Which Aliens Colonial Marine are you? Pvt. Vasquez (played by Jenette Goldstein) Spunky token ethnic type. Kicked alien butt and didn't take any crap off of no one. Dies in the end.

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For a time I considered joining the Marines not because I'm patriotic (ha!) or interested in fun with guns or thought it'd be a nifty career choice but because damn, I so wanted to be Vasquez. She was short and yet she kicked much ass--woot!

I'm feeling a bit: spunky! (ewwww)
current shinything: David Sylvian - For the Love of Life

Yoinked from His Phredness!
http://hall.p5.org.uk/dvcat/

Feh.

CLEARLY that thing is not a cat but a monkey. Jesus is not looking toward the painting's pussy-space, he is looking toward and extending his hand over the painting's wood-space, its table. With hand on wood and monkey on his back, CLEARLY this is a medieval message about masturbation.

Jesus is, in fact, spanking the metaphorical monkey.

I'm feeling a bit: touched (by a monkey)

The koi is learning to read lips. We talk to him in the aquarium, and when our lips stop moving, his starts, with big, exaggerated O's. When he sees me near the betta tanks, he gets excited and starts mouthing a mile a minute. (mokie + betta tanks = wet hands and baby snails for Makoto to munch.) The debate rages on as to whether he's just wiggling with excitement or actually wagging his tail at these moments, seeing as how he's a fish, and it's hard for him not to wag his tail when he gets excited.

I have given up on trying to get Jade to demouse the house. Aside from the obese mouse that bumped into things jogging slowly away, there is also the mouse that likes to take a stroll across my desk (and poked its nose out one evening at me) despite the fact that the cat sleeps on the desk, and now there is the poor idiot mouse that tried to hide inside a clear plastic box thinking I could not see it. If she can't knock these three easy targets out of the gene pool, she doesn't stand a chance against the supermice that inhabit the second floor.

Two photos, not mine:
#1. I want a pet hyena!
#2. How I'm spending my winter

Back to bed now...

I'm feeling a bit: sleepy
current shinything: Dead Can Dance - Desert Song

#1. "It's Not Easy Being Green" always makes me cry. I always think I can listen without crying--it's just a song, after all--and I'm always wrong. It's that sadness in Kermit's voice as he says, "It seems you blend in with so many other ordinary things... Er, Jim Henson's voice, I mean. On account of I'm a grown-up, and therefore, I know it's Jim Henson's voice and should say so. (It's Kermit! Kermit Kermit Kermit!)

#2. The Flying Picket's acapella cover of "Space Oddity" always makes me giggle. It's that little "whackity-bong!" at 2:20, that playful tone of voice, that sense not of loss but of adventure, that they put into the song. "Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do," woohoo!

#3. K's Choice's "My Heart" always makes me feel like a little girl again. The first gift I ever received was from my grandfather, a little blue and white dog that would play a lullaby when wound up, and the guitar feels like that. Sad and simple lyrics like "I always heard I could get hurt, I knew that from the start" make it a bittersweet kind of nostalgia. It also makes me miss my sister Meili, who first played the song for me.

#4. Another acapella! I don't know yet who does it (it certainly doesn't sound like Dave Matthews, with or without band), but the acapella version of "Satellite" always makes me grin like an idiot, regardless of who's watching. It's a song made for dancing like a doofus, laughing at "the weatherman's satellite eyes" and being stupidly happy for absolutely no reason at all, for four minutes and fifty-two seconds or so.

#5. Rob Zombie always makes me breathe heavy, but that's because his songs always start with a sudden jarring BANG that gives me a brief heart attack when they come up on ye olde mp3 shuffle. EEP! Move along! Move along!

#5, take 2!: "Into My Arms," by Nick Cave (et al., maybe) makes me wish I had someone I felt that way about, a love that pushed the boundaries of faith, someone about whom I could say, "I don't believe in an interventionist God (...) but if I did..."

( A brief word with the magic cactus... )

But anyway.

In the space of ten minutes I went for giddy to cranky. This would be about the time that Juno asks, "Have you eaten?" and the answer is, "Er, no." It's embarrassing to realize that most of my grumpy moods probably have more to do with forgetting lunch than any legitimate complaints.

Dinner, for the curious, is a plate of spaghetti with slightly lumpy mushroomy tomato sauce covered liberally in parmesan cheese and followed up, if I can be bothered later, with some strawberry and raspberry crepes topped with whipped cream, because really, where's the sense in relishing your carbs if you're not going to follow them up with sugar and hydrogenated oils, eh?

Today's tea: Celestial Seasonings' Marrakesh Express Vanilla Spice. Note the bright "Hi-Energy" banner on the box! Note the ingredients--blackest black tea, ginseng, guarana, cola nut, caffeine! My kidneys and bladder winced in anticipation! But alas...I should have listened to my initial reservations.

My first thought when reading the label was, "So why don't they just call it vanilla chai? It is vanilla chai, right?" Yes and no--they say black because they suggest drinking it black, while chai involves milk and sugar or honey. (Well, really, chai involves cooking your tea...but let's not get into that.) As a black tea, this is bad. The ginseng is too strong, making the tea itself taste weak, and with the spices on top of it, the whole thing wants a bit of milk and sweetener to make it less medicinal. With milk and sweetener, though--as a demichai, that is--it's just miserable. The spices are too weak and they disappear completely with the addition of sweetener, and the milk tames the ginseng but also dulls the tea, making the ginseng stand out even more and allowing the cola nut to poke through and coat your tongue with its nasty aftertaste. Properly chaied up, the tea might be strong enough to take on the ginseng, but I doubt the spices would come through at all. It's just not good.

So, summary?

