MuseBlog’s overriding theme for 2015 is stories, tales, and sagas. This month, we kick it off by celebrating a story about stories, the Thousand and One Nights, and its heroine, Scheherazade, whose genius for story-telling saved her life and made her a queen.
Update: I need to be super fabulously rich and have my own movie theatre. In my house. But also somehow magically have the ability to play movies that are not out on DVD yet in said movie theatre.
Because sure, it wasn’t super crowded (about 20 people by midway through the movie–3 joined at the 50 minute mark for some unknown reason) but neither was in when I saw it the first time on Christmas Eve.
But the person 4 seats to my left saw fit to only eat popcorn presumably with en’s mouth wide open–I don’t know how you could achieve that ear shattering volume of mastication any other way. The guy a couple rows back, couldn’t get popcorn out of his bag without rustling the bag mindnumbingly loud.
The lady with the little kid to my right, felt the need to be speaking ot him in the middle of the bestest scene of the whole movie.
And half a dozen people felt it necessary to vacate the movie about 5-10 minutes before midnight–less than a minute before things start to really get interesting in the movie. ((I mean SPOILER INTO THE WOODS SPOILER INTO THE WOODS SPOILER why would you leave when in 30 seconds Cinderella’s Prince Charming is about to seduce the Baker’s Wife in a musical number, right before she dies falling off a cliff? END SPOILER INTO THE WOODS END SPOILER SPOILERS OVER NOW I mean seriously y’all, by leaving 20 or so minutes before the end of the movie, you seriously just missed all the best/most interesting parts. Well, aside from Chris Pine’s first musical number.
But yeah. Lady with little kid left about 10 mintues to midnight. Familly of four two rows in front, after checking their clocks for about 2 minutes, left about 5 minutes to midnight–right before Chris Pine started his second musical number, after he was already on screen. Why would you leave when he is on screen??????
And more to the point. Why would you pay about $10 a person to leave 20 minutes before a movie is over?
And the brainsplittingly loud popcorn eaters to my left (one of whom was also clearly sick from the nose blowing and coughing–thanks, keep your influenza to yourself, thanks, there’s enough of it running around at school) felt it necessarily to snog at midnight. Seriously. You wanna snog your SO at midnight? That’s fine. Totally fine. It really is. I’ve done it. But don’t go to a movie that plays thorugh midnight to have your little midnight snogging. Ain’t nobody wants to see that cake y’all.
And my roommate and her boyfriend and possibly others from the group of people who were here earlier today (but had gone out to get drunk shortly before I left for my movie) are back and still awake. And talking. And school does not start for 3 weeks for you I really wanted those 3 weeks with no roommate is that too much to ask.
And this actually kind of probably belongs on the R&P thread but hey! Happy New Year from the land of Luna hates people and believe it or not is not nearly as angry at the moment as this post makes it sound like.
And while the other people in the movie theatre were annoying, I have to concede they were nowhere near the level of rage inducing annoying that the giggle-squeal-screecher-fangirls-or-whatever-they-were girls were when I went with dad on New Year’s Eve.
And I could indulge in a lot more blatant drooling and licking of lips when Pine was on screen when I didn’t have my dad shooting glances at me every two seconds during his scenes lol
And the first musical number of Pine’s, well, yeah. It was way way way more better than I remembered. The visuals. Yum.
Also. HAPPY NEW YEAR’S all of you. Hoping for a super awesome year. It’s certainly going to be a crazy one for me. But hopefully it is awesome too and yikes this year is scary, can I go hibernate until it is over?
New Year’s Resolutions:
1. Drink less soda/reinstate that eat less food generally over all plan. My magic metabolism is not quite as magic anymore as it use to be. Or maybe it just can’t figure out how to cope with days like today (4 cans of soda, a huge soda at the movie theatre, a small movie theatre popcorn, probably 1/2 a pound of cheese, almost a whole small summer sausage and most of a bottle of apple cider…. yeah. hm.)
2. Try to be a generally less easily annoyed person. I hide it well from people who don’t know me super well–so basically anyone who is not my immediate family (or you guys). but yeah. Try to be less easily angered I guess? I dunno. Never works out.
3. I don’t have a three. And 1 and 2 will have been abandoned within a week, so yeah lol.
It’s 1 am and I’ve probably had way more than a healthy amount of caffeine and carbonated drinks today. And should probably consider going to bed or something but yeah. I dunno.
Oh. Even more brilliantly fun. Pretty sure her female friends are having a sleepover in the living room. And one of them is coughing all over my living room. I can hear her. And I hear someone (a female voice, not my roommate’s) ask: Does she know? Which i can only assume is asking “does your roommate know we are sleeping on your floor” to which the answer is a resounding NO I DID NOT because I didnt’ even know she was coming back for New Year’s until she did yesterday. And the only words that have been spoken were “hey” when I ventured out to retrieve refreshments while they were all playing board games earlier.
So thanks. Thanks for the heads up.
I kind of really sort of almost hope that I get called it bright and super early tomorrow morning, just so I can “accidentally” slam the front door really super especially loud and wake all their hungover butts up and make them *miserable*.
I am trying to talk myself out of this and reminding myself of how well that sort of thing panned out my first year living here.
But seriously. I an “oh by the way” too much to ask for? I gave you a heads up before my mother stayed here for 2 weeks. I tolerate you having your boyfriend sleep over every night that you sleep here, but can we at least give people a heads up when there are more?
Oh look #2 lasted less than5 minutes.
popping out from the dusty cellar of museblog to point out that it is much, much better to deal with the minor annoyance of someone crashing on your floor than it is to let someone drive home drunk
i mean i’ll let friends and roommate’s friends crash at my place just as a regular courtesy, even when i haven’t been hanging out with them. and on new year’s, all bets are off. if you’re at least a friend of a friend of a friend (basically if i have a way to contact you through some chain of people) you are free to sleep at my place. even if she was sober, driving on new year’s is incredibly scary because other drivers on the road might not be. and even if she wasn’t driving, walking home at night can be pretty scary too, especially on new year’s.
i mean yes it’s off-putting when people show up unexpectedly, especially for introverts (like me and i assume you and probably 85% of musebloggers), but it’s also something you need to learn how to deal with, because it’s pretty standard hospitality to offer someone a place to stay if it’s late or if they’ve been drinking, and sometimes those offers are unplanned. and when you live with people, it’s definitely polite to give a heads up but it’s also important to be flexible and remember that your roommate is probably not trying to upset you. the best solution for issues like this is really just to let her know that it bothers you, and chances are she will try to let you know next time people are coming over
i actually had this issue a bunch early in college because i often have a spontaneous, pressing need for alone time (combination of introvert superpowers, fatigue, and anxiety) and the biggest thing to remember is that nobody is being intentionally malicious. they probably just don’t understand why this would be an issue. you really need to let her know – politely and informatively – that you need advance warning to prepare for people coming over.
(also i don’t want to read into anything and please don’t be offended but on the off-chance you do have anxiety or some other health issue, i just want to throw out that unexpected social situations got *way* easier to handle once i started admitting these issues to my doctor, and that basically took me getting to the breaking point and cutting off contact with most of my friends. to all mbers as a general rule, if you suspect that might be a thing i highly recommend dealing with it before you reach that point)
I have no desire for anyone to drive anywhere drunk. This did not strike me as an impromptu–oh cake everyone got tipsy/drunk and they need to sleep over. They went out for a night on the town in her vehicle shortly before I left for my movie. When I returned, they were all back (as was her vehicle) meaning someone was at least in their opinion, sober enough to drive them all to my apartment. So that same DD could have driven them to all of their respective apartments.
And if for some reason the DD got drunk once they were back at my apartment? Then when they heard me get home–they were all still awake in my living room, although at that moment I didn’t realize it was more than just my roommate and her boyfriend, she could have snagged me while I was unlocking my bedroom and informed me oh hey really super sorry, but we had more to drink than we meant, and everyone is crashing here b/c it’s ill advised for them to drive home. Those few words would ameliorate 90% of my irritation. Because while I still wouldn’t be thrilled about it (especially as I was really looking forward to the better part of 3 weeks having the entire apartment compeletely to myself), I would have accepted it with a much lower degree of irritation.
Given that we have also previously talked about how we both dislike talking/forced socialization/are introverts etc? There’s no way she doesn’t realize it’s likely to at the very least be a minor irritation. Given that she never once asked me if i cared if her boyfriend slept over (and the first time it happened I thought it was a fluke, because they HAD both been drinking, and I figured it was a one off thing b/c of that) normal roommate social niceties appear to be lost on her. And she definitely knew that she was coming back to our apartment, even if she maybe didn’t know her friends would spend the night. So there’s no reason she couldn’t have said anything in regards to that. Rather than showing up randomly when I expected her to be out of town for most of the break until school resumed for undergrads.
Nine times out of ten, if I’m even just told that people are coming over/spending the night/whatever, I’ll just experience minor irritation at the inconveniencing to my plans (even if those plans are just enjoying the near silence at the apartment complex when 99% of occupants are out of town), whereas not telling me makes me angry due to the lack of consideration for the fact that we BOTH live in this apartment.
Even if they were just crashing here because they didn’t plan ahead enough to realize that they needed a DD and ignoring the fact that someone was presumably a DD to drive them back to my apartment, there was ample opportunity for my roommate to have said as much to me. Obviously I don’t want people driving drunk or tipsy or anything. I am a firm believer that if you drink any alcohol at all you really shouldn’t be driving. But that’s why if you’re planning on drinking somewhere that’s not your own house/apartment, you plan accordingly. Be that a DD to drive you home, planning to take a cab, or if you’re planning on crashing at the other person’s place, you notify the other occupants.
The note I just found after going to put some stuff in my fridge (my roommate left while I was typing the previous comment) does pacify me a bit, although the fact that she was cognizant enough of the fact that people sleeping over might irritate me enough to justify a note of apology on her part tells me that she should have been cognizant of the fact that I’d like a heads up. However the fact that it even occurred to her that an apology might be in order is infinitely more considerate than all of the roommates I’ve had in this apartment previously.
I am apparently welcome to drink her wine (“I know you don’t care for wine”) or feed it to guests I may have over (since I don’t care for it).
Mm. Note seems to indicate good and friendly intentions. Probably something came up. In a perfect world, they probably would have had a plan and a DD, but sometimes things happen and even with a plan things are shaken up. With enough people, no one is going to want to drive /everyone/ home especially if they live all over, and maybe everyone wanted to drink. Glad she left a note for you! If this really bothers you, I might check in that she knows the connection between “introvert” and “doesn’t want my friends to stay the night.” It may well be that to her, spontaneous visitors are something different and more communication could help to make you both happy and comfortable in the apartment. I hope your roommate relations continue to improve!
Can you make it an IMAX when you build it? Because I have always wanted access to a private IMAX.
Absolutely
Um… Can I come?
Of course!
Yes
*rubs hands together and plans opening bill*
*scribbles titles down and crosses them out repeatedly*
Hmmm, I can’t find any IMAX theater showing Deepsea Challenge, so that has to be there… I never got to see Roving Mars even though I tried… oh, but The Dream is Alive is amazing even if I have seen it multiple times… so is Magnificent Desolation, but if I watched it a fourth time (or am I up to five now?) and didn’t cry I would worry I’d lost my soul… And I do want to see Everest now that I’ve read the book… Tornado Alley is probably still showing somewhere but it finished everywhere near where I live before I got interested in tornadoes… GHOSTS OF THE ABYSS IN 3D YES… Oh! Shackleton’s Antarctic Odyssey was created for IMAX, wasn’t it?
Eh, other people can leave the movie theatre whenever they like. It is their loss that they don’t see the end of the movie, but as long as they’re not blocking your view of it for too long by standing up to go, they can leave whenever they like. Maybe they just went to the bathroom.
Have you ever talked to your roommate about having people over? Sometimes I’m with friends and we need a place to go last minute and it is nice to be able to offer to host, so that might be why people appeared at your house. Perhaps they are tipsy and didn’t want to drive. Maybe you should mention you’d like warning in the future/ look for roommates that don’t want to bring friends over in the future? Communication: it is important. (You want her to warn you about future guests. Does she know that?)
Oh, I realize they can. It’s just distracting and annoying (especially when they’re in front of you) and it seems illogical to pay money for the movie and then leave 20 minutes before the end to never return (bit long for a bathroom break).
I am 99% certain that I established early on that i would like heads up about visitors. I have accepted and tolerate (although am not exactly thrilled) about the fact that if she is sleeping at our apartment her boyfriend will be to as they appear to be joined at the hip and incapable of sleeping apart–they either both sleep here or both sleep at his place and never separate.
As for future roommates: I graduate in 5 months and move home–I have no intention of rooming with anyone ever again (exception: if/when I meet someone and we get married or whatever).
Since someone drove her vehicle back to our apartment after their night out, presumably at least one individual was sober.
