My 6-year-old cousin knows her prime numbers up to at least 23. I didn't know my primes until I was 8.

That is all.

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I just got a spam subject line in iambic pentameter. Granted, it's not an original line, but still: "Or fill these void veins full again with youth" almost makes me want to open the spam and see what else this particular spambot has to offer.

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So, I've been on a "get out of the house at any cost" kick lately, and scored cheap last-minute seats to the Avs/Red Wings game tonight. (The Avs pulled that win out of our poor exhausted goaltender's ass, but I'll take the win.)

As usual, the fans were possibly more interesting than the game. At points, they definitely were. There wasn't a loudmouth drunk chick behind us like the last Avs/Wings game Tianna and I went to, but collectively things worked out.

Highlights:

-During the first period break, I saw two guys - one in a Henrik Zetterberg jersey, one in a Milan Hejduk jersey - hugging each other. Definitely hugging, not trying to strangle.

-The short film they showed during one of the ad breaks. Hilarious. Remind me to describe it later - tired now.

-The 14-year-old girl behind me, after booing Todd Bertuzzi for the first time: "Oh, good. Now I don't care who wins; I've done what I'm here to do."

-CRAIG ANDERSON. FORTY-EIGHT SAVES. JUST... GUH.

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...so, yeah. In light of a few recent events (plus, this is something I've been meaning to do for a while but haven't gotten my crap together enough to do it), I'm migrating everything personal and fannish of mine over to Dreamwidth. This shouldn't affect... really, anything... on your end if you're reading this, but I felt I should make an official-type announcement. I'll be tweaking both my DW and LJ reading lists over the next few days, so if you get multiple e-mailed notifications about that, just ignore them.

I'll even be reading two friends lists, because there are enough of you who post locked entries that it wouldn't be worth adding your journals as syndicated feeds. Plus there are communities and stuff, on top of that.

So, um, yeah. Business as usual, nothing to see here.

(This cranky, lost message brought to you by the fact that I woke up today and spent twenty minutes lying in bed listening for my dad to make french toast and sausage.)

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My favorite 6-year-old cousin, about LCROSS: "So it's like a meteorite, except it crashed into the moon! It's a MOONEORITE!"

I realized today that I haven't posted to this journal in six weeks. Therefore, bullet points.

-Finally beginning to come back to the world. I think.
-Going to the Jonathan Coulton concerts tomorrow and Friday! :D
-Going to the Avalanche season opener on October 1. Joe Sakic night. First row club seats. :D :D :D :D :D :D :D
-Family drama: still in full force. But I don't talk about family drama here.

One thing anyone who knew my dad knows is that he never threw anything away if he could help it. (Unless "anything" was a perfectly good cardboard shipping box, in which case he'd get rid of it with extreme prejudice, but that isn't the point.)

We went through some of his hoard today, and came across the book from his old Bronco.

( Possibly tl;dr backstory )

What's really interesting, though, is the note at the beginning of the maintenance log:



(click the image for larger version, if you're so inclined)

Oh, did I ever need this laugh.

The last paragraph of the first page was where I first cracked up. I mean, sure, everybody makes stupid mistakes, and not everyone is a good writer, but honestly. (At least it's obvious she writes her own speeches. Could she have somebody who's actually familiar with these things called "complete sentences" edit her speeches before she goes on stage?) And the lack of fact-checking. Gah.

(Please be warned: I'm not up for discussing politics right now. This post is here because the sheer amount of ink on those pages amuses and disturbs me. Start a political discussion and you will get kickbanned before you can blink. Do not test me on this.)

I'm now tempted to make a post-apocalypse playlist. So far I have "Sons and Daughters" by the Decemberists, and "Wooden Ships" by CSNY. Any other ideas?

So yeah. I'm doing Science and still alive.

Work's been decent to me except for the parts that suck, and those parts would suck no matter what I did, so there's no point complaining about it. (Well, a week ago Thursday really did suck but I'm not going to get into that, and that particular depressive spike is mostly done anyway.)

I have a new phone (G1 > iPhone. Hands down.) and new-to-me computer (logic board was close to going on Aeryn and I wanted to trade up while I still could, so I did. The phone is named Pilot, because it's mostly quiet but helps me get places and reminds me of Important Things. The computer doesn't have a name yet, so I'll be posting a poll to help name it later. (All my tech has Farscape-related names.)

Also, new shoes. I've never enjoyed wearing shoes, especially the closed-toed kind, but I found a pair that actually fits today and you don't turn down something like that. (Plus they were on sale.)

I signed up for the Firefly Big Bang over at Dreamwidth. Don't know what got into me, but I'm going to do it, dammit. (I have some sketchy ideas for a River story set post-movie...)

Pittsburgh won the Stanley Cup, which is awesome, if only because it means Detroit didn't. My CEO (who's a thoroughly awesome guy -- I wish I could clone him and put him in charge of everything) was cheering for the Red Wings because they weren't the Penguins (who had defeated his beloved Capitals), and I was cheering for the Pens because they weren't Detroit, so we had an informal rivalry going on.

Procrastinating about getting the cleaning that desperately needs to be done, done. Better get on that before it gets too late and I get too tired.

Ari Ne'eman is two years younger than I am.

My reaction on finding out his age: "Well, I knew he was younger than he seems... [beat] ...wait a minute, he's 21? He can't be 21! I'm 23!"

And now I feel unaccomplished.

