DUDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just landed an internship with an ad agency!!!!!!!!! I will be designing things! And learning stuff!

Wh00t!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't particularly want to be awake right now.

When Sean came to bed earlier, I woke up, and we snuggled a little. Then he fell asleep, and I lay there for a long time, but couldn't do the same.

I got up and closed the window and deck door and turned on the AC, thinking that maybe I was just too hot. But I still couldn't sleep. I'd left something undone, and my gut was giving me hell about it.

When I'd finally had enough of my twisting insides, I got up and dealt with the thing. Now I'm just going back and forth to the same websites, bored. I am chatting with Hai, which is good, and Jered's also on and we've exchanged a few pleasantries. Nice to know he's still alive :> But for the most part, I'm not doing anything worthwhile. Just sitting here surfing, with Naruto OST 3 in the background.

I'd like to go back to bed, but I'm not sure if I would be able to get to sleep.

Today I applied for an internship in graphic design via email. I also made a couple of calls, the first to the company offering the internship and the second to the local paper asking if an internship there as a copy editor is possible. I didn't speak with a person either time, so I hope my voice mail messages weren't horrible. I'll try calling again tomorrow, I suppose.

Don turned me on to a meeting of the local advertisers' association that's happening this Thursday, so I RSVPed for it and will attend, resumes in hand. I hope I can find something interesting to do that involves design, and that won't require me to go back to school. I'm getting the feeling that I will need to go back anyway, but I would like to be able to get some sort of job in the meantime. (And, you know, not abhor it.)

I rearranged my desk yesterday. Here are some pics:

Yes, lovely wires. I don't care. :P I'm just happy to have that hutch moved back some. It makes me feel less claustrophobic. It also means I can now look immediately to my left and see a calendar, which I think will really help my scheduling issues. (I still haven't found any calendar software that works for me.)

The wall over the rest of my desk and the server and the area around the four drawer filing cabinet seems really empty now. Not sure what I want to do about that, if anything.

I knew it

Templeton Peck You are 20% crazy and 50% bad-assed.

Better known to your friends as 'face,' you are truly suave and debonair. There isn't a skirt out there that you can't charm the pants off of. Nobody can deny you anything. You'll always get your way. Whether it's picking up your three piece from the dry cleaner early or getting your best friend out of the military asylum, just flash those pearly whites and everything will be OK.

My test tracked 2 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: You scored higher than 11% on lunacy You scored higher than 35% on bad-itude

Link: The 'Which A-Team member are you?' Test written by wm_the_bloody on Ok Cupid

Yummy

I could just eat him up.

My aunt just said something very sad to me

sometimes i wonder if [God] lets these things happen to convince me he is the only true support i have. if so, it has worked

I have no response for that.

This is the aunt who's recovering from a heart transplant, whose husband died suddenly and unexpectedly, whose goat pen was attacked by wild animals, and who just lost one of her treasured dogs. All within this past year. But she's known pain before this...abuse, divorce, losing both her father and her son in a tragic car accident some twenty years ago.

I love her, and I wish I could do something.

Heather Meadows, Viceroy of the Cul-de-Sac

Yes, that is my new title. You may begin fawning and showering me with gifts.

(Thanks to Eric Burns for the inspiration. And no, I don't have to actually live on a cul-de-sac to have this title. In fact, it's better if I don't, because it makes less sense that way!)

El neat-o

(As Dad might say.)

Nike and Bausch and Lomb have developed contact lenses for sports professionals that block out UV rays and unnecessary color information, making it easier for baseball hitters to see the seams on a ball, for example.

Imagine the possibilities for beauty, though. When you essentially wear sunglasses on your eyes, you won't have to squint as much, meaning you'll develop fewer wrinkles over time. (The colors of the lenses are also pretty striking.)

Hell, these could be marketed to anyone who's outside a lot. Think about truckers. Sure, they can wear sunglasses, but those can fall off or break or be misplaced easily. When you've got stuff in your eyes, you tend to leave it there until you're done with it for the day. "Never lose your sunglasses again!"

I just think the whole idea is cool.

I must own Smallville on DVD

I haven't had cable since 2002, and the air stations don't come in very well even with rabbit ears, so whenever I go home to visit my family, I spend a goodly amount of time watching TV with Mom. She likes to tape all the shows she follows and then watch them in the evenings or on weekends.

One of the many programs I watched with her this time around was Smallville. And I have got to say...it rules.

At first I didn't really think I'd like it. It seemed to me like it was going to be Smallville, 90210. But while there is an ample measure of teen angst, the show is smart, and distinctly sci-fi. There were all kinds of things going on that I want to know more about. One of the most clever and intriguing aspects is the fact that Clark Kent and Lex Luthor are best friends. I really mean best friends. They have this amazing bond that makes you just flinch, knowing how they will (presumably) be bitter enemies in the future. It's absolutely perfect.

