Dammit, I Hate Thinking About Class Stuff Outside of Class

But, I just can't help it this time. For our Gender and American religion class, the Nerdy Girl and I have to read a book about Spiritualism in the 1800s. It's a fascinating book. I was really struck by all of the similarities between Spiritualism and modern Paganism. The intense individualism, emphasis on progressive movements and social reform, and aversion to power structures and permanent buildings and all that. They even used the term "Summerland" for the afterlife.

So, all of these similarities seriously disturbed me. How many 19th century style Spiritualists do you know? None! It's gone, yo! And they had a lot more members and influence than modern Pagans. How do we keep our community from dying out the same way? What happened to the Spiritualists that we should guard against? Why is it that such hard, restricting, and often hurtful power structures keep coming back, while movements like Spiritualism with the potential for an improved quality of life go the way of the dodo?

I have no answers. Not now. How can I? I can't even remember what day it is.

WARNING! Have Brain Bleach Handy.

Ever wonder what Milton from Office Space would look like in a unitard? Yeah, me neither, but here's Jay Maynard's TRON costume, anyway.

I feel kinda bad making fun of the guy, but he's got to know, right? RIGHT??

In The Immortal Words of Katina Choovanski...

"At what point did I become a complete idiot with absolutely no pride whatsoever??"

I used to strike a bizarre ballance between being a covert control freak (over myself only, of course, otherwise it wouldn't be covert) and a mindless piece of fluff blown about on the winds of others' whims. Lately, that ballance has been upset. Or rather my (in)action has upset that ballance. I've very slowly given up the more useful aspects of the control freak, only keeping those with no practical value whatsoever (like getting irritated when my mom tells me she vacuumed in my old room because I know that means she was near my stuff). This has happened so slowly that I've only really noticed it now that it's reached a crisis point of sorts. I'm stuck and I don't know how to get unstuck.

I am so fucking stupid. How could I have let myself get to this point? Why the hell can't I just pay attention?

The New Grinch Movie Sucks 18 Kinds of Ass

So in my film and religion class last night, we watched both of the "Grinch Who Stole Christmas" movies. I really like the original animated movie, despite not being a Christian myself. The new live-action version of the movie, however, can spin off into a void never to be seen or heard from again, for all I care.

It was just all wrong. Never mind that they added a whole bunch of crap onto the front of the movie to pad it into a feature-length movie (they didn't get to the events of the original text until about 2/3 of the way through the movie). It was just all wrong. Five minutes in, the Whos were engaging in an orgy of consumerism, throwing money at cash registers and carrying piles of boxes bigger than themselves. Little Cindy Lou Who asked her dad if all of this didn't seem to be a bit much, to which he replied "But that's what Christmas is all about!"

That was it, I was done with this POS.

I don't care that the Whos finally realized their mistake in the last 10 minutes of the movie. The entire point of the original story was that they never lost focus of the real meaning of Christmas in the first place. Sure, they did all the other stuff with the decorating, and the presents, and the feasting, but they knew that those things were really unneccessary. In this movie, the Whos are assholes and the Grinch is actually the voice of anti-commercialism. Crap! All crap!

Also, the way women in the movie looked pissed me off. All of the people in the movie looked funky. They were supposed to be Dr. Seuss drawings brought to life, so they had funky Seuss-ian noses. All of the men that the audience was supposed to like and identify with/root for looked Seuss-ian. However, the only two women in the movie who the audience was supposed to like and identify with [Cindy Lou and Martha May (the Grinch's love interest, of all things)] looked like regular women (or girls, in Cindy's case). It was okay that the men looked funny, but the women had to conform to our culture's stupid ass beauty standards in order to be good enough for the audience.

You can accuse me of being too sensitive if you want. You can also kiss my ass, because I'm in a really, really bad mood thanks to this stupid movie.

Other People's Conversations

Overheard on my plane during an unusually long taxi to the runway:

"Apparently, we're going to drive to Denver."

Adventures With Alzheimer's

Just a quick disclaimer before we begin: I really do love my grandmother. She's a wonderful woman and I'm very sad that she will never be the same person she was when I was younger. However tragic the degenerative effects of Alzheimer's may be, though, sometimes they can lead to some very funny situations. If you can't laugh at times like these, the bad times will tear you down even quicker.

