ZOMG! I ♥ the interweb!

Probably everyone and their Great Aunt Sue has seen this site already, but I had to put a link here as Book of Numbers is awesome weirdness. It's like the internet grandchild of the animated sequences Terry Gilliam did for Monty Python. ♥!

No one is reading this blog anymore

If this is not true, post something in the comments. If it is, well, I don't see me not posting anything. Well, I will continue to maintain my occasional posting of nothing much which no one reads.

That still makes no sense.

Have I mentioned my cat, Lucy, knowns how to open doors? Lucy can open doors.

I am finally reading Death Note and now understand why people like L, though not to the point of licking fanart. That is just fucking weird, man.

A thought on lapsed relationships

I've a feeling the only reason this blog has not been removed from a particular list is that person can't be bothered to mess with their template.

At some point, this person will decide they are bored with their template and remove the link and then, well.

It's sad, but it's also weird, as I'm not sure. And I really can't bring myself to ask. I should just ask, honestly. I guess I don't because I just don't need that, too, to add to the total list of things which make me very sad right now.

I could be just jumping to conclusions, but I've had a sneaking suspicion for a long time now. I'm such a coward with this stuff.

Also, when I do this sort of thing to other people, I tend to, you know, write letters that are held on to for years due to the bitterness they inspire. Or whatever. I don't know why he held on to that letter so long. God, I hope he doesn't still have it. That would be pathetic beyond words, and give me way too much significance in his life. I am anything but significant.

Still, it's depressing, as I rather admire this person. But, I'm not admirable, so I don't see reciprocation. And, I'm annoying. So there's that.

C'est la vie, ne?

S.O.U.S.es

I have weird facinations. One is with WWII movies. I don't know why, as I'm not all, "Woo! Greatest war ever!" as I'm not particularly fond of war. Not to say we should have capitulated to the facist forces (for longer than we did, at any rate, which was for a really fricking long time, considering), but war bugs me. Still, WWII movies are the bee's knees. Even crappy ones.

Then I took a course on WWII through Japanese literature, pre-Pearl Harbor, during WWII, and during the occupation. I've read pieces that most Japanese don't even know were ever written. (The Japanese denial of much of what happened just before and during WWII is the subject of a long, exhausting essay for which I haven't the mental energy right now.)

So, when NOVA has a program about the famed Battleship Yamato, it's like ...well, not mental chocolate, but definitely crystal-methish.

Naturally, when you're dealing with the Pacific front, with the Japanese navy's successes shortly after Pearl Harbor, with the American aircraft carriers, with the freakin' Yamato, largest battleship ever created, you're going to get tons of superlatives. Still, "ships of unusual size" tickled me in a movie/book-geek-slash-WWII-geek mash-up.

Side Note
An interesting story which I vaguely remember getting some coverage nationally, about the grandson of an American WWII Navy vet returning the personal effects of a kamikaze pilot to his family. The last sentence, included in an article written a little over five months before the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, is somewhat bittersweet a read.

Also of note is that the kamikaze volunteers were nearly all university students, "though science students were deemed too valuable to sacrifice."

happy chocolate bunny day

If I can't have a flying car, I want a supertrain, damn it

From The Pinstriped Bible:

Parenthetically, it's amazing that we live in the greatest country in the world, but our high-speed trains between New York and Boston putter along like a toddler's wind-up toy. Why is it that France, Germany, and Japan get the cool transportation toys? Okay, part of the answer is because we spend all our money protecting those countries and freeing them up to buy choo-choos. Still, it's frustrating.

The poor quality of our rail and commuter systems in this country drive me absolutely bonkers. There's no reason why the greatest country in the world (yes, as an American, I am biased, but still) should not have kick-ass train systems equivalent to those in Japan, Germany and France. France! France beats us out! That's just wrong, America!

