Do you want to?
Actually, I’m kinda partial to capitalism. And the state. Can we keep those? And I’d add “For-profit prison systems” to the list.
links for 2010-03-02
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Ayn Rand, in her notebooks, worshiped a notorious serial murderer-dismemberer, and used this killer as an early model for the type of "ideal man" that Rand promoted in her more famous books — ideas which were later picked up on and put into play by major right-wing figures of the past half decade, including the key architects of America's most recent economic catastrophe — former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan and SEC Commissioner Chris Cox — along with other notable right-wing Republicans such as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Rush Limbaugh, and South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.
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Homespun will be the only retail store in Indiana that specializes in modern handmade goods, providing working artist with a year-round brick and mortar outlet for their goods. From clothing to jewelry to bath & body products, the store will be stocked with an array of stylish goods made by people in the city, state, and beyond.
Valentine Underpants
Stephanie stop at Old Navy yesterday while waiting for her hair appointment, and she bought a bunch of Valentine’s Day merchandise on high discount, including several pairs of my favorite kind of underwear. Then she hid them around the house while I was at water aerobics last night, because she’s leaving to go to a skating competition in Michigan for the weekend.
So as I’ve been getting ready for work this morning, I keep finding little valentine presents hidden, like a scavenger hunt. It’s very sweet. I love my girlfriend.
Valentine’s Day, Snow Day
I had a second snow day today (I worked at home yesterday, due to inclement weather) and Stephanie had the day off as well because we couldn’t get her car out in the morning. So we spent the morning digging out the street with the help of our neighbor Craig…
and in the afternoon, I worked on a website design for one of our publishing partners at work, while Stephanie edited pages for her work. Meanwhile, the animals had their own fun…
Then Stephanie made a romantic candlelight dinner for us (we’re being economical, since my house is still for sale — although we have an offer and some counters, which is looking really good) and now we’re going to watch the oh-so-romantic tale Corpse Bride.
What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?
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Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence |
 You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well. An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly. You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view. A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary. You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator. |
10 Weird Things/Habits/Little Known Facts About Yourself
Picked up from Lisa. This is a hard meme, because, what haven’t I shared at one time of another? This site is 12 years old, I never shut up (ever), and I’ve answered all you questions, officer. But I’ll give it a shot.
1. I ate the tequila worm once at a party on a dare. I talked another girl into doing the same thing at the same time (there were two bottles) and she really wanted to chicken out, but she didn’t.
2. I know how to cook the perfect chicken gizzard. It’s very difficult to get it correct; usually they come out rubbery and tough to chew, but I can make them easy to eat. I learned the secret to doing it correctly at a little independent chicken restaurant I worked at in the summer during high school. Fried chicken gizzards and livers were two of their specialities. This restaurant was in Noblesville on Conner Street, and all of their customers were white (because I know what you were thinking).
3. I LOVE chicken gizzards (although I haven’t had one since I worked there).
4. The fact that I love chicken gizzards grosses even me out a little.
5. I make up little fantasies in my head all the time – ala Walter Mitty. I think it’s utterly retarded that I do this, but I daydream these little things up all the time anyway. From the time I was 11 years old, the subject of my weird daydreams was usually Princess Diana, and when she died I was completely devastated.
6. I can’t believe I actually wrote down number 5 and admitted it in public.
7. I hate it when the sheet and the blanket get separated from one another and one is longer than the other, or there’s more of one of the hanging off the side of the bed than the other. This will actually keep me up at night. I used to combat this by having my covers be solely a comforter covered with a duvet cover, so I could switch the covers to wash, but have a single covering on me at night that wouldn’t get messed up. But Stephanie gets too hot that way, so we have a sheet, blanket and quilt on the bed, and they drive me nuts.
8. Whenever I go up or down the stairs, I mentally count the number of stairs. This is how I know there are different numbers of stairs between floors at my work.
