Vacations and Destinations

Pastini Pastaria in Portland, OR. Wonderful Italian food that far outshone my birthday destination of Casa Mia.

"Hey you! You dropped my number!" -Original quote invented by me ;)

Again on the refrigerator words:
one could tell a story, planting sentences growing life & ideas

Sham-full

"Yes, but today is a new day, filled with new hopes and dreams and even a few misspelled words."

Of Birthdays

I'm seventeen today. Old enough to not expect much on my birthday, but not so old that I don't get excited at being a year older. Actually, I hope I never lose that excitement. A year longer to live is too much opportunity to become bored over.

I'm planning on going to see Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd, which opens in theatres today. I'll come back later with a review.

But tell me, do I look seventeen?

Rather spring-ish shirt for the Winter Solstice, isn't it?

StumbleUpon and Its Goodness

Do you like those refrigerator word magnets?

"then keep eighty days,
to see what few found ways through:
five grew old last time."

Also, see what aliens think of us, or learn more about the
Elegant Universe surrounding us.

1/5/08 Edit: That poem I wrote above? I made it a haiku totally by accident, and didn't realize it until this moment. >_>

Indeed So

[ [ link ] ]

Do the Hula

Of Observations and Derivatives

I was talking with my father the other day and I was forced to categorize how I considered artists. I came up with the following theory:

Artists, of all venues, can be lumped into two categories: performers and creators. Then there are those who do both.

Those who perform others' material may be very successful based on their crowd-pleasing abilities, and those who create their own material may be very successful based on their creative genius. It is the difference between a magician who very successfully performs classic tricks to the audience, and a magician who is continually inventing new tricks and new interpretations to old ones. Both versions are considered artist, as both take a good level of skill and passion for the trade in order to perform; however they remain separate expressions of the same artistic passion.

The same may be said of actors versus directors, singers versus songwriters, instrumental musicians versus composers, even rubber stampers versus the stamp designers. And either category may branch into another: Mel Gibson has both acted and directed (as well as written scripts), and has done so quite successfully. He is an example of a performing and a creative artist.

The ability to create art, however, and the ability to perform it, seem to be caused by two separate motivations. The performance of art uses something already successful and enhances it or otherwise modifies it, using an already-successful medium to express to an audience. While this is a very useful skill, I tend to lend greater value to the creators, whose skills are bent towards creating something no one has seen before. It's more risky a venture, and takes time to gain popularity, but I can better appreciate what comes of such people.

Then again, a blend of traits is always good.

Going to School

It stopped snowing around noon. It has rained a bit since.

Dammit.

In other news, Howard Schnellenberger explains the difference between involvement and commitment: "When you're eating ham and eggs, the chicken that laid the eggs was involved, but the pig that provided the ham was totally committed."

You remember Bullseye's theme song from Daredevil? Been looking for it for awhile. Found it.


Or if you're looking for something a bit more peaceful:

Loveliness

It began to snow about an hour ago.

That is a ridiculously lovely idea to me. I hope (against all hope) that they cancel school tomorrow.

I'd look at the weather report to see how much snow we're supposed to get, but I don't want to jinx it. I've already prayed that it'll snow for a long time.

*SNOW ANGST*

Sisterly Affection

My sister will appreciate this, I think. I pretty much made it for her.


SeeqPod Music beta - Playable Search

I mean, sheesh, if this isn't enough OK Go for some time, then I don't know what could possibly be.

As a side note, I really need to finish reading Carroll.

Death To the Untrained Ear

... by virtue of training it.

Found *another* good online music finding source.

This one manages to allow you to search across the podcast network to find the song you want. You can create playlists, manage them, change them, share them, and embed your music all in the same place. Rather terribly convenient, actually. And when one considers that as time goes on, the amount of podcasts allowing access to songs will only grow.

It's called SeeqPod.

Inductive and Deductive Reasoning

I've always managed to know exactly what deductive reasoning was, which was assisted by my knowledge of how Sherlock Holmes came to his own conclusions. But while my geometry teacher attempted to explain the difference between that and inductive reasoning to me, the difference has remained one of the few cloudy points in my mental information reserves. That is, until today.

I received a document on argumentative essays from my teacher, wherein she discusses deductive and inductive argumentation. As her definitions seemed severely unclear, I finally Googled the definition for inductive reasoning.

I have since figured out that I use deductive reasoning to constantly evaluate my environment, while I use inductive reasoning to evaluate the people I meet. This is why I usually get a "feeling" when I meet a person, or a general definition of them based on scant information gathered, which later becomes proven quite accurate. I think the reason for its accuracy lies in the fact that the "scant information" is actually a subconsciously detected pattern in behaviours.

It's an interesting theory, anyway. I'll have to see if I see evidence of it in action.

Music Gets Into the Blood

Right now I'm on Pandora, and I'm totally digging the Howard Shore station. I mean, it's pretty much amazingly bomb.

If my title is true, than my blood is currently singing out wonderfully haunting vocals with epic soundtracks. You should honestly try this station.

Of Prophecies And the Prophetic

Had a bizarre dream last night.

In it I battled a black demon-possessed cat. But once I would kill it, the demon would somehow generate a new body and try to come and provoke me again into battle. A strange element in the dream was that the demon inhabiting the cat, usually unseen, could be viewed clearly through a hand-mirror held up to my face, which I looked through like a window and could see the demon. I would use the mirror after each battle as a sort of, "Ha! Now your true form is revealed!" cry of triumph. The residents of the house where the demon and I conducted our battles showed me how to use this mirror. There was one time that the cat and I battled with katanas, which was a fairly epic sequence.

In my dream, I also fought and killed a short demon man in the shape of a dwarf. The queerest thing about the battle were the weapons we used, which were strips of entire weeks that the dwarf had torn off of the calendar. He employed these strips like short swords. In the dream I remember being amused, knowing strips of paper couldn't hurt me. However, as he handed me one to use as I weapon, I realized that if he believed they were dangerous, the paper strips must hurt him, so I eventually killed him with the strips (without even a paper cut from the ordeal).

But during the battle, one of my favorite scenes in the whole dream occurred when I took one of the dwarf's two swords and added it to my single sword, and the dwarf began to run away from me. Until this point I had concealed that I wasn't able to be wounded from the paper, but now I stopped and lowered my weapons to draw him back. Instead of turning and charging me, he walked backwards quickly until he was close to me and then jabbed his strip of paper up and under his right arm inn order to spear me in the stomach (like in Kill Bill, you know?). Unfortunately for him, it was paper, and only bent; I laughed (I don't remember if it was in my head or not) at the silliness of the thing and began ripping at his back and sides with my two paper strips until he finally was defeated.

In addition to this scene, there was a point after killing the black cat for the last time when I turned around and saw the other residents in the house. They were grouped together at the far end of the room and were giving me black looks, whispering among themselves. They said that the reason the cat kept coming after me is that the cat's original self had been killed by me (which I didn't recall doing - I recall getting that I had done it in some other life or something), and now the cat's spirit had a personal vendetta against me. The residents sympathized with the cat, saying that I was a killer. As this was technically true, I didn't correct them (even though the demon in the cat was evil and it was self-defense and totally necessary warfare).

Like I said, it was a bizarre dream. Mostly I'm just sharing so that I remember both the dream and the date I had it.