If I ever hit the jackpot in some way or form, after paying off my debts and the rest of Mom's mortgage, I will start a campaign to get a decent commuter rail system set up here in the Capital Region. There is no reason on God's little green Earth that the commute from Saratoga to Albany should take over an hour. That's just retarded. (No, not mentally or physically disabled, retarded. There's a difference.) Once I succeed there, I will move on to doing something about our interstate rail system. ...and then pigs will fly out from my tuchus and soar through the sky. ::sigh::

Update: April 3, 2007, 13:37 GMT

From BBC News | Europe | French set new rail speed record:

A French high-speed train (TGV) has smashed the world record for a train on conventional rails by a big margin, reaching 574.8km/h (356mph).

...

The absolute train speed record was set by a Japanese magnetic levitation train - Maglev - in 2003. It reached a top speed of 581km/h (361mph).

...

After the record was broken, President Jacques Chirac conveyed his congratulations on "this new proof of the excellence of the French rail industry."

::crickets::

AAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUGH!!!

::head goes 'splodey::

Awesome!

Ancient, giant things are, by their very nature, awesome. #54398 in the series of Things I've Learned About By Watching Nova: Glacial Lake Missoula and the Ice Age Floods.

A note on grammar

I've been thinking for years now that I ought to start up a blog where my mom gives daily or weekly grammatical tips for English writers. Honestly, interweb. Your English blows. Even the better-written posts have sucktacular English. Mom's busy with her divorce, and I'm busy with my crappy-ass temp job, so, instead of the new blog, I bring you the

ENGLISH LANGUAGE GRAMMATICAL TIP OF THE DAY:

There is a difference between "fewer" and "less." Here's the way you can remember it. Say some lucky schmuck is walking down the beach, ducks down and scoops up a handful of sand. Not paying attention, the schmuck opens his and a little, allowing some of the sand to slip between his fingers. You can now either say that lucky schmuck has LESS sand in his hand or FEWER grains of sand.

"Less" applies to overall amount, or a mass which cannot be divided so that you can count it (sand, water, control...). "Fewer" applies to things you would count individually (grains of sand, raisins, controls...). If you pour water out of a glass, you have less water in the glass, as you can't count a mass such as water individually. (Granted, if you're an asshole, you could say you have fewer drops of water, but then, again, that'd make you an asshole.) If you poured peanuts out of a bowl, you would have fewer peanuts in that bowl, as you could, technically, count the number of peanuts which you poured out.

Less is for mass, fewer is for items. Capice?

... WTUF?

Holy crap. Further proof of the end of civilization. For some reason, the part which stuck out like a purple-clad dancing cat was the following:

Speaking at news conference last week, a Montgomery County coroner's office spokesman said the investigation had been complicated by the lack of research on the effect of microwaves on human beings.

Like my deeply troubled mother said when I told her about a mother who possibly nuked her own baby girl (for God's sake, WTUH?!), not too many bodies fit into a standard microwave oven, so it wouold be difficult to gather data on that sort of thing.

One, if she did it, it's simply yet more fuel for a sneaking suspicion I have that we need to start up some sort of law which requires that people get thoroughly vetted before they're permitted to breed. Completely fucking wrong, I know, but, for Christ's sake! Nuked babies! Come on!

Two, if she didn't do it, if it was the babysitter or someone, that poor, poor woman, going through this hell and being accused of committing such a completely fucked up and evil act.

I'm too tired to deal with this. I'm going to go watch this week's Scrubs on the DVR again.

Wow. That looks positively shitacular.

I'm a dork. I saw the trailers for The Lord of the Rings movies and I squeed. I was even excited to see a dragon fly back when the exceedingly disappointing Dragonheart came out.

Eragon is a derivative piece of shit. I shudder at the thought of kids reading it and thinking that's what good writing is. And, judging by the trailer over at Moviefone, it looks like the film based upon it is just as crappy: see for yourself.

Bad costuming, bad magical animal design, cruddy effects, misuse of good actors, shitty actors in central roles. Yup, all the marks of a decidedly mediocre fantasy flick. It's like Peter Jackson never happened. Then again, reading Eragon, it's like high school English never happened. Oh, wait. He was home-schooled, wasn't he? Guess it didn't happen.

