Some of you know this story and many of you don't. Names are withheld because i choose to withhold names not for other's convenience but for my own. I don't think I can handle names. I'm a serious wreck with certain things.

---



( I lost a brother and a friend. )

I've been watching a bad show for work and then transcribing it for hearing-disabled people.

It's usually decent work but this show is atrocious. I'll keep details out of it.

What surprised me was that a character who was supposedly just born in Colombia but brought up in America knows spanish but refers to her uncle as Tio.

As far as I can remember and from what's been checked out, this is not spanish usage. Tio is Portugese for uncle or aunt's husband or whatever.

Is this just bad writing or is this actually common?

"An alcoholic is someone you don't like who drinks as much as you do." - Dylan Thomas

www.wcsh6.com/video/default.aspx


he's just EVIL Nixon in the link. He's uncomfortable, he's got tics. He makes really bad jokes and slip ups. If he wins, I see a watergate, a david frost interview, and a slow ignominious death and someday, someone will remember him as something of a has-been great man. Because he has his moments, just like Nixon did.

I[ll try to be detailed on this subject but it's going to be hard because this is going to be a short post.

Since about march 8, I've been nursing a killer migraine. I haven't been to work since then either. My work place also cancelled short term disability just a few days before my illness started due to the lack of profit. For the pain nothing worked to alleviate it. Pills didn't help, nothing helped. Somewhere along the way, my seizures started up again and I started to have horrendous nightmares that would wake me up in the middle of the night and it became hard to go back to sleep. I soon started to dread even going to sleep and that caused even worse problems.

About 4 days ago, I was admitted to the hospital and they tried to break the migraine with a constant IV drip filled to the brim with medications. That actually broke the migraine but the rest of the problems remain. Because of the seizures, I can't drive now and thus making the problem worse.

All the pills I take now only make me more and more drowsy and I am unable to do anything at all now.

That's about it.

~
Arun

Yeah....not so good.

I'll try to see if I can get on the comp long enough some day to give you guys an update of the last two months or so of me being being sick to the bone.

Upon mckenzee's insistence (read: he mentioned it), I made Béchamel this last sunday and, damn,  was I hooked on it.

It's basically a french white sauce for pasta and other such dishes. I followed his guidelines rather than some of the recipes online because of both the simplicity and just because he was the one who had brought it to my attention.

The ingredients are fairly simple.

Butter
Flour
Milk
salt to taste
Seasonings as you please.
As it was for pasta,I decided to add in parmesan.
~

Melt some butter. I used a stick in fear that I wouldn't be able to get all of the flour but in retrospect a quarter stick or at most a half stick of butter is probably enough.

Once the butter is melted, add flour to the melted butter and mix. You are looking for a beige like coloring to this mixture.

Add in the milk to this mix and let it all come together.

It should be resembling a gravy by now.

As the milk starts to bubble and boil, I'd probably add the seasonings and the cheese. I thought i Had parmesan at home but I was wrong. I ended up using shredded dry parmesan instead. It still came out damn well.

It was tasty goodness.

it's a pretty bad feeling when you go over to your friend's place and start feeling like a mother hen.

For those who don't know, Jon is back at a behavioral health facility. Slater decided to confront him with his problems and unfortunately the somewhat physical approach that he took backfired in that it caused Jon to bolt. He took off for the rest of the day and spent it driving everywhere. In the middle of the night(12-ish), Andrew got a call from Jon stating that he was in Mckinney and he had been pulled over by a cop and the cop, not taking any chances with the obviously schizoid-acting Jon, took him in for a 24-hour wait in time. A bit after that, the cops decided to check the self-insured (Cobra insurance ==> outra-fucking-geous expensive) Jon into a behavioral facility in Mckinney.

That was two days ago. I wish I had had my phone on that day because aparently Jon & his mother both left several messages on my phone wanting to know what had happened. Of course, as all of this was told to me second and third hand (either from 'drew or from Steph who heard it from 'drew), I was in no place to know what was actually going on.

Then there was the problem of where his car was now? The cops didn't have it. The hospital didn't have it and if they did have it, wouldn't tell us
Today, The Raman family decided to go to Mckinney to give him some set of clothes and also to see if we could get some info to relay on to his family in Kansas.

On the way, we saw a car that seemed, to me at the least, deceptively similar to Jon's beat-up clunker on the side of the road.

