The clouds are doin’ shit
Me: *takes a grand total of fewer than 25 pictures on a 7-day cruise to Alaska*
Me: *goes to Mount Rushmore for the first and probably only time and takes approximately 30 pictures*
Me: *sees a weird cloud formation. Takes 50+ pictures of it*
‘Tis truth.
But in my defense, it was a pretty weird cloud formation (these are the two good pictures, haha).
Edit: these are Kelvin-Helmholtz wave clouds, also known as billows or fluctus. They are very short-lived clouds (the ones I saw lasted less than five or so minutes) that form when two different layers of air—one moving faster than the other—meet horizontally.
Ready for a blast from the past?
I wasn’t. But I got one today anyway.
It’s Jessica. As in, “Rob and Jessica.” As in, the “I hate you because the guy I like decided to ask you out, you trickster whore” Jessica.
Yeah. Her.
The last contact we had was back in 2008. This is the first I’ve heard from her since then.
So here are my questions: am I a petty asshole for not wanting to reply to this at all? Is it wrong of me to think that this (nearly 10 years after the fact) apology does not make up for all of this bullshit? Am I a bad person for getting all riled up about that whole damn Rob/Jessica nonsense again just based on this message?
Actually, you know what? I don’t actually care about the answers to those questions.
I’m not going to reply to her message. Maybe it’s because I’m a petty asshole. Maybe it’s because I’m wrong in thinking that an apology doesn’t make up for all the nonsense she pulled back in 2008. Maybe it’s because I’m a bad person. I don’t actually care. The more I think about all that 2008 nonsense with her and Rob and myself and all the related drama, the more I realize that the current me would not have put up with any of that. I would have dropped it all before it got as ridiculous as it did.
And while I can’t change the past, I can make up for it in the present. How? By not engaging. By not putting up with anything related to any of that goddamn drama that made the first half of 2008 so ridiculous.*
Petty? Maybe. Healthy? Yes.
Sorry, I just felt like talking about this, so of course it had to go on my blog.
*I just wanted to date Sean. I just wanted to date Sean. Instead I got to be part of the soap opera shitfest that was getting involved with Rob. Shoot 2008 me in the face.
IT’S HERE IT’S HERE IT’S HERE
So DJ Earworm was a little later with this year’s United State of Pop, but man, it was worth the wait.
This one is really good. One of my favorites and definitely the best since 2014.
Bus a Move
I have the utmost respect for bus drivers. They deal with less-than-polite people on a daily basis and have to drive a gigantic vehicle while making sure said gigantic vehicle doesn’t mow over cars/pedestrians/other hazards. And for bus drivers in cities like Calgary, they have to deal with lots of traffic, lots of highways, and, occasionally, really awful weather.
Bus drivers are cool.
But holy crap, the dude driving the bus today was Captain Herky Jerky whose sole mission in life was to terrify all of his passengers as we drove over the Bow. I thought we were going to go for a swim.
Sorry, my life isn’t super eventful right now. It’s pretty much all walking all the time.
URGE to WRITE
Dudes, I have had such a serious urge to write ever since NaNoWriMo ended. It’s freaky. I haven’t had just an urge to write in a long time.
More specifically, it’s an urge to keep working on my NaNo story, even though the thing is a piece of garbage and will never amount to anything.
Much like its creator.
But still. Maybe I’ll just have to keep working on it anyway. It’s really only like 30% – 40% done as far as the full story goes right now. Which is weird, ‘cause most of my NaNo stories (read: all of them) are at like 90% completed story-wise by the time I hit the 50,000.
ANYWAY. Time to write.
A List of Things I Hate:
- Myself
The end.
MORE MUSIC SORRY
This is really good. I’ve listened to it about 30 times already.
Is it a Five Star? …maaaayyyybe.
Maybe.
Edit: Yes. Yes it is.
Stop, drop, and ROCK ‘N’ ROLL!
Playing Rock Band with Nate keeps bringing up all these memories of when my roommates and I would spend hours and hours and hours playing Rock Band back in the house. We took it seriously, yo. Examples of said seriousness:
- Playing for 14 hours straight. This happened a few times.
- Busting through the tour mode as fast as possible to earn tons of money, and then spending all evening customizing the outfits of our band members.
- That time the Xbox red-ringed on us and we spent approximately one hour Xbox-less before we NEEDED to go get a new one to play Rock Band.
- Sean getting drunk and trying to sing Ballroom Blitz in a Scottish accent.
- Lanky singing Metallica’s “Blackened.”
- Sean and I quoting relevant Metalocalypse quotes as we play (“I have musics dyslexkia…you know that…I…don’t likes to talk about it.”).
