The only woman who ever truly loved you

pretzelcoatl @ 8:11pm: Week in Reviews
( Fun with equations )

hyuga @ 6:00pm: Tweets since Saturday, 15:55

• 15:55—Oh god, vomit. I just got close enough to Michelle Bachmann to be scarred for life.


• 15:56—Also, Rep. John Culberson of Texas handed me a ticket to the House visitors gallery. The ticket has Engrish on it, I shit you not.


• 15:57—"Appropriate hats may be worn by gentleman for religious purposes only." WTF? Is this some usage of "gentleman" I'm not aware of?


• 15:58—The context to all this was that I also met one of my favorite bloggers and journalists, Ed Brayton: http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/


• 17:00—This childish asshattery is why nothing gets done in Congress, and why we can't have nice things: http://bit.ly/1gPTMB


• 17:03—Oh and the video features my good friend John Culberson being a total dick.

pretzelcoatl @ 4:14pm: YAY SUN
It turns out me not installing Dragon Age yet (see also: lack of memory) was a blessing in disguise, as I could just as well have held off my haircut appointment and even probably my contact lens appointment and stayed in to play that game. But I'm glad I didn't because it is FREAKING AWESOME today. I'm going to the store and I won't freeze if I wear sandals! :D :D :D

Almost finished with a book, possibly another one after that, and watching a movie tonight. Other stuff: Running, laundry, some writing (I aim for five pages this weekend), and finally installing that game. You?

heebee @ 12:53pm: Music Sharing o/!
If you're a fan of the zombie genre, you will probably like Virus by Abney Park. It deserves a spot on any Resident Evil FST, at any rate!

wneleh, posting in fanthropology @ 12:18pm: Media references to fanfic, the week ending 11/07/09
In the Toronto Star, Peter Howell profiled Robert Pattinson, who said, of reading the Twilight novels as pro-abstinence, "I think it's hilarious that everyone, especially parents, are saying it's about abstinence and they're really pleased their kids are reading it. And yet so many people who are reading the books are thinking, `I want them to have sex! I want them to make me want to have sex!' And if you read any fan fiction, all of it is about Edward and Bella having sex in the same scenarios instead of stopping. It's quite amusing."

In the south-of-here Patriot Ledger, Dana Barbuto wrote, of the new movie Gentlemen Broncos, when it’s not paying homage to low-budget sci-fi films and geeky fan fiction, “Gentlemen Broncos” shows the type of unabashed heart that made the Hesses’ earlier film a cult hit.

( In the student press… )

Finally, Mark Morford, for the San Francisco Chronicle's website, dissed both my religion and my favorite hobby in one swell foop. No cookie for him.

(Crossposted to http://as-others-see-us.dreamwidth.org/7551.html.)

gangstavidel @ 12:41pm: And now that Ma is back at work, I get to resume the dayjob from hell and be my grandmother's live-in chauffeur. MM YES I ALWAYS WANTED TO DRIVE ALL OVER TOWN IN THE SNOW, I LOVE IT WHEN YOU NEED TO GO TO CHRISTMAS BAZAARS IN THE FIRST WEEK OF NOVEMBER.

sarraceniaceae @ 8:29am: Dear cat:

Crapping all over the carpet because I've kicked you out of my bedroom semi-permanently for peeing on my bed every morning for two weeks no matter what I did is not exactly the way to endear yourself to me enough to get let back in. Especially when you have three litter boxes and I have a brand new bedset that I really don't want contaminated with cat pee.

Siiiigh.

vulchu @ 2:27am: Off to Florida for the weekend as of early-ish tomorrow morning! (aka about 8 hours from now) WOOO DISNEY AND adesso!!!

hyuga @ 12:00am: Tweets since Friday, 00:07

• 00:07—http://www.tokyograph.com/news/id-5451 *facepalm* Oh, Gackt. You loser.


• 17:20—Slept in today until almost 10. Have felt healthier and more energetic than I have all week. A bit better emotionally too.

heebee @ 6:56pm: The other side of tragedy is discovering the people who rise up to meet it:

"Sergeant Munley — a woman with a fierce love of hunting, surfing and other outdoor sports — bolted from her car, yanked her pistol out and shot at Major Hasan. He turned on her and began to fire. She ran toward him, continuing to fire, and both she and Major Hasan went down with several bullet wounds, Mr. Medley said."

Read the whole article. This woman is incredible.

pretzelcoatl @ 8:20pm: omg yaaay
So I ended up getting Dragon Age and I'm suddenly MORE EXCITED about it now. I have two questions for those of you who got it though:

1) What did you end up playing as?

2) Is your "downloadable character" the same for everyone or is it random?

