Oi.

Today's going to be another long day. Mom's in an artshow down town and I'm helpig her with her booth. Actually, if things go like yesterday, I'm watching her booth most of the day. Wish me luck.

Take care and stay cool for me.

the <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/seiryu_16/"> devil </a> made me do it.

Well, she's not the devil, and she didn't make me do it, but that's where I got this from anyway.

1. What time do you get up?
Currently being jobless, when I get up depends on when I went to sleep. Usually between 7 an 10 am.

2. If you could eat lunch with one person, who would it be?
One of my friends I see not enough or at all.

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema?
Shrek 2.

4. What is your favorite TV show?
Er... I haven't watched a lot of TV recently. Best of what I've watched was West Wing.

5. What do you have for breakfast?
Er, food, ranging from leftover hamburgers to french toast. I especially like cold pizzahut pizza.

6. What/who inspires you?
Inspires me? I don't know. There are a lot of people I respect, but I've never felt the need for inspiration. Great vistas, especially in the mountians.

7. What is your middle name?
Guthrie

8. Beach, City or Country?
Depends on the day. Sometimes I just want to be around people. I'm not much of a beach person, though if it is fairly deserted and undeveloped, I enjoy wandering around on them. I really like being out in the countryside, but I like having a bookstore to come back to.

9. Favorite ice cream?
cookiedough + mint chocolatechip or a really good french vanillia

10. Plain, Butter or Salted popcorn?
Butter and salt, though I prefer margarine since it leaves less of a coat on my tounge.

11. Favorite color?
Emerald green and ruby red

12. What kind of car do you drive?
Nada

13. Favorite sandwich?
Either a grilled chicken sub with lettus, avicado, and black olives on a garlic cheese bun, or a peperoni and cheese panini with black olives.

14.What characteristic do you hate in people?
Closemindedness, arrogance especially without cause.

15. Favorite flower?
cherries, artichokes and roses. Several that I don't know the names of.

16. If you could go anywhere in the world on vacation, where would you go to?
Japan, some of the less developed pacific islands, the PNW.

17. What color is your bathroom?
Don't know. Probably on the white side of beige.

18. Favorite brand of clothing?
Whatever fits and wears well (I hate shirts that tear when they get touched.)

19. Where would you retire to?
the PNW if in the states, a small island in the pacific otherwise.

20. Favorite day of the week?
Er, don't really have one.

21. What did you do for your last birthday?
Don't rightly remember. I'm not that good at fixing times to events.

22. Where were you born?
Lompoc CA

23. Favorite sport to watch?
Don't really like sports. I can watch figureskating and soccer

24. What fabric detergent do you use?
Er, whatever is cheapest/easiest (often something that comes in tabs)

25. Coke or Pepsi?
Diet Coke, Barques, ICB, Mt Dew (rarely)

26. Are you a morning person or a night owl?
I tend to stay up late, but I like the mornings if I am awake for them.

27. Do you have any pets?
3 Fish, 2 Dogs, 1 Cat. When I get a job, it will be more fish, a different dog, probably no cat, maybe something unusual and mammelian.

Gaming

Hey. I just finished my character creation guide for Faerun. I'm hoping to start running either through AIM or a chatroom package I just found online within 30 days. If anybody is interested, drop me a line. After I know who wants to play, we can work out times (I am aiming for once every two weeks or so.) I'm assuming that you have a PHB or at least access to one (3rd edition D&D.) If you are interested and are a newbie, that's okay. Well, work through it. If you know an AIM dicebot and could send it my way, that would be greatly appriciated. I'd prefer to do the chat client, but I'd have to be the server, and I'm running a buggy 98 machine over a modem.

If you are intersted, the character creation guide is here http://www.geocities.com/voxpopuli42/mikefr2.html
and I can send you a doc version of the file on request.
The campaign is set in the middle of the year of Wild Magic (1372 DR) in the heartlands of the Realms. TSR's webpage (www.tsr.com) has a lot of Realms info in the downloads section if you want to look up a particular region. We're starting out with 10250 experience points (so 5th effective character level.)

