Formerly Felines for Anarchistic Green Democracies

A Bostonian at the University of Michigan.


There will also be discussion of the New England Patriots, Miami Dolphins, and Michigan Wolverines. Probably in that order.

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Blogging the Detroit Tigers for the Most Valuable Network.












the flickr photostream

Head here to see what I've been shooting lately.


the game sets

Head here to see the shots from a specific baseball or football game (or anything else I've made a set for).



Features


Spelling rant
Yankee Star Wars
A Tigers Comedy of Errors
How bad is Keith Foulke really?
Harry Potter and the Boston Red Sox
Bellhorn vs. Graffanino vs. Lamprey
Critiquing team slogans
Joey Harrington blogs a baseball game
Jason Varitek gets injured
Winter meetings fashion report
Mascot Rant #1
Mascot Rant #2




8 Days of Jewish Baseball
Day 1- Kevin Youkilis
Day 2- Brad Ausmus
Day 3- Al Levine
Day 4- Jason Marquis
Day 5- John Grabow
Day 6- Justin Wayne
Day 7- Shawn Green
Day 8- Gabe Kapler and Theo Epstein

the Story of Chanukah, Red Sox style
Part I: the cruel reign of Steinbrennochus
Part II: rise of the Soxxabees
Part III: the rebellion begins!
Parts IV, V, and VI
Parts VII and VIII


Image hosted by Photobucket.com
Fun with Roster Photos
Note: Comments may not exactly correspond to images, as the images will change when the team puts up new photos. Adds a level of surreality, I think.
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Boston Red Sox 2006
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Teams of the Cat

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Red Sox
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University of Michigan
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this is all


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12eight
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Firebrand of the AL
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Joy of Sox
Livejournal Home of Red Sox Nation
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Over the Monster
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Professional, Idiot, and the Tailback
Red Sox Fan in Pinstripe Territory
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Detroit Tigers and Lions



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Take 75 North
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I'm a member of DIBS!



College Sports


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iBlog for Cookies (Michigan)
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2632 (Orioles)
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Enlightened Spartan (Michigan State)
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Let's Go Tribe (Indians)
NYYFans.com (Yankees forum)
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Replacement Level Yankees
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TwinsGeek



Armchair GM (all)
Athletics Nation
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Deadspin
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Fire Joe Morgan
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Idiots Write About Sports (A's, Giants)
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McCovey Chronicles (Giants)
Metstradamus
Minor League Ball
On the DL (gossip)
Pittsburgh Lumber Co. (Pirates)
Rays Talk
Red Reporter (Reds)
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Gilbert Arenas
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Mike Maroth
Pat Neshek
Raymond
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the Brushback
Call of the Green Monster (Red Sox)
Die-hard Cubs Fun
the Dugout, chat room of pro baseball
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Ann Arbor is Overrated
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Scaryduck
Vitriolica
Whatevs.org
Mike Wieringo


if you are wishing to email the resident feline anarchist, you may do so at
bluecatsredsox@gmail.com


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Saturday, May 31, 2003  
Tonight was... interesting. That's probably the most apt description of it. I shall attempt to be more precise.

First and foremost I would like to say that the word haberdashery refers to an establishment selling men's clothing and, specifically, hats. Not, as Noah would have you think, a house of prostitution. This, folks, is why context clues are often misleading.

Anywho, I looked outside, and it was nice out. It's warm out, and the night sky looked appealing somehow. I got the urge, as I occasionally do, to go do some form of art down on the beach. Being a lazy bum I decided to not do painting or pastels, but rather to just do some inky sketches. Yes, I am a lazy, lazy person. Shame on me.

I had talked to Noah earlier so I stopped by to see if he would like to go down to the beach and chat whilst I doodled. He was amenable to the idea. We walked down since it was so damn nice out and it's not very far at all from our practically collective homes.

So we sat on some rocks and had much good conversation and I got a few pathetic doodles done. I had brought a light but I didn't use it because, as previously stated, I am lazy. So I couldn't really see what I was doing. Alas. The ocean was very nice and there was no evil sea breeze like you sometimes get. There's a big creepy old house there which is on an incredible piece of waterfront property but is in an incredible state of disrepair. We discussed that some. There was only one light on in the whole house, and it was illuminating this big round room with four big windows. One of them had a large, prominent confederate flag in it. Much mirth and speculation.

The tide started to come in so we headed back. As we were walking home, Jason pulled up. Noah decided that he desired fast food, so we whisked away to McDonalds so that he could get massive amounts of big mac and plastic sundae. As we were waiting in the drive thru line, we were priviledged enough to witness a fascinating encounter. A guy and a girl were standing in the parking lot, plainly in view of the entire drive thru line, yelling at each other. Suddenly, the guy began groping her posterior. Not rubbing or even holding. We are referring to extreme ass-grabbage here.

So of course the three of us in the car are cracking up. Then the guy starts doing something with the front of her shirt. It was suggested that he was thoughtfully providing her with a free breast cancer examination. It certainly looked as though something of that nature was occurring, although there was some doubt as to whether her health was the concern here. Then he seemed to get angry again, and he slapped her. Then he picked her up and tossed her in the air. Then her hair clip fell off and she bent over to get it and looked directly at Jason's car, where the three of us were visibly drowning in our own howling laughter.

Then they seemed to make up and there was more ass-grabbage. Then they got into two separate cars and drove away. All this while waiting for McDonalds to process Noah's order. I mean, we were waiting for a while, but still, it was a lot of emotion shifts in a relatively short period of time. So we finally got Noah's food, wiped away our tears of laughter, and continued on our journey.

Argk, I think I have to get up tomorrow, I'll finish this tale then. You can't wait.

12:22 AM

Tuesday, May 27, 2003  
Today was my absolute last day of high school! I am done! Never again must I attend classes in that building! Note how I avoid saying 'never again must I set foot in that building', because I have to set foot in it tomorrow. The mural is still quite unfinished, of course. Must continue work on it. So we're working on it during the day, when all the unfortunate underclassmen have to still be learning. I do hope that our paints and things don't get trampled upon between classes.

Pretty much everyone agrees that this was a thoroughly anticlimactic end of high school. Nothing happened. We went to our classes, and we didn't do anything in them. And this was the same as it always is. And then we came home. And I went to sleep. Not a particularly thrilling last day of classes. 'Course it doesn't help matters that it's in the mid to lower 50s right now. Most decidedly not late May/end of school weather.

The somewhat subdued atmosphere in school today may have been due to the fact that last night people did end up going to the back field. Reference 5/23 blog. They went despite the fact that it was pouring both buckets and cats and dogs. Not little cats and dogs, either. We're not talking about a few singapuras or chihuahuas here. Maine coons and great danes and mastiffs, that's what I mean. And pretty damn big buckets.

Er. Ya. So, people went to the back field, and the cops came (ooo, big surprise), and people left. Hoop dee doo. From what I hear, I didn't miss anything to weep over, so I am quite pleased that I stayed at home. It sounds as though large numbers of people stayed at home. Sometimes people are cleverer than I give them credit for.

In psych today we got to watch the spanish class's video, which they had to make for a final. Ha. I laugh. Our french final was to go out to lunch at a fancy restaurant in Boston. Silly spanish-taking suckers. Anywho. It was actually a pretty good video, considering that it had been knocked up in a matter of days. Also, it was entirely in spanish, and I speak only english and a smattering of french. So I was a wee wickey bit confused. But you could follow most of the action irregardless. It had Svetlana trying to seduce Andrew, Cassie crawling under a row of chairs, Kate gazing contemplatively out of a window, and Liz amazing the world with a long, smooth spanish speech (which had to be dubbed over in the video because Liz speaks spanish about as convincingly as a vache espagnol speaks french). It was funny.

Psych was last period today. On the last day. Awwwww. Yes, let's all begin weeping. Because we're not going to see each other ever again. Not tomorrow, when my entire english class is going out to lunch. Not at prom. Not at graduation. And never over the summer. Of course.

The topic of conversation in psych today: is your knee reflex located above or below your kneecap? I say, below. Why do I say below? Because that's right. Duh. Anywho, Jason claimed that it was both above and below, but we think that that is because his tendons are misconnected, causing him to have reflexes in unnatural places. Jessica and Corey were tested upon, and neither one of them showed any appreciable reflex above the knee. Case closed.

Also in psych today: Jaime v. Liz fight. Lots of slapping and shoving and misplacing of personal property on the parts of both Jaime and Liz. Much laughs for everyone else.

Ordered my season tickets for U. Michigan football! So excited that I am foaming at the mouth. No, really, that's excitement. I'm not rabid. I swear. Really. That raccoon bite didn't even break the skin.

I watched Adult Swim on Sunday night for the first time in ages, because, for once, I didn't have to get up early on Monday. I had almost forgotten how immensely awesome it is. They do these little messages between shows, and the messages are funny. One of them was as follows.

