My new space

it's been a while since I updated anything but I'm a little loopy right now and am not thinking quite straight and don't have any news anyway except one more week of work and then what I'm not sure yet

• finally re-templated my myspace page


• this probably applies to me

Avast, ye scurvy scalliwags!

Today is Talk Like a Pirate Day. I highly recommend this resource for translating phrases into Pirate-speech.

• Mr. Cello

There are heaps of new drawings, heaps! But I can't post them until early next week. Just try to imagine them, you'll really laugh.

welcome... to zombo.com... this is... zombo.com

I've moved everything over to a new server. The new music page has working links! Unfortunately, you cannot search the Lapsionary, but you can once again submit new words, and I will actually receive them. Check out my new blog!

I'm devastated..."tentacular" is a real word. My lit theory prof told me she had made it up. Maybe it's something like parallel evolution.

• I need a zombo.com t-shirt. You can do anything in a zombo.com t-shirt!


• the ultimate in de-motivation posters! Some of my favourites:
  
  • discovery
  • indifference
  • leaders
  • motivation
  • potential
  • quality
  • wishes
  
  
• miniature earth

So I've been reading some books that have a great deal of history mixed in with the story, and I thought, I could do that! So I started writing a sweet book about my trip to Paris and Berlin last summer. Now I get to go through all my HIST 390BP notes and maps and ticket stubs and general crap! Wooo! I actually find it very interesting. If only it were worth the time.

Oh those Britons

Drawings have been completely renovated. Still have to make a title for it though.

[edit: ...what should the title be?]

How would this be for a potential change?

Also: new music page.

And, the Britons have resumed calling me.

The shoulder of whom?

Here's one that you won't be able to cheat on. Guess who/what this picture is of:

P.S. if you've tried emailing me lately @lapsura.com I haven't gotten it. Lapsura.com is down, and I can't do any updation.

[Edit: Lapsura.com seems to have reverted to a very early stage. I sure hope it's temporary and they fix whatever the heck they wrecked]

Also, it occurs to me that I may not have ever posted this: zombo.com (must have speakers on).

Mmm! Refreshing!

• Heap of new drawings

Here's a picture of a bottle of honey I bought. It would appear that honey is a refreshing beverage for cyclists:

From my friend Bill

More gems from Bill Bryson's English and how it got that way

Fun Fact: the dying words of French grammarian Dominique Bonhours

"I am about to—or I am going to—die; either expression is used."

My favourite:

"Extract from the Pentagon's Department of Food Procurement specifications for a regulation Type 2 sandwich cookie: 'The cookie shall consist of two round cakes with a layer of filling between them. The weight of the cookie shall be not less than 21.5 grams and filling weight not less than 6.4 grams. The base cakes shall be uniformly baked with a color ranging from not lighter than chip 27885 or darker than chip 13711 ... The color comparisons shall be made under north sky daylight with the objects held in such a way as to avoid specular refractance.' And so it runs on for fifteen densely typed pages." (p 189-190)

(non)Awesome Sauce

Am I the only person who doesn't think it's funny to take advantage of a person's phobias? First, you have to understand that I have a serious aversion—I would even say phobia—of sauces. I also detest the Col. Sanders bobblehead; his creepy face gives me the feeling that he just might kill me. There are more pictures of the episode in the Photo Gallery.

Happy Anniversary!

Oops...Yesterday was the anniversary of the very first Drawing from the Library. I don't currently have my computer set up (nomad) so I haven't been able to post new drawings.

Anglo Saxonisming

This was (part of) one of my speeches in a performance I did in a class last year. 50 points if you can guess the language, what it means, and what book/movie "borrowed" it.

Hwær cwom mearg? Hwær cwom mago? Hwær cwom maþþumgyfa?
Hwær cwom symbla gesetu? Hwær sindon seledreamas?
Eala beorht bune! Eala byrnwiga!

Eala þeodnes þrym! Hu seo þrag gewat,
genap under nihthelm, swa heo no wære.

Gems

Oh, this book is so awesome:

I can think of two very good reasons for not splitting an infinitive.

1. Because you feel that the rules of English ought to conform to the grammatical precepts of a language that died a thousand years ago.


2. Because you wish to cling to a pointless affectation of usage that is without the support of any recognized authority of the last 200 years, even at the cost of composing sentences that are ambiguous, inelegant, and patently contorted.

[from the mother tongue: english and how it got that way by Bill Bryson]

In my most recent Shakespeare class, the prof took marks off for split infinitives. I maintain that the rule of the split infinitive is an urban myth. On the other hand, there are some people who think I'm too draconian and fastidious about grammatical things. I just can't fathom how "then" and "than" and proper punctuation and the simple difference between superlatives and comparatives can be so difficult for some people. You don't have to know the terminology to use the darn language right, either.