Somewhat related to the theme: When I took scriptwriting, one of the things we had to do was read and critique scripts. The one I was given was called Scheherazade, and was about a woman who was married to a mafia boss against her will. She cheats on him with another man, and when the boss sends his enforcers to kill her, she saves herself by telling them the story of how she was ensnared and forced to marry the boss. What makes it interesting is that the major characters in each step of her story are played by the same actors as the enforcers. There is one other recurring actor who also plays a major character in each step, and at the end he is revealed to be the man that she loves, the one who she’s been cheating on the boss with, when he bursts in and rescues her.
What I didn’t know though, was that that script had been written by my professor. When I gave my critique, and then he said that that was one of his early works, I freaked out a bit. Thankfully, he didn’t take it personally.
Also, Happy New Year to all!
Happy 8.401 K Day, Jadestone! Also 23rd birthday.
An incredibly late thank you!!!
I spent 11 hours playing dragon age and certainly did not orchestrate it for my characters to kiss just after midnight on new year’s. Nope.
I also kissed Leliana on New Years, if that helps.
Happy New Year, MuseBlog!
What gorgeous art to ring the happy newness!
Has anyone heard from Bibliophile recently? I haven’t seen them around in a while; I hope they’re okay.
been in this airport for 5 hours and haven’t gone anywhere yet… flight canceled, rescheduled flight delayed twice, now i’m going to miss my connection… but free hotel room courtesy of united?? I just want to go homeeeeeeeeeeeee
Also, here is my favorite orchestra (although not my favorite concertmaster) playing Scheherazade: http :// youtu.be/jwvP7Zb35es
Lizzie, are you planning to watch “Mozart in the Jungle”? Just curious.
I’ve been hearing about it – one of my acquaintances was apparently an extra – but I don’t have any immediate plans to watch it. From what I hear, it’s fairly inaccurate as to the musical details, and while sex and drugs are as common among classical musicians as in any other field it’s more what you do in your free time rather than a part of the process. If I do watch it it’s probably going to be in a drinking game context. If you’ve (or anyone else has) seen it, though, I’d be interested in hearing what you thought.
I did thoroughly enjoy A Late Quartet, though, which a lot of people found equally soapy (including the people who did the soundtrack) – I’ve watched it probably five or six times. It’s hilarious and the faking is good enough that i can make fun of it instead of just cringing the entire time.
Scheherazade is one of my all-time favorite pieces! I have a recording with the London Symphony Orchestra that I love. Oddly enough, I’m pretty sure that I was introduced to it by an anime (Princess Tutu… If anyone else besides fireh and I is a fan, HI. If not, look it up, it’s wonderful).
I have to admit that some of this modern stuff is quite listenable.
The scene: My family is sitting around with Brother’s girlfriend visiting. My mom is saying something about how she took a while to make a blanket for my cousin and her roommates teased her that he’d have bonded with another one already.
Brother: ionic or covalent?
Then he makes an “Aren’t I clever” silly face.
I like my family.
Nothing like being on call an it being 12:30 at night and you having reached the point where you in it really doubtful you’ll get called in, and you’re midway through a really enjoyable ds9 episode where Mikes in on “trial” with the cardassians, having finished tng except for the movies earlier in the evening, and planning to go to bed round about 1 when it’s over
Only for your phone to ring, and get called in to do anesthesia on a patient all night. Just got gone maybe five minutes ago. It’s nearly 6am. Best part? I am of course still expected to be at school at 8am as per usual to do anesthesia all day tomorrow. It’s an hour until I have to get up. It’s not even worth going to bed anymore. I’m going to be the one anesthetized tomorrow. It’s going to be hard staying awake all day. TGIF.
They put the Kardashians on trial? About time!
((side note: autocorrect strikes again that should read miles not mikes))
Is it too early to declare this the best comment of 2015?
Reality television? Yes, I believe the Cardassian Empire did experiment with this archaic form of torture in the early 21st century. Of course, we spelled “Cardassian” differently then…
But what do I know? I’m only a simple tailor.
Can we declare this the best comment of 2015? I legitimately started giggling.
Pwned already. *sigh*
Cardassian/Kardashian jokes are one thing, but Cardassian/Kardashian jokes that practically require you to hear them in Garak’s voice are quite another.
Did you spell it differently or did humans just transliterate it differently?
You’re watching DS9 now? I’m on-and-off-mostly-off working through it, in order, because it’s my favourite series that I’ve partially seen. (I’ve watched most of TOS but my tastes are shallow re: sfx, and an interesting scattering of TNG, but I’m willing to let that level of order slide.
)
I’ve been watching it concurrently with TNG for the last couple seasons (I’m not watching by individual series, but rather by air date). So I just now finished season 2 of DS9.
I like it much more than TNG usually. Not as good as TOS of course. Nothing beats TOS.
I’m watching DS9 now too! I got the first season as a Christmas present and it’s been finished for days. Now I’m just waiting to get back to school where the wifi is fast enough for streaming so I can
marathonwatch the rest. I grew up watching TNG and have rewatched some of it mostly-in-order, and I finished TOS (which I also had hazy out-of-order childhood memories of) fairly recently, so it was the logical next step.My brothers and I went out and bought LEGO sets yesterday and then spent the evening building them together. So much fun! We got each one done in about an hour because we worked together and we’re better at following directions than when we were little.
In what should probably come as no surprise, J got a Hobbit set showing the Attack on Lakeville, P got a Star Wars snowspeeder, and I got an arctic exploration set with a dogsled and a helicopter.
I got the ‘Attack on Lakeville’ set for Christmas!
Do you mean Lake-town, or has the name changed?
Oops, it is Lake-town in English, I was just mentally mixing it with the French title printed right underneath where it was “Lacville”.
Aha! Or, as the cognoscenti call it, Esgaroth.
(Hm, it occurs to me that humanity will not have fulfilled its purpose until somebody writes a song about eating escargot in Esgaroth.)
Does that mean that humanity gets destroyed as soon as someone does? a la “The Nine Billion Names of God”?
“Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.” That’s a risk, I suppose. But somehow I suspect there are other items on the list of things we’re here to do.
So, have you started writing it yet?
Too busy editing things for work. Maybe I’ll send the idea to Stephen Sondheim.
Attack all the Lake-settlements!
All your stilt-house are belong to us!
Since my mom re-married I’ve gained a step-niece. It feels weird being an aunt at age thirteen.
I can imagine…
Happy twelvty-third birthday, J. R. R. Tolkien!
Indeed! Happy Birthday!
I am in laundry hell…. Why why WHY did I decide to leave some of my clothes for after break? And why did the sad excuse for a washer have to FLOOD?
My dad liked my Twister fan-fiction!
Last night we had a family going-away party for me, and today there was one at church during the normal coffee-and-doughnuts. The only times I came close to choking up were the goodbyes to my former piano teacher, who I’ve known since first grade, and the pastor of my parish. The latter I actually have a decent chance of seeing again; he’s been out to the monastery several times and is good friends with several of the monks. I have to say hi to them on his behalf, and on the behalf of a list of people the length of my arm. For as big as it is, the Catholic Church can be a small world sometimes.
I have a few things left I need to get done this week. I need to clean my room, mail a package to a friend of mine, pack. There’s a few restaurants I want to go to before I leave, too. I finally got directions to the monastery, so hopefully the weather cooperates. We’re flying into Billings and taking a rental car down to the monastery and to our hotel. Saturday night my family and I will have dinner at the monastery so that they can meet the prior and some of the monks and ask questions. Then we’ll go back to the hotel for a few hours of sleep before my official entrance at seven o’clock Sunday morning. My family flies back home that afternoon, and I stay there.
It’s an odd feeling–or rather, it’s odd that it’s not odder. There’s the classical hypothetical, “What would you do if you had one day to live?” but instead it’s, “What would you do if you had one week left in the world?” Not much, apparently. Assuming that I don’t decide to leave the monastery and that I stay there for the rest of my life, I’m in the position now to do all kinds stuff I’ll never again get a chance to do; but there’s really nothing I want to do. I’m content. I feel that I’m leaving with no regrets. On the last day of the retreat back in June, Father Prior told the four of us who would be applying that the only thing he wanted us to do to prepare is to love our families tremendously. I think the clause, “Love ’em to bits,” was used. So that’s what I’ve been trying to do. This is so much harder for them than it is for me.
In other news, it’s been cold, and it’s going to be cold again this week. I love the cold. I do not enjoy the sub-par plowing job the city did after last night’s snow, however. Oh well, I didn’t crash into anyone, and I guess that’s what matters.
But since it fell unto my lot
That I should rise and you should not,
I’ll gently rise and softly call,
“Good night and joy be to you all.”
So fill to me the parting glass,
And drink a health what e’er befalls,
And gently rise and softly call,
“Good night and joy be to you all.”
I think it’s a very good sign that you are at peace and content. Don’t be surprised if you start getting letters in three years. I’ve learnt that MuseBlog doesn’t forget.
I love “The Parting Glass”.
*opens Google Calendar, types: “2018 — Piggy resumes contact with outside world”*
PUT IT IN THE MUSEBLOG CALENDAR SO WE’LL ALL KNOW
And if any family members wanted to drop us a word some time in the interim, that would be welcome, too.
By chance, this Christmas while I was with family in Connecticut, we finally went to see the 18th-century crèche at the Abbey of Regina Laudis. We wandered around for a while afterwards. Such a peaceful and beautiful place! Naturally, Piggy, it made me think of your coming journey. I can well understand some of the attractions of the monastic life. I hope you will find what you need.
I’ll ask my mom or my sister if one of them can poke her head in once in a while.
Good luck, Piggy!
All the best, me old mucker. Keep in touch.
I hope you enjoy your last couple days outside the monastery and enjoy your time within it!
I can’t believe it’s so soon. I’m going to miss you so much, Dad. Remember when I was that annoying little twelve year old who thought you were a girl and called you “Miss Piggy”? Without you I might never have grown up so quickly and so well; you were my role model for the longest time in terms of language and grammar. You’ve been a role model for a lot of things. And you’ve been an incredible mentor along the way. There are so many things to thank you for I don’t even know where to start–all the wise advice you’ve given me about friends and hardship and how you reminded me that I was an amazing, strong person when I just wanted to give up, your unfailing patience with me when I was taking Latin 1 and would ask you for help with translations, the ridiculous goofy conversations we’ve had over the years–but just, thank you so much for everything.
I’m glad you’re content, Piggy, and even gladder that you’ve found your designated calling already at this stage of life. Just don’t forget your internet daughter, alright? You can definitely expect letters from me once three years have passed–goodness gracious I may be out of college by then, what an odd thought–and in the meanwhile I suppose I’ll have to keep you in my prayers.
This is not a goodbye but a wish for you to fare well in your adventures beyond the walls of that monastery because don’t you even dare doubt that you’ll find a letter with my name on it waiting for you on the other side of three years.
Wishing you well, Piggy. Bon voyage!
All the best, Piggy. I know everyone on MuseBlog will miss you greatly.
Best wishes, Piggy!
Best wishes, Piggy! A pie for the road.
Best wishes, Piggy! It’s probably a good sign that you’re content and feel ready to go. Maybe in three years we can make a thread for writing messages to you, and the GAPAs can compile them into a letter and mail them?
A letter? How about an illuminated manuscript?
So, it’s like, freezing cold up here at my house right now. I don’t mind the cold very much, because I’ve got a nice and thick blanket, but I think some of my old asthma is coming back. Like, I can’t breathe as deeply as I normally can.
I used to have asthma pretty bad when I was little. And eventually it just went away. Now it only kicks in around really cold weather.
Which does suck if you also have a cold. Which I think I’m developing. Since I can’t breathe through my nose, I’m forced to breathe through my mouth, and that cold air gets into my lungs and it’s hard to breathe.
So, cold + asthma = Hate my life.
Sucks to your as-mar!My sympathies.
Very nice literary reference, by the way.
There have probably been lots of comments on this already, but I’m just catching up on important things following the lunacy that is Christmas. One of those things is listneing to the episodes of various science podcasts I’ve missed, including this one. I discovered with delight that it features a certain Robert Coontz. So THAT’s what the fellow does for a living!
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/346/6216/1569.2.full
That’s not exactly what I do — just the fun part.
So I was re-reading some of Gordon Korman’s “Everest” series, which I liked a lot when I was 11, and I was surprised by:
1) How serious and adult it is, there is absolutely no downplaying of how dangerous mountaineering is, people get very badly hurt and come close to dying (and of course someone actually dies on-page in the last book) and even when nothing goes wrong, the hardships and challenges are well-described. There’s also a lot of serious commentary on commercialization and adventure, publicity vs risk, reality show mentality and what competition does to a person psychologically (especially if they’re only 13), being a female mountaineer, and the different reasons people take up mountain climbing. When I was 11, I would read these books and wonder why I couldn’t write anything as good as this, and part of it was that I didn’t even realize all of this depth was there.