For my answer to 1, I was originally going to be a Dwarf Noble just because but then I realized that Mages get more dialogue options and had a cooler selection of specialties, so I'm going that route and as a human. Slightly more boring, probably, but I figured I could do the elf path another time.

But then it became even tougher when I saw the range of specialties for mages and I was like "I CAN'T CHOOSE." Do I do the one with the melee focus? Sure, let's go with that. No wait, I should play as a healer since that's what I usually do. No, wait, the Blood Mage! I could play a Blood Mage who is as nice as possible! No wait the Shapeshifter! No the healer! No the Blood Mage! No the fighter!

And so it went on until I looked up a Wiki and read this:

Wiki: Shapeshifters can become giant spiders.
Me: :D SOLD!

I fear how my brain works.

ETA: CURSES! NEEDS MOAR MEMORY ON MY COMPUTER! brb deleting stuff

moebot @ 6:29pm: WEEKEND STUFF
STUFF TO DO
-ENGD67 assignment (5 pages to go)
-ENGC76 assignment (4 pages to go)
-HISB40 paper (10 pages to go)
-construct "story" for volunteer work (idek)

angrybabble @ 3:40pm: And honestly, I'm down like the economy
I'm trying to get to public computers of one sort or another at least every 2-3 days now, so eventually I might catch up on things. Who knows. Back to my October reading list! (I know, I know, I go away for a year and when I come back, I decide to write really boring entries. In my defense I am trying to rebuild my old life and it was pretty dull! AND WE LIKED IT THAT WAY okay, well, perhaps we didn't, but we certainly appreciate it now.)

Out of curiousity, is there anything y'all WOULD prefer me to blog about?

( October 2009 Book Reviews Part 3: The Reckoning - reviews of The War of the Flowers, The Book of Unholy Mischief, and Fables comics. )

okay, I STILL don't have time to finish my book list but luckily most of the rest of them are Discworld novels (I'm on a series rereading binge since the new book came out) so I'll just list them later. Oh and the 70s amateur detective novels. Which are very smartly written and the clever writing makes up for the lack of actual detectoring.

Later. "Baby are you down down down down down?"

pretzelcoatl @ 4:22pm: OH WORLD
I want to figure out whether or not I want to actually get Dragon Age or whether I should hold off and finish the 500 other games I need to finish, which includes:

a) Phantasy Star II
b) Devil Summoner 2
c) Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney
d) Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime
e) Devil May Cry
f) Final Fantasy V's bonus dungeon
g) Scribblenauts
h) That one game I started on my iPhone

Annnd a few others, including those which are so frustratingly hard (MEGAMAN 9 AND CASTLEVANIA III I AM LOOKING AT YOU). And the ones that I still need to start arrrre:

a) No More Heroes
b) Viewtiful Joe
c) Eternal Darkness (which is also being borrowed)
d) Golden Sun
e) Earthbound - replay but I don't care it's sooo good
f) Second playthrough of Persona 4
g) The Secret of Monkey Island
h) Tales from Monkey Island Ep. 1
i) Vay

I may take advice from salacious_pop (Torchlight is cheaper!) and illian (Torchlight is also easier to just pick up and go!) and just get... Torchlight. But the fun of being a Dwarf Noble makes this a stalemate! CURSES!

I also want more time in the universe to do all the stuff I wanna do.

But most importantly, lest this post be entirely about the First World Problems: I WANT THE WORLD TO BE LESS CRAZY NOW. Or at least the good kind of crazy instead of the bad kind.

allforchocolate @ 6:56am: ( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )

laerfan, posting in futurama @ 5:52pm: THE FINAL
Who is your winner?

Poll #1481683 Winner
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 151

Choose your champion!

Final standings...
01. ???
02. ???
03. ???
04. ???
05. Calculon
06. Lrrr
07. Nibbler
08. Kif

pretzelcoatl @ 11:36am: Nerdy Questions Inspired By TV Tropes, abstrusedude's Facebook, and d2leddy's LJ
1)

If you were able to max out any D&D stat in real life, one of the following...

- Strength - muscle; lifting, carrying, swimming, breakin' shit
- Dexterity - hand-eye coordination, agility, reflexes, fine motor skills, balance
- Constitution - physique, toughness, health and resistance to disease and poison
- Intelligence - IQ, but also includes mnemonic ability, reasoning and learning ability outside those measured by the written word, the ability to learn new languages
- Wisdom - enlightenment, judgement, wile, willpower and intuitiveness
- Charisma - physical attractiveness, persuasiveness, and personal magnetism

...which one would you choose? Which is your strongest right now? Your weakest?

2)

Am I a Cylon?

3)

Do penguins taste like chicken?

mullenkamp @ 11:56am: Youmacon part 1
My writeups are always really long, so even a con we only spent two days at? Gets two posts. This one covers Thursday's preparations, and Friday's Star Trek silliness and the Pistons game.

