Thursday, February 26, 2004
I haven't blogged in a bit, I know, I know. I've been so busy doing absolutely nothing during spring break that I just haven't had the initiative to blog. I humbly apologize to you, dear reader.
If you are unaware, a blog meme is a list or something that goes around bloggers and gets posted on everyone's blogs. They're usually heinous, annoying, and good filler for people who can't think of anything to write. I have scrupulously avoided them, so if you're not a blogger yourself and get all your blogging news from there here turkey you might not even be aware of this unfortunate phenomenon. But today blogging giant ScaryDuck used one, so I figure I'm allowed to do so. The meme is 'Set your media player to random and list the first ten songs that come up'. Here you are, then.
1. Living-room, Paris Combo
2. City, Mighty Mighty Bosstones
3. Two Points for Honesty, Guster
4. Rikki Don't Lose that Number, Steely Dan
5. Angel of the North, Tinstar
6. Desensitized, Mighty Mighty Bosstones
7. Everything Hits at Once, Spoon
8. Ren? Bouteille, La Tordue
9. Aspects of Spirit, the Levellers
10. Bohemian Like You, the Dandy Warhols
Now if that ain't some Mighty Fine Music, I don't know what is.
We had our debate in bio discussion. It was beautiful. The subject was Global Warming and the Kyoto Treaty. The teams were Greenpeace, Concerned Scientists, Skeptical Scientists, and Industry, with loose alliances between Greenpeace/Concerned Scientists and Industry/Skeptical Scientists.
I ended up being the head of Industry, since I had done the most research and was clearly the most rabidly excited about the whole thing. During the debate it quickly became evident that the two most vocal people in the room were me and the kid heading up the Skeptical Scientists. After the debate it came out that I had been in Mock Trial in high school (which definitely does prepare you for high octane debates, especially if you were a witness or a cross examination attorney) and that the other kid had been in Model UN. Ironically, in a class of mostly upperclassmen, the two of us are both freshmen.
In any event, between the two of us, we absolutely tore apart Greenpeace and the Concerned Scientists. Every time they tried to bring out a fact, one or the other or both us would refute it. Loudly. With lots and lots of evidence, from lots and lots of reliable sources. Our job was to convince our GSI (graduate student instructor, for those of you who don't go to Michigan) of our side. We had an uphill battle, because she was obviously prejudiced in favor of Greenpeace/Concerned Scientists before the debate even started. But we had so much information, and the people in our opposing groups were so unprepared for it, by the end of the class she admitted that, against her own will, she found herself siding with us.
IT FRELLING ROCKED. I was on a hyper adrenaline rush for the rest of the day because of it. It's been a while since my last Mock Trial meet, and I'd almost forgotten what a kick it was. Cripes, maybe I should give up on this whole art and zoology thing and just become a lawyer. Ha. God forbid I should ever do something that has a chance of making me money.
I'm sure there's more from before I left for break, but I'll be damned if I can remember any of it now.
As I said in the previous entry, the two big events before heading home were the Pistons game and the Envelope show. The show was a very good time, as detailed previously. I think I more or less covered everything I wanted to. I think I also covered the Pistons game, except to note that some of the signs were very clever. The big player on the Pistons is Ben Wallace (he has an enormous 'fro, so many people in the crowd were wearing fake 'fros). He's known as Big Ben, and every time he did something good the Palace sound system played a noise like the bonging of the Big Ben clock. There was a sheet-sized sign reading "Wallace squared= exponential horsepower". Because, you know, the Pistons symbol is a horse. There's also a player named Okur Mehmet, so there was a sign reading "Wait a Mehmet, a miracle will Okur". Durr hurr! Those crrrrrazy Detroit fans.
For those of you who follow basketball, this was the game where the Pistons accidentally played Rasheed Wallace and Mike James before the trade had been finalized, causing them to later get fined a great deal of money. Oops.