- Michael getting drunk and falling off the drumming chair.
- Rabbi Jeff, Aaron’s burly, mountain man-esque character who was (obviously) Jewish.
- Aaron making up random lyrics on the fly as he sang.
- Our “cutoff” system. At one point or another, I said that anything less than a 97% on a song was not good enough, so we set 97% to “cutoff.” We had a bunch of other things for other percentages as well. 100% earned a high five, 99% earned a limp fist bump (because you just didn’t try hard enough to get a 100%), 98% was an actual fist bump, 96% was “not even cutoff,” 95% was “not even not even cutoff,” a 69% meant that you had to kiss everyone else in the room (this never happened), and a score of 1% meant you had to have sex with someone in the room (also never happened). There were others, but I can’t remember them.
- Calling the drummer and singer the “drummist” and “singist,” respectively.
- Calling the guitarist and bassist the “guitarer” and “basser,” respectively.
- Lanky wailing “MARYANNE!!!” in an overdrive section of More Than a Feeling and us all subsequently failing out because we were laughing so hard.
- How FREAKING EXCITED we were when my parents got me Rock Band 2.
- Sean rocking out so hard with the guitar that he tipped the couch over (this happened several times).
- Breaking at least three of Michael’s chairs.
- All of us playing Metallica’s “Blackened” on expert and just barely making it through the song. I’d actually failed out three times, but the last time was right before the end, so we still made it.
- All of us giving very serious consideration to making a documentary about our fake band.
- Putting those little plastic bendable glow stick things all over the instruments and then rocking out in the dark.
So much fun.
NumaNuma
GUYS.
It has been THIRTEEN YEARS TO THE DAY since Numa Numa Dance.
According to Wiki, the video was first posted to Newgrounds on December 6, 2004.
Doesn’t 2004 sound FOREVER ago? I was still in freaking high school.
The internet was a simpler time then.
I miss Annabelle.
And I am very, very sad.
Oh My God, Calgary
Calgary: home of the art that burns things, the giant blue ring that…exists?, and now this: the car-flipping rock.
You can’t make this stuff up.
And the Calgary subreddit is having all sorts of fun with it.
“Hazard in the streets, SageHillRock in the sheets.” Hahahaha.
Edit: When the fake Twitter account for the blue ring tweets about the fake Twitter account for the Sage Hill rock…
I love you, Calgary.
‘Phones
CRAP
CRAP CRAP CRAP
I should not be allowed in Best Buys.
Or, more specifically, I should not be allowed in the headphone section of Best Buys.
Because now I want these.
They’re so comfortable, dudes. And they also are great at noise cancelling. I was wearing them in the store and I felt like I was just in a huge auditorium where the only thing I could hear was the music.
But I already have like 30 headphones, so.
FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS.
The WriMo has Ended!
Heeeeeeeeey, guess what? I actually won NaNoWriMo this year! The last time I won it was in 2014, which is way too long ago.
- Total words: 50,250
- Percentage of total story complete: I dunno, maybe 40%?
This is also the first WriMo where I’ve felt like wanting to continue to work on the story after the month was up. It’s also the first time I have a story that would actually work as a novel-length thing. Prime, Google, and Arborhood would all work better as novelettes, probably.
WORD CLOUD!
YA SHUR Y KNOT
Book survey. ‘Cause NaNo and all that nonsense.
(Warning: I’m hyper)
1. Do you prefer hardcover, paperback, or Kindle…and why?
Paperback. Light, easy to read, and you can touch the pages.
2. If I were to own a book shop I would call it …
“READ ONE OF THESE BOOKS OR I’LL STAB YOU”
3. My favorite quote from a book (mention the title) is …
“They’re a rotten crowd,” I shouted across the lawn. “You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.”
I’ve always been glad I said that. It was the only compliment I ever gave him, because I disapproved of him from beginning to end. First he nodded politely, and then his face broke into that radiant and understanding smile, as if we’d been in ecstatic cahoots on that fact all the time. First he nodded politely, and then his face broke into that radiant and understanding smile, as if we’d been in ecstatic cahoots on that fact all the time. His gorgeous pink rag of a suit made a bright spot of color against the white steps, and I thought of the night when I first came to his ancestral home, three months before. The lawn and drive had been crowded with the faces of those who guessed at his corruption—and he had stood on those steps, concealing his incorruptible dream, as he waved them good-by.
Nick to Gatsby, from The Great Gatsby.
4. The author (alive or dead) I would love to have lunch with would be …
Probably Fitzgerald. Or Nabokov!
5. If I was going to a deserted island and could only bring one book, except for the SAS survival guide, it would be …
The Caine Mutiny. That will never get old to me. Love it.
