Joelle Hart's journal

accumulated links

2009-12-19T18:17:19Z

For cyrenasea and others: Evil bunny!

For bobbarker: Caricatures of WWII personages Check out the rest of the gallery, he does a lot like this, plus comic strips that I think would be funnier if I were better-versed in history.

For those who like observing the strange things that go on in fandoms (or those who have shipped unusual pairings), and those who are into Death Note -- An essay explaining why the author ships LxMello. The pairing is definitely wrong (not to mention illegal), but this person fully admits that and writes a schoolwork-complex (not to mention often hilarious) essay explaining why she ships it anyway.

More Bad Times, a fun song -- even though this is a cover by Presidents of the United States, the original isn't available on YouTube.

Dunno if anyone else on my list like mash-ups, but here are possibly the two best I've heard.
This one between Beyonce's "If I Were a Boy" and Tom Petty's "Free Fallin" -- I don't even like Free Fallin', but the two songs fit together very well in all aspects.

A social commentary on America's use of fossil fuel, put together from many songs. I love how the DJ managed to fit in "Disturbia".

Utena FTW

2009-12-10T04:40:03Z

I received the Utena DVDs. As advertised, they're all new, just with a nick in the plastic case. I've tested them all out. A couple of the Black Rose disks appear to have some tracking issues in the root menu -- the picture/menu text is a little wobbly -- but I've scrolled through all the episodes and I see no problems with the episodes themselves. Now I've got the whole series with the exception of volume 6.

And the finale is SO GOOD.

Yayful.

Utena-related advice sought

2009-11-23T02:13:03Z

So as I was researching (and looking at the links I just posted, and snacking... you know how research goes), I had an impulse to see if Utena is available for sale (possibly an impulse born of seeing the Utena-themed Lesbian Wedding whose link I posted recently). I currently own the first season, the movie, and volumes 7 and 8 (the end of the Akio car arc).

I discovered that while all the rest of the DVDs are available on Amazon, several of them available for less than $10, the last two DVDs -- Revelation and Finale -- are down to ONE source each (one source that is not asking $50, that is). One is $14, but the the other is $25.

I know there are Utena fans on this f-list who are more knowledgeable about things anime than I, so here is my question -- is this a case where, if I don't snag available DVDs like NOW, they will be gone forever? I'm trying to live very frugally right now, and while there's other series that I'd like to own/own more of someday, they've got active distributors and I'm sure they'll still be around in a few years, so I'm content to wait. But I can't stop thinking about these Utena DVDs!

joellehart @ 2009-11-22T20:52:00

2009-11-23T01:52:16Z

Spent all of Thursday researching for a paper, and a good chunk of yesterday and today writing it. And I've made good progress. So I feel comfortable sharing with you all some of the crazy things I stumbled over in the course of research (or procrastination -- but a surprising amount of this was one click away from environmental policy).

- Obama with Unicorns. I can't quite decide whether these remind me more of Neil Patrick Harris in "Harold & Kumar go to Guantanamo Bay", or that spoof of Star Trek where Data paints abominations. A little of both.

- The link most closely related to the research I was actually doing... kind of... clever satire Cheating Offsets! First reduce the amount you cheat on your partner... then buy cheating offsets for the rest.

- Burka Barbie. Hijab Barbie is prettier than standard Barbie IMO.

- Finally, Suicide Food. Animals that encourage you to eat them -- like in Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Tier 1 (one noose) is pretty much just standard BBQ restaurant signage, but the ones rated 5 nooses (you can filter on the right) are REALLY disturbing.

Because I know I've got anime-lovers on this f-list...

2009-11-19T12:57:49Z

For the past three years I've volunteered at the info desk for Katsucon. I can't do it this year, though -- too swamped with work.

I just heard from the coordinator, and he says they're still looking for two or three people. It's a pretty good gig -- free admission for all three days, free crash space, and free food, all for being only nominally better informed than the con-goers -- it's more about presenting a friendly face to guests.

If anyone is interested or knows anyone who's interested, drop me a line and I'll post / email the email address for the coordinator.

joellehart @ 2009-11-10T23:24:00

2009-11-11T04:29:20Z

Baguette Dropped From Bird's Beak Shuts Down The Large Hadron Collider

It's the comments that really make the article. Example: "I propose we start calling all defects in Colliders 'Baguettes'"

SQUEEEE!

2009-11-01T15:11:04Z

(nesuphyn, you're gonna love this...)

Utenta-themed gamer geek lesbian wedding!!!

(My favorite detail: that inside the rings is engraved "Revolution")

Many thanks to selecasharp for the link!

joellehart @ 2009-10-27T23:21:00

2009-10-28T03:26:10Z

Because I know my f-list contains many animal lovers, and especially one sighthound aficionado:

The text gets pretty cheesy, but the photos are so freakin' cute (the photo with the deer just kills me): Jasmine the Greyhound

And according to Snopes it's true.

Genesis

2009-10-25T03:50:37Z

I know the Kanye jokes have been going around for a while at this point, but this one makes me laugh every time I look at it.

