kenoma

The universe is always swallowing cats
From now until mid September or so, expect an update more or less weekly.

Started (and finished) As She Climbed Across The Table - quite excellent.
Attempting to play Realmz again, however, I'm playing Assault on Giant Mountain (and felt Prelude to Pestilence wasn't updated at all since I made) and am stuck at the end. Yes, I know you have to destroy Giantslayer with the Anvil of Pain. Yes, I know where the castle you go to is. I can't seem to get past two turns in the final battle without the game quitting on me. Yaaargh. I mean, yeah, it's done that before, but not ten times in a row. This game has more bugs than this summer. That doesn't say much, since I saw my first dragonfly today and still haven't seen any butterfly that wasn't a white.
Concert funtimes:
Overture to La Forza del Destino: I think I heard a bit of Mendelssohn in that.
Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 4: Not by an Italian. I've heard this before. And I'm not just saying that because I recognized his style.
Scarlatti - The Good Humored Ladies: The problem with pre-classical music is that there aren't as many people who can play things like sackbutts and clavichords and serpents.
Tchaikovsky: Not by an Italian. However, it does sum up
???: Uh, it was from Naples. That's all I remember.
Rossini - William Tell Overture: You know this.

Musings - WBCN is shutting down. I haven't listened to the radio since around 2003 (and listened to WAAF when I did and when I was actually able to pick it up, even if Hillman was a hard rightist douche galosh), but apparently, the playlists haven't changed since 1994 and don't include Slowdive or Lush or the Cocteau Twins anyway, aside from the occasional Linkin Park and other bollocks. There's a good reason people use things like compilation CDs and myspace and "hey, that's a cool band name*"

*Led to the discovery of July Skies, the Sunflower Conspiracy (sort of), the Ecstasy of Saint Theresa, among others.

Burning Question: It's July 16! Do you remember where you were when you first heard Kid A?
Burning Question 2: How do you discover new music, unless your playlist hasn't changed since 1995?

Current Mood: Bassarona
Current Music: The Sunflower Conspiracy - Ginger

There is a Christmas episode of the Simpsons on right now.
Can you figure out what's wrong with this?

It's July! November of the 2nd Phase of Spring if you're in China. And I'm 25 years old, but nobody who's still around regularly cares. And there aren't any butterflies that aren't whites. Yeah, that whole classic era thing lasted about a week, the post-classic/dark ages lasted 3 days with an episode I barely remembered. I had a last.fm quiz, but I accidentally deleted it and a few of the positions shifted slightly.

Burning Question: It's July! Why would they do this? Are they crazy?

Current Mood: Libytheana

our summer made her light escape into the beautiful
(yeah right - it feels more like October and I'm looking back on the warmth of late April, of all things - it's hard to make a summer mix without summer, but it will probably include Ride and Lush and All Natural Lemon and Lime Flavors)

There were two days that felt properly like summer, but for some reason, only whites were around, no fritillaries or swallowtails or buckeyes. I'm ambivalent about this, as whites are utterly incapable of sitting still and in the rare cases when they do sit still, their wings are folded instead of spread out, however, none of this matters because the digital camera I ordered two weeks ago (at least I think it was two weeks - time blurs into itself) hasn't arrived yet. Still, fucking whites and their fucking inability to sit still.

Carolyn: Yeah, they had seventies hair. Only good things to come out of the seventies were punk and the cars.
Truer words have never been spoken. Except for Popol Vuh. They're cool. And Star Wars.

The burning quesetion was "Will __________ confirm my friend request or will girl.echo.suns.veils come out?" It's the former. I checked just to make sure it didn't come out. A lovesliescrushing album wouldn't creep up on me. But there is stuff on their myspace, which is loveliescrushing for some inexplicable reason.
Burning Question: Why would lovesliescrushing use loveliescrushing as their myspace addy, anyway?

Current Mood: Acrodipsas
Current Music: All Natural Lemon and Lime Flavors - Muffin 57

All I need is an excuse to use the word "adultivity" in real life.
Seen on (Corridor of Ages): (Written on a brick of sorts) Neblles: Here lies a robin who someone cared enough to give a grave
Seen on (Corridor of Ages): A bicycle lawnmower, probably custom made. I wonder if it works.
Time doesn't really heal wounds, it just distracts you from them with much better people (see all entries between Incipit Liber de Naturis Bestiarum and I hope your heart keeps on beating for a long long time) and then you're just reminded as to why hunewearls suck. Not that I care about your role playing characters. Yours or anyone else's.
I watched Spoony's review of Transformers and I can now say that there's a movie where someone can ask "Are there any jive talking robots?" (1) and the answer would be "yes."

(1) There is a band from Boston called Jive Talkin' Robots, so if they were on the soundtrack, you could answer "yes" to that question and it would be a better movie anyway.

Guess what episode of The Simpsons is playing! I've been complaining about the lack of it since April of 2008!

Burning Question: Why isn't the Matrix oversaturated with advertizing, if it's run by machines?
Burning Question 2: What's the worst book you've ever finished? I think I finished Lucifer's Hammer.
Burning Question 3: Why would you go to a Japanese bookstore, anyway? The only reason I'd ever find myself in a bookstore that sells things in Japanese or Romanian or Farsi is if I knew there was a copy of the Codex Seraphinianus for a reasonable price. Read as thirty dollary-doos. Yes, that episode was on recently.
Burning Question 4: Why does the American Flag have precisely 47 stars?

Current Mood: Parnasius
Current Music: Future Sound of London - Max

Without Colors
People who are totally forbidden from spelling lily wrong: Americans (especially you fucks in Oregon. I know you're sending your Mardu entites), Canadians, English, Australians. People who are clueless. People who get mad at you for not talking to them and then get mad at you when you try to talk to them, no matter how Slovenian, Romanian, or Japanese they are. Navel-less non people. Modest chair people painted gray who don't want to be anything but chairs for others to sit in. People writing summaries of Step By Step. The cast of Step By Step. People who don't like people who wear scarves. Bike thieves.

