I've been considering deleting my useless blogs, the ones I never update because I'm a terrible person, and just using GIR for my personal blog. I don't know why I don't do that anyway, really.

My random little single project blogs, which will probably start popping up on GIR, tend to die because I haven't thought them through fully, or I lose interest. I need to stop doing that, huh? But this personal blog goes trucking right along, albeit at a slow pace, so I'm going to move it to GIR. I'll leave this livejournal account open though. (Will this be the last post?! FIND OUT! SAME BAT TIME, SAME BAT CHANNEL!)

I need to get a job once these shows are through, and get a new computer. GIR's hard drive is slowly but surely losing capacity, which I assume without really knowing or doing any research means it's dying. And it's only 6gb (5.8 now) anyway. The USB drive I keep my music on is literally a third of the size of my hard drive. I don't know if I still want to build a computer, though that would be pretty awesome. It might also be cheaper... We'll see.

Anyway, I get sad watching the blog there go to waste, so I'm going to start using it. The only reason I still use livejournal is 'cause of the various friends who also use livejournal. I might be able to do that automatic cross-post thing, with less trouble than I've had in the past, though.

I stopped using my paper journal too, just because my fountain pen ran out of ink and I dislike pencil. I need to get a new one...

During an IRS audit, the auditor looks at the tax payer and exclaims, "Well, sir, you have an extravagant lifestyle and no full-time employment, which you explain by saying that you win money gambling. I'm not sure the IRS finds that believable."

"I'm a great gambler, and I can prove it," says Ralph. "How about a demonstration?"

The auditor thinks for a moment and said, "Okay. Go ahead."

Ralph says, "I'll bet you a thousand dollars that I can bite my own eye."

The auditor thinks a moment and says, "No way! It's a bet."

Ralph removes his glass eye and bites it. The auditor's jaw drops. Ralph says, "Now, I'll bet you two thousand dollars that I can bite my other eye."

The auditor can tell Ralph isn't blind, so he takes the bet.

Ralph removes his dentures and bites his good eye. The stunned auditor now realizes he has wagered and lost three grand, with Ralph's attorney as a witness. He starts to get nervous.

"Want to go double or nothing?" Ralph asks. "I'll bet you six thousand dollars that I can stand on one side of your desk, and pee into that wastebasket on the other side, and never get a drop anywhere in between."

The auditor, twice burned, is cautious now, but he looks carefully and decides there's no way this guy can manage that stunt, so he agrees again.

Ralph stands beside the desk and unzips his pants, and urinates all over the desk.

The auditor leaps with joy, realizing that he has just turned a major loss into a huge win. But Ralph's attorney moans and puts his head in his hands.

"Are you okay?" the auditor asks.

"Not really," says the attorney. "This morning, when Ralph told me he'd been summoned for an audit, he bet me twenty thousand dollars that he could come in here and pee all over your desk and that you'd be happy about it."

The ark lands after the Flood. Noah lets all the animals out, saying, "Go and multiply." Several months pass. Noah decides to check up on the animals. All are doing fine except a pair of snakes. "What's the problem?" asks Noah. "Cut down some trees and let us live there," say the snakes. Noah follows their advice. Several more weeks pass. Noah checks on the snakes again. Lots of little snakes crawl over the earth, and everybody is happy. Perplexed, Noah asks, "Want to tell me how the trees helped?" "Certainly," say the snakes. "We're adders, and we need logs to multiply."

Most of you probably understand, (or maybe not?) but I'll explain anyway: A logarithm is the exponent to which a base (eg base 10, which is what we count in normally) must be raised to arrive at the desired number. So log(10), assuming base 10, would be 1. log(100) = 2, log(1000) = 3, etc.

If you add two logs, the sum will be the log of the product of the whatever. That is to say, log(xy) = log(x) + log(y). So 2 + 2 = 4. log(100) + log(100) = log(10000) = 100 x 100.

Sweet. Now if only I could compute logarithms without a calculator.

P.S. It could also be written as (I don't know if Facebook folks will be able to see this) log₁₀ 100 + log₁₀ 100 = log₁₀ 10000. The 10's in that should be subscript if it worked. (Though I guess just log10 100 would work too...)

http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/booksellers/press_release/100words/

This highly suspect and fairly opinionated article was bought to my attention by Stumbleupon, so I decided to make a little quiz thing out of it.

The editors of the 'American Heritage' dictionaries (aka people I never heard of before) have compiled a list of 100 words they think 'every high school graduate should know.'

"The words we suggest," says senior editor Steven Kleinedler, "are not meant to be exhaustive but are a benchmark against which graduates and their parents can measure themselves. If you are able to use these words correctly, you are likely to have a superior command of the language." Right, ok. Whatever.