( Several pics and a few embedded videos, so watch out for bandwidth! )

Tomorrow, Cid and Edea meet some of their students, Klavier (doing his best Adam Lambert impression) and Ema take part in the masquerade, and ... a lot of really random things happen that could ONLY happen at a con. Really. Only at a con.

I can't believe it's been a whole week... but then again, it might help that I was asleep for large portions of that week, after the fiasco Sunday. :P

oftendistracted @ 10:02am: Really?
The Fort Hood shooting is, quite obviously, a terrible event and we're already seeing dangerous implications on the EU's level of support in Afghanistan. Amazingly, however, it wasn't the front page news story of my paper this morning, which also incensed me.

"Sex education is to be made compulsory for all pupils, prompting fury from faith groups which said that the move would contravene the right for children to be educated in accordance with their parents’ beliefs.

All 15-year-olds must receive at least one year of sex and relationship lessons, Ed Balls, the Schools Secretary, said yesterday. Those whose religious or moral values prevent them from attending will be classed as truants and may be punished by the school. Until now parents could opt out of lessons about contraception, sexually transmitted diseases and homosexuality until their children were 19." -- Source

Edit: England already teaches Sex Ed within biology from an amoral, this-is-how-it-happens viewpoint. Some schools also teach societal and moral impact within General Education but it is not a strict requirement.

England's got one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in Europe, if not the highest. I'm not convinced that "[teaching children] about the importance of marriage, civil partnerships and stable relationships in family life, as well as how to have sex" will work to counteract that in those cases, or rather I'm sure it won't if they're taught at 15, which is a high enough age that too much hand-holding and fluffy wording is going to be greeted with skepticism and contrariness.

That wasn't the part that really pissed me off, though. Did you catch it?

"Those whose religious or moral values prevent them from attending will be classed as truants and may be punished by the school. ... Mr Balls said that lowering the age to 15 was “the most balanced, most practical and legally enforceable way” to satisfy the rights of parent and children."

Like the right to a moral or belief-based opt-out, then?

Anime+Game update after I play Dragon Age a ton.

mullenkamp @ 11:52am: Writer's Block: Here's looking at you


The last few seconds of this, especially.



...What?

This was seriously the first thing to come to mind. I dunno, every time there's a serious romantic scene in a movie, I want to fast-forward. :P

happyparasol @ 11:48am: thank you!
We went out to a Chinese restaurant yesterday and my fortune cookie said this:

Awesome, I am so anticipating this. DON'T LIE TO ME, COOKIE.

pretzelcoatl @ 10:01am: Writer's Block: Here's looking at you

moebot @ 10:16am: Do you think that fandom, in general, fetishizes and objectifies queer culture? DISCUSS.

I may or may not be writing a post on this and would like some discussion points.

oftendistracted @ 2:48pm: "A bird dropping a piece of bread onto outdoor machinery has been blamed for a technical fault at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) this week which saw significant overheating in sections of the mighty particle-punisher's subterranean 27-km supercooled magnetic doughnut.

According to scientists at the project, had the LHC been operational - it is scheduled to recommence beaming later this month - the snag would have caused it to fail safe and shut down automatically. This would put the mighty machine out of action for a few days while it was restarted, but there would be no repeat of the catastrophic damage suffered last September. On that occasion, an electrical connection in the circuit itself failed violently, causing a massive liquid-helium leak and knock-on damage along hundreds of metres of magnets.

Reg readers alerted us yesterday to the temperature rises in the LHC's Sector 81, which began in the early hours of Tuesday morning: most of the collider's operational data can be viewed on the web for all to see. Initial enquiries to CERN press staff led to assurances that the rises were the result of routine tests.

However Dr Mike Lamont, who works at the CERN control centre and describes himself as "LHC Machine Coordinator and General Dogsbody" later confirmed that there had indeed been a problem. Lamont, briefing reporters at the control room yesterday, told the Reg that machinery on the surface - the LHC accelerator circuit itself is buried deep beneath the Franco-Swiss border outside Geneva - had suffered a fault caused by "a bit of baguette on the busbars", thought perhaps to have been dropped by a bird." - Source.

While I don't subscribe to the 'LHC WILL DOOM US ALL' arguments - though I have read anti-LHC forums for a laugh - I have to admit it's a bit worrying for things as a whole when a bit of bread on an external source can necessitate a failsafe shutdown.

hyuga @ 12:00am: Tweets since Wednesday, 00:10

• 00:10—.@nomtweets Yeah, I'll pray. I'll pray you all suck satan's cock in hell.


• 19:34—Why has traffic been so fucktarded the last couple weeks?