Good to see that Galileo is still giving the Church the finger after all these years.

Heh heh.

(Found here.)

The last half hour I spent gazing at the nearly full moon through my telescope, feeling great wonder that we walked on this thing, that we explained its motion, that we described its nature, that we discovered its origin.

My species amazes me so much sometimes. Tonight, it was in a good way.

No. A great way.

I couldn't be more glad for switching majors. Go physics. Feel the PWN, moon.



We walked on this.

epiphany   n.  From the Greek for "shining forth". The sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something.

I present to you the single most rational explanation I have yet heard:

I dreamed the night before of a strange world indeed, one where a castle stood protected by an army of spearmen who had mastered a most unusual method of attack. Amassing themselves on the parapet, they would link arm in arm with each other, and, as the enemy army below reached the rampart, the spearmen would uncoil down the wall, rolling over their foes like a pincushioned tentacle thirty men wide.

This vista, incredible though it was, held me for but a moment. Then I found myself before twin tomes, one dark, one light. In the one, esoteric symbols beyond earthly ken, fey lines crisscrossing the yawning gulfs of its parchment. In the other, a line of symbols familiar and true, culminating in a helmeted visage which I must be acquainted with by now as my own. I turned: "I only have to... read one?"

"Choose, and remake this world again anew."

I swallowed. Alright then. "Triangle, circle, square, X... MASTER CHIEF!"

If I ever go insane, rest assured it will be really cool for me.

My dream last night was more ordinary. My ex and I had run into each other at a skateboard... whatdyacallit... ramp trick contest. We were both reticent at first, but then we started talking. bearr was participating. He did this trick where he grabbed his board mid-air and — yes — air guitared on it. He did a TV news interview afterwards about it. I got to really impress my ex by telling her, "I know that guy!"

---

My ex's gait gathers a marching quality when I'm working in Towers and she must walk past me. It always looks like an especially venomous glare to me. Glare by non-acknowledgement, if you will. I guess it shouldn't surprise me, really. It was a while ago, but I can't deny that the last message I sent her was intended to wound... any more than I can take it back. Perhaps I could try letting this state of affairs go to my head as a writer. Anyone can make an ex angry, but to get them so they won't give you so much as a fraction of a second of eye contact, three months later? That's class.

Still, I keep thinking of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, the part when he calls up the girl he loved in his own weird way (and tried to kill) and tenders the best apology he can, concluding, I just ask for what we all ask of the people we respect — That the thought of me does not compel you to violent spasms of projectile vomiting. I believe my days of getting that much from H. are through. She's made it quite clear that she doesn't welcome hearing from me.

I'd like to rescue her from a mugger. I even have it all planned out in my head, the way I'd use this one move we learned in Tae Soo Do to break his arm in two places.

Anyone wanna earn 20 bucks?

---

I admit, it was with some trepidation that I approached the 'What is your theme song?' quiz. Silly me.

<td align="center">Your Theme Song:


"Bohemian Rhapsody", Queen

Magnifico, Freddie. Magnifico.

'What is your theme song?' at QuizGalaxy.com</td>

It should have come as no surprise, I suppose. Freddie Mercury was of course born in Zanzibar, and the second game of the Metal Gear series, which I of course am dedicated to heart and soul, takes place in Zanzibar Land, a fact no doubt taken into account by the ruthless, serpentine circuitry that houses the WiyTSQ's pitiless algorithms. Not to mention Freddie penned Rhapsody in 1975, eight years to the year before I was born. But could even the unthinkably sophisticated Byzantine device that is the WiyTSQ, remorselessly efficient though it may be, find a song that encapsulated my wily, yet playful nature?

Did you really think otherwise? "When the band wanted to release [Bohemian Rhapsody] as a single in 1975, it had been suggested that, at 5 minutes and 55 seconds, it was far too long and would thus never be a hit. But Mercury gave a copy of the single to friend and London DJ, Kenny Everett, informing him that it was for him personally, and that he must never play it. The reverse psychology worked and Everett ended up playing the song on the air, up to fourteen times in the same day."^[1]

(Parting Pimping: For all you Queen/Evangelion fans who haven't yet seen it, I urge checking this music video of Rhapsody out.)

