am i the only one who thinks this is cool: http://ping.fm/2JqNI

cool Augmented reality card tricks. a little long but still neat: http://ping.fm/NKa9A

interesting meeting with these guys today: http://flycast.fm/

wondering if this ping.fm thing will really work...

hello? is there anybody in there?

Does anyone besides me get a picture of Bob Geldoff in their head when they hear those words?

I can't believe it has been almost two years (2!) since any of us made a post to this site.

kinda sad really.

Actually, if you think about it, that's about when the economy started to go in the shitter...

Maybe, if we all post really hard, we can single-handedly bring about the recovery,

On your marks. Get set. Post!

Hey, what's that behind you?

Battle of the Bands

And you say Radiohead is too depressing?

wishful thinking

So last night I am stuck at work at like 8:30 at night, doing some mind-numbingly stupid paperwork, getting more frustrated by the moment and wishing that there was something that I could do to make the people who were making me do it suffer as much as I was, but recognizing that there was nothing I could do about it. So of course John Galt pops into my head. John Galt was was screwed over by the nonesense of the world and did do something about it. and the first thing that pops into my head is:

"I wish I was John Galt."

This statement is so true. It was true last night and it is true this morning. I wish I could stop the world and get off, but more than that I want to make everyone realize that I have stoped participating and make them suffer for it. I love this idea - it sums up every irritation i have with the world and makes it seem like there is a way to get even.

How childish, immature and pouty is that of me? Sometimes I amaze myself at my capacity for being an ass.

my daily surreal moment

I don't know why I went here, but I did and we should be thankful:


Thou spleeny clapper-clawed bugbear!

The Future is Now

This is why I like living in the future!
What could be better than this?

If only they had been wearing little gestapo uniforms!

And something for Misreal

I'm not even sure how I came across this.

But... yeah, I'm going to have to go with what he said.

As long as we are being sexist pigs..

Amy Smart

I am actually suprised at the number of things she has been in - hopefully everything else was better than Crank...
of course, that's not saying much.

For Chris, Because I Have To

I can't come across this and not link it for you.

Enjoy.

Glorioski! HBO tries to make up with me.

I will never forgive HBO for the whole Deadwood business. You take a show that is not simply the perfect marriage of art and entertainment, a show for which I would lay down before a wild horse in the throughfare, and not only do you cancel it, but you fuck with and generally try the emotions of it's fans and admirers by dicking around in a mindless fashion about if you are going to do follow up movies to finish the story.

You are dead to me HBO, you and Joss Weidon, dead.

Except HBO is trying to make it up to me by buying the rights to produce George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and produce it as a show, not a mini-series.
This is confirmed folks, not a rumour.

Needless to say I am worried about the casting.

Do you have it?

If you don't it may be cause for concern.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af1OxkFOK18&eurl=


(And yes, this is now my favorite commercial of all time for a product that I find a little revolting).

Sorry for all of the worry

In our new, worry-free, world, I may have caused the slightest bit of worry recently, and for that I humbly apologize.

As for everything else, I regret nothing.

Happy New Year.

Hello, I must be going

This actually made me cry a little:

Babies Everywhere!

And this was just some very cool editing:

Amateur

I now return you to your regularly schedules lack of updates in this perfect world of ours.

Your Worries Are Over!

I have found the best website ever. EVER.

It completely removes the need for this blog.

You all will so thank me!

Maybe a little bit worried

As the days get shorter, colder and damper, I do find myself beginning to worry about ice, and slipping and falling. Do I have good enough boots to make it through the season? Is it sane, or feasible, to carry salt in my pockets to make a path as I walk?
To all of the property owners out there, from all of the pedestrian, um, in here I guess, I beg and plead of you, shovel your fucking walk. In fact, even though we have had no snow yet in the glorious, glamorous city by the Lake, go out and practice. Get your back into it. You call that shovelling? You shovel like a like a girl from the 50s. You know, when you could still say something like that and not have a girl kick your ass for it.
Geez, ok, you are too puny and weak to shovel. I get it, and you are too poor to buy a snow-blower, that's fine. Or too cheap, either way. Then hire one of those kids that roam residential streets in gangs, shovels shouldered like rifles, ready to take on the onerous task of clearing you property at very reasonable prices.
Remember, every day you leave the snow and ice to build up is another day you are just waiting to be sued.
This has been a public service announcement on behalf of the handful of people in this country that still use their legs for something other than a place to keep their pants.

Worrying about nothing

Apparently we are all free of worry and strife. Our days golden, our nights peaceful (or passionate, as we may desire). The hopes we have are that others will know the shining joy that is ours, for we can hope for no more for ourselves. Our homes are lovingly kept, our relationships solid, fulfilling and wrapped in a contentment that has no dullness. Every morning we arrise knowing that we will arrive to work rested and ready to face any crisis (not that there are any), our lunches are wholesome and tasty. We commute with narry a traffic jam to upset us or a homeless guy threatening to spit on us if we don't give him money. Dinner is divine. Television uplifting. And we sleep the sleep of the righteous.
All is well in Worryville.
We have nothing to worry about at all.

Catching Up, Part 1

• Wednesday staff meeting: In which I learn that our Retreat is This Friday. Starting at noon, we close this place down and convey ourselves to a lovely park building at which a duplicitous hypocritical cow named Jan (who is with the English department and who was my least favorite person there, at least of all the bovines) is going to run us through a Myers-Briggs personality assessment. Because it will be fun! And because "considering our tendencies can be interesting and valuable"! After all, this assessment "has been used for a long time in many industries and coporations," and that's good enough for our boss. So I'll be bringing along my own astrology chart, tea leaves, and entrails to even better try to determine exactly what cubby hole we all belong in.
  
