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Whoever invents paper that throws the red squiggles under misspelled words will make a million bucks.

The observation that our life is run by technology is old hat: it started when the Luddites destroyed their first textile machine and the Amish bowed out of society because of the zipper. And hey, I just had to look that shit up on Wikipedia.

So there's something pretty rewarding when we get to strike back at our crutches, specifically, (for me) when I add a word to Microsoft Word's internal dictionary. For so long it has corrected you, that smug little pop up box... And then, for one shining moment, you get to correct it. Boom, bitch! Who's your daddy now?




forcing microsoft word to acknowledge that anterior is so a word: ***

Balloons n' Things

So, every year, there is a hot air balloon convention that takes place where I reside. It makes sense that so many balloonists would convene at such a tiny location - we have 1,000,000,000 wineries. So I'm sure they land, get smashed, and then float around in a hot air balloon. It sounds fun, and I'd like to see some cop try to slap a DUI on a balloonist.

Anyway, as I was waking up this morning, still in the clutches of Lord Hypnogoga, I thought my sometimes roommate was downstairs, beatboxing. And he beatboxed with such POWERFUL FORCE that it warped the very dimensions of space time, resulting in this ultra-bass rumble - the ultimate beatbox move. Awesome! I thought, as I looked out the window and saw one of the balloons gently lowering. And I realized, as I came further into myself, that the sound I was hearing was the sound of air being let out of the balloon.

Whoa.



the ultimate beatboxing technique suddenly becoming a landing hot air balloon: ***

Smiles

At Dragfest this year, one of the girls (actually a girl, dressed as a girl, go figure) wasn't smiling.
"What's with her?" Someone asked.
"Oh she's being sexy, so she's not smiling," said her friend.

To quote xkcd:

FUCK.
THAT.
SHIT.

Smiling is great. It's friendly, it's sexy, it's whatever. It makes the sun shine, or the clouds rain, if that's your thing. It's hard for me to smile 'cause of my face, so I don't do it too much. I try to get my eye-smile on, know what I mean?

Anyway. I can count a hojillion (it's like a billion but with more STIs) times a smile made my life better, but I'll just relate today's. I was on my way to Reid to get some dinner when, across the stepping stones, I ran into a kind-of crush who smiled at me. We stopped and talked, it was a very short interaction, but that smile was awesome.



getting smiled at on my way to food: ***

The Precise Nature of "You"

OK, this is my last post focusing on music for a while. I hope.

As I was walking to lab last night I was listening to the latest Patrick Wolf CD, The Magic Position, specifically the title track, which is a love song.

It's one of those love songs that are sung in the second person (addressing some off-screen "you") and I experienced a sudden paradigm shift.

See, usually, I listen to these songs allied with the singer, feeling his yearning and expression towards that other "you." BUT this time, for some reason, I felt as if he was singing to me directly. That I was the "you"!

It was such a strange switch! I laughed, and felt a little flattered, and it was really quite strange and nice.




feeling like the object of patrick wolf's affection on a brisk spring night on the way to astro lab: ****