shuffle!

Or, Memep3 take 2.

Remember this meme? (Which led to this one that was also cool, but sadly, never seemed to catch on...)

Anyway. Time to do it again. Just because!

Meme rules:
Step 1: Put your MP3 player or whatever on random.

Step 2: Post the first line from the first 20 songs that play, no matter how embarrassing the song.

Step 3: Post and let everyone you know guess what song and artist the lines come from.

Yeah, I'm not doing 20 this time. I think, oh, 8 or 9 is a better number.

While I fire up iTunes, I'll talk about something. Um.
Huh. I guess not. Here we go!!

1) "Happy Jack wasn't old, but he was a man." (oh, way to start all easy!)

2) "Well you've got the perfect disguise and you're looking ok."

3) "So long to this cold, cold part of the world."

4) "So you say I need to consider this." (finally start getting harder)

5) "I'm losing speed, trying to keep up with you."

6) "Just living the way I live, the faces in the crowd."

7) "Howard, the strangest things have happened lately"

8) "SPEW!!!"

9) "I know, I know, I said that I would quit!"

Oh, here's an iTunes related question - does anyone know how to make it stop skipping the final five seconds of songs when playing a playlist? Sometimes it's cool, but mostly it's kinda annoying.

Good luck, everyone! (And if you want to do the meme on your own blog, let me know. I suck at the guessing, but I do like getting the peek into what's on everyone's playlists.)

I'm only happy when it rains

I was going to blog about how last night between 1:30 and 3:30 in the morning there was an incredibly powerful thunderstorm that passed through the Las Vegas valley, waking up everyone. (Seriously. Everyone in the house, and everyone I've talked to about it at work, plus all the news anchors and radio djs stated how the storm woke them up.)
And I was going to blog about how, during the storm, I had fears of the house's roof falling in.
And I thought about blogging about how that didn't happen, but when I got to work this morning, I discovered that the lobby was completely flooded and the ceiling tiles were soaked and collapsing. And I'd blog about how that was due not to the rain, surprisingly enough, but because the upstairs urinal in the men's bathroom was broken (probably on Friday) and kept flowing all weekend and flooded the upstairs which soaked through to the downstairs lobby.

I was going to blog about all that, then I realized that it's late, and I have to wake up early tomorrow morning, and there's a chance for another storm tonight, so instead, here's a silly little quiz.

Your Score: Starbucks

53% personality, 24% politics/class, 78% intelligence

You're a Starbucks whore. Spread those lips.

Link: The Which Evil Corporation Are You Test written by memoriesrewound on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

She turned me into a newt!

Warning: This post will contain spoilers for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, untagged. If you have not read that book completely, just know that the discussion might not make sense to you, and may ruin some elements of the novel if/when you do get around to reading it.


J.K. Rowling is a witch.

In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Harry, Ron, and Hermione spend a good portion of the novel in the woods, on the hunt for the remaining Horcruxes that belong to Lord Voldemort. (A Horcrux is, as was determined in the Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, an object that a (dark) wizard uses to store a part of their soul. In order to fragment your soul, you have to murder someone. Tom Riddle, AKA the Dark Lord Voldemort, has created seven horcruxes. In order to completely kill him, all of the horcruxes must be destroyed. Otherwise, as long as a horcrux remains, a part of Voldie's soul still lives on, and thus, he manages to be somewhat immortal. [/backstory for anyone that needed it])

One of the horcruxes is a locket that Harry, Ron, and Hermione take turns wearing/guarding while they search for a way to destroy it. This locket, which contains part of this powerful man's soul, actually begins to affect the young trio if they are around it for too long.

When this particular event took place in the novel, I came to my horrible realization:

The Harry Potter books are horcruxes.

Ignoring for the moment that souls don't exist (or that I don't believe in them, if you want to be all picky), the stories that J.K. Rowling wrote do, in a very real way, contain a part of who she is. She put her thoughts and memories and ideas into the stories, and if thoughts and memories and ideas are NOT what a soul is supposed to be, well, then I don't know what is.

Additionally, the stories go on to affect people who spend an extended amount of time with them. By reading Rowling's stories, you change your own soul.
And the fact that she has printed them into books means that she has, in a way, achieved Voldemort's goal: Immortality.

Coincidentally, both Voldemort and J.K. Rowling created seven different vessels.

But I'm 99% certain that Rowling didn't have to kill anyone to create hers.

TV in September

I'm going to attempt to blog everyday in September. (With the exceptions being the days we go out of town)

The 'blog everyday' thing has been done before, so this time, I'm bringing a P@ypical twist to it.

I am going to review/document/talk about/snark on everything I watch on television during that month. Whether it be broadcast on the air, watched on DVD, or screened at work, I'll blog about it. (I might even include videos watched on the computer, but we'll see how the tv angle goes first)

I may not be able to document *everything* I watch (I mean, how many times can I include the HeadOn commercial?) but I hope to get at least 90% of my boob-tube interaction blogged. I want to see a) exactly how much television I watch and b) hopefully provide some entertaining insight into what I'm seeing. (Plus, I can talk about movies that everyone else saw years ago, and I'm just catching up with thanks to Netflix!)

