I like the new Hero Machine! This here is a very Yansa kind of superhero :P

Dear Sir,

I am simply unable to publish your latest play, Confucius In Heat.

The play, if published, would corrupt the morals of a generation. In fact, it corrupted my own morals so much that I spent the afternoon hooking up with strong, manly sailors down at the city docks -- and, in the process, forgot to take my dear son, Norbert, to his Lutheran pre-school. (This is even more astounding, since I am in Salina, Kansas, where there is little or no aquatic transport. Such are the lengths to which your play drove me.) Due to this one-day lack of proper education, Norbert has joined a "gang", and is in the process of robbing an upscale liqueur shop even as I write. His mother and I have tried valiantly to shake him out of this life of crime, but to little avail. I fear things shall only get worse. When he is of age, he will probably even vote to raise taxes.

All of this, sir, because of your play! Are you happy? Are you proud of yourself?

Now, to the content of this play. Having 10,000 baby turtles suddenly emerge from their egg-shells on a beach set at the climax of each and every love scene would, I fear, be quite difficult and costly...

"Dear Sir: We must respectfully inform you that we refuse to publish your latest play, Confucius In Heat..."

¡PELIGRO! ¡PANTALONES!
PERIGO! OS PANTALÕES!
WAARSCHUWING! BROEK!
AVVERTIMENTO! PANTALONI!
ОПАСНОСТЬ! БРЮКИ!
WARNING! PANTS!

These pants were hand-crafted in Siberia of the finest Phrygian pixie dust and are, therefore, highly flammable. Do not immerse yourself in flames, especially if you're Zoroastrian, because they don't approve of such things.

Do not spill McSchmecken's®™ coffee on these pants while worn, or you will make many friends on the way to the courtroom, and we do not approve of sociability.

When wearing these pants, do not position any of your limbs at 90° to the perpendicular, or they (the pants) may explode without warning.

Do not mix paints and/or stains while wearing these pants; a certain lavender color found in these pants has been known to bleed onto other surfaces, especially if your personal tastes in décor do not include pinkness. One 57-year-old man in Weehawken, New Jersey (henceforth, "Bruce") awoke to find his ordinary beige living room covered in bright pink polka-dots. He did not heed our warnings.

Do not cover any portion of these pants with a serviette, even to protect them from poutine. (Au Québec: Ne couvrez pas toute partie de ce pantalon de serviette, même si vous devez les protéger contre le poutine savoureux. Vive le Babelfish !)

Do not wear these pants in any area that receives less than 8" (203.2mm) of precipitation per year, as the static electricity levels produced by these pants may be harmful to your health.

ACHTUNG! HEISS.

Do not feed these pants to marsupials.

Do not wear these pants to any organized religion's worship services, as your religious leader of choice is not likely to approve of their sleek good looks.

VERY IMPORTANT: Do not read, or listen to, any version and/or translation of the works of Emily Dickinson, Emily Brontë, or anyone else named Emily, within eight feet (2.4384m) of these pants. However, if your name is Emily, it is entirely safe for you to wear these pants -- as long as you do not create any literary works while wearing them.

These pants do not meet the European Union standards for industrial safety, so do not wear them if you plan to be industrial and safe at the same time in Europe. Boise, Idaho, however, is just fine.

These pants are void in Vermont and where not otherwise prohibited by law. Washington residents need not enclose return postage.

I have a journal! Oh my goodness! Yes! Hello, little journal!

GREETINGS, PLANET EARTH! IT IS I

I no longer make my living by being screamed at by angry doctors many times an hour! Instead, I work from home part-time writing documentation and talking to technicians, who are far friendlier than angry doctors.

I'm going back to college in August! This August! And I will be going for my Geography degree! :D

I've picked up a lot of netspeak from Miss Kick in the last few time units since I was posting regularly, so if I say things like "zomg" and "XD" and "roflcopter" nowadays, that's why. ;)

And, speaking of: zomg, I'm 30 :-o So far, 30 is being a pretty good year. Any year that begins with no longer being screamed at by angry doctors is a good one.