2) How there are really no physical descriptions of anyone outside of the main characters. I was REALLY surprised to find out that my mental pictures of Ethan Zaph as brown-haired and Cap Cicero as Hispanic and having a buzz cut were apparently total products of my imagination, because there’s no description of what they look like at all when they first show up.
I just learned that a friend of mine is cutting himself. I really believe he deserves better, but what do I say?
By the way, it might be helpful if you knew that he has a bipolar disorder. I don’t know if that makes any difference, but….
There are a few Musebloggers who might be able to give useful advice based on personal experience. In general, remember that mental disorders are complex, and it’s often not possible to say the “right” thing. Be his friend, make allowances for mood swings, be prepared to listen. You can’t go very wrong with those, and you may be a lot of help.
Does an adult know? I’m not telling you to gossip, but I am telling you that your friend might ask you to keep it a secret, and you won’t be doing him any favors if you listen to him. Talk to an adult — an IRL adult, a teacher or a counselor or a parent, GAPAs are great but not what you need right now — who you and your friend both trust.
But if he’s diagnosed it sounds like he’s already talking to a doctor/counselor, who presumably knows about his self-harm. So, okay, little mental illness things: a lot of the time it’s going to feel like there’s nothing you can do. That’s not to say you can’t help, because you can, but you’re going to spend a lot of the time feeling useless, and sometimes you’re probably going to be pretty useless. Paul’s absolutely right about this: what you need to do is listen and be his friend. Be there for him. Listening might be more useful than talking. And let him know you care about him, because that’s one thing that really does help sometimes.
Everything that ZNZ said. Also, I know you probably want to tell them that cutting themselves is bad, but believe me they know already. People don’t really cut because they want to, they cut because that’s the only way they know how to cope. If they’re bipolar, that would explain a lot (as much as I wish it didn’t). Make sure an adult knows about it, be it a parent, counselor, or a doctor. This is not a burden you should or even can carry alone. That way if things get worse an adult already knows to keep an eye on them. They probably want you to keep it a secret and they may take your going to an adult as a betrayal but eventually they’ll thank you for it, I promise.
A word of caution: a lot depends on the situation too. Multiple times my friends and I have tried to help another very depressed friend and due to the situation, it only made things a lot worse. If he’s in an abusive family or something (just an example), it may actually be safer to go the not-telling-people route, even though he’ll still be cutting and going downhill. I know how bad that sounds, but trust me, I have the experience. As much as I wish I didn’t.
That’s only if it’s really bad. I do think that help from a trusted adult should be sought out, but just think it all through and be careful.
This is an important thing to consider, with the caveat that you shouldn’t keep it secret from everyone. If his parents are abusive and telling them would exacerbate the situation, it might be a better move to inform a school counselor or doctor like ZNZ and Fireh have suggested.
Water is generally a delightful substance. It’s a major component of tea, after all.
Water is less delightul when it has been left standing outside in a bucket for several years and has acquired a thriving community of vegetation and small creatures which combine to produce slime, and a particularly offensive aroma when disturbed.
Ivy is generally a delightful substance, especially when it creeps over the most unrelenting parts of the built environment, undermining the harshness and softening the lines.
Ivy is less delightful when it has been creeping unattended for several years and is now lying in a thick mat, just where one wants to stand to mend the fence.
Ivy is not a delightful substance at all when it hides a bucket of fully matured water, so that one’s foot proceeds through the ivy and into the bucket.
Even Master Baker’s complaints are poetic.
That’s what I’ve noticed.
Thanks Paul, that made my day! xD
This calls for a song. Hurdy-gurdies ready?
Oh, fair is the water of river and sea,
Sing fol-de-rol-diddy, the pail and the boot!
And fairest the draught that we brew into tea.
And a roaring good fire to warm thy poor foot!
But foul is the water that changeth in time
Sing fol-de-rol-diddy, &c.
To a bucket abrim with malodorous slime.
And a roaring good fire, &c.
And fair is the ivy on hummock and heath,
Sing fol-de-rol-diddy, &c.
But foul when it hideth a bucket beneath.
And a roaring good fire, &c.
So walk thou with care when thou steppest outside.
Sing fol-de-rol-diddy, &c.
Let the cat in the adage for ay be thy guide.
And a roaring good fire, &c.
Ah, I see I’ve gone pink. Does everybody know about the cat in the adage? You can Google it.
Is it the same one that Lady Macbeth references or are there multiple adage-cats floating around out there?
That’s the cat. And the adage is…?
The cat loved fish but wouldn’t wet her paws!
(and/or the cat wanted to be king, but was hesitant about wetting her paws with King Duncan’s blood.)
Forsooth. Only in this case the cat (Paul) got his paw wet and wishes he hadn’t.
By the way, Paul, I’ve gotten my Mom into Yorkshire Gold tea. Fern may also find this amusing. She’s now addicted. It is spreading!
This reminded me that I needed to order a box to school. Hm, I might also snag some jaffa cakes and curry sauce granules while I’m at it. It feels so goofy to order foodstuffs online for delivery, but nowhere near me that I know of sells them.
It’s nice to know that I have a small influence on the world.
My parents are coming to visit me in a little over a week! I’m really excited!
Depressed…lonely…stressed… The only cure I can think of is to keep listening to heavy metal to take my mind off the pain…
*squids* If there’s anything you want to talk about, we’re here for you!
Well, you see… Nothing can really be done. In 2 years and 2 months, a very close friend of mine will be gone forever…
Aww, I’m so sorry. Maybe nothing can be done for them, but know that we’ll help you any way we can, since you will still be here even if they are gone.
Not just gone…they are going to kill themselves… It was my job to protect her since she was my friend…I feel as though I’ve failed and I feel so helpless… Her favorite song, whenever I listen to it(because it was my fav too) I cry remembering that just like in the game, she’ll be gone…
Two very very important things you need to know. (I’ll bet n dollars that I’m only going to be one voice in a chorus telling you the same thing.)
1) It is not your job to protect her from herself. Ultimately you cannot be blamed for someone else’s suicide and if she’s trying to imply that is the case she is being manipulative. (Not saying she said that, since I don’t know the situation, but if you feel that way, it isn’t justified.)
2) Two years is a long time. If she’s put a deadline on this you can still help her, or get someone else to help her in the way that she needs. Is there a school counselor, parent, or other adult you know you can trust? Tell them. She may not be grateful — she may see it as a betrayal — but it is better for her to be alive and hating you than dead, and later she will thank you. The overwhelming majority of people who attempt suicide and fail later report that they are glad they failed.
She lives too far away, I only know her through the Internet. I can’t do anything to stop her… She has tried suicide before and failed, she regrets that she did not die. And no, she didn’t tell me it was my job to protect her, I just feel as though I should protect everyone I befriend.
Just…continue being a good friend. Listen to her, tell her you care. Be gentle. Don’t try to guilt or shame or pressure her or do anything that will make her feel worse about what she’s feeling. Whatever her plan is, you being her friend can help her right now.
(BTW, the pie on your earlier post was accidental. Sorry.)
That’s the worst, because all you can do is talk to them and you never know if it’s having an effect. But you can talk to them, about your friendship, and what you admire about them, about what is good in the world, and you can tell stories and jokes and hope that you convince them in this way that life is worthwhile.
I don’t know if it works. I know my friends in this situation have ended up not killing themselves, but I have no way of knowing if my talking to them like this had any effect on their decision not to. All I know is that it’s what I’ve done.
(My previous message got deleted because my iPod crashed before I could send it.)
I’ve been telling her that she is amazing and beautiful and I’ve been RPing all the topics she loves, yet whenever I try to talk to her aside from that, she switches it over to things that depress me like reminding me that she’s going to kill herself and telling me about how her room is moldy. She tells me to be calm and stop pitying her, but how am I supposed to be calm when I know I’m going to loose her?!
Speaking from experience, depression messes with your head and with the heads of anyone you interact with. I doubt she realizes the impact she has on you when she says things like that. You’re doing the right thing by distracting her in crisis moments.
I’m going to second what other people have said here: it’s not your fault, whatever happens. You can only help her here.
Has she talked to anyone else about this? Do you know?
“Speaking from experience, depression messes with your head and with the heads of anyone you interact with. I doubt she realizes the impact she has on you when she says things like that.” This is super important. I know that when I’m talking about my depression with people who care about me, I often upset them without meaning to, and I end up being the one doing the comforting.
There are a lot of reasons for this. That she tells you to be calm is really telling, because depression can make you incredibly calm. You get apathetic, basically, and it’s really hard to have feelings about things. You also get used to being depressed, in a way that’s hard to understand without experiencing it yourself. Wanting to die is just the way things are, so there’s not much point getting upset about it. With all of that, it’s easy to get to a place where saying “I want to die” or even “I’m going to kill myself” doesn’t seem to be a big deal at all, strange as that might sound.
I know how that is. But remember that even though you can do everything in your power to be a good friend and help in any way you can, it’s still ultimately out of your control as to whether she tries again or not.
And even if she does, and she succeeds, know that it is not and never will be your fault. YOU MUST NOT BLAME YOURSELF. Even if she’s dead, remember her and everything she’s brought to your life. Don’t ever let her memory fade.
What puzzles me is that the whole thing is set for two years from now. I would like to know what the situation is that makes her feel as though she needs to do that, but I realize I’m prying a bit and you don’t need to say. Either way, two years is a long time to make good use of.
2 years from now is her 17th birthday. She plans to kill herself on her birthday so that she doesn’t have to become an adult. And of course I’ll blame myself. I blame myself whenever something bad happens to one of my friends.
Does she say why she doesn’t want to become an adult? There are a lot of misconceptions about adulthood and one of them is that it’s generally worse than childhood or adolescence. You lose some freedoms, yes, but you gain a lot of others you didn’t realize were even possible. If she’s dealing with abusive parents, for instance, they become a lot easier to escape once you turn 18.
I can see why. If you can do something that would end up helping, then not taking it would make things end up worse than they could be. But most of her situation you can’t control either way, so it makes way more sense to not blame yourself.
I understand what it feels like to try to protect the people you love. It’s a good impulse! That said, it can be almost impossible to protect someone from herself, especially long distance. Sometimes there’s nothing anybody can do. Please know that you are never responsible for your friends’ mental health, and if she kills herself it will not be your fault. And please remember that two years is a long time, and a lot can change in that time.
2 years feels like the 3 days in Majora’s Mask to me. (Majora’s Mask being both of our favorite Zelda game.)
Hey CPM and any other Chicago-based MBers! I’m going to be in Chicago A LOT this quarter–a couple of times it will be with a group from a class, but I’m pretty sure some of the things I have to work out on my own. I will have to go to the Art Institute, and also see 1+ theatre performances, and might just head into town for fun some weekend when I’m not filming. I don’t know exact dates yet, but I could potentially plan around things. Also, if anyone is going to the Fall Out Boy concert on the 24th, I’m going with a friend and we got actual tickets and if you also got actual tickets please find me there.
This quarter I’m in Paris so hopefully you’re still around in the spring!
Are you in Paris right now?
Yes I am. Just got done with the first week of class. Went out to some bars tonight; came back to find the gates to where I live locked, most likely as a reactionary measure to all the stuff that’s been happening. Fortunately was able to get through using a different building.
Stay safe, CPM. I know what it’s like to go to school in a city that’s gone through a manhunt.
I spent the entire morning watching my dog trying to get his toy up onto the chair with him. He just couldn’t get that he had to keep it in his mouth as he jumped.
He needs dog wings.
I have a cat who always wakes me up in the middle of the night because he wants to play fetch with his favorite mouse toy. ^^
One of my cats brings me catnip mice at night and drops them on the bed as presents. Sometimes she hides them under the covers for me to find later.
X3 That’s adorable.
I’ve never seen bubbles pop like they did today, when it was apparently 19 degrees Farenheit/7 degrees Celcius. This one cluster that landed on the glass sort of broke and then collapsed, much slower than bubbles usually pop.
My workplace is shut down. Not because of the cold (which is not as bad as it is in North America, but still annoying) but because someone broke in last night and cut the Internet cables.
That seems like an odd thing to do for no reason – it doesn’t obviously benefit them the way taking something would. Is your workplace controversial in some way? Either way, I’m sorry to hear that (and I hope your servers are located elsewhere).
Not that I’m aware of. The intruder may have been looking for copper wire, cut the cables, and then discovered that the cables were fiber-optic, not copper.
That’s plausible. Copper is expensive, so a lot of people are stealing it right now. One was caught in my neighborhood ripping copper downspouts off houses and throwing them into the back of his pickup truck, in broad daylight.
