Joss Whedon explains his plans, how they will unfold over the course of one week in July, and what you can do about it. (You can't stop it. The plans are already in motion, mwahahaha!)

Mostly as a note to myself to watch this stuff.

I keep running into the word "empathetic" in fiction. I find this word annoying - as annoying as one word can be, anyhow. Logically*, if a person with empathy is empathetic, then a person with telepathy is telepathetic. This, to me, means that a person with telepathy is capable of being pathetic at great distances. (To be fair, if the telepath in question happened to be an extremely whiny twit, or something else pathetic, this person would in fact be pathetic at great distances. But that would be a personality thing as much as a telepathy thing.)

* - Yes, I know that applying logic to the English language is a questionable practice.

Breakfast: Lemon yogurt, and a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich on homemade bread. The recipe looked easy. I didn't realize bread dough was so heavy, but other than the mixing part, it actually was easy.

(Note to self: add more flour next time - there were still spots that needed it. Even if I am getting tired, it needs more flour.)

But I baked yeast bread. And it was good.

(Next up: What happens if I use a cup or two of whole-wheat flour in place of the all-purpose stuff?)

...saved here for my own memory.

---

People keep writing letters to the newspaper saying things like, “It's colder than it should be this week; obviously, global warming is a hoax!” Using Washington's weather to disprove global warming is ridiculous. If our state is so powerful, then shouldn't Al Gore have been elected president in 2000?

There is a 1995 novel, Indiana Jones and the Philosopher's Stone. I only found out about it today because it was on the book tables at Costco.

Now I have this image of Indy with a wand in his left hand and a whip in his right hand, trying to make his way past a three-headed dog.

(inspired by an old post from betnoir's journal.)

There are three cats who live right here
and my rank was numbered three.
Then came the day the basket dropped
and the whole world changed for me.

The holes on it too small for paws
but still large enough to see,
so I am safe from others' claws
but they are not safe from me.

Clankity Clank!
I am a tank!
An in-vuln-er-a-ble kitty.
Clankity Clank!
Yes, I'm a tank!
Now the other cats are scared of me.

I shoved my cage around the house
and the other cats were quite awed.
Now I'm the cat - they are the mouse.
Because I'm safe from being clawed.

Clankity Clank!
I am a tank!
An in-vuln-er-a-ble kitty.
Clankity Clank!
Yes, I'm a tank!
Now the other cats are scared of me.

It's time to eat, and I want fish.
Pushing a basket is quite hard play
But I'm blocked from my dinner dish!
Will someone take this thing away?

Clankity Clank!
I am a tank!
And a very hungry kitty.
Clankity Clank!
Yes, I'm a tank!
Can you take this thing off of me?

Mew?

Google occasionally replaces their usual logo with something different. Now, you get a chance to vote on which one is chosen.

As I was walking home tonight, a masked bandit jumped out from between two cars, looked up at me, and turned tail and ran. The bandit's companion fled as well. Even if I'd had my camera, there was no time to take a shot - they were just that fast.

I don't know what raccoons do on Capitol Hill on a Friday night, but I hope I didn't make them late.

That's what I thought after finishing Guns, Germs, and Steel. I didn't automatically agree, but it was something to look at.

And it's how I feel about the idea that participation may be the next step in society. It's an interesting idea. It might be true. And I'll have to think about that.

(I'm sure there's some amount of humor connected with the fact that the first thing I did after reading the article was blog about it.)

Okay. There's a list of books which LibraryThing's users have marked unread, and there's a top 106. These are supposedly the ones which people buy so they can Look Smart. I wish to take issue with two items on that list.

The Silmarillion
This book, as far as I can tell, should not be bought by anybody except Tolkein fanatics and people who are suffering from insomnia.

Angels & Demons
Gaah. It starts out pretending to be a minor variation from reality, then takes a sharp left into Extremely Alternate Universe. I got through it by suspending my sense of disbelief by the neck until it lost consciousness. Then I swore off Dan Brown forever, figuring that if he doesn't care enough to research simple facts, he probably broke a few laws of physics here and there as well. I like books, but this one qualified for "should not be set aside lightly; should be thrown at the wall with great force."

