Category: General

Garage Sale Booty:
Aggravation game for 40 cents (for James) – missing 2 marbles.
A baker’s dozen of markers & pencils (good ones too) for $1.85

After the garage saling I called James to tell him about his prize. Since my previous plans had their berries picked, I went with him for a long walk with his dogs on the endowment lands. Maybe I should capitalize endowment lands, but I’m not going to because they’re already endowed enough without me making a point of it. It was almost like hiking, except the terrain was largely flat. I enjoyed it, and we saw a nice fat banana slug. Then James took me out for lunch at Acropol and then we went back to my place and played a game of Magic: The Gathering. It was a close game, but my legions of vampires took out his angels & griffons. Then I started working when he left and he came back later to watch War of the Worlds. I’m running Spaceship Zero in 7 days and I still don’t know what the plot will be.

James had me down four games – 5-1, but then I came back to win 7-5. It was quite sweatenating!

A meteor came down in a swamp and created these plant creatures, which are turning people and animals into plant zombies with their spores. That’s on the Superfriends right now, so remain calm – but there’s a meteor shower tonight so be on guard. I’m toying with the idea of going down to the beach to watch.

Tomato soup
Tomato stew
Tomato chowder

Clam soup
Clam stew
Clam chowder

Beef stew
Beef soup
Beef chowder

Think about it. We have these traditional names but they pretty much mean the same thing. The dictionary calls chowder “a thick soup in a milk or tomato base”, in which case cream of mushroom soup could easily fall into the chowder classification. The verb ‘to stew’ means “to cook by simmering or boiling slowly” so by that definition most soups are already stews. I say nuts to tradition! The rampant arbitrary renaming of soups begins now!

Knitting in the Buff tonight consisted of only 5 shows:

Reboot 5: The Crimson Binome – Introduces Captain Gavin Capacitor who plays an important role in the 3rd season
Black Books 6: He’s Leaving Home. Possibly the weakest episode of the first season. Still lots of yuks though, especially the beard fetish uh…business.
Buffy: The robot demon one from first season. I thought this episode was pretty awful, actually. Invariably when TV or film tries to feature computers or the internet, they might as well be magic boxes because any semblance to the constraints of real-life technology are tenuous at best. That’s not the only reason I didn’t like the episode though.
Look Around You: Ghosts.
Buffy: First episode from second season. I didn’t much care for this episode either. It seemed like a really generic, standard, story-rehashing episode and I really didn’t enjoy Buffy being all bitchy because she was dead for a few moments in the previous episode, even if it may have been “realistic.” When I first saw Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow bugged the hell out of me with her milquetoast delivery and sleepy-time voice, but now I would go so far as to say I like her – she makes a good underdog. I think Charisma Carpenter does a great job as the bitch but she’s always looked like she was 35 even in the first season, and that has never stopped bugging me. I think Xander’s my favourite. He’s got the most personality out of all of them, and is the most accessible.

In attendance was Marlo, Dalia and Anghold. We ended early (10pm) because everyone had to go. Also it was and is really hot in the apartment. Next time I look forward to some more Firefly. I like everyone in that cast.

Actually- quite a few interesting stories in addition to the standard ‘Bush is a twit’ announcements.

George W. Bush acknowledged that the war on terror has been “misnamed”; he said that it ought to be called “the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world.” [Whitehouse.gov]

Prime Minister Iyad Allawi signed an amnesty law for Iraqis who have committed minor crimes since the American occupation began, and he ordered the closure of the Baghdad office of Al-Jazeera for one month.

Britain banned toothy smiles from passport photos.

The United States announced that it will insist that the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, which would ban countries from making enriched uranium and plutonium for nuclear bombs, be stripped of any mechanism for enforcement, such as inspections. This position, which would render the treaty useless, apparently was reached because the Bush Administration does not wish to submit to inspections. [New York Times]

Prozac was found in Britain’s drinking water.

Missouri’s voters approved a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. [Reuters]

Several Nigerian sorcerers were arrested after skulls, body parts, and 50 corpses were found in shrines belonging to a cult called Alusi Okija; the chief priest of the cult was not arrested, however, because he’s an old man and police didn’t want him to die in custody. [Associated Press]