This video makes me so happy.

"As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me."

NEW LINK

I recently bought the Illusion of Gaia for Super Nintendo. It looks awesome, and I can't wait to play it. Love those old school RPGs.

Movie Quote Quiz

1. Pick 15 of your favorite movies.
2. Pick a quote from each one of them (use IMDb.com for help)
3. Tag friends who would know the movies
4. No googling/IMDb searching when guessing
5. Guess all the ones you know even if someone already guessed it (but don't read their answers to get your answers - that's cheating). Everyone who guesses the movie will get their name by the quote. The person with the most correct guesses out of the 15 wins.
6. If you played on facebook/blogger, you can't play on here and vice versa

The Quotes - I don't have much hope of people guessing many of these correctly, just because I like random movies, so I tried to throw in a few obvious ones, too.

1. Why would a reviewer make the point of saying someone's not a genius? Do you especially think I'm not a genius? You didn't even have to think about it, did you?

(Note: It was hard to pick one quote from this movie! But I figured I should pick lines said by only one character, not a conversation.)

2. "No, I like you very much. Just as you are."

3. "I can't think about that right now. If I do, I'll go crazy. I'll think about that tomorrow."

4. "It's the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs. I've outrun Imperial starships. Not the local bulk cruisers mind you, I'm talking about the big Corellian ships now. She's fast enough for you, old man. What's the cargo?"

5. "How do I look? I mean, do I look Amish?"

6. "Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest so long as I live on! I killed you. Haunt me, then! Haunt your murderer! I know that ghosts have wandered on the Earth. Be with me always. Take any form, drive me mad, only do not leave me in this dark alone where I cannot find you. I cannot live without my life! I cannot die without my soul."

7. "You're mistaken, Mr. Darcy. The mode of your declaration merely spared me any concern I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner. You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it. From the very beginning your manners impressed me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit and your selfish disdain for the feelings of others. I had not known you a month before I felt you were the last man in the world whom I could ever marry!"

8. Character #1: "Jesus is never mad at us if we live with Him in our hearts!"
Character #2: "I hate to break it to you, but He is - He most definitely is."

9. "Your son has been pretending to be a substitute teacher, lecturing the students, uh, giving out homework, uh. Mrs. Glasser has been ill, there was some confusion with the real sub. Your son held a teacher-parent conference yesterday and was planning a class field trip to a French bread factory in Trenton."

10. "No! I'm madly in love with you and it's not because of your brains or your personality."

11. "It's not the years, honey, it's the mileage."

12. "Of course I have a secret identity. I don't know a single superhero who doesn't. Who wants the pressure of being super all the time?"

13. "Good. Someday, and that day may never come, I'll call upon you to do a service for me. But, until that day, accept this justice as a gift on my daughter's wedding day."

14. "I killed two people. One was...yesterday? He was just a boy and I led him into quicksand. The other was...well, before Aqaba. I had to execute him with my pistol, and there was something about it that I didn't like."

15. "Neighbors bring food with death, and flowers with sickness, and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a knife, and our lives."

Books Read, 2009.

I do enjoy keeping lists, so perhaps this little table will inspire me to actually finish a book this year.

Finished	Book Title	Author	Genre	Pages
In Progress	Song Yet Sung	James McBride	?	?

If you have the Tiger version of Mac OS X, I would strongly suggest not using OnyX.

Both times I tried to use, it effed up my computer, giving me an error and "invalid node structure" every time I ran Disk Utility.

The first time, I had to wipe everything off my computer and start clean.

This time, I'm trying to get Disk Warrior and see if it can do anything. I don't feel like losing all of my stuff again, thanks.

19-0 (at home)!

Hey, punk-ass Boston Celtics, why don't you schedule some training in good sportsmanship into your practices?

...actually, why don't you just focus on playing basketball, since you've lost seven of your last nine games?

Fourth quarter, six minutes left in the game, Cavs player Ben Wallace is NOWHERE NEAR THE BALL, when the Celtics deliberately foul him.

Why?

