Why, I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!

Why was I not informed?
You’re fired, all of you. I came across this picture whilst hunting for something completely unrelated. Sources tell me it’s from King Arthur. There are double swords. And armor. And horses. And Ioan Gruffudd. How have I not seen this movie yet?? Why didn’t you tell me of the brilliance?? This situation must be rectified.

“Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster,
and if you gaze into the Abyss, the Abyss gazes also into you.”
Is it just me, or is the fact that Fredrich Nietzche said that inutterably ironic? It’s very thought-provoking.

I think I need to look into these books.

Shut up, I am working on the future I either want to be this person’s friend or to run away.

“What do you despise? By this you are truly known.” – Dune by Frank Herbert

“Is your religion real when it costs you nothing and carries no risk? Is your religion real when you fatten upon it? Is your religion real when you commit atrocities in its name? Whence comes your downward degeneration from the original revelation?” – Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

The word of the day is vituperation!

Today being the Last Day of UB, I am relaxing at home, which explains why I actually have time to post!

I finally looked up the correct pronunciation for the word “neither” (or either). Turns out it is equally acceptable to pronounce it neether or nyther, though most Americans use neether. Britains prefer nyther as pronouncing it neether is considered “a trifle underbred”, and regions of the US with closer ties to the UK (such as New England), still retain the nyther pronunciation. Now you know!

I have a rather irritating feeling of impending calamity. I think it might be because I had horrible, bloody, mind-shattering dreams last night, but it’s still a mite disconcerting. *looks up* Well, the sky hasn’t fallen yet! Keep your fingers crossed.

Livejournal is letting you become a “sponsored account”, meaning you get some of the perks of a paid account, but you have ads on your journal. Hmm…to sponsor or not to sponsor, that is the question! If you type the word “sponsor” too often, it starts to look really funny! But anyway, I love that I would be able to have 15 userpics (I have a thing for userpics, you may have noticed), and I could have a handy LJ photo album thing, which would be…handy. But, ads. Decisions, decisions.

Oh, this is awesome. There’s a note on our kitchen counter that says, “Buy time this week.” I was simultaneously confuzzled and elated, until I realized that Mom wanted to buy a copy of Time magazine. I still like it!

I just realized that I have used the “randomosity” tag on almost every single entry. Is this some sort of deep commentary on my life?

Oh, how have I managed not to talk about this?? I am watching the Horatio Hornblower movies! For English! It’s like a double helping of joy on a plate! Pardon my fangirlishness, but I love these movies SO MUCH, you have no idea. Everyone should read the books, and then see them, immediately. I have VIII left to watch, and then I’m done. I don’t want it to end…they need to make more. Ioan Gruffudd (pronounced approximately Yo-wahn Griffith, for you none-Welsh-speaking folk out there) is, as you might have guessed, Welsh, which only increases his inherent Horatio Hornblower coolness. Seriously, how many people do you know who can wear those hats and not look dumb? Not many, that’s how many.

Kick at the darkness ‘till it bleeds daylight

RAGE. Oooooh, that new Ten Commandments movie is horrible. HORRIBLE. The first half had some Biblical inaccuracies, yes, similar to the old Ten Commandments movie, which had its own foibles. But OH MY, the last half. SO. INACCURATE. *growls* I’m not even going to enumerate the myriad blasphemous changes they put into this story, just YARGH! If it weren’t dark, I’d go shoot something. *fumes*

If there was anything else I was going to add, it was lost somewhere in the rampaging ire.

Edit: Also, that was the wussiest-looking pharoah ever. I’m just saying. Yul Brynner would mop the floor with you, Mr. Eyeliner.

I just heard my mother say, “I need to buy some manly thank-you-note cards.” I think it was in the context of Ed needing to send a thank-you note to someone, but still. *shakes head*

Shopping is highly overrated, and that’s all I’m saying on the subject.