Did I mention that my old job was kind of stressful? Because, like, it was. I HAVE A GRAY CHEST HAIR NOW AND IT IS COMPLETELY FROM STRëSS I didn't like the stressed-out, survival-level critter that I was becoming. I'm glad it's over. I work from home now! Instead of similar stressed-out survival-level critters in the next room, I have Miss Kick instead! :D :D <3 w00t :D

I like Brazilian music! Did I mention that before? Pandora is pretty cool.

"A flowchart of Gary Gygax's influence", via zanna_voodoo:
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/03/09/opinion/09opart2.ready.html

Once upon a time, as it were, my mother had been told that D&D was the hip new thing for "talented and gifted" kids, so she brought it home one day in about 1984. As my brother and I sat on the couch and observed, she opened the box, squinted at the little figurines, frowned at the multi-sided dice, flipped through the book a bit, said something like "I don't think this is really all that great for you kids," packed it all up, and returned it to the store without further comment. This was my brush with Gygaxiana.

Later, in high school, I was an undisputed part of the "geek" clique, but none of then actually wanted to, you know, let me actually play D&D with them or anything. ("You're not serious enough," they said, and a 15-year-old can't really know that this is a sign that perhaps one's friends are maybe a little bit off.)

As a result, I've always been about 1-2 degrees of separation from traditional geekdom, which has compelled me to evolve in a slightly different direction, like a small band of critters left on a landmass that has separated from Gondwana. I HAVE A POUCH, PEOPLE

I had a Texas Instruments 99-4/A as my first computer. And I was a Viking, not Gandalf, for Halloween. (But I did teach myself Pascal. QuickBasic just won't cut it sometimes.) And now I have a hottt blood elf guy in World of Warcraft. :P Thpp thpp thpp, listen to me speaking Elvish

No, I'm not a pirate cruising on the Spanish Main. Wherever that is.

*looks it up*

If I was driving down the main island road in Galveston (right here in Texas!), I would be cruising near the Spanish Main, because the Spanish Main is basically the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. (Huh.)

But I wouldn't be a pirate. Unless I just started saying "Yarrr", or wearing an eyepatch, or downloading Metallica music illicitly from AudioGalaxy or wherever the kids go for such things these days. Which I'm not doing.

Anyhow. I must utter "Gñarrrr" because I am aching in a painful sort of way.

I remember hearing of something called rebound from taking pain-relieving medication. Rebound, it is said, is a situation where you hurt more when it wears off. I did have to take naproxen (or "The Mighty Over-The-Counter Hammer of Thor") to deal with a nasty sinus headache yesterday. Perhaps this, then, is rebound.

If I was in Galveston, walking down the beach with this pain coursing through my being, it could be Rebound on the Spanish Main. But I'm not in Galveston. I really wouldn't mind being there, you know, but I'm far, far inland and I have to go back to work tonight. In the distant past, whenever I was at the end of a relationship, if I had gone to Galveston and immediately dated someone else, that, too, would have been Rebound on the Spanish Main. But it wasn't, since I never went near Galveston until I was in a well-established relationship.

*nods*

- - - - - - - - - -

Brazilian singer Pedro Luis E A Parede sounds a *lot* like famous Northumbrian singer Sting sometimes, especially in the song "Mapa Da Mina". If you listen to Pandora, you too can hear proof of this.

(Wait a moment. I can't say I've ever seen them in the same room together... hmmmm...)

This term, I'm taking the state-required History of Texas course.

And it makes me think: Dangit, why doesn't Oregon require a college-level course on its history for all people getting a degree there? Texas does, and it's wonderful, because it's making me feel more Texan to know what happened here back in the day.

