From poisonyoulove:

01. Anyone who looks at this entry has to post this meme and their current wallpaper at their LJ.
02. Explain in five sentences why you're using that wallpaper!
03. Don't change your wallpaper before doing this! The point is to see what you had on!

( It's under the cut. )

And now, to change the subject abruptly, I came across a link to this list of sci-fi movie conventions that need to die from SamuraiFrog's blog, and I thought it was worth commenting on. So here are my thoughts on each item:

6. I think this one is just a throwback to the cheap special effects of early Star Trek.

5. I don't mind this one so much, but it did always seem to me that Star Trek characters spent an awful lot of time talking about what, to them, would have been ancient history.

4. I think the part about logical holes is what particularly gets to me. And it's not just sci-fi that does this. I mean, look at how often magical devices in fantasy aren't used when it would make sense. (Magic Belt, anyone?) I guess I like consistency in what things can do. For the same reason, magic that grants wishes can be an irritating trope in many situations.

3. I have to agree whole-heartedly with this. I can recall even noticing as a kid how weird it was that entire planets would have one culture and a single ruler (if not a single ruler for an entire galaxy), when such obviously wasn't the case on our own planet. Mind you, I still used the trope in some of my own stories. I was in elementary school at the time, after all. But really, why bother using planets and aliens when their entire civilizations are less diverse than the local country club? And I know I've seen several people point out how Star Wars is full of desert planets, ice planets, swamp planets, and the like. They're all fit for human habitation, yet consist of only one environment. Does every part of each planet somehow receive the exact same amount of sunlight? Or ARE there other environments on these planets that we just never see?

2. This just makes me think of the part in the Futurama episode "The Birdbot of Ice-catraz" where Bender just flies the ship out from the middle of Old Man Waterfall's peace ring.

1. A society with advanced military technology relying on infantry? Well, that's basically what we had in Vietnam, wasn't it?


And finally, another quiz result:

Your Brain is 60% Female, 40% Male

Your brain is a healthy mix of male and female You are both sensitive and savvy Rational and reasonable, you tend to keep level headed But you also tend to wear your heart on your sleeve

I had several dreams that I found worth remembering. I can't recall too much about the first one, but it involved a family of young pop stars whose song titles were based on a pattern. Each one had a root word preceded by the name of a season. I don't remember any of the root words, but if one of them were "time," there would be songs called "Wintertime," "Springtime," "Summertime," and "Autumntime." I'm not sure whether each kid had his or her own season, or how it was arranged. I think the same dream somehow involved Mega Man and Mario games.

Another dream had my riding a bus while carrying a whole bunch of large items that I wanted to throw away. The bus driver was friendly and tried to make sure everyone found their destinations even after leaving the bus, but I just wanted him to go away so I could find a trash can.

Then there was a dream about a board game that involved the term "Christmas herbs" at one point. And no, I wasn't smoking any Christmas herbs before having it. :P And either in that same dream or a slightly later one, I was watching a cartoon that seemed to vary between being The Simpsons, Futurama, The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3, DuckTales, and something else that wasn't anything like any of those. I remember a voice-over by Zapp Brannigan describing the episode, and a scene where Mario was fighting a Bowser-shaped vehicle underwater. Then there was some scene at a science lab, where the scientists were complaining that a villain had destroyed their greatest resource, gold. Someone replied by saying something like, "No, our minds are our greatest resource!" (I'm not sure whether I should be proud or ashamed that I can subconsciously come up with realistic-sounding cartoon dialogue.) Another scientist mentioned that the late head of their department wouldn't have given up in this situation, and a bunch of others praised their former leader. One said, "I had a daughter for him!", and another followed this with, "I gave up having a daughter for him!"

Yet another dream related to the Dragon Quest series, and most specifically to Dragon Quest IV. As I believe I've mentioned before, there are wandering item merchants and innkeepers in Torneko's quest, but nowhere else in the game. In the dream, they showed up at other times as well, and there was also a service that could transport you places based on their zip codes. I didn't know there WERE zip codes in the game (there aren't in the real one, of course, unless there's something significant I missed), but then I found a list of them. I found myself transported close to a building that was sort of like a greenhouse, and contained a puzzle involving parrots and trees that I was never able to solve.

