another kind of dinosaur
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Alex Ander's LiveJournal:
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| Saturday, October 14th, 2006 | | 11:35 pm |
life is good.
have been in amherst for past ~24 hours. all is well. cointreau in hot chocolate is delicious. also, devil may rhyme is a fantastic nerd-core rap group. | | Wednesday, October 11th, 2006 | | 6:04 am |
i am skeptical.does anyone know how prior attempts at this have worked out? | | Thursday, October 5th, 2006 | | 5:05 pm |
poll
do you find the following question frustrating? if so, why? "What happens when the next earthquake hits $400 billion on the Richter scale?" the question appeared in big bold letters in an add supporting legislation which they claim will make the US more rpepared for a major earrthquake. i know nothing of the legislation or the group, although you can look at there website if you want: www.protectingamerica.org. i'm screening comments so that answers will be as unbiased as possible. i know this is really random, but i would appreciate as many answers as possible. | | Friday, August 4th, 2006 | | 8:44 am |
geek angst
life is going pretty well for me at the moment, so i can't complain about that. i can, however, bitch about the upcoming star trek flick. i have a bad feeling about this. the last few trek movies sucked. nemesis shattered the even numbered rule. i heard that enterprise got better nearer to the end, but i could never get into it, because the first season just felt like they were rehashing plots from earlier series, and not doing as good of a job. i do not trust them to do this. the people doing the writing and the producer do not appear to have any prior star trek experience, which, given the last few flicks, is probably a good thing. matt damon is not a bad enough actor to play kirk. i've heard that shatner's comedy in recent years is decent, but when it comes down to it, he's a mediocre method actor. matt damon is not an amazing actor, but he is not bad enough to play kirk, and his motion is not nearly jerky enough. the choice to make it about the original series seems to mean that they have really given up on the picard model of captain. i do not mean to knock the other captains right now, but i realized why i loved TNG and picard so much. picard was a geek, no doubt about it, and a badass. he was by no means the first character to be both geek and badass: indiana jones is an earlier example of someone who was both. but in indy, the two felt sort of separate. he might have gone off doing badass things in defense of his geeky love of archeology, but they were stereotypically badass things, with fighting, car chases, saving the girl, etc. it was extremely well done, but the badass acts were not inherently geeky. with picard, they were (although its an odd parallel that picard's most adventurous activities are also tied to archeology) . i think that that is why i love TNG so much, and could never get into the other series as much (although i really ought to give DS9 and voyager another look). picard could handle a phaser, and was a legendary tactical helmsman, but that wasn't what made him a badass. his geekiness was what made him badass. this shone through with his clever politicking during the klingon rights of succession and the following civil war, with his handling of admitting Angosia into the federation in hunted, and with his manipulation of obscure terms of a treaty in the ensigns of command. as a stereotypical badass, picard doesn't really hold up. he is sent on a commando raid, but is captured. granted, he goes on to withstand a heroic amount of torture, but it is not as if he then goes on to beat the shit out of the cardassians or anything. he was once involved in bar fight, but a) that was in his wild youth; riker is shocked to think of the picard we know in a bar fight and b) he got his ass kicked. as such, TNG has riker and worf to do the stereotypically he-man-ish badass things, like shooting at things and beating people up. kirk does clever witty things; he was the only person to "win" the kobayashe maru simulation, his use of secret override codes in wrath of khan is wonderful, and star trek 4 does not really feature fighting or anything. most of that is the old kirk though, and none is it is quite the same level of geekery that is badass in and of itself as picard's actions are. the young kirk, which is what they are going to show in the new movie, is a stereotypical badass. beat up the man-lizard, blow up the enemies ship, sleep with the blue woman. that has its place, i'm just sad to see the TNG style so thoroughly gone. that was the biggest problem with the TNG movies. they all featured picard going and doing lone man stereotypically badass fighting, and it just does not suit his character, especially as patrick stewart puts on the years. the poster shows the starfleet insignia (command type) over both blue(science) and tan(command) fabric. given how the official site seems to be suggesting that the poster is hinting at the direction of the movie, i'm wondering if its just trying to evoke imagery associated with both kirk (tan) and spock (blue), or if its trying to suggest something about how scientific and strategic interests might either conflict or coincide. writing this has reminded me of a particular something positive. i know i should just shut up and let go. whoever is around me when this comes out in 2008 should probably prevent me from seeing it. | | Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006 | | 11:01 pm |
grmph.
