Category: Links

Insert Distraction Here.

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Ok, some videos and such to distract you from the fact that I haven’t posted anything about my recent trip to Wales.

First Where The Hell Is Matt (2008).  The back story of the video is this:

“Matthew Harding spent 14 months visiting 42 countries in order to produce “Where the Hell is Matt?”, a four-and-a-half minute video featuring Harding (and anyone else he could rope into it) doing an incredibly silly, high-energy dance in some of the most breathtaking scenery around the world. This may be the best four minutes and twenty-eight seconds of your week.“

I happen to agree. The video made me grin like a fool for no reason — and for every reason, it just made my heart feel light, and made me happy.  I liked the song enough to actually pay for it (conceal your shocked expressions, please).  If you wanna know more about Matt and his 15 minutes of fame, you can read all about it on HIS SITE.

Second, a video that I’m sure everyone has seen, but just hit my radar today, courtesy of an email.  I present to you, the heartbreak of COOTIES.

Lastly… sometimes it’s worth watching the ORIGINAL, sincere, but unintentionally silly video, just so you can really enjoy the PARODIES, as most of the time they are FUNNIER, and more LUDICROUS.  And then someone comes along and does THIS (ignore the video, listen to the music).

Pratchett-isms, And WTF.

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It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series.  It has evolved and grown beyond just a mere collection of books, and into a realm that commands as rabid — if not more, and politely so — a fan base that the Harry Potter series.  It’s been around longer, requires no particular reading order to enjoy, and boasts such a wide variety of amusing characters that while you may not like all of them, I guarantee you’ll find a quite a number of them that you do (and generally, they character subsets switch around from book to book so you’re not inundated with a bazillion characters at once).  And having just said that you can just pick up at any book and read, it’s nice to start at the beginning and work your way through, as it’s nice to watch the characters evolve and become quite well rounded indeed.

Been re-reading a few of the earlier books, very purposefully, to gain a sense on how far some of the characters come in their growth.  Stumbled across a few quotes (of many) that struck me as worth repeating.  The first is from Granny Weatherwax in Equal Rites, and while short, speaks volumes and mirrors a small splinter of my personal philosophy:

“They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.“

The second is from Reaper Man, and made me giggle for about a minute solid, while riding a recumbent bike in the gym, surrounded by sweaty people who seemed to have left their sense of humor in their lockers.  The context you need to understand this quote is this: it is between two wizards on the staff of Unseen University (a college of sorts for wizards of the stuffy, elitist, six-meal-a-day and do not much else type), and the Librarian is an orangutan who once was a human, was changed by an unfortunate accident, and refuses to be changed back as it suits his particular vocation.  He also communicates (quite clearly somehow) with a vocabulary that mainly consists of the word “oook“.

“Oook.”
“You? We can’t take you,” said the Dean, glaring at the Librarian. “You don’t know a thing about guerrilla warfare.”
“Oook!” said the Librarian, and made a surprisingly comprehensive gesture to indicate that, on the other hand, what he didn’t know about orangutan warfare could be written on the very small pounded up remains of, for example, the Dean.

And, as a final, completely unrelated note, THIS must be destroyed before it can reach the children! Seriously man, it’s freaking me out.

Skeewats!

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So, I’m about to begin my last set of squats… sumo squats.  I’m standing there with the bar across my shoulders, feet spread as far as the rack will let me go.  My legs having been already rendered near to jelly by a really good workout, and I’m wondering if I’ll make all the reps — or puss out a few shy of completion, when all of a sudden my iPod ticks over to Avenged Sevenfold: Bat Country.  The lead guitar rumbles out a chord that sounds like a Harley reaching critical mass as it plummets off a cliff, and the singer growls at me…

“He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man!”

“Jesus… fuck!” I say as I start to dip into the squats, my body responding to the heavy, fast bass and drum line that follows.  My brain had nothing to do with it, it sat there useless, whining about how tired the body seemed to be.  I snapped out a few reps above and beyond what my goal was.

The music can make the difference, and put you in the right frame of mind — even for a few minutes.  Grant you, I don’t listen to what GonzO does when he works out… the kind of music that eats guitars and shits pure evil.  But I have some nicely fast paced, serious rhythm stuff in my arsenal.  Bat Country does it for me every time, and it has the side benefit of being (more or less) a tribute to Hunter S. Thompson — the weirdest sonofabitch to come out of modern American journalism.  The song is a nod to the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which opens with the same quote as the song, and does a pretty good job or representing the chaotic, drug induced roller coaster trip that propels the book.

And on that note, I’m going to drag myself along the carpet and get some dinner.  My legs seem to be experiencing technical difficulties.

Aberystwyth Bound — Part 6.

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Ok, double entry (heh heh) this time because I’ve been such a slacker.

Have been distracted by a number of things.  First and foremost, DmentD.com moved to a new server and needed a little ironing out before the full switch-over happened.

Second, and I think more importantly, the addition of a proper GALLERY to my arsenal of tools to bore the hell out of you all.  I’m going to be migrating the Cake Gallery over to there, and include more pictures of the various cakes as well.  I’ll also be migrating the Ghosts of Halloween Past as well.  Since it is so damned easy to add things to the gallery now, rather than having to write a new page for each event, I can actually catch up on all the missing years of Halloween.  Also I can add pictures for things I think you peeps would like to see.  If you register an account for the gallery (and I reserve the right to refuse anyone an account, I am restricting it to folks I actually know and keeping the random strangers off my lawn), you’ll be able to add comments to pictures, and that is the icing on the cake, so to speak… hearing the reactions from you chuckleheads.

So, having rationalized my recent silence, on with the post.