"In order to grow your audience
You must betray their expectations." --Hayao Miyazaki

... and that's why he won the Oscar.

I laughed much. Then I calmed down. Then I laughed more.


i'm sure this says something coherent, but i can't really promise you anything


Anywho, a few more random quotes from some of the shows-

Space Ghost: Who-o-o-o wants new slacks?
Zorak: I don't wear pants and I don't know anyone who does.

the Oblongs: It's not a school for psychos... it's a school for the pathologically high-spirited.

ATHF: You need a lesson in what I'm gonna say cause I'm gonna eat your brains.

Well, they were probably funnier in the actual shows. Now you're thinking that I'm sort of strange, confused person who perhaps deserves to be locked up in a mostly padded room with nothing but a ficus plant for company for the rest of my days.

But you've got to be awfully careful with those ficus plants.

6:44 PM

Sunday, May 25, 2003  
Guess what, folks! It's Kitten Week over at Scaryduck! Go check it out if you know what's good for you.


have some kittens for kitten week


Today I undertook the arduous task of finding something to wear for graduation, since I'm not allowed to go in jeans and a tshirt. Ideally, that is what I would do, but I do not have my say in these things. Alas. If we have to dress up for this stupid senior banquet thing, I'm going to throw a hissy fit, and it's gonna hit you. Yes, you. Right there. So watch it.

Anyways, it didn't turn out to be as bad as it generally is, since my mother and I decided to check a different area. So we went up to Newburyport. Thoroughly nice town, I enjoy it greatly. Sort of like what Swampscott would be if Swampscott were bigger and didn't suck as much. Newburyport was having some sort of festival today, although we didn't know it when we went up there. There were tons of tents around with people selling artwork and jewelry and clothes and ice cream. All the good stuff. It was quite nice. And of course it was very pleasant out today... warm, but not too warm.

So I had a good time. We ended up getting clothes from this kiosk run by this nice old Indian couple (real Indian, I mean, not Native American). It's all made out of this material called 'viscose', which is apparently some sort of rayon thing, but whatever it is, it drives my cats nuts. They can't get enough of it. It's a skirt and a shirt and they're obscenely comfortable so I hardly care what they look like. Makes me look like a hippy, actually, but whatever. If I can be that comfy wearing a skirt I'll be a hippy for a day. Although I don't own a single pair of Birkenstocks, so I guess I can't be a real hippy.

There actually were a couple of hippy-folk shopping there. They were awesome. I thought that all the hippys had aged and were now all either old hippies or businessfolk by now. I didn't realize there were still any young hippies left. But these people definitely were. They were going through this Indian clothing... the guy had very long hair and a big hat and he kept taking his shirt off. I'm also pretty sure that he was trying on the skirts along with the baggy Indian pants. The girl was also decked out in the Indian gear, and she was named Savannah. She had a little boy with her who was named (I kid you not) River. I didn't catch the guy's name. But my lord. Who names their kid River? That poor little kid is going to have such issues when he gets older. What characters. They were hippys in every sense of the word. A dying breed, but apparently not quite extinct.

We also saw a massive black dog that I thought was a small horse at first. It looked like a mix between a Great Dane and something else, maybe a mastiff, because it was much too heavy to be just a Great Dane. Great Danes are tall but they're not real massive. It may well have been a mix between a Great Dane and a small horse.

On the drive there, we saw a kid walking along the side of the road somewhere in Ipswich or Rowley with a guitar case on his back. You notice interesting people like that when you're driving along. Anywho, on the drive back, we saw him again. Still trudging along, with the guitar on his back, but in the opposite direction. I wonder where he had been going. Hum.

That's all. I am terribly thirsty so I am going to go get a drink. Damn you, body, for making these unreasonable demands of me.

5:40 PM

Friday, May 23, 2003  
Holy cats. We only have ONE school day left in high school. Ever. That's so bizarre. It definitely feels like we have more left.

Today my french class went out to lunch at Maison Robert in Boston. It was awesome. Glorious in every conceivable way. It was fun and delicious and wonderous good times.

Vlad drove our entire class there in his massive Escalade, since the entire class consists of seven people. A most wonderous class indeed. So it was Vlad driving six girls in this enormous car, with music blaring the whole way. And we were all dressed up in our various skirts/nice pants to go to this fancy restaurant. And Vlad was wearing all black and looking quite spiffy. Can you say 'pimpin'? It was the very height of hilariousness.

Yar. So, we met Madame there, and we had lunch. Lunch was deeeeeelicious. I had grey sole which was supremely flavorful and perfectly cooked. You have to be careful with sole, because if you don't cook it just right sole is a fish that tastes really fishy. You know what I mean. But this sole was done perfectly. For dessert I had this chocolate cake thing with raspberries on top of it that was simplement parfait. The maitre d' kept coming over and talking to us in french... Madame was there before us, and I think she told him to do that. It was pretty cool because I actually knew what he was saying. He told us the specials of the day in french, and I understood what he said. Except I didn't know the french word for 'codfish', so I got confused on one of them. But Madame didn't know it either and she had to ask him, so I felt better.

The conversation was interesting and varied, as it always is in french class. I think that we have some of our best conversations there. It's just such a good group of people. They're all pretty articulate, and even though I don't hang out with all of them outside of school, it's a very easy group of people to feel comfortable around. It also helps that it's such a small class.

And of course there never has been, and never will be, a teacher like Madame. She's one of those incredibly rare teachers whom we respect as an adult, yet we're completely comfortable talking about anything with and around her. Usually you either have older teachers you respect but won't talk about certain things with, or you have young teachers who want to believe they're still in high school whom you can talk about anything with but you have no respect for them. But Madame is both very much not wishing she were still a high school student, yet someone our class has no qualms about discussing 'not school friendly' topics with. Hum. French class is probably one of the very, very few things I am going to miss about this school.

Yes, so, Maison Robert, smashing success. A most glorious restaurant visited with a rather good group of folks. I approve.

I love how Blogger is trying to make more targeted ads. I'm not sure if you noticed it... took me a bit before I realized what was going on. Frequently or prominently used words in your blog are noted, and Blogger assigns ads accordingly. I've had a lot of ads recently having to do with comic books. This makes sense and it also makes me pretty happy. I mean, I'd much rather have Metropolis comics advertised on here than, say, some stupid 'people finder' service. But sometimes it doesn't quite work out. For quite some time the ad was for some book called The Anarchist Cookbook. Ha. Well, if only it were the Feline Green Democratic Anarchistic Cookbook. Then it would have been appropriate.

Hurrrrm. I'm sure there's more to say, I haven't blogged in a couple of days. School is nearly over. I said that at the top. Well, it's strange. Doesn't feel like it all. As I said before. 'Senior week' is coming up, and I am not looking foward to it much. We haven't even got a real senior trip going on, because our class officers and our class advisors are all a bunch of apathetic, irresponsible fools. So we're basically having barbeques and mooching about around here. Monday night we're all supposed to camp out on the back fields, right behind the high school. Bloody stupid idea. I picture it thus:

--Orangely tanned senior girl with badly highlighted hair: "Gee, why don't we camp out on the back field the night before our last day of classes? Won't that be fun? We can have barbeques and play with frisbees and maybe even *giggle* drink some *giggle* 'juice'!"
--Voice of reason: "No. That won't be fun. It will suck. Why would you want to do something so stupid?"
--Orangely tanned senior girl with badly highlighted hair: "Well gosh, it must be a good idea... every senior class before us has done it!"
--Reason: "That doesn't make it a good idea. Has it occurred to you that lots of people are stupid? Just because something is a tradition doesn't mean it's a good idea."
--Orange: "But it is! It'll be soooo much fun!"
--Reason: "Why? It's been raining the past few days. The back field is going to be soaking wet and full of mud. How is that a fun place to spend the night in a tent?"
--Orange: "Well... I know! People can sleep in their cars!"
--Reason: "Gosh yes. Now why didn't I think of that? People can try to sleep while contorted into unnatural and uncomfortable positions in their cars! Yes, a truly great idea, that."
--Orange: "But people will be having fun all night! No one's going to really be sleeping!"
--Reason: "And what, pray tell, are people going to do all night long? Perhaps you have no concept of time, because that's a very long time to keep people's adrenaline going so they don't get tired. I somehow doubt that you have anything truly scintillating planned."
--Orange: "*giggle* People can drink 'juice'!"
--Reason: "On school property? Oh yeah, now there's a stellar idea."
--Orange: "It is, isn't it? And everyone will be there, and it'll be soooo fun!"
--Reason: "Right. Everyone will be there. You mean that all your similarly chipper, tan and functionally brain dead friends will be there. If you think that the entire grade is going to be there, you are severely deluding yourself. For cat's sake, we didn't even have all the senior girls on the Powderpuff team!"
--Orange: "Well, maybe. But it'll still be fun! And it'll be so fun to hang out in the morning!"
--Reason: "Sure, with everyone all unshowered and with unbrushed teeth. People are going to be wonderous. Especially after romping about all night in the muddy field, eating cat knows what sort of barbeque."
--Orange: "Buuut... we won't have to go to classes! We can just hang out back there and play frisbee!"
--Reason: "What the hell is the point of the last day of classes if you don't go to classes? You've got all summer to camp out and play frisbee on your own damn time. What, you don't have any capacity for delayed gratification? You can't wait one freaking day?"
--Orange: "Uuuuummmm... what's... 'delayed gratification'?"