I can't remember too much about it, but there was also a dream that had something to do with some guy debating whether to help the opposite side in a war, and my wearing a costume to school. Or maybe those were two separate dreams. It can be difficult to tell sometimes.

The last dreams I can recall involved Oz stuff, which was exciting for me, but probably not so much for most of the people reading this. {g} One involved my looking for a character named either Jack O'Candle or Jack O'Calendar, who appeared in the frontispiece of the original edition of one of Ruth Plumly Thompson's early Oz books (I think it was The Hungry Tiger of Oz), but wasn't pictured in my own Del Rey copy. The next bit of this dream involved a girl whom my subconscious decided was Jenny Jump, but didn't really fit her character that well. She was talking about making breakfast and lunch, and how she was trying to avoid her best friend. Dorothy, Betsy Bobbin, and Trot also showed up in a cafeteria of some sort, but all three had bright blonde hair. I normally think of Betsy as a strawberry blonde and Trot as a brunette, like how Eric Shanower draws them, but I decided that they were experimenting with dyeing their hair. I do a lot of that in dreams, especially Oz-related ones, proving that my inner consistency nerd never sleeps.

By the way, happy belated Pi Day, happy birthday to poisonyoulove, and happy death anniversary to Julius Caesar. I wonder if the latter is throwing a party in Limbo, which I think is where Dante placed the guy. I guess Brutus and Cassius aren't invited, though, what with their being busily engaged in being eaten by Satan. If there is life after death (and I don't think there is, but it's an interesting idea to contemplate), I wonder if murder victims ever forgive their murderers.

Here's my third visit to this meme, this time with the topics chosen by lozenger8.

1. Old-style video games

Why does everyone choose this one for me? Not that it's not an interest of mine, just that I should think I have enough other interests without repeating any. Oh, well. Video games have always been present in my life, even when I wasn't actually playing them. I remember picking out a Pac-Man pillow and eating Pac-Man popsicles (they were lemon-flavored, I think) when I was a kid, but I don't think I got much of a chance to play Pac-Man. There was just always something about video games that appealed to me, though, and older ones have nostalgic value for me. For some reason, that even applies to the ones I didn't know about until later in my life. I guess it's more nostalgia for the general feel than for the specifics.

2. Futurama

I've been a Simpsons fan for years (more on that in the fifth item), so I was pretty excited when I learned that Matt Groening was coming out with a new show, and one that mixed science fiction and comedy at that! As much as I love The Simpsons, I felt that the nerdier subject matter of Futurama was more directly geared toward people like me. And it looks like it's been gaining in popularity since it was canceled, which is a good sign in more ways than one.

3. Oz

Okay, what do I have to say about Oz that I didn't say last time? Well, plenty, obviously, but most of that is more specific. I can say that one thing I like about Oz fandom is that, while it's small, there are other people involved in it who are just as geeky about it as I am, doing research and discussing Oz as if the stories were real. For me, it adds to the verisimilitude of a fictional land that I often wish WERE real.

4. Frank Black

I got interested in him by way of They Might Be Giants, as there's not only significant overlap in the fanbases, but the Johns are fans of Frank's and vice versa. They both have a large amount of nerdy appeal, but it's more undercover with Frank. While the Johns have kinda whiny voices and use the accordion a fair amount (albeit less so in more recent recordings), Frank sounds more traditionally cool, even when singing about UFOs and Irish mythology.

5. The Simpsons

I still consider this to be my favorite show, and I watch all of the new episodes, even though I consider it to be well past its prime. Old habits die hard, you know? I've been watching the show since the beginning, but I was more of a casual watcher at first, only becoming really obsessed around the fifth or sixth season. Of course, I'm sure there are fans now who weren't even born when those seasons were first being aired, so I guess I'm an old-school fan by modern standards.

( Spoilers! Click here to enter the wormhole. )

While this is the end of the movies, I have heard rumors that they might be bringing the show back for another actual season. I'm hoping they're true, as the prospect of Futurama actually being totally over isn't a pleasant one. If this really IS how they're going to end the whole thing, though, it's a pretty decent ending.