Of course today, the day that I was planning to make the 3 hour commute from my parents’ house in to my near-future workplace, is a day that snow is closing schools and major roads right and left. This isn’t as bad as it could be; for one, after the 20 minute drive to the train station, it’s all mass transit for me (which is still open), for another, I don’t actually have to be in the office until 2:30 (which affords me the time to do things like make posts on the internet while I get ready for the day)
update: as I was typing this the snowplow came through our cul-de-sac! Very exciting, as this means I can now feasibly leave.
Travel safe!
We finally have the snow we wanted at Christmas, and the Jurassic Park pins and Alvin book I bought with my gift cards came, so Merry Mini Christmas!
“On the sixteenth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me…”
This is it for me, then. I don’t think I have any last-minute advice to give. If you need something, read St. Therese. I love you all. Thank you for everything.
May the road rise to meet you, may the wind be always at your back.
Thank you, Piggy. I love you, too, my friend.
I’ve looked up to you for years now; I’m going to miss you more than I can say.
Fare thee well.
Namárië! Nai hiruvalyë Valimar.
Nai elyë hiruva. Namárië!
Farewell Piggy
Goodbye, Piggy. Thank you for being here for so long. I’ll miss you.
Fair winds and following seas, Piggy.
I’ve so appreciated your collectedness and wisdom and serenity all these years, Piggy. All the best for the journey, and you’ll hear from me too in three years.
Good luck in your new life. We’ll miss you back here.
Good luck. old chap.
So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu!
Best of luck, Piggy. Thank you for everything.
I got into an argument with an internet friend earlier today.
It’s funny and very confusing that I can get so emotional over someone whose face I’ve never even seen. Why is that?
You’ve seen their ideas, their emotions, and their thoughts. You’ve had their friendship. (Unless that was a rhetorical question…)
You know, I think somebody *cough*me*cough* wrote a Muserology about this a little over six years ago.*
Internet friends are friends. Seeing a face or knowing a name have in my opinion nothing to do with the essential characteristics of friendship, especially the emotional ones.
*and this was before she stuck around on MuseBlog for another six years or dated someone met at online school for three months before meeting in person. Now I’m even more resolute!
Catwings, it was Meow’s muserology that convinced me to check this place out. And, well, I’m not sure how else to describe you guys but as friends.
Aww, really? It means a lot to me to know that!
SFTDP but… and this may sound horribly cliche and selfish… but does anyone know how to become internet friends or pen-pals with a celebrity?
Become an even bigger celebrity yourself. Then everybody will want to be your online friend.
It seems to have worked for Allegra.
Indeed it has. First step: acquire a ukulele.
I mean. There is something to be said for producing the same kind of content as the people you want to be friends with. I find that it is easier to have writer-friends after having published poems than it was before. And nowadays there are so many ways to put neat stuff out there on the internet, including by ukelele!
You mean the celebrities on Museblog aren’t enough for you?
Oh my gosh…my birthday is next month and I don’t exactly want anything! I have plenty of stuff to keep me happy for a long time! (A year at least. ;))
That is great.
I don’t know what to ask for. I have found out I want some things, but I’m not allowed to have them or they cannot be given.
Psychological research has shown that people get more enjoyment out of experiential purchases than material ones. Part of this is because a lot of the enjoyment comes from anticipation, thinking about the idealized purchase before making it. Then, even if the purchase falls short, experiences hold up better than materials. For example, that camping trip in Canada was awful because we were swarmed by mosquitoes and didn’t catch any fish. But we remember the trip fondly, because we all survived, and bonded over it. That watch that broke after only a month of wear is just garbage.
So, with that in mind, can I recommend an experience? Ask for a concert, a dinner, a trip to a museum, a trapeze class.
Seconded! I went to Lion King: The Musical for a birthday present this year and it was awesome. Other ideas: a tour of a famous house, a musical, an intro to bookbinding lesson, a first lesson on cross country skis/downhill skis/ice skates/something not-wintery.
XD I don’t really want any of those things. What I want most of all is to finally learn how to not annoy my friends and say the wrong things… I had this really good friend, and I messed up badly. She misunderstood me because I had blamed myself for something that was nobody’s fault.
So the current XKCD indicates that the cartoonist wants to live somewhere near Reclusive Gardens…
Watch out for that volcano!
I would probably choose to be closer to the penninsula (Randall misspelled it)
And I think I’d go closer to the mountains!
(For those who weren’t around or could use a reminder, “Our Reclusive Gardens” was the name of a series of relaxing threads created between 2008 and 2011. You can see them at
https://musefanpage.com/blog/?p=1452
https://musefanpage.com/blog/?p=1520
https://musefanpage.com/blog/?p=4997 and
https://musefanpage.com/blog/?p=9068 .)
HEY THERE
SORRY IT HAS BEEN SO LONG SINCE I POSTED… I read almost all the comments but uhhh I have sold my life to Dragon Age: Inquisition since 2 days after xmas and it is very hard to emerge
anyway. uh. wow I can’t think of anything to talk about that’s… not dragon age related. hm.
I applied for a job. Well, a 5month internship. Apps aren’t technically due til the 15th so I won’t hear anything until after that, but. I think I have a good chance of getting something? I technically applied to be in a pool of applicants who will be matched to a pool of different science projects that they’re qualified to help on. It’s organized by the Chicago Botanical Garden & various gov agencies (BLM, USGS, NPS… etc). they’re mostly botany based (some wildlife & other), and I have I think a decent amount of lab experience since my position in Cambridge. Also, the lady who runs the applications is a buddy of my college professor/advisor/lab boss, and I met her twice–once at Oberlin when she came to do a talk, and once at the botany conference last year. So, I think I have a good shot at getting something. I hope. The catch is I won’t know where or when since it’s different for each project–probably I’ll end up in one of the big empty western states, but who knows.
Umm. Oh! I got my driver’s license. After putting it off for like 6 years. Yep. Be even more terrified whenever you get on the road now. Actually you don’t have to bc the last time I drove was when I took the road test 2 weeks ago lollll
cars are scary.
I am trying to learn contact juggling in my spare time since i do nothing all day (except… for dragon age..), but even though mom ordered it (and my fire poi!!! happy bday to me~) a couple days before xmas they’re still not here. But on the other hand, they could arrive any day now. This is the downside of my preferred poi shop being located in new zealand.
Driving is useful. Cars can be loaded with interesting things like mermaid tails.
OH I REMEMBER THE OTHER THING:
RoseQuartz and CPM!! I’m around chicago with nothing to do for the foreseeable future. CPM I think you’re still in Paris, but I will probably still be here when you get back.
RQ, you said you needed to go to a lot of museums & etc this month? Are you taking advantage of all the free museum days chicago is doing? I know there’s certain days the Shedd Aquarium, Field Museum, & a bunch more are all free, so maybe the Art Institute is too?
I’ve been thinking about trying to go to a couple of those, but I’d also be totally willing to come down another time & hang out (although no plans on Fall Out Boy for me, heh). My uncle has a condo he keeps inviting me to stay in downtown overnight so if you ever wanna meet up for a day, I could almost certainly do that
The Art Institute is always free for me! They’ve got a special partnership with NU so we get in free with our student IDs.
For my theatre design class I need to go to the Art Institute and see two plays, one of which I’m going to with a group but one of which I have no idea what I’m seeing and also probably won’t find anyone to go with me. I was planning to go to the Institute on the 23rd in the afternoon sometime, although I’m kind of more a “wander around museum with headphones in sketching” type when it comes to art museums and tend to lose the people I’m with. I might also go to the Field Museum on one of the free days because I love it there and I haven’t been able to go since last year. (I’m going there in February as a field trip with my folklore class, but that’s a structured thing and it’s only the one exhibit, I think.)
Come visit meeeee!
oxlin! are you in the Chicago area too?
Nope.
Sounds great! Hopefully I’ll remember when I get back…
I turned a matchbox into a Steampunk jewelry box with spray paint, upholstery nails, a bobbin, and a Greek-key ribbon. (Plus hot glue and scissors.)
how do people stop being lonely?
They come to MuseBlog?
I don’t know. I’m lonely myself, but I’m not sure for what. I’ve got roommates around, which doesn’t seem to help. I think I’m craving math/science people and/or large groups. I hope you’re less lonely soon. <3
Though you could try doing an activity/finding some kind of meet up group/club for something you like to do. If you’re wondering about ways to make friends. If you’re just wondering about the persistent kind of loneliness I’m feeling this evening too, let me know if you find out.
*laughs a lot* Guess who’s not technically back in school yet but is stuck in a ~mandatory~ “brain boot camp”?
8:30-4:30 today and tomorrow and 8:30-1 on friday.
1) It’s TOO EARLY FOR THIS
2) I HAVE AN AUDITION ON SATURDAY I’D RATHER BE PRACTICING TBH
3) WHYYYYY
What do you do at “brain boot camp”?
So far we’ve taken a personality strengths test through StrengthQuests (my top five are adaptability, individualization, empathy, strategic thinking, and maximization, if anyone’s wondering) and a right brain/left brain quiz (is anyone surprised to know that I’m right brained? 13 points for right brain vs. 7 points for left) and then we’re like analyzing them and discussing what our strengths mean and all that. And then later we’re taking another online quiz that will tell us what our learning styles are.
I mean, I see how it’s useful, but I already know I’m a creative person, and I know my learning style is a mix of visual and audial, and I know that I’m good at going with the flow, working with people, looking ahead and predicting outcomes, and emphasizing my strengths to pull me ahead instead of necessarily focusing on trying to fix my weaknesses.
I thought the whole right-brain/left-brain dichotomy wasn’t upheld by modern science? (a quick search of Wikipedia confirms that – see “lateralization of brain function” article. “Short of having undergone a hemispherectomy (removal of a cerebral hemisphere), no one is a “left-brain only” or “right-brain only” person”)
Yeah. There’s that. Basically it’s “are you artsy or are you Type A”
Who says there aren’t people who are both?
what does it mean to be artsy? I’ve been thinking about this for the past 20 minutes and can’t come up with a good answer.
Honestly the whole concept is kind of dumb and outdated. I don’t know either. Everyone is a mix of the two and you can’t just point at someone and be like “your artsy traits are dominant/your Type A traits are dominant” because it isn’t ever that simple. Personality tests are overrated.
Which is the subject of this month’s Muse! (no joke)
There was a really funny “Which Personality Quiz Are You?” personality quiz.
Ah, and here it is! http://www.musemagkids.com/files/muse/MUS1501_34_FlowQuiz.pdf
The arrow from “What’s your favorite form of entertainment -> internet quizzes” back to the beginning is really what makes it, in my opinion.
Hah! That’s great.
when I was in early high school we took some test to determine in what type of career we’d be most successful, I think it was by the company who did the ACT or something. I was told I should look into becoming a truck driver.
A job that requires you to stay alert for long stretches of time and that you perform sitting down– Hm, not so different from what you’re doing now.
My job’s better – sometimes I get to stand and if I lose concentration no one dies.
One of those quizzes that I took in school picked up on my introversion and suggested I work in a morgue. While I totally understand where it was coming from, it was a weird thing to get as top suggestion.
Moonlighting as a truck driver woudl be useful for getting the orchestra to gigs. When you get your orchestra.
Hey I had to do StrenthsQuest too! Every incoming student at UChicago has to as of the start of last year. I was an Orientation Aide that year so I had to do it too to have something to talk to the first-years about.
I got Adaptability, Deliberative, Restorative, Analytical, and Harmony. Basically I like to follow the rules, solve problems one by one, go with the flow, and want everybody to just get along.
I had an awesome day at the American Museum of Natural History today! The natural disasters exhibit was amazing, it is everything I hoped it would be. They had so many great demonstrations and models and so much info was covered, I feel that a visitor to the exhibit who read and remembered everything could have aced the tests in the class I just took on the same subject.
Now then, to the incoherent fangirl flailing:
They mentioned Mount Katmai/Novarupta!
They had so many great photos and pics from the space station, and they were all credited as such!
The background music for the videos was really good, just tense and dramatic enough but also serious!
Models of earthquake faults you could manipulate! And a use of the Pacific People’s collection to help illustrate Samoan reactively from tsunamis!
The little model of Mount St. Helens!
Artifacts from Pompeii and also from Saint-Pierre, which was incredibly sobering. Saint-Pierre on Martinique literally (in the dictionary sense) was wiped out almost to a man in 1902 when they COULD have been saved if the city government had treated the danger seriously.
Actual video from inside a tornado taken by a robot projected in 270 degrees! HOLY CAKE! I had seen stills published in the Geographic when it happened, but never the actual video and certainly not like this. And they had this little “In Memoriam” sign about Tim Samaras and his work right when you went in, to make sure he got his due for getting the video. And they had an actual robot probe of the type that took the video on display and I never knew they were that big. Respect. So much respect.
The little kid who asked if I was a teacher after we had an impromptu conversation about tornado safety.
The huge projected map of New York with the blow-by-blow narration of Sandy was chilling and got my eyes teary.