Because the Cavs are kicking their ass, and Wallace has one of the worst free-throw percentages in the game. The Celtics want to foul him and hope he misses so they can catch up.

They go on to do this four more times.

Wallace makes five out of the 10 free throws. We'll take that. Cavs gets the rebound on one of the misses, and LeBron makes a basket. (Although, on one of the fouls, LeBron had just made a three pointer, so it didn't count.)

But, come. One time, okay. Doing it five times? Four of them for four Cavs' possessions in a row? That is bullshit.

Celtics, you have no class.

("The chant here in Cleveland is 'overrated.'" - announcer on ESPN)

Cavs, 98
Celtics, 83

These bowl games should be played on neutral turf.

It's bullshit that, when the BCS National Championship game involves the Florida Gators and Oklahoma Sooners, the game is played in Florida.

That's giving a home-field advantage to the Gators, when the home team usually wins.

And the last BCS National Championship game? In 2008, between the Buckeyes and Louisiana State University? Where was it played? In the Louisiana Superdome, New Orleans, Louisiana!

I mean, come on.

This year, OSU played the Texas Longhorns in the Fiesta Bowl in Arizona, which is right next to, I don't know, Texas. And who won?

And the Rose Bowl? Penn State played USC in...California. Who won?

Don't be giving one team a huge advantage like that.

I'd like to see these SEC teams play a game in a cold-weather state. Let them come up to Ohio and Michigan and see how they do. Wimps.

Yea!

Masterpiece Classic on PBS is showing a new version of Wuthering Heights next Sunday!

After the great adaptations of Jane Eyre and the Jane Austen novels, I was hoping one would be done of my favorite novel!

Round up the usual suspects.

This weekend I watched the movie Valkyrie. Yes, that movie with Tom Cruise playing a German soldier (not a Nazi! They are two different things. Learn your damn history, people.).

Now, I am not thrilled by Tom Cruise as a person, but I enjoyed this movie. It was good. I would watch it again.

You may not know, but this movie reunites the writer and director of The Usual Suspects. You know what that means.

A twist at the end of the movie!

I hear you ask, "But iWoman, this movie is a historical thriller set in Nazi Germany during World War II, depicting the actual July 20, 1944 plot of German army officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler. We all know how history turns out. How can there be a twist?"

There can be a twist because most people probably never even knew that officers in the German army tried at least 14 times to assassinate Hitler. So you don't know all of history, do you, smarty pants?

Now, I will tell you the spoiler here, but only read it if you don't mind being surprised!

S
P
O
I
L
E
R

B
E
L
O
W

Hitler is Keyser Soze!

The cat is so lazy. I'm sitting in the den, listening to MICE in the walls. Yes, mice. Most cats would be interested in the noise and, I don't know, try to get to the mice. Not this lazy one. He just looks up like it's interrupting his beauty sleep and then goes right on ignoring it. Thanks a lot, cat.

My new favorite song.

"The Show" by Lenka.

The Terrible Trivium.

Soja, I found that passage from The Phantom Tollbooth I was referring to, that I said I loved.

Now, I don't know that any child could appreciate this passage more than someone reading it as an adult. I'm referring mainly to the last four paragraphs.

Who hasn't been beaten down by the the Terrible Trivium?

The Terrible Trivium
--From The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

The Humbug whistled gaily at his work, for he was never as happy as when he had a job which required no thinking at all. After what seemed like days, he had dug a hole scarcely large enough for his thumb. Tock shuffled steadily back and forth with the dropper in his teeth, but the full well was still almost as full as when he began, and Milo's new pile of sand was hardly a pile at all.

"How very strange," said Milo, without stopping for a moment. "I've been working steadily all this time, and I don't feel the slightest bit tired or hungry. I could go right on the same way forever."

"Perhaps you will," the man agreed with a yawn (at least it sounded like a yawn).

"Well, I wish I knew how long it was going to take," Milo whispered as the dog went by again.

"Why not use your magic staff and find out?" replied Tock as clearly as anyone could with an eye dropper in his mouth.

Milo took the shiny pencil from his pocket and quickly calculated that, at the rate they were working, it would take each of them eight hundred and thirty-seven years to finish.