Also, I nearly got hit by a car on the way to work today. Local drivers are morons and I missed a train because of it. (Naturally I'm more upset by the train than the brush with death, even though logically I have no reason to even be angry about the train. It was the one earlier than the one I have to be on in order to be on time, if that makes any sense. I wonder what that says about me.) Seriously. STOP SIGN MEANS STOP, PEOPLE. I FIGURED IT OUT WHEN I WAS IN DIAPERS. YOU HAVE NO EXCUSE.

Yes, another one. Most of mine lately have been boring.

This one is just bizarre, though:

"Were you drunk? Answer, bastard!"

Sounds like Mr. Spambot is setting up for a duel.

So, I've had the Offertory from Faure's Requiem stuck in my head all day.

I opened up iTunes and set it to completely randomize everything in hopes of something else crowding it out.

Guess what the second piece to play was?

Spam Subject Line of the Day: "I am McLovin!"

*facepalm*

Ten years is a long time.

Ten years is almost three times as long as my youngest cousin has been alive. It's how long it takes light from the closest star in the constellation Andromeda to reach Earth. It's longer than many marriages last these days. Ten years is a long time.

It's not long enough that this anniversary hurts any less.

Ten years ago today, two young men killed fourteen people and injured twenty-three more in Columbine High School before killing themselves. These are about the only facts everybody can agree upon.

Ten years ago, I was in a car on the way back to school from a field trip when I heard on the radio that shots had been fired at Columbine High School.

Ten years ago, one of my teachers (the only person who believed I was being bullied at the time) didn't let me or any other student out of her sight until our parents showed up to collect us.

Ten years ago, my parents asked if I was OK, and all I felt was anger because why the hell didn't they think to ask it before? Why, when I told them before that no, I was emphatically not OK, did they not believe me? How could they expect an honest answer from me now?

Nine years and fifty-one weeks ago, my French teacher stepped out of the classroom for a few minutes and my classmates took the opportunity to chase me around and call me a freak. This was never a matter of simple teasing, but systematic abuse. Parents and teachers tell kids that "other kids will do that" (they will) and that they need to grow thick skins, but they don't actually allow kids to grow them. Nor, I think, do they grasp the full import of what bullying can do to a person. (You wouldn't tell a person who's been so abused as to lose function and sense of self to "snap out of it." And if you would, you're an idiot and I don't want to know you.)

Nine and a half years ago, the boys in my class were made to sit through a lecture on sexual harassment (yes, it happened. Yes, we were in eighth grade). Guess what got worse because the boys resented being called out?

Nine years and three months ago, I began to participate in bullying the one kid less "with it" than I was. If I had a time machine, that's what I would change. (Kevin had a shirt with the saying on my icon. I'm wearing this icon for him. Kevin C. from Denver, if you're reading this, I'm terribly, terribly sorry and I hope you can forgive me.)

I'm not going to talk here about how video games or music or trenchcoats or guns or metal detectors did or didn't cause this, I promise.

What I will say -- and what I believe is the ultimate cause of not only most school shootings, but also the current economic crisis -- is that we live in a society that has divorced itself from logical consequences.

Watch what happens next time a popular group coerces an unpopular kid into doing something against the rules with them. When they get caught, it's the unpopular kid who gets the brunt of the punishment, regardless of who actually did what. The main group gets off with a warning because there's a game on Friday. The loner gets the full punishment, even if the group had been setting him up to begin with.

Watch what happens the next time somebody hits a bully back. You know when someone would try to talk to you in class, and you'd ignore them until you couldn't anymore and turned back to tell them to shut up? You know how you were always the one who got caught and how unfair that was? Now imagine getting suspended or even expelled for punching the face of the person who's pinning him by the neck against a row of lockers. This is, incidentally, the legacy of the "zero-tolerance" laws that claim to help the bullied -- they make it impossible for people to defend themselves. School administrators can't be bothered to set consequences that actually fit offenses, so they shield themselves with rigid rules that actually causes more of the tension that it's supposed to alleviate.

You know who has it right? South Park. There's an episode called "Breast Cancer Show Ever" where Cartman singles out Wendy to pick on, about a cause (breast cancer research) that's highly important to her. She tells him she's going to kick his ass, and Cartman comes crying to Wendy's parents about how mean she is to him. Wendy's parents take his side and forbid her to fight, and Wendy promises not to. Later, Principal Victoria calls Wendy into her office and talks about how she's a breast cancer survivor herself and that cancer is "pure evil," a "fat little lump" that cannot be reasoned with and must be fought before it takes everything.

Wendy realizes Victoria's not just talking about cancer, and she kicks Cartman's ass in what is quite possibly the best fight between fourth graders I've ever seen.

And you know what? Nobody's going to screw with Wendy lightly after that.

In hockey, a player who sets out only to instigate a fight gets a longer penalty than a player who fights back. Surely hockey isn't the only place where that happens anymore?

Instead of addressing any root cause of anything, we as a society have our heads so far up our asses as to think that sensitivity training in schools does anything good or useful. We can't even see the consequences of them. (Hint: Kids are smarter than you think. They'll not listen to the seminars, but they'll resent having to go to them and they'll lash out more against the people they bully.)

But hey, we have metal detectors and transparent backpacks, and kids who wear too much black are publicly singled out for counseling, so we're safe, right? This could never happen again.

Except it will.

jenniferlupin has a poll on women in sci-fi/fantasy going on in her journal. It's for a class and she wants people to pimp it out, so here I am.

( Two coyote pics, under the cut )

Both pictures link to their Flickr pages, where you can see bigger versions if you so choose.