6. I would love someone to invent a bookish gadget that …
Would automatically make an audiobook of your book of choice. Read by Alexander Scourby.
7. The smell of an old book reminds me of ….
The fACT THAT I CAN’ SMELL THANKS SURVEY JEEZ
8. If I could be the lead character in a book (mention the title), it would be….
Phileas Fogg from Around the World in 80 Days. Love that dude. OR Gatsby from The Great Gatsby. Love that dude, too.
9. The most over-rated book of all time is….
If I say Lord of the Rings, will Tolkien rise from his grave and murder me in a very slow, drawn-out, boring fashion?
10. I hate it when a book….
Just tanks the ending. A book can be fantastic from pages 1 to n-1, but if that nth page is a disappointment (or however many pages it takes to make the “ending” happen), it’ll ruin the whole thing for me. I’m looking you, A Handmaid’s Tale.
Tattoo Idea!
HI!
You know what would be a good idea for a tattoo for me? A tiny little odometer on my leg somewhere (like down by my ankle, maybe at the base of my calf) that shows how many miles I’ve walked since [insert year here, maybe 2014]. Every December I could get it updated.
Of course, I’m no tattoo expert, so I don’t know how easy (or feasible) it would be to re-ink-over a tattoo every year to change its appearance, but it’s a cool idea regardless.
At least I think so.
Anyway.
Sun
This week has been awful, what with losing Annabelle and feeling really shitty for not being there for her when she was put down.
So this video was very much needed.
If you’ve never watched It’s Always Sunny, you’re missing out, yo. It’s the craziest. As one commenter says: “Out of context this show looks insane. In context this show is insane.” Truth.
BLAH
That is all.
(Also, I might actually finish NaNo this year, which is kinda cool.)
NaNo Soundtrack??
Aloha, bitches! NaNoWriMo is almost over and I have a very good chance of actually winning for the first time since 2014. Which is pretty cool.
So to distract myself from everything (especially Annabelle), I present to you the short but sweet set of songs that I would consider to be part of the “soundtrack” to my NaNo project this year. There’s not much, but there are a few tuned in tracks (ha), so let’s do it.
Clair de Lune (Debussy) – This is the song I hear in my head when my main dude (Apollo) goes out on the main deck during a cool, calm night and witnesses the captain up on the main deck already, staring up into the stars as if asking them what his purpose is in everything. Kind of a special little moment between the two characters without any sort of interaction at all.
Where We’re Calling From (Doves) – This song plays when they finally reach the edge of the earth. It emerges out of the fog; at first they just hear the rumbling of the ocean breaking over the precipice, then as they get closer, the fog clears up a bit and they see the great chasm below that is the abrupt edge of the world.
10,000 Miles (Mary Chapin Carpenter) – This song hurts my soul, but it’s perfect for the one of the main ending scenes (the one I posted on the 15th, actually). I wanted the end to be a very heart-wrenching experience for Apollo, and this song fits it perfectly.
Annabelle
Sweet little Annabelle is no longer with us.
My dad called this afternoon and said that she’d taken a pretty bad turn for the worse and he and Peter made the decision (with input from the vet, of course) to have her put down. I feel incredibly guilty for not being there with her at the end.
Annabelle has been part of my life since 2000. She was my girl. Now she’s gone.
That’s going to be a hard thing to deal with.
I feel really bad for my dad, too. He loved Annabelle. I’ve gone with my mom multiple times to have a kitty or dog put to sleep when it was time, but my dad has never had to do that. The abruptness with which they pass from life to death is a shock. I hope he’s doing okay.
RIP Bell-Bell. You were a unique, wonderful creature.
Move bus, get out ‘the way
Not sure if this is actually as funny as it seems to me right now, seeing as how it’s like four in the morning, but this is absolutely hilarious right now.
Edit: yup, it’s actually funny.
OK Print
This one definitely gets more impressive as it goes on. I don’t even know how you start to plan something like this.
OK Go is awesome.
This Song is Ruining My Chances of Winning NaNoWriMo
Me: Okay, brain, we’re almost to the end of the month, but you still have a lot of words to go. Let’s get serious and get this shit done, okay?
Brain: RA-RA-RASPUTIN, LOVER OF THE RUSSIAN QUEEN…THERE WAS A CAT THAT REALLY WAS GONE
Ugh.
Iron Lungs
This is a really interesting article on iron lungs and the few people who still rely on them to live.
Vaccinate your kids, you turds.
(Yes, I realize that the people featured in this article contracted polio before the vaccine was developed; when I say “turds” I mean the people today who aren’t letting their kids take advantage of this and other vaccines.)
Eigenblogger 