It appears that it is going to be yet another mind-numbing day at work. Joy. Yesterday my unexpected possession of the fifth Harry Potter book led me to forget that I was supposed to be constructing an egg drop for SARS (Students Advocating the Return to Space), so instead I have to throw one together when I leave work. Hopefully it'll dry before 7. I'd just shrug it off, but I promised Patrick I'd bring one so we'd have at least one excuse to take everyone up to play on top of the Physics building.
Apparently I managed to injure my hand a couple days ago - it's becoming very difficult to write and/or grip things, although there's no kind of bruise or anything. It just hurts and I don't recall doing anything to it. Jeff, kindly take the pins OUT of the voodoo doll.
Since Jessica got sick Monday night and didn't make it out to my place, she's planning on coming over tomorrow night for dinner. As soon as she leaves I will begin the mad process of cleaning for my parent's visit this weekend. They're coming to stay with me starting Friday afternoon. That means an extra clean apartment. *nod* In fact, I'll probably get started today after the SARS meeting.
Blarh. Oh and I posted some new sketches. Well, not terribly new, but newly scanned. Nothing special or even particuarly noteworthy. Actually, they're pretty rough - just random bits and scraps. I just felt like dusting off the old gallery. I keep promising myself I'll start drawing again and actually WORK at it.
why am I walking barefoot
upon this road with no one around
I close my eyes to this decision
the night's like coffee to my tongue
like waking up without a sound
I map the words out
maybe you will say them
would you help me rise up
touch my face and watch me try to breathe again
would you let me do this
burn down the final wall
overcome me baby
overcome me baby
overcome me baby
overcome me yeah
all I'm asking is to be alive for once
always I am mistaken
I look for love I find a stone
of all the seasons winter befriends me
I come to you in friendship
and hold my breath against the snow
what are you thinking as I gaze into you
forgive me the confusion
forgive me as I realize my thoughts betrayed
you are the answer
cry and smile the same
Tongue splitting. Tongue splitting is seriously yucky. Don't believe me, check out the article and LOOK at the first picture. It's not cool, it's not attractive, it's not even terribly inventive. It's just dumb...and yucky. Not only that, but who really wants a lisp for the rest of their lives? Apparently a select few do. But it makes me sick to see it.
Still, my day would not be complete unless I found a subject so disturbing as to cause my coworkers to curl up into the fetal position and keen. The tongue thing, while it has that effect on me, isn't quite strong enough. But lo and behold...the very last sentence of the posted article:
"But for believers in modification, a split tongue is merely a start. Split penises, sliced lengthwise in half, are not unheard of among aficionados."
Give it a minute, the mental image will appear. That is all. Goodnight.
"Kevin Carlyon, High Priest of British White Witches said Harry Potter in recent years had continued the trend, helping create what he called "the fastest growing belief system in the world". But it was not all good, he added.
You know, in cases like this, it'd be nice if officers were allowed to use an effective form of crowd control. Forget rubber bullets, firehoses, and plastic shields. Try an M-16. What's going on in Michigan is not a peaceful demonstration - it's nothing but a crowd actively looking for an excuse for violence. If they want violence, I say give them violence. You know what the best crowd control device is? A fucking flamethrower.
There's a lot I want to say, but there's really no way to frame it. The thoughts are there, but they just won't make the transition to written word. I've never been able to express real emotion to anyone but a select few anyway, so I don't know why I expected to start now. *shrug*
The weekend was pretty much uneventful. My dad visited for a few hours Sunday. Saturday I discovered that my air conditioner has been leaking water into the hall closet for what looks like years (yuck ick nasty run away call someone else to touch it). I introduced Mo and Jackie to Big Spring Park Saturday night when we missed the movie we were supposed to go see. Oh, and after my dad left I single-handedly defeated an invading army of wombats...but that's a story for another day.
So it turns out my dad will be stopping by tomorrow on his way back from Atlanta. That's a good thing! However, it means I get to spend today cleaning. Go me. :-P
LONDON (Reuters) - Sorcerer Kevin Carlyon performed an incantation on the shores of Loch Ness on Friday, trying to lure Britain's favorite monster into the open.
Carlyon, High Priest of British White Witches, said he had cast a spell two years ago to scare off the monster so it would not be caught by a visiting Swedish scientist Jan Sundberg.
But Sundberg is no longer a threat, he said, and now the time has come to reverse the hex on "Nessie."
"I feel this one went quite well," he told Reuters afterwards. "There have been very few sightings over the last couple of years and the aim is to slightly reverse the spell so Nessie starts to pop up again."