I might have to go with my Oz love and say Tik-Tok. I wouldn't say he's actually the first robot in literature, whatever some critics have claimed (even L. Frank Baum himself had already written about the cast-iron man in The Magical Monarch of Mo), but he's still a very well-written robotic character from before the term "robot" was even coined. And nowadays, there's sort of an unintentional steampunk feel to the clockwork man. That said, I definitely also have to give props to the robots of Futurama. Bender, Beelzebot, Robot Santa, Roberto, Hedonism Bot...the list goes on.

By the way, happy birthday to zaph! It would also be my grandfather's eighty-ninth birthday, if he were still around.

Here in the States, Christmas is pretty much totally over with by now. In the British Commonwealth, on the other hand, the holidays continue with Boxing Day. Traditionally, this was a day when lords and the like gave gifts to their inferiors, as in the song "Good King Wenceslas." The song makes reference to "the Feast of Stephen," which is also today (well, to Catholics, anyway; the Eastern Orthodox Church actually celebrates St. Stephen's Day tomorrow). Wenceslas was actually only a duke, but Emperor Otto I made him a king posthumously. This presumably didn't do him any personal good, as I don't think dead men can exercise any royal privileges, but hey, "Good Duke Wenceslas" doesn't roll off the tongue as easily.

Today is also radiantwterror's birthday, the fifth night of Hanukkah, and the first day of Kwanzaa.



Good question, Futurama screen capture! Basically, it's a celebration of African heritage, started in 1966 by Ron Karenga. That's all well and good, but why have it at a time of year that's already saturated with holidays? Apparently Karenga's original plan was to make it a possible substitute to the other holidays, but he later dropped that idea. Since a good many African-Americans already celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah, couldn't they have just placed Kwanzaa in some other month? I'd also say that the candle-lighting is ripping off Hanukkah, but really, the winter holidays are built on plagiarism. Christmas trees predate Christianity, for instance. And all joking about nobody knowing what Kwanzaa is aside, it must be pretty successful, as it's typically considered the third major festival around this time of year, while modern American calendars tend not to mention, say, Yule or Tet. Since Kwanzaa gifts are typically hand-made, though, you don't generally see Kwanzaa displays in department stores.

Speaking of stores and other holidays around this time of year, if Christianity had never become the dominant religion in Europe, would we be seeing light-up plastic Mithras and Odins that do the Twist to "Jingle Bell Rock"? Because I'd like to see those things.

So, bethje and I saw Bender's Game. ( Spoilers ahead! )

I guess I've never really been the biggest robot fan. I grew up in the era of Transformers and Voltron, and while I learned about these things from the other kids (and I did enjoy the original animated Transformers movie; I've never seen the live-action one), I didn't have any of my own. But there are some robots I quite like. I remember Tik-Tok being one of my favorite parts of Return to Oz, and I went on to enjoy his roles in the Oz books. I've seen references to him as the first robot in literature, don't I believe it. Even if you don't count my examples of primitive robots from mythology, I know I've seen pictures from the nineteenth century of mechanical people powered by clockwork or steam. In fact, I don't think Tik-Tok can even be considered the first robot in L. Frank Baum's work. No, I don't count the Tin Woodman, as some people apparently do (more on that later), but I do count the giant cast-iron man from The Magical Monarch of Mo. This monstrosity was built by the greedy King Scowleyow to crush his socialist neighbors in Mo, but was turned away with a feather and a pin, and smashed Scowleyow instead.