Don't mind them, they're high on themselves. Anyway, here's the words. Only check the ones you knew before you started the test:

10
[ ] abjure
[ ] abrogate
[ ] abstemious
[ ] acumen
[ ] antebellum
[ ] auspicious
[ ] belie
[ ] bellicose
[X] bowdlerize "I had forgotten this one, but I'm checking it anyway."
[X] chicanery

20
[X] chromosome
[ ] churlish
[ ] circumlocution
[X] circumnavigate
[ ] deciduous
[ ] deleterious
[ ] diffident
[ ] enervate
[X] enfranchise
[X] epiphany

30
[X] equinox
[X] euro
[ ] evanescent
[ ] expurgate
[X] facetious
[ ] fatuous
[ ] feckless
[ ] fiduciary
[X] filibuster
[ ] gamete

40
[X] gauche
[ ] gerrymander
[ ] hegemony
[X] hemoglobin
[ ] homogeneous
[ ] hubris
[X] hypotenuse
[X] impeach
[X] incognito
[X] incontrovertible

50
[ ] inculcate
[X] infrastructure
[ ] interpolate
[X] irony "I could go on and on."
[ ] jejune
[X] kinetic
[ ] kowtow
[ ] laissez faire
[ ] lexicon
[ ] loquacious "I knew what this meant once. The only thing I could think of now was 'loquacious babes.' :/"

60
[ ] lugubrious
[X] metamorphosis
[X] mitosis
[ ] moiety
[X] nanotechnology
[X] nihilism
[X] nomenclature
[ ] nonsectarian
[X] notarize
[ ] obsequious

70
[ ] oligarchy
[X] omnipotent
[ ] orthography
[X] oxidize
[ ] parabola
[ ] paradigm
[X] parameter
[ ] pecuniary
[X] photosynthesis
[X] plagiarize

80
[X] plasma
[X] polymer
[X] precipitous
[X] quasar
[ ] quotidian
[ ] recapitulate
[X] reciprocal
[X] reparation
[X] respiration
[X] sanguine

90
[X] soliloquy
[X] subjugate
[X] suffragist
[ ] supercilious
[X] tautology
[ ] taxonomy
[X] tectonic
[X] tempestuous
[X] thermodynamics
[X] totalitarian

100
[ ] unctuous
[X] usurp
[X] vacuous
[X] vehement
[X] vortex
[ ] winnow
[X] wrought
[X] xenophobe
[X] yeoman "Nice try!! Hah!"
[ ] ziggurat "I knew this one once."

Total: 53

So which do you know, hmm? If you repost this, tag me so I can see.

---

By the by, I posit that the word 'meme' should be included in the above! :P

P.S. I may be the only teenager in the world who both knows what irony has meant in the past--that's what they want--and who thinks they should give up and let it mean what it means now. The language changed, deal with it!

I had a big huge post all planned, but it lost wind and now it's just this. I've been thinking about Christianity recently.

I've come to terms with the fact that most people misinterpret faith, and most other people misinterpret science. My faith, being a faith, does not require sound scientific proof. Otherwise it wouldn't be called a faith. It might seem a bit off to some people, but that's my story, and I'm sticking with it.

So I don't get people who a) try to disprove God by citing a lack of proof, or b) try to preserve their faith by ignoring science.

I have never read the Bible, despite being Christian. The Bible didn't fall from the sky, though. It was written and copied and compiled and edited, and books were added and removed and probably lost, I'd imagine. The books of the Bible are a small group's interpretation of events, and what they considered to be the word of God. (Taking a very view of the authors)

So there's that. Turns out that when I wrote them down, all of the conflicts vanished. Huh.

I've not been doing much recently, and it's been bothering me. I'm not the kind of person who finishes what he starts, usually. (Activity-wise) It bothers me, actually. I have those three blogs sitting around the internet, collecting dust. There's a book my mom had that might help a bit. (She and (probably) my grandfather have the same problem--he did a good job with it though) I suppose it mostly must have to do with organization and stuff. I only read the first part of the book in which it described me as a special person. Aww, shucks.

That brings up some other things, but wait for a few paragraphs first.

---

I'm learning Italian. The guy I'm taking vocal lessons from has been teaching primarily me from Italian operas, and he taught me a little bit. (Mostly pronunciation stuff) But it got me interested, and so far that's one thing I've been able to stick with... So I'm learning Italian. I'm going to set a lot of my accounts on the internet to use Italian as their default language. (For display)

I can't hold even a small conversation yet, but I'm getting the grasp of the grammar, slowly... I'm working on gender and number right now, and also articles. The written language is harder than the spoken language, it seems, but neither is so hard really... I am having trouble with 'gl,' though. It sounds like the Spanish 'll' sound, and there's nothing like it in English. Perhaps they both really just sound like a normal L, and it's all a big conspiracy.