Got this from notasfatasmike, my thankless roommate. Go to Wikipedia. Type in your birthday without the year. List 3 cool facts, 2 births, and a death.

January 29 IN HISTORY!

3 facts
1933 - Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany. He represents the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei). Twelve years later, no one is ever again named Adolf. Referring to unpopular teachers as Die Führer skyrockets.
1964 - Stanley Kubrick's black comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is released in the U.S., satirizing the doctrine of mutually assured destruction
2004 - A whale explodes in the town of Tainan, Taiwan. A build-up of gas in the decomposing 56-foot long Sperm whale is suspected of causing the explosion.

2 births
1737 - Thomas Paine, the man whose Common Sense pamphlet jumpstarted a certain insurrection against Britain (oh, and he coined a name you might have heard of: "The United States of America")
1945 - Tom Selleck, mustache

1 Death
1956 - H. L. Mencken, outspoken social commentator and atheist whom the New York Times in the 1920s once called the most powerful private citizen in the world, the man responsible for the Scopes trial being remembered as the Scopes "Monkey" trial, and the guy I quote about a bizillion times on my info page, and holy shit I seriously had no idea he died exactly 27 years before I was born and he's practically my hero. (b. 1880)

I guess I have a new something to drink to on my next birthday... Anyone'd like to help me do this properly?


<td>"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under."

— H. L. Mencken

</td>

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Very Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	Low
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Divine Comedy Inferno Test

So I got shunted off to the sixth circle, where, interestingly enough, Dante encountered one of my two favorite characters in the Inferno, Farinata. This was a guy who sacked Dante's home city of Florence IRL, but when the rest of the army's commanders voted to raze Florence to the ground, he stood out alone and swore to defend the city by his own sword if they wouldn't relent. And they backed down.

Plus in the Inferno his punishment (along with the rest of the non-famous-philosopher non-Christians) is to be entombed forever in a red-hot iron tomb, but Farinata couldn't care less:

And he was rising, lifting chest and brow
as though he held all Hell in utter scorn.

Awesome.

Double-plus, the first time he speaks, the mere sound of his voice scares Dante like a little girl. All in all, another quiz-victory for yours truly.

Now hold on here...

Last night cleolinda of Movies in 15 Minutes fame (m15m) made this post here.

Which inspired me to respond with the comment you can see here.

My brother, peering over my shoulder, went off about how "All Your Base is soooo '90s. Are you kidding me?! You're making like the gajillionth reference to it! Gawd, I hope you get flamed like no one ever... [etc.]"

.
.
.

My brother... whose customized Recent Entries title is "Main Screen Turn On".

And here is an image of a pot and kettle:

I win! ^_^


(Flummoxed? All your questions will be answered here:
http://allyourbase.planettribes.gamespy.com// ) All your base are belong to us.

Cut from Molly Ivin's piece in the March Progressive:

Mah fellow progressives, now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of the party. I don’t know about you, but I have had it with the D.C. Democrats, had it with the DLC Democrats, had it with every calculating, equivocating, triangulating, straddling, hair-splitting son of a bitch up there, and that includes Hillary Rodham Clinton....

I can’t see a damn soul in D.C. except Russ Feingold who is even worth considering for President. The rest of them seem to me so poisonously in hock to this system of legalized bribery they can’t even see straight....

This is not a time for a candidate who will offend no one; it is time for a candidate who takes clear stands and kicks ass....

What happens now is not up to the has-beens in Washington who run this party. It is up to us. So let’s get off our butts and start building a progressive movement that can block the nomination of Hillary Clinton or any other candidate who supposedly has “all the money sewed up.”...

We can raise our own money on the Internet, and we know it. Howard Dean raised $42 million, largely on the web, with a late start when he was running for President, and that ain’t chicken feed. If we double it, it gives us the lock on the nomination. So let’s go find a good candidate early and organize the shit out of our side. ---End of Article---

(Originally linked here in the TPMCafe.)

I'd say this is the best indirect case I've seen for a Feingold nomination. Thoughts?

