Fivedesix

11:02 am: DOWN-TOWN... (where all the lights are bright!) DOWN-TOWN...
....where I get to see a chunk of ice at least as tall as I am crash to the sidewalk.

DOWN-TOWN.

11:24 am: Forge a New Word
In less exciting news, I need you, faithful readers, to create a word.

The word's definition:

NewWord: (Noun) The frantic feeling of shock, confusion and frustration when, just a few days prior one has figured out the perfect gift for an individual, and has now forgotten the idea.

08:25 am: Quest Log: Get the Foot in the Door
Quest Goals: Internship at Lincoln Park Zoo 0/1

Quest Update: Internship at Lincoln Park Zoo 1/1

Holy crap, folks, I start this Tuesday.

12:03 pm: Project Gutenberg
Karen Savage, a nice lady with a clipped English Accent, is reading Pride and Prejudice to me.

Instead of feeling like I am dying under the crushing weight of boredom at work, I [English Edit: "rather"] feel like it is eight hours of story time.

Edit: Now I've moved on to Bram Stoker's Dracula, except the reader is using a fake English accent for the reading and using a horrible "Dracula" accent for the Count, himself. Vhat terrorz!

08:45 am: House - The Movie
So, every time I click on my damn gmail advertisements, I get punished. I thought this one was for a neat-looking horror movie that I hadn't heard of called House.

Trailer? Looks nifty. I couldn't get audio at work, or maybe I would have heard some of the bare-assed Christian doctrine before I got to the end to find that "HollywoodJesus" and "NewChristianVoices.com" think the movie is just spiffy.

I'm going to spoil the end, now: If the movie is a true adaptation of the book, the psycho-murderer gets killed by baby Jesus.

From Wikipedia's House Entry: "Jack and Stephanie cry out to the "Son of Man" for mercy and forgiveness. A mysterious energy explodes from Susan's blood and kills White [the psycho-killer], thus ending the game."

Oh, good.

Also, gmail thinks that I would be in the market for one of these fine machines.

O_o

11:00 am: To My Terrible Memory
Last night, during the election, while cyrusbelmont was off infiltrating the rally, dearmary and I had a wonderful pork tenderloin dinner with pears and apples that I made (I burned my finger, slightly), we ate slices of pie and drank hot tea in front of our glowing computers, and I stayed up far too late playing WoW, checking the CNN website as the electoral votes rolled in, and chatting with findingamber, spreadtheclapp, mantis327, lliogor and Eric/Choklar on Ventrilo.

Thank you, America, for a pleasant night.

I want to remember a year from now the buzz of activity in the city as I left work early; the unseasonable warmth that kept the early November evening pleasant and accommodating to those who wandered and experienced the zeitgeist of the election outside their homes; the ridiculously long line of people outside Grant park as I looked down from the CNA building at 2 in the afternoon; the way that, subtly, the next morning, everyone in my CTA car was wearing some shade of blue.

09:04 am: Oh, hello
So, I've been away from LJ for some time. My current job had a nasty habit of blocking "blogging" sites. Now that I'm at a different assignment (in the same building, but more different!) I decided to check the old LJ to see if, for some stupid, bizarre reason, different security restrictions applied.

Apparently they do. So! I don't know how long it will last (it might be a glitch?), but I'm here, glancing through some weeks of old entries.

Let me know if I missed anything important.

10:27 pm: Been A While!
And, as is traditional, I post something with no substance at all.

However, I think this will make you smile.

Hopefully, I'm not the last person on the internet to find this YouTube gem. Enjoy!

08:15 am: O Face
I'm offended that you're offended by being possibly offended by the possibility that offensive material was offending to those easily offended by things not very offensive.

11:04 am: Just plain sad
So, I found out that on Monday there was a malfunction at Brookfield Zoo that ended up killing 16 of their stingrays in the Stingray Bay exhibit.

dearmary and I had gone last year, and they're really neat, affable, charming-in-a-cute-vacuum-cleaner-kind-of-way animals.

So, the idea of 16 of them dying from overheating is just really sad, and making me think morbidly.

Thus, lame-ass memorial LJ post: May those departed swim forever in clean waters with plentiful cups of shrimp dispensed by people with no fingernails.

08:09 am: Moving
So, I mentioned this to spreadtheclapp, layerburn and findingamber t'other night on Vent: If given the opportunity to move slowly over the course of a month, pass it by. Condense all of it into 4-5 days, get it done, and get on with life.

Instead of transitioning immediately from one place to the next, you're stuck in a limbo of having noplace for a month. Hate.

Also, work has been wackysauce.

That is all.

08:34 pm: Wall-E Marketing
Man, some movies have dinky little advertising websites that are worth a chuckle or two.

But check out the Buy-N-Large "Corporate Website." This thing goes on and on, with really clever writing and design that hits the nail on the head with corporate satire.

The only thing amiss is that the website looks too good. Wal-Mart's site isn't even this polished.

07:55 am: Wewt
Happy Birthday gold_wave. May your future contain far less car catastrophes and more awesomeness.

10:28 am: Isaac Asimov vs. Creationism
The following is an excerpt from "The 'Threat' of Creationism" by Isaac Asimov. It was originally published in the New York Times Magazine in 1981. The whole article can be found here. It's a pithy, wonderful excerpt, but do go and read the rest of it. It's refreshing. Isaac was a mental dreamboat. Here he jabs at the creationist tripe of dismissing evolutionary theory because our understanding of it is not yet complete.

"Consider. I drive a car, and you drive a car. I do not know exactly how an engine works. Perhaps you do not either. And it may be that our hazy and approximate ideas of the workings of an automobile are in conflict. Must we then conclude from this disagreement that an automobile does not run, or that it does not exist? Or, if our senses force us to conclude that an automobile does exist and run, does that mean it is pulled by an invisible horses, since our engine theory is imperfect?"

God of the Gaps can stick it.

07:49 am: Ding!
Yes, alankypirate is just that much more l33t.

03:49 pm: OOTS
So, if you haven't been following, this strip might not make much sense.

However, if you have, you will surely enjoy a visit to the quiet village of Lickmyorangeballshalfling.

01:37 pm: This made me think of cyrusbelmont.

09:51 am: Magnificent!
While I don't check them frequently, the Kate Beaton History Comics collection is quite nice. I roffled my ass off at this one:

08:44 am: Sushi?
I have had a hankering. So, I did what I normally do when I have a hankering for something, and I read about it exhaustively on Wikipedia. Recent hankering topics have ended in such amazing destinations as pages about the tragic and strange Moties, the delightful Jim Backus, and the gender bendery Emperor Elagabalus. Never you mind where these "hankerings" started; it's Wikipedia. Things are bound to get goofy after just two clicks.

I should have known, though, that when I started down a path paved with raw fish I would end up at a disappointing destination.

I can't decide if I'm put off, or simply more lusty for raw victuals than ever before.

08:51 am: Emo Bird / Happy Bird
Spring Song

A bird sang sweet and strong
In the top of the highest tree,
He said, "I pour out my heart in song
For the summer that soon shall be."

But deep in the shady wood,
Another bird sang, "I pour
My heart on the solemn solitude
For the springs that return no more."

- George William Curtis

The second bird has a job at Cinnabon.