Category Archives: Miscellaneous

I used to work at a bridal shop specializing in headdresses. My work there was to know a veil.

This blog is destined not to make any sense (this is good to know, you hooligans!)

I’ve set the scene for an interrogation. You are a D-cup bra. In the seat next to you is a potted plant (of the cactus variety). You and Mr. Prickles (the cactus) caused quite a commotion at a local nightclub last night. However you, being a bra, can’t remember a single thing. And Mr. Prickles isn’t talking. It is up to you and your razor sharp negotiation skills to persuade Mr. Prickles to confess to both you and the heavily-cologned officer across the table the goings on of last night. The tools at your disposal include:

-a book of matches
-three copies of War and Peace (unabridged)
-a piece of wedding cake
-Dr. Phil

The egg timer on the table is set at 56 minutes. It is ticking down. Quickly, my bra-like friend, what do you do?!

a) I quickly grab the book of matches and begin threatening Mr. Prickles with a burning match whilst distracting the officer by giving him a copy of War and Peace to read and entertaining Dr. Phil with the tasty slice of cake.
b) I enlist Dr. Phil to counsel Mr. Prickles into speaking, while the officer and I share the piece of cake after propping it up on the three copies of War and Peace.
c) I set the three copies of War and Peace on fire while all of us share the piece of cake and dance around the bon fire of glory.
d) I watch in amazement as Mr. Prickles constructs an elaborate escape using just three matches and Dr. Phil’s tie. I then pummel the officer with copy after copy of War and Peace as Mr. Prickles and I escape to the roof.
e) Dr. Phil threatens us with a lighted match until we all promise to stop making fun of his accent.
f) I act as a priest, reading out the wedding ceremony from a copy of War and Peace while the officer and Mr. Prickles realize their love for each other and get married, thus putting the wedding cake to good use.
g) I cough up a lung and Mr. Prickles and I take a cab to downtown New York.

You must choose! All of you!

And yes, I did have a bit of sugar tonight, how could you tell?

I am aloof, arrogant, and alien! Woo!

I loves me some Zodiac. These are “darkside Zodiacs” I found off of some random website. Aries and Virgo make me laugh especially.

Aries
Overwhelming, overbearing, overconfident. You are the zodiac’s permanently enraged adolescent. You have what nice social workers call “a problem with authority.” No one has ever explained the phrase “consequences of your actions” to you; consequently, your hospital’s ER is your second home. Subtle you’re not. No one will ever find you sitting quietly in a corner brooding on life’s great mysteries—or sitting quietly anywhere. You blunder through the world like Tigger gone rouge. Fortunately, you can be easily distracted by bright light, loud noises, meat, fire, blood, and knives. On good days, this means a neighborhood barbeque. On bad days, World War III.

Taurus
Obdurate, opinionated, overpowering. What you really like is stuff: in your mouth, in your bank, in your bed, in the bag. You stubbornly refuse to accept the folk wisdom that tells us we can’t always get what we want. Possessive seems too weak a word. Although you are not a people person, while you have them under your hand you are possessive, jealous, and resentful of them, too. Your children try to leave home the minute they can crawl. Your little bully brain can’t compute more than two variables at once, so when faced with something complex or unusual, you go rigid and do what you have always done, which often means doing nothing at all.

Gemini
Feckless, reckless, two-faced. There is no cunning so low you can’t limbo under it, no scam so complex that you can’t get your devious mind around it. You are the con artist, yet in spite of this you are never satisfied with what you get. You charge about in a restless miasma of noise, change, bells and whistles—and the manufacturers of Ritalin rub their hands in glee. You are in a permanent midlife crisis of your own making. Call you irresponsible? If it came to a choice between feeding your children and an invitation to join an exclusive high-stakes poker game—no contest. You might even sell the kids.

Cancer
Graceless, gloomy, grudge-encrusted. You distrust life and have no faith in the future. To build immunity against fate’s random cruelty, you look for homeopathic doses of gloom wherever you are. You remember everything nasty anybody’s ever said about you but you never, ever give away your own emotional secrets. People think this is because you are shy and diffident (you work hard to promote that illusion) but actually, it’s because you are afraid that people might use them against you. You may forgive, but you never forget. If you ever feel in danger of enjoying yourself, you activate your powerful fret drive so that you can worry ceaselessly about stuff you can do nothing about.

Leo
Bossy, boastful, bombastic. You never really got beyond what child psychologists call the “terrible twos.” You absolutely have to be adored—by everybody—at all times. This lust for adoration is often your downfall because you are very easily flattered and you believe every word. You expect the world to revolve around you. When it doesn’t, you plunge into grand imperial sulk mode until someone comes along to fix it. And you are never, ever wrong. Even when you are wrong, you have people whose job it is to redefine wrong or recalibrate the world so that you are right, looked at from a certain angle.

