more ads that don't make sense

If I had my camera phone, I would just show you this simple billboard ad rather than the over-explanation I'm about to go into. But, in the frat district of UT, there is a billboard for Natural Light beer that I pass every day on the way to school. It is of a man's hand reaching out of a shower for his Natty Light, and there are just the words "Been There" underneath. It's pretty straightforward. Except for the question: is this an ad for beer? Or for AA? Because honestly, and I know I'm not in the frat demographic they are targeting, I don't think I have ever "been there." And if I had "been" where I was drinking my cheap-ass alcohol from inside the shower because I couldn't go 6 minutes without, I don't think I'd want a whimsical reminder of it to try to sell me some more failure.

one more character

One more person from my summer statistics course was the kid that sat right in front of me every day. The only thing I ever heard him say was the last day, when he said, to no one, "Dude's funny," about Crackers, the class clown. One odd thing about this kid was that he wore the exact same shirt, every day we had class. It's very possible he got a bunch of them for free or something, so I won't make fun of that fact (maybe he's very poor! Or doesn't value fashion! I have respect for those things really!). But I will make fun of the shirt itself which said:

If you can read this
You must be wearing Focus contact lenses.

Since I had every single classtime to contemplate the inanity of the statement, I of course now have to share it with all of you. It took me a while to stop expecting "thank a teacher" to be the second line, so the first indignity is the implication that being able to see the letters is the hard part of reading. Hey! Learning to read was hard and it sometimes is still hard! If I have dyslexia, Focus contact lenses are not helping! But your blue font does make it difficult to focus on the text, so thanks for that! Also! I am NOT wearing Focus contact lenses, and I would imagine the vast majority of people are able to read that are also NOT wearing Focus contact lenses, so you lose all credibility with your "must." After a summer of getting unreasonably angry about this, I'm pretty determined not to ever, ever get Focus contact lenses.

happy birthday, dad, who doesn't read this!

I am now officially a student. I had a class yesterday, so.... student. However, I am also on book 7 of Harry Potter--subsequent to a re-reading of the entire series. So right now I am torn between reading a lot of stuff for my upcoming classes (letting Hermione be my guide), or reading The Deathy Hallows, which I actually read less than a month ago. It shouldn't be that hard a decision. Also, sleep should be in the mix somewhere, but for some reason it's not.

Anyway, I'm vascillating between being so anxious I cry about school, and between blithely planning the next series of children's books I will re-read. To calm myself down at one point, I watched The Saint. As per usual, the first 30 minutes just made me either more anxious, or laugh hysterically. I almost turned it off because I thought it wasn't doing any good, but I did watch all of it, and then I felt perfectly at peace. And honestly, everything has gone better since then. So, mental note, watch The Saint when worried about anything. It has Elisabeth Shue, Val Kilmer, Oxford, and Russia. And finely crafted dialogue. In fact, maybe instead of reading The Golden Compass again, I will begin my screenplay: The Saint 2: Back in the Habit. Or maybe "Back in the Halo" would be more appropriate.

I haven't updated. Everything that has happened that I think "Oh, haha, that was funny, I should blog about that" completely escapes me when I sit down to type. Possibly now that I finally (after a year) got my router to work, I can blog from bed, when important thoughts occur to me.

Other things that I did: went to New Orleans, had two houseguests (hi Mia! hi Leigh!), hosted a Shadowrun game (and blew up one helicopter with another helicopter! With my brain!), washed my phone (no pictures for a while), got my SNES cleaned (goes without saying I've been playing a lot of Tetris Attack), and oh yes, got a kitten.

The new kitten's name is Ladybird. Xander mostly thinks she's the greatest toy I have ever brought home for him. But sometimes he is annoyed that she reacts to violently to his stepping on her face. She's getting used to him. He's at least 5 times as big as her, and the size differential shows signs of only slight decrease in the future.

I don't know if I blogged about this, but from the start, my condo's shower has been boiling hot. It starts off cold, but as soon as it warms up, it's boiling hot, and you can't control the temperature and pressure separately, so I avoided long showers, and took baths pretty often. A friend tried to fix it, but it only resulted in boiling hot water shooting from the wall at firehouse strength, and as it was midnight, and it took a while for the emergency plumber to arrive, the whole two bedroom apartment was a steambath, even though luckily my friend was able to deflect most of the actual water into the tub. So anyway, two results to follow with: I might at long last actually be getting it fixed tomorrow, and mom will be coming in September and we'll repaint some parts of the apartment.

So, at this point, as I have googled Elisabeth Shue twice since starting this entry 8 minutes ago, I think it's safe to say that I like to google Elisabeth Shue. But I'm always disappointed by it. I think I secretly hope it will make me her friend if I do it enough.

Now I've googled Tetris Attack Tournament (more on that later... one day), so I've branchced out.

But now, really, really, really I will read this article on foreign policy. Even though I have four days with no classes.