---

It's a few paragraphs later now. I notice that I'm different from most teenagers my age. (No sex, drugs, or EVEN ROCK AND ROLL (just kidding about rock and roll)) I wonder why, a lot. It could be genetics, (either hereditary or some mutation) the way I was raised/various environmental factors, (We're talking social atmosphere here, not dust and mold) or a combination of the two. I'm fairly sure, writing it out now, that it's a combination of the two. But I still wonder.

I dislike tooting my own horn, (but I love that phrase) even though I could do it all day long probably. But I never admit things to myself even. I have my talents, but I tend to dismiss them as being sub-par or something anyone can do. Maybe I'm right to, and anyone can do it if they actually try. That's not to say I don't work at them. I continually try to get better if I enjoy something, but I never admit it once I'm good at it.

It startles me when someone tells me I'm good at something, then, because I always assume that I'm not as good as, or at least no better than anyone else.

I'm a bit past it with languages, and I'm willing to accept that maybe I'm pretty good with them. I'm having great fun learning Italian, and it's going fairly smoothly... (Maybe it's an illusion, I'm just learning it online. I'm here right now.. )

Computer languages too. The catch is, I need to stay with it if I want to learn a language. MUSHcode and English (and HTML/CSS if you count it) are examples of languages I stuck with. (MUSHcode, for those of you who don't know, is a language built into a certain 'brand' of text-based MMO, called a MUSH. It's useless outside of MUSHes. The sort I excel in is PennMUSH) C, C++, C#, PHP, Visual Basic, BASIC, and Python are examples of languages I didn't stick with.

Oh, also math. I could probably get along fine with complicated maths if I bothered to stick it out. I don't even think that I get frustrated anymore, I just don't like doing it. I don't know why.

---

I'm going to digress slightly. The other day as I was thinking about this sort of thing, languages and such, it occurred to me that I rail against rote quite a lot as a method for learning, (rote is memorization by repetition) but that a similar practice is probably how I learned English. Then I thought that MUSHcode, (or any programming language) was probably a better example, because human languages take much more than just words. (But you wouldn't know it to read my writing!!)

Of course we learn by repetition, I learn by repetition all the time. Isn't that called practice? Maybe there's a distinction to be made between learning and flat memorization, but if so then it's a very hard distinction to make. I certainly can't make it. Once I've learned the melody to a song, wouldn't one say it's been memorized?

What I think of when I think of rote is knowing something but having no understanding of it. For example: I know that if you took three protons from a lead molecule, it would become a gold molecule, but I haven't the slightest idea in the world why should be. I don't understand it, so I have learned it? That doesn't really fly either, actually. This bears more thinking, and an apology to the word 'rote.'

---

Now I'm going to digress again. This is how my brain works, by the way, switching from one thing to the next, but maybe it's a bit quicker here.

I like to learn things about myself. I suppose it's not so fun to learn something bad about myself, but I know most of the bad things already, and even that I like. I just love it when someone tells me something I didn't know. It doesn't have to be a compliment or criticism either, it can just be a description of my character, or an insight into my personality. Because honestly, I haven't got one stupid idea what's up with me. I'm a mystery to myself.

That becomes bothersome when I'm trying to identify the source of a problem that I'd rather fix. For example, a short temper with certain people. I suppose in that case it's because I'm an emotional creature, but I'd much rather not be. Short temper aside, some people just really tick me off, even as my mind says I ought to give them the benefit of the doubt.

K that's all. I'm tired, and this is probably barely coherent, so I'm hitting 'Post' going to bed.

---

That's kind of freaky... Sort of. I googled my Grandfather's name, (probably spelled his last name wrong though...) and someone with his name died in 1991, living in the same town he lived in until like two weeks ago.

Not much going on, internet. (Not much going on here either, real life)

I got all worried about death and inexistence again, but you already know about that, so I'll skip it.

I did, through a conversation with a friend, (so she did too) stumble upon an interesting concept, the deflation (or weakening?) of social stigmas. The name 'Hitler,' as an extreme example, and swear words as less extreme examples, have all been stripped of their meaning over the decades. Swear words are much more socially acceptable than they used to be. Much, much more. I could go on and on about this honestly, but I'm tired, and suffice it to say that I'm still interested in sociology.

Also, it occurred to me that one should look at an audition not as a chance to get yourself out there and add to your resume, or make money, or whatever, but as a chance to help the director find the right actors for his (or her) show.

I didn't lose a part recently, (actually I got a small part) I was just thinking about it in the van while I was bored. If a director turns an actor down, it's not (necessarily) indicative of skill, or how the audition went, but indicative of the director's vision. The actor didn't fit in the director's vision is all. Still, never know 'til you try.

(That's not to say that skill and the audition are not important :P )

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I don't remember much of this dream. In chronological order, here's what I do remember;


I was mixed up with some police force, (oddly, the characters were similar to those in Warehouse 13)
and they were interrogating a suspect in less-than-official conditions.

