Random happiness

As the school year starts up, and things get crazy and stressful and homework abounds, I find it is important to keep track of important, little happy or amusing things. As such, I have started this thread for such a purpose. This is intended for short, one or two sentence mentions or comments of something that was kind of awesome or amuses you or whatever. This can be anything, from something you read or something that happened or something you thought of.


I have two contributions to start this off. One is a random life thing and one is rather a joke.


My chemistry professor keeps making star trek references


Dear Tidus and Yuna,
Please go jump in a lake.
Sincerely, Areada

Hahaha, that was a great song that played when they jumped in the lake. Wish I understood Japanese, but it was beautiful regardless.

I had another dream about Jackie Chan last night. This time we were part of some bowling fundraiser for something or other. He gave me an autographed copy of Rush Hour 2. Jackie would always bowl strikes. He's that awesome.

I love how the animation suddenly gets better just for the one part of the scene xD.

That's because it's a video clip rather than a cutscene made using in-game models. I guess they wanted that scene to be something players would really remember. It would look clunky and awkward had they used character models. They also use video clips for the intro and ending cutscenes.

School starts in less than a week! Excited and terrified xD First time living with strangers...

Was browsing the Diablo 3 forums the other day. One poster questioned if a monster, Mallet Lord, was a bug since it completely annihilated him. A person replied "No, Mallet Lord is not a bug, but it is understandable you made that mistake because it has 6 legs."

I was asked, "What is more impressive, a mountain or a skyscraper?"

It's somewhat expected that most people asked the question replied with "A mountain." I suppose I like arguing for arguments sake (just ask my old high school Law teacher xD) so I answered:

Suppose you are religious. The mountain was created by God, the all-powerful being. By definition, an all-powerful being will not expend effort in any endeavour. It is not simply results that impress us, but results relative to the amount of effort expended. If God does not expend effort in His creation of the mountain, then we cannot say that the existence of the mountain is impressive. Now suppose you are not religious. The mountain is now a product of random chance, all previous factors led up to the mountain's conception and growth. There was no architect to the design, so what is there to be impressed by but a heap of stone brought to this location by circumstance? On the other hand, a skyscraper is a testament to human ingenuity and creativity. We have defied all odds to build a towering masterpiece of metal and glass. Does it not speak for the impressiveness of the skyscraper that so few of you find it more impressive than the mountain? We pay them no mind, for skyscrapers are commonplace. And that such a great feat can inspire so little awe, having become such a mundane part of our reality, is why the skyscraper is more impressive than the mountain.

Yes. This happened.

That mountains vs. skyscrapers thing reminded me of this little thought of I had a weeks ago. I live in Las Vegas*. When I was little, I always used to think the buildings on the strip were so amazing. They were towering so high above us, so shiny and magnificent-like, and yet all they were made up of was bits of steel and things of that nature. Eventually, though, I remembered thinking that along with the adage, "Beauty is on the inside." And then these monuments which I idealized so much in my childhood became so...not magnificent. Everything in those buildings are so empty. Despite the sparks and glows coming from the decor, there's just a sense of an artificialness to the joy to be had in there. It's mostly made up of kitsch theme slots and games of chance that can't exactly be called fair(of course, who cares at this point?) all just aimed at people with empty lives seeking empty pleasures to numb the doldrum of their real lives. Everything just seemed so fake there at the moment.
I'm not saying everything in this city is like this. There's a huge, thriving underground art community, and then there's the food(if you stay away from the empty buffets in the empty towers), and, I suppose, some shows like the Blue Man Group. Granted, I still believe the skyscraper's more beautiful than the mountain because of all the humans comining togetherness it represents because I'm really into that type of thing. Y'know, the being part of a bigger cause than yourself?

Anyway(s).

In my Spanish class, there's this kid named Zazzi. Except, in Spanish, the "z"s sound like "s"s, so((*alliteration, ACHOO!*)), so everyone calls her "Sassy." Oh Vot. Also this.



*Hooray for no boundaries!

