The Thunder rolled. It rolled a six.

Sice my interview on Tuesday (who knows how well that went), I've been cruising around on YouTube in between scouring the great wide Internet for jobs. I think I've seen every Graham Norton video by now and went searching for music tonight.

Now I present you with a question, or rather a series of them. Under the cut you'll find a few videos in pairs: the first will be the original, the latter (or latter plurals as the case may be) is/are a cover. The poll at the bottom is for you to tell me which version you like better.

( On to the showCollapse )


Now, which of those did you prefer? Well ... crap. I don't have a paid account any longer and now I can't make a poll. Here's the text of it anyway.

"Which cover makes the cut?"
A. "Personal Jesus"
Depeche Mode
Marilyn Manson
Johnny Cash
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

B. "All That She Wants"
Ace of Base
Britney Spears
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

C. "I Can't Stand The Rain"
Tina Turner
Ann Peebles
Missy Elliott
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

D. "Satisfaction"
Otis Redding
The Rolling Stones
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

E. "Smooth Criminal"
Michael Jackson
Alien Ant Farm
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

F. "Behind Blue Eyes"
The Who
Limp Bizkit
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

G. "Careless Whisper"
The Gossip
George Michael
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

H. "I Will Always Love You"
Whitney Houston
Dolly Parton
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

I. "It's My Life"
Talk Talk
No Doubt
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

J. "Hound Dog"
Big Mama Thornton
Elvis Presley
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

K. "Tainted Love"
Gloria Jones
Soft Cell
Marilyn Manson
The Pussycat Dolls
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

L. "Nothing Compares 2 U"
Jimmy Scott
Sinéad O'Connor
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

M. "Such Great Heights"
Ben Folds
The Postal Service
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

N. "Bitches Ain't Shit"
Dr. Dre and Snoop Dog
Ben Folds
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

O. "My Heart Will Go On"
A New Found Glory
Celine Dion
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

P. "I Love Rock And Roll"
Britney Spears
Joan Jett
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

Q. "Higher Ground"
The Red Hot Chili Peppers
Stevie Wonder
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

R. "Barracuda"
Rasputina
Heart
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

S. "Waiting In Vain"
Annie Lennox
Bob Marley
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

T. "Under Pressure"
Joss Stone
Queen
Keane
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

U. "Straight Up"
Random Guy (David Werner)
Paula Abdul
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

V. "Somewhere Over The Rainbow"
Israel Kamakawiwo'Ole
Judy Garland
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

W. "Against All Odds"
Phil Collins
The Postal Service
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

X. "Forever Young"
Youth Group
Alphaville
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

Y. "Forever Young" (the other one)
Rod Stewart
Bob Dylan
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)

Z. "(Love You) Inside And Out"
Fiest
The Bee Gees
Other/None of these (Tell me why?)


It's 5AM. I think I'll try to sleep.

ETA: Updated to show which ones I liked better (underlined).

Augmentin + 15 minutes = Barfing Festival September 2007

At last the movers arrive. This time only 7 hours later than promised. I hope they're hit by falling debris.

Nationwide Relocation Services and TJC Moving Co. Are a bunch of thieves.

But who knows, maybe this will all just smooth out and be a good thing after all. Musn't be so negative. Miss my dog :(

>80,000 folks with no power from a "thunderstorm" that any Arkansan would have just laughed at. This will take adjusting.

Know how I know I am white? I measure ny trip by the number of NPR affiliates I pass through.

New Kansas state motto: "Kansas, We Go On Forever." I hate this state and I want out now. 300someodd miles until Colorado.

jkpolk & lalinguabella are both *cough*twenty-something-else*cough*

panhypogammaglobulinemia

I think I'll start writing short little tales about the funny things that happen to all my patients before I forget. Here's a short one to start.

Before the whole Snakes Liquids On A Plane debacle, our patients would often collect 24-hour urine samples while travelling from wherever they may be to our hospital. (Now they collect them before and mail a portion in or do it once they arrive; either option is a hassle.) At any rate, Mr. X was flying here from Florida. He had a Nalgene container he was collecting his urine in with him and had put it in a carry-on case, tightly sealed, with his other medical supplies and such. Now, while a plane is pressurized, it isn't quite as many Pascals as found at sea level where he tightly sealed the container.