Now, on with the show:

About a year and a half ago, my grandmother moved from Ohio to live with my mom and step-dad here in Idaho because she couldn't take care of herself anymore. Here are some of the dimentia-induced highlights:

1. The first day she was here, she introduced herself to me 4 times in one hour. My aunt Dinah was the one who brough Gram out here from Ohio, so my mom took the opportunity to show her around our town (which is actually quite lovely). I stayed with Gram while they were out. When I made her toast and tea for an afternoon snack, she tried to give me a tip.

2. One morning Gram came out into the living room dressed in a summer dress over pajama bottoms with rubber boots on and tried to sneak out the front door without my mom (who, at the time, was in the kitchen, which is just off the living room) noticing. Thankfully, mom saw her and stopped her before she went wandering off. Gram said she had written a Broadway play and was going down to the store get a copy of the New York Times to read their review of it. She was really worried about what they thought of it. In a situation like this, there's not really much you can do. Mom just reassured her that she had always been a good writer (which is true, actually) and said she was sure the New York Times critic liked it. Then she offered to get a copy of the paper when she went to the grocery store later that day. She was hoping that Gram would forget about it by then. She was right!

3. Sometime during the first week of January 2004, she came out of her room one morning and proclaimed brightly, "Happy Easter!" When I tried to explain to her that it was January and that Easter was some time off still, she just nodded and smiled politely. She never believes a word I say. When mom came home from wherever she had gone that morning, Gram wished her a happy Easter too. When mom explained that it wasn't Easter yet, Gram immediately believed her. *facepalm*

4. Over the summer, I'd been having a lot of trouble with insomnia. It wasn't helping that I was having to get up pretty early for my job at the public library in Sandpoint. One night, I finally got to sleep, only to be woken up moments later by Gram turning her TV up as loud as it would go. She's legally blind, so she's got a lot of problems distinguishing the channel changing buttons from the volume controling buttons. That wouldn't be such a problem if she'd just turn the TV right back down once she realizes she's got the wrong buttons, but she just leaves it cranked up like that. We live in a Cape Cod style house, and the entire half-story upstairs is my bedroom. My bed happens to be directly above her television. I shoot up out of bed and go down to ask her to turn it down. She does, and I go back to bed. I finally start nodding off again and she cranks it back up! I go down again to ask her to turn it down, only to find that she has locked her bedroom door. She shouted that she wouldn't open the door because I was a stranger and that if I didn't leave she would call the cops. I had to wake my mom up.

5. Another night that summer, I'd finally managed to nod off in the wee hours of the morning, only to have Gram open my door and call up the stairs: "Grandma?! Grandma?!" I get up, and go downstairs and ask her what's going on. She says "Have you seen my grandma? She was just here and now I can't find her!" I try to explain to her that the only people who live here are my mom, step-dad, and me (I just didn't have the heart to tell her that her grandmother has been dead for decades). She smiles and nods, because she never, ever believes me, and continues looking for her grandmother, even checking behind my step-dad's Lazy Boy in the living room. Finally, when Gram starts yanking on the front door (which we close with a padlock at nights, so she can't go wandering off) to go look outside, the noise of me trying to convince her to go back to bed wakes my mom up. Mom comes out and explains that Gram's grandmother isn't here and she must have just had a vivid dream. Gram readily agrees, and goes back to bed. *double facepalm*

6. Gram fell asleep during M*A*S*H. She wakes up, and wanders into the livingroom and grabs the phone off the end table. She turns it on and dials some random numbers. My mom asks her who she's calling. Gram explains that she's trying to call the Army because she'll get in trouble if they find out she's off base without permission. Have I mentioned that my Gram is 86 and has never been in the Army?

It's never dull at my house, that's for sure.

