Some spacious thought was passing by too gently to be caught.

I take back all the sweet things I said about butterflies. This week I was ambushed by a butterfly thug. He took my wallet and knocked me down, and I’m pretty sure he stole candy from some babies. Monarchs: tonight on America’s Most Wanted!

Well, he didn’t take my wallet. But he did ambush me as I was going into work and flapped in my face in a very thuggish manner. I felt thoroughly accosted, and I’m sure anyone watching was thoroughly amused by the sight of a (supposedly) grown woman held at bay by a butterfly.

Only a couple links for you today. The internet has been quiet!
Wookiee the Pooh. Magical idea! James Hance’s artwork in general is quite intriguing.
Black tie at the beach, by Improv Everywhere (naturally).

Sadly, the narrative poetry by Lewis, while good, was nowhere near as good as his prose. It’s somewhat reassuring that not even Lewis can do everything well, I suppose.

I got sidetracked from Walden by Stephen King’s On Writing. I don’t really like King. Undeniably, he has some talent, but…he’s just not my cup of tea. That said, I’m really enjoying this book. It’s half memoir, half suggestions on how to write well, and all of it is both entertaining and useful. His thoughts on writing make a lot of sense to me, and I can see why this is considered the writer’s Bible by some folk.

My left foot feels sore, like I jumped from too high onto concrete. It didn’t start hurting until I stepped out of bed yesterday morning, from which I can conclude I was leaping from rooftop to rooftop fighting crime in my sleep again. Either that or I had another run-in with that nasty butterfly…

Come over if convenient. If inconvenient, come anyway.

The number of butterflies flitting about this year is nothing short of incredible. I was all grumbly about something the other day, and a couple butterflies danced by, and I realized it made me smile in spite of myself, and then I was more grumbly because it was about the sappiest, most cliche moment ever. But then I smiled again. Butterflies: not even penguins can resist ’em. I may have accidentally ran one over the other day, though. They were everywhere! I couldn’t help it! Now I have a macabre butterfly-wing hood ornament. Sorry, little dude.

I realize that I started off this post with butterflies, and sadly it is not going to become any less gushy. I am currently over the moon about the BBC’s series Sherlock, a modern adaptation of the classic (I know, I know, modern…but it still manages to be brilliant!), and all of you should get yourselves over to Surf the Channel or your British television purveyor of choice and watch this thing. It’s snappy and quick and exceedingly entertaining. One of the reviews I saw had the title “Conan Doyle is spinning in his grave…with delight!” And that pretty much sums it up. I was completely hooked within the first ten minutes, so packed were they with gleeful nods to the books and witty dialogue. There are only three episodes, but each one is an hour and a half long, so it’s basically like six episodes, which is typical of BBC shows. Also, good news: it’s been renewed for a second season!

I was all set to post a link to the deleted Return of the Jedi scene that’s going to be on the Blue Ray release, but…youtube went and took it down. *shakes fist* Just wait, though. Somebody will leak it again.

I know. Shut up about Tron already. But check it out! Daft Punk is doing the music for Tron: Legacy! Fantastic.

The Poladroid Project.
The Seabreacher. Heck yes.
My life is average. I feel really dumb, but I can’t seem to figure out exactly what the point of this is. It is nonetheless amusing.

Singin’ in the Rain: Special Edition
Soldier surprise homecoming mix. I warned you that it was only going to get more gushy. But trust me, it’s worth watching. You will smile.
Giant beach bubbles. I love how they disappear when they pop. It’s like some beautiful creature from another dimension passing from our reality forever, and some kid will see that, and grow up to be an interdimensional traveler just because of that.

I’m reading Walden by Thoreau cover-to-cover for the first time (I’ve had to read chunks for various classes, but that’s all), and I have to say, the American transcendentalists may have been crazy, but they were pretty genius too. I am sorely tempted to go buy an axe and live in the woods. Except that it’s August, so that would be suicidal for me. Maybe I should move to New England and muse on man’s needless desperation for a while first. I’m also starting up a brilliant book of narrative poetry by C.S. Lewis that Sam lent me. I predict brilliance. Lewis actually wrote a narrative poem backed on Wagner’s Ring Cycle when he was 15. *shakes head* Marry me, Clive Staples.

Well, that was the mushiest post ever. In an effort to salvage the remaining shreds of my reputation, here’s some guy doing triple back flips off of a giant rope swing. There.

One of these days the sky’s going to break and everything will escape.

I think I should add Danish to the list of languages to learn in my lifetime. I recently discovered that the Danish word ordekvilibrist means “word equilibrist, master of words,” and I may have fallen in love. Equilibrist is a pretty fantastic word all on its own, actually.

Have you ever heard of pygmy jerboas? Neither had I, but if there’s anything that tap dances on the line between cute and creepy, it’s this thing. As I watched the video, I realized I was getting more and more tense, expecting it to leap at the camera, unsheath a formidable set of fangs, and disembowel the cameraman at any moment. If I were an alien race bent on the conquest of Earth, I would genetically engineer packs of these guys, ship them down to the planet, wait until every household fell under their oddly cute spell, and then, when the time was right…order my army of pygmy jerboas to ATTACK! (Duh, aliens look like rabbits. Where have you been?)

