viaje a target con rebecca
rebecca came over on friday to work on invitations for the grandaddio party (7th grade class reunion; rebecca, pain pills, long story...). she wanted to sojurn to the nearby target because it's so peaceful since everybody is at wal-mart. :c) on the way, we listened to the iPod and sang along to oldies, like "tearing up my heart" and "i want you back" by 'n sync and "show me the meaning of being lonely" by backstreet boys. you remember those days? when britany spears wore clothes and christina agulera (sp?) had normal hair? remember cleopatra, that group of island girls that sang the song "cleopatra comin' at ya"? they were pretty popular for a while. and o-town, which was created on a reality show. i still hear their songs sometimes. anyway, remeniscing like that made us feel really old. the teeny-boppers today don't know that justin timberlake came with four other guys and that aaron carter had a brother. they don't even listen to that music anymore. they listen to good charlotte and nelly these days. and probably marlyn manson and nine inch nails in a few months. where have all the boy bands gone? and have you seen those "bratz dolls"? and "cali barbie" or "melanoma barbie" as we like to call her. soon, all the little pre-teens will be either goth or slutty. i think it's time for another boy band movement to save the teeny-boppers of america. i remember when justin and brittany and christina used to be role models. fame destroys people. the degredation of society can be seen in its pop stars and celebrities. we need morals and values again. and barbie needs sunscreen and maybe some chemo if she's not careful...

no more monkeying around
Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless! The site that taught me most of what i know about web design and programming, the home of beautifully helpful tutorials, Webmonkey, is closing its doors. I blubbered and sobbed while i read the Wired News article about its untimely demise. I can just hope that they keep the site on the web, even if they fire all the staffers. They wouldn't take it down, would they? I mean, I could deal with no new content, but the wealth of knowledge?how could someone flush all that down the preverbial toilet? Well, we'll just have to see what happens. And I guess that's all I have to say about that.

best books ever
i just finished reading my other favorite book. i've never been able to say "i couldn't put it down" and mean it so much. i read almost all of it today. it wasn't too long and it wasn't too short. it was just right. the plot was wonderful and detailed with multi-tiered meanings almost worthy of Hawthorne. and the suspense...oh the suspense. Alfred would be proud. and it read well, too. colorful enough to be a vivid screenplay for a movie and sprinkled with just enough interesting words (aka "big" words) to keep it intellegent without being verbose. and where the plot seems a little thin ("technology like that's hardly believeable..."), it's where the message takes over, and the reader realizes that it's a warning. it doesn't seem that dangerous, even inviting in some aspects, and it's so widespread that it's scary when i think how incredibly imminent it is. you think i've used "it" enough? how vague can i be? well, the name of the book is nightmare academy. it's by frank peretti, one of the best authors of the 20th century. my other favorite book is this present darkness, and hangman's curse, the first book in the veritas series, is really good, too. those are the only two books i've ever read twice (or even wanted to read twice). forget that harry potter stuff. who needs it? give me peretti anyday.

misanthrope i am
i hate stupidity. which inheritly means i hate driving, since all the stupidity of all the people on the roads is brought to a crescendo around my vehicle. please, don't use your turn signal. i don't need to know what erractic paths your whimsy will direct your little european car. oh, and just now, i was trying to take a nap. i just wanted 3 more minutes. but no. my sister had to start her american idol audition. i had asked her nicely to be quiet before, so why should ask again? i gave her a chance and toughed it out for a minute (a muscle-tensing, impatient minute that i could have spent resting on the thought plane) before i let out a short, irritated "shhh!" common courtesy would dictate being quiet. i would have, and i do when i am asked. but she let out a awful, defiant trumpet and kept on just long enough to be a butthole. what she couldn't see beneath the afgan blanket was my balled fists and my face bending around a scowl. so i threw off the blanket, cranked up my iPod, and posted this entry. nothing productive, but it's better than what i could've done.