Go work in comics!

I know way too many English majors who grew up reading X-Men et al not to post this here.

Go work for Marvel! They're looking for an Associate Editor at Marvel Entertainment in NYC. Job details behind the link. I can't imagine I don't have at least one geeky and über-intelligent friend (and this describes pretty much all of you) who could manage to fit the bill. Okay, yeah, comics ain't what they used to be, but comics! Squee! You'd be working for Marvel Comics! Home of Spiderman and Wolverine and Nightcrawler! Dude! Nightcrawler! Go apply! I know you could do this job.

I'm not applying 'cause I'm not qualified. I've work experience, but not appropriate work experience. I have this growing, creeping, chilling fear I'm going to be an admin for the rest of my days. My life is going to continue to be teh suck of suck for the forseeable future. How the hell do people start proper careers without internships?

They can't, can they? ... Crap.

an empty sky

*headdesk*

All right. This is just driving me buggy.

I've been reading juvvie books, trying to see if there's something I'd like to get for my bookwormish nephew, and have discovered 1) The Secret Country trilogy is all right, though missing a certain something (perhaps its dose of reality in terms of relationships between kids and their parents), 2) Diana Wynne Jones books MUST be bought from the UK as the US versions are but pale, heavily-edited shadows, 2a) I must buy lots of DWJ for the bookworm, and 3) Jane Yolen has no fucking clue how to you thou/thee in a sentence.

The Third is the subject of this post, as, for pity's sake! English is her first language and she's not a moron. So why does she write like one?

Thou and thee are, of course, older forms of you, no longer in use. Still, it's somewhat easy for anyone who studied Elizabethan and Jacobean literature in college (and for whom English is the primary language) to pick up the rules. Thou is used when the you is subject, thee when it's direct object, like the difference between he and him or she and her. The possessive, thy, changes form to thine when the noun is defines is plural. Per the following:

"Thou art a great beauty."

"T'would go better for thee if thou wouldst not lie so."

"Ah! Thou art a true Venus! Thine eyes, thy skin, thy mouth...!"

"Ach! Go to, go to! I'll no more of thee."

All right. Not the best dialogue, but I think you can probably pick up the use of thou/thee/thy/thine from it. Yes? It's not that hard.

So why does Jane frickin' Yolen screw it up? Why? At first, I hought she was simply illustrating the ignorance of a poor boy who lives thousands of years in the future when she used thee where thou should be, and thy in thine's place in The Dragon Pit trilogy (now, apparently, a series of four or summat). Now I'm reading The Young Merlin trilogy, and it's wrong again. Why? Why, why why?

Augh. It's so frustrating, it makes me want to go read some more DWJ. I swear, reading Diana Wynne Jones's ficture for preteens-and-up is like taking a lovely cool bath after a long hot day. Too bad I can't buy any more books until next month. Poop.

The Smithy Code

You've probably heard of this already, but how fabulous is it that a London judge has put a code into his ruling?

You don't know about this? Um, well, there's a New York Times article about it here.

I know that American rulings are available on the web, but are British? Does anyone know how I can find the Baigent v. Random House ruling? I'd love to read it, though I should imagine it can't be half as fun a read as the Mattel v. MCA (over Aqua's "Barbie Girl" song) ruling.

Yakitate!! Sugar Kat-pan

I'm all in love with the Yakitate!! Japan scanlations I've been reading, so I poked around the interweb a bit, and have discovered that the super-awesome, mega-good "solar hands" that the better bakers in the series have...I have them, too! Turns out "solar hands" means you have naturally warm hands. I'd always thought it was freaky that I had such good circulation, considering how much I loathe to exercise (ew! sweat! ugh!) and how much time I've spent over my lifetime just sitting on my arse, reading or watching TV or mucking about on the internet. Turns out, if I felt like it, I could be a naturally kick-ass breadmaker thanks to my freakishly warm hands. My freakishly warm hands about which my very own mother teases me.

