cstaley

01:25 pm: Facebook
Sorry I haven't been updating this journal much, but I've been over on Facebook. I'll try to remember to post here more.

01:31 pm: Snow?
Yesterday it was 70 degrees and I raked the yard. Last night, it was 30 degrees and snowing! Crazy weather!

To tell the truth, I didn't expect it to snow here in Austin at all, much less before Christmas.

03:23 pm: Forgetful
I just realized I didn't post about my Thanksgiving. So this is late.

A friend of mine, Mr. Smarty Pants, cooked Thanksgiving dinner for me, my roommate, and his own son. It was delicious! We had turkey, dressing, sweet potatoes with marshmellows, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie! Yum!

So thanks to Mr. Smarty Pants for the meal!

02:52 pm: Ace's Lounge
Saturday night after my art class, a friend and I went to Ace's Lounge. This is a fairly new nightclub in Austin that offers a "burlesque show" twice a night on Friday and Saturday. It isn't really a burlesque show, though. It is just go-go dancers performing to a crappy cover band. If you want to see skantily-clad girls dance around, but don't quite have the courage to go to a strip club, then Ace's Lounge is the place for you. My friend and I were hoping for actual burlesque (which is what they say on their advertisements), and we thought the band sucked, so we left.

07:28 pm: Dr Sketchy
I finally went to another Dr. Sketchy art class. This time there were three models, who are members of the Spank Dance Company. They performed a bit of their show "Butoh" which is a Japanese performance art dance. Here is a picture from their Butoh show earlier in the year.



I'll be honest, I didn't care for the show. It was a slow-motion and strange dance. Not my thing, really.

On another note, I won a prize for "Worst Drawing." I already know I can't draw well, and figured I would win it, but it still is sort of a bummer to win "worst" at something. I won an art toy and a little drawing sketch book, though. I like the sketch book a lot, so at least I got that.

02:18 pm: Bank of America is stupid
So for some reason, I had a bunch of small bills and decided to go to a bank to get the money changed into large bills. My bank is kind of far away, so I went to Bank of America. No go. For some reason, Bank of America will only make change for people with accounts.

What?

Why on earth is that a policy? I can see not cashing checks for people without accounts, because people can try to cash fake checks. But refusing to make change? I had the correct amount of cash in my hand! Why refuse to make change?

So, in summary, I think Bank of America is stupid.

02:57 pm: Dark Knight
I finally saw the most recent Batman movie. Believe it or not, it is still playing at one theater here in Austin. Which is odd, because it comes out on DVD next month. It isn't even a "dollar" theater, but a first-run place.

Anyway, I thought the movie was a little long. Sure, Heath Ledger made a great Joker, and the Two-Face special effects were awesome. But the movie's actual plot dragged in parts, so it isn't quite the "best movie" that all the reviewers were making it out to be. One good performance doesn't make a movie great.

01:46 pm: So I voted today. I'm glad early voting exists, so I can get that over with and not worry about it again.

Although the news has pointed out if something happens between now and election day, such as a video of my candidate laughing maniacally while burning down an orphanage with all the kids trapped inside, I can't take my vote back.

Why would the news tell me something like that? If that video gets released the day after election day, no one can take their vote back. Did the news always say stupid things? I can't imagine Walter Cronkite telling me something so idiotic.

01:35 pm: Posting
More and more of my old friends have started finding this blog, so I feel like I ought to be updating it more regularly. The problem is that the only interesting thing that is happening is that old friends are finding this blog.

So I need to try to think up something interesting, but nothing is going on. I guess I could spout my opinion about politics, but I am sure most of you are getting quite enough of politics these days.

I watched the movie The Aviator. It was pretty good.

I took some photos of downtown. I guess I could post some of those.

I dunno. I wish I had something to talk about.

03:44 pm: Facebook vs MySpace
So I don't know whether facebook or myspace is better. I do know that more of my friends use facebook on a regular basis and not so much myspace. So if you are one of my friends, you should add me on facebook as well as myspace.

As always, I'll keep using this as my blog.

12:57 pm: Lunch with old friend
Friday, I had lunch with an old college buddy (Christopher Griffin) I haven't seen in 15 years, and it is thanks to Facebook of all things. A bunch of my old college friends I haven't seen or heard from in years have started getting on Facebook, and I have been friending them. On Friday morning, Chris and I got on each other friends list. I read his updates and saw that he was staying at a local hotel and had gone out on 6th Street the night before. On a whim, I sent him a facebook message with my phone number and told him to call if he was still in Austin. Within an hour, he called and we made made lunch plans.

So it turns out that these networking site are usefull after all.

It was nice seeing Chris again and catching up.

02:55 pm: Voting
I filled out my voter registration card here in Texas, so I'll be able to vote. Texas is all but certain to go Republican, which makes me feel a little like my vote won't matter since I am unlikely to effect the outcome regardless of who I vote for. I'm voting anyway though.

Interesting, the state I left (North Carolina) has recently become a battleground state with the polls almost even.