Another player who interested me was Darko Milicic, and not just because his name makes me immediately think of Donnie Darko. Darko's my age, and in the NBA, for cat's sake. Whoever heard of such insanity? And, if I dare say it, he's kind of cute.
this is a basketball player? blimey, maybe i should watch more basketball.
Since I've been home it's been a whole lot of sitting around and not doing homework. I did exactly one drawing that I was supposed to do, and none of the reading I should have done. Oh well. We also have a project due the Monday we get back for CFC, but I honestly don't know how she would expect me to do that at home. It's supposed to be a model, for cat's sake. How on earth would she expect me to get it onto the plane and back to Michigan? I see no way to do so. Looks like that's something that will get done hastily on Sunday night. But not out of procrastination, mind you. Out of necessity.
My computer is now super magically enabled. My mother decided it would be a good idea to get Airport, the wireless internet option for Macs, so that I could use my laptop when I was home. My laptop has an internal Airport card, but the desktop and my brother's laptop both needed Airport cards. Because they're both older computers, they also needed an OS update to be able to run Airport.
So not only is my computer now on wireless cable internet at home, it's on Panther! The newest Mac OS! It's quite spiffy. And I got it 100% legitimately, unlike you thieving hoardes out there (*cough*Chris*cough*).
Tuesday morning I went birding with my mother. We were trying to find eagles. We saw no eagles, alas, but we saw tons of other stuff. At the Chain Bridge in (I think) Rowley we saw a red tailed hawk and a very out-of-season great blue heron. Up on Plum Island we saw a merlin, a female harrier hawk, another red tail, and what my mother claims was a kestrel. I think otherwise. It looked too big and too dark to be a kestrel from what I saw. Whatever it was, it flew directly in front of our car and scared the kitty litter out of us. A supremely excellent birding day.
On the way back from birding we stopped at a little farm. They had a paddock containing a llama and a buffalo. Why any farm in Massachusetts would have a llama or a buffalo is beyond my ability to comprehend, and why these two animals would be living together is even more incomprehensible. I took some pictures of the insanity, and then we went on our merry way.
On Tuesday night I hung around with Corey. We ended up just getting hot chocolate and sitting in Dunkin Donuts chatting for a while, because nothing else around here is open late. It is always good fun sitting at the big bay window in the front of the Dunkin Donuts, because you can watch the creepy and amusing people pull up in their cars. We got a carful of young ladies who clearly were too sleazy for Starbucks, and a gentleman with his large lady friend (resplendent in shiny red track pants. Mmm).
It was the first time I'd driven in months (no car at school, I'll have you recall), and, other than taking the turn out of the Nahant rotary a teensy weensy bit fast, I did nothing bad. Joy! I parked so crookedly that it defied belief, but my actual driving was just dandy.
That's about it, I suppose. Tomorrow I'm heading out to Tufts, and then we're going out to dinner in Boston, so that ought to be highly glorious. If I have the time and/or the inclination, I'll be sure to blog about that when it happens. And I'll be back at Michigan sometime on Sunday.
So until the next, I leave you with a news story filled with awesomeness!
9:45 PM
Saturday, February 21, 2004
Just a quick note for you folks back home.
I'm in Southfield right now... fled campus yesterday. The stomach flu epidemic is winding down, but it's still not the most wonderful place to be. We had art school going off to spring break dinner out on Thursday night, followed by ice cream. This was after the 5 hour drawing class that ended my long and painful period of charcoal inhalation. Huzzah.
Last night we went to the Pistons/Timberwolves game, which the Pistons lost 87-88. Aargh. The Palace seemed pretty nice, and the fans seemed pretty dedicated. The people sitting behind us were by far the best... they kept yelling things like, "That Ham-bone, man, we shoulda traded him for a water boy," and, "Hey Larry! Get your head outta your browneye!" and other such pleasantries. It was a really good game, but I don't know, I'm still pretty much a football kind of person.
