Category: Connections

Two hours of sleep last night, as I stupidly stayed up until three before I even realized that I still had to do my homework. I say “stupidly” because I wasn’t even staying up for any specific purpose–I just hung out with Michelle and Jessica and David, beatboxing and rhapsodizing about the Neptunes. That’s college, I guess, but then I thought I was supposed to get good at time management someday. Ha ha ha!

That wasn’t exactly the best night to skimp on sleep, either, as today was a big day: not only our biggest crowd at Chalk Circle, but my first ever show as the drummer for Grandma’s Genius! And it rocked! We’d practiced together on exactly one song, which we didn’t end up playing, and the PA was crap, which made for a frustrating beginning. As it turns out, though, once we got started we had a pretty flawless forty minutes. We’re good at this!

Then, just as we finished our last song (BNL, “Brian Wilson,” where I get to go crazy thundergod at the end), the first drops of rain started to fall… all over the band that had earlier refused to swap us time slots.

That’s right. God loves Grandma’s Genius more.

(Also, found while searching for Neptunes sites: Conch is their specialty!)

I went with Jon, Amanda, Amanda’s sister Kelly and the one and only Artdrey to a Legends game on Friday, then to see Spirited Away on Sunday, and in between…

There are apparently a lot of Beaux Arts Balls thrown by architecture departments all over the country, but the one in Lexington is the biggest, or so they tell me. People put on costumes and go underground and get physically rearranged by the music, and then there’s girls in fashion… things, and after that there are guys who are pretending to be girls.

I’d never been to a drag show before (although I have watched To Wong Foo several times), but I wasn’t really surprised. There were a couple of ladies who were definitely men, and then there was one who was fairly androgynous, and then… there was Jenna.

Jenna was beautiful.

Jenna is my soulmate.

Jenna, if you’re out there, know that I’m out here too, and no, I’m not single, but dammit I could be.

Next topic! I should emphasize more that this was a costume party, as in Halloween costumes, only in April, so with more skin. There were some intricate and pretty ones there, and then the size-over-intricacy ones (meet Mister Pez Dispenser!) and then there were just people out to make their fetishes public.

I came to the conclusion, that night, that costume parties exist to let people show off the way they really want other people to see them. The dude with the tux and the wolf mask wants to sweep you away; the girl with the angel wings and garter belt wants to be touched and untouchable; the guy with that much metal in his face… he’s just doin’ his thing, man.

So if this is the case, I find it terribly appropriate that Audrey and I wore brightly colored rayon old-person jogging suits. They were worth more than a few compliments from other partygoers, and they were the most comfortable things I’ve ever had the eye-grinding displeasure of wearing–the Secret of the Mallwalkers! They were also two terribly comfortable outfits on two terribly comfortable personalities. Even if, um, they did hurt to look at. The analogy breaks down there, I guess.

Part of me wanted to come back in jewelry and a big hat and my soon-to-be patchy pants, sure, but mostly I just had a great time in an elastic waistband, hovering next to my girl and being lifted bodily by the bass. Times that great in pants that swishy are few and far between.

(I’d like to cap off this entry by talking about Spirited Away, but really, can I say anything that hasn’t been said?)

Via Crummy comes a site with screen caps from a bootleg Asian DVD of The Two Towers, glorious subtitles included. A lot of them are just random, but these five are better than anything I could have come up with. The top left one’s a Unix nerd joke. The bottom right one is, somehow, going to be my new desktop wallpaper.

root toast I say toast
sister love

Today is my sister’s birthday! Caitlan is eighteen! Happy birthday, Caitlan!

In other news, Sumana has frequently plugged Bookfinder, a kickin’ service that, well, finds books. It’s kind of like the “network of bookstores” that Amazon uses to find out-of-print books, only much, much better. I was reading some of her comments on the service and how cool it was, and I kept thinking “gee, I wish I had a rare or used book that I was looking for.”

A couple days later, I was surprised to remember that I WAS looking for such a book, and had been for three years–Orson Scott Card’s short story omnibus, Maps In A Mirror. Bookfinder turned up several copies, all of which were too expensive at the moment, of course, but most of which were still cheaper than the few an Amazon search turned up two years ago.

So I went away satisfied, but came back tonight when I remembered a book that this amazing girl had showed me at a convention. The book is Anthropology, and it’s one of those forced-restriction masterpieces: 101 stories, each 101 words long. What I got to read of it was fantastic, and I wanted my own copy, but I remembered she’d said it was out of print.

Which it is–but tonight I found it for just ten bucks with shipping, and bought it. Thanks to Bookfinder! Hooray, Bookfinder!

I’m going to be a chaperone at the NJCLconvention most of next week, and I don’t know how often I’ll have web access. I hope to getanother entry up before I go, but that’s there just in case. And!

Two guys are driving past a field populated by a large number of cows. One of the guys turns to the other and says”What a big herd of cows! How many do you think there are?”

“Eighty-four,” says the second guy.

“Wow!” says the first guy, stunned. “How’d you figure that out so fast?”

“Easy,” says the second guy, “I counted their legs and divided by four.”

This is my Discrete professor’s idea of a joke.

Somebody’s been searching a lot for “xorph.com” on Yahoo, repeatedly and regularly–like twenty times in less than amonth. A fine thing, in my opinion, but how long is it going to take him or her to figure out the address bar? Also,somebody found this site by searching for “elephant dildo” the other day. Believe it or not, that exact phrase has cropped up in here before. All the same, I’m hoping it was one of my friends who’s in on that particular joke; if not, I hope it was someone who’s going to get help soon.

Speaking of help:


THAT MISTER HYPNOSIS IS A VERY BAD INFLUENCE YOUNG LADY!!!