Also, I have Everything Is Illuminated (finally) and there's a Thai James Bond movie in which R2D2 (some Thai guy makes unconvincing beeping sounds) and C3PO (some Thai guy making unconvincing beeping sounds - attention Thailand: C3PO talks in a British accent, not that there's a difference between that and beeping to someone who barely understands English watching a really halfassed bootleg of Star Wars) work for the villain and get in arguments. I must see this movie! I did see Chronopolis a week or so ago, for what it's worth. Nothing to do with the Ballard story, but intriguing and beautiful nonetheless. Some of it felt pointless, though. What's the deal with those black dots, anyway?

Also, when I start putting 3s in words, it's late. So that's why I let it autosave with a clipped sentence and posted it at a less ungodly time a day later instead.

It has just occured to me that Homer calls Grampa's anecdotes about turkeys being walking birds "antidotes," possibly because they rarely play Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy. It's baseball season and the office monkeys at FOX 25 have realized this the hard way. After all, Regarding Margie was pre-empted last week! Can't have that happening, we won't see that episode for another month! We can spare Deep Space Homer (thankfully, they played it today - I'll post the next time that happens again)

PS: I'll let you know when they play Regarding Margie. And possibly Kill Gil, because it pisses me off that much.

Burning Question: So, when are we going to see Kanchanaburi Jones? I was going to ask why we don't see American (insert random Asian movie here), but wasn't that the Depareted? And the Ring. And the Grudge. And there's a rumor about a Kontroll remake, but that's a (condescending voice) ruuu-mor.

I thought of another one while far from home and immediately forgot it upon being somewhere where there was a computer.

Current Mood: Araschnia
Current Music: Future Sound of London - 100 baby spiders

All At One Point
Sometimes, everyone makes a mistake in thier life. Like here. Once, I said that anything with a keytar was awesome, no matter how inept the musicians were. Well, I haven't seen The Ninja Turtles Coming Out of their Shells. Or if I have, I purged it from my mind at some point. Whatever. The point is: They have a keytar and yet they suck copious amounts of moogle antenna, and I'm going to need a lot of You Don't Know Her Name to get through that one.

People who can spell lily wrong: Slovenes, Romanians, Japanese. People making an artistic choice of some kind. People paying homage to Brian Aldiss.

On Serenades ch. 11 (1)
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... must be a bug.

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(1) Note that there's a link to it. I can't request critiques there unless I pay for it and I have better things to squander money on *a day after writing this, holds up Cosmicomics* and as for The Drowned World and The Alchemy Of Stone, maybe I'll outlive its copyright, but I doubt that, bite me Sonny Bono, but not that I let that stop me from reading Helliconia and the Starbridge Chronicles
(2) I get a blank page when I click [who?], also, this is not shitty Final Fantasy IV meets Harry Potter fanfiction in which everyone is a fox or a tiger or a panda or an unholy syncretion of all three.

Burning Question: In The Time Machine (either movie (3), as the book doesn't make it explicit what happened and when), why does civilization never rebuild even after 800,000 years?

(3) I say either the 1960 movie or the 2002 movie. There's a 1978 movie made after a daring midnight raid on the costume room at Plymouth Plantation. Because Plymouth, MA is the first thing I'd think of when someone asks me what life in 802,701 will be like.

Current Mood: Vanessa
Current Music: maudlin of the Well - Sleep is a Curse

Inamorata
decline.decipher.decadence

Fire's Day: Either I offended Emily somehow or she found out where I was on her hierarchy of the ways people prefer roast beef (I like mine well done on a slightly toasted onion roll with brown mustard - I think that puts me at the bottom). I don't know. I really don't. I'd say more about it but I don't really want to. If only Carla or Shootingstar was around.

Satyrday: I completely blanked on someone's name. I know it's not Concupiscentia. There's a band called that, you know. And, uh, he's not Dennis either. If he was Dennis, I could just type "go dennis" and appear wherever he currently is, I mean, if I was Thy Dungeonman (1). It's not Locke. It's not Brad or Bill or Domineco or Ian either.

Speaking of names, I found the most mindbogglingly awful list of names (Arizona and Tennessee), and it wasn't that list that had terrible names (Phagen, Finley, Ashton) with good names (hint: two of them can be found in various entries here while a third can be found somewhere else - you know who you are) interspersed. Yes, I've seen Lemonjello and Oranjello and Shaniqua and Shi-teed, but I'm convinced they're apocryphal. By the way, those names fall under the third sin of "faux ghetto names white people make up to ridicule people" and unlike the first two sins of naming, I can think of no exception to that. I think WASPy names (Pennington and Taylor and
Cedric, not Astata and Xenosphex) that people associate with success and cause people with ethnic names or butterfly genera names or mythological names or star names to be relegated to less "successful" lives is a sin too, but usually, they just fall under the surnames category. (2)

Later. I went to a cookout with various family members including one cousin who's 21 years younger than me and has ambitions in avant-garde music (read: the demo on a keyboard interspersed with random button mashing). The dogs liked the cookout, but Indiana Jones probably wouldn't. Garter snakes, after all.

Shunday: Supernumerary rainbow and double rainbow!

Moon Day: Also, by the end of the summer the outside of the car would be covered in big black spiders who learned that they could catch a ride on the cars and let their webs run into the flies (the spiders also loved the light fixtures on the Wellington platform so if you're arachnophobic, you may not want to look up on an August night.) I found 'em fascinating, but only since they were on the other side of the glass. You could see people making a pointed effort to look in any other direction.
Someone on a people mover. I think talking spiders are the next step. Giant intelligent friendly talking spiders. If you thought they were bad, wait until they start calling you "cute" and "neat"

Mozzarella crust, banana, quail eggs, scallops, triple chili, octopus ink.
Worst fucking pizza ever.
And I hope it saves this time.

Truesday: ♩♬ Indiana Jones is here! ♪ He's been around for like a million years! ♬

I actually had a better picture, but I accidentally messed it up when resizing it. It's a pity; it was so much better than this one. Not that quality is an issue in a facsimile of something a nine year old drew. But it kind of looks like the cat was hit by a cyclist or something.

