Scotrid, the Haplous Genius

Which is the right religion for you?

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 05:48:25 GMT

You scored as atheism. You are... an atheist, though you probably already knew this. Also, you probably have several people praying daily for your soul. Instead of simply being "nonreligious," atheists strongly believe in the lack of existence of a higher being, or God.

Atheism: 80%
Agnosticism: 70%
Satanism: 70%
Hinduism: 60%
Paganism: 60%
Buddhism: 50%
Confucianism: 50%
Islam: 35%
Christianity: 25%
Haruhism: 20%
Judaism: 0%

http://www.quizfarm.com/quiz_repository/Religion/156867/

So why do I tend to think of Jewish women as hot? And how did I get only 80% on atheism? And what the heck is Haruhism?

Reading List

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 01:25:23 GMT

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ

And I've also put in red the ones that I've seen a movie version of, and grey those that I've never heard of.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (4 chapters in, I got bored)
6 The Bible (parts of it; working on "The Extremely Condensed Bible")
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell (parts again, but this time it's because we couldn't take them home; I have a copy I'll get to in about ... who knows)
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (some of them)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (most of it, got bored)
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (and many of its remakes and parodies)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - E. B. White (if you count it being read to my 3rd-grade class)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (seen both Mel Gibson's version and the MST3K episode)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (I actually got through this one in school)

Okay, not a lot of italics in there. But I already have two stacks of books that've been waiting for my eyes for a couple years now. Not a lot of grey either. But I did used to work in a library and a book store.

Horse D'Oeuvres?

Tue, 06 May 2008 04:53:41 GMT

Hey irisgirl12000, remember telling me that a tim tam is a cookie in Australia? Well, it was also the name of a horse. It turns out that a whole neighborhood in the town where I work has all its streets named after winners of the Kentucky Derby. Tim Tam won in 1958. It is pure coincidence that I learned this on the day of the 2008 Kentucky Derby.

Authormatic - Bestseller generator!

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 02:13:12 GMT

A Fastidious Night

CHAPTER ONE
After a while the torch beams of the other searchers turned into distant flashes of light and the voices became an occasional call carried on the wind and not definitely identifiable as animal, let alone human. Inspector Wicks looked up from the boggy ground in front of his feet as the moon came out from behind a black scurrying cloud.
"Hot diggity daffodil!" His boot slipped sideways pitching him forwards. Not only did he now have wet knees and a wet sock but he had managed to hit the only rock between here and Sheffield and he struggled to his feet ruefully rubbing his sore neck. He was dog-tired. What a night, what a really fastidious night, one which had actually started well, on his settee with a takeaway and a can of lager in front of the TV and should have ended a couple of hours later in bed with a large tot of his favourite single malt on the bedside table. Instead here he was tramping a particularly inhospitable part of the moor, looking for a lost kid called Cecile whose most recent school photo had covered the front pages of all the papers for the last two days. He groaned; damn this job; damn Crimewatch; damn the busybody public with their farfetched anonymous tip-offs. If only he was in bed, if only he was half on the sidewalk, half off, if only he was anywhere else.

Another thick curtain of cloud was drawn across the leering face of the moon, accompanied by a high-pitched whistle. Was that the signal? Had something been found? He struggled to avoid imagining what that something might be, instead his mind produced a sudden image of the diminutive timid bunny that had stalked his night hours in childhood, he squashed that thought too, a childish terror but not one to conjure up in the present circumstances. He deliberately formed an image of his own small son fast asleep in that terraced house in South London, under the blue dolphin duvet cover that …… blue, something had been blue. He swung back the torch beam, retracing the path it had taken, a child’s blue belt buckle. Probably been there for weeks, blown away on a summer picnic. It looked new. Reluctantly but methodically he directed his torch over a 6 metre circle surrounding the blue belt buckle. This time white, the white curve of a small bent leg, a tangle of arms, neck twisted sideways, life-sized but not life-like, surely an abandoned doll, let fall and forgotten at the day’s end: and beside the doll, incongruously, partially obscuring its face, an all too real-looking icicle.