Tik-Tok is still an important figure, though. Created by the firm of Smith and Tinker in the Land of Ev (who were also responsible for the iron giant with the hammer that guards the Nome Kingdom, and the talking Hundred-Year Alarm Clock possessed by the Wicked Witch Singra), he has three different wind-up mechanisms, one each for thought, speech, and action. He originally belonged to King Evoldo, who locked him in a cave before committing suicide. Dorothy found him there, and brought him to Oz, where he still lives today. Well, except he doesn't really live, because Baum makes a clear distinction between the automated Tik-Tok and created beings who are magically brought to life, like the Scarecrow, the Patchwork Girl, and the Glass Cat. It's not entirely clear how Tik-Tok differs from these other beings, but maybe it has something to do with free will. Tik-Tok does have a certain level of free will and independent thought, but he was constructed to be a servant, and seems to stick to that role. The other three characters I mentioned were also created for servile functions, but all of them walked out on those duties to seek better lives. Also, Tik-Tok doesn't seem to have the same depth of emotion. That said, I'm not sure he's ENTIRELY emotionless, since he does have the occasional independent opinion. Indeed, Ruth Plumly Thompson and John R. Neill show Tik-Tok feeling and expressing enjoyment, but I kind of think they didn't really understand the character as Baum wrote him.

There's an article arguing that Tik-Tok obeyed Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics long before Asimov thought them up. While interesting, it contains some major stretches, such as the implication that the people of Ev and Oogaboo are not human, but Smith and Tinker somehow are. One fictional universe other than Asimov's own that DOES incorporate the Three Laws, however, is that of the Mega Man games. At the end of Mega Man 7, Dr. Wily reminds the hero that no robot can harm a human being, to which Mega Man replies that he is "more than a robot," but he never gets the chance to do any harm. These laws apparently also apply to Wily's own robots, even though I don't think a villain like him would have any problem with them hurting people. And as far as I can remember, it's true that the fighting in the series is always machine against machine. So, to get stereotypically geeky for a minute, would Mega Man or Tik-Tok win in a fight? I think it would have to be Mega Man, especially with all of his weapon attachments. On the other hand, Rock does seem to be a bit clumsily made, and is immediately destroyed when he hits spikes, which I don't believe would be the case with Tik-Tok. And the Evian robot isn't devoid of fighting skills. He knocks out Wheelers with a dinner pail in Ozma of Oz, handles a gun in Tik-Tok of Oz (although I don't think he ever actually fires it), and is said to be practicing swordplay at the beginning of The Yellow Knight of Oz (maybe he had a new software cartridge installed).

Of course, I can't really write a post about fictional robots without mentioning Futurama's Bender Bending Rodriguez, who would probably beat either Tik-Tok or Mega Man, since he would fight dirty. I'll probably be seeing more of Bender pretty soon, since Bender's Game comes out this week, and I have it at the top of my Netflix queue. Yeah, I know a TRUE Futurama fan would buy a copy, but I'm still holding out hope for a four-pack once these movies are all released.

It seems like every celebrity wants to be a rock star. Hey, if they've been working in one of the lively arts, they must automatically be ready to take on others, right? Even fictional characters aren't free from the lure of popular music, and back in 1990, the hugely popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles went on the Coming Out of Our Shells Tour. I didn't see it, and neither did bethje, but she DID have the cassette of their music, which she forced me to listen to yesterday. And let me tell you, it's BAD. The music is boring stuff that I couldn't really see too many kids getting into, and some of them just seem like totally unrelated songs with a few references to ninjas and pizza throw in. The voices of the Turtles sound nothing like they do in either the cartoons or the movies. One song features Splinter singing, and he just sounds like your typical raspy-voiced pop singer. And really, even if the Turtles DID decide to form a rock band, does anyone REALLY think Splinter would have been part of it? My suspension of disbelief can go only so far. Hey, maybe it was better with the plot that was part of the live shows.

In a dream last night, I was watching the next Futurama movie, which for some reason was being shown on TV at the same time as the DVD release. The plot had nothing to do with anything I've actually heard about Bender's Game, instead involving Bender being sucked into an alternate universe through the TV, and remaining there for years. When he managed to establish contact with the Planet Express crew, he had the form of a human, but not like the one he became in that one Anthology of Interest. It was more of a human form that still had some robotic features. Maybe he'd become a cyborg. I don't know. Dreams sometimes don't make much sense. Anyway, Fry was using a device invented by the Professor that told the stories of people who had fallen out a window (yeah, I know that Bender was supposed to have fallen through the TV), and the window had a stained glass picture of Abraham Lincoln who claimed that only Dr. Zoidberg ever talked to him. There was also a bit where Zoidberg was testing for a job on an airplane, and really screwed it up. After that, the dream totally veered away from Futurama, and had something to do with my getting ice cream in the basement of a college dorm. I woke up before I actually got to eat any, though. I have to say that, if the plot of Bender's Game is actually anything like this dream, it's going to suck. {g}