Earlier today we went to a glass art gallery in, er, some town in Michigan, the name of which I cannot recall right now. Anyways, it was the most awesome glass gallery I've ever been in. Ever. It's called Habatat. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous stuff. I'm not all that up on my glass artists, the only one I really had heard of before was Dale Chihuly, and they had a lot of extremely high-end Chihulys there. My favorite though was some guy named Petr Hora... he had some incredible red pieces that I desperately wanted. Voon. If only I could do glass work.
The Envelopes show was tonight, it was a bizarre but good time. The space it was in (the Detroit Film Center) is nuts and, er, very Detroit. The people seemed friendly enough.... it was mostly artists, and mostly young folk. I seemed to be one of the youngest there... I doubt there were many other college freshmen. But perhaps I was mistaken.
May I also make a small point for those Michigan natives who had been telling me that Detroit isn't really that bad, and that it is as hopping as any other city? /rant This was a Saturday night. The city was dead. Absolutely silent. No one was out. Now, you go almost anywhere in Boston on a Saturday night, and there will be people out. Fer crissakes, we get more people out and about on a Saturday night in Swampscott than there are in Detroit. That is not a 'hopping' city. Ahem. /end rant
My family, who had been threatening to dress like Sprockets for the event, were extremely pleased to see that at least one fellow did, in actuality, show up in a black turtleneck. So the artistic contingent did not disappoint.
Ryan Estrada was extremely personable and every bit as nice a fellow as his internet correspondence had led me to believe. A FRIENDLY ARTIST. Do you hear this, my fellow UMich art students? It is not necessary to be surly bastards all the time. I am certain Corey, over at MassArt, will also know what I am talking about.
The work at the show was good, for the main part. I had been worrying about my piece being too small, but it ended up being in the mid-to-upper range, size-wise. Woo. Ryan's piece (a series of translucent envelopes containing drawings of uncomfortable-looking animals, each labelled with a sticker saying "Biological specimens") was great. And by great I mean "well drawn, and giggle-out-loud funny".
There was another small piece which consisted of one of those schoolhouse frames, you know, with the little openings that parents use to put pictures of their kids in every year of their academic career. It had a series of little ink drawings of a child metamorphosizing into a fly, and said something like "Are you children being taught to love garbage?" My entire family got a kick out of this one.
There were some neat ones from Korea (including some garbage bags with an environmental message that my dad liked) and some from Austrailia. The fellow who does Ornery Boy had a good painting in it.
A lot of people did neat things with their envelopes, which was something I completely and utterly ignored. One piece came by owl post... the envelope had a lovely drawing of a snowy owl clutching a letter one it. Another fellow's piece appeared to consist of three manila envelopes, each with a postman character drawn on it. These were quite funny and appealed to even my non-artistically-inclined brother.
The main event, as it were, was the showing of a film. This was made by one of the artist's brother, who had been overseas in Iraq. So he filmed his unit and some of the things they did. We had some techincal difficulties with getting the DVD player to talk to the projector, which is something I am all too familiar with, as anyone who is in the ADP art lecture at Michigan will recognize. Not a day goes by (literally) in that class without us having to call the poor beleagured tech guy in to fix our projector.
Anyways, the movie, when it happened, was pretty good. Bits of it were quite funny. There was a good mix of soldierly goofing around, shots of burned out scenery, and interaction with Iraqis. Er, I will venture to say that some of it probably could have been edited out, and some bits were a little hard to understand what with background noise and all, but on the whole it was good stuff.
OK, this quick note is turning into something more and that won't do. Not on this computer. I'll do a proper blog when I get home, which is tomorrow! Yes, local folk, celebrate my triumphant return to Boston. Ah. Ocean. Cats. My own house. Cats. A city that does not creep people out unduly. Cats. Cats. It will be good times.
So more on everything when I get back. Until the next, mes amis, until the next.
10:36 PM
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Yes, I'm still alive! Mostly. Somewhat. Sorry I haven't posted in a bit, time has been a little hard to come by.