Oregon seriously has the suckiest history requirements ev4r. I missed the only required Oregon history classes in my entire education (because I was in one school for 4th grade and a different school for 5th grade), and I seriously could've gone all the way through my entire school years -- including a full Oregonian college education -- without knowing a damn thing about:

* The Nez Percé, Kalapuya, Chinookans, Nefalatin (Tuality) tribe, Paiutes, etc.
* Bruno Heceta and Spanish discoveries of (and names for!) Oregon places
* Captains Gray and Vancouver on the Columbia
* The Spanish and English at Nootka Sound (in present-day BC, but definitely part of Oregon history)
* The US/English trade with China (important in early Oregon history)
* The Lewis and Clark Expedition
* Astor, Fort Astoria, the wreck of the Tonquin
* The Wilson Price Hunt expedition (for Astor's Pacific Fur Company: navigated the Snake River, discovered Central Oregon)
* Oregon's French history (via the fur company employees and fur trappers)
* Fort Vancouver and John McLoughlin
* The Wolf Meetings and Champoeg
* 54°40'
* Oregon as an independent country (and it was an independent country... just like Texas... but nobody *knows* that... probably because there were no dramatic battles involved... everyone knows "remember the Alamo", but nobody would ever say "remember the various settlers' meetings at Champoeg where a law code was drafted based on that of Iowa" :P )
* ... all the post-statehood stuff that I still don't know (because I don't find it as interesting... umm, lots of logging? :P )
* Tom McCall
* The things that Neil Goldschmidt did other than being pervy

(I learned about all of that on my own, and yet I'm wishing I had taken a systematic college course -- like the History of Texas course I'm taking now -- that would've introduced me to everything in a clearer fashion. I've picked up what I know piecemeal, by following my interests and reading what I like. I know I've missed a lot that way.)

So many people are moving in from elsewhere (even in 1990, when I was in 7th grade, at least a third of my junior high school classmates came from California... and they knew California history pretty well). Especially because of all of this immigration, it's just wrong that Oregon isn't taking the time to teach its own history. Oregon definitely isn't California -- Oregon came into being for very different reasons. And Oregon sure isn't anywhere else, either. Living outside the state has taught me just how unique Oregon really is. Texas may have the tourist slogan "it's like a whole other country", but Oregon definitely is too. It may not have its own accent (complete with unique grammar and phrases), but it's not like anywhere else in the USA.

I don't seem to be showing up on my own Friends list...

Is that normal now? Did something change while I was away* ?

* = other than LJ becoming more evil due to the evil influence of its evil overlords, which we all knew was bound to happen

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Update:

Wait, nevermind. My entries are there now. It's not new evil; it's just the old "my friends page doesn't update for a long time" thing.

So, while we're here, have an old comic strip:

I have to write answers to two essay questions, but I seem to be taking every opportunity not to do it. So, instead, I'm looking through thunder.yansa.net, finding old stuff that I had forgotten about.

Like this Care Bears quiz result:

I originally got ISTJ, but the description just wasn't me, and I knew that was because of a couple of tricky questions where any choice was a tough call. So I took it again (without trying to influence it) and got INTJ, which is my usual. I've consistently tested as INTJ since I was 7, i.e., the first time I ever took the test. Whoo!

It is said that I have "natural leadership ability", and fictional INTJs include Mr. Burns from The Simpsons and Professor Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes stories (not to be confused with Count Jim "Thighs" Moriarty from the Goon Show... he's got to be some other type). Huzzah for my "natural leadership ability". [bored voice] I have conquered your foolish planet. You will all do my bidding. Mwa-ha-ha. [/bored voice] :P

I don't know about that leadership ability thing. People don't do my nefarious bidding nearly enough in life, y'know? Where *are* my evil henchpersons, anyway?

One thing about my results is very, very right, though: I know *damn* well that Extraverted Sensing is at the very bottom of my list of life skills. My "Heyyyyy, baby!" or "Wanna buy a used car?" percentage is somewhere around -16,000% :P

I never seem to like the career matches on tests like this. Why do they always have things like "mathematician", "lawyer", "accountant", "computer programmer", or "scientist", but never anything cool like "satellite cartographer", say, or "burly barbarian warlord clad in overpoweringly sexy yet highly impractical armor"?

(This was inspired by a recent entry from mielikki, where she had a really bad dream that, surprisingly, left the '80s song "Your Kiss Is On My List" in her head.)

