29 May 2007

A Tribute to Innovation

Way back when (aka April 2006) a few family members and I visited my brother during his semester abroad in Spain--his extremely trying last semester of law school. One important discovery we made there was a fast food chain that sold "pizza cones." What a fantastic idea! I am always impressed with people who are able to take what is ordinarily not finger food and turn it into something transportable. Pizza you can eat with your hands. Who would have thought.

Anyway, I was not the only one whose creative juices began flowing. This caused my sister's innovative side to emerge. She still talks about starting a rival chain here in the US. She would stick with the Italian theme, and create the world's first Lasagna Cone! Genius. Pure genius.

Shoot, I gave her secret away. Sorry, Emily!!

28 May 2007

Stand alone and greet the coming night

Here I am, back from another trip. I returned this afternoon from Denmark (plus a side trip to Sweden this time -- where, sadly, no one sounded like this). More on that trip later.

Not long before this trip I brought a new toy -- my Microsoft-produced Zune (competition to the ipod). What, you might ask, possessed me to purchase such a device? Well, I wanted a music player, but my new car apparently is not compatible with the ipod. Plus, just about everyone I know curses their ipod regularly. The device came in handy... I ended up watching all of Season 1 of The IT Crowd while I was stuck for six hours in Frankfurt, Germany. I've vented enough about that unexpected layover, and will refrain from boring you with that story...

In preparation for my trip I decided to get a few new songs. I found out about an eMusic "download 35 songs free" offer and decided to test it out. Unfortunately, they didn't have many of the songs I was seeking. I ended up rather arbitrarily picking out songs in the alternative, math rock, and goth genres.

Anyway, here are the songs I listened to most during the trip--some of which were new eMusic acquisitions, and others were not:

- Juliet, by Emilie Autumn. Goth/industrial/electronica. I like. I like much.



- Imitosis, by Andrew Bird. Alternative/Rock/Indie. I picked his album for the cover, of course. My goodness, I'm predictable. Anyway, I like this song despite its use of the word "machinations," which is one of my least favorite words ever. Whenever I read a paper containing that word, it undercuts the author's credibility by approximately 64.3%. And that's on a good day. Despite that, the song is excellent. You can listen to the song on his myspace page. Grr, I apparently just missed his 9:30 Club concert! Oh, also, the singer appears to be a thinner version of Dr. Who.

- Hey There Delilah, by the Plain White T's. Alternative/Rock/Indie. I actually heard this song on on the radio (it seems to get some late night "new music" play, at least), and decided to follow up. This song, as well as Hate (which I think is an amazingly entertaining song!!), is on their myspace page.

- Tired of Being Sorry, by Ringside. I wish they'd play more concerts. This is such a great song. And it doesn't hurt that the singer is HOT. Though I still don't understand why the video is about him getting beat up by a girl.



- Caramel, by Suzanne Vega - Good song. I can't find it now, but I swear I first heard this song in a trailer for the movie Closer. Not that I ever saw the movie... but I always have that association.

- The Mating Game, by Bitter:Sweet - Interestingly, this is one of the default songs on the factory-fresh Zune device. But if you like it, you have to download it later, 'cuz MS deletes it when they upgrade your firmware. This one is also available on the group's myspace page.

- The Last Remaining Light, by Audioslave. I've had this song (and album) forever, but for whatever reason, it regained my attention during my trip.



Last, but not least:

- The System is Down, by Homestarrunner. I have no idea why I have this, nor why it kept coming up. But it's kind of amusing...

16 May 2007

Say what?

To demonstrate what a fun and exciting person I am, I'm going to give you a list of my favorite words, complete with hyperlinks to random and totally unrelated tidbits.

Words:

Archipelago
Reticent
Indigenous
Vestige
Haberdashery

12 May 2007

Best. Headline. Ever.

Here it is:

Skywalkers in Korea cross Han solo

Whoever came up with that headline deserves some sort of prize. Do they award prizes for amazing headlines?

11 May 2007

Penguin Thievery

Despite the fact that this story has been proved to be a myth, I still find it amusing (indeed, fiction is allowed to be funny). Penguin thievery. But stories like these have their impacts: people apparently are calling a zoo in Utah and accusing them of harboring the stowaway penguin from the story. Stories that sound too good to be true (and that are full of plot holes and improbabilities) probably aren't true. Ah, well, you can still look at pictures of penguins on this penguin blog. Penguins are all the rage.

And here is xkcd.com's view of Snopes (the urban legend and myth debunking site):

07 May 2007

People who have way more time than me

Wow. It must take a lot of time to do things like this:



06 May 2007

Your looks rock!

This almost makes me want to sign up for a Facebook account! Or play the recorder. I can't decide.



These guys iz funny! Check out the Encyclopedia Rap. Or Pimp My Stroller.

Emily insists that I have to relate the full tale of the blog title. It all started many days ago. No, wait, it was Thursday. Emily's birthday. We went to Carrabba's for dinner. We had the same waiter that we had last time we ate there. Note, of course, that last time he gave us free ice cream for no apparent reason. No such luck this time around... he rushed us through our meal, and took my dinner away to box it up when I was pretty much still eating. It was fun. I suggested that perhaps the rush and lack of free sugar was because Emily was less attractive this time than the last visit. For some reason, she didn't like that possibility. To console her, I said, "your looks rock!" And now it's the title.

Rejoice, and show mirth, for behold, ye are now in on the inside joke.

04 May 2007

Caving under the peer pressure

My brother-in-law, Rob, is currently working on the movie The Golden Compass (scheduled for release in December). Apparently everyone has their daemons. And mine is an osprey. I am now going to do exactly what my other blogging family members have done--except Melissa, but she'll cave soon--and let you check whether I correctly assessed my daemon, or whether you see me differently.




This one is nice, and does convince me that the movie is worth checking out (and not just to see Rob's name in lights). Even so, my favorite personality identifying site is still kingdomality.com. According to that, my medieval career would have been as the evil prime minister. Mwahahaha.