Virgo
Peevish, pedantic, perfectionist. When you are hot on the anti-hypocrisy crusade, the first casualties are diplomacy, tact, and basic manners. If asked a simple question that anticipates a simple answer (e.g. “does my butt look big in this?”), not only do you reply, “Well, sure it does, lardass,” but you kindly go on to give your estimate of exactly how much bigger than the norm it looks, in both standard and metric measurements. Because of this, few people ask your advice about anything. That doesn’t stop you from giving it. You are never wrong, but you secretly fear the possibility that you might be, but you’d kill rather than admit it.

Libra
Shallow, superficial, shrewd. You may smile for the cameras, but underneath you are an antsy malcontent, restlessly searching for satiation. Whenever you get what you want, you don’t want it. As you can’t fill the void with stuff, you turn to other people. You simply can’t help using them. You’re not the sweet, helpless little cupcake you want us to think you are, are you? Your unique selling point is your famous inability to make a decision. You know that when you dither deliciously with admirers over two gorgeous gifts, chances are that if you dither long enough, you’ll get both

Scorpio
Intense, ruthless, domineering. Your favorite sport is competition and you have to have the last spiteful word or your day is just ruined. You have never been known to apologize for anything, since it would make you look weak; nor do you grant second chances. If people let you down, you shun them. You are up there with the Amish on shunning. If it wasn’t for your self-destructive streak and obsession with sex, the rest of us would be in trouble, for you will stop at nothing to get what you want, even if it means a global meltdown. Fortunately, you are often so fixed on taking things to the edge that you fall off, and you can always be distracted by lust.

Sagittarius
Brash, crass, tactless. You are the zodiac’s mindless hooligan. You may be loudmouthed and impetuous, but you aren’t stupid, and you know that you should at least look a bit remorseful when caught with the smoking gun. That does not mean you didn’t do it, or that you won’t do it again, because you love the rush of sheer naughtiness. No one keeps you on a tight rein, or any rein at all. You crash your way through any barriers, even those set up for your safety. And tact? Your best friend loses a leg in a terrible accident. You immediately ask if you can have their $90 shoes.

Capricorn
Petty, parsimonious, pessimistic. You may say that you are insecure inside (so who isn’t?) but it doesn’t help that you come on so ultra-respectable and old-at-heart on the outside. You’d do absolutely anything to preserve your social status. You’d also prefer to keep your ruthless, pathological ambition under wraps, in case anyone notices what you are doing and pulls away the ladder. The real reason for all your penny-pinching and wet-blanketing is to conserve your resources and energy for what you actually want to do—and the general folk opinion is that you are on cups-of-sugar-borrowing terms with Beelzebub.

Aquarius
Aloof, arrogant, alien. You are a chilly-hearted, disengaged observer of the human condition who has never knowingly reacted spontaneously to any experience. Whatever you’re doing, the inner you is busy making observations and taking notes. Your diaries are written to give you something sensational to read on the return trip to Betelgeuse. You signal your contrariness by dressing in eccentric garments to ensure that we all recognize your fascinating otherness. You get out of all the dull stuff like social engagements and having a job by coming up with a work of unsurpassingly staggering genius every now and again. And that’s easy.

Pisces
Confused, chaotic, contradictory. Your natural habitat is murky emotional depths, where you drift about vaguely, moaning about the intolerable pressure the world puts you under. You have the willpower of a marshmallow. Anyone who has to deal with you should always carry a tape recorder—anything agreed upon two minutes ago you will deny utterly two minutes later. What you want now is never what you will want in one minute. You have instantaneous mood changes; you set out full of optimism and jollity, but by the time you get to the end, you are one with Eeyore and everybody else has lost the will to live.

I guess the amperrock eroded (yes, blog titles are indeed getting more obscure by the day)

Mmm, mmm, mmm, what to blog about today? There’s really nothing going on that’s interesting to blog about, and I don’t have any ideas to b.s. my way through another blog without talking about my day, so I will give you a nice boring rundown of the random crap I’ve been doing lately:

1)      Working
2)      Painting my bright blue shoes bright glow-in-the-dark pink
3)      Um…let’s see…oh yeah, I bought my books for next semester. A nice $600 investment right there.
4)      I danced to “Shake Your Booty” on repeat for a good half hour this morning
5)      There’s really not much more
6)      Seriously, it’s really boring here
7)      Will you touch my butt?

Yeah. Life needed, anytime now.