http://www.valmcdermid.com/pages/authormatic.html

Guitar

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 20:26:34 GMT

Still working on

(I may have figured out some of these, but haven't written them down yet):

Flying by the Beatles
part of the theme from Rocky
Hazy Shade of Winter
Wah-Wah
Danny Boy (surprisingly easy)
part of the A-Team theme
Play That Funky Music
one of the Looney Toons themes
Something
There's a Place
Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows
O Come All Ye Faithful
The original Battlestar Galactica theme
The First Noel

Latest additions:
The Star-Spangled Banner

Songs or riffs I have figured out how to play on the guitar:

Here Comes the Bride
What Is Life (2 of the parts)
Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)
My Bonnie
In a Gadda Da Vita
Happy Birthday to You
Every Little Thing
Auld Lang Syne
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Another One Bites the Dust
Teacher, by Jethro Tull
The Futurama theme
part of the Star Wars main theme
part of the Darth Vader theme
that bit from Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Smoke on the Water
Do You Feel Like I Do
Day Tripper
Sunshine of Your Love
The Daily Show intro
The Colbert Report intro
Frere Jacques

EtA (08 Jun 30th): I finally widened the grooves for the 5th and 6th strings, so they're the same distance from the neck as the others.

Guitar - Whoops

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 04:47:07 GMT

I apparently tuned my guitar wrong. For the most part the difference between two adjacent strings is a fourth, but the difference between the 2nd and 3rd strings is only a major third. I've tuned my roommate's righty-strung guitar, and was so used to that process that when I got my own guitar and strung it for left-handed playing, I forgot to reverse the plan. So to correct this, I just had to raise the middle two strings a half-step. Chords sound much better now. However, I don't play chords; I play single notes. So I now have to relearn how to play those 2 dozen or so songs I've figured out over the last month.

EtA: I'll make a new list of songs I've figured out, but I will add them only once I've written them down.

Guitar - To Be Updated As Necessary

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 06:53:47 GMT

Still working on:

Hazy Shade of Winter
Wah-Wah

Latest additions:

Jingle Bells (I guess Christmas songs tend to be simple)
Handle with Care

Songs or riffs I have figured out how to play on the guitar:

Danny Boy (surprisingly easy)
part of the A-Team theme
Play That Funky Music
Day Tripper
one of the Looney Toons themes
Do You Feel Like I Do
Sunshine of Your Love
Something
There's a Place
Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows (suggested by my mom as an example of the first 2 notes going down a major sixth)
My Bonnie (up a major sixth)
Here Comes the Bride
The Futurama theme
The Star-Spangled Banner
The Daily Show intro
O Come All Ye Faithful (since it's first few notes are the same as Colbert)
The Colbert Report intro
The original Battlestar Galactica theme
The First Noel
What Is Life
part of the Star Wars main theme
part of the Darth Vader theme
Frere Jacques (which was also my first piano song)
that bit from Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Smoke on the Water (of course)

Get-to-Know-You Thingy

Sun, 09 Mar 2008 05:46:08 GMT

Since I've done someone else's, it's my turn to be interrogated.

You fill in the blanks, and I answer whatever's there. I will be sarcastic only if you ask pointless questions.

1. What do you think of ________________?
2. When did you last ____________?
3. __________ or ___________ and why?
4. What did you ______________?
5. What's your favourite ______________?
6. How would you ______________?
7. Who would you most like to _____________?

A Litany of Not So Personal Questions

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 03:57:20 GMT

1. Do you like blue cheese?
I can only take a tiny bit in one sitting.

2. Have you ever smoked heroine?
What, are you a cop? No.

3. Do you own a gun?
Only of the toy variety.

4. What flavor do you add to your drink at Sonics?
Cherry lime-ade is the best.

5. Do you get nervous before doctor appointments?
Haven't had one.

6. What do you think of hot dogs?
I don't care what everyone says, I think they're food.

7. Favorite Christmas song?
"Merry Xmas (War Is Over)" by John Lennon.

8. What do you prefer to drink in the morning?
There's something other than vodka? Actually, I have tea at work every morning.

