blogwaffe

Not a terribly good name for a holiday, is it?

But a good night, certainly. The week previous, Greg, Paul.za, Heidi and I went to Aardvark’s to see about costumes for the annual Prufrock Party (warning: poorly styled double links). Aardvark’s is truly ridiculous. Where else could you find an honestly good collection of kilts alongside wide assortment of ruffled shirts, kimonos, and hospital gowns. Not to mention the chaps. And they’ve got collector’s items as well. Want a jacket made entirely out of unopened condom packets? How about a kid’s danger mouse hoodie?

We spent about an hour there and all made out quite well. Paul got a leopard print floppy hat, and a leopard print… something. I don’t know, was it a nightie ,or a little girl’s dress? Or… I’ll just stick with a “something”. Couldn’t say. Anyway, in case you hadn’t guessed, he went as a leopard. Really quite amusing.

Heidi got a cheerleader skirt (they have a crap-load of skirts there but not one cheerleader top. Must be someone out there running around with about a hundred cheerleader tops wondering where all her (his?) bottoms got to), a high school athletic jacket (named Jessica Hooper) and some pom-poms. I think we eventually decided that she went as a college cheerleader dressed up as a high school cheerleader.

Greg, perhaps, stole the show. He got a plastic hula skirt, a long black wig, and (yup – you guessed it) a coconut. The hula girl outfit was complete after cutting the coconut in half and affixing it to his bosom. A little eye-shadow here, some lipstick there, consumate glitter and you’ve got yourself one seriously unattractive woman.

Laking such inpiration, I got an outrageously colored clown outfit and a gigantic blonde afro. No one ever quite pinned it down, but I must have been some sort of pedophillic circus escapee what with the ill- (read “non-“) shaven face. We met up with Michelle (a very lovely fairy), Suvir (glam rock/Beckham – I didn’t hear him say himself but received conflicting reports from others), Bert and Saucy (private schoolers), Ace (the guy that’s not Waldo – perhaps the best idea for a costume I’ve ever heard of), and Adam (a very well done Clark Kent). Pictures can be found at the coven. Sorry – I forgot my camera.

Holly also joined us for the night dressed as (I kid you not) “pretty”. She, Paul.za and I spent most of the evening together being highly entertained by our own and others’ antics. She danced with a pumpkin. It was most amusing. Her conversation and gesticulations were most amusing as well – but they might best be spared the ether.

Other notables: Mark and his girlfriend as Papa Smurf and Smurfette, Alexa and Shannon as angel and devil, some dude as a box of Franzia (complete with spigot!), and some other dude as chiken and waffles (genius.).

Anyway – fully enjoyed by (almost) every one in attendance.

I got spammed.

I don’t mean that some previously clean email account got those first couple emails that cause people to cower in terror before the inevitable flood of enlargements, pharmaceuticals, and money makers. Though, as an aside, that just happened yesterday.

No, I mean my blog got hit. Not hard, but even one unwanted comment would be enough. I got six. The offending omments all got caught by wordpress‘s coment moderation filters, but I wanted more. So I futzed around a bit with the code and installed a more powerful moderation plug-in. Hopefully, since the number of hits this site gets is minimal, no one will want to take the time to figure out how to circumvent these new methods I’m using. But I’ll be watching.

So the last many posts have been entirely devoid of content. Perhaps someone out there found the new bits interesting (though I think the robots are the only hits I get these days). If so, I’m glad. The new bits are the only thing I’ve done the entire week other than class, TA and sleep. And certainly none of that is interesting.

Last week(end), however, was more entertaining. Saturday night in particular. The evening started with a rollicking good (if long) time at the Lunasa concert on campus. The band is from .ie and claims to perform traditional .ieish music. I can’t back them up on their claim, since I don’t know what it is “supposed” to sound like. I can tell you that the concert was pretty awesome. The performers were obviously mighty musicians and masters of their various instruments. Additionally, their stage presence was most entertaining.

Read more…

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Finally got around to generalizing my little side popper app so it can deal with text input from blog entries as well as the wp-people data I designed it for. Check it [SIDE=/I appeared magically! And I didn’t screw up any funny characters! €! euro!/]out[/SIDE]. Still needs work, though: it can only handle straight text, not general HTML, and I’ll need it to if I want to use it for the picture album idea I have.

Naked

Volleyball

.com

A gynormous pet peeve of mine: links on web pages whose text changes size when hovered over. When they’re in some sort of menu, the effects are often only aesthetically vomitous. But when they are inside a section of text, they can change the layout around far too much to be able to not piss the ever living daylights out of me. And when I piss everliving daylights, I get angry.

I put web designers who commit such crimes somewhere between the 6th and 7th circles of hell.

I’m wearing a sweater today. My Mr. Rogers Sweater. It is no where near cool enough to warrant such attire, but It’s been a long time since I’ve opened up my warm clothes/electronics trunk for any anything but cables and adapters, so I thought I’d give it a whirl.

It’s comfortable. It’s also funny. I lived in Rochester.ny for four years where it was always a celebration when tshirts could be worn all day long outside during the school year. Different people drew the line in different places, so some people celbrated more often than others. But it was still a source of common ground for everyone: tshirts = happiness.

Now that I’m in .ca, where I wear short sleeves and shorts essentially every day, it’s sort of nice to have an excuse to put on the old Mr. Rogers Sweater. Not that it’s a good excuse: It’s currently 67°F outside. Were I still in Rochester, this would be a day of celebration.

Here in .ca, it sort of still is.

Do not let the unbelievers tell you otherwise. I am a keeper of secret knowledge, a gnostic. I will find deliverance before all others. I will see glory in this world others will not have noticed even until their deaths.

I was enlightened in the beginning, many ages past, but have only now found it my calling to raise up any that will follow after me. And my people will follow. Just as I have learned from my mentors, my shepherds, my counselors, so too will those that heed me, those that listen now, find beauty and hope in this bleak world our home.

I have signed up to receive instant SMS notification of the publication date of Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince as soon as that knowledge is available.

And, verily, all too may do likewise.