rants and ramblings of utter randomness

Dear Elton and Billy,

Thank you for a lovely evening. I hope we can do it again soon. You guys rock, literally.

Love, Love, Love,

Me.

P.S. Say hi to Bernie for me. He was definitely with us in spirit, as always. :D

Okay, I asked this question on Facebook and so far the crickets are chirping away.

The question is this: If the United States Constitution is to be taken exactly as the Founding Fathers intended, then wouldn't only white men of property get to vote? Because um. That's what "all men" meant to the powdered-wig set. And yeah, I know that "All men are created equal" is from the Declaration of Independence and not the Constitution, but the two documents are written with the same mindset.

My other question is: Why are so many Americans in such denial that there is an unwritten Constitution? Because there is. If there weren't, the Supreme Court wouldn't be able to say that Americans have a fundamental right to privacy, because the word isn't in the original document, and militias would be running around shooting muskets at everyone. Well, okay, maybe not so much with the muskets, but you get my point.


In other news, they gave Nibbles an Awful Awful, yaaaay!!

See?

Today is the birthday of France, and also of mr_t00by, who turned twenty at eight minutes after midnight this morning. This makes me feel, oh, about as old as France. But yay, birthday! :D :D :D



Also, because I shouldn't be the only one addicted to this, here:

Mahjong solitaire

Say goodbye to your lives, y'all.

In case anyone is interested, the opening statements of the Sotomayor confirmation hearings are being broadcast live over at C-SPAN. It's being broadcast pre-recorded over at CPAC, so you can come in at an earlier point there.

*crickets chirp*

Um, okay. See ya. :)

P.S. I think Sheldon Whitehouse might just be made of a whole passel of awesome. Yay, Rhode Island!

The source article is well worth reading; it makes you go 'hmm', and then 'um, quelle surprise.'


In other news, my new bag of coffee that I only used once is MISSING. Now see, I live in an apartment with two bedrooms, one bath, a kitchen area, and a living/dining room. HOW COULD COFFEE GO MISSING? And yes, I've looked in the freezer. It's the first place I looked, in fact.

Delivery Room Football by Emmett Miller, MD

This.

I'm slowly warming to the President's healthcare plan; even though I wish it would take insurance companies entirely out of the picture and go entirely single-payer, I know it's not feasable right now because Congress would laugh it out of the House (and the Senate). So this is the next best thing. And everyone will have access to healthcare and maybe, maybe single-payer will eventually get put on the table.


In related news this:

Special Message to the Congress Recommending a Comprehensive Health Program, by Harry S. Truman.

I find this both amusing and hella frustrating, because ffs, Harry Truman thought the system needed fixing OVER SIXTY YEARS AGO. Amerikay needs to get with the effing program, already.

There's a PROMO VIDEO for the baby shooter.

I'm appalled, insulted, amused, embarrassed, and disgusted. ALL AT EXACTLY THE SAME TIME.

Lt. Dan Choi may be fired from the military for refusing to lie about who he loves

I think you can drive this down the street and SHOOT BABIES AT PEOPLE..


Also, this? Needs to become an icon somewhere around immediately:

This is probably the closest to a Michael Jackson retrospective post you'll get from me.

He was only two years older than me, so I grew up with him. My childhood memories were of 'I'll Be There' and 'Ben', not 'Thriller' or 'Billie Jean' (although I loved both, and more). I first knew of him as a cute boy with a lot of talent. I crushed on him back when I was twelve, and afterwards always admired him for his musical genius. In 1991 I saw this, and I realized that 'genius' was a horrible understatement:





I could write a whole rant on Michael and how he's been seen by North America (and how he's NOT seen by places like Senegal and Ivory Coast who love him for his music), but I'm not going to. Michael Jackson was more, and less, and light-years away from all that. He didn't just make pop, he made art.

So, anyone know how long this is supposed to last? I'm kind of supposed to be there in mid-August.

Also, what's happening with the LCBO? Is liek, the entire province going on strike or something? WOE.


OTOH, if Ontario is dry this may convince mr_t00by that we might want to go to a city a tad closer to Québec. I would not likely complain about that. Hmmm....

Awwww!

OMG MONDAY. I DID NOT KNOW THIS WAS HAPPENING SO SOON.

ETA: The actual date is Monday, July 13. The trailer LIES. euphoricagony has the scoop here. It's still soon though, whee!