A love for the ice

I’ve been getting a lot of questions lately over why I like Antarctica so much. I have yet to be able to explain it. Maybe it’s because it’s such a strange thing to love, a continent. I guess I just love the adventure that goes along with it, you know? The fact that it was the last continent explored, the last left unsettled (at least permanently, or left unsettled by all but the scientists)…and it was called “Terra Incognita” for quite sometime.

It’s got a romantic sense about it (“romantic” as in the period, not the lovey-dovey kind): wilderness left untouched by man for centuries, then explored by a few daring men at the turn of the century. Then, left again until about 40 years later when science finally found interest and the means to further explore it.

I like the extremeness of it. I’ve always been a bit of a climatology geek (blame my dad for that one) and extreme climates have always interested me. Antarctica = extreme climate = Claudia happy…well, you get the picture. Plus I like ice.

Glaciers. I love glaciers. I guess I have a thing for the massive towers of floating ice, especially when they’ve been carved and shaped by the wind. How pretty.

Antarctica is a resource, and I’m not talking about energy or oil or any of that crap. I mean it’s a resource for us in regards to the earth’s past. It’s like a photo album of the world arranged in chronological order with the most recent pictures in front. The further we explore and the more we’re able to dig and bring up core samples, the further we can flip back in this photo album and get shots of what the world was like. And hey—how cool is that?

I don’t know. I guess I just like it. It’s hard to explain why. Yeah, all those reasons above count, but there’s more to it.

And I just realized I kind of copied Matt’s idea of trying to explain why one likes their hobby (or, in my case, continent). Sorry, Matt. I’m a dork.

My fingers are all tingly. Either I just developed “Spidey Sense: or I’m having a stroke.

Nothing’s going on today. So guess what that means? RANDOM FACT DIVULGING!

25 facts about me
1. I’ve been to the emergency room way too many times.
2. I used to play The Oregon Trail on the computer obsessively. My objective was not to survive but rather to accumulate as much bacon as possible. I kept a journal on it. I found this journal about a week ago. Hilarity.
3. I’m addicted to Ring Pops. Pathetic for a 19-year-old? I don’t care! I have to have my fix!
4. I have to count the number of M&Ms while they’re still in the bag because if there’s an uneven number I won’t eat it and I have to pick a different bag.
5. I can twirl a 9-foot PVC pipe with my toes like a baton.
6. When I got appendicitis I was secretly glad because it meant I could skip church that day.
7. I have some Backstreet Boys and some ‘Nsync on my iPod. They’re there for sentimental reasons, people, give me a break.
8. “Sexy Back” is one of my favorite songs.
9. Sex scares me.
10. I don’t think I could care less about monetary stuff. I mean yeah, money’s nice, but it’s not one of my priorities and it’s not something I really care about.
11. My I.Q. is 151, but I don’t throw that number around because I feel that I.Q. scores are meaningless.
12. I don’t like sports unless I’m playing them. Then I get freakishly competitive.
13. My clothes are organized in ROYGBIV fashion in my closet.
14. I have more socks than underwear, bras, and shoes combined.
15. I used to go on to Yahoo! chat anonymously and act like a complete smart-ass in the chatrooms. It was great.
16. I don’t have much experience with this kind of stuff, but I’ve learned of myself that if I like you in “that way,” I’ll do almost anything for you.
17. The movie Outbreak scared the crap outta me.
18. When I was in first grade I used to run around at school saving worms laying on the pavement after it rained. I was known as the “Worm Saver.” Some kids have never spoken to me since.
19. I’ve always, always been the friend who somehow gets in the middle of arguments between friends. I stay friends with both parties and I get to hear all the crap they say about the other behind their back. It’s frustrating because half the time I’m unable to bring about a resolution. Some of you who have put me in this situation know what I’m talking about.
20. I like busywork more than any healthy person should.
21. I surf through MySpace constantly, looking for blogs to read and surveys to steal.
22. I am VERY loyal.
23. I’ve always wanted to do nude modeling for art classes/photographers (not porno, you dirty-minded people!). So if you’re interested…
24. I’ve considered getting the Declaration of Independence tattooed on my back.
25. I hate people that remind me of me.

If a summer falls in the winter, does it spring back?

Hi-ho everyone! Today I bring you a list of some random crap that I highly recommend to you all. Why? Because I rock. And therefore all the things I like rock by proxy.

Go!

The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk—best book ever written.

Candide by Voltaire—second best book ever written.

Crime and Punishment by Feodor Dostoyevsky—very psychological. With long Russian names!

Watership Down by Richard Adams—yay! Rabbits.