We got to the facility. Went in and I talked on the phone for 30 minutes trying to get the nurse to give me some information. She didn't. Which is thoroughly understandable because of patient-confidentiality requirements. But an interesting part of confidentiality law was revealed. While she couldn't give me information on Jon or anything related to Jon, I wasn't allowed to give her or the facility information on Jon's prior history. Finally, she agreed to get Jon out of a therapy group to see if he would allow me to get information on him. Long story short, another fifteen minute wait and he came and signed the papers. It seems strange that these would be valid because of his condition and the place he was in but I didn't question it just because I was able to get the information. After another twenty minutes or so, they were able to give me his car keys.

We went back and found his car and I was originally going to come pick it up tomorrow as I was not comfortable driving the clunker to work.

Unfortunately, there was a notice from the Mckinney police department stating that the car would be declared an abandoned vehicle if it was not moved by 00:50 on 02/11/08 and that would be the coming 12:50 in the Ante Meridian. So I picked up his car and drove it to work.

~~

Overall I feel like a mother hen.

While I was over at Jon's place before going to Mckinney, I threw out all the open containers of food he had out and I picked out a few more clothes to take to him. I also checked Drew's temperature and gave him some orange juice and cough drops. I felt like I should have tucked him in and given him a peck on his forehead but I dutifully restrained myself though.

That's about it for now.

Love&Rockets
Arun.K.

It was just a few months ago that I boasted that I had cleared out the crazy distraction of a TV, cable, and video games.

I was feeling happy about that.

Then slowly but surely a tv landed in my lap. it was good in a way, I figured. I could use it to watch my occasional netflix, as it is an occasional happenstance now.

A month after I got the tv, I hooked up my ps2 to the tv and played some Final Fantasy XII.

I thought that was okay because I really didn't play much and it gave me an easily accessible dvd player.

We got a Bunny-ears antenna a little while later for PBS as Steph and I are public media fanatics. That is actually okay because we don't really use it at all due to the usual crappy quality of bunny-ear antennae.

I, as of five minutes ago, now have the full on cable package (all news, all movies) with a dvr attached.


I miss the simple life.

here's hoping I can ignore tv for the large part!  

Richardson just stepped down due to lack of funds and also not being able to get more than 4th place in both Iowa & New Hampshire.

I'm sad. He was my candidate. Even though his pro-gun-rights/pro-death penalty stance was completely opposed to mine, he and I saw eye-to-eye on many other things and he was the only one with ambassadorial, foreign, executive (both on the state-level and also as a member of a president's cabinet), and congressional experience. As a diplomat, I have yet to see a peer to this man, maybe Adlai Stevenson, but that was another lost cause. I knew Richardson wouldn't win but I was hoping he would soldier on. I hope he comes back in an important position in the new presidential team (whichever one it will be)

The Westboro baptist church (godhatesfags.com) recently released a cover of "We are the World" called "God Hates the world (and everyone of her people)" and it's absolutely sickening.

As someone who believes to a major, major extent in freedom of choice, I"ve always given at least a semblance of support to the Phelps/WBC crowd as long as they were only protesting at funerals or having peaceful protest.

But this video and song count as peaceful protest and I can't stomach it. I suppose there is something to be said for the power of thirty people just chanting about how much this world is damned and hated by it's creator. Keeping questions of religion out, I jsut can't fathom, stomach, or believe that such strong hatred for everyone exists. It's taking the idea of Nazism and Stalinist philosophy to new levels. They hated/had it out for a select group of people. In this case, the select group of people have it out for the rest of the world. Both are bad, but my stomach's upside down and I feel like heaving from teh video. I forced myself to watch it all the way through to see if I can find a reason for my being upset when they are just exercising free will.

I'm not going to link to it because I'm afraid what others might feel. I hate bringing up topics such as these so close to the holidays but I needed an outlet of some sort.

If you want you can go down and hunt the video but I'd suggest not to do so if you are faint of heart. Even if you aren't faint of heart, the last 30 seconds just convinced me that the WBC is evil, I just can't find a proper way to meld this in with the rest of my way of thinking.

It's just fucked up.

UGH

It's been a while, but I come bearing christmas gifts.

I bring you --- the pilot episode of WKRP in Cincinnati.

Tell me if you want more. ^_~

I read the phrase "hear here" on a lj message board today and started a small discussion about it on that board.

I don't know what the history of it is but I know it's in the bible.

Then a wise woman called from the city, "Hear, hear! Please tell Joab, 'Come here that I may speak with you.'" (source)

WOuld you qualify that as a Mondegreen.or is that just a single person's mistake.    

