Sunday, February 23, 2003


Grammyessness Part 4: final

I'm sure Norah Jones is a great singer, but for the life of me it's SO HARD TO HEAR HER! On the radio, on tv, everywhere! I can't hear what she's singing! If I could hear her, I'd know whether or not I'd wanna buy the album. Is she that soft on the album too? Oh brother...

Why'd they wait until damn near to the end of the show to have the guy come out and say "we're so glad to be hosting the Grammys!" Shouldn't they do that at the top of the show as part of the welcome? :-P

Anyway, "London Calling" was another casualty of the "bad live acoustics mix" cuz you couldn't hear what they were singing. Someone smack the sound guy upside the head please. Why bother playing the music if you can't hear it? Deaf folks can't listen to it via vibrartions on the tv cuz there's nothing there! they're still saying "and a Grammy winner tonight" when introducing folks but they still don't tell you what they won it for! And the producer is the only one they said to "stand up and be acknolwedged". Is there some sort of off-camera thing going on I'm not aware of? Anyway, it's all over now and I feel like I've wasted my time. Runaway winner this year is Norah Jones and they're playing her song over what should be time for the credits. I still can't hear her.
posted @ 11:29 PM  |   0 comments  |  


Grammyessness Part 3

Bruce and Eminem were great and good respectively, even tho Eminem looks like he doesn't know what he's doing here (blank look on his face). And HOW many posthumous and lifetime achievement awards are they giving out this year?!?! There are more awards and props being given to dead guys than the folks in the arena place.

And someone PLEASE talk to Aretha about that AWFUL outfit! She's not a snow queen... But it's come to this tho: channel surfing. That's right, for the first time I can remember, I've gone channel surfing *during* the awards show. This year's show is crap. If X-Men or The Professional were just starting, I'd change over to that. I've already missed one completely and it's too early for the too late reairing of The Professional. I don't think I even have an extra blank tape for it! And I'm certainly not staying up til 5am to get it if I can help it.

There's another complication: a few months ago, our dryer damn near caught fire and today the washer decided to have a go at it. Now my room is the room in the house with the highest concentration of the fumes in the house and someone's burning something outside. Needless to say, my lungs aren't happy. Wouldn't surprise me if I had to sleep in the den tonight. :-P
posted @ 10:50 PM  |   0 comments  |  


Grammyessness Part 2

Avril Lavinge's preformance was GREAT! In fact, if Weird Al doens't parody her or at least Sk8er Boi I'll be disappointed (but understanding). You could tell Robin WIlliams (great acceptance speech) was gonna get it cuz the drag queen was with him in Mrs. Doubtfire as the gay brother. Anybody else noticing the trend here?! At least they've started doing more decent "awarded off-camera" nods before commercial.
posted @ 9:40 PM  |   0 comments  |  


Grammyessness Part 1

The Grammys tonight stink. Simon & Garfunkel were good as were James Taylor and the Dixie Chicks, but so far the rest just plain ol' stink. You never put 2 piano players together and then have HORRIBLE acoustic mixing (read: I can't hear them) and so far, every performer who was played right before an award (they're doing performance-award-performance-award-etc tonight) has won something. If this keeps up, all you'll need to do is look at the list of performers and know exactly who's gonna win.

There's next to no life in any of the folks doing the introductions or acceptences (no Gwyn, saying "I'm gonna cry" doesn't count), altho Eminem's WAS good. I've been waiting for someone to say "you know who you are, I'd like to thank my inspirations". They keep saying "already a winner tonight" when intro'ing the presenters but the way they're showing those "others won but not on tv" is pathetic. Can't even read the captions on the people in the audience cuz it goes by too fast.

Biggest pet peeve of all? They did something similar at Golden Globes: they're mergring catergories together! Keep the male and female albums seperate, and don't slap drama in with comedy in the same catergory!!! ARGH!!!

I'll tell you in anything else happens tonight but so far it's a major drag.

On another note (npi), Blogger was purchased by Google. I think I'm gonna puke. First DejaNews and now Blogger! My precious Blogger is now Googlized!!! I'm gonna cry.
posted @ 9:06 PM  |   0 comments  |  

Tuesday, February 18, 2003


Gumby loves you too

Oliviapuff, you have a fellow situational pun-pal.

