As You Wish

Your Love Life is Like The Princess Bride

"Since the invention of the kiss, there have only been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind." For you, love is like a fairy tale - albeit a fairly twisted one. You believe romance is all about loyalty, fate, and a good big of goofy fun. Your love style: Idealistic yet quirky Your Hollywood Ending Will Be: Perfectly romantic

What Movie Is Your Love Life Like?

Summertime, Summertime, Summ-summ-summertime

You Are a Cherry Flavored Popsicle

You are sweet and friendly. For you, summer is all about doing your favorite things. You are a nostalgic person. You love old fashioned things like ice cream trucks. You savor everything. Every taste of summer, the feeling of the sun, the smell of the beach... Of all the types, you love summer the most.

What Flavor Popsicle Are You?

Hey, Who's the New Guy?

Do you ever see something and you say to yourself, "If life had been just a little bit different, that could have been me"? That's how I feel about TrekkieGuy's website. If you have an interest in original series Star Trek, check it out. Book reviews, wav files, and other fun stuff for authentic Trekkies to enjoy.

It'll Be OK

You Are a Thumbs Up

Your life philosophy can be summed up as, "Tomorrow is another day." Your greatest wish is for everyone to be content with what they have. You are naturally content and optimistic. You encourage people to be happy. Even if life isn't perfect, you believe that life is what you make of it!

What Hand Gesture Are You?

Those Are Some Good Books, Right There

I was wondering if there were some sort of definitive list of important books to read. I figured that Google would yield more than a few. But the one that came up first, and over and over, was Martin Seymour-Smiths "100 Most Influential Books Ever Written." I copied this chronological version from interleaves and have marked in bold all of the things I've read so far. (I've read selections and excerpts from others, marked with an asterisk. I mean, who hasn't read some Shakespeare?) Considering that I read most of it at least 20 years ago, I can see I've been wasting a lot of time. I was a bit surprised to not see The Art of War on the list.

1. The I Ching
2. The Old Testament
3. The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer
4. The Upanishads*
5. The Way and Its Power, Lao-tzu
6. The Avesta
7. Analects, Confucius*
8. History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides
9. Works, Hippocrates*
10. Works, Aristotle*
11. History, Herodotus*
12. The Republic, Plato
13. Elements, Euclid
14. The Dhammapada
15. Aeneid, Virgil
16. On the Nature of Reality, Lucretius
17. Allegorical Expositions of the Holy Laws, Philo of Alexandria
18. The New Testament
19. Lives, Plutarch
20. Annals, from the Death of the Divine Augustus, Cornelius Tacitus
21. The Gospel of Truth
22. Meditations, Marcus Aurelius*
23. Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Sextus Empiricus
24. Enneads, Plotinus
25. Confessions, Augustine of Hippo
26. The Koran*
27. Guide for the Perplexed, Moses Maimonides
28. The Kabbalah*
29. Summa Theologicae, Thomas Aquinas*
30. The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri*
31. In Praise of Folly, Desiderius Erasmus
32. The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli*
33. On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Martin Luther
34. Gargantua and Pantagruel, François Rabelais
35. Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin
36. On the Revolution of the Celestial Orbs, Nicolaus Copernicus
37. Essays, Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
38. Don Quixote, Parts I and II, Miguel de Cervantes
39. The Harmony of the World, Johannes Kepler
40. Novum Organum, Francis Bacon
41. The First Folio [Works], William Shakespeare*
42. Dialogue Concerning Two New Chief World Systems, Galileo Galilei
43. Discourse on Method, René Descartes
44. Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes*
45. Works, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz*
46. Pensées, Blaise Pascal
47. Ethics, Baruch de Spinoza*
48. Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan
49. Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Isaac Newton
50. Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke
51. The Principles of Human Knowledge, George Berkeley
52. The New Science, Giambattista Vico
53. A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume
54. The Encyclopedia, Denis Diderot, ed.
55. A Dictionary of the English Language, Samuel Johnson
56. Candide, François-Marie de Voltaire
57. Common Sense, Thomas Paine*
58. An Enquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith
59. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon
60. Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant
61. Confessions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
62. Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke
63. Vindication of the Rights of Women, Mary Wollstonecraft
64. An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, William Godwin
65. An Essay on the Principle of Population, Thomas Robert Malthus
66. Phenomenology of Spirit, George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel*
67. The World as Will and Idea, Arthur Schopenhauer
68. Course in the Positivist Philosophy, Auguste Comte
69. On War, Carl Marie von Clausewitz
70. Either/Or, Søren Kierkegaard
71. The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels*
72. "Civil Disobedience," Henry David Thoreau*
73. The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, Charles Darwin*
74. On Liberty, John Stuart Mill
75. First Principles, Herbert Spencer
76. "Experiments with Plant Hybrids," Gregor Mendel
77. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
78. Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism, James Clerk Maxwell
79. Thus Spake Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietzsche
80. The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud
81. Pragmatism, William James
82. Relativity, Albert Einstein
83. The Mind and Society, Vilfredo Pareto
84. Psychological Types, Carl Gustav Jung
85. I and Thou, Martin Buber
86. The Trial, Franz Kafka
87. The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper
88. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, John Maynard Keynes*
89. Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre
90. The Road to Serfdom, Friedrich von Hayek
91. The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir
92. Cybernetics, Norbert Wiener
93. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
94. Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff
95. Philosophical Investigations, Ludwig Wittgenstein
96. Syntactic Structures, Noam Chomsky
97. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, T. S. Kuhn
98. The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan
99. Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung [The Little Red Book], Mao Zedong
100. Beyond Freedom and Dignity, B. F. Skinner