EDIT: THIS ENTIRE POST IS FOUNDED ON A STUPID MISREADING SO DISREGARD THE POST IF YOU DON"T WANT YOUR VALUABLE TIME TO BE WASTED.

x-posted to linguaphiles

Jesus, Where has this guy been? Why am I only getting wind of him now? I think I might have found my candidate.

Watch his google video.

He's got style, grace, intelligence, a concrete plan, and he's funny.

He's a practicing diplomat and he brought New Mexico, since his governorship, back to being a scientific powerhouse.

Look at him.  

I may not be voting for Huckabee but this is a fucking hilarious ad and it shows that either Huckabee likes a good laugh or he knows how to capitalize on 12 year old humor (don't know how it's going to get him votes from that demographic.)

WATCH THE VIDEO -- It's fucking hilarious

After being subject to the (much deserved) revulsion and curiosity at the news that I was rereading Russell's "history of Western Philosophy", I was wondering if there is any real reason that i should not read his other seminal work -- Principia Mathematica.

I should say his and Whitehead's.  The reason i ask is that if I should not read that what else should I read in the field of mathematical logic?

Or what would an alternative book be to "principia mathematica" in regards to the subjects addressed within it?  

It's been a while since I've written any western horror. The last I did was the series of shorts I did during drew's original Deadlands game.

I miss my gambler ace shot diplomat.

But yeah mckenzee has a nice exquisite cadaver collaborative fiction game going on with western horror. you should join if you feel like writing a quick 250 words of western horror. :-D

   

But life is good and I am tired.

I fucking hate office politics.

That is all.

I only recently became acquainted with Norman Mailer after reading Marc Weingartner's " The Gang That Wouldn't Write Straight: Wolfe, Thompson, Didion, and the New Journalism Revolution" and that's when I was pushed into reading more articles, books, essays by the New Journalists. I was already pretty acquainted with Dr. Gonzo (Hunter S. Thompson) and I have talked enough about how his writing just shook my view on how writing needs to be writing. I knew of Didion and I've never been too fond of her writing. It's okay, but it's just normal writing.

But, Mailer, the man of a thousand pages amazed me. I picked up "The Naked and the Dead" and it took me a month to read, usually something of note. I finish books in, at the most, a week's time. Only the books that need my attention and the books that need my rereading of key passages often take me longer. Mailer was fantastic in Naked and the Dead. he slowly and methodically examined the war effort as pertaining on a fictional island during the pacific campaign of the war. he interviewed countless people and pulled on his own war experience to write an amalgam novel that addressed all the characters from all angles. He didn't pull any punches. Both high-brow and low-brow entertainment coupled in one novel, he would fly from page to page addressing different situations from Philosophy and the role of man above others to the stark-raving drunk dreams and hallucinations of soldiers. One page, he would have the soldiers reveling in each others company and ten pages later when one of their hurt  comrades was bogging them down, their emotions would grow darker and cursing that comrade in their minds for putting their safety at risk. This was a book. I was floored.

Then I picked up "Harlot's ghost" and I was frustrated. Where was the development of multiple characters. Where did that low-brow go? Where did the high-brow go? I continued reading. I put the book down after the first hundred to two hundred pages. Then a week later I picked the book back up and reread the first hundred to two hundred pages and continued reading. He shifted from his previous debut novel's style to a serious style by writing a fictional biography of the CIA. It was riveting. The internal workings of that company and after a while, I couldn't distinguish reality from fiction. I was in the book, I was this secret agent working with rebels in South American countries methodically destroying the opposition, not with guns and riot fights, but with spray cans and orders to put up graffiti in different locations.

I was with him as he worked as a double-agent within the company itself. And then it ended. No, that's not what happened. Then the book stopped. One Thousand two hundred and thirty pages down, the original plot line still left alone. This was just a history of some twenty years of the CIA. I was stunned. I rushed to the computer, scrambling and wanting to know where the next book was. What was the next book called? It had to be written. "Harlot's Ghost" was published in 1991. I was reading this in 2007. That's 17 years time to write that much. Come on, there had to be another book. And there wasn't.

For a week. For a month. I fumed. Another month wasted. Mr. Mailer had yet to write a book and had recently said that the sequel was probably never to come. In a fit of anger and impetuosity, I vowed never to read another Mailer book. It frustrated me.