The explanation of the positive effects each of these natural phenomena have and their role in ecosystems. Yes.
I bought a set of buttons with volcano, tornado, snowflake, and thunderstorm symbols on them, a volcano postcard, and a pocket survival kit.
What.
I just really love earth and space sciences.
Me too! (but not quite so much…) I just can’t believe that I missed that when I visited just a few weeks ago! Is it a new exhibit? Or one of the special displays? We didn’t go to any of those. I’m just a leetle bit jealous.
It’s a special exhibit, so it costs a few dollars extra, but not if you have a museum pass from a library.
What a cool day. Thanks for telling us about it!
I was at AMNH a week ago and my partner wanted to see that exhibit, but I was tired and it was 30 minutes to close (we only got to the museum at 4:30 or so) and I think the exhibit cost extra… maybe we’ll have to go back for it, it sounds really great!
Personally, every time I visit AMNH I have to see the meteorites/gem and mineral halls. Since taking a geology class with an identification component, I like that I can recognize some of them on sight (fluorite, quartz… though I am disappointed that they don’t let you drip acid on the calcite). Plus it’s quiet there, and unlike the also-calming ocean hall, there’s fewer preserved animals and fewer small children.
It’s there until August, so I hope you do get the chance.
I agree, the geology halls are very relaxing, I need to go there again. It really is too big a museum to do everything you want to in one visit.
Yes. Although I had no idea what 90 percent of the stuff in the mineral hall actually was, it was really cool to see everything there like that. But the meteorite hall! That was just awesome. Unfortunately, those two were the last places we saw, so we didn’t stick around as long there. Now I kind of wish I did.
“Reactively from tsunamis” should say “RECOVERY from tsunamis”.
More fun from today: some guy in my class who thinks he’s a genius tried to argue to me that humans can see infrared light if they look hard enough. I lost track of how many times I repeated the sentence “it’s in the NON-VISIBLE light spectrum” to him. Several brilliant “facts” I got from him during this absurd one-sided argument:
1) Infrared is really just red that’s a little bit harder to see
2) If it’s dark enough and you look really really hard .you can see infrared light.
3) He knows this because TV remotes use infrared light to transmit to the TV and when the lights are out and you stare right into the little bulb at the end of the remote glows a faint red? (me: “um that’s the red LED light that lights up to tell you the remote is working and you can see that red LED when it’s not pitch dark too” him: “NO I AM KNOWS ALL ABOUT SCIENCE HUMANS AND COWS CAN SEE INFRARED LIGHT BUT NOTHING ELSE CAN AND THAT’S WHY ITS CALLED NON VISIBLE BECAUSE ONLY TWO SPECIES CAN SEE IT”)
4) Cows and humans are the only animals that are able to see infrared light. (???????????????? why cows where did cows come from can cows even see colors)
5) Of course he himself has, as mentioned before, seen infrared light with his own two eyes and therefore is living proof that infrared light is visible.
6) Infrared is not actually on the “non-visible” light spectrum, it’s on the “partially visible” light spectrum.
Of course, being the geek that I am, and having the geek of a father that I have, I know infrared is on the non-visible light spectrum, and futhermore I also know that direct exposure to infrared can actually burn things (my dad once had an infrared laser and was messing with it and burned a little spot on his arm good job dad). A quick internet search for “is infrared light visible” brought up an article about a lab study done that proved under very controlled circumstances it may be possible to see infrared ( “30 volunteers had beams of near-infrared light pulsed into their eyes”, “humans can perceive IR light via two-photon isomerization of visual pigment chromophores.â€, “provided that two photons work together at the same time” etc.) but it sounds kinda dangerous and like it doesn’t work most of the time.
But seriously. What part of “NON VISIBLE LIGHT SPECTRUM” is it possible to even misunderstand that badly and what thought process could even LEAD to the conclusion that a dimly lit red LED = infrared light despite the fact that it’s common knowledge that infrared is on the non-visible light spectrum?? And where did the cows come from!!!!???!!!!
Oh dear. Yeah, where /did/ the cows come from?!
Apparently the factoid that cows can see infrared IS true, something about they have an extra layer in their eyes that allows them to see things humans can’t. I’m told this is something you learn in anatomy classes because you dissect cow eyes.
I still don’t know how he manages to be so steadfast in his conviction that he’s seen infrared light, though. The conversation continued this morning.
me: okay so do you even know what infrared light is
him: “of course I do”
me: okay so tell me what you know about infrared light
him: “it’s really hard to see but humans and cows can see it and it’s used in remote controls and Wii remotes and in some sort of medical procedure”
me: okay what do you know about the non-visible light spectrum
him: “it IS visible though!”
me: okay i will give you the fact that there was a study done that showed that it is slightly possible for humans to see infrared but that’s under very controlled circumstances unlikely to happen, ie. HAVING BEAMS OF NEAR-INFRARED LIGHT PULSED INTO YOUR EYES.
him: “well that’s not the ONLY way it’s visible”
me: okay you claim you saw infrared light. were you having beams of near-infrared light pulsed into your eyes at the time.
him: “it’s not really necessary to have that it’s just when multiple photons hit your eye at once” ((note: i made him read the article and this was a mistake because he took what he wanted from it, which was the part saying how the subjects could sort of see infrared light when two photons hit the eye at the same time))
me: so you’re claiming that two photons of infrared light hit your retina at exactly the same time as each other? that’s… *is speechless, stunned by stupidity*
him: “well there’s no way it was just a normal red LED light because i had to be under my blankets in pitch darkness with my hand covering the space between my eyes and the remote to see it, it’s not visible normally or even in like semi-dark and definitely not when the lights are on.”
me: that’s called a VERY DIM RED LED LIGHT.
him: “no but it couldn’t have been just normal LED light! it was really really hard to see!”
me: yes. a VERY. DIM. red LED light.
khase: “if you saw infrared light your eyes would be like severely burned probably”
him: “no that’s only like a SUPER LARGE AMOUNT of infrared that causes damage”
khase: “Uh. No?”
him: “besides like a lot of things emit infrared! like the sun and normal light bulbs and remote controls and LED bulbs of course and a bunch of other stuff”
me: well of course the sun emits infrared light the sun emits every type of light there is
him: “exactly! so it can’t be that harmful”
me: have you heard of sunburn
him: “yeah of course but sunburn isn’t from infrared it’s from radiation”
me: *stares in disbelief* uh…do you even know that infrared is basically heat?
him: “you’re wrong, it’s not heat”
me: okay do you know how an infrared camera even works
him: “yeah! the camera emits infrared light and captures an image when the light reflects back off of things”
me: *slowly losing all hope* that’s…not how infrared cameras work if they emitted infrared light it would just. like. either give off a lot of heat or potentially burn things depending on the amount and how focused it is..
him: “infrared isn’t heat or anything though it’s just a different wavelength of light”
me: have you ever seen a picture from an infrared camera. do you know how it lights up orange and red for warmth and is black and blueish for cold. that’s called heat and the absence of heat.
him: “but that’s not what infrared cameras do that’s called a heat detector camera”
me: *stares*
him: “whatever you don’t have to believe me but i KNOW i saw that infrared light”
me: *blinks slowly, loses all faith in the future of humanity, gives up*
*a while later, during the time management module*
teacher: “okay now I want you to write out a list of things you need to do between today and monday”
me: *writes out a decent list of ten things i need to do*
infrared boy: “i don’t have anything i need to do”
me: surely you have something that you want to do or should do between today and next monday
him: “well i have nothing except chores and those are easy and don’t have specific times or anything”
me: well write them down anyway the purpose of this exercise is to learn how to make a to-do list
him: “well they only take like two minutes each to do them anyway”
me: yes but we’re making to-do lists.
him: “well i don’t have anything to do at home i’m just bored all the time because my desktop is fried and my tablet doesn’t connect to my internet”
me: okay if you’re so bored all the time why don’t you do things. like read things and learn about interesting things and stuff like that.
him: “well i would but my desktop is fried”
me: there’s this amazing thing called a book..
him: “my family doesn’t have many books we just have a really old set of encyclopedias”
khase: *interjecting again* “dude, libraries are free”
him: “yeah but my parents don’t like me going out of the house”
khase: “there’s a huge library here on campus and it’s free too”
him: “i’m only on campus for classes and my dad drops me off and picks me up”
me: okay but don’t you have time between classes
him: “well yeah when classes start next week i’ll have more time”
me: …
teacher: “okay now we’re going to go around and share one thing we have on our to-do lists”
teacher: okay now i’m giving everyone a second piece of paper to write your goals down on!
me: *writes down like seven goals*
guy beside infrared boy: *writes down eight goals*
khase: *writes down one main goal*
infrared boy: *doesn’t write anything*
teacher: “okay now we’re going to go around and share our goals with everyone!”
*everyone has goals like studying better, getting into nursing school, etc*
teacher: “okay what about you [infrared boy]?”
IB: “oh well… i have so many goals i can’t just pick one or two to write down”
teacher: “well can you just pick one of them, whatever it is, and tell us?”
IB: “i just can’t decide one one”
teacher: “okay…”
He’s about to start his second semester of college classes. He’s officially graduating from high school alongside me in May. We are part of a thirty-something group of young adults from across the county who are written about in newspapers and held up as “the best and brightest of our community,” “the future of our society,” and “students who have outgrown the traditional high school setting in their pursuit of excellence.” His school counselor, his principal, and one of his teachers wrote recommendations for his application to this program which presumably praised his “advanced maturity level” and “drive to learn.” His dad is a computer teacher. He says he knows “everything” about computers and technology. I’m sure his parents would be more than happy to take him to the library if he asked them to. He’s not even upset that his computer is fried (“now i can go buy a better computer”) he’s just using it as an excuse.
I’m kinda scared for the future of my generation if he’s considered smart for our age group and school grade, honestly. Oh well. At least I get my own personal amusement out of witnessing such idiocy XD
I guess the confusion might come from it being the wavelength *just beyond* visible, but still, it’s listed as beyond visible because it isn’t part of the spectrum of visible light.
He’s read the article, half-remembered it, and reduced it to a misleading headline. He’ll probably end up as a journalist.
Robert might take offense to that, Paul.
Or he might be amused.
Little random question that may belong on a different thread but I can’t seem to find one so here goes:
I’ve been on MuseBlog for about two months now, so should I still not be able to officially “log in?” How does the process really work, anyway? Are the GAPAs (hi gapas!) just trying to make sure that I’ll stick around, or what? I read somewhere that the wait is around 6 months, but seriously, I haven’t seen any neophytes around…
Also, since we’re on the topic, is there anyone else out there also who is like me in this respect, but just for much, much longer? Because I’m kind of confused by how many ‘guests’ always show up at the bottom of the page…
.
On a completely different subject, after the Yule Ball I dug around a little bit and found some of those role-playing threads. They look awesome. And, you know, judging by the time stamp, it’s been a while…. I’ve never done one… Looks pretty fun…
*cough*
If you didn’t get that, I’m just suggesting a possible reboot. Oh, you did! Good. Because seriously, it looks like a lot of fun.
.
Switching gears again, have I mentioned that I got Kerbal Space Program for Christmas? It could be the only thing you hear from me for about a month… I built a couple rockets and a spaceplane (that seems destined to crash… sorry, Jebediah Kerman!)
BUT THEN, A COUPLE DAYS AGO I GO ON KSP AND ITS NOT WORKING!!!!! Turns out, if you you drag something from a game’s default folder to the desktop it messes the whole thing up. Now I know a thing or too about folders. and stupidity. Oh well. Off to launch a rocket (with parachutes, don’t worry. Jebediah will be safe)
The 6 month wait for Paleo accounts came from a few different things, especially (and this may be hard to believe since, as you observe, we have few neophytes around these days) from a MuseBlog era where there was a huge influx of neophytes all at once. Some overwhelmed long-time bloggers wanted a quieter, slower respite, so a Paleo Thread was created that only such accounts could access. There was also a big deal for a while about playing chess, which you needed an account for, but you could get chess accounts even if you hadn’t been around for 6 months. Nowadays, I don’t think anyone uses the Paleo thread*, but accounts are still relevant because threads like Romance & Relationships and Rants & ‘Plaints are protected, which came about because people were worried about everything on those threads being on the public Internet.
*Everyone correct me if I’m wrong. About any of this. As it happens, I almost never use my login, so I guess I’m one of those “guests” at the bottom of the page.
Oh man, it would be fun to RPG again. I’ve been missing creative writing, too. But I start classes on Tuesday and tiiiiiiiiiime.
I’d never heard of KSP, but it looks cool. Yeah, often games will have specific references to the locations of the files, so they’ll get really confused if you move folders around (I’m sure that’s one of the things you learned). Did you get your rockets back?
I never log in either… I pretty much exclusively post in the random threads now.