Reports of a "horrible great beastie" have been emerging from the 200-meter deep Scottish loch for many centuries, often describing a black creature with a fat body and serpentine neck.
But it was not until a road was built along the shoreline in the 1930s that Nessie-watching really took off. These days, there are numerous web-cams beaming 24-hour footage of the dark waters around the world via the Internet.
"I personally believe what is up here is more a spirit or a ghost than anything," said Carlyon, who discovered his own paranormal powers aged five when he correctly predicted a school mate would fall out of a tree and break his arm.
During Friday's ceremony, Carlyon said he cast a talisman into the loch -- a flat stone inscribed with ancient Nordic runes and witchcraft symbols -- while chanting the incantation: "Let Nessie be free, may her spirit be free, so may it be."
Don't like her stuff? Try Ursula Vernon. She's much better and her subject matter is generally more intriguing. Jeff, this is the woman who painted Having That Dream Again. Her little bits of 'writing' that come along with the paintings are pretty funny too.
"The witch-burning sucked. I don't think anybody's gonna argue that. And they generally caught people who were completely innocent and just baffled by the whole affair. But what always struck me was the incredible pettiness of the charges. "I sold my soul to Satan and had sex with the devil in the form of a black goat, and I got the power to spoil the milk!" I mean, crimony, you think that if you're gonna give head to the Devil, you could at least get something useful. Ooo, making cows sick with the evil eye. Sure, that was worth all those Sabbats. Sheesh. If I'm selling my soul to Satan, I at least want France, or Italy, or the Pope or something worthwhile." - Ursula Vernon, Trismegustus
One of my favorite blogs (although blog is a pretty rough term for it) belongs to Domesticat, a friend of a friend, whom I met two years ago over frisbee and bastardized Uno. I barely know her, but I keep up with her writing just because she's good. I've linked to her before, usually over something hilariously funny she's produced. This time, the posts I'm pointing you to are a little more serious, but I liked them, so here you are. "You got me. I'm listening." "Hay Bales"
And that's about it. I hope this rain dies down or else camping is out. I don't want to wake up in the middle of the night floating down Smith Lake.
Current Music: 'Silent All These Years' - Tori Amos
Your SNAKE DAEMON shows that you are dangerous, clever, and disconcert others with your effortless power. You function best when left to yourself, as other people's minds work too slowly for your liking.
"I like to think of this project as a military version of 'Junkyard Wars'," he says referring to a television program about teams building big machines from scrapyard materials.
He said he would publish step-by-step instructions on his Web site about how to make the jet-powered missile, which would be able to fly 100 km (60 miles) from his home, north of the main city of Auckland, in less than 15 minutes.
The missile could carry a small warhead weighing 10 kg (22 lb), would be hard to detect on radar, and would be impossible for the New Zealand Air Force to stop, Simpson said.
"Obviously the goal is not to provide terrorists or other nefarious types with plans for a working cruise missile but to prove the point that nations need to be prepared for this type of sophisticated attack from within their own borders."
The New Zealand Herald newspaper reported Simpson had imported a radio control transmitter, global positioning equipment, and a flight control system, among other things, without encountering problems from New Zealand customs.
"We are aware of the initiative," a Defense Force spokesman told Reuters, but declined any further comment.
" Visual, aural, and possibly even haptic sensors capture what the user sees, hears, and feels. GPS, digital compass, and inertial sensors capture the user’s orientation and movements. Biomedical sensors capture the user’s physical state. LifeLog also captures the user’s computer-based interactions and transactions throughout the day from email, calendar, instant messaging, web-based transactions, as well as other common computer applications, and stores the data (or, in some cases, pointers to the data) in appropriate formats. Voice transactions can be captured through recording of telephone calls and voice mail, with the called and calling numbers as metadata. FAX and hardcopy written material (such as postal mail) can be scanned. Finally, LifeLog also captures (or at least captures pointers to) the tremendous amounts of context data the user is exposed to every day from diverse media sources, including broadcast television and radio, hardcopy newspapers, magazines, books and other documents, and softcopy electronic books, web sites, and database access." - DARPA
Scared yet?
Note: This next section is entirely self-pitying whining. I advise skipping entirely. Don't say I didn't warn you.
I don't want to go to the ASCE meeting alone - I'll fall asleep in my soup. I don't want to go the ESC meeting tonight because I might have to bitchslap one of the officers. I don't particularly want to go shopping, but since a pair of my jeans was dyed green by a flyer I left in a pocket last night, I have to do that too. I don't really want to go out with friends before the meeting because then I'll be even more upset. I want to curl up in my bed, pull the covers over my head, and sleep my way through to this time next year. Really, I just want to be happy.