Beware the Devil's Blend

Not everything on the list is write-home-about-it-funny, but here are a few of my favorites from You Know You Drink Too Much Coffee When...

• Juan Valdez named his donkey after you.
• You're the employee of the month at Starbucks and you don't even work there.
• Your T-shirt says, "Decaffeinated coffee is the devil's blend."
• You can jump-start your car without cables.
• You go to AA meetings just for the free coffee.
• Your birthday is a national holiday in Brazil.
• You can thread a sewing machine, while it's running.
• You help your dog chase its tail.

They Try to Keep Me Away from the C-c-c-cutlery

The picture was freaky enough, why did they have to use my name? Old ad at Kitschy Kitschy Coo.

(Points to anyone who remembers where the quote in this blog post title is from.)

I Still Think Geddy Lee is Actually an Elf

No, Man, I Didn't Touch The Bamboo, I Swear

Go to Animal Talk to read about rescue efforts for panda's after the earthquake.

Risky Business

You Are Bold When it Counts

You don't make a big fuss about getting what you want... unless it's really important to you. Then you're as bold as you want to be. You just go for it! You're often up for a little excitement and adventure. Well, as long as the cost isn't too great. You enjoy risk, but not for it's own sake. Let's just say you've learned a few lessons about risk in your life.

Are You Bold?

Truth Hits Everybody

The truth is that Comcast sucks.

I have, as you know, had my own issues and I had said, "From what I can tell the answer is that no matter what your problem is NO ONE CAN HELP YOU. It is like their corporate model is to be actively unhelpful." And apparently they suck no matter who you are. Check out Dave Barry's report about trying to get his TiVo hooked up to his cable. He says, "Bomcast needs to stop apologizing for the inconvenience, and start being less inconvenient."

Leave Me Alone, I'm Learning

I found a cool little site called learning-styles-online. I took their free assessment and discovered that my top score (15 out of 20) was for the Solitary Learning Style, followed by the Verbal Learning Style (13 out of 20).

How do you learn best?

Hidden Danger

As Stephen Colbert said, "I look at the hidden dangers of hybrid cars. Danger #1: You can’t shut up about how you drive a hybrid car."

You Are a Very Green Driver

Saving the planet is probably pretty important to you. If not, saving some money definitely is! You don't use much gas when you drive, and you only drive when necessary. Only if everyone else showed so much restraint!

Are You a Green Driver?

Cheese Art: The Movement

Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better. - Andre Gide

For the 6,000 or so years since cheese was invented, people have continually come up with new and interesting things to do with it...

But for all the myriad ways there are to eat cheese, I must say I'm surprised by a recent trend in art: using cheese as a material for sculpture. - A Cheese A Day

Check out Sarah Kaufmann's Sculptures at sarahcheeselady.com.

Wait, Is That Five On a Scale of Ten?

You Are 5: The Investigator

You're independent - and a logical analytical thinker. You love learning and ideas... and know things no one else does. Bored by small talk, you refuse to participate in boring conversations. You are open minded. A visionary. You understand the world and may change it. At Your Best: You are sharp, inventive, and creative. You have the skills to lead the world. At Your Worst: You are reclusive, weird, and a bit paranoid. Your Fixation: Greed Your Primary Fear: Being useless or incompetent Your Primary Desire: Being competent and needed Other Number 5's: Bill Gates, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain, Bjork, and Stephen Hawking.

What Number Are You?

As Read Online

IM conversation after I stumbled across Northern Lights: Canada on Mars.

