CAW! CAW!

I don't think I'm as open as this test does, but it's not too far off!

Your Score: Jokester Soul

You scored -3 Extroversion, -14 Sensitivity, and 5 Openness!

You are a confident person with a strong sense of self. You can be loud and jocular, and you don't really care who hears you. You don't spend too much time stressing about how other people see you. If they like you, well, good for them. If they don't like you, well, that's their own problem.

People need to earn your respect in order for you to really start taking them into consideration. You might bend yourself over backwards for a friend or family member, but you aren't going to give that sort of special treatment to any old Joe Blow. Your loved ones know that under that bold, brash exterior, there is a person who is loyal and even clannish at times. You will fight to defend your friends and family from any and all comers. With these special few, you drop that joking exterior and be your real self.

Your daemon's form would represent your confident ways, your joking and insensitive manner, and your secret tendency for soft-heartedness. He or she would probably help you criticize all the idiots whom you meet on a day to day basis, and back you up when you are on the defensive.

Suggested forms:
Magpie, Raven, Kangaroo, Wild Boar.

Link: The Golden Compass Daemon Test written by wolfcaroling on OkCupid.

right on the money!

Perfect!

Uh oh, I just realized I'm posting those stupid things like myspace now. Shit.
Will I let that stop me? No.

I need a PADD!

Amazon's Kindle is like the future! I want one so bad! It looks smooth, the screen is clear and glare-free, and it's like science fiction come to life. I can only imagine how much better devices like these are going to get in the coming years.

My only worry with them is the effect they could eventually have on paper books as an industry and an art. I love the feel of holding a book as I read it, and the Kindle doesn't feel quite like that. A heavy, well-made book is something to appreciate in many ways, and even cheap little paperbacks have a comforting feel. Additionally, publishing is my intended career, and I don't want to work to produce something that's only going to come out electronically. There's less joy to it, less evidence.

And I wonder if it will have an effect in the long term on other things near and dear to me, like libraries and BookCrossing. You can't stumble upon a free e-book on your way to work...

However, I don't think something like the Kindle can boot hard-copy books out for a long time, if ever. My science fiction sensibilities are way more excited and powerful than my Luddite doubts. So, once I have money and a need to keep tons of books in a very small space, I'll head right out and buy myself something like a Kindle. Until then, I'll be happy with reading, loving, and giving away my paper.

The first rule of book club is you do not wait for the movie.

Now I have to start a book club, just so I can use this. Thanks, Indie Rock Pete.

This segues nicely into chatting about Fight Club, which I finally got to see the ending to the other night. Let me just say, all the people who voted to watch it on the bus are pricks. Watching it again, I noticed so much stuff I missed just because of a small screen and wonky volume. Also, the timing was awful and, looking back on the movie as a whole, we stopped at the worst possible time: after the twist and just as Jack is realizing what he has been doing and how extensive his creepy net is.

Speaking of that creepy net, people can't be that easy to suck in, can they? But they can, and that's really the scariest part of the movie. All the violence is pretty awesome, actually, except when Edward Norton's beating himself up in the parking garage. Awkward!

On the shallowest level of cathartic violence, I'm all for the idea of Fight Club, since gym memberships can be pretty expensive, and just using your body against someone else feels good. On the (pseudo?-)intellectual levels, I disagree almost entirely. Sure, commercialism is not so good, but you're no less of a man if you know what a duvet is or aren't particularly fond of being a hunter-gatherer. Commercialism's not the fault of a feminist society, it's the fault of greedy folk exploiting people who will buy shit.

Will I watch again? Hell yes! Brad Pitt sans much clothing, tormenting Edward Norton...hot hot hot. Hot hot hot hot hot.

And did you know Meat Loaf was an actor? I did not. I was pleasantly surprised. Jared Leto? Also an actor! Wow! The Rock? Actually not in Fight Club, but has a seriously convincing body double.

excellent and pointless!

Get Your Cyborg Name

Cupcake Dreams

That title sounds either brutally cynical or hopelessly gay, but it actually perfectly describes my dream from last night. As in most dreams, there's all sorts of confusing lead-in and crossfade, but the cupcake part is pretty clear. Also, I kind of think these should exist for real.