The suspect had become addicted to crack, and in the absence of the substance--we'd turned it all in or some
such thing--he was going a little crazy, and getting very paranoid. He was shouting at the main guy, and suddenly
he collapsed, screaming in pain. (I believe the main guy was actually on the table at this point, for some reason,
though that was what the suspect had been hallucinating) (I could see his hallucinations, I was drifting in and out of
the story :P )

The dream cut to him being taken by an ambulance with incredibly snotty attendants, and we--there were
three of us--were discussing how a bullet might have appeared in his heart without ever being fired, or penetrating
his skin. (We weren't wondering how he was still alive, for some reason)

Cut to a ride in a pickup truck, and a new girl appears in the dream. We just talk about ambulance attendants
for a time...

The dream gets real blurry here, but there's something about mount Rushmore having been carved by aliens,
and we are exploring a cavern inside that is very well lit for not having any lights.

---

That's the end of that dream, but a second dream started up with mount Rushmore, with a whole different
set of people. (These are some friends, and at least one of my brothers)

We leave mount Rushmore very quickly, turning up in a sort of parking lot. There's a lot here that I don't
remember, but parts I do remember include going down a set of stairs to another level of the parking lot,
having a female friend ask me to hold her hand, harrassing someone by a van (maybe green or blue, certainly a darkish
colour) in that second level, and then night approaching.

We tried to go into a fictional club, which in the dream was our usual place, but the bouncer turned us
away. So we went to an ice cream place next door, and alternated between there and the club for a while. I think that
my original set of friends disappeared and were replaced at some point by the guys from the first dream, among other,
real people.

Behind the counter was a friend of mine I haven't seen for a while, so we talked and she spoke of seeing
a show I was doing. (It hasn't been done yet IRL, but she did say she'd see it) I ordered an ice cream cone, and
a guy came from the back of the shop where another shop was attached, and started singing to her, backed up by another
guy (I knew/know both of them) and eventually me.

When that was over, he came out and took my ice cream, and left out the front door, so I ordered another,
less healthy one. (A huge one with fried strips of sugar cone wrapped around the top)

Yet another friend popped out, and I chastised him for some reason. He's not real, and I forgot his name,
but it was an odd one... I just used his last name, which started with 'scurm' or something like that.

I'm absolutely sure that I am leaving out large chunks of this dream, but since some of you like to hear about
dreams, I thought I'd post it anyway...

It's interesting how I can see the influences my conscious life had on the dream.

"Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn't
work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically
fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all
know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards
or FAQ's. We just figured it out. Today's kids are soft." - Blowhard McGee

I take issue with this quote. Besides that it is aimed at slandering my generation, (Or maybe the generation before mine... I don't keep track really) I find the suggestion that blowing into the cartridge dawned on every kid in America as soon as he or she saw a bright blue or orange screen to be suspect, at the least. (I like to imagine there didn't even have to be an NES present!)

Now before we start, it should be noted that I don't know who originated this quote. Maybe it was a famous comedian, or a respected writer, or perhaps it was a zanily ironic internet personality. Or Jack Thompson. (Warning: Jack Thompson is an insane disbarred lawyer. The linked website is poorly designed and laughably claims to be an 'open-source project'--Er, well, I suppose they are. I can see the website's HTML after all. ... That was a joke. You can always see every website's HTML. But really, who puts dark blue text on a white background?) (P.S. the irony of me publicizing Thompson, a man I quite dislike, is not lost on me.)

But it should also be noted that I don't care. So since about two hours ago I've been conducting extensive research (further reading) into the topic of whether or not he's full of it, and just now I stopped in the middle and wrote an opinion. (The links aren't in the right order. And I had my sources all so neatly arranged!)

Sort of. I have to admit that my hunch didn't turn anything up. None of the manuals for any video gaming system using ROM cartridges suggested blowing into the cartridge as a means of troubleshooting. I was unable to find a list of computers that could read ROM cartridges, so I didn't look through their manuals manually (Get it?) but I did search Google for variations of the term "blow into the cartridge" -nintendo -printer -NES -snes -korkys -tumblr -scenepointblank -@boringjob2 -nexon and I didn't get any relevant results.

So that's that. No manual anywhere suggests blowing into a ROM cartridge. And for good reason; the moisture in your breath can corrode the contacts. But now I'm curious about just where this thing started.

My new theory is that some kid, or somebody at a call center, thought up the idea and started suggesting it to people. This passed around, and before long everyone forgot where the idea originally sprang up because damn if it didn't work like magic. So now every kid in America knew how to blow into his NES cartridge, and once again the world could jump together on the Mushroom Owl Things of athleticism and Turtle Ducks of literacy. (Just kidding! Really! I like video games!) (I really did once think those were owls and ducks in Super Mario Bros, though.)