Something else to think about, this from Wikipedia:

In the 2004 Senate election, Feingold defeated the Republican candidate, construction magnate Tim Michels, by 12% (56%-44%), earning a third term. During the campaign, Feingold refrained from imposing spending caps on himself as he had in the past, and raised and spent almost $11 million. Although Republicans attempted to use that fact to paint him as a hypocrite, Feingold's records showed that more than 90% of the money came from individuals, that the average contribution was only $60, and that, once again, a majority of it was raised from Wisconsin residents [2]. Feingold's victory was seen by many pundits as a vindication of the many controversial stances that he had taken during his second term, as it was by far his largest electoral victory thus far. Feingold even won many counties which also supported the re-election of Republican President George W. Bush.

It's finally official that my parents will be losing the house they've lived in for 25 years. We haven't been able to make payments with any consistency since my dad lost his job as a manager at a window factory. (His greatest weakness as an employee is probably his inability to keep his mouth shut if his boss announces a plan that actually wouldn't work for X, Y, and Z. Sure he saved their stupid asses money, but it involved pointing out that they were wrong. That's being uppity.)

He's the one I'm worried most about; he's been working two full-time jobs, sleeping about three hours a night, trying to keep this from happening. He was trying to convince himself for a while, and I mean literal denial, that this time would be just like the others, that all we had to do was scrap together $3000 by the end of the month... from somewhere. Wasn't going to happen. Even if it did, that payment is just the tip of the iceberg. We haven't been making electric payments, haven't had the money to meet car payments... This time, we're sunk.

As it concerns me personally, I know you're all worried, but it's sincerely not going to hit me very hard. Eau Claire has felt more like home to me for a while now. A few years more would have seen me coming back to visit only on Thanksgiving and Christmas. That's the one positive; at least all the kids are out of the house with my little bro going to school here with me. But where my mom and dad are gonna stay afterwards, I still have no clue.

I'd made plans to go down to New Orleans and help out with the relief effort over spring break, but I'll be going home along with my brother now. I have my work cut out for me in the coming weeks to make sure everyone gets through this alright.

(I wish we were the only ones, but it seems this is going around: The same thing is happening (protected entry) to iwasntlistening. Send her a few kind words if you can.)

Shamelessly stolen from wukikimonkey:

"Well drawn you ask?

I deliver.

Funny as hell?

No problem.

Ninja's galore?

I know you wouldn't settle for anything less.

But what of the pirates?

Ye shall not be disappointed, matey.

I welcome you to the most amazing thing ever.

The Adventures of Dr. McNinja

Prepare yourself."

OMG

My brother made a livejournal.



http://tim_has_a_lj.livejournal.com



(And all you Zero Wing fans out there should get a kick out of his "Recent Entries" title...)

Having just gotten off work at the front desk at 2 AM, I thought it'd be a good idea to swing by my best-bud Phil's room, since I'd loaned him my shampoo, on the way back to my place.

So I went up and let myself in. He'd very thoughtfully left a note on his message board telling me where he'd left the shampoo, so I was able to find it without waking him up.

Oh, but earlier when we were having lunch, Phil made the mistake of telling me that he'd found my shampoo... borderline unpleasant. I'll try to conjure up the conversation as it went verbatim:

ME: Hey dude.
PHIL: DID YOU KNOW WHEN YOU GAVE IT TO ME? I'M SERIOUS, MAN — DID YOU KNOW?
ME: Huh?
PHIL: ABOUT THE SHAMPOO!
ME: Sham- ?
PHIL: IT WAS LIKE USING MACE OR... SOMETHING!
ME: The shampoo?
PHIL: YES!
ME: You didn't like it?
PHIL: ...
ME: I always thought it was, y'know, kinda refreshing.
PHIL: I don't know, maybe I used too much or something. I swear, it was like rinsing my hair with evil. Anyway, I got the kiwi and lime shampoo I like at Kerm's, so take it back anytime.

And so you see, Phil made one other mistake. That being that he left his kiwi and lime shampoo — what was to him the realization of his follicular hopes and dreams, his very coiffurial deliverance, if you will — out in the open.