I then picture Reason beating the crap out of the Orange girl with the supremely powerful Beating Stick of Reason. Then the Orange girl's friends flee from the rampaging Reason like lemmings flee from whatever it is that lemmings flee from. Then everyone gets to sleep nice and comfy and clean in their own beds that night, and everyone has a nice, quiet, pleasant last day of classes. Hooray! Everyone wins!


except for the lemmings. i guess the lemmings don't win.


Ya. That's about all I've got say about that.

Going to go listen to Porcupine Tree. Good stuff, I assure you.

8:07 PM

Tuesday, May 20, 2003  
So! My old reader nemesis! We meet again! But this time, the advantage is MINE! Mwah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

I had to go driving today. That, in and of itself, is not too bad. But the guy made me do 5 freaking parallel parks in 5 different spaces one after the other. I practically had a nervous breakdown. Decidedly not fun times for me. I mean, I didn't hit anything, but it was extremely nerve-wracking. That may or may not be correct usage of hyphens, but I didn't so much as glance at the usage packet for this last test, so I know not.

I read the Kill Bill script today. In bio. And french. I finished it at home. Argh, I waste my precious school time so. Anywho. I thought it was pretty good to read, even if movie maverick Noah didn't. Go ahead and read it, if you're into reading scripts. But don't read it if you want to be surprised by the movie because, duh, it's the script. Tells all. If you didn't realize that, you're a Fool. But I thought I ought to warn you in any event.

Ooo! Good stuff here. New comic. Called Strings of Fate. I seem to have developed a sudden dislike of completely constructed sentences for a moment there. But the moment, it passeth. So, this fate string stuff. It is goooooood. The finished pages are usually quite well done. Some of the unfinished ones aren't so easy to follow, and they may be a bit... not so well done. But the characters are insanely well-developed and the plot line is gloriously complex and original. One of those things where the actual writing doesn't even matter so much, because the characterization and the plot are so interesting.

I recommend taking a look at the character bios, if you're going to read the comic, because if you're not used to them some of the characters look a bit alike, and it helps to know who's who. Also, until you get used to them, the names can be a bit confusing, unless of course you're Chinese and your mental sets are already primed for Chinese names. I mean, I know which name goes with which person now, but I've been reading it for a bit. It may be a wee wickey titchy bit daunting to a newcomer. The character bios might be quite helpful here. It might even be a good idea to open the bio page next to the comics while you read them until you get into it.

Er. Ya. Well worth it, I would say. Very well worth it. For all the right reasons.

And, I might add, it is infinitely annoying that the girl who does Strings of Fate (Jen) and the girl who does Tourniquet and Return to Sender (Vera) are both right around my age. Maybe a year older. But, as you may note if you look at their stuff, they are both much, much, much better artists than I am. Aaaaarrrgh. Good art makes my spleen hurt. But I can't stop lookin' at it.

Oh, another online comic thing that I've been reading for ages but kept on forgetting to post on the side with all the other good stuff: Scary Go Round. Funny stuff. It may make more sense if you start a story from the beginning and read it all the way through. The art sort of grows on you. This comic is currently doing two weeks of guest artists, so don't judge it from what you see on it right now. Although there should be some good stuff there, a lot of the artists I like are guesting. To put it verbaliciously.

I simply adore the fact that we have to analyze an interview we're supposed to conduct with an old person using the things we learned in Chapter 4 of our Psychology book. I love this because no one in the class has read Chapter 4. I also love it because the teacher has already collected our books for the year, and there's not a chance in Hell or Hades that she'd give 'em back. It's at times like this that I like to sing my 'Impossible Assignment' song in a sweet, lilting voice, filled with honeysuckle and mildew.

Impossible Assignment!
O! How I yearn to fulfill thy requirements!
O! How I strive to do so!
O! How I am thwarted at every turn!
Thwarted at every turn by the
Impossible Assignment!
The books we're supposed to read are out of print!
The library we're supposed to visit hasn't been open since 1876!
O! How I wish the teacher had taught us the information
Upon which this Assignment is based!
Alas! It is not to be.
And so we strive onwards,
Ever we strive onwards,
Fruitlessly struggling to complete
Our Impossible Assignment!

Yup. That's my song. I'm not sure what tune you should sing it to, because I'm listening to an odd combination of the Beatles and the Dandy Warhols right now, and that sure ain't it. But use whatever tune strikes most true in your heart, and you'll be all set.

Both the Boston Globe and the New Yorker agree with me when I say that X2 was a more enjoyable movie to watch than Matrix:Reloaded. And we all agree that Matrix was not a bad movie. It just wasn't that good. Whereas X2 was that good. Hmm. What is this world coming to?

Aaargh! The sun! It sets, directly in my eyes! I must flee this unfortunately situated seat like the vampiric feline that I am.

7:21 PM

Monday, May 19, 2003  
Ark. My wiley archive trickery did not work. Again. Blogger claims that they're changing people over to a new, better version of Blogger sometime soon. This, presumably, will have working archives. But I'm not entirely certain if this new version of Blogger is for all, or just for the paying folk. I don't do this whole 'giving people money over the Internet' deal. Call me old fashioned if you will.

Hm. I, of course, make it a point to regularly read ScaryDuck, because it is just so damn well written and so very damn funny. But I do notice something interesting. Either Scaryduck is making a lot of that stuff up, or my childhood has been disappointingly and unusually devoid of explosions. I certainly hope that this is just a generational thing, and that I'm not alone in missing out on all this vast, explosive goodness.

Last period I had health. I love health. I love it more than life itself. Life would not be worth living if I did not have health class to look foward to. The creepy, creepy teacher, of course, just makes the class. He has a creepy goatee, and a creepy mustache that looks too big for his face, and creepy clogs that he wears all the time, and a creepy way of sitting with his legs wide open on a chair.

We're in a unit on stress now. He was describing to us the difference between internal and external stressors (things that make you feel stress). School, for example, is an external stressor. He then asked us what an example of an internal stressor would be. No one said anything. So he said, "Well, for instance, a bad acid trip would be an internal stressor." Um... what?? Who says that?

Also today, while discussing coping mechanisms for stress, he leaned foward eagerly and asked, in a husky voice, "Do you kids have... active fantasy lives?" He then waited with bated breath for our responses. Since we all value our lives and our right to resist molestation, no one said anything. He seemed rather disappointed that no one wished to share their fantasy lives with him and the rest of the class. So he turned to the gym teacher who assists (hinders) in the teaching of the class, and said in a creepily cheerful voice, "Well Billy, I hear that boys especially often have sexual fantasies. Isn't that right, Billy?" The uncomfortableness level of the class went up another couple of notches.

Later in the class, we were discussing why exercise is a good way to reduce stress. The health teacher was kind enough to explain to us why running helped him, personally, to reduce his stress. Imagine the following said in a preoccupied, intense voice, almost like he's talking to himself: "If I'm angry at someone, then I'll tell them off in my mind while I'm running, and there's a sort of physical release..." He got all wistful-looking for a minute, as though contemplating the pleasures of fantasizing about telling someone off while running.

Jeez. What do you do when a teacher does something like that? Do you sit there and clasp your hands worriedly in your lap, glancing nervously about the room to see how everyone else is dealing with it? Do you leap up from your seat and run screaming from the room? Some combination of the two, perchance?

Or do you do what I do, which is to write it down as quickly as humanly possible, so that I won't forget it later on when I try to blog it. Naturally.

Class ova. (ending I mean, not eggs)

*edit* End of the day, in French now. Not much happened today. A rather wasteful day, on the whole. In psych we're watching the Breakfast Club, for undisclosed reasons that I'm sure have nothing at all to do with psychology. I doodled through the entire thing anyways... there's no need for me to pay attention to that sort of tripe.

There's a hornet in the room right now. It's pretty big, but it's just buzzing around, and I don't think people ought to be freaking out this badly. The computer teacher is chasing it with an aerosol can of bee killer. Ha! Lookit her go! Chase that hornet! Ooo she got it. She made the can let loose a massive spray, which hit the hornet once, and then it started flying around, and then all of a sudden it had a heart attack (hemolymph attack?) and fell to the ground. There's bee killer spray all over the computers and Maddie now. I larf. It also smells something horrid. Ha. Maddie is going to have to go to the bathroom to get all that bee killer off.