But the main point there is that they didn't all just know how out of nowhere, despite what they may have said at the time. They had a problem, so they asked for help as human beings are wont to do, and someone proposed an answer: blow into your cartridge.

The only differences between that normal human behavior and asking on a forum or in a chat room are a) the medium and b) if you use the internet you have a much much much wider audience, almost guaranteeing that someone who knows what he's talking about will notice you.

If for some reason you want to contest my theory, fine. Let's say it's wrong, and every kid in America magically knew how to fix their amazing interactive picture boxes. Whomever is being quoted up there is stating that asking for help is for 'soft kids,' and that the right way to do it is to 'figure it out' and come up with a way to single-handedly ruin your cartridge.

I guess you could say that your theoretical help-givers helped ruin your cartridge too, but LOOK OVER THERE A MONKEY

Really, though. There's no shame in asking for help, regardless of where you ask. My theory may very well be wrong, but the originator of this quote was too.

By the by, on a completely unrelated topic. Help has a new slogan that I just made up on the spot for no reason at all: "Help. It's better than a hernia."

(P.S. Read up on memes some time, if you want. It's an interesting topic, although the existence of memes isn't proven according to wikipedia...)

So we're having financial problems. (Big surprise there) Apparently the laws around New York State property taxes are designed to destroy whole families.

I won't go into detail. I decided to get a job to help out because otherwise we're going to be living on the street at some point in the future. I'm sure that's hyperbole, actually, considering the number of expenses we could cut. We're already planning on cutting out our land line and satellite. Having internet access in our home, at this point, is pretty necessary for a number of things to be done securely.

But I decided to get a job anyway. It will need to be a full time job, but even at minimum wage I'll greatly increase our income. We won't be able to rely on state medical insurance anymore, but the new income will pay for that, and it will open other sources of income to us as well. (Since we won't be relying on state medical insurance, my mom can get a better job, or a pay raise, for example, without worrying about our health)

I was looking into a GED again, because of this. Testimony indicates that I wouldn't have needed a GED to work toward a degree at MCC, but I'm a little dubious as to whether or not I'll be able to get a job without any degree at all.

So on the American Center for Education website, they have sample test questions for the GED. And oh my God. I very, very sincerely hope that this is a joke of some sort. These questions are ludicrous. What's worse, according to the fact sheet, 40% of high school graduates would not pass the GED tests on their first try.

That doesn't mean anything for those who took and passed the GED tests, I'm sure they're all very intelligent. But HOLY GEEZ.

Look at question 1.
'Statement: clay holds water better than sand. Followup Question: Which of the following is true: A) Sand holds water better than clay B) Clay holds water better than sand.'

Obviously I cleaned it up a little, but that's basically it.

Ok, not really. That's actually dumbing it down quite a lot, but still.

I had a snarky, insulting thing to add here, but I decided to redact it.

Penny Arcade, if you don't know, is a web comic. Simple.

Recently, the authors took on a project of three or four ideas, exploring each one; my favorite is Automata:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/6/12/
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/7/31/
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/8/3/
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/8/5/
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/8/7/
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/8/10/

And a compilation by someone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trwYGBaDJOI

Just thought I'd share. There is some bad language, possibly NSFW depending on where you work.

So I've been thinking a lot lately. My mind has now recovered from that ordeal, but unfortunately a few ideas (read: one idea) is stuck in there just now, so I suppose I'll let you all in.

I watched a (comedy) video today. It started on what some would consider--perhaps rightly, that's not what I'm writing on--bad note, but then it was pretty funny up until the end which even I thought was slightly tasteless. And so I moved on to watch a different video. Here's what got me about it a little later, though: I laughed at the that video. (Hate me if you must) Specifically, I laughed at the part that I thought was lacking in taste.

So I got to thinking, 'Why do people laugh in spite of themselves?' Why can some people find humor in things that they find morally objectionable? (And why can't some) I'd like to say I got a grant and did a study on it in the few hours between then and now, but really I'd be lying if I even said I Googled for an answer. I don't have an explanation for you, 'cause I just thought of the question as I was about to go to bed.

On a closely related note, I suspect that this somehow illustrates how at least this sort of comedy works. In this case, it's all in the timing, and the surprise of it. I do know at least that the more surprising and unexpected a punchline is, the funnier it will be.

On another closely related note, I often feel like I've scraped the surface a somewhat deeper concept when I'm thinking, but I can't quite finish the thought, or put it to words. Woe is me. :(

The video, for the morbidly curious: 9 (Classy) Ways to Treat a Woman

ETA: I wonder if my use of the word 'often' says anything about me?

I'm posting using my server's shell today, 'cause I don't want to screw with getting xorg running. Just a few things.