fun fact: it snowed in NH yesterday. hiking in the snow is fun. it was nice, especially as i didn't get an actual winter in PA. but it also meant that large parts of backpacking trip for this week are not exactly safe, so we had to come home today, instead of saturday. damn. now will have to fit hiking into end of summer, when everything will be much more rushed and ugh. | | Friday, May 19th, 2006 | | 10:43 pm |
meme from ben
find an appropriate number (he had ten) of your favorite novels on amazon. pick a handful of ‘statistically improbable phrases’ for each (only works for ‘search inside’ books). list phrases associated with each book with book names omitted. invite friends to guess which phrases came from which book. (google is not allowed, as in most cases it makes the exercise trivial.) ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) q10 already took a few of the ones i might otherwise have used. asterisk indicates not actually a novel. 1. elegant female 2. scupulous meanness* 3. butter side* 4. parley room, witch consul, symbol reader, golden monkey 5. yes suh, post office corner 6. football phone, campaign physician, horseshoe drive, inaugural platform, black envelope 7. old sport, yellow car 8. three superstates, chinless man, chocolate ration, girl with dark hair 9. bloated colonel, tighter bomb pattern, more combat missions 10. hunderd miles, tenant men, great owners, git work, gray tents | | Monday, May 15th, 2006 | | 11:38 pm |
home now
done with freshman year. got home sunday. 'tis good. visited commie today. it was tuesday, despite what your calendars may tell you. was nice to talk to ms. jackman and ms. bluestein and such. am excited for summer; it should feature much time with Joanna, backpacking with dad, frequent contra and english dancing, and taxpayer funded lab job and housing at harvard. all good things. in a recent discussion in the fishbowl, the idea of a supreme court justice becoming a vampire came up (don't entirely remember how). if you are undead, do you maintain your lifetime appointment, or is it close enough to dead that you could to longer serve on the court? i suppose that even if the answer is the former, it would not be too hard to impeach a vampire, but i wonder. | | Monday, April 24th, 2006 | | 10:10 pm |
*sigh*
tomorrow will be free cone day. there are no ben and jerry's close enough that its practical to go. i miss commie. | | Saturday, April 15th, 2006 | | 6:38 pm |
damnable ville rats
Dear Fuckers in the SUV, about an hour ago, i left mary lyons to go to dinner. the weather was so beautiful, and my mood so good, i could not help but skip across the grass and down harvard avenue. as you drove past me and turned onto yale avenue, you took it upon yourselves to inform me loudly that i am "the biggest loser" and to give me the finger. now, there is a strong argument to be made that i am a huge loser, and there are any number of legitimate reasons to give me the finger, but i do not believe that you know me at all, much less enough to forward such arguments or for me to have given you a reason to give me the finger. i believe, rather, that you behaved as you did just because i was skipping, which is, if you will forgive me for saying so, a terrible fucking reason for insulting someone. skipping is a wonderful activity, especially on beautiful spring days. i highly recommend that you try it; you might realize that skipping through the grass on a beautiful spring day is much more entertaining than giving random people the finger. Sincerely, ahg | | 1:26 am |
my kind of multiculturalism
tonight i was given charoset by a man wearing a kilt, sporran, hose, and flashes, who then declined an offer of scotch because it was not kosher for passover. | | Sunday, April 2nd, 2006 | | 12:11 am |
| | Wednesday, March 29th, 2006 | | 10:41 pm |
hmm...
do y'all think hemingway or teddy roosevelt would win in a fist fight? i really can't decide. | | Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006 | | 9:49 pm |
two birds with one stone
can we make the raelians and the scientologists fight each other? all we would need to do is convince the scientologists that the raelians are really soldiers of xinu or something... we totally could, and should do this. | | Sunday, February 5th, 2006 | | 8:56 pm |
chem
at dinner, Nicole remarked that chem might eat her. now, chem does many things. chem might burn, dissolve, set fire to, blow up, melt, sublimate, give cancer to, and poison you, but it will not eat you. only bio will eat you. | | Wednesday, December 28th, 2005 | | 11:16 pm |
| | Friday, December 9th, 2005 | | 12:36 am |
i love her
sflyte120 (12:33:16 AM): once you've had robogirlfriend you'll never go back sflyte120 (12:33:20 AM): try our other products sflyte120 (12:33:26 AM): including zombiegirlfriend sflyte120 (12:33:29 AM): and ninjagirlfriend | | Thursday, November 10th, 2005 | | 6:27 pm |
| | Monday, November 7th, 2005 | | 11:39 pm |
random stuff amuses tired alex
- i recently learned of Hufu.
its human-flavored tofu, for all of you cannibals that want to go
vegan. but how did they get the taste right? did they find cannibals,
and hire them as consultants?
- i think there should be a parody western called "short noon". i know
this idea has already been done by gary larsen, but i do not think that
it needs to be a midget western per se. | | Saturday, November 5th, 2005 | | 2:02 am |
how to reform the CIA
i was talking to 172nd_brigade
about a point of commonwealth related gossip, and he has slowly culled
a lot of information with regard to it. i asked him if there was a
difference between how he gathered information with regard to gossip he
was interested in with how he meticulously culled data on troop
movements, and he said that the two processes were exactly the same.
then it hit me:
we should hire teenage gossip whores to work for the CIA. they would do
the job perfectly-these are experts at collecting information, not to
mention disseminating false information or limited correct information
to destroy their enemies. that sounds to me like a skill set
clandestine organizations such as the CIA ought to have at their hands.
they've had a wealth of people skilled at all of this in most
high schools across the country, and they have not bother tapping it.
the biggest problem that i can see is that we do not want to give the
gossip whores security clearance, because they are known for not
keeping their mouths shut. this does not mean, however, that we cannot
study them, or have them involved in training of operatives and
analysts. | | Thursday, November 3rd, 2005 | | 6:38 pm |
but the ones i don't buy are fed to pigs!
today was the first day of the swarthmore public library booksale. as a result, i have a bunch more books i do not really need, like the nibelungenlied, but that it is fun to have around.
general, boring updates:
- classes are good, especially chemistry. linear algebra is boring, but i suppose mr. sherry spoiled me. - to maintain the commonwealth tradition of using things that are not sports for PE credit, i have taken to folk dance, of the english, scottish, contra, and longsword varieties. the tri-co longsword team is called the points of etiquette, making me a point of etiquette. that seems wrong somehow, but the dancing is fun. - i visited commonwealth over fall break. i really miss it. i am happy here, and know that i really did need a new environment, but... there's no Ms. Jackman here. although there is a couch in my dorm with an even dirtier reputation than the great pfau couch of the commonwealth lobby. - i have found people with whom i can gush about pride and prejudice, firefly, ad other things which i need t gush about regularly. - i have not been gaming enough. ought to fix this.
i cannot think of anything terribly exciting. i am a boring individual. |
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