We went outside in math today, having nothing better to do. We sat on the grass. It was very hot out today, in the sun. Ice cream later, I am thinking. Anywho, Maura and Mariya were trying to teach Jess and Corey an insanely complicated Russian card game, so I was watching this. And I found an inchworm! I let it wander all over my hands for a while. It was cute. I washed my hands before eating lunch, though.


no one's shooting bee killer spray at this little bugger


Agck. Starting to get a bit lightheaded from this bee killer stuff in the air. I shall, therefore, desist.

10:27 AM

Sunday, May 18, 2003  
Oh kay... I just tried to fix the archives. Maybe it worked. Maybe it didn't. We can only hope.

Short blog here today, as I know that I've been posting long stuff lately and all ye who cannot read quickly might not enjoy that. I actually don't know, no one's complained to me, but I imagine, in my mind, that it is so.

In case you've been living in a hole this weekend, Funny Cide won the Preakness! The first gelding ever who is shooting to win the Triple Crown. Hoofa, insanity. I like him. I hope he gets it. Lawd knows it's been long enough since anyone won the Triple Crown.

I just underwent a good, solid hour and a half of the B3ta board. It is really and truly worse than crack. Mon dieu. Severely addictive yet also glorious.

Read the New Yorker today. There was an article about Dia, so I was happy. There was also a book review about a new book by this Margaret Atwood person, who I guess is a sort of feminist dysutopian writer. The end of the article mentions that this year is the 50th anniversary of Watson and Crick's discovery of DNA. I quote the article: "it was reported recently that Crick's wife, a professional illustrator, did only two scientific drawings in the course of her career. One was of her husband's famous double helix. The other was of a woman running."

There the article ends. I don't know. I find that inexpressibly sad. Hm.

Must flee like the hyrax before the eagle, brother desires computer use.

6:26 PM

Saturday, May 17, 2003  
Howdy ho, all.

I saw the Matrix again last night. Twice in two days. I admit that I would rather have seen, say, X2 again. But quoiever, it was a pretty good time. Other than the fact that Chris is probably one of the least punctual people I know, Jess and I managed to get into and out of Boston pretty much without a hitch. I have decided that the MBTA needs to have an 11:30 train during the week, though. It is no good at all having a 10:40 and then a 12:10. There definitely ought to be something in the middle. But anyways.

After we got to North Station, and after Chris eventually made his way over there, we headed out to the theater, which was at the Landmark Center or something like that. Near Fenway. A fairly impressive theater, but the actual movie screen wasn't any bigger than what we've got in Danvers. This one was sort of like what they've got in Revere. A bit glitzier than Danvers, but not really too much of a difference. I've been in a much more impressive theater in Detroit.

Anywho, we met a few of Chris's friends, and they seemed like nice people. Nice people are good. Um... yeah. Then we watched the movie. The tickets had been acquired in a manner that I would not exactly call legal, since all showings of the Matrix for that night were already sold out when we got there around 8. Crikey. It was an 8:30 movie, and when we went into the theater, most of the seats were already taken. Mass insanity.

Movie was OK the second time around, pretty much the same stuff. I noticed the computer animation in the 100-Agent-Smiths scene a lot more though, and it sort of pissed me off. I also noticed that the Maitre D'/Doorman for the French guy was Captain Braca from Farscape! Also known as David Franklin. I thought that he looked mighty familiar the first time I saw it, and I became sure of it the second time around. I checked online and lo! it is true. It makes me happy to see Farscape people doing other things, now that their very, very glorious show (which should not have been canceled) has been canceled. Ben Browder was a guest star on CSI recently. I smile.

I digress. So after the movie, me and Jess got on the T to head back to North Station, since the roads were iffy and we didn't want to risk missing the last train of the night. We got on at Fenway, and the train wasn't too crowded. However, we had forgotten that there was a Red Sox game that night, and when the train got to Kenmore, hoardes of people got on and poor Jess, who is claustrophobic, began not enjoying it. She was, however, quite composed. As opposed to some of the other people on the train.

A presumably drunken Red Sox fan had made his way on with his young daughter (maybe 11), who was sobbing hysterically. People in the train were uncomfortably looking over at her, because she was crying quite loudly and unmistakably, and saying things like, "*sob* How many minutes until we *sob* can get off?" Anyways, at one of the stops, another man tried to get on the train with his girlfriend, and I supposed he jostled the father of this girl, because the father shoved the other guy's girlfriend off the train. Eventually the girlfriend managed to hoist herself back into the overpacked train, and she was crying. The drunken fan took this opportunity to begin swearing at the guy with the girlfriend about 'trying to shove me off the fucking T' and other such pleasantries. He then turned to the train in general and announced, "This guy's girlfriend's cryin' harder than my daughter here, only she's 25!"

If he was expecting a sympathetic response to this, he was rather mistaken. Most people seemed somewhat uncomfortable with his loud and abusive shouting, and his hysterical daughter in tow. Gosh I love drunken, disappointed Red Sox fans on overcrowded Ts. Yessiree, I surely do. I found the entire situation highly amusing, but deemed it inappropriate to begin laughing out loud. My restraint is so very diplomatic.

Anywho, after Park it cleared out, and all was well. We got to North Station with plenty of time to spare, so we trekked across the street to Dunkin' Donuts for some delicious beverages. I got a lemonade Coolata, which is just lemonade poured onto crushed ice. Pretty good, though. Then we sat around chatting until our train got there. Chris called to make sure we had gotten to North Station OK, which was a startling and much appreciated show of responsibility on his part.

So, good times. A fairly good way to spend a Friday night. I have also decided that Jess is probably one of the very few people I could ever sit around in North Station with for long stretches of time and not be at all bored and/or annoyed. There are a whole lot of people with whom, through no fault of their own, I simply couldn't do it. I'd start getting all quiet and angry and I'd either simmer resentfully or I'd flip out.

Today I went to Ware Pond to see the goslings. There are a pair of Canadian geese there, and they have 6 goslings, and they are the cutest damn things. They're little and yellow and fluffy. The adults hiss at you if you get too close, but when they all come up on land to feed, you can get right up close to them if you don't do anything silly to piss them off. Which we did. I had brought the digital video camera, so I took some video of them being all cute and whatnot. Also got a nice shot of a red winged blackbird and a catbird. This'll go nicely with the egret, swan, and cormorant footage I have from Plum island.

My mother claimed that she had seen a big beaver-shaped thing in Ware Pond earlier in the day, but it wasn't a beaver because it had a rat-like, brown tail, rather than a big paddley beaver tail. I suggested a muskrat. First thing that came to my mind. Anywho, I showed her some pictures of muskrats, and she said that that was what it looked like. Now I greatly desire to see this critter. It wasn't around when I was there. 'Course, it may just be a great big water rat, but she said it didn't have a long rat nose, and muskrats have those short hamster faces. Hmm.

There were two pictures I thought you dear readers ought to see, but I figured it would kinder to the dial-up folk if I put them in one image, as opposed to two separate ones. This way you get all the knowledge and joy that photos bring to this blog, but you get it without the increased download time. Gosh. I've always got your best interests in mind, I does.


hello, i am braca and this is my muskrat.


Found a new comic for you people to have a gander at. It's called Elftor. It's very poorly drawn and often highly offensive and quite crude. But it's funny. If you're easily offended, I would not recommend this site. But if you think most things are funny, regardless of how offensive they may be, this site will offer you much laughs. Read more than one, though, because they really are all different. I haven't really looked at the other comics, Captain Suppository and Rabbit, you can check them out of you so desire, but those don't have my seal of approval on them. Only Elftor. Gawd it makes me laugh sometimes.

Planning to sleep nice and late again tomorrow. Maybe I'll get started on that now. Maybe not. We'll see.

11:44 PM

Friday, May 16, 2003  
I am in biology and I am very very tired and I am also hungry and tired and falling asleep and this computer screen is hurting my eyes. Did I mention tired? Very tired.

We saw Matrix: Reloaded last night. It was a pretty good movie, but it definitely was not the first Matrix. It was pretty damn packed for a Thursday. Well, it was opening night, but still. We had to sit in the front, and there were 11 of us so we had to save tons of seats and it was a pain in the posterior end.

There were some very cool scenes (i.e. the car chase, which was very heavily hyped up, but was worth all the hype). There were also some very Matrix-y scenes that maybe weren't so well done at points... the scene where he fights tons of Agent Smiths was OK, but sometimes Keanu got all rubbery and it became painfully obvious that he was being computer generated. The scene at the French guy's house was also OK, but when they were flying around you could sometimes practically see the wires they were hanging from. I mean, you couldn't actually see the wires, but you could see how they were hanging off of them pretty obviously.

