You are currently browsing the monthly archive for September 2010.
It would appear that I have become some sort of blogger. >_> Yeah. I know. But it could maybe be cool! I now write for The Bohemian, a friend’s travel blog. But, Stephanie, you say. You don’t travel that much. I know, little reader. I don’t know how this actually works either. But you can go read my post on San Diego anyway! Speaking of travel, I’ll be leaving for Wisconsin and Illinois next week. I predict all kinds of beauteous autumnal experiences.
90-year-old man recounts his WWII experience.
General Colin Powell on the mosque near Ground Zero. I was quite impressed. I wish everyone were looking at the issue so wisely.
Ukrainian light spectacle. Aw, you crazy Ukrainians.
Where do I sign up for this kind of job? Though, height-lover that I am, even I would have some issues past the 4.5 minute mark. That is nuts. Points to Ian for finding this bizarre video.
Catchy dance.
Pacific Sun Cruise liner in heavy seas. These things are supposed to be bolted down! That looks like a forklift flying around in the second clip! Pretty terrifying.
Disney princesses as superheroes. Infinitely cooler! I particularly like Belle.
M. Night Shyamalan learns that no one likes M. Night Shyamalan. Don’t get me wrong, I loved most of his movies, but I will admit his recent endeavors have been pretty awful. And this video is hilarious.
The Robin Hood Sandwich Challenge. I can’t quite believe two people spent so much time on this.
Carpet surfing. I laughed very hard. “Welp, back to chasing the dust bunnies.”
I don’t even know how to introduce this. Be amazing, indeed. Are they Russian hand-clapping androids? Belgian synchronized hand-dancers? We may never know.
Clients from Hell. I wish this didn’t sound quite so familiar.
CAPTCHArt.
There’s a tumblr called Hungover Owls. They have a point; owls do usually look a little under the weather.
Library desk made of old books, stolen from Sam.
J.M. Barrie writes fanfic for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This is the best! I was unaware, but apparently Barrie and Doyle were very good friends. Barrie wrote this little fanfiction poking fun at himself and Doyle. Lovely!
I wanted a paperback to read on the plane to Wisconsin, and I didn’t really have anything around here that I hadn’t read, so I made a trip to Ed McKay’s today. (My paperback copy of Geoffrey Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain is looking at me accusingly. Give me a break, Geoffrey. You’re not exactly light, happy, plane-reading material.) I found a perfectly lovely The Complete Sherlock Holmes for a mere $5! I have half of the contents already, but, come on, Holmes for $5. I also got Till We Have Faces by Lewis and The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley, some old favorites of mine. I found a book called The Wing-and-Wing by James Fenimore Cooper! I thought I had already thoroughly read and adored everything Cooper ever wrote, but somehow I apparently missed this chunk of awesome. A dashing tale of French privateers upon the high seas by the author of The Last of the Mohicans? Where have you been all of my life? I snatched it up, along with The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany, which I’ve had on my to-read list for an age or two.
On my way out I passed the free bookshelf, and lo and behold, I found a copy of The Iceberg Hermit by Arthur Roth! I read that book when I was very young, maybe 8 years old or so, and was completely captivated. I’m not sure that it was really all that good, but it was the first book of its kind that I had read, so it seemed terribly exciting to me at the time. I’m looking forward to rereading it. I remember I saw the movie Congo when I was young and thought it was SO COOL because it was the first action-adventure movie this Disney-and-musicals child had seen. A movie that propelled itself along based solely on adrenaline? I was so excited. In retrospect, though, it was an incredibly silly movie with pretty much no redeeming qualities, but it was the first like it that I had ever encountered, and that made good.
Work has been kind of awful lately, but I have high hopes for the month of October, presupposing my survival of the upcoming week. Keep your toes crossed.
The weather is tormenting me with hints of fall. In the morning when I go to work, the day is like, “Hello, it’s September! It’s fall!” And everything feels cool and quite lovely. Then I go out on my lunch hour and the day’s all, “Haha, just kidding, it’s 95 degrees, and the air feels like breathing fly paper. Gotcha! Summer’s here forever!” Get your act together. Don’t taunt me, September, or I’ll kick you in the shins. Fortunately, in just a week and a half I will be hightailing it to the northlands! I hope Wisconsin is frigidly cold.
The Solo Adventures, wherein we discover why Han dropped his cargo at the first sign of an Imperial cruiser. Shamelessly swiped from Ian. Entertaining, but Han Solo’s mouth is kind of scary.
What stormtroopers do on their day off. Also stolen from Ian.
Nathan Fillion and Alan Tudyk punking the Firefly cast at DragonCon.
Go play Word Bubbles. And then forget about getting anything else done for the day. Sarah passed along this horribly, horribly addictive little gem.
Spacecraft sculpture by Rik Allen. We must go exploring today.
Tree houses! I post about tree houses rather often, don’t I?
“Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)” by Arcade Fire.
I ate up a book of Bradbury’s short stories, We’ll Always Have Paris, which I did not love as much as some of his other works, sadly. Still, there were some good stories in there. I’ve been on a short story kick. Right now I’m reading Shadows and Mirrors, a collection by Neil Gaiman. I’m still trying to love Gaiman, but eesh, these shorts are DARK. Almost unrelievedly so. At some point in every story I find myself getting a little tense, just waiting for some blood to be spilled or something ugly to snarl. And yet, he’s so good, I keep reading, hoping for something better to mosey down the road, because it feels as if that could just as easily happen. Whimsical wit or bloodbath; it’s really a toss-up with this book.
I murdered four more butterflies today. STOP THROWING YOURSELF IN FRONT OF MY CAR. It’s just like that guy who kept throwing himself in front of my knife, I don’t understand it.
Other events of the week included the pipe under my sink bursting and flooding my bathroom, doing odd tasks at work (“Quick! Call every medical supply company in the Triangle! We need an electromyography machine NOW!” “But…what’s an electromyography machine?” “Irrelevant. Here’s the phone book.”), and drawing a giant wagon on an 8-foot piece of brown paper for my mother. Hey, I’m a good daughter.
Trash the Dress, an intriguing photography idea that makes a lot of sense to me. You’re only going to wear the wedding dress that one day, might as well wear the heck out of it!
Attack of the tiny cardboard people! Watch as they eat Singapore!
Star Wars Yoga class. Downward facing Wookiee, indeed.
Star Wars Uncut. One of the biggest geek collaborative efforts ever, I would imagine.
Are you at a bar?
Double rainbow all the way! Sarah and Graham informed me that I’ve been hiding under an internet rock by not having seen this until now, so I figured I would help out any of my fellow rock-dwellers.
Continuing to be sidetracked from Walden, for the most part. Every time I go into the library for *one* book, it turns into…more than one. I finished On Writing, and King had loads of extremely useful information tucked away in there. I picked up a copy of Bradbury’s Zen in the Art of Writing, and I’m looking forward to getting to that in the near future. Comparing the two writer’s style should be quite fascinating!
In the meantime, my ill-gotten library gains included The Naked Sun, the second book in Isaac Asimov’s robot trilogy. It was, like most of Asimov, quite good. At some point I realized I had read it before when I was 10 or so, which made for a surreal reading experience this time around. I remembered just enough of the imagery for the whole thing to be one long feeling of deja vu, but not enough that it gave away any important plot elements. If someone wanted to convince me that I had precognition, I’m pretty sure they could accomplish that by hiding copies of books I read as a child inside covers with different titles. “I’m a genius! I knew he was going to say that!” That’d be a pretty fantastic practical joke, actually…
Quoth the Girl 