Heart Update:
Well, I thought I should probably update y'all on my heart thing. I went to the doctor the other day. He listened to my heart, took my BP, hooked me up to a EKG and all that. Basically, I just need to calm the fuck down. It's stress, just like my mom said it was. Or rather, it was due to me de-stressing. I finally de-toxed a little, so my heart was adjusting. The doc gave me an anti-anxiety/anti-depressant to calm me down. Unfortunately, it made me violently ill. I do not have a good track record with anti-depressants. However, since Expedia totally screwed me over with regards to my flight home (switching my flight at the last minute so I'll be arriving in DIA an hour after my shuttle to Laramie leaves), my stress levels shot right back up to normal, so my heart isn't doing that fluttery thing anymore.*

* = Thank you thank you thank you I love you Abra for coming to get my sorry ass tomorrow.

Current Mood: Plane-phobic
Current Music: "Organic Anti-Beat Box Band" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers

Non-Porn Ate My Soul

Well, I've been trying to keep myself busy so I don't begin to dwell on my impending airplane trip, so I've been playing some fun web games. These two are the best.

It Really Isn't Porn. Honest:
When I first discovered ThisIsNotPorn.com many moons ago, I ended up playing it for almost 9 hours straight. I gave myself a headache. Luckily, I remembered to write down the answers to each subsequent puzzle, and how I figured it out. Unfortunately, that cheat sheet is in my closet back in my apartment, so I've been muddling through again as best I can.

The point of ThisIsNotPorn is...well, there is no point. But it's fun. Each page is a puzzle. It contains clues to help you solve it. Solving the puzzle means finding out how to get to the next page. Sometimes this is done by clicking on a specific part of the screen, sometimes it's figuring out a username/password combination, and sometimes it's adding the right word to the URL on the address bar. Sometimes, there are several ways off a page and if you don't take them in the right order, you'll end up going in circles. It's fascinating.

To get started, click on the link above, then click on the oven door. For this game, it helps (but isn't necessary) if you have an online English-Dutch translator open in another window. It also helps to have a program that can translate ASCII text. To do this, just open Word Notepad, hold down the Alt key and type in one of the three-number codes using the number pad on the right side of the keyboard. Then let go of the Alt key, and magically, the letters appear!

For those spoiler whores among you, I managed to find a series of posts I made on Fametracker when we were talking about this game. These are the answers to several of the first puzzles. I'm going to put it in Spoiler Text for those who don't want to know the answers, so just drag your mouse and highlight the text to read it:

1. If you highlight the entire page, you'll find some weird code thing. I'm not sure what kind of code it is, but apparently it translates into something referring to the legend of Alexander the Great and the Gordian Knot (someone on Fametracker posted this answer, so I didn't have to figure it out for myself). Click on "Asia Awaits." You'll get a pop up that says "HeWhoRulesByTheSword" and asks you for a username/password combination. It's Alexander/Gordian. It'll take you to the next page.

2. The voice that reads off the NATO phonetic alphabet is creepy as hell, but not relevent to this particular puzzle. If you click the mouse on the picture of the truck, you'll get a pop up that says something that translates as "The Boy Will Die Alone." There is hidden ASCII text underneath the picture which you can see if you drag your mouse over it. There is also ASCII text on the title bar. When translated, it's a bunch of words in Dutch that refer to a place where a boy disappeared and the answer being the old name of that place. That's a reference to the old folk tale of Hans Brinker and the Zuiderzee river. The old name for the Zuiderzee is IJsselmeer. Since there is no pop up box, or link to click on, the only logical way to get out of there is to type in a new URL, which is what you have to do. Just type "IJsselmeer" into the URL after the "/see/" part to go to the next page.

3. If you move the mouse over the bottom right hand corner of the sign, a blank pop up appears. This is to cue you in to something hidden right there on the sign. It says "Edith Head." She was a famous Hollywood costume designer. If you click on the sign, you get a pop up that says "WhatALovelyDrapeTheyMake," which I think referrs to fabric, and the username/password combination is Edith/Head.

4. The next one is pretty easy. The letters at the bottom of the screen are a reverse-alphabet code that spell out "whereisthesheepman!" which is a reference to a book by Murakami. And HM's Hotel of the Aquatic Mammal refers to the Dolphin Hotel. I have no clue what that's supposed to mean, though, because I found the way out by clicking randomly on the picture. Click in the middle, near the light in the building.

5. The one with the three lights in the dark: If you click in one place, you get the "Curiosity Killed the Cat" prompt username/password is Kipper/May. It's another Murakami reference. Then in the other one you get a "Master/Betrayer" username/password prompt. It's Xerxes/Demaratus.