It still is, but I'm taking a premeditated break from destroying my lung tissue to post this. Working on my drawing final, see. It's charcoal. I have had the mighty and disturbing ability to sneeze black for about a week now. It rather freaked out some innocent fellows in my bio class this morning. "Are... are you OK??" Yes. If having your nasal passages, throat, and lungs filled with charcoal powder counts as 'OK'.
We had our art lecture midterm today. Hard to tell, it could've gone either way. The only truly dangerous bit will be the first short answer question, which I fell asleep in the middle of. Yes. In the middle of the test. Right when the professor switched the slide to the second short answer, I woke up. I'd written about half a page and had no idea what I had written down, but had to move on because he was already on to the next slide. Eeek. I hope it's not the stream of consciousness stuff I usually write when falling asleep in class.
In slightly happier news, we got our first english papers back today (finally). Got an A, got an A. And Mr. Professor Man wrote on it, "You have a future as a satirist." The poor buggers have got to read all those boring papers, one after the other, so I rather enjoy it when they get a kick out my attempts to amuse them.
OK, useless as this post, I should probably go work on this goddamn final. The reason it's not done? I actually finished it last night. Then I sat back and looked at it. That was when I realized it was completely and utterly shit. Completely. As in, I would have been ashamed to pass it in as homework, let alone as a final. What I've got going right now certainly isn't the best work I've ever done (since it's being knocked up in one night... I had class straight through from 9 to 7 today, so I didn't exactly have time to work on it any earlier), but it's a good sight better than what I had before. It'll probably still look horrid next to everyone else's presumably more legitimate final projects at the critique tomorrow, but at this point I am just going to have to accept that that is just TOO DAMN BAD.
Family coming up on Friday! We're going to the Piston's game. And then it'll be Saturday, and we all know what Saturday means!
ENVELOPE OPENS!
Art show! Downtown Detroit! Doors at 7, film viewing at 8! The Detroit Film Center! 50 artists in the show! And I'm one of them! I can't say this enough: If you're in the area, go to the catdamned show! I'll probably never get another piece into a gallery again, so this could very well be your only chance at it!
Ah, final calling me. Back to charcoal-inhalation land.
12:01 AM
Thursday, February 12, 2004
HOLY CATS.
Just when you thought they had made the last few truly great internet animations, they go and prove you wrong.
The links above are great because they are random, inexplicable, and irresistably funny. The only one that sort of compares to this new one is the last link, which is, of course, to nosepilot. This animation is great because it is disturbing, yet beautiful, and extremely, extremely skillfully done.
Gorgeous. That's really all that can be said about it.
Just, um, not for the kids.
9:32 PM
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Well, my finger still feels off, but I am steadfastly ignoring it and refusing to tape it anymore, in the hopes that it will heal on its own. I am the consummate optimist, I am.
Please tell me I was not the only person who watched Westminster last night.
Josh the Newfoundland wins Westminster!
that there is josh. his real name is 'champion darbydale's all rise pouchcove', but his call name is josh.
Ah, I was so happy. I really kind of wanted Bunny to win, but Josh also was a good win. Just so long as it wasn't the goddamn poodle or that hideous peke. Anyways, here are the winners, according to group:
Terrier: Coco, a Norfolk Terrier (she looked almost exactly like the terrier in the movie Best in Show, except that was Norwich, not a Norfolk Terrier)
Toy: Les, a Pekingese (group winner last year... a thoroughly hideous beast that doesn't even look like a dog. And watching it walk was just painful)
Non-Sporting: Miki, a Standard Poodle (group winner last year... blasted thing is supposed to retire after this show, and I say good riddance to him)
Sporting: Stump, a Sussex Spaniel (the crowd liked him, because he was low and slow and his tail never stopped wagging)
Hound: Bunny, an Ibizan Hound (group winner last year, named Bunny because of the rabbit-shaped patch of white on her flank. Her real name is Playmate of the Year, in keeping with the theme)
Herding: Kevin, a Welsh Corgi (he reminded me almost forcibly of Kevin the RA. Only, you know, without the piercings)
and of course Working: Josh, a Newfoundland, a group winner last year, and Best in Show this year. What a splendid event to watch.