9. Can you do push ups?
Sure, but I never do.

10. What's your least favorite fruit or vegetable?
Raspberries. Though I like the flavor, the seeds annoy me greatly.

11. What's your favorite piece of jewelry?
I don't care for jewelry much, and I don't just mean on me.

12. Favorite hobby?
Logic puzzles.

13. Favorite restaurants?
I don't like going to restaurants much.

14. Do you have A.D.D.?
No.

15. What's one trait that you hate about yourself?
Severe introversion.

16. Middle name?
Scott.

17. Name 3 thoughts at this exact moment...
1. I should not have run so much at once.
2. I need to lose weight.
3. The Tonik ad in the margin reminds me of The Daily Show's mockery of it. "It's spelled with a kay, so you know it's totally rad."

18. Name 3 things you bought yesterday.
1. Nothing
2. Nothing
3. Nothing

19. Name 3 drinks you regularly drink.
Tea, orange juice, coffee.

20. Current worry right now?
I'm going to die alone.

21. Current hate right now?
Guys that drug their dates. Dude, she already said yes to the date. At least try to work with that for a while before committing a crime to be with her. You're going to make women afraid of even the nice guys.

22. Favorite place to be?
Of all the places I've already been to, um, boy, I just can't care about any of them. And I've been to Disneyland.

23. How did you bring in the New Year?
At home on the couch.

24. Where would you like to go?
The Bay of Fundy to watch the biggest tide on Earth. London, to see the historical stuff. Alaska to see the aurora borealis. The moon. Mars.

25. Name three people who will complete this?
That's not a question. The author should study grammar harder.

26. Do you own slippers?
No.

27. What shirt are you wearing?
My Superman blue sweatshirt.

28. Do you like sleeping on satin sheets?
Never tried it. Probably won't, because I won't buy them, and no one will offer to have me sleep on theirs.

29. Can you whistle?
I can whistle a tune, or whistle really loud.

30. Favorite color?(s)
Again the author needs to study grammar. Do not put a question mark between a words and its suffix. My favorite color is grey.

31. Would you be a pirate?
If I lived near the North Atlantic coast in the Eighteenth Century, and were dirt poor and completely amoral, probably. Subjunctive questions are pointless.

32. What songs do you sing in the shower?
Whatever I hear from the clock-radio when I wake up, because it always sticks in my head.

33. Favorite girl's name?
Sarah.

34. Favorite boy's name?
Edward.

35. What's in your pocket right now?
I have more than one pocket. Pick one.

36. Last thing that made you laugh?
The Knights of the Dinner Table.

37. Best bed sheets as a child?
Huh?

38. Worst injury you've ever had?
Had my chest crushed by a steel-pipe soccer goal falling on it. Almost got the head crushed too.

39. Do you love where you live?
Oh, yeah. Earth is the best planet in the world.

40. How many TVs do you have in your house?
2.

41. Who is your loudest friend?
Markus.

42. How many dogs do you have?
I have and shall always have none.

43. Does someone have a crush on you?
I wish.

44. Do you have a crush on someone?
I actually have crushes on some three.

45. What is your favorite book?
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter.

46. What is your favorite candy?
Malted milk balls. I'm going to have to try the strawberry milkshake flavor they have now.

47. What is your favorite sports team?
None, I don't care about sports enough for that. But I do have an interesting idea for a sport league.

48. What song do you want played at your funeral?
"Art of Dying" by George Harrison. It actually made me feel better when my brother died. Or maybe "Heading for the Light" by the Traveling Wilburys (still George Harrison, really).

49. What were you doing 12 AM last night?
Waiting for my neighbors to stop making noise so I could sleep.

50. What was the first thing you thought of when you woke up?
I needed to make sure I ate breakfast. I keep forgetting to.

