Sunbird

Every time I see a screenshot from Mr Robot I think, "Hey, I recognize that actor from somewhere" and then I go look him up and remember that he played Ahkmenrah in the Night at the Museum movies. Also, you're welcome. ^.^

Finished Impulse, the third book in Steven Gould's Jumper series. Now moving on (finally!) to Fury & Light, the next book in Chris Stewart's The Great and Terrible series that I have been meaning to read for seriously like a year.

I got to make a sheet of paper by hand today on a mini-field trip for my college course "History of the Book." That was fun. I also got some discounted froyo because a local yogurt shop was having a 50% off sale today. Frozen yogurt is always a good idea.

In a similar vein, my grandpa lived in Sweden for two years on a religious mission about 50-ish years ago, and he tells me he ate a lot of sauerkraut while he was over there because it was cheap. The neighbors would see him bringing lots of it home and ask him what he was doing with all of it, and when he told them he was just eating it, they were like o_O "You must have a steel stomach!"

I've got one! The rich lack it. The dead eat it. The poor have it. What is it?

@Oversleep That ping-pong video totally cracked me up. Ok, time for a bird nerd joke: A flock of migrating shorebirds landed in a field of marijuana to rest for a few hours. Before long, no tern was left unstoned.

I know double-posting is frowned upon, but it's been almost a week since my last post here, and I think you all will enjoy this one, so here goes. You know you're a Sanderfan when you have the chance to get a free balloon animal and you ask for a "Medieval broadsword in black" so you can pretend your balloon sword is Nightblood.

It's been released to select theaters in the USA, as well as to online video rental services like iTunes and Amazon; I saw it at the Jordan Commons Megaplex just outside of Salt Lake City, UT. Dan Wells said in a recent blog post that he doesn't yet know when it'll be available in countries other than the US, but apparently Australia is "ON TOP OF IT." (Last paragraph of the post.)

!!! Shattering glass, sheep, I LOVE your renditions of the Bridge 4 garage band and Kaladin with the Shardguitar!! I seriously could not stop laughing for like five minutes straight when I saw Lopen with the triangle in his mouth. XD I also think the scifi AUs of Renarin, Kaladin, and Adolin are awesome. And daaaaaang, the mirror scene with Elhokar and the symbol-heads is super creepy, especially that haunted look in Elhokar's eyes.

Oh man, these are great! One of my high school history teachers told our class about Intercourse. Apparently at some point a new high school was being built in the area and the school board was trying to decide what to name it. Some wanted to name it Intercourse High School and others wanted a different name, and they couldn't agree until someone shouted from the back of the room, "Give me an I!" cheerleader-style. And the thought of having their cheerleaders spell out "Intercourse" during football games settled the debate because after that, nobody wanted to call it Intercourse High School. Hahaha. There's a London in Ohio as well, and I think a Versailles too. (Ours is pronounced ver-SALES; is that how the Missouri locals say it too?) We also have Russia, pronounced ROO-shee. When I lived in Virginia, nobody could agree on how to pronounce Norfolk: NOR-fick or NOR-folk. Same thing with Staunton; some people used the same vowel as "cat" for the first syllable, and some people used the same vowel as "caught." Then there was McGaheysville. All the locals pronounced it "muh-GACK-eez-vill." I haven't personally been to Zzyzx, but I see pictures of the sign for the highway exit every time I go to one of Brandon Mull's signings and he gives his PowerPoint presentation because that's where he got the name for the demon prison in his Fablehaven books. If I got the opportunity to name a town, I might try to make an anagram with the name of the state. Wronkey, New York Ivi Grain, Virginia Do Flair, Florida Daryl Man, Maryland Sane Bark, Nebraska Nine Moats, Minnesota Gooner, Oregon

@mattig89ch Time? In marble halls as white as milk, Lined with skin as soft as silk, In a fountain pure and clear, A golden apple doth appear. No walls there are to this stronghold, Yet thieves break in and steal the gold.

Went and saw the live-action Tarzan remake (sequel?) last night since it was playing at my local discount theater. I very much enjoyed it!