"Pardon me," he said, tugging at the man's sleeve and holding the sheet of figures up for him to see, "but it's going to take eight hundred and thirty-seven years to do these jobs."

"Is that so?" replied the man, without even turning around. "Well, you'd better get on with it then."

"But it hardly seems worth while," said Milo softly.

"WORTH WHILE!" the man roared indignantly.

"All I meant was that perhaps it isn't too important," Milo repeated, trying not to be impolite.

"Of course it's not important," he snarled angrily. "I wouldn't have asked you to do it if I thought it was important."

And now, as he turned to face them, he didn't seem quite so pleasant.

"Then why bother?" asked Tock, whose alarm suddenly began to ring.

"Because, my young friends," he muttered sourly, "what could be more important than doing unimportant things? If you stop to do enough of them, you'll never get to where you're going."

He punctuated his last remark with a villainous laugh.

"Then you must -----" gasped Milo.

"Quite correct!" he shrieked triumphantly. "I am the Terrible Trivium, demon of petty tasks and worthless jobs, ogre of wasted effort, and monster of habit."

"We'll take a cup of kindness yet, For auld lang syne."

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

"Oh, yeah? That's what you think."

I've watched/listened to this video about a hundred times. Love, love, love Kristin Chenowith.

I'm watching the 20 greatest Christmas songs on NBC. This show is effing ridiculous.

Number 19 is "Jingle Bell Rock" by Julianne Hough, that chick from Dancing with the Stars who thinks she's a country singer. I'm sorry, but a song that came out THIS YEAR and sung by someone only five people know is not one of the greatest Christmas songs.

This show is basically an advertisement, and the singers prob. paid to have their songs on the list.

Completely RIDICULOUS. I love Christmas songs, so I'm pretty ticked.

...Josh Groban at 18? Shoot me. And people think they're cool when they sing the lesser known versus. They're not.

Now Taylor Swift is singing "Silent Night." Now, I actually like her, but she is so off key and sounds strained. It's awful. And it is not one of the greatest Christmas songs.

This video never gets old.

"I wanna roll around like a kid in the snow"

I think the Brat is in love with an opossum.

My evidence:

--Twice the opossum has been spotted sleeping and/or eating on the front porch.
--For the past week or so, the Brat has been acting weird at night. Usually, he stays in through the night and gets let out when someone gets up for work around 6 a.m. Now he is waking me up at three in the morning (lots of thanks) to be let out. When he gets on the porch, he starts meowing this awful sound, like he's calling someone. He's never done that before. And when I tapped the window at him one time, he looked at me guiltily - I swear! - and ran who knows where.
--He's all wore out, ragged, and sleepy when he comes inside in the morning and afternoon.

Okay. That's all I have. But I'm so right.

Cute.

If you like Christmas songs (and "Africa" by Toto), you'll agree that this version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" by Straight No Chaser is really silly and cute.

A good day.

I need to realize that if I just speak up about what's bothering me, it'll almost always be taken care of.

Sweep the stupid idea!

Pinkett Smith Happy to Help Karate Kid Son:

Actress Jada Pinkett Smith has a new role - acting as son Jaden's mentor as he stars in a remake of The Karate Kid.

Jaden, Pinkett Smith's eldest child with her movie star husband Will Smith, is forging his own Hollywood career after winning the part of Daniel Larusso in a remake of the hit 1984 film.

And Pinkett Smith will be behind the scenes playing a supporting role for Jaden, 10, who has previously acted alongside his father in 2006 movie The Pursuit of Happyness.

She says, "I'll probably be playing stage mummy, which is not a role I play very well. My son said, I need you here just as mummy."

The Karate Kid is an effing classic. It does not need to be remade. God. This seriously ticks me off. No originality anymore.