I would argue that mountains and skyscrapers are equally impressive, just because they can exist. I would also argue that for religious people, the fact that their deity managed to set things in place so that a skyscraper or mountain could actually end up existing, is pretty awesome. When you consider the monumental amount of time and energy and either natural forces or human beings that have to work together to create mountains and skyscrapers, the impressiveness of both is just mind-blowingly huge.

I'm actually quite impressed by mountains myself. I just argued for arguments sake, since everyone had replied answered with mountain. Hehe.

Nigel Thornberry has always terrified me. I'm going to have nightmares for a week now...

I totally understand xD. One of my very good friends uses the word 'contrary' to tease me sometimes...with good reason I suppose...

DOCTOR WHO PREMIERE TONIGHT

WOOOOOOOO!

I KNOW!

But I don't have BBC or Space channel :'( I'm going to have to wait to download it! NOOOOOOOOOO!

THAT'S NOT A HAPPY THING. I'm so sorry, though... *sadness*

It's okay. I'll just have to wait a little while longer



Edit: Three more minutes! WANT TO WATCH!

Facebook friend: broken phone sorry if i didn't get back to u

Me: I'm sure your phone forgives you. #punctuationisusefulingettingyourmessageacross

Haha. I tried to post a picture of two wanted posters, a real one and one for Team Rocket. But... only the real one showed up because the image is so big! Look at it here: https://i.imgur.com/BX021.jpg

I want to print those and put them up...

That made me very happy.

OH MY GOD I JUST WENT TO THIS ELVISH PANEL/CLASS. IT WAS AMAZING. AAAAAAAAAAAH.

Yeah, my day was good.

...

Was it real Elvish? I mean Tolkien Elvish, not Paolini or some other fantasy story. Because if so, I am insanely jealous. I want to take Elvish as my elective, but my school doesn't offer it :/

I could totally open up a law firm in Middle Earth!

P.S. That was an ellipsis of awestruck speechlessness.

The Elvish was amazing. REAL ELVISH. Taught by David Salo! The man who translated the language stuff for the movies!

Yup.

:{D

*isexcited*

Omg! I'm so jealous of you! >:[ *green with envy* I was never a Trekky, so the only language I actually ever wanted to learn was Elvish. Maybe Na'vi, but James Cameron is over-rated.

... Okay, I literally squeaked when I read that.

Elvish! Oh-my-gosh!

I've tried to learn Elvish a bit, but I've never had much self control, so the furthest I got was reading through the alphabet (Sindarin, by the way -- not Qenya), and deciding to use the Elvish numbers for thinking in base 12. And then not remembering them, so thinking with the English numbers (along with "en" and "ev") instead.

Quenya is the most put-together of the two elvish languages. Sindarin has a very limited vocabulary, we just don't have as much of it was we have of Quenya. So Quenya is probably a good way to go for learning. Now that I've had some of the basics, I fully intend to dive headfirst into studying elvish. The trick will be to find a reliable curriculum...

Because Quenya is not exactly a 'finished' language, and there are many points of confusion within the language, it is not really possible to be 'fluent' as we know 'fluent'. But I think it is entirely possible to grasp the vocabulary and the grammatical terms that are not too confusing. Tolkien did not always decide what terms he preferred and therefore there are parts of elvish where there are a number of options and people have to sort out the most likely one or the one that makes the most sense with things that we do know.

I'm always terrified of being late and therefore locked out of the lecture, and since I have to take the bus from my residence to the lecture hall, I always leave 40ish minutes early. This morning, on my way to class, I met a very nice Christian missionary. We had a brief but fun debate about why I should convert to his religion, and why he should convert to Islam. In the end, we reached an impasse and decided to maintain our own faiths.

I think he was slightly annoyed with me...

Waiting for my evening lecture to start right now. Sitting near the front, as per usual. Normally, the back is where all the gossip happens, but these three girls are sitting behind me. It shouldn't be worth noting, but they're hilarious to listen to. It's like the movie Mean Girls, but in real life!