Now which one do you think I grabbed?

I'll give you a hint: I will shortly have a very good idea of how refreshing I find the fragrance of kiwi-lime.

( And you wanna know the best part? )

[EDIT: Well, it would seem that Phil has discovered my sudsy subterfuge. Here's the message he just scrawled on my Facebook wall:

You dirty motherfucker! When did you perpetrate that felonious misdeed?!?! Give me my fucking shampoo back! I smell like a magical fairy's asshole with the stuff YOU loaned me!

I can't imagine what he could be so upset about. My shampoo's really not that bad.]

As Nietzsche once said, "What, then, is the meaning of integrity in things intellectual? It means ... that (one) makes every Yea and Nay a matter of conscience!"

One should not lightly say "Yea!" to a thing. Alrighty then...

This flash fucking rules.

Watch it, and feel the amazement course through thee...

[EDIT: Okay, I just watched it again and realized I didn't talk it up anywhere near enough. This is the fucking best flash video I have ever seen in my life BY FAR.

WATCH IT.

WATCH IT ALREADY.

WHY HAVEN'T YOU WATCHED IT YET...

THAT'S IT I'M COMING OVER!]

I have a puissant cold. It's almost as if a swarm of microscopic life-forms were invading my body, gnashing at my very cells. But grab hold of something, reader, for I have still more dire news for you.

It so happens that about a week ago I submitted a poem I wrote to N.O.T.A., our campus's semesterly literary, um, booklet. This was my first time submitting, a change that may have had something to do with the $150 cash prize they've begun offering for first place in both poetic and fiction categories (and $100 to the runner up in each). In the past, a lot of their published poetry has been the literary equivalent of "Kick Me" signs, to the point that there's even been public accusations of a suspicious correlation between taking first place and length of membership on the NOTA selection committee. But I don't want to leave you thinking that's the only theory; as an English professor here once memorably said, "I don't think they'll accept a poem unless it's sadly wearing a beret." Even so, I felt I had a pretty decent shot at winning.

You can imagine my surprise and outrage, then, at the fact that I didn't get in. I'm not even an alternate. I must express my bewilderment, but how? My only chance is if I can use my years of training under the Master to summon the perfect surprise-attack metaphor... Yes! — It's as if a group of 3rd-graders told Ron Jeremy he couldn't piss in the snow with them.

But far be it for me to not ask for a second opinion. Good fellows, you be the judge. I present to you the very poem, honed to a razor satirical edge just in time for "Fuck You, Singles!" Day.

If our most natural inclination isn’t to explain mysteries with a story
It might be to hold onto them long after understanding’s better inventory
Take one tale, one well-known and accepted concerning Life’s origin
The Biblical account of Genesis and Man’s introduction to sin
If you believe it all, I set myself here to swaying your opinion
I urge you at least consider what I say, don’t let yourself your prejudices pinion

In the story, God’s first words were Let there be light
Not in English, of course, no one knows what those words sounded like
It could have gone something like, Uhsploonisplursfuzhorn
The particulars don’t much matter — the Universe was born

In a day He laid the firmament (evidence: space-time, duh!) and raised the Heavens
Then on the second day made angels, animals, and Man, and to serve Man, 7-Elevens
And these too, of course, we have direct evidence for
But heed, I repeat — the story you know is not all true — read more:

God saw Man needed a companion and was fatherly empathetic
Then He took a rib to do it; the Dick could at least have used a topical anesthetic
Yet you might believe He needn't have in light of the Universe
Considering that, after all, He summoned it with a verse

But I tell no lie; God said This might hurt a bit — and yanked it right from his chest
The reason is simple; God was about to create His best
Having made Earth, sky, and even the stars from void, God required a tool to make beauty
Four days later, God stood back from his proudest work, and admired Booty

On this much we agree. You and I know it for fact
It’s accurate, it’s authentic; thus far there’s no need to redact
Would we could so continue, our story would end well
But remember, not all is what you’ve been told. I have more to tell

You know the version where a Devil, disguised as a Snake,
Tempted the Woman to take a certain fruit, thence God’s commandment to break
But blame here goes to the Woman too, for she in turn tempted Man
At which time God said, “You’re outta here. I’ve booked your travel plan.”