*Update* There seems to be a list of servers avaliable so I wouldn't have to run the server. Well well well...

book list

Y'all knows the routine. Cut, paste, insert bolding tags, have yesself a good ole time.
(acquired from the graceful )

Beowulf
Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart Well, I read his other book. Not a fan.
Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March
Brontë, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
Brontë, Emily - Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert - The Stranger
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
Dante - Inferno Took me a couple tries to get past page 10, but it was good.
de Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote Mostly. I was reading it alongside Candide and kept getting scenarios confused.
Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities Damned if I remember any of it though.
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers Better than almost all of the others that I've read on this list. No way in hell did Count of Monte Cristo the movie do justice to that book.)
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man See tale of two cities
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von - Faust
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter Didn't read past the intro. Got A's on all but one test though.
Heller, Joseph - Catch 22
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms
Homer - The Iliad
Homer - The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House
James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel García - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman - Moby Dick
Miller, Arthur - The Crucible
Morrison, Toni - Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front So painful. Read it for the same class I read the Achebe book.
Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream sadly enough, of these four, this is my favorite and the only one I haven't read. Though I'll admit that reading plays always seemed to be pointless to me. Unless the author was a hack, they were meant to be preformed, not read.
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles - Antigone See tale of two cities
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath can I substitute Cannery row?
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island See tale of two cities
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David - Walden
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire - Candide See Don Quixote
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass Most awful thing I've ever tried to read short of Also Sprach Zarastrua or Gone With the Wind (I got through the first 134 pages of GWtW, but I was more of a masochist in my youth.)
Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard - Native Son

So, had fun yesterday. It was good to see John and Deidre again, as well as the McClures (even though I had seen them the day before too)

*shudders*

You all know that our two presidents are raging cock monkeys, but did you also know that this attribute has spread to the house of representitives?
I submitthis for your reading:
Congressional Accountability for Judicial Activism Act of 2004 (Introduced in House)

HR 3920 IH

108th CONGRESS

2d Session

H. R. 3920

To allow Congress to reverse the judgments of the United States Supreme Court.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

March 9, 2004

Mr. LEWIS of Kentucky (for himself, Mr. DEMINT, Mr. EVERETT, Mr. POMBO, Mr. COBLE, Mr. COLLINS, Mr. GOODE, Mr. PITTS, Mr. FRANKS of Arizona, Mr. HEFLEY, Mr. DOOLITTLE, and Mr. KINGSTON) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, and in addition to the Committee on Rules, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned

A BILL

To allow Congress to reverse the judgments of the United States Supreme Court.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the `Congressional Accountability for Judicial Activism Act of 2004'.

SEC. 2. CONGRESSIONAL REVERSAL OF SUPREME COURT JUDGMENTS.

The Congress may, if two thirds of each House agree, reverse a judgment of the United States Supreme Court--

(1) if that judgment is handed down after the date of the enactment of this Act; and

(2) to the extent that judgment concerns the constitutionality of an Act of Congress.

SEC. 3. PROCEDURE.

The procedure for reversing a judgment under section 2 shall be, as near as may be and consistent with the authority of each House of Congress to adopt its own rules of proceeding, the same as that used for considering whether or not to override a veto of legislation by the President.

SEC. 4. BASIS FOR ENACTMENT.

This Act is enacted pursuant to the power of Congress under article III, section 2, of the Constitution of the United States.

(Origional text)
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:H.R.3920:/

I read this and felt very sick to my stomach. As much as I dislike some of the more corrupt *coughScaliacough* judges on the court, this is a bit much.

Stuffes

Wow, how'd it get to be 9:20? I swear ten minutes ago it was only like 8:15. I only pretend to be a morning person. The giant gaps in my morinings prove me to be otherwise.
Well, I told myself I was going to post this so come a week or two from now, I'd be able to look it up. I last mowed the lawn on Friday the 21st. On the 22nd, I watched Shrek 2. It was more fun than mowing the lawn. Actually, I may have done both yesterday. Yeah, I think I did mow the lawn on the 22nd.

Oh, in othernews, to everyone who reads, since the McClure brothers don't read this: I get to see John and you don't!
Well, actually, I think John reads this on occasion, so it doesn't really apply to him, but honestly, except for the occasional glimpse in the mirror, all John gets to see of himself is a pair of hands and assorted glimpses of other bodyparts from the edges of his field of vision (oh, and his nose if he looks carefully. At least I know I can see most of my nose with some effort, so I assume y'all can too.)

(Oh, I'm not posting this to spite the McClure brothers. They get to see John too, but since they don't read this, I am safe making the above claim.)

Thomas Covenent

I'm not sure that this is good news exactly, but Stephen R. Donaldson is writing a third Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever , following if I understand this correctly, his son. I read all six books (and the Mirror of Her Dreams series) and immensely disliked the author for using those heroes in those worlds (Well, the Mirror series gets better at least. Thomas Covenent really has no redeeming qualities at all. The Land deserves better. (I am not condemning him for the Rape he commits about 60 pages in. I'm condeming him for being a completely irredeemable person. I like anti-heros, but Covenent strikes me as somewhat below even Elric in redeeming qualities.
I hope that Steve makes good on the promise of the Land in this book (Best setting ever, better than Middle Earth, Better than Akaris)

Geek overdrive.