Not Much Middle Ground, Is There?

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 05:55:46 GMT

91% ~~Dennis Kucinich~~ (dropped out before SC, to keep his house seat)
88% ~~Mike Gravel~~ (dropped out after IA)
86% ~~John Edwards~~ (dropped out before Super Tuesday)
82% ~~Joe Biden~~ (dropped out after IA)
82% Barack Obama
81% ~~Chris Dodd~~ (dropped out after IA)
78% ~~Hillary Clinton~~ (dropped out after the last primary)
76% ~~Bill Richardson~~ (dropped out after NH)
...big sanity gap...
32% ~~Rudy Giuliani~~ (dropped out after FL)
23% John McCain
20% ~~Mitt Romney~~ (dropped out after Über Tuesday)
18% ~~Ron Paul~~ (dropped out after Über Tuesday, I think)
18% ~~Tom Tancredo~~ (dropped out well before any caucuses; also, scary thing: I work in his district, but thankfully he's not running to keep his seat)
17% ~~Mike Huckabee~~ (dropped out after McCain reached mathematical certainty)
10% ~~Fred Thompson~~ (dropped out after SC)

2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz

I don't know what I did differently; last time I got the same thing but with Edwards and Kucinich switched. And the Republicans are in a different order, but who cares?

And if you haven't done so already, go to www.wexlerwantshearings.com to tell Congress to get off its fat ass and investigate Dick Cheney.

Join the Call to Investigate Cheney

Sat, 15 Dec 2007 05:59:18 GMT

Representative Robert Wexler needs your help to get hearings to investigate whether Vice President Cheney has committed impeachable offenses. Hearings will either clear the Vice President or lead to actual accountability in our government for violation of the law and endangerment of US national security by its own officials. Wexler will use the list of signatories to show his colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee that the people of the United States do not want to ignore the repeated abuses of power by the Bush administration.

(Video is 2m 26s long)

A CASE FOR HEARINGS

By Representatives and Members of the Judiciary Committee:
Robert Wexler (D-FL), Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI)

On November 7, the House of Representatives voted to send a resolution of impeachment of Vice President Cheney to the Judiciary Committee. As Members of the House Judiciary Committee, we strongly believe these important hearings should begin.

The issues at hand are too serious to ignore, including credible allegations of abuse of power that if proven may well constitute high crimes and misdemeanors under our constitution. The charges against Vice President Cheney relate to his deceptive actions leading up to the Iraq war, the revelation of the identity of a covert agent for political retaliation, and the illegal wiretapping of American citizens.

Now that former White House press secretary Scott McClellan has indicated that the Vice President and his staff purposefully gave him false information about the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson as a covert agent to report to the American people, it is even more important for Congress to investigate what may have been an intentional obstruction of justice. Congress should call Mr. McClellan to testify about what he described as being asked to “unknowingly [pass] along false information.” In addition, recent revelations have shown that the Administration including Vice President Cheney may have again manipulated and exaggerated evidence about weapons of mass destruction -- this time about Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

Some of us were in Congress during the impeachment hearings of President Clinton. We spent a year and a half listening to testimony about President Clinton’s personal relations. This must not be the model for impeachment inquires. A Democratic Congress can show that it takes its constitutional authority seriously and hold a sober investigation, which will stand in stark contrast to the kangaroo court convened by Republicans for President Clinton. In fact, the worst legacy of the Clinton impeachment – where the GOP pursued trumped up and insignificant allegations - would be that it discourages future Congresses from examining credible and significant allegations of a constitutional nature when they arise.

The charges against Vice President Cheney are not personal. They go to the core of the actions of this Administration, and deserve consideration in a way the Clinton scandal never did. The American people understand this, and a majority support hearings according to a November 13 poll by the American Research Group. In fact, 70% of voters say that Vice President Cheney has abused his powers and 43% say that he should be removed from office right now. The American people understand the magnitude of what has been done and what is at stake if we fail to act. It is time for Congress to catch up.