I like this one more, though.
I like this one more, though. Gog looks like something from the Legend of Zelda, while Magog looks like a frog with teeth. Gog looks kinda sad, too. Maybe he watched When The Wind Blows. I did. Quite possibly the saddest movie I've ever seen, but it still made me smile at times. Then I cried myself to sleep.

They mentioned cows so I immediately thought of Velveeta. Shayna says the cows that produce it have eight udders and are from Chernobyl.

Wodensday: I found Madeleine's Theme Song on my computer. It's called Bike Thief and it's by Freezepop. Anyway, in case things go awry as they always do, here's my awesome plan, which took twenty minutes to think up: hack the speaker system to play it whenever she walks into the room. Of course, you don't want just anyone to come into a room and cause Bike Thief to play by tripping a laser detector. You'd need an amulet with a microchip in it that triggers a sensor.
Getting the CD player in the walls is a problem, though. So is hacking the system. But the plan is simple!

Actually, I found it on Monday and used emotional dissonance from When The Wind Blows as an excuse to not tell her about it even when she was around.

I checked out Autechre, Clear Horizon, and A Beautiful Machine. They're all good, but as far as addiction goes, it's mostly directed towards A Beautiful Machine.

Thirstday: Terrible backlog. And I found a mysterious N that was hopefully just part of a dummy sentence who's entire purpose was to make sure I saved my plan for world domination.

Fire's day: Vivi, if you're going to insult me, at least spell my name right, ok?

*looks at Red is a good color. It is the color of red things.*
Touche.
––––––––––––––––––––––
(1) which I'm not.
(2) Sometimes.

line.cipher.cadence

Burning Question: Don't you hate when there's a sign that says "do not flush paper towels down the toilet or it will clog" and there's paper towels in the toilet as if someone wanted to test this out for himself?

Current Mood: Nymphalis
Current Music: A Beautiful Machine - Entwine

It's spring, even if it doesn't feel like
Autosave does have an annoying habit of cutting things off. I wish I put the dummy sentence instead of one about a pizza in number9dream that I think would make a Cold Stone ice cream. Not a cromulent one or a passable one but the equivalent of the wasabi ginger (disater?) they had once. I suspect someone who works there is reading this.

Yeah, um, I forget the pizza and don't feel like looking it up (it's too cold and too dreary and I'm losing my motivation because of it; it's supposed to be nice out which makes me even less motivated) but I'll post it in the next entry along with the facsimile of the cat drawing. Speaking of drawings, where's that picture you promised, Elwe? Also, if you have seen her, please contact me immediately.

Actually, I realized I can have Livejournal send a message. Use it, don't abuse it. Oh, and you can only use it on mutual friends, which solves only half of my problems.

I read a recap of Twilight and guess what it does not have. The answer is an explosion! In fact, I read the recap twice in a row just to make sure I read it right. No explosions. No penanggalan either. Why not? The're vampires, damn it! This one's even a sparklepire!

I made a mix CD for Christina, though! You should listen too.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/9m6cy3

Tracklisting:
1. Kayo Dot - Wayfarer
2. Espers - Mansfield and Cyclops
3. The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower - Fairytales
4. Talk Talk - Inheritance
5. Movietone - The Blossom Filled Streets
6. Tara Jane O'Neil - High Wire
7. Eyeles in Gaza - The Silkie
8. Amp - So Hot (wash away all of my tears)
9. The 303s - Sea of Things
10. Revolver - Shakedown
11. The Ecstasy of St. Theresa - Immortality
12. Airiel - Firefly
13. Flying Saucer Attack - In The Light of Time
14. Ghost - Into the Alley
15. World's End Girlfriend - A Faint Melody
16. maudlin of the Well - Girl With A Watering Can

Track 6 makes me think of Ninja Turtles. There will be another one come July. I want to make a mix of things that sound like a field recording in a Venusian jungle, back whe people thought that Venus was a fecund Carboniferous swamp with dinosaurs and not just a toxic wasteland, but I only have two songs. What a pity.

Constance Demby - Lotus Opening
Acidage - Enchanted Forest
And I don't even know if the latter is tagged correctly.

I'll put this in here just because I found it and because I can. When I wrote this, the first swallowtail had emerged from his chrysalis.

Name the last book by a female author that you've read.
Palimpsest, by Catherynne Valente, of course.

Name the last book by an African or African-American author that you've read.
Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel Delany. I have Aye, And Gomorrah to read, but I haven't done that yet.

Name one from a Latino/a author.
Does Italo Calvino count? He's ethnically Italian and lived in Italy, but he was born in Cuba. If not, dunno. Get back to me when I read Labyrinths.

How about one from an Asian country or Asian-American?
Gormenghast (the omnibus, not the eponymous second book), if that counts. If not, probably Kokoro, about five years ago.

What about a GLBT writer?
Everville by Clive Barker. Still awaiting the third book, but it does give me an excuse to slack on my own work, even if I did promise to myself that it will be done by Bloomsday of 2010.

Why not name an Israeli/Arab/Turk/Persian writer, if you're feeling lucky?
Because I don't know any.

Also, this too.
1. One book that changed your life
Tsh. I have no idea.
2. One book you have read more than once
Imajica. Many others, too.
3. One book you would want on a desert island
City of Saints and Madmen. I considered one of David Duke's works, but I can just use grass and wood shavings for kindling.
4. One book that made you laugh
number9dream
5. One book that made you cry
The Course of the Heart
6. One book you wish had been written
Titus Awakens
7. One book you wish had never had been written
This is a hard one, since most things have a purpose. Take Mein Kampf, for instance. Mein Kampf is the quintessential insight on the totalitarian mind and an excellent guidebook for any would be assassins and saviors of humanity.
Actually, no it isn't. The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail. Irredeemable garbage.
8. One book you are currently reading
number9dream by David Mitchell
9. One book you have been meaning to read
Only one? Humm, how about Cosmicomics?