I don’t know if RPGs would work as well with the slower format of the ‘blog nowadays… I’m pretty sure that’s the reason they died out in the first place. Would RRRs work better? That way you wouldn’t have to wait for anyone else in order to continue the story. Though it still would be really slow.
I’ve been here for… a while. I lurked for about a year…? Two years? Goodness, I don’t even know anymore— before posting in January last year, but after that I left for a few months. And in all that time I didn’t get an account. I don’t think you need one unless you really want one, to be honest.
Speaking of that, am I technically a neophyte?
Many of my friends play KSP, and they really have a lot of fun with it. My university’s space club wants to do a challenge day where visitors could try to complete different tasks in it as part of the campus Engineering Week.
I would love to roleplay! I will hopefully have a *little* more free time this semester without GREs or graduate applications…
You are currenly listed as a “Subscriber”. There are actually several different types of account, and many more that could be created. As an All Powerful Being, I could, in principle, allow you to log in, and govern your ability to see, comment on, delete, edit, or otherwise manipulate posts on each different page. And create, modify or delete topics. Or not. But I had better leave decsions to other All Powerful Beings who know the Rules better.
I’m really upset because a good friend of mine injured her foot really badly and none of her family members care! DX She says her mom refuses to take her to get it examined and she can barely even walk on it because it hurts so bad! This isn’t fair! She’s a very kind and awesome person and deserves better than this! DX
That’s horrible! They should let her go to a doctor and hopefully get it fixed.
I know…but they just don’t care about her…
And that is horrible of them.
Indeed it is! GCA, can you not call or tell someone?
is this an internet friend? is it possible she’s overdramatizing?
I almost kind of hope so, because if not, that could classify as abuse.
She’s not an Internet friend. I’ve never talked to her over the Internet. I get to see her every Wednesday night.
Then you actually have a chance to help her. Call someone, like a doctor.
You see… I wasn’t even supposed to be posting stuff about it online in the first place. In our little class we meet in, we are told that whatever is said in the room stays in the room. I just couldn’t help it though… I gossip a lot…
Well, if a friend was going to jump off of a cliff and he told you not to tell anyone, it would be incredibly dangerous for your friend, and maybe even you, to not tell anyone. If you know that it’s the right thing or the safe thing to talk to someone about something, then that overrides the oath of secrecy.
I suppose, though there was three adults in the room with us when she told us about it.
Three adults? Teachers? And they’re not doing anything about this?
Ugh. School. Finals. Scared.
On a lighter note, I went out to feed my ducks earlier to find that they had all pecked one to death. It’s strange how something which looks so innocent can very well be a killer. I had a friend once who kept rabbits, and they said that every once in a while they would go out to take care of them, to find that the others had done what my ducks just did.
I suppose that is because every animal has a basic pattern to their instinct. I mean, bears have the instinct to hibernate during winter while most birds have the instinct to fly to the south. But I’m sure the same instincts for killing off the weaker of the group in order to survive and conserve resources exist in, at least, most.
I don’t know if it concerns all animals, for I have heard a lot of stories which contain herds of deer or elk with one member who is injured or lame. Do deer have a way of protecting every member of the herd, or were the protagonist hunter of said stories just lucky that they caught the lame animal before the herd left it behind?
I have quite the thoughtful nature, can you tell?
I think deer actually like to keep injured members in their flock, so they give an easy target to predators & allow the rest to escape.
Can someone confirm this or am I off track?
Interesting- in 11 years of raising ducks, I’ve never had that happen. They’ll often get into little feather-pulling fights for dominance within the flock, and the drake chases the females nonstop during the spring, but nothing like that. However, after the Weasel Massacre (one weasel, three ducks dead, three injured, one of which so badly we had to put her down), one of the uninjured ducks kept pecking at the one who was most badly injured. (It is worth noting that the agressor was already more dominant and the injured duck was a subordinate)
It’s possible that the breed of the ducks may contribute to aggressive behavior, as well as the drake/duck ratio in the flock, whether one of the ducks was introduced to the flock more recently, or was younger, etc.
So pretty sure that last night was the closest I’ll ever get to having a personal movie theatre. Went to a movie, and ended up being only one of 2 people in the theatre. Thought for the first 15 minutes of previews I’d be the only person, but then some guy walked in with his popcorn. Fortunately he was a fairly quiet popcorn muncher (eating noises in a quiet room bother me).
Speaking of the movie (Blackhat, with Chris Hemsworth), whatever wardrobe person was responsible for ensuring that in 90% of the scenes with Hemsworth, his shirt was at most buttoned up to the bottom of his pectorals? Deserves a huge huge raise. Because pretty much every scene with him you got a tantalizing glimpse of his chest, plus probably have a dozen scenes with him shirtless. Clearly they were playing up to the fact that he’s People magazines’s “sexiest man alive” (because hello he is super attractive) and yeah I’m shallow enough that all of that alone made the movie worth going to. And that may have been why I decided to go to the movie in the first place was Hemsworth being in it…..Hadn’t even heard of it prior to Wednesday night…..
((I swear, I go to movies for other reasons than just attractive actors. Really. I do.))
I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to express how much I love you all. ♥
“I swear, I go to movies for other reasons than just attractive actors. Really. I do.”
You surrrree? Evidence suggests otherwise and I’d rather hear about plots you liked than who you found attractive. Don’t get me wrong, it is totally fine to find people attractive, but I probably don’t find the same folks attractive so I’d rather hear if the plot is worth seeing. What is your favorite movie?
What is everyone’s favorite movie? I’m curious. Mine is Pan’s Labyrinth.
I don’t watch very many movies tbh, I go to the movie theatre maybe a couple of times a year. And I don’t much like picking favourites. But as far as movies that I can watch over and over again go, Love Actually and Blazing Saddles are what come to mind. I’ve watched Magnolia twice (which is saying something, it’s over 3 hours long) and it’s really spectacularly done, so that might be my answer for the best movie I’ve seen.
I’m sure, lol. Examples: Harry Potter, Narnia, LOTR & Hobbit, Hunger Games, Divergent, Mazerunner (still guilty on the last 2 that I’ve not read the books), Interstellar, Fury, many of the comic book movies, Pirates of the Caribbean, that Lego movie that came out last year, the Sherlock Holmes movies, and other movies that I can’t think of right off the top of my head. So I stand by my original statement. And I plan to go see Jurassic Park (4?) when it is released and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. I’ve actually never been much of a frequent movie goer, until maybe the last year or two.
I didn’t even go to watch Blackhat *just* because of Chris Hemsworth, although that turned out to be the most memorable/most redeeming quality of the movie. The plot looked interesting ( cyber espionage/cyber criminals/etc) and like the type of movie I would enjoy because I like action/mystery/etc type movie (and despise chick flicks and romcoms and comedy, generally), and I knew that I like Hemsworth as an actor outside of his physical appeal. So I figured it looked like a good way to spend an evening. As it would happen, the plot did not turn out as enjoyable as it looked and in my personal opinion was rather mediocre and a bit slow and drawn out. And a bit difficult to follow, which may have just been my difficulty understanding much of what the lead actress said as a result of her accent (I struggle with understanding people with accents, even when they have excellent english) and my mental exhaustion after a long day at school. 90% of the movie was probably unrealistic firefights (hand guns don’t stand a chance against machine guns…..).
I don’t really have a favorite movie, nor really a favorite anything. I mean, for instance, take books: I can’t deny that Harry Potter is the only book series that I every became fanatically involved with, but I still don’t know that I would say the Harry Potter books are my favorite books. Nor that Star Trek/Doctor Who are my favorite TV shows, despite the fact they’re the two I’m an obsessed fangirl in regards to.
The latest Star Trek movie (Into Darkness) is probably far and away the movie I’ve watched the most times (with possible exception of movies I watched over and over as a child, and have no real idea how many times I actually watched them), and aside from the first viewing, the others were all due to the merits of the story itself/the fact I’d become a Trekkie. But I don’t think I would consider it my favorite movie.
This is one of those questions that I always hate when people ask in “getting to know you” situations, because everyone always seems to have an answer right there on the tip of their tongue, while I”m just all oh well i don’t know i mean i don’t relaly have a favorite book’/movie/tv show/song/musical genre/etc, and then they look at me like I have two heads or some equally bizarre and grotesque physical appearance before awkwardly moving on to the next person.
As a little kid, Fox and the Hound and Lion King (the original, not any of the sequels which I haven’t ever seen) were two of my favorite movies that I owned, while Bugs Bunny was my favorite when it came to movies to rent, Tom and Jerry was my favorite cartoon (although I only ever saw any of it about every 2 years, because we only got NBC and PBS when I was little), Lamb Chops, Wishbone, and Barney were my favorite PBS shows, the Pretender was my favorite Primetime TV show, Box Car Children and Goosebumps were probably my favorite books (although it’s hard to say, I was a VERY prolific reader), and horror and fantasy were my favorite genres of books. And pink was far and away my favorite color.
But now, as an adult (or at least of an age society would consider an adult), I really don’t have any favorites. I have many least favorite things, but nothing that really stands out as a favorite.
I dislike rom coms, comedies, slasher films (I have to peer through my fingers because it’s too horrible to watch and I feel rather sick), not big into horror, I think vicryl and catgut are the worst suture materials I’ve ever had the misfortune of using (which actually, I guess I have developed a suture preference. I think it would be safe to say monocryl and PDS are my favorite suture materials), I hate performing skin sutures like simple interrupted/cruciates (and while it’s very tedious and I’m painfully slow, I’d probably have to say intradermal is my favorite suture pattern, because it has such a nice polished finished result when done right). Oh and neuters and abdominal exploratories are my favorite surgeries. So I guess I have favorites, they just don’t relate to normal life…..
Anyway. I think I lost sight of the point of this whole long rambling comment. And thank you for calling me out on my previous post. I don’t always think about how inane/obnoxious some of my posts are before hitting submit.
tl;dr: I don’t really have a favorite anything.
I’d never thought of anyone having a favourite suture.
I’ve found it’s actually fairly common that people in vet med who do any surgery have a favorite suture and in some instances even a favorite suture pattern. For instance, that’s why I know I hate vicryl and catgut: on my various externships, I’ve worked with vets who really like them and had me use them for procedures, and I developed a very strong dislike for catgut after it snapped right after I’d finished my suture line and was about to knot it and be finished, leaving me to have to resuture the entire incision (which was very small, fortunately for my sanity).
But I don’t suppose it is something anyone outside of a medical field would ever have cause to develop a favorite in regards to
Ha! I like that you have a favorite suture.
And I don’t mean to make people uncomfortable when asking for favorites, I was more just curious what kind of plots draw you. Sometimes something is so good that nothing else hits the same chord in me the same way, which is true for Pan’s Labyrinth. I love the fairy-tale-ness, I love that it is in Spanish, I love the scenery and the costumes. I also love the movie Hero, for the costumes and the scenery and the story. I tend to love pretty movies with fighting in them, I think. I do like watching action movies, but they’re less pretty. I like nice scenery and a well put together story.
Mm. I’m glad to hear some of your thoughts on plot!
Oh, I know you didn’t mean to make anyone uncomfortable when you asked about favorites. And you didn’t–it’s more when I get put on the spot, in person, with a bunch of people I don’t know very well, where I find it super awkward, as the only person who seems to lack a favorite movie, etc.
I don’t actually think I’ve seen Pan’s Labyrinth (or Hero, for that matter).
Plot wise, I tend to enjoy book movies, but also simultaneously hate them if I’m extremely passionate about the books in question and they change too many things, fantasy and sci-fi, mystery/intrigue, action, and war movies/historical fiction. For whatever reason, I’m not big on animated movies (it seems to be the done thing for college kids to go watch all the Disney kids animated movies, but I never got into that and typically give them a miss) or any of the ones I mentioned in my last post (rom com/chick flicks, comedy), but otherwise I’m likely to give most movies a try.
And horror it just depends on my mood. I like to watch a horror movie on halloween, but that’s typically about it. I don’t get nightmares when watching horror movies as bad as I did as recently as when I was 18, but they usually result in at least one really restless night sleep and me jumping at shadows and sleeping with a flashlight. As a teen, they’d usually result in at least several nights of nightmares and paranoia. And I’m still a bit leery of storm drains after dark, even though it’s probably been a decade since I first watched Stephen King’s “IT”.