Speaking of things I’ve never heard of, check out the mole cricket. It takes very little imagination to see one of these things growing to a tremendous size and eating Manhattan. I consider myself to be a fairly tough chick, but if I woke up one morning and saw this face looking at me, I would scream.

If murdered… Where, in the event of your untimely demise, you can leave instructions for your loved ones. “If murdered, please teach my son fencing and then legally change his name to Inigo Montoya.”

I was recently introduced to the concept of the flash mob, which is, so far as I can tell, when a group of people plan to meet in a public place and do something weird all together. Then I realized that was basically Improv Everywhere, so I was familiar with the concept after all, just not the term. Anyway, these things are fabulous! Do these happen in Raleigh? Can we *make* them happen in Raleigh?
Food Revolution flash mob.
Sound of Music in Antwerp.
Eurovision 2010 flash mob.
Improv Everywhere’s Human Mirror.

Martin Firrell’s sci fi project. This is why I love science fiction. Magnificent idea. Best ones are by Nathan Fillion and Ben Browder.
I really didn’t get why the whole 3D thing was suddenly cool. And I still don’t. But, this is undeniably brilliant.
LOOK AT ME!

We’re all predicates here.

(Two entries in one day?! Don’t be alarmed. The story of my Friday just went on for so long that I put it in a separate post.)

New word, new word! “Kvell” means “to be extraordinarily pleased; esp., to be bursting with pride, as over one’s family,” and it comes from Yiddish “kveln” meaning “to be delighted.” You’re welcome.

I’ve been watching the insects and spiders with great interest these days. I have a spider colony growing outside my door. I don’t mind bugs at all, and I find spider webs rather pretty, so I’ve just left them alone. For a while, they kept eating each other, and that was entertaining too, but now I think they’re forming a coalition to work together and bring down a common enemy (me, presumably). Two mornings in a row, they spun webs right across my door, precisely at face level. Let me just say right now that picking cobwebs out of one’s teeth is a terrible way to start a Monday morning. For the most part, however, they’ve been biding their time, and I’ve been biding mine. Your move, arachnids…but I warn you: you may start this, but I’ll finish it. *brandishes can of Raid*

The spiders are kept fat and sassy by a constant diet of insane moths and dragonflies the size of bricks. I’m only slightly exaggerating: the dragonfly I saw today had to be at least seven inches long. And the moths really are insane. I saw one flutter spastically straight into a spider web, wrench itself free, bonk around in a zany manner for a minute, then fly straight back in. Not brightest of chaps, moths. I have some fascinating ones that look like giant leaves, and some orange ones, and some bright green ones, so if they can’t be smart, at least they’ve still got their looks.

When last we left our heroine, I was just starting Mr. Midshipman Easy by Captain Frederick Marryat, which is a fictionalized story of Marryat’s own experience in the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic era. Obviously, this is right up my alley. Regrettably, though, I did not enjoy Marryat’s work nearly so much as the Horatio Hornblower books by C.S. Forester. Marryat actually lived during the time period, while Forester lived about a hundred years later; perhaps that has something to do with it. Or possibly it was the social satire axe that Marryat had a penchant for grinding. Either way, while the book was enjoyable, it was not at all enthralling.

I finished up A Conspiracy of Kings by Megan Whalen Turner with all of the reading night ladies, at long last. I think we started that book back in March. I’m a little hazy now as to what happened at the beginning, but I remember that I liked it! I didn’t enjoy it quite so much as the first three books in the series, I confess. It didn’t follow my favorite characters as much (one was conspicuously absent altogether!), which may have been part of it. Timing can affect my opinion a lot too, though, and I read the trilogy at the precise moment when I badly needed a lighthearted distraction from exams. I need to get up some exam-week-type stress and reread it. Still, even with all of that, I liked the fourth book very much, and I’m thinking copies of the Attolia series as a whole need to be on the list of my near-future acquisitions.

I also read The Secret Sharer by Joseph Conrad. Conrad is one of those authors I’m not particularly enamored with during the actual reading of the story, but whom I enjoy ruminating on and discussing later. I would’ve liked to have read this story for a class; I think it would spark some good discussion. As it is, there’s no one to shoot down my half-baked idea that the captain was (spoiler!) actually just schizophrenic. Ah well!

As mentioned in the below post, now I’m rereading the Poetic Edda, a very old collection of Norse mythology. Nice to return to old favorites, and now I have my very own copy to underline the daylights out of. 😀

I’ve been scrounging around the internet a bit lately, and I found a lot of cool blogs. Finding new stuff is fun, and then you get to go link-hopping: one blog links to another blog, which links to another blog, which links to a bunch of cool stuff, and before you know it you’re looking at a video of a guy in a giant bat suit terrorizing the citizens of Paris.

If you saw a heat wave, would you wave back?