Then, today, a few hours ago, I learned that he was dead. All of my dreams of a finish to that novel was gone. But a great man was gone, too. i won't lie to you. The first thing I cursed was that "Harlot's ghost" would never be finished. But, then just as when I felt an emptiness in me when Dr. Raoul Duke (Hunter S Thompson) had died. The same when I felt inside when i heard about Corretta Scott King and Rosa Parks died. When Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni had died. The world is full of great people and most of them seem to be from teh generation before mine. We still have many capable and wonderful people in my generation, but I can't mourn their loss because most of them are still here.

Here's to you, Mr. Mailer, I take back that childish vow. Let's see if I'll read all that you have written by the end of 2008.


Arun K.

Many people, including myself, have often noted/complained about the early arrival of Christmas.

Today, I saw a different variant on the Christmas comes too early.

The current wank from talktoaction.com is:

That's right. These days, the Religious Right doesn't even have the decency to wait until Thanksgiving to start whining about what terms people use to describe the December holidays.

~~

Sorry, but that's just too amusing.

The old argument that Christmas merchandise is put out too early is too passe now.
The new argument is that the people bitching that Christmas is no more are bitching too early.
~

I wonder if the other side will put an argument out saying something along the lines that:

"the people bitching that the people bitching that Christmas is no more are bitching too early are actually bitching too early."

~~

Absurdity.

I just paid 3.06$ a gallon for gas in dallas. THe cheapest thing around seems to be 2.88 in denton but I was desperately in need for gas.

who wants to run away to new jersey with me? they have 2.60 gas. cheapest in the nation, plus awesome and free Indian food courtesy my parents.

Recently, I've complained a bit about how the media just twists words and phrases and turns them around.

Arun K.

Now please, answer this question without looking at a reference material. If you don't know the answer, just say I don't know. This is for my own linguistic curiosity.

This is based off of debate going on various linguistic forums at the moment and I"m just curious on what your views might be on this.

~

Arun K.

Apparently Colbert's bid for appearing on the ballot was crushed in the one state he was doing it in -- South Carolina.
He was voted down 13-3.

He paid the funds to bill himself as a democrat (his dreams as a two-party candidate was crushed when he realized that it costed 7x the amount of money he was allowed to spend on teh campaign itself to run as a republican.)

But, the interesting part of the story that i read on MTV.com, as that is what google news linked me to, was the use of the addition rule to a quote by one of the 3 in the voting committee who voted for him.

Gilda Cobb-Hunter said that having Colbert would reinvigorate the voting process and bring in more of the "young people" and also add some humor to the campaign.

POking  fun at the 13 colleagues who spearheaded the session to remove him from the ballot, she spoke to MTV.com and jokingly said:

"[Like,] 'We have to save the state from Stephen Colbert!' Which I think is hilarious."

The statement itself isn't that noteworthy. But the addition of the square brackets around the word LIKE is interesting.

I can't for the life of me remember what a word within the brackets means in AP style.

Is it:

a.) that it was part of the original quote and has been deemed inappropriate/unnecessary for the context of the quote used?

or

b.) a clarification statement added by the writer of the article to add onto the quote?

~

Either way it is quote amusing.

If it was part of the original quote, then it shows MTV.com wanting to act like a grown-up news organization by removing so-called "valley girl" speech but inherently they fail because it removes from the validity of the statement.

If it is not part of the original quote, it shows someone inserting so-called "valley girl" speech into a quote as though to dumb down the conversation so it can reach their target audience.

Can someone clarify the proper use of the brackets in this case?  

link to article: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1573288/20071101/id_0.jhtml

Yep, I like nitpicking people just because it's fun. Not because I think there's anything wrong in being vague (as I do it all the time) but it's just absolutely and increasingly fun.

Joe Biden on Rudy:

Biden: “…And the irony is, Rudy Giuliani, probably the most under qualified person since George Bush to seek the presidency, is here - talking about any of the people here. Rudy Giuliani. I mean think about it, Rudy Giuliani, there’s only three things he mentions in a sentence — a noun and a verb and 9/11 and I mean, there’s nothing else. There’s nothing else.”

WHile what he says is essentially on the up and up, I should point out the somewhat open-ended assumption left by the main statement of his.

Rudy's sentence structure involves three very distinct parts of speech: A NOUN, a verb, and 9/11.

As far as I can see, 9/11 should be a noun as well but it's amusing to see that it has become a part of speech.

on google's igoogle/personalized page, there is a link at the called iGoogle Survey. It seems to be an internal survey sued for qualitative analysis and control purposes. But the survey is incredibly idiotic in that, it allows you to take the survey more than once. I"ve filled it out four times in the last two minutes with completely different answers and each one seems to be accepted.