The best who didn't win Group was, by far, the Pomeranian. They're all supposed to run around the ring and then come back and stand in front of the judge so he or she can look at them. The stand is called 'setting', and usually the handlers have to frantically wave a bit of food about in their hand to distract the dog so it'll stand still enough for the judge. The Pom came off its run, marched up until it was taut at the end of its leash, and set itself without any prompting whatsoever, directly in front of the judge. This little tiny puffball of a dog, standing proudly, staring up at the judge, was one of the greatest things ever. The crowd loved it. The Pom got fourth in Group, which isn't bad, but still. He should have gotten more points for being awesome.
In slightly more interesting (to those of you back home, anyways) yet still related news, the Tibetan Terrier came in third in its group. That's a Moxie dog, mind you. Maddie's dog. And the Keeshond who was in Westminster is apparently the uncle of Corey's glorious Keeshond puppy Cooper! The famousest of dogs. You all ought to go to Nahant to pay homage to his pedigreed glory. I would, if I was in the area.
I also hope that you all watched the Pro Bowl. None of that foolish Grammy business. It was the best Pro Bowl ever. The highest scoring ever, actually, with the NFC winning 55-52. At one point the NFC was down by something foolish like 35 points, and then they came back to win it. All three Patriots in the Pro Bowl (Seymour, McGinest, and Law) were introduced together at the beginning... warmed my little soul, that did. Seymour and McGinest didn't do anything much, but Ty Law had a number of good plays. What made me squeal with unabated joy, though, was Dre Bly's 32-yard interception and touchdown run. Dre Bly! The only Lions player in the game! Huzzah. Detroit representin'.
Today we proved that art students are all insane. Well, maybe just the males of the species. We were on break from CFC (a three hour class that's not even a proper studio... I mean, a three hour drawing class is fine, I can draw for three hours, but I cannot sit and talk about the Meaning of Art for three hours) and were leaning over the stairwell, as you do. Alex, in a burst of inspiration worthy of any art student, turned to Chris and said, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool to jump over all those stairs straight to the landing?"
Chris, being an impressionable sort, seized upon this idea with great enthusiasm. Megan protested: "Um, you guys? That's, like, not a good idea, you guys?" I protested: "Gee, I dunno Chris, that seems like an awfully good way to BREAK A FOOT OR A KNEE." Alas, our intelligent and logical objections were drowned out by the cacophanous insanity that is art studentry.
Chris backed himself up to the opposite wall. He took a great running start. He bounded off the first step and went sailing through the air, his legs tucked up and his arms pinwheeling madly. He landed with a sickeningly loud thud. He was on his feet, but he immediately went down to all fours, and only very slowly rose up again. He then limped laboriously back up the stairs to where we were standing in mute horror.
"Dude, did you see the air I got on that?!"
Well, the moron's foot wouldn't stop hurting him for the rest of class, and it appeared to be swelling up to an alarming size. He's probably got either a stress fracture or a nastily twisted tendon. I left when he was arguing with the CFC teacher over whether he should go to UHS (University Heath Services) or not. She was of the opinion that he really ought to. He thought it would be fine if he just limped on it for a few days. Sigh. Men.
Amusingly enough, this sounds like the sort of thing that Chris from back home would do, given the incentive. Perhaps it's in the name.
In other news, the mildly famous B3tan International Entomological Identification Mystery has been solved. A board member from England (name o'Jeff) has a pond in his backyard, you see, and he has a microscope, and he likes to take pictures of wee things he finds in the water. So he took a gif animation shot of this cute little fellow and posted it to the board. I replied. We got into a discussion which ended up being speculation as to what this critter might be. Both of us being mild zoology nerds, we had many days of debate and discussion on the subject, dragging in another biologically-minded b3tan named Sattamassagana (don't ask).