For Zeki

2009-10-25T03:48:40Z

Leaping wolf snatches photo prize

this is a technophobic icon

2009-10-12T17:45:10Z

Despair and elation followed each other in quick succession on Friday, as I became convinced that my wireless card had become irreversibly broken after only a year of use and took it to the store where I had bought it, only to have it mystically start working again and be told that I had apparently pressed some key wrong.

I knew to check that the exterior hard switch was on! I at least am not that clueless. But apparently you can also turn off the wireless by pressing the function key and something else, and that might be what I had done. Either that, or my wireless really is on the road to busted-ness, and it was just giving me a break. It has worked fine for the last few days, though.

And I wouldn't put it past myself to hit those keys and never know it -- I have a history of doing that sort of thing. Like the time last year, when a cat stood on the keyboard and changed the output so it was directed at a nonexistent external screen, leaving the laptop screen blank. Or -- even better -- the time I fell asleep at work and my cheek hit the keyboard, and when I woke up a few minutes later the whole display had rotated 90%. "How did you make it turn sideways like that?" asked my coworkers. "I don't know," I answered honestly, "I wasn't doing anything unusual," fibbing slightly.

ZOMG!

2009-10-12T16:02:45Z

Creepy!

Bizarre newt uses ribs as weapons

joellehart @ 2009-10-03T10:16:00

2009-10-03T14:20:07Z

A natural history museum, Madagascar, creepy creatures (warning: spiders), art, and doing the seemingly impossible...

This spider-silk textile is absolutely awesome-tastic.

in which I am either ridiculing bureaucracy or asking for help on my homework

2009-09-27T21:32:59Z

I'm working on an assignment to "write a memo" to the head of the EPA, Lisa Jackson, presenting ways to improve water quality in the United States. Making my task much easier, the NY Times website posted a memo from her to the EPA that was issued just this past July. In the memo, she identifies three areas in which she would like to see improvement.

But look at the excerpts of areas one and three below and tell me... am I just crazy, or aren't they the same thing (make information accessible and clear on the website), just framed differently?

"The first step is to improve transparency. Americans have a right to know how their
government is doing in enforcing laws to protect the nation's water, and government has an
obligation to clearly inform the public about water quality and our actions to protect it. An
informed public is our best ally in pressing for better compliance . Therefore I am directing you
to improve and enhance information that is available through the EPA web site on compliance
with the Clean Water Act and the level of enforcement activity in each state, showing
connections where possible to local water quality. This information should be user-friendly and
provide a way to look at performance of individual businesses as well as state and national
performance. State-by-state performance reports that have already been released under the
Freedom of Information Act should also be posted to the web, together with tools to analyze the
data EPA prepared for those reports."

[the second area is pretty much "we should do something about enforcing all these laws we got"]

"Third, we need to move EPA's information technology into the 21 st century. We need to
transform EPA to be not only a collector and disseminator of information but an analytical
resource that can present information in a form that is easily understood and useable by the
public . We have seen that when information is made public, it can be a powerful tool to help
improve the environment directly . We need to launch into a major shift of EPA's Clean Water
Act information systems - so that data on both facilities' discharges and compliance and water
quality and other environmental conditions will be readily available and transparent to both
federal and state regulators and the public, over the web, on a real-time basis."

mystery solved

2009-09-25T02:49:18Z

The ants, they love the new ant bait. <"lj user="sleepy_bird"> told me so, and lo, the next morning I witnessed the swarming. Apparently ants only swarm in shifts, though. The one who shrugged apparently wasn't indifferent towards the bait, she was just indifferent because she wasn't on call just then.

The Mystery of Masala Wok is still unresolved.

joellehart @ 2009-09-11T08:47:00

2009-09-11T12:50:25Z

Article on how everyone experiences a little bit of synaesthesia.

Interesting to me because I've always said that I preferred Coca-cola to Pepsi because the taste of Coca-cola is "round" while Pepsi tastes "sharp" -- according to this article, it's probably just their names that seem round or sharp to me.

best songs?

2009-09-07T17:12:00Z

Last weekend I took a trip with my Dad to the northern wilds of Michigan for an alumni thingy (we had to rush up to make the programming and back down Monday so I could make my first class of the semester that evening, so we weren't able to make stops to visit -- so sorry selecasharp and pixymisa, I wish I could have seen you! but we didn't even see my cousin who lives in Ann Arbor).

Anyhow, we had a good 5-hour drive each way, so we had lots of radio-listening time. I surprised him with my relatively newly acquired knowledge of classic rock, ie identifying "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane and "Eye in the Sky" by the Alan Parsons Project by both title and artist, and I even stumped him by correctly identifying "Bad Case of Loving You" as being by Robert Palmer.

He told me his unofficial list of "The Five Best Classic Rock Songs" -- that is, not songs that are the most fun or the most influential, but simply songs that he thought had "all the elements" of a great classic rock song:

"Crossroads" by Cream
"All Along the Watchtower" by Jimi Hendrix
"Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen
"Running on Empty" by Jackson Browne
"Don't Stop Believing" by Journey

Most of these (except Jackson Browne) scored high on this list, which looks somewhat more official than the personal lists you get on YouTube -- although I wasn't expecting the more soul stuff on here, like Aretha Franklin, to count as classic rock.