And for long ages since blame has fallen to the Woman that in Eden we no longer dwell
But I warn you now, the fault rightly lies with that long-ago emissary of Hell
I’ve learned the real truth from experience and feminism class
Man pointed fingers long ago, but should have pointed to the grass
It's wrong to fault the Woman for Man's fall from Grace
'Tis blaming the victim — the Snake ate the Woman, and assumed her place

Ever read The Tell-Tale Heart? What follows is from the short version, a snippet from an interview between EGM's Dan Hsu and Peter Moore, the Corporate Vice President of Worldwide Retail Sales and Marketing for Microsoft's Home and Entertainment Division (I'll translate that in the same spirit that EGM did: the guy's the high mookie-mook of marketing the Xbox 360):

EGM: But let's look at the PS1 generation and the jump to Dreamcast. On all levels, no matter which games you look at, you can immediately see a huge improvement in graphics. With a lot of 360 games, the leap isn't there, don't you agree?

PM: That's an opinion that I don't share, but look at it [this way]...we're selling games at an unprecedented rate; we're breaking records. Clearly, consumers are happy about something.(...)

(...)

You know, people have to make their own choices, and if they determine that this is not worth their 400 bucks, then it does seem like there's somebody in line behind them that does think it is.

Hmmm. So in other words, if, hypothetically, a company released a system that performed not only below hype but below reasonable expectations and it were to sell like the system everyone was led to believe it was... and, just hypothetically, if this were thanks in large part to the customers being what one might call "sheep"... why, then the system did just what it was supposed to!

At last, the Microsoft credo explained. And it's exactly what we always suspected.

I'm drawing the allusion to the Poe tale, incidentally, because of the way Hsu keeps beating away at Moore throughout the interview until he blurts out a thing or two he probably hadn't meant to admit. The Q I quote is actually by far one of the tamer ones. And I'm not the only one who thought so; a couple guys by the name of Tycho and Gabe also found the interview oddly inspiring.

On the trigonometry quiz I got back this morning, the final question was:

Verify the identity cos θ + (sin θ)(tan θ) = sec θ.

To earn full credit, I was supposed to transform the left side to the right side in the following steps:

cos θ + (sin θ)(sin θ/cos θ) =
cos θ + (sin² θ/cos θ) =
(cos² θ/cos) + (sin² θ/cos θ) =
(cos² θ + sin² θ)/cos θ =
1/cos θ =
sec θ

It's actually a pretty trivial problem if you know that cos² θ + sin² θ = 1. So, this is the way I wrote it:

c + (s)(s/c) =
c + (s²/c) =
(c² + s²)/c =
1/c =
sec θ

The only differences between the full-credit version and mine is that I did one step in my head (going from c + s²/c to [c² + s²]/c) and I substituted c and s for cos θ and sin θ.

Instead of full credit, I got 3 points out of 12.

I would have never guessed that making easily understood algebraic substitions in math class is very much against the rules...

Okay, so you all remember the telegroinic shapeshifter in my dorm? One of my longtime friends angelgrl131 happens to be this little vixen's next door neighbor. Got that? Good. Now check out angelgrl131's most recent post.

Oh, I can't take how funny this shit is!

Was at my best friend Phil's friend Bishara's this weekend. We watched The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and Citizen Kane, which happen to be No. 11 and No. 21 on this list here, and both of which I'd never seen before.

I deduced the ending to Kane a minute before the secret was unveiled. (FYI, the movie revolves around a journalist's attempts to find the meaning behind a dead billionaire publisher's last words: "Rosebud...") I guess that would make Orson Welles almost twice as good at keeping yours truly guessing as the guy who directed The Usual Suspects, which I had figured out about halfway through. Maybe I should be a detective. Anyway, the 'that whistle theme-song' Western was the better movie.

So, having been so laggard, I thought I should summarize the major events of last semester.