Another dream I had involved trying to rescue a bunch of kids and cats (including Reagan) from a camp that brainwashed them. While running up the stairs to the room where they kept the cats, I insulted some monkey-faced woman, and pushed another lady off a landing. After that, I started to realize it was a dream, and felt the pushing had been unnecessary, but I don't think it ever actually changed. After that, I encountered a gang of guards with buckets, and there was something about suffocation and knockout gas. Oh, and another unrelated dream in which my mom made grandfather clocks with world maps on them.

I finally got around to actually reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as well as its sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. They were very quick reads, and I enjoyed them. It does seem like some of the kids' sins in the original book are a little out of date nowadays. It's not as common for people to object to gum-chewing in general (although, admittedly, Violet Beauregarde was pretty gross about it), and the fact that the Oompa-Loompas' song about Mike Teavee implies that the main problem with kids watching a lot of TV is that they don't read books anymore suggests that there might have been some professional jealousy involved on Roald Dahl's part.

One thing I noticed about Great Glass Elevator was the advanced technology in it. In Chocolate Factory, the world seemed to be pretty normal aside from the factory itself. In the sequel, however, the United States has just launched its own space hotel. Near the beginning of the book, Dahl writes, "Newspapers and television had been shouting about almost nothing else for the past six months. Operation Space Hotel was the event of the century." But since Elevator is an immediate follow-up to the first book, does that mean the space hotel and the golden tickets were Big News at the same time? Anyway, perhaps when this book came out, a space hotel really seemed like something that would be built pretty soon. I know I had a book as a kid that said the Hiltons planned to build a space hotel if the cost of space travel dropped to a certain level, and Dahl has the United States government consider "Mr. Hilton" as a possible saboteur of the Space Hotel. Anyway, the book had a lot of clever ideas, but a much looser plot than Chocolate Factory, which might explain why it's never been filmed.

On a related topic, if Willy Wonka is supposed to make the best candy in the world, how come the actual company called "Willy Wonka" makes kinda crappy candy? I think there's a general difficulty associated with using fictional product names for real-life things. I mean, I guess making a Muggle approximation of Bertie Bott's Every-Flavour Beans was all right (and yes, I did eat a small box of them, including the gross flavors), but it's possible to take the idea too far. Incidentally, on the commentary for The Beast with a Billion Backs, someone mentioned that Fox copyrighted the name "Slurm" for a drink. If they decide to market Slurm and it doesn't actually come out of a colossal worm heinie, I'm not interested. :P

Finally, I saw a link to this list of the top 50 children's books on the Oz Club forums some time ago. I thought it would make a good meme, but I forgot about it at the time. Reading Chocolate Factory reminded me of it, though, so here it is in meme form. I'm bolding the ones I've read all the way through, and italicizing the ones I've read part of. (There aren't quite as many of those as usual, since these are mostly fairly short books, but it's the case for some of the story collections.) Also, I'm underlining my favorites.
( Read more... )

bethje and I watched the new Futurama movie, The Beast with a Billion Backs, last night. ( Caution! Spoilers ahead! )

Okay, I think I'm going to watch it with commentary now. I wanted to get my own thoughts out there before hearing what the writers had to say, but it looks like I've now accomplished that.

Here's a meme-style game I just recently thought up, which for lack of a better title I call "Things You Dislike About Things You Love." Basically, you list some things you enjoy (I ended up listing seven, but I don't think the number should be set in stone; it's cool if you think of more), and then mention an aspect of each that you don't like. You can be creative with them, but try to go with something that's more of a general trend than a specific item. For instance, don't choose a particular episode of a TV show, or a particular song by a band. That might also make (and probably is) a good meme, but it's not what I'm going for here.