There's a category of '80s songs that always spooked me a bit when I was a kid, and, even now, something in the songs goes a bit funhouse-mirror on me if I'm tense or anxious or really tired.

I didn't have words to describe the particular feeling when I was younger, but I think these days I'd say something like "it's not the lyrics or the music, but, weirdly enough, something just feels like the humanness was sucked out of the song by space alien music vacuums or something... and I just can't put my finger on it".

Interestingly enough, "Your Kiss Is On My List" is one of those songs. O.o

A lot of stuff from about 1982-83 is in that category. Maybe preschool and kindergarten was a scary time for me :P Pretty much anything from that era by The Police (except for "I'll Be Watching You", oddly enough) goes in that category.

The absolute pinnacle of that musical category seems to be "Be Near Me" by ABC. ("When Smokey Sings", also by ABC, is a close second.) Something about that song is just spooky, somehow, in a way that Michael Jackson's "Thriller" (which was *intended* to be spooky) isn't. O.o

My mental image associated with those songs is an image of being awake in the middle of the night when I'm about 5 and watching the classified ad channel on cable (you know how they used to have those channels with time, weather, and classified ads, back in the day?) For some reason, that, too, was spooky.

Yes, I was an easily spooked kid :P (I'm still pretty jumpy in some ways, but I'm not as ashamed of it as I used to be.)

A page at YTMND made me wonder what would really happen if you searched for "Internet" on Google Maps. The results were funnier than the YTMND itself...

( ... )

The prescription decongestant has been a frustrating little prescription; it's entirely ruined my sleep schedule. Pouts like a princess... waits for audience applause... not a sausage*. Waking up after 3 hours of sleep and not being able to get back to sleep is not uncommon lately (hence, this post).

Hi. I'm in a hotel a mere 20 miles from my home, awaiting The Apocalypse™:

A major ice storm is likely. Preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion. Prepare for extended power outages from downed trees and power lines. Have non-perishable food and bottled water on hand. Do not travel unless it is an absolute emergency. If you must travel... keep an extra blanket... flashlight... food... and water in your vehicle in case you become stranded. Hern hern Hern McHern hern hern, hern hern hern... hern*. OMG OMG WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE OMG THE ICE, IT BURNS OMG OMG EXCLAMATION-MARK ONE ONE ONE FINAL STOP GLOTTAL STOP

(* = clēver Goon Show reference)

That (except for the "hern" part and the last line, which was added to simulate local news coverage) is, quite seriously, what the National Weather Service is saying in its Ice Storm Warning for this area. O.o This hotel is 3 miles from my job. I don't know if it'll be too freaky out tomorrow morning to drive 3 miles back over here after work -- I didn't grow up in the Columbia Gorge, so I don't know from inch-thick ice accumulations :P

As far as I can tell out my window, it hasn't gotten icy yet... we're 0.1°F above the freezing point right now, and it appears to be raining what the scientists like to call "liquid water". However, the weather predictions for Saturday night and Sunday have consistently been dire -- even as far back as a week ago. O.o

So I've been wondering whether I ought to book this room for another day. This hotel hasn't been crazy-busy, though, so I suppose I wouldn't have trouble reserving a room again tomorrow morning when I have a better idea of how the weather turns out. I can carry my belongings back to the car, and pack them back in tomorrow if necessary. Like the mighty yak of the frozen Himalaya, I am strong and covered in a thick layer of majestic body hair. Like the Canadian voyageurs of yore, I have French ancestry and a heavy backpack. So it should be entirely manageable, if somewhat awkward, to carry my stuff out tonight and back in tomorrow morning. The way the weather forecast sounds, I'm just wondering whether I'll be back over here in the morning... and no wonder, when even my workplace is talking about having people stay in "disaster management cots", which sound (to me, and also to the mighty yak of the frozen Himalaya) like a place that you go if you're having a nervous breakdown. :P

No nervous breakdown for me... although I'm afraid I couldn't sleep in a disaster management cot in a room with my co-workers, so I'd probably just end up being awake until the ice retreats from Dallas in this strange new world, the Littlest Pleistocene Era® [fx: audience: "awww, how cute, rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb"]. When I emerged, I would have mutated genes and a whole new style of spear-points. No, wait, that's what happened to people sheltering from the *real* Pleistocene Era. I would just be really really tired. And I bet the mighty yak of the frozen Himalaya would be, too, if he was in my situation. *nods*

We had some ice back in early December (I think that's right?), and we might have some more around Martin Luther King Jr. Day, too.