For shame, google, for shame.

It's Powered by Confirmit and is used apparently by Market Research companies.

I find it rather intriguing that a large Market Research Software company such as ConfirmIt would be this retarded.

happy belated birthday by a day, eiluned.

   

I'm at work and utterly and infinitely bored.

I needed a reference for a weird pop culture use of Hercules and that got me to the page on Marvel's Hercules character which got me to marvel's Thor and then to Marvel's Ultimate version, Ultimate Thor,  and then through there to the Ultimate Galactus trilogy of graphic novels written by Warren Ellis.

All of this is on WIkipedia so the data is somewhat suspect in the first place. Of course suspect data about  fictional subjects is weird.

But suspect data on suspect subjects within fictional subjects? That's a whole new level.

Here's a quote from the notes section of the ULtimate Galactus WIki article -

The pseudoscience underlying the "Ultimate weapon" is somewhat dodgy; Reed Richard´s description of a pre-Big Bang universe as a "vast space full of volatile gases" being a particular low point.

Isn't the idea of pseudoscience in the first place to be dodgy. No matter how technical you might get with pseudoscience, it is still dodgy because none of it's actual fact/theory/postulate or any other aspect of science grounded completely and positively (that's an electronics pun) in the material world.

Hell, I would say being dodgy is part of pseudoscience's definition.

So with that in mind, I suppose calling an already dodgy subject dodgy would make it extra dodgy?

But there's a modifier on dodgy. It is only somewhat dodgy? SO does that make this particular pseudoscience more dodgy than before or less? Maybe it's not 1.5X dodgy rather than the 2x dodgy. That is the original pseudoscience would have been 1x dodgy. A dodgy pseudoscience would be 2x dodgy. SO a somewhat dodgy pseudoscience is only 1.5x dodgy? Or could it somehow make the value even lower than the original? Could it be .75x dodgy? Bringing it closer to actual science.

SO is this a contradiction then?
~~

Also, I"m not even going to touch the whole "vast space full of volatile gases" bit on Ultimate Richards' pre-big bang universe as the particular low point on this somewhat dodgy pseudoscience commentary.   but if I did touch it and the somewhat dodgy pseudoscience was .75x dodgy, then would that give some serious truth value to the volatile gases filling a vast space comment?

So is the original contributor to the article commenting on the sad state of affairs in the comics of today in that we can't even have proper dodgy pseudoscience.

Fucking Ellis, throwing in not so-real but not as fake pseudo-science into a not-real but fake pseudoscience pot. Just confusing!

~~

Tthis post was brought to you by Bohr Dome, the number 1213822389·2⁸¹¹³¹-1 and letter Foxtrot.

I've heard of spam that sounds like poetry but then you have the scam spams that make me feel ashamed that I cannot write in this obtuse and formal a fashion.
~