Yeah, I'm about halfway done with a packet of character creation information for a campaign that I have yet to hear any interest in. Now, halfway is a nice relitive term, and in no way shows how this calls back to the geekyness of my youth. In absolute terms I have produced twenty pages of information for character creation for a game I am not even sure will have players. That is like when I spent all summer working on a nearly full sized (or so it seemed) color map of a world that I never ran (but I would have if I hadn't lost the portfolio case it was in while passing out from dehydration in Chicago.) Well, not exactly like that. It is much less geeky than a map of a world made up of more than a pad of graph paper... But I am talking about a total of maybe 40 pages of information (gods I wish I had an electronic copy of the Faerun campaign setting. Mostly I've been typing info from that) which I may never even use. Though even if this campaign doesn't take off, I suspect that the next thin I run will almost have to be Forgotten Realms. If I run it face to face, I'll probably buy some of the other books (damn you hasbro, just because I've been gaming long enough for the dollar to drop in value by half doesn't mean you need to double the price of your books.)

On the floor laughing

So, thanks . I just read http://www.wonkette.com/ 's front page, and while I probably won't actually read the site regularly, I did see one of the funniest things this year.

"Paul Wolfowitz fesses up on why Iraq isn't going so well: "We had a plan that assumed we'd have basically more stable security conditions than we've encountered."

Among those assumptions: That Iraq was a magical country, where lollipops grew on trees and the clouds were made of marshmallows! With gumdrop mountains and fruit-punch rivers and houses made of gingerbread!

Basically, they used the invasion plans for Candyland. "

Gods, I hope that the pigfuckers in office lose this year. I swear that Bush majored in handbasket weaving in college. And President Chaney is desperately trying to open a gate to hell.

*edit*
I was wrong. I just found something funnier. Of course, being connected to Penny Arcade, it requires an extensive explanation to be funny.

In the beginning there was the Phantom, and the developers made some fairly amusingly broad claims about it.
The Lords of Fun, Gabe and Tyco saw this and realized it was bad, and there was much mockery.
After several months and a few more informational releases, and then registration for preordering elegibility began.
The Lords of Fun saw this and returned to the world to deliver more mockery
And then one day there was a report on the interweb at www.hardocp.com about the corperation behing the so called Phantom. It was fairly negitive and their fact checking was imperfect, so Infinium labs threatened to sue for defamation. A modification was made, changing nearly a quarter of the contested statements.
And the Lords of Fun saw this and wondered why Infinium failed to sue them for defamation. So they produced another page of mockery .
And Lo but they were not finished, for they recived a false note claiming that they did that comic to boost their website's page views. There was much wrong with this concept And so there was much mockery

And Lo did the Lords of Fun attend the great gatherin of their allies and minions, E3. There they did see the maligned Phantom again, where the head of the corperation came by to tell the Lords of Fun "I just killed a dog." And there was much mirth.
And then they saw that which was the Infinium back room at E3

All sorts of things


London - A German couple who went to a fertility clinic after eight years of marriage have found out why they are still childless - they weren't having sex.

The University Clinic of Lubek said they had never heard of a case like it after examining the couple who went to see them last month for fertility tests.

Doctors subjected them to a series of examinations and found they were both apparently fertile, and should have had no trouble conceiving.

A clinic spokesperson said: "When we asked them how often they had had sex, they looked blank, and said: "What do you mean?".

"We are not talking retarded people here, but a couple who were brought up in a religious environment who were simply unaware, after eight years of marriage, of the physical requirements necessary to procreate."

The 30-year-old wife and her 36-year-old husband are now being given sex therapy lessons while the university clinic undertakes a study to try to find out if there are more couples with a similar lack of sex education. - Ananova.com



I've been working on putting together a character creation guide for a 3rd edition Forgotten Realms campaign. I'm maybe 1/3 of the way done. Would anyone be intersted in playing? (I'm planning to run it once every week or two via either IM or a chatroom. I'll have a whole character creation packet set up. I'm assuming that anyone interested in playing has access of a 3rd edition phb and some dice (though I hope to be running a dicebot for the actual game.) Personally, I'd prefer to have this via AIM. I'm going to do some more work then e-mail various people who don't read my web journal and ask them. I'm hoping for 4 to 6 players, more would be okay, less would be icky.