  I really am amazed at how often these "what personality are you?" things I've been to here at the university. These little events are always done in the guise of "it'll be fun!" but there are waaaaay too many managers who also take a frankly creepy interest in the results. While the presenters are categorizing people as "artistic, mathematical, clinical, and enabling," you can see the supervisors matching those same phrases in their heads to "troublemaker, lacky, drone, and suckup." There's always the participants who get way too into it, so I'll have to deal with at least one woman who'll not only be amazed at how "true" her assessment is, but will then spend the rest of the day doing nothing but making hilarious jokes based on how other people were labeled. "Well, that's just what you'd expect an enabler to say! Hahahahaha!" This will go on for the following 2 days at work, as well, and then thankfully be forgotten. And the worst part about it is that it's a parlor trick at best, literally on the same level as astrology but with more professional and legitimate baggage attached to it (there's a tortured metaphor for you). It's more, you know, true.
  
  So I'm looking forward to that.
  
  
• Finished the second season of Veronica Mars. Still very enjoyable, though at a huge disadvantage when compared to the first season. The first season was one of the very few series that I immediately watched again, because while there were (and are) Dawson's Creek-style teen drama embedded in the show the writing and characters (especially Veronica and her father) are so... classy and smart that I can forgive the occaisional "I'm your real father!" moments. Generally--as with Deadwood, Firefly, The Wire, and some other shows I've taken to--it's the kind of manipulation that doesn't lean on the drama for its own sake, but as a general framework for the writing. Kind of the opposite of shows like Alias where the writing means more-or-less fuck all compared to good hooks to end that week's Dramatic Moment(s) on. Anyway, second season VM good (fire continues to be bad, yet useful). Still a smart show with a well-fleshed out main character, though some of it felt like it was borrowing a bit too much from the 1st season, which to me doesn't bode well for the 3rd.
  
  
• Took an IQ test online and apparently I'm Bill "Fucking" Gates. Scored a 133, and that's just what Bill would have done, because we're both so successful and have hot wives and smart homes and lots of cars and... hmmm. I'm pretty sure I'm at least smart enough to realize that the test is calling me an asshole slacker (a not very desirable porn job, unless you're into that sort of thing) while sniggering up it's electronic sleeve. I'd be depressed, but IQ tests are so amazingly stupid on the face of them that I can't really seem to feel much about this one way or another. Except that I scored a 133, and the rest of you are morons. Also, you're all dumb.
  
  Stupids.
  
  
• Sigh. This meeting, and the issue I had to talk about with the boss afterward, has truly left me angry and lazy. These are not two great tastes that taste great together. I've always got the impression the boss sees 90% of us as tools: useful for the one or two things we were designed for, but otherwise without any versatility and not too bright.
  
  
• I totally left two Zany and Irritating messages on Someone's voice mail on Saturday and have recieved nothing in Retaliation. These messages, I should point out, were fueled with a certain amount of vodka and involved if not singing, then at least one brief interlude of crooning, and it should be noted that there is a clearly finite amount of both vodka and crooning in the world, I am feeling a bit put out! But then, I'm used to crying myself to sleep nowadays, what with it being so hard being me. For instance, I saw a commercial for a movie a day or two ago. It's a CG movie involving penguins and it's called Happy Feet, starring the voice of Robin Williams. Misreal, at least, should understand why I can't decide whether this is reason enough to kill myself, or Robin Williams.
  
  
• I'm currently suffering from a desire to Cook. This desire is very nebulous, however, and I can't decide what I should chefify (a perfectly cromulent word--fuck you). I need to make a mess of something that (1) doesn't require ingredients I have to go out of my way to get and (2) will freeze well for future eatin'. That isn't chili or soup.
  
  
• Still reading The Terror. Slowly. Mostly just a little before bed each night, because I don't actually just sit down and read anymore. I've almost ordered The Devil in the White City a few times now, but I could have sworn Misreal gave me a copy of that as well and I should give my place a good looking through to find it.
  

What I am hearing in my head these days

lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallalalalalalllaaallallalalalallalallalallalalalalal
And so on.

A Year Ago Today

There is something strange about knowing exactly where you were at a given moment on a given day a year earlier. Even on a day like Christmas or Halloween or a birthday most people have a hard time saying, "Oh, yeah, 4:22 pm, I was sitting in my cousin's kitchen eating chocolate cake," or, "11:23 am? Yeah, I was standing outside looking at traffic."
Only tragedy allows for that perfect clarity of memory.
Today there are literally millions of Americans who can remember exactly where they were at this moment last year. Where they were and what they were doing every moment of that day.
For the last two days I have been able to remember exactly where I was at any given moment a year ago. Now, granted, yesterday was easy, on August 28th 2005 from about 10:30 am until about 9pm I was in a car. Except for a brief bathroom break around 5ish in Jackson, Mississippi I was in a tiny red car with my husband, two very cool, very interesting Brits, a pile of luggage, canned goods and bottled water.
Actually, a year ago today I was in that car again, minus the Brits and most of the luggage, and, at 4:30 we were probably just outside of Champagne, just starting to hear on the radio about the levees.
Which is funny, because no one in federal government seems to have heard about them for another day or two.
They were probably all much too busy to listen to the radio.

Tired, oh so tired

I can't remember the last time I was as tired as I have been the last week without being sick. I get up in the morning and I can't believe that I slept at all the night before. As the day goes on nothing gives me any more energy. By the time I get home I have to force myself to walk home and then up the stairs, mostly because living on the blue line would be...unpleasant.

I don't know if I am going through a low-grade depression, or I need vitamins or if I just need to sleep for about three weeks, but nothing seems to help.

All of which is nothing more than a pitiful excuse for not writing anything here worth reading.

In other news, Raindog, where are my dvds? That's what I thought.
Bite me.

Today's PSA