[By the way, a split infinitive is putting an adjective between the "to" and the "verb," as in "to quickly run." Some people would have you believe that this is impossible, just because in Latin the phrase would be currere celeriter, and you can see how it is impossible to split the infinitive currere, therefore the proper English rendering would be "to run quickly" ... ok enough of that. Oh, how I would love to turn this blog into a series of lessons in little-known linguistic and etymological(?) trivia!]

I suppose I never formally acknowledged that I finished my degree early last week. Or that I also turned 22 a little earlier last week. Both are duly noted. But we must never speak of either.

Oh, and as of today I have become a nomad. Good thing I have a caravan of llamas under my command. By the way, if anyone would like, say, 5 brown female baby llamas, you should really contact me. Really.

Error! Error! Banjo not found!!

• dark matter

The music page has been renovated, so songs are not actually available there anymore (except some Most Recent songs are still available there). The mp3s are still on the web, as well as a couple new songs, but I don't plan on posting the links anywhere. But you can listen to a medley of the piano recordings and of electronic/MIDI/guitar/new voice songs, and as always you can contact me for more information. Of course, if you're using IE or some other crappy browser...you won't be able to access the Most Recent or Medley mp3 links anyways.



Warning to motorists in Tokyo: "When a passenger of the foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet at him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage, then tootle him with vigor."

You may have noticed that lapsura.com has been significantly renovated. It should work at all times now, even though a lot of it is being regularly hacked. I've found a way to co-exist peacefully with this hacker, so that everyone gets what they want. But, if you're still one of those Internet Explorer people, I vehemently urge you to consider Firefox. It's so much more superior in many ways; plus, Internet Explorer severely butchers the awesomeness of lapsura.com (turns the title into a big ugly block and the floating windows—i.e. most of the links—don't work). In fact, I find Firefox a heck of a lot faster than Safari, plus you can't beat tabbed browsing. That's Firefox folks; just click the highly conspicuous button on the sidebar.

fucking sick to death of all this shit. ALL THIS SHIT. hacked again classes crazy too much work nowhere to live school is all I know and now it is done what do I do now (and yet none of that is bothering me half as much as I am bothered) everything is falling apart and they call these fucking antidespressants?

There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise. —Gore Vidal

After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations. —H. L. Mencken on Shakespeare

The best way to predict the future is to invent it. —Alan Kay

That's the secret to life... replace one worry with another. —Charlie Brown

Music is essentially useless, as life is. —George Santayana

I hate my life! I hate everything! I wish I was dead! ...Well, no I don't. Not really. I wish everyone else was dead. —Calvin

Verbing weirds language. —Calvin

Apparently I released my first album (without my own knowledge), which not only made it into Gil's "Listened to" the last few days, but was also featured as the on-hold music at work today. Soon I will have infiltrated all of North America!

Two birds attacked me at once today. I should really stop walking that way back from class.

• ouaouaron
  
• foofawfery
  
• preantepenultimate
  

Here's some of the Francis 100th Anniversary Parade in pictures:

Old tractors led the way:



Then came the fire trucks/bus and grader:



I remember making this sign for a parade at least 5 years ago for the Ag Society (I could have sworn it was Francis's 100th Anniversary then). It looks suspiciously like they changed the date:



Some horses:



Young hooligans on bicycles:



Then the police came to break up the riot:



Well, there was a lot more to the parade than that; floats and things that threw candy (and even Santa on a quad) but I'm not going to post those. Now here's some llamas and chickens:



All these and other pictures are in the photo gallery.

And of course, somebody HACKS MY WEBSITE, just when I hadn't made any backups...

ok so the hacking was probably almost entirely my fault, and it's also my fault that I didn't back anything up, but still! Anyways, the Lapsionary required complete reconstruction, and I'm still working out glitches in it. You can check out what the damage used to look like on almost every page here (old obsolete drawings page).

And if it was YOU who did it...don't do it again!

Today was the awesomest day in a long, long time. It's about time, too, because this week was pretty hellish. The awesomest part (today) was Ryan coming to visit. Then I finished reading a lengthy book for my Old Moldy Books Class. There's still a lot of reading to be done in order to get all my final assignments in this week, but then it will all be over. I also went on a very lengthy stroll by the lake (the first time in a long time that I've been outside during the daytime). I was going to go into the waterfowl park, but I didn't like the looks of those geese, and considering my recent encounters with attacking birds, it was probably for the best that I didn't. Tomorrow I'm going to the farm to take a bunch of stuff home and retrieve my camera. Since I've been going through my room, I've found a multitude of scraps of paper from months and months ago with ideas for drawings jotted down on them. So, there's a small collection of drawings piling up.

What it feels like:

Like somebody cracked open my skull, poured the entire contents of my head on some pavement, spread it into an even layer, sprinkled on some shards of glass, jumped on the entire mass for good measure, then scooped everything back into my head, where somehow someone wearing stilettos still manages to jump on it.

I just spent 18 hours in bed.