''It's not?'', you ask. No, but you don't notice because you take so long to reach 35,000 feet and, while it's not as pressurized, it is close. Does anyone remember Pascal's equation?

P₂ - P₁ = -(ρ)(g)(h₂-h₁)

Basically, what this says is that fluid pressures at two points of a connected tube will stay the same if acted upon by an outside force provided there is a place for the fluid to go. Example: U-shaped tube filled with water and sealed with movable metal plates atop the water. You push on one, the other rises.

You can extrapolate from that law and the Ideal Gas Law that when the pressure on the outside of a container like that decreases, the volume of gas inside the container will try to expand to fill it.

Think on that for just a minute. I'll wait.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Back? Okay, you've guessed it by now. The lid to the Nalgene container full of urine popped off and urine went all over the overhead compartment. Poor Mr. X had to pay Delta a huge fine and started writing checks to all the people's stuff his urine contaminated. He was mortified, but later laughed to us about it.

I'll never forget that one.

Some time back I saw a fan-produced short film where three male roommates got a mysterious package delivered to them: a box containing three lightsabers. They proceeded to play with them, as all us men would naturally do, and eventually went outside to cause less destruction and hopefully get the deposit back on their lease.

While at the park, they met three female roomates, also possessing lightsabers.

Does ANYBODY know where I can find this or at least what the name is? My Google-Fu fails me.

Help!

Apparently this guy forgot that little saying. Kevin Smith took time out of his busy day to remind him why that's still true.



Kevin, I love you.

Being asked by LJ not to post potential child porn - fictional characters or not - does not constitute oppression, nor does it equate to Nazi-like levels of evil, nor does Live Journal belong to you, the user, but rather to Six Apart, the company that purchased it. As a Harry Potter fan, I am asking you to shut the hell up. Jesus.

For reference: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven (particularly hilarious), Eight (particularly WTF?) there are dozens more.

LJ isn't banning all fandoms and fan-fics, just the ones that involve only smut with under-age (by US laws governing pornography, which, by the way, is 18-years of age, the same as in the UK and Canada ... age of consent isn't the same as the age at which you can be a porn star) characters, fictional or no. Please, please, please just calm down. You're making yourselves look like fools.

Some of you, like S, are very talented writers who write fan-fic in very brilliant and imaginative ways. Stunning pieces of short fiction, in fact. Most of you, however, are Mary Sues and pornographers with no redeeming literary at all. Just. Stop.

And the next person that changes that "First they came for the ... And then they came for the Jews..." poem thing to anything related to fandom is going to get my foot up their ass.

Big Girl (You Are Beautiful)

destroying next? I have frequent flyer miles to use.

Just watched "Alien" again (Thanks, Comcast On Demand!). Jesus jumped up and kicked a pony, I'd forgotten how damn scary that was. Probably the 10th or 11th time I've seen it, but every single time it gives me gooseflesh and makes my stomach quiver in fear like a little girl sitting on her pervy uncle's lap when nobody's home.

Yes, he did. Libby doesn't have to go to prison for his crimes because our glorious President is above the law. And the world knows, yet again, that our current administration feels that it is simply granted rights by God to do whatever the bloody hell it feels.

Here's the best quote (from the first link) from Mitt Romney, a presidental hopeful for the upcoming election:

Two Republican candidates for president, Mitt Romney and Rudolph W. Giuliani, expressed support for Mr. Bush’s decision. Campaigning in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Mr. Romney said, “I believe that the circumstances of this case, where the prosecutor knew that there had not been a crime committed, created a setting where a decision of this nature was reasonable.”

And here I was thinking that lying to a grand jury was perjury. Legal Eagle LJ friends (unbleachedbrun, moroveus, and iconoclast por ejemplo), isn't that ... you know ... a crime? Lying to the F.B.I. perhaps not, but the man was in front of the grand jury and lied. He was convicted of perjury. Hence ... maybe, crime?

Are Romeny, Giuliani, Bush, and even Fred Thompson (don't get me started) trying to put forth that since nobody was ever charged with leaking her name that Libby's crime doesn't exist? Colour me completely confused.

Google "Libby" + "Commute" for an explosion in Google News' server.

Tonight's theme is ''Why We Dance'', or so I've come to learn after seeing the Q&A session Cat recaps during each background piece. Also, you'll notice more than a few nods to last season.

( Cut for the West Coasters and my friends who don't like long recaps.Collapse )
Rankings: Difficult, top ... Pretenders, bottom ... Elvis.