The Alchemy of Stone, Everything Is Illuminated, Hothouse, As She Climbed Across The Table, The Drowned World, the rest of the Elric books, The Year of Our War, In The Cities of Coin and Spice, Finnegans Wake, Memoirs Found in a Bathtub. Some of which I have, some of which I don't and may never have.

I think the dreariness is impacting my ability to function properly. It took me an hour to think of this. I'm annoyed. I'm very annoyed. By the time I actually post this, it will be the 29th.
Burning Question: What bands have taken you a long time to get in to?

Current Mood: Apodemia
Current Music: All Natural Lemon and Lime Flavors - You Can Never Tell

The Green Wind
Actually, I started Number9Dream because I haven't been able to purchace Cosmicomics yet. Looks good, though. And I liked Cloud Atlas a lot for what it's worth.

It's warm again.
The same people that drew the muffin forest drew Blocko Man (a man of greatness), a pancake, Ice Man (you can tell by the parka), a guy with antlers and giant paw hands, a rabbit, and a few other guys either building a helix to the moon and a rocketship in the sky, or maybe they're all having a presidential debate and the rocket is just there.

By the way, for those of you who think a muffin forest would make a good place to live, you're very wrong. Either the muffins would be stale or someone would have already eaten them.

I thought about this one while (dreading/awaiting) origin: everyone's by now less than favorite (unless you're Canadian or have Stockholm Syndrome, apparently) grin-eating wankjob Ne Win supporting grinning fudgecicle's stirring sermon from his mountain of garbage, destination: yama, ref: doing bad things, stamp: a certain deviantart page which jumped from 1915 or so to 1932 in the past few days, the views of which can't all be Chantel and some guy who likes Nabokov and Vandermeer.

Burning Question 1: Do you think the lack of compassion especially in internet culture has produced people (I'm not going to say generation because some people who are like this are six years older than I am and somse mature people are six years younger than I am) who would fail a Voight-Kampff empathy test? Remember that the test is meant to elicit an emotional response, not check for the type of emotional response.

Burning Question 2: Has anyone made a sincere attempt at beating Battletoads with two players, and by beating, I mean getting to the Clinger Winger. I think that player 2 can just get a game over and press start as soon as player 1 gets to the Revolution.

But all I can think of is the Angry Video Game Nerd and these two guys who played it while one of them was high on Nyquil and didn't get very far. And that failed attempt to beat the Turbo Tunnel.

Burning Question 3: Who would you vote for?

Current Mood: Symbrenthia
Current Music: Miaou - Jet Sound Wave

Things Which Are Full of Grace
I suspect that someone has ripped off my idea to mash up the Forest Temple music with some rap as part of a sequel to the Ocarina of Rhyme. MisterShinra, reveal thyself. I've narrowed down the suspects and can safely assume it wasn't Christina, unless she was wearing a fake mustache, and it wasn't Evan because I don't think I told him about this. Also, there should be free umbrellas and free bikes everywhere. And free pie. So sayeth Onimo.

Well, I've found a few clues (including a piece of fanfiction in which a hunewearl saves Tails from a disesase. Yes, that hunewearl. Yes, that little orange bastard Tails. He calls Robotnik Eggman. It shouldn't piss me off because that's what his name is in Japan, but it pisses me off nonetheless), but mostly just compiled a list of books to read.

It goes like this
Italo Calvino - Cosmicomics
(This is the flash game equivalent of an art project Chantel told me about; since it doesn't think it needsan inherent http, I got an amusing error message when I clicked on it)
Jonathan Lethem - As She Climbed Across The Table
The Birth of Venus
(Fiona recommended that one)
J.G. Ballard - The Drowned World
(Probably out of print, but I'm not sure, anyway, compared to Nova Swing, I'll probably cross this one off the list if it's too hard to find)
Everything Is Illuminated
(Evan says it's good)
Ekaterina Sedia - The Alchemy of Stone
(If only)

Also, remember the discussion about names? I realized that a) the name Austin exists and b) I hate the name Austin. Part of it's because I knew a jerkface named Austin but mostly, I just hate the name in principle. It's a place name and a surname at the same time. That's two sins at once. There are noteworthy exceptions to both sins (Tara, Courtney), but I don't think there are any to both at the same time.

I'm trying to think of things that have both robots and dinosaurs because someone remarked that if Turkey could make movies with both dinosaurs and robots, their movie industry would have a stranglehold on the world. The obvious answer is Chrono Trigger. The slightly less obvious answer is Final Fantasy VI. Final Fantasy XII if the construct-type enemies count as robots. Xenosaga if gigantes count as dinosaurs. Yes, gigantes is the plural of gigas. Yes, I had to look that up. No, I did not expect you to know that.

Let it be said that as soon as I see the Time and Punishment short on FOX 25, I will immediately rush to the compy and update this with THEY PLAYED TIME AND PUNISHMENT. Why Time and Punishment? Because most of the time when I mention the Simpsons episode, it's me complaining that they played that same episode a month ago.
No, I'm too cheap to buy the DVDs. And I don't have any hard drive space to squander on episodes that aren't Homer Simpson vs. the City of New York.

It's not here. Poke around on my deviantart page until you find stuff about squishing butterflies.

Burning Question: Does slapping "With A Vengeance" at the end of a movie title make it better or worse? Provide examples.

Current Mood: Aemona
Current Music: Sigur Ros - Untitled 8

One Morning in May
Several situations in which I wish I had a digital camera of sorts:

A chickadee was hanging upside-down by his feet from a branch covered in pink blossoms that were already starting to fall like snow.

The moonset when I woke up too early yesterday with a horrid feeling of dryness in my mouth.

Funny dog story time: I'm playing Ocarina of Time as many of you already know. So, um, I just got the lens of truth and was heading to the treasure box shop to get the piece of heart that would be a chore to get if I didn't have the lens, and there are a bunch of dogs running around Hyrule Castle Town. The pug walked up to the speaker and tried to look inside it.

On the statement "if you can't be happy where you are, you can't be happy anywhere" while being asian by location: Maaaaaybe, but maybe they're just squandering happiness by not revolting. Leave no guard at Yodok and Hoeryong alive.