The entire …Waltzing Alone CD by the Guggenheim Grotto—they’re my new love. Their songs are a mix of folk, pop, a little electronica and a little country. It’s very, very nice.

Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” done classical style. I can’t get the damn thing out of my head.

This made me cry.

I feel like crap and I need to stop feeling like crap NOW!

Hello. I need a good pick-me-up today because the week’s been going rather crappily. So I decided to sit down and write out a few “little joys” to feel a little better. I can’t decide if it worked or not. But here they are:

  1. I watched The Music Man today. Holy crap, that’s one good movie.
  2. I haven’t had a “Claudia marries William Shatner” dream in over four months.
  3. My toenails are pink. Friggin’ bright pink. They’re awesome.
  4. I have Boise to look forward to.
  5. I just hit 700 miles on my bike’s odometer.
  6. I just made a loaf of really good bread.
  7. Futurama’s on. I love that show.
  8. Socks!

Eh. Kind of. 3, 4, and 7 really help.

I need a life.

I see the light! I see it! Oh god, now I’m blind!

Today I learned of a new joy: I learned how to ride my bike without hands.

I know, I know, it sounds really pathetic—I’m freaking 19 years old and just learned how to ride without hands. But let me tell you, it’s very nice.

I felt free.

And awesome.

And then I fell over at 16 mph.

Blog 426: Map-o-Rama!

Two interesting maps for you to ponder. Soda and religion, what a combination!

That is all.

(Red is Coke, yellow is soda, and blue is pop, by the way)

It’s craptastic.

Today I am pissed. But I have good reason to be.

We’re frantically cleaning the office right now because my mom’s friends are coming up here for a visit in about 10 days and the house is a disaster area. So basically, everything is all strewn out everywhere.

I don’t know if it was my mom or myself who did it, but some rather strong magnets got placed right next to my computer, causing quite a large chunk of data to be lost from my hard drive, including—you guessed it—Matt’s flash.

Which was—you guessed it again—about 96% finished.

So yeah. I’m not a happy camper.

But never fear! I shall remake it with an even better idea than the original (though I must say that the original was pretty smokin’ sexy). It will be wonderful

Apologies for the delay, Matt. Hopefully I’ll get this new one up and running pretty soon.

Fun with Fonts II

Haha, hello again! Since I got to campus early (like at 9:30) this morning, I was bored out of my MIND. So I went to the computer lab and came up with a few more font reviews. Then, when I came home, I realized that I had none of these fonts on my own computer; thus none of them showed up. So to keep things simple, these will all be in Times New Roman standard format. If you’re really that desperate to see what they look like, I suggest going to the Ag Sci computer lab, because it was on those computers that these were found. Annnnnnnnd, go!

DotumChe
This amuses me just because of the name: DotumChe. It sounds like the sound you make after a joke, you know? “Two tom-toms and a cymbal fell off a cliff. DotumChe!” Also, when you try to spell-check it, the first suggestion that comes up is “douche.”

Font
Ah, the font perfect for people who name their dog “Dog” and their cat “Cat” and their kid “Kid” and read “Magazine” and “Newspaper” daily. This is like the American dream of fonts, only it’s not called that. It’s called “Font.”
This font sponsored by “Sponsor.”

Informal Roman
Unfortunately for all of us, there is no archeological evidence supporting the Romans’ use of computers (let alone fonts), but several stubborn “historians” have continually voiced the idea and have constructed what they dub Informal Roman, a font similar to what had existed in Rome before the Romans began putting their computers next to their particle accelerators and having their hard drives erased by the powerful electromagnets (and thus abandoning the idea of computers all together). According to these historians, this font was of particular use in the typing of plans for arches and aqueducts in Microsoft Verbum documents. When creating final formal reports, Romans used Formal Roman, the equivalent of today’s Wingdings.

SuperFrench (yes, there’s a font called “SuperFrench”)
You have the right to become a SuperFrench. Anytime you choose to become a SuperFrench can and will be a time when you are allowed to utter the phrases “oui oui!” and “sacre bleu!” and “le croissant is too hard for my delicate teeth, you infernal pastry monkey!” both inside and outside French boarders. You have the right to speak French and to have a French person present during any SuperFrench adventures in any cafés you come across. If you cannot afford a French costume, cheese will be provided for you.

Blackladder ITC
This is the type of font used back in Elizabethan times by those jokesters that went around pasting “kick thee” signs on their friends’ backs and by tattoo artists who complied with the requests of drunken frat boys who wanted “I say, I do believe that Elizabeth I is quite a looker, pipeth-pipeth!” tattooed on their chests.

Niagra Solid
Because we need more fonts that rhyme with “Viagra.”