For about 2 months now in the Wal-Mart, there's been this keychain Jigglypuff sitting lonely by itself in a sparsely-stocked prize machine thingy. Y'know, the kind where you put in a buck and maneouvre a grabber towards it and 99% of the time you don't catch a damn thing?

Yeah, that thing.

Experience of watching others lose lotsa dough in those things, I stayed as far away from them as possible and to my recollection, I've never myself tried one. If I have, I honestly don't remember it, but I'm certain I lost.

Anyway, when they restocked this thing about a month ago, the Jigglypuff was still there, but shrink-wrapped to some yellow brick thing or something. I checked on it every time we returned to the W-M and I kept wondering if I should try the machine to get my 3rd Jigglypuff but the opportunity never arised. Until tonight.

I was in the Wal-Mart tonight and started getting some nerve shakes and near-blackouts and hard to breathe etc...the kind of thing where if we were in the grocery store, I'd normally just walk right out and into the van. Well, Mom didn't want me to goto the van in the Wal-Mart (which isn't enlightened to my problems) so she said to go sit in the benches out front. I asked if I could try for the Jigglypuff, and after establishing that I had some cash, she said yes.

So I get out there and VERY carefully surveyed the Jigglypuff vs the grabber. There was NO way that grabber was gonna get to it as jammed up to the glass wall- slanted in *just* the wrong way. So rather than sit down and let my nerves overtake me like last night (you don't wanna know- trust me), I decided to keep looking in the machine to see what else was in there just for kicks. I saw a rubber Jar Jar Binks who was supposed to be half-immersed in water (rubber water?). As much as I like Jar Jar, this wasn't a Good Catch in my opinion. After looking a few more times (my eyes were going), I saw something green and slender: a Gumby holding a valentine's heart!

Too funny for words! :-) What's funnier, is that about the same time that I noticed the Jigglypuff at the Wal-Mart, there was some sticker or window thingy for a Gumby at the local FYE. :-D

So after putting in $2 and on my last (4th) try, the Gumby was mine!


Cupid!

Gumby celebrates Valentine's Day


I figured the Gumby was a leftover from the holiday craze :-(, but I'm glad it was there. So Oliviapuff, meet Cupid Gumby! Everyone else, meet the new arrival!!! :-D

And if you'd like the break-down of the 4 tries, here it is: #1 it went somewhere else, #2 it went somewhere else, #3 it knocked Gumby over so I could grab it, #4 I got Gumby! I was trying so hard not to let it grab something I didn't want and since I don't remember operating one of these things for myself, it took me a buck to figure out how to operate the dang thing! Good thing my instincts to "cancel grab" worked...
posted @ 9:06 PM  |   0 comments  |  

Friday, February 14, 2003


The Quest for the Books

I decided to take the plunge recently...no I'm not getting married, I've just been very interested in reading the LOTR books. But since they're SO complicated and my first couple of viewings of LOTR confused the heck out of me, I bought the Illustrated Encyclopedia a few weeks ago. I finally came to the spot where I thought I could read them, but LOTR are just 3 books in one universe. LOTR is to Tolkien's universe as ESB is to George Lucas' universe: they're just a piece of the puzzle.

The Silmarillion and The Hobbit are two of the other books, and I knew this, but the problem was: what order do I read them in? Well, the ency had a nice long list of all the stories and when they were published, and a good read of the history given in the ency gives you the right order to read them all in. Problem: I thought that all of the "lost stories" and "histories" were all in one book. My mistake.

When I called my local Waldenbooks to ask about pricing, the numbers for prices I was given was correct, but when I actually GOT there and saw ALL THOSE BOOKS...it took me forever to pick and choose which ones I was gonna buy first since buying all of them (and they were missing at least one) would put me well over $120 potentially. Indeed, I paid about $99 for what I *did* get: the 3 LOTR books, the Hobbit, the Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales #1 (first of the "prequel" stuff and very early historically), and some other book about the languages of Middle-Earth.

That's a LOT of reading. And I don't have all the pre-LOTR stuff either.

What's worse, all the older historical and unfinished stuffs have LOTS of commentary to them. As if it weren't confusing enough! :-(

I've started with the languages book and it reads like a sort of textbook. I don't mind- I love it! And yes, I pulled out a pencil and started making notes. :-)

Well, "Here goes nothin'!" :-D
posted @ 10:35 PM  |   0 comments  |  


HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!!