I repeat: eeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

I'm doing this meme instead of going to bed like I should. I've done it once before, but I want to see people's results again, so um. Pass it around, it's a fun one.


Go to the Wikipedia home page and click random article. That is your band's name. Click random article again; that is your album name. Click random article 15 more times; those are the tracks on your album.



( Hi! We're brainy, brawny European footballers from Canada who moonlight in Vermont )*


^*Bad pun is bad like a really bad thing.

I didn't even have to think about this one because it's been true all my life. Charlie Brown, without question:

( More icon descriptions )

1. Reply to this post (putting up your hand), and I will pick six of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will create a never-ending cycle of icon glee.


mawaridi asked about ( these icons under here. )

• So my amazing family and my BFF all got together and bought me the best birthday present ever. I haven't used my desktop since I got it. :D :D
  
  
• Oh, and speaking of presents, thank you so much to eldritchhobbit for the virtual presents!
  
  
• Moving into a much, much smaller place is some kind of Buddhist act of casting off worldly goods. Or a hair-pulling act of frustration. I'm trying really hard to think of it as the former. And oddly, I'm succeeding. For the moment, anyway (which, um. Is also Buddhist. *g*).
  
  
• Of all the dorky comms out there--and I mean this as an extreme compliment--I've yet to find one more wondrously dorky than rockmemrspeaker. I've always thought that h20_wtf ran pretty high up the dork-o-meter, but I think this one tops it.
  
  
• Dear Stephen Colbert: MARRY ME PLZ. Dear Mr. President: LESS THAN THREE X ABOUT A BAZILLION.
  
  
• Whether it's science or God or technology or magic or plain blind luck, I will never be convinced that there are no such things as miracles. Case in point.
  
  
• One of the three thousand cool things about Scarecrow and Mrs. King is that all the guys wear suits. I guess even hardcore KGB agents want to look their best when they show up at spy headquarters in the morning. This is also a good show for playing Generic Bad Guy Bingo (which I suck at, but mneh).
  
  
• I've offically cancelled my vacation for June. Since I've been out of work for almost a month, you'd think this wouldn't bother me much. Thing is, schlepping around southern New England trying to move house and recover from random and very owie back issues does not equate with hanging around London and Stratford and Toronto (oh, my!) with my kid. I'm putting in for vacation in mid- to late August, but still. Wah.
  
  
• Now that I'm seriously pushing fifty, I've been thinking about doing some Epic Travelling to celebrate. It's two years away, so I've got a little time to plan (and save money OMG). I've been thinking about doing the Northwest for a while now but haven't figured out exactly how. So, anyway, yesterday's Vinyl Cafe broadcast was recorded from this train, and Stuart MacLean waxed so eloquent about the trip (and yeah, I know, using "Stuart MacLean" and "waxed eloquent" in the same sentence is redundant), I've added it to the List of Possibilities.
  
  Also on the list are:
  
  
  • U.S. Route 66.
    
  • U.S. Route 1, probably the north to south trek. And I could visit patchfire along the way, whee!. Well, okay, it's not exactly "along the way". But I'd definitely make the detour. :)
    
  • Belgium. I'd try very hard to talk bjohan57 into doing at least part of this one with me.
    
  • Oz and New Zealand.
    
  • Ireland (this sounds like a great tour group, even though my usual trip of choice is to travel by myself).
    
  • The Dempster Highway. Not so much alone for this one. I'd be afraid of breaking down in the middle of nowhere and dying of exposure or being eaten by lemmings or something.
    
  • The Alaska Highway.
  
  
  Some of these will eventually rule themselves out for sheer cost, and some could very well mean skipping vacation entirely next year (I'm not entirely sure I could DO such a thing, mind you). And I'll probably add to the list a lot in the next few months. A couple of these trips could actually be combined. You know, like if I win the lottery or something. I figure some kind of tentative planning should happen within a year or so.

Book meme from mijan.


Instructions: Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.


Even considering that I'm counting series that tell one story as one book, this list doesn't even come close to the total number of books I could list.

1. The Dark Tower series by Stephen King.

2. The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling.

3. Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin.

4. Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.

5. The Secret Language by Ursula Nordstrom.

6. The Children Who Stayed Alone by Bonnie Bess Worline.

7. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen.

8. Fire And Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values by Michael Adams.

9. The Forgotten Door by Alexander Key.

10. Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy.

11. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.

13. The Stand by Stephen King.

14. The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub.

15. Time and Again by Jack Finney.