I'm at some theatre (kind of like the El Camino Community one, where Chelsea danced, but darker, more like the place in the hotel where I checked in for that dumb Vector conference), getting concessions, but they're selling this cool thing that turns into a sugar scene in your cup of water. I'm with at least Chelsea and Daddy, and possibly Nicky, and Chelsea goes to get one. She puts them in the cups, which are glass, and swirls and shakes them up until they dissolve. The sugar and whatever else it is that makes the magic happen quickly start to settle and make this beautiful little diorama, but of what, I can't remember. I think it was roses or something quite fairytale-like. Once I saw how well they worked, I wanted to get one, so I went over and bought the little pack of three, since that's how they come. I didn't want to pay for the glass cups, though, since I am crazy cheap, so I used three of my blue plastic cups (which I actually have). They were slightly too small and some of the frosting got scraped out of place on the right hand cupcake, so I ate the messy bit and put water in the cups to dissolve them up. (The icing was pretty tasty.) I pressed the cups together in a straight row and started swirling them around and mixing it up. What's funny is that nothing spills and the cups stay stuck together, but it's a dream, so hey.

However, mine doesn't look like it's working out like Chelsea's did, and this is disappointing. I wander the room a little, which is a small anteroom off the main lobby and right by the concessions, but it's a small bedroom with a green bedspread-covered bed and white wood slat blinds on both windows. There are windows on opposite sides of the room, and nice regular daylight is coming through them. I've been swirling the cups around and sometimes stirring the sort of brown liquidy-sludge with a finger, when I hear this Southern accented voice quoting from Gone With the Wind (which I've never seen). Thinking back on it, I bet it was saying "All of this has happened before," Battlestar Galactica style. Before I went to bed, I watched all of the Razor flashbacks, and Adama put his hand in this goo tank and heard things. Anyway, this got me all excited because I thought, "Oh, mine'll be a beautiful scene from Georgia! That'll be nice; I haven't seen Georgia in so long..." this and that. I turn to the window on the other side of the bed (I'm standing to the right of the bed, facing into the room) and get a glimpse of Scarlett O'Hara as a kind of vision or hologram outside, and it occurs to me that I need to put the cups down and let the sugar settle. So I stop swirling them and look straight down into them, through the now clear water. Because the cups are pretty dark, I'm not seeing anything, but then I see flowers start to bloom on the bottom and suddenly the shared sides of the cups vanish and I've got the shape of three cups on the outside, but one shared inside. The sugar continues to build up, and the sides become transparent so I can see from all around. Strangely, it's not anywhere in Georgia, but rather a stylized San Francisco, like the inside of a tourist's snowglobe. It even says "San Francisco" in curly letters on the grass between the flowers. These flowers are also pretty stylized, but still nice, and off to the edge is the city and the bridge.

At this point, dream weirdness happens, and either or both of the following things happens: We look in and go into this San Fransisco diorama, Pensieve-style, or the Confederates come in through the windows. Yeah.

an eventful day

Hopefully, this title indicates that Saturday was an eventful day, not that today will be an eventful day, but either way it comes, I'll take it.

I just finished the last Harry Potter book, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. I made some pretty sweet time (approximately 6 hours and 41 minutes) and was somewhat pleased with all the outcomes, but after all the other books and all the hype that has accompanied this series and character, I find myself wishing for more than a "19 years later" epilogue. Which puts them in 2016, by the way, which is a pretty weird thought. Harry Potter and the Future? That's a dumb title.

There was a little fun fact in there that brightened my day: something happened on my birthday that was not bad or lame or destructive! Lily Potter was born, and if you try to take it away by reminding me it's fiction, I say "Get the fuck out and let me have something cool!" You take what you can get when your name is India and Gandhi was assassinated on your birthday.

The rest of the events that made up this passed eventful day mainly involve cleaning my room, finding old stuff I thought was lost (including about 40 books woooo!), and helping my dad put together a new bed for my garage room. It's looking really nice.

With a day so full of reading crazy stuff, I really hope my dreams are not disturbing or particularly affecting. Dreams where I die are not exactly a bad thing in general, but they do fuck me up for a while after.

So, to sleep, perchance to dream. Shakespeare said some good stuff about sleep.

true fact

I think the only way to get me to blog is to get me drinking. I say bring on the SoCo!