9. I’m fairly certain that my belly button is a different shape now than it was before my appendectomy surgery.
10. I have an unconscious habit of rubbing my hands together whenever I’m planning something. I don’t realize I’m doing it until someone points it out to me. Alternatively, I’ll rub the back of my head for the same reason. I’m obviously a total spaz.
20 Questions
I copied these 20 questions off of Matt Barton’s blog, ’cause he said I could. Feel free to share your answers, especially on your own blog.
1. Explain what ended your last relationship?
I’m currently in a wonderful relationship. My previous relationship ended because it was just too hard on both of us, and it was making us both spiral downward. I know that’s a frustratingly vague answer, but I need to respect her privacy, because she’s a tremendous person and a great friend to me. Neither of us did anything wrong, it was just too hard.
2. When was the last time you shaved?
No comment. I have to admit I pointed out that I wished I had shaved my legs in the emergency room last week when the nurse was putting EKG leads on my legs, and she laughed and said if we looked none of the nurses had shaved their legs in weeks.
3. What were you doing this morning at 8 a.m.?
It’s not 8 a.m. yet, do I still have to answer the question? Um. I expect I’ll be making some coffee. Usually, I’m scrambling to get the dog out for his morning pee so I can go to work about 8 o’clock.
4. What were you doing 15 minutes ago?
Letting the dog out for his morning pee. Just slighly earlier.
5. Some things you are excited about?
We had a great time Duckpin bowling last night with our friends David and Garrett and Amy. We so need to have a fun social thing. I’m excited that we launched a website yesterday at work that I designed. (If there’s something wrong with it, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.) I’m excited that I have a day free to work on organizing the house.
6. What is your favorite flavor of JELL-O?
Grape
7. Your prom night, what do you remember about it?
Eh. I wasn’t very into the whole prom thing. If I’d been out of the closet in High School, a chance to slow dance with a girl would have been a really high priority, but the idea of being groped by a boy put me off the whole “going to prom” idea. So I would rather have been the groper than the gropee, I guess.
8. Do you have any famous ancestors?
My Dad used to be a VP at Firestone. One of my Dad’s relatives invented some sort of air brakes for trains. And further back in the 1880s or so, one of my relatives was some sort of Military leader in the Prussian Army. Other than that, just a bunch of solid, hard-working private people.
9. Last thing received in the mail?
A present we’re giving to one of my Cousins for Christmas. It’s cool.
10. How many different beverages have you had today?
None, so far. I need to go make coffee.
11. Do you ever leave messages on people’s answering machine?
For my mom and dad, and a few technophobe friends. Usually I use the e-mails to communicate.
12. Do you draw your name in the sand when you go to the beach?
When you can build a sand mermaid with big boobies over one of your friends, why go around writing your name? Priorities, people!
13. Any plans for Friday night?
Last night, bowling. Next Friday – running around shopping with the relatives in Iowa.
14. Do you like what the ocean does to your hair?
Not a fan of oceans and never put my head in one.
15. Have you ever received one of those big tins of 3 different popcorns?
Well yeah.
16. Do you re-use towels after you shower?
Yes, always. Within reason, of course. I use the same towel about four times, then get a new one. I grew up with five siblings and we all had one towel that was exclusively ours, of different colors. And there were a few spare bath towels for when yours was in the wash, but not enough for all of us, so you had to be sure to work it so you had a spare while yours was being cleaned. And in a house with four brothers who felt it was their job to steal everything first just to spite you, it make sense to learn to re-use your bath towel. Now, of course, I have ten bath towels that are all MINE! Stephanie seems to have the same thing going on, but she was an only child, so I don’t know why she needs so many. Maybe she just loves towels.
17. Describe your keychain(s)?
Why, are you going to steal my car? Oh, wait, this is just a inanimate list of questions. I try to keep the smallest ring possible, but that doesn’t seem to work anymore. I have a ring for my keys, a ring for all those discount cards, and a ring that holds my wi-fi detector — all of which are attached by a carabiner.
18. Where do you keep your change?
I try to keep most of the silver at work in a drawer for sodas, and the pennies go into Stephanie’s giant glass jar.
