So... moved some furniture, drove another ten hours, and came back to South Dakota. And now I'm... so... perky. Aaugh.

I do have one unrelated comment. I went and saw the movie League of Exraordinary Gentlemen last night, and I have to say: Sean Connery is an alcoholic. I don't know how else to explain how the man went from being one dapper James Bond to (quite poorly) playing some washed-up superhero besides the most obvious possibility, which is an exorbitant quantity of scotch.

Just a random thought.

I guess I'm Iowa for the next 24 hours or so. The swans say "honk."

On my way out here, I stopped in Chamberlain for a family reunion that lasted a few hours. I've been to a few of these deals, but still it seems like every time the family that shows up is completely different. There were a few people I recognized, but the rest I swear I have never seen before in my life. Just like the last six reunions.

The only possible explanation I can come up with is that someone in my mother's family has an agreement with the Witness Protection Agency. The feds give Aunt Beatrice some names, and suddenly I'm shaking hands with "long-lost third cousin Ted" who of course hasn't seen me since I was "this big." I guess it's not so bad, except that cousin Ted's ten year-old son has grown morbidly obese in his young age, and for some reason enjoys whipped creme wrestling while out for a day on the beach. Even when there is no beach.

Other than that, it has been a pretty boring trip. I think I heard the same broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion three times, which got a little tiring. Now I can understand why Tori hates the guy so much. What happened to you anyway, Tori? I'm told you're out there somewhere.

News flash: Liberia still screwed. I hope we land troops soon.

Search Query Report

This report lists which queries people used in search engines to find the site.

Listing the top 20 queries by the number of requests, sorted by the number of requests.

reqs: search term
----: -----------
   9: morgan webb naked
   8: morgan webb
   2: ryan brown
   2: morgan webb pictures
   1: morgan webb naked free
   1: dr pepper screensavers
   1: space sirens download
   1: legal age to buy pornography in france
   1: zhamnov impaired driving
   1: wally pleasant mp3
   1: rapidfish
   1: morgan webb x play
   1: love the tux
   1: ydkj
   1: treatment for no doze pills overdose
   1: chicago korean corps
   1: dog costume
   1: aol 2.0 -palm -pocket -pocketpc
   1: how to be a hottie
   1: love sumi das naked
   2: [not listed: 2 search terms]

+ + +

It's the 'treatment for no doze pills overdose' bit that worries me. I can just picture some Intar-web kid freaking out and convulsing in his bedroom or something, desperate for the knowledge and finding only... whatever it is we have here. Fine pies and baked goods, I suppose.
I guess it's his problem for not knowing enough to dial the EMTs, isn't it?

I was about to write something, but then I suddenly decided to go on an Icee run instead. Oops. More news as events warrant.

+ + +

LATER...

Piña colada Icees aren't that great. Definitely not to be consumed in great quantites, at any rate. Informed.

Anyway, there isn't much in South Dakota I can really talk about with all sorts of linky-things underneath them, so I'd like to talk a little more about how screwed up the world is. Now, there are a lot of wars going on out there. A lot of people die every day, not just of the good old 'hunger and malnutrition' routine, but also of being shot in the head by a kid with a Kalashnikov. I've been thinking about buying a wall map and then sticking pins on it wherever people are firing guns at each other or blowing each other up on a regular basis. This is something I will probably do once I move in to the new place in August, and the first pin I place will probably be in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which will probably still be labeled 'Zaire' on whatever map I buy.

Active fighting in the DRC has been under way for about five years now. The CIA World Factbook sums it up pretty well, though it leaves out the fact that the middling estimate of the death toll is at about 4 million, which would make the fighting in the remote Ituri province in northeast DRC "the deadliest conflict on the globe since World War II," as WPR correspondent put it in article in this month's edition of that periodical.

What makes the conflict in the DRC so troubling is that there is very little anyone can do to stop the fighting from inside the country itself. The fighting in its current form is, as I understand it, a two-sided conflict between the Lendu and Hema tribes. The Lendu are being backed by the country of Uganda, and the Hema militants are supported by the government of Rwanda. The international community did help the fighting by encouraging peace talks that seem to have succesfully removed actual Ugandan and Rwandan military personnel from DRC soil, but the alliances are still there, fueling the bloodshed. So many people have died that even the warring factions aren't really independent anymore--the foot soldiers doing battle are mostly young children, and enough military leaders have perished that the Lendu forces are basically run by Ugandan officials, with the Hema in a similar situation. Without major political intervention, it is only a matter of time before the fighting stops because no one is left to keep up the killing. It could be a long time, as over two million people still live in the Ituri province and the birth rate is incredible--about half the country's population is under the age of 14--but this constant influx of new blood only serves to fuel the grim war machine that has been set in motion.