E3

Oh to be there this year!
Apparently the army staged an assult on the building with real weapons as part of the promotion for the continuing line of their FPS. I know a number of people who complained about them using a game for advertising, but hell, this game is probably the most realistic fps I've ever seen. It even has concequences for when you break the rules of engagement. I suspect that all of the play restrictions greatly whittle down the number of Complete Internet Fucktards(TM) playing it. They also make it more useful to play intelligently especially in the multi player version. How cool is that. (I have no problem with the military advertising. I'd sure as hell'd rather have a volunteer army than a conscript army, and you aren't going to convince me that we don't need a military. If we were to disarm, we would be the property of other nations in a matter of weeks.)

I hear that the next Xenosaga game is on the floor too!. *sighs* One of these days...

Dukes of Hazzard? The Game??? WTF? (And one of the two booth babes was wearing shorts at least 3 inches too long to be authentic. (And when your shorts are that small, 3 inches is a lot.)

SONY PSP I LOVE YOU!!!

Gabe apparently accidentally accidentally got in his own meet and greet line thinking it was for Halflife 2. No idea if he is telling the truth or lying, but the humor inherent in that story makes the reality completely unattached to the truth of the story.

Well the brother with the terminal patience defficiency wants the computer, so I guess I should let him have it. Take care.

*sighs*

venting spleen
My brother is a dipshit.
I just found out that because he is impatienthe's been doing hard shutdowns on my computer. I could have kicked him in the teeth for that. I'm running w2000, one of the NT kernel OSes. The great thing about w2k is that there is almost never a need for a hard shutdown. I've had to do it less than a dozen times in three years. Now if I was running a 9x os there wouldn't be a real problem (other than the fact I was running 9x) since it requires a hard shutdown fairly frequently and is set up so that won't damage anything. 2000 is set up so that you shouldn't need to do one ever (I'm a bad influence on my computer.) The problem here is that a hard shutdown for nt can screw up systems files (on the order of a 1 in 10 chance.) Well, I've seen the system repair stuff happen during startup at least 3 times in the last two weeks.
So I told him to shut my computer down properly or not use it at all. He said to get rid of the soundfile at the end (a 20 second clip of lina casting a dragonslave) or to get my computer out of "his" (our) room. I am seriously considering turning on the secuity options for both of my OSes so he has to ask me to let him on. I'd take my computer out in a heart beat if there was anywhere else in the house to put it. I can't put it in the garage (hot and wet and cold and wet aren't good for the electronics), and mom is usuing all of the counter and table space in the rest of the house for her photography. I swear, if he pushis this, I'm going to take all of my electronics outof our room including my television and my vcr (the pair of which he is addicted to.) It would be really sad watching him go through withdrawl when he can't get his shows (they don't come in on the big tv for some reason.)

/venting spleen

*edit* 8:34 am
I should get rid of that soundfile and hunt down my 1993 copy of encarta and put some of its sound files in key positions. I used to have their discssions of wave partical duality and of photosynthesis for my windows startup and shutdown sounds on my Dos box. (We're talking 5 or 6 minute discussions here. It ate up a huge portion of the Dos box's hard drive.)
Currently my computer doesn't make a lot of noise, but I am strongly considering changing that. Using 5 second sound clips for every action. I think I still have popeguilty's shitty the cricket file. I've got my (short) potatoe file. I can come up with other long and annoying things to put in the main setup (which will of course have system changes locked.) The best part is that I can have my own login with my regular sound set. *evil grin*

movies

The ones in bold I've seen. I don't know how many the family owns, but the ones I personally own are starred. This was stolen from

1. X-Men
2. The Craft
3. X2
4. Swimfan
5. Fellowship of the Ring
6. Finding Nemo
7. Peter Pan (Disney version)
8. Home Alone (in the theater)
9. Aladdin (in the theater)
10. The Ring (the origional Japanese)
11. 10 Things I Hate About You
12. Not Another Teen Movie
13. Spiceworld
14. 8 Mile
15. Bambi (odds are before you were born)
16. Pirates of the Caribbean (in the theater)
17. Edward Scissorhands (in the theater)
18. Stepmom
19. My Best Friend's Wedding
20. 101 Dalmatians
21. Scream
22. Scream 2
23. Scream 3
24. Big Daddy
25. Billy Madison (no idea why)
26. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
27. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
28. Heartbreakers
29. Dumb & Dumber (Not all at once, but...)
30. Two Weeks' Notice
31. Scary Movie
32. Look Who's Talking (in the theater)
33. Blade
34. Blade II
35. O
36. Titanic (In the theater... the pain. the pain, I wanted to stab out my eyes (or even better the eyes of the people whose idea it was to bring us there as a school))
37. Carrie
38. Carrie 2: The Rage
39. Daddy Day Care
40. Legally Blonde (well, most of it. Abysmal movie. I would have left earlier but I was busy mocking it with a friend)
41. Austin Powers
42. Storm of the Century
43. Oliver and Company
44. Two Towers (In the theater)
45. Return of the King (In the theater)
46. Mighty Ducks (in the theater)
47. Fast and the Furious
48. 2Fast, 2 Furious
49. A Walk To Remember
50. XXX
51. Beauty and the Beast
52. I Know What You Did Last Summer
53. I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
54. Sound of Music
55. Mary Poppins