19. When was the last time you spoke in front of a large group of people?
I testified at the Human Rights Ordinance hearings in front of the city-county council last year, on my experiences with homophobia and having been fired from a job because I’m gay.
20. What kind of winter coat do you own?
I have two – a puffy blue one for wet weather, and a blue wool one for dry days. I think they’re both within current styles, although they’re on the casual side.
Fun with javascript
via the J-Walk Blog:
Try this:
1. Highlight the text below
2. Press Ctrl+C
3. Paste into your address bar
4. Press Enter
javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI=document.getElementsByTagName(“img”); DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i-DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position=’absolute’; DIS.left=(Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5)+”px”; DIS.top=(Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5)+”px”}R++}setInterval(‘A()’,5); void(0);
Refresh the page to get back to normal. It works with IE and Firefox, for any page that has images. Of course, this could crash your browser. It crashed mine eventually.
More random image blogging
Since flickr’s taking it’s sweet time uploading my Friday pet photo, here’s a random image from somewhere on my site…
Movie Quotes Meme
Grabbed this meme from a variety of places, including X-Tra Rant, Torpor Indy, Radical Druid, Legal Quandary, etc.
Here are the rules:
A. Pick 11 of your favorite movies.
B. Then pick one of your favorite quotes from each movie.
C. Post the quotes in your journal.
D. Have those on your friends list guess what the movie is.
E. Either strike out the quote once it has been correctly identified or place the guesser’s user name directly after the quote.
F. Extra points for knowing the actor or character’s name.
1. “I just love books. They’re so decorative.”
(Auntie Mame. Rachel got the movie, but no extra points.)
2. It’s just, when you buy furniture, you tell yourself, that’s it. That’s the last sofa I’m gonna need. Whatever else happens, I’ve got that sofa problem handled.
(Fight Club, Narrator/Edward Norton. Dustin, +1)
3. It should take you exactly four seconds to cross from here to that door. I’ll give you two.
(Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Holly Golightly/Audrey Hepburn. Torpor Indy, +1)
4. You know how someone’s appearance can change the longer you know them? How a really attractive person, if you don’t like them, can become more and more ugly; whereas someone you might not have even have noticed… that you wouldn’t look at more than once, if you love them, can become the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. All you want to do is be near them.
(The Truth About Cats and Dogs, Brian/Ben Chaplin. Lori, +1. )
5. We’ve become a race of Peeping Toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change. Yes sir. How’s that for a bit of homespun philosophy?
(Rear Window, Stella/Thelma Ritter. No one got this.)
6. I don’t like Visigoths. Tomorrow, we’ll get sign: “No Spiders or Visigoths Allowed.”
(Life is Beautiful, Guido Orefice/Roberto Benigni. No one got this.)
7. When a woman’s got a husband, and you’ve got none, why should she take advice from you? Even if you can quote Balzac and Shakespeare and all them other high-falutin’ Greeks.
(The Music Man, Mrs. Paroo/Pert Kelton. Kellie, +1)
8. Up until now everything around here has been, well, pleasant. Recently certain things have become unpleasant. Now, it seems to me that the first thing we have to do is to separate out the things that are pleasant from the things that are unpleasant.
(Pleasantville, Big Bob/J.T. Walsh. Jason +1.)
9. I have reached the end of your book and… there are so many things that I need to ask you. Sometimes I’m afraid of what you might tell me. Sometimes I’m afraid that you’ll tell me that this is not a work of fiction. I can only hope that the answers will come to me in my sleep. I hope that when the world comes to an end, I can breathe a sigh of relief, because there will be so much to look forward to.
(Donnie Darko, Donnie/Jake Gyllenhaal. Stallio!, +1)
10. All these neat, little houses and all these nice, little streets… It’s hard to believe that something’s wrong with some of those little houses.
(All the President’s Men, Carl Bernstein, Dustin Hoffman. Dustin, +1)
11. I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with! (This ones a gimme, because I’m nice like that.)
(The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy/Judy Garland. Rachel +1)