I still remember the first time I remember getting nightmares from watching a horror movie–or, rather, seeing all of about 1 scene of a “horror” movie on screen at the local movie rental place, back when I was only 5 or 6, while we were standing in line to check out. They were playing “Beetlejuice” on a small TV monitor near the check out line, and I remember a woman’s mouth getting buckled shut with something along the lines of a door hinge. I don’t remember the subsequent nightmares, I just know that they happened, because probably up until around the time I was a teenager, I was banned from watching any horror movies or horror TV shows (including the animated cartoon Beetlejuice on the rare occasion when we had access to cable TV), in order to prevent my having further nightmares. Apparently mom never realized until recently, that the horror books that for some perverse reason I loved to read during that same time period, gave me just as much paranoia if not always nightmares, as any horror movies. Of course, had she realized I was terrified of the sponge under the sink for probably a month after reading an RL Stine book with an evil kitchen sponge….or that I was terrified an evil undead fish was going to come up out of the toilet/bathtub drains after reading a book where a fish is flushed down the toilet and comes back as an evil undead fish thing….Well, she probably would have banned them as well, lol. And when I was finally allowed to watch horror movies/shows again? I just….neglected to ever mention they still gave me nightmares……
You should watch Hero and Pan’s Labyrinth and let me know what you think! They’re both fantasy/action movies so you’d probably like them.
I’m not expressing an unpopular opinion here or anything, but Pan’s Labyrinth is an amazing film.
I will definitely give them a watch at some point
“Plot wise, I tend to enjoy book movies, but also simultaneously hate them if I’m extremely passionate about the books in question and they change too many things…”
.
I take this to mean that we stand together on the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire movie?
I hate goblet of fire, although not entirely based on the movie itself but coinciding events. Half blood Prince was my last favorite due to how it barely resembled the book at all
I hardly ever watch movies (I’m more of a TV person) but I’m going to watch the 1997 Cinderella tonight and I assert continually that there has never been a better movie musical.
I always have trouble with that kind of question – I used to be really indecisive, especially under fear of being judged. Now I tend to just satisfice instead of trying to search my entire movie-watching memory.
I unexpectedly loved the Matrix Trilogy. Obviously as a nerd I expected to like the first, but I also appreciated the sequels. That said, I find Keanu Reeves and Hugo Weaving super attractive. I tend not classify well-executed movie versions of books among favourite movies, but the Hunger Games movies are amazing and I prefer them to the books. Which I read when my tastes were much less dark, so if I reread them I might change my mind. I do have a thing for Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss. (and not a lot of interest in the characters straight fangirls tend to go for).
Luna – Hobbit, Into Darkness… does that mean you’re immune to Benedict Cumberbatch if he tries to take over the world with his uncanny cheekbones?
Benedict Cumberbatch is more than welcome to take over the world, as far as I’m concerned (wooo Sherlock!)
His name is just kind of fun to say. Really fast. BenedictCumberbatch!
Reread Mockingjay! For sure. I didn’t like it the first time, but I appreciated the darkness so much more the second time, and it sounds like you might too now.
My favorite movie might be Midnight in Paris. I’m generally medium on most of the Woody Allen movies I’ve seen but for some reason (or rather, almost every reason) I’m just enchanted by this one. The end is a little abrupt, and it’s definitely not the *best* movie I’ve ever seen by film-criticism standards, but I just enjoy it so much every time. Paris + jazz age + clever insertions of famous historical figures + time travel stuff + nostalgia play + generally witty writing –> absolutely fun, and couldn’t be a whole lot more adapted to be something I’d like.k
After years of trying out for all-district band, and not making it, and being sad, I finally had a successful audition this year! I made the concert AND jazz band. I’m so excited to finally have proved my worth. I’m so happy.
Congratulations, Agent Lightning!
Hey, congratulations, AL! I hope you have fun.
Congrats!
Congratulations!
Well done. old bean!
Congratulations!
I just want to say that your worth is not dependent on whether you make it into all-district band. I believe your success is well-deserved, and I’m proud of you, but this isn’t what makes you worthwhile – you are so much more than one point of data.
Agent Lightning–well, you’ve never needed to prove your worth as far as we’re concerned, but–CONGRATULATIONS, YOU. I believe I told you pretty close to three years ago (four?) that I was positive you’d make it before all was said and done, because you’re dedicated and impressive and generally awesome, and I’m so so so happy for you that that has indeed come to pass. Congrats!! Hope to hear about the clinic/concert weekend
So I finished reading “Kingdom Under Glass”, about the life of the early-20th century explorer, taxidermist, and naturalist Carl Akeley. A much darker book than I thought it would be, but very good.
One little question: do the “Coming Soon” birthdays come from the Google accounts/email that are in the “Leave a comment” box for some reason? Just because I happen to have one coming up in exactly the middle of the month of February (unless it’s a leap year), sooooo….
No, the birthdays (etc.) are on a separate Google calendar that we maintain manually. To be on it, you have to tell us the information.
Oh. Well, then. My date of birth was February 14, 2002. (Yes, Valentine’s Day)
suddenly I feel old
I also.
Me too.
Me three. It feels really weird to think that people born in the early 00’s are actually teenagers (or soon to be teens).
tfw you realize you are having a conversation with someone born after 9/11/
I was born two days after that
That moment when the girl in front of you at the “Your Maya Long Count Birthdate” station puts 2008 as her birth year.
Even me.
Could I just mention that some of us are occasionally perturbed ny the realisation that we are talking to people who don’t remember the moon landings?
It seems like we have this conversation where people one-up each other in age about every six months. I’m actually surprised none of you have stepped in to trump us before.
Fish, barrels.
My parents and most of their siblings remember the moon landings. I have one uncle who would have been three, and one uncle who wasn’t born yet by a year. Three of my cousins are older than me, and therefore remember 9/11 for sure. One cousin would have been nearly five for 9/11 so…maybe he remembers? I dunno. His siblings were born in 2000 and 2002, and I have two other younger cousins born in 1999 and 2002, so those cousins don’t remember. My youngest cousin was born in 2011, so he definitely doesn’t remember. I suppose he’ll probably have some other event to be amazed that folks don’t remember. I hope it is landing on Mars, or something else positive.
I mean, they were faked anyway, so..
runs, hides
*grabs Kai to come stand next to me*
*Mutual death glare in Lizzie’s general direction*
Woah, that is a pretty impressive death glare you have there, Noah.
I’m pretty sure I have friends my age whose parents don’t remember the moon landings.
I was born in 2001. I feel old, too.
I’m sorry, I am over a decade older than you as well and you don’t get to feel old in this context.
I was born in 1990. : P
I was born 2001 Feb 7th and I do not feel old. I still feel like a child.
I was using sarcasm.
How was I supposed to know? I’m not even supposed to be a part of this conversation.
You commented, therefore you are a part of the conversation. According to Museblog, yes?
I don’t think Catwings’ comment was aimed just at you; I think it was directed towards everyone who replied to her first comment.
Ah… I see. Sorry Catwings.
Okay, so I know this is absolutely unimportant, but today I found that I have a section of reddish hair that is really noticeable since the rest of my hair is almost black. XD It is the same color that all of my hair used to be. How in the world did all but one section of my hair change color and texture?! Someone please tell me because I am confused.
You were probably hit by lightning, hth.
Actually, I had been almost hit by lightning almost 3 years ago, it scorched my eyebrow. But how would that cause my hair to change?
Haha, what are the chances. I can say that I do research in coat type in mammals, specifically dogs, and nothing from that knowledge base springs to mind as a possible explanation. However, I have read that it’s very common for people who lose their hair through chemotherapy to regrow it differently. Typically, the post-chemo hair is curlier than the hair before, but I’m not sure about colour changes. Additionally, there are plenty of changes that hair/fur can go through as a result of (natural, not salon-induced) environmental factors. That being said, I can’t come up with a reason that only one patch would show such change, and three years after this (possible, but not probable!) cause. It could have taken that long for you to notice, I suppose! Especially if it’s in an awkward position or your hair grows slowly.
Overheard at the Museum of Science, Boston: “Who wants to see pterodactyl bones, baby?”
(Shouted enthusiastically by a boy somewhere between four and eight years old in the dinosaur exhibit.)
Museums just get more and more interesting every generation.
You mean the displays or the visitors? I think both are true.
It was intentionally directed towards visitors such as the aforementioned child… but I, too, agree that all aspects of museums were and are very interesting.
I am on a train into Washington, DC. Finally, traveling in a reasonable manner, which is to say: with constant internet access and power outlets.
We still have to get through finding the shuttle to the hotel/convention, which I am a bit worried about (since our train claims to arrive 6:25 and it claims to leave 6:30). We might take a taxi instead though – a bit more expensive but also much more convenient.
Tomorrow: ROBERT.
Update: I am in a hotel room with friends, in a suburb of Washington DC.
Enjoy!
SPOILER SPOILER BUZZ LIGHTYEAR THE ADVENTURE BEGINS SPOILER SPOILER ALSO GOLDENEYE SPOILER I GUESS EXCEPT I HAVEN’T WATCHED THAT ONE BUT I REALIZED THIS FROM THE CINEMASINS EPISODE ON IT
Wait, so Alec Trevelyan was the original Warp Darkmatter?
…I think I’m going to stop writing. I never have any really good ideas, and the way I write sucks, anyway. I’ll never be any good, so what’s the real point?
Yeah… no more dumb literature wannabes from me anymore.
Don’t say that! I like the snippets you’ve posted here on MB! While you may feel that you have room to improve (as everyone does), the only way to improve is to keep writing.
Kai’s right. What are you, 13? 14? Nobody starts out good. Everyone learns at a different pace and has different strengths. Keep writing and reading. It’s hard work but you will improve.
Slight amendment. If you truly don’t want to write, then you shouldn’t force yourself to do it. But don’t quit because you think you’re bad.
If you really like writing you shouldn’t stop working at it. Don’t compare your work to others’, compare it to your work from a few years ago and see how much you’ve improved. Your talent is unique and the more you practice the better you will get. <3
I second the above. It’s often hard to deal with not being as good at something as you want to be, but awesome things happen when you keep working on it anyway.
Please don’t stop…I like your work! It’s fabulous!
Great way to feel like a stereotypical dumb blonde…..Get a flat tire, spend 30 minutes reading the manual/getting it jacked halfway up. Managed to pry the hub cap off after another 10 minutes. Discover that of the 4 lug nuts ((and discover that they’re not called nut-bolt things, but lug nuts)), only 3 look like normal nuts, the fourth is all smooth and biggish and weird, and definitely doesn’t fit your lug wrench.
Stare at it in puzzlement for 5 minutes, (we’re now about an hour in), call mom for adivce (mom doesn’t know), be discovered by engineering roommate as you kneel there, who also doesn’t know what to make of it. Stand there next to her staring at the tire in consternation for 10 minutes, random dude walks by and asks if you need help. tell him yes, if he has tools to take that off/knows what it is why it is what is going on help. dude is unable to assist, after grabbing a giant tool box.
Spend over an hour troubleshooting on phone with dad, and then mom again, and then dad. After sending him a picture, finally determine it is probably a locking lug nut and that you should ahve a key, they shouldn’t put those on without providing you with a key. Discover a packet in your glove compartment, with what may be said key, manage to get it fitted on.
Start torquing on lug wrench, it won’t budge. At all. Like not at all. Mutually decide with dad on phone to call a tow truck to change the tire for you. While half the apartment ocmplex wanders by looking at you like you’re the biggest idiot to ever walk the face of the earth.
As you feel like an idiot, as the tow truck guy has no difficulty making any of the lug nuts turn, as you kneel watching him. As the apartment complex’s bus pulls up for probably the 6th time since you began this procedure. With probably the same driver, judging you and your 2 1/2 hour tire change process.
Also, apparently my front tires are really really worn? Even though I have only about 16,000 miles on my car? Not too thrilled about that, the tow truck guy seemed shocked that they looked as worn as he said they did, with that few miles.
So that was humiliating. I can’t even change a bloody tire.
Think of it this way: you might feel like an idiot now, but next time you have a flat tire, you’ll deal with it like a genius.
Assuming, of course, that whoever tightened the lug nuts on last didn’t do it so tight that I’m physically unable to apply enough torque to loosen them….
But at least I’ll know what I’m doing and where all the appropriate implements are!
If it makes you feel any better, the last time I had to change a tire, it took the combined efforts of me and my mom to loosen the lug nuts. Apparently the garage where I got my tires had tightened the nuts with a machine, rather than by hand.
Garages use a pneumatic wrench. It has torque control, so it applies the theoretically correct torque. Which is lots, but not enough to strip the thread.
Speaking as one whose father was a lorry driver (sorry, “Transport Manager”) :
There’s a (fairly) cheap device often referred to as a “spider”, available from car maintenance-y places. It’s in the form of a cross. On the end of each arm is a different sized lug nut socket, so it’ll fit most nuts. The important thing is that you use both hands, and simultaneously push and pull on a spider, so you can apply more torque with it, and it has less tendency to twist than a single arm. If one of those still provides too little leverage, see if you can acquire a bit of steel tube that will fit over your existing nut wrench to extend the arm length.
The main problem with either of these devices is where to store them.
At least you know where your security nut key is now.
I like the term “spider.” In the U.S., they’re usually called, more prosaically, “four-way lug wrenches” or “universal lug wrenches.” Folding models are available.
