Holy schnikes!!! They just sent a video of a Christmas tree catching fire (really fast!). Don't water your tree with napalm! Here are some other holiday safety videos:

Christmas tree fire (the bunny! so tragic!)
Good old turkey fryer

And another thing I got in the mail, and article about writing sessions at Battlestar Galactica. It makes me feel queasy inside, but I've read it three times now.

Another use of the word literally, that is annoying though correct We all know people who use the word 'literally' as if it just intensifies the meaning of what they're saying rather than assures you they're not talking metaphorically (eg "I literally exploded with rage at that grammer mistake!"). And that's annoying. But I just heard someone say "if I have cable, I literally..... watch way too much TV." Not necessary to use 'literally' in that sentence!! Maybe she had been going to say "I literally watch TV 25 hours a day" but realized that was wrong, and the long pause after 'literally' was really her just thinking of what she would do, literally, if she had cable.

And finally, a story: two little girls, sitting on a bed reading Cosmogirl. One reads:
1: "What feature on your body are you most self-conscious about?"
2: Hmm..... I'm not really sure.
1: [appraises 2] Is it your big ears?

I like my video store 1/2 of the time. It's the 1/2 of the time when Peter Cropes (nice pete) isn't working there. Seriously, Chris Onstad must have been inspired by this guy. When he's there, I don't even want to get my frequent renter card punched, literally for fear that it's what will tip him over the edge and claim me as the first victim of his rampage.

VS

dad says the only people who don't have the proper respect* for his car are Mustang GT drivers. One more reason for me to get a Mustang!

*read "have the proper respect" as "abjectly kowtow"

My brother and I played video games, even though we couldn't find any of the good ones that involve shooting each other. So we played good old Tenchu, stealth assassins, for old time's sake. We played 2-player co-op, and got to the level that took us months to beat last time. The level is a source of the ever-funny (to us) phrase: "OK, sis, you stay up top, feed 'em the rice." We tried that twice before remembering "stay up top, feed em the rice" had NEVER worked as a plan, and that's why we'd stopped playing it years ago. FYI: poison rice is basically useless in the Tenchu game, as it likely would be in a real-life ninja scenario. Who just picks up rice off the ground and eats it?

Friday's "impulse buy" (pictured previous update) has this additional story: Our old TV would take between 30-1200 minutes to warm up, and also it would not tell you for sure if it was on-and-warming-up, off-but-on-standby, or completely off. So if you turned it "on" but lost faith in yourself after an hour or so of staring at the blank screen and pressed the power button again, you might be turning it off for real this time--but you won't know for sure until 30-1200 minutes have passed. Anyway, Thursday night we all as a family sat and stared at the TV for about 3 hours, talking mainly about whether or not we thought it was going to come on. Friday, dad got a new TV.

I had dad hold up a quarter next to the tv to show the relative size of friday.s impulse buy.

'we'broke a plate, so we tried 2 fix it b4 mom wakes up. Brother, on incident:'this is the best thing we've ever done.'

There is no way 2 describe the terror this tableau fills me with. The bear is eyeless.

please confirm

this is really stupid. i feel really stupid for asking this. i'm taking macroeconomics, and i was like 99% sure, but someone was arguing with me so confidently, I'm not sure anymore.

US money isn't backed by any precious metals anymore, right? Most money in the world universe is off any gold or silver or gold-pressed latinum standards, isn't it??

i keep thinking "why do i want burritos so much today?" but the real question is "why am i thinking about burritos so much today?" because if i'm honest with myself, i ALWAYS want burritos, i just spend most of each day forgetting about that fact. i think that's why i irrationally found this SNL skit funny whenever it was I saw it. I am thrilled I am able to link to that so people know what I'm talking about, if they like. re-reading the skit, i am surprised at how short it is, and how it completely relates to my current condition.

Main Street is pretty depressing! Remind me never to get married, especially if it's the 1920s, and Illinois.

Today, I got to see an episode of Cleopatra 2525. No, I'd never heard of it, and now I know why! But it had Gina Torres.

(burrito).

baby steps

somewhat related to the last update's comment about phish vs radiohead being a potential dealbreaker (for the record, it's really radiohead vs. anything), the other night i was very proud of myself for not yelling "ARE YOU ON CRACK?" in the parking lot to someone who said that my Beatles bumper sticker should be superceded by my The Who bumper sticker. I told this story to my brother gingerly, knowing he likes The Who a lot (but, I mean, so do I; I have their bumper sticker after all). My brother's reaction? "WAS HE ON CRACK?" I was relieved; we can continue being siblings.

how i'm overcoming 'love': reality.

here's how it would go. "hmm, so you work in a pet store. yeah. what's that like? my cats really like you. probably because you smell like cat food. oh, you have bills and things like everyone else? oh, you like phish more than radiohead? that's a cool car you have there. oh, it doesn't run? is that why it's always parked outside your work/home? oh, right, you live in the pet store. yeah. what's that like? not that great? hmm. oh, you like dogs more than cats? well, let me just make my cat food purchase and be gone from here."

with this simple exercise, i become in control of these obsessive crush feelings! and you can, too! just think of a few minor things which in a real person wouldn't kill the relationship, but which sufficiently lop off the prettiest flowers of a crush.
i think i'm prepared to go cat food shopping this Sunday. Then the cats will have all the food they need when I go home for Thanksgiving.