There were also some scenes which were just gawd-awful. These were the sex scenes. There was really only one sex scene, and it was intercut with a rave dance scene set in a cave full of molten lava and sweaty, inadequetly clad people. And Keanu Reeves is gross without clothes on. And Trinity, if you look at her face, was definitely not having a good time. She looked pained. And they both had all those Matrix-connection things all over them. And they were sweaty. And people were raving. Our reactions consisted mostly of laughter and expressions of disgust.

There was another scene that wasn't technically a sex scene... this was chez the French guy, where he sent a woman a 'special' cake, that made her 'very happy'. To emphasize this, you got to see the woman's, um, excitement, via the Matrix, presumably as Neo sees it. Errr.. ya. Entirely unnecessary, in my opinion. There were also too many shots of people's lips all up close and whatnot. People's lips, that close up and enlarged on the big screen, are not nice to regard. Especially not when there's spittle hanging off them.

Then of course you get all the slightly bizarre allusions. I probably missed most of them anyways. Were those guys werewolves (silver bullets)? Those twins were supposed to be ghosts, non? They had creepy lipstick on. The French guy was some sort of devil? Perhaps the Devil? After all, his irate wife was Persephone, who, in Greek (or Roman, I always confuse 'em) mythology is the unwilling wife of Pluto/Hades/whichever one. The ruler of Hell, in any event. The Devil is French. I am somewhat impressed by the way that those Wachowski fellows predicted our current mass-Francophobia. The number of seconds they have left before something or other happens is 314. Pi. Har de har har. 'Tis infinite, you know.

Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) was played up a great deal, and she was barely in the movie. But I read that she is the star of the video game, which you must run out and purchase if you are a die-hard Matrix fan. I don't do those video game things. Her hair looked like that orange girl on Farscape. Secoza, or something like that. That's all I could think of whenever I saw her. I am a horrible, horrible, horrible geek and, thus, a bad person. I also thought that Morpheus was stupid and annoying.

There's probably more that I could say about the Matrix... hmm... lemme think... Oh, at the beginning, I had trouble knowing whether they were in the Matrix or in the real world. The key is, look at how they're dressed. If they're wearing nasty old Gap sweaters, they're in the real world. If they're wearing lots of leather and black sunglasses, they're in the Matrix. Yes, everyone wears the leather. Trinity seemed to actually be wearing some sort of liquid leather that had been poured on to her and then hardened. There is no other explanantion for how she got into that thing. Persephone, in the hind views, also appeared shrink-wrapped.


Hey Neo, stop your beatin' of Elrond, master of elves


Kate is looking at shoes online. I don't like shoes. I am happy I am wearing sneakers now, and that I will be wearing them inappropriately at fancy events. Ha. Take that, dress shoe industry! I reject your standards of cruel and unusual punishment consisting of unstable spike heels and reams of dangerously shiny straps.

In one of the southern states (probably Texas), a woman ordered a salad at Applebee's. The salad came. In it was a lizard head. 100% true story. You can't make this stuff up. Now, I've never found a lizard head in my salad one of the few times I ate at Applebee's, but now I am full of worry about this. Who knows what sort of animal craniums I have consumed there? Anywho, what I want to know is, what kind of lizard was it? I mean, if it was an anole lizard or a gecko or something, yeah, that would be pretty damn gross, but at least it would be a small lizard head. If it was an iguana or one of those bearded lizard things they have in Texas, that would be pretty damn disturbing. But if we're talking Komodo dragon head here, that's like finding a severed dinosaur head in your salad. I don't think I would be eating there again if I found a severed dinosaur head in my salad.


this bearded lizard's head is actually still attached to its body


Class is nearing it's inevitable end. I'm not as tired anymore, after the adrenaline rush of blogging (I kid, I kid), but I will probably fall right back asleep in english.

Sigh and alas and all that.

11:14 AM

Monday, May 12, 2003  
Bio AP test was today. Don't you just adore it when I start blogs with sentence fragments like that? Hoo ya. In any event, bio AP test. It was today. It wasn't too bad. By that I mean, it wasn't calculus. I actually knew a good portion of it. So I don't feel all depressed or anything. I am pleased with the amount of studying I did. And I am also pleased that I managed the entire year without cheating in any way shape or form. Not once. So take that, you cheating bastards.

The only slightly disturbing bit of the bio AP was the fact that there were rather a lot of ecology questions. The ecology section was the last 5 chapters of the book, and we sort of ran out of time in the class, so we ended up not really addressing them. They were skimmed over in class, but since I missed most of the classes in which we went over them (for other AP tests, bien sur), I was utterly unfamiliar with the material. Luckily, ecology is almost 100% common sense, and it wasn't too difficult to bull through it with a fair degree of confidence.

Oh yes, and of course it sort of sucked that no one had any idea when/where the test was this morning. It could have been at the school or at the town library. It could have been at 8 am or 9 am. No one knew. So we all showed up at the town library at 8. Desolation. Mark and Quang pounded on the library door (Mark, with his hooded sweatshirt, looking for all the world like some kind of mass murderer) until a cranky old library man came out to see what all the commotion was. We asked him if there was an AP test at the library and he was a bit short with us. He may have just been naturally mean-tempered, but then again, he may have been reacting somewhat poorly to Mark and Quang's admittedly dubious intimidation tactics.

Anywho, he came back out 10 minutes later and told us that yes, there was an AP test at the town library today, but it wasn't until 9. Seething with rage, many rash words were spoken about the effectiveness of the school guidance department (they run the AP tests) in letting us know these things. Some pretty harsh accusations were made of the particular guidance angel who leads us (ineptly, to be sure) through each and every AP test. There was some swearing.

I mean, just picture it. We're standing outside the catdamned town library at 8 am. We're waiting to take a 3-4 hour long AP test that most of us (i.e. everyone but Richie) fully expect to fail. We've just learned that we could have slept in for another hour. And to top it all off, they won't let us inside the library to wait. So we're standing outside. Where it's cold. Where there's a particularly nasty breed of drizzle coming down. And not a one of us has a rain coat.

Yes, our collective mood was one of sunshine and fluffy puppies. Anywho, me, Jess, Caroline and Richie went to Starbucks, which was good, because I got caffeine (which would, later in the day, test the resolution of my posterior pituitary gland's production of antidiuretic hormone... in other words, later on it made me have to pee. Gosh. I really did study). I also learned that Richie has an even worse sense of direction than me, which made me happy in an I'm-not-alone sort of way.

I'm off on a rocketship
Ecstatic with the view.

Glorious animation on B3ta today. I would only suggest checking it out if you saw the first XMen movie. If you did see that movie, it's absolutely hilarious. Leastaways, it was to me. I choked upon my own mirth, I did. Here's the link right to it, all convenient and such.

Today it was pointed out to me that a disproportionate (sp?) number of women on Survivor are named Jenna, or Jenny, or some variation on that theme. It sure does seem like there are a lot of them. Is this some strange sort of scientific phenomenon? Should someone look into it? Undoubtedly someone should, but it sure as heck won't be me.

just because i can...

boo ya! i'm on da map!


I am full of famousness. All you less famous folk may weep in your obscurity now.

Not to belabor a point I'm pretty sure I brought up some several blogs ago, but people are still whining that there is a lack of interesting stuff on here. And I know why people are saying that. To these people I say:

Click on the frelling links! That's what they're there for! Honestly. You think I put up these links merely for my own amusement? Nay, 'tis not so. If there's a link in the body of the blog, it's cause I came across it in my wanderings through the Internet, and I deemed it full of amusement/education/gloriousness value.

So if I say 'gosh dern it kids, I found a mad crazy animation today, here's the link!', don't come whining to me about boring blogs unless you clicked on the link and saw what that was all about.

Humph. If we were in Iraq right now I'd give you people the thumbs up sign. It's an insult there, ya know.

I figure that's enough reader abuse for one day, non?

I feel like I haven't been into school in ages. This is partly because I haven't been into school in ages. AP tests are not much fun while they're happening, but lawdy am I pleased afterwards. Unfortunately, psych tomorrow is in the afternoon, rather than the morning. This means I get to sleep in. But it makes the day soooooo long. I am not going into school, though. Technically, I think we're supposed to, but if those people ('those people' being guidance/the office) think that I am going into school and then taking a 3 hour test that ends up being 4 hours, thus extending my school day way beyond what it normally is, they are sadly, sadly mistooken. So to speak.

And I am going
going
gone.