Cmdr Sue: Dude, did you know that Canada was third into space? Does anyone pay ANY attention to the Canucks?
Nifty Zifty: I guess not. I did not know they had been to space. They need better P.R.
Cmdr Sue: ' Zactly! How about, "Canada! We're not as boring as you think we are!"
Nifty Zifty: I mean Mexico has some great ads out there and I am pretty sure they have not been to space.

To all of my Canadian bloggy friends, we really like Canada. We just didn't catch the part where you had the bronze in space. And, really, get some better P.R.

Really? That Was So Not the Obvious

Every now and then it hits me that, for all the time we've spent together in this blogosphere, I've forgotten to tell you so many things. After having Xander come up as my sidekick I did a Google search to see how many times I had referenced Buffy on the blog. Apparently there was that time and.... that was it. Like I didn't adore Buffy or anything.

As if!

Well, let me make up for that now. When the movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer was coming out I worked at the bookstore and picked up the novelization before opening night. It was crappy in the way that those sorts of novelizations always are, but I sensed it. I smelled the Whedon. I dragged my friends to the movie and sensed it again, the Whedonesque, but it still wasn't clear. It wasn't clear but it was enough. I was hooked.

When the tv series Buffy the Vampire Slayer came out I could tell that the Whedon was stronger. I was at my dad's house and taped the first episode when I watched it. I teased that I was going to be the only person in the world with an entire collection of the show, all six episodes. Up where I lived no one got the WB. My dad's house was five states away so I would nag him into taping them and then drive 16 hours one way to pick up the tapes (and cases of Barq's rootbeer, which we also didn't have). The episodes went beyond six. I became hopeful that there was finally going to be a good show that didn't get killed. Of course, it did get killed. But at least we got seven seasons out of it first.

How much of a fan am I? My Buffy tribute shelf includes books, action figures, comic books, a lunch box, games, a hat, a mug, and a Supernatural Defense Kit. Oh, and nice coordinating silk roses to tie the whole look together.

Ok, you already knew I was a geek. But did you know I was a Buffy geek?

All Purpose Channel Guide

Wow, this is exactly what's on the channels in our town, too.

StumbledUpon at collegehumor.

Cool!

Which Reality Show Do You Belong On?
**WARNING**REQUIRES REGISTRATION**

Created by BuddyTV

I Win! I WIN!

Which Friends Character Are You?
**WARNING**REQUIRES REGISTRATION**

(The post title is my favorite Monica quote.)

Does This Mean I'm Buffy?

Who is Your TV Sidekick?
**WARNING**REQUIRES REGISTRATION**

Or as Spike would say, Zaaaannnnddrrrrr.

Soogle Says: Check Out FactCheck.org

There is nothing Soogle likes better than some facts, and that is what FactCheck.org delivers. In particular I like Ask FactCheck.

The Visual Mosaic Meme

Scoops always has the funnest stuff.
Here are the questions you have to answer visually:
1. What is your first name?
2. What is your favorite food?
3. What high school did you go to?
4. What is your favorite color?
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
6. Favorite drink?
7. Dream vacation?
8. Favorite dessert?
9. What you want to be when you grow up?
10. What do you love most in life?
11. One Word to describe you.
12. Your flickr name - Or online handle.

Here's how:
a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd’s mosaic maker.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Drama

The Movie Of Your Life Is A Black Comedy

In your life, things are so twisted that you just have to laugh. You may end up insane, but you'll have fun on the way to the asylum. Your best movie matches: Being John Malkovich, The Royal Tenenbaums, American Psycho

If Your Life Was a Movie, What Genre Would It Be?

I had to check this out once I saw that Scoops was an Indie Flick.

Life is a Highway...

The Road Trip of Your Life

You see life as a journey you must take alone. Independence and individuality are primary to you. You live life at a fairly leisurely pace. You take time to enjoy the sweeter parts of life, even when you're busy. You're willing to take a few risks in life. You may not take the road no one travels, but you're happy to take the road less traveled. You tend to be a workaholic. You overwork yourself without ever realizing it and sometimes suffer the consequences later. In another life, you could have been a great artist. You trust your creative instincts enough to let them lead you.

The Road Trip Test

Ok, That Explains It

You Are 96% Burned Out

You are extremely burned out. You work too hard, and you're not getting the results you deserve. It's time for a life change, as soon as you can manage it. You're giving away most of your energy to something you don't even enjoy.

Are You Burned Out?

It's The Final Countdown

Keeping up with the Hadron Collider on a countdown clock. Just remember, your next 43 days might be your last...

Fill It With Zombies And Set It On Fire

Check out Dark Icon's Ten Tips for Writing Horror.

1) Drink.
It was good enough for Edgar Allen Poe and Stephen King, but somehow you’re too good for the bottom of a bottle? Amateur.

Good times, good times...