4 hours and one number 2 pencil later...
today i got up extra early to drive across town to take the ACT assesment test. i saw chris there, and we talked while we waited outside for 15 minutes in the freezing cold wind. "were your ears and extremities thoroughly frostbitten before the test?" should have been a question on the student review at the end. anyway, chris saved the day, since i had gotten everything i could possibly need...except for pencils. so he lent me one. how nice! i hate the science section. give me english or reading or even math, but the science?no. don't get me wrong: i love science, with a passion, even. but the science on the tests is all about interpreting data and confusing charts and graphs. "according to the pH data experiment 3, under what conditions would the percent of enzymes in Facies G affect the number of Newtons the ants would need to exert to pull the elaiosome from the seeds?" well, i think i did better on the science on the test than i did on the practice test, since i actually tried to understand it this time around. of course, that meant sacrificing the last 4 or 5 questions to the uneducated guess. D for "Daisy...G for "Grandaddy"... got a 16 in math with that method when i took the ACT in 7th grade. i hope i did that good this time around. :c)

thar she blows!
everyone likes dead whales, right? well, i found this interesting article a while ago. kept forgetting to post it. and after you read that, check this out for a whale of a good time. oh and BTW, my current favorite song is "My Immortal (Band Version)" by Evanescence.

hop-a-long goes for a walk
this afternoon, i went walking with my sister and the dogs. yes, my toe is still blue-grey and painful to move, but she couldn't handle two dogs all by her lonesome. so being the good sister, i took daisy's blue leash and walked up the street with her. it was an uneventful walk, except for the few painful times daisy would run me. then we saw a big dog and started to pulling the dogs when we realized that the poor thing had it's front leg in a cast. its run was like that of a raven, a rocking from side to side, except less smooth and more comical. i laughed. then i remembered i didn't look any better running up the street. and we saw trey on his dirtbike. while we were talking to him, i looked over and saw daisy dumping in the yard of a new house for sale. i tugged to leash, i'm guessing to move her out to the street, but i didn't expect to get that far. instead, there was left a kind of trail across the driveway. a trail of poo. instead of letting her leave a big pile in their grass, i decided to be helpful and spread the turds around a little. i hope the owners didn't see me scurrying away...

blonde bombshells
sometimes when the dogs behave so well and are sweet and loving to us and each other, i can't imagine parting with biscuit. then some days...i could give both of them away. right now they're outside because i didn't want to deal with them fighting in the house. just a little while ago, i shoved them outside amid a gutteral tirade of "bad dog"'s, after they had found a paper towel roll and torn it to shreads on the loveseat. luckily, it was almost empty anyway. that before that, biscuit had brought in and chewed up a foreign object that looked suspiciously like a turd. i decided it was just a muddy chunk of wood. not too long ago, we discovered that somebody had chewed up the printer power cord. lucky for the culprit (::cough cough:: biscuit), it wasn't plugged in. and the power cord to the laptop charger, which is near the printer cord, was chewed also. fortunately, my dad was able to splice the printer cord and repair the other cord. i'm wondering if we'll ever be able to find people who want a fat, masticating cocker spaniel that exacts his revenge through piles of poo on the carpet.

twenty years of macintosh!!
yes, folks. on january 24th, apple introduced the macintosh. lately, i've been marvelling at how apple is always behind everything cutting-edge. very few people know how instrumental apple is. most people are already familiar with the obvious achievements like the G5, the iPod, the iTunes Music Store, and many other innovative apple computers and products. but did you know that apple partially owns FireWire? and i'm sure everyone's familiar with Pixar, but how many know that steve jobs, co-founder/CEO apple, was co-founder of Pixer also? yeah. and if you look at the end of the credits for the Lord of the Rings movies, which had the best CG that i have ever seen, there's an apple and a blurb that says "Rendered with Pixar's RenderMan." if you see something totally new and innovative and amazing, there's a big possibility that apple is somewhere behind it. and now their greatest innovation is 20 years old. everyone, no matter what his os, should at least respect the mac. heck, if it hadn't been for the macintosh, we'd still be using commodores. :c)

around the world in 80 seconds
i don't have kazaa; i don't trust kazaa. i don't trust cheezy mp3 memberships either. i just want my mp3s free and without strings. or porn. eesh. and while i think the iTunes music store is one of the greatest inventions of our time, i'm a cheapskate. :c) so in these days of kazaa and iTunes, i have to travel from one end of the internet to the other to find a song. and that's if it's popular. i've been all over the world. i've been to dingy russian sites that remind me of MIR. i've been to creepy japanese sites that are covered in hoochy anime cartoons. i've even been to a ukranian site. i can translate some of the text on the spanish sites. then i give up and use the systran translator in sherlock. :c) well, i still haven't found the song yet, so i'll get back to work.