Which reminds me, I want a t-shirt like the seniors had with the SoCo-ripoff with Stonier. That would be cool.

too far gone

holy shit, dude.

not only am i pretty far gone, I'm typing a livejournal. slash blogger. i don't even know, dude. it's dark. i can't see well. so let's chalk up my typing error to the dark, not to my inebriated state. fyck drunk, i'm happy. we watched the return of the jedi and now we're watching serenity. that movei is only okay, but i feel like i should like it because it's "good" sci-fi. i think i'm a pretty good/responsible drunk. MASTURBATION!!! apparently, taht's the theme of the night. holy shit. nice and awkward.

holy shit awkward octupus! damn serenity. gross. and chrystal totally got eaten out by someone they know. and i've gotta pee like a mo. buenas noches, gente!

also, this took a really long time to type. except this part. this part went super-fast.

'night!

WTF THOSE IS LIKE HEADLESS LEGLESS CAT BODIES

Maybe I can justify my love of the weird grammar and blatant lameness of most lolcats by invoking my linguistics major. Or maybe I just need to 'fess up and admit I love something so pop. Wow, that makes me sound super-goth or punk or something. Which I am clearly not. Digressions end here.

Here is a fine sample of innovative and basically just ridiculous lolcattery. As a fan of Star Trek that doesn't really know/like the old series, I could totally get used to this as a summary medium. Jammer, take note!

Now I must write a ten-page linguistics paper. Ask me about it Wednesday after 7pm, when I will be done with my sophomore year of college. (SHIT!!)

back-dated

In a further attempt to both document my life and get rid of excess paper in my messy room, I have some blog ideas that I wrote down last summer in my extremely boring chem summer class lectures. Because I want them to be expanded on or typed in (as the case may be), but also want them to reflect the date on which I actually came up with them, I now have this handy
back-dated label.

cleaning up and getting rid of paper

I am trying to get rid of a lot of papers that I have lying around. I found two things that are worth keeping, but not in their paper format. There is nothing special about their papers (no fun drawings or anything), so I'll just type them in.

Now, this one was on the back of some frickin' trig notes. 12 Nov 2003. Holy crap. Anyway, we were big into Monty Python's Flying Circus, and I wrote down the funniest joke in the world and the German retaliation.

British: Q: Wenn ist das nunstuck geht ein slotermeier? A: Ja, bayerhund das oder die flipperwaldt gespurt!
What does it mean? No idea. Not at all.

Reeeeebuttal! There were zwei peanuts valking down die Straße when one of them was assaulted...peanut.

Fantastic. Okay, now I can get rid of the stupid paper.

Next, we have something much more recent. Sometime this semester, Michelle and I went to go see a comedy show at Ground Zero. (This was the same night that we walked home and watched them film House. wo0t!) We were looking for seats and wound up sitting next to Carolyn Sasquatch from the tenors. We got bored and were looking at the drinks and such, and made up some really awful World War II drinks. Really, really awful. So here they are!!

The Aryan (originally called the Swastika, until we came up with a better Swastika)
milk
Bailey's
marshmallows
blueberries
(coconut shavings)
vanilla (ice cream)

Serve in a Wonderbread cup. Garnish with a pineapple ring and a little Hitler 'stache of black licorice.

The Swastika
strawberry blended
licorice liqueur ?
black licorice swastika on top
(tequila)
pipe-cleaner barbed wire

Serve flaming, with a strawberry on the rim.

Obviously, the Swastika is not very well thought out. That's okay, because it's so tasteless anyway.

And I believe I'm done! For now!

Tying up loose ends.

Okay, I just wanted to get this out of the way so they will stop bugging me every other page. Jeez.

I make it sound a lot worse than it is. It's a very handy tool, especially for a class that does research. I wish html was useable, though. You have to adapt to their weird little system, but it's not too bad. Here's a link.

finals approaching...

It's that time of the semester again, and so, true to fashion, I am not studying or researching or writing the paper I should be writing, but rather typing in this damned livejournal. In fact, as I was getting dressed just now, I resolved to not go to my weekly session with Kishore and just veg around until Russian at 11. I even woke up early so I could prepare some questions and stuff for the consultation (or whatever we're calling it), but I have decided that I don't want to go. I'm pretty sure that I haven't missed one yet, or if I have, I've made it up. Anyway, I have a lot of recorded data to run through Audacity and analyze. Even though I've never used Audacity before...it's kind of a travesty that I've taken 4 classes in the major, including a phonetics and phonology class and never learned too much about analyzing spectrographs.