First: today I was bored enough to pay close attention to some ants. I spent a long time just watching them. They were scattered about, looking for food (as ants are wont to do) and having no luck, so I put a peanut down on the ground in front of one.

Well she antennaed it--antennaed is a word as of now--and went off to find some more ants, spewing food hormones to mark the trail. She finally met one, and they went back to the peanut together. After antennaeing it for a minute, (I'm not even trying with these semi-invented words) they each went off to find some more ants. Finally they had a group of about four, and they tried in vain for a half hour to move the thing. I guess they moved it an inch or so, and one died in the process.

I didn't learn anything I didn't know, but it did strike me how excited someone must have been the first time they observed this apparently intelligent behaviour in ants.

---

Another thing is dipthongs. I don't know how to explain it exactly; dipthongs are more or less two vowel sounds condensed into one. Like the English vowels 'U,' and 'I.' They are 'ee-ooh,' an 'ah-ee,' see? The word 'life' is one syllable, but if you removed the dipthong it would be two: lah-eef.

Anyway, there are no dipthongs in Italian, if I understand correctly. That much seems plausible so far. It wouldn't be so striking on its own, but consider how many you use in conversation. (ee-ahn) You'll notice now that I made you think about it.

Thinking about it myself bought about the realization that accents can be simulated easily by considering how to pronounce each separate vowel sound, and how they are stressed. I can't think of any good examples, because I haven't looked into this for long, but I thought it was curious and interesting enough to share.

---

Lastly, I'm no master of grammar, but I had always understood a few things: after a colon, like so, the first word is lower case unless there's some reason it shouldn't be; (A proper name, for example) a semi-colon should be used to separate lists, or to replace conjunctions like 'and.' The semi-colon thing holds true so far, but I've seen recently just about everybody capitalize words after colons. So either my sources were wrong, (I forgot where I heard that in the first place) or it's a matter of opinion, or both.

I have always held, after all, that in any living language, the most widely accepted version of the language must necessarily be the correct one. The word 'whom' has been phased out of existence, and new words such as 'Google' have been phased into existence. This has been happening since the dawn of mankind. (Or the tower of babel if you prefer, or both possibly. That's another blog post.) Shakespeare invented a veritable tonne of new words. Eyeball, alligator, and goo to name a few.

I'm tired, so abridged version of my day:

Nine hour double dress rehearsal. Arrived at 1:30pm, started at around 2:30. Stopped after runthrough for a break, with a picnic and grilling and cleaning up hall as well. (This is with Gatesingers, by the way, as opposed to OMP. We're doing The Sorcerer) Ran through the show again, did much better than the first time.

On the way home we were passed by twelve police cars going the same direction with lights and sirens. Exciting. I wonder what happened.

I hate to say it, but newspapers seem to be less politically charged and opinionated, and certainly less alarmist, than other forms of news media. That's not a fact so much as a theory, based on a few articles I've read recently. (http://www.kansascity.com/business/story/1299981.html)

Now I wonder: if that is the case, is it contributing to the apparent decline of the newspaper industry? Modern news sources--certainly those seen on television--deal as much in ratings as in anything. It's not their fault. Focusing on TV for the moment, they need ratings to stay on the air. They need viewers for those ratings, and their current format attracts viewers. (The politically charged/opinionated/alarmist format)

I wasn't going anywhere with this, but it seems like an interesting topic that I'd like to explore a bit more, later.

Again I haven't posted in a while. I sort of want to make a voice post, but it would probably not be phoned in so much as recorded, uploaded, and linked to.

Breakdown:
Yeomen went swimmingly. I miss it.
The Sorcerer is going swimmingly. We're doing it again, with a different group, and with my father this time. Now all five of us are in this. We have been since Christmas Carol, but I didn't know if I told anyone from the internet.

I haven't actually started moving on with my life, yet, though I wrote in my callendar: 'Gather Info about MCC'. I already have all this freaking info, and all the paperwork, and everything. But I can never seem to get momentum going to actually find out about this stuff. I've also been wanting to look into volunteering as a fire fighter. The fire station is like 75 yards from our house. I could -walk there- and ask about it, if I had an excuse not to call. But I don't even do that, because I haven't got the motivation. Maybe I am simply not ready to move forward. I am happy where I am, and there are still things to do here. Perhaps I should finish those before I force myself into college or some other situation like that. I am going to start taking vocal lessons this week though, probably... (I hear you: 'It's about time, boy!')

I haven't updated that project in journalism, but I've been thinking about it. I've been considering carefully what I want to do, 'cause I realized that in a way I am still injecting opinion. I'm a bit torn. I can continue with this approach, where I report an exaggerated piece of 'news' or, more frequently, spam email--it's a bit like Snopes, really. Or I can switch to pure news: just research and relay the truth behind these exaggerations, and filter out any opinion or untrue statements.