In short, if somebody is buying books to have on the shelf for the purposes of Looking Smart, I think these two are counterproductive.

My right ear is picking up echoes. They're lower pitch, like a bass drum is echoing every key I hit as I type. It's not wrong, just weird.

Yes, I'm really bored. So, any guesses on who that is in the icon? (I have to say, he's not looking his best in this photo.)

The guy in 208 snores. Loud enough that he can be heard in the hall, loud enough that I can hear him in 206, where I live. And he doesn't snore all the time, so I can't get used to it. But there was always something else about it, something that made it more attention-getting.

Last night, I figured it out; he snores in the exact pattern of the TARDIS. He has the rhythm down. Not the notes, unsurprisingly, but the rhythm. I think that I've subconsciously been expecting that little *tha-thump* sort of sound that you hear on Doctor Who when the TARDIS finishes materializing. Instead, it just goes on and on, like a TARDIS with a maladjusted circuit.

(Okay, it's possible that he's actually a Time Lord with a busted TARDIS. Of course, it's also possible that I will spontaneously teleport to Hawaii sometime this week. Actually, the teleporting is probably more likely.)

Headline: NATO hacks backs Bush's missile defense plan.

Fine.

I'll put up some links which show how much I care about April Fools' Day.

Yep. Eighties music videos.

And no Rick Astley singing "Never Gonna Give You Up."

I hate practical jokes.

Blog against Torture day? Fine. Since it's apparently necessary, I'll throw out one point.

One of the arguments for the U.S. using torture is, "Why can't we use torture? All the terrorists do!"

Anybody who says this should be tied to a chair, and forced to watch every episode of Leave it to Beaver. Why? Because they're using an argument that wouldn't have made it past June Cleaver.

Let me rewrite that just a bit:

"Why can't I smoke cigarettes? All the cool kids do!"

See the similarity?

And if all the cool kids jumped off of a bridge, would these people jump off a bridge too? And precisely when did the terrorists become the cool kids, anyway?

To: Reality
Fr: Peter Eng
Re: Seattle weather, Mar 28 2008

Please note weather of record for this time of year, this region, the past ten years, and adjust to match. Seattle is a self-described "rain city," not a "snow city." While I appreciate the lack of sticking to the ground, this does not fix the disconnect between current conditions and reasonable expectations.

Thank you.

...I should know better than to sleep-deprive myself, even if it is a convention weekend with a nice dose of filk.

Norwescon has become mostly a volunteer con with a touch of gaming - well, when I'm not catching concerts or in open filking. Sleep-dep leaves me with a few high points, so I'll go for the bullet-points method of summing up.

• Loaning my camera to my mother meant I couldn't take pictures of people at the con. (She'd better get a picture of Ichiro now!)
  
• I explained the pirahna model of opening Hospitality for the "dinner" rush.
  
• I'm not sure why Hospitality was not allowed to produce hot food this year. (Food-handler's permit problem, or complaints about the free food being almost as good as the hotel food? Rumors abound...)
  
• Filk. So much filk. Thursday was its usual ends-early, Friday kept me up late, I crashed early on Saturday, and got a ride home with Rick early on Sunday.
  
• I didn't pay enough attention to panels - there were a few that I should have gone to, and didn't.
  
• Creede Lambard knows The Punk Polka. I'd forgotten the details of the song, but it's good to hear old favorites. Now where did I put that tape?
  
• I submitted a bit of silliness to the daily 'zine, and it made it in. Then I read an e-mail from the Seattle Times saying that I was in the letters column for Sunday. Wow. In print twice in one weekend. That's above the average by...well...two.
  
• There's a guy out there who now knows about The Frantics. Also, I told my story about chatting on Pogo.com. ("I wish this website had profiles." "SAM, 28 YO, axe murderer...")
  
• Filk Mad Libs proved that "spleen" is a very silly word.
  

And that's as interesting as it gets from my view.