Five songs that I like, but am ashamed to admit it.

• "The Final Countdown" - Europe
• "Boris the Spider" - The Who
• "Danger Zone" - Kenny Logins
• "Here I Am" - Air Supply
• "High Enough" - Damn Yankees

If there truly is a Hell, I don't think it will be anything like how Dante had it described. Oh sure, there will probably be several layers, and you would still have to ford the river Styx with Charon and listen to Babe until you get to your destination, but I think most of the torture would be psychological rather than physical. For example, instead of being battered by storm-force winds, you would be forced to play "telephone" with one-thousand people to complete works of Shakespeare. If anyone gets even one "thou" wrong, they have to start all over again. I could honestly see this torture continuing on until Judgment Day. Instead of lying in cold mud for eternity, they would be forced to spend eternity in a small room with an immortal, invincible, talkative, and incredibly emo demon. There would also be a lack of blunt instruments, so that the damned would not be able to beat himself to death to cease the incessant depression ("cease the incessant"… I can't believe I just wrote that). Instead of being transformed into thorn bushes, the suicide "victims" would have their own special treatment. They would be forced to play "name the color, not the word" for all of eternity. Frankly, I think that would be the worst. If, on the off chance, they should become proficient in the game, they would be thrown in with more of the emo demons. That should brighten their mood </sarcasm>

Note: I'm writing this at work, so I am afraid there will be no silly picture appended to this post at this time.

Sorry, but there will be no posts for a while.

What do you get when you combine a godless particle colliderwith overzealous American Christians and politicians? You would probably get some sort of giant mechanized crusader, but that's not what this is about. This is about Douglas Preston's book Blasphemy. This book was incredibly good. Similar to the aforementioned biblical mech, this book revolves around a huge particle accelerator having its first run in the middle of the desert. Sadly, the local Indian population has grown tired of it and decided to piss off some lobbyists. The lobbyists, in a show of sportsmanship, decided to hire a famous televangelist to declare the supercollider a crime against God. While things heat up on the outside, things are really heating up inside the facility (in more ways than one). The crew believes that they have found God within the crossing beams of particles. All of this I've described happens in the first few chapters, might I add.
The story really moves along at just the right pace to keep you gripped. The amazing part is that almost all of it seems amazingly plausible. The ending gets a bit far-fetched, but I could still see it happening in modern day America. One of the characters also utters a line that I will never forget. He was one of the scientists. He had married a Playboy centerfold and was asked on a television interview why he would get together with someone so far below him intellectually. His response: "Who would you have me marry? Everyone's beneath me intellectually!" I totally feel the same way sometimes. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading in general.
Overall: 9.8713043825 / 10.0

Oh look, Tokyopop has a new rating system for their manga. Let us see how Aria stacks up. Hmm... rated OT for "older teen" ages 16+ and contains non-sexual nudity, mild fanservice, and alcohol use. Wow, it actually used the word fanservice. I don't think anyone outside of the otaku circles would even comprehend that phrase, let alone "concerned parents". For my purposes, however, I'm not sure if I can enjoy a manga that has only mild fanservice.

Okay, lame post, I know. I am currently engrossed in the awesome game No More Heroes. Please hold...

Obey Wikipe-tan

Yesterday, I finally got around to visiting my
old town again in Animal Crossing for
the DS. Apparently, it had been eight months since my last visit, which every
animal decided to remind me of loudly in bold-face capital letters. It seems
during those eight months, the animals had a meeting and unanimously agreed to
do nothing (similar to the US political system). As a result, there were weeds
all over the town, including within Tom Nook’s store. I spent the better part
of half-an-hour ripping those living beings from their life-giving soil (it's
called dedication). Afterwards, the town was clean of weeds, but also bare of
flowers. My fairly large plot of golden roses stands proudly and has not aged a
day, however. Considering how much time I spent selectively breeding to acquire
them, they had darn well better still be standing. My breeding plot is quite
dead, so I need to restart my breeding program from scratch. No matter. My
favorite townsfolk have also stayed, so that will be handy in trying to acquire
their pictures for my growing collection of animal souls. I also had the
opportunity to plant some of the peaches I had from the last time I played.
Should they grow in, then one of every fruit would be represented in my town,
thus earning me the glorious title of "fruitiest guy in town". I put
together a perfect snowman a little later on in the day, much to the jubilation
of the existential nihilists. Also of note was the ingestion of some
"coffee" mixed with so-called "pigeon milk". It was quite
an experience. I don't know what goes into that "pigeon milk," but
the barkeeper seems loath to reveal its contents. Drugs are probably involved.