Getting to know the dumpster on a personal level

Boring stuff first: I’m done with finals! Now all I have to do is wait and pray that the results are good. There.

Stuff that happens because I’m a loser: Okay. So I’m cleaning out my room, right? I have these two bags of trash that I need to take out to the dumpster. It’s about 11:00 PM, it’s dark, it’s kind of cold, and surprisingly, no one is around in the halls. So I take my keys and the two bags o’ fun and saunter out to the dumpster in a manly fashion. Not thinking specifically about what I was doing, I basically threw everything I had in my hands into the dumpster.

Including my keys and my Vandal card.

So now I’m standing out there and I’m thinking, “great. Smooth move right there.” So blatantly disregarding the “do not play in or around” stickers all over the dumpsters, I haul my butt up and into the one in which I threw my keys. It’s dark, mind you, and cold. There are several nasty-feeling (and probably nasty-smelling) trash bags in this dumpster. My keys had, of course, sunk to the bottom, along with my attached Vandal card.

I begin rooting around in said dumpster, hoping and praying that nothing thrown in there is too gross/slimy/lethal. By this point I’m probably freaking out people who are walking along the path beside the dumpster because I’m rustling around in it like a raccoon or something and probably sounding like I have rabies.

Finally, I find my keys in the corner of the dumpster, but now comes the issue of getting back out. In my search for the keys I had mashed all the trash down so that there wasn’t an easy way for me to climb to the top and get out. What do I do? I make a little Jenga-like tower out of the trash bags so that I can climb high enough to swing my legs over and jump out of the dumpster.

And I hurt myself doing so, of course.

Moral of the story: when the sales tax reaches 9%, do not by bulk toilet paper.

Oh wait, that’s tomorrow’s!

Today’s Moral of the story: take a buddy (or a brain) when going trash ditching late at night

What joy.

“Hey everyone, let’s do some mother%#*^ing drugs!”

Man, I’m bored. This has nothing to do with anything. Impending finals tomorrow.

Waiter! There’s a Hard Rock in my Cafe!

HOLY CRAP IT’S FINALS WEEK AND AFTER THIS I’LL BE A JUNIOR!

Ahem.

Finals finished today: statistics and psychology. I think I did okay on them—but I can never be sure. I either win or I fail. No in between.

Anyways, I’m glad they’re over; they were my hard ones. Now all I have left is biology (the bad: it’s cumulative and long) and Core (the bad: it’s Core).

Ah, yes! Matt and I went to see Spiderman 3 tonight. Not too horribly bad, I’d say…they threw in a bit of existentialism there at the end and I was happy about that. Three out of five stars? Maybe? I’m no movie critic.

I’m writing rather strangely tonight. Could it perchance be the fact that summer is nearly here and I’ll still be taking classes for the next month or so?

I say yes.

Time travel? Travel time! Speak coherently, Yoda does.

Three points of interest today:

1. Black clothes
I have nothing against them or the people that wear them. Seriously. I just feel weird when I wear them. I’ve never felt very comfortable in black, mainly because I’m about as pale as a person can get without being an albino (the black hair doesn’t help much, either) and I just feel so pretentious. I feel like I should go in a dank corner somewhere and read some angsty poetry with my angsty smoker friends. One step down from emo!

2. Band performance!
I love O Magnum Mysterium. It’s a freaking awesome-sounding song. Bukvich’s one was nice as well, but I think it would have been a lot better if we knew what we were doing (at least, more so than we did tonight).

3. Immaturity
This is not directed to anyone in particular; in fact, you (the three of you who read this) aren’t even the ones I’m talking about. There’s a certain air of immaturity surrounding some people I know that I think is just ridiculous and uncalled for. The concept of being “open-minded,” at least in my opinion, implies that you are open-minded about everyone, including those who disagree with your own viewpoints. In other words, I think one must be open-minded (or, I suppose, “nice”) when the situation involves close-minded people if one is to be open-minded. Otherwise, it’s just hypocrisy. Also, I don’t think friendship should be decided on one point of interest—be it a point of strong agreement or one of strong disagreement.

Again, this is not directed to most of you. And again, I’m just stating my own opinion here. Don’t be pissed if I conflict with your opinions.

Et tu, chair?