Mrs Nora Fernandez & Family
~~~

My sister, Anu, and I have always had relationship that calls to mind the tides and the moods of the ocean. At times, we were inseparable and I had hero worship for her and at other times we just didn't see eye-to-eye on any issue. She had her moods and her privacy and I had my aloofness and my increasingly American outlook. Over the last four or so years, we only drifted further and further away. I felt betrayed when she told my mother something I had told her in utmost confidence. She felt outraged I wouldn't talk to her. I felt betrayed that she and her husband didn't help me much when Steph became pregnant. She became outraged (somewhat rightly so) when I mistook her crying over my obstinacy in the pregnancy issue as maybe her husband abusing her in someway.

You can see the pattern. Our relationship has suffered deeply in the last couple of years. I've always complained that she doesn't come visit me. She always complained that I viewed Steph's family and the American way of life more important than my Indian heritage and our own blood-famiily. THe list goes on and on. I should have stopped all this a long time ago and swallowed my pride. But that is one thing Raman-blood has in spades. Pride, Ego, and a stubborn attitude to boot. We are who we are and a slight is never forgotten. It can be mulled over but we nurse it like an old battle wound gone awry and in some weird sense we look on that battle wound that slowly rots and is naturally amputated as a source of pride. A source of pride in that we didn't give in.

It isn't the best thing in teh world. But it's part of us.

Now, it is all for moot.

Anu just called me from the airport. My brother-in-law, Rajesh, has been preparing to move back to INdia for a better job prospect. Today is the final day when the two of them pack their lives here in this country and leave for good. My hand shakes as I write this because I know our relationship is severely damaged and I don't know how to fix it. My sister and I will always love aeach other but there is is a level of love that the two of us will never display towards each other. We are two stubborn coots who don't know any better. I'll try and she'll try but we'll always be stopped by ourselves. It's all gone

I love you, Anu.

I have often complained that i am not the most efficient communicator either online or offline. It is even more prevalent online as layers of meaning and subtlety are lost.

People are often unable to grasp what meaning I might have meant and I am often at a loss to understand the subtlety of another's statement.

In a recent conversation I had with a friend online, there was a specific level of information that was relayed and I was somewhat irritated  that I was supposed to read a small subset of that individual's philosophy from a single statement which has been used by that person many times in the past for many different meanings.

After I expressed my distaste and irritation, they gave me a subsequent explanation in three parts.

    i took several minutes, used a ... and gave an explanation

That's a three part explanation.

"I took several minutes" as in they waited a minute.

"used a '...'" was the second part.

"and gave an explanation" as the third part.

I am not using the above as a critique of the individual, even though this post probably seems like it is covered with barbs.

~

My point of comment, and not to mention amusement, is the fact that the use of such a thing as an ellipsis is actually expected to convey indepth information.

THinking about it, yes, it can do that. But, coming from an academic background and writing too many MLA papers, my first use of ellipsis is to bridge parts of a quote that are not originally connected.

Even without that background, I doubt when one sees an ellipsis, one does not automatically think assume a level of introspection or a level of sophistication. One would naturally assume it as a way of bridging two unrelated (or seemingly unrelated) clauses.

For example: i did it because the people fussed....[an unsaid ok] i was lazy.

I assume, even that would show a level of introspection, but does anyone actually think of the ellipsis as a tool of introspection or thought?

It is an unsaid agreement that I seem to have forgotten about. Do you think of the usage of the ellipsis is also the show of introspection or thought about the topic?

~~

There's a bbc story going around about

Apparently some Costa Rican artist in Nicaragua chained up a dog in his gallery and didn't allow anyone to feed it and the dog seems to have died. He calls it art. I feel sad for the dog and I do feel anger at the man. But I don't deny that something like this can be construed as art. I'm not touching the issue because while i feel the whole thing is dead wrong, my main point is based upon a a comment i read on a blog.

"This conceptual project is a disgrace to a civilised society. Note I did not call it art which is to grant it a kind of moral imperative that this does not deserve."

The second comment about something only being art if it has a moral imperative or "a kind of moral imperative."

I'm somewhat curious to see how Marcel Duchamp's toilet or Leonardo Da Vinci's mona lisa have a moral imperative?

Jack Vettriano's countless pictures of whores/high class call girls dressing up also must have some sort of moral imperative.

My real question is what exactly is the moral imperative?

Thou shall not cause pain? There's bound to be some crazy art out there that depicts pain.

Is the moral imperative not to profit off of loss?

There were nazi artists at dachau and auschwitz who profitted off of their work.

Is the moral imperative not to make a stupid pointless statemt ent and then call it art?

I can see that as the moral imperative but then you have such people as the impressionists who kept urging us to look at the whole picture and from far away and be detached rather than be up and in the center about it.

Maybe the artist was trying to raise awareness about the health of stray dogs on the street by making a horrible point?

Maybe he was recreating Milgram's expirement with people and a dog rather than just people.

Maybe he's a sadistic bastard.

Probably the last one, but I don't know...

That isn't a horribly novel thing actually.

But I started dr. who because of insomnia.

Now I started Robin hood because of insomnia.
            

Yeah, I'm breaking the rule that I won't have a meme on my lj. But, meh.