Let's run down school, shall we? I dropped CHEM 105b early this semester, and with it, pre-med. I was very relieved, but at the same time uncomfortable. Being pre-med means that you have a set course after undergrad. Being a linguistics and neuroscience major does not. I don't want to get into research because it seems rather dull in either field. I do NOT want to be an academic. Maybe I could work for the government. Which reminds me, rent has been so hard to make this year that I'm seriously considering ROTC again. Mommy would flip, though. And I'm getting the feeling I'd just chicken out anyway. Well, next year's rent should be much more manageable, as long as I can get in touch with freakin' Fat Tony. Talking to Ben Chua this weekend, I learned that they have INTERVIEWS! Prospective tenant interviews. Jeez.

Anyway, back to school. I dropped chem right on the add-drop date and added Russian 1 in its place. I have really been enjoying it, even though there's one guy in the class that often pisses me off. He's very rude to Yuliya at times, and it bugs me. So every so often I tell him off and the overall effect has mellowed him. He's the frat boy stereotype to a T. It's kind of daunting learning a language with a new writing system, which makes me pretty nervous for Chinese, which I think I should learn, especially since so many of my friends speak it. And by so many, I mean three. But whatever.

My one ling class this semester is pretty cool, but it's only once a week. For this reason, it's 3. Hours. Long. It's a lot. Especially since the professor is not very good at managing or directing a class. I think she's only on loan from the University of British Columbia until the end of the year. No one will miss her, as cruel as that sounds. I think she'll be glad to be gone as well. The best part of this class is how cool our informant has turned out to be. He's a 24-year-old first year grad student in the computer science department, but even so, he's picked up some linguistics jargon very quickly. He's also a fun guy to be around. Just this weekend, on Saturday, he invited everyone to this concert a group he's involved in had organized. The band/group/whatever is called Aradhna, and their music was very good. Rebecca came a little late, and we left early, but it was still very worthwhile. Plus, they had samosas at the intermission. I had never had samosas before Saturday, and I can't believe I missed out for that long! I love samosas. Chai...only a little, but samosas? Lots and lots. Especially with the chutneys. Holy crap.

I guess that leaves my last class. It's toward neuroscience, and it's called The Neurobiology of Aging (GERO 414). It's interesting, and the professor is a great guy, but I'm not putting forth enough effort, and it's really effecting my grade in the worst possible way. There is a lot more science-y shit to know than I expected, and neurochemistry always makes me unhappy. Oh well, it'll be over soon. Our final project is actually due Thursday, so we'll have a meeting on Wednesday to put everything together and go over it.

I guess I should wrap up. Next time, I'll talk about crazy housing shit and what led to it all. And the gig. The hilarious cancer gig. Oh, I'm going to burn for that...

music: iTunes randomizer
mood: weird...

fling myself gleefully

That, as I have noticed, did not work. Which is okay. I don't think I really need a day by day on my life, since most days are not that different.

Right now, especially, I'm caught in the midterm slump. I just had a midterm today and I'm pretty sure I fucked it up royally. On the bright side, though, at least when I walked my paper to the professor this time, I didn't feel like my guts were going to twist apart. Literally. It was not nerves; it fucking pained. Long story short, I need it to be summer.

Also, many other things are going wrong. However, on the bright side, my iPod was recently found and the girl who found it finally got in touch with me.

A Geeky Goal, Partially Met

Two down, three to go. Three and a half? Does the animated show count? I don't care; I actually don't even want to watch the original series...so cheesy...I...can't...quite...imagine...I...would...enjoy...it...

But what am I talking about? Let me clarify: I finished Star Trek: Enterprise today. I finished Star Trek: Voyager at the end of last week. Yeah, I'm doing it backwards, but I watch them as they come to me, and I got the first season of Voyager for free.

On a related note, let me take back everything I said about Enterprise before I started watching. You can't judge a show by its theme song, no matter how godawful that theme song is. Enterprise basically kicks Voyager all around the block in terms of characters, plot, and general exploration, Delta Quadrant or no. Of course, Enterprise had some weak moments, including a finale that REALLY PISSED ME OFF (but that's just because my favorite character died unnecessarily). However, every show has flaws, and since the show is over and done, I'll just have to live with the flaws, since there's no one to betch to to change things. (DON'T YOU CENSOR ME!)

On that seriously pessimistic note, I'll end. I'm going to post this to my real blog(s), too, just for kicks and giggles.

(Originally posted to account on tv.com just because I wanted membership percentage points. I think that's so I can review things...)