Speaking of dreams, although I don’t think I was, when I was working at the deli I would have these annoying work-related dreams. Oftentimes VERY prosaic, like in my dream I suddenly realized the customer wanted 2 pounds of shaved turkey and not 3, which is of course A Disaster. But now, especially lately, I have school-related dreams. Only they’re not stress-filled nightmares about failing tests or forgetting to do homework; no, no, nothing so mundane. They’re always about part of the group and some crazy-fun or crazy-scary or crazy-cool adventures! And that’s really so, so much better than shaved turkey. What happens when I start work at Staples? Will I dream of copier ink?? Ghastly.

It’s the Days of Unleavened Bread! And I am currently munching on, you guessed it, unleavened bread! Mom makes the bestest unleavened bread ever, ’tis wonderful. We had the Night To Be Much Observed at the Wulfs’ house this year, and boy howdy can those folks cook. A wonderful time was had by all, as always! I am thoroughly enjoying my break thus far.

I don’t think I brought enough reading material home. I know, this is catastrophic, just take deep breaths and calm down… I finished Mariel of Redwall on Wednesday, read all of Lost in Space on Thursday, and started The Iliad today because that was about all I had. Can’t go wrong with ancient epics anyway.

Seeing Dark Kingdom the other day has re-sparked my interest in the Norse sagas, especially the Volsung saga. I need to reread some of those. The movie itself was good (albeit with a few icky bits) and stuck to the story more or less, which was cool. Plus, the armor! And the swords! And the braids! And the funeral ship burning, and the torqs, and the axes, and the runes, and hello, Brunnhild = awesome. I thought it was funny that they advertised the show as being the precursor to LotR and Narnia and stuff. Tolkien loved the Norse mythology, but when someone asked if he got his ideas from them he said (of his ring and the Ring of the Niebelungs), “They are both round, and there the resemblance ceased.”

I saw the word “hellshine” in a book yesterday, and I think I shall use it one day.

Now go to bed! I shall as well.

And if you complain once more, you’ll meet an army of me

If you ever get close to a human
And human behaviour
Be ready to get confused
There’s definitely no logic
To human behaviour
But yet so irresistible
There’s no map
To human behaviour
They’re terribly moody
Then all of a sudden turn happy
But, oh, to get involved in the exchange
Of human emotions is ever so satisfying
There’s no map
And a compass
Wouldn’t help at all
Human behaviour

Yup, on a Bjork kick lately.

Last night I dreamed that Sarah, Matt, Luke, Johnathan, and I and maybe a couple other people (it got hazy) were all somehow stranded in North Dakota, and it was sort of like the Old West. We were working to earn money at some saloon/general store type place so that we could get passage on the trains back east, because there was a contest there for building the best bridge, and we were convinced our design would win. We built a huge, beautiful Lego bridge, although why we did this when we wanted to get it to the east by train, I don’t know. I swept floors ALL the time to earn money while the others ran around and did other jobs. Luke had a job scouting out the land and exploring through some swamp, I think. Indians might have been involved. At the saloon/store there was some sort of game thing about guessing how many gold coins were in this huge crate in the store, and if you guessed right you got all the gold coins. Sarah concocted some sort of brilliant mathematical way of guessing to the exact number how many gold coins there were, so we won all of them! We were quite excited, but alas, we had been stuck there so long that winter had come, and there was too much snow to travel by train. Johnathan disappeared for a while and we were worried, but he returned with a plane he had made out of Legos! We hooked it up to the Lego bridge, climbed inside the Lego plane, and took off, only it was a plane that didn’t fly through the air. Instead it burrowed through the snow. This was fantastic, except we hit a wall of ice and all had to climb out into the tunnel our plane had created to hack our way through. The air was getting thin because the bridge was blocking up the tunnel behind us, and we were briefly concerned that we would die in the snow tunnel. However, Matt found a place off to the right of the tunnel where the ice was only snow, so we all started digging through it. We broke through the last slab of snow into a huge convention center where they were going to hold the bridge contest, only that wasn’t until the next day, so until then they were using it to hold a dog show. Four infinitesimally small chihuahuas were staring at us in a shocked fasion as we clambered out of our snow tunnel with our Lego plane and bridge poking out of the snow behind us. And then I woke up! I love my dreams.