6. This one scares the bejesus out of me. It's just creepy. I can't make out what the people are yelling. Here's where the possibilities start splitting. I couldn't figure this one out, so I went back to the last picture by clicking the word "Are" at the bottom of the screen. I got taken back to the picture with the lights. Click on the second light from the left to get the "Dorothy" prompt. The username and password are Yuko/Gotanda. It'll take you to a picture of some windmills, which leads to a picture of a jail door, which leads to the windmills, which leads to the jail door, which leads to me going insane and turning off my computer. I haven't gotten past there yet. I was just too tired to sit and puzzle it out.

There are lots of solutions and shortcuts to this on The Cellar forums. Just do a search.

I Accidentally Killed The Crocodile With Electroshock Last Night:
For those of you who don't want to abuse your brains quite so bad, there's always The Stuffed Animal Psych Ward. The object of this game is to give therapy to crazy stuffed animals so they can go back out in the world and be lovable and cuddly again. This game is both cute and warped. I finally cured the crocodile this afternoon and it still makes me happy just thinking about it.

Enjoy!

Current Mood: Slightly anxious (damn planes...)
Current Music: "Nhee Tai Sieaw" by China Dolls

Did I Mention I Got A New Tattoo Last Week?

This is not it. Damn!

WARNING: Not work safe.

Sometimes I Have Nightmares That Jack Chick Is Right.

The revival of Jack Chick's thread over on Fametracker reminded me just how hilariously horrifying his work is. I love how he fails to grasp even basic concepts of other faiths, other languages, and even basic human interactions. For example, in The Tycoon, he seems to be under the impression that various people have claimed that Buddha, the Virgin Mary, "Allah the moon god", and Confucious have died for their sins. Who knew Don Ho and his Buddhist minions were so violent? In Allah Had No Son, he's completely unaware that Allah is just the Arabic word for God and that it's used by Christians and Jews as well as Muslims. And I won't even get into all of the tracts which feature doctors, professors/teachers, cops, and other people who recruit for Chick while neglecting their jobs and endangering the people who are depending on them. And it almost goes without saying that Jack Chick, not being an actual human himself, could not write a single line of believable dialogue to save his life.

Oh, and Mandy, you did say you wanted to read some stories with characters named Mandy, right? And this Mandy is a witch too! Hey, maybe you could come over some time and levitate my table? By the way, in the original ending, Mandy was murdered by witches. But on the bright side, rock music was invented by the druids, so they're not all bad.

I'm sure you can see why I'd find Chick endlessly amusing. And yet, there is a bit of fear underneath that amusement. Not because I'm afraid of Satan ("Haw! Haw! Haw!") or anything, but because people take this whack job seriously. Up here in the northern part of Idaho, where I spend about a third of the year, people take him very seriously. It isn't uncommon to find tracts, sometimes by Chick and other times from his kindred spirits, left in public restrooms or left on public benches at the city beach. Lots of people hand them out at Halloween instead of candy. I've worked at the public library here off and on for nearly four years and at least once a month someone would come in and shove tracts in the pages of books on feminism, sexuality, environmentalism, and any non-Protestant faith. And once in a collection of Oscar Wilde's plays. It's just kind of depressing to realize that I'm living in such close proximity to people who:

1. Actually believe this stuff, a lot of which is really mean spirited.
2. Feel the overwhelming need to force these views on complete strangers.
3. Are so disconnected with reality that they actually believe Chick tracts to be appealing and compelling enough to sway people's beliefs.

Still, even after all that The Death Cookie still manages to be more amusing than Upchuck Austen's Uncanny X-Men storyline about the plot to get Nightcrawler to become a priest and then Pope, at which time all the Catholics in the world would disappear in a puff of smoke (thereby faking the Rapture) thanks to scientifically engineered Communion wafers of death. For no real reason whatsoever. (I'm not making this up)

(For more Chickian weirdness, go to the official site linked at the top of this post or to this pretty comprehensive site)

The "I've mentioned my birthday is September 20th, right?" hint of the day:

I found this on the somethingawful.com forums:



Current Mood: Amused
Current Music: "Gimme Danger" by Iggy & the Stooges

Eh, I'll sleep when I'm dead. Which may be sooner than I'd planned.