When we got back to my hometown and I had access to a familiar modern rock station, I turned the tables a bit by quizzing him on the alternative 90's-ish rock we heard. He successfully identified "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana, but he had absolutely no clue about "Lighting Crashes" by Live. In fact, when I told him that the band was called Live, he gave me a weird look. Worst of all, when we heard "Doin' Time" by Sublime and I was trying to see whether he knew "What I Got", he turned to me and went "Hiya hiya hi hi hi?"... NOOOO, that was Sugar Ray! Argh!

So my question to all of you -- and this is purely for discussion purposes, not to try to compile any sort of authoritative list -- is:
What are the best 90's-era alternative rock songs? The ones that have "all the elements", that really capture the era, or the ones you should be familiar with to have a taste of the time. A few songs come to my mind:

"Smells Like Teen Spirit", definitely -- this makes it on to many "best rock songs ever" lists, and wikipedia says it "marked when alternative rock entered the mainstream".
I would nominate "What I Got" by Sublime, "Lightning Crashes" by Live (YES it's hyper-dramatic, but it's still played often today despite containing the line "her placenta falls to the floor", they must've done something right), "Basketcase" by Green Day, "Say it Ain't So" by Weezer, and "Sell Out" by Reel Big Fish (to capture the ska craze), and "Loser" by Beck.

Thoughts? Nominations?

Side note: we heard a song by Pink, and he asked me, "Is Pink like Kelly Clarkson, or like Fergie?" I told him that Pink was the dark step-sister of Britney Spears and Cristina Aguilera.

GIANT RAT

2009-09-07T02:58:25Z

New species of rat discovered in Papua New Guinea
"Ee's like a li'le... puppy!" says the researcher with the fun accent.

Cat lovers (and authors) on my friends list -- I think you'll like this

2009-09-05T22:17:48Z

One of my favorite comics is Lackadaisy (I'm sure I must have posted about it in the past). I am subscribed to get its updates on Deviant Art, and I even bought the hard copy of volume 1 (and promptly loaned it to someone).

It's amazing to me how self-indulgence in art can produce Mary Sues and all sorts of horrible things, and yet once in a while it results in a real gem. "Lackadaisy" starts the author's cat -- name and characteristics intact -- as an anthropomorphic prohibition-era gangster... and it's brilliant.

Said cat just recently died, and the author posted a eulogy on her Deviant Art journal. It's written with as much skill as she puts into her comics, and what she calls "sentimental drivel" is not only eloquent but hilarious, and heartwarming even for a person like me who's never actually owned a cat.
Sample: "Early on we had outfitted Rocky with collar bells, ensuring I would ever after associate their sound with him. Initially, this was a well-meaning attempt to warn cute backyard wildlife of the oncoming likelihood of dismemberment. In practice, however, the bells failed to create any real handicap for his sport, and ultimately only provided the ironically cheerful, tinkling death knell for many a hapless rabbit and field mouse."

You can see how the cat is recognizable in the comic by his bio on the Lackadaisy character bio page.

for Pixy Misa and Harp

2009-08-08T22:19:37Z

http://www.zazzle.com/artsyandroid/fanfiction?gclid=CJiIwtOLlZwCFR9N5QodvitEfQ

Things that have amused me lately

2009-07-21T13:27:52Z

I've seen the latest incarnation of the JesusFish. See, first it was the JesusFish... then the DarwinFish... then the TruthJesusFish swallowing the DarwinFish. And now... a dinosaur taking a big bite out of the JesusFish. At first I thought it might be Raptor Jesus, but it looks more like a T-Rex (kind of looks like the T-Rex from Dinosaur Comics, honestly).

* * *

I love my coworkers. The communal microwave has died, and somebody posted the following sign on it:
"I have SAD news to report. The microwave has died. R.I.P. First Michael Jackson, and now this. Both hit their peak in the mid-1980s."

* * *

This is the possibly the cutest animal in the entire world. That is my serious scholarly opinion as a scientist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTq972q8fVA
(Also look at "Do you want to know more about Sonya?" for even more)

joellehart @ 2009-07-19T14:12:00

2009-07-19T18:15:31Z

I know some people on my f-list will appreciate this. I was cracking up.

Epic

2009-06-18T14:02:20Z

You can probably guess what a Kazookeylele is if you think about it. Here are some performances involving that instruments, as played by dorks (makes me nostalgic for skiffy).

The Final Countdown -- EPIC

I Believe in a Thing Called Love -- EVEN MORE EPIC

SO TRUE

2009-06-04T00:29:05Z

Social Media Venn Diagram Tee

Obvious definition is obvious

2009-06-02T01:11:51Z

Thought Gramarye at least would get a kick out of this actual wikipedia entry, seen today...

Emotional isolation
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Emotional isolation is a term used to describe a state of isolation where the individual is emotionally isolated, but may have a well functioning social network.