• The second biggest thing that happened to me was meeting a girl who is easily among the smartest, funniest, most interesting and spontaneous people I've ever met, and really hitting it off with her. Supreme geekdom, we originally met over Facebook.com, whereby we realized the sheer multitude of interests we shared. We spent hours a day IM-ing each other and watching movies early on. One of the best parts of knowing her has been that she introduced me to the Smashing Pumpkins, now one of my top 5 bands. Early in the morning of Oct. 29, as we watched a DVD compilation of their music videos about three times, at the close of a series of tickle fights, I asked her to go out with me. My timing was one of my more brilliant ideas, as it made our anniversary exactly one month before her birthday, which in turn is exactly two months before mine. Outrageously clever, I know. Anyway, she said yes. We stayed up after that and watched the sun rise some hours later. (Her idea.) It was really good.
  
  
• The biggest thing was when she broke up with me about two weeks later. I don't know, maybe I seem more amusing across an IM connection. I actually dreamed about her today. Maybe that's why I'm writing, really. You know from your own experience, I'm sure, how emotions sometimes seize you in dreams, magnified many times over what they have any right to make you feel. Nightmares that scare much more than they should and so forth. When I dreamed of her today, it hurt so bad that it actually woke me up. Can't remember the last time a dream did that.
  
  The insult with the injury is that I feel like such a moping sot for not being over her. She let me go. And it didn't take very long. I should be prank calling her or something, and be all like "Uhhhmmmm, nnnooo... Who eeez theeez 'Bri-yen'?" when she asks if it's me. Not be sitting around wanting her back in my life. Not turning on the IM every now and then just hoping she'll send me a message. It's pathetic, and I know that. Doesn't stop me from sinking back into a confused roil of emotions once or twice a day.
  

Other notable 'events' really boiled down to people and traditions that, for the first time since I started college, began to vanish from my life. One of my greatest and earliest friends nutsy_seph moved to Colorado at the end of the semester before last. Another good friend, Trevor, moved to France at the end of last summer. I saw very little of a whole other group of my friends when a tradition of ours went by the wayside.

This semester isn't looking much better. kylej won't be coming back to school, at least for now. delmoth graduated and ain't living around here. My awesome roommate Ryan is studying abroad in Ireland, and I'll be rooming with a guy I don't know. Oh, total lulz, maybe I'll be able to focus on grades again with no distractions.

Sooooo... I guess the macro picture of my life sucks when I look at it. And yet day to day I'm basically happy. Oh I know, it seems unaccountable. At a guess, a mere guess, I would attribute such stoicism in the face of unthinkable hardship to being completely fucking awesome.

One last thing. The other thing that had me down at times last semester was the feeling that I was slowly but surely becoming a failure by neglecting to write. Feel free to nudge me or whatever that new option is if I go for a week without posting. Thanks.

"On the intelligent design side is the Thomas More Law Center, a nonprofit Christian law firm that says its mission is "to be the sword and shield for people of faith" in cases on abortion, school prayer and the Ten Commandments. The center was founded by Thomas Monaghan, the Domino's Pizza founder, a conservative Roman Catholic who also founded Ave Maria University and the Ave Maria School of Law; and by Richard Thompson, a former Michigan prosecutor who tried Dr. Jack Kevorkian for performing assisted suicides." -- "A Web of Faith, Law and Science in Evolution Suit" by Laurie Goodstein, 9.26.05, The New York Times

Jeff and Jim's is the most superior restaurant pizza out there, but I must confess to being still somewhat heartbroken; I can never order Domino's pizza in good conscience again! Tell me that doesn't grab your heart like a couple thousand Katrina victims.

(PS: I have to catch up in two literature courses by tomorrow DON'TTAKETWOLITCOURSESATTHESAMETIMEIT'SABADIDEA and I have a paper due on Friday alongside an exam. Then next Tuesday a larger paper is due. The moral being that I would like to tell you about the System of a Down concert last Friday (awesome, nay, fawesome) and how it was that I pretty much lost all interest in the hands-down most attractive woman I've ever seen, but I must beg for your charitable patience. Were time my toy how I would indulge you! Alas!...)