Did you know they sell boxing bags at Bed Bath and Beyond? It's true. EVERLAST

maybe this is from all the meditative navel-contemplating we did in kundalini yesterday, but i'm having one of those days where i keep hearing eddie izzard in my head saying "what's all this, please?" not referring to an american indian headress, but rather to the whole entire material world around me.

blue state country and western

I think it might not be all that satisfying to be the person who came up with genre names like "shoegazer" and "Twee Pop" and "Jungle" "Drum n Bass" "Ambient" etc. Because you don't really get credit for it or anything, and if you ever tell people you made that up, like at parties, they probably wouldn't believe you. It's kind of a random claim to fame, because even if it's true, it's not like you saved a life or did anything all THAT impressive. Plus you could never prove it, really. Even if you could prove you were the first person to put it in print, what if your awesome shut-in friend actually said it in conversation through the mail-slot of his apartment? No one would ever know.

Anyway, I'm going to invent a genre name, and then the appropriate musical style to go along with it. And I'm going to tell people about it at parties.

your happiness is just a chemical

So, I saw the Borat movie now. It's true that I laughed a lot.

I swear I had something to update. But nothing is coming to mind right now. Well, some things, but they seem so boring.

Remember in Willow when he threw that magic acorn at Bavmorda, but instead of turning her to stone, she caught it, and her arm momentarily turned to stone as she fought off the magic and crushed the acorn to dust? No? Well, anyway, that's my my arm kind of feels like right now. It's a combination of flu shot and miraculous and painful massage work on my shoulder. Really, I recommend this place highly.

At the theater, I saw a preview for a TV show that kind of made me laugh. It was only after the preview I realized it was a show for the girl we went out with in LA--we went out to celebrate the show's being picked up!

(it is darren hanlon) (he is from Gympie, Australia)

eeeeeeeeee!! I had my first moment on MySpace where (a celebrity) is my friend, and I feel completely, totally special, even though I am one of more than 1600. He, or someone in his employ, hit "approve" next to a picture of my eye, and it's like we connected! Electrons that touched electrons that touched electrons (times a lot more times than I can type) that touched him touched me!! And then I found out he likes Tucson, and it's all falling into place: we'll marry, and move to Tucson. I keep trying to find the flaw in this plan, and the only one I can find is that I haven't been to Australia to meet him yet, so please excuse me, but I have some planning to do.

there are also flies. squalor!

i don't know how this has happened, but i seem to have used almost every vessel in my inventory. That is, I still have plenty of plates and pans and baking dishes, but I'm having to eat my cereal out of a Tom Collins glass. I should just wash, I guess.

summation

I'm just going to sum up the last few updates (now deleted) with this. There's nothing new here, don't get excited:

1) Darren Hanlon - Title Fight: Heart v Mind
2) Aqualung - Strange and Beautiful
3) BtVS - Under Your Spell
4) Leadbelly - Big Fat Woman
5) Yo La Tengo - Black Flowers
6) Radiohead - Lozenge of Love
7) Frente! - Labour of Love
8) PJ Harvey - Oh My Lover
9) David Bowie - A Better Future
10) Willie Nelson - Are You Sure?
11) Emiliana Torrini - If You Go Away
12) Rilo Kiley - Bulletproof
13) Moby - Why Does My Heart Feel so Bad?
14) The Delgados - Hate is All You Need
15) Ben Folds Five - Song for the Dumped
16) Madeleine Peyroux - Dance me to the End of Love
17) Darren Hanlon - Falling Aeroplanes
18) Belle & Sebastian - If You Find Yourself Caught In Love

Overheard in my Life

Me: So the doctor said I have a low resting heart rate and asked if I run, and I said "No! I did that with my mind!"
Mom: Uh huh. Is that when he gave you the referral to the psychiatrist?
Me: No! That was.... uh, something different.

Woman to child at Chuy's [strong Texas accent]: "Tres" is Spanish for two!! And "leches" is Spanish for meats!

Anything Can Happen on Halloween

Happy Halloween. I got a YouTube account just to make sure this got updated.