It occurred to me that I could do both, and split later. There's no reason I can't have one more blog. I have fifty already. (Probably)

Now for the title of this post: Playground Games. The best physical sports, I have found, are the simple ones without many rules, and in a casual atmosphere. My favorite games right now, in no real order:

Four Square -- The wikipedia article explains it best. Apparently there's league play too, but it's best without strict rules..

'Indian Dodgeball' -- A combination of freeze tag and dodge ball. If you're hit by a ball, you're out until the person who hit you is out. If someone catches the ball (or if you hit them in the head) then you are out until they are out. If you're out, you just sit down. Get as many players and balls as you can, and you start getting alliances and strategies forming, as well as just a general excitement. It's difficult to describe how fun it is to not be hit, or to hit a player who has dominated most of the field. In the latter case, usually everyone is rooting for you, and when you succeed suddenly the field comes alive, you are immediately tagged out, and the thing starts all over again...

500 -- Someone calls out a number (and sometimes modifiers which depend on the players) and throws a ball in the air, and if you catch the ball before it hits the ground you get that number of points. Play to 500... (Or 1000 or 5000 or whatever) It's obviously more fun when more than one or two people are trying to catch the ball.

There are more games, certainly. You're never too old to enjoy these! I'm going to be playing Indian Dodgeball well into my seventies.

Well I haven't posted in a while. Turns out it's because I forgot to post the last post I was working on. I stopped updating my blogger blog for some reason, I guess I got bored cheating the system.

There are a few things I want to talk about, I guess, though I don't know if anyone really reads these. So I'll just type as stuff comes to mind.

Sometimes I wish actually that I had an 'anonymous' blog. I shouldn't have spread this one around my real life, now I can't talk about people anymore. (Especially those on Facebook -- You rascals!)

I've been interested in journalism recently, and sort of half-heartedly toying with it via my new project. I haven't really done anything to learn about journalism yet, somehow I skipped that step. I've just researched some things that people were raving at me about, and posted the results of my prying there. So far there's an article on a bill proposed to the House of Representatives, and Influenza A(H1N1) -- Swine Flu.

On a somewhat related topic, I suppose it's time for me to suck it up and get moving with my life. I need to learn to drive still, having pathetically become bored with the whole concept. And more to the point, I need to start looking into college. I have no interest in RIT at the moment--I'm not sure why, it just doesn't grab me--and as I've said I've been planning on MCC for a while. But all of my planning is useless if I don't do anything with it.

I can get a highschool equivalency diploma there first--I need to read up on that again too, I should stop forgetting stuff--and then start working on interesting things. I still am moderately interested in psychology, more leaning toward sociology now.

And journalism and graphic design and theatre and music and and and...

The problem with this, as you can see, is that I have far too many interests. Not a bad thing in and of itself, but it means I need to focus, and I cannot focus easily. I'm sure it would be possible. A lot, I could research on my own, but classes would still be awesome. Like graphic design -- the actual implementation is a piece of cake, now that I've read the entire internet. I know how to do all sorts of cool things with Photoshop and The GIMP. But what I don't know is the theory behind it. What looks good and why it looks good.

I'm sure that if I had actually read the entire internet, I'd know all that too, but I guess the point of college is that it's easier. If it was easier to just research it yourself, then why would anyone bother? Ignoring the preference many employers have for a degree.

Oh what else. Little Mary Sunshine went fine, if I didn't say anything about it. It was awesome. Only three performances, sadly, but that meant that it meshed nicely with Yeomen.

As for Yeomen, it's going fine. I guess mistakes were made leading up to the performances, but if no mistakes were ever made then everything would be boring. One of our directors has had to leave for *static*, and I will miss her. (I miss her already, and I saw her just today!) But the show must go on, this next Friday.

It being Yeomen, we really don't have very large audiences. Seriously, the first night we had 19 whole people reserved, and a staggering 40 showed up. That's 10% of our audience for G&S Christmas Carol. That said, MY GAWD are these audiences awesome. The 40-60 people that showed up each night this weekend had a great time. Even this Sunday's audience was energetic. And that's the best thing ever.

I might have mentioned that I turned my old decrepit computer, GIR--don't tell Nickelodeon--into an awesome server, and recently an even awesomer alarm clock. (It's a word if I say so!) There's not much going on there, though. I installed Wordpress purely on a whim, so it's sitting there nice and blank. I have no idea what to do with it now.

When I installed Wordpress, I initially wanted to host that new project I mentioned, so that I could use javascript. But then I realized that we're paying for and using a home service, and that if I hosted a blog, we'd probably get a nasty letter from our ISP.

