. The game play has been fantastic (thankfully more difficult than WindWaker) and the graphics are very impressive, much nicer than anything I�ve seen on Gamecube before for doublesure.

So I had a birthday. It was uneventful, but nice. Roger, Mike and I went out for Sushi and then I asked mike to bring Katamari Damacy to my house. YAY! Rog got me a pretty necklace, and Hillary bought me a DS for Christmas/birthday. The DS is awesome and I love me some tetris. My mom got me a couple of things, including a 100$ am-ex giftcard which I used to purchase the following things: lox, cream cheese and bagels (for my traditional stinky birthday breakfast), several pairs of el cheap-o earrings from a costume jewelry store, Brain Age (My Brain Age is 24!) and, of course, Twilight Priiiinceeeeessss. Next year, it�ll be fun to celebrate without finals hanging over my head; however, I�m not so sure that I ever want to be any older than 24, so we�ll see how that goes.

It also looks like living in my aunt and uncle�s basement is a go. That�s good, because I�ll save lots of money to pay off loans and buy a hybrid and that entire fund stuff. It�s bad because it�ll be 12,000 times as hard to make friends living 30 miles away from human civilization. But hey, subdued party in Henry Co. in a few months, guys! Currently, I�m trying to decide when to agree to start at the New Job. I have to notify them by Tuesday which of the 6 suggested options I want. Honestly, I�d like to have a few weeks to ass around, play at the pool, maybe go on a trip, and fucking unwind from school, but I don�t know if I can afford it. On the other hand, I honestly don�t know if I can afford not to take a few weeks off. I was so burned out last semester, if Spring is anything like Fall, I won�t be very good at work or anything else without a few weeks off. We�ll see, I suppose.

Bedtime. And sorry that the previous assy entry appears on the LJ feed twice. Oh, oh! Also: Brian, I�m sorry I haven�t talked to you in a long time and I miss you. Please forgive me, finals kept me busy, and afterwards I was not unlike a lump of goo in my daily correspondence. Now play nice, and maybe I�ll let you comment again. : ) HAPPY SUNDAY TO ALL AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!

relevant information II

2006-12-17 / 10:10 p.m.

"Ramie fiber is known especially for its ability to hold shape, reduce wrinkling, and introduce a silky lustre to the fabric appearance." more on Ramie!

New entry tonight (probably). Now, Twilight Princess and cleaning up my apartment. Woooooo.

Close your eyes and make a wish

2006-12-09 / 12:18 a.m.

Real entry will be up after finals. It's half written and 1/8th edited already.

Studying going badly. Stranded. Send help.

Okay kids, see you on the 14th (man, that is not very far off...) Now, it's time to spend my birthday trying to figure out Dr. W3nger's terrorfinal.