O.o

That's winter's worst in Dallas -- not pretty snow that can make up for the misery of driving in winter conditions, but ice, ice, ice. It's like The Dalles or something. Dallas = The Dalles (pronounced very differently from Dallas, for those not in the know). Triple-digit temperatures in summer, ice in winter, and plenty of wind. It's uncanny. Although, unlike The Dalles, we don't have the Columbia River, or elevation, or interesting columnar basalt. We could use some columnar basalt, true -- but not laid down in the natural way, because flood basalts kind of burn, and they aren't fun for a few million years. It'd be nice if some freeze-dried columnar basalt could pop out of the ground overnight in an uninhabited area; *bam*, a small amount of Instant Normalcy. The county it appeared in, they'd have my tourist dollars ;b

In other news, I'm on prescription CRACK prescription decongestants that make me alternately hyper and sleepy. I rather enjoy the hyper part; I don't have nearly enough of that sort of thing in these days of not consuming sugary treats. Woo-hah, woo-hah, got you all in check! 'Tis now the allergy season created by "mountain cedar" (that's what Texans call juniper) pollen, and that means sinus trouble. Allergies in midwinter are strange, but somehow it feels less aggravating than allergies on my birthday, and, plus, juniper pollen season here isn't even a quarter as long as the nasty awful horrid painful disorienting grass pollen season in Eugene, so I'll take it.

I don't think Central Oregon junipers had pollen. Either that, or I just hadn't spent January and February there, because when I lived in Bend (it was March-June), I didn't have any allergy problems. I had a great time, health-wise; I was breathing and thinking! ;b

Texas: It's like a whole 'nother country. Bad allergies in midwinter! Republicans! No columnar basalt! A coast with no Coast Range! Cattle as team mascots! (I totally wear UT Longhorn shirts now. I'm not a sports fan or anything, but I do like to wear the shirts of the Local Sports Team(tm). Longhorns = Substitute Ducks. Which, as Dave Barry would say, would be a good name for a rock band.)

I'm The West (not Mae West... sorry... only kickadee can come on over and see me sometime). It says that I'm not a SoCal surfer. It also says that I might live in Dallas. Both things are absolutely true!

Quiz reputability rating: 109.8% = More reputable than Suzanne

( The results don't look bad, but the code to create them was large and nasty and probably took up most of my clipboard space :P )

Woo-hoo! I got 370 on the World Languages Test :D

( quiz results )

It's 65°F (18°C) outside right now.

65°F!!!!

It hasn't been this cool outside -- at any time of the day -- since May 18th. (I looked it up.)

(Remember, I come from Oregon, a state where even the hottest day will have a low temperature of 65°F or lower -- and usually much lower than that. Often it will get down into the 40s at night -- that's 5-10°C! In summer! In the heat of summer, it's pretty much always too cold outside to wear shorts after the sun goes down. Well, it was for me, anyway, although some Oregonians are more polar-tolerant than I am ;) )

If I wasn't so tired, I'd stand outside and just savor the 65°F temperature, reveling in the feel of actual cool air on my skin. It's been so long that it actually felt odd to feel cool air outside. :b

But I'm really really really tired, so I have to sleep.

The forecast says it might get down to 59°F (15°C) overnight tonight. 59°F! I certainly hope so. I might just stand outside and savor the coolness on my lunch break at 1:00am. :D

But now, I sleep.

Yes! It is the "what do you think of me" même, but with a twist -- it is made entirely of words yoinked unceremoniously from the last 31 entries on my friends list, not all of which might actually contrast like the words in the original même!