9:04 PM

Sunday, May 11, 2003  
hi. no caps today. that's just the way that it is. tonight, i should say. helloooooo early sunday.

i've done much linkage on the side. it actually doesn't look like that much, but check it out. i've weeded out some of the sites i no longer think you deserve the links to, and i put up a new 'see it before you die or you will never rest in anything even resembling peace' section of links that you must see. before you die. i say before only because the availability of internet connections in the afterlife is currently a subject of much debate, and on the whole i think it's safer to see them before the fact, when you know you're going to be able to get online.

i mean, cat only knows, the afterlife could have some horrid dial up system that makes the cable connection of the living seem magical in its swiftness. best to do these things now. carpe diem, and all that. so go see those sites.

forgot to mention that corey had his art show. he goes to raw art. the show was good times. he's in the film program, so it was all movies. most of 'em were pretty good... some were sort of stupid but others were rather impressive.

there was a very good one featuring a cat. there was also a very good one about gay gummi bears, and one about this girl's grandmother which was very impressive, especially as she was in the beginner class. corey had a couple of films in there, including a one-minute movie about making coffee which featured a glorious semi-feline-themed coffee cup at the end, and a neat pseudo-old-fashioned one which had some very nice photoshoppage in it which i, naturally, approved of.

the other funny bit about the show was that a lot of us showed up to see corey's movies. so afterwards we were all standing about chatting together. ha. raw arts is in lynn. i'm pretty sure we were the single largest clump of white, preppy kids in there. more ha. swampscott is so very diverse that i love it to endless bits and pieces.

doom dee doom.

went to the beach with jess and liz today, cause it was gloriously nice out. they had been sitting at jess's house before they picked me up, and liz had been climbing on jess's fence and startling her neighbors, so jess figured that it would be a good idea to remove liz from that area. so we went to... err, devrow beach, i think it is. can't spell, but you know. the one in marblehead. we got ice cream and sat about and liz managed hit herself in the head with a rock. twice. oooooooonly liz....

then i came home and studied like a person full of insanity for the bio ap test on monday. i plan to do more studying tomorrow. i plan to not study much (or at all) for psych. hey, i've got my priorities straight, and i just don't give a pair of fetid dingos kidneys about psych. (douglas adams, please don't sue me. if you're still alive. if not, douglas adams' estate, please don't sue me)

hoofa. that's all. voon and good night.

12:29 AM

Saturday, May 10, 2003  
ha HA!

It is vaguely late night (11:50 pm after a full day of school etc.... counts as late night f'r me), so I shall impart some randomness and all will be well.

Saw an oriole in math today. Maura was looking out the window and she summoned my attention to it and my Sweet Feline Lord, it was an oriole. Very very bright orange (we're talking highlighter orange here) with black. Supremely colorful and looked like rancid fruit. I loved it with all of my debatably warm and lovin' heart. Didn't know we got 'em around these here parts, as this little fella was undoubtedly a baltimore oriole, and one would think that they lived in Baltimore. But this shore ain't no Baltimore.


no! you can't eat me! i will fill your stomach with rancid fruit poisons!


I found a game which is great. It is called Pedestrian Killer. Nice simple Flash game. You run over pedestrians. It is infinitely fun and soothing in a homicidal sort of way. I highly recommend it. I'm not sure what language it's in, might be German, might be some Netherland-ic sort of language. Doesn't matter though, just click on the car and away you go!

Fella from the FBofI gave a great talk today. He's the father of a teacher at our school, and when I say that he's an FBI agent, I mean a crazy, movie-type FBI agent. Special operations, more reactive than SWAT, dealing with drug busts and terrorism. He's got the gadgets to make Bond ashamed of himself. He told us a bunch of cool stories. I thought it was damn neat. Probably could have told you more about it in a more amusing way if I were in my right mind right now, but alas, I am not.

Trazan
Ja
Trazan
Ja

Ermm... today in calculus Sarah made hats out of the AP open response questions. They're printed on colorful paperboard stuff, so I guess Sarah thought that they would make pretty hats. It ended up being Stephanie, Meredith and Sarah wearing them, and they also made one for the teacher, but she, alas, did not wear it. It was quite amusing to see the reverence with which the AP test is treated in my math class. They looked vaguely like papal hats but also, as Corey pointed out, like KKK hats. Only light blue. With calculus printed all over them.

Senior show was tonight. Errr. Ya. Ja, I should say. It was OK. Some bits of it were very funny and other bits were horrible and stupid, the sort of thing that makes you weep in sympathy for the people up there doing the skits. Of course, this is my class, so there were also some that inspired no pity whatsoever, only a desire to maim and destroy-- a desire to maim and destroy yourself if you couldn't reach the despicable bastards causing you this agony.

Which you couldn't. Since they were onstage. But I digress into midnight insanity.

*burst of shuddering and depraved laughter intercut with exclamations in Swedish (of course)*

Pongfan, Noah's little movie spoof of the fine cinematic masterpiece Swimfan, was very well received. I had had a sneak preview the day before, and I already thought it quite good, but it is nice to know that the rest of the school did too. Most of the videos were actually quite good. There was one where they had people's funny answers to questions that had been edited in later. It also contained the story of Bryce (sp?) jumping up and putting his head through his own ceiling because he was having a dream about dead people in his room. There was an MTV Cribs spoof which was tolerably funny but suffered from horrible audio. And there was a very funny Officer Wrestler video which involved Dean tackling people.

Essentially, Russel carried the show, what with his singing and his turning very red in the face, and his voice-overs as God. There were other funny people but Russel sort of centered it. Dave as Mr. Kravitz, the environmental science teacher, was hilarious. Who else could have spoken of the dangerous effects of bovine flatulence on our fragile ecosystem so convincingly? Noah's 'get the girl' skit was pretty funny, but it suffered from a lack of mics, which meant that most of the humor went unheard and thus unappreciated.

The two worst skits were one about pie eating and one about Oedipus Rex. The pie eating one involved four girls with pillows in their shirts dragging two poor volunteers up from the crowd. Everyone ate pies. The sound system made farting noises. The girls backed away from the volunteers as though they (the volunteers) had farted. End of skit. Piece of shit. Hey, that rhymed. I'm a poet and I didn't even make a conscious realization of that fact.

The Oedipus Rex one involved Jason and Kayla wearing togas, reading Oedipus Rex back and forth. Kids in football uniforms watched them and heckled Jason. Heckling. More heckling. End of skit. I'm not sure if the point of it was to see the heckling or to see Jason and Kayla in togas, but in any event it is unclear why anyone agreed to be in it.

I am certain that there is more but my desire for sleep overwhelms all other less-whelming desires.

If you haven't checked out the Nightcrawler sites craftily posted in the previous blog, you are a horrible, horrible person.

Also, if you don't go see this animation right this very moment, you will surely die a death without meaning or purpose, and also full of embarassment. Dying when one of those stupid hand dryers in the bathrooms suddenly leaps off of the wall and burns your head off, that is the sort of death I am thinking of, if you don't go see this animation. It is one of the single most brilliant examples of sheer randomness that I have ever seen. It is called Ja Da and I would say that it should be a cult classic, except that it already is.

It's got a giant pixelated bunny, London, lasers, flying mackerel, a kitten, a sandwich, and incredible music even though I don't understand a single word of it (other than ja). Everything you could ever want and more. So much more.

My gawd. See it. With all possible haste and immediacy and other such things.

Wee wicky bit pissed at certain persons, but tha's OK. I hope they feel guilt. I love instilling guilt in the deserving. One of the few pleasures of high school. *insert pissed yet contented sigh here*

Hum de dum. I'm sure there's more, but I must run, I needs to. Check out that encroyable animation if you know what's good for you. If you don't know what's good for you, I do, and it's that animation.

G'night, don't let the rabid bed babies bite (cause then you'll need a rabies shot and we all hate shots).

12:28 AM

Thursday, May 08, 2003  
Good thing about today: took the calculus AP test, so I got to come home right after it, that is, around 12, a good two hours early.
Bad thing about today: took the calculus AP test, and bombed it.

Oh well. I guess I'll just have to take the good with the bad, n'est-ce pas? Alas for my complete and utter lack of mathematical reasoning skills.

Did anyone else read this article today? About the Bush administration 'quietly' relaxing some of the laws that keep church and state separate? Those sneaky little flange baskets. If you haven't read it yet go read it. It is highly disturbing.

The reason I zeroed in on this article in the paper is because we've already had a little taste of it at our school. A few weeks ago we had some people come into the school and present an assembly. It was on the subject of sexual abstinence, which is OK so far as that goes. Not necessarily a bad thing to have an assembly on in high school. The organization who presented and ran this assembly are religiously affiliated. They are, if I remember correctly, a particularly rabid version of Christian evangelical folks who are against sex, drugs, and also rock and roll. I kid you not. I'll try to get their website from someone and post it later.