56. Tuck Everlasting
57. The Patriot
58. The Wizard of Oz
59. Teaching Mrs Tingle
60. Crossroads
61. Now and Then
62. Pearl Harbor
63. Just Married
64. Cast Away
65. Radio Flyer
66. Final Destination
67. Lady and the Tramp
68. Shallow Hal
69. 40 Days and 40 Nights
70. Bring It On (More abysmal movie that I watched most of)
71. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
72. The Outsiders
73. The Matrix
74. Perfect Storm
75. Cruel Intentions
76. Never Been Kissed
77. Clueless (In the theater)
78. Bruce Almighty
79. Remember the Titans
81. Girl, Interrupted
82. SWAT
83. Sixth Sense
84. Phone Booth
85. The Lion King (in the theater)
86. Urban Legends
87. Nightflier
88. Lion King 2
89. Little Mermaid (In the theater)
90. American Pie
91. Center Stage
92. Scooby Doo
93. Bedazzled
94. Mrs. Doubtfire
95. Save the Last Dance
96. My Girl
97. American Beauty
98. Romeo & Juliet
99. Lost World
100. Casper
101. Miss Congeniality
102. The Rock
103. Face Off
104. Moulin Rouge (in bits and pieces)
105. Sleeping Beauty
106. Alien
107. Tombstone
108. Lake Placid
109. The Recruit
110. The Shining
111. Pocahontas (In the theater)
112. Win a Date with Tad Hamilton
113. Koyaanisqatsi (More than once!!!!!)
114. Princess Mononoke* (The year before it was in the theater)
115. Braveheart
116. Gone with the Wind
117. She's All That
118. Heavy Metal
119. Remo Williams
120. Fried Green Tomatoes (Sort of. It was played in the background of a class I was goofing off during)
121. Steel Magnolias
122. Fight Club
123. Star Wars
124. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
125. Toy Soldiers
126. Clerks
127. Magnolia
128. Wild Things
129. The Nightmare Before Christmas
130. What Dreams May Come
131. Fierce Creature
132. Frequency
133. The Others
134. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (In the therater)
135. Along Came A Spider
136. Annie (1982 version) (In the theater)
137. Eyes Wide Shut
138. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
139. Practical Magic
140. Down With Love
141. The Fifth Element (In the theater)
142. Donnie Darko
143. Kiki's Delivery Service*
144. Big Fish (in the theater)
145. Chasing Amy
146. Unbearable Lightness of Being
147. Parent Trap (the new version)
148. Great Expectations
149. Bridges of Madison County
150. I am Sam
151. Life as a house
152. Prince of Tides
153. Kill Bill Vol. 1 (In the theater)
154. Bowling For Columbine
155. Elf
156. spun
157. Weekend at Bernie's (In the theater
158. The House of Mirth
159. The Rose
160. Chocolat
161. Requiem for a Dream
162. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
163. Mask (in the theater)
164. Gia
165. Secretary
166. The Big Lebowski
167. Rushmore
168. Return to Me
169. Muppets Take Manhattan
170. The X-Files: Fight The Future
171. Moonstruck
172. Happy Gilmore
173. Mona Lisa Smile
174. Bad Boys
175. Bad Boys 2
176. The Delta Force
177. A League of Their Own (in the theater)
178. Murder by Death
179. The Hot Chick
180. Shrek (In the theater)
181. Groundhog Day (In the theater)
182. Liar Liar
183. House of Sand & Fog
184. Adventures in Babysitting
185. Monty Python & the Holy Grail (Over and over and over agian until I wanted to puke)
186. HEDWIG & THE ANGRY INCH
187. As Good As It Gets
188. Murder By Numbers
189. The Unsaid
190. 12 Monkeys
191. Igby Goes Down
192. The Mummy
193. The New Guy
194. Girl
195. And Starring Pancho Villa As Himself
196. Valentine
197. Wag the Dog (in the theater)
198. Spirited Away* (in the theater)
199. Almost Famous
200. Royal Tenenbaums
201. Citizen Kane
202. Lost In Translation
203. Sid and Nancy
204. Empire Records
205. Suspiria
206. Niagara Niagara
207. Sweethearts
208. Dead Man Walking
209. My Dog Skip
210. American History X
211. Minority Report (in the theater)
212. Spaceballs
213. The Last of the Mohicans (Well, I've slept through it a couple times, but I think I've seen most of it)
214. The Mysts of Avalon (TV version)
215. The Horseman on the Roof
216. The Birdcage
217. Peter Pan (2003)
218. Frailty
219. Men of Honor
220. Meet the Parents
221. Bend It Like Beckham
222. Speed (in the theater)
223. Fantasia
224. The Santa Clause
225. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
226. Mystic Pizza
227. Varsity Blues
228. Secret Window
229. Sweet Home Alabama
230. Ice Age
231. Hidalgo
232. Along Came Polly
233. Sixteen Candles
234. Breakfast Club
235. Breakfast at Tiffany's
236. Weird Science
237. It Takes Two
238. Princess Bride
239. The Wedding Singer
240. Harvey
241. Rudy
242. Dirty Pretty Things
243. Chicago
244. Lilo And Stitch
245. Jersey Girl
246. Mallrats
247. Milo and Otis
248. Lion King 1.5
249. Matrix Reloaded
250. Matrix Revolutions
251. Cinderella
252. Sleeping Beauty
253. Lola Rennt (Run Lola Run)
254. Am?lie
255. Nosferatu
256. Gone in 60 Seconds
257. An Affair to Remember
258. You've Got Mail
259. Sleepless in Seattle (in the theater)
260. Ghost World
261. America's Sweethearts
262. Batman Forever
263. Hairspray
264. So I Married an Axemurder
265. Ace Ventura Pet Detective (IN the theater... Dan's fault.)
266. Road Trip
267. Tommy Boy
268. The Rocky Horror Picture Show
269. Glitter
270. Memento
271. The Goonies
272. Crazy/Beautiful
273. Party Monster
274. Thirteen