Elwe: Even if I don't have many new random musings, you can still go here: yamathespacefish.deviantart.com - one chapter a day is cool. Be honest with your critiques. Marvel that everyone's by now less than favorite grin-eating Inner Party supporting grinning fudgecicle hasn't found it.

Burning Question: As a corollary to an earlier burning question, what bands have you checked out because of their name?
Burning Question 2: Sully asks: What kind of dog is Spunky anyway?

Current Mood: Speyeria
Current Music: Acid Mothers Temple - Soleil de Cristal et Lune d'Argent

Verso: Incipit Liber de Naturis Bestiarum
By the way, if you want to find the most disturbing image yourself, go look up "Christian and the Hedgehog Boys" which is this guy's band, and by band, I mean guy singing really bad karaoke, and search for it. You'll know it. When they try to get you for distributing porn, inform them that by the legal definition, porn is made specifically to arouse, while this stuff is in fact derotic. That's sound advice and you should take it.

See, Fiomily is doubly funny now because Emily and Fiona know each other. Of course, with those two, Madeleine would be rocking out with a keytar and Eric would be hitting the tambourine and maybe someone would have a game boy with one of those test cartridges they use at stores to make sure the system works, making sounds with that.

Evan recommends a book with a title that was a line from a T.S. Eliot poem.

Sarah says that Dubai was kind of cool but at the same time, completely soulless and without history. Hell of a view on that tower, if there was anything to see.

We discuss near death experiences: Chantel and I had problems being born. Tara nearly fell out of a ride. Someone probably pissed off a leucrotta.

Chantel describes Crime and Punishment to me: So there's this idea that some people are supermen and they can break the law for the good of society and this guy tries it to see if he can get away with it but it's botched. It just goes on and on and on, and this guy has a bunch of nicknames. The teacher had to print out a chart of all the names.

My thoughts: This would be good if he kept it down to 200 or 300 pages. I don't mind long things and all. City of Saints and Madmen is good. Also, those Russians. War and Peace is like that, I believe. I have three primary characters, a bunch of secondary characters who flit in and out, and a bunch of tertiary characters who aren't around much.

Also, I like to think that I write beautifully.

I'll tell you another story instead. Once there was a guy who blabbed sensitive information about Dave's cell phone. The Leucrotta snapped his spine with one crack of its jaws and wore his head and hands on his antlers for a fortnight in celebration.

Heather likes the Cats Against War shirt and thinks that the evil queen who hates cake would still choose cake if Eddie Izzard asks. I guess so.

Steve, Nikki, and I sat outside, blew dandelion seeds, and talked about fireflies disappearing and stuff due to global warming, objectivism (I say success is achieved by people with a complete lack of ethics, but Nikki and Steve say it depends on your definition of success), defining success based on the successes and failures of others. I can't say that I don't define my own happiness based around the happiness of others, since I don't like to see my friends unhappy.

Sleepy (who would be cool with someone who wants to call Darth Vader stealing his phone, or maybe that was Al or Joe) was singing Good Riddance. I remember that song from middle school. Couldn't tell you what half of these late nineties songs were, but I'd recognize them if I heard them, like that surprisingly decent Live song someone posted somewhere.

Burning Question: What's the best thing you've ever found lying there ripe for the taking? I found a ceramic Darth Maul head. And some bones. I made the Darth Maul into a pendant that Sully thought was supposed to the moon and I integrated the bones into a sculpture. No idea what kind of bones they were. Anyway, Steve found what he thought was a giant spider that turned out to be a Buddha sculpture. Nikki found a stuffed zebra. Madeleine found a bike. I'm sure it belonged to someone who went to take a pee pee while pawing through pile of window frames and shutters that was ripe for the taking and Madeleine just stole the bike. Someone's going to find his bike missing. Also I did not steal the Darth Maul. It was the last teacher asked the class for help cleaning out the room and we could take whatever we found. Îmi pare rău. Te iubesc.

If I was really Romanian, I'd dump me for that horrid butchering of the Romanian language if I spoke it instead of writing it.

Nobody's found a pile of sugar.

Burning Question 2: What would you do with a pile of sugar? Steve says to just leave it there. Those spark plugs can't be good for you. It's probably unsanitary, too.

Burning Question 3: What's the best response to a bad pick up line?

By the way, don't expect updates as often from here on, ok?

Current Mood: Coenonympha
Current Music: Maps - You Don't Know Her Name

Sherlock Holmes and the Case of Homer's Sugar Pile (an Indiana Jones crossover)
To Ramoth: I se va pune la prăjit ouă subsuoară dvs!
I was pissed when Firefox crashed due to the fact that I immediately went to the update thing and thought my entry was gone into the eternal void (come on, guys, one day this thing is going to be read by aliens), but now I'm glad it actually posted. Think of it as being like your heart after too many cheese potatoes. It stops working occasionally and you have to get it started again with one of those electric thinguses that I can't spell the name of but I know I used somewhere here. Sometimes it fucks with other programs. However, if you leave your heart fucked up for too long, it can kill you, also, your heart probably doesn't stop working completely randomly, or occasionally pump blood without the red blood cells for no reason at all. At least, I hope it doesn't.

To Carla: They played a song by Afro Celt Sound System and Sinead O'Connor on Celtic Sojourn on Saturday, also, my fortune cookie said "the one good thing about repeating your mistakes is that you know when to cringe."

Remember that episode when Homer has the sugar pile? I want a screenshot of the bags of sugar with a crudely drawn picture of Homer. I can't find any videos of the sugar or anything, just Homer dancing on the beach with ice cream cones and lollipops that melt IN SPANISH so he doesn't sound like Homer, and a cheapass video which is just a picture of Homer singing sugar doo da doo doo doo doo, oh honey honey doo doo doo doo doo doo you arrrrrrrrrrre myyyyyyyyy cannnnnnnnnndy with background music. Speaking of Spanish, Scott wonders if the bee man is English on the show. Or Romanian. Fact: Romanian is a cool sounding language and T-Rex's love poetry would sound better in Romanian. Fact: You can also hide the fact that your love poetry sucks if you put it in Italian. Fact: That's cliche. Fact: French is cliche and unpronoucable. Fact: Gaelic is unpronouncable. Fact: There aren't any Gaelic translators anyway. Fact: German makes you sound angry.