So... do you see me as more:

* doggy or Latin
* endorphins or shoe repair
* warm flannel sheets or The Beatles
* iTunes or Virgin Islands
* Ramen or Bosnian
* cerebellum or Frankfurter
* butterflies or harp player
* Pluto or Mupdate
* kokopelli or morpheme
* novel or one-word
* rabbit chaos or Buddhism
* Achilles tendon or Very Important People
* missing or ethereal
* aerial acrobatics or NaNoWriMo
* Mt. Hood or distress

It needed an icon, and, at last, one exists ;)

(Même courtesy of Miss Kick. :D )

If I was born in 2893, I'd have anime green hair and a jetpack. And I would be named Bob! No, wait. Bob-o-tron! Bob-o-tron 9000!

Actually, my name would just be a high-pitched shriek (IPA: ¥ with an ogonek), but I would go by "Möbius" for short. Or maybe just "Ö". And I would have no hair at all. And I could communicate with dolphins -- using only THE POWER OF MY MIND!

But I'd still have a jetpack. And plenty of Dr Pepper®™.

I believe that all songs in Spanish should include the phrase los pantalones del destino. *nods*

I am so very convinced of this fact that I am known to include the phrase when I attempt to sing along with something in Spanish, even if the phrase is not actually present in a literal sense within the song itself.

Me: Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret.
iGod: I don't know whether or not I am there God. I am a giant electronic brain. Hi, Margaret.

1. Are you named after anyone? Offline, I am named after my dad and my great-grandpa. Online, I am named after meeeee! There was a time, once upon a time, lo these many many years ago, when "Yansa" punched into one's search engine of choice (because there used to be more than one) brought up me, me, me, me, more me, and some things in Russian or Turkish. I am 9,356 years old in online years and I remember such things. I also remember Yahoo as a student web page at Stanford. I remember when Lynx wasn't hip. I have a seven-digit ICQ account. Ph33r my age and experience. Are you experienced, baby? *guitar feedback*

2. Do you have your children's names picked out already? Opus, Antoine, Piers, Ferdinand, Miguel Maria, Brutus, Gustav, François, Einar, Gunther, Wu-Chang... oh, and of course, my precious future daughter Mohammed-Ali Buddha Kali Thor Moloch Escalator Choo-Choo Tractor M'kælluh MacGillycuddy Ché-Guevâra Lenin Reagan Nixon Trotsky Shatner Quetzalcoatl Botha Einstein Cheever Boutros-Boutros Jones. Although that name is still subject to revision, because I need precisely 18 more middle names for her. Little M-A.B.K.T.M.E.C-C.T.M.McG.C-G.L.R.N.T.S.Q.B.E.C.B-B.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.?.J will one day inherit the old family fortune of 18 bazillion ngultrum (NZ$0.02), don'tcha know, and she needs a name that suits her dignity and wealth. It must look utterly splendid monogrammed into her locker at the country club in Plano.

3. If you were born a member of the opposite sex what would your name have been? I don't know. However, as a teenager, I always thought I'd pick "Jennifer" if I ever experienced a change in gender role -- right up until the program director of the college radio station where I was a DJ had a gender change and went by "Jenifre". I sort of gave that name up at that point.

4. If you could re-name yourself what name would you pick and why? When I was a kid, I wanted to be "Jason", because about 2/3 of the friends who treated me okay were named "Jason". True story. My mom has my old books from 1984-6 that have stuff like "Ex Libris Jason" scribbled all over them. As for right now, I don't really want to rename myself. I have achieved peace of nomenclature. Yes.

5. Are there any mispronunciations/typos that people do w/your name constantly? Online: Folks use IPA "æ" instead of IPA "a" to represent the first A in Yansa. It's really the other way around. Offline: My name is pretty common (British royalty, '80s sitcom, etc., etc.), so it's not mispronounced very often. The last name is a different question entirely. Offline, that is. My online name has no surname. I am just "Yansa"... like "Prince", or "Madonna", or "Artis the Spoonman". *nods*

Have *you* ever seen them in the same room together? ... Me neither.

I gave in to the mêmery!

( ... )

Hee! I'd forgotten about ( this )