arrgh

I so need to get a job. It isn't funny anymore. I'm officially so broke that I'm borrowing postage for job applications from mom.
Boys and girls, do not, I repeat, do not stop at a master's degree. I've been looking and every single interesting job out there requires either a hojillion years of experience or a master's degree (except for you sieryu... you seem to have found the secret of the interesting bachelor's level job.)

Yardwork

Oi. We have all of these huge trees in our backyard, along the fence row, on the side between our dog fence and the neighbors' assorted privacy fences. Well, these trees are all as tall as at least one of the wires leading to the house, so I have to be extra careful cutting them down. In fact, I am going to have to find our rope and pull some of them to me. In the past, I've done tricky take downs where I needed a tree to fall within a given 90 degree region. Yeah, now, because of the placement of wires, to take a tree down, I get to aim for a slice of yard at most half that width. And they are all catalpa and box elder or something, so if I cut them to stumps this year they will be in the wires again in two years. I may ask mom to buy me some sidewalk salt and make a salt/flour paste to smear on the runk and hopefully kill the damned things.

Well, I took down one of the safest trees today. I just had to make sure it didn't fall on the neighbor's privacy fence. Being a catalpa, I sawed about a third of the way through then just pulled it down. (a four or five inch diameter trunk. Those trees are so worthless.

I went out there to get limbs to build a trellis with. The catalpa branches that were a lot thicker than my thumb weren't good enough. I'd put a little stress on the branch and it would snap in half. The box alder or whatever they are were all bendy and would fold in half every time I put them under pressure, so I was stuck with mulberry branches (from the limbs that I'm taking down as soon as mom gets someone's ladder) Yeah, the average diameter of the mulberry branches? About half a centimeter.
I used mostly mulberry and two really thick alder branches for the end posts. I've got a nine foot long four or five foot tall trellis in the front yard now. I only wired a few pieces together then pressure wove the rest together (That actually will stay together better than wiring the whole thing together.) Then after I finished, I put my remaining snow pea plants in the ground. Yay! I still have half a pot of soil left from that, which I think I'll use to make mounds for the artichokes! Oh, the only problem with this trellis is that if something goes wrong, an entire frame of it could go all at once. It is made of six poles sunk into the ground with three sets of branches wired to them horrizontally as a freamework and a bunch of other branches woven among the parts to make the holes smaller. I only had one frame fall apart while I was building it and that was because a box alder branch sneaked through my selection process and I used it in a high pressure spot. It bent double and the whole thing that I had woven it into as the keypoint fell apart.

Well, this puts me one step closer to done with my origional planting plan! I still need to plant the artichokes and the brocciflour, but I need to figure out where they go first. Then a little field collecting and planting of trees and I'm done until something dies or fruits.