Steve thinks that the sugar pile episode was the one when they're at the candy convention and his face puckers inward. I don't think so, I mean, that's the episode when he grabs the gummy venus off of the babysitter and he goes on the talk show.

That says a lot about Fox. Once I knew someone with the last name Masterson and they didn't play the episode with a TV character named Corey Masterson at all during my high school career.

Evan recommended a book and we discussed Daria when he said he wanted to teach. He said his eye will bulge out eventually because he becomes bitter easily. I showed him a picture from the MOBA that wasn't in the book. If you stare at it too long, you'll have nightmares. Tell me, is this not the most frightening thing you've ever seen? I'll say I've seen worse. Some derotic art drawn really crudely in what I think are scented markers. I won't show it to anyone in polite company, or really any company at all.

Evan pranked someone by having an operator read erotic stuff over the phone. It's funny because they have to be utterly emotionless when doing it and you can tell they're about to crack, but it's the kind of service you feel bad about for abusing.

I watched some videos of the stuff Chantel and Tara recommended. You Don't Know Her Name by Maps is utterly amazing (there's a video of a guy who builds a robot), Silversun Pickups are good and Beanerd agrees with me, Mute Math has a keytarist and is therefore awesome; they're actually good but even if they sucked, they'd be awesome for having a keytarist. The only problem I have with Mute Math is that they make me agree with Encephalon and you know I hate doing that.

Chantel's heard of Invisible Cities because the graphic design professor gave her a passage from it about the city with post cards and some dialogue and they had to put together a book with illustrations. I really wish I could see this, it sounds so amazingly cool. Tara did a French accent. The origin of this is long and rambling, an it's kind of pointless here, but her arm did turn purple when she slept.

Some book recommendations for you:
Jeff Vandermeer - City of Saints and Madmen, Veniss Underground, Shriek: An Afterword
M. John Harrison - Viriconium, The Course of the Heart
Italo Calvino - Invisible Cities
Nicholas Christopher - A Trip to the Stars
Catherynne M. Valente - In The Night Garden, Palimpsest
David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas
K.J. Bishop: The Etched City

I'll have to ask Fiona and Evan for titles of books they've recommended.

Burning Question: When's the last time you saw the Simpsons episode with the sugar pile? I should mail this entry to last month when I could storm FOX 25 with soap bubble guns and silly string until they play the episode and buy Invisible Cities for Chantel.

Current Mood: Limenitis
Current Music: Pale Saints - Throwing Back The Apple

Peregrinations
Contents of CD #2: Treasure, Dead Cities, Eyes Like Brontide, Pygmalion, All Around Us, xuvetyn, Gala, Movietone, Oceans Apart

And an Ateaser sent me his mix CD which has a song that reminds me of Ecco the Dolphin and a song that reminds me of Chantel's description of Autechre. Maybe it was. Mine was well-received.

Tara and Chantel wrote down a list of bands for me to check out. Half of it's in fancy writing, and then Tara though "screw it" and stopped. There's also a heart, also known as the love muscle, scribbled on there too near Iron and Wine. Zoidberg probably thinks it's just digesting food or something. I think it's her heart crusted over with saturated fats and it's about to explode caused by that ghastly looking cheese potato she was eating. Makes me think of that scene at the beginning of Kontroll. It's none of my business if your heart explodes. One guy is crossed out. All I remember is that he's old now and that's what they were raised on. But I can't remember the name or read it or anything.

Mike (thinks wolverine was bad - not mediocre bad, not so bad it's good, but so bad it went past good and back to bad again) had a fake plastic zit. And Chantel gave him grief for the zit. I did too until he said it was fake, gave it to me to look at, and I stuck it on his hand.
Things that begin and end in grief: marriage, harvest, childbirth. Journeys away from home. Surgeries. Love. Weeping.
-from Palimpsest, which is really beginning to remind me of The Course of the Heart with some Ambergris thrown in. There's a woman with green hair, by the way. It's not as absurd as Ambergris, but few things are.

Not-a-burning question because there's a proper answer for this that I do not know: Does Twilight have an explosion? If it does, it would be the greatest movie I've never seen in my life. Unless BarryDennen dubs it.

Burning Question: Have you ever avoided listening to a band because of thier name?

Current Mood: Dynamine
Current Music: Cocteau Twins - Pale Clouded White

Fireworks and Hurricanes
I know, I know, Desire or Lucien or even Delirium belong here as well, but I figure I haven't used Death in a while and she's the one who recommended Mary Poppins (Emily sez that she plays every instrument and I totally picture that guy from Mary Poppins while Eric the human shouts "DANCE MONKEY DANCE!" and bashes on a tambourine), and also I met Madeline (she probably touched the Pleroma by wearing a möbius strip on her head) again and apparently we have a bunch of friends in common. Wow. That is so amazingly cool. We must jump up and down and up and down and up and down and dance around and around and around and around!

More lassitude and scatterbrainedness, since I sort of feel like there was an airstrike while I was in a state of pleroma and instead of feeling the earth-shattering kaboom, I just feel out of it, such as feeling a bit overheated even in a Cats Against War t-shirt and jeans when it's at least 20 degrees cooler than yesterday. Some people agreed that it was overly hot inside and others thought it was normal.

Scott thinks Mana Lisa looks a bit like Weird Al.

Chantel (does not have swine flu!) found the music I gave her (at least, the stuff she checked out) to be not exactly easy listening and thinks World's End Girlfriend (I think that's what she meant) sounds a bit like Autechre. Wow, I've heard of them. Probably from Rich or Amara. Let's search my compy and see what comes up, shall we?

Ok, nothing. Xpander likes them, and while he's a complete and utter blowhole, he does have good taste in music, but that's all I can figure out. Alas, I do not have any and can not find any references to people recommending it to me. Anyone? Rich gave me Ágætis byrjun when he gave me Aphex Twin, though.