Everybody loves somebody sometime...and you don't even need a holiday in order to do so! Hug your loved ones today!!!!
posted @ 10:25 PM  |   0 comments  |  

Wednesday, February 12, 2003


Happy Birthday to...

NINA YANKOVIC!!! Born on 2/11/03, she's the first child of Weird Al & Suzanne Yankovic!

If I weren't so busy with my sites (including my needs-an-update-badly Weird Al one), I'd've posted it actually *on* the 11th. And plus, with all this negativity on the blog recently, and the major fandom, I thought it appropriate.

Congratulations to the couple (I hope the delivery was fast and as painless as possible) and welcome to the world Nina!!!
posted @ 2:00 AM  |   0 comments  |  


The Love Calculator

Someone on the support group posted this link (I'd forgotten about the place actually) and I plugged in a few. Y'all won't understand 'em; I just wanted to keep 'em for posterity ya know. ;-) Anyway, here we go:

41%
The chance of a relationship working out between Zorg and Lain is not very big, but a relationship is very well possible, if the two of you really want it to, and are prepared to make some sacrifices for it. You'll have to spend a lot of quality time together. You must be aware of the fact that this relationship might not work out at all, no matter how much time you invest in it.

16%
Dr. Love thinks a relationship might work out between Zorg and Rainbow Heron, but the chance is very small. A successful relationship is possible, but you both have to work on it. Do not sit back and think that it will all work out fine, because it might not be working out the way you wanted it to. Spend as much time with each other as possible. Again, the chance of this relationship working out is very small, so even when you do work hard on it, it still might not work out.

RH vs troll here (tip: the troll is British and so the name is pronounced as "anarchy"):
75%
Dr. Love thinks that a relationship between Ann R Quay and Rainbow Heron has a very good chance of being successful, but this doesn't mean that you don't have to work on the relationship. Remember that every relationship needs spending time together, talking with each other etc.

Oh alright, here's one for the RASSMers:
12%
Dr. Love thinks a relationship might work out between Alice Carroll and Ted Stryker, but the chance is very small. A successful relationship is possible, but you both have to work on it. Do not sit back and think that it will all work out fine, because it might not be working out the way you wanted it to. Spend as much time with each other as possible. Again, the chance of this relationship working out is very small, so even when you do work hard on it, it still might not work out.

Try plugging in non-Sith War names and you get the exact same result. Hackboy never listens....
posted @ 1:19 AM  |   0 comments  |  

Tuesday, February 11, 2003


*Another* fuck up?!

Well, as infoave's finally getting phased out...all my good and hard work in taking down stuff I no longer use and reuploading the new and improved stuff has been replaced with the leftover stuff from infoave. In short, when I was tranferring to ftc, it went to infoave and with infoave dying, I'm left with the old stuff on ftc.

Makes you wanna can somebody doesn't it?
>:-P~
posted @ 11:26 PM  |   0 comments  |  

Wednesday, February 05, 2003


Ok...so *now* WTF?

This warrants another tech support call: the changeover is complete but all of the newest stuff I've uploaded is not on the new server's url, but rather the old. WTH is the old server's url still doing up and why does my FTP'ing to the new server go to the old one instead?

They're not gonna overwrite my new stuff are they? >:-P~

Anyway, for those of you with links & bookmarks to my sites, substitute "ftc-i" for "infoave" and you've got the new url (if not the new stuff for some oddball reason).
posted @ 8:53 PM  |   0 comments  |  

Saturday, February 01, 2003


Columbia joins Challenger and Apollo 1

Mom just woke me up to tell me that the Space Shuttle Columbia has exploded upon landing. Why am I always asleep when these things happen and why do they keep happening? I can answer the second one for usre, but still...

"Another one?!" was my reaction and this is a mix of emotions here. I was too young when Challenger exploded but we studied the whole thing quite a bit years later in 6th grade. That was on take-off and we knew what happened. Now we have it on landing (and another one named "C" and both lifted off in the month of Jan) and there's no black box to tell us what went wrong.

I hope NASA continues flying after this cuz it's be a shame to have 3 disasters kill a program. In 40+ years, they've only had 3 deadly accidents- far better than any airline I know of, and this stuff is FAR more dangerous. I really do hope they find out what happened and that the families will be alright and comforted. May God rest these 7 souls.
posted @ 10:57 AM  |   0 comments  |