The end of Michael's eternal posts about planting things is in sight!

a quick question

Okay, how many of you use the web interface to post here and how many use a piece of local client software? Is there any reason not to just keep using the webpage?

It's sad when it takes longer to fins a mood than to post.

Yet another rather late update.

It was a good weekend. I got the mowing done just before the grass would have gotten tall enough to cause some real major problems. I've been taking apart pieces of the mulberry tree and using the branhces to build tings. I've put a sunshade over all of the dogwoods and some of them are already doing better for it. I've finally decided where to plant the little pea plants, but I want to wait for some cool time to do it. The brocciflower should go into the ground soon too. I also wove a trellis from parts of the mulberry tree. That was fun, but this one was mostly a test of concept piece. I'm going to need a longer one for the pea plants.
Mom and I were talking. Our back yard has a distinct lack of treeage. (Well, there is the mulberry, and the catalpa that we've let grow up for some bizzare reason, and the oak that we never expected to be here to see grow into a full sized tree, and a couple of box elders that come down next time I feel productive, but that's it.) And we were trying to decide on trees to put there. I remembered where to find some paw paws in the wild that we could plant under the oak, and mom suggested maybe asking someone for some weaping willow fronds to try to root (actually, you have to try to get them not to root usually.) I'm going to run another idae past her. I'm wondering if she has any friends who have grape vines. Not concord or any of the wine/jelly grapes, but something pleasantly sweet and purple or red that we can grow along the side fence.

I'm also thinking of going out looking for some wild rubus vines (don't care what species) It'd be neat to get a berry patch going, and maybe plant a couple adult vines around the light pole out front so shep doesn't try to dig it out.

Hee hee, I can see it now. The backyard turns into a forest with a massive blackberry infestation. No more mowing ever!

After I get a job, I'm going to come back here and do some serious landscaping of the leave it alone variety. If we can get some decent shade in the back yard, we could even get some trillium and ferns growing back there!

I got an e-mail from Aundree a couple of days ago. It's good to hear from those who have made it out of this place. Sort of an affirmation that it is possible. *chuckles* Well, it was good to hear from you anyway.

Got a reply from the Academic Honors job. They said no, but mentioned that there was another position open that I could apply for if I wanted. I'm going to call them and say yes and mail off a modified application letter today.

drawing muchness in the well

I know that my entries have been somewhat sparse of late. I wish I could say that it is because I've been all productive like a good boy. Actually, since I don't have a particularly strong adversion to disbursing falsehoods, I suppose I could say that. It just wouldn't be true. I have put together two applications for jobs and need to get a couple more done soon. I could be teaching philosophy at Ball State or the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The gardening goes fifty fifty. The elms seem to be flourishing, but the dogwoods seem to be having problems. Maybe they need more shade or something. The sunflowers are starting to grow, but the tomatoes seem to be in stasis. I have a grand total of 2 artichoke seedlings. The blueberries have finally started to put some real effort into gettign bigger. The raspberries are growing like any member of Rubus namely quickly and with complete disregard for what happens near them. The asparagus is putting up shoots fairly regularly, and if I remember right, there should be mulberries soon.
I called Ball State yesterday and they told me that I should be hearing from them soon. I don't know if this bodes ill or not.

take care.

hee hee hee

If you don't read Ozy and Millie you should start, right now.
"They say dreams are your subconscious telling you something, but I think yours might be trying to distract you while it robs a bank."

The 50 Worst songs ever

Steal this and highlight the ones you actually like. (Thanks )