The Princess Bride is one of my longtime favorites. And I know they're usually classified as scifi, but the original trilogy of Star Wars movies are also ones that I could watch again and again. A more recent one that I never get tired of is Stardust, one of the few instances where I've liked the movie better than the book it was based on.

We need more of this. Imagine peasants starting to cough and getting boils and going to WebMD to diagnose themselves since nobody could really afford a doctor. "I HAVE THE PLAGUE?! NOOOOO--" *doubles over coughing* Or, alternatively, they mis-diagnose themselves with something much more harmless and stay naively cheerful as they're obviously dying. Son: "Father, you've been coughing up blood for the past three days! You're obviously NOT fine!" Father: "It'll pass; WebMD said I just need lots of rest and it'll heal up on its own." Clickbait ads: "Plague doctors are FURIOUS that a farmer discovered this one weird old trick to keep rats out of your hovel!" "Got plague? Try SAINT JEROME'S MIRACLE CURE-ALL! Guaranteed to restore your health and vigor in just 7 days or your money back!"

IMO doing that to someone who is kind enough to lend you their book(s) earns you a spot on the permanent blacklist of "never allowed to borrow my books again." I lent a book to someone once, and she kept it for so long that when I went looking for the book on my shelf and it wasn't there, I didn't even remember that I'd loaned it to her, so I thought my mom had lost it when I gave it to her to read. So my mom ended up buying me a new copy, and months later, the negligent borrower finally gave me back my original copy. Obviously, I was surprised, and when I realized what had happened, I was thinking... You kept this for so long that I forgot I'd even loaned it to you. No more book loans for you! If I may be so bold as to offer some advice--tell Lunch Girl that if she wants to read The Dark Talent for free, she should check it out from a public library because you have had enough of her taking advantage of your kindness and abusing your property. And if she "borrows" the library copy indefinitely or abuses it, then she can pay the library fines, and maybe she'll learn a valuable lesson.

@Morzathoth I hate swimming in the ocean because I have an unreasonably intense fear of sharks.

Twi, although I don't really know how you're feeling because your situation isn't something I've experienced myself, I want to echo what Edgedancer and Bleeder have said: you always have us. We're here for you and we love you, and I can't imagine that any decent person who takes the time to get to know you would not want to be your friend. I hope you find someone you can enjoy Christmas with this year. *hugs*

@Mistrunner apparently it is impossible to voluntarily hold your breath to death because you'll pass out and then your body will automatically start breathing again once your conscious mind is no longer telling it not to.

Re: science vs religion, I accept both. I definitely believe in God, but I see no reason why an all-powerful being could not use methods like the Big Bang or evolution--concepts accepted and promoted by modern science--to achieve his goals for the universe or for life on Earth. I also believe that humans have limits on our ability to understand and explain the natural world, and I'm willing to leave some mysteries unsolved for the time being.

I can do Friday the 23rd either.

Sounds like he enjoys messing with people.

Because finding a movie that's better than its book is so rare, I actually keep a shelf of them on GoodReads. This shelf currently contains 10 books if you don't count the disappointing Heroes and Stargate: Atlantis novels I've stuck on it: The Fellowship of the Ring The Two Towers The Return of the King Contact by Carl Sagan The Prestige by Christopher Priest Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion The Giver by Lois Lowry Hoot by Carl Hiaasen Stardust by Neil Gaiman A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs Things these books have in common: I saw the movies before reading the books, except for The Giver.

My bad--I neglected to check whether my memory was right about how many books in the series. XD

Ok this is totally unrelated to anything that's been said in the past few pages, but I want to share this. I'm going to assume that at least one person who frequents this thread has read all 4 of Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books. I've only read the first (so far), but I have heard about a joke from one of the later books about "6 x 9 = 42." I was puzzling over this last night and had sort of an epiphany. Obviously 6 x 9 = 54, not 42. BUT if you write the number 54 in base-13 (in the same way that binary is base-2), then you get... wait for it... 42. So 6 x 9 CAN equal 42, depending on how you interpret what's on the page. I feel like such a nerd.

This is the opposite of a problem. I'm working on Reflex, the second book in the "Jumper" series by Steven Gould. (Remember that movie that starred Anakin Skywalker as a teleporter?) Another example of "The book was better than the movie."