My animal diversity class has a website for the use of the students. This site has a 'discussion' section where you can post any questions you might have on animals, and experts will attempt to answer them. Cleverly, I decided to post the images of the mystery critter and ask what it was. The expert (the glorious Prof. Hammond, of whom I spoke in the Jan. 30 blog) replied that it was very mysterious to him as well, and he was going to send it around to some entomological specialists at the university to see if any of them knew what it was. Cue more debate, discussion, and speculation on b3ta.
Anyways, today I finally got a reply! It is apparently the larva of a tanypodine midge (family Chironomidae, subfamily Tanipodinae). It is predatory on extra-wee critters, and is quite common in most freshwater areas, both in American and England. The adults look like moquitos but are harmless. Hurray for things being given their proper taxonomic designations!
We have declared it the first use of b3ta as an international forum on insect identification. We are quite proud of ourselves for that.
I have taken photos of campus joys! Well, it's really only a small bit of campus... I don't have any shots of North Campus (the art school, music school, engineering school, some dorms, Pierpont Commons, and the Media Union) or of South Campus (most of the athletic facilities, including the football field and Yost arena, the hockey facility). I also don't have any shots of the two main 'store and eating' streets on campus, South University (the post office, my bank, Panchero's late-night Mexican restaurant, the Bubble Tea place, the enormous arcade, and other such things) and State Street (the State and Liberty theaters, the huge Starbucks, Espresso Royale, Steve and Barry's Michigan apparel, both Stucci's and Ben & Jerry's ice cream stores, and other goodness). I also don't have any shots of 'downtown' Ann Arbor (the real citylike area, with the expensive restaurants and stores and apartments) or Kerrytown (the even more expensive section of Ann Arbor, with very picturesque brick streets, farmer's markets, and a profusion of extremely overpriced handmade candle stores).
Um. So what I do have pictures of is some of the Hill dorms (where I live) and select bits of Central Campus (where the highest concentration of the University buildings are). It's not much compared to how much there is, but hey, this is a huge frikking college. I'm trying to give you folk a taste of the UMich experience, I'm doin' the best that I can.
Oh, the pictures are in this here link. They are all captioned for your reading pleasure, so be sure to click upon them.
I will try to get shots of some of those other places eventually, but we shall see what we shall see. It depends on how motivated I get.
Right, this blog is long enough. Until the next, mes amis, until the next.
10:25 PM
Saturday, February 07, 2004
I have not blogged in a very long time. For this I apologize most profusely. I was (am) ill, you see, and when I'm sick all I tend to blog about is how much it sucks to be sick. It sucks a great deal, my friends, it sucks a great deal. But much has occurred, and I figured that if I waited to blog until I was entirely healthy, there might never be another blog again. And that would be a sadness.
So.
PATRIOTS WIN THE SUPERBOWL!
Yes, I know I am a little late with that. But, as I said, illness. Anyways, it was a gloriously good game, despite the slowness of the first half. Vinatieri made all Pats fans want to kill him (who misses those kinds of kicks?), but he redeemed himself when he made the one that mattered. Still, if he'd made the earlier ones, maybe it wouldn't have had to come down to a kick like that mutter mutter mutter.
Bruschi played, which made me happy, since I was still a little worried about his leg injury. Brady was his usual steadfast self, and the offensive line did quite a good job of protecting him (as opposed to the Panthers line, since Delhomme was sacked several times). Vrabel got a touchdown, which made me unaccountably happy. And that slow first half served to show that this was a good SuperBowl win. It wasn't as though the Pats were playing some throw-away team, the Panthers were a team that could play them to a standstill for an entire half. That's some damn fine football there, folks.
I probably could have put in better analysis if I'd blogged right after the game, but at that point I was already sick, and all the screaming I'd done during the game left me in no condition to blog. Ah well.
if that isn't a beautiful sight, i don't know what is
image courtesy of nfl.com
The night before the SuperBowl Heather and I went to the midnight showing of Donnie Darko at the State Theater. It was incredible. We got there early and thusly got good seats. We kept looking for other art students in the crowd, but we only saw one other, and he wasn't one whom we personally knew. We were very disappointed in the art student community as a whole for missing such a typically art studenty experience. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Anyways, the movie was spectacularly good, as one would expect. It's the sort of storyline that resolves itself in such a way that you find yourself thinking that the script writers were as surprised by how things tied in at the end as the audience was. Wow. That sentence barely made sense. Illness still present in my brain. Also in the number of tissues being used and the way my entire head feels like it's wrapped in cotton.