Some people argue that the Judiciary Committee can not proceed with impeachment hearings because it would distract Congress from passing important legislative initiatives. We disagree. First, hearings need not tie up Congress for a year and shut down the nation. Second, hearings will not prevent Congress from completing its other business. These hearings involve the possible impeachment of the Vice President – not our commander in chief – and the resulting impact on the nation’s business and attention would be significantly less than the Clinton Presidential impeachment hearings. Also, despite the fact that President Bush has thwarted moderate Democratic policies that are supported by a vast majority of Americans -- including children’s health care, stem cell research, and bringing our troops home from Iraq -- the Democratic Congress has already managed to deliver a minimum wage hike, an energy bill to address the climate crisis and bring us closer to energy independence, assistance for college tuition, and other legislative successes. We can continue to deliver on more of our agenda in the coming year while simultaneously fulfilling our constitutional duty by investigating and publicly revealing whether or not Vice President Cheney has committed high crimes and misdemeanors.

Holding hearings would put the evidence on the table, and the evidence – not politics – should determine the outcome. Even if the hearings do not lead to removal from office, putting these grievous abuses on the record is important for the sake of history. For an Administration that has consistently skirted the constitution and asserted that it is above the law, it is imperative for Congress to make clear that we do not accept this dangerous precedent. Our Founding Fathers provided Congress the power of impeachment for just this reason, and we must now at least consider using it.

http://wexlerwantshearings.com/ to add your name.

Work

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 06:06:16 GMT

My job basically consists of entering homeowners' names and addresses into a database. Today I entered the name of a woman who is apparently an adverb: Amberly. Not Amber Lee. Amberly. And I think I know what it means: "in a cutesy way, causing the bearer to eventually suffer being an adult with a stuffed animal's name", e.g. "Michaela was named amberly." Names like Caitlyn and Shyanne just don't seem right on adults. And I am not looking forward to spending my golden years in a retirement home with old ladies named Shayna, Betha and Cammie.

EtA: I forgot Britney. Brittany is okay. Like Shyanne, Britney is a cutesy misspelling of a real name.

How (1970s) Stereotypically Masculine or Feminine Am I?

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 05:13:44 GMT

Your Score: Feminine

You scored 36 masculinity and 90 femininity!

You scored high on femininity and low on masculinity. You have a traditionally feminine personality.

Link: The Bem Sex Role Inventory Test written by weirdscience on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Wow. And I'm not gay, transvestite or transsexual. But I have always gotten along better with women than with men. This explains it. And yet women will not acknowledge my existence these days. I believe that, like the comedian Dennis Wolfberg, I emit the antidote to pheromones. Well, my friends sometimes say that my brother and one of our friends are the "girls" in their relationships. I've never been in a relationship, so I was not aware of these traits in myself.

Suggested Careers from Some Website

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 01:33:59 GMT

The machine has spoken:

1. Chemical Engineer
2. Biomedical Engineer (What the fuck is biomedical supposed to mean? Bio- means "life", and anything medical already has to do with living things.)
3. Computer Engineer
4. Agricultural Engineer
5. Electrical Engineer
6. Multimedia Developer (That's multimedium.)
7. Pharmacologist (I don't even take any medicine.)
8. Aerospace Engineer (Good.)
9. Actuary
10. Forensics Specialist
11. Oceanographer
12. Computer Programmer (Taken a class in that.)
13. Technical Writer (Good. If they mean those non-fiction books I'd like to write.)
14. Industrial Designer
15. Cartographer (Love maps.)
16. Desktop Publisher (Wish I could.)
17. Cartoonist / Comic Illustrator (Had some ideas.)
18. Criminologist
19. Interior Designer
20. Fashion Designer (Say what?)
21. Meteorologist
22. Video Game Developer (Had some ideas.)
23. Astronomer (Good.)
24. Geologist
25. Website Designer
26. Hydrologist / Hydrogeologist
27. Business Systems Analyst
28. GIS Specialist
29. Computer Animator
30. Graphic Designer
31. Artist
32. Political Aide (Only an aide? I want to be emperor, dammit.)
33. Medical Illustrator (Didn't know that was a job.)
34. Market Research Analyst
35. Critic (Could have guessed that, right?)
36. Database Developer (That is my job. Sort of.)
37. Translator (Only in writing. Fluency in speech is beyond me.)
38. Medical Lab Tech (No no no. Not with the bodily fluids.)
39. Writer (39th? Aw, man.)
40. Web Developer (Just waiting for that radioactive spider.)