Only for ginseng fiends like my former nearly-brother-in-law who will love that taste, chai-fiends like Caly or Tina who might find it in some nuances that leave them more forgiving of its less than spicy spices than I am, or for tea bag chai lovers who don't get all this talk of adding milk and sugar.

I'm feeling a bit: still a bit cranky

I was asked my age when buying tickets for a R-rated movie the other day. "Wh--uh....twenty-nine." I don't think she believed me, but it was obvious at that point that I was with someone and they were older, so it was okay legally to let me have 'em. Damnit.

I can't remember the last time I was carded for cigarettes or alcohol, but then the neighborhood store's clerks know me by now. I prefer renting videos to going out to the movies, and video shops don't give a damn how old I am when I hand them a box. At some point in the past couple of years, lacking any challenge to prove my age, I'd just assumed I was finally looking it.

The most common response, when someone finds out how old I am, is, "I hate you." Friends of the family, perfect strangers, doesn't matter: "I hate you." Sometimes it's followed by the second most common response, "You're so lucky!" Lucky my ass, man--people put on their "talking to the young and therefore intellectually challenged!" voices when I start conversations; they get defensive and wait for teenage attitude from me; they assume I need explanations and demonstrations that I never asked for and that they don't offer to taller or older-looking people. Worst of all, they call me cute, but not in a good way.

There's nothing good about waiting in a checkout lane with your twelve year old and ten year old sisters and having a passerby ask if you're triplets when you're eighteen years old.

There's nothing good about buying movie tickets with your fourteen year old sister and having the girl behind the counter politely tell you, in that syrupy "Aw, aren't you cute!" voice, that she can't give you the tickets but if your big sister there has her driver's license on her then she'll give 'em to her, when you're twenty years old.

And there is nothing at all good about asking your eighteen year old baby sister who never, ever gets carded if she'll pay for your liquor, since you're outside of the neighborhood and you left home without any ID that proclaims proudly that you really are, swear to Bob, twenty-six years old.

I'm feeling a bit: cheerful (really, I am)

Fucking codecs.

Everything was fabulous, then I had to try to get mkv files working. Now not only are they not working, but I can no longer get screencaps. MKV fanatics' answer to codec woes? "Use [other media player] instead, it's far better anyway."

It's the geek version of telling someone the answer to their problems with their Ford is to go buy a Chevy, brand allegiance becoming a statement of worth. I listen to Band X, therefore I am cool and naturally superior to you, at least until Band X becomes so popular that I am no longer one of the prestigious elite, at which point I shall either explode in a rage of "I knew 'em back in the day! You're all posers!" or else call you all sheep and extol the virtues of Band Y instead--though I'd never admit to listening to Singer Z, because there's no way identifying myself as a fan there will help my reputation.

Bah. Just tell me how to get the motherfucking codec to work properly, the way it's supposed to, and save the evangelism for another day, when I'm not in the mood to maim.

In other news, no "Yakitate Japan" icons for me, damnit.

In other other news, I talked to Heidi last night. Whee! Much fun was had, though I'm afraid I might've stammered a bit, being in awe of her l33t domestic skillz. She's a master of the things my great-grandmother tried to teach me before finally giving up and asking me what I would be drawing today, so she has taken on a bit of that divine nature in my head, as one of Those Women That Can Actually Do That.

Alas, I, apparently, can not be domesticated, and am doomed to remain a wild mokiecoon, fated to raid unprotected trash cans and vegetable gardens and to occasionally take over the attics of unsuspecting suburbanites. Even Zaphod has stopped eating my food now, and actively questions my choice of ingredients (I blame Caly and her suspicion of the innocuous eggplant). A simple cup of tea causes hesitation: "Um...what kind of tea is it? No, wait--don't tell me, I'll pass, thanks." (It's Ti Kuan Yin Oolong, tonight, second brewing, with a bowl of honeyed couscous on the side, but I digress.) And family reaction to my efforts to make a quilt for my cousin Jay's impending infant have been less than encouraging. True, I've not done much in the way of sewing (a two inch tall teddy bear and a semester of Home Economics that was almost immediately and entirely blotted from my memory and never spoken of again) but that's hardly reason to hide the sewing machine from me, right?

Maybe I should just admit defeat and buy the baby a book...

I'm feeling a bit: quixotic

( It's a long bit of nonsense. )

I'm feeling a bit: silly

I asked the cat, and she assures me that the paper fan is indeed a deadly weapon when properly wielded. I asked for a demonstration, but she lacks thumbs in her current incarnation and it just wasn't working out quite the way she intended. She did, however, deal me one ferocious paper cut, so I guess I can see how it might work. It's not half as effective as Tina's microwave oven, which launches itself at its victims from high places, but definitely stealthier. I feel like a slightly inept ninja now. Or a cup of soup. Hrm. Yes, I think I'll make that soup...

Happy birthday, Mr. Dodgson. I have my Alice on hand, a line of clean cups ready, and some freshly brewed tea.

( And that tea is... )

And how's this for a rabbit hole moment? A man who tried to commit suicide by parking on train tracks, only to change his mind and jump out at the last minute, is now being charged with the murder of those who died in the resulting crash, and might face the death penalty. Hrm.

LJ Battle Royale! by monmonito
Username
Weapon you got:	Paper fan
Your goal in the game:	A much-needed break from schoolwork.
Number of students killed:	99
For fun, you kill:	thebookreader
Out of a personal vendetta, you kill:	justthere
Accidentally, you kill:	girlpirate
You have an alliance with:	blackbird__fly
You develop a puppy-love romance with:	girl_obscured
Watch out for:	concertina42
Percentage of survival possibility:: 28%
Dying words:	"Kiss me, you fool."
Quiz created with MemeGen!

Tina. I knew it!

I'm feeling a bit: homicidal