The best bit about Donnie Darko was how the entire first reel (therefore the first 20 minutes of the movie) was backwards and upside down. Something about the reel being messed up. Anyways, it put a whole new spin on the film and, in my esteemed opinion, made it several hundred times better. People's mouths started looking like eyes, and the road looked like some demented kind of ceiling, and everyone went backwards. Oh, it was most wonderous.
The crowd was, if lacking in art students, full of all kinds of insane people. One fine fellow had a shirt on which read 'Crew of the Enterprise'. There were people with every hair style and color you can imagine. Some people had stuff on their heads that you assumed was hair because it was still there when they took their hats off, although there was no other confirming evidence. A great many people were high when they got to the theater, and a number of people contrived to get high while they were in the theater. Apparently Donnie Darko translates well under the influence of various mildly hallucinogenic drugs.
Some of these people interacted most amusingly with the entirely sober Heather and me. The people in front of us kept turning around to talk to us, and the people behind us had all sorts of odd conversations about chewing gum. After the movie a gentleman came up to us and asked, very politely, if we could drive him back to his apartment, as he had smoked himself right out of driving condition. We just as politely declined, since we hadn't driven to the theater.
Overall, a thoroughly excellent moviegoing experience.
Our current project in CFC class is to make a tshirt that makes people want to vote. I had a design with a missile that said "You can't complain about it if you don't vote", but I discarded that idea because I can't draw in Illustrator and the missile was shit. So I changed it a purely text one that said "VOTE or the small middle-eastern country gets it!" Better, we hope.
If you are looking for things on the Internet to make you laugh, I have such things.
Here is a fellow who did not study for his chemistry final. He decided to make things interesting anyways. And we reap the benefits!
Joel Veitch continues to be obscenely awesome, even though he is now a money-making big shot who makes commercials for Quizno's and VH1. Here is a short, cleverly worded, highly pleasing little animation about mango biscuits, and the pandas who yearn for them. Woo.
I don't really know what the heck is going on here, but it's ace. The animation is pretty long, so dial uppers be warned! But worth it, utterly worth it. The song is more or less about a fucking dwarf, but don't let that stop you. The dancing mushroom was my favorite bit.
Continuing the theme of longish animations with songs, we have this little gem. The song is by a band called Small Faces, and I'd never heard of them, but lots of folks on b3ta seem to know them, so perhaps it's a british thing. Compared to the last one, this is much more cheery and whimsical, both in song and animation style. Starring a potato-like creature.
An extremely restful game, where you're in charge of a submarine. You float around and look at things. Restful music plays. Easy, nice, no point to it really, other than to be nice and relaxing. I enjoy it greatly. Go here, and have fun.
A personal achievement. I finally got to 1000 posts on b3ta. Huzzah! Here you may see my triumphant, if somewhat lame, 1000th post thread. At least, you can see it until ukdragon takes down the image. Should be there for a couple of days, at least.
These are some of the funniest things I've ever read. They're the Random Student Interviews that the Michigan Daily does. For cats sake, go read them. Read them all. Some are funnier than others, depending on the interviewer and/or interviewee, but the vast majority of them are frelling hilarious. Go read. Right now. All of them.
Today I had the joy of having to shower in the 5th floor bathrooms. This was because there was a Hazmat team in our bathroom. Yes, a Hazmat team. Men in those white containment suits and all. They also had some cleansing device or other that kept blowing a fuse in the hall, plunging us into occasional darkness.