1. The Simpsons - The overabundance of jokes that simply consist of Homer being seriously injured. Sure, these are funny occasionally if done cleverly (everybody loves the fall down Springfield Gorge), but I think too many episodes will have a five-minute scene of, say, Homer being electrocuted in lieu of any dialog or plot development.
2. Futurama - Yeah, this is a nerdlinger criticism, but I kind of wish they were more consistent about the level of technology. I don't mind things like the Professor using an overhead projector or a dot matrix printer, because those are funny. I mean like how there are episodes where the characters don't know what wheels are, even though we see a bunch of them in other episodes.
3. XTC - That they apparently can't just get together and record an album every once in a while.
4. The Oz Books - One issue that tends to make my head ache when I think about it (okay, I'm exaggerating a bit, but still) involves animals. We're told a few times that all animals in Oz can talk, and that no animal ever dies (with the occasional exception to this latter item). Yet we still see predators eating other animals, and people eating meat. Some of this meat does appear to grow on trees, but The Lost King of Oz gives us a case of a cook planning to kill and cook a goose in the usual way. So we have situations where people and animals apparently have no qualms with eating other sentient beings, and of animals that are presumably still alive while being cooked or devoured. It gets a little messy when you think about it, doesn't it? Then again, the idea in the Chronicles of Narnia that it's not okay to eat talking animals, but it's perfectly all right to eat non-talking animals of the same species, also comes across as rather messed up (and more elitist than in Oz, but then Narnia seems more elitist in general).
5. "Weird Al" Yankovic - One thing that comes to mind especially with his recent work is that he seems to think the word "midget" is inherently funny.
6. They Might Be Giants - The demise of Dial-A-Song. I mean, I understand why they had to shut it down, but it still sucks. Also, they no longer seem to have much interest in doing themed concerts, and I never got to see any shows back when they did (well, aside from a Flood show).
7. Role-Playing Video Games - I've mentioned this before, but in the spirit of the meme, I'll repeat myself. It bugs me when there's a big, long, unskippable bit of dialog before a difficult battle, which probably means you'll have to sit through it a whole bunch of times. I had that problem with the Valentina and Dodo fight in Super Mario RPG.

If anyone else wants to perpetuate this, go right ahead. I imagine it will go the same way as anything else I've attempted to start, though.

I don't usually like to make descriptions of my dreams into posts in and of themselves (because they rarely get comments, natch), I'm going to make an exception this time, since there have been quite a few recently that I think are worth mentioning. Since leaving Disney World, I've been having a lot of dreams about it. I can't remember much about the most recent one, except that it was time to leave, and I hadn't done much of anything. That same night, another one of my dreams was about an Honors College reunion. This actually did take place recently, and rockinlibrarian attended, but I didn't. In the dream version, most of the students were staying at some new dorm instead of Whitmyre Hall. There were also some rooms in the back of Whitmyre (which never existed in real life) that had been demolished; when I thought I was going into one of them, I ended up outside. I've heard that they plan to demolish and rebuild the hall (again), so maybe that inspired some of what took place in the dream. There were some people I went to school with in attendance, but none of them talked to me. There was also an arcade, where a boy was playing some game that played the XTC song "Mayor Of Simpleton." I tried singing along, but it annoyed the kid.

Last night, I had a few more interesting dreams. One involved a laundromat that had pictures of characters from Futurama hung near the entrance, but somehow also existed within the show itself. I think that, at one point, I asked Professor Farnsworth why there were pictures of his crew in the laundromat, but I don't recall if he actually answered. I also had to wonder why there were still laundromats in the thirty-first century. I also remember seeing a globe that was supposed to show the world as it is within the Futurama time frame. Then there was a dream where I was in school (elementary school, I believe, although there were some elements of high school as well), and a really enthusiastic and jokey drug dealer came into the classroom. After he left, one of the authorities (I'm not sure if he was a teacher or not) basically said that, even though drug dealers are scum, he liked that particular guy because he was so amusing. There was also one in which someone on one of my Oz e-mail lists was talking about Hillary Clinton's commercial about the 3 AM phone call, and mentioned that Glinda was totally ready to respond when the Sawhorse showed up in the early morning to get help from her. I don't think such a thing actually happened in any of the Oz books (in the dream itself I thought of Kabumpo in Oz, but that actually has Glinda awake and researching the cause of frowns when the Soldier with Green Whiskers shows up at her palace with the Sawhorse), but I'm sure she WOULD be able to handle such a thing better than any of our current presidential candidates. Of course, she DOES have the obvious advantage of being fictional.