Spoon!

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 00:27:48 GMT

I can't wait to see what sorts of war cries it gives women.

Nerd Test

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 18:50:19 GMT

All Done

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 18:02:31 GMT

I have finished reading Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows.

Liberals Are Moderates

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 16:40:39 GMT

In response to Unity '08 claming moderates aren't represented in politics, here's a table outlining my thoughts on political sentiments. The "ultra" columns are not meant to characterize any actual person's (or party's) beliefs; they're just the most extreme ideas I could stand to write down.

Ultra-liberal Whackos	Liberals	Ultra-conservative Whackos
No weapons are available, including nail clippers and knitting needles. Eat your steak with a spoon or something.	Some weapons are allowed, some are not. Oh, and the 2nd Amendment doesn't say anything about making or selling weapons.	You can buy any weapons you want, including nukes.
Everyone gets a Basic Living Stipend.	Welfare is there to help the unfortunate get back on their feet. The minimum wage helps keep them there.	No welfare, no minimum wage. Be happy when I whip you, boy.
Abort all the babies. No one should ever have kids. But you should have lots and lots of unprotected sex.	Abortion is a possibility up to about 5 months. But if you're going to have sex, be careful about it in the first place.	Never abort a fetus or even a zygote. In fact, don't have sex. Ever.
Pure boot-heel Socialism.	Government regulates, but does not run, businesses.	Pure laissez-faire capitalism; corporations will be less regulated than humans, even though they have more power to screw things up.
Enforced race-mixing.	Date whomever you want.	No race-mixing.
Men should be subservient to women. Or wymyn. Or feminazis. Or something. Please don't hurt me.	Women and men are equal, and should be treated as equals.	Women should be subservient to men.
Polygamy and incestuous marriages are a-okay.	Any two consenting adults can marry, as long as they're not too closely related.	Only heteros can marry.
Government gets to control religion.	No religious test for serving in government. (see U.S. Constitution, Art. VI & Amd. I)	Religion gets to control government.
It's not illegal if you don't get caught in the act.	See the 4th Amendment. If you haven't done anything wrong, the government shouldn't conduct an inquisition.	The government can listen in on your phone calls and read your mail if they simply feel like it. If you haven't done anything wrong, then you shouldn't fear an inquisition.
Absolute freedom of speech...	...except that you can't incite violence or tell damaging lies.	If you disagree with the president (or his favorite general), you're a traitor.
Let's just politely ask all those "enemy combatants" not to commit terrorism.	Fair trials ensure that we know our verdict is correct, whether it's to acquit or convict.	Trials are for sissies. Suspicion equals guilt, like with all those witches.
We can stop terrorism through hugging.	Terrorism is a matter of law enforcement, since the perpetrators are just private citizens, not governments.	Anything bad done by a foreigner to a native is terrorism and an act of war, even though those aren't the same thing.

Look at how much more extreme liberals could be if they truly lost their minds. I actually could have gone further with some of the ultra-liberal stuff, and it demonstrates the sanity of real liberal positions on issues. On the other hand, the neo-cons don't have far to go before you have no rights and no hope. Just sit in your little box and do what we tell you to do, or we'll bring out the pain stick again. Oh, unless you're male, white, straight and rich; then you get to hold the pain stick.

