constructive weekend

here is a funny email i got.

THEY HAVE THOUGHT TO VISIT THIA AMERICA
YEAR OF THE SOUTH AND OF BEING IN WHAT MONTHS THEY HARIAN IT.
I AM AL READY ONE OF ITS FANS I NUMBER 1IN AMERICA OF THE SERIOUS AND VERY GOOD WHAT VISIT MY COUNTRY THIS YEAR.

harian sounds like an armenian family name. they all end with -ian or -yan, in case you didn't know. remember ani from chadbourne? her last name ended with -yan and she was armenian.

this morning i talked via im with my website "helper" (brian) who is very enthusiastic. he lives in washington state. he provided maybe 6 songs (lyrics) today that i don't have up yet and i have posted 3 so far. what most impresses me about him is that he has great grammar and spelling. yay!

i've been watching battlestar galactica a lot lately, which i will heretofore refer to as BSG. it's really good but is much less sci-fi-y than i originally thought. the thing that bothers me the most about it is that it's EXACTLY like earth life except that they have spaceships (they are from a very far-away galaxy). and ok, i know it's a show, but it's like they made no attempt at all to make their life different than earth life. i know they have to speak english, be human, etc. but i mean, they have books, regular plumbing and sinks and flushing toilets (well, i'll give them that they made the sinks triangular). they have history museums with regular-looking sculptures and artifacts. they have regular guns. the military people wear dog tags.

what really got me laughing was when they went to a political conference thing, and there was an x-ray machine like what they have at airports, which you put your bags through. what are the chances that a totally separate civilization would have that? and besides, was it really necessary for the story? NO. a lot of the stuff isn't, and i think they should remove that kind of thing. of course, it might make viewers more comfortable with the show, but christ, an x-ray machine???

the things that are more prominent are obviously made different, such as playing cards, money, the color of alcohol (it's usually mountain-dew-green), etc. how strange.

stargate is good about that type of thing. they have explanations for why people on other planets are human and live in similar societies and have a lot of the same shit. and actually they're pretty good explanations. and a lot of the time they don't speak english. one time they went to this planet where the people didn't speak at all and they communicated by some sort of weird humming. they were "nourished" by this giant mushroom thing, which was in turn nourished by the sound waves the people made. that one was weird.

i cleaned a ton this weekend and did very well. i decorated my patio and it looks kind of sad except for this cool mobile i got at ikea. i put my papasan chair out there, thinking it will be ok outside, and if it gets wet i don't care because it's falling apart. it will be nice once it gets slightly warmer to read out there. i bought a hanging cabinet thing for $40 with the purpose of displaying certain items of mine (it has a glass door). i spent like 4 hours putting the fucking thing together. and my hands are all cut up. christ, it was hard. the biggest problem was that one of the pieces was too large, so it was throwing everything else off. thankfully that piece is hidden, so i just shaved it a little. then when i went to hang it i discovered the screws i have weren't quite long enough (the cabinet did not come with hanging screws, only a piece of wood for the wall). so i finally was able to secure it better using those screw holders that you sometimes get in a package. it's up there nicely now.

i cannot believe how messy this place gets so quickly, and how long it takes to clean. i think that my problem is i always have to start projects, like the chair, and while i'm doing a project i just leave crap where it lies. i need to fix that about myself.

i have three regular light bulbs in my apartment (the rest are halogen) and on friday two of them burned out. that was weird. i was going to replace them but i have no more regular ones. the paper lantern has to have a regular one.

brighton: my laptop still works. the hard drive never fried: the only thing that really gave out was the power cord input. it wouldn't stay in very well, which is why i was always complaining about the computer turning off randomly. my dad says there is a spring that keeps the cord in, and it came un-soldered. he re-soldered it once and it broke again a few weeks later. the other thing that didn't work was an external piece, the PCI card i had, which was a USB hub. the PCI card was crappy and gave out after a while. but the hard drive was and is perfectly fine.