The device having only four “legs”, the sobriquet is somewhat tenuous. But it’s still poetic.
Are they re-running all the Ivars Peterson math columns now? There is a math page in the January Muse but it is one I’ve seen before.
Beats me. Ivars told me last March that he planned to contact Muse about a “reboot” of his math column, but I assumed he meant new material, not reruns. I’ll ask him what’s up.
If Ivars is writing new columns, I might have to look into subscribing again….
I know we’ve talked about this before, but how many musebloggers are actually currently subscribed to muse? I know I stopped subscribing around I think it was the 10th anniversary when the quality of the articles started slipping and the format changed.
I’m still subscribed.
I’m still receiving it, although the subscription runs out soon (maybe ran out at the end of 2014, I’m not sure if I got a January issue), and my mom isn’t planning on renewing it for me. Which given that I don’t think I’ve read any of the magazines for the past 4 years at least……
I do! *waves arms enthusiastically*
(should that be “I am?” rather than “I do?”)
About the same for me, I think. Still have boxes of it back at my mom’s place, though. Can’t hold onto it forever.
I am. Re-subscribed, though. I subscribed 1999- sometime in 2008 but then my parents stopped it as they claimed I wouldn’t read it. I/they started it up again May/June 2013. I would love to get my hands on the issues in between 2008 and 2013 (I’ve read them mostly, the library had them, but I’d like to own them), the March 2003 issue, and anything pre-1999 (though I currently own two from 1997 and two from 1998 thanks to a college friend.) I’m… some kind of completest and I want to own them all.
I don’t anymore
I subscribed from 2006 to around… early 2012? I think there was a period where my subscription lapsed, though. I’ve also read a ton of back issues from before then. My elementary school library had quite an extensive collection, and my mom brought home a few when the library she worked at got rid of them, which is how I found out about Muse in the first place. I especially like the one about priest holes. I’ve been meaning to buy some more back issues for years now. Maybe I will… someday…
I remember the priest hole one! I really enjoyed that article. Didn’t Paul write it? I can’t remember. Speaking of, whether he did or not, pretty much any article Paul did write was guaranteed to be super awesome and fascinating.
Yep, he did. “Everything was paneled in Elizabethan homes. They even tried panelling cats, but they rattled too much.” I love Paul’s articles. Especially the one about bog snorkeling and various other British sports. And “Kokopelli Gets a Music Lesson.” “You won’t believe anything I write after that catgut episode, will you?”
Oh yes, the catgut running joke. That was gold.
*blush*
I am!
Mine lapsed… about two years ago? I originally subscribed when Muse actually shipped to Austria (in 2004), then had them sent to my old US address and then continued the subscription back to Austria. But for some reason, the mailing got all messed up and I didn’t receive a bunch of issues, so my subscription was extended in exchange. I think that was muddled too, because they kept showing up for another two years or so and I think I only missed six issues? Anyway, I didn’t complain about them continuing to show up, though I preferred the old format.
I read it in the library for many years, subscribed somewhere around 2001, stopped after the Black Death issue because it scared me, but kept reading at the library until I came to college. Now I no longer have ready access to a library where it is available, so I might subscribe again.
I never subscribed — I’ve only read maybe one issue. I read Cricket instead; I only found MB because a bunch of my friends from the Cricket Chatterbox were coming here.
Not any more. My mum randomly subscribed me in mid 2007, and I continuously received Muse until May/June 2009. Then I convinced her to re-subscribe me so I got it for all of 2010. It lapsed again until my dad got me a year’s subscription in 2011, resulting in our arriving home from a few days doing a extracurricular science thing in Sydney to find four back-issues, Jan-April. *squee* (It was July, but there was always a month or two delay.)
I just stopped subscribing (roughly 2003 to the end of 2014). Even though the quality of the articles slipped for a while there, I’m happy to report that (at least in my opinion), Muse has fully recovered and is now characterized by the same kind of awesome, creative articles I remember from long ago. I’ll be sad to have my subscription lapse, but I haven’t read many of the issues since I came to college because they still went to my house.
I went through all of my magazines (Cricket, Ask, Click, Spider, Cicada, Muse, Odyssey…yeah, I got them all at one point or another…no Babybugs left, though) when I cleaned my room over break, and actually moved my Muses to a position of more prominence in my room (closet->bookshelf). I’m donating a lot of the others, hopefully to libraries or schools where kids can discover them just like I did, but I’m definitely holding onto the Muses for a while yet. Man, I wore some of those earlier issues to death. (Literary Velveteen Rabbits)
Yeah I just found an early issue of mine with the cover falling off!
So many of my Muse covers have fallen off that I have them hanging on my bedroom wall as decoration.
My family has had almost all of those subscriptions as well. Between my sister and me, we’ve got Ladybug, Spider, Click, Ask, Muse, Odyssey, Faces, and a short period of Cricket (or so I believe). We’ve been subscribing since I’ve been a toddler and haven’t let up yet! I was a little sad when I realized that there is nothing else on the tree above Muse in that category, but I don’t feel like I will stop anytime soon. What am I saying? If you guys haven’t (or just recently did) I have plenty of time! My only worry is that my parents will notice that it says “9-14 year-olds” on the cover and try to convince me next year that “I’m fourteen and am too old for this”. Not going to happen.
I subscribed to Spider at one point… or maybe Ladybug? Or both. I also used to have a bunch of old Crickets and Spiders from the 90s/early 2000s that my mom gave me when the librarian at the school where she teaches got rid of them.
Now that’s a reboot I can get behind!
Watching snowflakes fall in the glow of a streetlamp when they’re so big and thick they cast shadows on the ground…
It turns out that fried rice is really easy to make, so naturally all I’ve eaten for the past two days has been fried rice. Crumbled tofu instead of egg makes a completely satisfactory vegan substitute as well, in case you ever find yourself wanting to explore lazy vegan cooking.
Being back at school is alright. I really hope that I don’t crash and burn in my statistics class. My other classes seem like they’ll be good. I found a great sweater in a freepile last night.
Only one of the ships I sent applications to replied, and they didn’t want to hire me because my availability starts a month after the position does. But a friend of mine told me about a little square-topsail sloop that’s being built right now, and will very soon need people who like history and education and also know how to sail a boat, and I do all those things. Hopefully I can step into getting involved there, which would be just about ideal. I’d be super happy to be involved in implementing educational programs and training folks in dockside interpretation as well as being crew and (because she’s still under construction) hopefully picking up some shipbuilding and rigging experience too. Ideally I could do that and also pick up some delivery jobs or something to get more seatime, so by the time that the boat’s ready to go I could be a mate, or close to it, which is kind of terrifying but also really exciting.
That sounds awesome! (The boat thing, that is, although the fried rice does sound tasty)
Both of my parents did something like that when they were in college. It was called SEA Semester, I think. They were able to get college credits for a whole semester on the boat, and they had a great time (so I hear). It sounds really fun. I might consider something similar when I get to that point in life…
My friend from college did the Semester at SEA too!
SEA Semester, run by the Sea Education Association runs Corwith Cramer and Robert C. Seamans, the former of which several of my friends have been on, including my cousin as the third mate several years back, and my significant other. Semester at sea is done by a different group, and basically takes a huge cruise ship around, which seems like a lot less fun to me.
SEA semester is, as far as I’ve ever heard, a really cool program. I definitely recommend it, because anything that gets people on tall ships is good in my book. Shipboard environments are really great for learning a lot about pretty much everything.
The boat that’s being built isn’t going to do semester long programs, but they are going to go to historical reenactments up and down the east coast, and probably do daysails and overnight trips with groups. I feel like since it’s so small and history focused though there will probably be a much stronger emphasis on dockside interpretation.
SEA semester is what my friend did then.
Bubble tea.
I had that once! It was… interesting.
Is that anything like Thai iced tea? I just tried it for the first time a couple days ago. Don’t think I’ve ever had bubble tea, though.
It’s basically tea with obstacles……
Squishy tapioca obstacles that you can chew and pop with your teeth.
Thai Iced Tea is delicious!
Thai Iced Bubble Tea is possibly the best thing I’ve ever had.
Update: I am still alive. But with assignments for all of my classes due weekly, and midterms looming, who needs enemies?
So you can no longer click things on the J.K. Rowling website, but you can still watch youtube playthroughs of it. Sudden nostalgia alert!
Now if only there was still somewhere online to listen to the “Geographic Century” radio programs.
Decently-working keyboard ✓
Comfortable seating ✓
Creative mood ✓
Characters ✓
Setting ✓
Plot ?
One of your characters gets a message meant for another of your characters?
If you make that massage it could be interesting.
That works too.
SFTDP
—
Earlier today, my mom emailed me, telling me that she was reading a book earlier (an actual book with real paper), and when she went to turn the page, she tapped it. She was sitting there wondering why the page wouldn’t flip, and then she realized.
What has technology done to the poor woman?
My mom’s first ereader was the Nook, back before they had touch screens (only physical buttons on the side). And she still tried to tap the screen to make it do stuff!
Hey, I still have a Kindle like that. I love it, because the battery lasts three weeks. So far, I’ve always remembered not to tap the screen, but I’m sure I’ll slip up eventually.
I’ve tried to touchscreen my laptop before
I have the opposite problem sometimes… I try to point to something on the screen of my friend’s touchscreen laptop, and I accidentally click something or open a random menu.
I keep trying to touch the screen on my computer lately. The problem is that I have one of those convertible tablet/laptop things for school, which actually does have a touch screen.
I found a clip from a French educational cartoon about Auguste Piccard. I think it’s from a longer episode, because it sort of cuts off just before the Trieste is built, but even without knowing the language, it’s surprisingly accurate and very cute.
I stood in the middle of Kenmore Square today without being in danger of being run over.
Silent Snow, Secret Snow.
*shuffles up to podium, adjusts microphone, takes deep breath*
This week, we pause to honor those who have lost their lives in the exploration of space, whether during training or actual spaceflight. While the final week of January marks the anniversaries of three of NASA’s worst accidents, several cosmonauts of the former Soviet Union have also given their lives in this quest, and it was only this past October that Virgin Galactic test pilot Michael Alsbury became the first in-flight casualty of the private spaceflight industry. Therefore, although the anniversaries of their passing fall elsewhere in the calendar year, it is fitting and proper that we should remember these explorers now, as well.
We honor and respect the pioneering, courageous, and imaginative spirit of these space explorers and express our hope that their sacrifice will inspire us to continue in that same spirit. Ad Astra Per Aspera.
On this Remembrance Week 2015, we remember…
Valentin Bodarenko, March 23, 1961.
Theodore Freeman, October 31, 1964.
Elliot See and Charles Bassett, February 28, 1966, Gemini 9.
Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee, January 27, 1967, Apollo 1.
Vladimir Komarov, April 24, 1967, Soyuz 1.
Clifton Williams, October 5, 1967.
Michael Adams, November 15, 1967, X-15.
Robert Lawrence, December 8, 1967.
Yuri Gagarin, March 27, 1968, Soyuz 3.
Georgi Dobrovolski, Viktor Patsayev, and Vladislav Volkov, June 39, 1971, Soyuz 11.
Francis “Dick” Scobee, Michael Smith, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Gregory Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe, January 28, 1986, STS-51-L Challenger.
Sergei Vozovikov, July 11, 1993.
Richard Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, Ilan Ramon, February 1, 2003, STS-107 Columbia.
Michael Alsbury, October 31, 2014, SpaceShipTwo.
The guy I’ve been casually studying maths with over the summer told me that I talk like a microeconomist.
What were you talking about? (And, just a guess, had you recently been reading “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality”?)
Passed the NAVLE (vet licensing exam)!!!!
Hurray!
Congratulations!
Congratulations!
Congratulations!! That’s fantastic!
Yay!
Jolly good show, old girl!
dinner today: baby carrots, rice cooked with a hint of rice vinegar, and egg fried in butter, miso paste, and garlic powder. Delicious.
(Speech given by unknown Alvin Group engineer, 1965.)
Bathysphere, benthoscope, bathyscaphe, submersible. In the first half of the twentieth century, vehicles of deep sea exploration were only of interest to scientists and an adventure-hungry public. Then everything changed when the USS Thresher sank. Only the bathyscaphes, built to survive the immense pressure, could reach and photograph the wreck. But when the world needed them most, their flaws were revealed. A year passed and my colleagues and I discovered the newest deep submergence vehicle, a submersible named Alvin. And although his technical capabilities are impressive, Alvin has a lot to learn before he’s ready to challenge the abyss. But I believe Alvin can change the world.
I made fried apples and onions today, a la Little House on the Prairie. I’m fairly sure the onions are only in there to get the dish classified as a main course, because it tasted more like dessert to me.
On the first of February, we pause to remember the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia, killed during the re-entry of their vehicle at the end of a 16-day mission, on February 1, 2003. They were only sixteen minutes from home.
Hail Columbia.