Steve asks: Does Indiana Jones the Cat go on adventures and search for religious artifacts?
It probably has a proper answer but I don't know it. Not if he doesn't have a cat licence (read: dog licence with dog crossed out and cat written in crayon)

Al fell asleep at a Sigur Ros concert because the music was so relaxing. I must inform Tara (sounds like something Jeff Vogel would name his kid - look it up on Wikipedia). Oh, and Evan's heard Kayo Dot, which is rather cool. Neither of them have heard of Autechre.

Joe and Liz-Fraser-Says-Alice (recommended a book called Genesis, thinks Palimpsest reminds her of a more adult Northern Lights from the back of the book - I think it reminds me of The Course of the Heart, I'm about a hundred pages in because Emily was rather busy when not saying things that have probably never passed the lips of another human being and will never again) need to watch Barry Dennen's dub on Titanic.

I know it's a Kayo Dot lyric but
Burning Question: Cannot sunrise wait forever for its time?

Current Mood: Danaus
Current Music: Lights Out Asia - knock knock

Lassitude and Languor
It reached 90 F here. Not bad for a really cold April. Color's returning and everything.

I'm sure that's what gave me a lethargic feeling earlier today. That and the lack of sleep. Not tainted onion dip. But I couldn't tell you.

I started Palimpsest, also by Valente, but this one is different and from the description, reminds me of The Course of the Heart by M. John Harrison.

Elwe, I suggest checking out Movietone.

Burning Question: Why do I get lolcats in an image search for "Mad Cat" and not Dr. Claw's cat? I thought of it when thinking about cats named Indiana Jones and how they'd react in the presence of Cats That Look Like Hitler when I realized that those cats look like someone drew the mustache on with a sharpie.

Current Mood: Colias
Current Music: Movietone - Orange Zero

Coriander and Ultramarine
Contents of the CD I made for Tara (has a cat named Indiana Jones) and Chantel (I'm sure I'm spelling that wrong and oh yeah, she has a cat named Indiana Jones; they're the same cat): Ending Story, Lullabies to Violaine (volume 1), Choirs of the Eye, Espers II, Souvlaki, Hex, Spirit of Eden. It's not everything I wanted to give them, but it will do and I'll have another CD with Lights Out Asia and Flying Saucer Attack and stuff as well. Yeah, Souvlaki, like she couldn't just get it from Emily. Oh well, I didn't really consider that.

And Carla, let it be said that Putumayo Presents India is quite excellent, if a little short.

So I'm utterly high on life right now. And addicted to Saeglopur by Sigur Ros. Good band. I don't have any of their songs and I don't know why I don't have any of their songs, because I'm sure Amara would have sent one to me.

The Adventures of Yama, on the 27th of April, 2009 (October 59th of the 2nd Phase of Spring, 01984)
This is the first time the radio station gave away a bunch of CDs because they have so many and can't play them all and I recognized a bunch of the bands. Now, I've gotten CDs from them before and some of them are good.

What I have: A Ride EP with a shark and a bunch of fish (named Eric?) on the cover.
An EP by The King Left. That's amazing because Corey posts on atease.
Revolver - Cold Water Flat. Never heard of them but they're on Caroline Records.
A suede EP
The Nightblooms - 24 Days at Catastrophe Cafe

I gave Four Calendar Cafe and Cuckoo to someone who was checking out the free CDs.

Al's friend, can't remember his name, but I'm sure if I just threw off names randomly I'd get it, laughed really hard at the concept of a museum of bad art.

First part of the concert was Irish music. I'm sure someone said something bad about scarves because Fiona wasn't there. I missed the barbershop quartet and Khakatay, but Laurie (thinks native American music sounds like 60s music), Chantel (doesn't hear that) and Tara (can't stand bees and probably not Eric the Half a Bee; likes dragonflies and probably lepidoptera) said they were good. Then Arthur (thought Chantel's look translated to "who the fuck are you and why have you just invaded my space?" Is the first person I've met to say "tastes like vagina" positively - at different times) joined in the conversation and read some poetry.
This is for all of our benefits, not just Chantel's (didn't want to eat the hummus and onion dip because it's been out in the sun): Hummus gets kinda funky, almost as if it's oxidized. However, the onion dip remains perfectly fine. I've lasted a few hours without feeling any ill effects, and if I do keel over, it's because of something else.

Phil checked out Ocarina of Rhyme because Erik sent it to him. That's pretty cool.

There were three music professors, one on drums, one on guitar, and one on various woodwind instruments. And then the jazz ensemble.

Evan knew me on facebook before he knew me in person, apparently, and survived the Day of Lavos, sometime in 1999. I said that you can't play Ocarina of Rhyme on the radio. Like You Can't Play This Song on the Radio, except you can play that song on the radio. His friend got started on Monty Python, I asked about Twelve Monkeys and how scary it would be if an apocalyptic cult got ahold of the swine flu.

Someone says that Kelly Clarkson's haircut would be appropriate on a Lhasa Apso. I've seen the poster for that movie and anything wrong with Kelly's hair is overshadowed by Justin, whom I could just imagine singing the entire score to the H.M.S. Pinafore.

Burning Question: If a food fight were to break out at the supermarket, what would you use? Credit to someone on Atease. I say durians, because they smell horrid and they're spiky, but I've never actually seen a durian and don't think any future trips to the supermarket will be different.

Current Mood: Pieris
Current Music: Sigur Ros - Saeglopur

Red is a good color. It is the color of red things.
Hehehe, I can make Desire turn really pale if I move my pointer over him/her.

Note the mood, by the way. It's the beautiful season, so Lepidoptera. By the way, my mood is that special tingly feeling you get when talking to someone (Tara, in this case) upon realizing they listen to good music and think all Kelly Clarkson songs sound the same and are bollocks, thankfully not followed by the feeling of being caught in an airstrike. I'm going to make a CD for her and not-quite-Chanthou (she can't help you with Evocation; that is, if Evocation's flaw was not being in English instead crashing in Classic as soon as you got in the house), definitely with Slowdive, Bark Psychosis, Talk Talk, World's End Girlfriend, and Cocteau Twins, maybe Kayo Dot or Espers or Amp or Flying Saucer Attack. Hopefully, she gives me a CD of her own, but I'll deal with a list of bands to check out.