Anyway, this is what I mean when I say world is pretty screwed up. I guess there isn't so much I can do as an engineer, besides make some money and give it to Doctors Without Borders or something. I'll probably keep writing about it all, if only so I have handy, concise summaries to refer to later.

Oops, the kitten is meowing at me. This means I must go play with the kitten right now or be hated forever. By a kitten. So... I am off.

Oh no, it's a 'visit this link' post!

17:17:17, August 17th. At this instant, through the magic of atomic clocks, a bunch of people take pictures at the exact same moment, just because. I believe this corresponds to 10:17 am in Seattle, 11:17 am in Rapid City, 12:17 pm in Ames, and so on... other times elsewhere, I would presume.

Wow, so... I'm back in the motherland, South Dakota. The last week or so really flew by, between the studying and the other studying and the slacking off when I should have been studying and all. But now another phase of my life is over. I ate my last dorm food meal ever--ever!--on Friday evening before moving out of the residence halls for good on Saturday. It is probably saying something about dorm food that I don't remember what that meal was... chicken something, I think. Or maybe I just had a salad.

Anyway, today's rambling:

After acing my summer classes, I think I'm officially committed to being an engineer. I had my first suspicions of this when I was trying to explain to a friend why I spent so much time doing homework. I think my answer was something about "taking a bridge apart and finding the tension in each strut, one at a time" followed by how it "isn't complicated, just that there are a lot of numbers to keep track of." Which is basically what my area of study--mechanical engineering--seems to be about; a glorified accounting system for... err... mechanical things. I guess the only trick is in not being intimidated by complicated-looking drawings like this one of a regenerative gas-turbine power cycle from the last day of my Thermodynamics I class.

They tell me that in Thermodynamics II, we basically study the same topics as Thermodynamics I, except instead of talking about energy, enthalpy and entropy we discuss other fun, made-up variables like efficiency, exergy and fugacity. Fugacity! I'm not entirely sure what it means to have fugacity. I suppose the dictionary will tell me it is a measure of one's fugaciousness, which sounds to me like some obscure break-dancing term:
"Man, you see that cat's kicks? They was fugacious!"
"Yeah, yeah, I saw 'em. He had some serious exergy going there, yo. It was isentropic!"
I think I might just start dropping engineering terms into everyday slang conversations. If it works, I will be able to talk about my future profession to people and just sound cool and irreversible instead of nerdy. Dig?

On that note...

Actual quote, uttered while moving a desk that started to tip over: "Damn you, coefficient of static friction! I won't have you inducing a moment about the y-axis!"

I am back in Ames. Sunday was not fun, as I drove until sunset, then did homework until sunrise. It has been a productive 18 hours or so since I woke up yesterday, though, which I guess somehow makes up for that.

After I finished studying, I hopped over to the Campustown Kum'n'Go (no kidding) to grab a six-pack of Krispy Kremes and some milk. Walking back, I noticed that Copyworks, a copy shop/convenience store on the corner of Welch and Lincoln Way, had a sign posted advertising "25% OFF CHEERLEADER BUTT PRINT SHORTS."

It's worth noting that Copyworks is (perhaps 'was' by now) owned by a rigidly Christian couple who once declined a request to underwrite the radio station because they "did not approve of [our] lifestyle." Combined, these two incidents give us a glimpse into the morality of the average midwestern American town:

o Good: Scantily-clad young ladies with lettering attracting attention to their behinds.
o Bad: Heavy metal and electronic music that glorifies Satan and drug use.

By taking the negation of the second statement, and combining it with the first, we are left with a synthesis that is at the very core of the American civic religion: Jesus loves booty.

~

And now some sleep.

I am still in South Dakota. Tonight I completed my purpose for being here, the wedding of two friends, an event that went much better than the last two such events I attended. Better cake too, I think.
For the record, though, I suck at weddings. That is all I will say for now.

Here is the most bizarre dream I have ever had; it occurred at approximately five-thirty on the morning of the sixteenth of June, a Monday. It is probably not suitable for children and people offended by bloodshed. The text is taken verbatim from a transcription made immediately after I was awoken by my alarm clock.

Continue reading "My Angel Rocks Back and Forth"

It's not quite activated sludge, but it's not fully inert, so what do we have? A two-phase region. *ba-doom*
That was a thermodynamics joke. No thermodynamics joke has ever been funny, ever.

Anyway, this is just a note to say I'm going to be out of town for a few days, which mosly means that I'll be writing from South Dakota instead of Iowa. This doesn't matter to all but a few people, I guess, so that note is for them.

Reader, please remind me! While I am back home, I will type up a couple of dreams I had lately, one involving a misogynist talking tuna and the other finally explaining why I never used to wear pants in my dreams. I write down my dreams because all I do lately is review music and solve engineering problems, neither of which is horribly interesting. No talking fish, anyway, which is a pity. I think the impending shortage of engineers would be averted if more engineering textbooks made use of this sort of thing.

More updates as changes warrant.