Last night, I finally saw Bender's Big Score. I'd been considering buying it, but the prices I saw it sold for were mostly ridiculously high (come on, over $20 for one pseudo-movie that's less than an hour and a half long?), so I just got it from Netflix. Besides, I think there's a good chance they'll eventually release it with the other four movies, so it might make sense to just wait for that. Anyway, I might as well say what I thought of it, and that involves a goodly number of ( spoilers. )

I'm planning on watching it with commentary tomorrow, and maybe some of the stuff I mentioned is addressed therein. I guess now I can go back and read other people's reviews. I'm sure some of them covered a lot of the same things I did.

I'm cross-posting this to my own journal and futurama.

Here are a few things I'd been meaning to write about for the past few days, but just hadn't gotten around to working into an actual entry.

1. I recently got a spam e-mail allegedly from PayPal, with the subject line, "Your account has been randomly limited." Um...yeah, okay. There are some scams that are carefully constructed and I can totally see why some people fall for them. But do they actually expect people to believe that PayPal is randomly running through their list of accounts and limiting access for some of them without an actual reason?

2. In a dream a few days ago, I went with my dad to pick up the two Johns from They Might Be Giants from the airport (or somewhere along those lines; I don't remember any planes or anything). I don't think there was much more to that dream, which is kind of a shame.

3. Someone on the radio said that a company was planning on coming out with carbonated yogurt. Can caffeinated bacon and baconated grapefruit be far behind?

4. On Thursday, bethje and I got the Endless Shrimp at Red Lobster, and had some slow service. I think they purposely take their time getting the refills on the shrimp, so you won't be able to eat quite as much; but this particular waitress was slow even GETTING the orders. The food was good, though, and I think I ended up getting a good amount. I think shrimp and pizza are the two things I can eat the most of without getting tired of them, although that doesn't mean I don't sometimes regret eating so much afterwards.

5. I caught a brief bit of a news story about how Bush wants to veto a bill that would increase the funding for health care for low-income children, because it would be a step towards socialized medicine, or something like that. While this is not unusual behavior from this particular president, it just drives home how it couldn't be any more obvious whose interests he represents if he walked around wearing a T-shirt saying, "I (heart) Big Business!" I think it's kind of silly when people, often with politics similar to mine, act like there's some kind of conspiracy going in with the Bush administration, when most of the things that people complain about are pretty much as clear as day. What we have in our present government, as far as I can see, isn't a Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, but Vast Right-Wing Obviousness.

The top two posts on my friends page (which might not actually be the two newest at this point, since it's been a while since I last refreshed it) reveal that Futurama will be back in November and Dragon Quest IV, V, and VI are being remade for the DS. The latter is really only good news for me if they decide to bring them out here as well as in Japan, but at least it's a step in the right direction. I've been wanting to try the fifth and sixth game in that series for years, and occasionally have dreams about doing so.

Also, J. K. Rowling addressed some fan questions about Harry Potter in an online chat. She mentions a few things that I've discussed with my LJ-friends recently, including ( stuff I won't mention outside a cut because of spoilers. )

There's some more stuff I want to say, but I think I'll save it for tomorrow, since I'm running out of time before I have to leave for work.

I had a few interesting dreams yesterday. One was a stream-of-consciousness sort of thing. At one point, I was in a school classroom, and someone was working on getting outfits for everyone. The clothes I was wearing were too tight, so I jokingly referenced Dr. Zoidberg's line about "something not so tight around the thorax." Then that started me thinking of Professor Wogglebug's clothes, and that suddenly led into something about the Wogglebug boring people at a bank by talking about how he was in favor of marijuana. And THAT brought on a secret room at a prison, where drugs and eggs were smuggled in by corrupt cops. The drugs were apparently supplied by doctors who would write presciptions for patients and then claim they didn't know what happened to the drug shipments. I'm not sure about the eggs.