If you comment on this post, I will choose seven interests from your profile and you will explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so that others can play along.

Here are the 7 interests chosen for me. I think it is telling that most of them don't even describe me or have any interest for me anymore and I can't believe the obvious misspelling of words.

1. chibis - A term derived, for me, from anime. It is the basic idea of drawing or expressing adult characters in a form indicating their child-hood shape or size. I used to ha ve it on here for a long time because of an old online friend of mine, who incidentally shall remain nameless. THe friend knows why they were called Chibi. I don't really have any interest in them anymore. I suppose I could try to find some sort of literary inference into why Japanese creative works in the form of manga or anime might want to express characters as chibi. but that's to another post.

2. fantacy - I think that's supposed to be fantasy. I might have added that while I was in high school and never paid much attention to the spelling. I'll fix all of it someday. I like fantasy novels. I've always liked them. ALthough these days I really do tend towards the more folktale/fairy tale version of fantasy than just hardcore tolkien.
3. nobuo uematsu - He's an amazing composer who worked on many Final Fantasy games. Again, an interest that doesn't define me anymore.
4. redemption of althalus - A novel by David Eddings that was interesting when I first read it ages ago. But I'd probably find it too dreary and idiotic now. Eddings has some severe failing as a writer in that he has a very specific plot that seems to find its way into his different series of novels. Redemption was a little special in that it was a standalone book rather than a series. I suppose I will always cherish it because it is so hard to find a standalone fantasy (see I can spell) novel.
5. roger zelazny -  One of the great writers of the last sixty years in the world of fantasy/sci-fi. his Amber series inspired many writers, me included. I haven't gone anywhere with my writing but Zelazny along with J.R.R. Tolkien and Frank Herbert were some of the first people to actually get me to consider writing as a trade. I still find him interesting. His Amber series, his short stories, his other novels all dabbled in mythology. Egyptian, Greek, Hindu, Christian, and Celtic, he methodically incorporated this into his different works.
6. spirits - To be blatantly honest, I have abso-fraggin-lutely no idea what this one is supposed to be about. Maybe I was exploring some animist/pagan views at that time? Maybe it is to my love of alcoholic spirits? maybe it was me being an angsty teen and putting down my woe-begotten-heavily-laden-feelings as spirits. Fuck if I know.
7. sugatoxin - Haha, I haven't heard of these guys in so long. Sugatoxin was a local band in which a few of my friends played in. Lee and Jared. The band broke up soon after and as far as I know, jared is now in Austin somewhere and Lee is married to Leigh and maybe still living in Commerce, Tx.   

~~

NOTE TO SELF: update interests.
go on, post and I'll pick interests for you to expand on.

Thanks to mr_quackenbush for reminding me of matthew 6:5.

 5"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 6But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

~~

It's a very scary thought that I live in a country that only has military power. Our Economic power has depleted so much that the area that is despised by many Americans seems to have the most economic power.

The highest-valued currency in the world is the Kuwaiti Dinar at almost 3.5 USD to a single KWD.

The Bahrainian dinar and the Oman Rial match up at 2.65 & 2.60 USD to one BHD and one OMR respectively.

The malta lira is at 3.3 USD to a single MTL.

We know the EUro and the british pound kick our asses daily and now the Canadian dollar has joined in as well.

But Cuba?

The latest (aka 5 minutes ago) XE exchange rate shows

1.00 USD	=	0.925900 CUC
United States Dollars		Cuba Convertible Pesos
1 USD = 0.925900 CUC		1 CUC = 1.08003 USD

~~

Is the reason for our war that we are afraid that all our opponents are richer than us?

This may sound incredibly racist and bigoted, but I didn't know that Ghana's currency was higher than the USD.

It just goes to show that while the US may last for a while, we are no longer the power that we were even 10 years ago.

Empires rise and fall into the sand is the old turn of phrase, I think.

~~

here are a few links for your perusal on this issue.

highest valued currencies

XE.com - world class currency exchange site

EDIT: 0ct-6-07 - 550 PM CST - speculation on my part as to why the maltese lira and the latvian lat are this high is because they are both slated to become extinct as the euro will become their currency in the next few months or so. that tag might increase their worth for a bit. the maltese lira also has been pegged/loosely associated with the british pound for the last 25-30 years or so. that also gives it some credence.  

yeah...that's an old word.

those dappled grey tones
on her mane leap about
as i imagine the crowd weeping.
my throat caught up in a choke
the sky glares at me questioning
the ruffle of fur beneath
my hands as my body is shivering
essaying my fears inside
and out.
my lover left behind on the altar
once again i run.  

For the last few years I've seen what, I hope, is a new but bad trend in news journalism.

~
Arun K.

"In addition, the Vatican's former chief astronomer, Fr. George Coyne, prior to his retirement, issued a statement on 18 November 2005 saying that "Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be. If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science." Cardinal Paul Poupard added that "the faithful have the obligation to listen to that which secular modern science has to offer, just as we ask that knowledge of the faith be taken in consideration as an expert voice in humanity." He also warned of the permanent lesson we have learned from the Galileo affair, and that "we also know the dangers of a religion that severs its links with reason and becomes prey to fundamentalism." Fiorenzo Facchini, professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Bologna, called intelligent design unscientific, and wrote in the January 16-17, 2006 edition L'Osservatore Romano: "But it is not correct from a methodological point of view to stray from the field of science while pretending to do science....It only creates confusion between the scientific plane and those that are philosophical or religious.""