So I'm probably going to remove Wordpress for now, or shove it into a separate folder and use it to document what I learn about network administration, and anything else that GIR helps me with. I've been using Webmin a lot, although I can get by on the command line if I have to. But the tool is there, so why not use it, hmm?

Now I need to read a bit and make sure I know how to secure everything before I give people a link to GIR, or I would do that. I will do that, in fact, once I am sure.

Know what the really cool advantage to having a server in your bedroom is? Shell account + GNU Screen == lifeblood. I can just leave everything like TinyFugue (a command-line MUSH client) and Finch (Pidgin's command-line version) running, and start it up from a computer on the other side of the country if I have to, without it missing a beat.

So I can start a conversation at home, leave, and connect via SSH from the library for example--I have a Java-based SSH client installed too, btw--and pick up the conversation where I left off, as though I were still at home. Same with editing a text file or anything else...

Here's a dinky picture you can hopefully click on to see a big one!

From Drop Box

Obviously since I'm using PuTTY here, alsamixer does me no good at all, but it's neat.

Now, screen has a little trouble with UTF-8, or perhaps I just haven't figured out how to make it work properly, but hey. It's awesome, either way.

That's enough for now, I'm done...

Indeed I'm not. I've just not felt like posting anything.

A few things.

First, I feel I'm doomed to naivete, regardless of what I have or will learn, or am learning. Just call it a hunch, hmm?

Second, looking back four years ago, I can see how I have matured. It's raised some interest in me regarding cultural and psychological development, specifically that of sexuality, currently. (Other focuses have and will crop up presently) I know no one wants to hear such things, but it's interesting! It can possibly be summed up in sociology anyway. Sociology sounds better.

Third, I really enjoy thinking about how the set OMP uses has evolved over time, even in the one or two years since I've been doing shows with them. It grew a balcony for HMS Pinafore, and now three of the platforms we use to extend the stage have shrunk. It's a two-tiered thing now, and with a 'runway' poking out. I think it would be cool to take a photo of each set from now on (plus whatever photos might exist of old sets) and see how it's changed. I need money so I can do this, and other similar things.

I'll talk more later, I guess.

I'm not going to take a position on gun control, right now, 'cause that's
not the point my brain is trying to make to me. Mostly I guess the point is
that people should, in arguing their case, at least avoid logical fallacies.
I'm just as guilty, especially when I'm not putting my words to paper--I'm
scatterbrained when I don't have time to review and research--but here.

The most common fallacy I've seen in this particular debate--the gun control
one--is a sort of genetic
fallacy<http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/genetic-fallacy.html>,
if I remember right. What the one side--the pro gun-rights side--does is
quote from Memoirs
of the Life and Writings of Benjamin Franklin. "*They who can give
up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither
liberty nor safety.*"

I disagree, in some cases, but it seems solid anyway. Regardless of the
validity of the point, though, they always append '-- Benjamin Franklin'. To
make sure their opponents--the 'anti gun-rights' side (that's sort of a
false dilemma too, but that's a different post)--are aware of just who said
it. That's the fallacy. The quote is supposed to be automatically valid
because Benjamin Franklin said it. (Even if it is taken out of context) And
he's, you know, Benjamin Franklin.

I always wanted, even when I wasn't taking part in the debate, to quote
right back at them. "*I do not consider
Hitler to be as bad as he is
depicted. He is showing an ability that is amazing and
seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshed*" -- Mahatma
Gandhi. That wouldn't do much beyond making myself look like a Nazi, though
the point would be to show how dumb it is to quote someone to support your
cause.

Now granted, that quote, the Gandhi one, is out of context. It was spoken,
or written, in 1940, and the war was only just starting. Nothing incredibly
monstrous had happened yet--besides the whole starting a war thing. But it
shows my point anyway. Just because you quote someone famous, and credible,
doesn't mean that what they said was correct.

That said, I'm not aching for a debate on gun laws. Look up there, see? I
dislike both extremes. If you want to debate it, don't drag me in. Just do
it in a way that is sound.

Next Topic!

Did you look up there, click that link to Franklin's memoirs? I sincerely
hope you did. If not, go click it. I'll wait.

Ok, good. I sincerely hope you appreciate how amazing it is that you can
read that online, and for free. (With a library card, if you want it
-really- for free) Even print it. In 2004 (source) this wouldn't
have been possible, through these means. There may have been other sources
online, but come on. You have to admit, Google Book Search is pretty
awesome.

There's also wikisource. The Wikimedia Foundation is pretty lacking in
evil as well. Then look over at Hulu. The
point I'm getting at is, the internet, for all of the worries some people
have, (which are justified in some cases) is amazing. Simply amazing. You
just have to know how to use it. Look
at it. That's how the universe was formed. Probably.

And the internet has only been available to the public for as long as I
have been alive. That's eighteen years. Look where it has come in
eighteen years. Now say 'wow'. Now go read about it. :)