02:22 pm: Angels and Demons
Another book review, and this time it is Angels and Demons by Dan Brown (the guy who wrote the Davinci Code).

I hated this book. It was terrible.

First of all, it hinges on a religious scientist who "proves" God exists. How? By proving that all the matter in the universe could have been created at the Big Bang from nothing if there is just an enormous amount of energy. He calls this energy God, and the whole thing is the act of creation. In the book, this is such a revolutionary idea that the athiest director of CERN blanches and is horrified.

What Dan Brown doesn't seem seem to realize is that premise (all the matter came from energy at the beginning of time) is the whole premise of the Big Bang in the first place. I learned the equations for it 20 years ago in a college classroom, and is a natural extension of the 60 year old E=mc^2 formula. In fact, scientific proof of this is the whole point of the giant supercollider that they just built in Europe. If someone presented this idea to an atheist physicist, he would just say "Duh, dumbass." And calling a bunch of built-up energy "God" is just stupid. God is supposed to be a guiding presence, not just an overabundance of potential energy.

Believe it or not, the book gets even dumber from there. It has a bunch of priests and cardinals breaking church doctrine, and it has a "twist" ending that isn't foreshadowed in any way whatsoever.

The only good thing about the book was the words that read the same upside-down.

Avoid the book. It is awful.

12:29 pm: Enchanted Forest
I found Austin's Enchanted Forest the other day. It turns out it is right by my new living quarters. There has been a lot of hubabaloo about the Enchated Forest lately. It is sort of an artist's community that is full of modern art installations. But since the art is also made on site, the materials are often laying around and sometimes it is messy. Apparently, the city of Austin has told them they can't hold any events for a year. I talked to some of the artists there, and it turns out that none of the neighbors mind the place, but a developer who is building condos nearby is trying to shut them down because the developer thinks that the Enchated Forest is driving down property values.

However, the Enchanted Forest would often host art events for children, so a bunch of Austin moms started complaining and insisting the place stay open. That is good for the artists, but I also know that developers often win these battles.

For my part, I think the place is neat and hope it gets to stay open as an artist's community.

12:52 pm: Firefly Rain
So I finally got around to reading my friend rdansky's book Firefly Rain. It's a pretty good book. I finished it in two days, so I would classify it as "light reading." It is officially classified as "horror," but I don't really think it is that scary. It has supernatural elements to it and stuff going on is mysterious, but does that make something horror? I'm not sure. For this book and Clive Barker's "flay the skin off everyone" books to be in the same category doesn't really seem right.

It is pretty good, though. I do sort of wish the build-up had a bigger payoff, though. I felt that it stayed sort-of low-key throughout.

Now for two pet peeves that he fell prey to.

Despite years of living in the south, Dansky still had a southern character say "y'all" when referring to the singular. I don't know why all northerners think southerners do that. It drives me nuts. As a born and bred Mississippi boy, I assure you that if a southerner says "y'all", he always means "you and someone else," even if the "someone else" isn't currently present. Just a pet peeve.

Also, he was more than happy to write the southern accent out ("you ain't from around here, is ya, boy?"), but he didn't write out the accent of the native Boston character. There was no "I need to pahk my cah" or anything. That's another thing writers like to do: pretend only southerners have accents. Just another pet peeve.

Pet peeves aside, it made a good summer read. So I'll go ahead and recommend it.

02:27 pm: I have moved!
I haven't posted in forever, but I have a good reason. I have moved! I am still in the same city this time (Austin, for those not following along very carefully), but instead of being way up north in the suburban sprawl away from everything, I am now on South Lamar and much closer to the heart of the the city. Plus, I have a roommate now.

So now instead of being solitary and disconnected from what is going on, I have company and am in the middle of everything. It is very different, and I hope it is a change for the better.

01:45 pm: Yoga
I've started going to a yoga class, if you can believe that. It actually feels pretty good. It is like an advanced stretching class. Of course, the instructors try to mix all this spirituality stuff and holistic medicine into it. I sort of wish it could just be about the stretching and balancing and breathing. Still, I am enjoying it and it makes me feel good. So there you go.

10:22 am: My Birthday
Today is my birthday!

12:34 pm: Wristwatches
Why does anyone with a cell phone still wear a watch? The phone has a clock on it. Plus, since it pulls the time from the communications satellite, everyone with a phone has their clock synchronized.

I predict that in about 15 years, no one will wear watches except the elderly and the very quirky. In 30 years, watches will be quaint thing of the past, like wearing a top hat.

06:48 pm: New word!
I was fixing a typo at work and discovered a new word. Someone has misspelled "impassable" as "impassible" and I corrected it, but decided to look the words up in the dictionary to be 100% sure. Although the word was supposed to be "impassable," it turns out that "impassible" is a word, too. Impassibility is a theological doctrine that says God cannot feel emotions and therefore experiences nether pain nor pleasure at the actions of His creation.

So someone's typo has made me learn a new word, even if it is one I doubt I'll ever use.