I should make bread this weekend and test my "solar hands"-ness. See if it's all they're cracked up to be in the (very silly) manga.

I refuse to grow a 'fro if they don't work, though.

By the way, "yakitate" means "freshly baked." Don't you love Jim Breen?

This made my brain hurt

A link sent to me by my dear younger brother: Suri Cruise Explained.

Not all people from Syracuse are this insane. Honestly. My elder sister is very, very normal.

Gary is awesome!

Of course, those of you who know Gary already know this.

But why is this Gary of whom I speak so awesome at this particular time that I feel the need to post about his awesomeness on my publically-available blog?

Because Gary sent me a huge-ass box of Pocky, that's why. Not just chocolate Pocky, but Kurogoma Pocky, and Chocolat Chaud Mousse Pocky, and all sorts of other Pocky varieties. Even two big boxes of chocolate Pocky multipacks, with lots and lots of minipacks of chocolate Pocky inside.

I was bitten by a charity bug today (gave a bunch of donations to the groups you see listed above), and somehow this led to my giving away Pocky packets from one of these boxes. (One jerk gave his away instead of returning it to me, which is so jerky! No more treats for the jerk! He doesn't deserve the goodness that is Pocky.) The upshot of this is that I've now about three coworkers who, after one small pack, are totally addicted to Pocky and are attempting to come up with ways to get their own supply. Which is good, 'cause then I can mooch off of their Pocky supply, as, though Gary sent me what seems like half a metric ton of Pocky, I just might get through the delicious, delicious Pocky by the close of the weekend at the latest.

THANK YOU, GARY! YOU TOTALLY ROCK!

Wherefore Rabbit?

From yesterday's The Writer's Almanac.

The word "Easter" comes from an ancient pagan goddess worshipped by Anglo Saxons named Eostre. According to legend, Eostre once saved a bird whose wings had frozen during the winter by turning the bird into a rabbit. Because the rabbit had once been a bird, it could still lay eggs, and that rabbit became our Easter Bunny.

Holy shit!

NYTimes.com today: Cheney's Aide Says President Approved Leak

The testimony by the former official, I. Lewis Libby Jr., cited in a court filing by the government made late Wednesday, provides an indication that Mr. Bush, who has long criticized leaks of secret information as a threat to national security, may have played a direct role in authorizing disclosure of the intelligence report on Iraq.

You know they're still going to get away with it, though, don't you? Bush and Cheney could step out onto the White House lawn and shoot target practice at passing citizens and they'd still be sitting pretty. They could toss incendiaries into random in-session courtrooms and still be praised to high heaven by Republicans. They've done nearly entirely nothing but wrong since they came into power, and yet they can still do no wrong.

On volcanoes and colds

Vesuvius Due For Giant Eruption

"There was this Bronze-Age eruption about 4,000 years ago, and then 2,000 years ago there was the A.D. 79 event. It seems that just about every 2,000 years, there's been a major eruption of this scale at Vesuvius," said Sheridan.

I don't know why I think this is cool. I just do. As cool as the potential for life on Europa? No. But still, cool. In an opposite way, I guess, as Vesuvius is about geological activity killing life, but Europa's all about the cultivating of life. Alien life forms. Sucre, they're just bateria, but... Dude. Millions of years ago, so were we.

Speaking of single-celled life forms, I have myself a very nasty cold. Everyone else has a cold, too, so I guess I'm just being fashionable, in a sincerely lemming-like way.

Today's a day of baking banana bread (we have about forty-five frozen bananas sitting in our freezer, waiting to be turned into a baked good) and figuring out my personal finances and being sick. I wish it were a day of chocolate, laughter, and very good sex, but it's not. I'd even go for a day of laughter and good movies. Actually, that'd probably lead to a lot less chaffing. Yes, I would rather today were a day of laughter and good movies than of banana bread baking, balancing personal finances, and coming down with a horrible cold.

I'm going to go lie down now. Go read about Vesuvius. Learning things is groovy.