Facebook updates for today:

-Claudia is screwing around in the Ag Sci computer lab (take THAT, productivity!).
-Claudia is rising to power in the Ag Sci computer lab.
-Claudia is now the Chief Justice of the Supreme Ag Sci Computer Lab Court.
-Claudia is Pharaoh of the Ag Sci computer lab.
-Claudia is facing opposition from the riffraff in the Ag Sci computer lab.
-Claudia is fighting the death of her dynasty in the Ag Sci computer lab! Barricade the doors! Fire the cannons! Do something! Anything! Damn you all!
-Claudia is now exiled from the Ag Sci computer lab…but she’ll be back…hehe…with knives…

Um, yeah. I was having a little bit of boredom-induced fun in an empty computer lab. The chairs worshipped me originally. They offered me their ball bearings. Then they elevated me to their Pharaoh. Then they began to grow unhappy with my tyrannical rule. Then they overthrew me. And I was thrown into exile.

Yeah. I’ll be back, you anarchic chairs. I’ll be back.

Without blinds, the windows are NAKED!

Did anyone else find it funny that the blood drive today was being held at the law school? I did. I laughed on my way to stats (and through stats; my teacher thought I went insane).

POINT NUMERO DOS!!!!!!
My eye’s been twitching for about a month now. It’s really distracting.

I’m tired of this monotonous charade!

I’m going to get a taco!

Fix it!

Why hello there! Here’s a list I found at the Maxim website—”100 Things All Guys Should Know.” It is abbreviated here because I included only the things that I thought were really interesting/pertaining to everybody:

The best time of day to buy shoes
Late afternoon, when your feet have swollen to their largest size.

How to keep chisels and other bladed tools rust-free
Store them in wooden boxes. The wood absorbs moisture in the air, preventing rust.

How to win more coin tosses
Always call tails. On U.S. coins, the heads side, with its big, solid portrait, weighs infinitesimally more: In the course of 10,000 tosses, the lighter tails side will come up an extra 50 or so times.

The logic behind Mount Rushmore
Washington—the nation’s founding
Jefferson—the nation’s political philosophy
Lincoln—the nation’s preservation
Roosevelt—the nation’s expansion and conservation

The remedy for poison ivy
Baking soda and water. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The Seven Wonders of the Modern World (compiled in 1931, after we’d thrown up the Empire State Building)
-Empire State Building (U.S.)
-The Great Pyramids at Giza (Egypt)
-Leaning Tower of Pisa (Italy)
-Washington Monument (U.S.)
-Eiffel Tower (France)
-Taj Mahal (India)
-Hagia Sophia (Turkey)

How to relieve thirst in the wild
A pebble held in the mouth will stimulate saliva production and kill that dry-mouth feeling. Stay on the lookout for neon bar signs.

How to pick a ripe watermelon
Forget thumping on the hull or pressing the stem end: Color’s the key. The ripest, tastiest melons are an appetizing red on the inside, not that watery, why-bother pink, and that richness of color’s reflected on the outside. Look for a melon whose dark bands are wider than its light bands. The higher the ratio of dark to light outside, the darker the color (and the sweeter the meat) inside.

How to interpret equestrian statues
It is a convention—though one oft refuted—that the stance of the horse clues you in to the fate of the rider: If the horse is rearing, its rider died in battle; if only one leg’s in the air, he was wounded in battle; if all four hooves are on the ground, he died of other causes.

How to gauge the doneness of a steak without slicing into it
You can determine when a steak has finished cooking—whether it’s supposed to be rare, medium, or well-done—by giving it the finger. Press your forefinger into it lightly, as if picking up ink from a fingerprint pad, then touch your head and compare their firmness. A well-done steak should feel as firm as your forehead; a medium steak, as firm as your chin; and a rare steak, as firm as the end of your nose. Ain’t that cool?

Why Everest’s just tall enough
Mount Everest, earth’s highest peak, is 29,028 feet tall. If it were much higher, you couldn’t climb it without wearing a spacesuit. At around 35,000 feet, even inhaling 100 percent pure oxygen won’t suffice to keep you alive. Why? Because the extremely low pressure at that altitude lets nitrogen bubbles enter your bloodstream (the phenomenon deep-sea divers call the bends), which leads to embolisms and sometimes death.

Boredom + online palm reader!

Haha! I’m bored again. More fun! Today it’s palm reading:

-Your strong, deeply etched lifeline reveals a strong nervous system. In addition to that it reveals an equally strong physical constitution. The stronger the life line, the stronger the overall constitution, ensuring that there is stamina, vitality and good health.

-With the nervous system being more finely tuned, mental or emotional stress will play a large part in the overall physical well being.

-You are hard working, alert and work according to a planned scheme. You are quite willing to follow rules and regulations and also to have continuity in a family business.

-You are wise and intelligent. You carry out your activities with forethought and conviction. Sensitivity of nature becomes very noticeable. Your moodiness is often uncontrollable, in the sense that the company of people you may be in will dictate your moods.

-You are a person with a cold, unemotional nature. You are more likely to consider the practical aspects of marriage.

