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LAST.FM


I keep getting bits of song in my head, and they're good songs, ones I'd enjoy listening to if I only knew what they were. I figured out the words to one, looked it up, and it didn't even come up on search engines, so that didn't help; this one that got into my head not two minutes ago is relevant in some way to what's going on around me, per usual, but I don't know the words or anything more than a vague bit of melody. It's frustrating.


So last night I found a strange new dish upon looking down into the sink. For some reason I didn't register that it was a new kind of dish, though; at first, I thought it was a normal Corelle dinner plate, undergoing cell mitosis or something. I'm pretty sure that was my first thought: "Is it dividing?" It's really rather strange, as we've had the same types of plain-white Corelle dishes for years now, none of which have included this odd, elongated serving plate.


Dinner-plate mitosis reminded me of the apoptosis song from STARS, which goes to the tune of "Ode to Joy":


"Apoptosis, apoptosis, apoptosis—when cells die;
If your cell has apoptosis, then your cell is gonna die.


Apoptosis, not mitosis
Programmed cell death; implosion
BCL-2, cytochrome-c—
That spells fun for you and me."


Ah, the things I learned in STARS. We came up with other songs, too, to provide short explanations for various friends' research, but the apoptosis one was the most fun because everyone knew and loved Mina. He was equally famed for his contribution to the STARS newsletter, a poem called "Mina, Mina, y pues Mina" or something similar, as well as his continually agitated state of existence. Ah, Mina...


I've actually been watching some TV—it's been about a year since I actually had a TV around to watch, much less bothered to pay attention to it—and the movie Big Fish looks wonderful. Am I imagining how awesome it looks? [Editor's Note: Yes.] Perhaps it's just that glimpse of Ewan McGregor I caught in the trailer that makes me think it'll be good. Nonetheless, it's a non–Lord of the Rings fantasy, i.e. something I'm not already entirely sick of seeing or hearing about. It also seems like it'll actually have a color palette in use, a far cry from the near-ubiquitous browns and grays of LOTR.


(Yes, I know: "But it's not all browns and grays! Have you even seen the films? You need to go see ROTK. ROTK is the coolest thing ever. You obviously have no taste, and you obviously didn't pay enough attention to the movies if you say it's all brown and gray." OK, OK. [holds hands up against the LOTR-obsessed rabble] Whatever.)


I like movies that dare to use bright colors. Not Teletubbies/Barney bright-'n'-stupid, but movies that deliberately use a color palette to their advantage, i.e. The Matrix trilogy, Amelie, Moulin Rouge, Hero, and a few others that escape me right now. That's when you're really getting somewhere, when you can exercise that much creative control over every aspect of the color in a film.


I was washing dishes in the sink last night (no, we don't have a dishwasher, 'tis a shame) and thinking back over the semester. One thing I still wish I could've done was actually talk to Chancellor Wrighton at the newspaper's 125th anniversary dinner. This man is like Big Brother—other people write press releases under his name, speaking for him all the time in various capacities and [mis]representing what the guy's thinking—and there I sat for a good two-plus hours directly next to him and his wife, during which time I said little of any consequence.


Alas, I was attending largely for the free T-shirt—but the things I could've asked him! Unfortunately, I didn't feel up to the task of entertaining him with my wit and whizbang, so I just sort of sat there.


Wrighton seems to be something of a nonentity. a nondescript persona others can project thoughts and feelings onto. What I want to know is whether either of the Wrightons cook. Can they exist on their own? Do they have maids and servants? You'd think a chemist would be able to cook, but then again, you never know. What's their weekly schedule like? Which secret government agencies and corporations do they meet with? I'm sure these things happen—the question is whether they'd actually ever admit to any of it.


12:43 pm, December 24, 2003 :: the jablog years

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