Anyways, I guess they didn't overtly use religion in their presentation, because the school made them promise that they wouldn't beforehand, but they are very definitely a religious group. And their presentation was very definitely full of fakery, trickery, and flimsy biological explanations that any idiot who's ever taken a bio class could rip apart in minutes. If you have sex before you get married, you're automatically doomed to a divorce? If you have sex before you get married, a chemical in your brain runs out and makes it impossible for you to ever become close to anyone? I mean, come on. If you're going to be insane religious evangelists, at least don't be stupid insane religious evangelists. Or at the very, very least, don't assume that your audience is full of credulous idiots.

My point being that, among the other things these people did that piss me off, they didn't rely on valid scientific evidence of why premarital sex is bad to try and convince us poor vulnerable kids. They used religion and morality almost straight up, only they put them behind a ridiculously thin screen of wildly inaccurate claims, and they didn't actually use the words 'religion' or 'morality'.

OK, so bad, pseudo-scientific, thinly-veiled religious anti-sex presentation at my school. What, you ask, does this have to do with the lovely Bush government slowly but surely doing away with the separation of church and state? For one thing, this was a religious group at a public school. For another, this group is FEDERALLY FUNDED (red flag! red flag!). And finally, this religious, condescending, medically illiterate group is federally funded as part of Bush's education plan specifically so that they will go and speak to public schools.

Is no one else severely disturbed by this? Bush's education plan is spending money on these crazed religious frauds to impose their possibly-admirable-but-all-the-same-fanatic moral views on kids? There's a school in... Maine, I think it is, which is having to cut back its school day by an hour or so because they don't have the funding to keep it as it is now. Wouldn't federal money be better spent there? And besides all that, since when does the federal government pay religious groups to give presentations at public schools?

I shudder in anticipation of the future if things keep going in the same direction. We'd better not get another Republican president in the next election.

In other, happier news! The blog of Iraqi Salam Pax, Where is Raed?, is finally back after along and worrying hiatus. Obviously electricity and Internet access were rather disrupted for a time, but through a series of friends and contacts Salam has posted again. It's pretty good stuff to read. I have heard some doubts as to the authenticity of this blog, but I have heard a lot more valid sources touting the authenticity of it. Read it with a grain of salt if you wish, but read it all the same. It's definitely good to get a view from someone who's there.

In other, other news. Just in case you haven't read the previous post, I love Nightcrawler. You should too. If you wish to discover the joy that is Nightcrawler, I suggest Blue-Elf.com or BAMF Central. There's also a neat little Nightcrawler comic that does great justice to the religious side over at the Crawlspace. It's under the somewhat inauspicious heading 'Blast from the past', but definitely have a look at it, very very neat little 8 page comic, and the artwork's not half bad either.


aww. how could you hate that face?


That's all, as the brother is about the behead himself in his rage and desire to use the computer.

not that that would be a bad thing...

4:52 PM

Tuesday, May 06, 2003  
Aaargh. Back in French, and I have a rollicking thumper of a headache. Most unpleasant. But I shall endeavor to blog through it. I am such a trooper.

AP English test was yesterday. It wasn't too bad, but it was one of those things that's really impossible to tell, one way or the other. I could have done fairly well, and I could have fairly bombed it. Calculus is this Thursday, but there are no two ways about that sucker. Failure shall be my lot. There is no avoiding it at this point. I just want to get it over with in such a way that I don't get overwhelmingly depressed afterwards.

Jess's dance show was Sunday! Good times. Full house, and all that. There were three small children sitting in front of us who were bouncing exuberantly up and down in time to the music, making me strongly wish death upon them. I would have gladly made myself the instrument of their demise but, alas, there was a police officer just outside, so I had to content myself with merely thinking and quietly vocalizing curses in their general direction. One of these days my supernatural powers will manifest themselves, and then all small children had better watch their annoying, parasitic little hindquarters.

Anywho. It was a very good show. Other than the little kid numbers, the dancing was pretty impressive. The set design was, inexplicably, a giant sparkly gold star flanked by some sparkly sea shells on columns. The costumes were varied...some of them were quite nice and some of them made you wince. Jess did most gloriously. There was also a slide show of photos, and when Jess's photos came up we started shrieking and cheering. The only other girl who got a louder cheer was Alexandra, but that was only because her friends were, I assume, insane. They may well have been rabid and therefore unable to control their actions, but, by the laws of Occam's Razor, I like to think otherwise.

There was some crying at the end, but Ms. Lisa held herself fairly well, which was somewhat disappointing. Ms. Lisa, if you are uninformed, is the dance director lady. She has a very thick Boston accent and looks a bit like Cheri Oteri, and is slightly maddened when it comes to choosing music, costumes, and also when it comes to applying makeup. We had rather been looking foward to her losing it on stage, but she conducted herself tolerably well. Whether or not she broke down offstage I know not. But there was a junior who got up there to read a good-bye poem to the seniors, and she broke down, so we got to see some crying and all was well.

The whole incident with the poor girl sobbing on stage would have been a lot funnier, though, if she hadn't been standing near Mr. Anthony. Mr. Anthony is Ms. Lisa's husband. Don't ask me about the names. That's what happen when you work at Ms. Lisa's dance studio. You lose your last name. You don't get it back until you cut all ties with Ms. Lisa. It's like in Spirited Away. What is your name? Ginger Haley? From now on, you are Ms. Ginger. Seriously, everyone there is Miss Janie and Ms. Rachel and so on. Creepiness.

Right-o, I keep getting off track today. Damn headache, ruining my mind. So it was unfortunate that this girl was standing near Mr. Anthony, because when she started crying, Mr. Anthony started rubbing her back. Then he continuned to rub her back. The whole time she was up there alternately crying and reading her poem. It was Creepy with a capital C. We wanted to shout, from the audience, "Mr. Anthony, stop touching that poor girl!" but we felt it would be unwise to make a scene, and besides, she wasn't in any immediate danger of molestation, since they were both prominently onstage.

Ya. So, good times.

Then we went and saw X2! Oh, did we ever see X2. It was glorious. It was superb. Wolverine/Hugh Jackman was hot. The action sequences were cool, pretty much what you would expect from an X-Men movie. Nightcrawler, who is one of the few Marvel characters that I actually like in the comic books, was portrayed quite well, although disappointingly not hot (he sometimes is in the comics, depending on who's drawing him). It was very, very, very fun to watch. And the end was a murderously evil teaser, which only those who actually read the comics will comprehend. Everyone else'll just have to wait for the next movie.

As if you care, I have nothing better to do, so here's what I thought of the movie, character by glorious character.

Wolverine: much hotness. Also a pretty well done character, complex, pretty faithful to the comics, etc. Gets his bum beaten every way possible in this movie, but of course he is unstoppable in his bestial Hugh Jackman-ness. Good scene with a kitty. Kitties are nice. Also, next year I will be a Wolverine! Go Blue! And I only just noticed this, but the colors of his original uniform in the comics are bright blue and yellow. Those are Michigan's colors. He should be their mascot.

Cyclops: he didn't really do much in this one, mostly he was either absent or crying. He's fairly hot, but he wasn't in this movie all that often, as I said, and also Wolverine was rather more attractive. Yeeeeaaahhhh...

Jean Grey: cool stuff here, although the coolest was stuff I got because I know a thing or several about the comics, and I don't know if other people will think it's quite as cool. Also I was informed by the males who saw X2 with us that she was very hot, but I, personally, wouldn't be one to judge that.

Nightcrawler: as I said, very very well done, loved him to bits, I did. 'Course that may have been because I already really liked him, but I thought he was great anyways. Looked cool, sounded cool (we didn't stick around for the credits, but was that actor German? If not, he did a pretty mean German accent). I love the fact that they kept in the religious angle from the comics. But they didn't make him fuzzy. He's supposed to be fuzzy.

Storm: an idiot. Her role mostly consisted of standing around looking wide-eyed and saying things in an innocently confused tone of voice. Not entirely sure why they made her an idiot, but there you have it. Still, her getting-cataracts-and-making-weather deal was as cool as it was in the first movie.

Rogue: I wasn't sure if her southern accent was there the entire time. It seemed to fluctuate. Her character wasn't, in my opinion, anything particularly special, but then, the last movie was really more concerned with her than this one is.

Iceman: took me a bit to figure out that this was the same Iceman as in the comics. In the comics, see, he's all ice. Very cool visually for a comic book, but I guess they opted against it for the movie. I thought they did him pretty well, and he was kind of cute. Not Wolverine-hot, just cute. Also, the scene where his family found out he was a mutant was an awesome commentary on kids coming out to their parents. The mother says, "Bobby, haven't you ever just tried not being... a mutant?" and of course you could put 'gay' at the end there and voila! the movie takes on more meanings. I loves it, I does.