~~~

Just posting it there so I can reference later for whatever I need to. :-)

There has been a quite an uproar recently in the often thought-to-be quiet-spoken linguistic community about the removal of 16000 hyphens from word combos (compound words?) in the latest version of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. IT has been a rough-and-tumble rumble as both 70-year-old septuagenarians and 19-year-old graduate students sting both amongst themselves and others very much like bumble-bees to either defend or argue against those who feel that the hyphen is an old-fashioned, ugly, and downright-unnecessary thing!

~~

Arun K Raman
~

PS - Obviously a lot of this post was in parody and some of the hyphenated words really aren't grammatically correct but that is beyond the point.

The following blog post by Dr. Roger Shuy at the Language log shows one of the many practical jobs available with a linguistics degree. :-)

NEVER FEAR, KIDS! THE CHILDHOOD DREAMS OF BEING A LINGUISTS ARE NOT DEAD! NURTURE THEM! CARESS THEM! BECOME LINGUISTS!  

*paid for by  AWLA - Arun the Wannabe Linguist Association (of 1).

The title is an analogy to my status of being drunk

Corporate asskissing. Trust me - fucking extreme 

it probably won't make it to the oscars jsut because of the content but it's amazingly smart and brilliant.

http://www.slashfilm.com/2007/09/23/juno-four-video-clips/#more-4779 - Slashfilm has 4 clips that show how amazingly witty, smart, and strangely poignant it is.

It might hit a little close for home just because of you know the whole baby out of wedlock concept but it has Ellen Page of Hard candy and Kitty Pryde - X3 fame. Also Michael Cera from Superbad. The amazingly talented John Malkovich of too many movies to name fame. Also Jason bateman and Jennifer Garner star in it as an uncomfortable upper--middle class couple.

Plus Jason Reitman -- the man who directed "Thank You for Smoking" is directing it.

Ellen Page can easily pull off this role. Hard Candy was an amazing movie and this seems like it'll be much better.  

Reading this Daily Telegraph article on Prince(ss) Charles new activities and I am amused.

Man seems like such a pansy and that's awesome. I want him to be a stereotypical gay English man with his love of flowers and tea. And, boy, does the princess sure give tea and flowers a different meaning. :-)

Over the last several days, I've been slowly taking a few minutes here and there to make a list of all U.S. presidents until now and how much education they received.

I have the list below. I hypothesize that if one studied the current of politics over the last 200+ years, one would see that the politics of each president is dominated by their education. We have maybe two or four presidents who were versed in science. We have had maybe 5 presidents with high liberal art educations. And mostly we have had lawyers. Some of our most qualified presidents show their education as they rose to power on their own merits and also were completely self-educated such as Lincoln.
 
More under the cut.

~
Arun K.

What is my insipiration for my craft? I might say that i could look to the stars and remember that boy dream of traveling past planets and stars-unending to encounter ecosystems teeming with lifeforms alien and common at the same time. I could say it is the need to succeed and put an imprint on civilization as i know it and have it be said 150 years down the line, look there's the work of that fine author - Arun K. I could have it be said that I am a muse myself who helps the cause of others while writing little himself. I could also say it is my need for despair and negativity that causes me to write -- a good explanation of why i probably have not written much recently.it could also be my wife, my child, my father, my mother, and my friends.

But there is more to my arts and crafts than just a singular monotonous point-with-my-index-finger source for my imagination or my inspiration. It is singularly the idea that every person in this world has talent that I do not have and specifically in the world of writing, there are so many in my own circle of friends and outside that circle of friends who can look at me and smile/sneer/disdain/show-disregard at me and just know that they are better.

That is my source of inspiration.

 That is my dogma that lets me write and maybe someday flourish.

we use a voice recognition software called capmic at my workplace and i was looking at the text output today of one of my files and realized something.

half of my "our"s came out as are.

That's a product what is called a lazy mouth, at least colloquially if not in a politically correct sense.

It is also the faint tingling of a texan accent becoming part of who I am.

Not any kind of texan, EAST TEXAN!
I need to start practicing my Northeastern seaboard accent repeatedly!
~