Sniffle

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 00:17:21 GMT

I am sick on my birthday. I rarely get sick at all, and I've never been sick on my birthday before. Luckily, it's also the first time I've celebrated my birthday on another day. I hope my nose will be less runny, so I don't turn the cake into pudding. I also hope I'll be able to hear the birthday song over the crackling and stuffiness in my right ear. Everything sounds like it's on my left. Oh, and it's raining hard outside and I have to pay a bill. Yay, me.!

But I had a dream last night that I got to eat the French toast I'm planning to cook Saturday morning as a birthday treat to myself. Yum.

What's Your Accent?

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 03:32:12 GMT

What American accent do you have?
Created by Xavier on Memegen.net

Western. Like Midland, Western is an accent that people consider neutral. So, you might not actually be from the Western half of the country, but you definitely sound like it.

Take this quiz now - it's easy!

Unfortunately, the quiz doesn't cover my mom's weird habit of pronouncing pleasure, treasure and measure with a long a. I would love to know where that comes from. Also, Denver is really badly placed on the map, and as both a resident thereof and a cartography buff, I resent that.

Thanks

Mon, 30 Jul 2007 05:33:23 GMT

Since everyone has been so nice about the Harry Potter spoilers,

here is a reward. From the July issue of Games Magazine:

J.K. Rowling rewrites "Hush Little Baby"

Hush little wizard, don't boo-hoo,
Mama's going to save you from You-Know-Who.

If that love charm's up to par,
All you'll get is a lightning scar.

If that scar looks ultra-cool,
Off you'll go to wizard school,

Where dark schemes will soon descend,
And all the plots take a year to end.

J.R.R. Tolkien rewrites "Scarborough Fair"

Are you going to Saruman's lair
Frodo, Samwise, Merry and Pip
Say hi to all the Ents who live there
When you're on a ring-bearing trip

Tell him to chuck it in the crack of Mount Doom
Frodo, Samwise, Merry and Pip
When the All-Seeing Eye has gone to its tomb
That'll end your ring-bearing trip

Mary Shelley rewrites "Oh, My Darling Clementine"

In a tower filled with power
Was a corpse you did revive
I awoke by lightning stroke
And you were screaming, "It's alive!"

Oh, my master, oh, my master
Oh, my master, Frankenstein
Better make me a companion
Or I'll have to snap your spine.

WTF?!

Tue, 24 Jul 2007 04:01:58 GMT

Thanks for the HP spoilers, everybody! Hopefully, I'll forget all the plot points you told me by the time I get a chance to read it, but it's unlikely. I know you fangirls all know that you're all going to read the book in the first week it's out, but I'm not one of you. I don't even have a copy to read yet (and of course I'll borrow The Concept's, since I don't like to own hardcovers). Just a warning would be nice. Preferably at an LJ cut (my eyes get ahead sometimes).

Triple Squee

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 00:49:50 GMT

All in the mail today:

1. The free, signed book from Thom Hartmann.

2. The CD of science songs from irisgirl12000 . Can't wait to listen to it. Especially the Christine Lavin song.

3. A postcard from adele_sparks . I'm glad to know there's a part of Chicago that looks nice. After watching so much Due South, I felt like everything in Chicago proper must be run-down and scuzzy. But that's requisite for a crime show.

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 02:29:40 GMT

Your Score: hyphen

You scored 38% Sociability and 41% Sophistication!

You are comfortable around others. While you don't have to go out every night, you take pride in being easy to get along with. Others should not, however, misconstrue this to believe (as many do) that you are without subtlety. In fact, you have the power to inform the anal retentive that, indeed, they are discussing an anal-retentive issue. Who else can do that? Quotation marks intimidate you a little bit.

Link: The Which Punctuation Mark Are You Test

It's a nice coincidence that misuse of hyphens is one of my language peeves. It turns out I was just protecting myself. The results also said that I scored higher than 99% of respondents on Sociability (very surprising) and 99% on Sophistication (not so surprising). But I have to say that, though I am an introvert, I like interacting with people, I just don't know how.

And, boy, there are no anal-retentives in my circle of friends.! Not to mention that I edited the text above.