This week marks the beginning of that magical
time known as college classes. After doing a couple years at a smaller college,
I finally transferred to a four-year university. The best part is that it is
only a short distance from my house. It is maybe ten minutes away, as the crow
flies. In Virginia
traffic, however, it is closer to an hour both ways. This constant
back-and-forth commute, while irritating on my already unstable psych, is still
cheaper than going to a dorm, where they charge you double your tuition and a
keg of beer. With my favorite rock station on, the commute is bearable, at
least in the car. The commute doesn’t end at the parking lot. It seems that all
the brains within this institute of higher learning have yet to realize that
students will be arriving by car. This negligence is evident in their parking
lots which, aside from being about the size of your average matchbox, are
located about two miles from the campus (this is, of course, a farce. It’s
actually about mile away (seriously)). This leads to a wearisome walk to class.
Well, it’s not that bad of a walk. It is
refreshing. When the temperature is not even in the double digits, however, it
becomes a burden. If you think the parking situation may be incentive for dorm
life, it should be noted that the residential parking is even smaller. I
believe the final project for students taking quantum mechanics (PHYS 732) is
to try and park their car in the college’s residential lot. My guess is that
most college students end up spending their entire college career looking for a
parking spot, thereby allowing the college to collect more money without doing
any work.

Hiccups are officially a nuisance. They can
bring about embarrassment in any situation, including nudist meetings. Often,
the "cures" people use to get rid of them are completely worthless.
Drinking from the far edge of a glass of water is just as effective for curing
hiccups as breaking plates on your head. Ditto goes for holding your breath,
getting startled, and being punched in the diaphragm. Recently, however, I
believe I have finally found a decent way of curing this irritation. You see,
the best way to cure it is to take a shower. Taking a drive by yourself is
equally effective. My easy-to-follow process works like this: you get into this
type of situation and just start singing as loud as you can. That's all there
is to it. The shower is just a cover to avoid any potentially strange glares
from the other members of your household (if you live alone, you can forget the
shower and just continue sitting on the couch in your underwear). My guess is
that the singing overrides the spasms of the diaphragm by requiring it to
warble out a twisted version of Europe's The
Final Countdown. You have to make sure you are singing constantly, so this
may include making the sounds for the guitar solos as well. If you are in the
car, I would also recommend beating your hands on the steering wheel to
juxtapose the drums, but it isn't necessary. After a good five minutes of
making a fool of yourself of awesome singing ability, you should realize
that your hiccups are gone. If even these drastic measures should fail, I do
have one final, ultimate solution. Kill yourself. I haven't tried that one
myself, but sources tell me it's one-hundred percent effective.

As some of you may have noticed, today is Martin
Luther King Jr.'s Birthday (observed). You see, Martin Luther King Jr. was a
person whose birthday we decided to celebrate for the purpose of giving
government workers a three day weekend. You could say that we celebrate it
because of the guy's accomplishments in human rights, but if that was the case, then we would
actually celebrate it on his birthday (January 15) rather than the third Monday
of January. And why is it only MLKJ's birthday anyway? Sure, we get a couple of
the presidents' birthdays off, but there need to be more excuses for three day
weekends. How about Lewis and Clark day? I see nothing wrong with celebrating
Harrison Ford Day. What we need is to mob the president with a group of
Harrison Ford fans to get this piece of legislation passed. I mean, it worked
for MLKJ Day.

Black people: Always trying to keep the white man down.

Well, it's not for me to get picky about. I know
I have the day off and plan to enjoy it. The best part of today is that I am
actually getting paid not go to work. I was half-way tempted to wank off just
to say to my coworkers that I was getting paid to wank off, but I didn't think
it was worth a compromising situation. Instead, I just plan to stay inside all
day. There are three reasons for this. First, of course, is that I am getting
paid for it. Second is because I resume classes tomorrow. Once that begins, I
will hardly be home at all. I plan to do as much as I can today that I won't be
able to do until, y'know, my next day off. Lastly, today's high is expected to
be below freezing. I know I love the cold weather, but even I will say it's
cold when it's below freezing and windy. I hope to get a couple of posts done in advance, so that way I will always have something to post. I'm thinking about doing some book reviews too, so be prepared for that.

"Hey Juuuuuuude,
don't let me d- What the? D-Did that car just pass me? Oh no, I can't have
that now. If you pass me you will have to suffer the consequences. Hear that?
That's the sound of my station wagon catching up to you. Yeah, that's right, I
see you too. Yeah, you don't feel so high and mighty when you have a station
wagon blazing right next to you, do you? Now what say you slow down and bow
before my superiority? Oh, and you decide to speed up more. It seems you've
chosen the path of pain. High-Ho Silver, away! That's right, I'm still next to
you. It's good to see that your eyes are working. Alright, we've exchanged
grins, but that doesn't mean I'm going to go easy on you. Here we go. Zoom-zoom
ain't got nothing on me. Oops, I had to pick up milk. Well, way too late for
that now. I don't think I've ever gone by the grocery store that fast. Anyway,
gotta focus. I can't let this guy get further ahead of me. Yup, still next to
you, comrade. Ah, you're turning left here? Alright buddy; we'll call it a draw
for now. Yeah, yeah, I'll wave too. May your future endeavors be fruitful and
what-not. How fast was I going anyway? WHOA! What was up with that? Well,
whatever. What song is on now? This
summer I hear the drummin'; four dead in Ohio!"