My day: worlds collide, like peanut butter and chocolate, or bees and lobsters.
That's Beatrix - she's floatingtide and gooddamon 's 16-month pea.


PS: Dark Knight Review by me!

( Movie Meme )

I highly recommend starting with song "E".
From here.


( Tagged for 20 questions )



Hellboy II verdict:
Brand-name directors are no longer allowed to whip it out and spooge all over a script. And Hollywood is no longer allowed to give them money to do it.
Del Toro, Gibson, Shyamalan, Lucas.
Watch it with earplugs in or not at all.

I dreamt I beat up a neocon after class. He was a student, and had this quiz on current events and took some article from the RegGuard and completely distorted the facts so I got the question wrong. I'd read the article the day before, so I knew he was purposefully twisting things in order to humiliate me and others with his quiz game. I chewed him out and he got so upset that he hit some woman he thought was me. I saw that and kicked his ass.

But I was able to work off my sentence by helping the warden with his Dell OEM and tape backup system.


Other stuff: Twelve Kingdoms Book Reviews by me!

Sam's teaching me how to drive a stick. The mean man made me drive *home* in *traffic* from Springfield. I stalled two lights and made countless cars drive around me, which is so inconsiderate it nearly induced a panic attack, but other than that, I'm doing OK. Well OK, that and not accidentally shifting into Neutral instead of Second all the time.

( Weekend; Ohio living/school musing )


There are a ton of reviews this weekend! I have a good 4 or 5 of my own (including both translated Twelve Kingdoms novels) I have to write soon, but was too tired after doing all of these to take a crack at them. (Editing, photograbbing, metadata, podcasting, and soc/net/book/ing - still lots of legwork.) Plus, I don't want to spam my RSS subscribers too badly.
- Game Review: Grid by Sam
- Game Review: DiRT by blacklotus
- Movie Review: Hellboy II by karenjeane

I call dibs on Dark Knight!

Argh, I may have to retire my () buttons after this post.

I haven't been doing a lot of writing, here or elsewhere. I keep saying "I'll do it later," and then the media is not fresh in my mind anymore and I don't. Too many things are distracting me from what I *should* be doing. Instead of whining, I'll resolve this, I'm just not sure when.

The distractions haven't all been video games. The 10th was my birthday (no big deal), and it was a nice, quietish day spent with Sam and anaesthete . We got our hairs cut and went for PF Chang's and Coldstone. Later in the evening, Sam and I went to see Mongol, which was rather faithful to the history except for a few made up scenes.

I've also been downloading a metric asston of music, now that I have MediaMonkey, which is able to stream them off my 120Gb portable much better than iTunes ever could (which was not at all). This is important, since a graphic design job takes up a lot on the 80Gb main drive, and while I'm pretty anal about keeping only the music I really like and deleting old graphic design projects, I was still feeling a big crunch.

( Music )

We got our car back!

Tank is empty, car was 10 blocks away. Drives OK, looks OK, but no stereo inside (books still in the trunk!).

We'll just not replace it until we move, and use The Club until then. We netted one empty bottle of Budweiser, which will be taken in for fingerprinting (Whoooo~~~ are you - whowho, whowho). The policeman who found it did so by randomly searching. There was another stolen car, stolen on the same day, not 2 blocks away.

I'm happy. This is the next-to-best outcome, and now we don't have to look for a new car and have it randomly fall apart in Nebraska, or be more expensive than this one was.

Do not be personally offended by my non-personal opinions.

I fucking hate LoudTwitter. WTF is the point? If we wanted to read it, we'd be on Twitter.
Yeah yeah, friends filter and all that, but I don't want to miss the posts that do have substance. Does anyone know of some way to parse your FL more accurately?

Here's how it works:

The rules are to just list 10 things that recently made you happy, then tag 10 people of your own and force them to put these memes up.

( 10 happy things )

I tag: cometeoraine, miyarificus and dearvicky. Because I'm mean like that.

After crying, googling, downloading, installing, rebooting, resetting, and various other techie breakdowns, the Creative Zen is now up and running, and I've replaced iTunes with Media Monkey. The Zen + Windows problems were insane because of M$ fuckery, but now that I've manually edited the INFs, registry, and installed Microsoft's unfindable beta driver packages, it's working beautifully.