Okay, so for the past week or so my heart has been beating funny. It'll beat normally for a while, then it'll skip a beat and then kick in really hard again. It feels all fluttery and I don't like it a bit. My mom says that our family has a history of funky heart beats due to stress. This is true, since I remember her having to leave work to go to the hospital once due to a heartbeat so weird she thought she was having a heart attack or something. She quit her job and it cleared right up. But I'm not so sure that's what's wrong with me. If anything, I should be better now since I haven't done a damn thing since Winter Break started two weeks ago.

Tonight things got worse. I finally went to bed at, like, 3 am and I was trying to sleep when my grandmother turned her TV up as far as it would go. She's got dementia pretty bad, so she's not really aware that she's crazy and kind of annoying, so you can't get mad at her. But that doesn't make a blaring TV in the wee hours of the morning any easier to deal with. I was thinking about getting up to go tell her to turn it down (that thought was quickly followed by "Hey, Monk is on!") when my mom got up and made her turn it off. Then I realized that my chest felt pretty tight and the left side was aching. My mom was in the kitchen making a cup of tea (when you wake her up, she can't usually get back to sleep), so I went downstairs to express my freaked-out-edness.

She took my pulse, and it's kind of irregular, but I'm not having any sort of crisis. So we talked about things and unless I am having a crisis, the emergency room in Sandpoint is pretty useless and the doctor's office here in Priest River doesn't open again until Monday. Dammit dammit dammit.

I don't want to go to sleep, because it gets worse when I lay down or recline and I can't sleep sitting up (usually). So, here I am at 6:30 in the morning posting this completely unentertaining post because, well, I have nothing else to do. I'm too caught up on all my message boards, and no one is posting at this time of night, er, morning, so I'm bored. Bored bored bored.

Well, fantastic. That post took 10 whole minutes to write. Only 26 and a half more hours until I can go to the doctor!

Scary Ass Link of the Day:
Since I can't sleep, I think it would be fun to spread the misery around. Here is a link guaranteed to give you nightmares so bad you won't want to sleep either!

The Other Pony Club

There really are no words to describe this. It must be seen to be believed. I'll post a little snippet from the site anyway:

Human ponies are not new. It exists when and wherever people are inspired by horsy sports. Europe, US, ex-colonial Africa, Middle East. (Though there not all ponies may be volunteers, so be warned!) From our experience we now know what works and what does not.

What the fuck, man? Seriously! What. The. Fuck?

Current Mood: Worried.
Current Music: "Love Song #1" by Meshell Ndegeocello

"Alf guest stars"

Okay, I'm totally not in a bad mood anymore. I just found the Law and Order plot generator. Awesome! Frickin' awesome! It's like having five whole episodes at your fingertips every time you refresh the page!

"Tonight on Law and Order:
A headless corpse is discovered in a park by a blue-collar man on his way to work. Lenny and Curtis initially pin the crime on a sleazy, unfeeling pusher, but after a wrongfully accused prisoner is freed, they arrest rival brothers. McCoy and Kincaid prosecute, but McCoy must become agitated in the courtroom to win. The old DA takes a drink and says "A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains." Leonard Nimoy guest stars."

By the way, there's also a Law and Order coloring book. My birthday is September 20th, guys. That's all I'm sayin'.

Current Mood: Crescent Fresh!
Current Music: "Striptease" by Hawksley Workman

Happy Fucking Whatever

Well, one more year over with. Let's hope that 2005 manages to drain my will to live a little slower than 2004.

Why yes, I am in a cranky mood tonight. Why do you ask?

I don't know what it is about New Year's, but it plunges me into a black depression Every. Single. Year. Maybe it's because I can't help but contemplate the previous year and it always seems like every single year was worse than the one before it ("so every day that you see me is on the worst day of my life"). I'm a glass-half-empty kind of girl, so I suppose I tend to focus on the negative, but still. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I got wasted on New Year's like everyone else. Also, I have never, ever gotten a kiss at midnight.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go complain myself to sleep.

Current Mood: New Year's-y.
Current Music: "Hallelujah" by Jeff Buckley