I did Sarah’s Brain Usage thingy and got the following:
Your Brain Usage Profile:

Auditory : 18%
Visual : 81%
Left : 50%
Right : 50%

“Stephanie, you exhibit balanced hemispheric dominance and a strong visual preference. It is the intensity of your sensory preference which may more determine your learning style.

“The balance of left- and right-hemisphere usage is very helpful to a highly visual learner. You absorb your environment, selecting out details and simultaneously embedding them in a context, an overall perspective which adds nuances of meaning. Given the prodigious rate that you input information, you naturally utilize the services of both hemispheres more or less equally.

“You are active and searching, which produces energy. Because you can process multiple inputs comfortably, you do not experience the indecision of a person with mixed sensory preference. You are able to focus on more than one aspect of a situation and push for resolution.

“You can tolerate ambiguity, which is good, since you will experience a lot of it due to your input style. While a part of you will always seek completion, the other part will accept the process as it is. You may occasionally get impatient with yourself. You will always be able to work through problems in a logical sequence or given order, but you will have other options available to you as well.

“You may find that you have insufficient time to reflect on your experiences and thus lose a sense of meaning, not appreciating your “inner being” as much as you might otherwise.

“Many people would envy your combination of characteristics. Constantly seeking stimulation, you are artistic without needing to be “odd,” an active learner and yet reasonably logical and disciplined.”

Huh. Well okay.

By the way! I now have a few of the videos from the camping weekend up on Myspace. They’re under videos, unsurprisingly. I’ll try to add to them as I have time. Well, I’m off to do absolutely nothing important!

I would laugh evilly, but it would be too loud.

Shh…Sarah’s asleep. She went to bed at 9. Yes, 9. 9pm. I can only imagine the exhaustion that would warrant such an early bedtime. Anyway, I was going to go to bed too, but then I saw my computer was on, and one thing led to another…so I’m sitting here in the dark and she thinks I’m asleep. And this fills me with a deep, diabolical, and devious glee! Hence the icon, because it is the paragon of diabolical glee. Plus the gun is cool. However, I’m pretty much wasting time, so I think I’ll go do something productive like dreaming.

Eek, it’s been awhile.

So much has been going on, where to begin?? Oh, I know. I found out the other day whilst reading Paradise Lost that the word pandemonium is actually a word Milton made up! It means “all demons” in the sense that pantheon means “all the gods”. Isn’t that cool? …well, I thought so.

Last night there was a shindig Campbell put on, and I got some neat videos! Behold.
At the spring formal. Picking on random people.
Donald DANCES.
The Guys dance the can-can. Absolutely priceless. On a puzzling note, Sarah’s and my voices sound nearly identical when we’re filming, it’s hard to tell who has the camera.
After the formal, wandering about.
Frolicking at Faith’s house. I was completely unaware I was being filmed. Thanks, Sarah. Thanks a lot. (kidding)

And so, in conclusion, a good time was had by all. Sarah has posted a gazillion pictures of the event on facebook.

ALSO. Last weekend, we were going to go camping at my house, only it was 33 degrees and drizzly at night, so we slept in the house. But, it was still a blast, and all total over 600 pictures were taken, along with lots and lots and LOTS of video. More of this later. I’m experimenting with myspace to see if I can ditch Putfile as my video hoster because it does a rather poor job of it, so it might be a little while.

School is a madhouse. A zoo. A loony bin. BUT I WILL SURVIVE. *is drowned in a deluge of papers*

The word welkin means sky in archaic English! I love it. Ok, I need some dinner.