Bonus: Freestyle from Hok. Cool. Attitude from Dominic. Suave.

I know you all hate it when I review this show, so you can all skip this if you want. I hope you read it though! I love you all and crave attention.

About 30 of us are here at one of M's house watching So You Think You Can Dance on a projector that's aimed at, and I shit you not, an 18-foot tall wall. This house is huge and gorgeous. I want vaulted ceilings in my house when I buy. Mixed group of deaf and hearing folks and the TV's hooked up to the stereo-system so it can pump enough wattage through the speakers that I bet you can hear it down the block. But hell, it has to be loud and full of base so half of the folks here can feel the bass and rhythm. M and a few others have turned down their hearing aids and I am jealous of that ability for once! Who cares though? This is gonna be fun.

Here we go. It's time for the show.
( Cut for the length haters!Collapse )

Recap of all the dancers. Let's see if I remember them tomorrow though. Showing Kameron and Lacy again made my breath catch. People on the Internet are afraid that her being Benji's sister will get her votes just because of that. After tonight, I think they'll see that if she keeps up the strength and talent she showed in Mia's routine that she'll deserve her spot on this show. Faina brought Cedric down. Lauren and Neil tried, but weren't that great. Hok and were good, but not as good as some of the others. Dammit, I think I may like Jimmie and Shauna in retrospect.

---

Ranking in my ever-so-non-dancer opinion? I don't think I can really do that too much tonight. It's difficult and there are too many of them. I know which one I loved the best: Lacy and Kameron. Like I said, if she keeps that up she'll shut everybody up with their "She's only there because of Benji! Wah! Wah! I'm a hater! Travis Was Robbed!" crap. I liked Danny and Anya and also Jessi and Pasha. Everybody else was either okay or maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. I think that Jesus and Sara were good as well, and I really want Sabra to stick around. Poor Faina really struggled with hip-hop; if she makes it through tomorrow's cut, she better practice some other styles harder than she ever has before. I don't like Ricky's personality, but I think he's a good technical dancer. Shauna could have been better and Jimmy surprised me.

Dunno ... I'm just overwhelmed tonight. I know that I want to cry when I saw Mia's routine. Tyce's Annie Lennox routine with Allison and Ivan from last season as well as Mia's bench routine to Calling You with Travis and Heidi were two of my absolute favourites and this performance by Lacey and Kameron was so reminiscent of those two pieces of art.

jkpolk, what do you think?


I'm going to have to wait until tomorrow to watch Top Chef. It's the first episode and we're all still partying and watching SYTYCD again.

I watched "Mean Girls".


I liked it.


Kill me now.

I can't turn my head left, up, or down. It's never hurt this much in my life. I took a Skelaxin and a couple of ibuprofen and am doing with the doctor said: sitting with my spine straight as a board and doing circles with my neck very, VERY slowly. Hurts like hell. Glad I followed his advice and took today off. Geez.

Also, I fell asleep on the toilet after I took that damn skelaxin. I don't want to take that again. :-(

Concerning Martha Jones' mother:

Her eyebrows are out of control. Somebody get a weed-whacker because we've long since past the point where wax and tweezers are going to put a dent into that forest.

That is all.

Given that Irish was granted Official Language Status this week, the following excerpts from a television show titled No Béarla (to be shown on TG4 this spring) are all the more disturbing. Ireland claims that 25% of the population speaks Irish at a comprehensive level. Truth told, perhaps only 3% of the population can use it fluently and as a first language.

I need to practice. A lot. So very rusty.

One of the most disturbing things about this first video is the very hostile (very hostile) treatment he receives in Dublin from government workers, shopkeepers, barkeeps, etc. when speaking in Irish. The travel agency - where he finally can communicate in French, to his obvious dismay - was the worst. After the travel agent cops an attitude someone else backs him up and says ''Béarla only.'' Béarla = English. Tacky. Some of this hostility may be hold-over from when Irish was second-class, low-class.



( No Béarla behhind this cut boys and girls, but two more videos.Collapse )

Jake 2.0 is a very cool show. Why didn't I watch it when it was on? Now I have to settle for SciFi Network re-runs. Bugger. It only ran 16 episodes, too.

( Lyrics under the cut in case that page goes down, doubtful, but it may someday ... long after my own blog ceases to be sure.Collapse )