Pyro: very skeazy looking, but then I suppose that was intentional. I assume he'll have a bigger role in the next movie. Question: are they doing the Legacy virus in these movies? 'Cause Pyro gets the Legacy virus, and that makes him nutty and homicidal, if he wasn't before. (o my lord, I'm asking about the Legacy virus, someone kill me for being a geek)

Mystique: err, yeah. Naked. Blue. In the comics she's the mother of Nightcrawler... she abandoned him as a baby and that's why he's German. I wonder if they're going to bring that up at all. Also, in the comics, she's a lesbian, and she and her lover adopted Rogue before Rogue eventually went off and joined the X-Men. That was a pretty neat and long-running storyline, and also one of the few mainstream comic characters who was openly gay, so I'm sort of disappointed that they haven't made anything out of that.

Magneto: very unimpressed with him in this one. The only cool scene was the breaking-out-of-prison bit, because that was mad crazy coolness. I can't believe I just said that. But it was. You thought it was something else entirely, and then it wasn't. I won't say more in case you haven't seen it yet and you want to live the coolness for yourself. Other than that, he was pretty ineffectual. Also, his costume looked like crud.

Stryker: Ok, in the comic, he's a preacher. But they made the transition to general pretty well. 'Course you hate him, but he's got his reasons, twisted as they may be. Gotta hurry, as class is ending.

Lady Deathstrike: the only thing she said in the entire movie was, "What are you doing in here?" to a janitor. Her only line in the whole movie. Sort of disappointing. Also, she fights with Wolverine millions of times in the comics, so what happened in one movie sort of pisses me off. Alas.

The class, it is a-endin'. I trot. Stephanie wholeheartedly agrees with me that Wolverine was hotness. Ooooo yessiree.

*edit* Now 4:30, it is. This is sort of a long post but you know that you love it. Especially if you like to read my rantings about XMen. Anywho, I know that all who are not aware of Hugh Jackman's Wolverine hotness will naturally wish to see what it's all about, so I dredged up a picture and fixed the background so that most of it is hopefully the same color as the blog background, assuming that I guessed the hexadecimals correctly, which I may not have done.


my mutant power is hotness


Also just wanted to let you know that I am drooling in anticipation for Matrix next Thursday. The Matrix preview that was before X2 nearly killed me in its shining glory. I. Must. See. There was a gurt big article in the Times today about the Matrix, and I done read it all. I say so illiterately, so it must be extra true.

Today in biology we made bracelets. Good luck bracelets for our test tomorrow and the AP on Monday. They are beaded. I love it when the teacher does stuff like that, it makes the rest of the tortorous-ness of the class seem more bearable and worthwhile. My bracelet is extraordinarily lovely and full of luck and possibly some chi. Everyone else's bracelets are mere shadowy imitations of the splendor of mine. Except for Corey's, which shuns all pretense of splendor and is well within the realm of actual deformity.

Aaargh. I know this is a long post. I know. I shall go post some things on B3ta and that is all.



11:22 AM

Sunday, May 04, 2003  
A hand washed turkey... there's turkey for all... a hand washed turkey... this turkey's having a ball...

Only, see, you've got to sing it. It's no good if you're not singing it.

If you're too damn lazy to sing it yourself you may listen to it here. And if you haven't already, you are a horrible, horrible person for not doing so. It is glory incarnate.

I am going to start saying "lo shopkeep" when I enter stores now, and I am going to ask for 'a hand washed turkey' whenever I go into a record store.

Today, driving to the mall, we saw a very very small chihuahua sort of dog sitting over a man's shoulder as he drove his convertible. It was exceedingly cute, but it seemed rather unsafe. You know, driving in an open-air car with a small dog clinging precariously to your shoulder, and all that.

I didn't realize that Christopher Guest also wrote This is Spinal Tap. I tell you, the man is a genius. You cannot call yourself a film afficianado if you don't like Christopher Guest. Best in Show is one of the best movies I have ever seen, and that is not likely to change anytime in the foreseeable future.

Yesterday (or, well, two days ago by now I guess, since it's past midnight... Friday night, in any event) I saw Tron. A classic. The movie from which all other followed. Once you got over the cheesiness of the props and the '80s-ish clothing and the obvious blue-screenness of it all, it was actually a great movie. I mean, it took me a bit to get into it, but then I enjoyed it greatly. I suppose that I am so used to the excellent effects of today that it takes me a bit to readjust to the time when those effects were just starting to be used, which is essentially what Tron is. The first to use computer animation. And use it quite gloriously, for the time. Good stuff, if you're at all into scifi or movies, I suggest you see it, either for the entertainment value or the historical value, or both.

Also see it if you like South Park. I appreciate South Park so much more now that I've seen Tron. That show just never stops getting better. Moses has all sorts of new meanings to him, and I love it to pieces.

AP tests start next week. Hoorah. The only good thing about them is that I don't have to go into school on the days that I have AP tests. And I do mean the only good thing.

I saw Samurai Jack just now. I hadn't seen it in a while, and I had nearly forgotten how truly glorious it is. It is splendiferous (iron-like splendor?). Anywho. Glory.

Gasp! The news of the century! The old man in the mountain in New Hampshire has collapsed! Their state emblem-- gone! The most magnificent natural formation in New Hampshire-- gone! All that tourist attraction-- gone! My lord. New Hampshire is now destitute. I mean, yeah, there are still moose and loons and alpine slides and such, but the old man in the mountain! That was key to the whole New Hampshire experience. I, for one, am full of sorrow.


i am no more.


Go get out your New Hampshire quarters, and let's all have a moment of silence for the passing of this immense natural monument.

Moment....

Err, right then. That's all. I am going to go, I don't know, look at pictures of monotremes or something, and then I shall go bed myself down, so that I may awaken on the morn, fresh and ready to go see Jess's dance show, and see XMen. Both events have me in a positive frenzy of excitement.

Until then, mes amis.

12:30 AM

Friday, May 02, 2003  
Back in french class, bien sur. We're supposed to be looking at a website which is, in a curious mixing of languages, called The Monde. But alas, 'this site is currently unavailable', and so I shall have to blog. I am resigned to my fate.

The other day I came out of school as usual, looking for my mother's car, as usual. I find it is easier to get rides with her than with Noah since she is ever so much more reliable and timely when it comes to these things. I was looking for quite some time, as the vehicle was not in evidence. Eventually I saw my mother, but still no car. The reason for this became clear when it was explained that the car had had to go in for some work (a squeaking noise turned out to indicate a myriad of other, slighly complicated issues), so we had a rental car.

The rental car was a very red, very odd-looking Matrix. But it was kind of a neat car. The rental people claimed it was a wagon, but nothing is a wagon in my book unless it's got the third seat in the back, and this had no such seat. It had the advantage of not being as high as an SUV. Its dashboard, however, was very odd, consisting of this deep tunnely things that you had to gaze into in order to see the instrument panels. Anywho, it was very extremely red, and caused some mild consternation in the nieghborhood when we parked it in the driveway at home, but alas, we had to inform people of its rental nature.


i am keanu reeves


We have a Roomba! It's thoroughly glorious. It's a robotic vacuum cleaner. You put it down, tell it what size room it's cleaning, press a button, and away it goes! It's got a bumper on the front and can turn itself around to clear obstacles, like walls or furniture. You can set it up with a sensor so it doesn't go out doors or down stairs. It has patterns of movement defined by algorithms. It is great fun to watch if you have it vacuuming a room and that room has cats in it, because the cats have no idea what to make of this thing moving around the floor growling, and it makes them slightly nutty. Gosh. What did I do for amusement before Roomba?

In other news, Monsieur Chulsky is going to college at La Sorbonne! That's only the best school in all of France, mind you. Probably one of the best universities in western Europe! And Monsieur Chulsky is going there. He is my hero.

Yesterday, in art class, I was utterly horrified to learn that I had been the inspiration for a creation of my art teacher's. You see, she is making us paint mermaids. So everyone was painting these ridiculous Disney mermaids, and they were all flat, and they were all the same size, and they were all happy and full of bright primary colors. I hate assignments like these. So I did these vaguely nasty black-skinned, blank-eyed mermaids, with everything painted in somber colors, and, because I'm lazy, I only painted one big one up close, and I put some others behind it which were smaller.

Anyways, my art teacher was showing us all a new mermaid painting which she had started. This one is much the same as the others, only there's one mermaid slightly more in the front, and they're all holding kitschy-looking instruments made out of shells and things. It's heinously cartoony and, in all honesty, not very well rendered. So you may well imagine that I was absolutely mortified when the teacher said that she had gotten the idea from mine, with the one large mermaid. This had made her think to make this 'Shell Band'.

I would like to make it perfectly clear right now that, while my painting certainly is no great shakes, it is NOT in the least little way looking like what the teacher and others in the class are painting. Nothing alike. Mine is not good, but it is not as the others. Ugck. I shudder.

I'm going to go see if I can get in a quick game of Text Twist before the period ends. Until the next.

8:42 AM

 
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