Journal Entry — September 17th: Finally and at Last!

The rest of the trip into Aberystwyth was uneventful — made all my connections, all trains were on time (a miracle if ever there was one, according to my hosts), and the scenery was wonderful.  I’m quite sure I was pegged as a non-European instantly, just from the features of my face, and I’m able to start to see some trends in the faces of the English and Welsh (can’t really describe it, just sorta’ can).

Was met at the station by Sweets, and never have I seen a more wonderful sight!

Had a brisk walk from the train station back to the house, made to feel even longer due to the fact that I was towing a large suitcase — with an even larger box strapped to it — behind me.  As prepared as I thought I was for cars to be traveling on the other side of the road, it still caught me off guard, and even now I still look the wrong way when crossing the street.

Made it back to the house, and let me just say that it is a universal thing for a house to look like a war zone when owned by two young men, specifically the two guys that Sweets rents a room from.  I knew this style of “house decoration” from years and years of knowing GonzO, Phreeq, and their brood — a sort of post-modern junkyard.  That’s perfectly fine.  Dropped off the luggage, spent some time reuniting, and relaxed until everyone came home.

I met Bob, who had been staying at the house for a bit.  Andrew, Phil & Meg came home one by one, we had a round of introductions, and then opened the box of fun that I brought with me.  Had a good time watching everyone open their gifts and playing with them.  We had dinner, and watched a little TV (that I was trying very hard not to fall asleep during — and failing miserably), then Sweets and I made our way to bed.

Journal Entry — September 18th: The Burgeoning Tourist

Had a nice lie-in, then Sweets and I took off.  After a pleasant walk into town — about 20 minutes to get pretty much anywhere by foot — we sat down to have some breakfast for lunch (a full English breakfast to be specific… two eggs, two sausages, bacon rasher, baked beans, mushrooms and toast — a meal to do a Southern boy proud).  After breakfast we walked to the Aberystwyth Castle ruins and I went into full tourist mode, taking pictures and gawking at everything.

We moved on from the castle and walked along the seafront for a bit and stopped in some shops where I bought some real coffee from a surprisingly ‘coffee-snobbish’ shop, for later in the week.  Instant coffee seems to be the standard ’round these parts as (ta-da! a stereotype comes true!) tea is the hot drink of choice.  I also picked up a metric ass-ton of postcards to send back home.

Went to a little coffee shop, and I had my own little cafetière (aka French press) of coffee, and we relaxed for a bit, chatting.  Had my first opportunity to spend my newly exchanged English money.  The bills are easy enough to sort out, but the coins still give me fits, except for the pound.

Walked home an visited with everyone for a bit then hitched a ride with Phil & Meg to a nice Indian restaurant in town.  Apparently “doggie bags” are not as universally common as I had previously assumed, as I got funny looks when I asked for a container to take my leftovers home — this was confirmed by Sweets, as she was a little surprised when she was here that we were pretty much asked at every restaurant if we wanted a box or container for our leftovers.

We had a nice walk home (lots of walking in this trip), and relaxed with a little TV before heading to bed.

Aberystwyth Bound — Part 3.

DmentD

Ok, I’ve been lazy, but I think I have two valid excuses to explain why I have been lax in fulfilling the never made — and therefore never honored — promise to post within certain time constraints.

First: Halloween.  This is the first year in many that I’ve been able to actually build things and participate in party plans.  My time was deliciously spent covered in sawdust, glue and paint.  Consider yourselves lucky to get that previous post on the 18th.

Second: Guitar Hero III.  Holy crap, this game is fun!  I’ve been fantastically absorbed in it, and trying to work past playing the (fake guitar) controller like a monkey with 6 thumbs trying to peel a banana.  I finally beat the easy level, and now I move on the medium.  I played the first song — which on easy is now a mere finger warm-up exercise — and I felt like three of my fingers were removed and I was scrambling around trying to hit the fret buttons with the remaining digits.  Still, it’s great fun.  Basically DDR for your fingers.  For a lively example of the game, HERE’S a video of a player in “expert mode”, playing the final guitar battle against Lou, the last boss.  Bear in mind, he’s also doing this while throwing, and having thrown at him, powerups that cause strange things to happen to the guitar (cut strings, amp overloads, reversed strings, etc).

So without further ado…

Journal Entry — September 15th: Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop.

Got seven hours of sleep in a cool, clammy room on pancake flat pillows — but it was better than sleeping at the airport.  Woke, shaved, showered and checked out.  Hopped on the shuttle and made it to the airport by 11:30am.

Stood in the international check-in line for about 45 minutes, even though I already had my boarding pass from last night.  I wanted to check on the status of my flight, and the status of the box I checked on.  The flight is still on time and the box is here at the airport waiting to be transferred to this flight.  I was told to check on it again at the gate about 6pm to make sure it is still on track.

I was also told I could go wait in the business class traveler’s lounge in terminal “E”.  Apparently I hadn’t noticed that the friendly, magical ticket fairies that helped me last night bumped me up to business class.  At least I’ll be a little more comfortable on this flight.  I swear they must have been fairies, at Babba Yagga’s ticket booth!  It was in the middle of nowhere, with no gate in sight!  That booth must grow legs and move around randomly.  Jeebus bless the magical ticket folk at the Atlanta airport!

So, after hunting down some proper food I go to the lounge, only to be turned away because I didn’t actually pay for my business class ticket.  Snobs! So, I got a large coffee and took the train back to “T” and to my gate so I can plant my butt in a seat and wait with the rest of the lowly commoners.

At 6pm I’m gonna check on the status of my plane and the box.  Been IM-ing with Sweets, talking to my mom, and making a short blog post from my phone — gotta love modern technology!