I was going over something I posted a year ago and planned a Quest based around it giving someone Harrison Farsheets' advice. Except for three problems. Problem the first: It's Friday. Problem the second: I can't give the guy who should be wearing the wolf mask advice if I can't pry the two of them apart.
Burning Question: (and problem the third) What's to stop the person who listens to mindless music from just stealing the snacks between the time the person in the wolf mask hides in his room and the time the person with mindless taste in music goes to bed?

Current Mood: Lampronia
Current Music: Kayo Dot - A Pitcher of Summer

INTERNAL ERROR 69105.....
Here are some observations on a Sonic rom hack: Oh, the graphics are a little flat and ugly (version 3 improves that but has other issues), but I can deal with that. What pisses me off is all the bottomless pits. Look, the two most common forms of death are being crushinated by platforms or those stompy things in Marble Garden and drowning. Maybe dying against the boss, I don't know, but I'm pretty sure enemies are just a nuisance. I can deal with them in games like Mario and Mega Man because your first instinct with seeing a pit is "if Mario falls in that pit, he'll die" and if you end up in a pit, it's due to your own carelessness or those tiny platforms and invisible coin blocks that rom hackers love, while in Sonic, you see a pit and think "Gee, I wonder what's down there. Damnit! Bollocks!". It's not just one or two either. That wouldn't be a problem. But no, they're everywhere.

And I know they used them in Sonic. Wing Fortress, and to a lesser extent, Death Egg. But at least it makes sense to have a fall from space be lethal.

You know something. For a ridiculously easy game, Sonic 2 had a hard final couple of bosses. I beat Sonic 1 more than I beat Sonic 2.

Ahem.

Chanthou (her nine year old sister draws better than some people), no, that's a Khmer name, but it's something like that and Wikipedia informs me that the oh-so-Asian name of Fiona is on the top ten for Asians born in New York, so why can't everyone else steal thier names? Kenneth Eng won't be happy but he's named Kenneth and he also thinks that the Virginia Tech killer is a hero and what he did was a victory for all Asians (victory has never tasted so bitter) so his opinion counts for nothing. You hear me? Nothing! and Tara (eats her ice cream from a bowl) were amused by that rant, along with some remarks on bureaucracy (someone envisions it as a squid in which each arm has its own goal with either duplicate or run completely contrary to the goals of the other arms) and the art of transferring into a class. I wonder if they are still using equipment that was outmoded when Tara was born.

Later she remarked on contagious laughing (something I said? But I don't remember it) and I mentioned someone from my high school who laughed like a donkey.

It was nice out in the morning and then it was rainy. Christina called it a bummer. But it's going to be really warm soon.

I gave Shayna some Espers and Kayo Dot and more Slowdive and Talk Talk.

http://accardi-by-the-sea.org/Infocom/Online/
Here is a game you can play. It's called Bureaucracy and it's by Douglas Adams and anyone who is totally into getting married, anyone who thought they were totally into getting married but weren't and are getting divorced, anyone who needs to change classes, anyone who needs to fill out forms to get things straightened out, et cedera, will appreciate this. You get a bag of llama food and have to file a change of address form with the post office. It's kind of annoying since it's in Java, but dealing with the frustration of playing it on Firefox just adds to the experience! Have fun! I had Java crap out on me and mess with my typing ability when I first played it.

A Mind Forever Voyaging was made in 1985 and is eerily prophetic.

http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/
People in the mood for a more endearing game can check this stuff out instead.

Burning Question: What aspect of video games do you dislike the most?

Current Mood: Tenellia
Current Music: Talk Talk - Strike Up The Band

You're hearing things. I can't help you. Go see the eye guy instead.
I'm actually reading Dragons: Lexicon Triumvirate. Someone put it online with a MST3king that's actually really good with a few glaring flaws up until Chapter 5, in which he decides that it would be best to do a picture entry. Not to worry too much because Kenneth already makes fun of himself better than any snarking could, but this calls for a rant.

I like cats a lot, I prefer dogs to cats because while dogs are bigger, louder, and smellier, dogs are more sociable and friendly than cats, but I still like cats. I hate lolcats and everything lolcats stand for and everything about lolcats, and not just the imbecilic motifs and rejected Animal Farm slogans, everything down to the font. I hate them with every fiber of my being.

By the way, the flaws were a couple of "It's over nine thousand!" so, yeah, they're still using the same exact fucking memes people have been using back in 2006. Of course, I haven't been paying attention since very early in 2007, so maybe I'm just not noticing the new memes if they're in there.

Anyway, if I'm still getting that pissed off about it, I think internet culture has been completely ruined for me. Ok, that's off my chest.

I wrote that expecting to be in a somewhat better mood when I was talking about post-preamble stuff, but that didn't work out at all. Huzzah for bureaucracy, and I'm sure I'd have an easier time getting through this process if it involved a machine spitting out two red cards, two yellow cards, and two blue cards and having me exchange them for black cards. Black cards? Black cards!

I recommended In The Night Garden to Shayna and someone who's name sounds like Liz Fraser saying Alice and I made a frisbee and I discovered a band called Espers under interesting circumstances, those being someone posting a song by Fiomily (a portmanteau of Fiona and Emily that has less to do with this journal than the giraffopus on The Simpsons has to do with a table at the Art Institute of Boston with giraffes and an octopig wearing a trenchcoat that miraculously found itself in a fictional subway station along with a copy of The 0th Dimension) that one person said looked and sounded like zombies and another said reminded him of Espers in a weird way. Espers are quite amazing and remind me of something that I can't quite place. That helped my mood.

Burning Question: How can Emily have any pudding if she won't eat her meat?

Current Mood: Spirula
Current Music: Espers - Children of Stone

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