1. We Built This City ... Starship
2. Achy Breaky Heart ... Billy Ray Cyrus
3. Everybody Have Fun Tonight ... Wang Chung
4. Rollin' ... Limp Bizkit
5. Ice Ice Baby ... Vanilla Ice
6. The Heart of Rock & Roll ... Huey Lewis and the News
7. Don't Worry, Be Happy ... Bobby McFerrin
8. Party All the Time ... Eddie Murphy
9. American Life ... Madonna
10. Ebony and Ivory ... Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder
11. Invisible ... Clay Aiken
12. Kokomo ... The Beach Boys
13. Illegal Alien ... Genesis
14. From a Distance ... Bette Midler
15. I'll Be There for You ... The Rembrandts
16. What's Up? ... 4 Non Blondes
17. Pumps and a Bump ... Hammer
18. You're the Inspiration ... Chicago
19. Broken Wings ... Mr. Mister
20. Dancing on the Ceiling ... Lionel Richie
21. Two Princes ... Spin Doctors
22. Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American) ... Toby Keith
23. Sunglasses at Night ... Corey Hart
24. Superman ... Five for Fighting
25. I'll Be Missing You ... Puff Daddy featuring Faith Evans and 112
26. The End ... The Doors
27. The Final Countdown ... Europe
28. Your Body Is a Wonderland ... John Mayer
29. Breakfast at Tiffany's ... Deep Blue Something
30. Greatest Love of All ... Whitney Houston
31. Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm ... Crash Test Dummies
32. Will 2K ... Will Smith
33. Barbie Girl ... Aqua
34. Longer ... Dan Fogelberg
35. Shiny Happy People ... R.E.M.
36. Make Em Say Uhh! ... Master P featuring Silkk, Fiend, Mia-X and Mystikal
37. Rico Suave ... Gerardo
38. Cotton Eyed Joe ... Rednex
39. She Bangs ... Ricky Martin
40. I Wanna Sex You Up ... Color Me Badd
41. We Didn't Start the Fire ... Billy Joel (I think this was just the folks who compiled the list didn't get the references.)
42. The Sounds of Silence ... Simon & Garfunkel
43. Follow Me ... Uncle Kracker
44. I'll Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That) ... Meat Loaf (What can I say? I grew up on 10 to 20 minute ballads.)
45. Mesmerize ... Ja Rule featuring Ashanti
46. Hangin' Tough ... New Kids on the Block
47. The Only Thing That Looks Good on Me Is You ... Bryan Adams
48. Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da ... The Beatles
49. I'm Too Sexy ... Right Said Fred
50. My Heart Will Go On ... Celine Dion

Arrgh!!!!

I now wish I had finished my Master's Degree. I was looking at the BSU webpage for jobs again. Yeah. There are two masters level openings for instructors, one in Biology and one in Philosophy. I could have applied my MAIS to either of them. They were the programs I graduated from. I could have used the chairs of both departments as references for the job. In the philosophy department, the chair is the person who wrote me the best letters of reference ever. I could be teaching Phil Sci/Epistemology next year (as well as intro, and maybe I could weasel my way into Logic) Mutter... Wish that BSU had a Masters/PhD in Philosophy program.

one more for tonight

the world sleeps tonight
moonlit clouds embrace the sky
chill wind, crystal skies
wint'ry winds impell the clouds
without you their wonder fades

Hey anyone interested in the renga thing? give me a reply (and if you missed it, it is discussed several entries ago.)

Pale Gray for Guilt.

I am officially addicted to a pulp detective novel series. I'd been reading Spider Robinson's "Callahan's" series of science fiction short stories and novels when I there was this extended reference to a detective novel series that sounded vaguely interesting. I went to the library and checked out one of the books and never even got past the page that listed the books in the series. (I'd looked in the library and just grabbed the earliest one they had.) I decided that I'd read the first book first (at least) and promptly forgot about it. Then one day I was wandering around in a crappy used book store (I live in a town that isn't large enough by half to support anything else) and I decided to see if they had any of the Ian Flemming novels, since I'd wanted to read them anyway (I finally read casino royale, oodles better than any of the movies.) Being a crappy used book store they didn't have them, but being out of the miniscule science fiction/fantasy section made me remember that there were a few that I wanted to read that weren't in my major genres (I read mostly SF, fantasy, non-fiction, and any genre of fiction as long as it is written by Issac Asimov.) Well, I was there and I thought "hey John D. McDonals. I wonder if they have him. Well amazingly enough they did, and they had the first book, Deep Blue Gooodbye. So I read it. Then I went to the library and checked out all of their non-large print editions of the books over a period of a month or three. (I've avoided the large print ones mostly because I don't care enough to go to a different part of the library and try to figure out which ones I've not read.)

Well, I just bought (way cheap) an omnibus edition of three of the stories. I'd been hoping that one would be the one right after the latest one I'd read. They aren't but they are all new to me. Oh well. I looked it up today, and it appears that the latest one that I read was the last one he wrote before he died. That kind of blows a lot, since it set up more of a cliff hanger than usual.

Still no news from Ball State. I'm going to call them either tomorrow or the next day.

Lackey wrote a new book set in her Serrated Edge/West Coast Elves world, but back in the time of Henry VIII. It is kind of odd reading a book set just before Quicksilver. I'm afraid that either the research for this book was a little weaker (which is understandable since she not only puts out a lot of books a year but is writing fantasy instead of historical fiction) than Stephenson's or he was way off base in his research (I sort of doubt it. The only book by him that was way off base, other than Big U which was a parody of our reality, was Snow Crash, which was a parody of Gibson's Cyberpunk.

Oh well. Still no writing today. I think I'll bring in the plants tonight since it might fall below freezing. I'm worried about the trees in the back, but more because I'm afraid they may drown than because of the cold.