Why, you ask, was there a Hazmat team in your bathroom? You see, there is currently an epidemic of stomach flu going around the University of Michigan. This is a lovely virulent disease involving copious vomiting, diarrhea, cramping, fever, and general you're-not-going-anywhere-other-than-your-bed-and-the-bathroom-for-a-week-ness. If you get it you may not die, but you will want to. It started in Markley (the filthy bastards, no one was surprised), and despite the university's best efforts to contain it, it soon spread.
To MoJo. This was probably because lots of kids from Markley started going to Stockwell and MoJo to eat, since they didn't feel safe eating in their own dining hall anymore. Reasonable, maybe, but their coming over means that the slimy gits infected us.
Anyways, someone apparently vomited in our bathroom last night. It was probably just a drunk person. Loud Sarah had people around very late last night, so it might have been one of them. However, some of them were from Markley, so there's also a chance that one of them had the flu. Elisa, who lives next door to me, actually has the stomach flu but was, thankfully, at home this weekend. We love her to bits, but we're praying she'll stay there for a while. Her roommate, Sara, is flipping out about the possibility of getting sick. Anywho, there was a chance that it could be someone with stomach flu, so Hazmat was called in. The whole place was stripped and disinfected, and now we've got a toilet stall that's marked off with signs declaring it to be the 'sick person stall'. We also now have a cordoned-off shower for sick kids to use.
Which is problematic, because there are only two showers in our bathroom, and now there's only one that non-flu-afflicted folk may use. I don't know what the heck is going to happen in the morning during the week.
Pretty much everyone is going insane over this epidemic. The place where you swipe your card to get food at Stockwell has this little pump of antibacterial hand goo, and you've got to take some in order to get food. Damn good idea. Everyone on my hall has become an obsessive hand washer (myself included). I just did all the laundry I could possibly do today, including bed sheets and sitting futon sheets. I also washed all dishes and mugs.
See, this is the sort of thing where, if I catch it, I am Doomed with a capital D. Lots of people here, if they catch it, yes they'll be miserable, but they can go home and be miserable. Not something I can do. I'd have to stay here in the dorm and be miserable. Lord only knows how I'd even survive. Also, I would miss class. If my classes were all just lectures that would be OK, I could get the notes off of someone and that would be that. But you can't miss studio art classes. You just can't. They're one-time things that can't be made up. If I missed more than one of each class I would start failing. And there wouldn't be anything I could make up, really, because it doesn't work that way.
So I am stressing out over this illness, and that's probably making me more open to illness, and probably also stopping me from shaking off this Cold of Death that has me in it's fangs right now. Oh dear.
Oh, I was reading Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Normally I am wary of books by two authors, but this one was above and beyond even my tentatively good expectations. Gaiman and Pratchett are better known for their work on the odd and devoutly followed comic book, Sandman. I've read some Sandman, and this was completely different. It was a highly excellent book. Very much in the style of Douglas Adams (may his memory be forever untarnished). Very funny, very engaging, very well-written. The two main characters, Aziraphale and Crowley, just might be two of the best literary characters ever created. I love these guys. Lots. Go get the book! Read it! Only illiterates will not like it.
The one thing that confused me for a little bit was the ansaphone. I didn't know what it was, and it took me a bit to figure it out. It's an answering machine. Answer phone, ansaphone, see. I'm pretty good with british slang, since I spend some time on b3ta and read Scaryduck, but I hadn't run across ansaphone until Good Omens. Anyways, now you know, so there's nothing to stop you from rushing out right this very moment and getting the book.
Oh, and in other news, I had my finger broken for me. Dislocated, I think, actually. It's the pinky on my left hand, so it's not terribly bad, except for typing. A gentleman closed the door leading to the outside of my dorm very inexplicably fast, without looking behind him, and my poor digit paid the price. I had it taped up yesterday because it was hurting like silly buggers, and I'm trying it without tape today. Still quite sore and not moving properly. We'll see how it's doing tomorrow.
I'm sure there's more that happened that I wanted to blog about, but I've dredged my mind, and that's all I've got. Until the next.
Pray for my health.
10:10 PM
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