-You prefer not to reveal your feelings but to ponder about it, assess and decide how to deal with them.

-You may be healthy, wealthy and may lead an honorable life.

-Each bracelet signifies a lifespan of about 30 years.

-You are likely to contribute to the society and be remembered for it even after your lifetime.

Boredom + online handwriting analyzer!

What should I be doing? Studying for stats and various other classes. What am I doing? An online handwriting analysis. According to this one website, this is what my handwriting says:

-You are a practical person whose goals are planned, practical, and down to earth.  You need to visualize the end of a project before you start. You find joy in anticipation and planning.  Notice that I said you plan everything you are going to do—that doesn’t necessarily mean things go as planned. You feel you have the ability to achieve anything you set your mind to.  However, you set your goals using practicality—not too “out of reach”.

-In reference to your mental abilities, you have a very investigating and creating mind. You investigate projects rapidly because you are curious about many things. You get involved in many projects that seem good at the beginning, but you soon must slow down and look at all the angles. You probably get too many things going at once. When you slow down, then you become more creative than before. Since it takes time to be creative, you must slow down to do it. You then decide what projects you have time to finish. Thus you finish at a slower pace than when you started the project. You have the best of two kinds of minds. One is the quick investigating mind. The other is the creative mind. Your mind thinks quick and rapidly in the investigative mode. You can learn quicker, investigate more, and think faster. You can then switch into your low gear. When you are in the slower mode, you can be creative, remember longer and stack facts in a logical manner. You are more logical this way and can climb mental mountains with a much better grip.

-You use judgment to make decisions. You are ruled by her head, not her heart. You are a cool, collected person who is usually unexpressive emotionally. Some may see you as unemotional. You do have emotions but have no need to express them. You are withdrawn into yourself and enjoy being alone. The circumstances when you do express emotions include: extreme anger, extreme passion, and tremendous stress. If someone gets you mad enough to tell him or her off, you will not be sorry about it later. You put a mark in your mind when someone angers you. You keep track of these marks and when you hit that last mark you will let them know they have gone too far. You are ruled somewhat by self-interest. All your conclusions are made without outside emotional influence. You will work more efficiently if given space and time to be alone. You would rather not be surrounded by people constantly. You are not subject to emotional appeals. If someone is selling a product to you, they will need to present only the facts. They should present them from a standpoint of your sound judgment. You will not be taken in by an emotional story about someone else.

-You exaggerate about everything that has a physical nature. Although you may not intend to deceive or mislead, you blow things way out of proportion because that is the way you view them. You will be a good storyteller. This exaggeration relates to all areas of your material world. You have a vivid imagination.

-You are selective when picking friends. You do not trust everyone. You have a select group of people that are truly close to her, usually two or three. You are careful when choosing her inner circle of friends.

-You are sarcastic. This is a defense mechanism designed to protect your ego when you feel hurt.

-You have a temper. You use this as a defense mechanism when you don’t understand how to handle a situation. Temper is a hostile trait used to protect the ego. Temper can be a negative personality trait in the eyes of those around you.

I’m so bored.

!Sdrawkcab

So I’m sitting here in my room thinking, “I should totally run for President of the United States.” I honestly think I’m efficient, organized, and capable enough to do a good job. I just need a slogan and some campaign posters.

Get your colored pencils out, people.

Blog number 310: in which I discuss how awfully lame my name is

Today I found this little funky site. You could type in your name and get little doodads for it. Here we go! I just included the main part, cause, well, it’s sad:

You entered: Claudia Marie Mahler
There are 18 letters in your name.
Those 18 letters total to 82.
There are 9 vowels and 9 consonants in your name.

What your first name means:
-Spanish: Lame
-Latin: Lame
-German: Feminine of Claude (which means “intrepid!” Naw, I’m kidding. That would be cruel. It means “lame.”)
-French: A feminine form of Claud, a variant of the Latin Claudium meaning lame.
-English: Feminine of Claude (*cough*whichmeanslame*cough)
-Biblical: Lame

Your number is: 1

The characteristics of #1 are: Initiating action, pioneering, leading, independent, attaining, individual.

