Philip Welch: Did you know I lost ten pounds this last week?
Jennifer Lee: Um, without being snarky, how on earth would I know that? And congrats.
Philip Welch: Yeah, and 20 pounds the week before. That’ll teach me to invest in the British stock market!
Jennifer Lee: …
Jennifer Lee: *rolls eyes*
Philip Welch: Did you know I lost ten pounds this last week?
Mike Klein: I didn’t — how did you do that?
Mike Klein: Did you invest in Starbucks UK?
I am presently happy, and pleasantly surprised. The only thing that would make my life better would be sunny weather, acceptance to UW, and unexpended windfalls of tax-free cash income, but even without those things I truly have that which matters most in life.
I’ve safely made it back to Pullman, where I will be taking summer classes for the next two months.
I’d forgotten how hot it is here during the summer. I am already sweating more than I have in months. Fortunately, the inside of my house here does a good job of keeping cool (and conversely, a poor job of keeping warm in the winter).
My month in Port Angeles was relaxing and refreshing, despite certain disappointments. Nonetheless, I anticipate enjoying the rest of the summer, especially if my UW transfer application is accepted.
I’m spending some of my free time on Slashdot jousting with people who think that the World Trade Center was destroyed by planted explosives (and not by, for instance, gigantic jetliners that crashed into it and the resultant shock and fire damage). I think this latest exchange is my coup de gras:
You know, whoever designed the WTC must be pretty happy that you have so much faith in them that you think it’s more plausible that reptilian Jewish Freemasons from the outer space Illuminati secretly planted explosives than they were simply more vulnerable to aircraft and debris collision than they hoped.
I continue, further down the thread:
Building implosions are carefully controlled to avoid property damage to surrounding buildings. You want to get it down to a less than 1% chance of damaging other buildings. That doesn’t mean that, if a building collapses uncontrolled, it’s guaranteed to damage other buildings. It only means that random building collapses have an unacceptably high probability (which in practice may mean greater than 1%, or even greater than 0.1%) of damaging other buildings. Besides, it makes no sense to suppose WTC 7 was destroyed by controlled demolition, because WTC 1 and 2 *did* cause damage to surrounding buildings (thus making it inconsistent to be so cautious with WTC 7) and because there’s no reason to make a neatly contained implosion when your objective is to destroy inhabited office buildings to further your Masonic plot from outer space.
He finally clarified who his villain was:
Masons from space? WTF is wrong with you? The milatary-industrial-congress complex has the means and the motives to get this done. Their budgets and influence were steadily declining after the end of the cold war:
I school him on building implosions again and point out all the strange parts of his theory:
Why would the military-industrial complex (thanks for updating me on which perennial conspiracy-theory villain you’re using!) destroy WTC7 so that it would collapse neatly into its own footprint, while failing to destroy WTC 1 and 2 the same way? Why would the military-industrial complex be worried about protecting other buildings from damage when they were deliberately committing an act of terrorism? Why would they go to all the effort to make 19 predominantly Saudi nationals all appear at the same time on the four airplanes they crashed, with Arabic-speaking voices on the cockpit recorders, if they had no intention of attacking Saudi Arabia? Why would they bother crashing planes into the towers if they was rigged with explosives to start with? Why did they arbitrarily restrain the attack to the WTC and Pentagon? Why did none of the 100,000 WTC inhabitants ever notice the explosives being installed? How come no one has come forth admitting to being a part of this gigantic conspiracy? I think the more important question is–what, other than your political biases, leads you to choose a gigantic conspiracy theory over thinking that maybe you were wrong about building collapses?
Incredibly, his response contains both these lines:
Do you make mommy type for you? ‘Cause you sound too stupid to tie your own shoes.
All of your questions have been answered, all the data has been made available to you.
Don’t troll this thread anymore.
along with a bizarre claim that the military-industrial complex didn’t want to damage buildings because they owned all of them.
And my final response:
Drat and curses, you’ve found me out. I am indeed an agent of the Zionist-controlled military-industrial complex that evidently owns all the real estate in New York! While you have foiled my mission this time, be assured that our resources are far more extensive than your own!Seriously, though, I’d love to live in your world for like one day. I’m sure life is interesting if you see fiendish plots worthy of Lex Luthor around every historical event.
It may be worth noting that the Westfield Mall and Disney security tried to bar the zombies from entering, but Apple store security did not. In fact, salespeople were jostling one another for a position where they could take the best photo of the zombies (or themselves with the zombies, or their brains being eaten by the zombies).
From News.com.com.com
Arthur Du Mosch of Israel wrestled down a leopard that jumped into his bedroom during the middle of the night, and pinned it until park rangers could arrive to take it away.
I ran out of Aussie shampoo and conditioner so I went to get more. Well, instead of the “medium” or “mild” or other conditioner/shampoo Aussie used to make, they now only have “moist” and a variety of blends that are supposed to, I dunno, be especially nice. The only ones they had at the store were “volume”, “sun-kissed shine” and “soft”. Well, my hair’s soft enough already, and volume could have been a disaster, so I tried sun-kissed shine.
It’s quite shiny.
But now on the internet it looks like they have a “catch the wave” shampoo and conditioner that not only defines waves and curls, it even “helps eliminate frizz”. AAAAAAA!
Ooh, but they make a “calm that frizz creme”!
(No pictures because my camera is in Pullman.)
is waking up from a dream where we are speaking to each other, and are friends, and then suddenly remembering reality again.
Thanks to Canadian TV, I was able to watch both of these often-conflicting shows in the same night without mucking about with BitTorrent.
24…I’m not sure what to say. I mean, clearly all the major crises were averted and Jack Bauer continued to defy capture and adversity. It’s not a terribly unpredictable show in that respect. Oh, and James Cromwell died.
Heroes was just great. I mean, it was a little less-than-awesome to have 40 minutes of characters having heart to heart dialogues about their heroism and only about 90 seconds of climactic battle with Sylar. But most of the heart-to-heart dialogues were good, and climactic battles are expensive to do the special effects for.
Also, it was nice to see Hiro thrown into the past to meet his hero. Almost better than seeing Nathan sacrifice himself to save the city from Peter.
(You might notice the lack of spoiler warnings. That’s just how I roll.)