EFL: Malapropisms (updated)

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 04:32:21 GMT

Because some people didn't get a good enough education in English, I will be teaching English as a First Language. Today's topic is malapropism, which is when people use a word that is similar to what they mean, but wrong.

1. I heard an athlete on sports radio say, "I resent the innuendo." No, you resent the insinuation. An innuendo is a subtle way of expressing something; an insinuation is an indirect accusation.

2. Promises are for the future. If something has already happened, you can only swear that it happened. I am sick of hearing people "promise" that they did or didn't do something.

3. An impact is when two things collide. Something like, say, a tax increase has an effect, but not a collision.

4. For god's sake, it's "would have" not "would of". How can someone think putting a preposition in front of a verb makes sense?

5. Sinuses are not the same thing as nasal passages.

6. Irony is when things go against expectations, like when you try to bring about one thing and your efforts actually produce the opposite. Sarcasm is when people use a tone of voice that indicates that they don't mean what they say. A person can say something ironic that is not sarcastic. It would usually involve the same words, just in a sincere tone of voice. And it would be ironic, because you wouldn't expect them to mean it.

7. It's "let it be" and "leave it alone". Let goes with infinitive verbs, leave goes with adjectives. "Let it be", "let it rain", "let it go", etc. "Leave it alone", "leave it open", etc.

8. Lately I've been hearing people say "wreck havoc". You don't wreck it; then there wouldn't be any havoc left. You wreak havoc. This remind me of people who thnk that Kirk and Spock were on a show called Star Track.

9. You also don't step foot, you set foot. Since when is "step" a transitive verb? "Hey, go step that for me, would you?"

10. Apparently, some people think "round" means "circular". Jerry Seinfeld did a thing on his show about how Ovaltine should be called Round-tine. I had always felt that ovals were round, since they consist of curves, but what do I know about geometry?

11. For the last few years, movies have been offered on "DVD and Video". Um, what does the V in "DVD" stand for? Video. They mean videotape. Video is the information, videotape is one of the storage devices used to convey it.

12. You choose between one thing and another, not between one thing or another. (You do, however, choose one thing or another. Notice the lack of between.) If you do crossword puzzles, I can explain. When a crossword clue says, "Kennedy or Lennon" the answer is "John". When a crossword clue says, "Kennedy and Lennon" the answer is "Johns". And makes it plural, or leaves it singular. Since you would say, "Choose between them," and them is plural--well, you get the point. There are other, similar phrases where people make the same bad choice.

13. The big one. You do not have an arm on either side of your body, unless you have only one arm. If you have two arms, then you have one on each side of your body. Occasionally, something (usually a mass noun or plural noun) may be on both or opposite sides of something else. For instance, there is hair on both sides of my head. The trouble here is that either refers to options. It is the dual of any. If there are 2 options, take either. If there are 3 or more options, take any. So if you say there's a guard on either side of an entryway, I feel like I have to choose which side the only guard is already on. If something had three sides, you wouldn't say, "There's one on any side." So don't say either when there are two sides.

14. Here's one that's just backward. "He said hello, by way of greeting." Seems to me, he greeted by way of saying hello. If you replace by with as a, the original works okay for me.

15. That reminds me, I hate when people say to replace one thing by another. I always replace one thing with another. That way, it works in the passive. "X was replaced with Y by Joe," sounds much better than "X was replaced by Y by Joe." Two bys? Yech.

16. Jealousy is felt by a man that has a girlfriend. Envy is felt a man that doesn't. Jealousy is a feeling of wanting to keep what you have, envy is wanting to get what you don't have.

17. A warrantee is the person to whom a warranty is made. I know guarantee ends with -ee, but it also starts with a g instead of a w. They're not the same word.

18. Writers and speakers imply. Listeners and readers infer. Got it?

19. Outlaws do not flaunt the law. They flout it. To flaunt the law, one would have to obtain a copy of the law and show it off while shouting, "Look, everybody, I've got a law! And I'm flaunting it!"