The expression or destiny for #1:
A number 1 Expression denotes the skilled executive with keen administrative capabilities. You must develop the capacity to be a fine leader, sales executive, or promoter. You have the tools to become an original person with a creative approach to problem solving, and a penchant for initiating action. Someone may have to follow behind you to handle the details, but you know how to get things going and make things happen. You have a good mind and the ability to use it for your advancement (hooray!). Because of these factors, you have much potential for achievement and financial rewards. Frequently, this expression belongs to one running a business or striving to achieve a level of accomplishment on ones talents and efforts. You have little need for much supervision, preferring to act on your own with little restraint (god, that’s true). You are both ambitious and determined. Self-confident and self-reliant must be yours, as you develop a strong unyielding will and the courage of your convictions.
Although you fear loneliness, you want to be left alone (YES). You fear routine and being in a rut. You often jump the gun because you are afraid of being left behind.
The negative attributes of the 1 Expression are egotism (*cough*) and a self-centered approach to life. This is an aggressive number and if it is over-emphasized it is very hard to live with. You do not have to be overly aggressive to fulfill your destiny. The 1 has a natural instinct to dominate and to be the boss; adhering to the concept of being number One. Again, you do not have to dominate and destroy in order to lead and manage.

 

So basically, I could be God if I try hard enough and get people named Matthew and Mark and such to write a book about me. Sweet.

Waiter! There’s a quadriplegic in my Jazzercise class!

What’s up with me and the quadriplegic/paraplegic jokes? Anyway, down to business!*

*none of this should be taken seriously. Seriously.

An Exposition on Paleontology In Which Several Points Must Be Made

Point 1: In Which Is Written A Strongly-Worded Letter To Jack London

Dear Mr. London,
Having just read your short story “To Build a Fire,” I have several questions regarding the coldness of the territory in which your character, “the man,” was wandering about.
Repeated six times in 11 pages is some variation of the phrase, “it was cold.” Your exact words are:
“It certainly was cold, he concluded”,
“Once in a while the thought reiterated itself that it was very cold”,
“It certainly was cold”,
“It certainly was cold, was his thought”,
“There was no mistake about it, it was cold”, and
“It certainly was cold, was his thought”.
On completion of this story I found that there might be some confusion over whether or not it was cold in this Alaskan territory. Other readers and I would benefit greatly if you were to state clearly—on multiple occasions, perhaps, even repeating yourself—how cold it actually was (that is, if it was cold at all).

Thank you in advance,

Sir Isaac Newton (not that one, a different one).

Point 2: In Which The Riddle Of The Double-Dream-Marriage To William Shatner Is Discussed

Dear Brain,
It has come to my attention that you, on more occasions than one, have found it rather humorous to have me marry William Shatner in my dreams. This has occurred now both in the months of February and March.
While William Shatner is indeed a dignified character, and while we both share several similar activities and hobbies, such as appearing in Kellog’s All-Bran cereal commercials on the side (thank you, Wikipedia), I do feel it is time for a change.
I would appreciate it, my dear Brain, if you would delve into the past a bit, and conjure up images of Voltaire, Descartes, or Locke. Seeing as how Voltaire is the only man who dared show a smirk in his portraits, I would prefer him.
Oh Brain, how I wish for Voltaire in my dreams tonight.

Thank you in advance,

Me (you know me, don’t you?).

Point 3: In Which My Severe Aversion To Romanticism And My Longing To Return To The Study Of The Enlightenment Is Discussed

Dear English Department,
While I realize how necessary it is to delve into all forms and time periods of English literature, I do strongly recommend that we return to the study of the Enlightenment. It is so much more intriguing and enchanting than Romanticism. While Frankenstein’s creation and Rousseau’s raunchy “Confessions” do it for some, others, like myself, prefer the wit of Voltaire and the steady reasoning logic of Descartes.
Please see Point 2 above, disregarding the first part about Mr. Shatner.

Thank you in advance,

Some Random Student.

Through freedom, we all of us get potatoes

No, I didn’t write this one. I found it somewhere. Apparently, if you can answer the questions at the bottom, you will have found the meaning of life and the reason for all things living on this earth. The first one who wins gets a taco. Aaaannnnnnnnd….GO!

There are ten people in a room. All are atheists. Most are men. There are no chiropractors, nor are there any mafia members. A partition separates the blondes from the homosexuals. Five people stand on each side. Jerry, a lawyer, awaits trial tomorrow. He is to defend the innocent party (Kelly) in a crime involving sandwiches. The one guilty of the crime stands on the blonde side. Yvonne can’t decide whether the glass windows are half-full or half-empty. A man stands in the corner but, because he is blind, knows not whether he is on the blonde side or the homosexual side. Max is disturbed because of the voices in his head. Victor prays often and aloud. Two girls on the blonde side are dead. Mitch has a gun, but it is not loaded.  

Questions to answer:
~who stands on the blonde side? Who stands on the homosexual side?
~who are the men and the women; who are the atheists and/or chiropractors?
~who is guilty of the crime involving sandwiches?
~How did the two girls on the blonde side die?
~Is Yvonne insane?

Good luck…that taco could be yours!