MediaMonkey is probably the biggest accomplishment of the day. Programmable global hotkeys (though AutoHotKey was cool, no need now), Growl-style "now playing" popups, Last.Fm integration, synching support for every media device under the sun *by default,* a very smart playlist creator, a microplayer with mouse gestures... blah blah blah. It even grabbed all my iTunes data, ratings, etc. for me. I started playing tracks and noticed everything sounded amazing - it must have done some magic with the equalizer and my detected speakers. Amazing. I'm going to be in front of this options window all night tricking this mofo this out.

It is to Winamp and iTunes what Stewie is to Lois and Peter. I don't know whether to cackle maniacally or unzip my pants.

Even though I could use the extra cash and the TV is spewing panic at consumers in every direction, I'm still very glad I decided to take Tuesdays and Thursdays off from work for the rest of the summer until I move.

I do like my job in some respects - I have an extraordinarily flexible and understanding boss, I am paid very well, and every once in awhile, I get to do something truly creative. But it's hard to be enthusiastic about anything here, knowing that it's just a means to my totally tangential dream job.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I get to have Lauren days. Days that are spent by myself, regaining precious stores of sanity, or days spent entirely with friends. Lunching, sunning, watching children grow, drinking, laughing, analyzing, learning, and philosophizing.

These are the people I'm leaving behind in September in pursuit of change and big(ger) town dreams. I'll miss them, and I'm glad I have this extra time to spend with them.

Truthfully, I'm a little afraid, remembering what it was like to move the first time and how I had only two friends - friends that were forced into my circle and probably didn't like me much to begin with. I have a niche in Eugene created in part by my job and past jobs, and I'm not only leaving Eugene behind, I'm going way outside of my clique. I don't have problems making new friends, but I do have problems getting into their consciousness, their MyFaves, their "hey, we should invite Lauren too" reasoning. Yes, moving is new and exciting for me, but it does seem a little stupid to risk these friends, this good thing.


Save the date: September 22nd, it's wheels up and rock out with free pizza, beer, and ice cream cake for those who helped move heavy objects over the weekend.


Random: I have some new stuff in the portfolio, which is organized in order of stuff I am most proud of. If you haven't been there lately, take a gander!

I just bought my 5th MP3 player, and because it's my 5th, it's no longer an Apple.

The last Nano (2nd gen, pink) I purchased was a refurb for $80. I guess I and the previous owner just loved it to death, since both the headphone and the flash (?) connector have worn out and will no longer allow things to be jacked into it without static or power surges. Now, things won't even *stay* jacked.

Instead of another iPod, I purchased the Creative Zen, which is NOT PINK, but if it can hold up to my abuse, that's OK. I guess I'm growing up. I'll probably sell the Nano for scrap, since 2nd gens are in demand ($400!?), even if they don't really work.

The Zen's extra features are pretty impressive for such a cheap and tiny thing. Expansion cards? Yes please!

The biggest downside to this? There are no accessories for MP3 players that are not iPods. Namely, I'm having a hard time finding portable speakers for this that are of relatively good quality, are portable, and have a remote. Alas, one of these requirements must be compromised. Anyone want to buy some Altec Lansing speakers with remote (and slightly sticking "minus" volume button)?

The upside? I just bought an MP3 player, good cheapy headphones and cheapy speakers for $100.



Also, the geekiest thing you've heard all day: I installed AutoHotkey on Windows and scripted a bunch of commands to control iTunes via keystroke, add application launch capabilities like QuickSilver, and add other keystrokes simulating stuff I do on a Mac that Windows doesn't have keyboard shortcuts for. I'm not bringing the sexy MacBook Pro to Ohio (no moneys), and I need a PC for gaming, but I can bring some of the things I love about Mac to PC at least!

Monday was our sixth anniversary (of marriage. We've been together-together for more like 8 years,  and the wedding just sealed the deal). So we're not very big on anniversaries, but we still had a nice day. We went to the hot tubs at Onsen and had a nice dinner at our favorite restaurant, Cafe Soriah. It's good to visit all these places one last time before we move.

At the hot tub, we usually spend more time sitting on the ledge soaking our feet than fully submerged in the hot water. Some interesting conversations are had. This time, about our relationship.

( Sam's metaphor of marriage )

Sam managed to fuxor his back REALLY BADLY right before going to Onsen. Hot tub helped. So did my Monster Vibrator that I used for sexy purposes once and then relegated to more practical uses. (This thing seriously make the entire apartment shake. I'm surprised the power didn't go out. How on earth can you women use this for THAT?) He's going to get a massage today after my constant nettling (fucking Scotch Irishmen). This was on Monday, and he's still having trouble sleeping or bending over, which means I'm having trouble sleeping too. He's fortunate that I love the smell of Icy Hot and unfortunate that I give shitty massages.

