Falls a little short of the mark, but entertaining.

The real delight is that it pays blatant homage to Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

 

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/27/graduation-song/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=18708

Away from the Internets for most of the day because my niece Cecilia is having her high school graduation ceremony. See you all tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s “The Paper Chase,” one of my favorite graduation-themed songs, from the (now defunct) The Academy Is… (the ellipsis is part of their name).

I wrote about Fast Times at Barrington High, the album this song is on, here.

Have a good Sunday.

Hi, I posted here about a month ago & found some nice friends. LJ has been a lot less active since last time, though (I had a blog here almost a decade ago & just came back this April), so, I would like to make one more try here to build up my list a little bit more. I'll stop after this post, tho- not planning to bombard all the add-mes practically every other week.

I am turning 33 in a couple of weeks. I am American, but don't want to say exactly which US state I am from- I like the increased privacy here, after having too many people know all my stuff on Facebook for too long.

Like a lot of LJers, I have a medical challenge. Dystonia became a part of my life in February 2012. I am still feeling volatile about it; but I made a very understanding & caring friend in a support group this spring, and have recently found an over-the-counter supplement that really helps. I have made a personal choice to rehabilitate myself and not to pursue neurological treatment for now. I go through weeks ranting and self-pitying about it all on my journal, then feel better and say very little about it during a good week.

I work as a full-time professional musician and usually will jot down in my journal a few mentions of work if I am composing anything that week, if I have anything coming up, etc. I am currently looking for a piano bar gig for the summer, composing one original, and trying to crank out a coffee jingle.

I don't have a ton of hobbies- I just like to draw with pencils when my writing hand is feeling steady & painless enough to do it. I am also a Spanish speaker, and chat with people in both languages on Skype once in a while. I used to play sports a little bit; but between being over 30 and trying to protect my hands for work, I have pretty much quit.

So, anyone who wants to talk to me sometime, just add me. I pay attention to all of my LJ friends & I give comments every time that I am on. Thanks for your time.

Fair, honest pricing almost kills JC Penney.

Thanx to andrewducker

Happy birthday, mac_arthur_park

http://www.snopes.com/humor/jokes/donkey.asp

City boy turns a neat profit by raffling off a dead donkey to country folk.

The HuffPo article "Why You Shouldn't Boycott North Carolina" (over NC's shameful passage of Amendment 1 earlier this month) makes a lot of good points:

• Here in Orange County the marriage amendment lost, with 80 percent against it and 20 percent in favor of it. In Chapel Hill, where I serve as mayor, the amendment failed even more spectacularly: 86 percent to 14 percent.


• While winning eight out of hundred counties may not seem like much, it is important to recognize that the Great Eight ... are also home to what Americans love most about North Carolina. These counties include the cities of Asheville, Pittsboro, Cape Hatteras, Durham, Charlotte, Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and Boone.


• We need your support to convince the rest of North Carolina that these issues are important and that equality is the only solution.

All of these swirl around 2 larger points that the writer doesn't make explicitly:

1. North Carolina is very populous but is one of the least urbanized states--in terms of the percentage of the population who live in urban areas.
2. No state--not even Mississippi or Massachusetts--is completely "red" or "blue".

Minority rights in modern America isn't so much a Northern/Southern or Coastal/Inland issue as it is an urban/rural issue. I have a larger constellation of thoughts about that (broadly speaking, the more one has direct experience of people greatly unlike one's self, the more one is willing to treat them like human beings), and it's worth reminding ourselves of this dynamic.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/26/musical-synchronicity-of-a-certain-miserable-sort/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=18704

It may just be me, but I think the lead characters of these respective and currently popular songs deserve each other. Listening to the lyrics will help to explain why.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/26/dont-go-into-the-basement/

http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=18701

If you’re a vegetarian, that is, because the standing freezer down there is now full with roughly 250 pounds of beef. Krissy went in with a co-worker on half of a locally bred and butchered steer, and her quarter of a steer is now taking up several shelves in the freezer. Athena, who is our resident vegetarian, registers her (entirely posed) horror.

Actually, this is a fine moment to note that Athena recently passed her one year anniversary of being a vegetarian a few weeks ago. She started doing it to see what she thought of it and has kept at it ever since, with all of us doing a bit of research to make sure she’s getting all the nutrients she needs and so on. It does take some effort to keep a vegetarian lifestyle around here — Athena is one of the very few in her school who does — so I’m pretty proud of her for making the choice and sticking with it.

Massive purchase of beef notwithstanding, we’ve all cut down our consumption of meat here at the Scalzi Compound (the massive purchase will last us quite a long time), and Athena’s commitment to not eating the stuff is the major reason why. So good on my kid.