ETA: From here:

Smith also spoke about his son’s upcoming remake of The Karate Kid, and the news isn’t pretty. Apparently young Jaden, seasoned veteran of at least (but no more than) two movies, is taking a stand on the classic crane kick that not only won Daniel Larusso a trophy but the hearts of Elizabeth Shue, Tamlyn Tomita, and all of America. He doesn’t want the iconic crane move in his movie. Apparently, Jaden wants his Daniel to kick ass with moves taken from video games. The irony here is that papa Will is trying to convince his son not to mess with a classic film by changing something so important…

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STUPID.

ETA #2: From here:

Jaden Smith made his film debut alongside his father in The Pursuit of Happyness, and will also be seen in next month’s The Day the Earth Stood Still. Following in his father’s footsteps, Jaden has already pressured the studio to alter the ending to The Karate Kid reboot. **SPOILER** Reportedly, his character notices familiar traits in his mentor before realizing that the wise, old man is indeed himself from forty years in the future. Smith plans for the film to be the first in a karate/time travel trilogy.

There are no words. NO WORDS.

Bratty, spoiled kids who only get movie parts because of their parents should not be allowed to remake fun, entertaining films and change EVERYTHING THAT WAS GOOD ABOUT THEM. I did not realize 10-year-old kids now (re)write movie scripts.

For Christmas, we bought my dad an old-fashioned apple cider/grape juice press. He doesn't know anything about it. I just remembered some comment he made in passing last year, so I wanted to get him one.

But tonight during Ugly Betty some commercial had one in it, and he said, "That's what I need." Heh!

I love this show.

New camera!

"Bang bang, shoot 'em up, destiny"

So ABC has canceled two of my favorite television shows, Pushing Daisies and Eli Stone. And it's the last season for Boston Legal. ABC always cancels good shows, and yet crap like Private Practice is still on.

Life on Mars is still on. If that gets canceled, I'm never watching any new shows on ABC again. What is the point of getting hooked on something new when it won't last?

But, seriously. Life on Mars is awesome. That last episode, with Sam's dad? What a trippy mind fuck. And you gotta love the 1970's soundtrack.

Black triangle.

I'm not saying it's aliens or anything, but sometime in the late summer/early fall, I saw a "black triangle" flying in the sky. I personally know at least one other person who has also seen it around my area.

I found this video, and what I saw looked nearly exactly like this, the white lights at all three corners, forming a triangle, and a red light. Except I saw it from further away and didn't see the "form" of a ship, just the lights.



I don't know what it was, something to do with the government/military, I don't know, but it was weird.

Funny video game!

Super Obama World

Listen to this song! (The Submarines - "You, Me, and the Bourgeoisie")

Ew. It's snowing.

...okay, it's sort of calming to watch it, though.

What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?

Visit http://change.gov/!

I love my President-Elect Obama.

Today is beautiful.

Hell Yeah, America! - UsedWigs Mix Tape Vol. III

"Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'."
--Bob Dylan, "The Times They are a-Changin'"

It's going to be a long night.

Obama Rally Draws 100,000 in Missouri (with photo)

Beautiful.

Excerpt: Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill had harsh words for Palin when she introduced Obama on Saturday. Referring to comments Palin made earlier this week in North Carolina about “pro-America” states, McCaskill said “We have reached a new low in America politics when a candidate dares to say that one part of America is pro-America and another part is anti-America.”

...

...the "health of the mother"? Really, John McCain, really? You seriously put the "health of the mother" in AIR QUOTES?

But this video below is classic:



Obama is the definition of cool. McCain looked like his head was going to explode the entire night.

Okay, weird. Obama's Web site has a section about volunteering, and one of the volunteering options is to Make Calls.

It's actually pretty neat, as you can register, view/read a tutorial, and then it will give you a list of potential voters you can call and encourage to vote for Obama. It provides a script, in case you need some help.

So I signed up for it, just to see what it was like, and my parents are listed as two of the people to call! (They give you local people to call.) I recognize some other names, too. So weird.

If you have some time to kill, consider volunteering for the campaign in this way! You can also call people in Pennsylvania or talk to people in the streets.

Yea for early voting.

I've already voted. Have you?

(Actually, I almost got on television, too! Some news crew was covering the early voting in Ohio, and they stopped the couple in front of me, as I walked into the election office. I would have declined being on television if asked, but still).