Still no Fabio (car). Come back to me, my love :(

----------------
Now playing: The Beatles - Hey Jude
via FoxyTunes    

I may have done this before, but I like it.



Why so much Orwell and Dickens? Bleh. And wow, visual editor works really well for this type of post.
[Edit]: woops, I swapped the key for "star" and "italics" (fixed now).

Our car got stolen.

We haven't even had the car for a month. The title *just* came in the mail. But I guess it's better than having it stolen right before the move date.

( More details for the curious )


Very distressing. Not a catastrophe. Sam really helps.

One of my first reactions was "even if we get it back, it'll just get stolen again. People will just keep stealing my stuff!" Sam said if we get the car back and the stereo's missing, we shouldn't replace it, just to avoid future incident. I'm inclined to agree, and you KNOW how much I love music (taking my iPod for a 5 minute car ride).

Other people are not allowed to fuck up my life. I do a good enough job of it by myself as it is.

Hay Eugenians!
Go outside right now with some good sunglasses and *cautiously* look up at the sun.

We have two sun halos. It's relatively remarkable, since there aren't any clouds right now, and full halos are a little rare to begin with, especially in warm weather.

Sun Halo Article
Nice NASA blog thing with sketches

Now that I have a car, I want to make my own ribbon-stickers. Bright orange, with a smaller ribbon print. The script on the ribbon will read: "Ribbon awareness".


I wonder if we expelled waste from other parts of our body - elbows, etc. - would we still need to go to a private bathroom to do it? Would your elbow then be a "private" part?


On a more serious note, I wonder why no one's really talking about all the horrible flooding in the midwest. This is a disaster that's easily more expansive than Katrina, has several cities partially submerged, and is sure to destroy all our corn crop (this is not a trifle - see "King Corn" for more information).

Maybe it's because it doesn't have a fancy name like "tsunami" or "katrina". "Awful flooding in the midwest" is not really catchy. I'd make up a catchy name, but I'm afraid I'll go straight to hell for making light of it when I'm really not.


Feel free to ignore my macabre attitude today. I blame the moon.


I have Conan reviews.

I'm leaving Lane with a 4.1 GPA.

All the fretting paid off/was for nothing, and I have a quiet summer of packing ahead. Celebration is in order!


Antigone is so over Eugene, and ready to move. Helpful feline packs herself!

		I will marry Johnny Depp.
		After a wild honeymoon, We will settle down in Ireland in our fabulous Shack.
		We will have 2 kid(s) together.
		Our family will zoom around in a Green El Camino.
		I will spend my days as a Film Editor, and live happily ever after.

I could totally see how that works out: we meet on a film project and BAM INSTANT SMEX. Sorry Vanessa, I'm stealing your man. For you, Johnny, I would live in a shack. Especially if said shack is in Ireland.


So glad I didn't have to marry Newt Gingrich.

Six Recent Discoveries that have Changed My Life:

1. Spanx


2. McMenniman's Butterscotch Iced Coffee cocktail thing


3. Age of Conan (see you in two years!)


4. EasyBib (for "Works Cited" and bibliographies. You're welcome.)


5. Heat protection hair finishing spray stuff


6. iLike, recommendations and artist news fed into your media player

Finals are this week. I finally finished my unreadably meticulous Logic paper(s) of doom, and all that's left now is the anthro exam and a few interviews for a big newswriting final project. The subject - teacher salaries - is a little intimidating.

This also means summer. In summer, I will:
- Learn how to drive a stick
- Start giving away/selling my crap
- PLAY AGE OF CONAN

I finally got the fucking game yesterday, and as expected, my video card is too wimpy to play it at any more than about 3FPS. Contrary to the hard sell I got from VOS (ha, hardsell ME, try it), I went with a GeForce 8400 and it works just fine with all the graphic settings turned down. My love of stealth kitty has transfered into barbarian chick, and so far, it suits me fine. *More* than fine.

Server? It's a secret. I like MMOs without the MM bit. I enjoy PvE content, but I play alone when I'm learning a game or just leveling around. Other people only matter if I'm interested in endgame, and ever since WoW, I'm really not.

Saw Kung Fu Panda and Son of Rambow recently...maybe I'll do a review or two later.

Off to talk with the head of the teacher's union. La!