[Just as a side note, Mom watches it as it's shown on ABC Family, which I'm pretty sure is far behind the current seasons. Of that, I've only seen about five episodes. So I really have no idea what's going to happen, and I prefer it that way. If you're thinking about posting spoilers, why not just buy me the DVDs instead? :)]

Don't let them walk all over you

Here's why being a nice person at your job could stick you with all the shit work. (Well, duh.)

Laura Bush, comedienne

This is funny. I wish I'd seen the whole thing!

Two things, both concerning "new media"

The first thing is that I think the use of "[sic]" for misspelled words and badly worded phrases might be passe. This is because the only reason it's used is to indicate to your reader that it isn't your typo. When quoting text on the Internet, though, that's obvious, because you didn't retype it, you copied and pasted it.

Oh well. I think I'll probably keep using it, because I like it, and I'm an elitist bastard.

[Note: I don't think "bitch" and "bastard" are analogues.]

The second thing is pretty much me being annoyed with Google, MSN, and Yahoo. I was searching for the post in which I mentioned the Japanese funerals. I searched for "pixelscribbles funeral" in all three of those search engines, with no results. What did I end up having to use? AJ's favorite search engine, Searchalot.

I mean, no one ever talks about Searchalot. Searchalot isn't in the news. So why is it better at finding stuff I've written than the so-called top search engines?

I assume Google hadn't indexed my April posts yet. But maybe it had, and maybe it left that post out of its index. Maybe posts on my blog don't warrant finding in searches. Which sort of sucks ass, considering that I like people to read what I write. (And hell, if it's just a matter of being slow on indexing, then that means people will find my posts only when they're old and stale. Lame.)

If people aren't going to be able to find stuff I've written with the major search engines, then I guess I should work harder at advertising myself. :P

How to use chopsticks

Here's a nice tutorial on how to politely use your chopsticks. It includes some items I didn't know, such as:

When you finished [sic] using disposable chopsticks (wari-bashi), put them back in the bag and fold the bag in half. This indicates that they are used.

It also has a couple of things I did know, including the following taboos:

Sticking chopsticks vertically into a bowl of rice.
Passing food from your chopsticks to somebody else's chopsticks.

The site doesn't mention why these are bad, but I already know. These things are done only at funerals. I learned about the first one from Todd when I was in Japan. The second one I read about here (and mentioned here). Suffice it to say that the imagery of the second one is nasty enough that anyone would want to avoid doing it.

Nerds :D

From Wil Wheaton Dot Net:

COPS is our full-on guilty pleasure. One time, several years ago, Anne and I had a COPS-a-thon. We invited all of our friends. None of them showed up, but we didn't care, man. We watched four hours of COPS alone, and it was awesome.

hahaha. That reminds me of the time I had a Star Wars marathon back in high school. People did come to that, but only a handful, and they didn't bother to stay for all three movies. I remember being so frustrated and flabbergasted by that. ;D

Art and soul

Ruth Phillips has a lovely rumination today about art, true beauty, and "the zone".

In my past as a young 'modern' cellist, my gestures were stillborn for fear of them being imperfect. Since, by their very human nature, they were bound to be nothing but, I was frozen; cramped within the tiny world of trying to make something beautiful and perfect from control rather than flow. In the baroque and classical movement over the last twenty years and in my own personal movement towards it, gesture, controlled abandon (since we must have some control in the 'gobetis'; some discipline in the organic mix) and intention have become the priority as opposed to control alone. Thus any beauty (and there is so much) that appears as a result comes from grace.

I am enjoying Ruth's writing quite a bit; it's a window into the life of an artist and her artist husband and their adventures and soul-searching in Provence. It's not a life even remotely similar to mine, but we are connected through writing and through the thoughtful analysis of life. I'm glad to be able to read her.

32-year-old acts like 5-year-old

I think the real reason this upsets me is because on Saturday morning, when I got up at 6 am to get ready to drive home, my sweet father said, "They found that girl! She was kidnapped, but she somehow got away and was able to call the police. Finally, some good news for a change!"

Of course, the expense to the local police, the Albuquerque police, and the FBI also annoys me. But that pales compared to how she effectively betrayed the feelings of my father, the feelings of the hundreds, maybe thousands of people who searched for her and watched helplessly on TV for updates on her story. Those people cared with all their hearts. It's obvious that Jennifer Wilbanks didn't care at all.

Wilbanks decided to call her fiance and police with the story about the kidnapping when she found herself broke in Albuquerque, according to authorities.

"Oh, gee, I've run out of money. Let me get home at taxpayer expense. That's what the government's there for, right?" Not even a thought about all the people who were worrying about her...even though she, like a moron, fled her home without telling anyone where she was going.

I guess this proves that age has little to no connection to maturity.