The ungoogleable

There are some people - probably quite a few, actually - who, it appears, can NOT be found using Google.

On a whim, I've googled several of my old friends from time to time, just to see if they show up, or what they might be up to. Bits and pieces show up for most of them, but there are instances where putting in the person's name wields zero results.

Who are these people? Why are they not showing up on the internet? Have they gone on to become modern-day Luddites? Are they in the Witness Protection Program for having seen the truth about Pat Sajak? Do they have some sort of google-shield magic working?

I'd find out the answers to those questions, but, alas, google isn't helping me.

Top Ten

Heh.

Today being Saren's decade-mark, here are the top ten events of the day (in no particular order).

10. Seeing a rainbow
9. Riding the 'tomato' at Las Vegas Mini Gran Prix
8. Getting rained on, while at Las Vegas Mini Gran
7. Getting cards and presents from her sisters
6. Getting cards and presents from her friends
5. Playing for hours with her friends at the park
4. Cake!
3. Taking pictures with Steph's camera
2. Turning ten! Certainly doesn't happen everyday.
1. Being awesome. But then, she does that on a daily basis.

Happy 10th Birthday, Saren!!

I can name ... in six words

Who's up for a little lyrical game?

I will post the first two words, an ellipses, and the last two words of a song. Your mission is to identify them. Artist and title, if you're really good. ;)

I'll post the answers after a day or so.EDITED!

Decided the game was a little too difficult, so I'm adding a word to the beginning and the end. Plus, the ones that have already been IDed are no longer in the running. Answers will be up..probably the day after tomorrow.

Here we go!

1) "I'd like to ... garden with you."

2) "Came in from ... is my world."

3) "There are places ... love you more."

4) "I want ... my atmosphere." Soul Meets Body by Death Cab for Cutie [IDed by Kirk]

5) "Some say the ... all come down."

6) "On a dark ... can never leave."

7) "Can you feel ... what is it?"

8) "Hello I've waited ... when she sang."

9) "Is this ... wind blows." Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen [IDed by CosmicAvatar]

10) "In my ... just disappear." Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden [IDed by Kirk]

11) "Are you ... of mine." Scarborough Fair by Simon & Garfunkel [IDed by Cosmic Avatar]

12) "An old man ... helping you out."

13) "What's with these ... care about that."

14) "Spent my days ... as it seems."

15) "Don't you ever ... never never change."

Good luck!

Eight eight I forget what eight was for

Yeah, I should really use that title next year. I'll have to try to remember that.

Random ness.

1. I read The Big Question by Chuck Barris. God only knows why I finished it. Very very badly written stuff. Chuck Barris, in case you don't know, and don't feel like wikiing him up, was the creator of The Gong Show, The Newlywed Game, and the author of Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, which was recently turned into a movie.
Anyway. We rented CoaDM from Netflix a few weeks back, and when I saw that Chucky Baby had written a new book about a game show wherein the final question is a matter of life and death (answer the final question correctly, win 100 million dollars. Get it wrong, and you're executed live on tv), I figured, that might be a fun read.
Um. Not so much.
Interesting, if not completely original, idea. Horrible horrible execution. (No pun intended)

2. I'm now reading (about 100 pages in) State of Fear by Michael "Jurassic Park" Crichton. I have a feeling this book is going to piss me off. It's interesting so far, but I just suspect that the anger will eventually come.
Why do I read things again?

3. Here's a youtube video that is quite catchy, and pretty fun. Plus, it's Harry Potter related. Harper loves it. And I find myself singing it at random moments in the day. Dumbledore!


4. I found a site that you can watch movies, tv shows, cartoons, music videos. Not sure if it's legal or not, but, anyway, I'm about half way through watching The Host. I bet that Annika and or Will have seen it. It's a Japanese (?) horror movie that came out in 2006 about a gigantic mutated ...monster attacking people. Surprisingly good so far.

5. Dinner? What should we have for dinner?

6. Stateris. It's Tetris, using the United States. (There's also a European countries version, if you're so inclined.)

7. Dude, it would be nice if I finished a project once in a while, wouldn't it? Lately, I've been wanting to go back and work on/add to/finish (ha ha ha ha) the Perth story. You know, the one that I started as my nanowrimo novel back in 2005. I left it in a spot where I had written myself into a bit of a corner, but recently I've been thinking about ways to get out of it. Of course, I haven't found time to actually do any work on it, but, at least it's reemerging in my mind.
The ironic thing is that *new* story ideas have begun to invade my imagination, claiming for the attention that rightfully belongs to other, older, more neglected stories first. [sigh]

8. I had something to say here, but I've forgotten what it was.
(See what I did there?)

Sadly, I neglected step 4

Million Dollar Plan!

1) Grow hair for, oh, say a year or so.
2) Get haircut quite short.
3) Go to work sporting new do.
4) Charge everyone who comments on your new appearance one dollar.
5) PROFIT!!!!