Mosh. :(

Nevermind.

There's a young man who works for Obama's office in my county.

He's not from around here, he's away from his friends and family, just one of those campaign workers who go wherever they're needed.

I've seen him several times walking the streets and sidewalks, always in a different city or village in this county. I imagine he's going door to door, trying to let people know why they should vote for Obama.

I've seen him walking in the rain without an umbrella; I've seen him walking on a sidewalk-less road. I've seen him try to convince people to sign up as campaign volunteers.

I'm just really amazed at his dedication. Knocking on people's doors - that's hard work. Because you can bet that half the people do not appreciate that. But he's trying to reach at least one more voter.

I'd like to volunteer, but I can't because of my employment. I would never go door to door, but I wouldn't mind making phone calls.

This is another reason why I don't see myself doing what I do as a career.

"I walk on concrete / I walk on sand / But I can't find / A safe place to stand"

Today I watched several videos, from the mainstream media and from "citizen journalists" of recent McCain/Palin rallies. Some of these rallies took place in my own Ohio. I would share them, but the thought makes me ill.

John McCain and Sarah Palin should be ashamed of themselves, for promoting this hate, this ignorance, this VIOLENCE against another presidential candidate. Against another human being.

People at the Republican rallies yell out that Obama is a terrorist, that he should be killed, that he's a Muslim (and so what if he were, but that's something else entirely), that we should "bomb Obama." McCain/Palin supporters have turned into an unruly, hateful mob, and I honestly fear that violence will break out. It is SICKENING, and I can't even put into words how low I feel about it. And McCain smirks. And Palin encourages it: Obama pals around with terrorists!

I have to remember that these people are in the minority. That, for now, Obama is up in the polls. That even people like my grandmother, who has not always been the most tolerant, defends him against her friends that say they won't for a black man. They won't vote for a black man.

Seriously.

What to know who I voted for?

"That one."

Want to know who's going to be the next president?

"That one."

If I were playing a drinking game, taking a shot every time McCain said "my friends," I'd have alcohol poisoning right about now.

"But you gotta make the best of life while you're young"

My new babies:

Watch this.

Sarah Palin says: "We've got a toxic mess on Main Street that's affecting Wall Street."

Nice to know that no candidate in this election supports "gay marriage." / sarcasm

Just watched The Dark Night. Frickin' bad ass.

"What kind of overconfident nemesis are you?"

I wish blogger had an option that allowed you to make posts "friends only."

Oy!

Debate night! So not watching it on CNN, where I'll have to listen to dumb-ass commentators. I guess if you have HDTV you'd be able to see their reactions real time! Joy.

I think I can catch it on CSPAN, where they just play it without people bothering you.

ETA: John McCain is so effing disrespectful. I hate his damn smirk - it's like George Bush all over.

I missed the first 20 minutes because I guess C-Span is stupid after all.

ETA 2: Where's McCain's flag pin? Doesn't that make him "un-American"?

I heart Josh Lyman.

So Bradley Whitford seriously needs to star in a new show on television. Because he is that awesome.

Too bad Studio 60 got all weird and moved away from the relationship it should have been focusing on, that of Whitford's and Matthew Perry's characters (or just Whitford, that's fine with me), and started up with some stupid romances.

"Danny began working at Studio 60 as a segment producer, working his way up to become a co-executive producer. He resigned in 2002 as a display of support for the firing of his friend Matt Albie and went on to direct a critically acclaimed film penned by Matt. The two proceed to watch each other's back, Matt's decision to go back to Studio 60 is a show of support to Danny, because Danny is a recovering drug addict, Danny relapsed in 2006 after eleven years of sobriety. He tested positive for cocaine use in an insurance physical, and as a result cannot get bonded as a director until he has been drug-free for eighteen months."

So much wasted potential on that show. Whitford playing a recovering drug addict? And that friendship between the two male lead characters? I mean, come on.

Whatever.

So McCain wants to "postpone" the debate. Whatever. I should hope that a president would be able to focus on more than one issue at a time, thanks.