In another dream, I was playing a video game that was a combination of several different things. There were some Super Mario Bros. characters involved, but it was structured like an RPG, and had a Sims-like feel in some parts. Toad was wearing a mask, and the Princess was playing an organ to summon Death, so that he could make an appearance at a party.

In the final dream I can remember, I was at the mall, and I saw a store that sold pictures drawn by people on the Frank Black Forum, and signed by forum members. A few had my name on them, and I pointed them out to my family (I think my dad, brother, and sister were all there). There were also two Fastbacks items in the same store. One was a collection of singles (although it was a collection of albums before I examined it more closely), but I forget what the other was. I think the singles collection cost around $20. I was debating on whether I should buy one or both when I woke up.

( More typical meme junk )

Weird Al's latest AL-TV special aired last night on VH1 (and not MTV, which was also the case with the one he did for Poodle Hat). It was only an hour long, and that was with about eighty commercial breaks, so there wasn't time for Al to do much of anything. He did have two fake interview segments, this time with Jessica Simpson and Kevin Federline. They were amusing, but I'm sure they come across as stupid enough when their interviews AREN'T edited. I remember Al saying something about new copyright regulations for that kind of thing, so maybe he couldn't get permission for for more of those segments. I think there would have been time for at least one other one, if he'd cut down on the filler. He did play "Polkarama!" with clips from the original videos played at appropriate speeds, which was cool. I wish they'd let him do longer specials, though. The two-hour one he did for Running with Scissors was awesome, and I remember seeing clips from a really old one (used to promote Dare To Be Stupid back in the mid-eighties, I believe) as part of The Compleat Al. Hmm, I wonder if YouTube has any clips from old AL-TV specials. It would be great if there were a DVD release, but it would probably be difficult to get legal clearance for everything.

Also last night, I watched The Year Without a Santa Claus, which I can't remember having seen as a kid. (That doesn't necessarily mean I DIDN'T see it, though.) I'd like to see Frosty the Snowman again, since I haven't done so in years. I can't see any listings for it, though. I probably missed all of them this year. I do hope to catch the Rankin-Bass The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus when it airs on Christmas Eve.

Oh, and check out this interview with David X. Cohen, about the upcoming Futurama episodes.

By the way, did you know that LJ's spell checker doesn't recognize "YouTube"? What's with that?

It's been a while since I've made an update telling what I've actually been doing, so I'll go ahead and remedy that now. On Thursday night, bethje and I watched Velvet Goldmine and Natural Born Killers, neither of which did that much for me. They were okay, but they wouldn't go down in my list of memorable films (assuming I HAD such a list). We were finally able to return them to Netflix, though, which is good. The service isn't really worth it if you don't watch the movies, is it? On Saturday, we went to a party for Beth's cousin Samantha, who is now two years old.

Other than that, there isn't too much to report. I've been playing The Sims quite a bit. It's weird how a game where I've pretty much already done everything there is to do still holds my interest for so much time. Then again, I'm the kind of person who can re-read my favorite books a bunch of times and still get something new out of them, so maybe the principle is the same. Nevertheless, the fact that I encountered a really weird bug in the game on Friday is probably a sign that I should hold off on playing it for a while. I have a lot of other stuff to do, after all.

I'm in the process of editing my web page, and then hopefully moving it to a new server. My plan is to go back through my Oz stories and revise them before putting them back up. Of course, it'll probably take me some time to get around to this, but I'm hoping it'll be fun to return to those old tales.

Finally, here's a link that I got from the futurama community. Someone has apparently had a look at the Futurama movie script, and has a description of it. I assume it's legitimate, but whether or not that's the case, I'm still anxious to see it.

I had a dream on Tuesday night about some previously unknown part of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where Arthur and Trillian get together, but it doesn't last. I wonder if I had Fry and Leela on the back of my mind, what with all the discussion as to what will happen with them if the rumored new episodes of Futurama actually come to pass. I had several dreams on Wednesday night, but I can't remember most of them. All I know is that I had a library fine of $28 or so.

I had originally intended to finish reading my entire friends page before posting this, in case there were some more memes that I could add in. That's taking me longer than I might have expected, though, and I've already done two surveys, so I might as well just go ahead and post. So, without further ado, ( two surveys. )